SECOND READING.

HC Deb 19 April 1888 vol 324 cc1746-823

[ADJOURNED DEBATE.] [FIFTH NIGHT.]

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [12th April], "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed.

MR. FIRTH (Dundee)

Mr. Speaker, I think, before the debate on this important measure closes, that it is desirable that a much more extended reference should be made to its bearings upon the interests of the inhabitants of the Capital than has yet been made. I hope the Members for London will express their opinion on a matter so very closely affecting their constituencies, for, important as are the provisions of this Bill as they respect country districts, I believe that they must be regarded as infinitely more important as they affect the inhabitants of London, because this proposal amounts to giving them the germ, at any rate, of direct control over their affairs.

When the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) came to deal with the question of County Government, I apprehend that he found it inevitable, in dealing with London, to come to such a conclusion as is expressed in this Bill. The Metropolis is situated in the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent. He would find that either he must give to these counties administrative control over the Metropolis, analogous to that exercised over whole counties elsewhere—which is manifestly impossible—or that he must constitute London as a county by itself. He has taken the latter course; he has given to it more than the simple functions of administration, and he has done that because otherwise, I apprehend, the London County would have to receive the same amount of money as other counties receive, and that would have to be paid to the Metropolitan Board of Works—a condition of things which no one could contemplate with complacency. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman has constituted London into a county of itself, and that was in accordance with the Report of the Metropolitan Local Government Committee of 1867, which said— The first step towards improved and efficient local government is to constitute the Metropolis a county of itself according to the principles recognized in the government of this country from the earliest times. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has found himself able to adopt that proposition. With regard to London, its condition as a county will be found, when this proposal is worked out, different from that of rural counties, inasmuch as it is exlusively urban, and demands special treatment.

With regard to powers, the right hon. Gentleman, in respect to other counties, applies the Municipal Corporations Act. It was the opinion in 1835 that an Act analogous to that should be applied to the whole of the Metropolitan area, and it was stated by Lord John Russell, in the House of Commons, that it was his intention to introduce a Bill applicable to the area of London. The right hon. Gentleman has not given powers to the County of London to the complete extent to which that Act would have gone; but he has travelled a considerable distance in that direction. He has given to it the powers of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which has been offered up on the altar of the necessities of the situation. The organ of that Board has described this as "a daring and extraordinary proposal;" but, as a matter of fact, the abolition of the Metropolitan Board of Works has been received with universal joy and satisfaction in the House and out of it; and I think I may here adapt the words of King Lear, and say—"Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense."

The Bill that was introduced in 1884 proposed that there should be a Central Body with direct election to replace the Metropolitan Board of Works, and that there should be an enlargement of the City. The Bill of the right hon. Gentleman proposes to give to the County direct election, but it leaves the City alone. We want a subsidiary measure to give us control of the Local Autho- rities, but the Bill does not give that. The Metropolitan Board of Works and the City are dealt with more roughly in this Bill than they were by us, and if they were under the impression that we scourged them with whips, their opinion now must be that the right hon. Gentleman has scourged them with scorpions.

We gave to the City a representation based upon population and rateable value, and I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has found himself able to do what we and Her Majesty's Government of the day had not the courage to do, being apprehensive, if he will, of the comments of the Opposition—that is to say, to give a representation based on population; and, however he may extend Section 52, he will not give to the City anything like the proportion of representation which we proposed to give. The general position is, that the Metropolitan Board of Works dies at once—like a man who is beheaded—but the City of London is only to die gradually. It is to be surrounded by a pure and free organization, and the life at its centre cannot be prolonged for any considerable time. The Chairman of the London Municipal Council, as it may be called, will look upon the operations of the citizens in the square mile embracing the City very much as Lemuel Gulliver looked upon the operations of the inhabitants of Mildendo, the capital of Lilliput, and before long the City will become part of a great municipal organization.

In 1884 the right hon. Gentleman said a good deal with respect to our Bill. I am not going to resuscitate those opinions, or say more than that they were not much in accord with those he has found himself able to express now. He told us a good deal with respect to London opinion being against our Bill; but he will not find that that opinion, which he quoted against us, will very strongly support him. He will have the opportunity of finding that there is now a strong opinion in favour of what he proposes to give—namely, a strong directly elected Municipal Authority. I find that one hon. Gentleman representing a Metropolitan Division (Sir Roper Lethbridge), who expressed great satisfaction with this Bill, wished that the appointment of aldermen could be dropped. I remember contesting a London constituency with him some years ago, and I would on this point say nothing more than that our opinions did not in 1885 coincide so closely as they do now.

This is a Bill embodying the principles which we have for so many years advocated, and I think it becomes us to consider carefully what is our duty with reference to it. The opinion that I have expressed here and elsewhere is that it is our business to support it. It is quite true that it is incomplete, and that it does not deal with the whole question of the Government of London. I am glad that it does not, because this would have imposed on the Bill a greater burden than it could bear, and because the right hon. Gentleman has not yet come to the conclusion at which he will probably arrive when he has fully considered the matter as to the true solution of the rest of the London question.

We want consolidation of Central Authorities, and the control of Local Authorities; but I think the latter may for the present be postponed. With respect to the proposal which the right hon. Gentleman has made as to introducing a Bill for the purpose of dealing hereafter with Local Authorities, may I make a suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman? It is a very difficult and extremely complex question. The right hon. Gentleman has constituted a London Authority that will undoubtedly be composed of men not merely familiar with London life, but with all the varying phases of London government. There are men who have acquired a knowledge of the government of the Board of Works, and a few who have mastered the system of Vestries. You will have men with a knowledge of each; but it is a most difficult thing to get men with a knowledge of London government as a whole, and I suggest that you should leave to this Body power to bring in a scheme for the regulation of the whole system of London Government. Now, the right hon. Gentleman said with respect to the Bill, as a whole, that it "would enable those who desired yet larger reforms to give it their hearty support." We shall accept it in that spirit, and it must be understood that the criticisms that I am about to offer on the Bill are governed by that intention. We want one Municipal Authority, directly elected for the control of our affairs.

The principle of direct election is to us a principle of very great importance, and if we had known that the Government were going to introduce a measure with respect to London, I am bound to say that we should have looked with the utmost anxiety to the manner in which they would deal with that matter. I am glad the right hon. Gentleman has not entertained the proposal of the Metropolitan Local Government Committee of 1867, that there should be a representation first, of owners of property, secondly, Crown nominees, thirdly, delegates from local bodies, and, fourthly, ratepayers. The right hon. Gentleman's proposal will be a great improvement upon that.

With regard to the Metropolitan Board of Works elections now, I moved for a Return in this House as to the number of people who voted for vestrymen in London, and I found that only one in 33 of the population took even that amount of interest in these bodies. When those interesting bodies are elected, it is in some cases their duty to elect members for District Boards, who retire after three years. The District Boards assist in the election of the members of the Metropolitan Board of Works, one-third of whom are elected over London every year. It has thus been wittily said that the Board is "a vestry vestrified to the nth power." This system of election gives it neither responsibility nor public confidence. Now, the present plan is infinitely better, and is the same that was proposed by the Select Committee on Metropolitan Local Taxation of 1861. I say it is better than ours was, although I trust I may not be regarded as reflecting on the Government Bill of 1884, which Bill considered rateable value as well as population.

This Bill considers population only, as far as London is concerned. I am extremely glad to find that it is proposed that the elections shall be triennial, instead of being conducted on the system under the Municipal Corporations Act, which created confusion by annual elections of one-third. Lord John Russell, in 1835, said that— Whether people elect for three years or for one year, they will generally elect the same persons. And he said his object was to secure two-thirds who had "some experience in the management of the affairs of the town." Now, experience has shown that this is unnecessary. In the case of the London School Board the present system has resulted in the return of a large proportion of members having experience in the management, and with regard to the House of Commons I think I am right in saying that in the Election of 1885 nearly half the Members were changed.

Then, with respect to voters; I believe on this subject there is an observation which it is my duty to make in regard to London. We proposed in 1884 that there should be a citizen roll; and we had grounds for the expectation that this would be ultimately accepted as the roll for all purposes. This Bill proposes to have a list formed in accordance with the 9th section of the Municipal Corporations Act. I venture to suggest that, with regard to London for the purpose of these elections, this is unnecessary. Under the 17th section of the Metropolis Local Management Act of 1855 rated householders vote for the vestry, and the rate book is used as the roll. Now, between the rated householders and persons entitled to vote under Section 9 of the Municipal Act there is very little difference. It is possible for a minor to be a rated householder, but, of course, he could not vote under Section 9. But with respect to the City, of course, it is different. If you propose to make an entirely new roll there, that is a matter for consideration; but you at present have the Parliamentary franchise for electing the Common Council, and therefore it would be necessary to take off lodger and service voters and put on women voters.

With respect to the City, I see there is a power in the Bill as of which I am bound to say the right hon. Gentleman did not in his speech give us the slightest indication. I do not complain of that; but there is power to the Local Government Board to allocate to the City more than its population share of representation. The effect of this will be to isolate it still more, and cause a considerable amount of friction; and it is, moreover, an indefensible course, because there is nothing to be said with respect to the shop- keepers on Ludgate Hill which cannot be said of the shopkeepers in Bond Street.

There is one other point to which I propose to call attention. Under the Electors' Bill, Clause 3, Sub-section E, it is proposed for England and Wales that Section 21 of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act of 1878 shall not apply, and that the lists and register of voters shall be made out alphabetically. I draw attention to the fact that this will not do for London at all, and that it is necessary to have it altered, as our Register is now made up in street lists, and this to the advantage and by the consent of all parties concerned.

I understand that for areas for the first election the right hon. Gentleman proposes to take or utilize to a certain extent the vestry areas and the vestry wards. If that is the proposal, I think it is a very wise one, and I trust that the new London Authority will have power to frame a scheme, and consider whether administrative and electoral areas cannot in some way be made co-terminous.

With regard to the constitution of the Central London Authority, it is provided in Section 2, Sub-section 4, first as to the Chairman that he must be a Justice of the Peace, and in Section 36, Sub-section 5, the powers of the Metropolitan Board of Works are transferred to the London Council. This is a matter not of comment but of inquiry. The Bill is not clear on this point, and I ask if Section 36 over-rides Section 2? Amongst the powers of the Metropolitan Board of Works, under the Metropolis Local Management Act, is that of electing and paying a Chairman, and I wish to point out that, as regards London, it is necessary to have a Chairman and possibly a Deputy Chairman who ought to be paid. There have been paid Chairmen of the Metropolitan Board of Works, beginning with Mr. Thwaites and ending with Lord Magheramorne, and it is necessary that you should have one or two men who are prepared to give their whole time daily to the enormous amount of work which will fall to their share in these positions. There are 118 operative Acts of Parliament under which the Board now works, and I do not know where you will find your Justice of the Peace available for all that will be required of him. I venture to put this question, because it is one of several points in the Bill on which I find it rather difficult to arrive at any certain conclusion. The Bill has no Memorandum, and there are no side references; and if the right hon. Gentleman can, before the Bill goes into Committee, supply these, he will assist many of us in arriving at an exact conclusion as to what is meant.

As an illustration of the difficulty—under Section 15 County Councils have authority to maintain main roads; but under Sub - section 2 the Urban Authority "may claim to retain their powers of maintaining main roads." Is it intended that the Vestries and District Boards shall claim power to maintain the main roads as Urban Authorities? That is a difficulty, and I confess I have no means of ascertaining with certainty the intention of the Bill in this respect. I will give another illustration—under Section 37 the City Common Council may claim to "retain" the powers and duties of maintaining and repairing any main road in the City. I point out with regard to that, that they have not this power now, and therefore, if they are to retain it, it must mean that they are to obtain it. The power is now in the hands of the Commissioners of Sewers, and the Common Council has no power in this matter, except in the appointment of the Commission once a-year. This, as well as the matters I have just mentioned, will show that there is absolute inconsistency with regard to certain points. Now I return to the constitution of the London Body.

The selected councillors will be called aldermen, whether you like it or not. It is not probable that people will assume the longer title; they will be aldermen if they are anything, and the first point I wish to make is, that to give us aldermen by a system of triennial election in London is a retrogade policy. The aldermen we have are all of them subject to direct election. It is true that they are aldermen for life; they have been so elected for hundreds of years; but still they are directly elected. It is not long since one succeeded in an election with 121 votes and another with 163 votes; but still there is direct election. Besides, these aldermen at present have some connection with the wards; we make aldermen practically chairmen of our wards in the City; they represent some interests, but here you give aldermen the representation of nothing. They are like Bishops in partibus, without sees to visit, and we say that with regard to the London Council you should not take this retrograde step. I understand that the hon. Member for North Kensington (Sir Roper Lethbridge) says that "These must be dropped in London." I am glad to be able to agree with him. Further, I do not think that we shall be able to persuade our best citizens to accept the title at all, and I therefore hope that we shall be relieved from them as far as London is concerned. There is, of course, the danger of some of the elections turning on political grounds. In Liverpool and Leeds they have, I believe, turned on those grounds, but I hope they will not in future do so here. The adoption of selected councillors might lead to a misrepresentation in the Council of the majority of the electors, and now that you are starting de novo this in itself is an objection to the proposal. We have the idea that whatever exists can be defended upon some original principle if we can only find it out. And so you have attached to the constitution of this body a number of aldermen.

As a matter of fact, aldermen under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 have no foundation in principle at all. Lord John Russell, when he introduced the Bill on the 5th of June in that year, said—"We propose that there should be one body only, the Mayor and Common Council." When the Bill reached the House of Lords, Lord Lyndhurst moved an Amendment that one-fourth of the Council should be aldermen for life. Lord Brougham said he viewed such a proposal with "aversion and disgust," that it was inconsistent with the principles of the measure, and that the usefulness of the measure would be paralyzed by the "baneful self-elective provision." But it remained for Lord Wharncliffe to give the true reasons for the Amendment, when he said that a portion of the Council ought to be rendered "independent of the people;" that the— Principle of aristocracy was at stake, for if it were determined that a body of aldermen were unnecessary to a Corporation, then here- ditary Members in the House of Lords would be deemed equally unnecessary. Lord Ellenborough supported it for the earlier operation of the measure in order "to counteract the turbulence inseparable from the novelty of the system." We know that then there was a conflict between the two Houses of Parliament, and that strong language was used, much stronger than now, with reference to the House of Lords, one Member of the lower House, Sir Samuel Whalley, suggesting that there should be written over the portals of the House of Lords—"Mangling done here." When the Lords' Amendments were considered in the Commons, Sir Robert Peel said he did not consider the introduction of aldermen as councillors an improvement to the Bill, that the selection of a certain number of aldermen as councillors "would imply distrust without carrying security," and that they would be forced in without the consent of the community. Lord John Russell said that it was quite incompatible with the Bill, and would only tend "to embarrass, disturb, and weaken the action of the Municipal Body." Eventually a compromise was arrived at of election for six years—one-half retiring every third year. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will see his way to omit this provision for selected members from the Bill.

With respect to the Sheriffs, it is proposed to give the Queen the power to appoint a new Sheriff of London. I suggest that this power might very well be given to the Council of London. It is a power possessed by the Common Council of counties of cities, and I think we may very properly give it to the London Council. The present Sheriff of Middlesex is really two gentlemen rolled into one. The Liveries of the City Guilds elect once a-year two Sheriffs who become Sheriffs of London, and they together make the Sheriff of Middlesex. Therefore, this is a proposal to take away from the Companies of the City of London their right of electing a Sheriff of Middlesex—it is taking away a municipal right, and thus you may, so to speak, be beginning to let out water. Will the City rebel? They have already stated that the Sheriff-wick of Middlesex, paid for and enjoyed for 700 years, "will not be parted with tamely;" but I think that when the turtle is turned on its back it is not able to fight very hard. The Commissioners of 1854 suggested that the Sheriff should be appointed by the Common Council, and I think the Sheriff of London might be appointed by the County Council.

With regard to the Recorder. Under the 38th section, Sub-section 12, the powers and duties of Recorder and Common Serjeant of London are unaltered, but Section 23 provides for the payment out of the county fund of part of the salaries of "officers" of the Central Criminal Court. Now is it intended to pay any part of the salary of the Recorder or Common Serjeant, because if so it amounts to a proposal to relieve a present charge on the City funds, which again is something in the nature of the letting out of water, because it involves certain important principles. If the City estate is to be relieved at our expense, we have some questions to ask as to that estate.

With regard to the Court of Aldermen, I understand that certain administrative functions, not including licensing, are transferred to the Common Council of the City. I ask why should they not be extended to the London Council? But the magisterial functions of the City aldermen are left untouched. Why is that? The aldermen are a body of men exercising magisterial functions in the centre of the business of the world, without the slightest guarantee of legal knowledge or capacity for dealing with the questions which come before them. Two aldermen might, by the Central Criminal Court Act, try a man for murder, and one of them, in order to make a Court, always sits with the Judge; and when in 1854 it was proposed to abolish this right of the aldermen, they said it was a revolutionary proposal, and that they recognized the advantages they enjoyed in sitting with the Judges—as if the Court was a sort of university for the purpose of completing the education of City tradesmen.

With regard to the question of audit. The County Councils' accounts are to be audited by auditors appointed by the Local Government Board. Will the effect of the Bill be to continue the Treasury audit for London, which now attaches to the Metropolitan Board of Works? Because if so, I simply say that we should prefer to have no connection with the Treasury and to be placed on a level with other counties.

With respect to borrowing powers, other Councils may borrow with the consent of the Local Government Board. But this Bill seems to fix us with the borrowing powers of the Metropolitan Board of Works under the Act of 1869, which, as the House knows, makes it necessary for them to come every year to the House of Commons to make application for the money they want. I say this is an indignity. We want to have the County Council of London trusted to look after the funds of the inhabitants of London as is the case with County Councils in other parts of the country.

I do not find any power to promote Bills in Parliament and to promote schemes. I think such power should be given. The Metropolitan Board of Works sometimes comes to this House to be relieved from the cost put upon it in opposing Bills in Parliament; it has also endeavoured to introduce Bills on several occasions, and I apprehend that the new authority may very well have power to do so. I think they should have power, if I may venture to suggest it, to introduce Bills, or at all events to prepare schemes on certain subjects, such as, for instance, lighting.

I have looked into the Bill with the view of seeing whether, having regard to our extreme anxiety to pass it, other functions could not be given to the proposed new Authority without interfering with the scope of the Bill or needlessly adding to its extent. I have come to the conclusion that there are two or three functions which the right hon. Gentleman might very well give to the London Council without interfering with the scope or object of the Bill, and which, I believe, will pass without any opposition whatever.

First, with regard to hackney carriages. These in London have been licensed since the reign of Charles II., when the tax was devoted to making roads, and afterwards in the time of William and Mary to paying off the French War Tax. This tax brings in £31,000 a-year, and is now paid into the police account. The regulations are under eight Acts of Parliament from 1831 to 1869, and of which it would not be untrue to say that a more arbitrary and unpractical body of laws are not to be found on our Statute Book. I say that the Council might very well have power to make regulations and have transferred to it this £31,000 a-year, while the police might well retain certain functions with regard to intoxication, furious driving, assaults, and matters of that kind.

With regard to markets. In 1882 I carried a clause in the Metropolitan Board of Works Bill, giving to the Board power to deal with markets. That power, unfortunately, lasted for a year only, and the consequence was that the Metropolitan Board of Works, after its own special manner, set to work to consider it; it was found that every Member wanted to have a market in his own district, and nothing was done. I submit that this power should be given in the Bill. Of course we know that the City Corporation under a Statute as old as the time of Edward III. claims to prevent the establishment of any market "infra septem leucas in circuitu civitatis;" but markets are important things to provide for the people, and I suggest that this power should be given to the Council.

My third point is the water supply. In 1880 there was a Select Committee, of which Lord Cross was a Member, and they said in their Report that "in the absence of any single Municipal Body in London" they would suggest the establishment of a Water Authority. Here we have the very Body which the Committee proposed to establish. The Metropolitan Board of Works introduced Bills in 1872 and 1878 with respect to purchase and new supply. The simple reason why the House of Commons did not give them the power to initiate a new supply of water was because they had no confidence in the Board; and by a Return which I moved for three years ago, to show the loss which had occurred since those Bills were introduced, it appears that the citizens of London have lost something like £10,000,000 in consequence of not having control over their water supply.

The next suggestion of powers to be given to the London Council is with regard to the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The Metropolitan Asylums Board is a Poor Law authority in theory, but a Sanitary Board in reality.

I suggest that the functions of this Board should be taken over by the London Council, together with other sanitary powers. Look at the absurdity of the present condition of things. There is to be power in the Central Authority under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts of 1878 and 1886 to prevent the spread of contagious diseases among animals, but it has no power to stamp out and prevent the spread of infection among the people. We have 40 independent sanitary authorities in London; we have no means of combining, and no unity of action, and this the Local Government Board have themselves found out. Some of these authorities have not put the 35th section of the Sanitary Act of 1866 in force, and the Local Government Board have issued rules to have it enforced; but they have no power to make the Vestries carry out the Act. I suggest then that the London Council should lay down principles and frame bye-laws in sanitary matters, and also in respect of mortuaries, baths, and washhouses. When our Bill of 1884 was before the House in July, 1884, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board said "It was, in point of fact, impossible that they could treat London as a whole." That is, of course, altered, because he now tells us that it is possible. He then said— The Government themselves acknowledge the difficulties in the case by not conferring on the Board many of the powers which it was hoped by those who were mainly instrumental in raising the question, would be vested in a new Municipality. …. It appeared to him that if this new Council were to be entrusted with anything at all, it might fairly be entrusted with the powers now possessed by the Metropolitan Asylums Board."—(3 Hansard, [289] 1951–2.) I think this meets the case of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and I think it is right to take over their powers, and ultimately for the London Council to take over the Poor Law control? I think that Poor Law control and the Guardians might very well be ultimately given to the Council, and the Lambeth Guardians are already anxious that this should be done. I have now referred to the four matters which can be transferred without friction, and practically without opposition, on which the judgment of the House has already been passed, and the transfer of which will be of great benefit to us, that is to say, markets, water supply, hackney carriages, and the Metropolitan Asylums Board.

Now, with respect to the future, I confess I am satisfied with the Bill—the possibilities of the future are illimitable. The 8th section is beyond all doubt, in my judgment, the best in the Bill; I suppose it is the most decentralizing section ever framed in any Bill ever brought before this House. But I have just one suggestion to make upon it. It is stated that the Authorities there mentioned may, if they consent, have their functions transferred. I think there should be consent also on the part of the receiving Council.

There is power given to Conservators to transfer their functions to the County Authority. Now we are anxious to have control over the Thames Conservancy; but I do not see, owing to the diverse elements of its constitution, how this is to be worked out. The Board consists of 23 members, the Lord Mayor, two aldermen, four common councilmen, the deputy master of the Trinity House, two members nominated by the Lord High Admiral, one by the Privy Council, one by the Trinity House, two by registered shipowners, two by owners of lighters and steam-tugs, one by steam-shipowners, one by dockowners and wharfingers, one by the Board of Trade, and four by riparian owners. Their control extends from Yantlet Creek, in Kent, to Cricklade, in Wiltshire. I do not see how we are to carry out this arrangement, and I throw the problem before the right hon. Gentleman for his consideration.

There is one other point under Clause 8 to which I desire to call attention. I understand that the Home Office may give us the control of the Police; but under Section 91 the Police in London are for the present to remain as they are. No doubt Amendments will be moved on that point, because there are some matters in connection with the police which have been pressed upon the attention of the Government. At present the Police jurisdiction of the Metropolis extends, roughly, to 700 square miles. The Metropolis Local Government Committee of 1867 were in favour of relegating the control to the outside counties; why, then, should this not be done? In the counties outside London there are 580 square miles over which they have control, and I venture to say there is no reasonable ground on which that anomaly can be defended.

What is the principle in this Home Office control? There is no principle to be found. If you go back to the introduction of the measure of 1829 you will find that Sir Robert Peel proposed, not with respect to the City, but with respect to the London parishes, that two or three should be joined together in order to secure joint action on the part of the police. In those days there were only six policemen in Kensington; if a man escaped over the border into the next parish, it was uncertain whether he could be captured, and it was, therefore, for unity that the control of the Home Office was given. But the first point I make is, that there is no ground for the continuance of the control of the Home Office over the police its the counties around London.

Now we are to pay the whole cost, and taking the last Returns, which are for the year 1886, I find for the whole police area that £713,000 was paid in rates; the City police cost £110,000 in addition; the grant from the Government of 4d. per pound of rateable value of the whole area on £33,219,000, was £559,000. Taking the rateable value of London which was approximately £30,000,000, the amount of the grant to London proper amounts to £500,000.

I wish to put, if I may, a very important question to the right hon. Gentleman affecting London. As I understand the proposal there will be allocated to the London County certain matters of income which may be taken to balance the £500,000 a-year which is the police subvention. Is the £500,000 which is to be given to the London County Council to be used by that Council for the benefit of the City of London as well as the Metropolis? Because if so it amounts to giving the City of London the very large sum of £40,000 or £50,000, inasmuch as the City of London does not now receive any of the £500,000. If the City is to receive any of the money given in exchange, we shall oppose it in Committee, or else raise some difficult question with respect to City property, which question I think might be very well kept out of the discussion on this Bill.

The Bill still leaves two police forces. Attempts were made in 1839 and 1863 to amalgamate these forces, but the methods adopted by the City in order to prevent amalgamation were almost as bad as those which they adopted against our Bill in 1884. Those methods were wrong, but their proposition was right, which was to keep in the hands of the people the control of their police. Lord John Russell said, that the control of the police ought to be in the hands of those who are responsible for the peace of the town.

We have in London 14,000 men who are absolutely out of our control; they are placed in the hands of a military commander who has not the advantage of knowing the London people. Colonel Henderson did know the London people, and he believed in them with a faith almost touching in its extent. The present Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, does not understand them at all. He appears to be in a condition of nervous prostration, talks about 50,000 persons who are a danger to London and so forth. But what is more important to consider is the serious difficulty that the people themselves have not confidence in the police force. Supposing that the circumstances which occurred on the 20th November had occurred in any Provincial or Scotch town, what would have taken place? Beyond all doubt there would have been an inquiry. There were on that day many cases of men attacked by the police, but there was no inquiry. Things in this respect are getting worse, because we are now having—with regard to London—what has happened in Ireland—police versions of what takes place. I was in Cork, and a sad story was told me with regard to the want of control of the police in Ireland and its result. My hon. Friend the Member for Northwich (Mr. Brunner) and some friends were talking together in a corner of a room at our hotel; a gentleman spoke to me, and said—"If you want to see how the police system in Cork works go outside. There are men who have been listening for two hours to what Mr. Brunner and his friends have been saying." We went out, and saw three men of the Constabulary force with their heads close together listening at the window. If there had been control of the police force in Cork that could not have happened. We have had the police version of the affair at Mitchelstown, which is a perfect burlesquerie of what we found to be the case when we were there. We do not want that sort of thing in London. But the London police levy—as has been pointed out by the hon. Member for Barrow (Mr. Caine)—blackmail on a most unfortunate class in London. The London police levy blackmail on the great distributors of goods in London—["No, no!"] An hon. Member says "No," but I inform him that one of the very largest distributors of goods in London told me last week that it was a question of the money being paid whether his firm was summoned or not.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE) (Tower Hamlets, St. George's)

The hon. and learned Gentleman is making such a grave accusation against a body of men in London, that I think he ought to state the name of his informant.

MR. FIRTH

My informant is one of half-a-dozen of the largest distributors of goods in London. I am not going to state the name in this House. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes for the name, I will give it in private.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH) (Strand, Westminster)

I appeal to you, Mr. Speaker. A most serious charge has been made against the London police. The matter is one which concerns the public, and it is in the public interest that we should have the name of the person who makes a charge of that kind.

MR. FIRTH

The charge is not, of course, against the police as a body. I am not going to give the name in this House—[Cries of "Withdraw!" and "Name!"]—I shall not—I will give it to the right hon. Gentleman. He will recognize the name as one of the largest distributors of goods in London.

MR. W. H. SMITH

I am sure the hon. and learned Gentleman will understand that I am not seeking the information for the sake of interrupting him, but simply in the discharge of what I consider to be a public duty. If the name is given, it must be under conditions which will enable me to test the accuracy of the statement.

MR. FIRTH

That is so; but it must be understood that I am not charging the whole body of the London police. The London police contain as large a proportion of the very best men as are to be found in any force in the Kingdom. What I say is, that they are deteriorating, and I gave an illustration of their operations. The final question I have to ask is, why we should not in London have the same control over our police which other towns have? I think our London Council is a body to which that control may be fairly entrusted, and we must have the question argued out.

I have no objection to make to the proposals of the Bill as to licensing, except so far as they affect the whole country; but I certainly was astonished at the view of the law which the hon. and learned Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke) put before the House the other night, and as he said that the Temperance Party, in a publication in which I have taken no part, had wrongly stated the decision of Mr. Justice Field, I will read it now. He said— The learned counsel for the appellant pointed out that in the prior Act the Legislature had drawn a great distinction between new licences and licences by way of renewal. They have done so in one respect. The Legislature have said that when an applicant comes for a licence in respect of a house not previously licensed, his neighbours ought to know of it and have an opportunity of opposing his application, and, therefore, notices on the church doors, and notices of objection are prescribed to protect the justices in the exercise of their jurisdiction as to granting licences. But when a man has once gone through that ordeal and the justices have granted a certificate, he obtains another certificate by way of renewal as a man occupying those particular premises, and, subject to a careful provision, he need not attend in person unless required, and may assume that the certificate will be granted as before: 35 and 36 Vict., c. 94, s. 42; 37 and 38 Vict., c. 49, s. 26. As to the distinction between new licences and licences granted by way of renewal, every licence is a new licence, although granted to a man who has had one before, for it is only granted for one year. If the Legislature intended the enactment in question only to apply to a certificate by way of renewal, why did not they say 'any licence other than by way of renewal?' They have not done so. The generality of the language used points clearly to the conclusion that the Legislature meant to vest the absolute discretion in the justices. Mr. Justice Stephen said— I am of the same opinion. It seems to me clear that this Act was intended to give to licensing justices an absolute power, and that they can either refuse or confirm these certificates on any ground they like, and whether the application is for a new certificate, or is made for the twentieth time, and whether the applicant is of unblemished character, as in the present case, or of bad character. If that is the law, why should we not leave the publicans to the law? If the law is that they are entitled to compensation, leave them to it; but if it happens not to be the law, then by this Bill you are endowing the publicans with millions upon millions sterling, and that, I say, is a proposal extremely dangerous and unjust. I venture to make a suggestion to Her Majesty's Government as to the way they may deal with this question and get out of the difficulty with regard to licensing. I have found, when difficult social and political problems have had to be solved, that it was wise to see what had been done in similar cases elsewhere.

In the United States of America they have tried to deal with the Drink Question in every possible way. When a State legislated for the whole State the legislation has generally failed because particular localities were not in favour of State legislation; but when the question was left to be decided by each county it was found that the local system worked very well. Now, I have examined the reports from 12 States of the American Union as to how the system of leaving the decision to the counties has worked, and from the unanimous judgment of the Senators I must say that it has worked well.

I think, then, that in the matter of licensing every county ought to have the right to deal with it as it thinks best. That principle you have accepted in respect of Sunday Closing; why, then, do you not go further and give to the counties this power also? In Omaha there is a population of 125,000: the amount of the Licence Tax under a system of high. licensing is $250,000, and this sum of about £50,000 sterling which is brought in goes in aid of education.

Having now occupied the time of the House at sufficient length, I have only to repeat that we are extremely thankful for this Bill even as it has been introduced. As time goes on, I believe it will be shown that the County Council to be constituted for London will prove itself worthy of its position. I think that enlarged powers will be given to it. No Body ever started upon its municipal career with so extended a series of important functions as this Body will have to discharge. It will have a debt of £25,000,000, of which £17,000,000 will be its own liability. It will have the expenditure of an enormous income; it will have to control the whole main drainage system, and it will have an opportunity of solving the difficult problem of the disposal of sewage; it will have the control of parks and open spaces in London, of the Fire Brigade, and of the River Thames, and I think, as time goes on, the London Council will enlist the confidence of the inhabitants of London and of Parliament, and prove itself, by its character, a credit to the right hon. Gentleman who created it, and by its action an honour to the greatest City in the world.

MR. ELTON (Somerset, Wellington)

said, he took it that, as regarded the general principle of the Bill, the country agreed that county districts should be municipalized according to the pattern of the Municipal Corporation Acts of 1834 and 1882, and that the blessings of municipal life should be extended to the whole country. Let them, then, not attempt, while carrying out that principle, to combine with it at the same time alterations and improvements in every little detail of the existing municipal pattern as they went along, otherwise they would get into trouble, drift into hopeless confusion, and perhaps never get to the end of their task. Let them not try to do at once two things that were incompatible, but stick to the municipal principle. He suggested that it might be better to make grants for poor relief on the basis of an average of the grants made by the Guardians during the past five years, and not, as proposed, according to the number of indoor paupers, as such a method might discourage outdoor relief, and compel people to go into the workhouse. He proceeded to give examples of the hardships which might ensue if the Government proposals were accepted, and advised their withdrawal. With regard to the police, the boroughs under the Bill would lose a certain amount of control over that force, and they would hardly stand having the control entirely taken away and given wholly to Quarter Sessions. There was another alternative in regard to the police—namely, vesting the control over it in the Executive Government. That might be a system suitable to the Metropolitan area, but the counties did not want to have their police managed and controlled by the Executive Government.

MR. R. T. REID (Dumfries, &c.)

said, he desired to refer to a speech delivered from the Treasury Bench by the hon. and learned Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke), and in which the legal right of the publicans to compensation was distinctly laid down. It was stated that they had at law a vested interest in their licences. Such a proposition had never been recognized in any Court of Law, and was not to be found in any Act of Parliament, and its consequences, if established, would be most far-reaching upon this system of county government and upon the temperance question as a whole. The hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Caine) had calculated that the average value of a licence throughout England and Wales was £2,000. Taking the average value at half that sum—namely, £1,000—and the number of public-houses in the country at 180,000, the value of the licences would amount to the enormous sum of £180,000,000 Such was the value of the vested interest which it was proposed to create by this Bill, for it certainly did not exist at present. When the Bill was brought in to deal with the Irish land question, what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain)? Something very different to what he had said in regard to this proposal to give compensation to the publicans; and by comparing these two statements a fair estimate was obtained of the value of the right hon. Gentleman's opinion. The hon. and learned Solicitor General also referred to the moral right of the publicans to compensation. Into that he would not enter. It might be that the publicans had a moral claim to consideration; but that was very different to having a legal right to compensation. In the one case it might be deemed fair to make them some compensation or allowance; in the other, they would be entitled to the full value of their licences. Reference had been made to poor men being deprived of their property; but it ought to be borne in mind that the great bulk of the public-houses throughout the country did not belong to the publicans who occupied them; they belonged to the great capitalists, the brewers and distillers, and it was really, in the main, in their interest that this proposal for compensation was brought forward, and pressure had been brought to bear upon the Government to induce them to impose a legal right which did not exist and had never been recognized. There were three classes of licences. The first consisted of what were called on-licences, which were in existence before the Act of 1869—licences for selling beer alone, and which by virtue of that Act became entitled to renewal except upon four specific grounds. Then came certain off-licences, in respect of which there was a free and unfettered discretion; and although the Act of 1882, known as Ritchie's Act, declared them to be in the free and unqualified discretion of the Licensing Justices, it was proposed by this Bill to give compensation for the non-renewal of them. The great bulk of the licences that they had in view were the regular full public-house licences for the sale of beer and spirits; and the hon. and learned Solicitor General had endeavoured to show that there was a right of renewal except for personal misconduct. The law with reference to them began in 1828. By the Act of that year the Licensing Justices received absolutely free discretion to grant or refuse a licence, or the renewal of a licence; and that applied to spirits as well as beer. In 1830 the era of Free Trade in beer set in. From 1830 to 1869 persons obtained licences for selling beer as readily as gentlemen did for keeping horses. In 1869 a change came, and the discretion of the Justices granted in 1828 was restored, subject to the exceptions he had mentioned. It would not have been possible to maintain that there was a vested interest in the renewal of licences if it had not been for some things in the Acts of 1872 and 1874. It was enacted in 1828 that holders who wished for the renewal of their licences should attend the Sessions in person; they could not attend by attorney; and the Courts were, therefore, crowded, and other business was interfered with. To avoid this inconvenience it was enacted in 1872 that the Justices should not entertain objections to a renewal, or take evidence with respect to it, unless notice of opposition had been given, and that the holder need not attend unless he had received notice to do so, provided always that on an objection being made the Justices might adjourn the case and require the attendance of the holder. This was perfectly fair; otherwise an objection might have been heard in the absence of the publican. The sole object of the provisions was to dispense with the personal attendance of the publican unless objection were made to the renewal, but the Act went further and said that "subject as aforesaid"—that was, to the requisition to attend and to the notice of objection— The licence shall be renewed and the powers and discretion of the Justices relating to such renewal shall be exercised as heretofore. To appeal to these words as recognizing a vested interest only showed the weakness of the claim. After 1872 it was found that Justices in some parts of the country issued circulars requiring attendance to facilitate the issuing of the licences and the payment of fees, and in some cases for giving a little salutary advice. But this was found to produce inconvenience, and in 1874 it was enacted that a request for attendance should not be made save for some special cause personal to the licence-holder. This meant that licence-holders were not to be summoned by general circular, and that they should be required to attend if there were objections which might lead to refusal. Of course a licence would be renewed if a man was not required to attend—that is, he must have an opportunity of being heard before the renewal was refused. But the hon. and learned Solicitor General argued something very different from that, for he said that because a man could not be required to attend save for some special cause personal to himself, the licence must be renewed except for some special cause. It was torturing the words to put upon them this interpretation. The Act of 1869 specified four conditions, the violation of which was to involve refusal of renewal; and if Parliament had intended to grant a vested interest except for personal misconduct, it would have had no difficulty in expressing its intentions. The issue had not been raised in the Courts except in the Over Darwen case; but there were some obiter dicta of Judges that were important. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, in a case which came before him in May, 1878, dealt at some length with this question, and came to the conclusion that the Justices had the same discretion to refuse a renewal as they had to refuse a new licence. In 1876, Mr. Justice Lush said that the Act only required the licencee to attend if something personal to himself was to be brought up. But that would not take away the discretion of the Justices to refuse to renew his licence on other grounds when he attended. The question was about to be solved by a case which was now before Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice Wills in the Queen's Bench Division, in which the Justices of Westmoreland had refused renewal on the ground that there was no necessity for the house. He ventured to prophesy that the decision would be conclusive in abolishing the argument that there was a vested right for renewal of existing licences. The hon. and learned Solicitor General rested his case solely on these two Acts of Parliament; and even supposing he was right in his view of the law, why was it to be altered from the condition in which it now was? If the hon. and learned Solicitor General were right, and the County Councils refused to renew a licence, then they could be compelled to do so by a Court of Law. If the Government had this supreme faith in a vested interest, why did they think it necessary to protect it by a new clause? The very fact that the Government were endeavouring to protect this vested interest by a special clause was the best proof that they had no confidence in it. If they were going to transfer to the County Councils the power to deal with licences—and the lawyers in the House differed as to the extent of the publican's vested interest—why should the House decide between them? Of all Assemblages this was the least competent to deal with questions of law. Why should Parliament not leave the matter to the Courts of Law? Then when the time came, and the County Councils refused to renew licences, the holders could go to the Courts of Law for redress. He did not suggest that they should impair or diminish the rights of the publicans, whatever they might be; but he asked the House not to interfere with the rights of the public authority, whatever they might be, to deal with licences.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir EDWARD CLARKE) (Plymouth)

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman forgot that, so far as this matter was concerned, the magistrates and Quarter Sessions would cease to operate at all, and that the power created by this Bill was not a judicial tribunal, but a representative and executive body.

MR. R. T. REID

said, his point was was that the Court of Quarter Sessions was a judicial tribunal; and the hon. and learned Solicitor General's argument, if it meant anything, was that it was an administrative tribunal and had no discretion.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, his contention was that the Justices could not refuse to renew a licence unless the man had been summoned to appear before them, and that they only bad power to require him to come before them on a cause personal to himself.

MR. R. T. REID

said, he was glad to find that they were all agreed on the subject. Under the stress of discussion, the hon. and learned Solicitor General did not rise and say they had a vested right to renewal unless the man has been required to attend, and that he could not be required to attend except for a cause personal to himself. That was very different from saying that they had no right to renew. But he would ask the hon. and learned Gentleman, or anyone for the Government, to answer this question. Suppose a man had been notified and attended, and, being there, the Court said to him—"Now, Sir, we have you here. We think there are too many licensed houses in your neighbourhood, and we shall not renew your licence." Would the hon. and learned Gentleman, if they did, say that any Court in the Kingdom would interfere?

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, he thought they would.

MR. R. T. REID

said, if that were so, surely the hon. and learned Gentleman was arguing in a circle; and what a splendid and ample protection these people had! If that were the case, there was a Court in the Kingdom that would compel the Sessions to renew the licence, and the same Court would have jurisdiction to compel the County Councils to do the same.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

No.

MR. R. T. REID

asked, why not?

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, that the Courts now interfered with the discretion of a judicial tribunal, but an executive tribunal was to be set up in its place with which the Courts would not interfere.

MR. R. T. REID

said, that if the High Court now compelled a judicial tribunal to renew licences, it would also compel an executive body. He did not think that this country, if once awakened to the fact that the magistrates were not compelled to renew licences, as the judgment of the Queen's Bench would shortly show, would tamely submit to have saddled upon it the compensation for vested interests which for 60 years had been successfully resisted in the House. Even if the question were doubtful as to the renewal, yet a body of opinion would grow up stronger and stronger every day in opposition to giving the publicans, brewers, and distillers anything more than in law they now had. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham had commented upon the fact that £300,000 a-year to be derived from the licences was to be handed over to the County Councils, and said that would be for the purpose of dealing with the licensed houses. That sum was perfectly inadequate for purposes of compensation, as to his knowledge it was not enough to buy 12 houses in London that he could point out. Then it was pretty certain that the County Councils would abolish Sunday trading, with the result that the value of the licences would be reduced by 14 per cent. But the County Councils would only be able to add 20 per cent. to the price of those licences, and as 14 per cent would be taken off in consequence of the abolition of Sunday trading only 6 per cent would really be added. Thus, instead of £300,000 a-year, the sum available for compensation would only be £80,000. He asked the House whether it was really prepared to pass these Licensing Clauses which would impose almost limitless liabilities on the future ratepayers of the country. By passing these provisions they would erect an insurmountable wall in the way of temperance reform, for there would be no diminution whatever in the present enormous number of public-houses. Whenever a County Council might desire to refuse the renewal of licences, preposterous claims for compensation would be put forward which would render refusal impossible. To agree to the plan of the Government would be to postpone indefinitely the success of the great efforts that were being made to check the drink evil in this country.

MR. A. W. HALL (Oxford)

said, he did not wish to follow the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) through the thorny paths of the licensing question; but he would just remark with regard to the strong point which the hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to think he had made when he asked the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke) to declare why the existing state of things which compelled the Courts to grant licences should remain in the Bill, that the reason was that the Licence Clauses of the measure were going to alter the law, and that these Licence Clauses were really a concession to Local Option—a reasonable and fair concession to that principle of Local Option. The question he (Mr. A. W. Hall) should like to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman was this—did he really want to reduce the number of licences, or did he only want to harass the publicans, the brewers, and the distillers? If his object was to reduce the number of licences, he (Mr. A. W. Hall) ventured very respectfully to say to him that the shortest cut to that end was to grant publicans the reasonable and moderate amount of compensation which the Government proposed, because the County Councils would not consist exclusively of members of the Temperance Party. So far as the majority of the members of the Councils were concerned, they would be just and honest men, who would hesitate to confiscate the property of publicans, which was sometimes of enormous value—of such value that these extra licences would not suffice to pay for them, unless some arrangement for reasonable compensation were made. Now, he desired to turn to a very different subject indeed, and that was to a point in this Bill which he wanted to ask the Government to give candid attention to with a view to some alteration being made. He alluded to the grant in aid of indoor pauperism, which had already been alluded to, and to the representations in regard to which he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) was prepared to give favourable consideration as far as making an alteration was concerned. The proposal in the Bill to which he referred was one to which he took the greatest possible exception, and for several reasons, principally because the Government had officially told them that it was impossible to include the Poor Law in this new Bill, and that if it was attempted to include it they would be unduly overweighting it and jeopardising its chance of passing into law. Well, he (Mr. A. W. Hall) regretted very much that this was so; but he did not question the wisdom of the decision of the Government not to overweight the Bill by including the question of the Poor Law, but he questioned the wisdom of the proposal which said, at one and the same time—"We will not include the Poor Law in the Bill, and yet we will include the most important part of the Poor Law—namely, the question of indoor relief." He was one of those who should like very much to see this question dealt with on a good broad basis, and he was sorry that an opportunity, which he could not help thinking was a golden opportunity, had not been taken advantage of for that purpose; for he thought it was only right that the people who take so deep an interest as the working people did in this question of indoor and outdoor relief should have something to say in the administration of the Poor Law by allowing them to have a direct voice in the matter through representatives elected directly by them. The hon. Gentleman the Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Courtney), whom he did not now see in his place, in the very able speech he delivered the other night, seemed to feel some apprehension in regard to the matter being left to the County Councils, although the hon. Gentleman seemed to recognize that sooner or later it would have to be left to the County Councils. But so far as he (Mr. A. W. Hall) gathered from the hon. Gentleman, he seemed to think that if the matter were left to them there would be very great danger of its being abused. Well, he confessed that he did not in any degree share the hon. Gentleman's anxiety. He believed that the County Councils would have performed their duties in this respect thoroughly well and with thorough efficiency. But even if he had shared that anxiety, he would venture to say that it was too late for this theory. They had adopted the policy of trusting the people, and in all matters of Local Government they would have to hand over to the people, without any reservation whatever, the matters connected with Local Government vitally affecting their interests. No matter much more vitally affected the interests of the people than this matter of the administration of the Poor Law, and it would be quite impossible for them to continue to confine the administration of the Poor Law to the Boards at present elected or to the Local Government Board itself. It had been said, and truly said he thought, that there was no form of administration in the world more centralized than that of the English Poor Law. They had the principles to guide them laid down by Parliament in the several Acts, particularly in the Act of 1834; but the Local Government Board by their orders regulated every single act of the Guardians, and by their Inspectors and by their auditors, one might say, supervized every single act of the Guardians. Well, that might be all very right, but it was not true local government, such as they were trying to establish by this Bill; and therefore it was that he said he was so sorry that this opportunity should be lost, though probably it could not be avoided, of dealing with this matter, because they had no uniformity of procedure such as they might expect from the fresh and less centralized administration of the Poor Law. He held that there was constant pressure going on from the Central Department on Boards of Guardians to administer the Poor Law in a more and more doctrinaire spirit. Some Boards of Guardians yielded to that pressure, and some did not. Those who yielded to it did it by forcing the people into the workhouse at the expense of outdoor relief; but others did not do it, and went on granting their outdoor relief to the poor. It was a serious hardship, and he thought it ought not to continue to be the case, that two people might be living within a stone's throw of each other, though in different Unions, and yet might be subject to an entirely different system of Poor Law relief, instead of being subject, as they ought to be subject, to the same system of Poor Law relief. He believed if the administration of the Poor Law were in the hands of the County Councils there would be far more uniformity of administration than there was under the present centralized system. Then they got matters made worse, instead of better, by the action of the Government in the present Bill. The Government stepped in and proposed a capitation grant of 4d. for indoor paupers, thereby giving every Board of Guardians a distinct interest in making as many indoor paupers as they possibly could. Well, what would be the result of that? It would act as a stimulant; it would necessarily act as a stimulant to Guardians to increase the number of indoor poor at the expense of the outdoor poor. That was perfectly certain. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had said the other night, in answer to a similar objection, that he did not think Boards of Guardians would "scramble," as he said, for these fourpences, and he did not seem to think the suggestion reasonable, as he did not believe it very likely that Boards of Guardians would try to win this Government grant of 2s. 4d. when in order to do so they would have to incur an expense of 6s. 4d. or 6s. 8d. for indoor paupers. He thought that was not the way to put it. A destitute man came for relief to the Board of Guardians, and had to be relieved, either indoors or outdoors; which should it be? Under present circumstances there was a large doctrinaire minority on the Boards wishing to put every man into the workhouse; but the great body of the Guardians were apt to say, "It is more expensive to us to do that, and we should lose 2s. 6d. a-week per head, and we will therefore give him outdoor relief, seeing that he is not an able-bodied man, but an aged or sick person." Then comes in this terrible proposition of 2s. 4d., just putting the balance on the wrong side against the poor man. He (Mr. A. W. Hall), therefore, earnestly hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would consider that question, and would not tell him—as he was afraid he would—that the Guardians were not really going to scramble for these fourpences. He would tell the right hon. Gentleman that it was not merely a matter of opinion or hypotheses—it was a matter capable of proof. Under the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1870 something took place. The area of chargeability was made different for the first time in the history of English Poor Law for the indoor and outdoor poor. The difference was that the outdoor poor remained as a burden on the Union itself, while the burden of the indoor poor was made a charge over the whole Metropolitan area. What was the consequence of that? Why, that it became the direct interest of the Boards of Guardians to give as little outdoor relief as they possibly could, and put as many paupers as possible into the workhouse. Did they or did they not scramble for these fourpences? There was no doubt they did. He would give the House some figures that would prove they did. In 1872, before the Poor Act to which he was alluding came into full operation, the number of outdoor poor in the Metropolis in the first week of December, 1872, was 72,923, but in the corresponding week of last year that number had decreased to 43,460, or by 41 per cent, though the general population had increased 30 per cent. Did the indoor paupers increase in numbers or did they not? They did so largely, for whilst in the first week of December, 1872, the number of indoor paupers in the Metropolis was 35,383, in the corresponding week of 1887 these indoor paupers had increased to 59,099, or 69 per cent. The outdoor poor had decreased by 29,400, which at a cost of 3s. a-head, would be a saving to the rates of £4,000; but the indoor paupers had increased by 23,517, which at 6s. 8d. a-head, which he thought was the reckoning of the Local Government Board, would be £7,900 added to the rates. Therefore, by this scrambling for the fourpences, the Guardians had not gained as they expected, but had lost a considerable sum. Well, even if they had gained, which there could not be the slightest doubt they intended to do, and which this subvention on the part of the Government would make other Guardians in the country districts endeavour to do, such a thing ought not to have been allowed. Each case, he submitted, ought to be decided on its merits, and the Guardians ought not to have this largesse given to them in order to induce them to decide matters in any particular way. It was quite impossible that the great change in the administration of the Poor Law in the Metropolis to which he referred, could have taken place without very considerable hardship to the poor who were concerned. The House knew perfectly well that it was not everybody who went before the Poor Law Guardians and asked for relief, and was refused outdoor relief and was offered the workhouse, who would accept the workhouse. He could point to a good many people who would suffer almost any privation—cold and hunger, and almost starvation—rather than face the workhouse. One of the great reasons for this—and he should like to point it out clearly to the House—was that the classification of our country workhouses was not really of such a character as to render it possible for people who had any self-respect left to enter the workhouse. They were obliged to herd with people they had no sympathy with, and whose company they were not accustomed to, and the result was that they would submit to almost any privation rather than enter the workhouse. But even those who accepted the workhouse, what did they have to suffer? They had to suffer the loss of their homes, which, of course, were shattered and ruined and broken up, and in consequence of that they lost all opportunity which otherwise might be left to them of starting afresh when better times came, and when fortune became kinder. Some two months ago he was in communication with the secretary of one of the best of our London charities, one of those associated for some time with the name of Lord Shaftesbury, who had been president of it. He had taken the opportunity of asking this gentleman, who was in touch with the very poor of London, what he thought of the present, the modern and extremely severe system of Poor Law relief, and he said this— I certainly think that it would be of great advantage to both the poor and the ratepayer if some relaxation of the rules of the Guardians were made in time of sickness and in the case of widows with children too young to work. I have seen many homes broken up when a little help would have tided them over. He (Mr. A. W. Hall) implored the Government not to be instrumental in bringing about in the country districts the evils which this gentleman whom he had quoted had ascertained to be taking place in the Metropolis. There were far too many of those evils already in country districts, and notably, perhaps, in the city which he had the honour to represent. He trusted the Government would not make them general throughout the country by means of this Bill. He would like to say to them this, that if they did not mean to deal really with the Poor Law on a good broad basis, as some Members of the House would like to see it dealt with, why, he would ask, should they touch it at all? Why should they not let it alone? Why should they make this Bill or themselves unpopular, or why should they make those who supported the Bill unpopular with the agricultural labourer and with the town labourer by giving this bribe—and he did not use the word offensively—to the Guardians to induce them to put every pauper into the workhouse. He did not think this was a fair way of treating the country districts. He did not think that either the town labourers or the agricultural labourers would go in for indiscriminate outdoor relief. The law was very strict on the point, and declared that except in cases of emergency no relief should be given out-of-doors to able-bodied men, and he did not think that the labourers of the country would desire any alteration of that law; but what they did think was that when a man had brought up his family respectably and well and had subscribed to his club—which, however, only gave him assistance for a limited period—and when it had been impossible for him to make anything like a big enough purse to keep him when he arrived at old age, he ought not to be thrust into the workhouse to herd with those who had not lived respectable lives. He thought that was a feeling they ought to encourage, and a feeling of which they ought to be proud. It was a good old English feeling, and they ought to avoid anything which had a tendency to destroy it and discourage it, as some Boards of Guardians, particularly in London, did, to their disgrace be it said. He was told that they ought to compel thrift by a harsh administration of the Poor Law. But he had never been able to see it in that light, and he did not believe they could compel thrift by anything of the kind. He thought that as facts stood with the present congested state of the labour market it was impossible for the agricultural or urban labourer earning 10s., or 12s., or 14s. a week, in the first place, to render himself secure of constant employment; and, in the second place, even if he were sure of constant employment, to make a big enough purse to keep him when he became old. He himself knew a case of a hard-working, sober, steady, industrious, honest man, who had brought up a family decently and well. That man had been out of work the greater part of the winter, and at this moment he was unable to meet the calls upon him of his village club, though he had been for the past 32 years a subscribing member of it. At the present moment he did not know where to put his hand upon a sovereign which he owed to his club. He (Mr. A. W. Hall) would ask the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board how he supposed that a man such as this was able to make a purse sufficient to keep him when he became sick or arrived at old age? The thing could not be done, and it was distressing to think that the Government should have gone out of their way, as he thought they had gone out of their way, to say to this man—"We will do something to induce the Boards of Guardians, when you become old and infirm, to offer you the workhouse, instead of that outdoor relief to which you have a reasonable claim." If outdoor relief was to be abolished, let it be done openly and above board, and let them have a debate about that in the House, and consult their constituents about it. He had not the slightest fear what the result would be. He did not believe that outdoor relief would ever be abolished. But do not let them by a back stair approach the matter in this insidious way by bribing the Guardians to give indoor relief whenever they could, instead of outdoor relief. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had told them the other night that there would be a great difficulty in appropriating this 40 per cent. Probate Duty in any other way. He said he did not see any fair proposition by which he could divide it between the different Unions. Well, he (Mr. A. W. Hall) must say that when a Minister had shown such capacity as had been exhibited by the right hon. Gentleman for dealing with all the details of such a difficult, complex, and voluminous Bill, and told the House of Commons that he could hit on no other plan than that of inducing the Guardians by means of a largesse to put everybody applying to them into the workhouse, he must say it became very difficult indeed to believe him. He was quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman in this matter did himself too little credit. It would be perfectly easy for the right hon. Gentleman to find out, not one, but half-a-dozen ways by which this money could be distributed amongst the ratepayers. The county ratepayers would have no difficulty in accepting as much as the right hon. Gentleman would choose to give, but they had a difficulty in accepting it on the condition that they should give some sort of return for it other than they would give by deciding each case upon its merits. They desired to treat each case upon its merits, and not upon some fancy scheme of the Local Government Board, which the Board were going to bribe them to adopt. He (Mr. A. W. Hall) only wanted to add one or two words as to the other proposition of the Bill. He should like to say as to the Municipal Corporations part of it that he had listened with great attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board the other night, and he was rather surprised that the right hon. Gentleman had devoted so few of his remarks to the feeling of the Municipal Corporations with regard to the Bill. He (Mr. A. W. Hall) had attended a large meeting of the Municipal Corporations at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and was surprised to notice the great feeling of suspicion which was there exhibited as to what were considered the losses of the Municipal Corporations under this Bill. He had thought that they had counted their losses much more readily than they had counted their gains, and if he had spoken at the meeting, which he did not, he should have pointed out that the Bill was not a Bill for the government of villages, but a Bill for the government of England and Wales, and that to eliminate from it boroughs of a smaller population than 30,000 or 40,000 would be destructive of the County Councils, because it was essential that the experience which had been derived in the cases of such boroughs should be at the service of the County Councils to help them in organization and in other ways; but he thought that the right hon. Gentleman might adopt a lower limit than 100,000. It would be well, perhaps, to accept the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Childers) and put the limit at 40,000. This would be satisfactory to the borough he represented, and to many other similar boroughs. And he thought, furthermore, that the Local Council, when established, should have the duty of licensing public-houses conferred upon them. He could not agree with the proposed system of dual control. He could not help thinking that it was something like a lack of generosity on the part of the House of Commons to insist upon this dual control. Why should half be given to the County Councils and half to the Justices? He could not see the reason. The right hon. Gentleman had said that they were extending the Municipal Acts in this matter, but he also told them that the analogy was by no means perfect, because if it were acted upon they would have the unity of the district boroughs with the County Councils established. The county Justices had done their work with great efficiency and economy, and, therefore, it seemed to him that it would be a graceful act on the part of the House of Commons to acknowledge the good work which had been done by the Justices; and inasmuch as the whole judicial power was in their hands they should also be entrusted with the care of the police. He hoped the Government would accept the protest which he had ventured to make with regard to the matter of the indoor poor. He was confident that in this respect there was a very great blot on the Bill—a blot which would tend almost entirely to destroy the popularity of the measure when it was understood by the constituents of hon. Members.

MR. FULLER (Wilts, Westbury)

said, he did not intend to travel over the very large number of important questions they had had before them in this discussion, but it seemed to him that there had been some particular portions of the Bill which had not been dealt with in a way altogether deserving of their importance. Speaking as a County Magistrate, he must say that in his opinion the measure did not appear to contain the means of in any way deposing the magistrates from their present position. In his opinion the Bill appeared rather to raise their status than to make any other change in their position. Hitherto the position the County Magistrates had held had been one with responsibility far and away from the touch of the people. In his mind, the duties and functions which had hitherto rested on the County Magistrates had been more delusive than anything else, and, therefore, he thanked the Govern- ment for having come to the conclusion that the time had now arrived for putting magistrates in the position they ought to occupy as Justices of the Peace. He considered the Bill very useful and very far reaching. He could not agree with that authority that had declared to the country that in his opinion the powers which were to be given to the County Council were of an infinitesimal character. He believed that the powers given by this Bill to the County Council were very extensive. They were powers which required very delicate handling, and they were, of course, of a very responsible nature, and every Member of the House who had carefully considered the 8th clause of the Bill, coupled as it was to something like five and a-half pages in the Schedule, conferring extraordinary powers upon the Council, must come to the conclusion that these powers were very valuable and of a very important nature. Now, there was one matter in particular upon which he wished to draw the attention of the House, and that was a point which had been frequently spoken of, but which had not been considered exactly in the way in which he would venture to make some remarks upon it. He referred to the dual control of the police. Now, so far as he understood the Bill, its whole object was to alter the functions of the magistracy and the administrative powers dealing with public money. In future there were to be two separate Bodies, one consisting of the magistrates, who were to discharge the judicial functions which the magistrates at present carried out, and another Body, in the shape of County Councils, to discharge the duty of administrating public moneys. The main object of the Bill was that representation and taxation should follow one another, but if they brought about this system of dual control by Joint Committees of the Magistrates and of the County Councils, they would destroy that first principle. It had been discussed in the House more as a matter of expediency whether the magistrates should have any control over the police or whether the police should be in the hands of the Joint Committee or in the hands of the County Council, but he thought that beyond that question of expediency there was another view to be taken of the matter. It was said that, according to one of their most sacred Constitutional rules, the Body of the State that administered judicial functions should be entirely distinct and separate from that Body of the State that carried out its executive functions; and, therefore, he thought it very necessary as a Constitutional rule that the executive portion of the functions of the magistracy should be entirely separate from their judicial functions. He thought that this matter required to be considered almost in an historical light, because if they looked back at the time when first the Justices of the Peace were formed in this country as a body, and at the time when parish constables were initiated, they would find curiously enough that both these bodies were instituted at the same period, and that yet at that time the Crown nominated, as it did now, the "Conservators of the Peace," or, as they were now called, Justices of the Peace, but that the parish constable was elected and chosen by the people. That condition of things lasted for something like 200 years, and then they came to the period when it was found necessary for the Justices of the Peace to interfere. And why was it that they were allowed to interfere? It was not because the duties of the constables were not carried out as they ought to be, but because those duties were found to be too extensive in those parishes where the number of inhabitants was very large. The consequence was that the Legislature, not knowing where to put its hands on people to force the parishes to appoint a sufficient number of constables, imposed that duty upon the magistrates. This went on for 200 or 300 years longer, until the period when the model upon which the present Bill was founded was passed as an Act of Parliament, which brought them to the year 1835. Well, if that principle, which was established so many hundreds of years ago, of the Crown nominating the magistrates on the one hand, and the people nominating the constables on the other, lasted up to the year 1834, when the Municipal Corporations Act was passed, if it was necessary to change the system at all it would have been changed then; but, as a matter of fact, it was not changed. They would not find in any portion of the Municipal Corporations Act any vestige of those provisions tending towards the introduction of a power to the magistrates to take the control of the constabulary or watchmen as they were called at that time. Therefore, he contended that the Bill, by introducing as the 7th clause—an effective means of putting the whole control of the police in the hands of the Justices—the Government was acting directly in contradiction of the model they proposed to follow, and not only that, but they had had it stated in the House over and over again that there was no evidence that the Municipal Corporations had in any way failed in constituting proper and efficient constabulary forces throughout the various municipal areas of the country. That had been urged so often that he would not detain the House on the matter. He would like to ask the Government this question—namely, whether it was not the fact that in India some years ago the magistrates had full control of the constabulary as we had in England at this moment; and was it not the fact that it was found necessary in that country where we exercised very despotic powers to entirely alter that system, and put the management of the constabulary in the hands of a Body distinct from the magistrates. He said, therefore, if that was the case in India, surely it was an example to follow at the present time. Well, he should like, also, to impress upon the House that there was a very strong desire on the part of the people, particularly the middle class of the people, that they should have control over the police. A very curious instance had come within his own knowledge. A Board of Guardians upon which he himself had acted as an ex officio Member wanted to use the police for a particular purpose as regarded the treatment of vagrants. Some Guardians suggested that it would be desirable to use the superintendent of police and the constables rather as a means of checking the vagrancy; and as a result it was suggested that a small stipend should be given to the superintendent of police as an assistant relieving officer. That was suggested to the Board of Guardians, but those who supported the scheme found it most vigorously opposed by the farmers and the Guardians generally. They also found the reason for the opposition. It was opposed, not on account of the power it was proposed to put in the hands of the police, but because it was considered that the police were the servants of the magistrates and not of the people. The result was that although the Guardians did not disapprove of the scheme itself, yet because they disliked the condition of giving money to the police as servants of the magistrates they threw out the proposal. Finding that that was the state of the case, he (Mr. Fuller) took it upon himself to attempt to bring about the result he desired by stratagem. He went to the superintendent of the police and said to him, "If you want to have this office, the best way for you to secure it is this. Whenever you see a farmer give to him that ordinary salute which you give to a Justice of the Peace, and not only you yourself, but let every one of your men in the district show in like manner respect for the farmers and intimate that they wished to be their servants." Well, the effect of these tactics was magical. Within a very few months, instead of the Guardians opposing the object he had in view, that object was carried out, and the plan so established was continued for many years, though it did not exist at the present moment. The superintendent of police held the office to which he referred for many years. That showed that there was a strong public feeling, not so much amongst the democracy as amongst the middle class themselves, that the police were really the servants of the magistrates and not the servants of the people. He put that forward as one of the reasons why the County Councils should have sole control of the police. There was another reason. If he read this Bill rightly—and he had read it very carefully—it appeared to him that its whole object was to secure on the County Council as many magistrates as possible. If that was the case, he thought the House might assume that in future they would have a large number of magistrates on the County Council. If they had a very large number, who would these magistrates be? They would generally be the very best and most useful magistrates, and as a result they would have to go to the remaining magistrates in order to select from them the Committee to act with the Committee of the County Council, and they would be thus taking an inferior section of the magistracy and making them superior to their colleagues on the County Council. They would be, in this way, dividing the House against itself, and for this reason he maintained that they were not taking the best means they could adopt for their object, or to make the County Councils thoroughly efficient bodies. Then they had in the Bill a clause which gave them every possible power to see that the standard of efficiency would be in accordance with the wishes of the Home Secretary and the Government. In the 24th clause there was every power for keeping up that efficiency. They had a power of mandamus, which was the strongest power they could give for the purpose of controlling this matter. These were arguments which, so far as he was aware, had not been used before, and he thought that they were worthy of the consideration of the Government. So far as he had watched the debate, there seemed to him at the present moment to be a considerable consensus of opinion that the County Council ought to be invested with this important power, not only on grounds of expediency, but also on Constitutional grounds which he would impress upon the House. With regard to the Constitutional question, he wished to press this consideration. They know that when a magistrate was appointed he began to make himself acquainted with the laws of his country. He began to study Constitutional law, and he had no doubt that the library of almost every Justice in the country would be found to contain a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries. In that work would be found this passage:— There could be no doubt that in the distinct and separate existences of the judicial functions of a peculiar body of men, nominated, indeed, but not removable, by the pleasure of the Crown, consisted one of the main preservatives of popular liberty, which liberty could not exist long in any State unless the administration of common justice were in some degree separated from the Executive power. He did not wish to make any distinction between the two sides of the House on this matter, as he did not desire to see it considered as a Party question, but he appealed to the Government side of the House, because, at all events, they assumed to themselves to be a Constitutional Party, and he would urge upon the Constitutional Party that they should not appear to be in any way undermining those old and sacred liberties which had been contended for in the country for so many generations. He would now pass on from the question of the police, and, if he might be allowed, he should like to make a few remarks respecting the financial question. He felt extremely thankful to the Government that they had at all events grappled with the question of making personal property contribute to a certain extent towards the rates of this country. It was a matter which had been talked of for a long time, and he was very thankful to the Government that they had, at length, seen their way to making an attempt to put the matter in something like a definite shape. But he would point out to the House that it seemed to him that the particular taxes which were fixed upon for assisting the rates upon property at present by the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been rather unfortunately chosen. According to the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer which had been circulated, and which was in the hands of all hon. Members, something like £3,000,000 was to come from certain licences. This sum was to come partly from licences which were directly transferred to the County Councils, and some which were called local taxation licences which were not directly transferred, but which would by an Order in Council possibly be eventually transferred for levying purposes to the County Council. But he had no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been very wise and very discreet in putting on these taxes for the purpose of relieving the rates, and why so? Because everyone of these taxes were of the most odious and vexatious character, and he could not help thinking that as soon as the taxpayers recognized the fact that every tax they paid was a tax towards reducing the rates of the country, they would make it their business, either themselves or through associations, to so harass the County Councils in regard to these taxes that the County Councils would hardly know how to conduct their business. When they looked through this list of taxes, they found that there were no less than 20 different licences affected, some of very small amounts; and not only this, but they affected trades to a very great extent. A great many trades were inconvenienced and harassed very largely by these taxes, and it seemed to him that it was most important for the Government to consider whether it would not be far better if they wanted money to tax those particular items for the use of the Government generally and not to put the onus of such taxation on the County Councils. That onus would be more than the County Councils could stand. His own opinion was this, if he might be allowed to suggest it to the Government. It was, perhaps, rather presumptuous on his part. He would say that instead of having these £3,000,000 given by these taxes—and they knew what opinion was abroad with regard to some of them, particularly the Wheel Tax, as to which there would no doubt be a great discussion in this House, which would be continued in the country year after year and forced upon the attention of the County Councils periodically—he would suggest that instead of having this £5,500,000 given by these numerous licences, and the four-fifths of one-half of the Probate Duty, it would be much better for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to adopt the more direct system of a charge upon personal property. He could give over the whole of the £4,000,000 of the Probate Duty, which was a direct tax on personal property, and give to the County Councils, if he could spare it, the penny of the Income Tax, which was another direct tax upon personal property. By this means the right hon. Gentleman would get rid of the difficulties which he (Mr. Fuller) had pointed out, and he was sure this proposal was worthy of consideration. By these means the great difficulty which would constantly arise on the meetings of the County Councils would be got rid of. In all probability the argument against not giving these licences to the County Councils was that, if they gave anything else than that which was proposed by the Government, they would not be acting upon the theory that representation and taxation should go together. His answer, however, was that if that was the principle they wished to carry through, they were not carrying it through at all, because this £5,500,000 was not made up on that principle—far from it. There was one other point to which he felt bound to pay a little attention—namely, the way in which the distribution of these grants was to be carried out. It was proposed that £1,200,000 should be given towards the relief of the poor on the basis of 4d. being paid for each indoor pauper. He thought that was wrong on two grounds. First of all, it was wrong on the principle of the administration of the Poor Law, a point which had been dealt with so thoroughly by his hon. Friend. Secondly, he did not think that real property, as rated at the present time, had any claim to relief on account of the poor rate. It appeared to him they were instituting a State policy, as regarded the administration of the Poor Law, of thrusting poor people into the workhouse, because Guardians might find it very much cheaper in future to send people into the workhouse than to give them outdoor relief. Let them take ordinary cases; he did not want to take any particular case, because hundreds and thousands might be found. Cases of this sort came up constantly. An old man or an old woman could scarcely make ends meet, but if they could only get 1s. and a loaf or two—the whole relief would not amount to more than 1s. 6d. a-week—it perhaps would enable them to tide over the difficulty they could not otherwise get over. At present the Guardians, seeing such a case, would naturally give the ls. or 1s. 6d. a-week relief; but in the future, seeing that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Ritchie) adopted indoor pauperism as the basis for the distribution of grants, the Guardians would feel themselves forced to drive such people as he had described into the workhouse. It was true he had not long been a Member of Parliament, but he had been long enough a Member to learn that the working classes of the country had set their faces against the workhouse. If there was one thing the working people wished to see destroyed and levelled to the ground it was the workhouse. The feeling might be wrong, but still it existed. Now, if Parliament, by a State policy, forced upon the democracy of this country a principle that would irritate that feeling, the feeling might amount to a danger. But what he particularly wished to impress upon the House was that, in his opinion, real property, as it was now rated, had no just claim to be relieved in any way. Statistics had been produced which showed that the history of the poor rate was that, decade by decade during the last century, the rate had decreased, and that it had now arrived at a lower figure than it had ever been. Therefore, he could not see, although a landowner himself, that any landowner had a just claim to that relief which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Sleaford Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) seemed so anxious to obtain. The maintenance of the poor had been a direct charge upon land and houses, and that charge had not been increasing, but gradually decreasing. On that ground, therefore, he maintained that the principle of giving £1,200,000 as a grant in aid was wrong. The next suggestion which he thought wanted consideration was that which had been thrown out by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. The right hon. Gentleman had offered to the House a suggestion, other than that he had adopted, as to how to distribute these grants in aid. He had said they might distribute the money according to the population, or according to the rateable value, or according to indoor pauperism, and he had chosen the latter method. The object the right hon. Gentleman had in view was to arrive at what were the poorest areas, the areas which required assistance from the grants in aid from personal property. There must be hundreds of ways of arriving at such a conclusion; but he (Mr. Fuller) ventured to suggest one way of testing the poverty or wealth of an area—namely, through the House Duty. He considered there could be no better test of the wealth of a population than the character of the houses in which they lived. The House Tax was levied upon houses of £20 annual value and upwards; and taking up the Inland Revenue Report for 1886, he had compared this basis of finding out the poverty or wealth of an area as compared with the indoor pauper basis which the right hon. Gentleman had adopted in the Bill. He had only, however, been able to make a comparison between London and the rest of England and Wales. He found that the annual value of dwelling houses in London paying House Duty in 1886 amounted, in round figures, to £22,000,000, and that the annual value of the dwelling houses in the rest of England and Wales paying House Duty was £33,000,000. Therefore, taking the two amounts as the basis, of every £10,000 received as grant in aid for personal property London would receive £4,000, and the rest of England and Wales £6,000. Now, they found that the indoor paupers in London in 1886 numbered 55,000, and that those of all England and Wales numbered 188,000. Therefore, taking indoor pauperism as the basis of distribution, London would receive, assuming that £10,000 was the grant received from personal property, London would get rather more than £3,000, and that the rest of England and Wales would get rather more than £6,000. There was a very small difference as regarded the distribution in each case, and, therefore, he suggested that the House Duty was a good means of arriving at an idea of the wealth or poverty of an area. The House Duty was certainly a safer and a better test the House, because it would be a fatal policy to drive the poor people into the workhouse. He had said he did not approve of £1,200,000 being given as assistance to the rates on real property. Then the question arose, what rates would they relieve? There were different classifications of rates; there were rates which were necessary only for metropolitan and urban districts, there were rates which were necessary for the maintenance of the poor, and there were rates which were necessary and levied both in urban and rural districts. He considered that the metropolitan and urban rates did not require any subvention or assistance from grants-in-aid from personalty. They were special rates necessary, perhaps, for very large urban districts such as the Metropolis and other large towns, but if anyone went into the question he would find that such rates were not generally requisite. Harbours and docks and wash-houses and public libraries, and things of that kind, were luxuries which might be demanded by urban authorities, but which ought to be provided out of special rates. Again, he had said that the maintenance of the poor had no claim to this subvention. Then, they they came to that other class of rates which he believed did require assistance, and they were the rates that had been introduced within their memories, the rates that had been collected with the poor rates and that had, within the last 30 or 40 years, been increased to a very great extent. They were the rates necessary for sanitation and education, for the enforcement of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts, for weights and measures, police stations, lunatic asylums, lighting, paving, registration, vaccination, and things of that sort. His opinion was that the relief they were to receive from personal property ought to go towards those particular rates, and not towards the rates for the maintenance of the poor or for simply urban matters. The whole grant-in-aid, according to the statement of the President of the Local Government Board, was £5,500,000. By Clause 23 of the Bill, the County Councils were ordered to pay over to the various districts £2,300,000. There was no objection to that, because provisions for the police and for the assistance of pauper lunatics was included in the sum. But by Clause 15 of the Bill, upwards of £1,000,000 was to go towards the highways. He was very glad to find that there was power given to the County Councils to assist certain districts where the highway rates were extremely high. The great object in a national question like this should be to equalize the burden in all localities so far as possible under the circumstances. They knew that, as a matter of fact, highway rates were very much higher in some places than in others from no mismanagement, but from natural causes. In some places there were no materials, and consequently the cost of maintaining the roads was extremely heavy. Therefore, he was glad power was given to the County Councils to distribute a certain amount of money, so as to equalize the highway rates in the various parts of the county. He saw no objection to the grant of £2,300,000 under Clause 23, or to the £1,000,000 for the highways; and the suggestion he had to make was that the balance between those two items and the £5,500,000 should be appropriated to the relief of those rates which had become onerous and burdensome during recent years. He thanked the House for the patience with which they had listened to him upon this subject. Of course, there were many subjects he should like to have dealt with, but he had already trespassed too long upon the attention of the House. He would only say he was extremely glad to be able to feel that, at all events, they were now progressing, and that there was every probability of them accomplishing, in the near future, a popular, useful, and permanent measure of reform.

SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON (Essex, Epping)

said, he did not wish to detain he House for more than a few moments; but there were one or two points to which he desired to refer. The hon. Member for the Westbury Division of Wiltshire (Mr. Fuller) had dealt with various points of the Bill, and had objected to the way in which the Bill proposed to charge the amount that was to be contributed to the maintenance of the poor upon personal as well as other property. His (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson's) recollections might be imperfect, but, as far as they went, the words of the old Act of Elizabeth were, that the rates should be chargeable upon the "ability" of persons rather than upon their rateable property. That, as far as it went, was an answer to the position the hon. Gentleman had taken up. Upon the whole question of the contribution in aid of the poor there was much to be said; it was undoubtedly a question of great difficulty. They all knew the tendency there must be in the minds of those who administered a grant of this sort to carry out, perhaps, further than it ought to go the separation between indoor and outdoor poor. He quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman who deprecated the entire abolition of outdoor relief. But the House must remember that the whole tendency of our Poor Law system of late years had been, while preserving some outdoor relief in cases of real necessity, to do so in a way which would prevent able-bodied people throwing themselves as a charge upon the parish. He did not think they need dread even this new precaution as an incentive to indoor relief, remembering that those who administered it would be supervised and influenced by the feelings of the locality in regard to their conduct. Now, what led him, perhaps, most of all to speak upon this Bill was that he had for a long time taken a totally different view to the hon. Member for the Westbury Division of Wiltshire (Mr. Fuller) in regard to the management of the police force of the country. He had had experience in dealing with the police force in the past, and he asserted that there would be great danger in the transfer of the police of this country to the control of an elected body, such as our County Councils were to be. He confessed he did not like the proposal of the Government for a Joint Committee for dealing with this force. He did not like it, because he believed it would load to an amount of friction in the future which he did not wish to see imported into the matter. He considered that, inasmuch as the magistrates were to be left with judicial functions and with the administration of the law, the police, the engines which carried out that administration, ought to be under the control of the magistrates rather than under the control of a popular body. At all events, until they saw far better than they could at present what the working of the Councils of the future would be, the police force, upon which law and order and the whole administration of justice rested, should be left in the hands of those who had managed that force in the past. He could not help looking with alarm on the possibility of a local agitation arising on a particular subject that might divide very strongly the inhabitants of some particular part of the country; he could not help looking with alarm at the way in which a conflict might arise as to the carrying out of law and order. It was not very long ago that there was a necessity of enforcing the law in a particular part of this country by the interference of the police, and to enforce it, as they all know, against the opinion of a very large body of the people of that part of the country. He referred to the Tithe War in Wales. Would anyone tell him that if the police force had been put under the control of a Local Council in that country the magistrates of the country would have had any power whatever of enforcing the law? If such a sharp division of public opinion were to occur in any part of this country also, he believed that there would be considerable danger of the law not being enforced under the proposed circumstances. He knew that with regard to this question it was said that they could not separate the control of a particular force from the people who would have to raise the money for the support of that force. But surely that might be guarded against by providing that the precept issued by the magistrates for the amount required for the police force should be subject to the supervision of tile Central Authority—namely, the Home Office, and that the amount asked for should only be an amount absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the police force of the county in a proper state of efficiency. He hoped the Government would look carefully again into this question, because he know that the opinion which he hold was shared by a large number of his brother magistrates, who had had sometimes to conduct the affairs in their particular counties. Certainly, the matter ought to be most carefully considered before the idea of handing over the police, either to a Joint Committee or to the future Councils, was entertained at all. One other point had been specially referred to that night by previous speakers, and if the House would allow him he should like to say a few words upon it, and that was the question of licensing. He had had in past years something to do with the Bills that were passed, and that had been mentioned that night. The Bill of 1869 was his own, and in the Bills of 1872 and 1874 he had to take a considerable part. Although he might seem to differ on some points from those in authority on that side of the House, and although, not being a lawyer, perhaps he had no right to interfere in the legal argument, he could only say that at the time those Bills were passed, and when he was in constant communication with all parties on the subject, the question of the absolute legal right of suspending or taking away a licence was never disputed; but although that right was never disputed, and as a dry legal position he believed it could not be disputed, still it was then said, as he said now, that a moral right had supervened, and that the custom which had gone on for years of renewing licences as a matter of course, except in the case of bad conduct, had practically established a right which the law did not give. It was that moral right which he believed was possessed now without a shadow of legal right, and for that moral right he believed the holders of licences were entitled to some compensation, if not the compensation provided by the Bill. He knew it had been said, and said by a great authority, that that had been altered by the introduction of the amendments of the law that were made in the years 1872 and 1874. He could not help thinking, from what he remembered of the past, that the account the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) gave of the reasons for the alterations of the law which were then made were the right reasons. He believed that they were made from a feeling that the custom had given such a right to a renewal, unless there were offences which were proved against the holders of the licences. There was one other point in regard to the licensing part of the Bill which he desired to mention. He confessed he should have preferred himself to have seen the Licensing Clauses of the Bill relegated to a future action of the House, for he looked with some alarm to the first election of the County Councils throughout the country, lest those Councils should be elected on the lines simply of temperance or the brewers' interest, and that the general interests of the counties should not be considered. He was much afraid that they might see the election take such sharp divisions, and that they might not got an authority as satisfactory as if it were elected without such considerations being imported into the matter. Therefore it was that he should have liked to have seen the Licensing Clauses postponed until the Councils were fairly established in the country, and dealt with in a separate Bill on a future occasion. He believed that under such circumstances they would have got greater efficiency in the body to which he looked forward as a sound body in the future for carrying out the business of counties; because he could hardly hope that if the elections were fought on the sharp lines he had referred to, they would get as satisfactory a body as they otherwise would get. With these two or three minor objections, he hailed with pleasure the introduction of what he believed was new vitality into county life, and he was not one of those who were afraid that those who had administered the business of the counties in the past would not have their full share in the administrotion of them in the future.

MR. A. J. WILLIAMS (Glamorgan, S.)

said, that on Monday night the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) suggested that long debate on the second reading of the Bill was not needed. Before that suggestion was made, there had been considerable discussion upon this great and complicated measure, and since then its various propositions had been subjected to searching criticism. The right hon. Gentleman taunted the Party to which he once belonged with not knowing what they wanted, and with not being able to rest until they got it. As a matter of fact, he (Mr. Williams) scarcely remembered a debate in which such important results had been arrived at as the present. First of all, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld), himself the author of a great scheme of Local Government, occupied the attention of the House by a series of criticisms which were of great value. Then, again, the right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler) was enabled, by a masterly treatment of the financial aspect of the case, to bring before the country, which understood so little about it, all the thorny and serious questions which were involved in that side of the Bill. So, again, the hon. Baronet the Member for the Cockermouth Division of Cumberland (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) was able to expose the great principle underlying the Licensing Clauses, and the hon. Baronet was followed by the hon. and learned Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke), and by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) who, by his reply, had aroused the attention of the Kingdom. Subsequently to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, they had the privilege of listening to one of the most striking speeches ever delivered—the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bodmin Division of Cornwall (Mr. Courtney). The eloquence, power, and dignity of that speech lifted the hon. Gentleman into a position even beyond that which he had justly occupied in the House. Though, in theory, he (Mr. Williams) had long adhered to the views which the hon. Gentleman put forward in his speech, he had not been able to follow the hon. Gentleman into its development. Furthermore, they had had the advantage of listening to another remarkable speech, that of the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. Long). By its ability, its readiness, and its adroitness, that speech lifted the hon. Gentleman at once into the front rank of debaters in the House. Towards the end of his speech the hon. Member said that the Bill was not drawn in the interest of the squire, or of the upper classes, but in that of the democracy; and so adroit and ingenious was the way in which he put the point that he (Mr. Williams) began to fancy he must be right. But, on consideration; he did not think the hon. Gentleman had repaired the tactical blunder which Lord Salisbury made when he blurted out at Carnarvon that this was not a democratic or Radical Bill, but a Conservative Bill. Why, a democratic Local Government Bill would give, once for all, to every class and section of the people not only full power, but full scope to deal freely and fairly with all that locally affected their daily life and well-being. Proper local self -government, like charity, would begin at home, and that was why he held the opinion that a great mistake had been made in not beginning with the immemorial home of local self-government in the country—namely, the parish. The Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. Long) took the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) to task for venturing to submit that they might have done well to make the parish the unit. The hon. Gentleman said there were 15,000 parishes in England and Wales, and that 6,398 of these had not more than 300 inhabitants. In his (Mr. Williams') constituency, in the Vale of Glamorgan, there were 86 parishes, and in 26 of these the population did not exceed 200; in 12 of them the population was under 100, and in one parish there were only 31 inhabitants. When Sir Charles Dilke referred to parishes, in that remarkable speech which he delivered in 1885, he, of course, did not mean the parishes as they now existed. They who advocated the creation of the parish as the unit did not say they should build up the local government of the counties out of such parishes, as they found, for instance, in the Vale of Glamorgan. No; they said that the parishes should be the parishes as they ought to be. At present the inhabitants of a parish had, practically, no organization or power at all. They were merged, for all practical purposes of administration, in the Poor Law Union, and that, of course, must, to a great extent, continue. What would the parishes have to do, it might be asked? In the parish in which he had spent his life there were 1,365 inhabitants. It had 7,000 acres of land, which were owned by less than 30 persons—chiefly by one or two persons. The land was tilled and occupied by 58 tenants. The other householders, chiefly labourers, were 65. There were several local charities in the hands of the rector and churchwardens. The parishioners had no power. The Vestry had absolutely nothing to do. Could anyone wonder that, under such circumstances, the farmers and labourers took no interest in parochial affairs? There were no parochial affairs to take an interest in as parishes now existed. The only interest the 58 tenant farmers of his parish, in which he was a landowner to a small extent, had in the parish was to scrape as much as they could out of the farms they occupied, and put as little as they could into them, because they knew that at any moment they might be turned out of their holdings. And what interest could labourers have in their parishes, except in getting their 15s. or 16s. a-week? They saw large tracts of uninclosed common land, but they knew that they could not put a foot upon it, or that if they ventured to build a cottage upon it the lord of the manor or his agent would come down and prevent them. They had seen for generations thousands upon thousands of acres of land, which, he maintained, belonged to themselves, inclosed and appropriated by landlords. They knew that the landlords would take the remainder if they had the opportunity. They would not take what was left of the common land in his parish, because he (Mr. Williams) happened to be a landlord; they never would do it there. Now, a farmer, if he had power given him to interfere in parochial affairs, would not care to do so as long as he was liable to be turned out of his farm at any moment. It was the constant fear that at any moment their tenancies might be terminated which made his tenants, just as well as those of other landlords, afraid to tell their minds to their landlords. What was the change which the Democratic Party would before long make in reference to the parishes? Suppose they could make the farmer independent of his landlord, and suppose they could make the labourer independent of the farmer. [Laughter.] He observed that hon. Gentlemen opposite smiled at that; but it was upon such principles that the greatness and liberty and independence of the United States had been built up. De Tocqueville had described the independence and the democratic constitution of the townships of the United States, and those townships were the exact counterpart of the English parish. In the townships of America the citizens assembled once a-year and elected their committee, who ordered the execution of public works and raised money. That was exactly what he and his hon. Friends said should have been provided for here. The Government ought to have begun by giving the labourers and tenant farmers of each parish an independent position and large control over parochial affairs. That was the true democratic way in which a great system of local self-government could be built up. The President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) said, the other night, that the parish might very well have its powers extended and enlarged. Let them take his (Mr. Williams') parish, with its 1,400 inhabitants, its 58 tenants, and its 65 labourers, and apply the New England system to it. He would have the old parish vestry turned into a corporation, and the parochial property and charities put into the hands of the people. Annually, the inhabitants would meet and elect a committee—a simple committee. They might combine, with other parishes, in engaging a clerk to conduct their affairs. The committee would find that the 60 labourers were anxious to have allotments. Instead of having recourse to the Bill of last year, of which the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bordesley Division of Birmingham (Mr. Jesse Collings) was so proud, but which had been a complete failure, because the compulsory powers were too complicated to be of any use whatever, some simple method, such as an application to the County Court Judge, would be devised for securing allotments to labourers. A great mistake had been made in not making the parish the unit. He was very much afraid that if they had County Councils to which the shopkeeper, the artizan, and the labourer never could go, but which must, of necessity, be composed of men of leisure and means, the result would not be satisfactory. The way proposed in the Bill was not the way in which great democratic institutions were built up, and he maintained that he and his hon. Friends were justified in pointing out to the country the fatal defect in the Bill, that the Government had begun at the wrong end of reform.

MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN (Kent, Faversham)

said, he would promise the House that he would not detain them for more than a few minutes, because he was very conscious the opinions he held in regard to this measure were not in accord with those which were held by the vast majority of Members on either side of the House. He was afraid that the expression of what he had been used to think Tory opinions were now very much out of place in the House of Commons—he was afraid nowhere more, say, than upon the Benches from which he spoke, because he could not help feeling that if they on that side of the House supported the Bill they must do so as Ministerialists and not as Conservatives. He maintained, in spite of the recent declaration of the Prime Minister, that the Bill, were it bad or good, were it wise or unwise, were it just or unjust, were it necessary or unnecessary, was neither more nor less than the uprooting, the upheaval, the disturbance of that system of domestic government which had prevailed in this country for generations. To show what that system was, perhaps the House would allow him to read an extract from an article which appeared in The Times on the 30th of March. In the article, which was exceedingly laudatory of the measure, it was said— Nobody whose opinion is worth anything denies that county business has been administered by the magistrates sitting at Quarter Sessions with absolute purity, with strict regard for economy, and, in general, with an efficiency which the new representative bodies may well take as a model. And that was the system which it was now proposed to destroy, and in the place of which they proposed to try something, they knew not what. The object in which they were anxious to try an experiment was the Constitution of their country. It seemed to him that in both financial and domestic matters they had taken leave of their senses. Financially, they were now pursuing a system which was ridiculed and repudiated by every civilized nation in the world except this, and in their domestic matters they were now about to abandon an institution which, on every hand, was pronounced to be most exemplary. He protested against the doctrine announced on that side of the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Sleaford Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin), when he said that Conservatives ought to support a measure of the sort because of the pledges they had constantly given that they would deal with the question of Local Government. It was perfectly true they had constantly promised to deal with Local Government, but they never pledged themselves to this particular Bill. A good illustration of his argument was afforded by something which occurred the other night. The hon. Member for the Cockermouth Division of Cumberland (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) said that the House had pronounced strongly in favour of Local Option. Undoubtedly they had, but the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) made a very good answer to the hon. Baronet; he said it was true the House had pledged themselves to deal with the question, but when they came to the particular course the hon. Baronet proposed they were all at sixes and sevens. And so they, the Conservatives, had undoubtedly pledged themselves to deal with the question of Local Government; but that did not in the least prevent them expressing an opinion as to the shape the reform should take. Personally, he was utterly astounded that anyone calling himself Conservative could possibly support this measure, unless he were constrained to do so by political exigencies. The Bill might be approved by men who called themselves Tory Democrats. He did not understand what a Tory Democrat was, unless he was a man who might be described as a wolf in sheep's clothing, and whose clothing was of the very scantiest description. It appeared to him that Gentlemen calling themselves Tory Democrats began by announcing themselves as Members of the Tory Party, and then proceeded to preach the most revolutionary and violent doctrines. He, certainly, had no sympathy with them. It might be asked why, holding the opinions he did, he did not put down a Notice of practical opposition to the measure? He had two very good reasons for not doing so. First of all, bad as he believed the measure to be, he confessed it was inevitable on account of pledges, somewhat recklessly given, and on account of the abandonment by the Leaders of the Party of the principles which had always actuated Conservatives. That being so, if he had any common sense he must accept the inevitable; and, under the circumstances, he believed he should be discharging his duty as a private Member of Parliament if, in conjunction with those hon. Members around him who retained some Conservative principles, he objected to some of the most objectionable clauses of the Bill, and if, in Committee, he endeavoured to amend certain proposals of the Bill, especially those concerning the police. He was decidedly opposed to the suggestion to hand over the control of the police to a hybrid committee on the ground of the confusion which would be created in police management. The second reason which induced him to forego any active opposition to the Bill was that he believed the measure to be intimately connected with the Budget, and the Budget he regarded as one of the best which had been introduced for years. But there was one other reason which he was sure would commend itself to hon. Gentlemen opposite. It was this—that bad as he believed the Bill to be, he would accept it, or 10 others worse, rather than give a vote which might by any possibility lead to that which he believed would be the greatest calamity which could befall the country, and that was the accession to power of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone).

MR. F. S. STEVENSON (Suffolk, Eye)

said, the hon. Member for the Faversham Division of Kent (Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen) who had just sat down appeared to be a few weeks behind the age, and to be ignorant of the state of feeling and altered circumstances amid which the Conservative Party now found itself. When the hon. Member spoke of Tory Democrats as being wolves in sheep's clothing, he appeared to have forgotten that the Leader of the Party at the present time was no longer the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), but two such sober-minded Conservatives of the old school as Lord Salisbury and Lord Cross. Speaking in Wales a short time ago, at Carnarvon, Lord Salisbury pointed out that this measure was not a Radical Bill at all; and Lord Cross, in addressing Tories of the old school at Wisbech, said there was no necessity for them to be afraid of any portion of the Bill. He (Mr. Stevenson) intended to utilize his Amendment on that occasion as a text upon which to found his speech. His Amendment, which was as follows:— To move to leave out all the words after 'That,' in order to add 'no measure for the reform of Local Government will be satisfactory to this House which fails to deal with the administration of the parish, and which retains the Boards of Guardians, with their existing constitution, qualification, and mode of election'"— pointed to the fact that, in regard to the interests of the agricultural labourers, the village artizans, and working classes generally in the counties, the present measure was dumb, or, so far as it touched them at all, it did not deal with them in the most satisfactory way. He thought his Amendment had been a fortunate one in other respects—first, because it had struck the key-note of much of the criticism passed on the provisions of the Bill; and, secondly, because it had not been ruled out of Order. But there was a certain technical difficulty in the way of proceeding with it. If it were formally moved, it would be impossible to deal with the measure as a whole, for the debate must be confined to the subject-matter, and the Government would be prevented from giving various explanations on certain points which had been asked for in different quarters of the House. He thought, therefore, it would be for the convenience of the House, and in the interest of the debate, if, instead of formally moving the Amendment, he took it as his text on this occasion. The Amendment dealt with two distinct questions—first, the subject of the government of the parish by the parish; and, secondly, the omission of the administration of the Poor Law from the scope of the Bill. As to the first question, he thought a signal change had come over the spirit of the Tory Party. At first they thought a revolutionary change had been proposed, and it was only after Lord Salisbury's speech that they were re-assured. The more they looked into the measure, the more it was obvious that differences of opinion might arise with respect to it. It was a maxim of the late Mr. Fawcett that it was a most unfortunate thing to praise a Bill on its introduction. If ever there was a Bill of which that might be said, surely this was the measure. The more the Bill had been looked into by every section of the House, the more it appeared to be obvious that it was, after all, to use a metaphor of the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen), a wolf in sheep's clothing, and that it hid provisions which not only were the reverse of harmless, but which might be positively pernicious and harmful. As to the County Council, it seemed to him (Mr. Stevenson) that there would be a difficulty in having the feelings and wishes of the village artizan and the agricultural labourer expressed in it. They were told that the voters in counties would obtain a direct management in their own affairs by reason of being represented in the County and District Councils. But it had to be borne in mind that for a considerable time the sittings would be in county towns, and that those towns, as far as the agricultural labourers and the village artizans were concerned, might just as well be in Timbuctoo. A certain principle had been accepted—namely, the extension of the suffrage to the counties, and the fact that there should be a County Council created. That extension of the suffrage for local purposes was, after all, the irreducible minimum, the inevitable and necessary part of County Government, which could be introduced in 1888. What they had to do, therefore, was to carry out a measure by which the municipal life and the local energy might be fostered in the particular localities in which the bulk of the population were principally interested. But that would not be done by the County or the District Council, because the areas were too wide for ordinary purposes. In many parts of the country it was very rarely the case that neighbouring parishes had many interests in common, as witness the way in which some Boards of Guardians had dealt with the Allotments Act. What they wanted was a system which enabled the inhabitants of a parish to have a direct voice in the management of their own local affairs, without outside interference. Such questions as the management of the parochial schoolroom for public meetings, allotments, water supply, and the management of parochial charities might be referred to them. At present, Vestry meetings were a mere farce. They usually met at an hour when the bulk of the parishioners could not attend, and beyond that there was a system of plural voting in Vestry polls which was a serious impediment to the expression of the wishes and the wants of the inhabitants of the parish. The proper way of dealing with the reform of parish government was by developing the system of Vestry government, so as to enable the inhabitants of the parish to meet together to exercise their rights, not by delegating those rights to others, but by exercising them in their own corporate person. He would call the attention of hon. Members to extracts of the debate in 1871, which showed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) recognized the need for parish government when he introduced the Rating and Local Government Bill, and that even so late as 1885 the right hon. Gentleman had not changed his opinions. Again, in 1885, speaking in Edinburgh, the Chancellor of the Exchequer adverted to the necessity of giving the parishes some local life, and spoke of these three gradations—first the parish, then an aggregation of parishes; and, next, over these a County Authority was to be established. Although the right hon. Gentleman's scheme of 1871 was now thought to be impracticable, yet what he then said showed that the right hon. Gentleman realized the importance of dealing with the parish; and the wonder was that he had not succeeded in impressing those views on his present Colleagues. He (Mr. Stevenson) must suppose that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had changed his mind on that matter, as he had done on the allotment scheme and on various other questions. No man talked more loudly of political conscience than the right hon. Gentleman; and, whereas other men were their hearts on their sleeve, the right hon. Gentleman were his conscience on his, and it was to be feared that his conscience in that case had rather suffered from the exposure. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) appeared to be under the delusion that the scheme they now advocated was one for establishing Parochial Councils; but what they were really advocating was the extension and development of the principle of open Vestries. Speaking in 1885 on the subject of Local Government, the right hon. Member for West Birmingham himself put the parish first and foremost, and said that then Local Authorities should be constituted for the district and the county; and he could not understand how the right hon. Gentleman did not lay the same stress on that point now as he did in 1885. In referring to his (Mr. Stevenson's) Amendment, the right hon. Gentleman described it as an attempt on the part of the tail to wag the dog. Now, the right hon. Member for West Birmingham was one who ought to speak with great caution about the relations which subsisted between a dog and its tail; because at one time he might have been described as a tail without a dog, whereas now he was very much in the position of a dog without a tail. He (Mr. Stevenson) now came to the second blot in the Bill as affecting the agricultural districts—namely, the omission of the Poor Law administration from the scope of the measure. Why should the Board of Guardians be retained side by side with the District Councils; and as the Government proposed to deal with the boundaries of Rural Sanitary Authorities, what difficulty was there that might not be overcome in dealing with the boundaries of Unions on a similar principle? The present cost of the administration of the Poor Law was greatly out of proportion to the relief received; and under different arrangements—as, for instance, by transferring the care of the indoor poor to the County Council and that of the outdoor poor to the District Council and by the grouping of districts together—the Poor Law would be better and more economically carried out. The necessity for such a huge staff and such heavy establishment expenses as existed under the present system might be obviated. The Bill of the Government provided for a complication of areas and of authorities; whereas what they desired was simplicity of areas and of authorities, which had been provided in England ages ago. Again, the Bill proposed that the portion of the Probate Duty to be handed over to Local Authorities should be given in proportion to the number of indoor paupers. That provision would put a premium upon indoor pauperism and would operate unfairly, and it would be very unwise to insert it in the Bill unaccompanied by provisions placing Poor Law administration under popular control. The Bill would not give to those who were most interested in the proper administration of the Poor Law a direct influence in its management. The retention of the present system of Boards of Guardians side by side with the District Councils to be created by that measure was one of the greatest anomalies that could be devised. The Poor Law had exercised a pernicious influence upon English life; but that would not be remedied by the penal harshness which the Bill promoted. The feeling entertained on both sides of the House was that the question of the Poor Law ought not to be shelved, but should be dealt with speedily, and in accordance with the just claims of the English people. The question should be dealt with now in the Bill before them. It had been stated that to do this would be to overweight the ship. But there was a very obvious remedy in their hands. It was not impossible to devise a process by which the Licensing Clauses could be dropped out, and clauses dealing with the Poor Law substituted for them. On that side of the House they protested against the sins of omission and commission which characterized the Bill; and although he had refrained, with a view to the convenience of the House, from moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice, he could assure the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Ritchie) that he and those who acted with him reserved for themselves complete liberty at any future stage to move to include in the Bill, which in its present form would be actually harmful and pernicious in many parts of the country, clauses dealing with Poor Law administration and the government of parishes.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. E. STANHOPE) (Lincolnshire, Horncastle)

said, he could assure the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Eye Division of Suffolk (Mr. F. S. Stevenson) that the Government were very grateful to him for his consideration. The hon. Member told the House that he did not move the Amendment of which he had given Notice, because he desired to consult the convenience of the House and the Government, who would not at once be able to meet the points which he put before them. The hon. Member might disabuse his mind of any such idea. He had no occasion whatever to consult the convenience of the Government. Their convenience would have been consulted best if the Amendment had been moved. The Government were quite prepared to meet it, whether the hon. Member moved it on the second reading or on any other stage of the Bill. The hon. Member had stated that the Bill was one which did not deserve the confidence of the country. He had made a speech in support of his Amendment, and yet he was not prepared to submit that Amendment to a vote. In the course of the debate it had been a somewhat convenient practice on the part of hon. Members not to endeavour to go over the whole ground covered by this great Bill, but to deal with certain portions of it, and it was his intention to approach the Bill from the point of view of one who knew the rural districts, and who thoroughly shared, and to a large extent sympathized with, the feelings expressed by his hon. Friends on that side of the House, and by some hon. Members on the other side, with regard to the way in which the Bill would be regarded by county magistrates. At the present time he filled the office of Vice Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and when he saw these great changes impending he was very much inclined to approach their consideration from the same point of view as many of his hon. Friends. He did not think that any one of them who was specially connected with Quarter Sessions could have failed to be extremely pleased with the manner in which testimony had been borne from all quarters of the House, no less emphatic than unanimous, to the efficiency and economy with which Justices had managed county affairs. He had every hope that those same powers which the county gentlemen of England had exercised in times past would be employed by them in the future, if they were elected, in discharging the more extended duties which the present Bill proposed to give. He said—if elected. He had no doubt whatever that the county gentlemen of England would in very large numbers be elected to the new Councils. They were the natural leaders in the rural districts; they had, time after time, been the protectors of the weak; and he could not but think that even in these distressful times which had fallen upon agriculture, when the failure of rent had made a large number of them more inclined to stay upon their own farms and devote themselves more particularly to their own immediate localities, they would come, if elected, to the new Councils with a fuller knowledge even than they had before of the wants of the inhabitants. If he bad any doubt of that he should have greater fear than he had on the score of what appeared to him to be the greatest difficulty they had to contend with. It was not the want of interest on the part of the labourers. He did not believe it was necessary to establish parish Councils or to revive the parish Vestry in order to awaken the interest of the labourer. If parish life were to be reconstituted, someone would have to give a much more accurate description than had yet been given of the powers that were to be entrusted to the parish. As to control over public allotments, there were already provisions by which such control could be vested in a committee in every parish. The supply of water formed part of the great sanitary powers to be conferred upon District Councils; and it was surely not imagined that you could invest the parish with a power which could be exercised only for a much wider area? The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) was taunted with having changed his opinions since 1871, when he strongly advocated the revival of parish life; but it must be remembered that since then a great change had been made in rural life by the formation of sanitary areas throughout the country. But the greatest difficulty now to be contended with was the getting of the members of the County Council to any place that might be selected for its meeting. The area of many counties was enormous, and the members of the County Councils had other important work to do; and the greatest danger was lest, through the non-attendance of members who would have a distance to travel, the business should fall into the hands of a narrow clique living in the town of meeting. The difficulty and the danger would be the greater if an enormous mass of duties was heaped upon the County Council. Many of those elected would have important affairs of their own to attend to, and if public duties called them to neglect their own business too much there would be danger that county business would fall into the hands of those who would not attend to it properly. Therefore he totally disagreed with the opinion that they should not deal with county administration without making a complete job of it. If all the duties that had been suggested were to be laid upon County Councils at once good men would be deterred from serving upon them. We ought not to reckon upon all county gentlemen being willing to stand as candidates; but everything ought to be done to facilitate their becoming candidates. The hon. Member (Mr. F. S. Stevenson) had urged that Poor Law duties should be handed over to the new County Concils, and had based some of his reasons upon the history of our Poor Law. It was a remarkably grotesque view of the history of the country to suggest that the gradual taking away of land from the people necessitated the passing of the Poor Law of Elizabeth, for the inclosure of commons occurred chiefly in the 18th century, and any such reconstruction of our Poor Law system as had just been recommended, with the expenditure it would involve, it would have been madness to couple with a measure for the creation of County Councils. His right hon. Friend the Member for the Epping Division of Essex (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) had protested against including any licensing proposals in the present Bill. Well, could he deny that if the Government had declined to deal with the Licensing Question, it would have been said that their Bill was hopelessly incomplete. As to the powers that were to be transferred from the Home Office, the Local Government Board, and the Board of Trade, many of them were of so thoroughly simple and local a character that it was obvious they could be better exercised on the spot by those who had local knowledge than by Departments in London. An hon. Member on the Ministerial side was very anxious that certain powers with regard to Private Bill legislation should be transferred to the new County Authorities; but although he believed that some steps could and ought to be taken by means of which the House would divest itself of powers which at the present time it could not adequately discharge, he did not believe it was possible to do it by transferring them to the County Councils. In various quarters, again, fears had been expressed that the urban element in many counties would altogether swamp the rural element. He fully admitted that if such were the case it would be a danger which it would be the duty of the Government to endeavour to meet; but he would like his hon. Friends to look for a moment at what was the nature of the urban sanitary districts. Many of them were exceedingly small, and if anybody looked into the history of the matter, he would find that in many cases they were so formed not merely because they wanted to exercise urban powers, or because they partook of an urban character, but simply in order to escape the rate which would be imposed on them by Highway Boards. He found that in 1881 there were no less than 22 urban districts with a population of less than 1,000, and four and five times that number with a population of less than 2,000. He would venture to say that others of these Rural Sanitary Boards, even containing a much larger population, were really and entirely rural in the it interests. If he were to take instances of counties in connection with which the difficulty in question had been especially urged, he should take the counties of Devonshire and Kent, where there were a large number of urban sanitary authorities. But what was the nature of those urban sanitary districts? As was well known, they had simply been developed on the seaboard, consisting of watering places more or less large all along the coast; but would anybody be prepared to say that the character of their population was so distinctly urban as to have interests diametrically opposed to the interests of the rural population immediately adjoining. Or would one not rather say that they might safely trust their representatives on the County Councils to take, at least, as large and fair a view of their duties as any representatives would take in any other county? He was quite sure that when the question was examined in detail his hon. Friends would be satisfied that the alarm which they had felt did not rest upon substantial foundations. The best earnest of the desire of the Government not to endanger the old county policy was to be found in the plan by which they had dealt with proposals altering the boundaries of counties, and they hoped and believed that those boundaries would be dealt with in accordance with the general feeling of the whole inhabitants of the county. There had been a good deal of alarm, too, with regard to the borrowing powers contained in the Bill. He was one of those who looked with very great suspicion upon the borrowing powers as exercised in several cases by the boroughs, and he should so far agree with his hon. Friends that they ought to take warning by the lessons to be learnt from the boroughs. In this connection, however, there was one provision in the Bill which he believed would be of great value, and that was the provision enabling County Councils to borrow money for the purpose of lending it to Local Authorities within their own borders. If the restrictions provided by the Bill upon the borrowing powers of the County Authorities were not deemed sufficient to prevent those powers from being abused, he was sure that his right hon. Friend would be perfectly ready to consider any reasonable proposal for making those restrictions strong enough when the Bill reached the Committee stage. Another part of the measure that had given rise to some discussion was that which dealt with the control of the police. In referring to that matter he did not desire to touch the question of the control of the police in London—they were pretty well all agreed upon that. He was not afraid of touching that question, however, because the Government would have the strongest objection to hand over the control of the police of London to any Municipal Government of the Metropolis which might be established. But as regards the counties generally the question was a difficult one, and the Government were placed between two fires with regard to it. He could not disguise that the Government proposal was a compromise, and, like most other compromises, it did not appear to have succeeded in pleasing many hon. Members in that House, although that was no proof that the proposal was not the wisest solution of the question. The proposal of the Government, he believed, would meet reasonable objections on both sides, and they intended to earnestly press upon hon. Members in Committee the desirability of abiding by the compromise which had been arrived at after the most careful consideration. He desired to offer a few observations with regard to the very able speech which was delivered the other night by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Leeds (Sir Lyon Playfair), in which he dealt with the subject of public health. The right hon. Gentleman was, perhaps, the greatest authority in that House upon such a question as that, and it was with much diffidence that he ventured to criticize some of his observations. By the 45th section of the Bill the powers of existing Sanitary Authorities were transferred to the District Councils, while certain powers of the Local Government Board were transferred to the County Councils. The right hon. Gentleman complained that the Local Government Board would still retain the power of prescribing the duties of the medical officers of health, although the County Councils would have the power to make regulations with regard to their appointments and with regard to certain of their functions. The object of certain powers over the medical officers of health being retained by the Local Government Board was to insure uniformity of action throughout the country by means of general orders and instructions which could not be secured if the whole control were handed over to the different County Councils. The right hon. Gentleman had also complained that the medical officers of health were to make their Reports to the Local Government Board instead of to the County Councils; but there was no reason why copies of those Reports relating to their districts should not be furnished to the County Councils. If the Bill required amending upon this point, no objection would be raised on the part of the Government when the measure reached the Committee stage. The right hon. Gentleman had proposed a scheme dealing with large sanitary areas under which the number of officers of health would be reduced from 1,200 to 180, each of whom would receive £600 a-year. This, however, would leave 1,000 existing medical officers unprovided for; and he was afraid that the result would be to start the County Councils with an enormous expenditure, while many medical officers who had learnt their duties and had discharged them with great efficiency and industry would be deprived of their posts. He believed that a medical officer appointed by a Board would have, in many cases, more influence with them than any person imposed upon them from headquarters. He thought there were no other points of detail which it was necessary for him to dwell upon. It was, he thought, a very remarkable fact that now, on the fifth night of the debate, they had learnt for the first time that there was no intention on the part of any responsible portion of the House to challenge the second reading of the Bill. Its main principle had not been attacked. Its main principle was that of handing over certain large duties of county government to Bodies mainly based upon popular election. The Government were well aware that in endeavouring to apply that principle to any practical scheme of government for counties they were running the risk of offending many interests and of treading on the toes of almost everybody who was at the present time connected with local government, and of exciting the prejudices of large and important Bodies throughout the country. The Government were, however, much more than content with the reception which their proposals had met with; and the more those proposals were discussed the more satisfied the Government were that they would appear to be reasonable and judicious, and that between extreme partizans on one side or the other they had endeavoured to the utmost of their power to keep a fair and even balance.

MR. A. H. DYKE ACLAND (York, W.R., Rotherham)

said, he thought it would be advantageous if, consistently with the main principle of the Bill, they could develop the public life of our country villages. Nothing was more important than to prevent villagers from crowding into our towns, and therefore it was desirable to make country people take more interest than they did at present in their village life. He did not wish to make the parish what was called a unit; but, while accepting the district as the unit, he thought there were purposes for which the parish organization was desirable, and, indeed, practically essential. He also thought that the existing Vestry was the obvious organization which could by simple and easy means be reformed. We could not avoid having some kind of parish organization, even according to the present Bill. At the present time, the initiative for bringing into operation the Free Libraries Act, the Lighting Act, and certain other Acts of Parliament was given to the Vestry. Why should the initiative power now existing be taken away from the Vestry and transferred to the District Council? Besides these permissive Acts, there were certain other matters which parishes and Vestries must become more connected with. For example, the Allotments Act had been referred to. The allotment managers were to be chosen by the parish in such manner as the Local Government Board should decide. What more obvious way was there than to elect them by the parish in Vestry assembled? A representative element was required in the administration of charitable trusts, and the Charity Commissioners were at present, he believed, formulating some plan which would introduce in certain cases representatives of parish Vestries. But what was greatly wanted was Vestry reform. What would be the objection to interesting parishioners, in certain matters affecting their own parish, by giving them a certain amount of control over such matters? In towns the Mayor often called together a town's meeting; but villages under the present system were much more stagnant, and would remain so until some reform was effected. The desired reform of the parish Vestry would not be so very difficult a matter. What was wanted was to enable a certain number of the ratepayers to summon a meeting; that such meeting should appoint its own chairman; that the principle of one vote and the ballot should be adopted, and some arrangement made for meeting in the village schoolroom, which was supported by public money. The Local Councils for parishes were to be composed of members of the District Council, and "certain others" not chosen by the parish but by the whole District Council. Why should not these others be chosen by the parish, and not by the District Council, which might have very little in common with the parish? The Vestries ought to be given some administrative power and some limited executive power, as in respect of allotments and charity matters, and also a fairly full power of deliberative action in relation to matters which specially concerned the parish. Many of the Government's own supporters in the rural districts were feeling strongly that something of this sort ought to be done. It would have very beneficial effects of a social and educational character if the different classes—the landlords, tenants, and labourers—were brought together to discuss matters in which they were all jointly interested.

MR. JESSE COLLINGS (Birmingham, Bordesley)

said, he thought there must be general agreement with the hon. Member in his desire that there should be a re-invigoration of village life; and if that was all the formidable looking Amendment of the hon. Member for the Eye Division of Suffolk (Mr. F. S. Stevenson) meant, it was a pity that the House was not informed of it several days before. There was a portion of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) which met the arguments, so far as they had been displayed, by the hon. Member for the Rotherham Division of York (Mr. Acland). In a sentence of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman it would be found that he said that as soon as the boundaries and other matters were settled for the County Councils, then it was the wish of the Government that there should be a reform of Vestry Councils. He (Mr. Jesse Collings) could not help thinking that the conclusion of the hon. Member for Eye was a lame one with regard to his Amendment, which threatened the life of the Bill, which was intended to kill the Bill—[Cries of "No, no!"] No; then was the Amendment a joke? He thought the hon. Member would have to explain himself in many places. His Amendment against the Bill on its second reading, if it were carried, would certainly have killed the Bill, and that was why so much importance was attached to it, else it should not be moved at all.

An hon. MEMBER

It has not been moved.

MR. JESSE COLLINGS

No; but the House was led to believe it would be moved, and after five nights' debate the lame and impotent conclusion was arrived at that the Amendment meant no more than a slight alteration in parish Vestries. That, it appeared, was all it meant! He was inclined to think his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) was mistaken—that the tail had not wagged the dog, but after sundry contortions the dog, with a great effort, had succeeded in moving the tail. That, he thought, was the explanation of why the Amendment was thrown up at a late hour. But the reason given was that it was for the convenience of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War (Mr. E. Stanhope) stated, however, that the Government did not want any such consideration as was offered them; that it was no convenience to them; and, that being so, perhaps the hon. Member, or some of those who acted with him, would still move the Amendment, seeing that its object had not been secured, and the consideration shown bad secured no acknowledgment from an ungrateful Government. But the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Eye Division meant something more than the reform of Vestries, else why all that was said about "wolves in sheep's clothing" and that labourers could not go to a distance to attend District Councils "any more than they could go to Timbuctoo?" The reform of Vestries would not cure the matter. He was surprised to hear the argument that labourers would be unable to avail themselves of the advantages conveyed in the Bill, because they could not go to the county town or the place where the District Council assembled to discuss matters in which their localicy was interested. It might be said, if that made the Bill worthless, that when the Imperial franchise was conferred on labourers it was still more worthless, for if a labourer was unable to go a few miles to attend the meetings of the elected body he certainly could not travel to Westminster. The whole argument was of an extraordinary character, and struck at the value of all representative arrangements. The references of the hon. Member for Eye were unfortunate. He mentioned the subject of water supply, and said no object more fitting for parish management could be singled out than the water supply.

MR. F. S. STEVENSON

I said especially in clay districts.

MR. JESSE COLLINGS

But if the Bill were to deal with such distinctions as between clay and other districts, a Minister of Geology, or something of that kind, would be required. Another extraordinary statement was that the advances as payment for indoor pauperism were calculated to promote pauperism. This was an argument that might at once be disposed of. The average cost of the food of a pauper was from 2s. 1d. to 2s. 4d. per week; but that did not include all the expenses connected with paupers, which, he thought, would be nearer 8d. or 10d. than 4d. per day. The argument hon. Members were asked to support was that Boards of Guardians composed of men not more than ordinarily insane would, for the sake of getting a lot of fourpences, spend a lot of eightpences or tenpences. The argument was was not worth consideration. It was absurd to suppose that any representative Body would do anything of the kind. There was one remark of the hon. Member for the Faversham Division of Kent (Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen) that it was worth while to digest. He said that the Government, though pledged to a County Government scheme, were not pledged to a scheme such as they had placed before the House and the country. That was quite true, and so much the more credit to the Government in that they had not brought in a Bill just redeeming their pledge and no more; but they had sought to meet the exigencies of the case, and had prepared a Bill that all people who know anything about Local Government in counties would admit accomplished its object well. The importance of the reform he estimated as equal, if not superior, to the reform in the Imperial franchise; it was of as much importance that the labourer in the rural population should have a vote for the control and management of his own local affairs as that he should have a vote for Imperial affairs, because it touched his domestic life, and had relation to affairs with which he was locally acquainted. It was impossible to give effect to any Act that might be passed for the benefit of rural districts, to re-invigorate local opinion and restore that life and interest so desirable, until a reform in the administration of County Government, in the direction of the Bill under discus- sion, was secured. The legislation of past years had been of the most haphazard and piecemeal character from the want of a good system of administration. No doubt, Quarter Sessions had done their work well; but they had not had much work to do. They were a non-elective Body; they had but little power of rating the county, and without more money they could not do more work. The consequence was that in any now legislation, no matter how good, new authorities and new areas were created, or the work was shunted on to the Sanitary Authority to carry out, with the result, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) said, of a chaos of rates, and a chaos, worse than all, in areas. This accounted for much of the backwardness and lethargy in the rural districts, and made this the most pressing question of the day. He congratulated the Government on the manner in which they had grappled with a question so full of peculiar difficulties. Traditions had to be upset—a difficult thing to do—strong sentimental opinions had to be overcome, and many time-honoured institutions had to be modified or overturned. All this was a work of especial difficulty to the present Government. He supposed he must not say a Tory Government—there was no Tory Party now—nor was there a Liberal Party either. He preferred, therefore, to let the credit of the case lie with the Unionist Government and its Liberal Unionist supporters, including his humble self, as against the ex-Liberal Party represented by those to whom he was opposed at the present time. The Government were to be congratulated, and were entitled to the gratitude of all who valued the welfare of the rural districts. The Government had dealt with the subject in a manner very few expected they would. He attended a meeting at which the hon. Member for the Eye Division and many of his friends were present, and he was ridiculed for giving expression to the bare possibility that the Government might bring in a decent County Government Bill. It was held to be certain that by means of ex officio members, or other methods—[An hon. MEMBER: Selected members.]—he would come to that presently—by some method the representative principle would be so leavened that what was given with one hand would be taken away with the other. By this means it was thought the Government would lose Liberal Unionist support, defeat would follow, a Gladstonian Government come in, and then the Universe would be set right. That expectation, he believed, was at the bottom of a good deal of the action in regard to the Bill. But all those fears, expectations, or hopes had been falsified. A sound, honest, decentralizing measure had been brought in, far-reaching, and even revolutionary, in its changes, yet on strictly Constitutional lines. There were not found in the Bill any ex officio Members, any plural votes or voting papers, no nominated members, and an end was put to the wasteful system of subventions—the whole management of affairs was in the hands of electors, women included. He was, therefore, not surprised at the chorus of approval with which the Bill had been received at first. He valued first expressions. Ejaculations, it was said, ascended straight away to Heaven, or where they were addressed. He was inclined to think that the first expressions from the Front Opposition Bench were the best thoughts before they were modified by other considerations. His right hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) was justified in calling the measure large, comprehensive, and complete, and that was strong evidence to get over, and many arguments would be needed to explain them away and make the country believe that this large and comprehensive measure was a wolf in sheep's clothing. What was the principle of the Bill? It was the principle of establishing popular representative government in the counties, and that was to be carried out by an extension to the counties of the Municipal Corporations Act. Both principle and method were plain, and could be understood by everybody. It had been found impossible to attack the Bill on principle, and even the attack on details had had to be abandoned. The hon. Member for Nottingham said it was a Bill with a very fine superstructure, but a bad foundation; but the contrary was the fact, and whatever defects there might be in the superstructure, the foundation was absolutely good and could not be improved upon. Therefore, he found that, although the Bill could not be attacked for anything it professed to do, resort had to be had for what the Bill did not profess to do. But much manifestly would come later, and the passing of the Bill would make subsequent reforms much more easy. He accepted the Government's promise in reference to assessment and Poor Law reform, and there was plenty of time before 1893 to complete the measure and satisfy hon. Members on all points.

It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed To-morrow.