Commons Sitting of 19 March 1889

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL.
Read a second time, and committed.
QUESTIONS.

  DAIRIES AND COWSHEDS.
  MR. COCHRANE-BAILLIEasked the President of the Local Government Board whether, in view of a statement that he made last Session, that every district should have regulations as to the cleanliness of Dairies and Cowsheds, he has had any reports from the sanitary authorities that his instructions have been carried out, and that a more stringent supervision is being maintained?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,): In accordance with the promise I gave last Session, letters have been addressed to the sanitary authorities urging them to make regulations with regard to dairies, cowsheds, and milk-shops, in all cases in which there has been any reason to suppose that such regulations have not yet been made. The Annual Reports, which are now being received from the Medical Officers of Health, are carefully examined with the view of ascertaining whether special communications are necessary in particular cases, and I am glad to be able to say that, in the large majority of cases, the Medical Officers of Health have stated that the inspections of dairies, &c., have been made with satisfactory results.

  LICENSING LAWS IN LAGOS.
  MR. COCHRANE-BAILLEasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether any arrangements have been made for the extension of Licensing Laws to Katanu, a district of the Protectorate of Lagos, in accordance with the desire of the inhabitants, who have petitioned for some means of checking the unrestricted sale of liquor?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Baron H. de WORMS,): It will be seen, on reference to the report on Lagos, No. 4, presented to Parliament in December last, that the Secretary of State called for a Report from the Governor on this subject, but as yet no reply has been received. Accordingly the Governor was reminded by the last mail.

  IRELAND—THE DINGLE UNION.
  MR. KILBRIDEasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether charges and allegations, amounting to forgery, were made against officials and others in connection with the Poor Law elections held in Dingle Union in 1888; whether the Board of Guardians have asked the Local Government Board, on the 9th of February, to hold a sworn inquiry; and, whether the request will be granted? The hon. Member also asked whether the attention of the right hon. Gentleman has been called to the fact that, in March, September, and October, 1888, Lord Ventry, through his agent, Captain E. A. De Moleyns, recorded 12 property votes, as immediate lessor of under-rated holdings in the Dingle Electoral Division of the Dingle Union, at the Poor Law Elections of the above dates, whilst owing two levies of Poor's Rate for the houses occupied at that time by John Lee and Mary Walsh, in Green Lane, Dingle; whether he is aware that Mrs. Mary Fitzgerald, of Mai. Street, Dingle, was landlady of said houses until July 1887, when Lord Ventry dispossessed her, and, as she owed rates when dispossessed, he was not entitled to vote in the following March, as those rates were unpaid; whether Mrs. Fitzgerald, although having her rates paid for the house in which she resides, was refused a voting paper in March, September, and October last, as the rates of the two above-mentioned houses were unpaid, whilst Lord Ventry, who was in possession since July 1887, was allowed to vote as if the rates were paid; whether Lord Ventry also voted, as immediate lessor, in the Dunquin Electoral Division last March, whilst owing £1 16s. Poor's Rate for holdings on the townland of Ferriters Quarter in said division; and, whether a representation has been made to the Local Government Board with regard to this matter, and whether an inquiry will be held.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,)said, that the Local Government Board had directed an inquiry into the matter.

  DISUSED CARBINES FOR SCHOOL DRILLS.
  MR. CALEB WRIGHTasked the Secretary of State for
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  War whether his attention has been called to a circular letter recently issued by the head master of Mayall College, Dulwich Road, Brixton, to the parents of boys under his charge in which he says—
  "For the purpose of more thoroughly attending to the physical training of the pupils under my charge, I have received the permission of the Government to form a Cadet Corps in connection with a regiment; carbines have been, issued by permission of the Secretary of State for War, and a course of drill has been prescribed that will especially benefit growing boys and improve their physique and deportment, besides being conducive to habits of obedience and orderliness. Tunics and belts will be provided and kept at the headquarters; I have been gazetted Captain by the War Office, and take entire charge and responsibility."
  Will he inform the House whether the Government have supplied the carbines; and, if so, from what fund; and, whether any other schools are under the same conditions?
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. E. STANHOPE,): Yes, Sir. Unserviceable carbines, which have been rendered incapable of being fired, have been supplied, on payment, for drill purposes. In answer to the second question, all duly constituted cadet corps and many schools have been so supplied.

  INDIA—THE CRAWFORD COMMISSION.
  DR. CAMERONasked the Under Secretary of State for India whether it was true that in course of the evidence recently given before the Crawford Commission certain native magistrates, under promise of indemnity from the Bombay Government, gave evidence that they had corruptly purchased their judicial appointments and promotion; whether it is the case that the Judges of the Bombay High Court, Justices Jardine and Birdwood, who are specially responsible for the representatives of inferior courts and offices, have sent to the Bombay Government minutes pointing out the illegality of maintaining on the bench magistrates who had corruptly purchased appointments and promotion, and its fatal effect upon the public estimation of our Law Courts if permitted to be presided over by such men; whether Her Majesty's Government propose to take any steps to prevent a continuation of the scandal against which the Judges of the Bombay

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  High Court protest; and, whether the Minutes of Justices Jardine and Bird-wood, together with a Minute endorsing them by Mr. Justice Scott, having been published in the Press of India, he will lay them before the House?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Sir J. GORST,): The Papers in the Crawford Case, including Mr. Crawford's Memorial, arrived by mail yesterday. They are being dealt with with the utmost promptitude consistent with a due consideration of the important issues involved. The Secretary of State is of opinion that any statement at this moment in Parliament on the subject would be detrimental to the interests of the public service.
  DR. CAMERON: Will the hon. Gentleman present Papers on the particular branch of the case to which my question refers?
  SIR J. GORST: That branch is a very important part of the case, and among other branches it is undergoing careful and anxious consideration. I cannot make any promise as to Papers.
  DR. CAMERON: Then I will take an opportunity of calling attention to these Papers, as they appear in the Indian Press.

  TRADE SOCIETIES.
  MR. HOWELLasked the Postmaster General whether Trade Societies and Branches of Trade Societies have been permitted, subject to the approval of the Secretary to the General Post Office, to invest their funds in the Post Office Savings Banks, without restriction as to amount, for a period of a quarter of a century; whether recently some societies or branches of societies have been refused so to invest their funds; and, if so, by what authority, and for what reasons; whether some such societies, being obliged by their rules to keep separate accounts, such as those for sick and other benefit purposes and those for trade purposes, are forbidden to keep separate accounts for such separate fund; whether the recent regulations as to the signatures of trustees are disregarded as regards withdrawal of amounts and otherwise; and whether, in view of the absence of statutory regulations, the Government will propose such legislation as will prevent misconception and
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  annoyance to the lawfully constituted bodies herein referred to?
  *THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES,): The facts as stated in the first and second paragraphs of the hon. Member's question are, as I pointed out to him in my reply of the 28th ult., substantially correct. I am still in communication with the National Debt Commissioners on the subject, and I confidently hope that all difficulties will shortly be surmounted. With regard to the third paragraph, I would state that the Savings Bank regulations do not permit any person or society to have more than one account, although, for my part, I can see no reason why this rule should not be relaxed in the case of such societies as those referred to, seeing that they can place their funds on deposit without limit as to amount. Indeed, I was anxious when the regulations of 1888 were under consideration to make such exemption. With regard to paragraphs four and five, I would refer the hon. Member to the latter part of the reply to a question asked by him on the 26th ult. I am not prepared at the moment to state whether fresh legislation will be required; but the hon. Member may rest assured that I shall spare no pains to prevent misconception and annoyance to the large body of depositors whose interests he advocates.

  DEFECTIVE SWORDS.
  MR. HANBURYasked the Secretary of State for War whether, in addition to the regiments in Ireland mentioned in the recent Report, the defective swords of pattern 1885 are in the hands of other regiments; and, if so, what regiments; whether they have all, or any of them, been tested, as were those of the regiments stationed in Ireland; and who assisted the Inspector of Small Arms when inspecting the swords of the latter regiments?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: I think that I informed my hon. Friend in June, 1887, in reply to a question which he then put to me, that all cavalry regiments other than those in India have swords of the pattern known as that of 1885. Up to the present time, the swords of six regiments have been inspected since issue, and the remainder will be examined as soon as possible. The Chief Inspector of Small Arms was assisted in his work

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  by qualified men employed in his Department.
  DR. TANNER: How comes it to pass that the War Office are so anxious about the swords in Ireland being specially examined?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: Defects were reported in one regiment, and then the others were examined.

  ALLEGED OBSTRUCTION TO THE POLICE.
  MR. HAYDENasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the cases of seamen who were recently sentenced by the resident magistrates at Ballaghaderrin, county Mayo, Petty Sessions, to imprisonment for a month and a day for alleged obstruction of the police in the discharge of their duty at Lissacal, county Roscommon, and who served formal notices of appeal to the next quarter sessions for the division, which take place at Athlone on the 22nd instant, can be tried at a more convenient place than Athlone, which is at the opposite end of the county to that in which the defendants reside, being nearly 50 miles distant; whether he was aware that there will also be Quarter Sessions at Castlerea on the 29th March for the same division of the county, which is only seven miles from the defendants; and whether, in view of the fact that the defendants are too poor to defray the expense of travelling to and attending at Athlone, he would consent to a postponement of the cases from Athlone to Castlerea Quarter Sessions on the 29th instant?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am unable to answer the Question on account of insufficient notice.
  MR. HAYDEN: As the Quarter Sessions meet on Friday, will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiry?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Inquiry has been made already, but I have not received information that would enable me to answer the question.

  DINUZULU.
  MR. WALTER M'LARENasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he was aware that it is impossible to set down the appeal against the validity of the warrant on behalf of Dinuzulu, for which leave has been obtained, until the record
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  has been sent by the Natal Registrar direct to the Registrar of the Privy Council; whether the Order in Council granting leave to appeal was sent out to Natal by Messrs. Loughborough and Gedge, solicitors or agents in the case, on the day they received it, a month ago, and whether everything has been done on their part, and on the part of Dinuzulu's friends, to push on the appeal; and, whether, in these circumstances, the Government intend to take advantage of this technicality and allow the trial to take place, or whether they will rather give time for the appeal to be heard?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: The reply to the first paragraph of the hon. Member's Question is in the affirmative; and as regards the second paragraph, the Secretary of State has no information. In answer to the last paragraph, I may say that this is not a matter of technicality, as the result of the appeal in no way affects the competency of the Commission to try the case. I can only refer the hon. Member to the answers which I have already given in the House to himself and other hon. Members, especially to that which I gave him on the 8th inst.

  WORKING HOURS IN THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARDS.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSENasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he would consider the possibility of re-arranging the working hours at the dockyards, so as to enable the men to leave work at 5 p.m during the summer months?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord G. HAMILTON,): This question is under consideration; but at present there is no intention of causing work to cease in the summer before 5.30 p.m. Such an arrangement would be detrimental to the wage-earning power of the men, especially if the system of task-work be extended.

  RAID ON A WORKMAN'S CLUB.
  MR. CUNINGHAME GRAHAMasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has now any information to lay before the House as to the alleged raid on a workman's club by the police on

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  Saturday, after a parade of Jewiah unemployed?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS): I am informed by the Commissioner of Police that there was no raid whatever, but the police were themselves assaulted, and a case is now pending before a magistrate. Until the facts are ascertained at the trial, it would obviously be improper that I should make any further statement on the subject.

  THE SPECIAL COMMISSION.
  MR. T. M. HEALYin rising to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department the name of any visitor admitted to see the prisoner John Daly at Chatham Prison since the passing of the Special Commission Act, 1888; the reason for the visit; whether it took place without the presence of warders; and, in what manner and on what grounds the permission to visit was granted, said, that he had received a letter from the Home Secretary desiring him to postpone the question until he obtained details. Might he ask whether the information was not at the Home Office?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I have no information at the Home Office. I have asked for the details.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman cannot obtain the information from the Prison Commissioners, and whether the Prison Commissioners are not under the same roof as the right hon. Gentleman?
  MR. MATTHEWS: The question put to me asks information as to whether the interview took place in the presence of warders. Information on such facts could only be ascertained through the Governor.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the names of any person or persons admitted to see the dynamitard, John Daly, since the Special Commission Act was passed?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I have not the materials with me to enable me to answer that question accurately, and I told the hon. Gentleman that if he postponed his question, I could give him a full and not a partial answer.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: Then I shall put the question in another form. Was
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  Mr. Richard Pigott allowed to see John Daly in prison?
  MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Richard Pigott did—I am speaking from memory, I am not quite sure I am correct—in the month of December last visit John Daly in Chatham Prison at the prisoner's own request. The visit was a private visit under the prison rules.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I shall put a further question on this subject.

  DIVISIONAL COMMISSIONERS.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the newly named Divisional Commissioners had their appointments as Resident Magistrates cancelled by the Lord Lieuteant: whether, thereupon, they were immediately re-created magistrates for their various counties by the Lord Chancellor; if so, will they be obliged to confine their functions to certain Petty Sessions districts, as was ruled in the case of Mr. James Byrne, of Mallow; and, what Petty Sessions districts have they selected to act for?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It is the case that the Divisional Commissioners are to have their appointments as Resident Magistrates cancelled; also that I am advised that they will be appointed by the Lord Chancellor to the Commission of the Peace for the particular counties comprised in their respective divisions. They will not adjudicate in any Petty Sessions district, their duties having been all along purely executive.
  DR. TANNER: Is it the intention of the Government to bring in a Bill dealing with this question?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Speaking without notice of the question, my impression is that a Bill will not be necessary for the purpose of the proposed change.
  DR. TANNER: Are Her Majesty's Government going to keep their word?
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!

  CAPTAIN SEGRAVE.
  DR. TANNER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary for the Colonies whether facilities will be afforded at the Government Offices for Cape Colony to search the columns of the Cape Gazette, with the object of ascertaining why Mr. O'Neil

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  Segrave was obliged to retire from the Cape Mounted Infantry?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: The notification in the Cape Gazette is as follows:—
  "Colonial Secretary's Office,
  Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope,
  July 20, 1885.
  His Excellency the Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, has been pleased to approve the following alteration in the Cape Infantry Regiment:—
  'The services of Lieutenant O'Neil Segrave are dispensed with. Dated the 16th of July, 1885.'
  JOHN TUDHOPE, Colonial Secretary."
  I shall be happy to give the hon. Member the facilities he desires for seeing the Cape Gazette, should he still wish to do so. No answer has as yet been received from the Cape in reply to the telegraphic inquiry as to the cause of Mr. Segrave's dismissal. If the hon. Member will put a further question on Thursday, I will give him the information, should I have then received it.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I have to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether Captain Segrave's salary will be upon the Vote on Account, and whether that Vote on Account will be taken without any reasons being given with reference to the matter on which the interrogation has been made?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: It will not be upon the Colonial Estimates.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Will it be on the Vote on Account of the Irish Estimates?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Mr. Segrave is still a Resident Magistrate in Ireland, and will remain a Resident Magistrate until there is some evidence to show that he ought to be dismissed, and, he being a Resident Magistrate, I presume his salary will be provided in the Vote.
  MR. SEXTON: May I ask whether the Agent General of the Cape Colony, in sending a copy of the Official Gazette, has not stated that Lieutenant Segrave's services would not have been dispensed with unless he had been guilty of some grave offence; and whether under these circumstances Captain Segrave will be continued as a Resident Magistrate?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I really am amazed at the principles of justice which appear to animate hon. Gentlemen
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  opposite. I have done my best to get full information regarding Mr. Segrave's career in South Africa, and if there has been any delay due to any office in this country, that is not at the door of the Irish Office, but at the door of the Colonial Office, and I hope it will be on the head of my right hon. Friend near me that all the vials of the wrath of the hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway will be poured in regard to this matter. If hon. Gentlemen think that I, as responsible for the Irish Government, am going to dismiss any servant of the Irish Government until full particulars have been obtained with regard to the offence of which he is accused, they are entirely mistaken.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: May I ask whether all these circumstances were not brought under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman on December 19 last; and when he seeks to evade responsibility, when he disclaims responsibility, for the Irish Office, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, after the lapse of three months, he is not at present in possession of that information which has been asked for?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I made a request to the Colonial Secretary for information, and I have not got it. The right hon. Gentleman knows that I have no direct means of communicating with the Cape Government. Any further question on the subject should be addressed to my right hon. Friend.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Then I will ask the Under Secretary for the Colonies why, if he was requested three months ago to inquire into this matter, he has not done so?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: The only answer is that the request was made to the Cape Government. [Cries of "When?"]
  BARON H. DE WORMS: At the time, and repeated since by telegraph. It was repeated again to-day.
  DR. TANNER: If a question is sent by telegraph, why cannot an answer be received by wire?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: An answer might be received by telegraph if it had been sent.

  IRELAND—THE BARROW DRAINAGE SCHEME.
  MR. W. A. MACDONALD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary

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  to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received a copy of the resolution passed by the Queen's County Grand Jury at Maryborough, in which they expressly endorse the resolutions adopted by the public meeting previously held at Portarlington, which resolutions condemned the Government scheme for the drainage of the Barrow by means of embankments, and advocated the scheme recommended by Lord Castle-town's Commission; and, whether, in face of this second expression of opinion from the locality interested, he intends to adhere to the scheme embodied in his Bill of last year?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As at present advised I do not propose to alter the scheme.

  MR. WILSON AND THE IRISH POLICE.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the hon. Member for the Holmfirth Division, whilst taking a walk with Mrs. Wilson in the neighbourhood of the Gweedore Hotel, on Saturday 16th instant, was persistently followed about by two armed constables; whether, when the hon. Member shortly after took a car for a drive with Mrs. Wilson, three armed constables mounted another car and persistently followed them for some time; and, what was the object of this police supervision?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: This is one of the questions with regard to which I have not yet received information.

  BALLYCOTTON PIER.
  MR. LANE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he can state approximately the cost of carrying out the alterations recommended by Mr. Wolfe Barry on Bally-cotton Pier; and, what has been the cost of the other repairs and alterations executed on this pier by the Board of Works since their engineer certified in 1888 that the pier was "a perfectly sound and stable marine work"? [Tuesday, 19th March.]
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON,): Until a detailed and complete specification of the works recommended by Mr. Barry has been made it will not
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  be possible to frame any estimate for their probable cost. It has not been necessary to expend any money, and no money has been expended on the pier since its transfer to the Grand Jury in 1888. The Board of Works hold that it was, and is, a perfectly sound and stable marine work, having stood the most severe storm without showing the slightest failure or weakness. The only expenditure since the transfer to the Grand Jury has been for the removal of some rubble stones from the bed of the harbour (£11 3s. 5d.), and for labour in connection with the examination during Mr. Wolfe Barry's inquiry (£30 11s. 3d.).
  MR. LANE: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is a fact that the Report which was submitted to this House has not yet been issued to Members, and whether there is not ground for the rumour that this Report has been sent back during the course of printing to the Irish Office for revision?
  MR. JACKSON: I am not quite sure whether I am sorry or glad that the hon. Gentleman has put the question, because really it contains an imputation upon the Board of Works and the Treasury, which I think it is extremely desirable to remove. I told the hon. Member, when I laid the Report upon the Table of the House, that it was that day sent to the printers, and it has not, therefore, been sent back to the Board of Works, and the delay in issuing it rests entirely with the printer, and not with the Department.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether anything is being done to prevent the delays of the printer, of which constant complaints are being made?
  MR. JACKSON: As one who knows something of the difficulties with which the printer has to contend at this season of the year, I feel it my duty to stand up in his defence, and say it is almost impossible for him to get through the work which falls upon him this fortnight. The House decided that this work should be let by contract to one printer, and the whole of the printing for the Estimates of the Army, the Navy, and the Civil Service, and the whole of the other papers in the course of distribution to Members, has to be done by this one firm, and for about a fortnight it is not too much to say that

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  the men are almost worked beyond their power of endurance. I say this because I believe they have done the very best they can.

  GAMBLING AT TATTERSALL'S.
  MR. S. SMITH: I beg to ask the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the following remarks of Mr. Justice Manisty, as reported in the Times of March 12, on the subject of gambling—
  "He did not hesitate to say, from his experience as a Judge, that there was no greater evil in society, and none which caused more misery and ruin in families…. He could not see why, when petty betting houses were put down by force, Tattersall's should be spared, though the bets made there were no more valid or legal than if made in any public house;"
  and whether the Government are prepared to give effect to the recommendation therein made?
  MR. MATTHEWS: My attention has been called to the remarks of Mr Justice Manisty. The subject of gambling has been frequently under the consideration of the Legislature, and was finally dealt with by 16 and 17 Vic, c. 119, the Statute to which, I presume, the learned Judge alludes. The question whether the establishment at Tattersall's falls within the provisions of that Statute is one which, so far as I know, has never yet been raised, and which appears to admit of some doubt. It is open to anyone interested in the matter to raise it. The Government are not of opinion that further legislation on the subject is necessary, or that the public interests call for any special interference on their part.

  THE RISLEY SCHOOL FOUNDATION.
  SIR W. FOSTER: I beg to ask the hon. Member for Penrith whether the Charity Commissioners have it in contemplation to hold a public inquiry at Risley in connection with the draft scheme recently issued for Risley Schools; and, if so, whether the inquiry will be held at some hour in the evening, so as to give the industrial classes a full opportunity of stating their views on the scheme?
  MR. J. W. LOWTHER: On the 8th of this month the Charity Commissioners directed that a public inquiry should be held (under the provisions of
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  sections 35 and 50 of the Endowed Schools Act, 1869) concerning the draft scheme which has been published for the Risley School foundation; and they have already instructed the Assistant Commissioners, to whom the duty of holding this inquiry is committed, to arrange for an evening sitting for the convenience of the working classes.

  LABOUR IN INDIAN FACTORIES.
  MR. J. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether any reply has yet been received from the Government of India to the inquiries of the Secretary of State as to the expediency of amending the law for the regulation of labour in Indian factories?
  SIR J. GORST: Yes, Sir; the Secretary of State has been informed by telegraph that the Government of India's report on the Factory Act was despatched by the mail of the 8th of March.

  THE LONGRIDGE GUN.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether it is the case that a Longridge gun, differing in no material respect from the original design of the inventor, was made at the Abouchoff Works, in Russia; that this gun fired 1,000 rounds of battering charges; that it was then, taken to pieces, the wire being unwound and re-wound on a new A tube replaced in the original jacket, and was at this moment in the course of firing a second set of 1,000 rounds, of which 500 had already been fired; that the gun was made in about half the time of an ordinary built up gun, and cost two-thirds of the money; and that the most detailed information respecting it is in the possession of the Director of Artillery; and whether, if this be so, he is prepared to cause fresh experiments to be made, with a view of testing the merits of the Longridge gun?
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. BRODRICK,): Detailed reports on this gun have been received only within the last few days, and have been remitted to the Ordnance Committee for report. We must await that Report before coming to any further decision.

  AFFAIRS AT TANGIER.
  DR. CAMERON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been called to a Reuter's telegram, dated Tangier, March 16th, to the effect that the Moorish Minister for Foreign Affairs had sent a messenger to the Sultan's Court to inform His Majesty that the British Channel Squadron had come to Tangier to support the demands of the British Minister with regard to the cable and other claims, and that it was reported that the squadron would not leave until the Sultan's answer was received; and whether it is true that a British Squadron had gone to Tangier to support demands of the British Minister; and, if so, what demands?
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON,): Some ships of the Channel Squadron have gone to Tangier. There are certain serious questions unsettled between the Shereefian Government and that of Her Majesty, especially the treacherous murder at Cape Juby of a British subject by some of the Sultan's soldiers, as well as the prohibition to allow the submarine cable to be repaired. I cannot enter into these questions further, as they are still under discussion between the two Governments.

  THE IRISH POLICE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE.
  MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if he can state what grounds Sergeant Kelly had for the belief that a meeting of the Fermoy branch of the Irish National League was about being held on the occasion when he (with several other policemen) intruded on the premises of the Fermoy Young Ireland Society, and remained there despite the protests of the officers and members of that Society; and, whether this action on the part of Sergeant Kelly was in accordance with the instructions issued to the Constabulary?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It would be manifestly inconvenient and likely to defeat the ends of justice, to state the ground or the sort of information on which the police act in taking steps in
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  cases where a breach of the law is anticipated. It is the duty of the police to take all such lawful steps as the circumstances of each case may require.

MOTIONS.

  PUBLIC BUSINESS.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the Motion on the Paper in the name of the First Lord of the Treasury as to financial business, I should like to point out that it contains five distinct propositions, and I wish to know whether, in accordance with the practice of the House, the Motion ought not to have been in paragraph form and each proposition put separately from the Chair?
  *MR. SPEAKER: It is one proposition. I do not see anything unusual or improper in the Motion as it stands.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I understand that, as in the case of the Rules of Procedure, the Rules of the House may be discussed and voted upon each paragraph separately.
  *MR. SPEAKER: That would be contrary to the statement I have just made. Of course, Amendments may be moved, but I shall put the Motion as one.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: May I ask whether it is not the fact that each of the Rules of Procedure was dealt with and divided upon separately?
  *MR. SPEAKER: My observation did not apply to the whole of the Rules, but to each individual Rule which contained several propositions.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I submit, Sir, that the First Lord of the Treasury ought not to be allowed to put the House into a difficulty. A Member may not take the same view of one part of a Motion that he does of another part.
  *MR. SPEAKER: I do not think any difficulty will arise. Any hon. Member can move to omit any portion of the Motion.
  *THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,): Mr. Speaker, I have now to move—
  "That until the proceedings on the Supplementary Estimates, 1888–89, the Excesses, 1887–88, and the Vote on Account for 1889–90 in the Committees of Supply and Ways and Means, and on Report therefrom, and the

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  several stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill, are concluded, the proceeding thereon shall hare precedence of other Orders of the Day and Notices of Motion on every day for which they are appointed. The provisions of Standing Order No. 56 shall be extended to any day on which the said Votes are set down. Such financial business may be entered upon at any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the sittings of the House, except of Standing Order No. 5. But after such proceedings are disposed of no opposed business shall be taken."
  I regret that I am under the necessity of moving this Motion, but, as I have already stated, it is imperative upon the Government to make provision for the services of the country. By introducing the Consolidated Fund Bill to-day we shall be able to insert in it on Thursday the provision as to the Vote on Account. This is not a Motion brought forward for the convenience of the Government, but in the interests of the service of the country, and whether hon. Members approve the course which I now suggest or not, it is but right that we should make provision for the service of the country. That provision cannot be regularly and adequately made unless we take the Vote on Account on Thursday next. The business on the Paper for this Evening Sitting will, of course, be superseded if my Motion is agreed to. But I may say with regard to the first Motion, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt) and which deals with mining royalties, that the Government have considered it, and, although they are not prepared to accept it in the terms laid down by the hon. Member, they are prepared to accept it in substance. As to the second Motion, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Woolwich (Colonel Hughes), we are of opinion that upon the whole the hon. Gentleman is right in asking for a judicial inquiry into the circumstances under which workmen entered in the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, and other Government establishments between December 17, 1861, and June 4, 1870, have been hitherto refused the benefits of the Superannuation Acts. The third Motion on this evening's paper is that of the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir G. Trevelyan), but I think it will be generally admitted that in the ordinary course of things it could not have been
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  reached before 1 o'clock in the morning. I regret that it is not in my power to afford the same terms of conciliation to hon. Gentlemen who have Bills on the paper for to-morrow; but I venture to say to the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) that he has hitherto been so successful in obtaining days for the discussion of matters in which he is interested that I think in this instance he may well submit to the necessity which is imposed upon us. In the event of Supply not being concluded to-morrow we propose to conclude it on Thursday. The Financial Bill will be read a first time to-day. It will then receive a second reading, and in Committee we propose to introduce as an Amendment a provision for the Vote on Account and such Votes as may be taken to-night and to-morrow, so as to report the Bill in the House on Monday next. We shall then be able to read the Bill a third time on Tuesday, and that is the latest day on which it will be possible to comply with the financial regulations of the country. Under these circumstances, I trust the House will accept this Motion and proceed with the discussion of the Estimates, having due regard to their proportional interest to the country and apportioning time accordingly.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That until the Proceedings on the Supplementary Estimates 1888–9, the Excesses 1887–8, and the Vote on Account for 1889–90 in the Committees of Supply and Ways and Means, and on Report therefrom, and the several stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill, are concluded, the Proceedings thereon shall have precedence of other Orders of the Day and Notices of Motions on every day for which they are appointed. The provisions of Standing Order No. 56 shall be extended to any day on which the said Votes are set down. Such Financial Business may be entered upon at any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the Sittings of the House, except of Standing Order No. 5. But after such Proceedings are disposed of no opposed Business shall be taken."—(Mr. W. H. Smith.)
  *MR. BRADLAUGH: If a soft speech could turn away wrath, I quite admit that the right hon. Gentleman has made his proposal in as soft and kindly a fashion as it was possible to do it; and so far as my hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt) is concerned—he, no doubt, will presently express his view—it does seem to me to go a long way to disarm opposition, so far

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  as the very important Motion standing for this evening is concerned. The right hon. Gentleman says the question submitted to the House is not for the Government, but for the country; but he forgets the country has no opportunity of expressing an opinion upon it. I think I might answer, at any rate, for the Members who sit around me, that if we thought the First Lord was going to give an opportunity to the country, if—after providing the financial means of government for the moment—he intended to give the country an opportunity of generally expressing a verdict, partially expressed at Kennington the other day, I think I might then promise him we would withdraw all opposition to his Motion. He was good enough to say, in equally kindly fashion, some words as to my good fortune in the ballot. If he would undertake to give my Bill, which stands first for tomorrow, that precedence on some other day it obtained by good fortune in the ballot, but which it now loses entirely, then I could understand the applicability of his address personally to myself. But the effect of the Motion is to take away the time from private Members. On every conceivable pretence the rights of private Members and the House are constantly being taken away. I deny that the present Government has any right to ask the House for the indulgence it now seeks. What is the case presented by the First Lord? The case is that by law they are now in a position in which—unless they take away the rights of private Members—they cannot comply with the law as a Government should. But they knew that before they fixed the date for the assembling of Parliament. It is the duty of a Government not to speculate on private Members' time, but, having the whole authority at their own disposal, make such reasonable appropriation of the time as shall prevent that necessity. What is the effect of a Motion like this upon Members who have balloted for Bills? Under the new Rule, no Member having charge of a private Bill has the slightest prospect of having that Bill passed into law, unless on the first day of the ballot he is able to fix a date so that the Second Reading can be taken before Whitsuntide. So the practical effect, when the Government takes the whole time in this fashion, is to
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  postpone the consideration of the legislative proposals submitted by private Members until next Session. If it were a Motion for which I could ballot night after night, the uncertainties or chances of the ballot might modify the rigour of the right hon. Gentleman's Motion; but I have no chance of a ballot again for position for my Bill. I can only do it on the first night of the Session; and if No. 1 is to be killed by the Government in this way, what becomes of No. 2, No. 3, and the others? If the first number has no chance of being submitted to the judgment of the House, then the ballot, so far as private Members are concerned, becomes an entire sham, and should be so understood outside. Not only were the Government late in assembling Parliament—and I am quite ready to admit that hired men have a good excuse for being late in resuming work; but that is no excuse for a Government charged with the administration of the country—but, moreover, it arose from the bad management of Government time last Session. We should not have sat until Christmas Eve if the Government had not wanted to appoint new officials with new salaries, and, after having wasted on their project twelve nights of their time, abandoned their Bill. These twelve nights might have been devoted to Supply, and might have saved the necessity of any adjourned Sitting at all. We agree that, with his onerous duties as Leader of the House, the First Lord may well be anxious for a prolonged rest, but he has no claim upon our indulgence on that account. He stands before the House as having wilfully selected a date for the meeting of Parliament which, with no good fortune, would leave him any spare time but what he might obtain by taking away from private Members a right they have had for generations, and which has been attended with great advantage to the country on the whole; though sometimes, perhaps, time may have been wasted. I stated yesterday my especial reasons for opposing this Motion, and, on a matter of fact, I found myself in conflict with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If he will permit me to say so, that conflict of fact is not one on which he is in a position to express judgment, for I was here and he was not. What happened on Thursday? To show there was no despotism on our part to aggravate

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  the difficulties of the Government, it is enough to remind the House that when the Secretary of State for War made an appeal to us not to prevent him getting at once into Committee, many of us—I myself had a great question to raise—refrained from raising questions, and you soon left the Chair. Consequently we shall not be able to raise those questions we desire to raise until particular Votes are taken in Committee. Perhaps next Christmas we shall be told, as we were last Christmas, that it is too late; that everybody wants to get away; and we shall be asked not to occupy time then, seeing that we shall have an opportunity of doing so "at an early day next Session when Estimates are again brought in." Sir, it is a question for the country. It is a question for the country when private Members' grievances shall be considered. Grievances used to come before Supply in the old time, but now, it appears, Supply is to come first, to come always, and to come clumsily. Last year we had six Votes on Account; indeed, I am not sure whether there were not more—they came so often, that one hesitates to trust one's memory. Now we are beginning the same thing, and private Members' rights are to be sacrificed. On Thursday we followed the course pursued when we allowed the Secretary for War to get into Committee without opposition, and what happened? The Opposition allowed the Supplementary Naval Estimate to be taken without a word of challenge, because we wanted to spare the Government any annoyance. There was good matter for debate, £800,000 gone to the bottom of the sea, and an item relating to this state being on the Estimate. I had myself voluminous notes, and I thought the matter might be raised, and if I had had an idea that this Thuggism was to be applied to our rights I should not have hesitated to raise it. We allowed the Vote to be taken without challenge at all. There was an eloquent and useful word or two from naval supporters of the Government, but not a word of criticism to delay the Vote. The Vote for men also passed and the Vote for money might have been taken at ten minutes past 8 on Thursday, without challenge or dispute. There was no one here to dispute it, except myself and a few other Members, well-intentioned towards the
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  Government I am sorry to say. I repeat it now. Four Members on the Government side rose, and made interesting speeches, and my view frankly was that the Government were in no haste to get this Vote taken, but they rather wanted to delay it until late in the evening, so that they might say blame rested on the Opposition. Why did they not take the Vote when they could have taken it? It is utterly futile to say they could not have prevented their followers from speaking with the more than willing—the devout obedience they yield to the First Lord. They knew how pressed he was for time; they knew he was in a corner; and one sign through the ordinary Government channels of communication would have stopped them, and, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the North, have made them "stifled Ciceros" for the time. I ask the Government whether it is fair to take any, and in a fashion that is not reparable, not simply the places of Members who have Motions on the paper, but to destroy their opportunities which by the only possible ballot of the Session were secured for submitting legislative proposals to the House and country? I do not pretend to deal as I would elsewhere with the real grounds why the right hon. Gentleman should not have the assent of the House to his Motion. I quite agree, if the Government had the general sympathy of the House, not only of their own devoted supporters—I quite agree, if they had the general sympathy of the country with them, this great concession should be made to enable them to carry on the Government with facility; but because I believe they have not got that sympathy outside, and because I am sure they have done everything possible to alleviate those sympathies inside among Members on this side, I intend not only to protest as I do now, but to divide the House against this effort so early in the Session to utterly destroy the only opportunity of independent Members to obtain a judgment on their proposals.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The First Lord has founded his demand for this Resolution upon the imperative necessity of passing within the financial year what is called the Consolidated Fund Bill, one of those temporary Appropriation Bills passed by Parliament

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  with reference to Votes in Supply on particular dates. As I understand the right hon. Gentleman, he says it is necessary that all the Votes in Supply should be put into this Bill; that the Bill will not operate unless these Votes in Supply and the Vote on Account in particular are passed. Now, I venture to challenge that statement. I speak in the presence of those who have had greater experience than I have had, and I say it is not the practice of the Treasury; that it is not the rule of Parliament—it is a new practice introduced, I will not say surreptitiously, but with very little explanation endeavoured to be introduced by the Government for the first time, in order to force on the Vote on Account, and so prevent our having adequate time to discuss it. That is my reading of this transaction. On the other hand, I say that if the Consolidated Fund Bill is passed at any time it will cover the Vote on Account, although that Vote on Account be agreed to subsequent to the passing of the Bill, so long as the Vote on Account be taken before the last day of the financial year. I ask whether that has not been the previous practice of the House, and whether it is not the rule of Parliament? The Government are attempting to alter this rule; and why? Because they shrink from the discussion of the Vote on Account. We claim every day that can be given to the Vote on Account, and I will say why; but first I will bring the Government to book on this practice of Parliament and of the Treasury. I will take their own Consolidated Fund Bill of 1888; the Act, in its second clause, states that Her Majesty's Treasury may pay out all moneys which had been voted to make good the Supplies granted for the service of the year ending on the 31st of March, 1889. They may consequently, under the authority of that Act, for any purpose voted by Parliament before March 31st, 1889, pay out whatever money is voted up to that date. This is not merely an interpretation of the law, but it has been the practice of the Treasury up to this time. Is the Consolidated Fund Bill to be in the same terms this year as it was last year? If it is in the same terms, you may pay money voted on account down to the 31st of March. If it is going to be in different terms, then the question arises
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  —Why is a change going to be made? This pressing on the Vote on Account is a new and surreptitious form of the closure. We are surrounded by closure at every step. Every means is taken in one way or another to prevent the public discussion of the conduct of the Government. If these devices are allowed to be operative, the time will soon come when the House of Commons will not be a place for discussion at all. I know, if you had your will, that would be the case. The House would become a mere vestry to register the transactions of the Government; this is what you are fast turning it into by your methods of procedure; but it does not signify so much to us; if you will not let us discuss your conduct here, there are other places where we can do so. As an old Parliamentarian I would much rather discuss your conduct in your presence in this House; but, if this is not what you wish, we must discuss it in your absence and elsewhere, unless you are going to prolaim meetings in this country. It will be discussed, for I trust we shall still have the right of public meeting that is not permitted in Ireland. I say there is no financial necessity, and there is no legal necessity, for your passing this Bill in haste if you introduce it in the same language in which you did last year. This will be according to previous practice at the Treasury, and there is no reason why the Vote on Account should close before March 31.
  MR. JACKSON: There is the Report.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: And the Report. That, as I understand, has been the established practice. We hear some whisper of some higher authority behind the Treasury which insists on the new practice, but I know of no authority which has the right to control the practice of Parliament and the Treasury, or at all events, let us hear the claim and we will examine it. We stand on the established practice of Parliament and the Treasury, and we claim distinctly to keep open the Vote on Account to March 31. We are told Supply occupies too much time as compared with former days, but there never was a Government behaved as this Government has behaved. We have had a little experience of the conduct of administration. We saw yesterday how the Chief Secretary for Ireland

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  treats the Home Office, and we have seen to-day how the Colonial Office treats the Irish Office. Such confusion and maladministration was never exhibited before. We are getting at the truth bit by bit, but it is very hard to get at; it requires a surgical operation to be practised by Members on this side; but by degrees we are getting it out, and we see how every department of the Service has been prostituted. ["Oh, oh!" and cries of "Withdraw!"] I shall not withdraw; I have the right to challenge the conduct of the Government in these matters; I mean to do so in Committee of Supply. I shall challenge it with reference to Mr. Anderson, with reference to the prison doctor, with reference to the Irish Constabulary, and with reference to the Resident Magistrates. It is said they have taken all these men, paid by public money, and placed them at the service of the Times newspaper; and I shall not spare them. When we are asked for £10,000 for the Attorney General, I shall ask what services he has rendered to the State in the course of the last nine months? These are proper questions for Committee of Supply; and it is in Committee of Supply that the conduct of the Executive Government is to be examined. Therefore, I will resist by every means in my power attempts to shove Committee of Supply into a corner, to use the closure on Committee of Supply, and to silence the Opposition upon the Vote on Account, on a pretext which I believe to have no foundation in law or in the financial practice of the country. Therefore, so far as this Motion is concerned, so far as it claims to shut our mouths on Thursday on the Vote on Account, I say there is no precedent or necessity for it if only the Government will introduce their Financial Bill in the same terms as that of last year, which was passed on March 27. We are entitled to examine the conduct of the Government as in my opinion it requires to be examined.
  MR. BURT: I join my hon. Friend in his protest against the proposition of the First Lord, on behalf of private Members, though at the same time, so far as I myself am concerned with my Motion on the Paper for this evening, I feel I have no reason to complain. I understand the right hon.
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  Gentleman has substantially accepted my Motion, so I have no intention to continue the debate. I should not have stood between the House and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were it not that I am anxious to give him an opportunity of answering two questions. I have to ask when the Government will be able to place upon the Paper the exact terms of their proposal in reference to Mining Royalties, and also whether the Royal Commission it is proposed to appoint will include in its inquiry mines under the Crown and Mines Royal? I join emphatically in the protest against further enroachments on the rights of private Members.
  *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN,): I cannot give an absolute answer to the question of the hon. Member; but the Government will in a few days give notice of the exact terms of reference to the Royal Commission. With regard to the more technical part of the speech of the right hon. Member for Derby, I am at a loss to understand what he really means, and I only hope that the difficulty of understanding what he means is not shared by himself and his colleagues. Nothing can be more preposterous than the idea that we should have any sinister object in view in wishing to pass the Vote on Account and to embody it in the Ways and Means Bill. There is only a single occasion, of which the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian will be well aware, on which the Vote on Account has been passed so near the close of the financial year. That was in the year 1853, and although we have admitted it is not positively illegal, yet it is distinctly a financial irregularity that a Vote on Account should not be included in the Ways and Means Bill. I challenge any hon. Member or right hon. Member opposite to say whether it is not the regular practice that that should be done. Then what did the right hon. Gentleman mean?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: What I asked was this: Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer mean to say that the Ways and Means Bill of last year would not legally have covered any Votes for that year although voted after the introduction of the Bill?
  *MR. GOSCHEN: The right hon. Gentleman asks whether it would not

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  "legally" cover such Votes. I have admitted that "legally" it would; but I contend, on the other hand, that it is against the regular practice of the House, and that there is only one single exception to such regular practice which the right hon. Gentleman can quote. Let the House thoroughly understand that there is no positive law; you may take funds voted in the Ways and Means Bill for the Army and the Navy, and by law apply them to the Civil Service; but it is against every principle of finance that it should be done, especially when the separation is made in the debates of the House between the two, though I know that the sums voted are not ear-marked in the same way as the Votes themselves are earmarked. It is entirely against the practice of the House and against all financial tradition that such a course should be pursued. Then the right hon. Gentleman says that we are introducing an innovation, and challenges us as if we for some surreptitious cause were anxious to introduce such an innovation. The right hon. Gentleman piles challenge upon challenge, and says, "I am going to ask you this and to ask you that," but what we wish is that those questions should be put, and that we should not lose time night by night before coming to these Votes. We expected to be on this Vote yesterday, and we endeavoured to hasten on business; but then the friends of the right hon. Gentleman opposite would not allow us to do so. Perhaps some of those gentlemen who cry "No" spent a portion of the five hours which were devoted to discussing a Vote of £200. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby appears to approve of speech after speech being made, repeating precisely the same arguments simply in order that a certain number of gentlemen may each figure in the Scotch newspapers.
  DR. CAMERON: Is the right hon. Gentleman in order in attributing motives?
  *MR. SPEAKER: That entirely depends upon what the motives are.
  DR. CAMERON: The right hon. Gentleman said that a number of Scotch Members repeated statements over and over again simply in order that reports of their speeches might appear in the Scotch newspapers.
  *MR. SPEAKER: I do not think that the motive of desiring to have one's speech reported in a newspaper can be said to be a dishonourable one.
  *MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Member for the College Division is very susceptible as to motives; did he hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby charge the Government with every kind of surreptitious motive? He said that he would state what their motive was, and that it was a surreptitious one, and would not be avowed. What we do contend, and will contend against anybody, is this—that we have allowed ample time for all the business of the House. The hon. Member for Northampton said that we should not have called the House together so late, and should not have speculated upon taking the time of private Members. We made a most careful calculation, and we saw that there was ample time, provided that hon. Members would not abuse the opportunity. But has the hon. Member for Northampton counted the number of days so far occupied? Ten days were spent upon the Address, although the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian and his Friends above the Gangway, I believe, thought themselves that four or five days would be amply sufficient. I know that they have no control over hon. Members below the Gangway; but they must take that into account; and the hon. Member for Northampton will see, if he looks at the way in which business has been conducted, where really lies the waste of time. Take the case of the discussion on the Navy Estimates. There was a Vote of £3,000,000, and it was taken in one night by 12 o'clock. The hon. Member charges hon. Members on this side of the House with having purposely prolonged the debate. A more extravagant proposition I never heard. Was the hon. Member here from. 10.30 P.M. till 12, when the hon. Member for the College Division of Glasgow—to whom I will attribute no motives whatever—spoke three or four times, and the hon. Member for Mid Cork two or three times?
  DR. TANNER: May I correct the right hon. Gentleman? I spoke twice—three minutes the first time and four minutes the second. Put that in your pipe.
  *MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must confine himself to Parliamentary expressions—
  DR. TANNER: Certainly, Sir.
  *MR. SPEAKER: To expressions not derogatory to the dignity of this Assembly.
  *MR. GOSCHEN: The waste of time was simply in order that we might not commence the Supplementary Estimates that night. I trust that I am only replying to the hon. Member for Northampton when I say that a more deliberate—an almost avowed—waste of time than that of Thursday was never witnessed in this House. An hour and a-half was spent simply in order that we might not go to the Supplementary Estimates. I am not sure that this was not deliberately avowed by hon. Members below the Gangway, and then we are told that it is we who are delaying business. We are most anxious to meet the charges which the right hon. Gentleman makes against us. The right hon. Gentleman is very fond of putting a charge in one sentence when he knows that we cannot reply at the time. He has made a number of insinuations, upon each of which we are most anxious to meet him, and to have done with all those insinuations and suggestions, and we wish that he would induce his friends below the Gangway and elsewhere to shorten the proceedings so that we may come to the discussion of these important matters. We have no desire whatever to escape from that discussion, and we shall be able to answer then such suggestions as that we have prostituted the officials of the Civil Service. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman, as an ex-Minister, knew that the Civil Service is too high, too honourable, too great, to be prostituted, and that any Government which took such action would find that the instrument would break in its hand But the right hon Gentleman, so long as he can get the cheers of his own friends, so long as he can turn to his allies below the Gangway and ask them to endorse whatever falls from his eloquent lips, is not concerned really to bring these matters to an issue, as we desire. I do not charge the front bench, because they have no control, but I say that if there had not been a preposterous waste of time upon the Supplementary Estimates, which the hon. Member for Bradford
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  himself spoke of as paltry, we should yesterday have been able to begin these more serious questions which the right hon. Gentleman is so anxious to approach, though his desire is not less than ours that we may have an opportunity of meeting them.
  *SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN: The most serious charge that can be brought against a political Party is that of delaying business, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken this opportunity of making that charge across the floor of this House. He rests it upon two cases. I shall name them both, and the House will be able to come to its own conclusion whether or not I have met the cases named by the right hon. Gentleman. The first had reference to the Scotch debate of last night. The right hon. Gentleman says that that debate was unduly prolonged by hon. Members who wished to have their speeches reported in the papers. Now, Scotchmen do not intrude Scotch business frequently in this House, and this was a subject which Scotchmen feel very deeply upon; indeed, I think that since the debate of yesterday Englishmen and Irishmen are beginning to understand why Scotchmen entertained that deep feeling about it. In the first place, the Government, presuming upon the pliability and peaceful disposition of Scotch Members, wished to bring on this debate as late, probably, as 12 o'clock at night. I do not think that that in itself was a proposition calculated to induce Scotch Members to enter on the debate with a feeling that they were going to be fairly treated. The debate came on early yesterday, and it was a case in which no financial or administrative defence whatever was offered for adding a very considerable sum to the Estimates. The Chancellor of the Exchequer got up and flung across the Table a quantity of very highly-spiced attacks upon hon. Members, and especially upon my hon. Friend the Member for the College Division of Glasgow, and before my hon. Friend was able to reply the debate was cut short. The right hon. Gentleman talks of this as a frivolous matter; but he has been a Scotch Member himself, and he should know that Scotch Members look pretty closely into all questions before they vote. What was the character of the Division taken

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  last night? Twenty-seven Scotch Members, including several habitual supporters of the Government, voted against the Ministry, and to the best of my belief there were only eight Scotch Members who voted on the other side, and at least three of those were Members of the Government. I do not think that it is fair that when a debate, on which Scotchmen feel so strongly, is conducted with perfect propriety on the one side, and on the other side, without any attempt to give an argument which can hold water in a financial discussion. I say I do not think it is fair to charge the majority with delaying business. The other case relied on by the right hon. Gentleman may be more shortly disposed of. The Chancellor of the Exchequer referred to the Navy debate on Thursday night. Now, by far the greater part of the evening was taken up with an interesting discussion, but one which, nevertheless, was not of a nature intended to be raised in Committee. Committees are intended to check a too great expenditure, and it was not until the last hour and a-half that Members sitting on this side of the House had an opportunity to come to the real business of the evening, and to discuss and vote whether, or not, the number of men proposed for the Navy was a proper number. I say that when a Vote of three or four millions is proposed, it is not for the Government to say that the Opposition are delaying business, when, after along and technical discussion, they give only an hour and a-half to the Radical Members to make speeches for the purpose of showing that the proposed increase of 3,000 men, with the necessary additional expenditure of about £100,000, should not be granted.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON,): May I point out that, in that hour and a-half, there was not a single proposition of that kind made?
  *SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN: I am only adopting the period fixed by the Secretary to the Treasury opposite. My point is that it was not until the end of the evening that that proposition was, for the first time, brought forward, and I say that those hon. Members who objected to this increase in the Vote would have been wanting in their duty if, even at that
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  late hour, they had not brought the matter forward. I consider that I have conclusively proved that, in these two cases, the fault does not lie with the economists, who wish to turn Committee of Supply to its proper use.
  DR. CAMERON: As the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer referred to me, it is only due that I should explain precisely how the matter stands, and I shall do so in a very prosaic fashion. On Wednesday evening I asked the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House a question as to the order of business for the following day. I did so because the Scotch Members were particularly interested in one or two Votes proposed to be taken. The right hon. Gentleman told us that he would take the Navy Estimates, and also that he proposed to move a suspension of the 12 o'clock rule, and he went on further to explain that he would not avail himself of that suspension of the rule to proceed, after 12 o'clock, with the Supplementary Estimates. Well, Sir, as a matter of fact, on Thursday's papers, we found the Supplementary Estimates set down after the Navy Estimates, and, in order to make sure, I asked the right hon. Gentleman if they were not so put down merely as a matter of form, and if he intended to adhere to his engagement of the previous evening. He replied that if he had an opportunity of bringing on the Supplementary Estimates after the Navy Estimates, he would do so. I then put the question to him—
  "Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake that, if the Supplementary Estimates are got on with, advantage will not be taken of the suspension of the 12 o'clock rule to carry on the discussion till the early hours of the morning, and get rid of a couple of inconvenient votes which come up on those Estimates?"
  The right hon. Gentleman would not undertake that, if these important Scotch questions came on at five minutes to twelve, he would not press the discussion to a close, or enforce the Closure. I told the right hon. Gentleman that he would facilitate business if he would do so, but he declined. I wanted to ventilate the Samoan Question, and I thought that that was a legitimate subject to raise on the Navy Vote. I should have spoken longer on it than I did if the right hon. Gentleman the Chairman of Committees had not failed to see that the bearing of

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  my intended observations on International Law was relevant to the Vote in question, and I was, therefore, obliged to be shorter than I had intended to be. The right hon. Gentleman says that I spoke more than once. Well, I was obliged to do so, because the First Lord of the Admiralty would give me no answer whatever to my perfectly legitimate question on this most important subject. Altogether, I think I spoke but a very short time, but if it is any satisfaction to the right hon. Gentleman I may inform him that about half-past ten, I, through the ordinary channels of communication, communicated to the representative of the Government, that if they agreed not to take advantage of the suspension of the 12 o'clock rule and hustle through very contentious Scotch Votes, I would use my influence with hon. Members below the Gangway to prevent any discussion being carried on on the Naval Vote. I got no reply, and, that being so, I was determined that these Votes should not be taken after 12 o'clock, and by the Closure disposed of at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. I had no wish to see the discussion of them utterly burked by being brought on at an untimely and unseemly hour in the morning. The whole speech of the right hon. Gentleman has been marked by his characteristic exaggeration. He spoke of five hours being wasted. Now, he is an arithmetician, and he is the head of the arithmetical Department of the Government. How does he make his figures up? I only make out that three and a half hours were spent in the discussion.
  *MR. GOSCHEN: And an hour and a half spent in discussing another subject, makes five hours.
  DR. CAMERON: There was not another hour and a half so spent. The right hon. Gentleman talks as if we had wasted the time of the House. He made, on that occasion, a most bitter and uncalled-for attack on myself, totally outside the question before the House. I was prepared to answer, and shall take an early opportunity of answering him before the Vote passes into law. But what did the Leader of the House do? Before I had an opportunity of answering, and when five or six other Scotch Members were wishing to speak, he moved the Closure and gagged us all. Yet he would have the world believe that
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  we were obstructing. I say it is the Government who are obstructing, particularly in this case. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the debate being upon a paltry amount of £200, but with us, it was not the amount, it was a question of principle which was involved. It was a question of guarding the most precious Constitutional liberties of our country in a legitimate manner in a Court of Law, and without Government interference.
  MR. GLADSTONE: The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be very well convinced that he has succeeded in bringing about, partly by his own practice, and partly by the necessity it imposes on others, a great prolongation of this debate. The debate arose on a Motion which is in its nature wholly prospective. It has relation to the arrangement of the coming business of the House, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby entirely conformed to the character of the Motion, and spoke strictly with regard to the coming business of the House and the time it would require. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, apparently not finding that field of argument a promising one, went in to a quantity of retrospective matter, and charged Gentlemen on this side of the House, and particularly the Scotch Members—whose character in that respect might, I think, have done something to exempt them from such a charge—with wasting the time of the House. That appears to me to have had a very inconvenient effect. The right hon. Gentleman says, "We calculated beforehand the time that would be necessary for Supply, and if it had not been for the excess that has been used by hon. Members in the disposal of that time we should have been much further advanced." But I want to know what right has the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make himself judge by a preliminary examination of the exact amount of time that will be requisite for discussing Votes in Supply? If the right hon. Gentleman assumes that prerogative, he ought to take care that the proceedings of the Government are within the usual lines. But the proceedings of the Government and of the majority in this matter have been altogether beyond the usual lines, and a new method of government and a new method of administering

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  the law under the name of procedure has been established in Ireland; and in England, under what is known as the Parnell Commission, novelties have been introduced which have raised for us the necessity of entering upon a number of the gravest questions in reference to the Vote on Account. I will not discuss with the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether there has been a waste of the time of the House or not. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I will not discuss the matter, because, even if it were true that, as he thinks, there has been a waste of the time of the House, that is no reason why the House should be deprived prospectively of that time which is reasonably necessary for the discussion of the very important questions which are coming before us. Well, Sir, the state of the case is this. It is admitted that the contention of my right hon. Friend near me is strictly according to law—namely, that there is no legal necessity whatever for closing on Thursday evening the debate on the Vote on Account. Now, let that be recollected as having been stated clearly before the House. What has been set up on behalf of the Government I do not exactly understand. It is not a legal necessity; it is something less than a legal necessity; it is something of an official mystery. Some line of practice is to be departed from which it is admitted has been departed from on former occasions [Cries of "Once!"]; this is my proposition, and it constitutes the ground on which I shall give my vote, and which appears to me to be totally irresistible. There are questions of the utmost importance, some of them of great delicacy as well as novelty, which have to be discussed on the Vote on Account, and my contention is that all the time necessary for discussing these questions ought to be granted to the House as far as the law will permit. When I say as far the law permits, I mean the time for the purpose of reasonably discussing these questions which ought to be given to us; and I say that there is no ground on which the Government can possibly justify that time being taken away. The right hon. Gentleman opposite may say we have time enough between now and Thursday for discussing these matters. I do not say whether it will be so or not—I cannot tell when we may get to the Vote
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  on Account—but this I will say, plainly, that there are a large number of questions to be raised on the Vote on Account in regard to which the liberty of the House ought in no respect to be interfered with, and that only the law would justify that interference. But I contend that the law does not justify that interference. It is admitted on all hands, and by the right hon. Gentleman, that there is a precedent which he himself has quoted for the very practice that is now contended for, and we say we cannot have a stronger ground than the gravity of the questions and their number and the necessity for debating them; that the law does not restrain our privileges; and that, next to the law, there is nothing so sacred to the House as its privileges in the discussion of Votes of Supply. On this ground we ought to vindicate for ourselves the maintenance of those privileges, and to enter the firmest and most definite, though respectful, protest against every attempt to infringe them.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I have been at the trouble to count the propositions contained in this extraordinary Resolution, and I find that there are sixteen expressed and sixteen understood. In my opinion there never was brought before this House a Resolution containing so many vices. It teems with suppression, and what it expresses it expresses in the worst possible manner. I have merely risen for the purpose of protesting against this system of coercion by Resolution, which simply aims at filching away the time of the House before it has had its eyes opened to what is being done. It involves, in the first place, that we shall sit after one o'clock to-night if it be carried; it next involves that we shall sit to-morrow after six o'clock, and that on Thursday night we shall sit after 12 o'clock. In point of fact it invades every principle which the First Lord of the Treasury established by his famous Procedure Rules; and the right hon. Gentleman who got the House in 1887 to carry that series of Resolutions is now obliged to pose as the "heavy father" in strangling his own offspring. There is not a single Rule he has proposed which he has not—sometimes within two or three days—moved to suspend the operation of. He reminds me

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  of the free Cossack Aitchenoff appropriating other people's property without the smallest respect for the law of nations. I appeal to the long experience of many hon. Members of this House with regard to Votes on Account, and I ask what necessity can there be for including in this Resolution such a Vote? Before I sit down I will move to omit the words "Of the Vote on Account for 1889–90," from the Resolution. This House assented to the new Rules on the distinct understanding that we were not to be kept up after 1 o'clock when there was a Morning Sitting, nor after 12 when we met at three; and yet, not having the pressure of legal force on the question which might arise on the Supplementary Estimates, this Vote on Account is lugged in to prevent the House from fully discussing the matters that might arise upon it. We are told by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) that certain Scotch gentlemen make speeches in order that they may be reported in the Scotch newspapers; but if such were their intention yesterday, it will be impossible now, because no Scotch newspapers can report speeches made at one or two in the morning. I admit that the Government have some, claim in consequence of their own neglect of business, to come to the House in formâ pauperis and claim indulgence as to Excess Votes and Votes for Supplementary Estimates. They say—"We have mismanaged the business of last year. We compelled the House to sit up to Christmas. We did this by making one Gentleman who was very obnoxious to the House an Under Secretary, and we passed a Bill appointing the Parnell Commission, which no one regrets more than the Government." I admit that they have considerable claim on the indulgence of the majority of the House, but, I ask, why is it that, having kept us here till Christmas last year, we are to lose the whole of our rights and privileges now? Is it not fair and reasonable for private Members to say that when you deprive them of their rights on a Wednesday, they ought at least to be reinstated at a later period in the Session, because they are being deprived of their rights at a time of the year when it is difficult to get them restored. If the hon. Mem-
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  ber for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) is prevented from having his Bill discussed to-morrow he certainly ought to have another occasion at a later part of the Session; for, contrary to the usual rule, it is the man who has the first chance this Session who will suffer, while the man who has the last loses nothing. I say the Government are not entitled to impair in any way the privileges of the House. The Irish Members, for a wonder, have not been complained of this Session. That is a refreshing novelty, and when I heard that it was the Scotch Members who were complained of, I almost experienced the feeling's of an archangel at finding that we, the Irish representatives, were without blame. But I would say that we intend to reserve ourselves for this Vote on Account, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby was justified in charging the Government with sticking up this Vote on Account for the purpose of applying the Closure in advance. I say that the Irish Members are entitled to discuss the Vote on Account. The House has seen the way in which questions put to the Government have been answered of late. It saw yesterday the way in which the question about Dr. Barr was replied to by the Chief Secretary, and, I ask, was there ever such an instance of ingenious disengenuousness? We have also seen the way in which the Home Secretary endeavoured to shuffle out of the admission that Richard Pigott during the last three months obtained access in Chatham Prison to the dynamitard John Daly. I say it is a most unfair thing to stop discussion on these questions, and if the time necessary is not granted to the House, the charge made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby will have been well sustained. Our argument is not met by saying that the interests of the country demand the action proposed by the Government. The First Lord of the Treasury seems to coin with great facility a series of soothing phrases which might be wrapped up in the famous word "Mesopotamia." I do not know whether he has heard of the "electric shiver"—a species of fraud by which a certain secret chamber gives forth a kind of false and fraudulent shiver. The way in which the right hon. Gentleman speakes of dis-

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  agreeables in this House reminds me of the electric shiver fraud. What we hare a right to insist upon—we who have had the law so strained against us, who have had to withstand the whole force of calumny, who have had fraud and forgery levelled against us, together with the passing of a Coercion Bill by means of forged letters—is that we should have our hands untied and our mouths unlocked, and be enabled for once in the course of two or three Sessions to debate these matters freely and fairly, and at a reasonable time of day. The House having had the assurance that there would be nothing illegal in taking the Vote on Account later on, I will now move the omission of one of the sixteen propositions contained in this Resolution—namely, that affecting the Vote on Account. I move, therefore, to omit the words "and the Vote on Account for 1889–90."
  Amendment proposed, in line 2, to leave out the words "and the Vote on Account for 1889–90."—(Mr. T. M. Healy.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I regret I cannot accept the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member. If I were to do so there would only remain one night for the discussion of the Vote on Account. This would really mean precluding the House from discussing the matter, seeing how near is the end of the financial year. Under these circumstances I must ask the House to take such steps as may be necessary to give legal effect to any Vote which may be passed by this House before the end of the financial year. I have stated what I believe to be my duty to the House and the country. [Opposition Laughter.] It may be a laughing matter to hon. Members opposite, but I have stated what I believe to be my duty to the House and the country. I desire to afford every opportunity of challenging the conduct of the Government, and we are perfectly prepared to afford right hon. and hon. Members opposite every conceivable opportunity for that purpose, and, under these circumstances, I trust the House will accept the Vote as it stands.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I do not quite understand whether the right hon. Gentleman withdraws the proposal to close the debate on the Vote on Account next Thursday.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I have stated that in my judgment the debate on the Vote on Account ought to be concluded on Thursday, and I have given the reasons for which I think it ought to be so concluded. It is for the House to decide whether it will accept those reasons or not.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to closure us on Thursday night, there being no legal necessity for our being closured? The right hon. Gentleman says it will be for the House to decide. We know what he means by that.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I think I may fairly claim that whenever good ground has been shown or urged for the continuance of a debate I have never sought to prevent its continuance. I desire, as far as I possibly can, to conduct the business in accordance with the sentiment of what is thought right and proper to be done not only on these Benches, but on the Benches opposite.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I will not enter into a controversy on that matter with the right hon. Gentleman, for whom, I beg to assure him, I have the most sincere respect, and whose invariable courtesy I desire to acknowledge; but he has said that he never has used, and never will use, his Parliamentary majority for this purpose if he thinks a good cause is alleged against it. What I ask is whether he thinks we have alleged a good cause. If he gives us an assurance that he is not going to closure us on the Vote on Account on Thursday next, so as to preclude us from challenging the conduct of the Executive Government, I, for one, will give him every facility for bringing on the Vote on Account. I should like myself to have every day till March 31 for discussion of the Vote on Account, and I think I can promise the Government occupation enough in discussing the Votes in every department, and the conduct of the Government in respect of them. I do not desire to throw any obstacles in the way. I think before we proceed with these matters that we ought to have a clear understanding from the Government of what they are going to

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  do on Thursday with regard to the Vote on Account. These is no legal objection to this being done; and I have it from my right hon. Friend (Mr. Childers), who has great experience in such matters, that the question by no means stands on a single precedent as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said. If necessary my right hon. Friend will show that is not the case. Whether it be so or not, as my right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone) has said, if there was not a precedent, you ought to create a precedent effecting a settlement of the claim. We do claim the right to challenge at full length the proposals of the Government on the Vote on Account, and I think we ought before we proceed any further on this Resolution, to understand from the Government that they are going to give us every opportunity which the letter of the law allows, to bring their conduct under the judgment of the House and of the country.
  DR. TANNER: I wish to say a word or two in respect to what fell from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unfortunately, the Chancellor of the Exchequer on several occasions has seen fit to make statements which I cannot say are false, but which are not characterized by exactitude. From unofficial records kept in this House of the length of time hon. Members speak, I find that the other evening I spoke twice, on each occasion five minutes. I was the only Irish Member who spoke below the Gangway during the whole course of the debate before 12 o'clock. Then, again, we find on this record that no less than 10 Members sitting on the Government side of the House took up the major portion of the time of debate up to a quarter past 10 o'clock, and that there were only two Liberal Members who took part in the discussion. I think it is simply ridiculous for the right hon. Gentleman to search round for some of us on whom to fasten his mis-statements—mis-statements which I think are unwarrantable coming from a gentleman of such high position as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think he really ought to feel very sorry for having offended in this way, and I think he ought to promise not to do so again. I feel rather annoyed, Mr. Speaker, at this rather unwarrantable charge of obstruction which the right hon. Gentleman threw out against me,
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  but I also regret having used the expression which I did at the time the right hon. Gentleman threw out the charge against me.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I am not able to enter into any engagement with the right hon. Gentleman as to the way in which I shall endeavour to conduct the business of this House, and I am sure he will see that any engagement of the kind which he desires would be one calculated to impose a very serious inconvenience upon public business.
  *MR. CHILDERS: I am very sorry the right hon. Gentleman cannot accede to the practical engagement which my right hon. Friend asked for, because all my right hon. Friend sought was that the Vote on Account should not be absolutely closured on Thursday next. As it is admitted on all sides that these debates could be taken on Monday or Tuesday, and as the Government have already obtained the next Tuesday for the purpose, I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman would have acceded to the request. Let me put to the House—and I have some experience on the subject, having been Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer—what precisely is the character of the Ways and Means Act, commonly called the Consolidated Fund Act. We do not pass simply one of those Acts at the close of the financial year; we usually pass three or four such Acts in the course of a Session besides the final Appropriation Act. The Bill passed within the last few days in the month of March is, except as to one clause to which I will refer, precisely the same as the Bills pased in April, May, June, and sometimes July. Each of these Acts contains two clauses. One of these clauses empowers the Government to pay out of money authorized in the Committee of Ways and Means what has been voted by Parliament in Committee of Supply. And that power to pay what has been voted in Committee of Supply is used, not once, but dozens of times during the Session, with respect to expenditure which has not been included in the authority of the Ways and Means Resolution. I say distinctly, and from my experience—and no one sitting on the front bench will differ from me—that the rule is this, that if you have a sufficient amount voted in Ways and

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  Means, whether in the first Act, the second, or the third, or the fourth—if you have a sufficient balance to meet a particular expenditure, all that is necessary is that the Vote should have been passed in Committee of Supply and reported, and it is not necessary that the particular amount of that Vote should have been included in Ways and Means Resolution. All through the year the Treasury proceed upon that principle, and are constantly issuing money for the service of the different Departments before the amount has been included in the Ways and Means Act. But in the first Act, that passed in March, there is an additional clause, and it refers wholly to the Supplementary Estimates. It is necessary that the Supplementary Estimates should not only have been voted, but that they should be the subject of the Ways and Means Act before the last day of March. If any gentleman will refer to the first Consolidated Fund Act of last Session, he will find this additional clause, which he will not find in the subsequent Acts. It is absolutely necessary that the Supplementary Estimates should be voted and included in the Ways and Means Act passed in March, but it is not necessary as to any other Estimates. Over and over again every year moneys are paid in accordance with the Votes of Parliament that have not been included in Ways and Means. There is thus no difference in principle whatever between the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Acts. Finally, of course, the Appropriation Act recites the actual Votes and authorizes payments under them, but this is on the last day of the Session, when half the expenditure has been already defrayed. But as to the intermediate Ways and Means Acts, the sum named is merely what happens to be the total of the Estimates passed, when leave is given to introduce the Bill, and is merely named as a matter of convenience, the Clerk at the Table being responsible for the amount being correctly added up. I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that it has only once happened that the Vote on Account has not been included in the sum taken in Ways and Means. That may be, as in ordinary times there is no pressure as to Votes being taken in sufficient time; but I remember that in 1874, no Army or Navy Votes were, in consequence of the
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  House being late, taken before the first Ways and Means Act. For each Service a Vote on Account was taken; and then, after the Act passed, proper Votes, on which alone expenditure could be based, were adopted in Committee of Supply. We are now in a similar position, the House having met a fortnight after the usual time, and I trust, therefore, that the Government will not persist in an objection which they admit is not founded on legal considerations, but is most inconsistent and in principle altogether novel.
  MR. JACKSON: Mr. Speaker, I, of course, would hardly like to put my opinion on this question against that of the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, but, so far as I am able to judge, he has advanced no new reason; he has simply reiterated what has been admitted by right hon. Gentlemen and by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that it is not absolutely necessary to include the Vote on Account in the Consolidated Fund Bill, for which the Royal Assent must be obtained by the 31st March, in order to comply with the strict law. I venture to suggest to the House whether it will approve of what I cannot describe otherwise than as an evasion of the intention of the law. It is true that the Vote taken for the Army and the Navy does provide money which may, without breaking the law, be used for the purposes of the Civil Service, but I would ask the House to consider what this may tend to. If the right hon. Gentleman's principle is not only sound, but desirable in itself, perhaps he will carry it a little further, and admit that it is not necessary to take Ways and Means in the Consolidated Fund Bill for a Vote on Account of the Civil Service, so long as we have money already voted for any other purpose. If that be so, then it will place in the hands of the Government of the day a power which, surely, it is very undesirable it should possess—namely, a power of postponing the discussion on the Civil Service of the year until such a date as it might be compelled to bring it on by the absence of money derived from other sources. I hope, Sir, that the House will not sanction the proposal that money which has been clearly and distinctly voted for the purposes of the Army and Navy should be thus, by the deliberate sanction

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  of the House, appropriated, without any restriction, to the payment of the amounts which fall due for the Civil Service, and I hope that the House will strengthen the Government in its action in this matter. I venture to appeal to the former utterances of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, who, in times past, has most firmly taken up this position; and I trust that, for the sake of financial regularity, this Vote will be included in the Bill which must receive the Royal Assent before the 31st March.
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: As these matters are matters of very considerable importance, I should have been glad if we could have debated them with the advantage of strict official information in our hands. That we have not got, however, and it is undoubtedly unsatisfactory to be reduced to rely upon memory in such matters. But, Sir, I must say, with regard to the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, his official zeal has entirely misled him. There is a broad distinction of principle between the Military and Naval Services on the one hand, and the Civil Service on the other hand. The hon. Gentleman stated that it would be an evasion of the spirit of the law to apply money voted for the Naval and Military Services to the Civil Service. I challenge that statement. It is not so in point of fact. We have not voted money at all for the Military and Navy Services as such. All we have done is to vote the first Vote, and, carrying the hon. Gentleman's argument to its logical conclusion, according to him, you have no more right to take the money under that Vote and use it for other Naval and Military Votes than you have to apply it to the purposes of the Civil Service.
  MR. JACKSON: There is a clear distinction between the two cases. It is permitted by law, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. There is a great distinction between applying money voted under a particular head for the Naval and Military Services to other Votes on the same service, and applying it to the Civil Service, which is entirely distinct.
  MR. GLADSTONE: There is no reference whatever to it in the Ways and Means Act. It is quite plain that the restriction, if there be one, applies to Vote I, which has been actually voted
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  for the Navy and Army; and if you take the money under these Votes and apply it to other military and naval purposes, it is exactly the same thing as if you applied it under Ways and Means for the purposes of the Civil Service.
  *MR. J. E. ELLIS: I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, that the issue before the House is whether sufficient time shall be allowed for the discussion of the Vote on Account—whether, or not, it shall be closured. The First Lord of the Treasury said he appealed to the House and to hon. Gentlemen opposite whether he had not always allowed reasonable time for discussions; but, Mr. Speaker, that is not our view. Our impressions on this subject are very different indeed, and there is a strong feeling on this side of the House that we have not been allowed a proper opportunity of discussing matters here. I do not base that statement upon mere recollection. I hold in my hand a Return, laid on the Table of the House during last year, which contains an account of the number of times when the Closure Rule was put into operation, and from it I find a fact of remarkable significance, for it seems that during the Session 1887–8, on no less than six different occasions, the assent of Mr. Speaker, or the Chair, was withheld from the proposal to apply the Closure when it was made by the First Lord himself. I think, Sir, that that is ample proof that the First Lord of the Treasury has used the Closure Rule in a manner which he himself will allow, after the action taken by the Chair, not to have been reasonable. No reply has been given to the very cogent remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for North Longford with respect to the extraordinary number of propositions contained in the Motion of the First Lord, and no adequate defence has been made of so remarkable an innovation of the practice of Parliament as is now proposed. I venture to say that the proceedings of Her Majesty's Government, in moving this Resolution, will be appreciated outside this House, for it will show that their desire is to stifle the discussion on the Vote on Account, and therefore I heartily support the Amendment which has been moved.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: The hon. Member who has just sat down has indicated

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  his belief that we desire to stifle discussion. I wish to say again that the Government are prepared to meet any charge which may be brought forward.
  *MR. ELLIS: Without the Closure?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: If it appears to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian and his colleagues that the discussion on the Vote on Account is inadequate and insufficient for the purposes which they have in view, and if the right hon. Gentleman will place on the Paper the terms of any Motion censuring any Member of the Government—in any form that he may think will best bring forward the whole question he desires to raise—we will meet him at once; and after the Vote on Account has been taken we will give not only Government time, but all the time we can control for the purpose which the right hon. Gentleman desires. We will give a full, complete, and exhaustive debate upon any question of censure which can be raised in this House. I absolutely repudiate the charge that we have endeavoured to stifle debate, and I say the suggestion is perfectly unworthy of the hon. Gentleman who made it. We have done nothing of the kind. When it has fallen to my lot as a Minister of the Crown to ask the Chairman of Committees to take certain action, I have only desired to do what appeared to me to be necessary in the interests of the House and of the country, and I deny distinctly that we have tried to stifle debate. I regret having had to intrude so long on the time of the House.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I understand the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman is that we should not take the opportunity of examining the conduct of the Government in Committee of Supply, but that we should take the offer to move Votes of Censure upon various Members of the Government as separate Motions. Well, Sir, there is an old saying about gifts which come from the Greeks, and I, for my part, must decline this wooden horse which is offered by the First Lord of the Treasury. And I will tell him why. First of all, the Committee of Supply is the place where you can cross-examine the Government. Cross-examination has lately proved to be very useful, and we desire to put the Government under cross-examination in Committee of Supply. That is the place where we can
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  endeavour to extract the truth, and where we can put question after question until we elicit the truth. That is the place where, according to Constitutional practice, we can deal with the Government. Well, then, Sir, if it were necessary to give another reason, we cannot have Votes of Censure upon all the Members of the Executive Government, whose conduct is, in my opinion, deserving of the strongest censure. You cannot have 20 or 30 different Votes of Censure on all the Departments of the Government, and I should call that a very small number of the Members of the Government whose conduct has to be challenged. In fact, I do not know how many there ought to be. I think we shall have to ask the Home Secretary whether he has not done too little, and the Secretary for Ireland whether he has not done too much; and we shall have to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what he has done. There are, it will be seen, many forms of inquiry for which Committee of Supply is the legitimate and convenient organ, and, having that Constitutional organ at our disposal, we shall exchange it for nothing else. We stand by the Committee of Supply. That is the Parliamentary privilege of this House. That is the engine of the Opposition. That is the means by which they appeal against a Parliamentary majority to the opinion of the country against the conduct of the Executive Government. That is my answer to the right hon. Gentleman. We stand by the Committee of Supply.
  *MR. C. BRADLAUGH: I wish to give one reason why I intend to vote for the Amendment of my hon. Friend below the Gangway. We have heard this evening of an incident which influences my vote. I mean the Home Secretary's admission that Richard Pigott had been permitted by the Home Office—and by no one else, for the Prisons Board is under the control of the Home Office—to visit Delany the convicted dynamitard in gaol here, after the Government knew that Pigott, on his own admission, was a tainted witness, and had been charged with forging documents which he was about to give evidence upon. That, Sir, seems to me so grave a fact that the Vote on Account ought not to come within the scope of possibility of being closured on Thursday.
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I have absolutely no knowledge of the matter to which the hon. Member alludes, and I cannot see what bearing it has on the subject. The observations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby seemed to indicate that there were going to be five-and-twenty Motions of Censure at least during the Vote on Account. The prospect, therefore, is indicated that this Vote on Account is to be continued at least during half the Session. The right hon. Gentleman says that Committee of Supply is the means by which these matters are to be brought before the House; but what precedent is there for a Vote on Account being utilized for 20 or 30 Votes of Censure? There is no such precedent whatever. If Votes on Account were to be utilized in such a manner it would be absolutely impossible to make any progress whatever with Parliamentary Business. I am not sorry the right hon. Gentleman put the matter so clearly before the House. We see now it is not only a question of one night; the Vote is to be made the engine for the cross-examination of every Minister. It is interesting to observe, and I trust the country will observe, that a guerilla war fare suits hon. and right hon. Gentlemen much better than any opportunity of really bringing a distinct charge against Her Majesty's Ministers which they will be compelled to verify and on which a distinct issue may be taken. We thought hat on this Vote on Account there were to be some definite and distinct attacks made on Her Majesty's Ministers. We were charged with endeavouring, by shortening this Vote on Account, to stifle discussion. We have now offered the opportunity for unlimited discussion on distinct issues to be brought against the Government, and the moment that offer is made the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, who is most forward in bringing every kind of insinuation and innuendo, gets up and refuses to join issue with us upon any particular point. I believe the House might leave the matter there. [VOICES: "Kennington!"] Ah, yes! Kennington, of course! You wish to rest on the judgment of Kennington rather than on the judgment of this House. Hon. Gentlemen opposite wish to parade Kennington before the country, and not to endanger the effect produced
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  by accepting the challenge we make to them to bring forward any distinct charges against the Government. Well, we are very sorry. We should have liked to join battle. But they refuse. They prefer to continue this kind of cross-questioning They wish to continue I do not know how many weeks upon this Vote on Account without coming to the real business of the House. They do not wish to approach any legislation; this is to be the chief work of the Session. I cannot interpret their words in any other way. It cannot, however, be supposed that the House itself will be willing to prolong this debate indefinitely. We have made what we consider to be a most fair offer to our opponents, and I can only express our surprise that it has not been accepted in the spirit in which it is made.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 270; Noes 166: Majority 104.—(Division List, No. 25.)
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I need hardly say that I cordially support my hon. Friend and Colleague in opposing this Resolution. I propose to conclude the remarks I am about to make by moving an Amendment, because I believe that if this Resolution is to be passed there are certain portions of it which ought to be amended. I think that the House ought to protest against the reckless assertions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer whenever he speaks of hon. Members sitting on this side of the House. Among other things which the Chancellor of the Exchequer cited as an instance of obstruction from the Opposition was the first Vote for the Admiralty. Now I happen to know what occurred. I proposed an Amendment to reduce the number of men mentioned in the Vote. During the evening I did not move the Amendment, as there appeared to have been a reduction of 3,000 men, and because the supporters of the Government got up and delivered their usual general essays upon the Admiralty, and I thought it would be uncivil on my part to interfere until they had got through those essays. I moved my Amendment at half-past 11. It was a perfectly

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  legitimate Amendment, whether right or wrong. The Division took place at 12 o'clock, and occupied half-an-hour after one or two Members on this side of the House had said a few words. In these circumstances, I consider it most unfair that the Chancellor of the Ex chequer should bring these genera accusations against this side of the House. There is no man in the House who wastes more time than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man of figures facts, and statistics, is a great deal too combative. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has attacked the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir W. Harcourt). But I have heard the right hon. Gentleman make the same attack 50 times; indeed, the right hon. Gentleman never gets on his feet in the House without saying that the right hon. Member for Derby makes speeches in order to obtain cheers from his own side of the House. The right hon. Member for Derby naturally gets up to speak, entertaining the same views as hon. Members on his own side of the House, and, of course, those hon. Members naturally cheer him. Would the Chancellor of the Exchequer not be surprised if hon. Members behind him cried "Oh, oh!" when he spoke? Let the right hon. Gentleman be satisfied with the cheers which he elicits from that side of the House; but do not let him waste any more of the time of the House by complaining that when hon. Gentlemen get up on this side to express the views of the majority of the Opposition their expressions are approved of by the Party with whom they act. The right hon. Gentleman says—"Why have a discussion on the Vote of Account? Why not propose a Vote of Want of Confidence?" The fact is that we have a primâ facie case against the Ministry; but we want to cross-examine them; we wish to establish the case from their own mouths. We could not do this in a general debate; but we look upon this Vote on Account just as a Royal Commission. We want to have our Royal Commission in the House in order to cross-examine the right hon. Gentlemen. But the Government say, "Not at all; we will not accept that; we want to make long speeches and then come to a general decision on the matter." An
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  other reason why we cannot follow the advice of the right hon. Gentleman is that it is mistaken tactics, when there is a clear minority in the House, to indulge in Motions of Want of Confidence. On such occasions the friends of the Government come down to the House in strong force, and, after defeating the Motion, they go through the country swaggering and saying that they have been whitewashed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that a guerilla warfare is monstrous. Well, that is just what we are going to carry on. Guerilla wars before now have proved successful; they waste the forces of the enemy. We are not going to engage in pitched battles against the master of many legions on the other side of the House. I agree with my hon. Friend and Colleague, and I would not give a single day to the Government, because never a day in their hands passes without their doing some sort of evil. I would not give them a day, nor afford them the opportunity of getting a single sixpence. The Government may, by means of the Closure, force Supply through; but there is no reason why we should be called on to aid and abet them in maintaining a position which is a false one, because they have not got the country at their back. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury shows a certain sort of suavity, but I discovered long ago that his suavity is very Machiavellian, and the more urbane the right hon Gentleman is, the more utterly I distrust him. What occurred a little while ago? The right hon. Gentleman wished to lay his hands upon a portion of the days set apart for private Members, namely—Tuesdays. The right hon. Gentleman said we should have an opportunity of airing our grievances. He said he wanted half a day for the discussion of the Estimates, and now that he has got it he wants to prevent the discussion of those Estimates, and he practically puts the Closure on the discussion of the Vote on Account. The front Opposition bench asked whether the Government gave up the doctrine that the Vote must be had on Thursday; but the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury said they must leave it to his judgment. What does his judgment mean? It means the Closure. The right hon. Gentleman

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  talked of his duty to the country, but I know of only one duty which the right Gentleman owes to the country, and that is to consult the country. Let him do that. We shall be perfectly satisfied with that; but if the right hon. Gentleman takes up an attitude of defiance, and refuses to consult the country, then we will throw every obstacle we can in the way of the transaction of public business. [Cheers from the Ministerial benches.] I say what I mean; I believe it is our business to do everything we can to provoke a Dissolution; and one of the means of doing that is to render public business exceedingly difficult in the present Parliament. I, for my part, am prepared to do everything I can to attain that excellent, most admirable, and most Constitutional end. The Motion of the First Lord of the Treasury will cause us to sit not only after 12 as long as the right hon. Gentleman pleases, but after 6 to-morrow as long as he pleases. A most important debate is to be inaugurated on the Vote on Account, and, owing to the small amount of time meted out to us, the discussion will be kept up at an hour when there can be no adequate report of it in the newspapers, and when the House is weary and tired out. Anybody who will refer to the pages of Hansard will see that what I say is correct. The 12 o'clock rule was adopted after lengthy consideration; and it was fully understood that it was only to be abrogated when it was necessary to close on a particular night some special debate. Personally, I would not object to our meeting at 10 at night and adjourning at 10 the next morning; but I do like regular hours; and we have now got accustomed to breaking up at 12 o'clock. There is an agitation going on to limit the hours of labour to eight. We meet at 3 and adjourn at 12, so that we have 9 hours' hard work, and we are now called upon by the right hon. Gentleman to continue our labours still further. There is no good reason whatever for that demand of the Government. It is altogether unnecessary to go on after 12 o'clock. We want a fair debate, but it ought to be continued during proper legislative hours. The legislative shop ought to shut up at a proper hour. I beg now to move as an Amendment that the following words be struck out of the Motion:—
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  "Such financial business may be entered upon at any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the Sittings of the House, except of Standing Order No. 5. But after such proceedings are disposed of, no opposed business shall be taken."
  Amendment proposed, in line 7, to leave out all words after the word "down" to the end of the Question.—(Mr. Labouchere.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I cannot accept the Amendment. The hon. Member has stated that it is his intention to offer every possible obstruction to Public Business, and, under those circumstances, it is perfectly clear that it would be seriously injurious to the public interests if the Government were deprived of the facilities which this addition to the Motion will afford them. The powers we ask for are urgently necessary in the position in which we stand—namely, the power to close a discussion when an adjournment would be exceedingly injurious to Public Business. There are many instances when a debate may be closed with advantage to the House, and it is impossible for any Minister to use a power of this sort except with the general assent of the House. I would humbly represent to the House that we have now been discussing this Motion for three hours, and any further prolongation of the discussion must take away from the time available for the consideration of the Estimates in Supply and the Vote on Account, which we desire to approach. The House has already, by a very large majority, refused to strike out a certain portion of the Resolution; and I would, therefore, again urge that we should now come to a conclusion on the Motion and allow business to proceed. The feeling of the House has been sufficiently ascertained by the Division which has already taken place.
  *MR. STUART: I must protest against taking the discussion on the Vote on Account at an hour when the public Press cannot report what we say, and when the Ministry and their supporters will care very little for our arguments. Gentlemen on this side desire to speak to the country through the House.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 267; Noes 161.—(Division List, No. 26.)
  Main Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 265; Noes 166:—(Div. List, No. 27.)
  Ordered, That until the Proceedings on the Supplementary Estimates 1888–9, the Excesses 1887–8, and the Vote on Account for 1889–90 in the Committees of Supply and Ways and Means, and on Report therefrom, and the several stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill, are concluded, the Proceedings thereon shall have precedence of other Orders of the Day and Notices of Motions on every day for which they are appointed. The provisions of Standing Order No. 56 shall be extended to any day on which the said Votes are set down. Such Financial Business may be entered upon at any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the Sittings of the House, except of Standing Order No. 5. But after such Proceedings are disposed of no opposed Business shall be taken.

MOTIONS.

  CHARITIES, &C. EXEMPTION BILL.
  On Motion of Sir Julian Goldsmid, Bill to exempt Charities and Hospitals from Local Rates, ordered to be brought in by Sir Julian Goldsmid, Baron de Rothschild, Sir Robert Fowler, Sir Algernon Borthwick, Mr. Octavius V. Morgan, and Mr. Lawson,
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 164.]

  LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT (1887) AMENDMENT (LEASEHOLDERS) (NO. 2) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Macartney, Bill to amend section one of "The Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1887," in regard to Leaseholders, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Macartney, Mr. O'Neill, Colonel Waring, Mr. T. W. Russell, Mr. Lea, and Mr. William Sinclair.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 165.]

WAYS AND MEANS.

  CONSOLIDATED FUND (NO. 1) BILL.
  Resolutions reported.

  (1.) "That towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the Service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1889, the sum of £90,091, be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom."

  (2.) "That towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the Service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1890, the sum of £9,267,300, be granted out of the Consolidated Fund."

  Resolutions agreed to:—Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Courtney, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Jackson."
  Bill presented, and read first time.

  SUPPLY.
  Resolutions [18th March], reported.

  (1.) "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £200, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1889, for certain Expenses of the Law Agent in Scotland for Government Departments."

  (2.) "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £24,690, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1889, for Public Education in England and Wales."

  (3.) "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £28,310, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1889, for certain Charges connected with the Orange River Territory, the Transvaal, Zululand, Bechuanaland, the Island of St. Helena, and the High Commissioner of South Africa."

  Resolutions read the first and second time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do agree with the Committee in the First Resolution."

  THE DISTURBANCES IN SKYE.
  DR. CAMERON: In rising to oppose this Resolution, I am aware of the position in which the Government are placed in regard to time, but I maintain that the carrying or the abandoning of the Resolution has nothing whatever to do with the passing of a Vote on Account, and that it might be abandoned without the slightest difficulty to the carrying on of the affairs of the nation, and with considerable advantage to the credit of Her Majesty's Government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the debate last night, which was brought to a premature close by the intervention of the First Lord, attempted to draw a red herring across the course of this discussion, leading the Committee to believe that in our opposition to this Vote we were actuated by personal dislike of Sheriff Ivory, and that there was no matter of principle involved. This the right hon. Gentleman more than insinuated—he said it. Now, I utterly deny that I have any dislike whatever to the gentleman whose name happens to be mixed up with this Vote. It has been my misfortune on various occasions to find myself interested in the wrongs of various people in order to get those wrongs righted, and on

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  this, as on other occasions, I have not hesitated to approach the Law Courts to assist persons in getting what redress they could. I have seen the Game Laws harshly administered, and when what I thought a legal mistake was made, I have not hesitated to have it Drought before the Law Courts, and on one occasion I had the satisfaction of getting a conviction quashed, and damages awarded against a gamekeeper who acted illegally. On another occasion, a ship's crew belonging to the Clyde appeared to have suffered grievous wrong at the hands of their employer, and I did not hesitate to bring the case before a Court, where I got compensation to the tune of £2,000 for the men. This is a precisely similar case, but the explanation why we fight it so bitterly is that the payment of this money is a gratuitous and gross insult to the vast majority of the people of Scotland—I may say to the people at large—represented by the 27 Scotch Members who voted against the Government last night, while only eight Scotch Members voted with the Government. The right hon. Gentleman says my charges against Sheriff Ivory were virulent, but that has really nothing to do with the matter. The question we have to discuss is whether the Government had any right gratuitously to interfere in order, at the public expense, to relieve a gentleman who happens to be a Sheriff from the consequences of acts, not committed in the discharge of his official duties, but in direct contravention of his official duty. The right hon. Gentleman quoted from Papers that have been read to the House, and which show that I advocated raising the question in assertion of a constitutional right; and then he said I had adopted a Plan of Campaign, and he evidently used the expression to throw discredit on us as Campaigners, in that the action we took was analogous to the Plan of Campaign elsewhere. But the right hon. Gentleman has greatly mistaken the intelligence of the Scotch people—even of the constituency that once returned him to Parliament—if he imagines they will be taken in by any phrase he may choose to apply in this matter. The conduct of the Government has taught us this, that if it is a Plan of Campaign, there may be more honesty in it than in the Government
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  method of paying the expenses of a private individual surreptitiously out of the public purse. One of the gravest charges we make against the Government is the concealment they have practised throughout. If they believed they were justified, if they believed they were doing good, they certainly endeavoured to do it by stealth, and may blush to find it fame. There were three actions concerned, though only two came to trial. The first was raised by Macpherson against the Procurator Fiscal of the Skye district, but it was held to be incompetent, it being declared that the deeds in respect to which the action was raised were committed by the Procurator Fiscal in the discharge of his duty and were privileged, and the case could not go before a jury. That gentleman not being blessed, I suppose, with the influence of Sheriff Ivory, did not get off so well in respect to expenses. A large sum was paid in the shape of expenses. I took the trouble to apply to the agent at Inverness to find out what the expenses on the other side were. It is often the case that the expenses on the side of the plaintiff are greater than those on the side of the defendant, because the pursuer has to bring up witnesses and to pay the whole costs. In this case the pursuers were non-professional, their solicitor had to be paid, their counsel and witnesses had to be paid, and their expenses should have been much greater. Well, in the case of Macpherson versus the Procurator Fiscal the expenses were £125, and the total sum given by the Treasury and the Procurator Fiscal was £59 8s. 11d., or not half that amount. So strict an investigation was not made into this case as into that in which Sheriff Ivory was defendant. The expenses must have been paid out of the Estimates of 1888. The Secretary to the Treasury has told us they were paid out of the Supplementary Estimates, and the date of payment indicates that must have been so. There was a Vote set down for the completion of Peterhead Harbour and other incidental charges, and we should never have heard of this demand but for a direct question put in the House on the subject, and then it came out during the Autumn Session. Under the general accounts, as rendered, it is impossible for any Member to tell what the Supplementary

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  demand refers to, and it was simply by accident, as the result of a question put by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, that the fact was elicited that £200 out of the total was required to pay the costs of Sheriff Ivory. When the story was told such strong opposition was aroused that this Supplementary Vote was postponed to this Session, and that is why we got it so late in the financial year. If the Government had in a straightforward manner put the item down as they have now, it would have been challenged and discussed at once and disposed of before the House adjourned. I wish the House to understand why there is such a keen feeling on the subject in Scotland on this matter. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer read certain extracts, but he omitted certain disagreeable passages, and so did not show the grounds upon which I advised my friends to raise a fund to test the legality of certain deeds committed in these raids into the Highlands. I shall supply these omissions of the right hon. Gentleman. He ridiculed the idea of malice on the part of Sheriff Ivory. We have evidence that the Sheriff in connection with the expedition of 1885 minted medals for the reward of every policeman who arrested a crofter, and in the case of Beaton he took down the name of the constable who arrested Beaton with the view of presenting him with the much-prized decoration.
  An hon. MEMBER: Who paid for the medals?
  DR. CAMERON: The Government have denied that they have paid for them. I do not know if the cost was defrayed out of savings, or whether it was a purely personal undertaking on the part of the Sheriff. The Chief Constable of the county, who was the proper person to be put in charge of the expedition, had had a "tiff" with Sheriff Ivory, and the Sheriff took personal command of the police—a shameful and unprecedented thing in connection with the expedition. The deeds we complain of are these: the arrest of persons without any warrant at all, whole villages besieged and houses ransacked without any warrant or reasonable suspicion against the inhabitants. I could quote a number of instances from the Glasgow Herald, a paper that has no prejudice in favour of the
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  crofters, and I have reason to believe that the very case given by the reporter of that journal could be supported in a Court of Law. That reporter describes how Sheriff Ivory, not being satisfied with the state of things and the disposition of the force, ordered more constables to be told off, and urged the men on to greater exertions by exclamations of "Go ahead" and "Get on with you." He marched men into houses and endeavoured to get the women recognized who were present; he ordered examination of every room, told the men to look into cupboards, under beds, and examine the byres, and leave no means of escape open. A midnight raid was made upon a house where an old woman of 70 resided; she was awakened in her bed by the gleam of a lantern on her face and saw policemen standing around; she was asked where her husband was; she was a widow; she was asked where her son was, she replied in his grave; she was asked where her girl was and replied that she had none. She was very much frightened, and fainted after the police left. Dozens of such cases might be quoted. In one of the first houses invaded, a man named McLean was dangerously ill; he was much affected by the domiciliary visit of the police; and soon afterwards died. His wife describes how much the visit of the police affected him, and how in his sleep he murmured about the difficulty of meeting the expenses of his funeral To carry her husband to the church yard the wife had to beg the assistance of friends at a distance, the men of the neighbourhood being either in custody or hiding in the hills. The funeral procession was met by the Sheriff and his escort of police on their way to pay another visit to the house of the dead man, but they did not go when they heard whose corpse was in the coffin. These are some of the incidents that have stung the people of Scotland in to indignation. In these expeditions there was the greatest brutality on the part of the police. We have an instance in which an officer burned down a house illegally. He was reprimanded forsooth! but he was never brought to trial. We have it in evidence that on another occasion an infant in the cradle was included in an inventory of the contents of a house by an officer, and it is alleged also that he threatened to burn the house

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  down unless the people paid the amount he was charged to collect. These are the things that roused the public indignation, and I must say that it appears to rue a matter of some importance that, before we allow such proceedings to be carried on with impunity, we should put their legality to test in a constitutional way. Three actions were raised. Sheriff Ivory said there were not more than two we could attempt to support out of all the charges made in my speech when this movement was initiated, but why was this? We had no desire to harry Sheriff Ivory—our desire was to settle constitutional points, and so three typical actions were taken. In one of these cases a technical difficulty was found in connecting the Sheriff and Procurator Fiscal with the order upon which the police acted. Of the three actions, one was raised for libel, one on the subject of arrest without warrant, and another for keeping a person in prison for a long time without evidence and then liberating him without apology or excuse. Now, Sheriff Ivory was in the habit of libelling—never a report of his appeared but somebody was libelled in it. The Lord Advocate remarked that I had made libellous statements in this House in respect to Sheriff Ivory, but let me say I uttered those statements outside the House. The speech from which Sheriff Ivory quotes is not privileged, and Sheriff Ivory has the opportunity of raising any action upon it he likes. But I say in this official document he has libelled Norman Stewart, and he did so while the case was pending before the Sheriff Substitute. It is upon the evidence of the representative at Inverness of a Glasgow newspaper that Sheriff Ivory possessed himself of telegrams in a very equivocal fashion, and then he stigmatized the reporter to whom these telegrams belonged as a ringleader in the riots that attended the crofter movement. The Sheriff accused his own officers of committing perjury, and said that perjury was the cause of Stewart's escape. So there was every reason why we should take up an action for libel. Then another reason was that Sheriff Ivory was habitually in the habit of disregarding the rules laid down to regulate the conduct of officials, and with no justification whatever, and not with the honest impress-
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  sion that he was entitled to do as he did. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his attempt to rescue Sheriff Ivory from the consequences of the illegal action in which he was cast for damages, accuses us of organizing a Plan of Campaign, but let me say that it was owing to the dislike of myself and certain of my friends to do anything in the nature of persecution against Sheriff Ivory, that the other cases were not carried on appeal to the House of Lords. I should certainly be the last man to discountenance such a proceeding now, and I believe such an appeal is still open. If there is such an appeal, I do not think the Government will be so ready to renew their demand for Sheriff Ivory's damages. I think they will be inclined to let Sheriff Ivory hang by his own tail, and sink or swim according to his own deserts. The Chancellor of the Exchequer charges us with wasting time over a small item of £200. Will not his ideas of £ s. d. allow him to see that the Scotch people have subscribed considerably more than this sum to test this as a constitutional principle. We resist this clause on constitutional grounds, and shall carry our protest to a division.
  *MR. A. SUTHERLAND: It certainly is a new character for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to insist against the wish of Scotch Members in paying this sum out of the Exchequer. During the debate incidents have been brought out that make this case tolerably plain, but perhaps I may be allowed to call to the recollection of the House the circumstances out of which these Highland expeditions arose. The people of Skye claimed a right of grazing on land which the proprietor resisted. An interdict of the High Court sustained the contention that there was no right of grazing, and it was because of a breach of this interdict that the whole of the expeditions took place. But mark the result. An Act of Parliament was passed appointing a Commission to inquire into crofter grievances, and that Commission took evidence in regard to this grazing right. What did the Commission find? Why, they made the agent of the landlord produce documentary evidence to show that the people had the right. That incident would be quite sufficient to account for all the feeling which has been manifested during these proceed-

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  ings, and to bring all the so-called upholders of law and order into utter contempt. As a matter of fact, it was shown that the tenants and the people persecuted by Sheriff Ivory were the real upholders of law and order. They Slave been proved to have been in the right, and I call on the Lord Advocate and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to deny these facts if they can. We have got to this time of day, that the Government, who will not pay anything in response to the just demands of the people, come forward, and, in the face of the people of Scotland, insist on expending £200 on an action for which Sheriff Ivory ought to pay himself. If the Government desire to take the steps best calculated to force on the agitation for Home Rule in Scotland they are doing it, and in so far as they are doing it I am thankful to them. I have great pleasure in supporting the proposal of my hon. Friend that the House do not agree with the Committee.
  *MR. PROVAND: This is a very bad case, and the feeling throughout Scotland is so strong in reference to Sheriff Ivory on account of his conduct on the two expeditions that he took part in to the Isle of Skye, that we feel bound to protest against this payment. The £200 now asked for may be taken to be the costs in the case of the man Stewart, and the case ought to have been—and was, in fact—a private suit of this man against the Sheriff. The Sheriff had no occasion to say what he did about Stewart in his report. What was the result of the action? Why, there was no trial. The language the Sheriff made use of in his report was unjustifiable, and the Sheriff did not attempt to justify it; on the contrary, his counsel stated distinctly that the facts did not justify what he had stated about Stewart, and, therefore, the case went by default. I think myself that the Government are ashamed of this matter. Why was it that they tried to smuggle the Vote through last December without saying a word about it? As the hon. Gentleman the Member for the College Division of Glasgow (Dr. Cameron) has remarked, it was only by an accidental question put by an hon. Member that it was discovered that this £200 was concealed in another Vote. There are several other things the hon.
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  Member for the College Division has said to which no answer has been returned by the Lord Advocate. The right hon. Gentleman has evaded the issue. The Chancellor of the Exchequer twitted those who opposed the Vote last night by saying that there were very few Scotch Members present to discuss it; but on the right hon. Gentleman's own side of the House there was not a single Scotch Member to defend Sheriff Ivory. No one had a word to say for him except the right hon. Gentleman himself. And the Division List must have shown the right hon. Gentleman what the Scotch Members think of Sheriff Ivory. On the Division five private Scotch Members supported the Vote, and 26 Scotch Members opposed it. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will be able to explain that to the House, if he has anything to say on the subject to-night. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of the action taken by Stewart as a bogus action; but Stewart was a poor man, and how, I ask, could sympathy be better shown than by contributing money to enable him to defend his character? If the right hon. Gentleman would not have had the man go to Court, will he say what other course he should have taken? It was necessary to adopt either civil or violent means. A great deal of bitter feeling has been excited in Scotland in consequence of the action of Sheriff Ivory, especially on his second expedition. The reports in such newspapers as the Glasgow Herald and the Edinburgh Scotsman show that by day he was but a mere man-hunter and by night a sort of official moonlighter. No wonder there has been so much agitation against him. As to the publication of his Report, it cannot be contended that the public service required it, nor was that the reason of the publication. He says himself that he was prompted to it by the charges made against him by the Rev. Mr. M'Cullum reflecting on his conduct in making arrests feeling, as he did, that Mr. M'Cullum's charges should be contradicted at once, in as public a manner as they had been made. The interests of the public service had nothing whatever to do with the Sheriff's action; and in view of all the circumstances of the case, I shall vote against the granting of this £200, as I consider it a gross misapplication of the money of the taxpayers.
  MR. M'LAREN: I desire, as a Scotchman, to enter my protest against this Vote. I know a good deal of—in fact, I know intimately—the details of the case, and I do not approach it with the view of needlessly taking up the time of the House, but because I feel that the conduct of the Government, in pressing the Vote on the House in opposition to the strong wishes of the great majority of the Scotch Members, is conduct which will be disastrous to the best interests of the Highlands. There are one or two points I wish to touch on—points which, I think, have not been brought out by other speakers in the course of the debate. There are two admissions in Sheriff Ivory's statement that I want specially to call the attention of the House to, and these two points refer to the action of the Law Officers of the Crown in refusing to take up the Sheriff's case. On page 7 of the Correspondence, Sheriff Ivory himself states that he instructed his agents to obtain the services of the Solicitor General for Scotland as one of the counsel in Norman Stewart's ease, but that the Solicitor General returned the papers and declined to act, on the ground of his official position. The Scotch Solicitor General saw that it was not to the interest of the Crown to interfere—an example which it would have been well for the English Law Officers of the Crown to have followed in another case. On page 8 of the Correspondence, Sheriff Ivory says that, in consequence of the difficulties for which the Crown authorities were, to a large extent, responsible, he was advised that the Lord Advocate, by declining to conduct his defence, had plainly intimated that there were no public interests involved in the action. That sentence seems to me a very vital one. If there were no interests of the public service involved, I want to know why we are called upon to pay this £200? If the matter had been one of public interest, and the public interests had been involved, the Lord Advocate or the Solicitor General for Scotland ought to have defended the Sheriff, or to have been willing to defend him; but if there were no public interests involved—if the Lord Advocate thought that then, and has given no reason to lead us to believe that he thinks differently now—we should not be asked to
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  vote this money. It is clear from the correspondence that, in the deliberate judgment of the Treasury and the Government, Sheriff Ivory ought not to have his defence paid for; and the only reason why they have now changed their mind is because they have been worried into it by that gentleman, the Sheriff having written that if the matter had been referred to Mr. A. J. Balfour, who was intimately acquainted with the work he had to do in Skye, he would have been treated differently. I protest against the Government having allowed themselves to be hectored by Sheriff Ivory in this way. Is an official to be screened and compensated by a Government when he does wrong and has to pay for his wrong-doing? I consider it unjustifiable on the part of the Government for them to indemnify an official, when by his deliberate action, without the sanction of his superior officers in the Government, he commits an irregular act. The fact is undoubted that Sheriff Ivory libelled Norman Stewart; for he himself expected that if he had allowed the case to go before the Court he would have been found guilty. I maintain that you will create a very bad impression in Scotland by voting this money. It must be remembered that this innocent man, Norman Stewart—a poor man—was arrested, put in prison, and very nearly convicted, and yet no proposal has ever been made to compensate him. On the other hand, you have the rich man—the official in the Government Administration in Scotland—breaking the law, libelling an innocent man, and when he is obliged to pay damages, the Government come in and grant him an indemnity. You wilt create a feeling that you are condoning a breach of the law, and seriously embitter the minds of the people of the Highlands against your administration.
  The House divided:—Ayes 230; Noes 138.—(Div. List, No. 28.)
  It being after ten minutes to Seven of the clock, further consideration of the Report of Supply stood adjourned.
  Remaining Resolutions to be further considered this day.
  Order for further consideration of remaining Resolutions read—
  Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the second Resolution."

  EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND WALES
  *MR. M. CONWAYsaid: I am anxious to get some explanation from the Vice President of the Privy Council on certain points. I complain that very little elasticity is given to this Estimate. Looking to the Annual Report, we see that while the day schools earn 18s. 1d. per head of the average attendance, our voluntary schools earn 17s. 0¼d. per head, then it is understood by the House that 17s. 6d. per head can be earned very readily without any assistance from voluntary sources, I think the Government will be doing their duty if they make the annual grant on the Estimates a little more liberal in the near future than they made it last year or are likely to make it this year, according to the information placed before the House. The Government know that the voluntary schools can easily earn 17s. 6d., so that it will be seen that 1½d. is scarcely a liberal estimate to make. By cutting down the Estimates there is no opportunity given for schools to educate their children up to the Schedules of the Code, especially Schedule IV., which formulates a goodly number of advanced subjects and provides for any scheme of instruction, manual or otherwise, which is marked with illustration and experiment, there by earning for every individual pass in any given one or two such subjects 4s. per pass. I think, therefore, the Department ought to come to the House to ask for a more liberal grant than they are asking. Contrast this sum with the Naval Vote. We were told last year that our Navy was in a state to resist any two Powers, and to-day we are asked to spend some millions in order to strengthen the Navy, which it was said could do such excellent work last year. If a million or two were given to education and a million or two deducted from the Naval vote, the country would be far better off in the way of investment. I wish the Department to take into consideration the advisability of increasing the popular grant, so that more elasticity may be given to the work of the managers and teachers of schools in the country. How does this plan work by keeping the grant at 17s. 7½d. per head? It comes to this, that the teachers and managers of the country
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  are of opinion that private instructions are given to the Inspectors to the effect that the merit grant "excellent" should not be given to more than 17 per cent for the whole of the schools of the country. We know that schools which receive a "bad" merit grant in 1888 will work hard in 1889 to obtain the mark "good" or "excellent." When it is understood that the merit grant makes a difference of £5 on an average attendance of 100 in a school contrasting the mark "good" with the mark "excellent," and of £10 contrasting "excellent" with "fair," hon. Members will see what a difference is made in the apportioning of the "merit" grants to the schools. It comes to this: that schools which work very hard in 1889 to redeem themselves from the stain on 1888, at the end of the year are unable to get the mark "excellent" because of the rigid limit of administration of the popular grant, which is estimated on shabby lines by the Department. That should be plainly understood. My object in getting up is to draw the attention of the Vice President to this state of things, and to induce him to use his influence for its improvement. Teachers are in a state of nervous trepidation in respect of examinations; knowing very well that by reason of the instructions given to the Inspectors, it is utterly impossible for them to obtain the mark "excellent" because of the necessity that inspectors are under to keep down the grant. But. Sir, there is another point: we have actually a rule published by the Department, that singing shall not be paid for in infant schools unless the senior girls' department are taught singing by note, so that little children of from three to seven years cannot earn the singing grant. I ask the Vice President whether the girls' schools have not decreased in numbers in the matter of earning the singing grant? Fancy little children being sent to school and not being allowed to use their voices in singing in the senior girls' school, because no singing is to be taught except by note. Fancy the Education Department coming down on the infant department and preventing little angel voices being heard unless their elders in another department are taught by note. They are not allowed to relieve the tedium of their school life a little save on that

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  condition; they get no grant otherwise. I shall call the Vice President's attention to these things in Committee, and I shall use every means the House affords me to press upon him those questions. Another question is that of technical education, which ought to be popularly encouraged. I hope it will be found that when the Vice President places his Estimate for Education upon the Table that he has provided for technical education in a liberal manner.
  *SIR W. HART DYKE: Mr. Speaker—Sir, the observations of the hon. Member were directed to two points. The first point deals more especially with the grant given on the Education Estimates. Well, as regards that grant, I am not here to say whether it is a good or evil thing that it has been maintained at this particular point; but I may impress this upon hon. Members—that any change in this respect requires an Act of Parliament, which must be very carefully considered. But with regard to the other points raised in the hon. Member's speech, I think the changes proposed in the Code, which proposals will be distributed amongst hon. Members on Saturday next, or at the latest on Monday, will meet many of the difficulties to which the hon. Member has referred, and especially the difficulties under which teachers labour. I believe that those difficulties will be absolutely met by the proposals which are to be distributed amongst Members. The hon. Member has referred to the question of singing in girls' schools. I will take particular note of what he has said; but I must say that it is new to me that which I have heard with respect to singing by note. It is our object to promote the taste for singing in all classes. All I can say is that, if the new Code introduces a change in the least degree in that respect, there will be no difficulty in amending it. The hon. Member has referred also to technical education. Well, Sir, I am not here this evening to divulge what will appear in the new Code; but I have already said in this House on more than one occasion that we should propose very much to open the schools in future in the case of additional subjects taught. In fact, the policy in which we hope to enlarge the new Code is this—to secure that the three R's are thoroughly taught in the schools, and for all other additional subjects greater freedom will
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  be allowed than has ever hitherto obtained. I am sure the hon. Member will forgive my not replying to his observations at greater length, because in a very few days their new Code will be in the hands of hon. Members, when it will be fairly discussed.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I am very glad that the hon. Gentleman has made a reference to the new Code, and I sincerely hope it will fulfil the expectations which on former occasions he has led us to entertain. I hope that drawing is to be reinstated in the girls' schools, and that it will be restored to the position which it ought to occupy. There have been great complaints about this among those who are interested in girls' education, and it is a great mistake to suppose that drawing is not supported in girls' as well as boys' schools. I desire, however, rather to ask for an explanation of the figures in the Supplementary Estimates. It does seem to me an extraordinary thing that there should be a deficit of no less than £24,690 in the Estimates which are proposed in a matter like this of education. It is a matter of calculation, and I cannot understand how it is that you should be asking us for an additional sum. The fact that it is so suggests to some of us, at any rate, that there has been a tendency on the part of the Department rather to set an example of cutting down than of raising the whole scheme of education. In the absence of the information I ask for, it would, perhaps, hardly be fair to complain of the Government in this respect; but I may remark that it does suggest that the Department has not been too anxious to increase the number of day scholars to the extent we should desire. I hope that during the coming year they will be able to calculate with sufficient exactness what is required for the succeeding year, so that it will not afterwards be necessary to ask for a further large sum. I do not understand on what principle the amount of the grant for the 3,663,000 day scholars has been arrived at so as to be put at 17s. 7½d., because in the last quarter of 1887–8 the grant for Board Schools was put at 18s 1d., and for the Voluntary Schools at 17s. 0¼d. I should have thought that, if the case was as in the preceding year, we should have required an increased grant for the expected increasing

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  number of scholars of the following year, and I do not know on what principle the Government have calculated their anticipated increase in the number of scholars for the year now closing. From their own confession, indeed, they have miscalculated. In 1887 the average attendance of day scholars was 3,527,381, and now they give us in the details of the Vote asked for the number of 3,663,000 day scholars, which seems to me to be a very small increase compared with what might have been expected from the yearly increase of the population. In the same way, in 1887 the number of night scholars was stated at 30,984, but the estimate for the following year was only 36,000. I have drawn attention to these figures because it does not seem to me that the Government have done what might have been expected from them in the shape of allowing an ample margin for the development of education. I agree with the hon. Gentleman who has already spoken, that we look to the Government to do everything in their power to set a good example on this matter, and not to give the public the impression that they are trying to cut down and limit either the sum to be expended or the number of children to be educated. I hope we shall have no such procedure as was seen in the case of the last London School Board, whose practice was rather to restrict than to extend the scope of education. The hon. Baronet the Treasurer of the London School Board (Sir R. Temple) shakes his head; but we know very well that this matter has been gone into, and the general impression in the Metropolis to-day is that such was the case. For my part, I trust it will be the case no more, and I venture to express the hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council will see his way to prevent for the future the miscalculations to which attention has been called.
  DR. TANNER: Before any decision is taken on this matter, I wish to say that the action of the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council has not been what we on this side of the House are entitled to expect. In answer to the speeches that have been made, he said, "Oh, wait till my Code is introduced, and
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  then you will see how all these matters will be dealt with." Might I suggest to the right hon. Baronet—for really in dealing with one matter we are dealing with all—that instead of his giving us only Returns in connection with the two difficult questions which the right hon. Gentleman just now spoke of, in respect to the 17s. 6d. rate and the singing by note, surely the House of Commons is, or at any rate ought to be, entitled to more than the indefinite Returns it has received from him. The right hon. Gentleman is always extremely courteous, and in most cases extremely willing, to give us some information as to the Department over which he rules; but I cannot say he has been so to-night, and I sincerely hope that instead of the indefinite system which appears to pervade responsible Members of the Government, and instead of this matter with regard to the little children who have been referred to by my hon. Friend—
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! I must warn the hon. Member that he is not speaking with any intelligent relevancy to the subject now before the House.
  DR. TANNER: In order to make myself thoroughly relevant, I must say that my hon. Friend near me has called attention to the 17s. 6d. rate and also to the question of singing by note, and I wrote down the answer of the right hon. Gentleman as to both these points, and certainly as a private Member I should think it would be better when responsible Ministers of the Crown get up to answer such matters if, instead of saying they will be dealt with at some future time by a Bill, they said they should be dealt with on the instant, or that at any rate definite Returns should be given showing the amount by which the Government propose to deal with these things. I, however, hesitate to go further into controversy on this matter, because I freely admit I have not studied the matter of English education, though at the same time I hope hon. Members will permit an Irishman to express his opinion on the narrow methods and means employed by English Members of the present Administration.
  Resolved, "That this House do agree with the Committee in the second Resolution."

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  Question proposed, "That this House do agree with the Committee in the third Resolution."

  SOUTH AFRICA AND ST. HELENA.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL: I desire to have an answer to a question which I put yesterday, with regard to the item of £60 for an expedition to Walfisch Bay. Is it not a fact that Walfisch Bay belongs to the Cape; and, if it belongs to the Cape, having been retained under the British flag in defence of Cape interests, I desire to know why the British taxpayer should be called upon to pay for this expedition and not the Cape Parliament? £60 is a very small matter, no doubt, but the principle involved is a large one, and whether the amount is £60 or £600,000, it appears to me that the principle is the same, and that the taxpayers of this country should not be called upon to pay the amount unless there is some reason for it. As to the whole question of South Africa involved in this Vote—that is to say, the extension of our Protectorate and the payment for 200 extra police—I may say that I was breakfasting this morning with the envoys of Lo Bengula. We have been told that Lo Bengula has asked Her Majesty's Government to step in, in order to deal with concession hunters, but the gentleman in charge of the envoys, who was once on the staff of Sir Charles Warren, declares that the envoys have not come to this country in connection with this question of concessions, but for apolitical object—namely, to seek the alliance of this country against the Boers and Portuguese. I do not wish to press the Under Secretary for the Colonies too hardly on this point. We must be content to leave discretion with the Colonial Office, as they are in possession of all the facts of the case, which we are not. I should be sorry to tie the hands of the Government, but at the same time I think they ought to give us such information on these subjects as they can offer without detriment to the public service.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: As regards the 200 extra police required in Bechuanaland, perhaps the Under Secretary will be good enough to give us some explanation as to why information was not obtained from the Cape in reference to the case of Captain Se-
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  grave, who was connected with this force, and dismissed for embezzlement. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how it is that it should take from the 19th December to the 20th March to get a reply from the Cape?
  *MR. SPEAKER: The point the hon. Gentleman raises has no reference whatever to the Vote before the House.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I beg pardon. I understand that the gallant Lieutenant was a member of the Bechuanaland force.
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Baron H. DE WORMS,): In answer to the question put to me by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy, I have to say I thought I had answered him last night as to the Walfisch Bay Expedition. The item of £60 is inserted for the purpose of paying the expenses of Colonel Phillips, who was sent to Walfisch Bay to negotiate with the German representative with regard to a tract on the south-east of the Walfisch Bay Territory. There is an international question between this country and Germany, and as the negotiations are pending the House will understand that it is not possible for me to enter into details on the matter. Then, with regard to the statements the hon. Member referred to as being made to him at the breakfast with Lo Bengula's envoys, I have to point out that the gentleman who is conducting these natives has no authority to make any statement on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, and Her Majesty's Government are in no way responsible for any statement of his.
  *SIR J. SWINBURNE: May I ask, where is the "Orange River Territory"? I thought I had some idea of the geography of South Africa, but I am at a loss to know where this territory is, and should like to have more information on the point.
  MR. CONYBEARE: With reference to this Walfisch Bay mission, I should like to know when these negotiations will be completed, and when we shall be entitled to discuss the result? I do not think it is a proper thing to ask us to pay this £60 and yet refuse to give us any information on the subject. The more immediate question of interest, however,

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  is in regard to some information which appears in this morning's newspapers in reference to the disturbances in the interior. I find from Reuter's telegram that one of our own people is creating disturbance, or at any rate, is mixed up with people who are rising and driving German settlers down to the coast.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: There is nothing with regard to Damaraland in this Vote.
  MR. CONYBEARE: If the right hon. Gentleman knew as much about this territory as I do, he would be aware that Walfisch Bay is a little strip of territory cut out of Damaraland, and that, therefore, I am perfectly in order. Can the Under Secretary for the Colonies give us any information as to whether the disturbances I refer to are affecting our interests in Walfisch Bay? We have just had news of the slaughter of a number of our people in another part of the world, namely, in China, and I think the Government should consider whether it is not necessary to protect our people in Damaraland. As to the envoys of the Chief Lo Bengula, I think we are entitled to have some information as to what line of policy Her Majesty's Government proposes to pursue in regard to that country. The Colonial Office seems habitually devoid of information in respect of this territory in South Africa. There is a letter in an evening paper from Mr. Haggard, who has just returned from Matabeleland, and he states that though he is the last Englishman who has been in Lo Bengula's country, and offered to give Lord Knutsford information regarding the state of the country, his Lordship refused to see him on the ground that he had more pressing business to attend to. Not very long ago it was stated that we were going to assume some sort of indefinite Protectorate over the whole of this country, and I sincerely trust that Her Majesty's Government will not sanction the exploiting of this magnificent country for the benefit of two or three individuals connected with the Rhodes and Rudd concession. Mr. Haggard was refused permission to enter this territory, although he at last succeeded in doing so, and notices have been issued that nobody is to go into Matabeleland or Basutoland, and without going into the question whether we ought to assume responsibility for the whole of Matabeleland,
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  I think we ought to avail ourselves of the opportunity of the presence of Lo Bengula's representatives in this conntry to see that no injustice is done to our people there. I am as opposed to wholesale annexation as anybody, but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that, in Matabeleland with its great mining wealth you will soon have very considerable British interests. It is only reasonable when the opportunity presents itself that we should take measures to protect our interests hereafter, and that will be best done by carefully considering, and not by peremptorily rejecting, the request which has been referred to Her Majesty's Government by the envoys of Lo Bengula. I will not go the length of saying that we should appoint English Residents, but it must be obvious that it is impossible for the Chief Commissioner living in Cape Town to protect British interests so far from the seat of Government as Matabeleland. I trust that the Government will without undue delay afford us some reasonable opportunity of carefully discussing the whole of this important question, because if we do not go into it the time will come when we shall be involved in some stupid difficulties arising from our disinclination to face the questions of the day, which will involve us in the expenditure of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of pounds.
  COLONEL NOLAN: I hope an answer will be given to the question with regard to the Orange River Territory. We all know where the Orange Free State is; but as there is a new name we ought to know—
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! I must remind the hon. and gallant Member that this Vote has nothing to do with the Orange River Territory.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Sir JOHN GORST,): As the Under Secretary for the Colonies has exhausted his right to speak, perhaps I may be allowed to answer the questions addressed to him. The matter principally touched upon by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Conybeare) were fully dealt with in the House last night, and if he had been here and heard my right hon. Friend's speech, or read it in the ordinary channels of information, his curiosity would have been amply gratified. He spoke of Damaraland,

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  and although the hon. Gentleman's geographical knowledge of South Africa seems to be unexceptionable, I am afraid I cannot congratulate him upon his political knowledge of native territories. The district he referred to is not British territory but German territory, and we have nothing to do with it. As has already been stated, Her Majesty's Government will discountenance any attempt to create disturbance on the part of British subjects, but beyond that they have nothing whatever to do with Damaraland, and Damaraland has nothing whatever to do with the Vote before the House. With regard to Lo Bengula, as my right hon. Friend stated last night, communications have been addressed to the Chief, and until his views with reference to those communications are known, it is impossible for the Government to give any further information or any further pledge as to what their policy will be. If hon. Gentlemen opposite had attended in their places last night and discussed matters in Committee, there would have been no occasion to raise them on Report. As regards the other questions which have been put, if hon. Gentlemen who were not here last night desire to have them answered by the Under Secretary for the Colonies, and if they will give notice in the usual way and have their questions printed on the paper, no doubt answers will be returned.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I brought before the House subjects with regard to which information appeared in this morning's papers, therefore I do not see how I can justly be accused of dealing with matters which I might have discussed last night.
  Resolution agreed to.

  SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1888–9).
  SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)

  SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1888–9).

    CLASS VI.
    (1.) £9,500, Supplementary, Super-annuations and Retired Allowances.
    *THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON,): I shall endeavour, as arranged, to give the House the names of the persons to whom awards have been made. The sum asked for is divided into several sub-heads. Under sub-head A come
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    all superannuation allowances awarded as the result of services, and limited to the period of years of service or retirement from ill-heath on medical certificate. No Supplementary Estimate is asked for nnder the sub-head B—compensation allowances. It is a matter of satisfaction that this sub-head this year is not in excess of the sum voted. Sub-head C comprises gratuities awarded either to Civil servants who have not served ten years, or to higher servants under certain conditions. I will deal first with sub-head A—superannuation allowances—and I will give to the Committee the names and amount of pension which have been awarded in each of the cases which come under this sub head, in the order in which they appear in the details on the Vote. The first item is "Colonial Governors," for which a sum of £1,000 is asked. The reason for that is that a pension has been awarded to the Colonial Governor Weld, who was 65 years of age, and to whom a pension of £1,000 has been awarded. A Colonial Governor is not entitled to a pension unless he is 60 years of age, and has administered the government of a colony or colonies for periods amounting in the whole to 28 years, of which, at least, four years must have been as Governor of a colony in which the salary of the Governor is not less than £5,000. Governor Weld possesses all these qualifications, and, therefore, the Committee will agree that this pension has been well earned. The next item is for the "National Debt Office." There have been four requirements—namely, Mr. H. Court, who has been granted a pension of £833, his age is 67, and he has had 52 years' service; Mr. H. C. Cole, a pension of £353, age 69 and 49 years' service; Mr. T. Russell, a pension of £466, age 62 and 42 years' service; and Mr. Haffenden, a pension of £364, age 60 and 38 years' service. I may point out that the total of these sums is £2,017, while the amount asked for is £1,000, the explanation of which may be taken to be that pensions have fallen in, which enable the total sum to be paid with an additional Vote of £1,000. The next item is "Police-Courts." A pension has been awarded, to Mr. Mansfield, who is 75 years of age and has had 28 years' service. He is entitled under the terms of his employment to additions for professional

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    qualifications, and he has been awarded a pension of £1,000. His salary was £1,500. The next item is the "Supreme Court of Judicature." Under this head we find—Mr. P. Marshall, a pension of £400, age 69 years, with 29 years' service; Mr. Ross, a pension of £400, age 71 with 35 years' service; Mr. W. R. Kemp, a pension of £466, age 72 with 60 years' service; Mr. T. Coghlan, a pension of £400, age 76 with 45 years years' service; Master Hodgson, a pension of £1,000, age 72 with 31 years' service, and addition for professional qualifications; Mr. T. Howard, a pension of £466, age 70 with 55 years' service; Mr. S. Richards, a pension of £466, age 72 with 45 years' service; and Master H. Pollock, a pension of £900, age 62 with 36 years' service. Two men have retired from the Pay Office which was attached to the Supreme Court. They are—Mr. Hair, a pension of £520, age 58 with 39 years' service; and Mr. Naylor, a pension of £406, age 50 with 33 years' service. In both of these cases there are medical certificates which have satisfied the authorities that both these officers are quite broken down in health. The amount of these pensions is £5,426, but only 2,300 is asked; pensions falling in making up the difference. The next item is "Prisons." The sum asked for consists of a list of small pensions too long to give to the Committee, but I think that it is a matter of congratulation that the Prisons Estimates are being year by year largely reduced, that the staff is being reduced to suit the requirements, and that none of those pensions come under any other category than that of persons entitled to pensions on retirement. In every one of these cases, except two, in which broken-down health, verified by medical certificates, was the cause of retirement, the men were over 60 years of age and entitled to retire according to the rules of the Service. In none of these cases has any addition been given except in two cases, in which the persons have been granted the additions to which their professional qualifications entitled them. Another item is the "Com passionate Fund," which appears on the Vote as sub-head C. I venture to make an appeal to the Committee, which I hope will be responded to—that the Committee should vote this money to meet what are known at the Treasury as hard cases. Without this money the
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    Treasury has no power to meet such cases. In 1887 an amending Act to the Superannuation Act was passed by Parliament. Prior to that it had been the custom at the Treasury to exercise what are known as "extra-statutory powers"—in other words, to meet exceptionally hard cases, the Treasury had exceeded their statutory powers, and had given gratuities to men who were outside the four corners of the Act. When that amending Act passed through the House, the Treasury gave a pledge that if the Act were passed they would simply confine themselves within the limits of the Act, and they had since endeavoured to confine themselves strictly within those limits. There were cases, however, which arose from time to time which, I venture to think, are those most deserving of consideration. They are the cases, first, of men who have not the requistite number of years of service to entitle them to superannuation allowance at all. Next, the cases of hired men who are entitled under the Act of 1887 to one week's pay for each year of service. I think I shall be able to show the Committee cases in which that small compensation is inadequate to the circumstances of the case. I will mention, first, the case of a man named George Frost, a postman, who, while delivering letters, slipped on some ice and fell, and was so severely injured that he was retired from the Service, and his capacity for self-support is materially impaired. That man has been given a gratuity of £33, which is the total amount the Treasury have power under the Act to give to him. If the Committee are good enough to pass this Vote, we shall be able to give him a further gratuity of £25. John Leaky, a postman, while delivering letters, was struck by lightning. He was obliged to retire, and was totally incapacitated. He was entitled to £11 17s. 3d., but if the Committee give the Government the power we now ask, he will receive a further gratuity of £25. Daniel M'Carthy, a hired Admiralty labourer, met with an accident which brought on epileptic fits. The man appeared to get better, and he was taken on again; but while at work on board a boat he fell overboard and was drowned. His widow was refused a pension because the lapse of time since he met with the original accident made it impossible to con-

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    nect the death with the accident. It is now recommended that the widow should receive £15 for herself and £2 for each child under the age of 15. Joseph Barrett, a hired postman, while delivering letters, was struck on the head by a cricket ball, and was so badly injured that he was compelled to retire, and was unable to contribute to his own support. He will receive no gratuity, because the injury he received was not directly attributable to the nature of his employment. It is now proposed to give him £25. I may say that a sum of £500 has been asked for in the Supplementary Estimates for this purpose, and there has been placed in the Estimates of next year, for the approval of the Committee, a sum of £700. It has been provided that the administration of this sum shall be governed by the strictest rules; that the amount shall be placed at the disposal of the First Lord of the Treasury for the time being; and that the First Lord of the Treasury shall be entitled to act in these particular cases only on the recommendation of the Treasury. I hope that I have shown that, although these are cases which are outside the four corners of the Act which we have to administer, they are hard cases which deserve consideration. I wish to say that it is difficult to avoid Supplementary Estimates in connection with the Superannuation Vote, because it has been the practice—and it is difficult to avoid the practice—to make the amount up of the sums which are on charge up to the 30th November. In other words, the Superannuation Vote for the current year, which will be presented to Parliament, say at the end of February, will contain all the superannuation allowances which are known up to the 30th of November preceding. But it is impossible for anyone to estimate the number of retirements that may take place during the year, or the number of pensions that may fall out of charge during the year; and therefore it is the most difficult of all the Estimates to estimate accurately. I hope, however, that I have convinced the Committee that at any rate the Vote now asked for has not been submitted without the most careful consideration of all the circumstances connected with the matter, and that they will be justified in agreeing to the Vote.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: I am sure we are obliged to the Secretary to the Treasury for the full statement he has made, but at the same time I cannot help saying it would have been infinitely better had the statement been presented to us in writing. The statement is extremely satisfactory indeed; there is only one or two observations I want to make upon it. The hon. Gentleman has told us that in two cases pensions have been granted to gentlemen entirely broken down in health, and that medical certificates were received to that effect. We were so thoroughly convinced in the discussion which took place last Session of the great abuse which had taken place in allowing officers to retire on the certificates of private medical practitioners, that we welcomed the pledge given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the practice should cease, and that in future certificates would only be accepted from public and responsible officers. I should like to know whether that pledge has been fulfilled? Again, I see that one gentleman has retired at 67 years of age, and after 52 years' service, and that another gentleman has retired at 72 years of age after 60 years' service. I should like to know whether all these years' service count in assessing the amount of pension to be given?
    *MR. JACKSON: In no case is more than two-thirds of the salary given as pension, and in no case are more than 40 years' service counted in fixing a pension.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: I will only add I think the whole House will heartily assent to the grants in the hard cases which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
    MR. JENNINGS: This Vote as it was presented to the Committee was open to very great objection; but I think that the most serious objection has been removed by the statement which has been made by the Secretary to the Treasury. Although I think it is a shameful thing to give very large pensions to persons who have done nothing to deserve them, and who have not been in the service of the country for more than three or four years, I admit that under the system which now exists the people who give to the public very many years of faithful and hard

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    service are justly entitled to their pensions. On this score, therefore, I shall certainly make no objection to this Vote. I think that postmen and persons of that description get far too little after their period of service has expired. My objection to the system is that the money has gone too largely into the hands of persons who, by influence or by some other circumstances, have received large amounts without rendering any services whatever to the country. There are several points in connection with this Vote to which I should have liked to refer. I must say that it is a serious thing that these Supplementary Estimates should have been so long before the House as they have been. The period of time which has been devoted to some questions is very discouraging to Members who have objections to make to particular items; and considering the state of public business and the manifest desire which the House has shown this afternoon to arrive at the Vote on Account as soon as possible, I think I should best consult the wishes of the Committee if I do not move the Amendment of which I have given notice.
    *MR. CONYBEARE: I should be the last man in the world to object to any reasonable remuneration by way of pension or otherwise to those who have faithfully served the State. What I object to is, that we do not deal with the different classes of public servants on anything like equitable terms. When we consider what paltry sums these poor incapacitated postmen and others receive, and what large sums are granted to old gentlemen on retirement, I think it will be admitted that we reward the latter on a higher scale than we do their less fortunate brethren. The Secretary to the Treasury has told us that the man Frost was only entitled to £33, that Leaky was only entitled to £11 17s. 3d., that M'Carthy was entitled to nothing at all, and that Barrett will receive nothing unless we assent to this estimate. What I want to emphasize is that we ought to have an equitable scale of pensioning—for the highest as well as the lowest of our public servants. The Secretary to the Treasury has pointed out that in the case of hired servants like postmen, dock labourers, and others, the scale of pension is one week's pay for every year's service.
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    Now, if we take the case of Mr. Mansfield's pension of £1,000, which is two-thirds of the salary he has received annually for 28 years, and apply to it the principle we apply to the case of postmen and others, what do we find? Why, that Mr. Mansfield is entitled, not to £1,000 a year, but to £784.
    *MR. JACKSON: The hon. Gentleman is confusing the two classes of servants. The men he refers to have not got Civil Service certificates.
    MR. CONYBEARE: What I complain of is that they ought to have. If you have poor men working hard for you for a number of years, they are just as much entitled to have their services recognized in the form of pension, if you admit the principle of pensions, as other people. You deal out one measure to poor men, and another measure to rich men. I want to see all men treated alike. But one word in respect to what the Secretary to the Treasury has said as to prisons. I was glad to hear him say that prison establishments are being reduced, but I should like to be assured that the remark applies to the Admiralty prison at Bodmin. Is the scandal as to the sinecure offices connected with that establishment to continue? If it is, it is clear we shall be asked at some future time for superannuation allowances in respect of a number of offices which everyone admits are nothing but sinecures.
    MR. H. FOWLER: I think that the plain and lucid explanation of the Secretary to the Treasury has made it clear that the action of the Treasury in regard to disbursements under this Vote have been characterized by very great caution. In reference to the remarks of the learned Member for Cornwall (Mr. Conybeare) let me say that the real point of inequality in regard to these pensions is the allowance of ten years for professional qualifications. This is nothing short of an abuse, and I hope it will be dealt with by legislation. In the case of barristers who are appointed to well-paid positions of £1,500 a year, I fail to see why their retiring allowances should be calculated on more than the actual number of years that they have served. With reference to the compassionate allowances, I rejoice that such a fund now exists, as there used to be cases of great hardship which the Treasury desired to

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    meet, and which they felt sure the House of Commons would desire to meet, but which, owing to the state of the law, could not be assisted. I am glad that this discretionary power is now given to the Treasury, and I feel sure that it is exercised with caution.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: I should like some information as to what are the arrangements with regard to the reception of the medical certificates.
    MR. JACKSON: Most careful scrutiny has been made into these certificates and in all cases where it is deemed necessary to get confirmatory evidence the Department obtain it.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: May I ask whether in view of the case of Mr. Wise, which occurred last year, the Bill which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to introduce is intended to apply to Ireland?
    *MR. GOSCHEN: We shall certainly apply to Ireland the provisions we apply to England. We shall see we get confirmatory evidence in the case of all pensions which are granted.
    *SIR J. SWINBURNE: Instead of getting confirmatory evidence would it not be better to have all officers applying for pensions examined in the first instance by the Government medical officer? It is very well known that no doctor likes to say that a brother officer has given a certificate which is not exactly correct.
    *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: That is in the main the intention of the Government; but it cannot always be carried out because in many cases distant from London it is not possible to get examination by a central officer. We have been in communication with medical officers and have taken great pains to ascertain whether we can find anyone possessing the necessary qualification to undertake the work. We think we have done so, and we are about to make arrangements whereby in all principal cases the gentlemen applying for pensions shall be examined by a Government medical officer.
    Vote agreed to.
    (2.) £7,000, Supplementary, Pauper Lunatics, England.
    DR. TANNER: I de sire to point out that although the number of lunatics has decreased of late
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    years the number chargeable to the poor rates has increased in each year. The number chargeable in January, 1888 was 72,486, but last year the number shows an increase of 1,602. Besides this there is the fact that in all cases the treatment of these unfortunate people is certainly not what any humane man would allow to pass without inquiry. Last year my hon. Friend the Member for North Fermanagh called attention to the case of John Stickley, a man aged 68, who was removed from the Hammersmith Police Court to Colney Hatch on the Saturday previous to the day on which my hon. Friend brought the case before the House. The poor fellow was said to be in a feeble condition but perfectly quiet. As a rule when patients are removed from a police-court or a workhouse to an asylum, they are certified to be violent; but this man was certified as perfectly quiet. On the Monday he was seriously ill, and on the Tuesday he was dead. At the time of his death it was discovered he had a broken jaw and that one of his teeth had been knocked out. At the inquest the jury found that the man's death had been accelerated by the injuries he had received, but nothing had since been done to arrive at the truth. It has not yet been shown how the man sustained the injuries. Surely the police who conveyed the man from the court to the asylum would have noticed that Stickley was suffering from these injuries if he had sustained them at the time. Certainly I should have thought that the Government would have granted an inquiry into the case; but instead of that the representatives of the Local Government Board fenced with all the questions which were asked upon the subject. I have here a list of 15 or 16 cases which demand some reply from the Minister in charge of this Vote; but I will not delay the Committee further, since friends of mine tell me there are many matters that are more deserving of public attention. I will, however, say I hope the Government will take into consideration the remonstrances addressed by responsible medical officers in the asylum service, as to the asylums being undermanned, in consequence of which the medical officers are quite unable to do their duty by the unfortunate creatures submitted to their care. Surely, in an asylum of 300 patients, one

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    medical man, one assistant, and two clinical clerks are not enough to pay attention to the cases committed to their charge. The mere writing out of the charts of the cases would take all the time of such a staff. I have no intention of dealing with the matter at any length, but I sincerely hope the hon. Gentleman opposite will bring the matter before the Department under whose supervision these unfortunate people are, that they may be dealt with in the way humanity demands.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. W. LONG,): I am sure the Government and the Committee are quite ready to listen to the suggestions of the hon. Member, but I hope I shall not be misunderstood when I say that the Department responsible for this Vote has no control over the administration of these institutions. The sole duty of the Local Government Board in connection with this Vote is to ask for this money and to see that each charge made is substantiated by the Board of Guardians, and this is the last occasion when it will be the duty of the Local Government Board to ask for this money. Any remonstrance with respect to administration should be addressed to the Lunacy Commissioners. The hon. Member has made some strictures upon the administration of those pauper lunatic asylums. For my own part, I have no doubt that there was some foundation for charges brought forward in various cases; but, as a whole, those institutions are very carefully looked after. The fact of a small Supplementary Vote being necessary is owing to the fact that the figures on which the original Estimate had been founded were somewhat misleading. I am sure that the remarks of the hon. Member will receive due attention in the proper quarter.
    DR. TANNER: Allow me to say that when public money is voted, then is the time for calling attention to defects in administration of any department concerned in the expenditure. As a medical man I thought it my duty to bring this matter forward.
    Vote agreed to.

    CLASS VII.
    (3.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
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    "That a sum, not exceeding £10,500, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1889, for certain Advances to be made in Aid of the Emigration and Colonization of Crofters and Cottars of the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland, including Expenses of Administration."
    *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN, St. George's,): It may perhaps be convenient that I should at this point express the arrangement by which the Government propose to carry out their view expressed last year, that there should be a review of schemes of State-aided emigration. We propose to appoint a Committee to inquire into the subject, and the terms of reference we shall propose will be as follows:—
    "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into various schemes which have been proposed to Her Majesty's Government to facilitate emigration from the congested districts of the United Kingdom to the British colonies or elsewhere; to examine the results of any schemes which have received practical trial in recent years; and to report generally upon the means by, and the conditions under, which such emigration can best be carried out and the quarters to which it can most advantageously be directed."
    MR. HUNTER: In what respect does this differ from the Motion put on the Paper last year?
    *MR. GOSCHEN: If the hon. Member compares the two he will see that this is considerably wider in scope than our proposal of last year; it includes emigration from congested districts not only in the crofter counties, but in other parts of Great Britain, and not only to British colonies, but to other parts of the world.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: Does it include migration?
    *MR. GOSCHEN: No; it does not.
    *MR. ANGUS SUTHERLAND: Will the inquiry include the scheme under which the Government are now carrying on emigration from the Highlands?
    *MR. GOSCHEN: The scheme of the Government is so far only experimental; it would be for the Committee to inquire how far it has answered, and whether it is desirable to give further effect to it.
    MR. HUNTER: I see that £700 have been announced as the amount subscribed by private individuals in Glasgow towards this emigration scheme; is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to

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    say if any further sums beyond this £700 have been received up to the present time.
    *MR. GOSCHEN: Yes; I believe the remainder of the amount has been subscribed.
    MR. F. S. POWELL: I presume the phrase congested districts refers to rural districts, not manufacturing districts or mining districts? The term has hitherto been understood in that sense.
    *MR. GOSCHEN: No; our proposal is wider than that. You might have a congested district in the East End of London. The Government are anxious that the whole question of emigration should be thoroughly thrashed out. We do not want to put forward any scheme unless it has received the countenance of the House of Commons. The subject is one which is rightly considered of great importance both by the friends and the opponents of emigration; and there are few subjects upon which it is more desirable to have a full inquiry by a competent Committee.
    MR. SETON-KARR: Is it intended to appoint this Committee at once? Will a Colonization Board be constituted to administer the fund which has been raised?
    *MR. ANGUS SUTHERLAND: Pending the Report of the Committee, is it proposed to suspend the present scheme?
    MR. HUNTER: I wish to ask whether, after the additional sums beyond the £700 are subscribed, the private subscribers will be allowed to appoint one of the Commissioners?
    MR. SETON-KARR: Will the fact of this Committee being appointed preclude any discussion in the House upon State-aided colonization?
    *MR. GOSCHEN: I must admit that I think the subject would be better discussed after the Committee has been appointed. It is the intention of the Government to appoint the Committee at once, and it will be more satisfactory to have the whole matter threshed out upstairs before a general discussion is taken in the House. But, of course, hon. Members can take their own opportunity of raising a debate, or they will find it upon the Motion to appoint the Committee or on the terms of reference. The Government hope that in arranging this Committee they have satisfied to a
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    certain extent those who are in favour of colonization. The £2,000, which are equal to one-fifth of the amount to be granted by the Government, having been subscribed, arrangements have been made for the Provost of Glasgow to represent the private subscribers. We do not propose to extend the present scheme for the emigration of crofters until the Committee have reported, except so far as pledges have been given to a limited number of crofters, who have made their plans, sold their stock, and whom it would be undesirable to disappoint. Otherwise we do not wish to move at all until we have the full opinion of the House upon the subject. I am glad to have this opportunity of answering these questions, and I think hon. Members will see exactly how the matter stands.
    DR. CLARK: After this announcement, I do not think there is any necessity for fighting out the question to-night. As a matter of fact, in discussing this Vote, we discuss money already spent. I, for one, desire that the question of emigration from the Highlands should be thoroughly discussed; but I do not think, under present circumstances, this is the opportunity. Under the condition that nothing further is done by the Government, I will not raise the question now.
    MR. SETON-KARR: Are the Government aware that a Colonization Committee, composed of 135 Members of this House and 30 Members of the House of Lords, has existed for the last two Sessions? These Gentlemen have thoroughly examined the subject, have taken evidence, and are prepared with a practical and sound financial scheme. I merely mention this to ask if the Government are aware of the fact, and whether that knowledge will have any bearing upon their own proposal?
    MR. CONYBEARE: Have the Government considered the desirability of taking evidence from Colonists, and from inhabitants of other countries? I understand the proposal is to extend the investigation to all parts of the world. Now, it is well known that the class of people we want to get rid of—the paupers and the unemployed—are just those which foreign Governments, and

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    even our own Colonies, will have nothing to do with. I hope, therefore, that arrangements will be made, by way of Commission or otherwise, for collecting evidence in foreign countries and the Colonies, if witnesses cannot be brought before the Committee upstairs.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: Are we distinctly to understand that the Committee will inquire into emigration to all parts of the world, and not confine itself merely to British Colonies?
    *MR. GOSCHEN: I distinctly read out the words "British Colonies and elsewhere." With reference to the suggestion of my hon. Friend (Mr. Seton-Karr), I am aware that there is such a Committee; but the Committee we propose will be composed not only of the friends of emigration, but of the critics of emigration. There are gentlemen in this House who have doubts as to the efficacy of emigration, and it is in order to get an authoritative decision of the House on this very important subject, which may cause considerable outlay, that we wish it thoroughly sifted both by the friends and supporters of the scheme and by the critics of it. As to the suggestion of the Member for Camborne, it would be most Utopian to lay down schemes of emigration without being fairly assured that those schemes would receive the warm support of the Colonies or countries to which the emigrants are to be sent. The agents for the Colonies in this country will be able to give valuable information with regard to the views of the Colonies they represent, and it will be important to have knowledge of the laws, say of the Dinted States, which regulate emigration into the United States, and generally of the conditions under which emigration could be carried out. We wish to place no limits to the fullness of the inquiry.
    DR. CAMERON: It seems to me that a most ludicrous fiasco has occurred to night. In order to avert threatened discussions the Government have been converted to the desirability of appointing Committees, and have agreed to three—one for mining royalties, another for dockyard administration, and a third for emigration. I am fur from considering the present proposal as being in advance of the proposal made by the Leader of the House at the end of last Session. I disliked
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    that proposal, because by it the Government tried to fix responsibility for a mismanaged scheme on the shoulders of a number of private individuals; but besides, this is not a question of emigration of people from the congested districts of the United Kingdom, including East London and Ireland; it is a question of £10,000 for crofter emigration, and I think the subject would have been better considered by a Committee specially appointed for the purpose, and mainly consisting of Scottish Members.
    *MR. GOSCHEN: I may remind the hon. Member that such a proposal was made by the Government last Session, but it was objected to on the ground that it was too narrow, and that we ought to consider the case of other districts besides the Highlands, and other countries besides our own Colonies.
    DR. CAMERON: The right hon. Gentleman is not correct in his statement of the grounds of the opposition to that proposal. The ground of opposition was that the Government had started a scheme and bungled it, and proposed to shift the responsibility for that mess on to the shoulders of a Committee. Besides, it was offered too late in the Session. I have not the smallest objection to the appointment of such a Committee at the beginning of the Session, and I believe my own friends would agree with me on that point. But we would very much prefer to have a Committee on the special proposal for the crofters. On the 11th of April, the Secretary to the Treasury wrote various letters in which he said he had got the consent of the Treasury to the scheme of crofter emigration. That scheme had been warmly advocated by Lord Lothian for months previously. Lord Lothian publicly stated, in November or December of the year before last, that he was convinced that emigration was the remedy for the woes of the crofter districts, and it was said that if his views were not accepted by the Government he would resign. By April of last year he succeeded in convincing the politico-economical Chancellor of the Exchequer of the soundness of his views so far as to induce him to allow the funds of the general taxpayers to be applied to the benefit of one particular class. When the First Lord of the Treasury was asked why this scheme

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    was to be carried out, he said that the Government were following the proposal of the Crofter Commission. People who had read the Report of the Commission believed that what the Commission proposed was quite contrary. Their scheme was that labourers should be sent out who were to be indentured to employers, and that was a scheme for which a small sum of money would be sufficient. The second part of the scheme was that families should be emigrated by the assistance of the State. They issued a circular, stating, as indispensable conditions for the success of the scheme, that each family should at once find means of subsistence on the homestead from the day of its arrival; and, secondly, that the cost should not exceed what the family could reasonably be expected to pay back in eight or ten years; and, thirdly, that the Colonial Government should take an interest in the scheme, see that the emigrants were properly established, and look after the repayment. None of these conditions were fulfilled. Instead of being allowed time to sell their holdings the crofters were hurried out, and therefore the expense was greater. When these men landed in Canada they were not looked after by the Canadian authorities; a representative of a land company carried them off. It was proposed that the Government should advance four-fifths of any sum not exceeding £10,000, on condition that the public subscribed the remaining one-fifth. Until a few months ago only £700 was subscribed, and the Government restricted their advances. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that the full amount of £2,000 has now been subscribed, and I should like to know from the Lord Advocate if that is correct?
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. P. B. ROBERTSON,): Perfectly correct.
    DR. CAMERON: I am glad to hear it. Now, as to what actually occurred, as a matter of fact, men were landed in Canada, arriving there about the middle of June. They were taken in charge, not by an agent of the Canadian Government, but by the agent of the Canada North-western Company. I believe that gentleman bestirred himself in the interests of these people, giving attention to their welfare to an extent for which they ought to be thankful. But the care he took of them was not business with which
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    the Government could in any way identify themselves. The scheme was a tentative one, to see if emigration could be carried out on such a large scale as would relieve the congestion of the Highlands. The proposal was that the men should be emigrated to Government lands in Canada, that £120 should be given them to pay their passage-money and settle them in their homesteads, the Canadian Government giving them the land under the Homestead Rules, while the Government held a lien on their holdings and stock for the amount of their advance. Mr. Scarth, the gentleman I refer to, looked about for a good place for the emigrants to settle in, having in his mind the desirability of placing them where they could fish, and he had in view also the necessity of supplying them with machinery, implements, and everything necessary for cultivating their land. All these things were provided. But it was found that there was no Government land available to meet the conditions, so the emigrants were brought down to a patch of territory belonging to the Canada North-Western Company, land selling from 6 dollars to 8 dollars an acre. Thus they got double the value of the land which the Government intended to give them—that is to say, they got what was equivalent to a present of another £120. They were, as I say, supplied with implements and stock, and the result was that Mr. Scarth, who took them in charge, greatly over-spent the money which was to be advanced. The Canada North-Western Company, who did not share the philanthropy of Mr. Scarth their manager, gravely objected to what had taken place, and so Mr. Scarth, was compelled, on the Government refusing to pay his outlay, to threaten to take back the stock he had given to the crofters. This brought the Government to book, and they advanced some £700 beyond the sum they had given under the original arrangement. So the crofters got another haul out of the Government, the £700 in question being divided among 30 or 40 families, and, after all, the Company was a loser in the matter. Some controversy took place over this—the crofters said they had been promised several things which were not given them. They said the understanding was that they should receive homesteads of Government land

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    where they would have the right of preemption on another quarter section, and that this understanding had not been fulfilled. They said that the officer of the Board of Supervision who had superintended their emigration had said that they should receive similar terms to those which had been given to previous emigrants, which included provisions for the winter and seed for the summer, but that they found themselves at the commencement of the present winter without food and seed. Certain gentlemen who had been connected with the matter could not afford to see the scheme come to grief, and then it was, I understand, that for sheer shame's sake the money was subscribed. If it is impossible to find in a suitable district Government land in Canada on which 30 families can be placed with advantage, how in the world are the Government going to carry out the scheme to such an extent as to deplete the population of the Highlands to any appreciable degree? The contention is utterly absurd. I have never had any confidence in the scheme of the Government. It is utterly vicious so far as it gauges the amount of money to be spent by the Government by the amount of private subscriptions to the scheme. If the Government wish to emigrate a certain number of crofters, they must find the money for it out of their own resources, and the amount which will be required will be vastly more than is likely to be forthcoming, or than has been forthcoming. Schemes to the extent of £10,000 have again and again been tried, and have again and again failed. Sir James Matheson spent £10,000 in emigrating people from Lewis, but the island is as populous as ever. No doubt information on this subject can well be obtained by a Committee, but to mix up the question of State-aided emigration from all the large towns of England with this question of crofter emigration, to my mind, would be an absurdity. I have no objection to the question being dealt with. My object in criticizing the Vote is to show that the Government rushed into this matter without proper consideration by sending out men in a great hurry at a period of the year when it was impossible to fulfil the conditions under which emigration should have been conducted, and at a time when the emigrants were
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    unable to plant corn or lay by any provisions for their winter use. The Government sent these people out, and they made so little arrangement for them that, according to statements in the Canadian newspapers, if it had not been for the kindly homesteaders, who gave them a few acres of land planted with potatoes, they would have come to grief soon after their arrival. The way this matter is brought before the House I think deserves criticism. The proposal was made in the course of a crofter debate, the Government declaring that this was the remedy they proposed for the state of matters that existed in the Highlands and Islands. They said they were determined to carry out this policy, as it was the policy recommended by the Crofter Commission. If it were not too late an hour I would ask how it was that it was only at the fag end of this Report that the Commission dealt with the matter, and whether it was not a very different kind of emigration that was referred to by them? The crofters in Canada have no doubt fallen on their feet by obtaining more than twice as much as they bargained for, but as a piece of statesmanship the whole thing has been utterly ridiculous. I do not intend to oppose this Vote tooth and nail. But it is through a piece of simple blundering on the part of the Government that so much money has been wasted.
    *MR. ANGUS SUTHERLAND (Sutherlandshire): I agree with the hon. Member who has just sat down, that there is great danger in mixing up the case of the congested districts of England with the case of the Highlands of Scotland. The cases are entirely dissimilar, and whatever grounds there may be for emigration from the congested districts of England, these grounds do not exist in the Highlands. It seems to me that the Government simply want to continue the policy of the landlords prior to the passing of the Crofters' Act in 1886, when the landlords thought they would compel the crofters to emigrate by turning them off the good land and putting them on the bad land. I wish to ask the Lord Advocate from what part of the Highlands there has been any demand for emigration? I can give the right hon. Gentleman hundreds of instances where the people of the Highlands in public meeting assembled

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    have passed resolutions asking for migration, but not for emigration. I have no intention of referring to the £10,000 which is asked to-night. I take it that the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a confession on the part of the Government of the failure of the scheme they originally proposed, and I hope the result of the inquiry will be that the Government will be induced to take the same view of the state of matters in the Highlands that the people themselves take, and that they will afford facilities to the crofters to give evidence themselves before the Committee. If the Government do that, I am satisfied they will be convinced that the question of the congestion of the Highlands is to be met by migration and not by emigration.
    *MR. BARTLEY: An hon. Gentleman behind me Bays that there is a Committee consisting of 125 Members of this House, and a large number of Peers, all in favour of emigration, and that, therefore, it is not necessary to have an inquiry—
    MR. SETON-KARR: I said nothing of the kind.
    *MR. BARTLEY: I am one of that Committee. We have only met once, and as yet this question of emigration and migration has not been discussed. As the question of colonization, emigration, and migration, is so important I am glad the Government are going to have a searching inquiry which may come to some sound conclusion on the matter.
    MR. HUNTER: I can quite understand that the Government wish to confine the inquiry within manageable limits, but I would suggest that the reference should be so drawn as to enable those who say that emigration is not desirable to put before the Committee the alternative of migration.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: I also think that the Committee ought to inquire whether a remedy for the existing congestion in the Highlands may not be found in migration, and not in emigration only. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham has said that it is impossible to make advances to enable Highlanders to stock farms in the Highlands or in other parts of Scotland, because we do not know whether we shall recover such advances. But surely there would be quite as good (or even better) security for such advances
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    if made in Scotland as for similar advances for stocking farms in Manitoba. I can confirm the statements made by the hon. Member for the College Division of Glasgow as to the scheme of emigration to Canada which has been referred to, and I think it is to be regretted that the Government should refuse to let the proposed Committee look at least into the question of what is the best remedy for the congestion of the Highlands, and whether the evil may not be met by migration to other parts of Scotland. Until that question is examined we shall not be satisfied; and though we do not oppose the Vote now, when the question for the Committee is proposed we shall move an Amendment.
    *MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: Sir, the appointment of a Committee relieves the Committee of the House from considering, in any controversial or argumentative sense, the proposal of a grant of £10,000. It is desirable that the Committee should be appointed with a fair field and an open ground for inquiry, and that nothing should be prejudged before the investigation which takes place before the Committee. The Government submit, as one of the elements of inquiry by that Committee, what they justly call the experiment which is made in emigration under the present scheme, and it is because that is necessarily one of the chief subjects of inquiry that I desire to say nothing to prejudge the question as to the success of the experiment. At the same time that reticence on the part of the Government, Mr. Courtney, must not be misinterpreted as any indication of a belief that the scheme is to any extent a failure. I desire to say in a few words in what respects the experiment has been a success; and I would quote the words of its chief critic (the hon. Member for the College Division of Glasgow), who has said that in the present case the crofters have fallen upon their feet. I hope that when this question is considered by those who are primarily interested—namely, the relief of these congested districts, that they will have in view in any representations made to the Committee that emphatic testimony to the success of this experiment. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy has raised a point as to the scope of the inquiry, but before I men-

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    tion that, because it is not an unimportant point, I desire to say in reference to the general tone of the remarks of the hon. Member for the College Division, that when the result of the recent scheme is closely examined, it will be found to contain great elements of encouragement, and that it has actually achieved success. No doubt he is right in saying that the exigencies which arose from the lateness of the season at which the emigration took place may have to some extent impaired the absolutely complete and uniform success of the individual emigrations. But all that is merely an incident of the scheme, which, given fair play, is likely to form a most encouraging field for the inquiry of the Committee. I turn to what has been said by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy, who I believe approaches the subject, as I believe hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the Gangway opposite desire, in a spirit of perfect candour. This is a subject in which all classes of the community are vastly, and vitally interested, and it is of importance, that the Committee, in its action, should have an entirely open mind as to the resources which the Queen's dominions present for obtaining the happiness of any class of her subjects. But, Sir, he will allow me to remind him that there are two subjects which are inextricably confused in the combination which he proposed. Hon. Gentlemen on the other side very properly emphasized the necessity of the Government exercising care as to the financial results of their experiments. One of the encouraging features in such emigration as has been experimented upon in the recent scheme is that there are Government lands available from the Colonial Government, and that these can be placed at the disposal of the emigrants. But when we come to the Mother Country, we are not in the position of having Government lands, and, accordingly, any scheme of migration is handicapped wih the enormous pecuniary burden upon the State of expropriation. It is a most serious question, and a most delicate social and economic problem, that of expropriation, The hon. Gentleman, on reflection, will see that the subject which he suggests stands in a different category from that of emigration, and is attended with
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    difficulties of a most momentous kind. It is greatly to be feared that the Committee of Inquiry would find their usefulness largely hampered if they had to deal with a subject which might really lead to the embarrassment of more accessible scheme of emigration to Government lands which are available in the Colonies. As to emigration, there are a number of competing schemes; various experiments have been made, and materials are already to hand. Accordingly, the Committee of Inquiry into the subject will have the various interests placed before them. The scope of the inquiry proposed by my right hon. Friend is one most likely to lead to practical results. I hope I have conformed to the moderation of statement which is appropriate on this occasion, when we are on the threshold of an inquiry. I desire to impress upon the Committee this, that had this been the right occasion I was prepared to vindicate the success of the present experiment. But I think it is better to reserve the judgment of the Committee of this House on that subject, as there is prospect of an inquiry by a tribunal which will not only be completely impartial, but thorough.
    *DR. MCDONALD: In reference to what the Lord Advocate has said, I would recommend to the House that which was recommended by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. The First Lord of the Treasury told us the other night that he was most willing and anxious to do anything of the kind. And what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham suggested was this—that you should migrate those crofters who are willing and able to stock farms The Lord Advocate has spoken of the difficulties of expropriation, but I can assure the House that there are no such difficulties in the Highlands at all. There are hundreds, nay thousands, of farmers in the Highlands who have been groaning under high rents for the last 19 years, and who would be glad to pay for the chance of throwing up their leases. When the right hon. Gentleman says there is very considerable difficulty in emigration, I ask him why not migrate to Mr. Winan's forest? Does he think it very wrong to cause communities of

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    crofters to be set up in the forest? The crofters have already been the subject of legislation, and under the Crofters' Act we have had the right to have a farm of 300 acres broken up, half of it to be divided among those crofters. Unfortunately the Government of the day, assisted by Gentlemen on the other side of the House, so hedged it about with rules and regulations, that only one crofter has so far benefited out of the many hundreds and thousands of crofters that have been already dealt with. The right hon. Gentleman says he is prepared to prove to this House that the emigration experiment has been a success. I do not deny that for a moment. I allow that success as far as concerns the 900 out of every thousand crofters who have gone to foreign lands. But that is no benefit to the people who are left behind; and it is with people who are left behind that we have to deal. Then, Sir, as has been pointed out, if the Government asked for 10, aye, 20 times the amount for emigration, the increase of the population is such that we would still have the same number of people left behind that we had at the beginning of the experiment, and the congested districts would be in just the same condition as they were before. If the Government are willing to adopt the advice given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, they will introduce a Bill to amend the Crofters Act, so that land which farmers are willing to give up will be taken by crofters who can pay for stocking the farm and erecting buildings upon it. Surely, that is not an experiment which would involve serious cost. There are thousands of crofters who are able to stock the land and build houses, or they can get friends to help them to do so. If the Government can effect an amendment of the Crofters Act to that extent, we shall be able to show the country that there is a good number of crofters who are able and willing to take up the crofts without costing the country a single sixpence.
    MR. LYELL: I did not gather from the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he had a sufficient number of intending emigrants to absorb the whole of the £10,000. If
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    there is not a sufficient number, it would be decidedly needless to vote the whole sum, because it might not be actually needed by the Government. I ask the question of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—
    *MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to answer the question. The number proposed to be emigrated this season would, according to the same proportion of expenditure as last year, nearly absorb £10,000. The hon. Member is probably aware that certain families were emigrated during last year, and the number proposed to be sent out this year is 40.
    MR. CONYBEARE: Has the Government calculated how much money would be likely to be required for the purpose of emigrating a sufficient number of these unfortunate people to produce the slightest impression on what we call the congestion of these Highland districts? The Government emigrated a certain number of families last year; they were a mere drop in the ocean. They are going to emigrate a certain number this year; they will be a mere drop in the ocean. In order to produce the slightest impression in the congested districts throughout the whole United Kingdom, including Connemara, and the slums of the East end of London, you would want not £10,000, but ten thousand thousands of pounds, millions, for the purpose of expatriating the bone and sinew of our country. Before this Vote passes, I take leave to protest against the whole system of emigrating the working classes. You have ample lands in this country for the wants of the whole population. You have got, I believe I am right in saying, nearly two acres of land for every individual of the population of the United Kingdom. It is all very well complaining of the congestion of the population, but I hold you have no right to make such complaints as long as you have your deer forests and your extensive rabbit warrens, and your extensive fox covers. It is, then, nonsense to talk of migrating and emigrating the population. What you ought to do is not to emigrate the working classes who produce the wealth of the country, but those who have no visible means of existence. The sooner the Government propose to emigrate whole shiploads of

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    Dukes and Marquesses the better will it be for all concerned.
    MR. MARJORIBANKS: We are speaking of the Highland crofters and not of the slums of London, and we have a right to press on the Government that they should consider in the Committee proposed the question of migration from one part of Scotland to another. If the Government consider the whole cost of emigrating a family—the cost to them, the cost to the Government of Canada, and the amount to be raised by private subscription—they will see that it would be sufficient to cover the cost of migration from one part of Scotland to another, which would do more good than emigration. I think this is a question that ought to be referred to the Committee, and I would further say that if the Committee have no power to consider such a matter it will fail to fulfil what should be one of its principal objects.
    DR. CAMERON: The right hon. Gentleman opposite has stated that the cost of emigration per family would be £121.
    *MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: It is obvious the Government must exercise caution in the number sent out, so as to keep within the money at their disposal, and I spoke of the emigration of 40 families.
    DR. CAMERON: Then, in that case, if you have £2,000 in subscriptions, you are asking for too much, as the sum you say you need would have a large surplus. That sum, amounting to £12,000, would emigrate 70 families, at £171 per family, which is £50 more than you say is necessary per family. It is unwise, as has been shown in many instances, to have more than is wanted, and it is found that excesses are often applied to other purposes than were intended.
    *MR. GOSCHEN: In the case of a Civil Service Vote the amount cannot be transferred to another head of expenditure, but must, if in excess, simply be returned to the Exchequer.
    DR. CAMERON: I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that if he asked for £3,900 only, that sum, in addition to the subscribed £2,000, would be more than is needed for the 40 families spoken of; and I only ask for an undertaking that any surplus shall not be applied to some other purpose. I would also suggest that the revival of
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    the Committee of last year, if it is intended to deal with the subjects of emigration and migration, would be of more utility than the Committee now suggested. In fact, the cause of the Highland crofters would be simply lost if referred to the Committee proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which would prove to be only a convenient way of shunting a question which certain Members of the Government, especially political economists like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, are not at all enamoured of.
    MR. CALDWELL: I desire to point out that the population of the congested districts of the Western Highlands is put down at 27,000; and taking the number of families to be emigrated at 70, with an averge of five per family, the total number of persons emigrated would be only 350, which would not provide for the removal of the natural increase of the population, so that the district would in the future continue to be quite as much congested as it is now. Emigration on a large scale might do much to remedy the congestion now complained of, especially if it went beyond the natural increase of the population; but the proposal as it now stands would practically leave the state of things in the Highlands pretty much as at present.
    *DR. MACDONALD: I should like to know whether the £2,000 spoken of has been provided?
    *THE LORD ADVOCATE: Yes; I stated so earlier in the evening.
    Vote agreed to.

    EGYPTIAN ACCOUNTS ADJUSTMENT.
    4. Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That a sum, not exceeding £39,766, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1889, as a grant in aid of completing the Adjustment of Accounts between the British and Egyptian Governments."
    *MR. GOSCHEN: Among other matters of account with the Egyptian Government is one arising from a reduction which was made in the interest on the purchase money of the Suez Canal shares, which was reduced from 5 to 4½ per cent. After a time the payment was resumed, and the Egyptian Government repaid the ½ per cent. and

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    placed it again at the disposal of our Government. On the other hand, there were claims raised by the Egyptian Government, and a set-off was arranged of that money which had been repaid to us by the Egyptian Government against various claims upon us made by the Egyptian Government.
    SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL: I wished to raise an important question as to whether the accounts with the Egyptian Government are to be squared at the expense of the British taxpayer; but under the circumstances I hope the Government will remember the amount of work we have done, and will consent to report Progress. I beg to move accordingly.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Sir George Campbell.)
    *MR. W. H. SMITH: I am sorry to say we cannot consent to adopt this course. It is the general desire of the Committee that we should complete the Supplementary Estimates this evening, and I hope that my hon. Friend will withdraw his Motion.
    DR. CAMERON: I think, perhaps, it would be a more convenient course if we discussed this matter on Report.
    SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL: I know it is of no use dividing the House against the master of many legions, and I will, therefore, take the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow.
    MR. PHILIP STANHOPE: I hope that we shall have some assurance from the Government that a proper opportunity will be afforded the House of discussing the action of the British Government in relation to Egyptian Finance.
    Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: I understand that it is not intended to enter upon the Vote on Account for the Civil Service to-night.
    *Mr. W. H. SMITH: No, Sir.
    MR. SEXTON: The Civil Service Excess Votes raise a very important question as to the Divisional Magistrates. I hope the Government do not intend to press them through tonight.
    *MR. W. H. SMITH: We shall be able, I think, to give a satisfactory explanation to the House on that subject.
    Original Question put, and agreed to.

    CLASS III.
    (5.) £123, Supplementary Land Registry.
    *MR. W. L. JACKSON: With the permission of the House, I will explain in a few words that when this Vote was submitted the other night, some objection was taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, in consequence of which it was withdrawn. I am now able to inform the House that the Vote does not involve any increased charge upon the Treasury, and I may say, as the right hon. Gentleman is not in his place, that I have explained the matter to him personally, and I think that if he had been here he would have been able to say that he was satisfied with the explanation. Something was said the other night about the amount of business transacted at the Land Registry. Now, there were 665 settlements registered there last year, and that involved a considerable amount of work; but Bills, which it is intended to lay before Parliament, will, if they become law, necessitate a considerable addition to the office. The fees have increased, and I am able to inform the Committee that, although the figures given are based on an estimate, they have been tested and fortified by actual experience. In the year 1888–9 the cost of the office was £2,796 and the receipts and fees amounted to £820, so that the net cost was £1,976. For the coming year we estimate that the cost of the office will be £3,400, and the estimated receipts £2,947, leaving a net cost of £453. But then, from that we ought to deduct £180, the salary of the clerk who has been transferred from the Supreme Court to the Land Registry, and that reduces the net cost to £273. I think it will be admitted I have carried out my promise, that there shall be no additional charge put on the Exchequer in connection with the transfer of a clerk. His place has, I believe, been abolished, and the figures I have given can be relied upon. I trust, therefore, that the Committee will be good enough to pass this Vote.
    MR. MOLLOY: It was stated last year that the staff of

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    this office was excessive, and that there was not sufficient work to employ the clerks half their time. How is it, then, that the staff has been increased?
    *MR. JACKSON: There has been no increase. There have been two deaths during the interval; one clerk who died received £400, and the other, who retired and died a week after, received £300.
    MR. MOLLOY: At any rate, it was pointed out last year that there was scarcely any work for the staff of this office to do, and the excuse that the hon. Gentleman gave for keeping the office going was that further legislation was intended, which would involve the transfer of additional work; but, in my experience, that excuse has been held out for the last three years, and I must say that when the question comes up on the Estimates, we shall go into it thoroughly, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be prepared with some better and more valid excuse than the flimsy one he has given this evening.
    "Vote agreed to.

  CIVIL SERVICES (EXCESSES).
  (6.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £10,970 14s. 2d., be granted to Her Majesty, to make good Excesses on certain Grants for Civil Services, for the year ended on the 31 at day of March, 1888."
  MR. FLYNN: I certainly should have expected that some Member of the Government would have volunteered an explanation in regard to this Vote. It is an irregular Vote, intended to cover an illegality which has been exposed on more than one occasion by hon. Members on this side of the House, and it the Government insist on trying to get it passed to-night, we shall not only be assisting in covering an irregularity, but we shall be delaying discussion on two or three very burning questions which are likely to be raised in connection with this Excess Vote. Up to the present time we have had no explanation from any Member of Her Majesty's Government, and especially from that Member who is most directly responsible for the Vote, of the system under which the Court Valuers are appointed, or who recommends them,
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  what are their qualifications, and what class of persons is appointed. From time to time, Mr. Courtney, in this House, hon. Members below the Gangway have had to protest against the manner in which the administration of the Land Acts in Ireland has been gerrymandered in the interests of the landlords, and I think this complaint is most glaring in connection with the appointment of Court Valuers. These Valuers have all been appointed under Section 32 of the Land Act of 1887, and they consist either of landlords themselves, or of near relatives of landlords, or of landlord's agents, and surely, when one remembers the long series of Land Acts which have been brought in for the pacification of Ireland, it might have been thought that if the Government had had the smallest particle of common sense—if they had recognized their duty to the country—they would have gone to any length, rather than have given the people of Ireland fair cause for suspicion that there was any partiality exercised by them in this matter. But, as a fact, they have gone to the other extreme. Notorious landlord partizans have been appointed to advise County Court Judges in the settlement of rent disputes. We were not aware that the Government would have had the temerity to bring on this Vote to-night, or we would have been prepared with particulars of the most glaring instances of partizanship in the administration of the Act. In consequence of the mal-administration of the Act, it brings no benefit to the people in whose interests it is supposed to have been passed, and I must say that the appointments of County Court Valuers have given rise to the strongest suspicions amongst the tenants that they have not been made impartially. Indeed, I would suggest that the appointments stand out as the most discreditable acts of the Administration. I have a list here of about 30 men, who have been appointed under the section, and I defy the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to point out any single one of them who possess the confidence of the tenantry in the north, south, east, or west of Ireland. I believe that one of the valuers so appointed is a brother-in-law of the hon. Gentleman who represents the landlords of South Tyrone. In my own district, a gentleman has been

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  appointed who was always known as a notorious landlord's valuer; another valuer of Miltown Malbay is a well-known landlord, who, at the last Kilrush Quarter Sessions, served process for rent on one of his tenants because he had applied to the Court for relief, and this same valuer had acted for years as agent for his brother Then, again, an agent of Lord Clanricarde has been appointed, and is it possible to expect that the tenants will regard as fair Tents which are fixed by men of this character? Again, we have Mr. George Trench, a cousin of one of the worst rack-renters in the county of Cork, and yet you are surprised that there are disturbances in that county—you are surprised that you have to send the police and military to assist the bailiffs in collecting the rents. It is perfectly understood that the County Court Judge, though he has a knowledge of the law, is not necessarily a good judge of land and able to fix the rents, and that is why power was given for the appointment of these valuers to assist him. But it was never intended that the valuers should be landlords, or their agents. Now our grievances are that we have never been able to get any information as to the grounds on which the appointments are made, the qualifications of the men appointed, and the system pursued in making the appointments, and I think, therefore, in view of what we consider to be the shameless partizan character of the appointments, we are justified in opposing this Vote.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I may say in the first place that the appointments are not made by the Government, but by the County Court Judge. The man appointed must be either a landlord, a landlord's agent, or a tenant, or he could have no sufficient knowledge of the land. That is my second point, and my third is that the tenants are not obliged to go into these Courts; it is optional for them to go before the Land Commission appointed under the Act of 1881. Now, I am not the author of the Act which gives this alternative tribunal, because I think alternative tribunals are open to objection.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: The right hon. Gentleman has stated that he is not the author of this particular system. But it strikes me that he is the author of it
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  under section 32 of the Act of 1887, and yet he has the audacity to get up in this House and put the blame on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, whereas it is in his own Act of Parliament that the provision is made for the appointment of valuers to aid the County Court Judges in performing the duties imposed on them by the Act. This conduct is characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman. He says in the balmiest way that he is not the author of the Act, yet here is the section in his own Act of Parliament. As a specimen of the right hon. Gentleman's administration I commend it to the notice of the country.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. and learned Gentleman is under a misapprehension. Undoubtedly under the Act of 1881 the County Court Judges had the same jurisdiction, although it is perfectly true that power to appoint the valuers is given in the Act of 1887. I may add that my recollection is that the valuers are not appointed by the Lord Lieutenant.
  MR. T. M. HEALY; Here again the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cork complained of the partizan character of these gentlemen, he got up and said, "They are not appointed under our Act, and I am not responsible for the Act of 1881." Upon that I quoted the section, to show that for the first time the court valuers were created under the Act of 1887, and then he says the Lord Lieutenant does not appoint them. But the Act says they are appointed subject to the approval of the Lord Lieutenant. Who is the Lord Lieutenant? Why, it is practically the Chief Secretary; for the Lord Lieutenant is always over here boat and horse racing. Will the right hon. Gentleman contradict that? I fear he may, for he would contradict the Twelve Apostles if they stood here. Notwithstanding his denial of responsibility, I repeat that the appointments are made subject to the approval of the Lord Lieutenant. I have no doubt, nevertheless, that despite this exposure of the inaccuracy of the right hon. Gentleman's statements, hon. Members will still go to their constituents, and praise the splendid, impartial, and manly administration of the right hon. Gentleman.
  *MR. W. A. M'ARTHUR: Notwithstanding that I always enjoy the little disputes between my hon. Friends from Ireland and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, I find that at 1 o'clock at night the enjoyment considerably diminishes. We have been here nearly 12 hours, we have to be here again at noon this day; and as the Government has done a fair amount of business, and as they cannot fairly say that public business has been obstructed, I beg to move to report Progress.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I hope the hon. Member will not press his Motion. We have made some progress, and we are most anxious that these Excess Votes should be disposed of. I hope we may be allowed to finish the small number of Votes that remain.
  MR. SEXTON: I trust the right hon. Gentleman will be willing to reconsider his decision. Only one of the several questions involved in the Excess Vote has been discussed, and he will surely recognize that from the nature of the controversy which has arisen between the hon. Member for North Longford and the Chief Secretary some time further must elapse before the point can be settled. Then there is the larger question behind of those hybrid functionaries—the Divisional Magistrates—who resemble more than anyone else the Governor of a Turkish province. I shall be obliged to raise the whole question as to the manner in which the salaries of these officials are being legalized. Surely the right hon. Gentleman cannot expect the Committee to sit more than half an hour or an hour longer, and as it is not within the bounds of possibility to explain our views on the question in so short a time, I think we had better adjourn now and begin afresh to-morrow.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will give way on this point. The Government possess a very remarkable power of prolonging debates, but we are prepared to sit as long as they like. The whole of this evening no Irish question has been discussed. I do say it is not fair to us and to the
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  interests which we represent to take an important discussion like this after one o'clock at night. It cannot make much difference to the Government. They intend to get certain business through by Thursday night, and it cannot make much difference to them whether we rise an hour later or now. It does matter to us a great deal. At an earlier hour of the evening, the light hon. Gentleman taunted Scotch Members with talking in order to have their speeches reported in the Scotch newspapers. Well if the Scotch Members may do that, surely the Members of a much maligned and misrepresented Party ought not to be compelled to discuss Irish questions at an hour when they cannot be reported.
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I wish it were in my power to accept the suggestion of the hon. Member. But we want the time. Eight hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench wish to discuss the Vote on Account, and the time we can give them is limited, so that I do not think it would be fair to them to leave over these subjects for to-morrow. The question of the appointment of valuers for instance, which has been debated, is one which ought to be discussed on the Vote itself and not on an Excess Vote. If questions of principle are to be raised on Excess Votes we shall never get through our business. Then, as to the question which the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Mayor of Dublin wishes to raise, it is merely a technical question, and I do appeal to hon. Members seeing that there is so much business to be taken to-morrow, to allow us to proceed with these Excess Votes. Hon. Members offer to go on to an unlimited time to-morrow, but the First Lord of the Treasury has stated he hopes the House will not sit long after 6 p.m.
  *MR. LANE: I wish to call attention to the fact that it is not merely Irish questions which are raised by this Excess Vote. Hon. Members representing English constituencies have waited for an opportunity to discuss other questions raised by this Vote. If we pass it now we shall be condoning a very grave irregularity against which the Public Accounts Committee have protested for the last four or five years. A Constitutional question is involved in this attempt to condone an illegality. Hon.

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  Members here are determined to discuss the question from a legal point of view. They want to know what right the Irish Law Officers of the Crown have to suggest to the Lords of the Treasury means by which they may evade the responsibility which the Government have incurred here year after year by promising to bring in a Bill to legalize payments which have been regularized by the Appropriation Act every year. Although the Government has introduced that Bill every year for five years they have never attempted to pass it, and the proposal now made is simply intended to do away with the necessity for passing the Bill. I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer will find it more prudent and more conducive to the saving of the time of the House if he consents to this adjournment, for if he refuses the debate must necessarily be prolonged.
  MR. SEXTON: The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is under a complete misapprehension when he says this is a technical question. It is a question of substance and one of great importance, because certain salaries have been illegally paid during the last five years, and now it is sought to legalize them by simply changing the names of the officers. We are entitled on this Vote to question the nature of the offices held by these gentlemen, and the utility of the services which they perform. If the right hon. Gentleman intends to clôture the debate, I can only say it will be a rather uncommon step to take on a matter of such importance. It would also exasperate hon. Members, whereas by consenting to the adjournment the question might be satisfactorily disposed of in a short time to-morrow.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I think this Vote ought to have been brought on first in the evening. Now, for the first time for four years, we have an opportunity of discussing this important matter, it is not fair for the Secretary to the Treasury to put down this Vote at so late an hour especially as he is the person who issued the Treasury Minute with respect to this unusual transaction, and as the Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee condemn it. I do not see why this Vote of £10,000 should not be put off to a later period of the Session, when it can be properly discussed. Remember
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  that these gentlemen will get their salaries whatever the House does. If we lose this opportunity we shall not be able to raise the question on any other Vote, and therefore I ask the Government to withdraw it and bring it on later in the Session.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! Perhaps I may be allowed to intervene and make a statement which will clear up a little misapprehension as to the scope of the present Vote. This Excess Vote refers to the year ended the 31st of March, 1888. It comes on on the recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee, and it is proposed to be taken, as is invariably done in these cases, after the Supplementary Estimates. The very important legal question which the hon. and learned Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Mayor of Dublin desire to raise can be properly discussed on the Estimates for the coming year, and cannot be properly raised on a Vote for the year ending March, 1888. The proper time to discuss it will be when the suggestion is acted upon, and comes into operation.
  MR. SEXTON: The point I desire to refer to is not so much the illegality of the course pursued. I wish to protest against the the payment of excess, and to convince the Committee that these offices should not continue to exist.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 41; Noes 121.—(Div. List, No. 29.)
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. SEXTON: I presume that the explanation promised by the Government with regard to this matter will be made, now that a debate is forced upon the Committee. Instead of having an Excess Vote, we are informed by the Comptroller and Auditor General that there ought to be a surplus of £300 upon this Vote. How has the excess of £700 arisen? It is because the Executive have used public money to make payments not allowed by law. It is because a certain class of Divisional Magistrates in Ireland have for five years been paid a high salary, which is illegal. I consider the existence of this class of public officials is opposed to the public interest. They are a kind of secret and irresponsible agents between the Government in Dublin Castle and the landlords and the forces of the

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  Crown. We find the Divisional Magistrates sometimes directing the movements of soldiers and police; at other times in command of them at evictions and public meetings; then directing a magisterial examination; and finally ordering what Magistrates shall proceed from one district to another in order to try certain cases. Now, I protest against their performing functions of a judicial character. I say that at times they have acted shamefully and unfairly. There is Mr. Cecil Roche, who tried Mr. Latchford, and who nominated a magistrate to try Mr. W. O'Brien, who had so severely held him up to public condemnation. Although the Committee of Public Accounts have year after year warned the Government that this payment was illegal, it has been continued. The Government, in these circumstances, might have lowered the salaries, or passed an Act to authorize the payment; but they take neither of those courses. They adopt, on the contrary, a course which is neither straightforward nor frank, and which is unprecedented. They seek to legalize the payment by simply changing the title of the Magistrate's office, while he continues to discharge the same duties and to enjoy the same salary. The Lord Chancellor, indeed, has been called in to the rescue, and now we are to have not a paid Divisional Magistrate, but a paid Justice of the Peace. The Lord Lieutenant has withdrawn the warrants held hitherto by these Divisional Magistrates; he has, in fact, disrobed them; but the Lord Chancellor, instead, is putting their names on the Commission of the Peace. What do Englishmen say to paid Justices of the Peace? There are, I know, paid Magistrates in England, but they derive their power from Statute Law. I think that these new officials may best be compared with the French Prefect; they are to be responsible to the Lord Lieutenant, and they in turn will have control over the resident magistrates, who are magistrates for all Ireland, while their superior officers can only exercise magisterial powers in limited districts. A more extraordinary and more ridiculous proposal never challenged the attention of the House than to give an official with inferior magisterial jurisdiction a higher salary and the control
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  over magistrates having wider judicial powers. I protest strongly against the creation of this executive monster in order to escape from the effects of an illegality. I contend also that these offices are superfluous and constitute an, evil.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down did not take the advice which was given from the Chair, to the effect that the more convenient time to discuss the legality or propriety of the course taken by the Government with regard to the status of the Commissioners was not the present occasion, but on the first occasion when a Vote is asked for for the payment of their salaries in the future. But as he refused to act on the suggestion, I am bound to deal with the arguments which he has put forward. He has said that we have acted illegally. Undoubtedly there has been an irregularity, commented upon year after year by the Public Accounts Committee; but to say that payments authorized by the House and passed through all the stages of a Vote afterwards embodied in a Bill are illegal seems to me to be a misuse of words. He has described the Commissioners as hybrid functionaries, half judicial and half executive. But he is mistaken; they are entirely executive; they have no judicial functions at all.
  MR. SEXTON: Do they not direct what Resident Magistrates shall try cases under the Crimes Act?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: They may have done so, although the duty appertains rather to Dublin Castle. It is not, however, a judicial function; it is purely an executive act. The right hon. Gentleman complains we have not acted fairly in thus bringing the matter forward. But the Government have laid on the Table a Minute fully explaining the whole matter; and we cannot be fairly charged with any want of frankness in regard to it. The hon. Member is greatly exercised by the change which has been made in the functions of these officers; but that change is a purely technical, and not a substantial one, and it certainly need not and ought not to be made a sufficient reason for a long debate at this hour of the morning (five minutes to 2 o'clock), when so many other occasions must shortly arise on

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  which the question might be raised, and raised, too, with far greater propriety than it can be now. Let me point out that Lord Spencer is the statesman to whom we owe the institution of this office; the officials were highly valued too by Mr. Forster, as no doubt they were by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle. I certainly do not the less value their services.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: The right hon. Gentleman speaks of this as a very small matter which need not occupy much time. But as he has chosen to bring it on at this hour he must not blame us for seeking to have it adequately discussed. My chief complaint in the present business lies against Lord Ashbourne, who, sitting in the Court of Appeal, plays into the hands of the Government by the creation of these officials, and making them all Magistrates for a group of counties—one of the most unparalleled and scandalous acts ever done by a public functionary. As a matter of fact, these Magistrates have not even a local habitation in the counties where they are in the Commission of the Peace. Remember the position which these men occupy. Mr. Forster, finding the country getting out of hand in the year 1881, devised means as he said of getting more into touch with it, and he at once created a number of gentlemen like Captain Plunket—this most malodorous man in the public nostril—and put them into these positions. Lord Spencer expended the system and really gave it to us in its present form. There was a famous Minute issued in the year 1882 about these gentlemen, dividing the whole country into divisions and placing each division under the charge of one of these officials. Under Mr. Forster they no doubt exercised magisterial functions, for Mr. Clifford Lloyd used to sit at Mallow and apply to the people brought before him the same law as he had been in the habit of administering to Belfast prostitutes—he bound them over to keep the peace. Then came the passing of the Crimes Act of 1882, at which time we got a promise that the executive offices and judicial offices should be separated. At that time it was never intended that the position of County Magistrates should be impinged upon. It was always considered that a
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  County Magistrate was a person owning land in the county, or, at least, having some stake in it. But these Divisional Magistrates do not own land in any of She counties in which they are now to act. I really cannot see any change in their legal status. It is true that they have ceased to be Resident Magistrates, but to all intents and purposes they continue to exercise their former functions. What has been done after all is only a gross evasion of the law. ["No, no."] Well, if you do not like that term we will call it a novelty, and I will say that the last person who ought to start a novelty of this sort is the Keeper of the Queen's Conscience in Ireland—the Lord Chancellor. He is a high officer of State, and I suppose he is so called because he gets the high salary of £8,000 a year. But he is not like the English Lord Chancellor, because one of his duties is to sit in a Court of Law, and recently he had before him three or four appeals in which Resident Magistrates were concerned, and in each case he has given his decision in their favour The Lord Lieutenant, acting under the pressure of the Public Accounts Committee, deprived these Divisional Magistrates of the warrants under which they acted. Lord Ashbourne, being a Member of the Cabinet, would, it might be supposed, utterly disdain to be mixed up in a matter of this kind; but what does he do? He comes very promptly to the rescue of the Government, and these very men, from whom the Lord Lieutenant has withdrawn his warrant, he creates Justices of the Peace for groups of counties. What else does he do? Remember that not long since, because Mr. James Byrne travelled a few miles out of his own Petty Sessional district to adjudicate in a charge brought against a policeman of breaking a man's head—and in that case the defendant was fined ten shillings—Lord Ashbourne at once asked the Magistrate what business he had to go outside his Petty Sessional district, and when the authority of Lord O'Hagan was quoted for the Act the Lord Chancellor said that did not matter to him, and he dismissed Mr. Byrne from the Commission of the Peace, Well, this very Lord Chancellor goes and appoints Magistrates who are to act not merely just outside their own Petty Sessional districts, but for whole groups

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  of counties. I believe, for instance, that Captain Slack is put on the Commission of the Peace for 12 different counties. Lord Ashbourne has the audacity, having removed Mr. Byrne from the Commission of the Peace for travelling 15 miles in his own county, to help the Government, like a lame dog, over the stile, and give these Divisional Magistrates very unusual and extended powers. The Home Secretary appears to find this very funny; no doubt he found it very funny when he admitted Pigott to see John Daly, but I do not think it desirable that the quips and cranks and wreathy smiles of the Home Secretary should be imported into this debate. Perhaps his only reason for laughing is because among the counties I mentioned as those over which Captain Slack had jurisdiction, was the County of Waterford, in which Dungarvan is situated, that being the constituency in which Mr. Pigott helped him to a seat in this House. Now, I say it is not right that, at this hour of the night, we should be compelled to challenge the conduct of the highest executive officer in this way. I can only repeat that the conduct of Lord Ashbourne in this matter has been unparalleled, un precedented, and most regrettable. We are told that these Divisional Magistrates do not exercise magisterial functions at all, but it is rather difficult to define what are judicial functions. Last year I questioned the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary in reference to a charge brought against Mr. Latch-ford, a millowner and Justice of the Peace in Tralee, a man of moderate Nationalist opinions, who had got into a dispute with another magistrate, who was also a millowner, but who was not of Nationalist opinions. The dispute had reference to a right of water-way, and the men employed by each of the disputants took up the quarrel, with the result that there was something in the nature of a tipsy riot. Now, the Crimes Act was passed to deal purely with conspiracies and agrarian crimes and matters of that kind, but when a summons for riot was taken out against Mr. Latchford, Colonel Turner directed that he should be tried by Mr. Cecil Roche, with whom he had been in the habit of sitting on the Bench at Tralee, and from whose decisions he had found it
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  necessary constantly to dissent in consequence of the harsh manner in which people were treated. Now, Mr. Roche hated this Magistrate with the natural hatred of a man who occupies a position in which he is paid a salary to be obnoxious to people—Mr. Roche being a man who, be it remembered, had been dismissed from the Land Commission for drunkenness—yet he was appointed to the position of a magistrate—
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! I must ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to adhere to his argument, as he very well knows how to do.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: Very well, Sir, I will keep my references to Mr. Roche for another occasion. What I wish to say is that it was a monstrous use of the Crimes Act to try Mr. Latchford under it for an offence arising out of a question as to water rights, and I think that Colonel Turner must certainly be considered to have exercised judicial powers when he directed such a trial. He also clearly exercised judicial powers when he chose the Magistrate who should preside at the trial. Now, I take issue upon this Vote, first in regard to the salaries paid to these officials, and, next, I take issue on the extraordinary bastard powers which are conferred, upon them by the Lord Chancellor, and I venture to say that the people of Ireland cannot but condemn these wholesale payments in excess of the law, and also the manner in which the appointments are made.
  MR. A. O'CONNOR: I think that this is a Vote on which direct issue should be joined at the earliest possible moment. The Chief Secretary says in this matter concealment was impossible and frankness obligatory, and he therefore takes credit for frankness. But I venture to point out that when the Solicitor General for Ireland was recently questioned as to the reason for the change of names he gave a very different version to that now stated by the Chief Secretary. I do not see how their claim for frankness is well founded; I say that this is a violation of the Statute and not a mere irregularity. We have been told by

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  the right hon. Gentleman that these officials do not exercise judicial functions. But the right hon. Gentleman well knows that they were appointed under the Act 6 and 7 William IV., c. 13, and when that Act was passed, only magistrates with judicial functions were contemplated. What becomes now of the frankness of the right hon. Gentleman? I wish the House to understand that the Government have year after year admitted the illegality of the sum charged in the Vote. A Treasury Minute to legalize the payment was issued on the 15th of February last, and now we are asked to consent to the retrospective effect of the Minute issued ten months after the end of the financial year in which the particular charge was made, in order to whitewash the Government. With these facts before it, is the House going to condone this illegality and irregularity simply because the Government have resorted to a certain device? Whether the device is sound enough to purge them of their illegality is a matter to be settled hereafter. I do not think the Committee should condone the illegality, and I, therefore, move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £1,118.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £9,852 14s. 2d., be granted for the said Service."—(Mr. Arthur O'Connor.)
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I really think we are entitled to be told under what circumstances Lord Ashbourne made these appointments. We have raised many important questions, and are entitled to have some explanation. We have pointed out, for instance, the unparalleled act of the Lord Chancellor in appointing as magistrates for groups of counties men who have not sufficient land to "sod a lark." I challenge the English Attorney General to quote a similar instance in England, and I do submit that we are entitled to some better defence of the Government action than we have yet heard.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I may point out that the hon. Member followed me after I had endeavoured to reply to all the arguments which had been brought forward up to that time, and now he
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  complains that I did not answer his argument at once. The result of the change which has been made is that the area over which these magistrates have power has been diminished and not increased; and the magisterial functions of these gentlemen has a parallel in London, where the magistrates have jurisdiction over the whole of the Home Counties, extending, I believe, as far as Berkshire. As to whether the magisterial appointments were made by the Lord Chancellor or otherwise, that question appear to me to be utterly unworthy of serious attention on the part of the Committee.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I venture to suggest that the case of the London stipendiaries is not a parallel case to this. Sir James Ingham may have power over the Home Counties, but it is probably given him by statute, just as in the same manner the Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary is by statute made a magistrate for the whole of Ireland. I say Lord Ashbourne ought not to interfere in any executive function in Ireland, because, as a Member of the Cabinet, being a Judge, he ought to keep himself clean and sweet from interference in these matters. Why, I ask, should Mr. Byrne be removed from the Commission of the Peace for acting just outside his Petty Sessional District, whilst the official who removed him appoints Captain Slack, with power to range at will over the whole Province of Leinster? That is a plain question which demands an answer.
  *MR. LANE: Only last Friday I asked the Chief Secretary for the reason for the change of the name of these officials. He replied that it was a mere matter of form. The Solicitor General on being asked if there was any other reason for the change, said he was not aware of it. Why did he not give me the real answer then? I think we are fully entitled to discuss this Vote. It is not unusual for these Divisional Magistrates to appoint the Resident Magistrates to try cases under the Crimes Act, and

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  then sit on the Bench beside them. I remember in the case of my own trial Captain Plunkett brought up to Cork a Resident Magistrate from the town of Bantry and another from Limerick, as he had good reasons for not selecting a magistrate in the immediate neighbourhood, and as I had subpœnaed himself as a witness he brought up Captain Slack to take charge of the troops outside the Court. Captain Slack, after conversation with Captain Plunkett, took his seat on the Bench by the side of the Resident Magistrates, until I was obliged to order him to leave the Bench. This shows clearly, Sir, that the Divisional Magistrates are not as represented by the Chief Secretary, merely executive, as distinct from judicial, functionaries. Captain Plunkett treated with contempt magistrates of Cork belonging to all political parties, who at two successive meetings called on him to direct the prosecution of a certain person. Why, he not only ignored the meetings to which he was invited, but he absolutely refused to order the prosecutions. Anyone who watches the conduct of these officials must come to the conclusion that they seem to think they are paid for no other purpose than to exasperate the people of Ireland into bloodshed and riot. Wherever Captain Plunkett has been he has been responsible for wanton and unnecessary sacrifice of life. It was in his division that O'Hanlon lost his life by being stabbed by his police in Youghal. It was in his division, and under his subordinates, the three men were shot in Mitchelstown. It was by his subordinate that Ahern was murdered in Midleton. Rioting follows his footsteps, and it is monstrous that we should be called upon to vote excess salaries to such men as Plunkett.
  SIR U. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH: I do not think the Government should feel any surprise at the strength of the protest made on this occasion, when we consider, first, the course of events in Ireland under the administration of these Divisional Magistrates, and, secondly, the most exceptional irregularity which has occurred year after year in connection with the payment of their salaries—an irregu-
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  larity which has been reported on by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee. Further than that there is the extreme peculiarity of the rather ingenious arrangement by which it is proposed to legalize the payments. It may be inconvenient to discuss the matter at this hour of the night, but after all it is the choice of the Government, as, if they had chosen to accept the Motion to report Progress, the subject could have been raised on a more convenient opportunity. As Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee I feel bound to join in the protest made against this Vote, and I shall support the Motion for its reduction.
  MR. SEXTON: The Government have endeavoured to amend the illegality of their position by a very curious method, but they have gained nothing whatever by it, as they will still be under the obligation to introduce a Bill in reference to the pensions of these gentlemen. Notwithstanding all the ingenuity employed by the Government on this occasion they will find themselves precisely in the same position. ["Divide" and Cries of "Order," and "Progress!"]
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order!
  MR. SEXTON: I move to report Progress.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Sexton.)
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I hope the hon. Member will not persevere with his Motion. Hon. Members cannot complain that they have not been listened to. I must say that I think the hon. Member ought not at this time of the morning to be so susceptible to cries of "Divide."
  MR. SEXTON: Then suppress your disorderly followers below the Gangway.
  The Committee divided: Ayes 44; Noes 124; Majority 80.—(Div. List, No. 30.)
  Question again proposed, "That a sum not exceeding £9,852 14s. 2d. be granted for the said service."
  MR. SEXTON: I hope hon Members will now be willing to allow us to proceed without interruption. The hon. Gentleman the Recorder for Ashton-under-Lyne is not now in his place, and his absence will tend somewhat to the order of the debate. I was about to ask the Solicitor General for Ireland whether he will give a reply to the pertinent question put to him by my hon. Friend? We have a right to ask what has been the course of these transactions. Lord Londonderry and Lord Ashbourne would appear to have been in collusion—to use no harsher term. We ought to know when was this matter arranged? Did the suggestion proceed from the Judicial Officer or from the Executive? Did Lord Londonderry point out to Lord Ashbourne that they were stealing from the public purse and paying money they had no right to pay, or was it Lord Ashbourne who generously consented to come to the rescue of the Executive? How was it initiated? Did the eminent judicial person go to the Castle to help the Executive out of the difficulty, or was he asked to do so by Lord Londonderry? Did Lord Ashbourne fill up a number of Commissions of Justices of the Peace, or did Lord Londonderry take away the Resident Magistrates Commissions before Lord Ashbourne conferred those of Justices of the Peace? Did Lord Ashbourne move in the matter as a Member of the Cabinet or a Member of the Privy Council? Again, every Justice of the Peace is bound by law to pay a fee of £6 on receiving his commission. We have been told that the Divisional Magistrates have had batches of commissions given out to them, some getting six and others 12. Have they paid the £6 fee on each; and, if not, how has the law been evaded? Let us be certain about these things, and let us see that there have been no breaches of the law. Let me also ask, were these affairs conducted vivâ voce as between Lord Londonderry and Lord Ashbourne, or in writing? We know there have been
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  important negotiations between Government agents and dynamitards, which, doubtless, have not been submitted to paper; but as between Lord Londonderry and Lord Ashbourne there must have been correspondence. Who was the first to write, and will the Government be willing to lay the correspondence on the Table, and thus communicate it to those who have to vote the needed money?
  MR. MADDEN: But with regard to the question which was put to me on the subject, I may say that my answer related solely to the change in the title from Divisional Magistrate to Divisional Commissioner. This change is quite distinct from the root of the question, and does not affect the position of the present officials with regard to the Public Accounts Committee. The questions put to me by the hon. Gentleman as to what has passed between other persons I am not in a position to answer.
  *MR. GOSCHENrose in his place, and claimed to move "That the Question be now put."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 121; Noes 43.—(Div. List, No. 31.)
  Question put accordingly, "That a sum, notexceeding£9,852 14s. 2d., be granted for the said Service."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 46; Noes 120.—(Div. List, No. 32.)
  *MR. GOSCHENclaimed "That the Original Question be now put."
  Original Question put accordingly.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes, 120, Noes 44.—(Div. List, No. 33.)
  Ordered, "That a sum, not exceeding £10,970 14s. 2d., be granted to Her Majesty, to make good Excesses on certain Grants for Civil Services, for the year ended on the 31st day of March, 1888."
  Resolutions to be reported, and Committee to sit again.
  House adjourned at ten minutes before Four o'clock in the morning.