Commons Sitting of 6 May 1889

EAST INDIA (DISTRESS AT GANJAM).
Address for "Reports by Mr. J. H. Garstin, C.S.I., on condition of Ganjam, Madras."—(Mr. Bradlaugh.)

CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE (IRELAND) ACT, 1887 (IMPRISONMENT OF MESSRS. CONDON AND JOHN O'CONNOR, AND DR. TANNER)
MR. SPEAKERacquainted the House that he had received the following Letters relating to the imprisonment of certain Members of this House:—
Court House, Tipperary,
May 2, 1889.
Sir,
I beg to inform you that the appeals of Mr. Thomas J. Condon, M.P. for East Division of Co. Tipperary, and of Mr. J. O'Connor, M.P. for the South Division of County Tipperary, from the order of two Resident Magistrates sentencing them to be imprisoned for four

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months each without hard labour, came on to be heard before me at this Sessions, and that I this day confirmed the order of the Magistrates, and sentenced the appellants to be imprisoned for four months without hard labour, and issued a warrant for their arrest.
I have the honour to remain,
Sir,
Your most obt. servant,
WM. ANDERSON.
County Court Judge and Chairman of Quarter Sessions for the County of Tipperary.
The Right Honble. the Speaker,
House of Commons, London.
Court House, Tipperary,
May 2, 1889.
Sir,
I beg to inform you that the appeal of Dr. Charles K. D. Tanner, M.P. for Middle Division of Co. Cork from the order of two Resident Magistrates, sentencing him to be imprisoned for three months' without' hard labour, came on to be heard before me at this Sessions, and that I this day affirmed the order of the Magistrates and sentenced the appellant to three months' imprisonment without hard labor, and issued a warrant for his arrest.
I have the honor to be,
Sir,
Your most obt. servant,
WILLIAM ANDERSON,
County Court Judge and Chairman of
Quarter Sessions Co. Tipperary.
The Right Honble. the Speaker,
House of Commons, London.

QUESTIONS.

  NEWFOUNDLAND LOBSTER INDUSTRY.
  MR. SAMUELSONasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the French have the right, under existing treaties, to take and preserve lobsters on the so-called French shore of Newfoundland, and whether the text of the treaties, which speak of "stages made of boards necessary and usual for drying of fish," can cover the erection of factories for tinning lobsters, with boilers and other apparatus; and whether, with reference to the dispatch of Governor Blake, dated St. John's, Newfoundland, 10th July, 1888, setting forth the interference of the French with British subjects carrying on the
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  lobster fishery at White Bay, it is intended by the Colonial Office in future to support British subjects where they may be engaged in the lobster industry on the portion of the coast where the French possess treaty rights, provided such taking and preserving of lobsters does not interfere in any way with the prosecution of cod fishing (and the catching of bait necessary for the same) by the French?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON,): The French claim this right, but Her Majesty's Government do not admit that it is conferred by the Treaties. Her Majesty's Government will support British Subjects in the Lobster Fishery, provided they do not interfere with French Treaty Rights. The position of British and French Fishery Rights in Newfoundland is not free from difficulties, but those difficulties have hitherto been generally prevented from becoming acute by the prudence of the Governments concerned, and of their officers; and it may be hoped that like success may attend their proceedings in the future.

  MILITARY BLANKETS—H.M.S. SERAPIS.
  MR. SAMUELSONasked the Secretary of State for War whether, on the arrival of the East York Regiment at Portsmouth from Aden in December last in the Serapis, the non-commissioned officers and men were deprived of their blankets by order of the Naval Authorities on board the ship, in spite of the protestations of the Regimental Authorities that the blankets were required, as the men were not to disembark until next day; whether, in consequence, the men had to sleep on the bare and damp decks; and whether within eight days of arrival at Sheffield, twenty-four men were admitted to hospital suffering from chest affections, one case nearly proving fatal?
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (MR. E. STANHOPE,): It is true that in December last the non-commissioned officers and men of the East York Regiment, on their arrival at Portsmouth from Aden in the Serapis, were deprived of their blankets, and had to sleep on the bare decks in their greatcoats. It is also

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  true that within eight days of their arrival at Sheffield twenty-seven men were admitted to hospital suffering from chest affections. There is no doubt that the weather on their arrival was specially inclement, but there can be little doubt also that the taking away of the blankets contributed to, if it did not actually cause, this amount of illness. No blame whatever attaches to the naval authorities. The responsibility rests entirely with the Colonel commanding the battalion, who seems to me to have committed a grave error of judgment likely to imperil needlessly the health of his men. (Hear, hear.)
  MR. SAMUELSON: Is it the fact that the Regimental Authorities protested against the blankets being taken away?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: No, Sir; that is not the fact.

  TRADE CHARGES COLLECTION SCHEME.
  MR. BARTLEYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps have been taken by the Treasury with reference to the Trade Charges Collection Scheme of the Post Office; and, whether any system of paying the postmen per transaction is proposed?
  *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN,): In reply I have to inform the hon. Member that, after a full consideration of the scheme, I have been unable to adopt it. The business undertaken by the Post Office is already so extensive, and even its ordinary growth is so difficult to deal with, that it has appeared to me inadvisable to impose upon it new responsibilities not absolutely unavoidable which would involve an increase of charge for staff accommodation, and which ought, I think, to be met, if required, by private enterprise.

  GOLD AND SILVER PLATE.
  MR. HOWELLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, having regard to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Gold and Silver with respect to the abolition of the duties upon gold and silver plate, and the injurious effects of those duties upon the several trades connected with this branch of British industry, the Government will under-
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  take, at the earliest opportunity, to abolish those duties; whether he will. explain to the House the exact position of the question of drawback in relation thereto; how much is demanded by the trade; what precedents there are for the quantity of drawbacks in the case of other goods, such as paper, bricks, glass, &c., when relieved from taxation; and whether he is aware that a sum of about £50,000, or equal to one year's duty, would satisfy the claims of manufacturers of and dealers in silver plate, and that no drawback can be claimed on gold goods, seeing that the duty is almost entirely derived from wedding rings?
  *MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Member's question deals with two distinct subjects—the duty on gold plate and the duty on silver plate. The Royal Commission on Gold and Silver did not touch on the gold plate duty at all. It only recommended the repeal of the duty on silver plate, and based its recommendation on the interest, not of the home industries, but of India. I cannot accept any proposal for the repeal of the gold plate duty, but I may say at once that I should be glad to see my way to abolishing the silver plate duty. I have, how. ever, already explained to the House that the state of the revenue would not justify my taking any steps in this direction at present, and I can give no pledge on the subject. On the question of drawback, in the event of the abolition of the duty, no definite understanding exists between the Government and the trade, and no demand has been formulated by the trade in general on the subject. The precedents quoted by the hon. Member show that similar drawbacks in the past cost the country a very considerable sum. I should be very glad to learn that £50,000 would satisfy the silver plate trade. No drawback could be claimed on any articles, whether of gold or silver, if they were unstamped.
  MR. HOWELLalso asked the right hon. Gentleman whether, having in view the Paris Exhibition, and with the object of placing the manufacturers of gold and silver wares of the United Kingdom upon equal terms of competition with their foreign rivals, he will so far relax the laws relating to the duties on gold and silver plate, and the compulsory hall-marking of gold and

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  silver wares, as to permit manufacturers of the United Kingdom to execute foreign orders of any quality to suit foreign markets, without payment of duty, and free from the obligation of assay, upon notice being given to one of the Assay Offices; goods so manufactured to be exported under the official seal of such Assay Office, under the simple declaration of "hard ware," in conformity with the practice prevailing in France in the case of goods exported, either of a quality below that allowed by law for home use, or not required to be hall-marked in France?
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I should not be prepared to make so great a change as the hon. Gentleman proposes without a strong and general expression of opinion in its favour on the part of the trade. I do not say that even if such an opinion were expressed it could be done, but in any case I am not prepared to take steps in the absence of such opinion.

  NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.
  MR. DIXON-HARTLANDasked the First Commissioner of Works if he was now prepared to propose to make proper provision for the National Portrait Gallery in accordance with its importance and its value to the Nation?
  MR. AIRDalso asked if the Government contemplated the erection of a suitable building for the National Portrait Gallery.
  *THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. PLUNKET,): Early last week I received a letter from a gentleman freely offering to build at his own expense a National Portrait Gallery if the Government could procure a suitable site not more than a mile and a half from St. James's Street. I answered thanking him for his handsome offer and asking him to favour me with an interview in order that we might discuss the subject. He was good enough to come to see me last Saturday. I then suggested to him a scheme for providing a National Portrait Gallery which I had, just before I received his letter, submitted to the Government, and I am glad to say that this scheme met with his entire approval. There the matter rests at present, but I expect that within a few days I may be able to give further information, and that, if our plan should be, as I hope it
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  will be, at once taken in hand, this most valuable collection of National portraits may within a couple of years be permanently housed in a manner suitable to its wants and in every way convenient to the public. I must add that when, at the conclusion of my interview on Saturday, I asked this gentleman whether I might make his offer public he told me that I might du so on condition that I did not mention his name; but I must be allowed to say that the absence of ostentation and the straightforwardness with which this gentleman has acted is worthy of the greatness of his openhanded generosity and of his public spirit.
  MR. MUNDELLA: Arising out of the question, may I ask whether, as the Government will now be relieved of the cost of erecting a gallery for the National portraits, they will consider the propriety of finishing the South Kensington Museum?
  *MR. PLUNKET: That is not a matter which arises out of the question.

  THE POSTAGE OF SAMPLES.
  MR. ALFRED THOMASasked the Postmaster General whether his attention has been called to the fact that traders can forward. samples of merchandize to their private customers at the pattern or sample rate of postage, but, upon the samples being returned to the trader by the customer, and bearing stamps of the same value that conveyed them in the first place, that the package is treated as a letter, letter rate is charged, and double the deficiency of the letter rate of postage is demanded when tendered back to the trader; and whether he can see his way to put an end to this difference of charge upon the same packages?
  *THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. H. C. RAIKES,)I think the hon. Member must be labouring under some misapprehension. Subject to certain necessary conditions, intended to show the bona fides of the transaction, patterns sent by tradesmen to their customers at the pattern rate of postage are entitled to pass at the same rate when returned. It is only when the conditions are not complied with that letter postage is charged. Complaints of such charge are, I am informed, extremely rare.

  INDIAN AFFAIRS—PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY.
  MR. BRADLAUGHasked the Under Secretary of State for India whether Her Majesty's Government have taken any, and what, steps to give effect to the official declaration made in 1886, and formally recorded in the Resolution No 34/1573-980 Simla, 4th October, 1886, that it was then the intention of Her Majesty's Government, at an early date, to undertake a Parliamentary inquiry into Indian affairs; and, whether he will state the reasons for the delay in undertaking such Parliamentary inquiry?
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Sir J. GORST,): An immense mass of information has been obtained by the Indian Finance Committee and the Indian Public Service Commission, and their reports have been laid before Parliament. This fact, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, has rendered a Parliamentary inquiry into Indian affairs at the present moment inexpedient.
  MR. BRADLAUGH: Let me ask whether the Government, when it made the declaration referred to in my question, had not in view the investigation of those Commissions, and had not expressly declared that it was its intention that a Parliamentary inquiry should follow that of the Public Service Commission?
  *SIR J. GORST: Yes, Sir. The Government had those inquiries in view, but they had no idea how completely the result of those inquiries would exhaust all information that it was necessary to obtain on the subject.
  MR. BRADLAUGH: Do I understand the hon. Gentleman to mean that the whole of the matters as to which the Government on the 4th of October, 1886, intended and expressed its intention then to inquire into has been exhausted in the two inquiries he has mentioned?
  *SIR J. GORST: The hon. Gentleman is quite right in concluding that in the opinion of the Secretary of State the inquiry is now exhausted. Any further inquiry would merely obstruct the necessary reforms in India.
  MR. BRADLAUGH: I beg to give notice that if I cannot obtain an opportunity before, I will call attention to the
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  subject and ask for further information upon the statement of the hon. Gentleman in reference to the Indian Budget.

  POOR LAW SCHOOLS AT HANWELL.
  MR. MUNDELLA: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the long continued prevalence of ophthalmia in the Central London District (Poor Law) schools at Hanwell, in which there are 1,100 children from the unions of the City of London and St. Saviour's, Surrey; whether ophthalmia has been present in these schools for the last 28 years; whether, in 1874, the proportion of children with healthy eyes were reported to be less than 15 per cent; whether, between October 1875 and April 1886, 2,420 children suffered from ophthalmic disease, of which 191 cases were "annually produced in the school"; and whether the number now separated on account of this disease is more than double the number separated a year ago; whether in the North Surrey Schools at Anerley, there are from 800 to 900 children, drawn from the same class as the Hanwell children, with only one case of ophthalmia, although in 1873 there were 300 to 400 children suffering from it, and whether the disease was practically eradicated by action taken on the advice of Mr. Nettleship, an eminent oculist; whether Mr. Nettleship has now advised the Hanwell managers to follow the course which was pursued in the North Surrey Schools, and notwithstanding that his suggestions have met with the support and approval of Mr. Hedley, the General Inspector of the Local Government Board for the Metropolitan district, and have been before the managers for more than four months, no action upon them has yet been taken; and whether, having regard to the serious consequences attendant upon this disease, which often remains active, with intervals of comparative cure, for many years after a child leaves school, and respecting which Mr. Nettleship states that "it is no uncommon thing at our Eye Hospitals, and eye departments of general hospitals, to see young men and women, of from 20 to 30, whose lives have been made miserable, and their livelihood precarious in the extreme, by frequent relapses of granular ophthalmia, which

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  was first contracted in a Poor Law school," he will take such measures as may be needful to secure that this scourge shall be promptly and effectually dealt with?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,): The statements in the question of the right hon. Gentleman as to the prevalence of ophthalmia in the schools at Hanwell belonging to the Central London School District appear substantially to be in accordance with the facts. With regard to the schools at Anerley belonging to the North Surrey School District, Dr. Bridges and Dr. Mouat, two of the Board's Inspectors, in 1873 advised that between 300 and 400 children at those schools should be placed under medical care, and Mr. Nettleship was selected to take charge of them. The Inspectors at the same time advised many structural and hygienic alterations, which were adopted by the managers, and the result has been that opthalmia has been practically eradicated from the schools. The managers of the Central London School District were in 1875 strongly urged by the Local Government Board, by letter and in conference with the Board's Inspectors, to take steps similar to those taken at Anerley, but they did not carry out the suggestions then made. Measures, however, were taken which, though not in the opinion of the Board sufficiently energetic, had yet the effect of reducing the disease for some years. Two years ago ophthalmia became again prevalent, and since then the Board's Inspectors and Architect have had interviews with the managers, and the advice given by them has been endorsed by Mr. Nettleship, who was subsequently called in by the managers. The managers have not as yet, however, given effect to this advice. The Local Government Board on the 3rd inst. addressed to the managers an urgent communication, impressing upon them the very grave responsibility which they will incur if any further delay occurs before steps are taken to provide an effectual remedy for the very unsatisfactory condition of things which has so long existed. The Board have specially urged certain structural alterations at the school, and especially the provision of a distinct infant school. I cannot
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  but express my regret that these arrangements have not already been adopted by the managers. I am strongly impressed with the importance of the matter, and I will take care that every pressure is brought to bear upon the managers so as to secure the sanitary condition of the schools being placed in a satisfactory state.
  MR. MUNDELLA: I am grateful for the answer of the right hon. Gentleman, and I will repeat part of the question a week hence in order to ascertain if anything has been done in the matter.

  THE SUGAR CONVENTION.
  MR. CAUSTONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, under the Convention or the Bill before the House, Jersey or Guernsey would be bound to receive no sugar from France if that country came under prohibition by the decision of the International Commission, on account of having bounty-fed sugar?
  *SIR. J. FERGUSSON: Jersey and Guernsey are not effected by a Treaty or an Act of Parliament unless specially named therein.

  DUTIES OF SHERIFFS' CLERKS IN SCOTLAND.
  MR. MACKINTOSHasked the Lord Advocate whether his attention has been called to the great increase of duties thrown upon sheriff clerks and sheriff clerk deputies by the operation of the Crofters' Acts of 1885 and 1888, within the counties embraced by those Acts; whether any representations for an increase of salaries have been given in; and, whether Government are prepared to take any steps in the matter?
  *THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. P. B. ROBERTSON,): I have heard nothing of this matter except through the hon. Member. Section 27 of the Crofters' Act authorizes payment of remuneration to sheriff clerks for the work thrown on them by that Act. Any applications or representations will therefore be considered by the Treasury.

  THE FACTORY AND WORKSHOP ACT.
  MR. COGHILLasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, with a view to prevent the great injury that is caused to operatives in various manufac-

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  tures by the inhalation of the dust that arises from the processes in which they are engaged, he will be able this Session to introduce a short Bill for the amendment of "The Factory and Workshop Act, 1878," Section 3, with a view to secure the compulsory adoption in factories and workshops of the best known means of protecting the operatives from (lust and other impurities?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (MR MATTHEWS, Birmingham, E.): The whole subject of amending the Factory Acts, and this point among others—namely, whether effectual means can be devised for preventing injury from the inhalation of dust—has lately been engaging my attention, and I have a Bill in preparation. The state of public business is such that I cannot at present give a positive pledge that I shall introduce legislation on the subject during this Session, but I shall be very glad if I can find an opportunity of doing so.

  THE VAN AND WHEEL TAX.
  MR. SWETENHAM (Carnarvon, &c.)asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has abandoned the proposed Van and Wheel Tax; if not, whether, in view of the great increase in bicycle and tricycle traffic, and the superior roads they require, he will reconsider the propriety of including them in the tax; and, if the Van and Wheel Tax is abandoned, will he bring in some measure whereby the rural ratepapers may be recouped some of the extra outlay they are obliged to incur in consequence of the wear and tear the country roads receive from the heavy and narrow wheel wagons emanating from the towns.
  *MR. GOSCHEN: The Van and Wheel Tax was a part of the Excise Duties (Local Purposes) Bill, and fell to the ground when that measure was withdrawn. Besides the Wheel Tax, the Bill in question proposed the imposition of a horse duty, and I may say that my hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board contemplates the re-introduction of that proposal. But we have not yet seen sufficiently strong evidence of the desire of the County Councils for the revival of the Wheel Tax to encourage the Government in re-introducing that most just and reasonable duty. In reply to the second
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  paragraph of the hon. Member's question I would remind him that it was just because the owners of heavy vans and wagons emanating from towns objected to paying for the wear and tear of country roads that so formidable an opposition arose to our previous proposal. I have no reason to suppose that the opposition to the tax proceeding from the urban districts is diminished. I wish that the matter could be treated locally; but it is for the County Councils to realize that it is only a strong and general opinion on their part which would justify us in again taking up the question.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT, 1888—COUNTY BOROUGHS.
  MR. TUITEasked the President of the Local Government Board whether a County Borough became a separate Poor Law Union under the Local Government Act of 1888; and if so, whether he could state in what manner the residue (if any) of the Union from which such County Borough is taken will be dealt with?
  *MR. RITCHIE: No, it does not. The Local Government Act has not the effect of constituting a County Borough a. separate Poor Law Union.

  ANTHRAX.
  SIR JOHN SWINBURNEasked the Vice-Chamberlain what steps Her Majesty's Government intend taking with a view to stamp out and prevent the constant recurrence of anthrax amongst cattle in the neighbourhood of Cottesbrooke, in the county of Northampton?
  THE VICE CHAMBERLAIN (Viscount LEWISHAM,): It does not appear from the returns that anthrax has existed in Northamptonshire to any serious extent. The total losses on seven farms on which the disease has appeared since the beginning of the year amount to seven cattle and three sheep. Under these circumstances it does not seem to be necessary to adopt any exceptional measures.

  IRELAND—LAND CASES AT KILMALLOCK.
  MR. WILLIAM ABRAHAMasked the Solicitor General for Ireland when will the Sub-Commissioners for Limerick County give deci-

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  sions in the land cases heard by them in February at Kilmallock and elsewhere; and have all the farms been examined; if not, what is the cause of delay in doing so?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,): The Land Commissioners state that decisions have been given in all cases heard in the County Limerick in February except as regards those in Kilmallock Union. The cases in that Union were held in the last week in February, before the lay Assistant Commissioners had finished their inspections in the Croom Union, to avoid clashing with the assizes. The inspection in the Killmallock Union has now been nearly completed, and the decisions in these cases will shortly be given.

  VACCINATION.
  Mr. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the evidence given at the inquest on an infant of one month, named Ellen Madd, at the Holborn Town Hall, on 2nd April, from which it appears that the child was born in the workhouse, was too feeble from its birth to take either breast or bottle, and that it was vaccinated on the third day without the consent of the mother having been obtained; whether his attention has been called to the rider added by the jury to their verdict, protesting against the workhouse rule of vaccinating children within three days of birth; and whether, having regard to the circumstances of this and similar cases, he will direct an alteration of the rule, and place children born in workhouses or hospitals in the same position as other children as regards the Vaccination Laws?
  *MR. RITCHIE: I have made inquiry of the Guardians as to this case, and obtained a copy of the depositions taken at the inquest. It appears from the report of the medical officer of the workhouse that the child was vaccinated on the fourth day after its birth, and that at that time and when it left the workhouse, three weeks afterwards, it was perfectly healthy. According to the evidence of the mother she was not able to suckle the child, but it was fed with the help of the bottle. There was no suggestion at the inquest
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  by the mother or anyone else that vaccination was in any way concerned in the death of the child. The medical officer of the workhouse states that no vaccination is performed without the knowledge of the mother, and that if any objection were made by her, the child would not be vaccinated by him. With regard to the alleged protest by the jury, the note of the coroner is as follows:—"Some discussion among the jury followed as to the advisability of vaccinating infants at a very early period, and ultimately they determined to leave the matter in the hands of the Guardians," but they added a rider to their verdict, asking the Guardians' consideration as to the advisability of continuing the practice of vaccinating children at so early an age. It is to be borne in mind that if children born in a workhouse are not vaccinated before their discharge, they commonly escape vaccination altogether, and the Local Government Board are advised that there is no medical reason against early vaccination in the case of healthy children.
  MR. PICTON: May I ask whether the express consent of the mother was asked, or was the vaccination carried out in the absence of any audible refusal?
  *MR. RITCHIE: The consent of the mother was not expressly asked, but she was informed before the vaccination took place, and she raised no objection. Had she raised an objection the vaccination would not have taken place.

  PRISON REGULATIONS.
  MR. HENEAGEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether there is a discretion vested in either the magistrates or prison authorities in England to absolve persons sentenced to short terms of imprisonment from certain sanitary regulations in reference to dress and haircutting; if so, in whom the discretionary power is now vested, and what are the conditions under which such powers can be exercised; and, whether he will consider the advisability of placing England, Scotland, and Ireland on an equal footing, by giving some discretion either to Visiting Justices or the Governors of Her Majesty's Prisons, on the recommendation of the Presiding Magistrate in cases of summary juris-

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  diction, as to the necessity or advantage of enforcing all the sanitary regulations as laid down by the existing prison rules?
  MR. MATTHEWS: Under the Prisons Act of 1865 no discretion is vested either in the magistrates or in the prison authorities to dispense persons sentenced to short terms of imprisonment from wearing prison dress. With regard to haircutting, the Act of 1865 lays down that the hair of male criminal prisoners shall not be cut closer than may be necessary for the purposes of health and cleanliness. The practice now pursued is that the hair and beard are cut once a fortnight to a length proper to insure cleanliness; but, in accordance with instructions issued by Sir R. Cross in 1879, prisoners are allowed to grow their hair to a moderate length a short time before discharge. I will refer the suggestion as to placing England, Scotland, and Ireland on an equal footing to the Committee which, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, has lately been appointed to inquire into the whole question of prison rules.

  MILITARY BANDS.
  MR. BROOKE ROBINSONasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the principal festival in South Staffordshire for its mining and iron making community are the fetes held annually at Whitsuntide, by permission of the Earl of Dudley, in the grounds surrounding the ruins of Dudley Castle; that these fêtes are of an entirely non-political character, the profits arising from them being applied in support of various charitable institutions; that they have been held continuously for a period of 40 years, the average attendance being about 30,000 persons, and one of the principal attractions having been hitherto military bands; that last year, and again this year, permission has been refused for bands to attend, although this year a memorial upon the subject has been presented to the War Office, signed by the Mayor, Clergy, and other principal inhabitants in the town; that last year the committee of the fêtes supplied the place of a military band by engaging the Hungarian and other bands, which, however, were found unsuited for the locality and concourse of people; and,
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  whether he will bring these facts under the notice of H.R.H. the Commander in Chief, with the view that the withdrawal of the privilege of allowing military bands to attend the fetes in question may be in future re-considered?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: No application appears to have reached the War Office as regards the Whitsuntide Fetes at Dudley Castle; but, considering their importance, as explained by my hon. Friend, any request for the attendance of a military band will have the favour-able consideration of His Royal Highness the Commander in Chief.

  INDIAN MAILS.
  MR. W. S. CAINEasked. the Postmaster General if he would consider the desirability of establishing a. ship-mail for India, for newspapers and printed matter, at a reduced rate by the mail steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company leaving London for Bombay each week?
  MR. RAIKES: As far as I am aware, there is no public demand for any arrangement whereby newspapers and printed matter, could be sent to India by the all-sea route at reduced rates. Weekly newspapers posted for conveyance by steamers leaving the Thames on Thursday or Friday afternoon would, be a week older than those posted on Friday evening for transmission via Brindisi; and. as the papers sent by the all-sea route would lose another week on the journey, they would be a fortnight older on reaching their destination than those sent by the regular overland route, and would thus be practically worthless. Other printed papers can now be sent weekly by the route indicated by the Parcel Post to India.

  THE INDIAN LIQUOR TRAFFIC RESOLUTIONS.
  MR. CAINEasked the Under Secretary of State for India if any action had been taken by the Secretary of State for India with regard to the Resolution passed by the House on Tuesday last?
  SIR J. GORST: The Resolution passed by the House of Commons has in regular course been sent out to India. A despatch upon the subject is in preparation, and will be considered by the Secretary of State in Council as soon as possible.

  THE INDIAN FACTORY ACTS.
  MR. CAINEasked the Under Secretary of State for India whether he was now in a position to inform the House of the decision taken by the Secretary of State with regard to any reform or alteration of the Indian Factory Acts?
  SIR J. GORST: A despatch from the Government of India on the subject has been received. The matter is under the consideration of the Secretary of State in Council, and no unavoidable delay will take place in dealing with it.

  KING EYO OF CREEK TOWN.
  MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir J. Fergusson) whether it is a fact that King Eyo of Creek Town, within the British Protectorate there, was forcibly carried on board a German man-of-war on the 25th of February, and kept on board until certain natives from the German Protectorate of the Cameroons were delivered up; whether any intimation was given by the German Authorities of their intention to take this course, or whether any negotiations with the British Consul preceded this action of the German Commander; and what representations have been made by Her Majesty's Government to the German Government on the subject?
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: Consul Hewett has reported that, at the date of the last mail, he was going to Old Calabar, where these events were said to have occurred, in order to ascertain the facts. Judgment must be suspended till the result of this inquiry is known.

  WAR OFFICE COMMITTEES.
  MR. HANBURY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what public official means of information exist for ascertaining the names of persons serving on War Office Committees, such as those connected with the invention or the supply of arms and other War Office stores; how such Committees are paid, if at all; what official regulations exist preventing Members of such Committees from themselves becoming personally interested, directly or indirectly, in the adoption, rejection, or improvement of the inventions or stores upon which they may be called in to advise the
  1238
  Secretary of State; and whether he will lay such regulations upon the Table of the House, and publish the names of the Members of such Committees quarterly in the official Army List, as the names of other Committees are already published?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: My hon. Friend will find in the Army List the names of the Members of all War Office Committees connected with the invention or supply of arms or of warlike stores, except the Permanent Dress and Equipment Committee at Aldershot and the Small Arms Committee, which was a temporary Committee and has just concluded its labours. The names of its Members are well known. The rules for the payment of Committees will be found in the Royal Warrant for pay and promotion in Articles 243 to 247. Members of the Ordnance Committee are forbidden to take out patents for inventions in any way connected with their duties on the Committee. In the case of other Committees, it is a well understood rule that no Member may have a pecuniary interest in the success of any invention on which he is called on to advise. Any breach of this rule would involve the removal of the Member from the Committee. I shall be very glad to insert in the Army List the names of any permanent Committees that may be appointed for these, purposes.

  BRITISH GUIANA.
  MR. A. PEASE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether any steps have been taken by Her Majesty's Government to carry out their expressed intention of taking into consideration the constitution of British Guiana with a view to its amendment?
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR THE COLONIES (Baron H. de WORMS, Liverpool, E. Toxteth): Her Majesty's Government continue to be of opinion that the constitution of British Guiana should be amended, and are considering the manner in which this can best be effected.

  SCOTCH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.
  MR. HUNTER: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate when "the Minute of the Scotch Education Department to be forthwith laid before

  1239
  Parliament," as mentioned in Sub-clause 4 of Clause 19 of the Local Government (Scotland) Bill, will be in the hands of Members?
  MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: I beg to refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on Friday to a question, put by the hon. Member for West Edinburgh in almost identical terms.

  DISCHARGES OF GOVERNMENT WORKMEN.
  MR. BROADHURST: I beg to ask the Secretary of State of War whether it is true that mechanics who bad left their employment at Woolwich Arsenal, and who had obtained work at the Small Arms Factory at Enfield for the purpose of bettering their condition, have been discharged from Enfield at the instigation of the Woolwich Arsenal Authorities; and, if so, whether he will cause an inquiry to be made to ascertain what justification there is for such action on the part of the officials?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: Five men have been discharged from Enfield for violating a necessary rule of old standing, which requires that a workman shall not leave one of the Government Ordnance factories for the purpose of obtaining work in another without first obtaining the sanction of his superintendent.

  THE IRISH LAND COMMISSION.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when the appeals from the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners in the several land cases on the Charlemont estate in county Tyrone will be heard; and if the Government can take any steps to expedite the hearing?
  *MR. MADDEN: Unless moans are taken this year for expediting appeals, I do not think the appeals will be heard this year.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: What I want to know is whether means will be taken for expediting appeals this year?
  *MR. MADDEN: That is a matter which is at the present moment under the serious consideration of Her Majesty's Government. I am not in a position at present to make any further statement on the subject.

  THE PRICE OF POSTCARDS.
  MR. ESSLEMONT: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether, in view of the saving of £40,000 to £60,000 a year effected upon Messrs. de la Rue's contracts, he is now prepared to reduce the price of postcards to the public; and, if so, from what date the reduction will take effect?
  *MR. RAIKES: I am not yet in a position to communicate to the House the decision of the Government upon the subject of the contemplated reduction of the price of postcards, but I hope very soon to be able to make an arrangement which will, I hope, be satisfactory to the public.

  WALES—BURIAL GROUNDS.
  MR. THOMAS ELLIS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in March last, an application was made by the parishioners of Trawsfynydd, county of Merioneth, to the Home Office for its sanction of a new burial ground; whether he is aware that much inconvenience has arisen, owing to the impossibility of burying the dead in the new burial ground until such sanction is given; and whether the Inspector of Burial Grounds will report upon the ground without further delay?
  MR. MATTHEWS: My answer to the first two paragraphs is in the affirmative. The Inspector will report as soon as he has had an opportunity of conferring as to the suitability of the site with the medical officer of the district, whom he has arranged to meet on the spot.
  MR. T. ELLIS: May I ask whether any burial can take place on this plot of ground without the sanction of the Home Office?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I rather think not.

  IRELAND—CASTLEBAR PRISON.
  MR. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Governor of Castlebar Prison has refused the application of their friends to see those in gaol in default of bail, unless they came to tender security; under what authority has the Governor so acted; and, if he is not justified in his refusal, will he intimate

  1241
  the fact to him in order to prevent the annoyance caused to parties going long distances to Castlebar from other counties, only to find themselves disappointed?
  *MR. MADDEN: I have asked for a report on this subject, but I have not yet received it.

  INTERNATIONAL CODE OF SIGNALS.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade how soon the alterations and additions in the Signal Book proposed by the International Code of Signals Committee will be in print, and will be sent to the Governments of other Maritime States for their approval; and, whether a letter of inquiry, similar to the letter of inquiry on the subject of night signalling, will be issued by the Committee to shipowners and Mercantile Marine Associations to obtain opinions as to the establishment of a system of sound signals to be used by steam and sailing vessels during foggy weather to indicate the course steered, and the limits and most practical way of carrying out such a system?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,): The revised book is being got through the Press as rapidly as possible, and will be communicated to the Governments of Maritime States at the earliest possible date. A letter of inquiry in the sense suggested by the hon. Member has, I find, already been addressed to representatives of the interests concerned, by direction of the Chairman of the Committee.

  COUNTY ALDERMEN AS RETURNING OFFICERS.
  MR. PICKARD: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether it has come to his knowledge that Mr. William Peed, the paid Deputy Returning Officer for the County Council for the county of Cambridge, has been elected and accepted the position of alderman in that Council; whether he is aware of the fact that since such election he has again acted in the capacity of Returning Officer for the same county, and has been paid for such services; and, having regard to Section 12 of "The Municipal Act, 1882," whether it is competent for such
  1242
  a person to hold office as alderman in that county?
  *MR. RITCHIE: I have made inquiry as to the facts, and I find that, as the High Sheriff of the county of Cambridge was desirous of becoming a candidate for the office of County Councillor, the Court of Quarter Sessions appointed Mr. Peed, who was the Under Sheriff, to act as Returning Officer in the election. At the first meeting after the election, Mr. Peed was elected a County Alderman, and since that time he has conducted the election of two new councillors, considering that he was required to do so by virtue of Section 107 (2), of the Local Government Act, which provides that the person acting as Returning Officer at the first election shall act in the like capacity in any election held to fill a casual vacancy before the appointed day. It does not devolve on me to determine whether or not a member of the County Council is disqualified, but I may say that as Mr. Peed was appointed to the office of Returning Officer by the Court of Quarter Sessions, he has not, in my opinion, by reason of that appointment hold any office or place of profit in the gift or disposal of the County Council, within the meaning of Section 12 of the Municipal Corporations Act. With regard to any election to fill a casual vacancy after the appointed day, it will of course devolve on the County Council to appoint the Returning Officer.

  THE SITTINGS OF QUARTER SESSIONS.
  MR. COGHILL: I beg to ask the Attorney General whether he is aware of the great inconvenience that is caused by the practice prevailing in some counties of holding adjourned Quarter Sessions, and that at these adjourned Quarter Sessions there are frequently three or four times more prisoners to be tried than at the regular Quarter Sessions; whether the practice of holding adjourned Quarter Sessions is a contravention of the Act of 11 Geo. IV., and 1 Will. IV., c. 70, section 35, which provides for the holding of Quarter Sessions four times a year; whether he will bring in a Bill this Session to make the times of holding Quarter Sessions uniform in the different counties, to limit the number of such Sessions to

  1243
  four in a year, and to enable the justices to fix the days for holding them at suitable dates immediately before the Assizes are held; and whether, if the Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen of Sessions and Recorders of boroughs are to be called on to do the work which properly falls to the Judges of the Queen's Bench Division, he will provide for their receiving some remuneration for the additional work cast upon them?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir R. WEBSTER,): The information conveyed to me does not support the statement in the question of the hon. and learned Member, that the holding of the adjourned Quarter Sessions has been found to be seriously inconvenient. I have no doubt that the practice is legal and in accordance with the Statutes. The matter is under the consideration of the Lord Chancellor, with a view to legislation for relieving the Judges of Assizes from trying Quarter Session prisoners without the necessity of increasing the number of Quarter Sessions, and I am in hopes that some legislation may be effected during the present Session with that object. It would be beyond my province to deal with the question of remuneration referred to in the last paragraph of the hon. and learned Member's question. There is a Bill pending before the House also dealing with the same subject in the name of the hon. Member for Carlisle.

  TITHES.
  MR. SWETENHAM (Carnarvon, &c.): I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce a Bill this Session dealing with the Tithe Question; and, if so, whether he will introduce it in time to enable it to become law this Session?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (MR. W. H. SMITH,): It is the intention of the Government to introduce a measure dealing with the tithe question, when further progress has been made with the important Bills now before the House.

  TENDERS FOR THE NEW WAR SHIPS.
  MR. BROADHURST: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in inviting
  1244
  tenders for the shipbuilding in connection with the proposed increase of the Royal Navy, the Government will only communicate with such firms who pay the standard rate of wages to the workmen they employ?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord G. HAMILTON, Middlesex, Ealing): The Admiralty see no reason to depart from their usual practice with regard to putting out of the contracts for the new ships, and will invite the firms on the list to tender as before.

  A MINISTER OR DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
  MR. HENEAGE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether there is at the present moment any Minister who is personally responsible for the charge of the interests of agriculture; and when. it is the intention of the Government to make arrangements for the presence of a responsible Minister in the House of Commons, in accordance with the practice in previous Administrations since the establishment of a Committee of Agriculture at the Privy Council Office in 1882; and, whether he will state the names and official position in the Government of the members of the present Committee of Agriculture, and whether they were selected on account of their special knowledge of agricultural questions, or for other reasons?
  SIR E. BIRKBECK: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when he will introduce the long promised measure for the constitution of a fully equipped Department of Agriculture, such as has been recently pressed on the Prime Minister by a deputation from the Central Chamber of Agriculture?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: The Lord President of the Council is personally responsible for the charge of the interest of agriculture, and the Department is at present represented in this House by my noble Friend the Member for Lewisham (Viscount Lewisham). The following are the names of the Members of the Committee of the Privy Council for Agriculture:—The Lord President of the Council, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, the Earl of Lathom, Viscount Lewisham, the Home Secre-

  1245
  tary (Mr. Matthews) and the Secretary for Scotland. Some of these gentlemen were selected on account of their special knowledge of agricultural questions, others in virtue of the offices they hold. I hope to introduce the Agricultural Bill on Thursday or Monday next.

  THE STATE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
  MR. G. A. CAVENDISH BENTINCK: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether there has been communications between the Government and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster relative to the overcrowded state of Westminster Abbey; whether the Government intend to institute an independent inquiry into the subject; and whether Her Majesty's Government will use their best endeavours to induce the Dean and Chapter to forbid the erection of any more statues, busts, or so-called memorials within the walls of Westminster Abbey, and to remove the statue of the late Earl of Shaftesbury from the west-end of the nave to some other position or place?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: Communications have passed between the Dean of Westminster and the Government on the subject to which the hon. Gentleman refers, and I have reason to believe that further representations will probably be made with a view to some inquiry of the nature indicated. My right hon. Friend will probably accept this answer as sufficient for the present.

  PRINTING OF RETURNS.
  Mr. JOHN ELLIS (Notts.,): I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware of the great and growing interval which often elapses between the Order of the House being given for the printing of a Return or Paper and its distribution among Members; whether this often arises from the detention of proofs of the documents in the Public Departments longer than is necessary; and, whether he will cause steps to be taken to ensure the more prompt distribution of these documents?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I would point out to the hon. Member that after an Order has been given by the House for the printing of a Return, it has to be prepared, and some Returns are of so intricate a nature as to require much
  1246
  time for their preparation. If the hon. Member will give me the name of any particular Return which he considers has been unduly delayed by the Department concerned, I shall be quite ready to draw their attention to the allegation of the hon. Member, but it is quite impossible for me to deal with any general complaint unsupported by details.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—REPORT OF SUPPLY.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS (Notts.,): I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will arrange for the "Adjourned Debate on Report of Supply [29th April]," on to-day's Orders of the Day, to be taken at a reasonable hour before midnight?
  *Mr. W. H. SMITH: I will take care that the Report of Supply to which the hon. Gentleman refers, shall be taken at a reasonable hour.
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: The right hon. Gentleman gave a conditional promise that he would give us an opportunity for a discussion on the Report of Supply with reference to the absence of our Ambassador from Paris at the time of the opening of the Exhibition.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I did enter into such an engagement, but I think the hon. Member will own it was impossible for us to report progress on Friday morning as the Vote was not obtained till the last moment. I will endeavour, as far as I can, to meet the views of the hon. Gentlemen, but I think it must be admitted that some sacrifice must be made by hon. Gentlemen, looking to the condition of financial business.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I am very anxious that progress should be made with Supply, but there is a question arising upon the Foreign Office Vote, upon which it is desired to have a short discussion, and if it be inconvenient to bring it on at a late hour tonight, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether he could not take all the rest of the Votes on Report of Supply, and allow this matter to be discussed possibly tomorrow morning.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I will postpone the Foreign Office Vote this evening, at all events.

  ADMIRALTY CHARTS—THE ZAMBESI.
  SIR J. SWINBURNE: I beg to ask the first Lord of the Treasury whether he will have the Admiralty Chart, with the latest corrections on it of the mouths of the Zambesi, placed in the Tea Room of the House?
  LORD G. HAMILTON: I have no objection to have the Admiralty Chart of the mouths of the Zambesi, with the latest corrections, placed in the Tea Room of the House. There have, however, been no recent corrections.
  SIR J. SWINBURNE: Will the noble Lord give telegraphic instructions to the Commander-in-Chief at the Cape to send one of Her Majesty's ships to examine and report upon the navigable channels of the Zambesi?
  LORD G. HAMILTON: A surveying ship, refitting at the Cape, will visit the Zambesi on its way to Zanzibar.

  CUSTOMS—HERB AND GINGER BEER.
  MR. C. GRAHAM: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can promise any relief to the manufacturers of herb and ginger beer from the provisions of the Customs and Inland Revenue Act of 1888?
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I presume that the hon. Member refers to the Act of 1885. Herb beers, which do not contain more than 3 per cent of proof spirit, can be made and sold without any interference. For the security of the revenue it is absolutely necessary to attach a penalty to the selling of any such beers containing morn than 3 per cent of proof spirit. Complaints have arisen in the trade as to the method of enforcing these penalties, and representations have been made to me through the instrumentality of the Member for West Birmingham. In consequence of these representations some changes in their method of procedure have been adopted by the Inland Revenue, which I hope may be satisfactory to the trade.

  ADMIRALTY—SPEECH OF SIR A. HOOD.
  MR. CREMER: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether his attention has been called to a speech reported in the
  1248
  Times as having been delivered at the Institution of Civil Engineers on the 11th ult. by the Senior Naval Lord of the Admiralty (Sir Arthur Hood), in which there occurred the following passage:—
  "He first denied positively that the Navy was in an inefficient state; further, he asserted that the Navy at this moment was in a better state of preparation for war than it had been at any time for the past 20 years,"
  and, if so, whether these statements were made with the sanction of the Board of Admiralty?
  ADMIRAL MAYNE: I beg to ask whether at the same time Sir A. Hood did not say that a large increase of the fleet was necessary to bring it up to its proper relative strength in 1874?
  LORD G. HAMILTON: The two sentences quoted by the hon. Gentleman were used by Sir Arthur Hood, and they merely express what, both in this House and outside, I have frequently before said. They do not refer to the sufficiency of existing naval establishments.

  HALL MARKING OF SILVER PLATE.
  MR. HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has received strong evidence of the feeling of the silver trade that Hall-marking should still continue compulsory; and whether, before any proposal is laid before Parliament to abolish the Import Duty now levied upon foreign plate, he will take care that the trades likely to be affected in their capacity for giving employment to the industrial population at home by the probable increase in the competition of inferior foreign and Indian plate, if the duty be taken off, will have full opportunity of being heard?
  *MR. GOSCHEN: I have received evidence that there is a strong feeling on the part of at least a portion of the silver trade that Hall-marking should continue compulsory. I think that the trades to which the hon. Member refers already have full opportunity of making themselves heard, and that they are, as a matter of fact, making themselves heard in the public discussion which is taking place.

  IRELAND—CHEERING FOR THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.
  MR. CRILLY: On behalf of Mr. Flynn, I beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that at Rathmore (county Kerry) Petty Sessions, on Thursday 11th instant, before Mr. Leonard, J.P., who is Agent to the Kenmare Estate, and Mr. M'Dermott, RM., two men, Daniel O'Keefe and John Moynihan, were charged "with forming part of a disorderly crowd and cheering for the Plan of Campaign," and were sent to gaol for six months in default of giving bail; was there any evidence of disorder other than cheering as above mentioned; has his attention been called to the evidence of the two police witnesses, to the effect that the defendants called for "cheers for the Plan of Campaign and William O'Brien," and to the evidence of the witnesses for the defendants, to the effect that these men were members of the Rathmore Football Club, calling themselves "Blackwater Campaigners," and that having won a football match there were cheers called for and given for the "Blackwater Campaigners;" and, whether, taking the circumstances into account, he will cause inquiry to be made into the case, with a view to the remission or reduction of this sentence?
  *MR. MADDEN: It appears that the men named were summoned under the ordinary law for being concerned with a number of others in disorderly conduct in a public place, and that the conduct in question consisted of forming part of a disorderly crowd who were making a demonstration in favour of the illegal conspiracy known as the Plan of Campaign. The information before me does not furnish details of the evidence of witnesses for the defence referred to in the third paragraph. The Court ordered the men to give bail to be of good behaviour for six months. They declined to do so, electing to go to prison in default. It is open to them to obtain their immediate release by giving this guarantee of future good behaviour.
  MR. CLANCY: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman state what were the disorderly demonstrations
  1250
  which these men were said to be guilty of?
  *MR. MADDEN: On the information before me, shouting in the public streets of the town and cheering in the public streets for the Plan of Campaign. It was a disorderly crowd.
  MR. MAC NEILL: Does the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary now adhere to the statement that no one has been imprisoned for cheering the Plan of Campaign?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): In the first place, no one is in prison, except for the fault of giving bail; in the second place I entirely adhere to my statement, and in the third place I say that the mere fact that a disorderly mob shouts for the Plan of Campaign does not make the conduct of that mob innocent.

  THE GLASGOW BOUNDARIES COMMISSION.
  DR. CAMERON: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether he can yet state when the Bill promised by his predecessor in office will be introduced to carry into effect the recommendations of the Glasgow Boundaries Commission?
  *MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: As the hon. Member is doubtless now aware the Government do not intend to introduce a Bill on this subject. I have been unable to find any trace of such a promise having been made as is suggested in the question.
  DR. CAMERON: I beg to give notice that I will take an early opportunity of calling attention to the subject.

  IRELAND—MR. E. HARRINGTON, M.P.
  MR. JOHNSTON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant whether it is a fact, as stated in some of the morning papers, that the hon. Member for West Kerry, being about to appear before the Special Commission, has expressed his attention to start on his journey in prison clothing, though he is free to resume his usual attire?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As my hon. Friend is aware, for some time past prisoners in a similar position in Ireland have been perfectly at liberty to wear their own clothes. I understand that

  1251
  Mr. Harrington has expressed a preference for travelling in prison clothes, and has expressed a desire to be clipped before coming over.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask whether the hon. Member for West Kerry was not taken through the streets of Tralee in prison clothes?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I presume that was before the new Rules.

  SANITARY MATTERS IN BELFAST.
  MR. DE COBAIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if his attention has been drawn to the serious neglect of the Chief Sanitary Authority of the city of Belfast, which had for years permitted the receptacle for the night soil and filth of the entire population to remain in the centre of the Cromas Ward, and in close proximity to the dwellings of a rapidly increasing population; whether he has seen that this condition of things has been condemned. by the report recently issued by the Chief Medical Officer of the Sanitary Department of Belfast, while the only remedial measure adopted up to the present has been to whitewash the manure heap, that they might be concealed from public observation to some extent; and whether, as this nuisance is closely contiguous to the new bridge to be opened by his Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor during his visit to Belfast, he would request the Local Government Board to call upon the Corporation of Belfast to take immediate steps to remove this nuisance?
  *MR. MADDEN: The Local Government Inspector stationed in Belfast reports that the contents of the manure depot referred to consist nearly altogether of street and road scrapings. The Corporation of Belfast has made repeated efforts to obtain a site for a depot outside the city, but so far without success. Last month the whole subject was under consideration of the Town Council, and in accordance with a report obtained from the Medical Superintendent Officer of Health, steps are being taken to have the contents speedily removed, and to secure that until a suitable place be secured outside the city the contents of the present place be kept as low as possible. The place is also being disinfected with lime.

IRELAND—THE POLICE AT FALCARRAGH—ARREST OF MR. CONYBEARE AND MR. HARRISON.

  MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE.
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES, Member for North-West Durham, rose in his place, and asked leave to move the Adjournment of the House, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz., the conduct of the Police at Falcarragh, and the circumstances attending the arrest of Mr. Harrison, and the prosecution of Mr. Conybeare.
  But the pleasure of the House not having been signified,
  *MR. SPEAKERcalled on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than 40 Members having accordingly risen,
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: I am sorry to have to trouble the House on this question, but I think it necessary to seek some explanation from the Government in respect of what I conceive to be one of the grossest violations of the elementary principles of justice ever known. I am sensible how undesirable it is that matters under judicial investigation should be discussed in this House, and yet no hon. Member will deny that the prerogative of this House does extend even to such matters. Having regard to a most wholesome doctrine, I will avoid discussing the evidence before the tribunal, and will abstain from expressing any opinion on the manner in which the justices performed their duty. I shall exclusively confine myself to information obtained from the pure and undefiled columns of the Times. On the 19th of April there appeared in that newspaper a statement to the effect that the police made another raid upon the houses of evicted tenants upon the Olphert estate who had re-taken possession, and made about a dozen arrests; that an old man, aged 90, was also placed under arrest; that at the house of the widow Coyne, a cripple over 80 years of age, who was in bed, four armed policemen were in the room and two emergency men, and as she refused to go out she was put on a chair and placed. by the roadside. The hon. Member who poses as the agent-general of the landlords of Ireland, the hon. Member for Tyrone, has admitted in his letters to

  1253
  the Times that the tenantry on the Falcarragh estate are in a most miserable and destitute condition. It was under these circumstances that a young man, an undergraduate of Baliol College, Oxford, moved by pity for these unfortunate people, found his way to Falcarragh, and introduced into their houses some loaves of bread and packages of tea. For that, caught in flagrante delicto, he was arrested by the police. Now what I want to ask the House is, what offence Mr. Harrison committed in handing in these loaves of bread, and secondly, what is of more importance, assuming that he had committed an offence, which might be the subject of some civil remedy, what justified the police in arresting him? In amplification of this question, I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman what are the functions of the Royal Irish Constabulary in respect of evictions. I have followed with great care and interest the information we have at various times received in regard to the conduct of the Irish Constabulary at evictions, but, as an English lawyer, and speaking, as I know I do, the confirmed opinion of every member of my own profession, I say without hesitation, that the duties of the police at evictions are confined within these limits: they are entitled to protect the bailiffs in the event of an assault being committed upon them, and in that case to enter a house and arrest any persons who may have committed the assault. That is the sum total of their functions, and I challenge contradiction. I know that my mere statement is no authority, but I have examined the text books in the library, and I hold in my hands a very useful little book, called "The Irish Constabulary Code," issued by Mr. Reid, Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary. In looking through the book I find that Mr. Reid points out what are the duties of the Constabulary at evictions, and he says at page 302—
  "The Constabulary at evictions are not to assist in making a seizure or to do any act connected with handing over to the bailiff the possession of land, and are only to protect in case of violence, and if necessary to enforce entrance for the purpose of arresting those who have committed violence."
  Then, again, I refer to a judgment of Chief Baron Pallas reported in volume 21, page 18 of the Irish Law Times. That learned judge, a fair and high-minded
  1254
  man, although he has no sympathy with the Plan of Campaign, lays down in the most clear and distinct language that the Constabulary have no right whatever to lend any assistance to bailiffs for the purpose of supporting any civil process except to protect the bailiffs from assault, and if necessary to arrest those who commit an assault. Now, I wish to ask the law advisers of the Crown and those who are otherwise legally responsible, what was Mr. Harrison doing that he was arrested by four or five constables, including the head constable? It is idle to tell me that Mr. Harrison has been acquitted. It was the duty of the law advisers of the Chief Secretary, who undoubtedly had cognizance of this procedure, as soon as they discovered that Mr. Harrison had been arrested on such a charge, to order his immediate release. A more gross violation of the elementary duties of the Constabulary than the arrest of Mr. Harrison it is impossible to conceive. But I do not stop there. I find that four armed policemen were in the house of an old woman. What right had they in that house? If they were there to arrest the old woman for an assault I can understand it, or if they were of opinion that the old woman was endangering the lives of the emergency men who were engaged in carrying out the evictions. But according to the Times perfect quiet reigned in Falcarragh, and here again I maintain that the police were guilty of a gross violation of duty. Mr. Conybeare—I presume I am entitled to mention the hon. Member for the Camborne Division by name—has been convicted of having called out "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign." The report in the Times states that the learned magistrates—if they are learned—acted to the best of their lights, and they stated that they conceived the calling out of "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign," constituted an overt act connecting Mr. Conybeare with conspiracy. That is a somewhat startling assertion.
  *MR. WHARTON: I rise to order. I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Member, but I wish to ask you, Sir, whether it is in accordance with the practice of the House for an hon. Member to refer to the circumstances of a case pending legal jurisdiction. The fact is that all

  1255
  the circumstances to which the hon. Member is alluding, will come before the Court of Appeal, and will probably form the charge against the hon. Member opposite before that Court. I wish therefore to know if it is in accordance with the practice of this House, that the circumstances of the case can be referred to on this occasion?
  *MR. SPEAKER: When the hon. Member on a previous night gave his Notice, I thought it my duty to take upon myself the responsibility of saying that I thought, under the then circumstances, it would be indecorous in the highest degree to bring the circumstances under the notice of the House. But to-night the hon. Member has varied the Notice on moving the Adjournment of the House, namely, "For the purpose of calling attention to the conduct of the police at Falcarragh." He now appears to be dealing with another subject, namely, the prosecution of the hon. and learned Member for the Camborne Division (Mr. Conybeare), and I hope I may say I do not think I am travelling out of my responsibility and my proper functions when I say that I do not think the House will sanction any remarks which are likely to prejudice the trial which, though it is over in the first instance, is now the subject of appeal. The hon. and learned Gentleman has asked me whether it is the practice of the House. I am not aware that there has been any definite and distinct expression of opinion on the part of the House that pending trials should not be alluded to. Nor am I aware of any distinct and definite ruling from the Chair, though I am aware of frequent expressions of opinion both from Ministers in this House and other Members with regard to the impropriety of alluding to pending trials in such a way as to prejudice a fair trial of the case. With these remarks I shall leave the subject in the hands of the House.
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: I have no intention of discussing the mode in which the trial was conducted. I say that the charge which was formulated against Mr. Conybeare was that he called out "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign." It may be that it was an imprudent thing to call out "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign." That is another matter; but I will put a hypothetical case. Assuming that there was
  1256
  a conspiracy in existence in which certain persons were known to have assisted. As an illustration let me take the case of what is known as "the long firm." Suppose that some individual were to call out "Three cheers for the long firm," would that be held to be taking part in the conspiracy of the long firm? Would it be an overt act?
  *THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,): Whether there is any Rule of the House or not, I venture to appeal to the hon. and learned Member whether he desires to set up a precedent for discussing the conditions under which a conviction has been given by a Court of first instance—a conviction that has been made the subject of an appeal to a Higher Court. I venture to say, following the remarks that have fallen from you Sir, that such a course has never been taken and is not in accordance with the view of the House. I think that the practice is one that may have serious consequences and that it is, contrary to the course which has been generally followed by the House. [Cries of "Order."]
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: I listened with the greatest respect to what has fallen from the Leader of the House, but at the same time I am bound to say that I do not think the trial of any Irish Nationalist in Ireland is likely to be prejudiced by anything that can take place in this House. Certainly the case of the Crown is not likely to be prejudiced. I have sufficient respect for the judicial tribunals of my own country and Ireland to avoid saying anything that will be derogatory to them. Passing from that I wish to show, as indicating the spirit and temper of the prosecution, what the kind of evidence was which was given against Mr Conybeare—
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member is now entering into a matter which is clearly irregular, and I cannot say that it is one which constitutes a definite matter of urgent public importance. The hon. Member is mixing up two distinct matters. He moved the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of calling attention to the conduct of the police, and now he is going into the question of the prosecution of a Member of this House. These are two matters that should be kept

  1257
  perfectly distinct, and they are not both covered by the notice given to the House.
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: If you, Sir, had borne with me a little longer you would have seen that I was alluding to the conduct of the police. The police stated that Mr. Conybeare had cried, "To hell with Mr. Balfour." I do not believe that my hon. Friend did use such an expression. Those who knew Mr. Conybeare well knows that he is incapable of using such an expression.
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member is distinctly violating the Rule I have laid down.
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: Then I will abstain from commenting upon any of the evidence which was brought before the Magistrates on that occasion. There is, however, another matter to which I wish to call attention, and which is of great importance when we consider the mode in which justice is administered in Ireland. It is reported that Mr. Conybeare during his visit to Falcarragh was subjected to an odious system of police espionage. Members of the constabulary followed my hon. Friend about, with note books in their hands, and wrote down every word he uttered in private conversation. They acted as eavesdroppers when he visited private houses, and I want to know by what legal authority or statute they are entitled to follow the humblest of Her Majesty's subjects from house to house and take notes of what he says? Under the controlled and restricted conditions with which I have been able to bring forward the Motion, I think I have a right to demand some satisfactory explanation from the Chief Secretary and the law advisers of the Crown of the action of the police. It is not a question of the administration of the law for the purpose of preventing acts of violence. No doubt, the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to enforce all the machinery of the law in order to preserve law and order in Ireland, but in this instance the action of the police has been far more calculated to lead to disorder. Possibly we shall hear the right hon. Gentleman denounce the disorder which exists in Ireland, and arraign the conduct of the people in resisting the entrance of bailiffs and emergency men into their houses. But that is not the
  1258
  point. The point he is called upon to address himself to is whether it is within the legitimate functions of the police to establish a reign of terror in Ireland. I say, with a perfect conviction that I am speaking the truth, that it is a perilous thing for any English Member of Parliament who is in sympathy with the Home Rule Party to visit any place in Ireland where evictions are pending and, speaking personally, having regard to my professional duties, I am free to confess that I should hesitate for a long time before I followed the example of my hon. Friend. All the authorities have to do is to prove that there has been a conspiracy in existence, and then haul any hon. Member before a magistrate and accuse him of being a party to it. You may call that firm government of Ireland, but to my mind it is infirm government, equalled only by that which has been found to exist in countries which do not enjoy the blessings of Constitutional Government. It is not the law of the realm, but of irresponsible police officers, and an equally irresponsible magistracy. I desire to see the law of the country properly vindicated, but I appeal to independent Members on both sides of the House to say whether the course which is being pursued by the Government in Ireland is not one which has analogy only in the acts of Turkish Pashas and Bashi Bazouks.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. Atherley-Jones.)
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,): If an illustration were wanting of the inconvenience of discussing matters which are pending before the Courts of Law of this country I think that such has been furnished by the speech which has just been addressed to the House. Although the hon. Gentleman did not discuss the events in detail, yet he did state to the House the nature of the charge as it presents itself to his mind, on which the hon. Member for Camborne is arraigned—a statement with which I cannot concur. But I shall not discuss that point, nor enter into it at all. The hon. Member asks by what authority and by what law the hon. Member for Camborne was shadowed by the police

  1259
  during his visit to Falcarragh. It has been a common practice not only in Ireland, but in this country for the police to obtain evidence in this manner. The Court in the first instance has decided that during his presence in Ireland the hon. Member for Camborne broke the law. If there is any reasonable ground for believing on the part of the authorities that any person is engaged in an undertaking which involves a breach of the law, it is not only within the right and lawful for the police, but it is their duty to obtain all necessary information by all lawful means—[An hon. MEMBER: "Yes, lawful means."]—which may be necessary for the purpose of ascertaining certain facts. Will any hon. Member get up and state that the means used by the police have been unlawful? ["Certainly."] Then let the illegality of what is called shadowing a person and watching his movements be tested; but I maintain that the practice is lawful. I submit that if the authorities in any district have reason to suppose that any person is present for the purpose of offending against the law of the land, they are bound to adopt all reasonable means of obtaining information as to his proceedings. The hon Member is in error as to the presence of the police in a house which I should call the landlord's and not the tenant's.
  *Mr. ATHERLEY-JONES: The house to which I referred was the house of Widow Coyne, an old cripple over 80 years of age.
  *MR. MADDEN: If that to which the hon. and learned Member referred is not the house in respect of which Mr. Harrison was arrested, I fail to see the pertinence of his remarks in regard to the Motion. But still, if the hon. Member thinks anything tends on this point, let him put a question down on the Paper and I will cause inquiries to be made.
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONESI obtained my information from a report in the Times of the 18th or 19th of last April.
  *MR. MADDEN: I surely cannot be expected to carry in mind full details as to all occurrences that have been reported from time to time in the public Press. If the hon. and learned Gentleman wishes to ascertain the facts, let him put a question down on the Paper,
  1260
  and then I will get any information in my power. Now, Sir, I will pass to the portion of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman which dealt with the case of Mr. Harrison. I presume that the House is aware that that gentleman was acquitted by the magistrates of the charge of committing, the acts which he did commit in pursuance of an illegal conspiracy. I will, venture shortly to recapitulate the facts with regard to Mr. Harrison's arrest. Certain evicted tenants on the Olphert estate had re-taken possession, forcibly or otherwise, and were in unlawful possession of the houses from which they had been evicted. It was alleged and. proved before the magistrates that there existed on that estate an illegal conspiracy to defeat and frustrate the action of Her Majesty's Courts, and that in two ways—first by violent opposition to the execution of the process of eviction, and secondly by unlawfully returning after execution of the writs to the houses from which they had been evicted. Both these facts actually occurred. Fierce resistance was made to the execution of the writs, violent assaults were made on the police, an Inspector was seriously injured, and. rendered insensible. After the execution of the eviction, the resistance to the law took the form of re-taking possession of the premises. It might be a question whether the possession thus taken was not violent and forcible, and therefore a criminal offence. But at any rate, it cannot be disputed that the evicted tenants were in unlawful possession. Now it came to the knowledge of the police that a visit had been paid by several gentlemen to the houses which had been re-taken possession of by the evicted tenants, and on that occasion Mr. Harrison did what has been euphemistically described as administering relief to a starving people; in other words, he selected out of all the people of the districts as the objects of his bounty the inmates of houses who had returned and were in unlawful possession of those buildings. When the House remembers that it was proved before the magistrates that there was a conspiracy among these people to defeat the execution of due process of law, and that the people unlawfully returned into possession of their houses in pursuance of this conspiracy, the case wears a very different

  1261
  aspect, and is totally different from the suggestion that Mr. Harrison was a young gentleman who had only gone over there to relieve distress. Mr. Harrison was guilty of what I will only characterize as a thoughtless act. He did not realize the consequences of what he was doing; he did not realize that instead of relieving distress he was accumulating distress and misery. That is why I venture to characterize his action as thoughtless. Evil is wrought by want of thought. Still, Mr. Harrison was acquitted by the Court of the charge of having acted in pursuance of the conspiracy which I have described. He was not arrested by the police for what is described as the distribution of charity. He certainly was arrested and was put in prison. But why? Because, Sir, when the police pointed out to him that the persons he proposed to relieve were resisting the law, and asked him for his name and address, he did not comply with their request.
  MR. CONYBEARE: That is not true.
  *MR. MADDEN: That is what was sworn at the trial.
  MR. CONYBEARE: And I say it is not true.
  *MR. MADDEN: It was sworn to at the trial of Mr. Harrison. At all events, whether ho gave his address, or whether he is under the impression that he did, it did not reach the police, and that is the material point, and therefore the fact that he was arrested, and not summoned, is due to the fact that the police could not get his name and address, the police had no alternative than to arrest him. What occurred afterwards? When Mr. Harrison was arrested and taken before the magistrates for what the police believed to be an illegal offence, the magistrates offered to release him on bail, but he deliberately, in open Court, refused to give bail. That may be right or wrong, but the offer of bail having been made to Mr. Harrison, he cannot complain of being imprisoned when he declined to give bail, and deliberately preferred to go to prison.
  SIR HORACE DAVEY: I think the House is indebted to my hon. and learned Friend for having brought this subject forward, because we cannot too often impress on the House and the country the extent to which Ireland at the present time is police-ridden. So
  1262
  far as my knowledge and information goes, there is no better example, no more flagrant instance of what I do not hesitate to call the illegal action of the police than their conduct with respect to the Falcarragh evictions. Now, Sir, we have been told, and I intend absolutely to accept your ruling, that we must not refer to a case which is sub judice; but, Sir, the Crown having thought fit to try Mr. Harrison and the hon. Member for Camborne together on a charge for conspiracy, I am nut to be precluded from discussing the case of Mr. Harrison because part of the evidence given against him was also given against the hon. Member. There is one point I desire there shall be no mistake about, and that is that the prosecution of Mr. Harrison was undertaken by the express directions of the authorities at Dublin, as was stated by the learned Gentleman who conducted the prosecution on behalf of the Crown. It seems to me, Sir, that the Government has been overriding and trampling on the most ordinary liberties of the Irish people. At any rate, in this case they have succeeded in making themselves ridiculous, because anything more absurd than to prosecute Mr. Harrison on a charge of entering into a conspiracy with a number of persons whose very names he had never heard of, and for acts which were done while he was still pursuing his studies at Oxford, could hardly be conceived. With regard to the act for which Mr. Harrison was arrested, what happened, as appeared from the reading of the evidence, is perfectly plain. Mr. Harrison called on the tenant inside the house to open the door; the door was put ajar, and he threw in a loaf of bread, and for that the heavy machinery of the law of conspiracy is called down, and Mr. Harrison is arrested for alleged forcible entry. He was also charged with aiding and abetting in the frustration of the law, which is a new criminal offence to me. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite has made a most unsatisfactory answer to every one of the questions asked by the hon. and learned Member for Durham. Since when I ask him again was it a crime by statute or common law to give a loaf of bread or a packet of tea or of cakes to a starving man who is committing a civil offence? Suppose the people in re-taking possession were,

  1263
  committing a trespass, what statute, English or Irish, makes it a crime to give them a loaf of bread or a packet of tea? By what law, or by what right, are the police entitled to lay siege to a house of which possession has been retaken by the tenant and to try to starve him out by blockade? It appears to me that in this case they formed a cordon round the house, more or less perfect, and prevented people from approaching it. Both in the south·west of Ireland, and more particularly in Donegal, the police seem to be under the impression that they may do whatever they please. I have read the evidence of a policeman that he gave passes to the people to enable them to get through the cordon of the police. That was wholly illegal and unjustifiable. It was perfectly preposterous for the Crown to institute an action for conspiracy against Mr. Harrison and to try to connect him with acts done three or four years before, when he was a boy at school or at college. But that is what was done, and it naturally followed from committing the administration of so delicate a law as that of conspiracy to Resident Magistrates. The thing from which more mischief has come than from any other is the withdrawal of such actions from the decision of a jury. If the law of conspiracy is to be administered by magistrates, we shall have to alter the law. The only thing which makes it tolerable in this country is that it is administered by a jury. Now, Sir, one more point, and I will sit down. The hon. and learned Gentleman gravely said and challenged the House to contradict the statement that it was lawful for the police to shadow a man, note-book in hand, if they believed he was about to do an unlawful act. I do not believe because the police thought the hon. Member for Camborne was going to cheer for the Plan of Campaign that they were entitled to follow him about like a shadow. When Mr. Harrison was arrested he was cheered by the crowd, and according to the report in the Times the crowd were charged by the police for so cheering, and the Inspector of Constabulary said it was a scandal to cheer a prisoner. But if the police arrested persons like Mr. Harrison I fear I shall be guilty of the scandalous conduct of giving those persons a cheer.
  *MR. JAMES LOWTHER: It may appear very presumptuous for a layman to join issue with an ex-Solicitor General on a point of law. But, Sir, I am emboldened in this instance to make that attempt because I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman's eminence at the Bar has not been attained by personal attention to such trivial matters as Police Court prosecutions, otherwise I think he would have known that what he has laid down as indisputable law is without a shadow of foundation; in fact the hon. and learned Gentleman has lent the weight of his great authority to the astounding doctrine that the police are not justified in keeping out trespassers from houses of which illegal possession has been taken.
  SIR H. DAVEY: The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. That is not what I said. I said I was not aware of any law which enables the police to besiege a house and form a cordon about it to starve those in possession.
  *MR. J. LOWTHER: The hon. and learned Gentleman went a good deal further; he asked what right had the police to prevent people from entering those houses? That position taken up by the hon. and learned Gentleman, I am glad to think, after fuller consideration, he deliberately repudiates. Then he went another step further still, and said the police had no right to follow about, note-book in hand, as he put it, persons whom they choose to think are objects of suspicion. I venture to say, Sir, that no person who has had a share, however humble, in carrying out the law can deny that the police are justified, if they believe any person is engaged in acts likely to bring him into conflict with the law, to see when and how any breach of the law occurs I do not consider that I or anyone else would be justified in detaining the House by referring to the action of a Court of Law; there has been too much discussion of that kind already of late, which has largely brought discredit upon those who have indulged in it. I will, therefore, merely content myself with saying that the police in the matter referred to have discharged their duty, and in the like circumstances I hope they will do precisely the same again.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I do not think I should be justified in wasting the time of the House by replying to any of the comments which we have just heard from the right hon. Gentleman, and which seem to me to prove only this—that a right hon. Gentleman may occupy one of the highest positions in connection with the Government of Ireland without his legal knowledge being such that even the Lord Lieutenant could satisfy himself of it, I presume no one will contradict me when I say I am probably the only Member of the House who can place in the possession of the House the actual facts which are at present under discussion. [A laugh.] Hon. Members opposite laugh as they usually do when matters are being discussed of which they are strangely ignorant. I happened to be present with my friend Mr. Harrison during the whole course of the proceedings for which he was arrested and imprisoned, and after my friend Mr. Harrison was arrested I carried on his work with my friend Mr. Benson. I am not going now to touch upon the actual charges of which I stand condemned, as I do not for one moment presume to anticipate the appeal that will be heard later on in my own case; but I trust I shall not trespass upon forbidden ground if I place before the House the facts as stated in Mr. Harrison's case. Stripped of their legal verbiage, the charges against us amounted to this—that we had, by giving bread to Mr. Olphert's starved and besieged tenants on the night of the 16th of April, aided and abetted them in connection with the Plan of Campaign and also in the holding of forcible possession. The first charge applied equally to Mr. Harrison and myself, and if he was acquitted upon that charge so of course must I have been. The other charge, with respect to the holding of forcible possession, broke down, I imagine for two reasons—in the first place, because the very persons who were accused of having held forcible possession were not even proceeded against by the Crown when their cases came on, and secondly, because, as I conclusively proved to the magistrate by the citation of English authority, to prove the holding of forcible possession it is necessary to show that there was actual violence, as to which not a shred
  1266
  or little of evidence was advanced. I mention these matters in order to bring out as strongly as possible the point that so far as the Plan of Campaign, as an illegal criminal conspiracy, exists on the estate, and I am not going to deny that it does exist—so far as it exists, and so far as we were in any way whatever either by giving bread or otherwise assisting, cheering, and comforting the starved and downtrodden tenants of Mr. Olphert, we were guilty of a charge of which Mr. Harrison has been acquitted, and of which I to-day stand condemned. The only other evidence on which the Crown was able to make out a case against me at all was that I, for the distinct purpose of—
  *MR. SPEAKER: I am bound to say that the hon. and learned Member is now referring to his own case.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I want to distinguish between the exact charge against myself and the charge against Mr. Harrison, of which that gentleman was acquitted. I do not propose to discuss now the question of the cheering of the Plan of Campaign. That was the charge againt me as contradistinguished from the charge preferred against both Mr. Harrison and myself, and on which one was acquitted, while the other was found guilty. I only want the House to distinctly understand that so far as we were charged either jointly or severally with promoting and aiding and abetting the Plan of Campaign the evidence of the bread giving upon which we were prosecuted was the strongest that could be brought forward. Now so far as I am concerned the House, knows that I had nothing to do with originating the Plan of Campaign on the Olphert estate. It was originated at a time when I was travelling in South Africa, when Mr. Harrison was living in England, and when Mr. Benson was travelling in the United States. On Friday the 12th of April I was performing my duties in this House, and I left on that evening for Ireland. I had never at that time either met or heard of either Mr. Harrison or Mr. Benson. I reached Falcarragh on the 14th of April, and it was on the evening of that day that the only act took place on the part of the tenants which could be construed to be anything in connection with the Plan of Campaign. The tenants on that evening went back to the houses from which they

  1267
  had been evicted during the previous week.
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! I am reluctant to call the hon. Gentleman to order, but he is not now discussing the conduct of the police. The hon. Gentleman is clearly defending himself against charges which may be said to be pending against him.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I have not the least intention of defending myself. I defended myself before the Magistrate, and I suppose I shall have to defend myself before the County Court Judge. I am content to await that time. Now, as to the control of the police, the first thing I desire to allude to is the system of espionage which is adopted in Ireland. Now the Solicitor General for Ireland stated that it was a common fact that I was breaking the law.
  *MR. MADDENsaid that he had said that the Court of First Instance had held the hon. Member guilty of breaking the law.
  MR. CONYBEARE: You first assume a man is guilty of something, then, for the purpose of making him guilty, you set spies to shadow him and track him everywhere, and take down every word he may say, and then, when that course of action is called in question, you say that the police were perfectly right because he was found by the Magistrate to have been guilty of something. The hon. and learned Gentleman assumes that I was only followed by the police after they had some idea I was taking part in an illegal conspiracy. That is not the explanation given by the police authorities on the spot. It is not their practice to wait to know whether a man is doing that which is illegal before they shadow him and track him out. Several English ladies and gentlemen complained of the inconvenience to which they were subjected, and Mr. Divisional Commissioner Cameron said to them, "You must understand that this country is in such a condition that strangers must be watched to ascertain if they are respectable, and not Members of Parliament or others coming to incite the people to crime." These are the words of this Pasha who had autocratic control of the whole of the managements of the police and military in Falcarragh at that time. I have here the notes of the evidence of Sergeant Kenny of Falcarragh. This officer in
  1268
  cross examination said it was his duty to know who stopped in the hotel and in every house in the district, including Mr. Olphert's house itself. He added, "I saw Captain Butler and Mr. Russell were there. I heard that Mr. Russell was an Irish Member of Parliament. I did not see he was respectable." The hon. Member for South Tyrone must be glad to receive a certificate of respectability from Sergeant Kenny. The officer went on, "I set my men to watch whether they are respectable or not. There are many persons coming into the district whom I did not set my detectives to follow." The fact is that at this moment such is the police intimidation in Falcarragh, such are the daily irregularities and illegalities practised by the authorities there, that it is not at all surprising that they should go beyond what we, as English gentlemen, have a right to claim as their duty in setting spies to track out everybody who may come into the district. But there is further evidence on this point. Two ladies—Miss Chapman and another lady—came to Falcarragh during the last few days I was there. They were tracked and insulted by the police; and, therefore, it is idle for the Solicitor General for Ireland to get up and say it was in the fulfilment of their duty that they followed me, because they recognized in me a dangerous person and conspirator. The irregularities of the police have infected the emergency men, for Armstrong, an emergency man, stated that his instructions were to interfere with English ladies and gentlemen and representatives of the Press whom he saw walking about. He added, "They were in a lane when I ordered them away and took their names." It is monstrous that ladies and gentlemen from England should not be able to talk to these poor wretches, who are being turned out of their homes by Mr. Olphert, in order to ascertain the facts, and to refute the libels and false statements which are being spread by the family of Mr. Olphert and the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell). That is what we complain of, and I very much mistake the feelings of the people in this country if they will not resent, in the highest degree, an interference with liberty, even in Donegal, without the slightest provocation. At this moment there is

  1269
  no crime in Donegal except that which the police, and the emergency men, the riflemen, and the landlords' men generally, choose to commit. Falcarragh is not in a disturbed condition, save for the riotings of the riflemen and police who roll about the streets in a drunken condition at all hours of the night and day, making a most disgraceful exhibition of themselves, and actually insulting and assaulting English gentlemen, as they did in the case of Mr. Harrison, without the slightest reason. But it is not merely a question of the action of the police in the particular matter which has been most prominently brought under the notice of the House. We complain of the illegal action of the police in other respects. We complain of the police authorities, deliberately, by a petty dodge, getting hold of the houses from which these poor people have been evicted. They have done this on the pretence of hiring them from the landlord's agent. It was unearthed in the course of the recent trial that one day, after the people had been turned out of their homes, the emergency men, and the landlord's agent, and Mr. Cameron, and other police officers went round. The police authorities asked the agent if this house and that house were to let, and, on being assured by the agent that they were, Mr. Cameron said, "I will have this house and that house at 1s. a week as a police barrack," and at once installed some half dozen constables in them. So fearful, however, were they of the consequences of the exposure, that a few days later the police were hurriedly turned out of the houses. Then I will take another point. The police in this country are supposed to be employed for the purpose of defending the property and lives of poor and rich alike, but in Falcarragh, as no doubt in other parts of Ireland, the police regard their duty as strictly limited to the persecution of poor people. What do they do if a petty larceny takes place? They positively decline to institute any inquiry. I affirm without hesitation that if the police in Falcarragh would only apply themselves to their proper duty of protecting the poor people, as well as protecting Mr. Olphert, against intrigue and crime, there would be less disturbance, and less call for any of the coercive practices in which the Chief
  1270
  Secretary delights so much. I should like to give one or two illustrations of what I consider illegal action on the part of the police. Inspector Herd swore in this case that he arrested persons before he had got warrants. I want to know by what right police arrest persons, break into their homes, break in the doors with hatchets at five o'clock in the morning, and turn out women and children without warrants. Has it come to this, that there is no protection whatever for the poor people against these illegal malpractices of the police? I think these facts need to be blazoned abroad throughout the land to show to what an odious extent the Government have travelled in their illegal coercive progress throughout Ireland. These police are not content with doing what I have described, they are deliberately aiding and abetting the emergency men in wholesale destruction of the tenants' property. It is all very well to say the house belongs to the landlord; it is not so with the fittings and furniture. We might argue that the walls of the houses in some cases were built by and are the property of the tenants. But the furniniture of these poor people was thrown out and wantonly smashed—cooking pots, tables, spinning wheels of the women—every article of furniture was pitched out and maliciously destroyed. Day after day, evening after evening did I hear complaints from the tenants, days after the evictions, of how the emergency men, protected and assisted by the police, had been going into these poor people's houses, tearing down the roof and rafters, tearing up the flooring, taking away every particle of timber they could find to the police station for firewood. Two or three nights ago one of the tenants described to me how his house was gutted in this fashion, and how the police and emergency mere hurled a great rock against a partition dividing two rooms, shattered it, and the timber was carried away by one of the Olphert carts to the police barracks. I went to the barracks afterwards and saw the remnants of the partition thus wantonly destroyed. It is bad enough if the emergency men do these things, but we do not expect the police to aid and abet the landlords' agents in such proceedings. I have full particulars of the assault on Madge McGally, felled to the ground by a policeman's baton.

  1271
  I saw the wound on her head from which she suffered for many days. Again, there was the case of Neil Doogan of Ballinish, not the man of the same name who has just been imprisoned, whose wife was assulted by an emergency man, and yet Mr. Cameron would take no notice, although Mr. Harrison swore an information against the emergency man whom he saw strike her. Mr. O'Brien also, the member for Monaghan, swore he saw an emergency man strike her on the breast with his closed fist, and a serjeant of police saw it too, but beyond pulling the emergency man away would do nothing. Such assaults as these are countenanced by the police, and it is right they should be brought clearly before the people of this country. I do not want to unduly prolong this discussion, but a great deal might be said in connection with the terrible scenes of suffering we have witnessed at Falcarragh during our stay there. I think at any rate these specimens of the illegal actions of the police we have adduced demand some explanation from the Government, and amply justify my hon. Friend in making his Motion. I am sorry that the fact of my appeal has prevented him from taking a wider and larger view of the question, for I think it is time the whole of these transactions should be clearly and vividly brought before the country, and the sooner the better. At any rate, I have endeavoured to place these few facts before the House, not because they are the only facts by any means, but because they are some of the more sober facts, and indicate the state of police terrorism that exists from one end of Donegal to the other. It is idle for the police to attempt to frighten Englishmen from going there. They may bring charges of conspiracy against me and others, but I hope that the English people will not be intimidated from going to Ireland to see for themselves the facts of these cases. That is the intention of the Government and the Police, for Mr. Mackay, the Crown Prosecutor in the case against myself and Mr. Harrison, wound up his remarks by an insolent threat against visitors appealing to the Magistrates from such a sentence as would not only deter us from continuing the duties we considered were enforced upon us, but which would also frighten other
  1272
  English people from visiting that part of Ireland. It may suit the Government to try and frighten away English people; the Chief Secretary may think his black deeds are best done in darkness without witnesses, but, at any rate, some of the truth shall be known throughout the length and breadth of this country. It is because discussions of this kind are, perhaps, the most efficient means of bringing the facts to the notice of the people of England through the Press that I rejoice the hon. Member has brought these proceedings at Falcarragh before the notice of the House.
  *MR. BRADLAUGHI cannot help thinking the Government must feel that they, and they alone, are responsible for the discussion which has taken place this evening. What is the case, about which there is no doubt? The police, thinking they were following the instructions received from the right hon. Gentleman and those whom he trusts, and evidently not wrong in so thinking, from the statement made to the House by the Law Officer of the Crown, took on themselves to prosecute a gentleman named Harrison, under charges worded in the gravest language, of which the only overt act, the only act attempted to be proved, was, that Mr. Harrison had offered food to the people whom it is alleged had re-taken possession of the holdings which had been theirs. That is a matter upon which the House can judge. It stands to the country, that in Ireland it has become an offence, an offence which warrants the police in summarily arresting an individual, that he should have given bread or food to a man whom the Government consider criminal. How long has this been a criminal act in England or in Wales? If this man had been a felon, and his felony undoubted, since when under the common law, or under the statute law, has it been an offence warranting arrest, to give him food? I submit it is a monstrous proposition. There must be a perversion of all ideas of justice in the land, a distortion of all legal principles, or no policemen would be such idiots as to take action in such a fashion, and no law officer would be mad enough to endorse what they had done. The learned Solicitor General speaking with reference to the watching by the police,

  1273
  said, if it be alleged to be an illegal action, it could be tested; but how can it be tested? By what process? If I have spies set upon me, unless I can prove conspiracy against them, by what process known to the law can I take action against them? If the spying that is pursued is such that I can allege that it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace, it is possible I can make some summary application, but short of that what action can I bring, what indictment would lie? How can it be tested? The way in which it is tested is that there is a series of provocations which sometimes end in resistance, and then the police use force with great brutality on one hand, and send the unfortunates to gaol on the other hand. There can be nothing more shocking than the state of feeling existing among the police at Falcarragh as shown by the conduct of these prosecutions. The Solicitor General says the act of Mr. Harrison was a thoughtless act, but thoughtlessness is hardly criminality. The law officers in Ireland, who had the same opportunity of judging the nature of the act as the magistrates, instead of treating it as a thoughtless act, for which Mr. Harrison might have been subjected to a warning, treated it as a criminal act for which the man was prosecuted on a grave charge of conspiracy for which he might have been sent to gaol for six months. If this was a thoughtless act then it should have been so recognized by the hon. and learned Gentleman's colleague in Dublin, and the proceedings should have stopped short at the unfortunate action of the police, and the prosecution by the law officers should not have been added. It is unfortunate that we should occupy our time in this House discussing proceedings which have taken place in Courts of Justice, but it must not be forgotten that these Courts of Justice are special Courts of Justice created for the express purpose of dealing with special kinds of offences never known before, and manufactured solely, both the Courts and the offences, by a Statute drawn by the right hon. and learned Gentlemen who now have the enforcement of it; and these Courts of Justice have been so constituted as to lay them open to the gravest suspicion, the magistrates and police acting together; and magistrates chased out of
  1274
  one country for conduct unworthy of honourable men have been considered worthy to sit and sentence men to gaol on charges of having broken the law. I have no wish to occupy time, but I desire the country should understand why I vote for this Motion for Adjournment, if it should be carried to a Division; that it is a new thing that the giving of bread to a man, however wrong that man might be, however criminal that man might be, is to be made an offence for which the giver might be sent to gaol, and still more do I vote for the Motion when the man to whom the bread was given is admitted to have been a wretched starving tenant, who had crept back to his own homestead, from which hard times and hard conditions of life had driven him.
  *THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I should have preferred to have given way to the right hon. Gentleman, because my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General having spoken, nobody else on this Bench has the necessary knowledge of details in reference to matters that have occurred in Donegal to enable him to reply. But as the right hon. Gentleman prefers, and I think wisely, to speak after me rather than before me, I will not interfere with his wishes. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down appears to have entirely mistaken the ground on which the Government object to discussions of proceedings pending in Courts of Law. It is not that the Government fear publicity and discussion. What we object to is the sort of maimed discussion which necessarily occurs if hon. Gentlemen are allowed to raise topics in the House in regard to pending proceedings, and which we are not allowed to reply to because the matters are still sub judice. You, Sir, have had occasion three or four times to call hon. Members to order for trespassing on matters not relevant to the Motion, and which had close connection with matters still under consideration by Courts of Law, but though stopped from going into details, that did not prevent them from making insinuations against the Government with regard to such matters as the cheering of the Plan of Campaign—insinuations which are freely made use of in controversy outside the House, and which hon. Mem-

  1275
  bers no doubt think will find their way into the Press if repeated in the House —but to which I am precluded from replying by the ruling of the Chair. That is the reason, and the only reason, why I object to this discussion. Personally, I like discussions on Irish matters. It is not when Parliament is sitting, but when it is not sitting, that I am afraid of the speeches and criticisms of hon. Members. They may say what they like when I am able to reply to them; but it is the reckless and irresponsible utterances on platforms where there is no one acquainted with facts to answer them that I objected to; not to utterances in this House. So far as the Irish Government are concerned, I can assure the hon. Gentlemen we have no objection either to the number or the character of the debates they may raise in the House, provided always they are debates into which we can enter freely and not with our hands tied by the circumstance that they concern matters still to be determined by a Court of Law. Two very eminent legal authorities appear to me to have made strange blunders in their law in the course of proceedings this evening. The ex-Solicitor General uttered a good many sentiments on the criminal law which I think, though I speak most humbly, showed that he is not so intimately acquainted with that branch of legal procedure as he, by universal acknowledgment is with other and more difficult branches of the law. The hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to think that it was a peculiarity of Irish law, administered by the present Government, that a man cheering a prisoner should in any circumstances be regarded as guilty of an offence. I recommend the hon. and learned Gentleman, when a suitable occasion offers, to go at the head of an excited crowd and cheer by name some prisoner coming out of Bow Street. I think I can promise the hon. and learned Gentleman that under the English Law he might find himself brought very summarily before the magistrates, and if it could be shown that his conduct was likely to lead to a breach of the peace, or to bring the law into contempt, I may also promise him that the magistrates will not take a very lenient view of his offence. So much for the hon. and learned Gentleman. I go now to
  1276
  another eminent legal authority. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh), though not technically learned, has a large experience in these matters, and he appeared to regard it as being contrary to law to interfere with any man who supplies bread to a person guilty of an offence. The hon. Member asked under what law in England or Ireland could it be illegal to supply bread or the necessaries of life to a man, even if he be guilty of a criminal offence. Giving bread by itself, of course, is not an illegal offence in Ireland or anywhere else, but giving bread for the purpose of assisting a man in committing an offence is, I apprehend, an offence against the law both in England and in Ireland. Is that proposition denied?
  *MR. BRADLAUGH: My point is that no case is known to the English Law in which the giving of bread to a criminal, either before or after committing a crime, is held to be an offence.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I distinctly traverse the statement just made. I repeat that I do not believe there is a lawyer who will contradict me when I say that to give bread or anything else to a man for the purpose of enabling him to break the law, is an offence against the law in every civilized country in the world. This brings me to the conduct of the police in arresting Mr. Harrison. Mr. Harrison was acquitted. The magistrates took a lenient view of the circumstances and acquitted him.
  MR. CONYBEARE: The magistrates said the Crown had not made out their case. [Cries of "Order, order!"] I rise to order.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member has no right to interrupt, and should not continue his remarks when I am standing and calling him to order. Mr. Conybeare on a point of order.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I only wished to correct a wrong explanation of circumstances within my knowlege. The magistrates distinctly stated in their judgment, not that they were taking a lenient view of the case, but that the Crown had failed to prove their case. That was on the charge of having given bread to those poor people, enabling them to break the law which, the right hon. Gentleman says, is both in this country and in Ireland an illegal offence.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not know what the hon. Member considers the interruption in order; he makes a fresh speech when I was not referring to him, directly or indirectly. I take it that it is admitted, or not denied, that the law of the hon. Member for Northampton is bad law. (No, no). Well, I will leave to those of a contrary opinion the opportunity to maintain it, and come to what I may call the ethics of the case. Was the constable justified or not in arresting Mr. Harrison? We must assume that Mr. Harrison was innocent, because he has been acquitted. But was there a primâ facie case for the arrest? The whole body of tenants who had been evicted on the Olphert estate in January, by one consent, when the hon. Member for Camborne appeared on the scene, retook forcible possession. [No, no]. Well, illegal possession of their houses. In so doing there could not be any doubt that they were acting apparently in concert for the purpose of setting at naught the decrees of a competent court. No one denies that. Mr. Harrison appeared on the scene and proposed to give bread to one of the tenants who had acted in this illegal manner, and he, in the opinion of the police, did so for the purpose of enabling the tenant successfully to carry out that illegal operation. Has that fact been denied by Mr. Harrison? The allegation is that Mr. Harrison acted purely from charitable motives. I do not doubt that Mr. Harrison is probably a young man of charitable instincts and wishes, but his charity in this case was of a very selective character. Did Mr. Harrison give bread to any person who was not engaged in the illegal proceedings? Was this part of a general charitable scheme to relieve poor tenants in that part of Donegal? Is there anything in the behaviour of Mr. Harrison or his friends and associates which would lead the policemen to believe that Mr. Harrison was actuated by purely charitable motives. The policeman warned Mr. Harrison that his action was illegal.
  *MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: How?
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am not traversing the action of the Court; I am only saying that the policeman hada primâ facie case, and that is all that is required to justify him. The police-an told Mr. Harrison he was acting
  1278
  illegally, and asked him for his name. Mr. Harrison refused to give his name.
  MR. CONYBEARE: No.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: He did refuse to give it, and it was only on his refusal to give his name that he was arrested and taken before the magistrate. The magistrate suggested that Mr. Harrison should be let out on bail, but Mr. Harrison having taken for his guide, philosopher, and friend the Member for Camborne, the Member for Camborne advised him not to give bail. That was nobody's affair but Mr. Harrison's, and neither the police, nor the magistrates, nor Her Majesty's Government are to be held responsible for the advice which the hon. Member for Camborne chose to give his friend. The only imprisonment, therefore, which Mr. Harrison suffered was because he was fool enough to take the advice of the hon. Member for Camborne. I have every hope, however, that as Mr. Harrison grows older he will grow wiser, and if he chooses his associates with care his course through life may be an honourable and a useful one, and we can only sympathize with him in this case because his openly expressed wish for martyrdom was not gratified. The hon. Member for Camborne is deeply indignant because of the espionage, as he calls it, which the police are alleged to exercise over strangers travelling in disturbed parts of the country. That formed the main part of his speech to-night. He stated that one police officer deposed on oath that it was the practice of the police to observe the behaviour and physiognomy of any person who came into the country, and if he did not look respectable they followed him, and the Member for Camborne was naturally indignant that after that definition of the duties of the police, he should have been followed himself. Is the hon. Member really of opinion that where there is an illegal conspiracy of a serious kind going on in a country, which has led to wide-spread disaster, to the injury of the police themselves, as well as of the tenants and landlords, and where the police are of opinion that persons of influence coming in the country—because in Donegal the mere fact that a man is a Member of Parliament is still supposed to give him character and influence—that such persons have either for their object, or as

  1279
  a necessary consequence of their action, the furthering of an illegal conspiracy. I will put it to the hon. Member himself whether the police would not have failed in their duty if they had not made it their business to watch the proceedings of such persons. If the hon. Member, or any Member of this House, thinks I am going to suggest that the police went beyond their duty in this case, I can give them no such satisfaction. The police did their duty, and they would have been wanting in their duty if they had done anything less than what they have done. In speaking of the attacks made upon the police, may I remind the House that these men are carrying on most difficult and critical work in a country practically in a state of revolution. I observe no less than three right hon. Gentlemen opposite eagerly taking notes of that observation, with the obvious intention of using it for their own purposes. I am grieved to interfere with their benevolent purposes, but if they bad given me half a moment to explain, I should have saved them the trouble of making the notes. What I said I adhere to. I say that the part of Donegal we are dealing with is in a state of revolution. [Cries of "No; that is not what you said."] Who has made it so? An hon. MEMBER: You have made it so.] The Plan of Campaign has made it so. ["No; the battering ram."] The allies of the Members who introduced the Plan of Campaign have made it so. But I do not think right hon. Gentlemen opposite need be agitated about the result. Even in this particular Falcarragh district the worst times are over. The disorder, an unfortunate disorder, which has reached during the last few months almost the point of revolution, is in process of being brought to an end, although if anything could promote the continuation of that state of things, it is the openly-expressed sympathy which Members of this House give to an illegal conspiracy, by moving adjournments of this kind we have heard, and by supporting them by their speeches. Hon. Members may perhaps think that they are merely criticizing the action of the magistrates or of the policeman.
  MR. MACNEILL: No, your action.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I tell you that you are in fact throwing the whole weight of your political reputation and of your great name upon the side of disorder and upon the side of conspiracy. You are fostering it, and if you are not fostering it knowingly your ignorance, at all events, is culpable. I have often defended the police before, from what I deemed to be unjust attacks, but I say without hesitation on the present occasion, that while I do not believe the police of Ireland have ever been more unjustly accused, so they have never had a more difficult task to perform than has fallen to their lot during the last three months in this corner of Donegal. They have performed their task, I believe, with the greatest regard for law, with the greatest temper, and the greatest discretion. They have performed it under extreme difficulties, and I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member who opened the debate for this, if for no other cause—that he has given me an opportunity of publicly stating in this House my high opinion of their conduct.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The right hon. Gentleman seems to have been very much surprised that I should desire to want to hear what he had to say in defence of the Irish Government on this subject. I must admit that I never heard a speech from the Minister who was to pacify Ireland, except with admiration of the spirit which he brings to bear upon the task of pacification, and when the Minister who every month has pacified Ireland gets up and states in the House of Commons that it is in a condition of revolution—
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I noticed the note which the right hon. Gentleman was making of my statement, and I took occasion to correct it at the time. Perhaps he will allow me to correct it again. I did not say that.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Well, Sir, I will recite in the presence of the House what took place. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the country was in a condition of revolution, and when he saw that a note was being taken, he tried to get out of it and said it was in a corner of Donegal.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As the right hon. Gentleman has represented me as saying one thing with a particular meaning and immediately afterwards

  1281
  perverting that meaning, perhaps he will allow me to point out that, from the context of my observations, of which he took a note, that must have been my meaning. I was discussing and defending the conduct of the police in a particular barony of Donegal, and it was that barony alone to which I referred.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I shall be very happy to settle with the right hon. Gentleman whether I am to speak before him or to follow him, but I hope that we shall not pursue the inconvenient practice of both speaking together. I prefer now to refer to what the right hon. Gentleman said, and not to what he meant. The House has heard what the Chief Secretary said, but he has now got down to a revolution in a barony. Let us then proceed to consider who is the author of that revolution in a barony, and how far the barony is justified in the course it is taking. This is the line which it now appears the right hon. Gentleman is desirous of taking upon this subject. There was another reason why I waited, I did not expect the person who was going to answer my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stockton (Sir H. Davey), would be the Chief Secretary for Ireland. There was another Gentleman sitting by him, the Solicitor General for England, who I thought would have been called upon to answer the legal portion of my hon. and learned friend's remarks. But the right hon. Gentleman, bold as brass, prompted by the Solicitor General, ventured, with that courtesy with which he usually treats the House, to speak of the blunders in law of the hon. and learned Member for Stockton. Now, Sir, we have had curious law laid down by the Solicitor General for England before now, and we have not found that his first-hand law is very good, but I venture to say, that his second-hand law, frittered through the Secretary for Ireland, is the most arrant nonsense. That is my reply to the statement of the Secretary for Ireland as to the blunders in law of my hon. and learned Friend, the Member for Stockton. If the Solicitor General for England is prepared to maintain the ridiculous proposition of law that we have heard from the mouth of the Secretary for Ireland, let him have the courage to get up himself and make the statement in the presence
  1282
  of many hon. Members of the House who are in a position to refute it, and not prompt the Secretary for Ireland to make the extraordinary statements we have from him. Well, Sir, putting aside all this bluster of the right hon. Gentleman, and considering that the charge made against the hon. Member for the Camborne Division is one of illegality and outrage, the only answer the right hon. Gentleman has attempted has been couched in the language of insult and insolence. That is my opinion. An answer more insolent I have never heard. But we had a curious interlocutory address from the Leader of the House, who, although a little out of order as I thought, informed us that it has been the universal practice of the House never to refer to legal proceedings that were pending. The right hon. Gentleman's memory has failed him on this occasion. One of the most memorable debates which ever took place in the House of Commons—a debate in which its greatest members took part—was on a question of legal proceedings which were pending. In the great debate which occurred in 1844 Mr. Macaulay, Serjeant Wilde, (afterwards Lord Truro), and Lord J. Russell took part, and condemned the conduct of a Court of law in the O'Connell case while an appeal was pending in the House of Lords. We are now approaching a period when such rules of debate as may be necessary for the protection of the liberties of the people are growing narrower and narrower. I shall say nothing myself in regard to the legal proceedings pending in this case. I will only point out that what the right hon. Gentleman supposes to have been the practice in former days was exactly the opposite. What was the charge which the Secretary for Ireland was called on to meet, and how has he met it? It is said that the conduct of the police was oppressive, irregular, and illegal in this barony of Donegal. How has the right hon. Gentleman met that charge? What is it the police are said to have done? First of all an objection has been taken to the watching by the police of people upon insufficient grounds. What is the peculiar and ingenious defence offered by the Solicitor General for Ireland? He is a very careful man, and he laid down the law correctly. He said "If

  1283
  you think it is likely that a man is going to committ an illegal act, why then you may watch him." That was the doctrine still more particularly laid down by the right hon. Gentleman the member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. J. Lowther). If you think a man is likely under some circumstances to cheer for the Plan of Campaign, the police, according to my right hon. Friend, are justified in watching him and going into a house after him. Will the Solicitor General, will the Home Secretary say that these are the instructions to the police in England? There is going to be a public meeting about this day month somewhere near Epsom Heath and my right hon. Friend may be present. Other persons will be there who may reasonably be suspected of being likely to make illegal bets or to enter upon some gambling games prohibited by the law. Is it the doctrine of my right hon. Friend or of the Solicitor General that the police should begin to watch those men at once and to enter houses wherever they go? And yet that is the doctrine which is to cover the action of the police in Donegal. The doctrine is perfectly monstrous. Everybody knows that if the police were allowed to do such things in England the whole country would be in a state of revolution. That is the first allegation, and I venture to say that the answer which has been given to it is absurd. What was the case of Mr. Harrison? Mr. Harrison was arrested for giving food to certain people. The Secretary for Ireland, prompted by his adviser, says that these people were guilty of illegal acts. But the Solicitor-General for Ireland did not say that. These men had been evicted; they returned to their houses at night. They were in the position of a person taking illegal possession perhaps upon a claim of title. The men may have committed a trespass, but they were guilty of no criminal act at all. Why, then, should the supplying of them with food be treated as an act for which a man is to be arrested? Suppose that a man returns to an empty house from which he has been evicted, and that a publican sends him a mutton chop and a pot of beer, is the publican to be arrested for doing so? Such a proposition would be perfectly ridiculous when it came to be examined by the light of the facts.
  1284
  Would the Solicitor General for Ireland maintain for a moment that a publican who sent in meat and drink under such circumstances was guilty of an offence? Then, if there be no ground for the assumption that an offence had been committed, what becomes of the case? It is the fact, no doubt, that at this moment there exists in Donegal a reign of terror deliberately created by the Government. The method the Government have followed has been to tell the police to do what they like, and the Secretary for Ireland will defend them in this House—per fas aut nefas. That is enough to make a revolution in a. corner of Donegal or anywhere else. That is a course which the English police would not be allowed to take for a day. What is the object with which this policy is pursued? There is a way in which peace may be made in Donegal as elsewhere, namely, the way in which it has been made already by the hon. and learned Member for Hackney. But is that the object of the Government? No, Sir, the object of the Government appears to be that which is described in the letters which we have read, and which I must say I read with indignation and disgust—from the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), who is calling on the landlords to root out these tenants, and is calling on the Government and rich men in England to subsidize the landlords in Ireland in order that that may be accomplished. That is their policy. It is sought by these illegal and brutal acts on the part of the police to trample down the combinations by which the tenants seek to defend themselves, instead of looking to a policy of conciliation and to arbitration—which might have been had and which would be had if the Government desired it. On the contrary, they have determined, as between landlords and tenants, to encourage that war to the knife which the hon. Member for South Tyrone is always preaching between the two classes, and it is on that account that I say that in my opinion, by encouraging the police in Donegal, they have brought about in this barony that which the Secretary for Ireland has described as a revolution.
  *MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I am not a lawyer, but there is one point which I think has been over-

  1285
  looked in this House in regard to the case that has been raised. The charge against the tenants was a charge of retaking forcible possession, and that, I apprehend, is a criminal proceeding, and therefore the police very properly held that Mr. Harrison was aiding and abetting a criminal action. No doubt Mr. Harrison was acquitted and these people were only declared to be in illegal possession, but that much, I think, may be said regarding the action of the police in the matter. I am not going to enter into the law, but I do know something of the common sense and the facts of the case. The Member for Derby has read my letters with indignation and disgust. Well, I am quite content that it should be so. I can inform the right hon. Member for Derby that a good many people read his speeches with indignation and disgust. Now, Sir, there is no use in hon. Members accusing me of going to Donegal as the agent of the landlords. It would be more becoming of them to refute my statements in the letters which have been referred to. What I venture to submit is that there is not a single paragraph in my letters to which a successful answer has been made in this House or in the Press. My case is simply this. The hon. Member for the Camborne Division talks about the police watching English visitors in Falcarragh. During the week I was there I met English tourists driving in every direction and speaking to tenants without any police interference whatever. On Sunday, April 14, the houses were taken possession of, and hon. Members should mark that the retaking of possession is part of the Plan of Campaign. Possession was not retaken by the tenants evicted in January, but on the 14th April the hon. Member for Camborne division and Mr. Harrison arrived, and the houses including those from which the tenants had been evicted in January were re-occupied. The hon. Member for Camborne and Mr. Harrison complained that they were viewed with suspicion. Well, did not their action constitute fair ground for suspicion on the part of the police that they were encouraging the Plan of Campaign? If they were going about the district cheering for the Plan of Campaign can they complain that the police regarded them with suspicion as associated
  1286
  with the Plan? Did any one of the Gentlemen concerned, except the Member for Camborne, ever cross the landlord's threshold? Not one of them, except the hon. Member, made any attempt to get the facts from the landlord, to investigate what the rents were, what the valuation was, or any of the circumstances of the dispute. They were content to take the facts as they got them from the authors of the Plan of Campaign. If I was not followed I, at any rate, made no overtures to the police. They were at perfect liberty to follow me if they chose. I did nothing that I should object to have written on all the walls of every town in England. If the police did not follow me I suppose they came to the conclusion that they might be more usefully employed. It is also said that the emergency men insulted English visitors. When I attempted to go upon certain lands—those of Bernard M'Nulty—an emergency man stopped me, as he had a perfect right to do. I went off the land when I was ordered off, and an English tourist has no better right than myself to be on such lands. This district of Donegal has been for months in a state of agitation. I have done my best to get at the facts. I have gone to the landlord, to the tenant, to the authorities, and tried to find out where the equities lay. I should have been glad if the Motion for the Adjournment had been made, not upon the arrest of Mr. Harrison or the hon. Member for Camborne, but with the object of getting the whole of the facts out upon the floor of this House, and if that were done it could be proved conclusively that the equities are entirely with the landlord, and I could have shown that the tenants have in many instances been compelled to go into the Plan, that the rents are not only fair, but in some instances excessively low.
  *MR. SPEAKER: The remark I have made to other hon. Members would apply to the observations the hon. Member is making as to the Plan of Campaign on a particular estate.
  *MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I have just finished, Sir. I should have welcomed, I say, such an inquiry on the floor of this House instead of that which is now being made.
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I do not perceive that

  1287
  Her Majesty's Government have any intention to favour the House with their views of the law as affecting the questions that have been raised, but I confess I consider the subject so important that I have thought it absolutely necessary to take an accurate note of the circumstances of the case. I generally regard such Motions as this of the hon. Member for Durham with prejudice, but having listened to the speech of the hon. Member and to the debate which has followed, I thank him for having made the Motion, and I thank your, Sir, for having confined the discussion within its proper limits, so that we know the points we are discussing, and are not led to deal with far wider questions which undoubtedly it would have been within the prerogative and power of of this House to deal with. The case stands thus: The Secretary for Ireland has described not the whole of Ireland, but a particular portion of the country, as being practically in a state of revolution. I did not understand the right hon. Gentleman to apply these words to the whole of Ireland, but I did understand that the words were applied to something more than a particular barony—a contraction of limits which by degrees he ultimately achieved. But I beg to observe that the right hon. Gentleman did not take sufficient note of my industry in marking down expressions that I thought material—an industry which I have exerted on former occasions rather to the disssatisfaction of the right hon. Gentleman and the Government, and which I exerted this evening when the right hon. Gentleman said the Plan of Campaign had devastated not a particular barony, but the entire country side.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear.
  MR. GLADSTONE: That view is interesting when it is brought into comparison and contrast with the vaunting speeches made by organs of the Government, on all occasions when it appears convenient, with respect to the manner in which they have put down disorder in Ireland and re-established peace and comfort among its people. But now I go to what I deem a more important declaration of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman has said that the police on this occasion did no more than their duty. But this is exactly what was said in the case of
  1288
  Mitchelstown when the action of the police was illegal, and when nobody committed any illegality but the agents of the Government, and when that illegality of the Government resulted in the loss of three Irish lives. I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that there has begun to be perceptible in the action of the police on certain occasions in Ireland and in certain districts a tendency to excess and aggression and illegality which is deeply to be lamented, but can not be wondered at, because the police take their tone from the speeches of Members of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman has laid down the law for us all, he has expounded what is an offence and what is not an offence, has found fault with one, at least, of the most eminent lawyers in the House for gross blunders of law, and has given the House a still higher idea of the extravagant conception which the right hon. gentleman has formed of his own knowledge and ability in the department of law. Then the right hon. Gentleman was compassionate upon the youth of Mr. Harrison, and said that when Mr. Harrison grew older he would grow wiser, and indicated the point of age at which it might be expected that Mr. Harrison would exhibit the same kind of wisdom and the same kind of modesty which the right hon. Gentleman himself exhibits every time he speaks in the House. I will not taunt the right hon. gentleman as to the possibility—for it is a supposition so extravagant that I hardly dare venture to state it—the possibility that he, too, may grow a little wiser with age. It would be almost an insult to a man of his superhuman endowments to express such a hope, and I will pass on to the general case and to the doctrines which the right hon. gentleman has laid down. We have a right to look to the Executive Government as the guardians of our lives and liberties. In the first instance the Judicature of the country is the power to which we have recourse and in which we have confidence, but we have a right to look also to the Executive as the guardians of private personal right and liberty. I do not think that any impartial man can have listened to the debate to night without arriving sorrowfully at the conclusion that liberty in Ireland, as affected by the Government

  1289
  and its immediate agents, does not enjoy the guarantees that belong to it in England. To talk of equality of rights is a mockery. To talk of the impartial administration of the law as between man and man is going in contravention of the plainest facts of the case, and the doctrines which are laid down by the Government as applicable to Ireland are doctrines which they dare not for one moment preach or attempt to enforce in England, in Scotland, or in Wales. With respect to Mr. Harrison, the hon. Member who last spoke ingeniously added a point to the defence made by the learned Solicitor-General for Ireland. Mr. Harrison did no act of force, and none is alleged against him. He did not enter the house of which the evicted tenant had retaken possession. The door of the house was opened to him, and he placed a loaf inside. For so doing, and after refusing to give his name, Mr. Harrison was arrested, and that arrest was justfied by the Chief Secretary. Now I want to know whether this is the measure of British liberties or not. The Chief Secretary and the Government have been challenged to say under what law that arrest is justified. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, said, and the Member for South Tyrone undoubtedly said, that a criminal act had been committed by the tenants in retaking possession. The forcible retaking of possession would, under the Crimes Act of 1887, be a criminal act. The Member for Tyrone said that was the charge. But that was not the charge. The Solicitor General made no such charge, but said that possession was illegally retaken. The learned Gentleman did not say that possession was forcibly retaken. In that case the offence was a civil offence, and the giving of the loaf in aid of a civil offence was nothing more than a civil wrong. Thus, upon the issue of the Government themselves, this gentleman was arrested and treated as a prisoner because he had aided in the commission of a civil wrong, or done an act subsidiary to aiding and abetting a civil wrong. Would any man doing precisely the same thing in England be arrested? And, again, I ask under what statute or on what principal of law it is that a person doing an act which taken at the worst is but the aiding and abetting of a civil wrong is liable to be
  1290
  laid hold of by the police and carried off in confinement before a magistrate. Sir, this is the doctrine of Her Majesty's Government as it stands before us. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman opposite has embraced the whole question and found no difficulty. He is always ready to lay down the law, whatever case may arise. From the stores of his legal learning the right hon. Gentleman can always produce declarations of principle which will cover everything. Then the hon. Member for Tyrone has taken the emergency men under his protection and made a complete answer to the charge against them, of which the Government took no notice. But the hon. Member has misstated the charge made against the emergency men. The charge was contained in the declaration of the emergency man himself that he turned visitors out of the lane and off the common footpath. That was deemed unworthy of consideration by Her Majesty's Government. Of course, they are not responsible for the conduct of emergency men; but these men are acting under the protection of the Government, and I should like to know the opinion of the Government on the conduct described by the emergency man himself. Then there is another case of which the right hon. Gentleman has not taken the smallest notice. It has been asked, what right had the four policemen to be in the cottage of the old woman? She had three emergency men to confront. Were they so desperately afraid of that old woman? She was the only force they had to face. The Government have given no answer to that question. The House is entitled to know whether the police were or were not justified in finding their way into that cottage when there was no probability of their meeting resistance. These events involve the revival of a controversy which was settled 50 years ago, in the time of Mr. Drummond. It had been the practice of the Irish police to execute civil process, and it was a constant occurrence unhappily—most common and habitual in Irish history—that the agents of the law in the course of their employment continually committed breaches of the law. In the time of Mr. Drummond it was determined that the police should take no part in evictions, except in the case of violence actual or immediately apprehended. This is a

  1291
  recurrence to the old doctrine. An old woman, and nobody else, was found in the house, and if it is a recurrence to the old doctrine that it is the business of the police to be made the agents of evictions, then I can only say that we have gone back fifty years under the present Government in the application of administrative principles to the Government of Ireland. Now, one word with regard to watching, or "espionage" it was called, it appears to me most properly and most accurately. Those who defend the espionage by the police upon the hon. Member for Camborne have said—"Surely under such and such circumstances it was their duty to do watch." It is not a question of mere watching; it is a question of following up, of invading his privacy, of listening to his conversation, of taking down his words of conversation, of permitting no communication with any person except in the view of the police, who record all his words. Why was the term "espionage" invented if it was not to describe such a process as that? For that process the Government have no words except the words of praise. And all this is to be done, not under the authority of a responsible officer or Minister, but of a common policeman, who thinks, not that a crime has been committed, even in the sense of crime under the Crimes Act, but that a certain person is in the view of this policeman likely to commit a crime. Upon that presumption in the mind of the man this offensive process is established. with regard to which I can only say that such pranks could not be played by the police (except in Ireland) upon any Englishman of spirit, without considerable breaches of the law, and without summary punishment of such gross impertinence and such monstrous iniquity. I am taking these matters entirely as they occurred in debate; I do not pretend to pronounce a final judgment upon them. Inspector Herd—I rather think he was acting on his own authority—breaks open the house at five o'clock in the morning, and arrests the inhabitants of the house, or a portion of those inhabitants, without any warning. The right hon. Gentleman heard that statement, and he did not think it worthy of the smallest notice. It is covered by his declaration that the police have done no more than their
  1292
  duty—that the police did no more than their duty in breaking open the house at five o'clock in the morning without a warrant, and arresting the parties inhabiting the house. Sir, I say it is time that the people of England began to look to their own liberties if doctrines such as these are to be practised. This we can say, that such doctrines will not be unnoticed, but shall be proclaimed before the world both in this House and out of this House. I have endeavoured to describe the position taken up by the right hon. Gentleman in regard to these points. I say we have a right to expect of the Government that in putting down illegality they shall use legal means. And I say this, that the speeches of right hon. Gentlemen, and the conduct of the Irish Government through its police, are marked by a sad indifference to private rights and to the liberties of the subject. They proclaim themselves the promoters of law and order, but they are themselves amongst the most dangerousfoes to the tranquillity of the country as well as to the loyalty of the people.
  *THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir E. CLARKE,): Mr. Speaker, the charge which the right hon. Gentleman brought against the Government in his closing sentences, is, and is meant to be, a grave and serious charge. He has charged the Government, in dealing with these affairs in Ireland, with not stopping at the use of illegal measures, and says that in disregard of public law and private right, it carries out the work which it has set before it. It is a grave charge, for which there is not the smallest shadow of foundation, and the defence which my right hon. Friend has made for himself and for the Government of Ireland this evening is a defence that rests upon the law, and is justified by the law. He did not go one single inch beyond the law of this country, as well as of Ireland, in the defence which he made of the action of the police in Ireland. The tight hon. Gentleman has complained that no English lawyer from this Bench has spoken early in the debate, in reply to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman who represents Stockton. Well, Sir, I was responsible for the speech for the moment being left without answer. I confess that I did not think it worth while. I do not

  1293
  think it worth while. The hon. and learned Member is not very familiar with the criminal law, although no doubt he is one of the greatest lawyers in this country in certain departments of jurisprudence. The honorable and learned Member for Stockton made a speech which was not directly referable in many of its parts to the Irish question. With regard to the details of what has taken place in Donegal, I am not of course familiar, and I thought it was not desirable, so far as I was concerned, to speak at once in a debate which I hoped would come back into a more legitimate channel of discussion—the discussion of that which actually took place at Donegal. I noted that one part of the honorable and learned Member's speech was directed to the question of the law of conspiracy, and he proceeded to say that it was an outrageous thing that Mr. Harrison should be arrested and charged with conspiracy, and that there should be given in evidence against him the speeches of men whose names he did not know, and acts which were committed when he was not in the country. The conspiracy, far reaching in its mischief, has existed in Donegal for a long time. A man comes into it who has never known any of the actors in it before, who has heard nothing of its details, but if he has a knowledge of that conspiracy, and of the aims and objects to which it is directed, and of the history of its progress, and knowing the purposes of those who were the movers of the conspiracy, joins them in endeavouring to carry those purposes into effect, he is as much guilty as if he had been associated with the original foundation of the conspiracy. And the hon. and learned Member for Stockton knows that, I dare say. The only question that has to be dealt with is this. Did the person know the nature of the organization to which he was giving his co-operation, and knowing that was he taking part in that organization, and working towards its purpose? The other two points of the hon. and learned Member's speech referred, one to the giving of a loaf of bread, and the other to the police following about. Now, as to the giving the loaf of bread, it has been said in this House, that the giving of a loaf of bread is a criminal offence by the law of Ireland? My answer is that it is. The giving of
  1294
  a loaf of bread as an act of charity to a person simply for the purpose of relieving that person's hunger is an act which nowhere would be a criminal offence; but a loaf of bread given to a man in order to enable him to carry out an illegal and a criminal purpose is in itself an illegality, and a crime according to the law of England; and according, so far as I am aware, the law of every civilized country—[Sir H. DAVEY: Would a jury convict?] Would a jury convict? Is that the way in which the hon. and learned Member for Stockton proposes to discuss legal questions in this House? To pretend to discuss it at first as if he were a lawyer dealing with a question of law, and then to turn round and say, "Well, if he were a criminal you could not get a conviction." It is elementary in criminal law that it is an offence to give food to a felon for the purpose of enabling him to escape from justice, after he has committed felony, and if you know that the felony has been committed. Here is a book, handed me by my hon. Friend—"Blackstone's Commentaries," in which it lays down that a man is accessory who gives food, shelter, or victuals for the relief of a felon; or gives the felon assistance, or furnishes a horse or the means of escape, or uses violence to assist his escape, makes him accessory [Sir H. DAVEY: A misdemeanour.]. There are no accessories in misdemeanours as is pretty well known. Everybody who takes part in a misdemeanour is himself a principle misdemeanant. And if it were an offence on the part of these people—[What people?] Hon. Gentlemen do not understand the form of my answer. If it were an offence on the part of these people to occupy these premises, then it was an offence on the part of any person to supply food to them for the purpose of enabling them to carry out that object. It would have been a misdemeanour, and it would have been aiding and abetting in that misdemeanour. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt) is very anxious to attract my attention. I will pay attention to him at once. He has chosen to make an observation in this House, and he repeats it in almost every speech he makes outside, with regard to the "Solicitor General's law." He is always mentioning the word "licens-

  1295
  ing;" he is so proud upon the question of licensing, and he thinks the Solicitor General so wrong. I cannot go on to say that he thinks himself so right, because he did not venture to express any opinion. I have a very accurate recollection of an amusing incident on the occasion of the debate on the licensing laws. I hope I may be forgiven for mentioning it, but a case was pending with regard to licensing. ["Order."] Very well, I will keep that, and I am sure that some day I will have the opportunity of answering the hon. and learned Member. Now, the other matter was with regard to the following about. It has been said, is it conceivable that it is the atrocious principle of our law that any police-constable, because he imagines that a person may at some time or other commit some sort of an offence, may follow him about here, there, and everywhere. If there is a man whom those who are in charge of the public's peace and order believe to be upon a criminal errand, then it is not only their right but their duty to protect public interests against the crime which they have reason to apprehend. It is in every case a matter of degree. It is not because a man is going to commit some trifling misdemeanour that the police will follow him about everywhere. But if a man comes into a district such as we are dealing with in Donegal, whomsoever he may be, if the police have serious reasons for believing that his presence would light up the dying flame of mischief or disorder in that place, it is their right, and it would be their duty to watch where he went and what he did, and to make themselves acquainted with such exhortations as he gives to the people upon whom his influence may be exercised. One other point has reference to the cheering of of prisoners. I commend to his attention the suggestion of the Chief Secretary that he should try the experiment, when prisoners are being transferred from Bow Street Police Station to the police van, and when a crowd of the prisoners' friends and associates are about, of raising a cry in favour of one of those prisoners, and he would find that he would undoubtedly be seized by the nearest policeman and taken into custody and charged either with attempting a rescue, or with using language tend-
  1296
  ing to provoke a breach of the peace Now, there are other matters mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman with which I cannot pretend to deal. They are matters connected with the details of these affairs in Donegal. He wants an explanation with regard to Inspector Hurd; he wants an explanation of the statement as to emergency men having threatened people and turned them into the public road. He wants an explanation as to the four policemen being in the old woman's cottage. With regard to these statements I believe there is no information in the possession of my hon. Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland or of my right hon. Friend. I believe we have no information with regard to them, at all. The hon. and learned Gentleman will see that I am speaking with regard to two matters of criminal offence—one the forcible retaking possession of this property, and the other was the conspiracy to defeat the action of the law and the jurisdiction of the Court by concerting action for the retaking of this property. That was the charge made, and whatever else may be said, there can be no doubt of this, that when. Mr. Harrison was arrested for refusing to give his name and address, he was taking part, so far as anybody can see, in an action which was then believed, and alleged to be, a criminal action. Mr. Speaker, I have dealt as briefly as possible with these different points. The reason for my rising was that I did not desire at all to leave the matter without giving my best support to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary with regard to this subject. These questions of law that I have dealt with are the subject of doctrines, of rules and canons among us, which amply justify my right hon. Friend in the contention he has made to night. I repudiate the charge that the Government in Ireland or elsewhere has resorted to illegitimate means, or has in any respect strained the law, in order to carry out its purposes; but I do claim that it has used the law for the purpose of protecting the liberties and the interests, the true interests, of the people; and I think this House will agree that when it has courageously taken that course it is only doing right in defending here, as my right hon. Friend defended, the men who have loyally and faithfully served it.

  1297
  The House divided:—Ayes 153; Noes 250.—(Division List No. 96).

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  NAVAL DEFENCE BILL.
  SECOND READING.
  Order for second reading read.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Mr. Speaker, it is very refreshing after the heated excitement of an Irish debate to fall back into a discussion which only involves an expenditure of £10,000,000 and which is always conducted in a calm and quiet fashion. I respect those gentlemen who devote a great portion of their time and energy to inducing foreign countries to decide their differences by arbitration, and I trust that the seed they are sowing will produce, some time or other, a plentiful crop. But we must look on the actualities of the day. We have not yet reached the millennium. At the present moment the continent of Europe is one great armed camp, and I agree that we ought to provide for our safety by being ready to pay a fair and reasonable amount of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day called fiscal insurance. But we ought to limit the burden of this fiscal insurance to what is sufficient for our safety, and not expend under the guise of fiscal insurance a large amount of money for offensive as well as defensive armaments. I have never known an armament proposed or a war undertaken which was not styled defensive; and in fact, to speak of the proposed increase in the Navy as defensive is as futile as the language of the Chief Secretary for Ireland when he spoke of his battering ram as a defensive weapon. The past history of the nation, which is a long record of meddling and annexation, justifies the people in placing no confidence in the declared defensive policy of a Government. In every war we have undertaken during the last three centuries we have meddled in matters which did not concern us, except in the case of the Spanish Armada, and then that was really a retaliatory attack upon us because of the depredations we at that time committed upon Spanish commerce. During the last forty years
  1298
  the country has spent, irrespective of the normal Budgets, £100,000,000 in useless wars. I have no confidence in the present Prime Minister, who is not a man likely to rise above the traditional folly and wickedness which has characterized this country in its relations with others. I thoroughly distrust him. Many distrust him in his home policy. I assure them they would do well to distrust him equally in his foreign policy. Two years ago he was writing despatches all over Europe imploring the European powers to join in a crusade against Russia, and to put Alexander of Battenberg on the Throne of Bulgaria. Again, we find him indirectly assuring Italy that if she would join in what Prince Bismarck called the League of Peace we would, under certain circumstances, aid her. And at the present moment what is a portion of our fleet doing? It is, at the demand of Bismarck, nominally preventing slaves being introduced into a portion of Africa, but in reality it is protecting German arms while they are destroying the property of British citizens. Yesterday a great function took place in France to celebrate the centenary of the States General. Where was the British Ambassador? He was not there. When France makes a great effort to maintain the peace of the world, we withdraw our Ambassador, and we ask for augmentation of the Fleet. The Times is regarded as the official organ of the Government, and therefore it is important to see how the Times met this proposed augmentation of the fleet. What did the ally or confederate of the Government say? On the 7th of March it said:—
  "The Protean Eastern Question has again assumed a disquieting aspect. It is idle to pretend that we may safely ignore the disturbances thus threatened. We may hug non-interventions as closely as we please; but whether we like it or not, our interest will be more or less directly involved in any struggle that may take place. Unless we are in a position to say "hands off" to all the world, these interests will be deliberately made a part of the prize of success in quarrels, with which we desire to have nothing to do."
  According to the Times we are increasing our Navy in order to place Lord Salisbury and his colleagues in a position to interfere in the Eastern Question. The House should warily and cautiously look into the proposal put before it. For every single decade the country's

  1299
  normal expenditure upon armaments has increased by leaps and bounds. In 1881, the Budget for armaments was, for the Army £14,680,000, and for the Navy £10,581,000. In 1888 the Budget for the Army was £18,429,000, and for the Navy £12,325,000. This year the House is asked for an addition of £1,500,000 in the normal Budget for the Army and Navy. The value of the Fleet is put down at £35,500,000, and for building a yearly sum of £2,650,000 is granted, while the annual depreciation of the Navy is £1,850,000. Therefore, as the expenditure for building and repairs is to continue until 1895, every year during the interval there will be an increase in the effective force of the Navy equal to £800,000—that is to say, that in 1895 the Fleet will be worth £39,500,000. The House is, however, asked for an expenditure of an additional £10,000,000, which will increase the prospective value of the Fleet to £49, 500,000. Now, it is obvious that the amount of depreciation in the Fleet would increase proportionately with its value; and, to maintain the new standard, a much larger amount will have to be spent annually than is necessary at present. The first Lord of the Admiralty told the House that the new standard of the Fleet was that it should be equal to any two navies in the world. I was shocked when I heard a Minister of the Crown make such a declaration. I have no doubt the hon. and gallant Admiral (Admiral Field) would have supported the First Lord of the Admiralty if he had asked for double the amount. [Admiral FIELD: Hear, hear!] I thought so, but I am not a quarterdeck politician, and therefore I was shocked. This was really a gauntlet thrown down to Europe, threatening, in effect, that "whatever you spend we will spend double." Perhaps some hon. Gentlemen opposite are acquainted with the game of poker. Great Britain is playing a game of poker with all Europe, ships of war being the stakes. It is perfectly avowed that we are throwing down the gauntlet. Lord Armstrong is an authority on this subject. Two or three days ago I was reading an article in the Nineteenth Century, written by Lord Armstrong, in which he suggests that, in order to frighten the world and show them what thorough devils we are, we should spend £20,000,000 instead of
  1300
  £10,000,000. Is it not reasonable to suppose that foreign nations are likely to accept our challenge? We propose to build as much as France and Russia together. I think the only result will be that there will be some sort of alliance between France and Russia, and that they will build against us, or it is very possible that France will do so alone. The noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord Charles Beresford) says we want a sufficient force to blockade every port of France, and to sweep the flag of France off the sea. I wonder whether France will say "We must increase the number of our ships to meet your threat." If France does this, is this country to go on increasing its Fleet? If so, where is such a policy likely to end? In my judgment, estimates based on the power and the number of ships of other countries are always erroneous. Since the First Lord of the Admiralty propounded his scheme, the estimate he gave to the House has been found to be erroneous, because since then the Sultan has gone down. I expected the noble Lord to come forward and say "I must ask the House for an additional sum of money to replace the Sultan." If any one wishes to see the absurdity of pitting our Navy against a combination of other countries, it will be seen in what the Continental Powers did with reference to their armies. Russia was supposed at one time by Austria to be increasing her army; Austria followed suit; Germany increased her army because of the action of Austria, but the final result of these tactics was that each Power remained in precisely the same position and as though no increase had been made. I therefore assert that in the present state of European politics it will be found absolutely impossible to maintain a numerical superiority over any two nations, and to declare that no matter what other Powers build, this country will build double the number. This standard of taking a number of ships equal to that of two Powers is a new one. In the last century we had many naval wars. Spain and France were the great naval Powers of Continentals Europe then, but at no time was our navy equal to the navies of France and, Spain united. We had always tried to have a navy equal to that of France. In 1859 we entertained the same views,

  1301
  because in a pamphlet entitled, "Observations on Modern Systems of Fortification," I find that Sir Howard Douglas wrote:—
  "The steam fleet of France has, during the last 10 years, been in a state of progressive augmentation, the Government of that country having steadily acted upon the recommendations proposed in the Enquête Parlementaire (1849), and is now equal, if not superior, to that of Great Britain."
  Then, Sir Robert Peel said—
  "What is the advantage of one Power greatly increasing its Army and Navy? Does it not seem that other Powers will follow its example? The consequence of this must be that no increase of relative strength will accrue to any Power, but there must be universal consumption of the resources of every country in military preparations."
  I quote these views in order to show that at that time there was no idea of having a Fleet equal to two of the Great Powers, but only superior to the Fleet of France. And what Sir R. Peel said I and my friends are saying now. We hold to the traditions which governed the conduct of the best, wisest, and most Conservative statesmen of this country. But why do the Government limit the number to two Powers—why do they not say three? If Italy or Germany were to join France and Russia we might as well submit at once, and say that we were vanquished. It would be more logical for right hon. Gentlemen who proposed this doctrine of equal numbers to suggest that our Navy should be equal and superior to the Navies of the entire world. That is the logical outcome of their proposition. Sir Arthur Hood, First Naval Lord, told the Committee on Naval Estimates, "Our Navy is superior to any two navies."
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord G. HAMILTON, Middlesex, Ealing): Did he say any two nations?
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I have quoted the words used by the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord C. Beresford).
  LORD C. BERESFORD: I never said that.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Well, that is the report I have of the noble Lord's statement. Sir Anthony Hoskins said—
  "I am an advocate for building in such a way as to establish a sufficient superiority to
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  any two nations when combined, and I think that we are doing this."
  The Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. Ashmead Bartlett), on April 25th, at Liverpool, said—
  "He had stated more than once that the British Navy never in peace was better prepared for war than it was at present, and that numerically and in character we were superior to any other two nations. The lessons, however, of the manœuvres had shown that the extent of our superiority, in the minds of responsible naval officers, was not so great as to insure our supremacy so absolutely and unquestionably as it ought to be."
  I take this extract from a précis in the Times, and I claim the hon. Gentleman as a supporter of the views I am now advocating — namely, that our Navy is strong enough. In reality, the scheme proposed is to make our Navy equal to four of the greatest navies in Europe. In the last Returns given by the Admiralty I find that there were 91 armoured and protected ships, exclusive of ships obsolete in type and speed. In 1894, taking the existing number of ships, ships building and projected, France would have 62 ships and Russia would have 31 ships—a total of 93. There is no deduction for ships obsolete in type and speed, but with that deduction our present Navy is equal and superior to the fleets that France and Russia will have in 1894. If deductions be made for obsolete ships the four great navies of Europe only equal unitedly the Navy which the House is asked to vote for, which is to come into existence in 1894. Really this policy of building a Navy to outnumber the four great navies of Europe is not only a recklessly expensive doctrine, but is the doctrine of a nation in. its decadence. There have only been four great naval battles in history—Salamis, Actium, Lepanto, and Trafalgar. Probably the Civil Lord of the Admiralty never heard of them. I shall be glad to tell the Civil Lord privately, afterwards, when they were fought, but he may take it from me now that they did take place, and the victory was in. every case on the side of the navy that was the smaller; therefore, it is not proved that mere weight of ships was to carry everything before it. Lord Brassey cited some observations of the French Deputy, M. Menard Dorien, on what constituted the supremacy of England:—

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  "Picture to yourselves the results of the first encounter between hostile fleets. It is probable that both sides will be ill-prepared to renew the engagement. With whom will then the supremacy of the seas remain? With the nation possessing the greatest industrial resources; with that Power which shall be the first to replace the fleet destroyed by the rapid construction of another fleet. Therefore it is that the true strength of England lies in her creative resources. Her yards occupy a position more secure from attack than ours. It is not in our power to create seaports like those of England, far up navigable rivers, combining facility of access from the sea with advantages for the purposes of defence of an inland station."
  Now let us take a standard of our requirements which seems a more reasonable standard. What are those requirements said to be? To enable our Navy to protect our shores from invasion, and to protect our commerce. This danger of invasion is aired at every moment. We are asked to think what a terrible thing it would be, a foreign army in England, and we are asked, will you refuse to vote a sum of money to save us from this invasion. [Cries of "No."] Sir Arthur Hood says "No," but he said this on April 11th this year:—
  "As to the statement that no organisation existed in preparation for war, he would merely point to the fact that, last July, 68 ships of war were assembled in all respects ready for service within five days of the order being issued from the Admiralty; and in the naval manœuvres this year the number of vessels would be largely increased. As to the suggestion of our fleets being crushingly defeated in the Channel and the country laid open to invasion, he failed to realise for a moment why our superior fleets should meet with a result so widely different from all their glorious traditions. As bad been shown, we could in five days assemble a fleet of 68 vessels ready for service, and with such a fleet and our armoured coast defences, and with a large number of gunboats and torpedoes in reserve which could be maintained at any threatened point, he thought that the scare of invasion might be allowed to drop without further comment."
  After that I do not think that any gentleman will contend that this great expenditure is asked for as necessary to defend our shores when we have from the first authority, that of Sir Arthur Hood, a clear and distinct statement only a few days ago that the present Navy is amply sufficient to defend our shores against such danger without withdrawing any ships from the numerous squadrons we have in all parts of the world. Then I come to the protection of our commerce. Now there is an idea entertained by some hon. Mem-
  1304
  bers opposite, of making the ocean as safe as the county of Kent if we were engaged in war. It is a perfect chimera; it is an impossibility; it can never exist. Some days ago I was reading something said by Lord Wolseley, who, of course, is a little jealous of this augmentation of the Navy ["No, No."]—Yes, he holds that we might spend this, but we should also spend a great deal on the Army, in case we do have an enemy on our shores; and then Lord Wolseley wants to be there to defend us again. Lord Wolseley pointed out that our naval superiority after the battle of Trafalgar was unquestioned, and yet within a few weeks of that victory 20 ships of our mercantile marine were captured by French ships of war in the Channel. It is asserted that it is far more easy at the present time to defend our mercantile marine than it was in those because of the difficulty of the enemy's cruisers getting coal. This has been asserted again and again by the advocates of increased naval expenditure. Now there is no greater illusion than this about coal supply. I am very sorry that hon. Gentlemen have not devoted some time to the International Law on the subject. It is no merit in me that I have done so, for I was brought up in the Diplomatic Service and was obliged to learn with a view to passing examinations. I will venture to give the House some of the results of my studies. I have seen it asserted again and again that, provided we blockade the ports of France or Russia, or any other country with whom we may happen to be at war, even if the enemy's cruisers escape, they could not get coal, and, therefore, could do us no damage. As a matter of fact, a belligerent ship may put into any neutral port to refit, but not to equip. In 1859, during the Franco-Austrian War, Her Majesty's Government forbade contraband of war, but declined specificially to say whether coal was contraband of war, but only asserted that the carriage of coal might be so in some cases, and, therefore, those who engaged in the carriage, must do so in view of the risk they undertook. In the House of Lords there was a debate upon it, and Lord Granville explained the case. If coal was sent to a port whore there were war steamers with a view of supplying

  1305
  them, the coal became contraband. But nobody ever asserted that coal in Situ so to speak in a neutral port, may not be sold by a private individual to a belligerent ship. We had an exposition of what the law is laid down so recently as 1885, at the time of the war between France and China, in a despatch from Earl Granville to M. Waddington, in which the then Foreign Secretary said:—
  "I have requested Her Majesty's Secretary of the Colonies to inform the Governors of Her Majesty's colonies of Hongkong, Ceylon, and the Straits Settlements that, while carrying out the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act as to equipment, they are not to interfere with any shipments of coal made in the way of trade, and having the character of a commercial transaction."
  Therefore, I hope I have distinctly shown that it is a delusion to suppose that we are in any better position now, owing to our having a steam fleet to protect our commercial marine, than we were when we had only sailing vessels. We have no more advantages, because the enemy's cruisers can follow our mercantile marine and can obtain coal where they please. The question, however, is of no great importance, because, as a matter of fact, we should have no marine to defend within a couple of weeks after au outbreak of war with any of the great European Powers. That is owing to the Treaty of Paris, in which we assented to the doctrine that free ships make free goods." This simply means that neutrals may convey to the ports of a belligerent everything that is not contraband of war without chance of being captured by the other party, whereas the belligerent itself could not convey to its own ports anything, whether contraband or not, without the chance of capture. The effect of this would be that if we were at war, say, with France, the rate of insurance on British bottoms would be far higher than the rate on neutral bottoms, and the result would be that all our carrying trade to our own ports would he done by neutrals and not by us. It would not he the slightest use for us to blockade foreign ports, because the mere chance of the prospect of capture would be sufficient to send up the rate of insurance on British bottoms higher than that on neutral bottoms, and we should have a result similar to that of the
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  American Civil War. The Confederates had but one or two cruisers that managed to get on the sea from neutral ports, and the United States lost the whole of their carrying trade, which fell principally into our hands. It is asserted that belligerents in all probability would not hold to the Treaty, and that we are not forced to abide by it. [An hon. MEMBER: It is not a Treaty.] Call it an agreement or what you will—a Declaration, I think, is the term. It was in the course of the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris that the Declaration was made to which we, with other Governments adhered, that "free ships should make free goods." Hon. Gentlemen have asserted that belligerents may not stand by the Declaration, and possibly, if it was not to their interest they would not; but do not hon. Gentlemen perceive that it may be impossible for the belligerent to avoid it, because they would immediately have the neutrals to deal with, for it would be for the interest of neutrals to maintain the principle of "free ships, free goods." Suppose we had a war with France and Russia, our carrying trade would in that case be transferred to the United States, which would then become the great carrying power of the world. Do you suppose that in that case the United States would consent to France and Russia throwing over the principle of "free ships, free goods"? Not a bit of it; on the contrary, they would insist on free ships being able to go into any of the ports of the world without hindrance or capture; and if France or Russia were to try to capture any of the ships then sent abroad, depend upon it, the United States would very soon join us in opposing them. Hon. Gentlemen may say the United States were not parties to the Declaration of Paris. Well, Sir, it was not necessary that they should have been because they have always laid down the principle of "free ships, free goods"; and they have announced to both France and Russia that from their view of the matter, free ships are to be regarded as free goods. And why was it the United States would not sign the Declaration of Paris? It was because the United States had proposed that the provision should be extended, and that no private property at sea should be liable to capture at sea. That was called the Massy Amendment, and

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  while all other nations agreed to it there was only one which opposed it. What was that nation? It is England which has always been on the wrong side in such matters. We are the people who would reap more advantage from it than any other country, and yet it is entirely owing to our action that the principle thus recommended was not agreed to by the entire civilized world. So certain is it on these facts that we should have absolutely no sort of commerce if we went to war with any great naval power, that the facts have been met only by two arguments; and I will take the two arguments as used by the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord Charles Beresford). I would first say that I can assure the noble Lord, if this were a question of seamanship, and we were really about to be invaded, I should desire nothing better than that he should be at the head of our Fleets, as I am convinced that all which naval ability and knowledge could do the noble Lord would do to defend us; but at the same time I know that the noble Lord and his friends would have no confidence in me if I should be planed in such a position as that. The noble Lord may, therefore, understand what slight confidence I have and the House has in his legal powers. He will perhaps excuse me for saying that I regard him as what is called a "sea lawyer" in relation to these questions; as one, in fact, who does not know much about the law, The noble Lord told us that the total steam tonnage of the world is eleven millions; that of this we have seven millions, and that as it would be impossible to transfer any portion of our seven millions to neutrals in case of war, we should be obliged to provide for the defence of our own commerce, because the three millions or so of the rest of the world would not be enough to bring us food. The error of that is this—that any Englishman having a trading ship would have a perfect right, if we were at war with France or any other country, to transfer it to an American citizen, as absolutely as he now has the right to sell a pair of boots or anything else. Nowhere else but in this House could it be laid down that in case of war an individual citizen of a belligerent state has not a right to sell a mercantile ship to a neutral friend. The other point the noble Lord
  1308
  attempted to make was that food is contraband of war. Where, I should like to know, did the noble Lord get that doctrine from?
  LORD C. BERESFORD: I referred to the case of rice.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: The noble Lord is entirely mistaken. Food is not contraband of war, unless destined for a besieged town or some place like Malta to victual the ships. It is true that we have tried to make food contraband of war, because when at one time we had the supremacy of the sea, we misused it in order to bully neutrals. In the year 1793 we nearly went to war with the United States who protested against this doctrine. During the Peninsular War, in our long war with Napoleon, the armed neutral Powers held their own against our making the food of foreign countries contraband of war. We have entered into many treaties with other countries, and I defy the noble Lord to show me any one of those treaties in which it is laid down that food is contraband of war. The noble Lord has just said he took his idea that food was contraband of war from the case of France, in regard to her war with China in 1885. Well, what was it that then happened? In that year France being at war with China declared rice to be contraband of war, in the case of ships sailing to the northern Chinese ports, on the ground of the Chinese armies there; but Lord Granville absolutely denied their right to enforce this doctrine. Ultimately France put her claim on this ground: that it was suggested that some of the shipments of rice intended for China were in the nature of a tribute or subsidy to the Court of Pekin, and that under these circumstances rice ships must be stopped, leaving it for a Prize Court to decide whether the rice was public or private property; that is to say that France believed that the Court at Pekin was obtaining certain tributes of rice, and claimed that her vessels might stop rice ships running to the northern ports in order that they might be taken to a Prize Court to decide whether the rice was public or private property. But that is hardly a declaration that food is contraband of war. To this Lord Granville replied that he protested against rice being treated generally as contraband of war, and he stated that Her

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  Majesty's Government would not consider itself bound by the decree of any Prize Court which should uphold a contrary doctrine. I think I have now conclusively shown certain facts. I have shown that at the present moment we have absolute security from invasion, and my witnesses have been Sir A. Hood and other men of weight and authority. I have also shown that our fleets are superior to those of any other naval Power, and my witness in this case has been the Secretary to the Admiralty. I have further shown that if we adopt the plan suggested by the Government, our naval force should not only he made superior to that of any two, but of any four, of the great naval Powers, and my witness to that has been the Government Returns. I have also shown, looking at International Law.—and on this point I could quote Grotius, and others, by the hour, if necessary,—that if we went to war we should have food and raw material brought to us in neutral ships, and that whether we blockade the ports of our enemy or not, we should absolutely, owing to the effect of a differential rate of insurance on our own and neutral bottoms, lose our carrying trade, and, therefore, have no commerce to defend. Now, Lord Salisbury admits all this, being, as he is, an exceedingly able Gentleman. A few days ago Lord Salisbury went down to Bristol and there he was defending this proposal for increasing our Navy. But how did he defend it? He pointed out that we are menaced by a new danger. inasmuch as there is a sort of powerful necromancer—William Ewart Gladstone—who may induce the country to consent to the pernicious plan of Home Rule. And what would be the effect of this? It would be, if we did not assent to the present scheme, that we should have to fight not only our foreign enemies, but Ireland also—that great fleets would be collected in the Irish ports; and consequently he urged the Bristol people to consent to an increase of the Navy, because, if they did not, Bristol might in a short time—you see, he evidently thinks that Home Rule will come—be attacked by an Irish Navy. I say there is no doubt that at the present moment our Navy is amply sufficient for our requirements. The Secretary to the Admiralty observed admirable good
  1310
  sense by insisting on this last year. I should have been glad if he had insisted on it this year, and I only regret that he should have succumbed to the advice of certain distinguished Naval Officers who assert that our naval superiority is not so absolute and certain that it is not desirable to propose a great increase of our Navy. But even admitting for a. moment that it is desirable that we should increase our Navy, there are still a great many objections to the present scheme for securing that increase. I will only enter upon a few of them. The mode of raising the money is in itself most objectionable, and enough to lead every reasonable man to vote against the proposal of the Government for binding future Parliaments; because it is thought that if this Bill should be passed the House of Commons of the future cannot refuse to carry the scheme out. We are dependent on the action of the House of Lords, in which, of course there will always be a permanent and safe majority in favour of any proposal of the present Government, and I object to anything that will pledge the future House of Commons to such an expenditure unless this measure is repealed. Another objection to this scheme is that it is far too large; in the present state of science armaments speedily become useless. In fact we we are now in what I may call a transition stage. Sir Arthur Hood said in reply to a somewhat jingo speech made by the President of the Royal Academy last Saturday, that "it was desirable we should ensure that the vessels of the different classes to be built shall be decidedly superior in all respects to any vessels of similar types built or building abroad." Now, just see what the expense of that would be. Suppose we build ships larger than those abroad other nations will in turn build vessels like them, and we shall then have to build others larger still. This idea is absurd, and, moreover, I think that if we are to spend money on a large increase of our Navy the present moment is badly chosen. We have had a great period of depression in the shipbuilding, trade. In March, 1888, there were 380, ships building with a total capacity of 594,000 tons; there are now 528 building, with a total capacity of 920,000 tons—a far larger number than last year. It is probable that too many ships

  1311
  will be built and there will be a renewed depression in the trade. Would it not have been wiser to have waited a while? Past history shows us, and everything shows us, how little confidence we ought to have in these large expenditures which are periodically asked for. The House will remember the large amount Lord Palmerston asked for and expended in the fortification of the Channel Islands, and then there were £5,000,000 asked for by Lord Northbrook, as to which nobody has yet discovered where it went. [Cries of "Oh."] Hon. Gentlemen cry "Oh," but they should remember that I am speaking of a Liberal First Lord of the Admiralty. We have come to the conclusion that a great deal of that five millions was absolutely wasted. I will go even further. In 1885, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone) asked for eleven millions for the Army and Navy. Of this, two-and-a-half millions were handed over to the Admiralty. Does any one know what became of that? [Cries of "Oh."] An hon. Gentleman again says "Oh "; I will enlighten him as to whore a portion of it went. The Auditor General says he cannot make out where most of it went, but he finds that a considerable sum went in buying cables and selling them again for about one-third of what they cost; that some of the money went in decanters and some in stew pans for the officers' messes. I tried to find out where the money went, and that is all I did find; anyhow, the fact that the Auditor General could not find it out ought to make us exceedingly careful in granting these large sums. Let us remember what happened two years ago. At that time, the noble Lord the Member for Paddington, was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of this House, but he found the extravagance and waste of the Admiralty so great, so scandalous and outrageous, that he honorably preferred to withdraw from the Government and cease to be the Leader of the House and Chancellor of the Exchequer, than accept the responsibility of that expenditure. Last year, a Committee was appointed to look into the Navy Estimates, and that Committee agreed with the noble Lord and found that the expenditure was gross, scandalous, and profligate. [Cries of
  1312
  "No."] I maintain that it did, that being the conclusion I draw from the evidence and the opinion of everybody except my hon. Friend, who shakes his head; and when I say that he has been in the Admiralty I may add that, like others in a similar position, he has lost every vestige of independence in these matters. But, Sir, I say that Gentlemen who are not here to support either old or new Admiralty officials are the best judges; you know that your own Chancellor of the Exchequer accused you of waste and profligate expenditure, and when we have now a Royal Commission sitting to try and put an end to or cheek these monstrous and profligate demands, you certainly ought to check these profligate wasters of eleven-and-a-half millions sterling, at least until that Commission has presented its Report. There is another reason why we should wait, and it is that because by doing so we shall be able to increase the Navy, should it be necessary, from the normal Budget of the year. At the present moment we have 30,000 soldiers in Ireland. What for? Not to defend Ireland against foreign aggression, but to defend it against the Irish people—to defend landlords from their tenants. It will be admitted that it would not be necessary to keep those men there if the Irish people were not, as the Chief Secretary had said, in a state of revolt, but pacified, quiet, and contented. In case of war we could not withdraw a single one of those men, but might have to increase the British garrison there. We should absolutely neutralize the feeling which keeps those 30,000 men in Ireland if we only gave the Irish Home Rule. And when we Liberals come in we mean to give them Home Rule. As this would save three millions per annum on the Budget we ought to wait till the Liberals come in, when, if they think it necessary to increase the Navy, they can do so. What did Sir William Maitland say? Why, that when we were seeking everywhere for troops to fight Napoleon we had during the whole time 60,000 men in Ireland, and were obliged to keep them there because Ireland was so misgoverned that it was disaffected. I must refer to one more plea for this proposal, which seems to be the climax of absurdity. Let hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House who are devoted to

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  political economy hear what Lord Armstrong says on that subject. In defending this expenditure he says:—
  "The money required for the purpose is nothing to a nation which like ours is possessed of superabundant means. All the money required would be spent in the country, None would be withdrawn from productive industry, seeing that the capital and labour are far in excess of our requirements. It is the working classes who would especially benefit by the expenditure, as the wage fund would thereby be increased, and this chiefly at the expense of the wealthy."
  The shipowners, of whom Lord Armstrong is one, would be benefited. I yield to no man in my desire for the safety of this country; I desire to see the country safe and respected. Why should an hon. Member shake his head at this? Does he suppose anyone in this House wishes to see a foreign army careering about this country? Or that, if we thought this expenditure necessary we should not readily vote it? But I tell the Government that what they ought to do to make the country secure should be to maintain the Navy at its present point of efficiency, which the Secretary to the Admiralty says is greater than at any previous time of peace, and not throw down the gauntlet to all Europe with the braggadocio of saying "If any other country builds one ship we will build two." Also let them give up the habit of meddling with European policy, and of annexing every territory they can put their hands on. Our relations to our Colonies are most peculiar. They are willing to remain with us and to aid us in our defence if we should be really attacked; but I doubt whether they would remain with us and assist us if we plunged into a great European War through our own fault, as in the case of our going to war, as Lord Salisbury proposed, to put some German Prince on some throne in the Peninsula. We are told by the opposite Party that we ignore our position as an Imperial country; that our views with regard to our foreign relations are petty and paltry; but the fact is that we take a far larger view of our position than Gentlemen on the other side of the House. We on this side of the House believe that we are not merely a European Power, but that we are so strong that we can afford not to be frightened every moment at what is taking place in
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  Europe, and ought not to be making treaties and engagements to maintain the balance of power. We believe that these matters do not affect us, and that we ought to give up the idea that we are a mere European country, which is bound to mix itself up in all sorts of questions, because, if we do this, we shall inevitably lose our Colonies. I would suggest that Her Majesty's Government should call together a European Conference, and should propose to it three points—first, that private property at sea should be safe from capture unless it be contraband of war; secondly, that it should be defined by common consent what is contraband of war, and under what circumstances it is contraband of war; and thirdly, that it should settle the position as to belligerent warships when in neutral harbours. If these three points were settled, there would be exceedingly little chance of war; at any rate the chance would be minimized and the safety of the country would be far more assured than it is likely to be by the building of an excessive Navy, thereby exciting the distrust and jealousy of other European Powers. If we were to call together such a Conference as that, should we be listened to, having laid it down that we must have a Navy as great as those of any four Naval Powers of Europe? Why, that would prejudice the whole question. For my part, I should be sorry to see the absolute supremacy at sea which some desire. The European Powers would view such a supremacy with as great objection as the other Powers of Europe would view an absolute military supremacy on the part of any one of them. In the view of these enormous naval preparations, how could we urge other Powers to a general disarmament? The first thing they would say to us would be that we should begin the disarmament by reducing our own Navy. We should answer, "Not in the least; we have a right to a Navy as large as all your navies combined; Britannia rules the waves and ought always to rule the waves." Naturally, then, foreign Powers would say, "Suit your precept to your example, and then we will listen to those perpetual suggestions you are making to us as to disarmament and the blessings of peace." Look at the United States. They have a small Navy. [An hon.

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  MEMBER: They are 3,000 miles away.] But this country has voted money to protect the coasts of Australia, which are farther away than those of the United States. The reason the United States have no Navy is because they do not meddle with other people. They meddle with nobody, and nobody meddles with them. If anyone should meddle with them, Americans are rich and powerful enough to make them rue it. This country has a hard fight to maintain its position in the markets of the world; and in the keen commercial competition of modern times this additional burden of taxation will be a serious hindrance. I can only regret that the most powerful voice which has ever been heard in this House in favour of peace is now hushed, as I am sure that Mr. Bright would have protested in the strongest terms against this extravagant outlay on armaments. Far better would it be than all the eloquent tributes which have been paid to that great statesman if we were to profit by the lessons which he impressed with so much weight and wisdom upon his fellow-countrymen. I move that the Bill be read a second time this day six months.
  Amendment proposed to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words, "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Labouchere.)
  Question proposed "That the word 'now' should stand part of the Question."
  SIR W. LAWSON: I rise to second the proposal of the hon. Member. This Bill, as we all know, is a Bill for the granting to Her Majesty's Government of £21,000,000 for the building of seventy new ships; and the preamble of the Measure says that we shall grant the money cheerfully. Well I must say I shall grant it with the greatest reluctance, repugnance, and distrust; and I do not think those who are most enthusiastic in supporting the naval policy of the Government can feel cheerful when called on to vote this money. What is it for? Against whom is this proposed increase of our Navy directed? Avowedly against nations who are, we are told, most friendly to this country. It is most humiliating at this period of the world's history to find nations so
  1316
  jealous of one another that whilst we are told they are on friendly terms we find them getting up these great armaments against each other. We all remember that the Queen said in her speech at the opening of Session: "Nothing has taken place to affect the cordial relations between myself and other Powers." Now on the introduction of the Bill I asked the first Lord of the Admiralty against which of the Powers of Europe these preparations are to be made. All the noble Lord said in reply was, "We have heard all this before." But can the noble Lord not bear to hear anything twice? Does he never go to church, where the same thing is said over and over again? The question is not whether I say anything new, but whether I say anything that is true. I say again that I oppose this proposal so persistently because I regard it as a preparation for war. This increase of the Navy is the best way of promoting bad feeling and danger instead of peace. The late Prime Minister only lately wrote one of the best and shortest letters he ever wrote in acknowledging Mr. Dymond's "Essay on War." It was as follows:—
  "I thank you, and am glad that the advocates of peace are active, for militarism is the most conspicuous tyrant of the age, and it is the road to war."
  If we could only get that into the heads of the people, we should do great good. I am not ashamed to say that I believe that all these great naval standing armaments are nothing more than standing nuisances. But I do not want to argue from that position. I do not wish to be regarded—as were Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden very unjustly during the Crimean War—as an advocate of peace at any price. I desire to speak on the merits of the case as it stands at present, and on the real necessity of adequately protecting this country. No case has been made out for this extra expenditure, either in the changed circumstances of Europe or in the altered conditions of the Navy. I ask whether the evidence is not sufficient to prove that the Navy is sufficient for all that even Gentlemen opposite want to do. Lord Cross, speaking at Newbury on the 10th of April, said:—
  "By our naval supremacy we shall be able to give effect to the policy which is ours to-day, and by which we are going to insure the peace of

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  Europe and the prosperity of the world, and of all civilization."
  What an extraordinary idea! The noble Lord, who was responsible for the Government of 200 millions of people, appears to be a little off his head on this matter. Then the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord C. Beresford) said that our Navy ought to be as strong as any two navies in the world. But is it not so already? It was only two years ago, at the Royal Academy Banquet, that the First Lord of the Admiralty spoke of the Fleet which was about to engage in the Jubilee Review as the greatest which had ever been reviewed by a Sovereign in time of peace. I should like to enter a protest against these Naval Reviews. It is only a short time since the Times' Berlin correspondent wrote as follows:—
  "A great impression has been made on the Emperor by the fact that the House of Commons has now in effect voted the addition of 70 ships of war to the British Navy, and Ills Majesty has followed the debates on the subject with the deepest interest. The Chauvinists—that is to say the Jingoes of Germany—were flattering themselves that their steadily increasing fleet, the wonderful creation of the last 18 years, was gradually beginning to bring Germany alongside of England as a naval Power. But the prospect of this sudden and enormous accession of strength to the British Navy has rather taken away their breath and make them pause in their calculations. The Emperor himself, too, is not unaffected by this feeling of surprise: but he is animated by an earnest ambition to emulate, to some extent the example of England, and doubtless the ambition will only be stimulated by the monster naval review at Spithead in July, to which His Majesty is looking forward as one of the greatest treats and compliments which are awaiting him in England."
  We were getting up this Fleet for a naval review which the Emperor of Germany was to attend in order that he might pick up a hint as to how he could fight us if ever he wished to do so. It does not seem to me that that was a very sensible proceeding. In May, 1885, a glowing description of our navy was delivered by the hon. Member for Barrow (Mr. Caine). The hon. Member, speaking in Cheshire, said:—
  "He would assume then that, so far as the Navy was concerned, it was not in the history of our country in a more efficient condition than it was to-day. Our Navy was stronger than that of any two Powers combined. When the shipbuilding programme of the Government was complete It would be as strong as that of any three Powers of Europe. We could take every ship in the French fleet and lay alongside her as strong a ship as hers, and find ourselves at the end with
  1318
  a reserve fleet equal to that of every other Power. We had shown that at a week or two's notice we could sweep the seas with merchant cruisers, and could build more ships of war from an ironclad to a torpedo boat in a given time than all the nations of the world put together."
  That is pretty good for an hon. Gentleman like the Member for Barrow, whom the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian put into Office in order to look after torpedoes. If that hon. Member votes to-night or to-morrow for the present proposal of the Government, either he must have given a misleading account of the condition of the Navy in 1885, or else by his vote he will condemn the present Government as utterly incompetent for having allowed the Navy to fall into such decay that it requires so much renovation. Even the Secretary to the Admiralty a few days after this scheme was announced made a speech at Liverpool at a meeting of the Constitutional Association, in which he said:—
  "He noticed with satisfaction the allusion in the report to the proposed extension of the Navy, Liverpool, the premier shipbuilding port in the world, could thoroughly appreciate the importance and value of naval defence. He had stated more than once that the British Navy never in peace was better prepared for war than it was at present, and that numerically and in character we were superior to any other two nations. The lessons, however, of the manœuvres had shown that the extent of our superiority was not so great in the minds of responsible naval officers"—
  by the way, was not the hon. Member a "responsible naval officer"?—
  "as to insure our supremacy so absolutely and unquestionably as it ought to be if we are to to secure the confidence in which alone enterprise can flourish."
  Again, Sir Arthur Hood, Senior Naval Lord of the Admiralty, speaking on the 11th of April last at the dinner of the Institution of Civil Engineers, said: —
  "It had been hinted that in the event of war our fleets might possibly meet with a crushing defeat in the Channel which would leave the country open to invasion. The men who had made these statements had deprecated entirely any idea of creating a scare: but he should like to ask them what surer course they could have taken to do so than this. He denied positively that the Navy was in an inefficient state; further, he asserted that the Navy was at this moment in a better state of preparation for war than it had been at any time for the past 20 years. By July at the latest they would have received the whole of their guns. As to the late manœuvres showing their feasibility in time of war of placing our commercial ports under ransom and destroying our commerce, the important point appeared to have been for-

  1319
  gotten that in the late manœuvres both the attacking and defending forces were provided by our own Navy, and therefore in case of war our defending forces would be at the least double the strength they then were, and would be able to offer double the protection. As to the suggestion of our fleets being crushingly defeated in the Channel and the country laid open to an invasion, he failed to realise for a moment why our superior fleets should meet a result so widely different from all their glorious traditions."
  I thought we were supposed to be the bravest and most gallant naval people in the world. Then what a lesson this speech is for the hobgoblin Party who sit on the other side. I have given evidence—strong and convincing evidence—to show that our Navy never was so strong as now; and, secondly, that we were never more friendly with foreign Powers. That being the case, I cannot make out why 21 millions more should be wanted. I cannot find out against whom preparation is to be made. Not France, I suppose. General Boulanger came over the other day without opposition. We allow Frenchmen to come in, and it is only French sugar we keep out. We are going to show our Fleet to the Emperor of Germany, and nobody is afraid of Italy, whose condition is a warning against extravagant expenditure on armaments. The scare-mongers have landed this country in a miserable and anomalous position. In days gone by one Englishman used to be reckoned equal to three Frenchmen and five Russians, but the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone now goes up and down the country whining and pining and saying, "I cannot fight unless I am two to one against the enemy." Where is British valour when it comes to that? I say all this is unworthy of this country, and will bring us into contempt. I wish I could get all hon. Members on the opposite side of the House to look on it in that light. I know there is one who does—the noble Lord the Member for Paddington. I appeal to the noble Lord, who has made personal sacrifices and is now boycotted by Birmingham, to respond to the appeal to "come over and help us" to initiate a policy of peace on true Conservative lines. What did Mr. Disraeli say 30 years ago? Why he said, "Let us terminate this disastrous system of wild expenditure by mutually agreeing, with no hypocrisy, but in a manner and under circum-
  1320
  stances which admit of no doubt, by the reduction of armaments, that peace is really our policy." That is the policy of true Conservatives. At any rate it is my policy, and until some honest effort has been made by this or some other Government to reduce armaments, and to get other nations to join us in a sensible and peaceable course, whatever any one else does. I shall offer a most determined opposition to this mad and monstrous proposal for augmenting the burdens of the people by fostering that military spirit, which has been the bane of civilization, of Christianity, and of progress.
  *THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ASHMEAD BARTLETT): I do not know whether it is owing to any infirmity of mine or to the remarkable prolixity of the preceding speeches, but I confess I was not able to make head or tail out of the remarks of the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir W. Lawson). With regard to the appeal the hon. Baronet addressed to the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord R. Churchill) I would answer him in the words of the wife of Lord Fairfix at the trial of Charles the Second, that the noble Lord "is far too wise to be here." In spite of the labours, and sometimes the annoyance, which the hon. Member for Northampton inflicts upon the Government, I am disposed to think his presence and activity in this House are not without their advantages. The hon. Gentleman plays to this country the part which the Helot of Sparta served to the Lasedemonian father in the education of his sons. He is a perpetual warning of the eccentric misfortunes which would befal this country if the Radical Party were to obtain control of its destinies. I do not think it necessary to deal in detail with the speech of the hon. Member for Northampton, though some of his arguments were remarkable; for instance, he thought it a misfortune that the British Navy should be put on such a footing of strength as would enable it to equal any two European Powers, and said "why not to any three?" He also drew this extraordinary conclusion, that if our Navy were equal to the Navies of any two other powers it would be in the power of a third nation to control the destinies of Europe. But he seemed to overlook the fact that if there was any-

  1321
  thing in that argument, the state of things he seemed to desire—namely, that the British Navy should only be equal to that of any other Power, would far more easily control the destinies of England from a naval point of view. The hon. Gentleman also attacked the foreign policy of Lord Salisbury, which has failed to meet with his approbation. But the foreign policy of Lord Salisbury has at least given England an honourable peace, instead of the costly and disgraceful defeats and disasters which marked the administration of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian. He also objected to our mode of raising the money, and urged that it would limit the power of Parliament to deal with and control policy in future—a point with which I shall deal presently. I would remind him, however, that it is always in the power of Parliament to reverse in the future any decision that may now be come to. What is needed, above all things, in our Naval policy, and in regard to the strength of our fleet, is definitiveness and fixity of purpose; and the object of Her Majesty's Government in placing this scheme in a Bill has been to make it difficult in the future to delay, or to frustrate that policy. Let me ask the House to consider the broad issues that come before it in regard to this great programme. Why have the Government submitted this programme to the country? They have done so, in the first place, to ensure the maritime supremacy of England, which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton has ridiculed. We on this side of the House do not hold with the hon. Gentleman. We believe in the maritime supremacy of the country as necessary, not only for its greatness, but also the magnificence of the Empire, its commerce, and, indeed, for the national existence of our people. Our object has been to make the Naval Power of Great Britain equal, and indeed, superior to the combined forces of any two great Naval Powers. Why, it is asked, is the Naval supremacy of this country essential? I answer that it is needed, first, to secure the safety and prosperity of the people at home; secondly, to maintain the strength of our world-wide Empire; thirdly, to defend the commerce of the
  1322
  country, is the value of which is almost immeasurable; and, fourthly, to protect the food supply of the people, which means our national existence. What are the arguments against the new programme? First, there are the peace at any price party, who say that no preparation is necessary, who would not defend our shores and our commerce till danger appears. That is to say, who knowing that it would take three and a-half years to build an ironclad and that guns take two years, and that other countries are well provided with both, would wait till a hostile fleet was in the Channel, bombarding our forts and sailing up the Thames before they began naval construction? The hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Cromer), who moved the Amendment, has argued that we should undertake no measure of defence till danger is imminent.
  * MR. CREMER: I never used those words; what I did was to challenge the Government to point out what the danger is, and where it is to be found, or to show that it has any existence at all.
  *MR. ASHMEAD BARTLETT: I have the hon. Member's words here. My noble Friend the Member for Marylebone (Charles Beresford) said he wanted to know whether the hon. Gentleman was prepared to say that our commerce, trade, and food supply were not to be defended, and the hon. Gentleman replied, "When in danger, not before."
  *MR. CREMER: I am sorry to interrupt, but I would point out that in the observations I had previously made I, when moving the Amendment, over and over again challenged the Government to point out where the danger was to be found, and whether it was not entirely imaginary, and my answer to the noble Lord must be taken in conjunction with those remarks.
  *MR. ASHMEAD BARTLETT: Well, my reply is that the present state of Europe and the state in which it is likely to be for some time to come, constitute the very greatest danger to every Power that is not fully prepared; and I, for one, am waiting until we see other Powers ready to attack us before we do anything to protect ourselves. But there is no use in labouring this question. The Party which used to be in the ascendancy—

  1323
  those exaggerated descendants of the old "Manchester School"—are now weak enough in Parliament; they are weaker in the country. They were defeated the other night by a majority of 176, and have not the smallest chance of carrying their doctrines. I venture to say that those whom the hon. Gentleman and his friends call the democracy, but whom I prefer to call the working classes, understand this question better than he, and those who act with him. The people of this country, especially the intelligent artizan of England, fully understand the vital need that exists for naval supremacy. They regard expenditure on the Navy as an insurance, a prudent necessary insurance just as needful to safeguard their trade, their liberties, and their subsistence as the premiums paid by the householder to guard against loss by fire. There are the second class of opponents, the opposition cavillers, who hardly go to the length of resisting this measure openly because they know the country would hardly stand that, but who complain on one ground or another that this large expenditure is not needful. Some of them say the reasons are not clearly stated; others say that it is a mistake to put it in the form of a Bill and so to remove it from further Parliamentary control; others quote speeches of the present Board of Admiralty to show that in their opinion such an increase as we now propose was not needed a year or more ago. My colleagues are perfectly able to defend their own action and their own language. They have done so, and they will do so again if needs be. When any hon. Gentleman can quote any words of mine deprecating an increase in the Navy, I shall be ready to deal with him. But, Sir, I will go so far as this. If the Board of Admiralty have been mistaken—which I do not admit—in their views upon this great and crucial question, it would be no mistake for them to acknowledge and to repair such a mistake. [Cheers.] The Naval Manœuvres which took place last year on a scale of unprecedented magnitude, detail, and thoroughness, have taught not only the country and the Board of Admiralty, but even the sailors a great many lessons with which they were not
  1324
  before perfectly familiar. This programme is not a sudden or a new discovery. It has been under consideration since the middle of last year. I believe it was on the 1st of July, 1888, that the First Naval Lord, Sir Arthur Hood, drew up his confidential memorandum which embodied most of the present programme. Among other lessons they taught was the extreme difficulty of blockading modern warships of high speed and great facilities for disguise and concealment. The manœuvres proved that the blockading Power must have a considerable superiority of force, and that in the case of England there ought always to be a large reserve squadron in the Channel. Then there were many questions connected with the structural type of ships, their speed, their disposition of armament, their guns, the effect of high explosives, the invention of quick-firing guns, all which render it impossible to submit a complete and finished programme at an earlier moment than has been done. These difficulties have been in the main surmounted, and the ships and guns and armaments proposed in the new programme have the highest naval sanction. The simple question for Parliament and the country is, is it necessary, is it of paramount importance that the naval supremacy of this country should be established; are the ships which we propose wanted or are they not wanted? To these questions I have not the slightest doubt that Parliament and the country will unhesitatingly answer, "Yes, the ships are wanted, and they must be built." Those who object to this programme being put into the form of a Bill, and who allege that it will thereby be removed from the conduct of Parliament, miss the whole object of the scheme of the Government. Parliament can always undo what it has decided to do. But this Bill will, of course, render it difficult that their programme will be reversed, injured or delayed. It will be secured either from the caprice of a snatch vote, or from the exigencies of a Ministry, or from the dissensions of experts, or the selfishness of parties. This programme is the result of much consideration, study, and experience. It has been carefully and deliberately thought and worked out in its size, its cost, and all

  1325
  its details. It is put fully and candidly before Parliament and the country to accept or reject it. The amplest discussion has taken place and is likely to take place upon it. I believe it will be accepted by an overwhelming majority in this House. When thus accepted, it will become law and will be carried out. Those who know how in past times the Navy Estimate have often been the happy hunting ground of greedy Chancellors of the Exchequer in search of a surplus and of a popular Budget, how peremptory orders have come from the Treasury to cut so much off this Vote and so much off that, so much off construction and repairing, or both—to the great detriment of shipbuilding—and so much off guns, will realize what a national boon this fixed programme must be to the Navy, and, therefore, to the country. The great need of naval policy in the past has been definiteness and continuity. This Bill supplies these requisites, and will enable the people to rest assured that their dominion over the seas will be made supreme. Then there is the class who fulminate vague, but none the less violent, charges against the Admiralty, both the permanent officials and the present Board, and who affirm that they are utterly unworthy of confidence. I wish hon. Gentlemen who make such charges would descend from reckless rhetoric and go a little into the sober region of practical details. The present Board has, in its own interest, not made enough public reference to the great and valuable reforms and economies which it has succeeded in making in expenditure and administration. It is now possible to build an ironclad in one of the dockyards at a speed at least 30 per cent quicker than formerly, and at a cost not exceeding that of private yards. Great economies have been effected. The naval members of the Board have been, and are among the ablest men in a great service that can boast a vast amount of brilliant ability, great experience, and unbounded devotion to duty. I should like to add my humble quota of regard and admiration to the well-deserved tribute which my noble Friend has bestowed upon Sir Arthur Hood, the First Naval Lord. Then there are our opponents who criticize the types and armaments of our new fighting ships.
  1326
  Foremost among these is the hon. Member for Cardiff, whose views upon the naval question are of Protean variety. To such critics I need only say that the types that have been decided upon have been most carefully considered; that thee have been submitted to the criticism of the highest practical sailors; that thy approval of them is in the proportion of more than six to one; and that the hon. Member for Cardiff found few, if any, naval experts to agree with him. Lastly, there is the class, represented by my noble Friend the Member for Marylebone, who think we are not doing enough, and who want £20,000,000 extra spent upon the Navy. My noble Friend has the courage of his opinions, and he is very candid. But does he really think the taxpayers of this country would be pleased in time of peace to undertake such an extra burden as that? I sympathize with the noble Lord in many of his feelings and in much that he has done and said. I do not think that his reasons for leaving the Board were adequate; but I do believe that my noble Friend since he has left has done yeoman service in arousing and stimulating public feeling upon this vital question. His conduct has been loyal and considerate to his former colleagues, who so much regretted to lose his aid. I think that my noble Friend will be disposed to admit that a very fair compromize has been come to. The increase in the Navy which the Government propose is by far the largest made in modern times, and it will, I believe, guard our maritime supremacy against all reasonable combinations and dangers. This programme, as compared with the expenditure of former years, shows an increase of £2,044,000, on the average expenditure of the 4 years ending 1889, and had on an average increased £4,500,000, in the 4 years ending 1879. The hon. Member for Northampton has quoted figures which made out that the Navy of this country would in the year 1894, under the present programme, be equal in strength to the combined fleets of four European Powers. That is, I regret to say, not likely to be the case. In the year 1894, according to the existing programmes of this and other countries, the armoured vessels of this country, including belted cruisers, will number 77; those of France 44, and

  1327
  those of Russia 27; that is, we shall have 77 as against 71 Russian and French armed ships. As to protected cruisers of the first, second, and third class and torpedo gun-boats—our total number in 1894 will be 96. France would have 50, and Russia 29.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps he will explain from what source his figures are taken, seeing that they are different from the returns.
  *MR. ASHMEAD BARTLETT: I may point out that the difference may be due to the fact that the programmes of foreign countries have been quite lately enlarged. There is also very possibly a difference of classification, as there is considerable vagueness in classifying the great variety of types among modern war vessels. At any rate, my contention is that we should be superior in order to secure our maritime supremacy. Now, Sir, I have referred seriatum to the different arguments which have been used in opposition to this Bill, and I venture to think that none of them are calculated to seriously influence either the House or the country. I believe that this Bill will become law, and that it will give the Empire a sense of peace and satisfaction with regard to its Naval strength, to which it has long been a stranger. I should like, in conclusion, to say one word with regard to the views of the masses of our people. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Bethnal Green, in a speech which he made on a previous stage of this Bill, said that the working classes would look on this as a wasteful and needless expenditure. I venture to differ from that view. We are told that the working classes will condemn this expenditure. In my humble judgment the working classes of this country have a much clearer insight into the needs of the country, and are inspired by a much purer patriotism than many of their flatterers and would-be leaders. The people of this country are not unmindful of the advantages they possess with their brethren among the other nations of Europe. They see the military armaments of other countries increasing by leaps and bounds. They see the flower of the youth and manhood of Continental countries taken off by the conscription, not by scores and hundreds of
  1328
  thousands, but by millions. England' alone is free from this terrible drain, and why? Because of her insular position. To preserve the value of that insular position, the maintenance of our Naval supremacy, of our secure command of the seas is essential. It is, therefore, the fact and most bounden duty of a Government, worthy of the name, to maintain that Naval supremacy. More than half our food supplies are now produced beyond these shores. The loss of a single great battle, one such disaster as befel France at the Nile, or Trafalgar, might deprive this country, perhaps for ever, of her maritime supremacy. These are the days of sudden and fatal blows; of short and decisive campaigns; a. disaster once incurred is too often irreparable. Let this House, let the country reflect what panic, what cost, what ruin, the news of such a catastrophe would inflict upon these islands. If indeed, by great efforts, by great expenditure of treasure and human life, England were to succeed in retrieving such a defeat, how infinitesimal would the cost of timely preparation seem compared with the waste of blood and money that must follow a great naval reverse. It is the object of the present Government to guard against the possibility of such a dread catastrophe. They believe that the present naval programme will, when completed, place the British Navy in that position of strength and predominance which will enable it to guarantee our Imperial power to defend, so far as is possible, our immense and wealth-giving commerce, to uphold the honour of the flag and the repute of the Nation, and to safeguard the food supplies, and the independence of our people.
  *MR. H. H. FOWLER: I must, in the first place, congratulate the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, on having at last broken the long silence he has so rigidly maintained during all these years. Those hon. Members who remember his Imperial speeches between 1880 and 1885 will recognize that the hon. Gentleman still bolds the same opinions. The greater part of his speech, however, has been devoted to a eulogy of the best of all possible Admiralties, in the

  1329
  best of all possible Governments, and. the hon. Gentleman has even extended his benediction to the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone. Sir, I have no disposition to complain that the hon. Member has paid this tribute of admiration to his colleagues and himself. But I must ask the House to give some consideration to the Bill, which it is asked to read a second time. The object of the Bill is twofold. It proposes to make further provisions for the Naval defence of the country, and it proposes to defray the expenses of such provision. I submit that in both aspects the Bill is unprecedented. It is a new mode of voting supplies for the Navy, and a new mode of providing ways and means for meeting Supply. I do not think it is fair to charge hon. Members on either side of the House with want of patriotism. Surely we can afford to admit that both sides are desirous of maintaining the maritime supremacy of the country. The Liberal party—I may go further and say, the Radical party—has accepted during a long series of years Cobden's doctrine that the Navy is our first, second, and third line of defence. It has been, on principle, opposed to a large army. It weighs always in favour of a strong navy to protect our coasts, colonies, and commerce. We have objected to a large military expenditure on the ground that we have no desire nor justification for interfering in Continental politics, but we have supported a sufficient Navy. We are entitled to further explanation of the Government proposals as contrasted with their proposals in 1887–88. Now when they came into office the estimated naval expenditure for 1886–87 was 13¼ millions. What did the noble Lord do? Why in the next year, 1887–88, the noble Lord reduced it to 12½ millions, and in the next year it was further reduced. After twelve months' experience of the Admiralty, what did the noble Lord say? He said that, owing to the exceptionally large outlay of the last three years, it would be possible for some years to come to associate the reduction of expenditure with an increase of naval efficiency and strength. That was the noble Lord's statement in 1887. The noble Lord the Member for Marylebone criticized that speech severely, and the noble Lord (Lord G. Hamilton) in his reply said
  1330
  that, "The policy of the Government was opposed to any wholesale building of vessels." Now, the present policy is to lay down 70 vessels, of which a large number are to be put out to contract. But what did the First Lord of the Admiralty say twelve months ago? "Why, if the Admiralty were to lay down a large number of ships at one time, so rapid are the changes that probably in ten or fifteen years they would be obsolete." Let the House contrast the present financial proposal of the Government with the expenditure of previous years. In 1885–6 the sum spent in new construction was practically £3,750,000; in 1886–7 it was £3,500,000; and in 1887–8 it was £3,000,000; the average of the last three years being upwards of £3,000,000. Ten years ago the country was not spending, as the hon. Member for Sheffield has said, two-thirds as much as of late years; for during the four years ending 1879 the expenditure in new construction was £2,000,000. Now the figure is £3,000,000 per annum, and there is in existence a Navy, the prime cost of which has been something like £44,000,000, while the allowance for depreciation amounted to £1,849,000. With these figures before them, the Government are proposing to spend in shipbuilding and armaments during the next five years £21,500,000; but they do not propose to spend this sum in addition to the normal expenditure. It includes the expenditure which they would incur if the normal rate were continued, and that amount would be £16,250,000 during the five years. Will the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone, who has made speeches in the country maintaining that the Navy is in a state of unpreparedness, and that a large outlay is necessary, be satisfied with the additional expenditure proposed by the Government? Of this £16,250,000, in fairness to the Admiralty, there must be deducted the sum necessary to complete the ships already in progress, and that deduction brings the figures down to about £14,250,000. This leaves something like £7,000,000 for additional ships. Of the proposed expenditure, £11,500,000 is to be spent in the dockyards, and £10,000,000 on contracts during five years while being raised in seven years. The instalments

  1331
  of the £10,000,000 are £1,428,000 each, and so what the Government propose to do is simply to add this sum to the Navy Estimates for the next seven years. Now, Sir, not being an expert, I will not debate the sufficiency or the insufficiency of this amount; but I want rather to deal with the financial aspect of the question. How do the Government deal with that? Assuming that it is a proper sum, by the Bill before the House the Government ask Parliament for authority to provide in the ordinary Estimates of the next five years for £3,000,000 more than they propose to spend, on the chance that some use for it may be discovered. No Government ought to be trusted with more financial power than is necessary, lest a premium should be put upon Governmental extravagance. The whole ten millions is to be spent before the end of the year 1894, and at that date only seven millions of it will have been raised. The first criticism is, then, why spread the expenditure over seven years instead of five, since it is to be spent and will be needed during the five years? The Admiralty is hardly the Department to be trusted with the largest amount of uncontrolled expenditure. The hon. Member who has just sat down stated that the object of the Bill was to make it as difficult as possible to weaken or delay the policy of the Admiralty in the future. That is exactly the point on which. I join issue with the hon. Member. The principles of our finance are opposed to taking the expenditure of the year out of the control of the House of Commons. Those principles are, first, that the income of the year shall be paid into the Treasury; secondly, that the expenditure of the year shall be met out of the income of the year; and, thirdly, that all unexpended balances shall be repaid to the Treasury at the end of the financial year. There are three principles laid down for our guidance applicable to all departments, sound and sensible principles, the financial value of which is apparent. The charges for the year should be met by the income of the year that is a great constitutional principle, though the noble Lord opposite calls it financial pedantry. In the Civil Service Estimates the House will be asked to vote to keep up a great establishment
  1332
  called into existence because people do not appreciate the financial soundness of this doctrine, and so we have a huge bankruptcy system for those who will not live within their means. The principle we apply to individuals should be applied to the policy of nations. Lay by all you can, pay off debt if you can, but do not anticipate your income several years in advance. How do we work our national expenditure? We have three modes of dealing with the National expenditure. All our national expenditure is taken out of the Consolidated Fund. The first payments are permanent grants under certain Acts of Parliament, which, for constitutional reasons, are placed beyond the control of the House of Commons. In this category are included the Civil List of the Sovereign, the salaries of the Judges, and of certain High Officials. There is no precedent for any portion of naval or military expenditure being put upon the Consolidated Fund, and taken out of the control of this House by annual Votes. There is the second mode of meeting expenditure, by annual Votes in Committee of Supply, and this House has always been jealous of its control over the annual Votes for military and naval purposes, so jealous that there is a Standing Order that provides that if Parliament meets before Christmas, then before the 15th January the Military and Naval Estimates should be on the Table, or within ten days of the opening of Supply. Parliament insists that the whole of the Military and Naval expenditure shall be annually submitted, and there has been no variation from that in the financial history of this country. I need hardly say that this, practice represents a vital principle not to be dispensed with in favour of the exigences of Party. The hon. Gentleman says that what Parliament has done Parliament can reverse, but that is exactly what we do not mean.. Parliament does not control the annual expenditure but the House of Commons, the expression Parliament implies that the House of Lords has a voice in the matter, but this the House of Lords has not.
  *MR. ASHMEAD BARTLETT: I used the terms convertibly; I meant the House of Commons.
  *MR. H. H. FOWLER: I am glad to have that correction, because the hon. Gentleman's words implied a dangerous doctrine. What was the Resolution proposed by Lord Palmerston, as to the control of the House over Supply.
  "That the right of granting Aids and Supplies to the Crown is in the Commons alone as an essential part of their Constitution, and the limitation of all such grants, as to matter, manner, measure, and time is only in them."
  Now if this Bill passed, both the manner and the time would be transferred from the House of Commons, in whom it alone rests, to the united Legislature to whom it does not belong. Then there is a third mode of voting money, to which I have alluded, and which was mentioned in the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as applied to works of a permanent defensive character, that Bills have been passed making these works a charge on the Consolidated Fund. But such Bills invariably contain a clause providing that the charges in question shall be defrayed out of the moneys to be voted by Parliament. The precedent relied upon is that of Lord Palmerston's proposals with reference to fortifications. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that it was a legacy, so to speak, from Lord Palmerston's policy. How did Lord Palmerston proceed? He regarded these fortifications as permanent additions to the defences of the country—very much as the Government now propose to regard this outlay. The original estimate, I think, was something like £6,000,000, but that amount was exceeded. Did Lord Palmerston bring in a Bill to vote £6,000,000 from the Consolidated Fund? No. In 1860 a Bill was brought in; the money was to be borrowed; but the Bill provided only for the sums to be expended between August 1, 1860, and August 1, 1861. Parliament provided only for the outlay of the year, although it did
  1334
  so by raising terminable annuities. In 1862 Parliament had another Bill before it. The Government estimated that the cost of the works would be £6,860,000, and the House of Commons sanctioned an expenditure of £1,860,000 in the year. Again, in 1863, in 1864, in 1865, and in 1867 Parliament had Bills before it, and in 1869 the final scheme showed that the total cost was £7,460,000, and. Parliament sanctioned a final expenditure of £1,500,000. No less than seven Acts of Parliament were passed to authorize the expenditure of these £7,000,000. Why? The financier would say why not authorize the Chancellor of the Exchequer at once to raise the whole amount by terminable annuities, and this—apart from constitutional reasons, or what the noble Lord calls the pedantry of finance—would have been the easiest and simplest way; and that is the way a Railway Company would have proceeded. But Parliament wished to keep control of the annual expenditure, and therefore Lord Palmerston proposed the voting year by year of the outlay for that year. I am not arguing the policy of the expenditure of these 21 millions; my argument is that the annual expenditure should year by year be brought under the notice of Parliament. But that is not my only precedent; I have another even more to to the point. I do not know if the noble Lord has had it brought to his attention. In 1865 the Admiralty were anxious to construct certain dockyards by contract, and obtained an Act to empower them to do this; and the Act that was passed, declaring that it was expedient that the dockyards at Chatham and Portsmouth should be greatly extended and that it would conduce to economy if the Admiralty were authorized to give contracts over a series of years, provided that the moneys to meet it should be annually voted by Parliament. Here

  1335
  is a direct precedent in regard to an expenditure of 21- millions for the case now before us. The hon. Member says, in justification of the Government proposals, that it is intended to make it as 'difficult as possible for Parliament to alter them. He said, I think, something about the caprice of party. Well, but party caprice and party Government are the constitution of this country; and may I remind him of an historical fact, and that is that the House of Commons has never refused a shilling to the Admiralty that a Government has asked for. That should be remembered by hon. Members who complain of the parsimony of the House of Commons, and express the fear that the House of Commons will not do what is necessary They must recollect that no responsible Minister ever asked for a vote to be expended on the Navy but he invariably got what he wanted. Now what are the reasons for this proposal? You escape party control, but I do not think that that is the real intention of the noble Lord. I think he has a more practical reason. I believe his real object is to get rid of the surrender of the balances at the end of the year. I admit at once that there is very good ground for complaint on this account. Suppose we vote in the house 12 millions to the Navy—of course that is upon the simple estimate that the executive believe that that amount will be needed, the executive cannot be certain that it will be spent within the year—and if on the 31st of March it is not spent, then the balance, be it half a million or whatever it is, not spent is not carried over for the next year, but very wisely, as I think, is surrendered, and goes to the Exchequer towards the reduction of the National Debt. The noble Lord may ask, for instance, one million; but suppose he is only able to pay away £600,000; well, shipbuilding to the extent of £400,000 is proceeding, and will in a short time be done, but owing to some technical difficulty upon which the engineer has to satisfy himself, he cannot send in his certificate before
  1336
  the 31st of March, then the noble Lord may say I am compelled to surrender this £400,000 and the money will have to be re-voted next year. Thus the Estimates appear to be increased by £400,000, whereas really part of the money voted last year has been diverted towards the reduction of the National Debt. I admit that this is misleading and inconvenient, but I do not think it is necessary to alter our financial system and arrangements to meet a difficulty of that kind, I have a higher opinion of our officials at the Treasury and of their financial ability. I do not believe that they need be driven to such a remedy as this is, and I could myself suggest a scheme by which it could be avoided. That where Parliament is satisfied that the work has actually been performed, the money might be paid into the Bank of England under the joint superintendence of the Treasury, the Admiralty and the contractor and so a surrender of the balance be avoided. We have had no reason to depart from the principles of finance to meet a temporary difficulty of this sort. The noble Lord speaks of the services being hampered by the covert action of the Treasury of the day. Now what could he mean by that? I have watched with great admiration the noble Lord's political career, and I have always noticed that he has a great horror of the Treasury. He has never been at the Treasury himself and that is to be regretted, because he regards that branch of the public service with a strong aversion, entertaining the dread of some mysterious, autocratic, irresponsible, parsimonious, intolerant body, always endeavouring to hamper the public services. Well for the last 170 years and until we arrive at the present Government the First Lord of the Treasury has been Prime Minister. And whether we may think of the wisdom of the departure from this precedent we all entertain the greatest respect for the present First Lord, and I am sure that with his long official experience the First Lord has a firm determination to do justice to all branches of the Service. He is assisted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they acting together with two Secretries to the Treasury, one permanent and the other political. So I think

  1337
  the Treasury can certainly not be described as being hostile to any branch of the public Service. You are going to sanction an arrangement between the Treasury and the Admiralty. Why should not you carry that out towards other branches of the public Services? Why not have recourse to that dangerous invention of Continental Governments, the principle of Voting a Budget for two or three years in advance? It is because we wish to resist that tendency that we object to this change. There is no reason for departing from the procedure requiring Parliamentary control year by year. You have a majority in this House at the present time as you have in the House of Lords, and you may feel perfectly safe from reversal. Ten years ago there was a Party which had a majority in this and in the other House, but when they went to the country they found that they had not the support of the country behind them. Therefore, without indulging in any prophecy as to the result of a General Election we protest again against our withdrawing from Parliament not only the power over its own annual expenditure, but against interfering with the power of the next Parliament over its expenditure. Principle precedent and prudence alike justify strict adherence to the custom which has hitherto regulated the relations between Parliament and the Executive, securing on the one hand the efficiency of the public Service, and on the other hand maintaining the supreme and final control of this House over the national income and expenditure.
  *COLONEL HILL: I will not occupy time with the points the right hon. Gentleman, who has just spoken, has raised. I take it for granted that the Navy is of the first importance to the Empire, nor am I careful to answer those who appear to think lightly of our naval supremacy, and are indisposed to favour any expenditure on the defensive forces of the country. I do not think it would be becoming or that it is necessary for me to attempt to make any defence of the criticism made upon the noble Lord (Lord G. Hamilton); he can very well answer them for himself Nor do I think
  1338
  the country is interested in knowing what he may have said in former days, or with the question of precedent or non-precedent for the manner in which it is now proposed to raise the amount to meet the Government proposal. What the country is interested in is knowing whether the Navy is adequate for the wants of the country, and how the Government propose to make it so if the insufficiency is admitted. I recently heard Lord Rosebery make this remark in a speech to a commercial assembly of considerable importance, that no party that deserves the name of a party would refuse money for an increase of the Navy, upon two conditions, first that a necessity is shown, and secondly that it is judiciously expended. I entirely agree with his Lordship's views on that matter. How are we to ascertain the necessity? The question of policy has to be decided by the Ministry, and they have declared it is necessary that our Navy should be equal to the Navies of any other two countries in the world. That appears to me to be a very moderate proposition, and one that will find favour with the country generally. Then to whom are we to apply for information as to what is required to put the Navy in this condition but to the distinguished naval officers who hold or have held commands in naval service? I know it is sometimes said that naval officers in approaching such matters are disposed to sink national considerations in the desire to advance the interest of the profession to which they belong, but I have faith in the honour and patriotism of naval officers and believe them to be worthy of and true to the great traditions of the British Navy. Well, although the First and Second Naval Lords spoke with a somewhat uncertain voice before the Naval Estimates Committee, there is among naval officers a concensus of opinion that our Navy is seriously

  1339
  deficient in strength for the protection of our shores and commerce. If this be so, the necessity for an increase of strength requires the support of no further argument. It is scarcely necessary to consider the question of what might happen if our fleet were swept away, whether our land fortifications are strong enough to protect our seaports, whether our merchant vessels would be able to bring us sufficient food supplies, or whether if a hostile force were landed, we should be able to repel it. I am greatly mistaken if the British Nation feel otherwise than that none of these disasters must be possible so far as human prudence and human skill can prevent them. I am quite sure my countrymen would deem their rulers traitors to their sacred trust, did they not make such preparations as may be needful to protect them, not only against the actual occurrence of such evils, but also from the more probable, though scarcely less serious, consequences of panics caused by the mere fear of them. The inadequacy of our Navy is universally admitted. The noble Lord the Member for Paddington, notwithstanding his zeal for economy, admits that an increase is required, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, who certainly speaks with considerable authority on the subject, not only says we want more vessels, but he emphasizes that by saying that a great many of the vessels we have, are not fit for the purpose for which they were intended. It seems to me quite impossible for us to come to any other conclusion than that the first proposition laid down by Lord Rosebery, viz., necessity has been proved. The British Navy requires to be strengthened. This cannot be done without money, which the British taxpayers must furnish, and I believe the money will be cheerfully provided if the second proposition of Lord Rosebery can be sustained, that the expenditure
  1340
  will be judicious. The question of judicious expenditure divides itself into two heads, first the nature of the additions, and secondly their cost. The first is by far the most important. If the addition is too great there is evidently much waste, and if the addition is too little, the object of expenditure is lost and the waste is greater, and this would also be the case if the additions were of the wrong kind. Now, the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord C. Beresford) who has done good service in calling the attention of the country to the necessity for strengthening the Navy, makes some objection to the Government scheme because it is not accompanied by detailed Plans of Campaign for meeting every emergency. Well, I do not hesitate to say that an Admiralty which would propose a great expenditure which they advise the Government is needful, and would suffice to bring the Navy up to its proper strength without having given such plans and calculations their most careful consideration would be unworthy of its position. But to publish these details to the world in a Parliamentary Paper would, in my opinion, be most unwise. Some hon. Members say they have no faith in the Admiralty, and I am not here to assert that all administrations in the past have been models of perfection and wisdom, the proof or disproof of such a proposition would serve no good purpose. But having had some opportunity while sitting on the Naval Committee of forming an opinion of the Members of the present Board of Admiralty who are immediately responsible to Parliament and of the chief Admiralty officials, I do say that I feel confidence in their business capacity. I do not at all agree with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton that they are profligate wasters. On the contrary, they have introduced considerable economies in the administration of the Navy, and introduced rules and regulations not only conducing to greater economy in the future, but preventing the

  1341
  repetition of the errors of the past. As an indication of the careful manner in which the Admiralty Programme has been prepared, I would point to what my noble Friend (Lord C. Beresford) has characterized as a useful and business-like paper "Designs for Battleships." When so much care has been taken over the designs, I think it is only fair to suppose that similar care has been exercised in determining the quantity, and it is worthy of remark that the additions proposed by the First Lord came within 4 vessels of the number suggested by the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord C. Beresford). As to the designs of the contemplated vessels, of course, a man-of-war is such a complicated machine, that there will always be differences of opinion among Naval authorities, but I think the discussion which lately took place before the Society of Naval Architects shows that very great care was taken to come to a compromise among the different qualities that commend themselves to the minds of the different experts.
  It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned; to be resumed to-morrow, at Two of the clock.

  SUPPLY.—REPORT.
  Resolution [3rd May] reported.

  CIVIL SERVICES.
  CLASS II.
  "That a sum, not exceeding £35,286, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, including certain Expenses connected with Emigration."
  Resolution read a second time.
  *Mr. DILLWYN: I regret that this Order should be reached so late in the sitting, but I do not think that sufficient attention has been given to a circumstance in connection with the massacre on the Gold Coast, which was brought to the notice of the House by the hon. Member for Leicester on Friday last. The discussion then related prin-
  1342
  cipally to what my hon. Friend described, as a massacre of natives, but there was another point raised that did not receive the attention it deserves. Two natives were tried before a jury in a proper manner for conspiracy and murder of Mr. Dalrymple. The Judge summed up in their favour, and they were acquitted. There was another charge against them, but the Colonial Attorney General entered a nolle prosequi. So far, there is no complaint. But the Governor did not seem satisfied, and a Bill was passed by a subservient Legislative Council which enabled the Governors to keep these men prisoners notwithstanding their acquittal. That seems to me a proceeding so entirely contrary to all ideas of right and justice that I think we are justified in raising this point again, seeing that the Under Secretary on the last occasion did not deny or make any explanatory comment on this transaction. I trust some explanation may be forthcoming now, and to raise the question I formally move the reduction of the Vote by £50.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out "£35,286," and insert "£35,236"— (Mr. Dillwyn).
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That '£35,286' stand part of the Resolution."
  THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR THE COLONIES (Baron H. de WORMS, Liverpool, East Toxteth): If the hon. Member had given me notice that he was going to bring this on, I would have taken care to have had the means of full explanation with me.
  DILLWYN: I ought to have done so.
  BARON H. DE WORMS: I am afraid. I can only repeat the information I gave the other night, when I think the hon. Member was present. [Mr. DILLWYN: Yes]. I then explained that the persons against whom prosecutions were

  1343
  withdrawn, the Government did not see fit to return to their district where they had been the means of raising a rebellion. The Governor had thought fit, not with a view to punishment, but in the interests of peace, to detain these men, and an Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council for the purpose of preventing their return and a recurrence of those unfortunate events to which reference has been made.
  *MR. PICTON: I really think that the lives and liberties of Her Majesty's subjects ought to have a little more serious attention than they seem likely to get from the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman has not stated the whole facts as they are known at the Gold Coast, and reported in the Press there. In addition to the two men referred to, an old woman, Akoto Mamlay, is also detained, from whom surely no danger can be expected. The fact remains that these persons are committed to prison apparently for life, but at any rate, during the pleasure of the Crown, although they have been acquitted of the crime with which they were charged, and the Attorney General of the Colony has entered a nolle prosequi with respect to other charges. Why preserve the institution of trial by jury at all if the decision of juries is to go for nothing? Certainly after the practical admission of the Attorney General that he had no evidence to tender, these persons ought surely to be set at liberty. This Ordinance was practically the expression of the will of the Governor. [Interruptions.] It is all very well for hon. Members to exhibit impatience when they care nothing about the Dependencies of the Crown except as a source of wealth to themselves. These people have a just right and claim to our consideration. Late though the hour is, we are bound in duty to give some attention to this matter. We desire to know whether the Governor
  1344
  has this Constitutional power to pass an Ordinance and imprison people at his will after they have been acquitted by a jury of the offences alleged against them. I should like to know if the Constitution of the Colony recognises any such system of lettres de cachet. A grave wrong has been committed, and we demand some serious explanation.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,): The Government have always understood that this is a question which is not yet finally decided. The condition of affairs to which the hon. Member has referred could not remain without investigation, and my right hon. Friend gave an answer the other night to the effect that the Government were waiting for Despatches, and that when those Despatches are received the whole case will receive consideration at the hands of the Government.
  *MR. CHILDERS: I think this matter ought to be put a little more positively by the Government. May we have a distinct assurance from the Government that the Papers will be laid on the Table after the decision of the Government has been arrived at?
  *MR. RITCHIE: The Government could not absolutely undertake, until they had seen the Papers, to lay them on the Table of the House. They will, however, be presented to the House unless there is some impediment in the way of their production.
  *MR. CHILDERS: I am quite aware of that technical rule, but I thought an assurance should be given that unless a clear reason of public policy prevented their presentation they would be laid upon the Table.
  BARON H. DE WORMS: By the indulgence of the House I may be allowed to say that I stated last week that the Government are awaiting a Report from the Governor. When they receive the

  1345
  Papers, if it is possible to present them to the House, we shall be happy to do so
  SIR W. LA WSON: The logical course would be to postpone the Vote. The Papers that are coming may throw an entirely new light on the subject. I would therefore move the Adjournment of the Debate.
  Motion made and Question proposed. "That the debate be now adjourned."—(Sir Wilfrid Lawson.)
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,): I hope that the hon. Baronet will not press that Motion. Members of the Government have spoken, and would not have an opportunity of speaking again if the debate were adjourned. When the Papers are presented, hon. Members can raise any question they desire.
  MR. ILLINGWORTH: What opportunity have we?
  *SIR MICHAEL HICKS BEACH: The ordinary opportunities open to every Member. Tuesdays and Fridays still remain for the purpose, and as we have seen to-night matters of urgency find other opportunities.
  MR. ILLINGWORTH: If the Government will intimate that steps will be taken to secure the release of these innocent persons, we shall be satisfied, but short of that I do not think we ought to be.
  *SIR R. FOWLER: Papers have been presented, and we have had an opportunity of discussing them. I do not see that the Government can give a more absolute promise in regard to other Papers they have not yet themselves received, and, moreover, I cannot see any reason for passing what would practically be a Vote of Censure on Lord Knutsford. I think hon. Members might accept the answer as given.
  Question put, "That the debate be now adjourned."
  The House divided:—Ayes 58; Noes 169. (Div. List No. 97.)
  Question, "That £35,286 stand part of the Resolution," put, and agreed to.
  Resolution agreed to.

  FRIENDLY SOCIETIES ACT (1888) AMENDMENT BILL. (No. 193.)
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 1.
  Amendments made.
  Amendment proposed,
  "In page 1, line 15, to leave out the words from "a certificate," inclusive, to the end of the Clause, and insert the words, "Section 1 of The Friendly Societies Act, 1888,' shall be modified as follows:—

  "(a) The words on being satisfied that the society has been so constituted solely on bonâ fide grounds of advantage or convenience to the members thereof ' shall be repealed;

  "(b) For the words transmitted to and received by the society affected thereby' shall be substituted the words 'advertized in the London Gazette and in some newspaper in general circulation in the county in which the registered office is situate, and also transmitted by a registered letter to the society at such registered office.' "—(Sir Herbert Maxwell).

  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand a part of the Clause."
  It being after midnight, and objection being taken to further proceeding, the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Tuesday, 14th May.

  PARTNERSHIP BILL. (No. 151.)
  SECOND READING.
  *MR. H. H. FOWLER: I wish to ask the Government how they mean to deal with this Bill, which affects millions of property in this country. I think we are entitled to ask that a Bill of this sort should not have any Government sanction unless the law officers of the Crown can assure the House of Commons that it involves no change in the law.
  *SIR MICHAEL HICKS BEACH: I can only say that if the right hon. Gentleman can persuade hon. Members behind him to withdraw their objections to proceeding with this Bill, it may be possible for the Government to state their views upon it.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday.

  SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH CONTRACT (HALIFAX AND BERMUDA).
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That the Contract, dated the 12th day of April, 1889, for the Construction of a Submarine Telegraph Line from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the Island be approved."—(Mr. Jackson).
  DR. CAMERON: I wish to ask the hon. Gentleman to postpone this Motion. Papers on the subject were only issued on Saturday last. I see that under the contract we are to give a subsidy of £8,000 a year for 20 years, but there is not the slightest explanation beyond that the cable is required for strategic reasons. I think that as guardians of the public purse we are bound to insist on having some explanation of the reasons for making this grant of £160,000. I think it undesirable that such important matters should be brought forward in so hurried a manner, and that an endeavour should be made to pass them through the House without hon. Members having had time to make themselves acquainted with the terms of the contracts. I will, therefore, ask the hon. Member to withdraw the Motion for the present, and if he does not do that, I shall feel compelled to move the Adjournment of the Debate. My object is to give the Government an opportunity of affording us full explanations on this subject.
  *MR. CHILDERS: I rise to support the appeal of my hon. Friend, although my acquaintance with the subject since 1881 does not lead me to oppose the proposal. But the papers ought to have been circulated long ago, and I only received mine this morning.
  1348
  I hope the Government will consent to the postponement of this matter.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: It is not necessary to move the Adjournment of the Debate. My hon. Friend proposes to give an explanation of the facts, and, under the circumstances, the Government will consent to the postponement of the consideration of this contract until an early day.
  MR. CHILDERS: I hope that in similar cases in the future the issue of Papers will not be delayed until so closely upon the discussion of the subject, and that they will be circulated instead of being put on the short list.
  *MR. W. L. JACKSON: I laid the contract on the Table before the Recess, and I was under the impression that the Papers had been distributed at an earlier date. I found subsequently, however, that they were put on the short list for the purpose of giving hon. Members an opportunity of saying whether or not they required them. I at once gave instructions for a full circulation, but I am quite willing that the discussion shall be postponed, and will accordingly withdraw the Motion for the present.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

  PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS (INSPECTION).
  Address for
  "Return showing, for the years 1870, 1880, and 1889 respectively, (1) the number of Inspectors of Public Elementary Schools of each class employed; (2) the scale of Pay of each class of Inspectors; (3) the number of Children in average attendance at Inspected Schools; and (4) the cost per thousand Children of Inspection."—(Mr. Mundella.)

  COMMISSIONERS FOR OATHS BILL— [Lords].
  Read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 208.]
  House adjourned at a Quarter before One o'clock.