Commons Sitting of 10 April 1891

Preamble
The House met at Two of the clock.
QUESTIONS.

  "SHARP V. WAKEFIELD," AND THE IRISH LICENSING LAWS.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Attorney General for Ireland whether the decision of the House of Lords, in the case of " Sharp v. Wakefield," overrules the judgment given in the Irish Court of Queen's Bench in 1876, in the case of " Clitheroe v. the Recorder of Dublin," in which it was held that the Irish publican had a vested interest in his licence?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,: The case of " Sharp v. Wakefield " was decided by the House of Lords on a different state of facts and upon different statutes from those which were before the Irish Court of Queen's Bench in the case known as Clitheroe's case. It, therefore, does not overrule the last-mentioned decision. How far the principles on which the House of Lords rested their decision are applicable to the Irish Licensing Code, in any particular state of facts, is another and a, different question, in regard to which I ought not to do more than point out that the matter can be raised before the Licensing Authority by any person interested, and, if it is thought advisable, taken to the Courts of Appeal.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he has not now set a precedent which may be followed subsequently in answering a legal question addressed to him by a Unionist Member?
  MR. MADDEN: I have never refused to answer a legal question which related to a matter which came within my province. I have answered the question of the hon. Member for South Tyrone, (Mr. T. W. Russell) as far as it was within my province and duty to do so; but I declined to express any opinion as
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  the question may hereafter be brought before another tribunal.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSON: I wish to know whether the case mentioned in the question is one which may go before another Court?
  MR. MADDEN: Does the hon. Baronet mean the Irish case?
  SIR WILFRID LAWSON: Yes.
  MR. MADDEN: The Irish case mentioned in the question arose before the passing of the Irish Judicature Act and the decision of the Court of Queen's Bench was final. If a similar case were to arise in Ireland now, it might be carried before a Court of Appeal and ultimately to the House of Lords.

  THE IRISH FISHERIES.
  MR. FOLEY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is correctly reported as having recently stated to a deputation on the subject of Irish fisheries, that—
  " Only that morning. he had heard from a benevolent lady who had two large boats constructed regardless of expense, costing, he believed, nearly £1,000 a piece, and she sent them to Clifden for the purpose of developing the fishing industry, but the fishing population there did not know how to manage them, and if they had tried, the only result would have been that the boats would have been wrecked and the crews probably drowned; "
  whether he has since been informed that such statement is incorrect; and whether the Government will, during the present period of intense distress, assist in its alleviation by employing the people in the erection of suitable piers and harbours along the west coast which are greatly required, and the erection of which would facilitate the development of the fishing industry referred to?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,: The report of the statement attributed to me is substantially correct, except that the vessels were to be used at, not had been actually sent to, Clifden. That statement, which I have no ground for believing to be otherwise than accurate, was based upon the report of the shipbuilder who had built the vessels, and who had, by direction of the proposed donor, visited the neighbourhood with a view to make arrangements for their reception. The erection of piers

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  and harbours is seldom the best way of providing employment in districts where acute distress prevails.

  DISTRESS IN DONEGAL.
  MR. A. O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what steps, if any, have been taken to start relief works in Ranafast, Ranomona, and Loughnanoran, in West Donegal; "whether he is aware that there is much fever in these districts; and what means of subsistence there are for the 783 inhabitants from this time till June, and for the women and children from June till the return of the wage-earners from the Scotch harvest in August?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I must ask the hon. Gentleman to defer the question until Monday. I have not yet been able to obtain full particulars; but I hope to have a Report by that time.

  SALE OF INDIAN OPIUM IN ENGLAND.
  MR. KIMBER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department Whether opium, the manufacture of the Indian Government, imported into the United Kingdom for the use of Chinese or others for smoking or other purposes, will be allowed to be sold here as in India without being labelled " Poison," as is required by law to be done as regards opium sold for use as medicine and under penalties enforceable in the Criminal Courts?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,: According to the provisions of the Pharmacy Act opium cannot be sold in Great Britain unless, together with the name of the article, the word " Poison " is used, and the name and address of the seller are given.

  ABDUL RASOUL.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether he has further considered the case of Abdul Rasoul, and what he proposes to do for him?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOE FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON,: In the absence of my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary for India, I am requested to
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  say that Abdul Rasoul was offered the payment of his expenses in this country, a passage to Bombay, and a safe conduct to Kashmir. He declined these terms unless he also received some Government appointment or a pecuniary equivalent. The Secretary of State refused to extend the offer specified above, and on the 20th of March Abdul Rasoul was informed that if he did not avail himself of those terms within 14 days, they would be withdrawn. He has made no communication since then.
  MR CONYBEARE: I should like to be informed what the offence was for which Abdul Rasoul was imprisoned, and whether he is not entitled to some compensation for the illegal manner in which he was arrested and imprisoned for nine months in India without trial and without any accusation of any kind having been brought against him? I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the Government are prepared to admit that the imprisonment of Abdul Rasoul was illegal, or what the accusation was upon which he was imprisoned?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: The hon. Member put the same questions some time ago, and they were answered by my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. My question has not been answered yet. What I want to know is what justification the Government had for kidnapping Abdul Rasoul and keeping him in prison without trial for nine months?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: I will read the answer of my right hon. Friend to which I referred:—
  " If Abdul Rasoul demands compensation, he should address himself in the first instance to the Government of India, and in the event of the Government refusing redress, he should appeal to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is not in possession of information to enable him to answer the question."
  MR. CONYBEARE: The Under Secretary promised some time ago to get the information. May I ask whether the Government have obtained it, and when it will be communicated to the House?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: That question does not arise out of the answer to the question on the Paper, and as I do not represent the Indian Department I decline to go into it.

  FEVER IN MULL.
  DR, CAMERON: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether his attention has been called to a paragraph headed " Outbreak of fever in Mull," in the Scotsman, of April 6th, in which, after a description of the manner in which the relatives of a man, said to have died of typhus, were refused food, shelter, and the means of escape from the district, the following passage occurs:—
  "At last Craignure was reached, and one house, after a search, gave admission to the woman and girl, but the two men could find no shelter, and they seemed to have wandered about the entire night. Next morning the body of the hawker was seen lying in a sandpit, death being due either to exposure or to the fever. Here again it was found impossible to get anyone to coffin the remains; "
  whether it is true that an outbreak of typhus has occurred in Mull; and, if so, what steps have been taken by the Board of Supervision for the purpose of dealing with it; and whether it is true that a hawker was found dead " from exposure or fever," as described; and, if so, was any inquiry made, and by whom, and on what date, into the circumstances attending his death?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. P. B. ROBERTSON,: Several cases of typhus have occurred in the Island of Mull; but, so far as known, only one case has resulted fatally. The Board of Supervision have obtained a full Report from the County Medical Officer, and have called upon the Sanitary Inspectors who failed in their duty to state any reasons why the Board should not dismiss them from office. The facts about the death of a hawker appear to be substantially as stated in the Scotsman. His death, however, is attributed to exposure, and not to fever. No special inquiry seems to have been made into the death of the hawker. The Secretary for Scotland will call for a full Report from the Board of Supervision, and will also direct the attention of the County Council to the lamentable state of matters revealed by this case.
  DR. CAMERON: Was any inquiry made into the circumstances of the case?
  MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: I understand that no special inquiry was made.
  DR. CAMERON: Will the right hon. Gentleman direct an inquiry to be made?
  MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: The hon. Gentleman can hardly have heard the last part of my answer, namely, that " the Secretary for Scotland will call for a full Report from the Board of Supervision."

  THE TUBERCULOSIS COMMISSION.
  MR. FURNESS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the hardship entailed upon butchers through the seizure, without compensation, of the carcases of animals infected with tuberculosis, evidence of which it is practically almost impossible to obtain until the animals are slaughtered; when he expects the Royal Commission on tuberculosis to Report; and whether the Government will consider the advisability of extending the provisions of " The Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878," and the amending Act of last Session, to tuberculosis, as far as compensation is concerned?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. CHAPLIN,: My attention has been called to the subject on more than one occasion. It is quite true that it was first introduced by the hon. Member for West Salford by a Motion in this House, and upon April 24th, 1890, a deputation on the question was received by the President of the Local Government Board and myself. A Royal Commission was subsequently appointed by my right hon. Friend to investigate the subject. I am unable to say when their labours are likely to be concluded, and, pending the issue of their Report, I do not contemplate extending the operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts in the direction desired. I sympathise sincerely with the hardships of the present position, so far as the butchers are concerned; but I may point out that the cases of pleuro-pneumonia and tuberculosis differ so greatly that, even if I took the course suggested, I am afraid it would not have the effect which is anticipated either by the hon. Member or by those whom he represents.

  ROADS AND BRIDGES ACT.
  MR. REID: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether any power

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  is given to the burgh Local Authorities in the Roads and Bridges Act to borrow money for the making and re-forming of footpaths within burghs; and whether the Commissioners of Police have power under the Rutherford Act, 13 and 14 Victoria, c. 33, to borrow money for those purposes and to assess for the same?
  MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: The first part of the question must, I think, be answered in the negative. On the other hand, comparing the 210th and 340th sections of the Act 13 and 14th Victoria/cap. 33., the power in question seems to exist under that statute.

  COLONISATION OF CROFTERS.
  MR. SETON-KARR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether it is proposed to continue the colonisation of crofters from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland to North West Canada, by sending out any more families this Spring or in the Spring of 1892; if so, by what date they will be sent; how many; and whether to the existing crofter settlements of Saltcoats and Killarney, or to some other district in the Dominion?
  MR J. P. B. ROBERTSON: The recommendations made by the Select Committee on Colonisation are at present receiving the consideration of Her Majesty's Government, but whatever their ultimate decision may be, it will not be possible for the Secretary for Scotland to make the arrangements contemplated by the hon. Member during this Spring as the season is already too far advanced for colonisation this year.
  MR. SETON-KARR: AS to next Spring?
  MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON: I cannot say.

  VOTES FOR ELECTION OF GUARDIANS.
  MR. MORTON: I beg to ask the Attorney General whether ratepayers whose rates are paid by then landlords have the right to vote in the election of Guardians of the poor?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir R. WEBSTER,: Provided that persons are rated, it does not matter whether their rates are, or are not, paid directly to the landlord, as far as the right to vote in the elections of
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  Guardians is concerned. Their names must be on the rate books.
  MR. MORTON: Does the term " ratepayers " mean that the name is on the rate book?
  SIR R. WEBSTER: Yes, Sir.

  THE BUDGET.
  MR. J. MORLEY: May I ask whether the First Lord of the Treasury can now state when the Budget will be taken?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,: It will not be taken before Monday week, but I will give notice on Monday, or on Thursday at the latest, of the precise date on which it will be taken.

  THE LABOUR COMMISSION.
  MR. W. H. SMITH: I stated yesterday that I hoped to be able to make a statement with regard to the proposed Royal Commission on Labour Questions; and, as I received last night the sanction of Her Majesty to the Royal Commission, I now propose to read to the House first the terms of Reference and then the names of the Royal Commissioners approved by Her Majesty—
  "To inquire into the questions affecting the relations between employer and employed, the combinations of employers and of employed, and the conditions of labour, which have been raised during the recent trade disputes in the United Kingdom; and to report whether legislation can with advantage be directed to the remedy of any evils that may be disclosed; and, if so, in what manner."
  The Marquess of Hartington, M.P., the Earl of Derby, K.G., Sir Michael Hicks Beach, M.P., Sir John Gorst, M.P., Mr. Mundella, M.P., Mr. L. Courtney, M.P., Mr. H. Fowler, M.P., Sir E. Harland, M.P. (Shipbuilder and Engineer), Mr. J. C. Bolton, M.P. (Chairman, Caledonian Railway), Mr. Gerald Balfour, M.P., Mr. Jesse Collings, M.P, Mr. T. Burt, M.P. (Secretary, Northumberland Miners' Association), Mr. W. Abraham, M.P. (South Wales Miners' Committee), Sir Frederick Pollock (Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence, Oxford), Professor Marshall (Professor of Political Economy, Cambridge), Sir W. Lewis (Manager of Bute Docks, Cardiff), Mr. T. H. Ismay Managing Director of White Star Steamship Company), Mr. David Dale (ironmaster), Mr. G. Livesey (Chairman of South Metropolitan Gas Company), Mr.

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  W. Tunstall (Cotton Manufacturer), Mr. J. Mawdsley (Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners), Mr. Tom Mann (President of Dock Labourers' Union), Mr. Edward Trow (Secretary of Board of Conciliation of the Iron and Steel Trades), Mr. Henry Tait (Chairman of the United Trades Council, Glasgow), Mr. S. Plimsoll, Mr. Hewlett (Managing Director of Wigan Coal and Iron Company), and Mr. M. Austin (Secretary, Irish Democratic Labour Federation).

  PRIVATE BILL PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) [SALARIES, &c]
  Committee to consider of authorising the payment, out of moneys to he provided by Parliament, of any salaries, remuneration, and expenses, which may become payable under any Act of the present Session to amend the Procedure in regard to Private Bills relating to Scotland (Queen's Recommendation signified), upon Monday next.—(Mr. Jackson.)
THE LABOUR COMMISSION.
  ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE.
  Mr. JUSTIN M'CARTHY, Member for Londonderry City, 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, namely, " the refusal of Her Majesty's Government to recommend the appointment of Mr. Michael Davitt as a member of the Royal Commission on Labour; " but the pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. Speaker called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and less than 40 Members having accordingly risen, the House proceeded to the Business of the day.
MOTIONS.

  SEA WARE, CROFTING COUNTIES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Eraser Mackintosh, Bill to encourage the industry of gathering and manufacturing Sea Ware within the Crofting Counties of Scotland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Fraser Mackintosh, Mr. Chamberlain, Dr. Cameron, Colonel Malcolm, Dr. Mac-donald, and Mr. Caldwell.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 274.]

  PUBLIC FOOTPATHS BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Jesse Collings, Bill for the preservation of Public Footpaths, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr.
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  Llewellyn, Mr. Hobhouse, Sir Edward Birk-beck, and Mr. Taylor.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 275.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  MIDDLESEX REGISTRY BILL. (No. 265.)

    COMMITTEE.
    Considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    Clause 1.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: This appears to be only a temporary provision, and I therefore object to the attempt of the Government to pass it in such haste. The Government were allowed by the courtesy of the House to go into Committee on the Bill last night, and we now find that the result of yielding to the Government upon a supposed non-contentious Bill at a late hour of the night is that measures of an urgent character are postponed in order that precedence may be given to this measure. I think the least we can expect is that the Bill should have been properly drawn, carefully considered, and fully adequate for the purpose, but we find that it is only a temporary measure.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir R. WEBSTER,: Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that the object of the Bill is merely to empower the Government not to fill up an office which it is not necessary to fill up. The late Lord Truro held the sinecure office of Registrar of Land Transfers in Middlesex for many years, and it is this office, which has now come to an end, which the Bill proposes to abolish, thus effecting a considerable economy. But in order to do that it is absolutely necessary that legislation should take place. If the Bill is not passed, persons who have transferred land would lack the protection of registration. The reason why the word " temporary " has been inserted is that in consequence of an Act passed two years ago the whole of the question of land registry is awaiting further legislation. The only object of bringing in this Bill is to protect persons who may* transfer land and allow the transfers to be registered in the ordinary way. I may

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    add that the Lord Chancellor already possesses the power to make 'a rule, so that it is purely a formal matter.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: Then what excessive mischief could arise to the State if this Bill is not pressed forward? No injury would be done to the State, but people who may have paid their money for land would not have the protection of registration.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I should like to have a little further explanation. In the county in which I live we have a Land Registry, and therefore we are in the habit of paying certain fees when we purchase land, and it is duly transferred. I presume that the landowners of Middlesex are in the same position, and I want to know what the financial effect of this Bill will be. Will the fees in future be paid into the Exchequer?
    THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON,: I made a statement on this subject last night. The position of the matter is this. Under the arrangement which has hitherto existed one half of the surplus fees, after payment of expenses, went to Lord Truro as Registrar. There is under the statute not only a power to appoint a successor to Lord Truro, but also a power to the successor who may be appointed to appoint a deputy. The surplus fees amount to about £9,200 a year, of which £4,600 has gone to the Exchequer, while the other £4,600 went into the pocket of Lord Truro. It is now proposed, as the Attorney General has pointed out, that the work shall be continued to be done by the existing officers, and that the whole of the surplus fees shall go into the Exchequer.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I am much obliged for the explanation, but these figures were not mentioned last night. That is just the kind of way of doing business which leads to difficulty and inconvenience sometimes in regard to the passing of a Bill. It is desirable, I think, when the Government attempt to hurry a Bill through the House after 12 o'clock at night that a full explanation should be given of its provisions.
    MR. SEXTON: The explanation given by the right hon. Gentleman may be satisfactory, hut I think it would be more satisfactory if the way in which the money is to be
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    disposed of appeared on the face of the Bill. As far as the Bill is concerned, the fees payable for the registration of land transfer may go anywhere. There is no security under the Bill that they will go to the State. I think there ought to be a special arrangement in the measure itself as to the disposal of the money, and I would, therefore, ask the Government to give some assurance on the matter.
    MR. PICKERSGILL: The Attorney General spoke of the urgency of the Bill. May I ask whether there have been any memorials for registration since Lord Truro's death? I gather from the silence of the hon. and learned Gentleman that there have not been. Then how are the gentlemen protected who have been concerned in the transactions to which the Bill relates? He says that unless this Bill is passed immediately the persons interested in these transactions will suffer. I shall be glad if he will explain how the interests of those persons are protected who have presented memorials since the death of Lord Truro?
    SIR R. WEBSTER: What I said was that the Bill provides for the fulfilment of an extremely important as well as statutory duty. I will not go into the question whether any memorials have been presented within the last few days or not. It is not necessary to insert words in this Bill to safeguard the interests of those who have presented memorials, but the object of the measure is simply and solely to enable Her Majesty not to fill up the appointment rendered vacant by the death of Lord Truro. If an appointment is made, the officer appointed could appoint a deputy and get the fees.
    MR. SEXTON: The hon. and learned Gentleman has not answered the question at all. What is the objection to stating on the face of the Bill what is to be the use and destination of the money hereafter?
    SIR R. WEBSTER: Lord Truro received one-half of the surplus fees during his life time, and unless some one is appointed to fill up the vacant office the fees will go into the Treasury. If it is found necessary to insert words in the direction suggested by the hon. Member it could be done in another place.
    MR. S. T. EVANS: I put a question last night to the Secretary to the Treasury in regard to this Bill, and my recollection is that he only made a general statement to the effect that it would secure economy. It now appears to be a much more important Bill than was imagined. There is nothing on the face of the Bill to show what the powers of the registrar or masters are, and there has been no time to consult the statutes in order to ascertain what those powers are. I wish the Government to let the Committee know distinctly - what economy the proposed change will effect. It appears from the explanation of the Secretary to the Treasury that the sum of £4,600 a year went into the pocket of Lord Truro, but it does not point out whether anything will in future be paid to the officers of the Land Registry in addition to the salaries they now get. Nor are we told what is to become of the vacant office, except parenthetically by the Attorney General, that it will not be filled up, but the fees will go into the Treasury. Anything that is calculated to effect economy will have full support on this side of the House. [" Hear, hear ! " from the Ministerial Benches.] I am glad to hear that cheer, and to find that there is as strong a desire for economy on the other side of the House as upon this. What I wish to know is whether the Land Registry is to benefit from the abolition of the office. It has not had much to do hitherto, and I would ask whether an increased expenditure in connection with the office is contemplated. In that case I think we are entitled to know distinctly what economy the Bill will effect.
    MR.'LABOUCHERE: I think I can explain the ground of the last appointment. The appointment was in the hands of the Lord Chancellor, and a son of the Lord Chancellor got it. ["No," from the Treasury Bench.] At any rate the Lord Chancellor had a voice in the matter. There are three fees paid; one for registering the sale of land; another for registering a mortgage, and another for inquiries. All these fees went into the pocket of Lord Truro. What I particularly complain of in the matter is that the inhabitants of Middlesex are to be
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    called upon to pay greater or heavier fees than would meet the cost of the office, the benefit of which is to go to the Treasury. I claim that the fees charged should be so estimated that they would only pay expenses, and seeing how unsatisfactorily the business has been done in the past, I hope a thorough investigation will be made into the office, and that some better arrangement will be made for the future. Complaints have been made for years of the surplus fees which went into Lord Truro's pocket, and now the Government seem to think it right that the Treasury should inherit those fees. Not only are exorbitant fees paid, but when there is a mortgage on the property transferred extra fees have to be paid, and in addition there is an exceedingly bad index kept. So far as the late Lord Truro was concerned the office was an absolute sinecure, the whole of the work being done by subordinates.
    MR. CONYBEARE: I wish to call attention to the fact that no reference is made in the Bill either to the old arrangement or any proposed new arrangement. I claim that a more definite explanation of the arrangement made ought to be given by the Government, and that more time should be allowed to hon. Members to consider the matter. My main objection to the Bill, however, is of a general character. It may be impossible to so amend the Bill as to make the system of registration compulsory throughout the country, but I believe that is the only reasonable course which can be taken. If registration is good for Middlesex, it is equally good for the whole country, and I object to this partial and piecemeal kind of legislation.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: I must remind the Committee that my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast; (Mr. Sexton) has already pointed out that it has not been made clear that the alleged economy to be effected by this Bill will be appropriated in the manner intended. However that may be, I agree with the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) in contending that there is no reason why the Imperial Exchequer should make a profit out of a local land registry; but it has not been made clear how the money, or really what amount of money, will go into the Exchequer

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    under the Bill. I believe, However, that the Government would do well to defer the consideration of the measure, which was only circulated yesterday, especially as the persons who have to resort to this office would not be damnified by a short delay. The haste of the Government in the matter and the communications that have been going on between the two front Benches seem to me to be very suspicious. Whenever we see past and present Ministers combining together to get the Speaker out of the Chair, I think we ought to have our suspicions aroused. We all know that hitherto one-half of the fees have been pocketed by a descendant of Lord Truro. Who are the other Registrars? Are they noble Lords also? When we find the Government bringing in a Bill of this kind to the confusion of their supporters, and the First Lord of the Treasury throwing up his hands in despair at any idea of opposition, we ought to insist upon a full and complete explanation. If the Bill is seriously intended, the schedules should be so drawn as to show that the money will go into the Exchequer.
    MR. H. H. FOWLER: Referring to a remark of the hon. Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) about the two Front Benches conferring together, I may say that I remember when I was a young Member of the House, the present Chief Secretary for Ireland giving me a lesson in procedure. The right hon. Gentleman told me that whenever I saw the two Front Benches agreeing, I might come to the conclusion that there was some mischief on foot. But I may remind the hon. Member for North Longford that every question that comes before that House is not a Party question. There are great and important questions of finance and administration altogether outside Party considerations, and I am perfectly sure that both sides recognise the wisdom at times of carrying out important works of public good and public economy by concerted action between the Party Leaders. I may point out that the salary connected with this office being on the Votes, the hon. Member for Northampton will have the opportunity, on the Vote for the Land Registry Office, of raising the whole question of the cost of the office. But this is not the time to raise that ques-
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    tion. In the same way, with regard to the hon. Member for Camborne's (Mr. Conybeare) suggestions as to the compulsory registration of titles, this is not a Registration of Title Bill, but a Registrar's Fees Bill, and the two things are very different, Here is an office which, under existing legislation, has the right to levy certain fees. For a considerable number of years one half of those fees have gone into the public purse, and the other half into the pockets of the private sinecurist. This is a Bill to terminate the private sinecurist, and to provide that the whole of the fees shall in future go into the public purse. It has been asked, Why the hurry in this matter? The hurry is* £5,000 a year. What would my hon. Friend below the Gangway say if in the present week this sinecure place were filled up, and a vested right created which could not be abolished without large compensation. I ask the House of Commons to rise above all Party feelings in a matter of this sort, for I see great danger of this opportunity of effecting a real saving of £5,000 a year being lost if the House does not proceed rapidly to the passing of the Bill.
    MR. E. ROBERTSON: By this Bill certain important duties are transferred. May I ask whether the Registrar will derive any additional emoluments under the Bill?
    MR. JACKSON: I thought I had explained that matter last night. The position is this: There were originally three of these Registers, as they were called, in the Act of Parliament, and after paying the expenses of the office the surplus fees were divided among the three. One of the offices lapsed and the fees were then divided between the remaining two. Another died, and the Lord Chancellor, with whom the appointment rested, appointed the Queen's Remembrancer, on the condition that the fees to which he was nominally entitled were paid into the Exchequer. Another vacancy having arisen it is not proposed to make a fresh appointment, but to pay the whole of the surplus fees into the Exchequer. The question of increasing existing salaries has never been considered. If application were made for another £100 a year in respect of extra duties, I do not want to shut myself out from considering it, but no

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    change in that direction is contemplated, so far as the Bill is concerned; the fees must go into the Exchequer under the new arrangement.
    MR. SEXTON: After the statement of the right hon. Gentleman I hope the Government will se3 no objection to put an end to all doubt upon the subject by declaring in terms in the Bill that all fees or additional fees received under the powers now given shall be paid into the Exchequer. There may be some arrangement which does not appear in the Bill, and we ask that the intentions of the Government shall be placed beyond all doubt by being embodied in the Act.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,: I trust the hon. Member will be satisfied with the assurance that the Bill carries out the intention he desires, but it would be decidedly injurious to the public interest to introduce such a provision in the Bill, because if the arrangements were to become stereotyped, then it might not be possible to attempt any reduction upon the Votes, as has been foreshadowed by the right hon. Member opposite (Mr. H. H. Fowler). The Bill is the bonâ fide outcome of a desire on the part of the Government to effect a great public economy by transferring these fees to the Exchequer. The Government say, upon their responsibility, that the measure accomplishes that purpose fairly and fully, and, having made that statement, I must leave to the House the responsibility of proceeding with the measure or not.
    MR. CONYBEARE: Will the Government recite in the Bill the arrangement proposed?
    MR. W. H. SMITH: No, no.
    MR. CONYBEARE: Then I think we had better report Progress.
    MR. COBB: Perhaps the Financial Secretary will not mind my asking a bonâ fide question— namely,? whether we may take it as absolutely understood that the rules which the Lord Chancellor has power to make in the first Section of the Bill relate solely to procedure, and will have nothing whatever to do with salaries or fees?
    MR. JACKSON: Oh, certainly.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: If it was possible for the Lord Chancellor to appoint the Queen's Remembrancer on a former occasion there is nothing in this Bill to prevent anybody else being appointed now.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: The appointment does not rest with the Government or with the Officers of the Government. It rests with a person wholly independent of the Government.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: Who is he?
    The question was not answered.
    Clause agreed to.
    Clause 2 agreed to.
    Bill reported without Amendment.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: I trust that the House will now allow the Bill to be read the third time.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, " That the Bill be now read the third time."
    MR. T. M. HEALY: Now that we have granted the passing of this Bill I desire to explain the true inwardness of the position of the Government in this matter. Formerly the appointment to this office was vested at one moment in the Lord Chancellor, and in another in the Lord Chief Justice of England. The Lord Chief Justice at the present moment is a Liberal; the Lord Chancellor is a Tory. Had the office remained in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, he would have been allowed to job it away. But, as the office will now be in the gift of Lord Coleridge, a Liberal, and, therefore, one to whom Her Majesty's Government are inimical, this Bill is brought in and extreme pressure put upon the House by the Tory economists to pass it after 12 o'clock at night, all in order to take a piece of patronage out of the hands of Lord Coleridge. And this Bill has today been put in the front of the pièce de résistance of the Government, the Irish Land Bill, so important is it to prevent a Liberal Judge from having a piece of patronage. We all know that jobbery exists in various holes and corners of this Kingdom, but if there is any office that requires remodelling, refreshing, cleansing, and purifying, it is the patronage in the hands of the Lord Chancellor. No hurry is ever shown when an office falls vacant that is in the patronage of

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    the Lord Chancellor. The only desire is to fill it up if it happens to be a sinecure. On the present occasion I have to congratulate Her Majesty's Government on their splendid zeal for economy, because the patronage happens to be in the hands of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. That is the sole explanation of this Bill. I have tried to get out of the Government what their wonderful afflatus was, but having failed, it only remained for me to bell the cat.
    MR. W. H. SMITHI desire to mention, with reference remarks of the hon. and learned Member with regard to the Lord Chancellor, that when the vacancy fell to him to fill up, he appointed the Queen's Remembrancer, on the condition that the fees were paid into the Exchequer.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read the third time, and passed.

    PURCHASE OF LAND AND CONGESTED DISTRICTS (IRELAND) BILL. (No. 111.)
    Considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    Clause 1.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 7, to leave out the words " the Land Purchase Acts after the commencement of."—(Mr. Conybeare.)
    Question proposed, " That the words ' the Land Purchase Acts' stand part of the Clause."
    MR. CONYBEARE: I am satisfied with the Debate which occurred last night. I understand that the Chief Secretary has undertaken to make some alteration of the Bill.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,: I wish to point oat, with regard to the Amendment moved last night by the hon. Member for Camborne, that the hon. Member for Long-ford had suggested that it would be an improvement if we allowed the £900,000, or so, out of the £10,000,000 originally granted under the Ashbourne Act to be allocated under this Act. That is not a matter with regard to which the Government has a strong opinion one way or another. I think it would be
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    better to have one system of land purchase in Ireland, but I have no objection to the Amendment. However, the proper way would be to omit " for the purpose of such prior proceedings." If the hon. Member will withdraw the Amendment I will at the proper time move the omission of these words.
    MR. CONYBEARE: I am quite willing to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. E. ROBERTSON: I have placed on the Paper an Amendment to this effect: In line 1, Subsection 1, after the word " Acts" to insert " as amended by this Act."
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I accept the Amendment.
    Amendment proposed, in Sub-section 1, after " Acts " insert " as amended by this Act."—(Mr. E. Robertson.)
    Amendment agreed to.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 8, to omit the words " for the purpose of such prior proceeding."—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)
    Question, " That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause," put, and negatived.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: I have now to move to omit from line 10 in the clause the word "guaranteed." This is an important Amendment, because if it is accepted there will unquestionably have to be a considerable change in the Bill in regard to the mode of procedure. I object to a Guaranteed Stock, because I believe that the responsibility of the country should not be nominal, but real, and at the last election the country decided against incurring any liability for the objects of this Bill. I do not think those objects are such as to justify us in throwing more responsibility on the taxpayers. There is, in the Bill, both a suppressio veri and a suggestio falsi; and the Government try to persuade the unfortunate taxpayer that he will incur no liability. If we assume that estates of the value of £150,000,000 are to be sold, we may take it that, before getting back our Sinking Fund in full, at least a century will elapse. From whom do we buy these estates? We buy them from the Irish landlord for cash. To whom do

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    we sell them? We sell, the estates to the present tenants. Many of these tenants have very small holdings, and Sir James Caird says there is no economic rent in these small holdings. We should thus come into the legal right to extort what ought not to be extorted. The Chief Secretary says there would be a margin, but that depends on whether the price of produce would be maintained. Who can guarantee that the price of produce will not fall during the next century? In all probability it will fall. We know that there has been a heavy fall in the price of produce during the last 20 years. While the purchase of land will be regarded by business men as a bad investment in Ireland, there are special reasons why it might be regarded as a bad speculation. In Ireland there are a large number of properties supposed to be worth millions, which are now in the Encumbered Estate Court or in Chancery, and cannot find purchasers. Only two years ago the Land Commissioners reported that 15 years was too long a term to grant without a revision of rent owing to the rise and fall in the price of produce. If these properties had been bought in 20 years ago, the purchasers would have been told that their security was perfectly safe, and yet we now know that the loss would have been very considerable. We may, therefore, fairly say that it is problematical that in the next 20 years there may not be a fall equivalent to that which has taken place within the last 20 years. Whilst the purchase of land in England would be regarded by business men as a bad or questionable investment, in Ireland there are special reasons why it would be regarded as a bad speculation. Rent in Ireland has not the sanctity of property which rent elsewhere has. There is a feeling—I do not say whether it is right or wrong —against rent in Ireland. Landlords in Ireland are not popular. Does anyone suppose this feeling will diminish? Does anyone suppose that landlords will be more popular when England is made the landlord in many cases? Common sense tells us the reverse will be the case. It tells us rent will soon be called Land Tax or tribute paid to an alien Government. Last year the Chief Secretary told us we were entirely mistaken in supposing there would be
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    any opposition to the payment of this tribute or annuity, because no one had protested under the Ashbourne Act. But we find there are numerous protests against that Act. There are many persons unwilling or unable to pay rent, and who ask for a reduction of the annuity. You may take it that although the tenants may possibly be able to pay their rents, there will be what I may term a political strike against rent. That assuredly is possible, and I think it exceedingly probable. It is absolutely impossible to meet this by eviction. You cannot, for a moment, think of evicting hundreds of thousands of persons because they do not choose to pay their rent. I have here a statement by a right hon. Gentlemen who, with hon. Gentlemen opposite, is a great authority upon this matter, I allude to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain). Speak-in Scotland he said—
    "Working men of England and Scotland, you will be Irish landlords; you will have to evict the tenants; you will have to collect your rent at the point of the bayonet, and I refuse to be a party to such contingencies."
    What does the right hon. Gentleman say now? Is he not a party to such contingencies? These contingent securities cannot be impounded until evictions have taken place; therefore, evictions are the first things that will have to take place. Suppose the right hon. Gentleman overcomes his refusal to be a party to these contingencies, where are we to get buyers? Who in the name of wonder would buy these holdings? At present when a man is evicted you have the greatest difficulty to induce anyone else to take the farms owing to the strength of public opinion which is brought to bear against the persons who take evicted farms. Unquestionably that difficulty would be very greatly increased if evictions were to take place at the instance of the British Government. But the Bill suggests you should farm these farms yourselves. Can anything be more ridiculous? Practically, all we have for the repayment by the tenants is their goodwill. They will decide in their own consciences whether they will pay or not. No doubt you will find a very large number of persons who in-some place or other will decide they will not pay. I have here also the opinions

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    of other eminent men. What does Lord i Selborne say? He considers the tenants would not pay rent, and he proves satisfactorily to himself and to me that Solomon was of the same opinion. He says—
    " I know very well that Mr. Gladstone has persuaded himself that, if this immense accession is made to the National Debt, we may-rely on the Irish re-paying. Now, I have authority even higher than Mr. Gladstone's for warning you against suretyship, even for a less amount. In a certain Book of Proverbs it is said, ' He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it, and he that hateth suretyship is sure.' Look at the party from whom repayment is expected in this ease. I feel sure that if the country enters into these transactions it must expect to pay."
    So much for Lord Selborne, backed up by Solomon. The noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) said—
    "The first effect will be that the tribute asked from Ireland will be unpaid. It would be idle to think of exacting tribute, or the interest on any loans you may advance to a starving peasantry or to the unemployed artisans of once flourishing communities."
    The right hon. Member for West Birmingham, addressing some people somewhere, said—
    " Yes, and you were to take the risk, which at the beginning was to be £50,000,000, and which very soon would have been £200,000,000, and you were to take that on a security on which I venture to say no private individual and no Financial Company would have advanced one farthing."
    It is said we do not advance more than £30,000,000. Personally, I think we involve ourselves in the necessity, if we agree to this grant, of advancing a very much greater sum. I put the minimum at £150,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian limited in his Bill the liability to £50,000,000, and then hon. Gentlemen opposite said we should he forced to advance £200,000,000 or £250,000,000. The same arguments which went to show that if you advanced under the right hon. Gentleman's Bill £50,000,000 you would have to advance a larger sum, go to show that if you advance £30,000,000 at present you will have to advance a larger sum, only they are considerably stronger now than they were then. We do not select estates. It is the first come , first served. This is proved by what took place under the Ashbourne
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    Act. Under that Act the Duke of Abercorn received £267,000, and the Duke of Leinster received £244,000. I do not say they were in any way bad landlords, but they applied first and they got the money. What will be the result of the operation of this Bill? We shall have two classes of tenants in Ireland. The first class will be what I may term the tenants of the State. They will pay lower rent than the other tenants, and will at the end of .49 years obtain their holdings. The other class will be the tenants of private individuals. They will pay a higher rent than the tenants of the State, and at the end of 49 years they will not get their holdings. It seems to me obvious that this will create such agitation and confusion that the only way out of the difficulty will be to buy all the land of Ireland. But the Bill only deals with £30,000,000, and it is asserted that if the tenants do not pay, we are to secure repayment from other sources. I admire the ability of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in trying to make a really good financial omelette out of rotten eggs, as I shall show the other securities to be. The first of the other securities is that we retain one-fifth of the purchase money in our hands. This would undoubtedly be a cover so far as one-fifth is concerned if we were to give the real value of the estate, but as a matter of fact we begin by giving about one-fifth more than the value of the estate. The Chief Secretary said we buy on a certain number of years' purchase on the net value. We do not buy on the net value, we buy on the gross value, less the local contributions of the landlord. No allowance of any sort or kind is made for expenses of management, local charges, cost of eviction, or other incidentals. This one-fifth is perfectly illusory. We are told the British taxpayer is absolutely and entirely protected from any chance of having to pay. We collect £1,169,000 from Ireland every year by way of Imperial taxation. This, capitalised, amounts to £29,717,000, which it is proposed to advance in these guaranteed bonds. It is said, therefore, that the British taxpayer is secure by holding this money in his hand even if the tenants or annuitants do not pay. That is very pretty in theory, but let us look at the

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    fact. The £1,169,000 is made up of a considerable number of items. In the Return which is furnished to us of the amount of each item, the first class of items is called the cash portion of the guarantee fund. That amount is not in any way allocated at the present moment to any particular service. That amounts to £293,000 per annum. I think the Government might have added £40,000 or £35,000, the Customs portion. I admit this is absolute cover, so far as it goes, although it is doubtful whether we could really refuse to give it to Ireland, and whether, if we did refuse to give it as now, we should not be called upon to give it to Ireland in some other shape or form—in meal, or malt, or something else. If I add £35,000 to the £293,000, it gives us £328.000. The capitalisation of this sum is £8,025,000. Therefore, we have to find somewhere else £841,924 in order to make the capitalisation up to £29,717,000. How is this done? And here comes in the ingenuity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman takes the Imperial contributions to local charges— to the maintenance of lunatics in workhouses, the salaries to workhouse schoolmasters, allowances to medical officers, and payments for medicine for dispensaries and medical appliances. I assert this expenditure could not be withheld. It is absolutely necessary for the future of civil society. It is absurd to say we could allow the lunatics to go at large. We could not refuse to pay schoolmasters and others in Ireland because a number of tenants—our tenants—had refused to pay us their rents. If the counties did not meet this expenditure you would have to meet it. The State pays a portion of the charge for the police of London. Does anyone say that we might mortgage that portion and go without the police? What have these unfortunate lunatics, these schoolmasters, these paupers specially to do with the fact that the Imperial Parliament takes upon itself to enter into these transactions? Are you to say to a lunatic: " I will turn you loose if a tenant in Tipperary does not pay me "; are you to say to an unfortunate schoolmaster: " Go; you shall not have your salary;" are you to say to the pauper: " You shall starve because I cannot get some money from the tenant?" The real
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    amount of cover from Ireland is £328,000, which capitalised will make £8,025,000. That leaves £21,691,000 absolutely uncovered. The Government have another plan forgetting back our money, although, if their former plan were good they would not trouble themselves to provide other securities. They propose, if the money is not paid by the tenants, that the Lord Lieutenant shall be empowered to issue a precept to any defaulting county to make up by means of a rate the amount due. If the default is owing to distress. how can we get the rate any more than the rent? The same may be said in the case of a political strike. If the people should say, " We are not going to pay the rent," are they likely to recognise their obligation to pay the rate? Then I ask what does the grocer in Tipperary gain from your giving credit to the Tipperary farmer? Yet you say, " If the Tipperary farmer does not pay you come down on the Tipperary grocer.'' You do not intend to obtain the consent of the county to levy this local rate or to enter into these transactions. You impose these transactions on the the county and, having done so, if the individual does not pay you call on the whole county to pay. Yet this is the Government which, during the last few years, has been prating about introducing a grand scheme of local self-government for Ireland. I think one thing seems to be forgotten. Before you can impound any of the local money, or levy any rates, you must exhaust all possible means of getting the money from the particular individual who owes it to you, that is to say you must proceed by eviction. We have the statement of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) that he never will assent to the contingency of eviction, and, therefore, he never will assent to our obtaining our money in any other way, because eviction must be the primary step. But allowing that the £30,000,000 are amply covered by the securities, I think that a fatal mistake has been made in the calculations. As the money comes in we are to reinvest it in fresh purchases. New credits are to be opened before the old are extinguished. The consequence is that there is an overlapping. What will happen in the fortieth year? The State will in that year have £1,169,000

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    covered, but it will in that year lose about £2,250,000, and therefore will be above £1,000,000 short. Assuming the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be perfectly right, we shall not be protected so far; because, instead of investing the money in Consols, we are to invest it in other securities risky in themselves. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham has said that if we could show that the securities were not covered he would be an inconsistent person. I have shown it. Now, what advantage, social or political, is to be derived from this purchase of land, which outweighs the risk? In 1881 an Act was passed creating dual ownership in Ireland. That was regarded as a perfect panacea for all the ills of Ireland; but now we are told that it is so unjust and injurious a measure that we ought to risk £30,000,000 to get rid of it. What is this dual ownership? I lake it as simply meaning fixity of tenure and fail-rent. If the rent is not fair let it he made fair. You have laid it down that a fair rent is the margin that remains after the tenant is allowed to live and thrive. You based your legislation of 1881 on the landlord being only allowed to exact a fair rent. If the rent is unfair then reduce it. But if the rent is fair, why change it; why not leave it as it is? I see no earthly reason why the taxpayers should pay in order to convert these exceedingly fortunate tenants into freeholders—they are much better off than English agricultural occupiers, and why, because they are better off, are they to be converted into owners at the risk of the British taxpayers? Now, here in London we have dual ownership, we have heavy ground rents, and very few people are able to get freehold's; the people of London pay excessive rents and they are badly lodged owing to the high price of land resulting from this system of dual ownership. We have long complained of this, and we have urged reform, but we have never come to the State for assistance. When the Londoners ask for the enfranchisement of leaseholds they do not ask the State to lend them the money for 49 years, they say they are willing to pay for this; and if people in Ireland want to be freeholders why should they not pay for it? Why are we in London to incur the cost of making the Irish tenants freeholders? Let them in Ireland
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    as in London, if they want to become freeholders, pay for it themselves and not come sponging on the State for credit and assistance. Further, why should it be for agricultural tenants only that State aid in this direction should be invoked? There are plenty of manufacturers and traders who, if they could obtain capital at 2¾ per cent., with 49 years given to pay the principal, would be able greatly to benefit themselves and to give a share of the benefits to their employés under them. There is a name I can mention which will command respect on both sides of the House—the late Mr. John Bright. What does he say on this question of dual ownership in Ireland? Mr. Bright, writing to Lord Kilmorey in 1887, said—
    "The Land Act of 1881 and the Land Courts have given 15 years leases to the tenants at a rent fixed by the Courts during the period of 15 years. To me there seems no reason why, under those leases, landlord and tenant should not live in as much harmony as they have lived in past times' under ordinary leases in Ireland, and as they live now in Great Britain. I do not agree with those who are saying so much about the dual ownership, as if there is great importance in that phrase."
    Well, I do not see why tenants should not be left to this dual ownership. II; is somewhat curious that hon. Gentlemen opposite and Liberal Unionists should be now so anxious for the extinction of landlords in Ireland, that they should consider they have a sort of function of a political St. Patrick to drive out landlords from Ireland, as if they were so many snakes. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian made a proposal of this kind all those gentlemen denounced it as a perfect monstrosity. Lord Salisbury said—
    " If the money is to be spent, for Heaven's sake let it be spent in a common-sense way, not spent in a fantastic scheme which never, in the experience of the human race, has been attempted before. I can show the Prime Minister a better way of spending the money than in buying the landlords out. 1 do not say I recommend it, because I am not at all convinced that the electors of Great Britain ought to bear such a tremendous burden; but, assuming that the Government is right in thinking that they ought to bear it, I would point out to them that if they could only emigrate another million of the Irish people, they might do it for a great deal less than that sum."
    Again, speaking to an assembly of Primrose dames and knights, on the same date, Lord Salisbury said—

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    " Buying out landlords for the purpose of evading the duty of protecting them would he a cowardly shirking of our responsibility."
    What did the President of the Board of Trade say speaking to his constituents at Bristol?—
    "If a large liability is to be incurred for Ireland by this country, it would be better spent in promoting emigration rather than in that wild scheme of buying out the Irish landlords which Mr. Gladstone proposes."
    In a manifesto of Liberal Unionists at Liverpool, signed by Lord Derby, the measure of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian was thus described—
    "A measure bad in itself, likely to be disastrous to Ireland and injurious to Great Britain, pregnant with danger of future strife and collision, and involving the expenditure of many millions of the hard-earned money of the taxpayer."
    What did the Chancellor of the Exchequer say? Upon finance I may say I am a disciple of the right hon. Gentleman, and I treasure up everything he says. Speaking in Scotland the right hon. Gentleman said—
    "You are going to expropriate and expatriate the whole of the landlords in Ireland to other parts of the United Kingdom. You are leaving Ireland to fight her way alone with this burden on her, having removed from the country most of those who might contribute to her support."
    Does the right hon. Gentleman say " Hear, hear " to that? [Mr. GOSCHEN: Hear, hear !] Very well. The Duke of Rutland, too, was very indignant with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian for bringing in the measure. Speaking at Hatfield he said—
    " Part of the scheme of the Government was the expropriation of the existing landlords of Ireland. What class was it that maintained the large section of the Irish people, the day labourers, the grooms, the gardeners, the men-servants and the maid-servants, the vast body of people who could not be reckoned either as landlords, tenants, or manufacturers? Why it was the landlords of Ireland, whom it was proposed to exile from their native land. These people would have to emigrate to England, and the English labourer and artisan would find additional Irish competition not only beating down their wages but rendering it impossible for wages to be sustained or increased."
    Well, I do not find myself able to agree with all the Duke of Rutland has said, but I am inclined to agree with him here. If you remove the rents and the landlords it would be beneficial, but if
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    you remove the landlords and substitute a great absentee landlord in the State, if you carry away the rents to another country, then I think the Duke of Rutland is entirely right and that you do harm by spending money in this way. We have in this country a large revenue derived from land, especially in rents, and imagine what this country would suffer if all these rents were paid into France and withdrawn from this country. But in Ireland the case is much stronger. Here we have other industries than that of agriculture, but agriculture is practically the only industry in Ireland, and yet you lightly say you are going to take away the rents arising out of this industry, and that you will benefit the country by so doing. I say the money we are asked to vote now will be wasted, and that for all the good it will do you might just as well convert it into bullion and cast it into the sea. The Government will not effect their own purpose by this measure. Their object is to do away with dual ownership in Ireland; but there will still be dual ownership between the State and the tenants. They will establish in place of the dual ownership between the tenants and the landlords, some of whom are resident, a dual ownership between the tenants and the non-spending State, and this is to go on for 49 years. What happens at the end of that term I do not care, and I do not know that anyone does. As practical men we must look a little closer to the immediate future than that. Then, again if you convert the tenant into owner he may and no doubt will sell or let. You cannot prevent it by legislation, you cannot make the people adscriptus glebœ, a sort of caste as in India—an agricultural caste, and say, " You were born on this land, you must remain on this land, and throughout your life you must continue to cultivate this spot of land." Who really does benefit by all this outlay? Do the landlords? Some undoubtedly do. Some landlords will sell well. They will pocket their money and go somewhere else to enjoy it. But many landlords do not wish to do that. What will their position be?—for instance, I take the case of the hon. and gallant Member for Armagh (Colonel Saunderson). I believe he is a landlord who deals fairly with his tenants, and he probably wishes to remain

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    in Ireland. Look at the unfortunate position in which he will be placed. I think it ought to induce him to come to our assistance in our endeavour to do away with this guarantee. He is on good terms with his tenants, and they pay only fair rents. But neighbouring tenants are suddenly enabled, by the use of British credit, to pay less rent and to take possession of their holdings at the end of 49 years. Will he not thus be placed in a false position? Will he not find himself at feud with his tenants from whom he demands nothing but a fair rent, or will he not have to reduce his rents below that which is fair simply because others around have had their rents reduced by the assistance of the State? I appeal to hon. Gentlemen opposite, for the sake of the hon. and gallant Gentleman in his position as a fair landlord, to pause before they assent to the scheme of the Government. Do the tenants profit in any way? I do not think they will if they keep faith. They will have to pay a fixed amount for 49 years. I would rather pay on a sliding scale with a revision every 15 years than pay a fixed amount in 49 years. It may be a good bargain or a bad one. I can conceive it being such a bad bargain that they could not pay; but as they have not the remotest intention to pay and as they know that it is the British taxpayer who will have to pay, in that sense they will make a good bargain for themselves. Will Ireland be benefited? I have pointed out the effect of the absenteeism proposed to be created. Will the relations between the two countries be improved? Surely not. When we become the owners of the land in Ireland we shall inherit all the ill-feeling engendered by centuries of injustice, and be hated as landlords of the country. Who, then, will get the benefit? Some landlords will, and the tenants will if they do not pay; but the real persons who will gain will be our friends in the City here—the mortgagees. Companies have advanced enormous sums on estates in Ireland, for while in England they get 4 per cent. they get 5 per cent. in Ireland, and there is the natural result of high interest and bad security. These companies cannot foreclose; they cannot get their interest, and they are delighted with the Bill because it will enable them to be paid in full. The mortgagees will be the beneficiaries.
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    How are the Irish Members going to vote? My impression is that they are going to vote for the guarantee because they regard the money as a gift. As sensible men, they know that much nonsense is talked about security, but that nobody in Ireland dreams of paying a halfpenny. A few months ago, I read a speech of Lord Salisbury's, in which he urged as a reason why this Bill should be passed that it would render Home Rule impossible. Irish Members are therefore selling their birthright for a mess of pottage, and a rotten mess of pottage it is, too. Still, with us Home Rule is a principle, and, come what may, we still remain Home Rulers. There is Homo Rule and Home Rule, and by aiding the Government to pass this Bill Irish Members are -making it somewhat difficult for Radicals to give them that very large measure of Home Rule which they desire. Control over the land of Ireland is a portion of the measure of Home Rule which should be given to Ireland; but the electors will say, " It is not Irishmen's land, it is our land. The Irishmen have bargained it away for our money, and we must look after that land, and exercise some sort of control over it. We may be base and bloody Saxons, but we are mortgagees; we have our rights, and must look after them." It is suggested that the Bill may remove a difficulty, that if they get hold of the land the Tories will perhaps agree to allow the Irish to exercise control; but the Tories will do nothing of the sort. On the contrary, they will use the fact of this money being advanced as an argument against giving the Irish control over the land. It may be said, some Liberals do not go so far as others as to the amount of control to be granted, and that if the Bill passes we shall become a happy family in this matter. Well, I do not see how the difficulty that exists is to be removed by the Bill. There can be no absolute finality in legislation on land. Whether you pass this Bill or not you must place the control over land with an English or an Irish Parliament, and the difficulty will exist whether you pass the Bill or not. Personally I could never understand how any one calling himself a Liberal, much less a Radical, can hesitate for a moment to give the Irish full control over the land. I do

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    not understand the distinction between property in land and anything else. I can understand the opposition to Home Rule but that anybody in favour of Home Rule should say we will give the Irish Parliament full power to deal with manufacturers and other property, but reserve to the English Parliament the right of control over land, seems to me absolutely illogical. It may be asked why are we so indignant at this guarantee, particularly as the Liberal Government brought in a Bill with a similar sort of guarantee. Well, that does not concern me, for I voted against it, and undoubtedly of the two Bills that was the better. The annuities were to be paid from the Irish Exchequer, and if we had an Irish Parliament the Irish Local Authorities would act as a buffer between us and the actual tenants. But the real point is this, that it is no use going back to that; we must recognise the fact that at the last General Election the people declared against any species of Imperial guarantee being given for the purpose of purchasing land. No great measure involving a huge liability like this should be passed without the approval of the country being obtained to it, and à fortiori no great measure like this should be passed when the country has expressed disapproval of such a measure, as the country at the General Election did. At the last General Election not only did Members on this side declare against an Imperial guarantee, But almost every Tory, as well as Liberal Unionist, went to the electors with the cry, " Do not return the Liberals to Parliament, although Mr. Gladstone has declared the Land Purchase Bill is dead, for it is humanly possible that he may bring it in in another shape. Send us to Parliament as the guardians and protectors of the Imperial Exchequer against the possible raids of Mr. Gladstone." I have in my pocket 69 addresses of Conservative and Liberal Unionists [Cries of " Read, read "] which I have obtained at the British Museum. The hon. Gentleman would not say "Bead" if he realised the utter sameness in the addresses. I will, however, read one or two as samples. Here is one signed " Algernon Borthwick," who is, I presume, the Member for South Kensington. He said—
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    " The English taxpayer in these times of hardship and depression is to be asked to contribute millions on millions upon the chance of the Irish tenant farmers paying their rents to the permanently-absentee landlord—the British Treasury. Common sense, honesty, loyalty, and law all condemn the wild and dangerous scheme which the Premier (Mr. Gladstone) has adopted."
    The next extract is from the address of Mr. Bartley, the Member for North Islington, who said—
    " The very heavy additional burden of taxation which the policy of the Government involves in buying out the Irish landlords seems to me to be both unjust and unnecessary to the English, Scotch, and Welsh taxpayer."
    Viscount Baring, the Member for the Biggleswade Division, said—
    " I am opposed to the Land Bill, because the British taxpayer would become liable to a charge of at least £30,000,000, and probably not less than £200,000,000, for the purchase of the property of the landlords of Ireland."
    Lord Henry Bruce, Chippenham, in his address, said—
    " That you, the British taxpayer, should, out of your hard-earned incomes,"
    —we all know this style—
    "be called upon to pay the fabulous sum of from £50,000,000 to £150,000,000 to buy out the landlords, and that in future the odium is to devolve on your shoulders of collecting their rents—which will assuredly be considered foreign tribute—is a burden which I imagine you will not for a moment tolerate."
    Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, East Grinstead Division, said—
    " The second Bill provided for buying out the landlords at an enormous expense, which would almost certainly eventually fall upon the British taxpayer. It was the principle of this scheme, and no mere Resolution, which was decisively rejected by Parliament."
    I have taken these as the most moderate samples, but all alike condemn the principle of an Imperial guarantee. The present Bill unquestionably gives such a guarantee, and that guarantee is justified by the most transparent of subterfuges, the subterfuge being, I fancy, the effort of the Member for West Birmingham. That right hon. Gentleman explained all over the country that he had a plan for reducing rents and making occupiers owners with no loss to landlords, no Imperial guarantee, no liability to the British taxpayer. Well, we wondered how he was going to do this, and for a long time he did not produce his plan, but at last this plan is produced, and, I presume, we owe it to him. He says

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    that guarantee is merely nominal, and there is no real liability. But I think I have shown that there is, and I think we can, as men of business, judge of the security. I put it to men of business, if you were to go into the City and ask for a loan on this security in the Bill without this guarantee would you get it? How much money would you get? I defy the Chancellor of the Exchequer to get up. in his place and fairly and honestly say that, from his knowledge of the City of London, he could place a loan for the purposes of the Bill without a general Imperial guarantee at 5, 7, or even 10 per cent. But this violation of a pledge on the part of a great Party is really more important than the financial loss, because it strikes at the confidence that ought to be entertained by the country in the majority of the House of Commons, whether Liberal or Conservative. The Party opposite call themselves constitutional: I think their conduct in this matter is unconstitutional—so unconstitutional that I was going to say it was "dishonourable;" but I will not do that; I will say, " Brutus is an honourable man." We know that if this Bill is passed here, there is no chance of its being thrown out in the House of Lords, which is a mere pale reflex of the majority in this House. I suppose if the Liberal Party were to bring in a Bill in opposition to their pledges to the country, the House of Lords would throw it out; and they would be justified in doing so. But you do not expect the House of Lords to do that now. The head of the House of Lords is the head of the Government, and gentlemen sitting on the Front Bench opposite are merely his clerks. These are my chief reasons for moving this Amendment. I have not a vestige of doubt that I shall be beaten, because I do not believe that the present Government could propose anything, no matter how monstrous, no matter how contrary to the pledges that had been given at an election, which their henchmen on that side and on this side would not vote for. Though we shall be beaten, we shall have done our duty. We shall have protested against this guarantee on it merits, and have protested against it as one of the grossest violations of confidence ever perpetrated by Representatives against those they re-
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    present. Though we shall be beaten, I have no doubt that the electors will take the matter up at the next General Election. Two days ago an eminent Member of this House, taking part in the proceedings on some festive occasion, in returning thanks, said this-House was on its death-bed. My only prayer is that it may never rise from its death-bed.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 10, to leave out the word " guaranteed."—(Mr. Labouchere.)
    Question proposed, "That the word ' guaranteed ' stand part of the Clause."
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Member who has just sat down has taken the opportunity afforded by the Amendment standing in his name to make a most elaborate Second Reading speech against the Bill. No topic touched upon in the prolonged Debates that took place last year on the Second Reading, so far as my recollection serves me, has been left untouched—I will not say unadorned—by the hon. Member. He has discussed the necessity, or absence of necessity, for land purchase. He has. discussed the advantages and disadvantages of landlordism, and he has discussed the advantages and disadvantages of dual ownership. Whether the course taken by the hon. Member was strictly in order it is not for me to say. [Opposition cries of " Order !" " Chair !" and " Withdraw ! "
    THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order !
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes; whether he was strictly in order it is not for me to say. I think that it will, at all events, be admitted that is not my bounden duty to follow the hon. Member closely through all the topics to which ho has thought fit to refer. One observation made by the hon. Member caused me some surprise. The hon. Member expressed his inability to understand the frame of mind of any person who thought that a legislative distinction could be drawn between landed property in Ireland and other kinds of property. He said he could understand the frame of mind of those who oppose Home Rule, but that the frame of mind of anyone who could be so silly as to suppose that legislative precautions had to be taken in the case of Irish land which need not be taken in the case of other property in

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    Ireland was a degree of stupidity that he could not understand. If the hon. Member's view is right, the most stupid men in this House are the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian and the right hon. Member for Newcastle, and their stupidity is shared by nearly every considerable Member of this House, except the hon. Member himself, who has in the last 10 or 15 years expressed an opinion upon the Irish land question. Then the hon. Member raised a topic which is not raised for the first time in this House. He dwelt on what he termed the inconsistency of the Tory Party in making themselves responsible for a large scheme of land purchase in Ireland, and quoted some election addresses to show that objection was taken by Conservative Members to the Bill of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian. Of course, objection was taken to that Bill; and if it should be revived, I think the hon. Member would find that the same objections would be taken by the same people, and on the same grounds, and that it would not be necessary to express them in different language to that which was used in 1886. The objection made in 1886 was not to land purchase in the abstract. [Laughter.] The opinion I am expressing is founded entirely upon the extracts quoted by the hon. Member. The Committee will see from those extracts that what was objected to was the risk of loss to which the British taxpayer was exposed by the Bill of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian. But those who opposed that measure do not think that risk is thrown upon the British taxpayer by the Bill before the Committee. They may be right or wrong. I shall in a few moment's have to explain why I think they are right; but whether they are right or wrong, there is no inconsistency in their position, which is that the scheme advanced by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian in 1886, connected as it was with a scheme for a Home Rule Parliament, was essentially insecure; whereas the present Bill, with its entirely different sets of guarantees and its different machinery for recouping the British taxpayer, and with no association with a Home Rule measure, is a Bill which may be accepted in perfect security by even the most anxious economist. The hon. Member has
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    asked us—and again this is a question which has been asked before in the House—what financial house in the City would lend money upon the security provided by this Bill. I reply that if you were to go into the City and say, " You shall have absolute control over that part of the Imperial Fund which goes to support Irish local taxation; the Guarantee Fund shall be put into your till if there is any insufficiency of payment," there is no house that would refuse to accept the proposal. The security is absolute. If you gave an Imperial pledge—if this House were to give a pledge that the £30,000,000- to name a sum—of the Guarantee Fund should be paid to the City house in case of insufficiency in the receipts from Irish land, of course no firm would refuse to take the responsibility, and the House of Commons is in exactly the same position as this hypothetical firm.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: The Government are under the prior obligation of keeping the lunatics in Ireland.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There is no obligation of a financial kind to keep the lunatics.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: How about the police and removables?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I trust we shall not hear much more about this hypothetical firm. The hon. Member for Northampton has criticised the security for the advance of money by the State, saying that agricultural produce is very likely to fall in value. The hon. Member said that arrangements are going to be made with the tenants which will cover a period of 49 years, that during that period any number of vicissitudes may affect agriculture as they have done in the past, and that as the income the occupier receives is diminished, so his ability to pay will diminish with it, and we may find we have lent our money on agricultural security which has greatly shrunk in value. Of course, no one can absolutely forecast the future, and what the hon. Member predicts with regard to the value of agricultural produce may come to pass, but there are two observations with which I may meet the hon. Member's criticism. The small tenants whom the hon. Member has in his mind as those who will suffer most by a, shrinkage in the value of agri-

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    cultural produce sell only a small and insignificant portion of the produce of their holdings. The greater part they consume themselves; and in respect of that part, therefore, it matters not a farthing whether the price goes up or down. Then I believe the tenants will very seldom have to pay more than 80 per cent. of their present rents; and in the case of the small petty holdings which afford least security, no doubt the number of years' purchase will be proportionately small, and the reduction in the annual payments in proportion to the present rents comparatively large. In the poorer districts of the West I suppose there will be few cases of more than 15 years' purchase, and the reductions will probably be reductions of 40, 50, or even 60 per cent. upon the rents now paid. The margin supplied by such reductions is so enormous that I think we may look forward with perfect equanimity to anything that nay happen to agriculture in the next 49 years, and not anticipate any difficulty of the kind the hon. Member has referred to. We must also bear in mind that the eventuality of periods of exceptional distress is met by the creation of two kinds of Reserve Funds which will, I believe, be adequate to bear any strain that is likely to be thrown upon them. So much for the objection of the hon. Gentleman, on the score that the land on which the money is lent will fall in value. But then the hon. Gentleman complains that the Government give too much for the land, and settle too long a term of years for the purchase. I think that the hon. Gentleman must have had in view the Bill of last year; the Bill of this year mentions no number of years' purchase, and leaves the whole question entirely to the landlord and tenant to settle what price they shall receive and give, subject to the decision of the Land Commissioner that the land given in security is ample to meet the loan made upon it. The hon. Gentleman has based his speech upon, not memory, but forgetfulness of last year's Bill. The hon. Gentleman, however, has preserved the greater portion of his criticism for the Guarantee Fund. For my own part, I fully accept the principle that the Government cannot ask the House of Commons or the country to lend more money than they have already lent on
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    the security of Irish land without supplementing the security in some effective manner. I contend that we have succeeded in doing so. The hon. Member has, first, taken the cash portion of the Guarantee Fund, and his criticism is, " I grant that the cash portion fully covers the £8,000,000 or so advanced, but even as far as the cash portion is concerned, you will have to evict before you use it, and eviction is a thing from which you will shrink, and is a thing in which the right hon. Member for West Birmingham has expressed the opinion that he will never take part." But it being accepted that the cash portion of the Guarantee Fund is inadequate, the hon. Gentleman is entirely mistaken with regard to the question of eviction, which is not in any way an essential preliminary. The Bill provides that as soon as there is any deficiency in the Land Purchase Account in consequence of the non-payment of annuities, immediately the Treasury shall seize upon an amount of the cash in its possession equivalent to the default, quite irrespective of any payment on the part of the tenant, or of selling his holding. The criticism of the hon. Gentleman on the cash portion is, therefore, based upon an imperfect acquaintance with the contents of the Bill. With regard to the contingent portion of the Guarantee Fund, the criticism is that since that portion of the money is devoted to such local purposes as the support of pauper lunatics and other analogous purposes, it will be impossible for this House, under any circumstances, to touch it. For my own part, I fully believe that under no conceivable circumstances which any practical statesman can contemplate will it ever be necessary to touch the contingent portion of the fund. Even the hon. Member himself does not contemplate a general conspiracy against the payment of the annuities. But if there were, for my own part I do not believe that the House would shrink from requiring the locality to pay a tax sufficient fully to pay the deficiency in the cash portion. Before we can arrive at the contingent portion we have to conceive a universal conspiracy against payment of the annuities all over Ireland; that the localities refuse to pay the tax legally put upon them to meet the deficiency; and that this House will be so

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    soft-hearted — I was going to say pusillanimous—as to meet this deliberate conspiracy against the taxpayers of this country by calmly repealing the Act and giving to the localities—who must have been privy to the conspiracy—funds to which they have no earthly right. I do not believe that the House would hesitate for a moment if the contingency arose. But is this possible? I contend that it is not. I dealt with this question at very great length last year, both on the First and on the Second Reading of the Bill, when I gave detailed financial arguments and figures which nobody has attempted to meet. Does the hon. Gentleman think that it is so easy to get up a universal conspiracy against the payment of annuities?
    MR. LABOUCHERE: Yes.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Then I maintain that the hon. Gentleman knows little about Ireland. In order to make such a universal conspiracy successful they must, in the first place, deal with a landlord whose pecuniary position is such that he cannot stand by himself; secondly, the conspiracy must be backed up by a system of boycotting and intimidation; and thirdly, the conspirators must have enormous funds at their disposal. I believe that the amount paid out of the Land League funds to each evicted tenant is about £3a month, and from that anybody may calculate what sum it would need to back up a universal conspiracy against the payment of annuities. It would require millions, and where are they going to get those millions? The hon. Member seemed to think that the Government would be under the necessity of cultivating the holdings. What the Government would do would be simply to turn the tenants out of their holdings. [Ironical Opposition cheers.] I suppose if there was a conspiracy nobody would object to that? Then they would have to be supported out of other funds; and, of course, the thing would break down. I suppose they would build a certain number of Land League huts, but the conspiracy would break down, and a great many of the people would come back to their holdings. But a general refusal to pay is quite impossible to contemplate. Whether from historical reasons or otherwise, there undoubtedly exists in the minds of a certain portion of the Irish tenantry
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    san idea, which is backed up by the Irish in America, that there is something inherently wicked in what they are pleased to call "landlordism," and that a tenant fighting his landlord is a proper object of sympathy and has some peculiar rights not known to the Common Law. But what sympathy would there be for men who had got a reduction of from 20 to 40 per cent. on the original rents, and who had been aided by the British taxpayer to become proprietors of their holdings, on the part of any section of opinion in Ireland, in this country, or in America? They would get no sympathy, and they would deserve none. They would occupy the position of an ordinary debtor who, having the power to fulfil his obligations, absolutely declines to do so, and they would utterly fail in receiving' assistance from America. I do not believe' that any such struggle, if attempted by the most insane agitator, would meet with the slightest degree of support from the Irish purchaser. We have had 20 years' experience in these purchase matters, and in no case has there been the slightest indication of such an attempt. We have had to deal with purchasers under the Acts of 1869, 1870, 1881, 1885, and 1888; and if our experience proves anything, it proves that the Irish purchaser is not the scoundrel which the hon. Member for Northampton endeavours to make out. But if by any possibility we can conceive any conspiracy against the payment of annuities on so enormous, so gigantic, and so inconceivable a scale that the cash portion of the Guarantee Fund will not be sufficient to meet the deficiency in the annuities—if we accept such a wild hypothesis—then I do not think that the Legislature of this country would hesitate to meet that conspiracy by the only arm by which it properly could be met; they would refuse to pay the ratepayers of the counties, who must have abetted the conspiracy, funds to which they had no legal title; and they would fail in their duty not only to this country, but to the Irish people, if they allowed the provisions with regard to the contingent portion of the fund to remain a dead letter. Never was there, or can there be conceived to be, a safer financial transaction than that which the Bill asks the House to undertake; the whole advance is, and

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    must be, covered. Imagination may wander at will over various possible contingencies—potato failure, conspiracy against rent, what you please; but, if the figures involved in any fancied hypothesis are worked out, the conclusion must be reached that, whether the Bill is a good Bill or a bad one, whether it is suited to the needs of Ireland or it is not, whether it will or will not contribute to the solution of one of the greatest difficulties that ever arose in the government of Ireland, it is financially a perfectly sound and secure measure.
    MR. KEAY: I have listened with much pleasure to the address of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, but I notice that he made one important mistake, and that was when he stated that he had answered in detail all the different points raised by the hon. Member for Northampton. I wish to remind him of what appears to me to be the most important point in the hon. Gentleman's speech to which he did not allude at all. I refer to the challenge given by the hon. Member for Northampton to the right hon. Gentleman to say whether my hon. Friend was or was not right in giving certain figures which would be the deficit between the amount of the Guarantee Fund at its 40th year on the one hand, and the amount due from the tenants in the 40th year on the other hand.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I admit that I did not touch that point, because, although I felt the importance of it, I thought it much better to defer allusion to it, because it is not strictly relevent to this Amendment. In dealing with such complicated figures as I shall have to present, I prefer to deal with them at a later stage.
    MR. KEAY: Of course, the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to his opinion; but, at the same time, I think that the point which he so gracefully elided is one which presents in the most forcible manner the risks that the British taxpayer has to incur under the guarantee which is the subject of the present Amendment. I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman has adopted and endorsed in the speech just made all he said last year on the First and Second Reading of this and of the former Bill. As the matter is fresh in the memory of the House, it would be well for me to deal
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    with the statement on which he has laid particular stress on the present occasion. In what I thought was a very courageous, if not a boastful, spirit, he spoke of his description of last year as to how the tenants' instalment was to be met in case of total repudiation, and he said that the figures given by him on that occasion had never been controverted. Now, in my humble way I attempted to controvert those figures in my speech on the Second Reading of the present measure, and I was further prepared, after the Amendment we were then discussing was disposed of, to have addressed the HOUSE on the Main Question; but, by some subtle influence for which I cannot account, it appeared to be known on the Treasury Bench that it was this point as to the insufficiency of the Guarantee Fund that I intended to touch on, and the result was that no sooner had I risen in my place than I was promptly closured by the First Lord of the Treasury. I am bound to add that that was the solitary occasion on which during the period I have sat in this House I was appointed Teller on a Division, that Division being on the Closure. I will now ask the House to allow me to read from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to which I have just alluded. It certainly was what he has called an exhaustive speech. I will not trouble the House with the preliminary passages in which he boastfully alluded to how the tenants' instalment was to be met from the Guarantee Fund in case of total repudiation. The right hon. Gentleman very properly accepted universal repudiation as the only contingency that was worth considering when discussing the financial solvency or otherwise of the Guarantee Fund. The right hon. Gentleman said—
    " Very well, instalments at 4 per cent. on an advance of £30,000,000 amount to £1,200,000 a year. Let me suppose that in one year—the hypothesis is an absolutely unfavourable one—not a single sixpence of the annuity was paid, what funds would there be at the disposal of the Treasury, and of the Land Commission to meet the deficiency? "
    I should here tell the House that this speech of the right hon. Gentleman has been very carefully revised by himself, and that I am quoting it from Hansard. The right hon. Gentleman goes on to say—

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    " We shall have, first, the £200,000 reserve fund; secondly, there would be the £200,000 annual probate grant; and, thirdly, £40,000 of the new Exchequer contribution, and £75,000, being the ¼ percentage on £1,200,000, and there would be besides that, if we accept the hypothesis of 17 years' purchase, £1,118,000 of tenants' reserve; so that without touching the £5,000,000, which is the landlord's fifth, and without touching a sixpence of the contingent portion of the Guarantee Fund, you have £1,633,000 to meet a call of £1,200,000, on the extreme and absurd hypothesis of not one sixpence of annuity being paid during the year in question."
    Now, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman said that these figures had never been controverted. I am sorry he has left his place, because I am going to controvert them now. He spoke of the reserve of £200,000. That was the first item. To that I answer that that reserve is only available for one single year, and that in the following year it would not exist. The second item is the Probate Duty grant, which he put at £200,000, whereas the Returns show that it ought to be £189,000. Then there is the Exchequer contribution of £40,000 a year. I accept this, and I have put it to both sides of the account. He then tells us that in some mysterious way there will be £75,000, being a ¼ per cent. of the tenant's 4 per cent. instalments, called the county percentage. How he could ever have imagined that, on the assumption that the 4 per cent. instalment was to be withheld bodily by repudiation, the ¼ per cent. was to come in and the 3¾ per cent. were not to come in, I should be glad if he would explain to the House. The last item is one which had a great effect upon the House. He said there was the tenant's reserve of £1,118,000, adding, in a qualifying parenthesis, that that was on the assumption of 17 years' purchase being the average rate. But the right hon. Gentleman must know, and it is shown by the Return presented to this House, that whenever 20 years' purchase is reached no tenant's reserve can come into existence at all. The present Bill provides that 20, or even 30, or 50 years' purchase may not only be the price of the land, but may be advanced by the Treasury. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman was not justified in talking about the tenant's reserve being a guarantee at all, seeing that it is merely contingent on the improbability of the
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    tenant getting the land from the landlord at only 17 years' purchase. What, then, are the incontrovertible figures the right hon. Gentleman rests on? I have summed them up in two columns. I have one column containing what the right hon. Gentleman says was the amount last year of the safeguard of the British taxpayer, and I have put the truth of the matter in the other column. The right hon. Gentleman's column comes to £1,633,000 of cash held against tenants' instalments of £1,200,000. The truth is, that the actual amount would be £229,000 only, which would leave an odd £1,000,000 totally uncovered.
    COLONEL NOLAN: I think the hon. Member has shown that there is a superabundance of guarantees, and there is an annual income of £1,000,000 to cover deficiencies. I object to the multiplicity of guarantees, which are totally unnecessary. I should prefer the simple guarantee of the Consolidated Fund to all these local guarantees, which I would like to see swept away altogether. It is quite certain that no person in the City would advance money so cheaply as the Government. There was a dispute between the hon. Member for Northampton and the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The hon. Member said that no person in the City would advance 10 or 15 per cent. and the Chief Secretary plainly showed that the Government advances would be a good speculation. I do not think that any firm in the City would advance money so cheaply if there were no Government guarantee. In my opinion, the great advantage of this Bill is that the small tenants of Ireland would get their farms at a much cheaper rate per year than they would if there was no guarantee by the Government. That is why I think the Bill a good one for the Irish tenant. Now, to come to the point as to the English taxpayer. If hon. Members on this side of the House think that the English taxpayer ought not to guarantee the funds, I think they are justified in voting against the Bill. But if it can be proved that the taxpayer ought to pay, then I do not think that in order to gain a Party advantage they ought to sacrifice the tenants of Ireland. The whole sum involved is about £1,000,000 a year, or £30,000,000 in the aggregate. What

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    is likely to be the probable deficiency? Experience of the various Land Acts of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, and of Lord Ashbourne's Acts, shows that the deficiency will be very trifling. It has not yet amounted to anything like 5 per cent. of the annual income. The British taxpayer would in all probability have a very small sum indeed to meet, even if all the local guarantees were swept away, and the Irish tenants would gain a considerable advantage. The outside cost to the British taxpayer would be about £50,000, if that much. It is not a great deal to provide. Ireland in five days provides £50,000 for the conveyance of British troops to any part of the world, and in the same period for that and other purposes she contributes £100,000. Therefore, the surplus contribution of Ireland for five days alone is all that the Imperial Exchequer is likely to be called upon to pay. The sum required is extremely small compared with what Ireland contributes; and I think the taxpayers may fairly come forward and say the sum is so small they are willing to pay it. I intend to vote against most of the local guarantees, because I think the charge should be borne by the Imperial Exchequer. I think the small tenants in Ireland have certainly very strong claims which cannot possibly be met without the Imperial guarantee.
    MR. E. T. REID: I am one of those who are strongly against a guarantee for any purpose contemplated by this Bill. I think in the country some rather unjust reproaches have been levelled against this side of the House, because of unwillingness to allow the guarantee. Were it intended for the congested districts or to mitigate the unfortunate consequences of our policy in Ireland, I should not be unprepared to accede to the proposal. But that is a wholly different business from the proposals of this Bill, which are not designed primarily for those who are poor and in distress. The guarantee is mainly on behalf of those who are by no means poor. The Bill proposes to make advances irrespective of the financial necessity or position of those who receive them. Under the Ashbourne Acts, during the last five years, the money has been spent not in the poor districts of Ireland at all,
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    but in Ulster and other prosperous parts of Ireland, outside Ulster; and what has been the experience of the past may reasonably be anticipated as the experience of the future. I doubt whether this guarantee would close accounts between landlords and tenants, for it would still be competent for the landlord, after receiving a certain number of years' purchase under this Bill, to stipulate for further sums for the tenants who get their farms by purchase. The landlord will be able to refuse his consent to the tenant getting the benefit of this guarantee, and by that means he will be able to appropriate to himself the bonus created by the use of British credit. That objection alone is, to my mind, fatal to the use of British credit in this way. The use of British credit will create a certain bonus in the hands of those persons for whose benefit it is applied. If you say that it is to be applied to the very poor people of Ireland, then I can understand it. But you apply it indiscriminately to all the tenants of Ireland. As an illustration, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, when he first introduced his Bill, spoke of a tenant paying a fair rent of £100, which would be reduced to £68, thus putting into his pocket a bonus of £32 a year. If you are going to use British credit for the benefit of a tenant who can pay £100 a year, how will you refuse to use it for the benefit of the poorer classes of this country, or all classes in a like position in this country, when they ask for it to be extended to them? The strongest ground of opposition of all is that the use of the guarantee will put the British taxpayers in the position of the landlords of Ireland. That point, however, has been so much dwelt upon that I will not pursue it. I am not going to suppose a general strike against rent; still, it would be necessary for the Government to evict a considerable number of persons, or otherwise they would not be able to enforce payment. I do not think it necessary to say anything about the securities. Had the Bill been a good or a fair measure, or one intended to benefit the poor people, and not the landlords, I should not have looked too closely or jealously at the securities; but when we consider the nature of the securities it is found that they have been condemned wholesale by

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    the most competent authorities. The hon. and gallant Gentleman who spoke just now said that the debt was so good that no security was required. I do not know how that may be. The noble Lord the Member for Paddington, in a series of letters which have not been answered, and the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn, in a pamphlet which cannot be answered, have demonstrated that these securities are absolutely worthless. It is quite true that the Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian in 1886 was a much safer proposal, and although it could be defended on the ground that it was part of the general settlement of the government of Ireland, still I cannot say that I liked it; indeed, I declared at the General Election that I would not support it. But it is no answer to the damaging criticisms which have been made against this Bill to say that similar proposals have been made in past times. No doubt, had it not been for the land proposals of 1886, the Liberal Party would have now been in power, and it does seem to me inconsistent with the honour of Parliament that a Party whose success at the polls was due to its attacks on the land scheme of 1886 should now propose a Bill of a more dangerous character. It is of no use dealing further with this point. I am perfectly sensible of the position in which we now are. The Opposition appear to be in this position: that they are hampered by the unfortunate fact that in 1886 a similar Bill was brought forward. It is of no use our offering any arguments to hon. Gentlemen opposite dealing with the Irish question. For the last five years we have been trying to persuade the Conservative Party to share in our views, but not much attention has been paid to the arguments. It is, therefore, a hopeless struggle; but, notwithstanding this, I trust that the Opposition will fight this Bill in Committee right through, thus doing our duty to our constituents. Although the Government may betray their constituents we will not betray ours.
    MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I think it is a little too unjust to reproach my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton with having travelled beyond the limits of the subject now before us in the able
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    speech which he delivered, and which contained a great deal of matter of great importance submitted for the guidance of the House. I am not going to alarm the Government with the idea of an extended speech, but I am ready to give my opinion that there was not a word in the speech of my hon. Friend which was not perfectly relevant to the scope of the subject before the Committee. I will not speak of any implied reproach upon yourself, Sir; but I think it was conveyed in the question put by the Chief (Secretary whether the speech of my hon. Friend was in order. I own it appears to me that, if it were the pleasure of the Committee so to do on this question whether the guarantee of the British Treasury is to be afforded to the outlay of a large sum of money, nothing could be more clear than that the Committee, if so minded, has a perfect right to discuss all the conditions of that guarantee. That is the protest I make on my part against the attempt at undue limitation, perhaps made without sufficient consideration, of the power of the Committee. I shall only make one or two observations upon what has fallen from the various hon. Members in the course of the Debate. The hon. and gallant Member for Galway—I will not say has objected to the Bill, but has observed on the Bill that his difficulty is to make out a justification or necessity for all the securities which the Chief Secretary and the Government have promised to provide. He thinks that, viewing the good disposition of the Irish people to pay their debts, there would undoubtedly be a moderate loss; still, that loss ought to be cheerfully borne by the British taxpayer, who ought not to condescend to place between himself and the possible loss these elaborately provided securities. Let me say that the scope of that moderate loss was not quite accurately estimated by the hon. and gallant Member. He stated that the amount of the risk which was incurred by this Bill was limited by the sum of £30,000,000; whereas, as has been frankly told to us from the first, the £30,000,000 is to be a circulating fund invested and re-invested until it has performed the whole of its operation, which may extend, with certain exceptions, to all the agricultural land of Ireland and a sum near £100,000,000, being a

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    good deal within the mark, was stated by the Chief Secretary as the extent of the liabilities that would ultimately devolve. I do not think that the hon. and gallant Member will find that there are many candidates for seats in any portion of Great Britain who would like to announce in their addresses to their constituents the doctrines which he has announced to-day: I perfectly understand the position of the Irish Members. Their position is a very difficult one. They have an unsettled money account between England and Ireland, in respect of which England is largely indebted to Ireland, although that debt has not been acknowledged, and has not been paid. Whenever a grant is made or proposed in this House it is the universal practice of Irish Members to accept that grant, but to frankly admit that they accept it without acknowledgment and without gratitude. They accept those grants as part payments of a sum of money which they hold—and, in my opinion, within limits, justly hold—as due to Ireland; and they regard the distribution of that sum of money by an authority of which they consider the moral competency to be more than doubtful, as portion of a policy expressly based upon, and intended to secure, the permanent refusal to Ireland of her rights of constitutional self-government, and to intercept and frustrate the attainment of the dearest wish of their country. That appears to me to constitute a case for them quite distinct from our point of view. We have to consider our own obligations to our constituents generally, and we ought to remember the circumstances under which in the present Parliament we have to comply with those obligations. Reference has been made to the subject of dual ownership, and the abolition of dual ownership by the plan now before us. Dual ownership, as has been stated by the hon. Member for Northampton, is not about to be abolished. For the ownership of the landlord the ownership of the British Exchequer is to be substituted, and our belief is that to present that ownership of the British Exchequer to the Irish occupier in general in lieu of the ownership of the landlord is a course dangerous and impolitic. That is a course in respect of which we, the authors of the Bill of 1886, stand in no embarrassment what-
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    ever, because there was no ownership at all on the part of the British Treasury — the ownership was that of the Irish authority. It was the Irish authority, and the Irish authority alone, which would in any circumstances have been called upon to settle with the Irish occupier the question of the repayment of the instalments due to the plan of land purchase. There is another point which, in my opinion, is of importance—the City firm. A challenge was thrown out by the hon. Member for Northampton to this effect—" What City firm would lend money on the securities that are offered by this Bill? " It is necessary to distinguish, of course, between the security and the guarantee. A City firm would lend money freely enough on the guarantee; but the question is whether the guarantee ought to be given. The Government say that this proposal is safe; that there is no liability at all; it is a nominal guarantee. But my hon. Friend proposes to test the question whether upon those securities a City firm would propose to lend money. What is the answer of the Chief Secretary? It was this—that if the House of Commons is prepared to place at the disposal of the City firm the Votes which it is now proposed to make, and which are under our control, for Irish purposes, then the City firm would lend the money. Our contention is that the House of Commons cannot place those grants at the disposal of any creditor in the manner intended by the Government. It would be impossible to prevent the application of them to their legitimate purposes. But what I want to observe is that the answer of the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely suicidal, because, if the allocation of the securities gives a sufficient guarantee for the City firm to lend its money, why are we to have an Imperial guarantee? Does the right hon. Gentleman not see that he has himself supplied the best argument for the proposition that is now before the House — that no Imperial guarantee ought to be given unless that guarantee is necessary? For the guarantee he now proposes there is no case whatever, and the Bill ought to rest alone on the validity and sufficiency of the securities he proposes. But I wish to state in a few words the main ground—indeed, I may say, the one

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    sufficient ground—upon which I feel myself absolutely precluded under the present circumstances, and in the present Parliament, from dealing with any question whatever of British guarantee for an expenditure of this kind. It is quite true that the Bill of 1886 was condemned at the General Election. Of that there can be no doubt. But it was not condemned, as has been asserted, on account of the principle of guarantee which was involved in it, but on the ground of the conditions with which that principle was accompanied, and the manner in which it was applied. I suppose the main argument of the Chief Secretary would be that which has been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham—that it was the withdrawal of Imperial control from the government of Ireland, which really constituted the reason for condemning and refusing such a guarantee as was then proposed. I wish, however, before making an answer to that proposition, frankly and honestly to confess that the Bill of 1886 was condemned by many gentlemen sitting on the Liberal side of this House and by many constituencies. Whether it was condemned after sufficient discussion is another matter. Whether the principle of the guarantee of British credit of funds for Irish purposes is admissible, I do not feel myself at all obliged at the present time to question or decide. It is no doubt a question for the people of this country to decide, and they ought to decide it after full discussion, and with full knowledge of what they are about. But it is obvious that all those Liberal Members and constituencies who were disposed to condemn the guarantee of 1886 did not in the least degree condemn it on the ground supposed by the Chief Secretary, but on other grounds totally distinct. They did not disapprove of, but, on the contrary, they approved of, the granting of self-government to Ireland, and considered that to be a great recommendation of the plan proposed by the Land Purchase Bill of 1886, which had this recommendation, at any rate—that it was presented as a portion of the settlement of the Irish question. That question now remains unsettled, and has to be dealt with if this Bill should become law. I wish to affirm in the strongest manner— I am not speaking the opinions of Liberal
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    Members of this House, or of Liberals outside its walls, but the general opinion of the country in 1886, without distinction of Party, whether that opinion was hastily given, whether it is revocable or not—there can be no doubt that that opinion was absolutely hostile at that time, at the time when the country gave its commission to the present Parliament, to the granting of this guarantee in any form. That, I hold, is entirely beyond question. I do not think we are here simply to act upon definite instructions from the Government. We are a deliberative Assembly. The general rule of our procedure must be to hear the entire case, and freely decide on the various issues that are before us; but, at the same time, there are given circumstances under which we are bound by pledges, which ought not to be disregarded. In my opinion, a large portion of the minority, and certainly the whole of the majority, of this House, speaking generally—I admit the right hon. Member for West Birmingham is an exception—were returned with the fullest conviction on the part of the country that they were not to pledge the credit of the British Exchequer for this purpose. That conviction, I should say, constitutes a pledge. Nothing can be more important as a principle of the Constitution than that whatever understanding has prevailed at the time when the nation gave us our commission should be fully and absolutely maintained. My opinion is that the nation arrived at the conclusion that this guarantee ought not to be given. It might alter it. I do not scruple to say that there was an open pecuniary account between England and Ireland, and that that account will have to be settled on liberal terms. The nation will have to consider whether in those terms the use of the Imperial credit should be introduced. Undoubtedly, in 1886, speaking for myself, my view was that the Bill then introduced for the purchase of Irish land was a Bill that without risk to the British Exchequer— though I confess I feel some scruple in using those words after the way they have been used on the opposite side of the House—conferred a boon on Ireland which was demanded by justice. Whether that was a wise form of proceeding is a matter I do not consider

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    myself able to discuss, because I think the proceedings of the election of 1886 have limited the arena in which we are to act. The nation at that time had arrived at an understanding, which we are bound to respect. Do not let it be supposed for a moment that I question the motives of any gentleman in this House, or presume to impeach his full right to determine for himself the limits of his duty; but, according to the best opinion I can form on public affairs, I think it would be a breach of faith to the country if we now proceed to pledge the credit of the British Exchequer to a great scheme of land purchase in Ireland, we being here, not as perpetual legislators for this country, but as those who received a certain commission in 1886, to the terms of which we are bound rigidly and loyally to adhere. I feel myself entirely shut out, therefore, from assenting to this principle; and, as I have taken the opportunity to declare it in previous discussions on the Bill, so I shall feel it my duty to give to-night no hesitating vote for the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Courtesy demands a few words from me in reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian; but they shall be very few and said in no hostile spirit. The main point of his contention was that the objection the country felt in 1886 to the Bill he proposed was one based on the broad fact that British credit was to be used. I differ from him. I say the objection of the country was based on an impression, right or wrong, but in my opinion right, that the credit of the country was not only going to be used, but was also going to be imperilled. Although the country expressed that opinion with no uncertain sound against the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman introduced, yet he now asks this House not to support a Bill which differs in almost every essential particular from his. It may differ for better or worse, but it does differ. It has a different set of guarantees, and a different set of securities, and, whatever its merits or demerits, it is not to be judged by any argument that may properly be urged against the Bill of which the right hon. Gentleman was the author. The right
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    hon. Gentleman made one statement which struck me with surprise—that, in his opinion, a pecuniary boon was given to Ireland by his Bill, a boon which is equally given now, and demanded by justice. Sir, if the boon given by his Bill was demanded by justice, I cannot understand how the author of that Bill —let the verdict of the country be what it might—can now retreat from that position. If strong political justice is involved in a scheme of this kind, I cannot understand how the right hon. Gentleman can reconcile the lofty grounds on which he proposed his Bill of 1886 with his action against the measure now before the House. I probably should not do anything that would be conducive to the brevity or the amenity of the Debate if I were to explain the reasons which make me think that the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman imperilled British credit. I submit that his Bill should be excluded from this discussion. The present Bill must be judged on its own merits, and by what it contains; and I repeat the conviction which I expressed to the Committee two hours ago—that, whatever else this Bill may do, it does not imperil the credit of the British taxpayer.
    MR. T. M. HEALY: I regard this matter from a different standpoint to that of the hon. Member for Northampton, and what I have to ask the Government for is some explanation of the meaning of the word "guaranteed." While the hon. Member for Northampton objects to what may be called the original guarantee, I, on my part, object to guaranteeing the guarantors. I am amazed that the Irish Secretary abstained from defending that branch of the scheme which is so obnoxious to Irish Nationalist Members, but which is equally covered by the word "guaranteed." As a matter of drafting, what is the necessity of this word " guaranteed " at all in this part of the Bill? It may either be inserted or omitted, without any damage whatever; and, for my part, I do not think the Government were well advised in drawing the fiat of the hon. Member for Northampton and of the Irish Members on the same matter, though from a wholly different point of view. From my point of view, I am entitled to argue

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    this; if this House is not really building a castle in Spain for the purpose of holding out a mirage to English electors with the idea that they have a solid bulwark to resist Irish non-payment, I would ask why should{ you ask the pauper lunatic to pay rather than the policeman? You give £90,000 for education in Ireland every year, and you cover that under your guarantee. You have for one schoolmaster receiving £1 a week three policemen receiving 30s. If you want a guarantee, why not draw it from the policeman, who is a useless object? {" Oh ! "] Well—I think I can gratify hon. Gentlemen opposite—who will become a useless object when the Bill passes, because we are told that it is the Irish agrarian question which poisons the social life in Ireland. The moment you withdraw and settle the Irish agrarian difficulty the necessity for the policeman disappears. I think I have heard that argument somewhere from Leicestershire. Accordingly, I say that if you declare that your advance of £30,000,000 is justified by the foundation of social peace in Ireland, then, having regard to the force, which exists to an enormous extent because of the agrarian difficulty, it would be more natural to hypothecate the police rate or charge rather than the charge for national education in Ireland. I think that is an unanswerable argument; but there is another. If we have any need for the police in Ireland, will even the Member for South Hunts contend that we have need for the removables? You have them in Ireland now 80 or 90 strong, enjoying salaries and allowances, which I imagine come to about £150,000 a year. They have their staffs of policemen attached to them, so that the removables, so to speak, breed an expenditure of a quarter of a million a year. Why, then, in face of the existence of this body, should you hypothecate the funds which go to pauper lunatics, schoolmasters and mistresses, medical officers of workhouses and dispensaries, and medicines and surgical appliances? If the Government are sincere and genuine in their proposal, knowing, as they must know, that the charge for education is more likely to increase than to diminish, and that the charge for the removables and police ought to diminish rather than to
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    increase, why do they hypothecate these sums and not the charges for removables and police? Will anyone answer that argument? The Government have thought it well to entirely elude that branch of the discussion, and yet it is as fully covered by the word the hon. Member for Northampton objects to as the question of the Imperial guarantee. The losses to the Imperial taxpayer sit very lightly on my mind. I suppose I may consider myself to some extent an Imperial taxpayer. If this charge of £30,000,000 were distributed equally all round it would come, I suppose, to 6s. 8d. a head of the population of the United Kingdom. My view of this proposal is that it is a contemptible spirit for the House of Commons to display with regard to an Imperial guarantee in respect of a nation to which, as the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian declares, the Imperial Exchequer is still largely in debt. The imposing of this local guarantee upon Ireland, I say, is more odious to Irish Nationalist Members than is the Imperial guarantee to the hon. Member for Northampton. The Government are not sincere in the guarantee. No one knows in his heart better than the Chief Secretary that not a penny of the pauper lunatics' or schoolmasters' money is ever likely to be called on. [" Hear, hear !"] Hon. Gentlemen say " Hear, hear !" then why do they put it in the Bill? Surely there is such a thing as frankness and sincerity in the conduct of the business of the State. We object to the schoolmaster having his interest imperilled. Why do not you include the policeman and the removable rather than the schoolmaster? Assuming it is desirable to have a local guarantee, there can be no answer whatever to that branch of the argument. But is it necessary to have a local guarantee? [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear !] By his " Hear, hear ! " the right hon. Gentleman thinks not, but he belies himself—of course, I use the expression without offence—by the drafting of the Bill. It is the poison you instilled at the General Election of 1886 into the minds of the electorate, and the fears you yourselves created in your minds for the purpose of shipwrecking Home Rule and destroying the Government of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, which brings about this

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    fanciful and inartistic guarantee. Either act in an Imperial spirit in this business or do not act at all. When this Bill is passed you will go to your constituents and say) " Oh, what a grand boon we have given to the Irish. How good is Mother England to her Irish children, or adopted children. Once more the great Imperial milch cow has given cream to the starving Irish." At the same time, you take very good care to make the starving Irish guarantee you against every shilling of loss. You declare that is generosity: I say it is the height of meanness. If you wished to act generously you would abandon this local guarantee altogether. You know every shilling of the advance will be repaid, and yet, for the purpose of laying the bogey you have raised, you persist in this local guarantee. If that is my view in regard to the pauper lunatics, schoolmasters and others, what is to be said of the fourth guarantee which you insist on getting from the localities? I ask for a definition of this particular guarantee stock. Having denuded us of our education, having deprived us of the sustenance of the pauper lunatics, is it creditable or decent in you to insist on a further guarantee out of the local rates, and to do it under a system which deprives the local ratepayers of the smallest amount of control over the advances which are to be made? Not only are we to be deprived of local control, but you yourselves declare you will not even allow the Members of the House of Lords to vote year by year the salaries of the gentlemen who are to pay out these moneys. I, therefore, might fairly vote with the hon. Member for Northampton, but I do not feel inclined to do so. To hear you talk about Imperial guarantees, one would think that Ireland is no portion of the British Dominions. The Income Tax gatherer comes round in Ireland as regularly as he does in England and Scotland. To speak of yourselves as the British taxpayers, when Ireland pays three times more than her fair share into the Imperial Treasury, is, in my opinion, a piece of Imperial impudence. Ireland's debt at the time of the Union was £13,000,000, but now the Imperial Debt is £800,000,000. Our view in this matter is entirely different to that of English and Scotch Representatives. We take
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    exception to the word "guarantee," on the sole ground that it involves and implies a local guarantee just as much as an Imperial guarantee. We say that a local guarantee is unjust and iniquitous, and we wish to obtain from the Government some assurance that it will be struck out of the Bill. If you do require a local guarantee you might very well find it in the provision for the police, or the removables, or the Judges, or some other branch of the Civil Service, which certainly might fairly be expected to be cut down if a scheme of this kind is passed to bring social peace into our country.
    MR. CHANNING: There is no passage in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian'(Mr. Gladstone) which will be so heartily echoed by every Radical in the country as his frank recognition of the debt due from this country to Ireland. But it is just because we consider the proposals of this Bill will tend to defeat the payment of the real debt to Ireland, and because we Radicals intend to give Ireland the full control of the land question, that I, for one, oppose the Bill. The hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Colonel Nolan) said he hoped we were not opposing the granting of a British guarantee for Party reasons. Those of us who have tried to think out the question oppose this scheme, as we should oppose any such scheme of land purchase, because we consider it calculated to do injury to the Irish people themselves, and calculated to promote discontent and dissatisfaction among them——
    THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! That line of argument is not relevant to the question of the guarantee.
    MR. CHANNING: I am opposing the giving of this guarantee Sir, because I consider that it will only unsettle the land question in Ireland instead of settling it. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary has made it very doubtful whether he intends to deal with the local guarantee at all; and one feels inclined to ask whether he really proposes when the cash portion of the guarantee fund is exhausted to go straight to the rates. One can hardly read his pledge otherwise than as a pledge to the people of Ireland not to

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    deal with the local funds, which are made part of the security, but to go straight to the rates instead. The British taxpayer is asked to give a guarantee in this matter, although he has no satisfactory pledge or security that the price to be paid for the land is a just and a fair price. You deny to the people of the locality the consent of some representative authority to the pledging of their credit. My main objection, however, to the Government proposal is that we are asked to guarantee the application of money to the carrying out of a scheme which will lead to social disorder and discontent in the future, and will discourage national thrift in Ireland. I think it would be wiser if the Government were to introduce some form of local control. There has been, in my opinion, but one sound proposal of land purchase put before the House of Commons, and that was the scheme proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridgeton (Sir G. Trevelyan) in 1884.
    THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order ! The hon. Member is wandering from the subject. That is quite apart from the question of the guarantee.
    MR. CHANNING: I will conclude, then, by saying that we oppose the granting of this guarantee, because it is given not to set Ireland free, but to forge for her a fresh chain.
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: Before deciding on the retention or rejection of the word " guaranteed," I think the House had better ascertain what the word means. I have been at some pains to examine the Bill, but I am in a state of considerable doubt about it. The drafting of the measure is of such a character that, at any rate to one who has not studied it very closely indeed, it appears to be self-contradictory. The Government had to admit yesterday that the advance which the Bill is intended to authorise could not be made until some important Amendment had been inserted. In considering the present Amendment one is driven to the examination of those portions of the Bill which are likely to throw light upon its signification, and I would invite Members opposite, who have copies of the Bill, to look at the last two lines of the first page and the first line of the second. There it is provided
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    that the dividends and payments to the Sinking Fund shall be paid out of the Land Purchase Fund, and, if that is insufficient, shall be paid, as a temporary advance, out of the Consolidated Fund. On page 4, lines 5, 6 and 7, it is provided that if the Land Purchase Account is at any time insufficient to meet the dividends and Sinking Fund payments, the deficiency shall be a charge on the Guarantee Fund, and so on. Having read these pages, I am bound to admit that I cannot make out clearly what is to be the nature of the guarantee for the land stock issued to meet this difference. It is a very simple question to answer—what is it exactly that the House is undertaking to guarantee, and what is the guarantee here expressly referred to worth? The House ought to pause, I think, before deciding the question.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: I think it is pretty evident from what has been said that what Irish Members want is to get our money under an illusory security. I object to a British guarantee in any shape or form, and so I shall support the hon. Member for Northampton. The Chief Secretary has made a long Second Reading speech, but he has failed to justify this dangerous, insidious proposal contained in the Bill. The hon. Member for Northampton has done well to attack the whole principle of the guarantee. The Bill is like some marine monster, with all its machinery under water. We do not really know what it means; we only know that in some shape it means the guarantee of the British taxpayer, and to that I have the strongest objection. There is no necessity for a guarantee for the Irish tenants; they are fairly prosperous, they are well off, and there is no reason why we should be burdened in order to turn them into landlords. There are certain parts of Ireland, called the congested districts, where distress exists, and with which we deal in another part of this Bill, and with which this Amendment does not deal. Putting aside those parts of Ireland, it seems to me the Irish tenants are an exceedingly prosperous set of people—they get good prices for good crops, and they have an exceedingly valuable property; as a matter of fact, I believe the only kind of property that is saleable at a good price in Ireland is

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    tenant-right. I am not one of those who ' object to dual ownership. I think it is the right thing. In the interest he has in his holding it seems to me the Irish tenant has all the advantages of a real peasant proprietor in the true sense of the word, and this Bill proposes to turn him into a landlord at the expense of the British taxpayer. This will be of no advantage to Ireland, but, on the contrary, it will do a great deal of harm, creating a new set of evils with a new set of landlords. The Act of 1881 was founded on a right principle, and the Irish tenants are well off under it. I do not see why the British taxpayers, who do not own their houses, should be called upon to give this enormous security that the Irish tenants may become owners, and therefore I shall vote with the hon. Member for Northampton.
    MR. MORTON: Such an important Amendment as this, in which the enormous amount of £30,000,000 is concerned, requires to be fully debated before we come to a decision. On many grounds I object to this guarantee, and one strong reason is in the fact that I, in common, I think, with the majority of Members in the House, am pledged against supporting a proposal to use British credit to buy out Irish landlords. In itself that should be a reason for supporting the Amendment, and our duty to our constituents requires that we should carefully consider the chances of repayment of these advances. The security is hardly good enough for the English people, and but for the British credit behind it, every business man will say the money could not be raised. I do not say the time might not arrive when it might be right to consider whether we should allow the Imperial credit to be used for settling the land question; but the time has not arrived yet, because we shall practically be compelling the Irish tenants to pay more than the actual value of their holdings. I say distinctly you have no right to use British credit until you have decided in the first place what is the fair rent for the tenants to pay, and the number of years' purchase at that fair rent. If by any means the Irish tenants think they will not be compelled to pay back the money, then for the sake of a present advantage, the interest being less than their rent, they may be induced
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    to agree to purchase at more than the land is worth, and by-and-by they will urge this as a reason for being relieved from their debt to the State. Before British credit is pledged in this way' the question of fair rent should be settled, and the actual value of the land determined. I do not accept the statement that the object of this guarantee is the benefit of the Irish tenants, but rather, I think, the object is to obtain money for the Irish landlords. They know, as we know, and the people of this country know, that Home Rule must come before long; and so the Government are trying to make the best terms they can for their friends the landlords while they have the opportunity. If you are going to use the Imperial credit so that people may get money at 3 per cent., let the whole of the people benefit by the transaction. Why should you confine the advantage to agricultural tenants? If a scheme were proposed whereby tenants would continue in the occupation of their land at a fair rent, and for the benefit of the whole country, I could see some reason for using the Imperial credit so that money might be borrowed at a cheap rate; but why is this scheme to be carried out in this manner for the interest of one particular class? Have not tenants in England, Scotland, and Wales an equal right to the advantage of borrowing money at 3 per cent., or do you put a premium on agitation? Are the tenants in England and Scotland to take to heart the lesson that if they carry an agitation to extremity, they may hope to have a similar advantage conferred upon themselves?
    Mr. A. J. BALFOURrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
    Question put, " That the Question be now put."
    (6.53.)The Committee divided:— Ayes 21G; Noes 157.—(Div. List, No. 125.)
    Question put accordingly, " That the word ' guaranteed' stand part of the Clause."
    (7.6.)The Committee divided:—Ayes 232; Noes 138.—(Div. List, No. 126.)
    It being after Seven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House at Nine of the clock.

    PURCHASE OF LAND AND CONGESTED DISTRICTS (IRELAND) BILL—(No. 111.)
    Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

    SUPPLY.
    Order for Committee read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

    THE INDIAN OPIUM TRAFFIC.
    SIR J. PEASE: Although it has fallen to my lot on several occasions in years gone by to address this House upon the question of the Indian opium trade, I think I may honestly say that I never rose in my place for this purpose with so much feeling of responsibility on my shoulders as I do at the present moment. The House is well aware— individual Members are "well aware—of the very large and increased interest that has been taken in this subject during the last two years, especially by the Christian Churches of this country; and I felt—on finding my own table as well as the tables of my Friends who are supporting this Motion on both sides of the House, covered with letters and Petitions—how very little any poor ability I may have is worth in representing that which so many of the best people of this country have laid earnestly to heart. This question has never been a Party question. My hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcudbrightshire, on the other side of the House (Mr. Mark Stewart), was dealing with it before I dealt with it. My hon. Friend the Member for the Honiton Division of Devonshire (Sir John Kenna-way), who has just entered the House, took a considerable and leading part in the question before I did so. My hon. Friend and relative the Member for the City of London (Sir R. Fowler), who supports me, and who is moving an Amendment to my Resolution, before any of us, I believe, took a part in the discussion of this opium question. I am now about to attack the entire Indian
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    opium question. I look upon India and this country as inseparable, though that doctrine is not popular with some of my friends. But I believe it is a doctrine we have to maintain. I hold that we have to look at the interests of India and the interests of this country as identical. We, practically, appoint the Government of India; we, practically, make the laws which govern the Government of India, and we are responsible for the fact that all things go on in India under the jurisdiction of this country. ' In the first Resolution that I placed on the Paper, I did not propose to deal with what is called the Malwa opium question — that is, the transit duty on the opium coming out of the independent States—but on looking further into the question I found that it was so intimately connected with the Indian opium question that although, if I drew degrees of morality, I should not think the Malwa question is as immoral as our Indian opium cultivation and trade. I felt it was so bound up with the whole matter that it was necessary to deal with the Transit Duty as well as the cultivation of the poppy in India by the Indian Government. I think I shall show that the Malwa Pass Duty is as open to attack as any portion of the Opium Revenue. I say we cannot separate the Government of India from our Government. I look upon our connection with the manufacture of this drug as most wretched and wicked. We cannot look upon the moral question with indifference. My object will be to show that opium is a drug, that it is to be treated and used as a drug if it is to be used, but that its abuse is universally the source of human misery, demoralisation and crime. We must admit that, as a nation, we have, for the sake of pecuniary gain, fostered, promoted and encouraged the growth of the poppy and the sale of the poppy. There is no similar case in the whole history of this country where this country has become a trader in the most obnoxious article you could imagine, a trader in an article which has done damage to mankind wherever it has been introduced. We not only license the land, but we pay subsistence to the planter; we manufacture the article, we sell it for consumption, we store it in the warehouses, we send it in such quantities into the

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    market as we feel will keep up the market price and value, we advertise the article on the main line of railway from Bombay to Baroda. On our railroad placards are posted in three native languages, showing the native traveller where he can purchase this article, and we are traders in every respect in this article. I ask the House—suppose we had the entire whiskey trade under the management of this House, would there not be a great outcry in the country? Opium is far worse than whiskey. [" Oh ! "1 Some hon. Gentleman says " Oh! " but I will prove before I resume my seat that opium is far worse than whiskey. I merely take it as a parallel. If this House had all the whiskey distilleries of the country in its hands and advertised their whiskey—advertised it as the Indian Government do opium—what an outcry there would be amongst civilised people and amongst every one interested in the promotion of temperance and morality. I say, and I shall try to prove, that for this greed of gain we have sacrificed every principle of political economy—that we have sacrificed every principle of morality, and that we are sacrificing every principle of Christianity. Now, I lay down as the moral law that, whatever other nations may do, it ought to be no guide to us. It is no argument for us to do wrong. It is no argument for our supplying China with opium that the Chinese are growing opium themselves. It seems to me we have no alternative but to wash our hands of a traffic which is a disgrace to our Christianity and our morality. We ought to deal with this drug as a poison. In this country the seller of opium must be a registered chemist. If he dies his death has to be reported. Opium is scheduled as a poison in the 31st and 32nd Vict. c. 121. Every box, bottle, vessel, wrapper, or cover must be labelled " Opium— Poison," and be marked with the address of the seller. The Lancet, in a recent number, confirmed this view and said, " Opium is from first to last a drug and a poison." Perhaps there is no testimony more affecting than that of the unhappy Coleridge. He said—
    " I used to think the text in St. James that ' he who offen deth in one point offends in all' very harsh, but now I feel the awful, the tre-
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    mendous truth of it. In the one crime of opium what crimes have I not made myself guilty of? Ingratitude to my Maker; to my benefactor, injustice; and unnatural cruelty to my poor children; self contempt for my repeated promise—breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood. After my death I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified narration of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at least some little good may be effected by the dreadful example."
    Sir George Staunton, the representative of the East India Company at Canton, said many years ago—
    " It is mere trifling to place the abuse of opium on the same level with the abuse of spirituous liquors. It is (i.e. the abuse) the main purpose in the former case, but in the latter it is only the exception."
    Sir Thomas Wade, who represented us for many years in China, gave evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the subject. The Committee in their Report said—
    " The demoralising influences of the opium trade are incontestable and inseparable from its existence."
    Sir Thomas Wade said—
    " It is to me vain to think otherwise of the use of the drug in China than as of a habit many times more pernicious, nationally speaking, than the gin and whiskey drinking we deplore at home."
    The late Rev. Dr. Williamson, an extensive traveller and experienced missionary, said—
    "Its tendency to crime is most appalling. It loosens all sense of moral obligation. There is hardly an evil which I have not heard or seen perpetrated by these infatuated mortals."
    I put it to the House that opium is a most excellent medicine and drug, but it has to be used with the greatest possible caution. If any hon. Member feels any doubt as to the medical testimony on this subject, I would refer him to the wonderfully good speech delivered in this House by Lord Shaftesbury—then Lord Ashley—in 1844, in which he stated the opinions of all the greatest medical men of the day. It is a drug which cannot be used by any man with impunity for very long; it deteriorates the constitution, and unfits a man for all the duties of life. I intend to prove to-night from the history of China, Java, Burmah, California, and our own colonies in Australia, the evil that is done by this drug in which we traffic. I have received during the last few weeks appeals on this subject

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    from the Chinese Christians of Hong Kong, from the Christian Churches at Shanghai, from the Christian Churches at Canton, from the Pekin Anti-Opium Society, and 1 yesterday presented a Petition, with 1,100 signatures, from Singapore deploring the trade, and imploring the Government to put a stop to the importation of Indian opium. During the last few years I have presented Petitions to this House from the Convocations of York and Canterbury, from the Wesleyan Conference, the Free Church Methodists, the Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians of England, the Scotch Church, the Free Church of Scotland, Cardinal Manning, and all the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United Kingdom, the Unitarians, the Society of Friends, the missionaries in China, the Bishop of Bombay and 300 clergy of Bombay. In 1883 I presented a memorial to the then Prime Minister signed by 3 Archbishops, 12 Bishops, several Peers, 60 Members of Parliament, and 30 Mayors and Provosts. I think that shows how very strong the feeling in this country is. I have just received a telegram from Bombay stating that a meeting has been held there to-day, with the Bishop in the chair, which unanimously voted in favour of my Resolution. I presented to this House a Petition signed by a large number of the principal clergy in this great City of London. It was signed by the Dean of St. Paul's, the Archdeacon of London, Canons Newbolt, Russell, and Lang, the Archdeacon of Middlesex, Canon Furse, and the Rev. E. Carr Glynn. I presented to this House this afternoon a Petition signed by 4,100 inhabitants of India. I have looked carefully through the Petitions, and I have presented between 400 and 500 within the last few days to this House—and I never saw such Petitions in my life, in the long experience I have had in this House. They are signed by clergymen of all denominations, and by the leading inhabitants of towns. I have received them from Argyllshire in the North, to Devonshire and Cornwall in the South and West. Every Member of this House has been receiving Petitions from his constituents on this subject. I have never seen, since I have dealt with this subject, so much enthusiasm in the country, and I have never had so many prayers forwarded to me
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    for the success of this Motion as I have had during the last few hours contained in letters and telegrams from all parts of the country. I will not go into the question of the opinions of statesmen, because there has never been a statesman on either side of the House who has ever dared to say a word in favour of the morality of this trade. We have had the pecuniary argument over and over again. With that pecuniary argument I will presently deal; but what I have to prove at the present moment is what are the effects of the opium trade when it has taken hold of a people. As regards China the history of the opium trade there is a very simple, but a very terrible one. Up to 1858, it was a contraband trade. It was one of the grounds for the impeachment of Warren Hastings. In 1820, opium smoking was almost unknown in China, and our trade with China in that year was 3,000 chests. In 1839, the date of the first war, it had reached 31,000 chests. In 1856, although it was contraband, it had reached 60,000 chests. The trade was legalised in 1858, and by 1862 it had reached 75,000 chests, and in 1879 it was 94,000 chests, and it continues at about 80,000 chests. But we have taught the Chinese to grow more of it for themselves. The Convention of Chefoo was made by Sir Thomas Wade in 1876 with the Chinese Government, under which it was proposed to leave the Likin opium duties in the hands of the Chinese Government themselves. Sir Louis Malet, in one of his very clear Memorandums, laid down the view that after careful reading of the Treaty of Tien-Tsin he was of opinion that the Chinese had a perfect right to impose any Likin duty they liked. The English Government refused to ratify Article 3 from 1876 to 1885. Hon. Members who took an interest in the question will recollect that some of us, year after year, from 1876 to 1885, never left the Governments alone on the question. It was contrary to the policy we pursued between India and China, and they resisted it. For nine years we held out, because, as Lord Salisbury said, we should neutralise all our policy with regard to this drug. We deprived the Chinese during these years of their power of unlimited pro-

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    hibition; we drove them to cultivate their own opium. They raised the Imperial Tax of 30 taels to 110 taels by adding a fixed Likin duty of 80 taels per chest. After May 6th, 1890, either party may terminate the Chefoo Treaty, by 12 months' notice, but then we fall back to our old position under the Treaty of Tien-Tsiu. What has been the effect of this opium trade on China? Out of an enormous number of testimonies which I have collected I will give a very few, and I believe I have taken them honestly, selecting them by date over a considerable period. The late Dr. Med-hurst said—
    "That, calculating the shortened lives, the frequent diseases, and the actual starvation which are the results of opium smoking in China, we may so venture to assert that this pernicious drug annually destroys myriads of individuals. Slavery is not productive of more misery and death, than is the opium traffic, nor were Britons more implicated in the former than in the latter. Those who grow and sell the drug, while they profit by the speculation, would do well to follow the consumer into the haunts of vice, and mark the wretchednesss, poverty, disease, and death which follow the indulgence, for did they but know the thousandth part of the evils resulting from it they would not, they could not continue to engage in the transaction. It has been told, and it shall be rung in the ears of the British public again and again, that opium is demoralising China, and become the greatest barrier to the introduction of Christianity which can be conceived of."
    Dr. Osgood, who in 1879 was chief Medical Missionary at the Shanghai Hospital, wrote—
    " I hope I shall not be accused of egotism or cant when I write that in my opinion the use of opium is an unmitigated curse. I have never heard a heathen Chinaman defend the use or sale of opium, but on the contrary, they universally condemn them. The only apologists have been representatives of Christian lands."
    Many of the North countrymen in the House would know the name of David Hill, a well known Dissenting minister at York. His son gave me the following, and I asked him to write it down. He was a missionary in the centre of China—
    " The effect of opium smoking among the Chinese has again and again been depicted to the British public in. strong and earnest language; never, I think, too strong, certainly never too earnest. No language could fully picture to others the deplorable consequences of opium smoking, which I myself have seen in China, even in the case of some of my own Chinese acquaintances."
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    That gentleman told me that when he went into one of the interior provinces, the city walls were placarded with papers warning the people against his-coming, as it was the missionary who brought the opium trade, and who brought Christianity. The two things were coupled together, and if we are a Christian people, which I trust we are, 1 trust we may take away from ourselves the curse of preventing the-spread of what we believe to be the purest form of religion amongst these-poor heathens. I have several more quotations. Mr. Frederick Porter Smith founder and manager of the Hankow Medical Mission Hospital, Central China, said—
    " I wish to place on record that after an intimate acquaintance with the people, the literature, the language and the commerce of one large province of central China, I am compelled to describe the infatuation, the miserable saturation of the country, the change of type of the character of the nation, and the miseries wrought upon individual habit, constitution, temper, and fortune, all exhibited in the course and consequences of the vice of opium smoking in China, as forming an unique instance of national lunacy and suicide. No epidemic possession of any people or sect reads with such terrible details as are afforded by the simple story of this horror. At the same time I protest against gratuitious exaggeration being imported into the question, now able to take care of itself."
    Dr. Pringle wrote to the Lord Mayor—
    " If those who have spent, as I have spent, 30 years in India, came forward on behalf of poor China, I am certain a weight of practical evidence would he forthcoming which would swamp anything that can be opposed to-it, and would end in the Government of India washing its hands of what, without doubt, in these days of increased education in India is-viewed as a sad blot in the rule of a Christian Power."
    Some time ago a Petition was presented to this House signed by all the Protestant missionaries in China. I will only read one or two extracts:—
    " The connection of the British Government with the trade in this pernicious drug creates prejudice against us as Christian missionaries, burdens our work. It strikes the people as an inconsistency that while the British nation offers them the beneficent teaching of the Gospel it should, at the same time, bring to their shores a drug which degrades and ruins them."
    They describe opium as—
    " A great evil to China, and that the baneful effects of its use cannot be easily overstated. It enslaves its victim, squanders his substance, destroys his health, weakens his mental powers,

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    lessens his self-esteem, deadens his conscience, unfits him for his duties, and leads to his steady descent morally, socially, and physically."
    That was the evidence of the missionaries—there was a stronger testimony even than that. It was a letter from Archdeacon Wolfe of the Chinese Mission. He says—
    " The people are being ruined by it, and it is indeed a lamentable spectacle to see professing Christian men speaking and writing in -defence of the horrible crime. The pernicious results of this soul and body destroying vice are apparent all around. Cadaverous-looking faces meet one on every side, and the slovenly habits and the filthy appearance of the people generally testify too plainly to the evil it is working on this once industrious and energetic population. The rapid progress which opium smoking has made during the last 20 years among all classes of this population is a very serious matter for us missionaries. Humanly speaking opium smokers are beyond the reach of conversion, as the vice unfits them for the perception of any moral or spiritual truths. Can the Church of Christ in England do nothing to influence the nation to withdraw from the abominable traffic which is causing so much moral, spiritual, physical, ruin to this great people. It is a sad reflection on the Church of Christ in England that it seems powerless to influence the English people in so important a matter as the Indian traffic in opium. Almost the entire population in some places is abandoned to the use of this poisonous drug. The effects are witnessed in the extreme poverty of the people, in the broken down and dilapidated dwellings all through the village, and in the gross immorality which prevails amongst the inhabitants. Even openly and without shame they prostitute their wives in order to secure for themselves the means of indulging in opium smoking. Little children are sold as slaves and turned away from the embrace of their helpless mothers in order that their degraded fathers may have money to buy opium. And this and much more may be told of the effects of opium smoking on the miserable people; yet professed Christians in England see no harm in it, and openly advocate the abominable traffic which makes it possible, and comparatively easy, for the Chinese people to ruin themselves and their wives and children for time and for eternity."
    It may be said, on the other side, that this state of things in China does not entirely arise from our action with regard to the traffic in opium. Certainly not, and no one for a long time has said that it did; but, at any rate, we are participators in that trade. We are sending 80,000 chests of opium a year to China, and, therefore, are helping largely to produce that state of things. The Indian Government are trying to make a profit out of that trade,
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    and although it is becoming smaller, we are keeping it up as much as possible. There is one argument which has been used in this House again and again, I will not attempt to go into it. I think I hear the voice of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell). I remember that he said a few years ago that it was better that the people of China should be poisoned by our good opium than by the bad opium they produced themselves. That may be regarded as an argument by the hon. Gentleman, but I do not think it is one that will have the assent of the House. I will refer to a statement made by a well-known writer in a publication, the last edition of which I had the honour of publishing in conjunction with my late excellent friend who, I may say, was one of the greatest ornaments this House has ever had, the late Mr. John Bright. Mr. Dymond, in his Essays on Morality, says—
    "If I were to sell a man arsenic or a pistol, knowing that the buyer wants to commit murder, should I not be a bad man? If I let a house, knowing that the renter wanted it for purposes of wickedness, am I an innocent man?"
    Mr. Dymond treats the argument that if we did not do it some one else would, as follows:—
    " Upon such reasoning you might rob a traveller on the road, if you knew that at the next turning a foot pad was waiting to plunder him. To sell property or goods for bad purposes because if you do not do it some one else will, is like selling slaves because you thought it criminal to keep them in bondage."
    Now, Sir, I have done with the case of China, which I have only used as an illustration of what the traffic in opium does. I have not said we could get the Chinese Government to alter their plans. I have not said we propose to try to get the Chinese Government to do so. My case is that we ought to put our house in order, that we ought to have clean hands in regard to this business, and it does not make the slightest difference to us as to what we ought to do when it is said that China now grows opium for herself. Let us, if we can, be moral and do what is right, independent of all other considerations. I now come to Burma. There can be no doubt that we introduced the opium trade into Burma. An official Report of the

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    Government in 1870, states that " Opium eating is not a Burma habit: it is a new vice." The Report of the Burma Baptist Missionary Convention in 1866, states that—
    " The Burmese, as a race, were remarkably free from the use of intoxicating drinks and drugs 50 years ago."
    The Rev. C. Bennett said—
    "When I first arrived in the country in 1830, opium was rarely used, and almost entirely confined to Chinamen. There were, however, a few Burmese who used it, and they were looked upon by their countrymen as outcasts, and worse than thieves."
    It is said that we are trying to prevent the use of this drug in the opium houses, that we have ceased to licence a great number of them, but still the number of opium houses in Burma is almost kept up, and the smaller number of houses by selling to others vend almost as much opium as was formerly sold by the larger number. A late traveller in Burma states:—
    "It is perfectly true that there is only one opium shop in the Akyab district dealing directly with the Government. But this opium shop distributes the Government opium to many hundreds of other shops. I myself saw yesterday at Akyab 50 of these dens in less than 45 minutes. The number of smokers in each den was from four to eight. The great majority of them were Burmese. These 50 dens lay all around one of the chief Police Stations of the district, and within a gun shot of the Custom House. Mr. Htoonkyawoo told me that his estimate of the number of dens in the Akyab district, the town included, was at least 1,000, all supplied by the one licensed shop which appears in the Government Re-port. If this rate is correct the 30 shops we have been told BO often are the only ones in Burma represent 30,000 others. Certainly I can scarcely imagine any town in China worse than the portion of Akyab that I visited. The shops lay three and four together, and entire streets seemed to consist to a large extent of these opium dens."
    I have always wondered how any Member of this House can get over the testimony which has been so often read of Sir C. Aitchison, although in my opinion his testimony is not so strong as that of some of his subordinate officers. He shows in the Report I hold in my hand, but which 1 will not read, that the land is in danger of going out of cultivation owing to this drug. That the people are emaciated by it, that it saps both physical and mental energies, that it predisposes them to disease, induces
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    indolent and filthy habits, destroys self-respect, is one of the most fertile sources of misery, destitution, and crime, that it fills the gaols with men of relaxed frame predisposed to dysentry and cholera. This Report is more than confirmed by those of the subsidiary officers who furnish information on the same subject. But I may be told that the Burmese people are weaker people constitutionally than the Chinese; but surely difference of constitution cannot account for one people being benefited by the drug, and the other being materially reduced in their moral and physical being. I see that in the Government proposals with regard to the people of Upper Burma, there is a Report signed by Lord Dufferin, C. P. Ilbert, T, C. Hope, A. Colvin, G. Chestrey, and J. B. Peile. They say—
    " No shops whatever will be licensed for the-sale of opium, inasmuch as all respectable classes of Burmese are against legalising the consumption of opium in the new province. Any one found selling opium to persons other than to Chinese, or transporting opium in quantities above three dollars, or keeping a saloon for consuming opium, will be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding Rs 500 or three months rigorous imprisonment, or both. As traffic in opium was absolutely prohibited under the Burmese Government there will be no hardship in thus proscribing opium dealings."
    This Report is written and signed by the Governor General of India, the very country for which we are trying to keep up the opium revenue. I think I have proved that this traffic has done great damage both in Burma and in China; and I say the time has come when we ought to wash our hands of any participation in a traffic which produces so much moral and material injury. I do not propose to deal with the damage done to the people of India. That point will be taken up by my hon. Friend who is to follow me. We know the effects that have been produced, not only in those places but amongst those who have gone forth to our colonies in different parts of the world. Only the other day a very curious piece of fresh evidence came to my notice. In the month of March, meetings were held in the City of Amsterdam for the purpose of inducing the Dutch Government to put a stop to the opium trade in Java. Java, in 1815, had an English

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    Governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, who put down the opium trade by decree. In 1816 it was opened again by protests from Bengal. The Dutch Government rule in Java over 22,000,000 of people, amongst whom are 250,000 Chinese. Services were held in Amsterdam at nearly every church, and meetings were held for the purpose of impressing upon the Dutch Government the necessity of stopping this iniquitous trade, which, as 1 have already shown, was re-opened in consequence of protests from the Bengal Government. In California there are, as we know, a large number of Chinese, and there was a municipal law for the suppression of the vice of opium smoking. That law afterwards became a Statute of the State of California. It enacted that—
    " Every person who opens or maintains, to be resorted to by other persons, any place where opium or any of its preparations is sold or given away to be smoked at such place; and any person who at such place sells or gives away any opium or its said preparations to be there smoked or otherwise used; and every person who visits or resorts to any such place for the purpose of smoking opium or its said preparations is guilty of a misdemeanour, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding 500 dollars, or by imprisonment in the county gaol not exceeding six months, or by both such fine and imprisonment."
    These people have taken the bull by the horns and endeavoured to put an end by law to a vice which was deteriorating and demoralising their population. Having now dealt with Java and California, I come nearer home. The other day I had a call from a gentleman who was lately a member of the Victoria Government at Melbourne. He showed me this letter, addressed to him on leaving Australia.:—
    "My Chinese friends, who are working with me to secure the removal of the opium curse, desire me to take this opportunity of wishing you 'fair wind and favourable tide' both on your voyage to the land of your fathers and on your return to this, the land of your adoption; and I thank you very cordially for the warm sympathy, wise counsels, and powerful assistance you have rendered the cause of our suffering countrymen ever since the commencement of the movement for the prohibition of the accursed traffic in this and the adjacent colonies. But much as we know you have done, we feel sure that you will be only too glad to do much more to forward the cause of the poor victims, wherever and whenever opportunity offer you; we thought, therefore, that as you are proceeding to the United
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    Kingdom, which still holds the key to the whole situation, we would be failing in our duty if we do not entrust you with the prayers and tears of the thousands of victims, in this colony alone, who are held spell-bound by this fell-destroyer. You yourself have seen its terrible havoc in your midnight visits, and can therefore make far more forceful representations to the Powers that be, than any description of mine."
    That letter is signed by a Chinese gentleman, one of the leading Chinese Christian men in Australia. What is the history of the deputation to Mr. Deakin, who was then a Member of the Government in Victoria? These gentlemen who compose the deputation speak in exactly the same way as our missionaries in China speak. The Rev. Mr. Allen speaks similarly, and so does Canon Parker and another English gentleman. Then what does Mr. Deakin, speaking for the Government, say in reply to this deputation? I dare not read, what I should like to read, some extracts from the speeches on this occasion, as I feel I am occupying the time of the House. The Governor says—
    " There was but one feeling amongst the Government on the subject. He did not think, however, that the sum of £20,000, or, to be correct, £18,000 a year was a sum to be depreciated, and he did not think that Parliament or the Government would be called upon to throw away that sum unless occasion justified it. In this case the moral weight which attached to the objections to the traffic, which had been properly termed infernal, made the point one about which there could not be the slightest difference of opinion."
    Thereupon the Government of Melbourne addressed a letter to the other colonies asking them to co-operate in their representations, in order to put an absolute prohibition upon the sale of opium in those colonies. Sir, I cannot understand how right hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House, and hon. Gentlemen here, can come down to this House after all that testimony from China, and all that testimony from other parts of the world which I have read, and say that there can be any justification of this opium trade, except it is used for recognised and legitimate purposes. It would not be for me, for one moment, to depreciate the very distinguished Indian services of my hon. Friend the Member for the Evesham Division (Sir Richard Temple). His name will ever be associated with

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    Indian history; and with regard to my hon. Friend behind me (Sir George Campbell), I must make a similar observation. But Sir Cecil Beadon, in his evidence before the Committee which dealt with this subject, says that the Indian Government looks for revenue, and he does not hesitate to say that the consequences of the opium trade do not come before the Indian Government. Indian officials in this House generally take that view. They tell us there are people who consume opium with great advantage to themselves. I do not believe it for a moment. But they tell us so, and they think they have seen it. The medical evidence is entirely on the other side; but, even if it be so, the proportion of those who receive benefit from the use of opium is infinitely small compared with the thousands upon thousands who are demoralised by it. China has made a Treaty with America prohibiting the importation of opium; England has made a Treaty with the Corea prohibiting opium. I am not going into the question of our Treaties or our commerce, as I see my time is limited; but it is a fact that our trade with China has not increased at all during many years past. It is less than it was in 1868. We have a trade with Japan; we have been prohibited by our Treaty to introduce opium into Japan. Our trade with Japan in 1868 was £1,200,000; our trade in 1889 was £4,000,000. I believe we are standing very much in our own light in regard to this traffic. If the £11,000,000 in silver which China pays us for opium were paid to us for goods from Manchester or Leeds the results would be very much more beneficent, and it would be very much better for this country. I shall now endeavour to touch on the Malwa question, and I will tell the House why I have incorporated the Malwa Duty in my resolution. I have done it for this purpose: I find, from the Report on the Moral and Material Progress of India in 1888-89, that the native States engaged in the cultivation and production of opium so arranged and managed it as to safeguard the British Revenue, and in exchange for this service they received compensation in money or in some other form. What
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    has been the course of the Malwa Duty? The Malwa Duty was 650 rupees; it was raised to 700 rupees, again reduced to 650 rupees, and now is 600 rupees per chest. In 1880-81 there was a trade of 46,000 chests; in 1889-90 it got down to 30,000; and it is now down to 28,1,00 chests. By lowering the duty we get more transit duty on opium, to poison still more people, although we get less money for doing so. A late traveller in Rajpootana says—
    " The condition of the people is deplorable. The Rajpoots were called a people fit to succeed the English. The poppy grows on their finest land. Instead of food being grown and stored in good years, the poppy is in possession."
    The last famine in Rajpootana was owing in great measure to this cause. Opium takes up the cotton and food lands. Lately cotton and food are turning out the poppy, and food has gone down 25 per cent in price. What do the Governors of Native States get out of the trade? The selling price in 1888 and 1889 was 1,120 rupees per chest. The Pass Duty was 650 rupees. The cost to the Indian Government over 10 years has been 390 rupees, or, latterly, 410 rupees the chest; but, taking it at 390 rupees, we walk off with about £1,320,000, and hand over to these natives for their opium about £180,000. I do not think we are doing them a very great kindness, so far as the Pass Duty is concerned, in promoting the cultivation. Of course, the native Princes get a higher rate out of the land which is devoted to the cultivation of the poppy than when it is devoted to other crops. But there is a Memorandum, I see, by Dr. Keegan, who says—
    "The results of the depression of the opium trade in Malwa are far-reaching. The means of livelihood of a large body of cultivators who find themselves unable, with the low prices obtainable for the produce, to defray the expenses of cultivation and to pay the heavy State opium assessment are seriously affected, white the States whose revenues depend largely on their opium assessments are likely to find them considerably diminished."
    Even with regard to Malwa we do not seem to be doing the people a very great kindness by levying a duty of even 600 rupees. These people are starving on the opium land; they are in a very poor condition, and they are demoralised. Well, now, I come to that more difficult

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    part of my subject, and I own it is the most difficult—the Indian Revenue. The largest revenue that ever was obtained from opium by the Indian Government was in the year 1880-1, when they received from both sources, the transit duty, and the other source of revenue, cultivation, Rx8,451,000, from Bengal cultivation and the Malwa Pass Duty. The largest value during that period of the rupee was 1s. 8d., so that our Indian Revenue was over £7,000,000. But that Revenue has fallen very steadily. In 1888 and 1889 the two revenues together made Rx5,900,000, instead of Rx8,400,000, or about £4,500,000. The Budget Estimate telegraphed the other day put the sum at Rx5,300,000, or £3,989,000; you may call it £4,000,000, and that is the figure with which my Motion practically has to deal. This is a very awkward item in Indian finance. At least £2,000,000 has been drawn out of Stock in the last three years in order to keep up these revenues to about £4,000,000. That is about £500,000 a year that has been drawn out of Stock, which reduces the figures of the factors we have to deal with to about £2,500,000. But the amount in advances for cultivation in India is, I believe, even upwards of £2,000,000. The amount of capital invested in Stock is above £1,000,000. If you deduct the interest on that Stock and advanced for cultivation and the capital value of the works, you further decrease the sum with which we have to deal. I do not believe a wise accountant would put the Indian revenue at the present moment at more than £3,500,000, at the very outside. And that is the figure with which we have to deal, and it is for that amount we are doing so much mischief to mankind. Now, with regard to the Indian Revenue, I am very glad to see a surplus in 1890-91 of about £2,000,000. In 1889-90 there was very nearly the same surplus. It is a large surplus, and I have no doubt there are many uses in India for that surplus. But I think the Indian Revenue from this source is a doomed revenue. A Consular Report from Wanchoo, circulated to-day, states that, though the consumption of opium has increased, the consumption of Indian opium has very much decreased. What do our own people say? In the Report on the Moral and Material Progress of
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    India for 1881-82, they say the poppy is being slowly replaced by the potato and sugar-cane—
    "The system of advances is reported to be the chief inducement to the cultivator to grow-so precarious and troublesome a crop as the poppy. The efforts of the sub-agent to extend the poppy cultivation in Agra, Muttra, and Aligarh were not attended with success."
    Sir Evelyn Baring in 1885 said a diminishing revenue might be expected. This was true, though the fact was not mentioned that it had sometimes been necessary to increase the number of cultivators in order to prevent a diminution of the area cultivated. The Indian Government has had to bear a reduction of the revenue from opium from £7,000,000 to £4,000,000, and I think it is reducible to about £3,500,000. The value of the drug has gone down considerably, and the quantity offered for sale has also gone down considerably. When I come to look at the finance of India there are several things which attract attention. One is the large amount which is constantly being placed annually on the revenue, which any Corporation, or other body, dealing with funds would place to capital and discharge over a series of years. The expense of the Army of India in 1881-82, after the Afghan War was 13,000,000 tens of rupees; in 1884-85 it was 16,000,000 tens of rupees; and in 1888-89 it was 20,000,000 tens of rupees. Therefore, the Indian Army alone has cost us £5,000,000 sterling more than it did after the Afghan War. Those who know anything about the Indian Army have always stated that very great economies could be effected and maintained without detriment, but with advantage to that force. There are points in connection with the Indian Army which, any man knows, ought to be attended to, and every man in India who has borne the name of a distinguished soldier has advocated economies and changes. My hon. Friend and relative, the Member for the City, (Sir R. N. Fowler), has placed on the Paper an addition to my Motion if it comes to be the substantive Question relative to subsidies from this country. I have always advocated that if we ask in this House the Indian Government to make a sacrifice on moral grounds, we ought to do as we did in connection with

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    the slavery question—meet them by some subsidy. My hon. Friend has, however, drawn his Resolution a little too wide. If my Motion comes to be the substantive Motion, I think we should amend his by saying, " This House is of opinion that such annual grants should be made to the Government of India as the then probable amount of deficit and the then circumstances of Indian finance seem to require." I do not think the Indian Government can look, as I am sure they do not look, for a long continuation of this opium revenue; but the more I have looked into the question the more am I convinced, that India itself would be a great gainer by doing away with a trade which demoralises its population, and certainly adds very much in many ways to its expenses and its charges. I trust I have proved that this trade in which we are engaged is the curse of China, has been and is, I am afraid, still the curse of Burma. My hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Mark Stewart) will prove it is the curse of India. It is being rooted out because it has been a curse in Australia; the Dutch are anxious to root it out because it is a curse in Java; and it is a curse to the American population in California. I have shown, that every thinking man in whose opinion we place confidence—that certainly all the heads of our Christian churches—look upon this question as I look upon it— as a question of Christianity. I have also shown that the revenue for India is an uncertain one, that it is fading away, that the crop occupies good ground which ought to be devoted to more legitimate trade, and I trust I have shown it is a disgrace to Christianity. I am not advocating any breach of faith with those native Princes who have so often been loyal to the English Crown. I do not know what are the Treaties, or what may be the nature of the Agreements. I have not yet made use of the argument that there is a legitimate trade which would compensate us in some degree for the abandonment of the illegitimate trade. Surely we might do a legitimate trade to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of pounds by producing opium for medical use in India, to supply our legi
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    timate trade at home and abroad! At the present moment medical requirements are supplied almost entirely by Turkey or Persian opium, the Indian opium being manufactured entirely for Chinese consumption. I appeal to Her Majesty's Government and to the House to do away with this horrible traffic, which is demoralising and destructive to mankind. I appeal on the ground of those laws which ought to regulate the dealings of mankind; and I appeal on still higher grounds. I appeal on a ground which is not often urged in this House, but a ground on which I believe I shall have the sympathy of a large number of Members in this House—the Christian ground. We call ourselves a Christian country, and I trust we shall long remain one. Many of my hon. Friends on the opposite side of the House maintain a State Church because they hold what I consider a beautiful ideal — that as a nation we acknowledge a Supreme Being and worship Him. In this House we have prayers read every day, and we pray that God's Kingdom will come upon earth. If we go on with this opium trade, we are not spreading God's Kingdom; we are spreading the kingdom of the devil. The evidence is strong in favour of the Motion which I have ventured to bring forward, and I pray that this House, in its wisdom, may see right to put an end to this traffic, which I have endeavoured to describe in language which I believe to be true.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the word " That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "this House is of opinion that the system by which the Indian Opium Revenue is raised is morally indefensible, and would urge upon the Indian Government that they should cease to grant licences for the cultivation of the poppy and sale of opium in British India, except to supply the legitimate demand for medical purposes, and they should at the same time take measures to arrest the transit of Malwa opium through British territory,"—(Sir Joseph Pease,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question proposed, " That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    MR. MARK STEWART: After the very exhaustive speech of my hon. Friend. I

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    need not trouble the House at greater length than I can possibly avoid. In 1875 I brought forward a Motion for the gradual diminution of this trade, and had that Resolution been carried we should hare been saved a great many heart-burnings and great difficulty in this question. To-night we approach a Resolution of a much more drastic character, and one which may possibly not commend itself to every Member in this House. I have submitted the Resolution which appears in my name on the Paper because I believe it to be a thoroughly practical one, and one which would have commended itself to the majority in the House. But having the honour to second the Motion, I wish to say a few words in its support. The point to which special attention is directed is this: That while the Government of India assert in this House that the opium revenue is diminishing, and that they are doing what they can to put down the opium traffic, we find a very much larger consumption of opium is taking place. If I take the instance of Lucknow I find that in the year 1883.84 there were only 12 shops licensed for opium smoking; in 1885-86 they were reduced to six, and in 1887-88 to three; but, on the other hand, the consumption in those shops very considerably increased, namely, from 36,000 toles in 1883-84 to 41,000 toles in 1885-86, and to 64,000 toles in 1887-88. This very large increase in the consumption of opium has nothing to do with China; and that statement must fill us with alarm and consternation. The only remedy for such a state of things is the suppression of the withdrawal of the manufactured goods. Opium smoking is considered a disgrace. It is said the only thing that saves the nation from utter extirpation at once is the virtue of their women, and if a woman smokes it is considered such an unrighteous and unholy thing that even opium smokers are dead against that view. I wish to direct attention to the case of Akyab, the capital of Arracan, in Lower Burma. They go about the country and establish centres, following the three great lines of railway. It was one of the strictest rules under the late King Theobald that no person should be allowed to smoke or chew opium, and
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    that rule was rigidly enforced. Now we find that the consumption of opium in the district ruled by him had decreased largely, while in Burma it was rapidly on the increase. In Lower Burma the smoking of opium has increased since last year, and there is a very large increase in the amount consumed by the population over which this country bears rule. Now we are told by Government documents that opium is only sold to the Chinese, but that is not the case at all. I have seen numbers of Burmese go openly into the shops and buy opium. I have many cases on record where the consumption of opium is encouraged among persons who have not known its delights and pleasures before. These are at first given opium of much milder character and not so strong as other kinds, and after becoming accustomed and habituated to smoking this then they are given the opium of British India. There can be no doubt of the great facilities which are given now for the sale of opium among the native populations of India. Till recently there was little opium, comparatively speaking, used in India. There was a little used in the Punjab. But now it is calculated that something like 122,000 cases-are consumed annually by the native population. That shows the enormous increase that is going on in the manufacture of opium. To curtail the facilities at present existing for its manufacture would not be so hard on the people as some persons might be disposed to think. There is an enormous quantity of the best land under the cultivation of the poppy, and a great deal of labour is required. Now, that labour could be utilised in growing food and cotton. Many parts of India, we know, are extremely cold, and the people are in a bad way when they cannot obtain warm clothes. It would conduce to the health of the people to put down the cultivation of the poppy in favour of the cultivation of cotton. We have an enormous amount of testimony as to the condition of the people owing to the opium trade, and we cannot question the value of these authorities. These men know the habits of the people, and can get at the popular mind and the popular wishes in a far better manner than ever before. Their

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    unanimous opinion is that so long as the opium trade continues great evils will exist, and they are most anxious to do away with the whole thing. They say that it is a very grave state of affairs that we who set up to be the most civilised nation in the world should set such a bad example to these people, and that we are fast losing our character in all parts of the East. It is absolutely impossible to remedy this state of affairs as long as this opium trade exists. We should not make the natives bad by bringing in opium amongst them, but should encourage them to higher aspirations founded on bettor principles, and should introduce trade not mixed up with opium, and bring the people to truer lights. Some people say, " Well, after all, we have the consumption of alcohol at home to consider and get rid of before we go to India about the opium." [" Hear, hear ! "] Bat the two things are quite different. The quantity of opium which would poison the whole population of London is 20 cases, whereas 20 cases of alcohol would only perhaps cause a few people to be locked up. Then, opium is despised among the people who employ it most. Again, the Government is not so mixed up with the sale of alcohol as it is with opium. If the Government were so much connected with the manufacture of distilled spirits in this country as they are with the manufacture of opium we should hear a great deal about it. But they do encourage the trade in opium. There are officials to examine the opium and pick out the good stuff. The bad lots are sold through India. The Chinese have a strange prejudice against us, and when I see that I say that something must be wrong. This is owing to the opium trade, and it is our duty to remove that prejudice. If we remove that prejudice they will enter more easily into commercial relations with this country. If we put a stop to the opium traffic we should have fewer people in our gaols and fewer people in our Lunatic Asylums. I think I might just mention another intoxicant—gamja —the manufacture of which has also increased, but I do not propose to go into that. Another point is this: It is often said the carriers in India are better for the use of opium; but the fact
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    is, that those who have never had a dose of opium are better bearers than those men who are addicted to its use, and who without it would simply fall down and be unable to proceed another yard. Then with regard to fever, it is said by those experienced with the fever and malaria districts that those who do not eat or smoke opium are much safer than those who do. Just one word before I sit down upon our settlements and colonies, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The Local Government derive a large revenue from the sale and manufacture of this drug in these places; but in Rajpootana, where no opium is allowed to be sold, the state of things is much healthier. In regard to these settlements, a very remarkable movement took place on the 17th July in last year. A great number of the merchants met together to forward Petitions to the House of Commons of the British Parliament praying for the prohibition of the growth, manufacture, and sale of opium. That Petition was signed by 1,000 persons in a few hours, and amongst them were many opium smokers. I would also like to say a word about the opium farms of Singapore, because we are told the Government are doing all they can to discountenance the further sale of opium. These opium farms are tenanted by Chinese, and, as they are very poor tenants, the Government have lowered the terms to enable them to carry on their farming operations, which does not look like discountenancing the sale of opium. From Hong Kong the people have petitioned the House of Commons to pass a stern law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of opium there. Another Petition was against the use of the Chinese contract system. One Chinaman takes a contract, in consequence of which we are told there is only one contract; but this man may give 500 sub-contracts or licences, and he does so. In many cases contracts have been given in order to set up this trade until it is now almost impossible to stop it. I beg to apologise for having detained the House so long on a subject somewhat old, but I am firmly persuaded that the growing feeling in this country is such that it will force the hand of the

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    Government, and cause them to ponder before they allow this manufacture to go on. I am strongly satisfied the feeling is a ripening one, and that at the next election it will be made a test question in many a constituency. I do not say this for the purpose of catching votes to-night, but because I am representing what I believe to be the growing feeling and the demands of the country.
    DR. FARQTJHARSON W.): I am very unwilling to give a silent vote on this occasion, because, in the first place, on my own side I have a strong conviction, and, next, because I feel placed in a position of some delicacy in this matter. Before I go further I wish, in justice to my constituents, to absolve a certain influential section of them of any complicity in the action I am taking, because—and I say it with deep regret—I am going against the wishes of a certain influential and respectable section of my constituency. I have presented to this House a large number of Petitions in favour of the Motion before the House, and I have had many letters from highly respectable clergymen in my constituency urging me to vote for this Resolution. It is only a strong sense of duty that compels me on this occasion to say a few words in opposition to the wishes of my best friends and supporters. But I think it is the duty of anyone who thinks he can say a word in defence of the position we take up in this matter to get up, regardless of the consequences to himself, and to say that word, as I hope I shall, in a straightforward manner. If all the statements made to-night could be proved, I should have no hesitation in saying I would follow my hon. Friend who sits below me into the Division Lobby; but these statements are founded on misconceptions; and, therefore, I shall feel it a duty to vote the other way. We have
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    not had trotted out to-night the statement that we force opium upon the Chinese. I suppose that old contention is now given up. [Cries of " No, no! "], Well, I am sorry I have started that hare, because I am afraid I shall have to give it a little run; but, as I have pointed out before, and as the officials in charge of the Government of India have pointed out also, it is impossible for anyone now to say we have forced opium on the Chinese. [A laugh.'] That laughter may be a convenient method of getting rid of an inconvenient question; but we can show upon eminent authority, adopted by Lord Ripon, that the opium war was a war of tariffs, and that the Chinese people had the opportunity if they liked of excluding opium from the 300 Articles; but they declined to give up the revenue, which they knew to be an important one, but one which, by giving 15 months notice, they can now put an end to. But we must look at this matter from a practical point of view, and see what the effect of giving up this revenue would have upon India. I prefer to take my views and form my conclusions upon the opinions and evidence given by the Governor Generals, and they tell us, and Lord Ripon, who is above all things a man of sober judgment, tells us in so many words that India would be bankrupt if we remove the opium revenue from it. There is nothing more taxable in India, and, therefore, the only way of getting rid of this opium revenue would be to tax the people of this country 2d. on the Income Tax [" Hear, hear !"] I am stating this as the only alternative. If England desires to do that they may, but I agree with the words of the late Mr. Fawcett, who said it would be in the highest degree absurd to spend money in stopping this traffic when we have at our very doors round the corner a traffic in alcohol, from which we derive an immense revenue, and which causes far more widespread misery than opium ever did or could do. There are only two alternatives in dealing with this matter. The one is to prohibit opium growing in

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    India, and that would be impossible, for we know that there are many large estates in India where the growth of opium is obliged to be permitted; and to prohibit the growth of opium, and thus make India bankrupt, would not be any benefit to China, because it is a fact well-known that two-thirds of the opium used in China is grown' upon Chinese territory. We also know from the highest Chinese authorities that the issue of edicts against the growth of opium in China must be taken in a Pickwickian sense; they are issued for the delectation of the world, but not intended to be acted on, or, at all events, they have never been acted upon. If acted upon, I should like to know of any authentic case of a Chinaman being beheaded or put to?death for breaking the law. The second alternative is to allow free trade in opium, to allow it to be grown freely and unreservedly throughout the whole country, and that would mean the demoralisation of the whole of India, as the people would at once largely grow it for their own domestic consumption. We have heard a good deal about opium absorbing fine land that might otherwise be used to good purposes. The fact is, that this land is also used for other purposes, as a crop of rice is invariably taken off the land before the opium crop is gathered; therefore the land does grow other things as well as opium. I think that those who have argued this question have not sufficiently considered it. What is the opium grown in India according to population? Habitual consumers of opium might use ten-parts of an ounce a day, but there is not enough opium grown in the country to demoralise so vast a population. What is the case with China? Sir Robert Hart told us that only 1 per cent. of the population of China smoke opium; and even if India imports ten times as much as she grows, the total supply would only account for 10 per cent. of the population. I leave the political aspects of the case, because those I am not so qualified to discuss, but I think I am entitled to say a word about the medical aspects of opium, because my labours in medicine have been devoted to the consideration of, drugs and their properties, and I have taken the opportunity of getting
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    the best assistance I could, and consulting the best authorities as to the effects of opium. One difficulty about the consideration of this question is, that I think many persons who talk about the use of Indian opium fancy they are getting the same thing as the Turkish drug from Smyrna. We know very well that the Indian drug is of such weak effect that it is never used in medicine in this country, there is no market for it. If you restrict the growth of the opium in India you would get no revenue at all, for the drug is too weak to be of any benefit in medicine, and when opium is used for smoking it is used as an extract. It is mixed with a number of other things which bear the same relation to opium that a glass of whisky toddy would bear to the spirit which was previously put into the glass. I do not know if any hon. Member has ever seen a person smoking opium. The quantity he uses is extremely small—a piece no larger than the tip of the finger is put into the pipe; the smoker takes one or two whiffs, enough to give him a pleasurable feeling and send him into a comfortable sleep. "Very often the smoker, having for a time forgotten his troubles, rouses up again very little the worse for his indulgence. Whisky and opium are very much alike in their double action. Small doses are stimulative and restorative, but large doses are narcotic. It is in small doses for its stimulating effect that opium is taken, and there is a great difference between eating opium and smoking it—just the difference there is between chewing and smoking tobacco. If you chew tobacco you get a greater amount of the narcotic injurious principle into the system than you do if you smoke it, and it is the same with opium. Medical authorities have held that morphia, which is the active principle of opium, is not volatilised by heat at all, so that the smoke when carried into the lungs does not carry with it any of the active principle. I am sure the hon. Member for the Ilkeston Division (Sir W. Foster)—who seems to have been deserted by his medical colleagues, and who, therefore, has not the benefit of their advice in this matter—will confirm me in what I say about the medical aspects of the case. He cannot help doing it.

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    The political aspect of the case is a totally different thing. The physical vigour of people who eat opium has been disparaged. I know nothing about the Chinese, but I have travelled in Rajpootana, and I am bound to say a finer, more manly, vigorous, and splendid set of people I never met. We are also told of the terrible evils of opium eating in Burma, but a more charming people I never saw in my life than the Burmese. I go further, and am prepared to say that opium in small doses as a tonic or restorative is of considerable value in preventing ague. My hon. Friend who proposed this Motion said he could not believe that any persons could take opium with advantage. Let me mention a circumstance which came under my own observation. I was dining with a poor friend of mine, a man who was in consumption. He got through the early part of the dinner very well, but began to flag about the middle. He went out, and when he returned he said to me, " Do you know what I went away for? I went away to give myself a subcutaneous injection of morphia." When he came back he was cheerful, and was stimulated in a way I am sure no small dose of alcohol or a tonic could have stimulated him. I have not the least hesitation in saying that a moderate use of this stimulant preserved that poor man's life certainly for a year or two. I was very much surprised to hear from the hon. Baronet who introduced the Motion that opium was a worse evil than alcohol. I certainly admit with the hon. Baronet that the opium smoker, lying in a state of quiet, dreamy satisfaction, is quite useless, but he is not absolutely mischievous. He does not get up and beat his wife or kick her to death with his heavy boots. There is no crime that I am aware of specially connected with the use of opium. I should like to say most strongly that opium does not cause any of those destructions of tissue which alcohol does, and therefore, however much a man may suffer from the great evil of the excessive use of opium, there is still hope for him if he pulls up at last in his mischievous course. The same cannot be said of the alcohol drinker. If he amends he finds himself in a much
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    worse physical condition than he was before he began to drink excessively. His liver and kidneys are crumpled and shrivelled, his heart is wrong, the tissue of his body has physically degenerated, and he dies a victim of the secondary results of that degeneration. I do not wish to detain the House any longer. I have shown the House that even the worst and most hopeless opium-eater may return to health. Some time ago I heard of the case of an old woman living in a low district who died at the age of 90, and who had been in the habit of taking some 200 or 300 ounces of opium per diem— [laughter]—of course I mean grains. Yet she carried on a laborious life, and died in the full odour of sanctity at the age of 90 years. And now I conclude. I have tried to prove that, as regards the Indian trade, the Chinese are practically in the position of local option—they can prohibit the introduction of the drug; that the evil effects of opium have been enormously exaggerated, and, thirdly, that the abandonment of the revenue derived from this source would make India bankrupt. Some part of the case, of course, depends on official evidence, and there are some people who think that official statements must necessarily be tainted. I have read statements to that effect; but I do not believe that an English gentleman drops all his veracity at his office door, and we are, in my opinion, bound to accept these statements from high-minded eminent officers who rule with honour and distinction various foreign lands under our sway. I think, too, that the Mover and Seconder of this Resolution may take some comfort from the belief that in 30 or 40 years matters will come round to the way they would wish, and the Chinese will grow all their own opium and want none from India, and thus there will come a natural end to a condition of things we deplore, but which, I think, is not so bad as has been represented.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS(Sir J. FERGUSSON,): I believe the House will expect from Her Majesty's Government some statement in answer to the strong appeals

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    addressed to the Government by hon. Members, although I very much regret that the task has fallen to me instead of to my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary for India (Sir J. Gorst) to make that reply. Still, I think I shall be able to satisfy the House that the Government of India is not bent upon demoralising the people of India and China by carrying on the opium trade, that all possible efforts are made to control and curtail this traffic with a view to restrain the consumption of the drug among their own subjects in India, and towards a gradual reduction of the export to China. The hon. Baronet the Member for the Barnard Castle Division does not now for the first or second time raise this question, and no one can doubt the entire earnestness and sincerity with which he has taken up this question. His sole wish is to remove what he thinks is a blot upon our national character, and to stop what he considers is a source of great mischief to all the people concerned. I entirely recognise his honourable object and bis disinterested efforts to accomplish it; and if I demur at all to his statements of fact and point out the impracticability of the changes he proposes to introduce, I can assure him that in doing so I in no way depreciate his motives or doubt the nobility of the object he has at heart. It is quite true, as he has said, that there is among the public a growing interest in this question. I know that the public mind is more stirred in relation to this matter than I ever remember it to have been in former years; but I also think that, to a large extent, an artificial interest has been created, and the public mind has been influenced by many impassioned appeals that are not quite consistent with the real facts of the case. I judge this from many statements I have read and from a great many letters which have
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    appeared in the public Press. Into these I will not enter at any length, but the House will remember that there is one allegation constantly made that we force our Indian opium on the Chinese. Now, that is not the fact, and the statement has been disproved over and over again. In former Debates it has been shown that in negotiating the Treaty of Tien-Tsin Lord Elgin expressly disclaimed to his secretary, who conducted the negotiations, any intention of requiring the Chinese to insert the article of Indian opium. It was entirely because the Chinese Ministers considered that they could not dispense with it that opium was an article included in the tariff. [" No, no ! "] If that is doubted I can prove my statement from the Despatch from the Government of India, presented to Parliament in 1882. In this Daspatch to the Secretary of State there is included a statement from Mr. Lay, the Chinese Secretary to Lord Elgin's Mission. He says—
    " All the negotiations at Tien-Tsin passed through me. Not one word upon either side was ever said about opium from first to last. The revision of the tariff and the adjustment of all questions affecting our trade were designedly left for after deliberation and arrangement, and it was agreed that for that purpose the Chinese High Commissioner should meet Lord Elgin at Shanghai in the following winter. In the meantime," Mr. Lay continues, "the preparation of the tariff devolved upon me at the desire of the Chinese no less than Lord Elgin. When I came to opium' I inquired what course they proposed to take in respect to it. The answer was, ' We have resolved to put it into the tariff as yang yoh' (foreign medicine). I urged a moderate duty in view of the cost of collection, which was agreed to. This represents with strict accuracy the amount of ' extortion' resorted to."
    From that time to this it has rested on that footing. The Chinese at any time may terminate the Treaty on giving 12 months' notice, and to protect themselves they may increase the duty to any extent they please, or they may exclude it altogether. This, I think I may say: that if the Chinese Government thought proper to raise the duty to a prohibitive extent, or shut out the article altogether, this country

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    would not expend £1 in powder and shot or lose the life of a soldier in an attempt to force the opinion upon the Chinese. I deny that our wars with China were on account of opium; our quarrels with the Chinese were on account of trade generally. Opium was only one item, and war was carried on in order to open China to trade generally, not for the trade in opium. The hon. Baronet condemns the practice of the Indian Government in respect to opium entirely, and in this he differs from the line taken on former occasions, by which he regarded the system provided in Western India in respect to the levying of duty on opium as comparatively unobjectionable. I am not concerned to weigh the difference in degrees of morality of the two systems. The cultivation is limited in Bengal to certain areas, the poppy is grown under licence, the produce is taken at fixed rate, paid for handsomely and sold at public auction. In Western India the poppy is grown in independent States, and by Treaty opium is sent through the Custom House, with a heavy tax upon it. What we have to consider is this: Whichever way we deal with this business it is in the same spirit, on the same principle that the Indian Government deals with opium and spirits as the Government deals with the Spirit Duty in this country. There are three ways of dealing with the trade in intoxicants and narcotics—things which may be harmless or even beneficial when taken in small quantities, but extremely injurious to human health and life if taken in excess. You can either forbid the trade altogether, you can tolerate it and not interfere with it, or you can regulate it. The course taken alike in this country and in India is to regulate the trade, to place upon these things the highest duty possible for them to bear without offering too great a temptation to smuggling. There is practically no difference between the system pursued in this country and in India, nor in principle any difference in the method pursued in dealing with opium in Bengal
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    and in Bombay. I wish to point out, further, for the matter might be mistaken from what has been said in speeches by the hon. Baronet and my hon. Friend behind me, that in some States, such as the Great Mahratta States, by Treaty sufficient opium is grown for homo consumption and none for export. My hon. Friend is mistaken when he talks of the amount grown in Rajpootana. In a great part the poppy is not grown at all, and in other States under Treaty they suppress the poppy on condition of being supplied with Malwa opium free of duty for their own consumption. But there were one or two things said by the hon. Baronet in his speech to which I must refer out of respect to him, for the serious nature of his speech requires that I should give attention to it. " Suppose," said the hon. Baronet, " the Government of this country had the whisky trade in its hands: " that would be the Gothenburg system, which some people advocate. I should not like the State either here or in India to undertake the sale and distribution of an article of the kind. It would have some considerations to recommend it, but there would be, I think, greater objections—forone thing, it would tend to demoralise the Public Service. The hon. Baronet has referred to an opinion expressed by Sir Thomas Wade; and I must admit that, in relation to matters connected with Chinese trade, this is an authority of the highest importance . If Sir Thomas Wade unreservedly condemned our position towards China that opinion is deserving of every consideration and respect. But let me remind the hon. Baronet of a passage in these Papers laid before Parliament in 1882, quoted from a Despatch from Sir Thomas Wade to the Secretary of State in 1881. Sir Thomas Wade gives an account of a conversation he held with the Chinese Ministers. He says—
    " I went to the Yamen to speak of various matters. Four Ministers received me. Adverting to opium, I observed that the authorities in some places were taxing opium, native and foreign; in others were trying to increase the sale and consumption of both. Without at all denying the right of the Chinese Government to do as it chose, I should wish to know what course the Government approved? They said the question was embarrassing. The Chinese Government would be glad to stop

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    opium smoking altogether, but the habit was too confirmed to be stopped by official intervention. No idea of abolishing the trade at present was in the mind of the Government. Alluding to the desire of well-disposed people at home to see England withdraw from the trade, I asked if it would be of any use to diminish yearly the export from India. The Indian Government might be thus enabled to provide otherwise for loss of income. They said so long as the habit exists, opium will be procured either from India or elsewhere. Any serious attempt to check the evil must originate with the people themselves. The measure I suggest would affect Chinese 'Revenue, but would not reach the root of the mischief."
    Now, it has been said by the hon. Baronet to-night, as it has been said before, that we introduced opium into China. No greater mistake was ever made. We did not introduce it.
    SIR J. PEASE: The right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say that I never said so in my life.
    SIR J. FERGUSSON: I beg pardon; the hon. Baronet said, I think, that we had set the Chinese to grow opium.
    SIR J. PEASE: Yes.
    SIR J. FERGUSSON: Very well. Now, as bearing upon that, I may be allowed to say that Sir Thomas Wade told me to-day there is good reason to suppose that opium has been grown in China from time immemorial. In 1840, when the first Treaty was made, opium was grown 1,000 miles from the sea-board in the most remote parts of China, and equal to that grown in India. Clearly, then, we did not introduce the drug into China, and that statement has been made, though not by the hon. Baronet. It was an article of trade in the days of Queen Elizabeth, from what are now known as the Straits Settlements. The use of opium, like the use of spirits, has been the habit of people in parts of India from time immemorial. In the very early history of our occupation our officers seriously contemplated the cutting down of palm trees to prevent the distillation of ardent spirits. No one could respect more than
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    I do the expression of opinion by Christian and Benevolent Societies on this subject. They no doubt feel strongly that we should not, by our policy, inflict injury on the people of India or China. But while there is the strong demand—the settled habit of people—for this drug, it is impossible to prevent its use without an exercise of force amounting to downright tyranny. As has been said by the hon. Member opposite (Dr. Farquharson) the moderate use of the drug is very common, and I am reminded of my own experience in India. Among the Rajpoots it is the universal practice to offer a drink of a solution of opium as a mark of hospitality. It is used as a sort of stirrup cup, a bowl being specially kept for the purpose of dissolving the opium in water. No one can say that it has had a demoralising and degrading effect upon the Rajpoots; there is no finer race of men in India. A warlike, manly, energetic race they are, and yet they are in the habit of taking this as a drink in the morning just as a man in England may smoke his pipe. It is quite true that one of the articles of impeachment against Warren Hastings was the sending of opium into China, but that is by no means any proof that Warren Hastings was among the first to send opium from India to China. It may be that the work of the missionaries is prejudiced by Europeans taking part in the opium trade, but if there was not a single chest of opium sent from India to China there would be a great falling off of Indian revenue, but there would be little diminution in the quantity used in China, because year by year the native grown opium is increasing, displacing the Indian opium, which under a high import duty is an expensive luxury. There is evidence that the Chinese grown opium will displace the Indian imports the low excise duty put upon, it by

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    the Chinese Government gives it a ready sale and promises at no distant period to displace the Indian opium. The fact is, there is in China, as elsewhere, several phases of opinion. There are those "who disapprove of its use altogether, but there is also a large class interested in the cultivation, and think it ought to be promoted rather than discouraged. Burma has been mentioned to-night, and there is some confusion between the regulations in British or Lower Burma and the recently-annexed province of Upper Burma. In Lower Burma the sale of opium is strictly regulated. There are only 20 licensed shops; and that the regulations are enforced is proved by the fact that last year 300 persons were prosecuted in Akyab alone for the illicit sale of opium. The shops are not kept by Bengalese, but by Chinese, for there is a large Chinese population, and the sale could not be prohibited without causing great excitement. In Upper Burma, on the other hand, the sale and use of opium was prohibited by former Kings through the influence of the priests; but, as a matter of fact, the drug was commonly sold and used. According to the Reports of officers, with which at this late hour I will not trouble the House, the Government have set about checking this illicit sale, but allowing a limited number of shops for the natives of China and India, "who are accustomed to the use of the drug; but neither opium or spirits are to be sold to native Burmese. And yet it is made a reproach against the Government of India. You cannot govern a country upon abstract principles. You must deal with the country as it is. People have a certain habit, which you may discourage to some extent, and to some extent you may restrain it by making indulgence in the habit expensive. Finally, I come to the position the Government take on this question. It has been often before the House, and whatever Party has been in office the Government have recognised the evils that do attend on an excessive use of opium. The difficulties in regard to India have been often urged. The hon. Member opposite said just now that India would be bankrupt if an end were put to the opium revenue. That is an extravagant statement. The gross
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    receipts from opium estimated for the present year, were about Rx.8,300,000, and the net revenue Rx.5,300,000. There is not only to be considered the revenue which India derives and which she will have to make up, but there is also the profit of the cultivator, as well as of the native States who grow, or who receive it from us and make a profit upon it, and the interests of all concerned cannot be disregarded in' a proposal to sweep away the trade. You may withdraw a source of revenue, you may gradually wean the people to other industries, but you cannot with a high hand take away the means by which they live, and which they have been pursuing with perfect obedience to law for years past. In comparison with our own Revenue the amount which India derives from the opium trade may not seem a very large sum; but I would ask the House to remember that it is a fifth part of the gross Revenue of India received from taxation, and that surely is no small amount. In the next place, I would ask the House how they could propose to replace such an item in the receipts of the Government of India. It is well known it is very difficult to find a new item of taxation in India without seriously hurting the prosperity and comfort of the people. We have in recent years made many efforts for the defence of India; we are frequently called upon to do more in the way of work for developing the means of communication. The other day we were asked to reduce the Salt Tax. How can you hope to reduce the Salt Tax, which is so profitable, if you are constantly depriving the Government of more than £5,000,000? It is manifest that the postponement of the reduction of this tax on one of the necessaries of life must be for an indefinite time. The hon. Baronet spoke of the sum as £3,500,000 sterling; but the rupee goes as far in India as ever, notwithstanding the difference in exchange. You have to provide for the item in the Indian currency, and not in the British. How are you going to deal with the native States, to whom you have granted this revenue, because they will not be content to go without the profits they derived from the trade? It is evident it would disturb your relations with

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    them, and that the amount that would ' have to be made up would not be confined to the loss of revenues in India, or even to the compensation of those who obtained a livelihood from the trade. These are very serious considerations. I freely admit that the Government of India have never denied that it would be very desirable that this source of revenue should be altered. They have taken means to reduce it. They have diminished the number of licences, and they diminished the area on which the poppy was grown. One million acres less are now under poppy in Bengal than ten years ago. I read to the House yesterday some statistics in regard to opium in the last ten years, which show that from 1881 to the present time the diminution in the total consumption in British India has been from 5,606 chests to 4,500 chests, a diminution of about 20 per cent., which I think shows that the measures of the Government have not been without effect. The change cannot be made suddenly; but it is being already made by degrees. The revenue of India, I am glad to say, has increased in the last five years by £7,000,000. I hope the work of development going on will cause it to increase still more. So that little by little this revenue which is objectionable in many ways, because it is the result of indulgence, no doubt will gradually be diminished. Before I sit down I will notice what was said by the hon. Member for Kirkcudbright as to the system in the Eastern provinces, particularly in Singapore and Hong Kong, where opium licences are farmed out, which probably furnishes too great an inducement and encouragement for the sale of the drug. The Secretary of State for the Colonies has, I know, expressed his dislike to the farming system, and he will call upon Colonial Governments to consider the practicability of substituting another system, and by fixing the price of the licences as highly as possible, thereby reduce the number. I think I have shown the House that the Government do desire to limit, and restrict, and regulate this traffic. It is impossible to abolish it straight away without great hardship to the Indian people unless, indeed, this House shall make good the
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    loss. I remember, not many years ago, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian expressed an opinion to that effect. Not only would you take away from India this profitable revenue derived from a common source, but you impose upon India the necessity of making up that revenue by taxing still more highly those people which some hon. Gentlemen opposite say are now overtaxed. Therefore, I think I may say this Motion should not be pressed as a Vote of Consure on the Government of India, seeing that their policy was tending in the direction which hon. Members desire to go, though it is impossible at one stroke to accomplish the object they have at heart.
    MR. S. SMITH (Flintshire: I think the House will agree with me that the speech to which we have just listened is a very fair one coming from a Government official, representing on this occasion the Government of India. I have to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the tone of his speech, for the courtesy with which he has treated our views, and for certain important concessions he has made. For instance, he made a concession that never has been publicly made in Parliament before, and which will be fruitful of very important consequences. He has told us, speaking on behalf of the Government, that we will never again fire a shot in China in order to insist upon their receiving opium. I wish to fix the Government to this most important concession, and I hope it will be made known throughout China and throughout all Asia tomorrow, that the British Government has practically repented of the policy pursued towards China for the last 100 years. I am bound now to ask the House to permit me, for a few moments, to criticise some of the statements of my right hon. Friend. I am sorry that we who are moving in this matter have to join issue absolutely with him, as to some statements which he puts forth officially on this occasion. The main statement

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    which he made, which is always made officially in these opium Debates, is that this country has never forced opium upon China. I think that is a very startling statement to make in face of all the evidence that we have upon the subject. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the opinions of Sir Thomas Wade, the British Ambassador at Pekin whom we have heard justly described as a man of great eminence, and whose opinion is entitled to the greatest weight. I am willing to leave the decision of this question entirely to the reported opinions of Sir Thomas Wade, and I hope the House will give me their attention for two or three minutes while I lay before them the opinions of our late highly respected Ambassador in China. We were told we used no compulsion under the Treaty of Tientsin. I think Sir Thomas was in China when that Treaty was agreed to. Here is what he wrote in 1868, in a Despatch to the British Government—
    " We are generally prone to forget that the footing we have in China has been obtained by force, and by force alone, and that unwarlike and unenergetic as we hold the Chinese, to be, it is in reality to the fear of force alone that we are indebted for the safety we enjoy at certain points accessible to our force. Yet nothing that has been gained, it must be remembered, was received from the free will of the Chinese; now the concessions made to us from time to time have been from first to last extorted against the conscience of the nation in defiance, that is to say of the moral convictions of its educated men, not merely of the office-holders, whom we call Mandarins, and who are numerically bat a small proportion of the educated class, but of the millions who are saturated with a knowledge of the history and philosophy of their country. To these, as a rule, the very extension of oar trade must appear politically, or which is in China, the same thing, morally, wrong, and the story of foreign intercouse during the last 30 years can have no effect but to confirm them in their opinion.''
    Does the Under Secretary agree with that opinion, that we have extorted every thing from China by force, that our action in China has always been contrary to the moral convictions of the country?
    SIR J. FERGUSSON": No doubt the introduction of Free Trade was unacceptable to the Chinese. What I said was
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    that in no sense was opium forced upon them.
    MR. S. SMITH: Very well, I will try again. Here is what Sir Thomas Wade stated in 1869. He reported to the Government that he had been complaining to the Chinese Government of their hostility to the trade, and here is the reply which he passed on to the British Government—
    " The Chinese Minister said how irreparable and continuous was the injury which they saw inflicted upon the whole Empire by the foreign importation of opium. If England would consent to interdict this case, either to grow it in India or to allow their ships to bring it to China, there might be some hope of more friendly feelings. They believed the extension of this pernicious habit was mainly due to the alacrity with which foreigners supplied the poison for their own profit, perfectly regardless of the irreparable injury inflicted, and naturally they felt hostile to all concerned in such a traffic."
    That was the reason which the Chinese Government gave, and rightly gave, for their hostility. It is too late in the day now to be told that this country did not force opium upon China. The judgment of history has been passed upon it, and no historian of repute now would deny that our first war was entirely an opium war brought on by smuggling opium into China for 50 years, by defying the Chinese edicts constantly issued against it; and by forcing this opium upon them by traders, we at last brought on that deplorable war. The second war was at bottom and substantially another opium war, brought on by continuing this smuggling trade in defiance of all the edicts of the Chinese Government. I say we gained entrance into China for opium purely by force, contrary to the convictions of the people. Until we obtained entrance for it, opium was prohibited in China, the Chinese Government used its whole power to suppress the growth of opium at home, but at last it found it could not resist our pressure to legalise it, and it was vain to attempt to suppress it at home. Now I will pass to one or two other statements which the right hon. Gentleman has made to

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    us regarding India. He tells us that the policy of the Government of India has been to regulate and to control the traffic in opium, and that if they had endeavoured to do more than that it would be considered an intolerable hardship by the people. Now, I deny that. I say the best proof of what the Indian people think of it is to leave them to decide it by local option. Leave to any town in India to decide by the voice of the people whether they wish opium shops open or not, and I do not believe you will find a single place in India that will not, by a practically unanimous vote, decide to close the opium shops. I do not believe there is one State in India that will not agree to the closing of these shops if put to the popular vote. Most Asiatic States that are free and independent have prohibited opium. The Burmese Government made it a capital offence to sell opium or to smoke it; but as soon as we got possession of Burma, what did we do? We spread the taste by the free distribution of opium cakes among the young people. We gradually developed this habit, that was almost unknown before, in an abominable manner; and over large tracts of that country we have brought misery and ruin in our steps. I consider our dealing with Burma in this whole question of opium disgraceful in the last degree. We have published false statistics on the subject, we have deluded the people of this country by putting forth the statement that we have only licensed 34 opium shops in Burma, whereas, the fact is, that these opium shops are distributing centres to a vast number of small dens. One gentleman in the single town of Akyab counted 50 opium dens in three quarters of an hour. Yet our Government declares there is only one licensed shop there. It is believed there are a thousand shops. And so all over Burma. I say we are thoroughly humbugged and deceived by official statistics put forward regarding opium in India and China. Now, we have been told there is a great decrease in the consumption in India. I am sorry to say I do not believe it. All the information accessible to me points in the opposite direction, and I must give the House some figures taken from
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    the last Excise Reports of the Government of India. I ask the House whether they agree with the statement that the consumption of opium is declining in India? In the Presidency of Bombay the number of opium shops licensed was 652, and here are the Revenue Returns. For the five years ending 1882, the revenue was 51,000 rupees; for the five years ending 1887, 97,000 rupees. In 1888, 118,000 rupees; in 1889, 120,000 rupees; for 1890, 121,000 rupees; and the estimate for 1891 is 129,000 rupees, showing in the Bombay Presidency alone an increase of just 150 per cent. in ten years. I commend that fact to the attention of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Well, take Bengal. Here are the figures for 1887 and 1888, the latest years we have got. They were 4,137,000 in 1887, and 4,399,000 in 1888, an increase of 262,000 rupees. The increase for five years was 842,000 rupees. That does not look like a decrease. Here are the last figures I shall trouble the House with: They are for Lower Burma. In 1888, 17 lakhs of rupees; in 1889 they were 18 lakhs of rupees. That is an increase of 8 1/2 per cent. In Arakan the revenue from opium in 1886 was 71,000 rupees; in 1887, 119,000 rupees; in 1888, 176,000; in 1889,188,000; and last year 158,000. I am very much afraid that we are being deceived or misled by the Government statistics. It was my duty some years ago to analyse the Abkari statistics with regard to the liquor traffic, and I came to the conclusion that they were very untrustworthy, and I am very much afraid it is the same with the opium traffic. The fact is, that the demand in India for revenue is so constant and pressing that it leads to evasions; it leads to official colouring whenever desirable rather than allow the real facts to transpire. It is virtually impossible to get thoroughly straightforward Returns in a question of this kind. I think everyone who has had experience of Indian statistics will justify what I am saying. I freely admit that India is a very poor country, and that it is quite impossible for us to throw extra taxation upon India to the extent of £4,000,000 sterling. What we have to face is this: India will lose £4,000,000 sterling in

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    our money by the abolition of the opium traffic. It is clear to me that if this country is to insist, as it ought to do, on the abolition of this traffic, this country must come to its assistance. I am quite sure that if the case were put straight and plain before the people of this country, if it was made clear that a great national sin had to be expiated, and that the cost was to be £4,000,000, there would be no difficulty in finding the money. The amount is a trifle in comparison with the amount of the wealth of this country. Our annual income is about £1,250,000,000 a year. Mr. Giffen puts the capital-value at £10,000,000,000 sterling. I therefore ask, would there be any difficulty in getting £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 a year? It is absurd to say that there would be any difficulty. If the conscience of this country were roused it would be looked upon as a fleabite, and it would be far easier for us to do this work now than it was to pay £20,000,000 for the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1830, England was then very poor, but she is very rich now, Her income is three or four times as large, and her taxation is very much lighter. There would be no difficulty whatever, out of the surpluses we have year after year in the Budget, to find the amount required to tide India over her difficulties in the few years for which it would be requisite. Of this I feel perfectly certain, that any sacrifice this country would make would ennoble her and raise her in the esteem of every nation on the earth. The advantages that would come back to us would repay us ten-fold for all the little sacrifice we would make. We would have an immense development of the trade with China, as an hon. Friend observes. Our trade with China has been starved, and that by this wretched policy. It has remained absolutely stationary for many years. I believe that Lancashire alone has paid in the loss of trade more than the whole amount that would be required to extinguish the opium traffic. However we look at this matter—whether we look at it from the point of view of political economy, from the point of view of Christianity, from the point of view of public ethics—I believe our bounden duty is to take measures for the early extinc-
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    tion of the trade. I believe the country will soon demand it. I do not think the Government know how strong the feeling is in the country, and they may yet discover that in a surprising manner. At the next General Election any candidate who comes before an audience and says we should make a little sacrifice to put an end to the iniquity will carry his audience with him. I do not believe a single constituency will return a Member who would avowedly support the present system, and no candidate will make a speech such as that made to-night by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire without receiving manifest tokens of disapprobation. The only point I can compliment the hon. Member upon is his courage. A more extraordinary speech was never listened to in this House; and I venture to say that no man will at the next General Election face an audience with such a speech and be returned, holding such views. I hope the House will do itself honour to-night. It has a great chance. I hope we shall have a Division to-night that shall do honour to this House, and that shall raise this country in the estimation of foreign countries, and save us from that national judgment which will certainly come upon us some day if we persist in this national sin.
    SIR R. TEMPLE(Worcester, Evesham): At this late hour, before we divide, owing to
    my official experience of all parts of this great question, I may perhaps crave permission of the House to summarise, in a very few, moments, the practical morality of this matter. Sir, with all respect to the hon. Baronet the Mover of this Resolution, and the striking, perhaps stirring, array of testimony which he produced against opium in China, the House will recollect that the hon. Baronet belongs to a very honourable party, the Temperance Party, and we know that precisely the same testimony, only stronger and larger, could be adduced by any temperance speaker regarding the use of alcoholic spirits in England. Now, Sir, the hon. Baronet says that the opium system of

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    India and China is morally indefensible. I say it is defensible. If it were morally indefensible I would not undertake to defend it. If it be morally justifiable, then, and then only, would I undertake its defence. I make no ad misericordiam appeal. If the thing be wrong, then I do not claim the money; I would let it go, be the consequences what they may, be the embarrassment to the Government of India, be the consequent taxation to the people of India, what they may. But, Sir, I undertake to show that upon moral grounds, upon arguments of practical morality, the system is just as defensible as the Excise system of England, or of any civilised country in Europe. May I ask the House for a moment to consider the case of China? Of the opium supplied to the people of China three-fourths are produced in that country. That is of inferior quality and is increasing, and is subject to only one kind of taxation, namely, the local one. That taxation goes to the Chinese Government. One-fourth of the opium comes from India. That is of a superior kind, is fast decreasing, is subject to double taxation —first, that by the Government of China, an import duty; and, secondly, the export duty levied by the Government of India. So that, on the whole, the Indian opium in China is to the Chinese grown opium what the champagne of France is to the rest of the wines of that country. It decreases, because the Chinese grown article increases in quantity and quality, driving the Indian article more and more out of the market. Then China is perfectly free. I will not go into those questions of ancient history, which have, to the undue occupation of the time of this House, been adduced by the hon. Member who has just sat down. But how is the case at this moment? There has been a Convention lasting for a few years only, according to which Indian opium was admitted to China upon the condition that the Chinese Government were to levy only a limited amount of taxation. The term of that Convention has expired, and the Chinese Government
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    might put prohibitory duties upon, or might stop, the Indian opium importation altogether. Indian opium lies at their mercy. Therefore, China is entirely a free agent. Now, the House will see that if China is poisoned by opium, she poisons herself. But then, firstly, comes the question whether this opium is really a poison. The House has just heard the important medical testimony given by the hon. Member for Aberdeen. But there is still more important evidence, namely, that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, perhaps the first living authority medically on this subject. I only hope that time will permit of his giving us his opinion during this Debate. To the best of my knowledge and judgment opium is not deleterious in reasonable moderation, and is, under all circumstances, far less deleterious than alcoholic drink. Either taken to excess is harmful, but the former less than the latter—that is, the narcotic drug less than the alcoholic spirit. It is not the case that opium leads to crime. Of course, excessive use of it will directly lead to various social mischiefs which may amount to crime; but leading to crime in the same sense as when spirits are taken to excess is not a direct consequence of the indulgence in opium. Spirits, indeed, lead to violence; but opium induces quiescence, and that is the reverse of leading to crime. The hon.. Baronet spoke of opium being labelled in England as a poison. Why, certainly; that is the concentrated distillation, amounting to a tincture. That is poison. But that is a wholly different thing to the substance sold in the Eastern bazaars under the name of opium. That opium is perfectly harmless if taken in moderation, and it is taken by many classes in Western India without any mischief whatever, or without anybody being acquainted with the fact that it is taken at all. We have heard evidence to-night that it is taken by the most stalwart and enduring races of Western India. And in Eastern India the inhabitants of Assam and Orissa, being consumers of opium and not of spirits, as in other parts of India, are about the most quiet of all sections of the population. It is not really the fact that opium is a poison in the true sense of the word. Like

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    spirits, it may be taken in excess, but, unlike spirits, when taken in excess, it does not conduce to dangerous conduct. Then, secondly, the question arises, are the Chinese the victims of the poison if it really existed? To what extent do the people of China consume opium? Only to the most limited. Why, Sir, it has been shown upon calculations by the very highest authority in China(in a Blue Book which I have in my hand), that not more than one man out of 150 obtains access to opium at all. Now, the hon. Baronet spoke of the thousands and myriads of people who are being poisoned. What becomes of that allegation in the face of these calculations. The people of, China are not being drugged, nor are they intemperate. On the contrary, they are, as a nation, temp3rate. Are the people of China in a degraded state? Quite the contrary. Their numbers are increasing, their trade is expanding, their industry is thriving. So much are they over-populating the vast and magnificent area with which Providence has endowed them that they are obliged to emigrate to foreign places. They people Lower Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo; and if it had not been for the action of our white countrymen they would have obtained a large share in the Australian Continent. If it were not for the Americans they would hold the Eastern Coast of the Pacific. These are not the sort of people who are being poisoned and demoralised. I charge the hon. Baronet and those who think with him with unintentional, nevertheless monstrous, exaggeration in respect to opium in China. Then I ask the House to consider what is really our position in India. What do we do with this opium produced in India? We put a very heavy tax, indeed, upon it—three or four times ad valorem the cost of production. I say that we have a right to do so, just as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a right to tax whisky in Scotland and Ireland. If it be righteous to draw taxes from a gin-palace, it is equally righteous to do the same from an opium den. There is no wrong morally in taxing a spirit or in taxing a drug. Either is harmless when used in moderation, or may even be beneficial. Either it is dangerous only when used to
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    excess, though the drug is less dangerous than the spirit. But the possibility of its being used to excess has never been treated as an argument against the morality of taxation either in England or in any civilised country of Europe. You say that we not only act as taxers of it, but that we trade in it. But with regard to the opium trade of Calcutta and Bombay, there are Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and merchants of other nationalities, men of wealth, energy, and enterprise, conducting this business who would be very much astonished to hear that their steamers, wharves, and various apparatus of trade are part of a Government concern. It is said, Why raise revenue from an unholy product? Does not the House perceive that the same thing might be said of spirits, from which we annually derive a vast revenue? Why, this argument as regards the taxation of opium runs on all fours from top to bottom pari passu, and is in every respect similar to the argument with regard to the taxation of alcoholic liquors in every civilised country of Europe. Upon this point I listened with great interest to the confession of Coleridge which the hon. Baronet read. Does he not see that if Coleridge had taken spirits instead of opium, and had suffered from delirium tremens, instead of the narcotic effects of opium. his confession would have been ten times graver than that which has been read? It was, indeed, a lucky thing he took to opium and not to spirits. The hon. Baronet, my hon. Friend behind me (Mr. M. Stewart), and the hon. Member for Flintshire (Mr. S. Smith), have attempted to set up for China and for India a standard which they cannot and dare not set up in England. I claim for India and China the same measure which is meted out in England, neither more nor less. I appeal to those hon. Members to take the beam out of our own national eye be~-fore looking to the mote in the eye of our fellow-creatures in India and China. Before I conclude, just a few words regarding our own system in India itself. The House, doubtless, remembers that this is twofold—that for Malwa, native States, that for Bengal our own territory. With regard to Malwa, we levy a heavy

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    export duty, as the drug passes through our territory en route to China. But in Bengal there is a different system. No man can cultivate the poppy without a licence. He must take the produce to the Excise officers. It must be manufactured on the spot under their eye. It must be by them sent to Calcutta, and there made over to the trade for export only. No man can engage in the production of this drug without a licence. Everything has to be done on the spot, where it can be under the inspection of the Government officers. And why is this? It is because we wish to make sure that the traffic in this article does not spread amongst our own people, and to see that it goes to Calcutta, from which place it is exported to China. [Ironical cheers.] Yes, but the people have spirits, and that is thought quite sufficient for them without opium; and therefore it is that we make sure that the opium goes out of India. It is for these good purposes that this system of severe Excise, and of licensing cultivation and of manufacture under Government inspection, is adopted in Bengal. It may be liable to misunderstanding; but once the facts are realised, then the moral advantage of the system is patent. Nothing would be easier if you wished it than to adopt in Bengal the same system which prevails in Malwa and Western India, so that the drug might be manufactured privately, as spirits now are, and subjected to an Excise system, with a view to exportation from Calcutta for China. But then the people of Bengal would illicitly get hold of the drug, which they cannot do now. Thus certain evils which are now absent from our Indian population would spring up. We are anxious that the people there should not consume this drug, in addition to the spirits they already have; and it is because of this anxiety for the moral welfare of our Indian people that the system I have described to the House is carried out. A great deal of misapprehension exists in the minds of those who denounce this system, and misrepresentation has been put forth, although, no doubt, unintentionally. Therefore, it is necessary that this point should be cleared up. Let me ask the House to consider what would be the consequence of attempting to abolish
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    altogether the traffic in this drug? We should stop the transit of the Malwa Native States opium through British territory for exportation to China. But the production inside those Native States, being profitable, would continue. The result would be that all along the whole course of our frontier there would be a vast increase in the illicit traffic in opium and in the consumption of that article by our people. That would be one of the first results of our carrying the Motion of the hon. Baronet to-night. Next, if you were to abolish the Bengal system and stop the poppy culture in our own territories, fresh legislation would be required. You cannot prohibit a profitable cultivation, lawfully carried on for generations, without a new law. But I do not think you would get the Legislature of India to agree to the passing of such a law, unless you are prepared to send out a request that the Members are to vote to order. Opium is a thing which can be grown in every man's back garden, and if, owing to prohibition, this cultivation cannot be conducted openly and honestly, would not the people cultivate illicitly? Then would not the prohibition lead to fresh evil, involving executive difficulties and the setting up of an inquisitorial system? Besides, when you have prohibited and stopped its cultivation in Bengal, and stopped its regular transit from Malwa through British territory, what will you have done? You will have destroyed £5,500,000 of British revenue, and by enabling the people of China to obtain opium untaxed, and therefore cheaper, you will have stimulated the consumption of the drug instead of checking it by taxation. In this way you will have created the very opposite effect to that which is intended. Such would be the result of the ill-advised proposal now before the House. I am thankful to the House for the kind attention with which it has listened to me to-night, and I will not attempt to detain it much longer; but I have offered a mere summary of what might have been said on this complex question; because every one of the propositions I have put before the House would require at least a quarter of an hour to properly vindicate it I should, however, wish to add a few

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    words with regard to what has been said about Burma. It is quite absurd to speak about opium as being prohibited practically in Burma before we took over the country. There may have been prohibitory edicts, but these were not attended to. Why, Sir, consumption of opium has existed in Burma for a long period. It went on in that country merrily, and it is only since the extent of this consumption has been brought to our notice after the annexation that the system had been brought under strict Excise supervision. Again, the Burmese are not being demoralised. Not 3 per cent. obtain either drugs or spirits. They are a temperate people. With regard to the Excise on spirits in India, I do not propose to enter into any statistical discussion with my hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Mark Stewart). I may say, however, that in this respect India may be regarded as a model country. The consumption of alcohol among the Indian people is so small that it does not apply to more than 7 per cent. of the population in Southern India; while in other parts of that Empire it is much less. I think I am within the mark when I say that not more than 4 per cent. of the whole of that large population of 260,000,000 ever consume alcoholic or narcotic substances. As to opium, it is taxed 10 times ad valorem, and not one person in 500 or more ever touches it. This, I think, is a result of which we may well be proud; and, considering the magnificence of such administrative facts, I can bear with equanimity all the detailed criticism which, with the best possible intentions, has been poured upon India by my hon. Friend (Mr. M. Stewart). I would remind the House, in conclusion, that we are asked to sacrifice £5,500,000 of our revenue by adopting the Motion of the hon. Baronet, Revenue that is now being spent on frontier defence, on the saving of life from famine, on the development of physical resources, on countless things pertaining to the welfare of the people. And for what? Practically for no moral advantage, for the vindication of no moral principle whatever. We should be only putting that big sum into the pockets of the opium consumers of China, without any commensurate result, either moral
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    or physical. Indeed, the real result would be that for them the drug generally would be cheapened by so much remission of taxation. If there were a gap caused by suppression of Indian opium China would fill it up. Being cheapened, the consumption would be stimulated. What moral good, then, would the hon. Baronet have attained? Absolutely none. The very reverse, indeed: he would be augmenting the very evils which he vainly hopes to cure. I trust the House will reject a Motion, prompted by lofty and philanthropic motives no doubt, but sustained by misrepresentation, sincere and unconscious, because it springs from a misapprehension of the facts.
    MR. McDONALD CAMERON(Wick, &c.): I cannot but thank the hon. Baronet behind me for the manner in which he has brought this Resolution before the House, although I very much regret that the data on which we have to consider this matter are not so complete as they might have been. I may say that I had put down an Amendment, which I submitted to you, Sir, for your consideration, but which you felt it necessary to rule was out of Orders That Amendment had for its object the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole system of the opium traffic, in order that the House might have authentic data on which to found something like sound legislation. A good deal of sentiment—in fact, a great deal too much sentiment—has entered into some of the legislation passed by this House. We have had a recent example in the case of the Contagious Diseases Acts. We now know very well that they have not achieved the results anticipated from them by those who were parties to that legislation, and I am afraid that if this Motion be carried" the same result may possibly follow. 1 have recently come from the East, where I have entered into this question of the opium traffic; and, as far as I have been able to acquaint myself of the facts, I can

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    substantiate all that has fallen from the hon. Member who has just spoken. There is one point that I should like to bring before the House. Whenever this House, out of mistaken notions of goodness or of conferring benefit on the people of India or of our Crown Colonies, has attempted to interfere without a thorough knowledge of the conditions under which the people live, it has generally made a mistake. Take the question of the labour laws in the Straits Settlements. The labour employed in the Straits Settlements has been almost entirely procured from China. It is the Chinese who perform almost the whole of the labour there is, and it is a fact that in the labour agreements which are made in that part of the world the labourers will not engage to do the work required of them, on the plantations or elsewhere, unless they are certain that they can procure opium; just in the same way as among our large centres of population men will not engage to do work unless they can get tobacco and other things that they require. If you were to abolish this traffic, I feel sure the result would be that at the best you would only bring about a modification of the evil. It is a mistake to think that you can change the character of an eel simply by passing an Act of Parliament. There is too much of this sort of feeling entering into all the desire to pass this kind of legislation. There is a Commission at this moment sitting in the Straits Settlements on the labour question. They do not know how to meet the difficulty there. It has been said by the hon. Baronet who has brought forward this Motion that the Dutch are endeavouring to get rid of this traffic in Java. I do not know where the hon. Baronet has obtained his information, but I do not. think it is entirely accurate. There may be a few officials or other persons in Java who have the same views on this subject as the hon. Baronet, and who, therefore, desire to abolish this traffic. Many people in this country, no doubt, wish to see a check put upon the opium traffic; but let me point out that the tobacco plantations at Java and Sumatra are entirely worked by Chinese, who would not labour there unless they were sure
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    of a supply of opium. Is it likely, then, the Dutch Government will put a stop to this profitable industry simply to give effect to philanthropic views? I confess I do not like the opium traffic myself. I think that something should be done to regulate it. In deference to public opinion in this country an effort should be made to bring it more under control. But I do object to legislation being undertaken without a sufficient knowledge of the subject. If a Royal Commission investigated it, then hon. Members would have before them details which would enable them to arrive at a just and right conclusion; they would have before them data of a practical character. I shall vote for this Motion, not because I expect it will be carried, but because I am unable to bring forward that of which I have given notice. I should very much prefer that the Government could see their way to adopt my proposal, and have a Royal Commission to inquire into the traffic, which, it must be remembered, is a legal traffic. At any rate, some effort should be made to meet in this matter the wishes of a large section of the people of this country.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY(Mr. W. H. SMITH, Strand, Westminster): I have listened with very great interest to the Debate which has been going on for the last 3½ hours, and with great interest also to the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I was a little surprised at the conclusion at which he arrived. He spoke with considerable force against the Motion of the hon. Baronet opposite, but wound up with an intimation of his intention to vote for the Motion on the ground that he could not move an Amendment of his own for the appointment of a Royal Commission. Now, I can assure the hon. Member that there is every disposition on the part of the Government to take means to satisfy the people of the country and public opinion on this question by making any inquiry which it is possible to institute. If the hon.

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    Gentleman desires that every information shall be obtained the Government are perfectly ready to communicate with the Government of India with a view to an inquiry being conducted in the manner suggested by the hon. Member, or in any other form by which information can be satisfactorily obtained for the people of this country. This is a very grave question indeed. The hon. Baronet opposite introduced it in a speech of great moderation, but I cannot help recalling to the recollection of the House some of the statements which he made upon this question. He said, " Let us be moral and right without any regard to pecuniary considerations." That is a sentiment which does the hon. Baronet great credit, and it is one in which we are all prepared to join with limitations. I would venture to suggest, Sir, that we should have no regard whatever for pecuniary considerations in matters where we ourselves alone are concerned should those considerations interfere with a discharge of a moral duty; but, at the same time, I hold it to be both moral and right that we should have regard to pecuniary considerations when we arrive at a resolution which affects other persons. I occasionally take refuge when I have to consider questions of administration in that storehouse of moral axioms which is constituted by Hansard; and occasionally I find it possible to borrow axioms from the lips of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. Now, that right hon. Gentleman, speaking on this question only a few years ago, said—
    " There is a kind of morality which, in my opinion, is the lowest of all, and it is the morality of a Government which makes promises without knowing that it has the means of fulfilling them."
    Now, the hon. Baronet asks this House and this Government practically to make a promise without knowing that it has the means of fulfilling it. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that if the House desired to effect a reform it should be prepared at once to assure the Government of India that it would provide it with that revenue of which it would be
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    deprived if this traffic were suppressed. The hon. Baronet, dealing with the same point, said there could be no doubt that the money would be forthcoming, and that the revenue would be found by this country, or, at any rate, there might be a postponement of the charge for expenditure actually incurred, and its payment extended over a period of years. It appears to me that a recommendation to postpone the payment of debt by the Government of India is not a kind of morality which we ought to enforce upon that Government. Is the hon. Baronet prepared to move an Address to the Crown setting forth that the Imperial Government is prepared to make good to the Government of India such a deficit as may arise from the suppression of the opium traffic? I know that my hon. Friend the Member for the City of London does propose to give effect to that principle, and desires that the House should agree to a financial Resolution of that kind; but I would suggest to the hon. Baronet that such an Address to the Crown ought to be a Resolution preliminary to one condemning the traffic in opium.
    SIR J. PEASE: When I concluded my speech I stated that if the langaage was carefully guarded that I was prepared to assure the people of India of an annual grant from the Imperial Parliament for the purpose of meeting any deficit which might be occasioned by the suppression of the traffic.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: Then I would suggest to the hon. Baronet that he should make that Resolution antecedent to the one condemning the traffic in opium.
    SIR J. PEASE: I am quite prepared to add it to my Resolution.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: There is a good deal to be said in favour of such a Resolution; and if the hon. Baronet desires to withdraw the Resolution now before the House, and add a clause to that effect, then we shall be in a position to consider the whole question. What I wish to point out to the hon. Baronet,

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    who I believe is thoroughly in earnest in what he is advocating, is that we are asked to agree to an abstract Resolution without any indication on his part; that if that abstract Resolution is carried, and if the consequences thereof is a loss to the Revenues of India, a grant will be made from the Exchequer of Great Britain to make up that deficit. No doubt the hon. Baronet would be prepared to advocate such a grant, but I think the House will agree with me that that would hardly be a satisfactory mode of discharging our duty to the inhabitants of India. We should deprive them of certain revenues, and at the same time there would be by no means a certainty that this House or the country would be prepared to make good the revenues thus taken from them. The course which this Government has taken, and which all Governments have taken, during the last few years — for the present Government take no credit for greater care and consideration for the morality of the people of India than has been shown by preceding Governments—has been to diminish the area of cultivation in India to ah extent, in the last five years, at any rate of 20 per cent. The production and sale of opium has been decreased considerably in each year, and that must be taken as an indication of the policy of the Government. But we are not prepared, and we are not able, to accept a Resolution which would terminate the production of opium in India, and at once deprive the Revenue of India of a large sum. If we were to attempt to do that illicit sale and production would be the result, and the consequence would be far more serious than those arising under the present system. Our policy has greatly diminished the cultivation and consumption of the drug, and that policy which has been carried on -with marked success during the last five years would be persevered in, but we cannot accept the Resolution couched in the language of the hon. Baronet unless this House is
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    prepared to precede it by a positive engagement on the part of this country to make good to the Revenues of India the enormous sum of which it would suddenly be deprived by a desire—a very proper and humane desire—on the part of the people of this country to protect the people of India from the consequences of this traffic. I think the House will agree that the course which I am suggesting is a very proper one, and would meet all practical purposes. I say again that this House must, in the first instance, pledge itself to make good to the Revenues of India any loss of which it might be deprived by the suppression of the opium trade, and until that is done the Government cannot assent to the course suggested by the hon. Baronet.
    (12.40.) The House divided:—Ayes 130; Noes 160.—(Div. List, No. 127.)
    Words added.
    Main Question, as amended, proposed.
    (12.56.) Amendment proposed,
    To add, at the end of the Question, the words " And this House, feeling the pressure of taxation on the people of India, will take steps to reimburse the deficiency so caused to the Indian Government."—[Sir Robert Fowler.)
    Question proposed, " That those words be there added."
    MR. T. M. HEALY(Long ford, N.): I should like to hear the views of the Government. It is surprising to me that a gentleman of the great experience of the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London should have delivered himself in such a brief space on so important a question. I have known him to make long speeches on matters of far less importance. I can hardly think he limited his speech solely by reference to the state of the clock. Now, Sir, it seems to me very unfortunate indeed if by reason of the limited period—
    It being One of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put.
    House adjourned at One o'clock till Monday next.