Commons Sitting of 18 December 1893

MR. SPEAKER'S INDISPOSITION.
The House being met, the Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, owing to the continuance of his indisposition:—
Whereupon Mr. Mellor, the Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table and, after Prayers, took the Chair as Deputy Speaker, pursuant to the Standing Order.

QUESTIONS.

  LAND PURCHASE IN WATERFORD.
  MR. WEBB: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what is the cause of the delay on the part of the Land Commission in completing the sale to the Rev. R. J. Casey of a portion of the property in the hands of the Trustees of the Duke of St. Albans, in the County of Waterford, all the necessary forms having by intending purchaser been completed in January 1892; and will the purchaser have any claim as against the present holder for dilapidations now believed to be taking place?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (Mr. BRYCE, Aberdeen, S.) (for Mr. J. MORLEY): The Land Commission report that there has been no delay on their part in completing the sale referred to. The advance applied for was provisionally sanctioned in 1892, but the solicitors for the vendor not having lodged an abstract of title to the estate within the prescribed time they were called upon in November last to explain the delay, with the result that the abstract was lodged on the 12th December. As regards the second paragraph, I am informed that the matter is one in which it is considered that the purchaser must act on the advice of his own legal adviser.

  POLLING CLERKS FOR THE ISLAND OF LEWIS.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that, at the last General Election, polling clerks for the Island of Lewis and remote parts on the western mainland of Ross-shire were sent from Dingwall, Inverness, and other distant places, at an excessive cost to the candidates, though there were many persons in the aforesaid districts able and willing to perform the duties; and whether, before another Election takes place, steps will be taken to alter this state of matters?
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Sir G. TREVELYAN, Glasgow, Bridgeton): I have communicated with the Sheriff of Ross and Cromarty on the subject of the hon. Member's question, but as yet I have only received a reply

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  to say that he will communicate the result of the inquiries he is making as soon as he possibly can. If the hon. Member will renew his question later on, I shall be glad to answer him.

  THE SALTCOATS CROFTERS.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he has yet had an opportunity of conferring with Sir Charles Tupper on the grievances of the Saltcoats (Canada) crofter settlers; if so, will he state the result?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: Sir Charles Tupper's Report has just come in and is of considerable length. It is under my consideration; and, if necessary, I shall confer with the High Commissioner for Canada upon it.

  SLAVEEY IN ZANZIBAR.
  SIR C. W. DILKE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with reference to a statement recently made that the traffic in slaves in Zanzibar is absolutely prohibited, and that every person entering the Sultan's dominions from outside is free, whether he is aware that recent travellers, with every opportunity for knowing the facts, have stated that, on the contrary, there is an active Slave Trade going on into the Sultan's dominions from the interior, and this since the establishment of our Protectorate, and up to the present time; and whether he will make further inquiries as to the accuracy of the information furnished to the Foreign Office?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir E. GREY, Northumberland, Berwick): I have not seen these statements, but if they are specified they will be examined.

  THE DUNDALK PETTY SESSIONS CLERK.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Government are cognisant of any attempt to force into retirement the present experienced clerk of Petty Sessions, Dundalk, and replace him by the son of an ex-District Inspector; has Colonel Cad-dell, Registrar of Petty Sessions Clerks, Dublin Castle, in any way interfered in this matter; is he aware that the County Louth Magistrates have already been
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  canvassed by letter, as if a vacancy existed; and was any application made to the Dundalk Bench to recommend the retirement of the present clerk; and, if so, in whose interest was this application made?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): The Irish Government have no knowledge of the matters referred to in the first paragraph, nor, I am informed, is the Registrar of Petty Sessions Clerks aware that any representation, by letter or otherwise, has been made to the Dundalk Bench of Magistrates in favour of the retirement of the present clerk, or that it was, or is, in contemplation to replace him by the son of an ex-District Inspector.

  JURY CHALLENGING IN IRELAND.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, at the trial of the case of the "Queen v, Moray and Clune," heard at the Munster Assizes on Tuesday, the 12th instant, out of a panel of 74 jurors, 41 persons believed to be Roman Catholics were challenged; and whether this step was taken with the sanction of the Irish Government?
  MR. SEXTON: At the same time, I will ask whether it is the practice for agents of the Government to collect information with respect to the religious persuasions of persons summoned to act as jurors in criminal cases, and to supply such information to the officials who act on behalf of the Government in directing jurors called to be sworn to stand aside?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): I am informed that the powers of challenging jurors is exercised in open Court, and that it can be ascertained from the public Press what was the number of jurors ordered to stand aside. In this or in any other similar case the Irish Government gave no instructions whatever. Speaking for this and similar cases, they have no knowledge whatever, nor did they make any inquiry into the religious belief of any juror. It is not the practice of the agents of the Crown to collect, nor have they received or supplied any information with respect to the religious creed of persons summoned to act as jurors.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman two questions arising out of that answer— namely, whether it is a fact that 41 persons out of 74 were ordered to stand aside, and also whether it is a fact that the representatives of the Crown on the occasion had any knowledge of the persons ordered to stand aside?
  MR. BRYCE: I believe the number was not 41; so far as I know, the number was 39. The representatives of the Crown did not know the religious belief of the persons so ordered to stand aside.
  MR. SEXTON: I assume from the reply of the right hon. Gentleman that he is unable to say whether it is a fact that the 39 persons were Catholics, and whether an exclusively Protestant jury was sworn. I also wish to ask whether the gentleman who acted in Court on behalf of the Crown had before him, when he so acted, information as to the religious persuasions of the persons who were challenged?
  MR. BRYCE: I am informed that the agent of the Crown Solicitor had no information with regard to the religious belief of these persons, but that he ascertained it subsequently from a person who told it to him in Court after the jury had retired—that the jury, in fact, consisted of seven Roman Catholics and five Protestants. Before the jury retired, and while the case was being heard, the Crown Solicitor had no knowledge whatever of their religious belief, and I have no knowledge what was the religious belief of the persons challenged.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Were any instructions given to the representatives of the Crown?
  MR. BRYCE: No instructions or information was given, and the person who represented the Crown had, I am told, no knowledge of the religious belief of the persons challenged.
  MR. SEXTON: The information which is in our possession leads us to conclude that the jurors challenged were all Catholics, and that the jury was exclusively Protestant. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the Government have any objection to instruct their local agents in Ireland that no information as to the religion of persons summoned to act as jurors is to be collected or used for the purpose of
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  applying a religious test on the question as to whether or not any persons summoned are competent to act as jurors?
  MR. BRYCE: I am informed that no instructions whatever are now given to Crown Solicitors relating to the religious belief of jurors. The substance of the rule under which the Crown Solicitor acts is already known to the House. That rule gives no instruction whatever to the Crown Solicitor to make any inquiries as to the religious persuasion of the persons summoned to act as jurors, and he is not so instructed by the Irish Government. I have already stated that it appears that on this jury there were seven Roman Catholics.
  MR. SEXTON: My point is this: that in the absence of instructions to the contrary, the thing may be done, and is, in my opinion, done. What I ask is this: whether the Government have any objection to issuing instructions to Crown Solicitors in Ireland that they are not to collect, or to obtain, or to use information as to the religion of jurors, for the purpose of excluding Catholic jurors from the box?
  MR. BRYCE: According to the information supplied to me, they do not do so, and there does not appear to be any necessity for issuing a rule forbidding them to do that which is not now their practice.
  MR. SEXTON: As this answer does not satisfy us, we shall be obliged to take an opportunity of moving that it is expedient that such instructions be issued.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: Can the right hon. Gentleman inform us how Mr. Curran, the Crown Solicitor for Clare, became acquainted with the position of the Cork jurors without some special local information?
  MR. BRYCE: That is a question of which notice would be required; but I may say I have no information whatever on the subject.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I think it is highly essential that we should know how a gentleman from a different county prosecuting at the Winter Assizes at Cork became acquainted with the religion of gentlemen summoned to act as jurors, so as to be able to challenge 39 of them.
  MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, order!
  [No reply was given.]

  THE GLASGOW AND LANARKSHIRE MAGISTRACY.
  MR. PARKER SMITH: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether the qualifications of a large proportion of the gentlemen added a month ago to the Commission of the Peace for Lanarkshire are in respect of Glasgow only; why the appointments were not delayed until after the appointed day of November on which the City of Glasgow became a county; why the gentlemen in question have not been transferred to the new Commission of the Peace for the County of the City of Glasgow; whether the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire was consulted in regard to the appointments; and what he proposes to do in the matter?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: Yes, Sir. (1.) The qualifications of a large proportion of the gentlemen added in November last to the Commission of the Peace for Lanarkshire was in respect of Glasgow only. (2.) A strong feeling existed that the representation of Liberals on the County Bench was unduly small, and it was therefore thought unjust not to wait till the City of Glasgow became a county, as the date of that event was uncertain. (2.) The gentlemen have been transferred with their own consent from the Commission of the Peace for Lanarkshire to that of Glasgow. (4.) Communications passed between the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Chancellor on the subject of these appointments, but the Lord Chancellor accepts full responsibility for the appointment.
  MR. HOZIER: Was it owing to the want of local knowledge that the Lord Chancellor made this ridiculous blunder?
  [No answer was given.]
  MR. PARKER SMITH: Have the gentlemen whose qualifications are for Glasgow already been transferred?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: The majority of them have responded readily to the Lord Chancellor's invitation that they should be transferred, and that will at once be done.
  MR. HOZIERasked whether the Lord Chancellor's letter was dated the 13th December, and had not been replied to by a good many of the gentlemen concerned?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: The Lord Chancellor has communicated to the House of Commons what appears to me to be an absolutely satisfactory explanation of the reason why the appointments were made.
  MR. HOZIER: Were they intended to be made Magistrates for the City of Glasgow, or for the County of Lanark?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: They were appointed by the Lord Chancellor to be Magistrates for the County of Lanark; but their qualifications being for Glasgow, they very properly were transferred when Glasgow became a county. I consider that the Lord Chancellor in this matter has acted from first to last with perfect consideration for everyone concerned. He acted perfectly within his rights, and he has given a satisfactory explanation.
  MR. HOZIERasked why on the 13th of December the Lord Chancellor wrote a letter to all the gentlemen concerned asking them to consent to be transferred from the County of Lanark to the City of Glasgow?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: Because they could not by Statute be transferred in any other manner.

  IRISH POOR LAW OFFICERS' REMUNERATION.
  MR. WEBB: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Local Government Board in Ireland has, in Dungarvan, and presumably in other Unions, fixed the remuneration of Poor Law officers at a scale greatly below that which the Boards of Guardians, the representatives of the ratepayers, desire to allow; and whether the Government will urge upon the Local Government Board a re-consideration of their decision in regard to same?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): The Local Government Board presume this question refers to the scale recently fixed by an Order made by them under the Parliamentary Registration Expenses (Ireland) Act, 1890. The new scale of remuneration for the duties under the Franchise Acts of clerks of Unions and poor rate collectors had most careful consideration, and the amount now fixed was deemed adequate for the work done, having regard to the interest of the ratepayers. In the absence of any consider-

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  able volume of opinion against the scale on the part of Boards of Guardians it is not proposed to alter the scale.

  SALVAGE WORK OF COASTGUARDS.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I have travelled 100 miles in order to put a question arranged to be asked to-day relative to the distribution of money paid for Coastguard services in protecting the cargo of the wrecked steamer Inflexible off the Island of Moriach, and have just received a note asking me to postpone it till Thursday. I beg to give notice to the Civil Lord of the Admiralty that I shall not put it on Thursday, but I intend to ask it on Wednesday, 27th December.

  DUBLIN AND CORK TRAVELLING POST OFFICE SORTERS.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether an application from the sorting clerks of the Dublin and Cork Travelling Post Office (American Mail) for payment for Sunday duty was refused by the Secretary, London, in March, 1891, on the representation of the Controller, Dublin, that the staff were not called upon to perform as large an average daily duty as other officers of the Dublin Department; if such representation was correct, was the time this staff has to wait at Queenstown occasionally for homeward mails included in the return of their duties prepared by the Controller; whether a similar application made in November, 1892, has been refused recommendation by the Controller on the same grounds, and no definite reply received since, notwithstanding the fact that the late Postmaster General (Mr. Raikes) stated in May, 1891, when questioned on the subject of payment for Sunday duty, that he was not aware of a single instance where such duty was performed in which payment had not been made; and whether these officers are the only Post Office servants in the United Kingdom who are not in receipt of pay for Sunday duty: and, if this application were granted, what extra charge would be involved?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. A. MORLEY, Nottingham, E.): An application from the sorting clerks in the Dublin and Cork Travelling Post Office for extra payments for Sunday work was refused in March, 1891, on the ground
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  that the average attendance of the staff was considerably less than 48 hours a week. The time of waiting at Queens-town for homeward mails was taken into account in reckoning the average attendance. Taking these occasional periods of waiting into account, the average weekly attendance of these officers is about 35 hours a week. The Memorial of November, 1892, since the circumstances have not altered, was refused by the Secretary, Dublin, on his own responsibility. Mr. Raikes' answer in the House of Commons on the 12th May, 1891, no doubt referred only to fully employed officers. It is believed that there are very few officers on the Establishment of the Department who are not in receipt of pay for Sunday duty, unless when the Sunday duty added to their week-day duties does not increase the average attendance to more than the number of hours required of them in each week. It is not in contemplation to extend this privilege to officers, who render less than the average attendance of 48 hours a week.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: Do I understand that the Department does take into account the time these officers are in waiting?
  MR. A. MORLEY: I believe it was taken into account on the former occasion, and it has been taken into account for the purpose of my statement.

  THE ARMY AND THE UNEMPLOYED.
  MR. A. WILLIAMS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the fact that some thousands of men will be transferred this year from the ranks to the Reserve, he will consider the desirability of preventing them being thrown upon the unemployed labour market during the winter, by allowing them to extend their service with the Colours or by offering them some slight inducement to do so?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling, &c.): For military reasons it is necessary that the Reserve should be maintained in strength. If time-expired soldiers are not discharged the Reserve loses in immediate strength, and the soldiers who are to constitute its future supply are not enlisted. On the other hand, when a soldier is discharged, a recruit is enlisted in his place, so that

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  there is no increase in the number of men competing for civil employment.

  BILLETTING.
  MR. L. HARDY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that very great dissatisfaction at present prevails amongst licensed victuallers in consequence of the rates now paid for soldiers' billets and for Cavalry billets; whether he is aware that the payment now made for a horse is about' 5d. less than the actual bare cost of the fodder which has to be provided under the Army Discipline Annual Act, without any allowance for accommodation, attendance, &c.; and whether he will consider the desirability of re-adjusting the amount paid for billets for horses in consequence of the very exceptional rates at which all classes of forage are now selling?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: In the first place, I would refer to a reply I made on July 28 last to the hon. Member for North Islington to the effect that the maximum rates are laid down by Act of Parliament, that I have no power to go beyond them, and that on the balance of years they are fairly profitable to the innkeeper, who obtains his licence conditionally on providing billets when required. To this I have now to add that we are able to estimate from the prices at which forage is bought for the Army the actual cost of the forage which the innkeeper is required to provide for the horse billeted on him; and we find on the average of large stations that the 1s. 9d. paid leaves a margin.
  MR. BARTLEY: May I ask whether the allowances complained of were not fixed in Act of Parliament forced through at 5 o'clock in the morning, and closured at every step to prevent discussion?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: It was not closured to prevent discussion.
  MR. L. HARDY: Will the right hon. Gentleman receive a deputation of licensed victuallers?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I do not know that any good would come of my receiving a deputation. As I have already said, for many years the licensed victuallers made a gain. Against the high cost of fodder this year must be set off the lower prices of the preceding years.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Is the right hon. Gentleman also of opinion that the innkeeper makes a large profit out of three-halfpence for a breakfast?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The amount was fixed before I came into Office, and after very careful consideration; and, as it has been so recently revised, I am not disposed to re-open the question.
  MR. BARTLEY: Will proper time be given for the discussion of the next Army Bill?
  [No answer was given.]

  THE FACTORY ACTS IN SCOTLAND.
  MR. D. CRAWFORD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that complaints have been made of defects in the inspection under the Factory Acts in Scotland, in particular that masters who keep their workmen employed on stated holidays are not prosecuted, and that the new Workman Inspectors allege that they have no power to enter premises; and whether he will ascertain how far these complaints are well founded?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. ASQUITH, Fife, E.): I have no reason to suppose that disregard of the law as to holidays is a common offence. Certain cases have been reported by the Inspectors, and the offending parties have been cautioned; but, except in a few instances, it has not been found necessary to institute criminal proceedings. The operations of the Inspectors' assistants are by Departmental instruction limited to workshops. The Inspectors attend to both factories and workshops.

  CRIME IN CONNAUGHT.
  MR. P. M'HUGH.: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has observed that Mr. Justice Murphy, in addressing the Grand Jury of Sligo at the opening of the Connaught Winter Assizes recently held in Sligo, congratulated them on the unexampled immunity from crime of all kinds in the Province of Connaught at the present time; and whether, in view of the peaceful condition of the Province, he will withdraw all extra police now stationed in it, so as

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  to relieve the inhabitant ratepayers from additional taxation?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): The language used by the learned Judge was to the effect that there was little serious crime to be tried at the Connaught Assizes. An extract from his charge was read by me in answer to a question last Thursday. The only force of extra police now serving in the province of Connaught is one of 65 men in the East Riding of Galway, and the question of the possibility of reducing this extra force will be taken into careful consideration in the course of next month.

  RETURN OF IRISH MAGISTRATES.
  MR. P. M'HUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can account for the delay in presenting and issuing the Return, Justices of the Peace (Ireland), ordered by the House on 10th February last; and when the Return will be circulated?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): I understand that the Return has been presented to the House. It is a very voluminous one and has taken a large amount of time in preparation. It was laid on the Table last Thursday, and I am informed it will be at least a month before it can be printed.

  SCHOOL ACCOMMODATION AT ATHERTON.
  MR. CALEB WRIGHT: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether he has received a Petition from parents of more than 1,000 children in Atherton, Lancashire, for free places in the day schools; whether he has received from the Atherton School Attendance Committee statements to the effect that two scrutinisers visited the parents and reported that many of them have withdrawn their names; whether he has also received signed statements from some of the parents declaring that the scrutinisers told them that their rents would be raised if they demanded free places for their children, and that the names of some parents had been withdrawn without their consent; and if he could cause inquiry to be made into all the circumstances of the case?
  THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Mr. ACLAND, York, W.R., Rotherham): Petitions have been received purporting to have come from parents of 1,646 children at Atherton desiring free education. The School Attendance Committee have stated that many of the parents have withdrawn their names. Signed statements have been received from some of the parents to the effect that the scrutinisers told them that their rents would be raised if they claimed free places for their children, and also to the effect that the names of some parents had been withdrawn without their consent. The case is being carefully inquired into.
  MR. LEES KNOWLES: I wish to ask a supplemental question of which I have given private notice.
  MR. ACLAND: I have received none.
  MR. LEES KNOWLES: It is whether several persons whose names appear on the Petition have stated that they did not sign it; whether several persons who have signed it have since asked leave to withdraw their names, and from how many persons were received the signed statements referred to? Further, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the managers of various voluntary schools, including a Roman Catholic free school and a so-called British school held in the Unitarian schoolroom, have recently decided to add to the number of free places available in their schools, in case of any real demand, and that there are even now a few vacant free places in the Church schools, as well as more than 150 vacant free places in the Roman Catholic schools for children between 7 and 15 years of age, besides ample accommodation for infants?
  MR. ACLAND: That is a question which I cannot answer without notice.
  MR. LEES KNOWLES: How many persons sent in the signed statement referred to in the question?
  MR. ACLAND: I am afraid I cannot say that, from the information I have before me.

  THE SIMS-EDISON ELECTRICAL TORPEDO.
  CAPTAIN GRICE-HUTCHINSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the European Sims-Edison Electrical Torpedo Company, having

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  failed to obtain any assistance or encouragement from the officer deputed by the War Office to attend the trial at Stokes Bay in February, 1892, has, in consequence, had to transfer its operations to France; whether he is aware that two of these torpedoes have been constructed by an eminent firm in France, and favourably reported on to the French Government by a committee of naval officers; and whether, in view of the fact that France may acquire the right to these torpedoes and the secret of their construction at any moment, he will give to the company such aid as may be requisite so as to secure to this country the possession of what is one of the most advanced systems of dirigible torpedoes at present known?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The trials referred to have been kept under observation. It is not considered that the Sims-Edison electric torpedo has the advantages possessed by the torpedo already in our Service.
  CAPTAIN GRICE-HUTCHINSON: What was the Report of the officer, and on what grounds did he base it?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: That would necessitate a long and technical answer. Our officers are well aware of all the facts concerning this torpedo, and have come to their decision deliberately.

  THE GOVERNMENT AND THE UNEMPLOYED.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to a meeting, stated to have been held at Tower Hill on Tuesday last, of the unemployed, when a speech was made by a Mr. Jewnes, described as organiser of the unemployed committee, and subsequently endorsed by a man described as a Socialist organiser, in which he said that:—As Government would do nothing for the unemployed, they must now take matters into their own hands. It was time to act, and wreck shops, if necessary, in order to obtain food. A secret society was being formed, and he warned the Authorities that, unless the demands of the unemployed were satisfied before Christmas, there would be a reign of terror in London unprecedented in the annals of history, and deeds would be
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  perpetrated which would have more effect, and cause a greater sacrifice of life, than those which had occurred in the French Chamber of Deputies and at Barcelona; and if, on inquiry, he finds that these or similar words were uttered, what steps does he intend to take?
  MR. ASQUITH: The statement referred to, and some others alleged to be of a similar kind, are at present the subject of inquiry and consideration. I shall be obliged if the hon. Member will further postpone his question for a few days.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN: On Wednesday, December 27th.

  GALLANTRY OF BRIDLINGTON FISHERMEN.
  MR. H. S. WRIGHT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the gallant action of five Bridlington fishermen in putting off in the open sailing coble Swiftsure, about 4 a.m. on the 19th November, during the height of the gale then blowing, and effecting the rescue of the crew of the schooner Victoria (six hands), whose vessel went down almost immediately afterwards, and whose lives would have been lost but for the prompt action of these men: Christopher Brown, Fred Brown (his son), Richard Purvis, John Usher, and Tom Clark; and whether the Board of Trade will take any steps in recognition of their conduct? I should like further to ask the right hon. Gentleman if his attention has been drawn to another gallant rescue by fishermen of the same place which took place a few hours previously when the crew of the boat Hesperus saved three lives off Flamborough Head? Will the Board of Trade kindly take this case also into its consideration?
  MR. MUNDELLA: My attention has been called to the gallant service performed on the occasion to which the hon. Member refers, and I am considering how best to recognise the action of the fishermen concerned. We have several of these cases before us. We deal with them in connection with the Local Authorities. In the case referred to in the question on the Paper there is a local subscription being raised for the fishermen, and we shall consequently probably take the course of awarding them medals.

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  I will, of course, inquire into all cases brought under my notice.

  SECOND DIVISION CLERKS.
  MR. HANBURY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury how many Second Division Clerks have been promoted to the First Division since the issue of the late Order in Council; how many vacancies have arisen in the First Division; how many have been filled by means of the usual examination for First Division appointments and by promotion of the Second Division respectively: and how many have not been filled up?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Sir J. T. HIBBERT, Oldham): By the First Division I understand appointments normally filled by open competition under the scheme known as Class I. Since the 21st of March, 1890, the date of the Order in Council, 19 vacancies" in such appointments have been filled by open competition, and three by the promotion of Second Division clerks, while 66 other places superior to the Second Division not now classed as Class I. (more than half of which were formerly so classed) have been filled by the appointment of Second Division clerks. I am unable to answer paragraphs 2 and 4 completely, but I have obtained figures from six of the largest Departments employing First Division clerks—the War Office, Admiralty, Post Office, Inland Revenue, Customs, and Local Government Board. In these Departments 112 vacancies have happened altogether since the 21st of March, 1890, and 97 of these have been left unfilled, showing that the policy of the Royal Commission has been effectually carried out in respect of the reduction of the Upper Division.

  PROMOTIONS FROM THE RANKS.
  MR. HANBURY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War how many promotions have been made from the ranks to commissions during the last 10 years; and how many of them have been effected with an outfit allowance?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I presume that the question is not intended to refer to promotion to the ranks of ridingmaster or quartermaster, or as district officers of Artillery, or of the coast battalion of Engineers, all of which carry the outfit allowance without
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  question. In my reply on March 2 last I stated that in the preceding 10 years 197 promotions had taken place from the ranks to commissions in the Cavalry and Infantry; and that 117 of the officers had received outfit allowance. Since that date 16 more officers have been so promoted, of whom 11 have had outfit allowance.

  DERELICTS IN THE ATLANTIC.
  MR. MACDONA: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he is aware that news has recently reached Lloyd's of the abandonment in the Atlantic of the new fourmasted ship Bahama, 2,245 tons, 278 feet long, which is reported to have been seen by the Rhyl; and if the Admiralty will make further inquiry into the matter, and report to the Mercantile Marine Authorities of our seaports if it should prove to be a fact?
  MR. MUNDELLA: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to the Admiralty has asked me to reply to this question. I am informed that the Bahama was abandoned on the 22nd November, because the crew were unable to navigate her. She had been taken in tow by the State of Nebraska, but was let go after two hawsers had parted. The crew were taken off. The vessel was subsequently seen by the Rhyl, as stated in the question. I have ordered a formal inquiry into the circumstances of this abandonment.
  MR. MACDONA: Is it the intention of the Government to send a vessel out to blow up this obstruction?
  MR. MUNDELLA: No, Sir; she is 1,800 miles from our coast, and the report as to her condition when last seen was that she was loaded very lightly, that her decks were dry, and her mizzen-staysail was set.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Does the right hon. Gentleman think a vessel of this size can take care of herself under a mizzen-staysail?
  MR. MUNDELLA: No, Sir; but it is not the business of the Board of Trade to send a vessel 2,000 miles to cruise for a ship abandoned last November.
  MR. MACDONA: Has the right hon. Gentleman received any communication from the United States Government on the subject of derelicts and their removal?
  MR. MUNDELLA: No, Sir.

  IRISH FISHERMEN'S LOSSES IN THE RECENT GALES.
  SIR T. ESMONDE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that four fishing boats, belonging to fishermen at Brandon, County Kerry, were lost with all their gear during the recent gale; if the money to build these boats was obtained by the fishermen from the Irish Fisheries Board; and whether, in consideration of the poverty of these fishermen, he will authorise the remission of this loan by the Fishery Board, or their making a free grant to the fishermen to provide them with new boats and gear in time for the approaching spring fishing?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): I am informed that the application put forward in the question of the hon. Baronet will be brought under the notice of the Congested Districts Board at its next meeting.

  BURIAL BOARDS.
  MR. H. HOBHOUSE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if it is the intention of the Government that, after the passing of the Local Government Bill, Burial Boards in boroughs and urban districts shall continue to be appointed by the Parish Vestries; and whether any and what provision will be made in the case of Burial Boards whose districts include a rural as well as an urban area?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Sir W. FOSTER, Derby, Ilkeston): Burial Boards in boroughs and other urban districts are not necessarily appointed by the Parish Vestries. The Town Council or other Urban Authority may be constituted a Burial Board under 17 & 18 Vict., c. 87, s. 1, and 20 & 21 Vict., c. 81, s. 4. It is proposed, however, by Clause 48 of the Bill that when there is in an urban district or part of an urban district a Burial Board, the Urban Council may resolve that the powers of the Burial Board shall be transferred to them from & specified date. Upon that date the powers will be transferred accordingly and the Burial Board will cease to exist. The clause further provides that the Burial Acts shall not be adopted for any part of an urban district without the
  1608
  approval of the Urban Council. Provision is made for cases where the district of a Burial Board includes a rural as well as an urban area. See Sub-sections (2) and (4) of Clause 40.

  SECONDARY EDUCATION.
  MR. H. HOBHOUSE: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education if he can now state the exact terms of the Reference to the proposed Royal Commission on the Organisation of Secondary Education?
  MR. ACLAND: I am not able to give any further information on this subject at present, beyond what I have already given.

  COST OF SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS.
  MR. H. HOBHOUSE: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education if he can give the House any information as to the average cost of a School Board election in a rural parish, distinguishing the remuneration of the returning and presiding officers and other expenditure?
  MR. ACLAND: The Annual Report of the Committee of Council gives an abstract of School Board expenditure, in which the election expenses of each Board will be found set forth separately. The figures of this Return for the last three years show that the election expenses of School Boards are slightly over ¼ per cent.—[the exact figures are between 5s. 8½d. and 5s. 8¾d. per £100]—of their total expenditure. I cannot, however, give exact figures for rural as distinct from urban districts. As regards the remuneration of Returning Officers and other special items of expense, a scale of charges was drawn up by the Department in 1886, of which I can give the hon. Member a copy. I am considering whether, in some of the particulars, this scale may not need some revision.

  AUXILIARY LABOUR IN THE POST OFFICE.
  MR. J. ROWLANDS: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether, in connection with the large amount of auxiliary labour which is now being employed in the Postal Service, due precaution is taken to offer employment to those who are qualified, and who are out of permanent employment at the

  1609
  present time; and whether there are, at the present time, persons in auxiliary employment who are obtaining a fair livelihood in their ordinary situations?
  MR. A. MORLEY: To the first part of the question the answer is in the affirmative. In London alone for this Christmas season 3,400men, who are not in regular employment, have been engaged and are now at work. To the second part the answer is also in the affirmative. Some of the auxiliary employment extends over only part of the day, and, where this is so, it is made a condition of employment that these wages should be supplemented by wages from another source.

  BRITISH INTERESTS AT RIO.
  MR. COHEN: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government have received any intelligence from Rio to the effect that the protection of the British Flag has been withdrawn from lighters engaged in landing goods at Rio from British vessels; and, if so, whether he can state the reasons which have prompted the withdrawal of this protection?
  SIR E. GREY: The latest information received from the British Senior Naval Officer at Rio de Janeiro is to the effect that the Custom House is closed and trade at a standstill. The reports have been received either from him or from Her Majesty's Minister at Rio implying that Her Majesty's Squadron there has ceased to protect British shipping or lighters engaged in landing British goods. Inquiry has been made by telegraph as to whether there is any foundation for the report.

  THE TRAINING SHIP "IMPREGNABLE."
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether the number of boys sleeping on board H.M.S. Impregnable every night is upwards of 1,600; whether the average number of the watch below when the ship was in commission was less than 600; whether in the winter months the ventilation of the ship is interfered with by a tarpaulin awning over the deck; and whether any Reports have been received by the Admiralty as to cases of sickness or death
  1610
  on the ship attributed by the medical officers to overcrowding?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Sir U. KAY-SHUTTLE-WORTH, Lancashire, Clitheroe): There is sleeping accommodation on board H.M.S. Impregnable for 1,514 boys, and this number is never exceeded. The average number sleeping on board during the winter months is 1,350. The Impregnable (late Balwark) is a 121-gun ship, and would have had a complement of 1,110 to 1,130 men if commissioned for service. Though a considerable portion of her crew would have been on deck when the ship was at sea, practically the whole of the men would have been below at night in harbour. When fitted as a training ship, she was completely gutted—all guns, stores, and magazines being removed, as well as the machinery and boilers. This largely increased the accommodation. There is no tarpaulin over the deck. The arrangements for ventilation are not interfered with by the awning. No Reports have been received by the Admiralty from the medical officer as to cases of sickness or death in the ship attributable to overcrowding.

  THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES.
  MR. RATHBONE (Carnarvonshire, Arfon): I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education when will the different Elective Bodies, under the newly granted Charter of the University of Wales, be called upon by the Privy Council to elect their representatives on the University Court?
  MR. ACLAND: The Draft Charter was approved of by the Committee of Council on the 23rd November last, and the order sent to the Home Secretary directs him to prepare the necessary warrant. For passing the Charter under the Great Seal, I have ascertained from the Home Office that the Charter is not yet issued, and until it has been issued no proceedings can be taken under it.

  RESIDENT SCHOOLS FOR THE BLIND.
  SIR E. LECHMERE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board how many of the 26 existing resident schools for the blind are certified under the Poor

  1611
  Law Board; and whether he will give the names of the schools so certified?
  SIR W. FOSTER: The Local Government Board have certified 17 schools and institutions for the blind under the Act 25 & 26 Vict., c. 43. I shall be happy to furnish the hon. Member with a list of these schools. I may also observe that Boards of Guardians are empowered by Section 42 of the 31 & 32 Vict., c. 122, with the approval of the Local Government Board, to send any blind child to any school fitted for the reception of the child, although the school may not have been certified by the Board.

  MATABELELAND.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can state what is the time required to transmit a message from Buluwayo to the nearest telegraph station in connection with Cape Town; whether the employés of this telegraph station are those of the Imperial Government or of the South Africa Chartered Company; and whether all messages handed in are transmitted, either favourable or otherwise, to the Chartered Company, and whether in cipher or not?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. S. BUXTON, Tower Hamlets, Poplar): A recent message seems to have reached Cape Town from Buluwayo in five days; but the usual period taken is seven or eight days, and the time of transmission obviously depends on the means of transport and the state of the roads. The telegraphists at the nearest stations to Buluwayo are in the employ of the Company. The Secretary of State has received no information which would lead him to suppose that any messages have been or are kept back.

  THE CHARTERED COMPANY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies when the promised register of the original and present shareholders in the Chartered Company of South Africa will be laid upon the Table of the House and be open to the inspection of Members?
  MR. S. BUXTON: The Secretary of State is assured that the lists are being
  1612
  prepared with all possible despatch, and will be furnished shortly, when they will be laid on the Table.

  THE SECRETARYSHIP OF THE INLAND REVENUE DEPARTMENT.
  MR. H. W. FORSTER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, on the retirement of the Secretary to the Inland Revenue Department on the 31st instant, it is proposed to fill the vacancy so caused from the outdoor staff of that Department?
  SIR J. T. HIBBERT: No recommendation has yet been made to the Treasury by the Board of Inland Revene.

  TUBERCULOSIS.
  SIR M. STEWART: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture if he can inform the House whether the Report of the Departmental Committee on Tuberculosis is ready; and, if so, when will it be laid upon the Table?
  SIR W. FOSTER: I have communicated with the Royal Commissioners, and am informed that they are making every effort to complete their labours, and that their Report will shortly be issued.

  SPECIAL PENSIONS FOR ARMY VETERANS.
  MR. HANBURY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what is the total annual amount of the special pensions for campaigns previous to 1860 granted to veterans who had not qualified for ordinary pensions; what is the qualification for such special pensions; what was the number of qualified men on the list of applicants at Chelsea or elsewhere in September, 1892; what is the number of such qualified men who have since applied; and how many veterans are in receipt of such pensions as the present time?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The total annual value of special pensions awarded to soldiers who took part in campaigns prior to 1860 is £14,143. The qualification for a special pension is the possession of a medal for one of the campaigns, 10 years' service, and destitution or necessitous circumstances. In September, 1892, there were 887 qualified men on the list of applicants, of

  1613
  whom 490 have since been pensioned. About 340 men have since applied who appear to be qualified; but inquiries as to them are not yet complete. One thousand and forty-seven of these veterans are at present in receipt of pensions; and the Chelsea Commissioners have power to fill up certain of the vacancies as casualties take place, and to add 100 each year to the list of pensioners.

  MR. OWEN JOSEPH KELLY, J.P.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mr. Owen Joseph Kelly, Mountain View, Blackrock, County Louth, upon whom the Commission of the Peace was lately conferred, sat on the Bench at Licensing Sessions for the County of Louth on the 31st October last; whether he is aware that Mr. Kelly is a partner in or connected with the firm of C. Smyth and Company, wholesale and retail wine and spirit merchants, Clanbrassie Street, Dundalk; and whether he proposes to take any steps in the matter?
  MR. BRYCE (for Mr. J. MORLEY): The Annual Licensing Sessions for the County of Louth were held on the 28th, not 31st, October last, and it appears to be the fact that Mr. Kelly took part as a Magistrate in these Sessions. It does not appear that Mr. Kelly is a partner in the firm referred to, but inquiry is now being made as to whether he has any beneficial interest in the business.

  HOUGH-ON-THE-HILL PARISH MEETING.
  MR. A. C. MORTON: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the conduct of the Vicar of Hough-on-the-Hill, near Grantham, who, at a parish meeting at the end of last month, held to appoint a committee for technical education purposes, endeavoured to eject a parishioner who had been elected to take the chair, called in a constable for that purpose, and, on the constable refusing to interfere, extinguished all the lights in the room; and whether the Vicar of a parish has any right to insist on taking the chair at a meeting such as referred to, it not being a Vestry meeting?
  SIR W. FOSTER: The Local Government Board have no jurisdiction whatever with regard to the matter referred to in this question. The Board, however, have made inquiry of the Vicar, who informs them that he did not endeavour to eject a parishioner who had been elected to take the chair; that he did not call in a constable for the purpose; that neither he nor anyone else extinguished the lights in the room, and that he did not assume the chair as Vicar, but on the request of the parishioners present when the meeting began.
  MR. A. C. MORTON: Am I to understand the Vicar had no right to claim to take the chair at this meeting?
  SIR W. FOSTER: I infer from the statement of the Vicar he did not take the chair as Vicar; he only did so at the request of certain parishioners. It does not appear that he was officially entitled to take the chair.

  SUCCESSION DUTY.
  MR. YERBURGH: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, with the view of affording increased opportunities to Public Bodies and to individuals of acquiring land in small parcels, he will consider the advisability of giving landowners the option of paying Succession Duty in land instead of in money?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE, Edinburgh, Midlothian): I am afraid that the obstacles in the way of the intentions of the hon. Member, though those intentions are excellent, are quite insurmountable. In the first place, the hon. Member must recollect that the selection of land for the purpose of accommodation for the labouring population requires an adaptation in that land to the places where they live, whereas the people who wanted to pay their Succession Duty in land would, of course, offer land with reference to a totally different set of considerations. There are many other difficulties, but one difficulty is paramount and conclusive—namely, that the taxes which are received by the Government are not received in order to be hoarded or kept together as a fund, but in order to enable the Government to meet the immediate pressing obligations of the country from day to day. Of course, a Government, with land on its hands

  1615
  and no cash to meet its obligations, would be in an impracticable position.

  UGANDA.
  SIR MARK STEWART: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can inform the House whether Sir Gerald Portal's Report on Uganda has been received by the Government; and, if so, when will the Report be laid upon the Table?
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I have made inquiry at the Foreign Office, and have ascertained that Sir Gerald Portal's Report has been completed and sent in. It is now in course of being printed, but it has not yet been seen by Ministers.

  FALSE TRADE DESCRIPTIONS.
  MR. STUART-WORTLEY: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, assuming that the Belgian Government were entitled to fix the day of the new Conference of the International Union for the Protection of Industrial Property and the repression of False Trade Descriptions, they were bound to do so within two years from the 15th of April, 1891, when, by affixing of the Plenipotentiaries' signatures to the Madrid projects the conference of Madrid was closed; and whether the Madrid Conference recorded its opinion that new projects to be laid before any future Conference should be given notice of six months before the assembling of such Conference?
  SIR E. GREY: At the Madrid Conference in 1890 it was arranged that the next meeting should take place at Brussels, but no date was fixed. It was, however, understood that the date would be fixed by the Belgian Government in concert with the International Office, and that notice of the date fixed should be given within two years from the close of the Madrid Conference. While it is true that the actual Conference of Delegates at Madrid closed in April 1890, the meeting at Madrid for the Deposit of Ratifications of the various Protocols did not take place till June 1892. In the view of Her Majesty Government no special reason appears to exist for urging the meeting of the Conference, and to summon it before preparations are complete would lead to no result. It is the case that six months' notice of new proposals must be given.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  MR. J. LOWTHER: I would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister whether he could state at what hour the House will meet on Friday; at what hour the proposed adjournment will take place; and at what hour the Motion for Adjournment will be made?
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: The question is a very proper one. My right hon. Friend near me (Mr. Marjoribanks) is in communication with those gentlemen who can give him the best information with respect to the feeling in all quarters of the House. No doubt it is proposed to meet on Friday, and I hope the Government will be able to make a very early announcement as to the hour of meeting.
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: I wish to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman has considered the great inconvenience which will be caused to hon. Members whose residences are at a great distance from London by his arrangement that the House shall be called together on Wednesday, the 27th?
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I view the inconveniences occasioned to all hon. Members with very great regret and pain, but the heavy burdens cast upon the House render them inevitable. It is entirely beyond my power to meet the difficulty.
  MR. SEXTON: I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that the feeling of the Irish Members whose homes are most remote from the House is rather one of disappointment that the House does not meet on the 26th.
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I am, to some extent, aware that such is the case; but the object of the Government has been to make, I will not say the best, but the least objectionable arrangement for the convenience of the whole House.
  MR. COURTNEY: I would suggest that if it is absolutely necessary to meet on Wednesday the hour of meeting should be 4 o'clock instead of 12 o'clock. That would avoid the necessity of many hon. Members coming up to town on the Tuesday, on which day, owing to the holiday season, the railway arrangements will he extremely awkward.
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: The suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman is rather a friendly one, and that we will certainly consider. There would be some small gain by it.
  MR. BARTLEY: I would ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will take precautions to secure the presence of all the Ministers, because there will be a great many questions put to them on that day?

  THE NAVAL DEBATE.
  MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I wish to give notice that to-morrow, in conformity with the usual practice and for the usual purpose, I shall propose to move the suspension of the Twelve o'Clock Rule.

  FRANCE (ANARCHIST CRIME IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES).
  Mr. Deputy Speaker acquainted the House that Mr. Speaker had received the following communication from the President of the Chamber of Deputies of France:—
  Chambre des Députés,
  Secrétariat Général de la Pràsidence,
  Paris, le 14 Dàcembre, 1893.
  Monsieur le Pràsident,
  Au début de la séance ďhier, j'ai eu ľhonneur de lire á la Chambre FranÇaise la lettre de Votre Excellence et le message que vous avez bien voulu me transmettre au nom de la Chambre des Communes. Par ses chaleureux applaudissements, la Chambre des Députés a marqué combien elle était touchée de ľinitiative prise par le Gouvernement de la nation Anglaise et par la haute Assemblée que vous présidez. La Chambre m'a chargé d'avoir ľhonneur de transmettre à Votre Excellence tous ses remerciements et de la prier ďêtre auprès de la Chambre des Communes ľinterprète de sa vive reconnaissance.
  Veuillez agréer, Monsieur le Président, les assurances de ma très haute considération .
  Le Président de la Chambre des
  Députés,
  Ch. Dupuy.
  À Son Excellence
  Monsieur le Président de la Chambre des Communes du Royaume-Uni.

  NEW MEMBER SWORN.
  Bruce Canning Vernon-Wentworth, esquire, for the Borough of Brighton.
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  EAST INDIA LOAN (£10,000,000) BILL. (No. 475.)
  THIRD READING.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a third time."
  MR. COURTNEY: This Bill is for the purpose of authorising a loan of £10,000,000 sterling to the Indian Government, but the discussion of the previous stages have gone beyond the examination of that special proposal. It has—perhaps necessarily—ranged over the examination of the previous proposal which was accepted in principle by a Committee appointed at the instigation of the India Office relative to the suspension of the free coinage of silver. And although this question of the closing of the Mints is, as I believe, completely separable from what has recently happened, the two things have been examined together, and it is necessary that they should be examined together, because undoubtedly the closing of the Mints in India to the free coinage of silver has been productive of a situation which requires some consideration as to what the next step should be; and the determination of that next step must depend on the anticipated consequences of the first step. It is, therefore, quite justifiable (although, I repeat, the closing of the Mints is not necessarily connected with the refusal of the Indian Government to sell their drafts) that there should be this wide discussion. Various hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have suggested that the present situation has actually been caused by the closing of the Mints. It is natural, therefore, that as the only member of the Committee appointed by the India Office to consider that question who has the honour of a seat in this House, I should desire to take some part in these deliberations. The policy of our action has been severely questioned, and it is not astonishing that one should desire to

  1619
  defend a step in which one concurred, if one did not originate it. But at the same time I must repeat once more that the closing of the Mints and the refusal of the Indian Government to sell their drafts on India at the prices which were available are two steps which are absolutely distinct from one another. The one is not the cause of the other. One can conceive of the closing of the Mints having been followed by the usual course of business—namely, the sale of the Council bills in the open market for whatever they could have fetched. One can also conceive of the refusal to sell taking place without any previous closing of the Mints. Nothing, therefore, is more clear than that the steps were not connected. You might have closed the Mints without refusing to sell the drafts; you might have refused to sell the drafts although the Mints had remained upon. As a matter of fact, that step was taken in, 1876, when the Indian Government did refuse to sell their drafts at the price, which they were then offered for them, although there was no previous closing of the Mints. I have insisted on the essential independence of these two things: I must ask also what was proposed for our consideration on that Special Committee, and what it was that we assented to. There seems to have been a most remarkable misunderstanding of the actual steps recommended by us and of the policy of the Indian Government. I read in newspapers of considerable authority that the Committee attempted to fix the rupee at 1s. 4d., and that the Indian Government was actuated by the same desire. I have no authority to speak for the Indian Government. It is represented here by those capable of explaining and defending its conduct. But I may say for the members of the Committee that we should have been extremely astonished if we had been told that we had attempted by a stroke of legislation to fix the rupee at 1s. 4d. from the time that stroke was effected thenceforth and for ever. No such step entered our minds. Had it been suggested to us we should have pronounced it impossible. The rate of exchange at the time was not 1s. 4d., and to think we imagined that by closing the Mints we could bring up the coined rupee to that level is to attribute to us a policy and an assumption which we certainly did not entertain. I am astonished
  1620
  at the suggestion of the hon. Member for Whitechapel (Mr. S. Montagu), who apparently thinks that it was our intention to set up the rupee at 1s. 4d. as an immediate consequence of the closing of the Mints, to which we said that we could not refuse our assent. The simple question before us was this: Through a long course of years the value of silver, and, therefore, of the coined rupee (silver had in all those years been freely coined in the Indian Mints), had continually fallen in relation to the golden sovereign. This produced two disagreeable consequences. In the first place, there was the continual variation in the rate of the exchange between the United Kingdom and India, which disarranged the course of trade between the two countries. No one knew in making an arrangement based on the present value of the rupee what its value would be six months hence, when the transaction thus entered on would reach its conclusion. No one, therefore, could make any safe calculation as to the prospective gain or loss of a transaction. That greatly hampered trade between India and the United Kingdom, exposing merchants and bankers to chances on which they could not calculate, and, in fact, bringing a gambling element into their transactions. But, in the second place, the continued depreciation of the rupee in relation to the sovereign imposed on the Indian Government a growing pecuniary loss. They were required to remit a considerable sum of money to England every year to meet their debts in this country —which debts are payable here in gold— and since, owing to the fall in the rupee, their receipts were becoming more and more insufficient there was not only a disarrangement of commerce, but a growing deficiency on the part of the Indian Exchequer. Thus the question before us was simply this: It was suggested that the free coinage of silver should be stopped in India, and that suggestion was put forward as a means of arresting the inconvenience to which the Indian Government had been exposed and also preventing the variations of the exchange between the two countries and the consequent derangement of commerce. We took a great deal of evidence. We examined almost all the objections raised against the course suggested. I do not think that a single

  1621
  objection has been raised in the Debates on the various stages of this Bill which was not before us and fully considered. Our decision, as is well known, was that we could not recommend the Government at home to refuse to accede to the request of the Government of India that they should stop the free coinage of rupees. Well, it is said that that is all very well, that our action showed that we anticipated a rise, even a rapid rise, in the value of the rupee. My right hon. Friend the Member for St. George's (Mr. Goschen) said that he had read the Report of the Committee carefully, and that he could not but come to the conclusion that the Committee anticipated an immediate rise in the value of the rupee—not only a momentary rise, but a rise that would be maintained. The Committee, as a whole, expressed no opinion the one way or the other upon the point as to whether there would be a rise or whether that rise would! be rapid. Their language does not lend any countenance to the belief that they did anticipate a rise, still less a rapid rise. Their words show that they looked forward to the possibility of a very slow rise, even the possibility of no rise whatever, that they are not to be accused of what has been imputed to them of anticipating a rise which has not happened, still less a rapid rise. Here is a paragraph in their Report which deals expressly with this question. I refer to paragraph 64. What they there say is as follows:—
  "Next as to the effect of simply closing the Mints on the future value of the gold price of the rupee. If there be already, as there is reason to suppose, a quantity of unused rupees in India, they would have to be absorbed before the closing of the Mints produced an effect on the value of the rupee. In that case, there might be some time to wait before there was any increase in its value. The apprehensions of men concerning the future might cause an immediate effect of a serious character; but one cannot venture to say for what length of time this would be maintained. Neither could one trace the progress of the enhancement of the value of the rupee, in respect of time or place, which we should expect to follow the closing of the Mints."
  I may say that we had reason to believe that there were a quantity of unused rupees in India and we expected that they would have to be absorbed. In that case there might be some time to wait before there was any increase in the rupee value. How is that consistent with the objection that we looked forward to a rise—even a rapid rise? Further on in the Report—paragraph 149—I read—
  1622
  "What then would be the effect of the scheme suggested by the Government of India? …. It is true that those who think that exchange would not for a considerable time rise at all, and that even the existing ratio might not be maintained, may be right in their anticipations."
  The Committee, in their concluding recommendations, admitted that it might be that a considerable time would elapse before there would be any rise at all. And they pointed out in the previous paragraph, which I have quoted, that if there was any comparatively large amount of unused rupees in India they would have to be absorbed before any rise could be expected. The assumption, therefore, that we thought that the rupee would jump up to 1s. 4d. is an assumption which we did not intend to be drawn from our Report. Speaking for myself, I have a Memorandum by my side at this moment—a Memorandum which was circulated amongst the members of the Committee expressing my own opinion—and in that Memorandum I anticipated that some years would elapse before any alteration would be found in the value of the rupee relative to the sovereign, and therefore before there would be any considerable alteration in the financial position of the Indian Government. The fact is that this imputation upon us arises from our extreme caution. We wanted to make as little change as possible. We desired to keep things, if it were possible, exactly in the position in which they were — to prevent the rupee depreciating, but also to prevent it becoming inconveniently appreciated. Some persons in authority, no doubt, thought that the rupee would jump up a good deal and remain very much enhanced in value, and it was suggested that that should be prevented by the adoption of the provision which we recommended to the Government, and which they acted upon, that the rupee should be exchangeable for sovereigns at the rate of 15 rupees to the sovereign. At that it could not go above 1s. 4d. In order to prevent the possibility of it getting above that we proposed this limitation which fixed the maximum value of the rupee—the minimum value being fixed by other circumstances. We proposed to leave it at the precise value it was at when the Mints were closed, at the same time preventing any large or inconvenient rise by laying down the provision that the Indian Government

  1623
  should be under an obligation to exchange rupees for sovereigns at the ratio of that indicated. As to the minimum value, of course the rupee could not fall below the value of the silver—below its natural value as one of the precious metals. We should have secured two advantages which the Indian Government sought for. In the first place, we should have secured the steady ratio of exchange, saving commerce from the fluctuations which it had been exposed to—the disturbing influences which had worked so much mischief amongst the bankers and traders; and, in the second place, we should have secured the Indian Government against the further loss in the depression of its revenue from the depreciation of the rupee. I do not mean to say that even by stopping the coinage of rupees altogether the value of the rupee was saved from any possible fall. I wish to point out this, which is now in my mind, and has not been mentioned by any previous speaker, that if the value of the rupee in the past had changed relatively to the sovereign, in consequence of an alteration in the value of gold as much as in consequence of an alteration in the value of silver, any future change in the value of gold would still affect the value of the arbitrary rupee. It would not, by our arrangements, be saved from the variation consequential on the variation in the value of gold. But it would be saved from the variation in the value of silver. I do not think that that is a matter which attracted much attention. But it is a point to be considered. We could not say that the rupee would not fall even if we stopped the coinage of silver, because it might fall in consequence of a rise in the value of the sovereign as gold, and not in consequence of a fall in the price of silver. Let me add that we knew the closing of the Mints would produce consequences which were different from those which would have come to pass if the Mints had not been closed. We were quite conscious of what my right hon. Friend the Member for St. George's dilated upon, that our intervention was pro tanto an alteration of the relations of debtor and creditor. 'With regard to contracts which are to be settled in the future, if we prevent the rupee from falling we do something which will affect the amount to be paid hereafter, and make that amount different
  1624
  from what it would have been if our action had not been taken. In other words, the creditor would receive more than he would have received had the Mints remained open. But I submit that the circumstances were such as justified this intervention. I must say, in reference to the fear of my right hon. Friend, that in this matter he is paying a little too much respect for form and too little respect to fact. It is quite true that the form of the contract is subject to modification if you alter the character of the rupee—if you give it the artificial value which attaches to it by closing the Mints —but if, in so doing, you secure a fulfilment of the contract nearer to the sense of the contract, you secure justice far more than if you allowed the contract to work out in its own way. Let us look back to the period when there occurred such an enormous change in the value of the precious metals in the 16th century. Who now, looking back to that time, would say that the statesmen who had interfered—and Lord Burleigh did, though in a small way, interfere—with the contracts then running, and saved those entitled to the money from the depreciation which followed, and exposed those liable to pay money to pay something which would counterbalance the depreciation, would not have imposed on the contracting parties a condition of justice far more real than was secured by leaving the contracts absolutely unchanged? Here, if the circumstances are such that we believe the bargains between different parties would be observed in spirit more closely by keeping the rupee more closely at 1s. 4d. than allowing it to drop to 1s. 1d., or 1s., the Legislature is justified in interfering. The intervention of the Legislature saves the obligation from being changed. If the Member for St. George's refuses to look at the circumstances which require the problem to be from time to time reconsidered, and to inquire whether a state of affairs has not arisen which justifies intervention to change the mere form of the contract in order to secure regard for its spirit, he is really enslaved to the form and neglecting the importance and reality of facts. Now, Sir, I have stated what the exact recommendation was which was submitted to our consideration on the Committee, and which was acted upon. If the Indian Government had been content with closing the Mints,

  1625
  and gone on selling its drafts as before, what would have happened? We cannot say with precision. We cannot give an exact figure as to what would have happened. But I think that we can say this, that the drafts of the Indian Government would have sold for something —have sold between certain limits which were clearly definable. Their drafts could never have gone beyond 1s. 4d. in the rupee value, because we had made the provision that the Indian Government should be under the obligation to give rupees in exchange for the sovereign at that rate. And, therefore, it never would have been worth anybody's while to give more than 1s. 4d.—to enter into a higher bargain. On the other hand, the drafts could not have gone below the value of the raw silver; That would have given about 1s. 1d. in the rupee, for the rupee considered as raw silver would be worth about 1s. 1d. If the Indian Government had gone on selling its drafts it would have realised for these drafts something between these two rates, and, judging by the rate which prevailed while the Mints were still open, we should not have been far wrong if we had believed that the drafts would have secured something like 1s. 2½d. The question therefore arises, has the Government been wise in refusing to sell the drafts at all, for anything like the price which could have been obtained for them, and in borrowing as it has to the extremity of its borrowing powers, and coming to obtain even further powers of borrowing to meet the demands which have to be met here? The Indian Government knows that it could have sold drafts, no doubt, not at tenders which would have come to the amount which they desired, but the drafts could have been sold if they had been put on the market. There have been remittances going on to India all along, and, strange to say, there have been remittances of silver going on all along. But, unfortunately, the Indian Government did not leave the matter alone. They refused to sell their drafts. The hon. Member for Whitechapel is not content with the Indian Government because they did not insist that they should get 1s. 4d. I must confess that I have much respect for his experience. But how he thinks that they could have got that amount, when they could not secure 1s. 3d., is to me a considerable puzzle.
  MR. MONTAGU: By an Import Duty on silver.
  MR. COURTNEY: My hon. Friend now thinks that an Import Duty on silver ought to be associated with the closing of the Mints. The Committee did consider the question of an Import Duty on silver, and we rejected it for two reasons. In the first place, we had to meet the question of the continual variations of exchange. The imposition of an Import Duty on silver would have left those variations as lively and active as ever. It would have loaded silver with a percentage of increase, no doubt, but it would not have affected the frequency of the variations of silver in relation to gold. The rupee would have gone up and down in precisely the same way. Next, there is a certain quantity of uncoined silver in India. An Import Duty on silver would have been a bonus to every holder of such silver; it would have been a loss to the Government, a loss to every person engaged in trade and commerce, but a benefit to a certain number of banks and speculators who had uncoined silver in their hands in India, and who would have realised all the Import Duty imposed upon it. The expectation of the imposition of an Import Duty now has been to a large extent the cause of the state of things that has recently prevailed in India. I regret that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not say a word in reference to this point on Thursday last. Speculators have been accumulating stocks of silver in India in the anticipation that an Import Duty is going to be put on. I trust that my right hon. Friend will state that the Government have no intention of imposing such a duty. It would certainly not only be an interference with ordinary trade, but it would give a bonus to persons who do not deserve anything of the kind, whilst it would give no considerable assistance even to the Indian Government themselves. I should look with considerable jealousy on any proposition of the kind. If it were necessary to adduce any additional reason to induce the Indian Government to put its foot strongly down with reference to such a proposition it would be the fact that the importation of silver, which has been going on from the United Kingdom during all these months, has been the one reason why the Government has been unable to sell their

  1627
  bills. Those who have sent over silver in this speculative way are not only doing the Indian Government an injury now, but will do so in the future, and deserve to have no boon offered to them. It is said that the Indian Government are unable to say what the exact rate of exchange would have been had the drafts been freely sold. The effect of their action in refusing to sell their bills has been to turn the balance of trade the other way to that which we have experienced for many years. We, Members of the Committee, are charged with not having anticipated any effect upon the balance of trade of the closing of the Mints. That is another statement which is not supported by an examination of the Report of the Committee. We did think that closing of the Mints might have a temporary effect on the exchange and on the course of trade, and might temporarily restrict exports from India and temporarily inflate the volume of imports into India. But we said we did not believe that any permanent effect of the kind could be produced. In paragraph 123 of our Report we said—
  "So far as concerns their effect on the import of silver into India, the Council bills now compete with silver; the closing of the Mints to silver would relieve the Council bills from this competition, and the immediate effect would be a tendency for the bills to sell at higher price. The merchant wishing to pay for Indian goods would have to pay more gold for the Council bills. If their price should rise so far as to make the business of buying Indian goods unprofitable, it would, no doubt, pro tanto, check the export trade of India, and the price of bills must fall. But it would only fall so far as would be necessary in order to make the trade again profitable. In short, India must pay her debts by exports, and the Indian Government cannot in any way avoid whatever expense is necessary to pay them. That these exports should ever consist of silver, depreciated as silver is in the Western world, is highly improbable; but if this should turn out to be the case it would be because silver was the article which India could best spare."
  Of course we relied on the fact that India must pay her debts; we did not expect that the Indian Government would have thought that the payment of the debt might for a time be arrested. If the Indian Government had gone on selling their bills the necessary effect would have been an alteration of prices which would have compelled the Indian producer to send over here goods which, as things are, have not been sent. India has always to pay a very large sum annually to Great Britain, and it is
  1628
  necessary that the balance of trade between the two countries should follow that fact. The goods must be sold, and the trade will be regulated in the end by the necessity under which India is of paying the debt she owes to people on this side with respect to interest on loans, and other matters of that kind. The truth is that the whole of the working out of the problem has been embarrassed by the refusal of the Indian Government to sell their bills. By that refusal they have delayed the re-establishment of the situation which is necessary for the placing of commerce in its proper position. In fact, the Government, by their action, have taken away that spur of necessity which requires goods to be sent over here in order to pay for the bills. The bills have not been sold, and the goods have not been sent. One question which has been raised in the course of the discussion is, whether the change involved in the closing of the Mints, and the giving to the rupee of a value differing from that which it might have had under free mintages, produces any change in the taxation of India. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir W. Harcourt) was rather shy on this question on Thursday, and quoted the opinion of some unknown authority which he said led him to the conclusion that the closing of the Mints did not involve any change to the detriment of the Indian taxpayer. The Committee never accepted any such conclusion as that. We always recognised that if the closing of the Mints was to be operative in altering the value of the rupee there must be, pro tanto, an addition to the taxation of India which might be concealed, but was all the same perfectly real. The language used by my right hon. Friend (Sir W. Harcourt) really supports that contention. The argument quoted by my right hon. Friend was to the effect that when in the past the rupee has been depreciated the rent paid by the ryot has been a depreciating rent, and the taxation of the ryot has been a depreciating taxation. If, however, you reverse the process you find that the rent paid by the ryot becomes an increasing burden, and, therefore, the taxation of the country is increased. Indeed, what motive is there for the whole of this business except that of obtaining something more in taxation, and freeing the revenue of the Indian Government from the embarrassment in which it is

  1629
  placed? We are not afraid of recognising that consequence of our action. I am inclined to think that the government of India by England is worth its cost, and that, if necessary, the taxation of India must be increased to meet its cost. I do not mean to say that we should not reduce the expenditure to the lowest limits consistently with safety, but I do say that, whatever is the necessary cost of government in India, that government is worth it. Therefore, I do not shrink from the conclusion, nor do I shrink from avowing here, that the stoppage of the coinage of silver, if followed by the appreciation of the rupee, is an increase of taxation, and, if followed by a depreciation of silver, a cessation of what would be a relief of taxation. The Government, no doubt, had a grave question before them when, after having closed the Mints against the rupee, they found they could not get as much for their bills as they had hoped. The question whether they did right under these circumstances in suspending the sale of their bills depends upon the estimate of the time that must be taken in changing the value of the rupee. If you could anticipate that in six months the rupee would go up, it might be desirable to enter into a speculation as to the future rise of the rupee. If, on the contrary, there is reason to believe that a long time must elapse before you can by any possibility sensibly appreciate the rupee, it becomes a very dangerous and hazardous policy to keep back your bills in expectation of the rise. My right hon. Friend (Sir W. Harcourt) cited what was done in 1876, when the noble Lord the Member for the Ealing Division (Lord G. Hamilton) was Secretary for India, and the sale of rupees was for a time stopped, in justification of what is proposed to be done now. But my right hon. Friend did not tell us how that experiment worked out. That omission from his speech of the other day he will have an opportunity of supplying to-day. In 1876, the rupee having fallen much below what the Indian Government liked, that Government suspended the sale of their bills and borrowed some money for the purpose of supplying the funds they would have obtained by the sale of them. How has that worked out? I have looked at the price of the rupee calculated in gold from 1876 to the present time. There was a short interval during which,
  1630
  if that debt were repaid, it might have been repaid without any loss to the Indian Government, but if the debt was not repaid within that time—and it was so short a time that to attempt to unload the whole debt during the interval might cause the rupee to depreciate and so prevent full payment of the debt—then undoubtedly the transaction would have been one which was full of warning as to what should not be done, rather than an encouragement of what should be done. What did it come to? The rupee being in that condition that about 12 went to the sovereign, it was thought desirable to raise a loan; but if you had to repay that loan now, instead of being able to repay it with 12 rupees for the sovereign, you would have to pay 16 rupees, the cost to the Indian Government would be increased 30 per cent. You might be very glad if you could repay it at 15 rupees to the sovereign. I do not know what happened with that particular debt, but if that particular debt is still existent, the burden to the Indian taxpayer has been increased in consequence of the withholding of the sale of drafts at that time, and the conversion of the debt. It is true we are not quite on all fours now with the situation then, because having arrested, as we may fairly hope, the rupee for a very considerable time, in future you do not run the risk of that very considerable falling which has happened since 1876. But, on the other hand, you have a new element brought into the matter, and that new element is one which very much affects the whole question—namely, that you are in the face of what you hope to be an appreciating standard. If the hopes of the Government are realised, the rupee will be increasing in value every year, and slowly but surely you will be going through all the experience of an appreciating standard. Now, an appreciated standard has many advantages, but it is not a favourable thing to trade, commerce, or industry. It is a time when prices are falling, and it is a difficult thing to re-adjust all the relations of life to a continuous fall of prices resulting from an appreciated rupee. You have to adjust the rates of labour with the employment of capital, and all your occupations of capital which involve the use of money involve this consequence. It is good for those who lend money, but it is

  1631
  bad for those who use things. The man who uses things with the assistance of money finds at the end of a certain time that the goods he uses are worth less, and the money he has to pay is worth more. Thus an appreciated standard is good for the banking world, but bad for the industrial, manufacturing world. And certainly, if you look at the future of India through all the consequences which may follow from the appreciating standard, that is a thing which will make the rise in your standard very slow, because it will be a drag on the course of commerce. It is a future which had to be faced; we thought it worth while to face it; we never concealed it from ourselves; and it is very risky indeed to pile up debt in the hope of a rise of the value of the rupee when that rise must be slow and may be indefinitely delayed. I confess, therefore, that the action of the Indian Government, though very intelligible and though taken under great temptation, is one which appears to me to involve considerable risks, so much so that I certainly should be slow to take it myself or to approve of it after it has been taken. But it may be said— if you look forward to the future of India in this way, if you consider that the appreciation of the rupee is a matter which will interfere with trade by acting as a drag and preventing the development which would otherwise grow—if you look forward to these consequences, how came it that you were able to approve of the stoppage of the mintage at all, as this is a necessary consequence? There was a deficiency in the Indian Government, a deficiency which could not be met, so far as we could see, by any easy imposition of taxation. The reduction of the expenditure of the Indian Government was not a point before us, and we may be sure it is not easily accomplished. Here we had a problem involving, no doubt, such consequences as I have described, but also involving the extreme advantage of arresting the constant drain on the resources of the Indian Government, and also of checking that constant variation of exchange which affects Indian commerce. And putting oneself into the position as far as possible of an Indian Prince—if you can suppose such a thing —who is under an obligation to remit a certain amount of gold to Great Britain, and whose means of payment were in
  1632
  silver, and who was unable to obtain any other re-adjustment of the monetary relations of the world, the question came before the Committee—
  "Is it or is it not expedient to allow this particular plan to be adopted?"
  And the Committee—and here I am speaking more for myself than for some other members of the Committee—could not but acquiesce in the proposal. But speaking for myself, I always realised the risks which were involved in it, the risks consequent on the continuous appreciation of the currency in India, if that appreciation were to happen. The Memorandum to which I have before referred expresses my own opinion, which is to the effect that if the standard were changed, as recommended, above the value of the raw silver contained in the rupee there would be a grating and grinding of parts until the adjustment of the economic machine was reached. In my opinion, fixed payments, like rent, would necessarily be more burdensome, money wages would slowly decline, prices would decline, in different proportions and at different rates of speed, commodities imported from the European markets falling first, and there would be a tendency to diminish exports and production. All these consequences were, in my view, to be contemplated. And putting oneself as nearly as possible in the position of a patriotic Indian Prince in relation to the position of the Indian Government and the Government of Great Britain and in relation to the monetary difficulties of the time, it was impossible to refuse to accede to the suggestion before us, although in my judgment it involved the consequences to which I have referred. But it did not involve what the Indian Government has taken upon itself to add to those consequences—namely, the refusal to sell their drafts in India. That, indeed, was something never before us; and I do not know what would have been the opinion of my colleagues if that had been offered for their consideration. Some of them, I know, would have looked upon it as a very risky and adventurous course, and I confess with' the uncertainty of the future which is before us, I should rejoice if I understood, as I do understand, that the Indian Government will unload this debt as soon as it sees any opportunity of doing so, and that this is not looked upon as a permanent loan; and that the moment any

  1633
  power of selling the drafts arises which will in any degree meet present difficulties, the drafts will be sold, the debt will be paid, and the course of commerce, as far as the Government is concerned, will be left absolutely unchecked; and, for the future —though the result to India may not be entirely satisfactory in an economic sense —it will not be embarrassed by the action taken during the last two or three months. I offer no opposition to the passing of the Bill now, but it is, as I said, a step full of grave uncertainty, and my only satisfaction in connection with it is the assurance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the earliest possible opportunity will be taken of clearing off the debt which has been created so as not to leave it for the future inheritance, as apparently the debt of 1876 has been left to us—very much to the injury of the Indian Government and the Indian Treasury though it was intended to be beneficial to both.
  MR. CHAPLIN: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have followed the speech of my right hon. Friend, and I confess there is one statement which he made in the earlier portion of his remarks which I do not quite clearly understand. I understood him to say that there was no expectation on the part of Lord Herschell's Committee that the rupee would be raised to 1s. 4d. If that were so, Sir, I do not understand the paragraph in the Report in which it is stated that
  "the closing of the Mints for the free coinage of silver should be accompanied by the announcement that though closed to the public they would be used by the Government for the coinage of rupees in exchange for gold at a rate to be fixed—say, 1s. 4d. a rupee."
  If there were no expectations of the kind, I do not see exactly what is the object of that paragraph.
  MR. COURTNEY: Some persons advocated it, if the Committee did not. It was to prevent those persons from being uneasy.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I understood that the ultimate introduction of a gold standard was part of the plan. I do not think the answer is sufficient and complete. The right hon. Gentleman used another argument in the course of his speech which I heard with satisfaction— that is, from a bimetallist point of view. The right hon. Gentleman met the objection urged by the right hon. Member
  1634
  for St. George's (Mr. Goschen), that the raising or fixing of the rupee would impose a burden upon the debtor in India greater than he had before, by proceeding to argue that such an infringement of contracts in certain circumstances would, in his opinion, be justifiable. That is an answer to the main objection which has hitherto been urged against the adoption of the principle of bimetallism. Now, Sir, I wish to begin by making a confession. I am well aware that I have no special claim to speak upon the general condition of affairs in India; but I hope the House will not think it undue presumption on my part to take part in this Debate on a subject in which I have long taken a very great interest. We are asked to give our final sanction to a Bill which increases the borrowing powers of the Indian Government by £10,000,000 sterling, and I desire, with perfect frankness, but without political bias or Party feeling, before it leaves this House, to express my views on the general policy which has necessitated the introduction of the Bill. It will be in the recollection of the House that the Government refused to allow any opportunity for the discussion of the policy of closing the Mints before it became law—and that notwithstanding repeated appeals from these (the Opposition) Benches from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen, and from a number of supporters of the Government as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston (Sir R. Temple) said this policy had been practically approved by the House. I hope he will forgive me when I say that I differ with him altogether, and that I must emphatically demur to that statement. The House of Commons never had an opportunity of approving or disapproving of the proposal. I know this — that I took the earliest opportunity, after it became law, by a Motion for the Adjournment, of expressing my disapproval of it and my great apprehensions of its probable results, and on that occasion I was supported by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. A. J. Balfour) and by other gentlemen on both sides of the House who took part in the Debate. I only refer to the matter now to correct the misapprehension to which, I think, the statement of my hon. Friend, if it remained uncontradicted, would give rise. So far as I am concerned, the views I ex-

  1635
  pressed on that occasion are strengthened and confirmed by what we have seen since then. It appears to me that the necessity for the present loan is the first-fruit of the policy to which I then took exception, and the Bill of the Government looks very like a confession of failure and of the collapse of their scheme. If it be so, I may be asked why I do not oppose the Bill. If I am, the reply, it seems to me, is simple and conclusive. When a Minister comes forward, with the full responsibility of the Government, and tells the House of Commons that unless his proposals are accepted a great Dependency like India cannot meet its obligations; when he hints, and not obscurely, at the possible danger of bankruptcy, if his measures are rejected or even delayed, I, for one, am not prepared, however much I may dislike or disapprove his policy, to take upon myself the responsibility of rejecting it. But that being the position, upon the Minister's own showing, it is not possible to over-estimate its gravity, and I do think that Parliament ought most seriously to consider how this grievous state of things has come to pass. One or two speakers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have expressed a hope that the subject of bimetallism would be avoided and that the Debate would be conducted in a practical manner. I have no desire to introduce the subject of bimetallism, nor do I intend to do so, except so far as it is strictly ad rem.; but I must remind the House that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who first introduced the subject. Some of the statements which he made were most inaccurate, and I must not be blamed if I have to spend some minutes in replying to them. And I would wish to remind those hon. Gentlemen who take this view, and who think this question can be practically considered without taking into consideration a whole variety of questions absolutely inseparable from bimetallism, that it seems to me that they have yet to learn some of the first elements of the question. How, for instance, is it possible to ignore the fact that it was nothing but the abandonment of bimetallism which has been the origin and source of all the present monetary troubles in India? This cannot be denied. It is the statement of the Indian Government repeated to the Home Government over
  1636
  and over again. The initial difficulty which has been the cause of all your troubles has always been the great fall in the value of silver, caused entirely by the legislation of foreign countries commencing in 1873, and the proof of this is that up to that time silver had for generations maintained its parity with gold without any practical variation. Your difficulty with the rupee was unheard of up till then, and the constant and continuous fall in silver, the origin of all your troubles, was unknown. That being so, I should have thought that a wise Administration would have sought to reverse a policy that had been so injurious to its great Dependency; or, if it were not possible to bring about a rise, at any rate to arrest any further fall in the value of silver. But the present Government has, unhappily, adopted a policy of a precisely opposite character. The very moment the Conference at Brussels came to an end, the Government proceeded to make war on silver themselves. By closing the Indian Mints to the free coinage of that metal, they deprived it of the most important and the largest market still left open in the world, thereby lowering its value to such an extent that within a single week of that event silver fell in value by 8d. an ounce—a thing which was absolutely without precedent in. the history of the world.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: It fell 10d. in 1876.
  MR. CHAPLIN: Not in a single week. No doubt in 1876 there was a heavy fall in silver after the closing of the European Mints, but it was gradual, and extended over many months; but in this case it fell 8d. in a week. And the most extraordinary thing is this: that it was done in the teeth of the evidence of all the practical men of business and experts examined on the subject almost without exception. The right hon. Gentleman may say he relied on the Report of Lord Herschell's Committee. I venture to think that that is not sufficient justification of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's action. For the; consideration of important questions like this there is always a Committee in existence, and that is the Cabinet itself, in which, as a matter of course, upon a question of this kind, the right hon. Gentleman would exercise a commanding influence. And what was

  1637
  the evidence that he had before him? Witness after witness, comprising some of the most eminent men of business and most practised experts in the country, gave the clearest and most convincing evidence against the policy of closing the Mints. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the imports of silver bullion into India, and he expressed the opinion that it was impossible for anybody to say why these had occurred, or what had become of them. If he had studied the evidence given before the Committee he would have found that some of the experts who were examined foretold that this would be the case. If he likes, I can refer him to the paragraphs. They pointed out that, while it created a further fall in the value of silver, the raising or fixing of the rupee would everywhere check Indian exports, in the East especially, and that there would be the greatest possible danger that the balance of trade, hitherto in favour of India, might be reversed; that there would be no demand in consequence for the Government bills, and that they would be unable to sell them. In fact, these experts, one after another, foretold, when examined before that Committee, exactly what has since occurred, and how Lord Herschell, with all his experience as Chairman of the Gold and Silver Commission, and with all this weight of evidence before him, how he could have put his name to the Report is a thing which passes my comprehension, and which is extremely difficult to comprehend. They did report, however, in the sense of which the House is aware, and the Cabinet accepted the conclusions. And why was this done? Simply because, so to speak, Her Majesty's Government had closed the door upon themselves. They choose to consider, for what reasons I know not, that anything and everything in the nature of a bimetallistic remedy was impossible— was altogether beyond discussion, and that under no circumstances whatever were they prepared even to consider it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has given his reasons for this decision. The Royal Commission of 1888 had, he said, condemned bimetallism as applied to India—
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I said a section of it—the section whose views were adopted by the Government and Lord Herschell.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I am quite ready to accept that qualification, but it was not the statement made in my hearing I think, and it is not the statement reported in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. The right hon. Gentleman further said infinite danger would have occurred to India. It would have injured the natives of India, and one of the main reasons for rejecting it was the injustice it would do to the natives, and the social and political injury which would result. The right hon. Gentleman went on to add that the Conference at Brussels would not have it, and he further told us that the President of the United States had intimated to the English Government that he had no desire for any renewal of the Conference. Well, Sir, I am afraid I shall be obliged to traverse each and all of these assertions. Now, with regard to the Commission of 1888, I really think it would be difficult to imagine a greater accumulation of errors than was contained in the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. In the first place, I should have pointed out, only the right hon. Gentleman has admitted it himself, that it was not the Report of the Commission, but only one of its Reports. In the second place, it was the Minority Report of the Commission; and one of the six gentlemen who signed it, with more experience on the subject, has abandoned, I understand, the attitude which he maintained at that time, and has expressed views of an opposite character. In the third place—and this is a most important point—the objections which were urged by that section of the Commission, whatever they may have been, were objections which were limited —and this is what the right hon. Gentleman has altogether overlooked—to bimetallism at 15½ to 1—
  SIR W. HARCOURT: No, no.
  MR. CHAPLIN: You will find that is so. I read the Report half-an-hour ago. It is absolutely the case, that the quotation which the right hon. Gentleman made from the Report was in reference to bimetallism at 15½ to 1. No one that I know of has asked for such a ratio, and it is not a necessary condition to the adoption of the policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Whitechapel at that Commission asked for a recommendation of bimetallism at a ratio very much higher than that. In the fourth place, I should be prepared to contend that if injury there

  1639
  was at all to the natives, so far as it would not have been counteracted by the rise of gold prices in the West, it would have been limited to a section of the population only, and that the population as a whole would have been enormously relieved to a much greater degree by the decrease in taxation which would have immediately followed upon it. In the fifth place, I want to point out that the right hon. Gentleman at the present moment is trying, by much more ineffectual and much more clumsy means, to do exactly the same thing himself. The right hon. Gentleman is trying, by closing the Mints, to give a scarcity value to the rupee—in other words, to depress the prices of the produce of the natives of India, and concurrently with this—and this is a most important point—he leaves them open to the increased competition of their fellow - producers in the East through the fall in the exchange with silver countries, which he himself has brought about, which I am afraid is destined to be most injurious to the natives of India in the future, and which at all events under bimetallism could not have happened. I am sorry to have detained the House so long upon these points, but I am bound to reply to what seemed to me to be the very great fallacies put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the other night. And while we are dealing with the subject of injury to the natives of India I must take the opportunity of replying again to what the right hon. Gentleman said in reference to the uncoined silver in the possession of the natives. I must contradict the statement that he made on that point—namely, that
  "The supposition that the natives hold great stocks of uncoined silver may now be regarded as entirely exploded."
  May it indeed? I would like to know what authority the right hon. Gentleman had for that statement? I quoted in this House the authority of Sir David Barbour that there are 130,000,000 of uncoined silver in the possession of the natives. That has not been contradicted. The right hon. Gentleman has never attempted to meet it. I will give him another authority, one more recent than that, whose evidence was before Lord Herschell's Committee and his statement is in the Appendix of that Report. I refer to Mr. F. C. Harrison, a gentleman who, I understand,
  1640
  stands high in the Financial Department of the Government of India itself. What does he say—
  "In my first Momorandum, I have estimated the silver in India to be about 510 crores."
  A crore, I understand, is £1,000,000 sterling—
  MR. MONTAGU: One million rupees?
  MR. CHAPLIN: It would be £1,000,000 sterling if rupees were worth the old price—2s. Mr. Harrison goes on to say—
  "In my first Memorandum I have estimated the silver in India to be about 510 crores. Of this, 166½ crores is in active circulation, and 343½ crores remain to be accounted for. Of this considerably less than 50 crores is hoarded in the form of rupees. Roughly speaking, it may be said that 300 crores may be held in India in the form of bullion, obsolete coins, and ornaments. In Madras 1822–3 was a famine year, and the country bullion (silver) brought to the Mints was 92½ lakhs."
  You have by your action depreciated that enormous mass of property in India, and then, forsooth, you come down to the House of Commons and tell us that you oppose bimetallism, because it would injure the natives of India. A more daring assertion, I think, was never made on the part of a Minister. Perhaps, if the right hon. Gentleman is right, he will tell me where all the silver bullion now being sent to India is going? It is not going to the Mints, because the Mints have been closed; and if the silver bullion is not in the hands of the natives, if it is not being used for hoarding purposes, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman, who is so confident on this point, will be able to explain to the House where it goes. I do venture to think that I am justified in saying that in face of such evidence, which I have been able to put before the House on this point, the right hon. Gentleman ought to refrain from reckless assertions of this kind, which are absolutely contradicted by such authorities as we have. I hope I have now more or less disposed of the statements of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the Commission of 1888, and on the question of uncoined silver. The next points are the Conference at Brussels, and the intimation given by the President of the United States to the English Government, and in regard to which I venture to express the hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take an early opportunity of laying it on the Table. It is a document that will be read with great

  1641
  interest. Upon the first point, the question of the Conference, as the House is aware, I have always maintained that the failure of that Conference was due to the action of England. I have done what I daresay few Members of the House have done. I think I have read every single word of the Report of the proceedings of the Conference, and if my statement is seriously challenged, I will be prepared to give chapter and verse for everything I have said on the subject. Listen to the statement of one of the Indian delegates—
  "Now, the quasi-official declaration of the hon. Delegate's views (Sir Rivers Wilson) not only precludes any advances by other Powers towards a solution of the difficulty, but places Great Britain in the invidious position of being the principal, if not the sole, obstacle to a satis factory solution of the difficulty under which we labour. Indeed, I gather from conversation with many of the foreign Delegates that this is the prevailing impression to which his declaration gave rise…. In fact, England holds the key of the position."
  I have often heard it stated—the right hon. Gentleman has stated it more than once—that Germany is entirely opposed to any alteration. We have had some very important information on this subject as lately as last week. It appears that the Agricultural Party in Germany have made bimetallism one of the main planks of their policy, and this Party in the German Parliament was only defeated last week by a majority of 24. What are the facts? In the German Parliament, on the 14th of this month, Count Caprivi was reproached by the Agricultural Party with the conduct of the German Delegates at the Conference. He replied—
  "That the Government, seeing that the Conference was doomed to failure, had bean unwilling to entangle Germany in the fiasco."
  And why was it doomed to failure? Count Caprivi said—
  "Without Great Britain nothing could be done, and under the present Prime Minister there was no chance of anything being attempted."
  [Ministerial cheers.] I quite understand those cheers; but do not tell the House of Commons and the country, as they have frequently been told, that the Conference was broken up because cither nations would have nothing to do with it? What I have read is a very significant admission on the part of Germany, and it is quite possible that at no very distant date it may be very important to
  1642
  remember it. As to the President of the United States, I do not know at present what he intimated to the English Government.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I have read the words.
  MR. CHAPLIN: But I do know his Message to Congress on December 4 last. It is more significant, I think, than the language of Count Caprivi in Germany. So important does President Cleveland consider the question, and such a wholly different view does he take of it from the lofty disdain which the right hon. Gentleman opposite always exhibits for the interests of silver that he asks Congress for general powers to summon another Conference whenever he pleases. He said—
  "It seems to me that it would be wise to give a general authority to the President to invite other nations to such a Conference at any time there should be a fair prospect of accomplishing an international agreement on the subject of coinage."
  I maintain that all this shows it is owing to the action of England alone—I do not now say whether that action was right or wrong. I am not arguing that question atall—but it was owing to the action of England alone that the Conference failed. However, the Conference did fail. The English Government adopted an opposite policy altogether. They closed the Mints in India, creating thereby a further fall in the value of silver, with the result that the balance of trade has been affected and the Indian Government has been unable to sell their Council bills now. The experts who were examined before Lord Herschell's Committee foretold that result to the Committee, but Lord Herschell and the able men who were his colleagues apparently did not see it. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin, who was one of the Committee, said just now that all they intended to say upon that point was that the difficulty would not be permanent. I hope my right hon. Friend will prove to be right, but I see no symptoms of it at present. It seems to me the Committee relied on past statistics. There is a paragraph in their Report which shows that they relied on past statistics. The experts, on the other hand, relied on their practical knowledge and acquaintance with the subject, and, as may be easily understood, the experts were light and the Committee turned

  1643
  out to be wrong. That is shown by the figures of the balance of trade at the present moment. In 1892, from April 1 to September 30, the balance of trade in favour of India was 149,000,000 rupees. In the same period in 1893 it was 91,000,000 rupees. In the month of October of the present year the balance against India was 17,000,000 rupees, while in October, 1892, the balance in favour of India was 15,000,000 rupees. That shows a change for the worse of no less than 32,000,000 rupees. No doubt matters may improve in the early months of next year. So far as I can learn from all the best authorities it is most probable that they will. But the question we have to consider is this: Will they improve sufficiently to enable the Government to overtake the losses they have incurred already and to pay their current expenses as well? That seems to me to be really the whole question we have to consider. Of course, it would be unbecoming on my part, except with the greatest diffidence, to express any opinion at all on a point like this. But I must say that on that point I am by no means re-assured by the reasoning of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which seems to me to be altogether fallacious. When he was asked this question by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's the other night, the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought he had met it triumphantly by citing a similar recovery in 1890–91, and by pointing to a similar transaction by the Indian Government in 1876. But does not the right hon. Gentleman perceive that the circumstances of 1890–91 and 1876 have no bearing whatever upon the situation in 1893? The circumstances in 1893 are wholly different from what they were during the years to which he has referred. In 1890–91 and 1876 the value of the rupee and of silver were absolutely the same all the world over, but in 1893 there is an immense divergence between them which you yourselves have brought about. The exchange with silver countries has fallen in consequence of your action, and your exports to these countries—from India—have been very grievously affected thereby. That is very important when we remember how large is the proportion of her total exports, which is sent by India to silver-using countries. From a
  1644
  table of the net Indian exports which is contained in the Report of Lord Herschell's Committee I find that of merchandise alone in the year 1892 the net exports from India to gold countries were Rx. 19,000,000; whereas during the same period the exports to silver countries were Rx. 22,000,000. But the other night the right hon. Gentleman said the trade of India was in the proportion of 75 per cent. with gold countries and 25 per cent. only with silver countries. That may be right about the total trade; but, unless the figures I have quoted from official sources, and I have taken pains to have them verified, are entirely wrong, so far as exports are concerned—and that is the important point. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely mistaken. I venture to think that what I have just shown is alone sufficient to upset your calculations as to recovery, or, at all events, to put your calculations on that point in very great danger. At any rate, the right hon. Gentleman must admit that it is a possible contingency which we must contemplate. Well! Supposing that the experts are right as to the future of Indian exports, and supposing you continue to be unable to sell your Council bills, what are you going to do? The hon. Baronet the Member for Kingston advised you to sell your cash balances, as he did in 1872. The answer to my hon. Friend is the same as to the right hon. Gentleman—the circumstances of 1872 and 1893 are totally different owing to the action of the Government. But even if you were to adopt the policy of selling your cash balances, where is the market for silver bullion? What is the price you expect to obtain to-day? I should like to ask the hon. Member for White-chapel, who can give an opinion probably as good as that of any man: Supposing you were to put even a million of silver bullion on the market now and sell it for whatever it would fetch, what effect would that have upon its price? But you do not want a million only, but five or six millions at least. I want to know, is it a practicable proposal, except at the cost of enormous loss to India, to recover your position by selling our cash balances? It seems to me that there is no difference whatever between that operation and putting your Council bills on the market and selling them for whatever they would fetch. But what other resource have

  1645
  you got? Can you reduce the expenditure in India? You can do so if you choose to stop your public works, and if you greatly reduce your estimates for the defence of the country. But to do the first would be most prejudicial to the interests of India, and to do the second, would be to place our Empire at the mercy of the invader. Can you increase taxation? That is a point upon which I am unable to give an authoritative opinion; but I know that the very best authorities in India have told us over and over again that to attempt materially to increase the taxation in India at the present time would be accompanied, in all probability, by serious political danger. Then, are you to go on borrowing as you are borrowing now? If you are to go on borrowing ten millions after ten millions, unless the balance of trade is restored I do not see how that operation can lead to anything except bankruptcy in the ultimate issue. Turn in whatever direction you may, it seems to me that this unfortunate policy on the part of Her Majesty's Government has landed us in a difficulty from which there appears at present to be no clear way of escape except one, which the right hon. Gentleman has pledged himself never to use. Now, I think I am entitled to ask this question, and Parliament is entitled to receive an answer. Do the Government see a way out of the difficulty which they have created themselves? If they do, will they take Parliament into their confidence, and will the right hon. Gentleman tell us or not what is to be their policy in future? I will not prolong my observations any further now, except to ask the Government again—and we have a right to know—what their policy is to be, and what are the Government going to do if their great scheme of currency for India continues in the future to be as great a failure as it seems to have been up to the present time?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W. HARCOURT, Derby): I observe that the two speeches we have had have taken up two hours. I will endeavour to avoid that result, especially as I spoke the other day, and will try to confine what I have to say to a quarter of an hour. The right hon. Gentleman opposite, in a somewhat minatory tone, complained that Her Majesty's Government did not submit their plan to Parlia-
  1646
  ment before it was adopted. We refused, deliberately refused, to do so, and for good reasons. We did not want to bring about a wild speculation in silver in India during the progress of a discussion in this House. No, Sir, we took upon ourselves the responsibility of what was done, and we are willing to accept it. That is my answer to that part of the question. And if it be necessary to adopt any other change in the currency of India, we shall take the same course, and we should not promote the most wild speculation upon the subject by saying beforehand what we are likely to do under some possible contingency. A more reckless and unjustifiable proceeding than that it is impossible to conceive. Why, you might just as well, before the Budget, announce what you were going to do with the duties on tea and spirits. Everybody knows that the action of the Government in that matter, if it were announced beforehand, would lead to speculation of the most injurious character. So much for that part of the charge of the right hon. Gentleman. Then he says, "Oh! but any wise Administration, when they found the fall in silver going on and the injury being done to India, would at once have applied some remedy to it." Well, there were strong men before Agamemnon, and so there were wise Administrations before the present one. And what did the late wise Administration do, of which the right hon. Gentleman himself was a Member? There had been a formidable fall in silver from 60d. to 38d., which had affected the Government of India in the most serious way. Complaint had been made of it in all their Despatches. Yet did the late Government adopt bimetallism? The present Leader of the Opposition is a bimetallist, and who was the person who got up and refused to encourage an inquiry into the matter? It was the late Mr. W. H. Smith, from this very place, and he was supported by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, and good reasons were given by him for not even inviting a Conference. At the time of the Brussels Conference, the Government of the United States having proposed that the discussion should be directed specially to bimetallism, the right hon. Gentleman declined to accept the reference upon these terms. The right hon. Gentleman quotes the opinion of a bimetallist upon that Conference as

  1647
  to the conduct of the Conference. I do not accept that at all. The German Government began the Conference by saying that
  'Germany, being satisfied with its monetary system, had no intention of modifying its basis."
  That was the first declaration made upon the first day, before the English Delegates had made any declaration on the subject at all.
  MR. CHAPLIN: Count Caprivi told you why.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I entirely differ from the right hon. Gentleman, and that has nothing whatever to do with the present question as to the view of the German Government upon the subject. As to the view of the American Government, certainly the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to have the Despatch. I quoted the words on a former occasion. Now the right hon. Gentleman has no doubt made a profound study of all these questions, and he says he cannot understand how Lord Herschell's Committee came to the conclusion they did.
  MR. CHAPLIN: In the face of the evidence.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The right hon. Gentleman thinks he knows better than the Government of India at Calcutta, better than Lord Herschell's Committee, better than the Council of India, and, of course, better than Her Majesty's Government. I am not in that position. I do not pretend to understand these matters better than the Government at Calcutta, Lord Herschell's Committee, and the Government of India. The right hon. Gentleman does. He has the advantage of me in that respect. I am more modest, and I am willing to believe that these authorities know better about Indian affairs than I do, and though I am perfectly willing on the part of Her Majesty's Government to take the responsibility of the decision, I have no hesitation in saying that, in coming to that decision, we were mainly influenced by the opinion of the people who thoroughly understand Indian affairs, and I will take the liberty of saying that I doubt whether the right hon. Gentleman does. With regard to the hoards of uncoined silver, I will not go into that matter again. The right hon. Gentleman was entirely refuted by Mr. O'Connor in the letter he wrote, and if the right hon. Gentleman
  1648
  wishes to know Sir David Barbour's opinion, he has only got to read that distinguished gentleman's speech when he recommended the Bill to the Government at Calcutta.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I wish to point out that Mr. O'Connor's letter and the statement to which he refers were unofficial and were not accepted by his own Government, while the quotations I have made from Mr. Harrison are official statements made on behalf of the Government.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I leave the right hon. Gentleman all the advantage of that. In my opinion, it has nothing to do with the present question. As to the export of silver to India, the right hon. Gentleman thinks he knows all about it and where the silver goes to, and of course he has means of information and sagacity of penetration which do not belong to the Indian officials. I find, however, there are as many opinions as there are men upon that subject. Some think that that has happened which occurs in ordinary times—where a commodity becomes suddenly very cheap, a great many people buy it simply because it is cheap, hoping that at some future time it may be raised in value. It is much too early, I believe, for any one whose opinion is worth having to pronounce upon the subject. The figures I gave the other day as to the exportation of silver were correct in the month of November, and they showed a considerable decrease, but I am informed that since that time the export of silver has been increasing again and is on the increase, and that therefore there is at present, so far as one can see, no tendency to a decrease in the importation of silver, but rather the reverse. Now, I pass to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin, who spoke with the authority of one of the able members of Lord Herschell's Committee, and he justified and defended of course the conclusion at which they arrived. He said that the course of the Indian Government in refusing to sell their bills below a certain price was not one of the things before that Committee, and ha further said that the object of the recommendation of the Committee to close the Mints was to arrest the fall in silver and to prevent fluctuations in the exchange. But, supposing that the Indian Government had allowed the exchange to run down, how would the fall in silver have been arrested,

  1649
  and how would the fluctuation in exchange have been prevented? My right hon. Friend asks me what the view of the Government is on the subject of an Import Duty on silver. For the reasons I have already stated, it would be highly improper on my part to make any statement on that subject, and I utterly decline to make it. This experiment must be tried; time must be given for it to be tried.
  MR. CHAPLIN: For how long?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: That, again, I must decline to say. It has not been adopted with the view of its being a permanent thing. If it turn out that a mistake has been made, of course measures must be taken to correct that mistake. The position of Her Majesty's Government is this: They were called upon by the Indian Government to take the course proposed. They submitted the proposal to a competent Commission; that Commission reported that they did not feel justified in overruling the Government of India in this matter; and we do not feel justified in overruling the Government of India. Of course, we cannot go on for ever without selling Council bills; everybody knows that; nobody proposes that that should be done. My right hon. Friend alludes to the increase of taxation in India. He says, and I have never undertaken to deny, that these operations with the rupee may be considered as an increase of taxation; and I have ventured to say that you may argue the question just as you may argue whether an increase of rate here falls upon the owner or upon the occupier—a controversy in which the disputants on both sides may be right to a certain degree. If the scheme which has been adopted is not successful, we may have to find some other. We are told that the cause of the difficulty is increase of expense to the Indian Government due to the loss by exchange; but that is an error. The financial difficulties of India are not mainly due to the course of exchange; they are due to the cause which has brought financial difficulties upon all nations at all times, and that is the enormous increase of expenditure in relation to the resources of a country. That is the real cause of the financial difficulty of India. The right
  1650
  hon. Member for Sleaford was good enough to send me a pamphlet upon Indian currency dangers by a gentleman named Herman Schmidt, which contains an acute criticism upon the policy now being adopted by the Indian Government. The writer is adverse to the closing of the Mints, and there is a great deal worth considering in what he has written. To my mind, the most striking part of his observations upon that matter is one which is contained on page 34 of his pamphlet, in which he says that loss by exchange is not the only item of Government expenditure. He takes the total expenditure of the Government of India in 1879-80 at 61 millions of tens of rupees; he finds that the loss on exchange was 3¼ millions; and thus you get 57 millions as the expenditure of the Government of India. In 1892–3, the total expenditure was 88 millions, and the loss by exchange was eight millions; and thus you get 80 millions for the present expenditure of India, or an increase of 22½ millions, totally apart from the loss of exchange. The writer remarked that it was difficult to believe that the Indian Government should say so little about the 22 crores of additional general expenditure and so much about the eight crores due to the loss by exchange. I do not touch these figures, but there is much that is worthy of consideration in these remarks. This difficulty has now to be met somehow. All that Her Majesty's Government have done is to ascertain from those who are best able to judge what was the best method that could be suggested. It is admittedly an experimental course they have sanctioned; and I fancy that few gentlemen will have the courage of the right hon. Member for Sleaford and to speak ex cathedra as to the consequences that are to ensue. [Mr. CHAPLIN: I did not.] I, for my part, make no pretence of doing so.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I did not do so. I wish the right hon. Gentleman would not misrepresent me. I said that on that point I spoke with the greatest possible diffidence. I only said I feared what was going to happen.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The diffidence of the right hon. Gentleman consisted in his expressing his extreme disapproval of Lord Herschell's Committee. My diffi-

  1651
  dence goes so far as to accept the conclusions of Lord Herschell's Committee. At all events, the Government are satisfied with the great weight of opinion that recommended the course they have submitted to the House; and I am glad the House is going to accept the proposal made by the Indian Government, which must be judged by its results. If it is not successful, then, of course, any errors in the experiment must be corrected in the future.
  SIR J. LUBBOCK: I was anxious to have moved some Amendments in Committee, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer appealed to me on the ground that the Bill must absolutely be passed through both Houses by the 5th of January, or the Indian Government would be unable to meet its engagements. Under these circumstances I did not feel justified in pressing my Amendments, but I cannot help asking, why was the Bill deferred to the last moment? We are often told that this House does not take sufficient interest in our great Dependency. Yet here is a Bill dealing with £10,000,000 of money, and we are told that it must be passed at once, and that no time can be given for discussion or amendment in Committee. The Government have had almost the whole time of the House for the last 10 or 11 months, and yet they drive off this Bill to the last minute; they closure my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin in the Debate on the Second Reading: they decline to give a single evening, or even part of an evening, for Committee, and I understand that the Debate on Third Reading is to be sternly limited. This power to borrow £10,000,000 is asked for because the Government have stopped drawing Council bills under the belief that in the spring they will obtain a better exchange. The whole case made for the Bill is that in the opinion of Government the exchange is almost sure to rise. I venture to characterise this as a speculation in exchange. My right hon. Friend asked what a merchant would do who had a large stock of wheat and found that freights were high. He says the merchant would wait. I do not think so. I believe he would send his wheat forward, perhaps not quite so quickly, but by
  1652
  degrees—at least, if he were a prudent man. But if he hoarded all his wheat till freights fell, that would certainly be speculation in freights. Then my right hon. Friend quoted The Statist as saying that the shrewd Manchester merchants have abstained from drawing, as he has. But the passage which be quoted says, as it seems to me, exactly the reverse. The writer says that the closing of the Mints has stimulated exports from Lancashire to India, and that
  "The consequence has been a very large increase in the number of merchant bills offering in competition with the India Council."
  This is the very reverse of what the Government have done. It is true that the writer adds—
  "Some of them have taken a favourable view of the exchange, and they have shown an increasing disposition to obtain advances on their bills, thus taking on themselves the risk of loss in exchange."
  But, Sir, what does The Statist say this week. In a temperate and able article it supports the view we have taken, and gives strong reasons for doubting the wisdom of the policy adopted by the Indian Government. Another great authority, The Economist, also speaking of the expectation of the Government that they will be able soon to draw at better rates, says—
  "It may be doubted whether this hope will be realised…. It is certain that the attempt to confer a scarcity value upon the rupee must continue to act as a stimulus to imports and a check upon exports to silver-using countries… . That is itself a reason for doubting whether the demand for Council bills will be so active as to enable the Secretary of State to fix his own price for them, and there is a further reason for doubt, in that he has latterly, by refusing to sell, been causing the market to seek for and become accustomed to other methods of transferring credit."
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed that the closing of the Mints had steadied the exchange; but unless the Government draw they will gain nothing by that. I believe that the steadiness of the exchange is more due to the action of the Indian Government here, in not drawing, than to the closing of the Mints, but, of course, that is a matter of opinion. The Government are accumulating balances which are lying idle in India, while they are piling up debt here.

  1653
  Already they have borrowed £5,000,000 here, while they have £16,000,000 lying idle in India. If they continue this policy by April they will have another £6,000,000 of debt here, and £21,000,000 lying uselss on the other side. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said—
  "If the Indian Government had drawn, as the right hon. Baronet has recommended, the market value of the rupee would probably have been reduced to 1s. 2d., and the loss on the transaction of the year would have been £5,000,000."
  This is a serious charge, but, in the first place, we are not talking of a year. It is not a permanent Bill, but only one to enable Government to postpone drawing for three or four months when they expect to get a better exchange. Now 1d. on £5,000,000 would be, say, £300,000, from which must be deducted the interest. How does the Chancellor get his £5,000,000? He justifies it by a further statement which I understood to be the words of the Indian Government. They said that—
  "If India had not suspended the free coinage of silver, … it is not improbable that silver might have fallen to 31d. per oz., which would have made the rupee only worth 1s. That would have compelled the Secretary of State to sell during the year bills on India to the amount of Rx. 31,000,000, and would have imposed on the people of India a charge for the exchange of Rx.15,000,000, which would be a charge of £5,800,000 above the provision in the Budget."
  But that statement does not bear out the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the first place, the calculation is not made at 1s. 2d. as he states, but at 1s., which makes a great difference. Secondly, it has no reference at all to the question of drawing, but to the closing of the Mints, which is a very different matter. In the third place, the Indian Government say that the price of silver might have fallen to 31¼d., but the present price, notwithstanding the closing of the Mints, is over 32d. Lastly, they do not say that there would have been a loss of £5,000,000 to the people of India, but that the Government would have received £5,000,000 less than the Budget Estimate, which is a very different thing. Practically, if silver falls, the people of India pay less taxes, and of course the income of the Government falls. It is a loss to the Government, but not to the people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that the Government contemplates the introduction of a gold standard in India.
  1654
  I should like to ask him to give us the opportunity in this House of discussing the matter before this is done? It would, I believe, be a disastrous error. The late Mr. Bagshot, a very high authority, when discussing this question, and after condemning the proposal to close the Mints, said—
  "As usual, however, other cures are suggested, which it is said will be less painful and quicker—one is, that the Indian Government should demonetise silver, and adopt a gold standard. But in this case the remedy would be worse than the disease."
  And he concludes by saying—
  "That, in his judgment, the best result to the Indian Government from this expedient would be far worse than anything it is now, by letting things take their course."
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer refers to France, but France has not got a gold standard. Debts are payable in silver to any amount. Those who are responsible for the closing of the Mints must view with surprise and apprehension the immense imports of silver into India. I was surprised to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer, indeed, deny this, and say that the imports of silver into India are falling. It is no doubt true that in November they were low. But it is very unsafe to take a single month. I believe that they now show a tendency to rise again. But if we take four mouths, from August to November, the amounts were for 1891 £2,000,000; for 1892 £2,800,000; for 1893 £2,500,000; so that though the Mints were closed the amount was £5,000,000 more than 1891, and only £300,000 less than 1892. Moreover, I believe my right hon. Friend will admit that, as I stated last week, there has been a considerable increase in December. But does the amount stated in the Board of Trade comprise the whole? It is stated that a large amount of Austrian silver has gone to India recently. Is this included, or has this amount to be added? Perhaps my right, hon. Friend will kindly tell us when he replies. Those who thought that the closing of the Mints would, I do not say immediately, but within a short time, raise the exchange, did not, I believe, allow sufficiently for three considerations: (1) the amount of rupees hoarded; (2) the effect of the Native Mints; (3) the amount of rupees circulating in other Eastern countries and in Africa. As re-

  1655
  gards the first point, if, as seems probable, the rupees hoarded are being replaced by bullion, it will be a long time before there is any diminution in the circulation. With reference to the Native States, I wish the Under Secretary had given us some information. It would be interesting to know what arrangements have been made with them. Lastly, we must remember that millions of rupees are in circulation outside India. They circulate at a value slightly above that of bullion. The closing of the Mints cannot affect the value in exchange of rupees out of India, and if in India the value of the rupee is raised they will, of course, tend to return, and will for a considerable time keep down the value of the rupee. Sir, as there is some misapprehension on the subject, may I say that I have never advocated the imposition of a' duty on silver per se; but merely maintained that, if the Government have determined artificially to raise the value of the rupee, a duty on silver would be the least objectionable way of doing so? It may seem anomalous, but the whole position is anomalous. I do not, of course, ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to express any opinion on the subject, but I hope the Government will give it their serious consideration: it might have been an alternative to the closing of the Mints; but that step having been taken, it seems a necessary part of the policy. It is no use closing one door and leaving another open, and at any rate it would give the Government a substantial addition to their revenue. Sir, I do not think we should be justified in opposing this Bill, but the responsibility must rest with the Indian Government. If a rise in exchange is so inevitable, the banks and merchants will certainly take the bills at a fair price. But suppose the course of trade should go against them, suppose the production of silver should increase, and the price should fall, or that we should, unfortunately, have a war. The Government have already staked £5,000,000 on the issue. Surely this is enough. If they go further no doubt they may make a profit, but they are running a terrible risk, and may land us in national disaster.
  MR. A. G. H. GIBBShad Hot the slightest intention of opposing the Motion of the Government, although he felt that in closing the Indian Mints they
  1656
  had embarked upon a very desperate experiment. When the Under Secretary for India came down on Friday and proposed the measure he told them there was nothing unusual or abnormal about it. On Wednesday afternoon the hon. Gentleman had a little looked up his authorities, and he thought he had only found one precedent which he considered sufficient for him, and that precedent was the action of a Conservative Government. The hon. Gentleman, therefore, then said there was nothing very unusual or abnormal about the proposal. If a Conservative Government did once speculate in exchange, then, if they had been told the result of that speculation, it would have been very interesting. However, whether a Conservative Government speculated or not, it did not alter the fact that this was a speculation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed displeased because this was called a speculation, and he repelled the idea that it was a speculation on the ground that he knew the Indian exports would increase, because the time when they naturally increased was approaching, and therefore it was thought the exchange must necessarily rise, which would remove it from the category of a speculation. They saw a good deal of speculations in the City, but he did not think that there was any one who ever entered into a speculation who did not know some circumstance which removed the operation from the category of speculation. If the right hon. Gentleman had got some exclusive information as to the Indian exports, which nobody else had got, that would make it a good speculation; but if he only had got information which was known to everyone else, then it could not be a good speculation. As far as he could see, the action of the Government had not done anything towards putting the balance of trade in a better position. He did not know whether the Manchester people in exporting so largely thought that the exchange would go up, but he was told on good authority that this was not at all the case; but that what had occurred was merely their natural action. The exports from Manchester had been small for some time from other causes, not connected with Manchester, and now they had sent forward these goods, and the bills drawn against them were competing with the Government bills. Again, the

  1657
  action of the Government had certainly not increased the exports from India. The exports of wheat had fallen in the most extraordinary way, and it was believed that the natives were storing their wheat because they would not send it over at this rate of exchange. They had been told that the Government of India anticipated there would be an enormous improvement in their trade with gold-using countries, though they admitted that there was likely to be a falling off with silver-using countries. He gave the Indian Government great credit for seeing that, though they were not right as to the gold-using countries, they had been right in the case of silver-using countries. He would just give one or two figures. The exports from India of cotton twist and yarn to China in September, 1892, were 15,000,000 lbs., of the value of upwards of 52 lakhs and 55,000 rupees. In the corresponding month of this year the amount was 7,900,000 lbs., of a value of over 27 lakhs and 87,000 rupees, or hardly half. This showed that the Indian Government were accurate enough in foreseeing that the trade with silver-using countries would fall off. The Chancellor of the Exchequer laid great stress on the fact that this remedy had been asked for by the Indian Government, who knew all about it. What the Indian Government asked for was bimetallism, and when they were told they could not get that they asked for a remedy which appeared to have every disadvantage its worst enemies ascribed to bimetallism, and none of its advantages. They were told, too, that there was no other way out of the difficulty but this: that they could not raise the money by taxes for political reasons; and the right hon. Gentleman did not appear to think that any great diminution of expenditure would be entered upon, though he (Mr. Gibbs) was not at all certain about that. Anyhow, the only other alternative was, apparently, to have a financial crisis at once, and the way in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke on Wednesday last, saying that unless this Bill was passed India would be in a bankrupt position, astonished him very much.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I took the language of Sir David Barbour, in the speech he made in support of the Bill.
  MR. A. GIBBSsaid, it might be Sir David Barbour's language; and, if so, he
  1658
  was sorry for it. But when the Chancellor of the Exchequer adopted that language as his own it was a thing very different indeed from language merely coming from even so eminent a person as Sir David Barbour. But they were not going to have any financial crisis now. The credit of the Government of India was good enough to borrow £10,000,000 or a good deal more. But they must remember that if this experiment did not succeed they would have to go on borrowing; there might come a time when the credit of the Government of India might not be sufficient to keep up such a gigantic speculation, and therefore further borrowings would come to an end, and they would have their political and financial crises upon them both at once. This policy might not be unusual or abnormal at all in many parts of the world. This policy of endeavouring to keep the fixed exchange at a certain rate had been often tried by Governments among the Southern American Republics, and the next stage—though it did not come so quickly as this—was to try and raise a sterling loan in the English market. He had no doubt, if the right hon. Gentleman would consult some of these Finance Ministers who used to do these things, he would find many of them roving about different parts of the Continent quite at his disposal, and for a very small remuneration they would show him a great many of these tricks. He did not know whether this loan was to be permanent or temporary. He supposed it was going to be a temporary loan at first, and eventually to slide into a permanent one. He regretted very much the course which the Government had taken, and he earnestly hoped it would prosper.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. GEORGE RUSSELL, North Beds.): I only rise to say a word or two on three points upon which a personal appeal has been made to me. One is by the hon. Member who has just sat down. He challenges what I said about our proceeding not being abnormal. I think the hon. Gentleman has perhaps confused two separate speeches or parts of speeches of mine. My action was challenged in two separate respects, and in both of these respects it was stated to have been equally unprecedented, abnormal, and unusual. One was our coming to Parliament and asking

  1659
  for general powers over and above the specific purposes we had in view. With regard to that, so far from being unprecedented, I showed that there were 11 precedents exactly to the point. With regard to the much narrower issue of coming to Parliament for borrowing powers because we had failed temporarily to sell our bills, I only referred to one case, which the hon. Gentleman has cited. My reason for making something of that was because it was the noble Lord himself, the late First Lord of the Admiralty, who challenged our conduct in that particular regard us being abnormal, who happened to be the Minister to whom it fell to do precisely the same thing in 1876. With reference to the questions of the right hon. Baronet the Member for London University, the answer to his first question is, that in the statement about the importation of silver the amount imported from Austria is included, but it is very trifling indeed. With reference to the other question of my right hon. Friend, the Native Mints may undoubtedly be coining all the time, but the coins they put out are not legal tender in the rest of India, and are only current in the immediate vicinity of the Native States.
  SIR J. LUBBOCKwas understood to ask whether there was any arrangement with the Native States?
  MR. GEORGE RUSSELL: Not generally, only in four cases of comparatively small importance.
  MR. COHENhad not risen, any more than any of his right hon. or hon. Friends, to offer any opposition to the Third Reading of this Bill. He should not follow his right hon. Friend below him (Mr. Chaplin) in his disquisition on bimetallism, because it appeared to him they were not there, as practical men, so much to inquire what had been the causes which had produced the results they deplored as to consider what were the remedies which they must apply to get them out of, or tide them over, the difficulty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the Second Reading, told them that the Indian Government thought it probable that the disturbance which had occurred was a temporary one, and that they should deal with it by temporary remedies. It seemed to him, therefore, to be material, and, indeed, essential, to inquire into two things: First, how far was
  1660
  the opinion likely to be correct that the difficulty was a temporary one? That was a pertinent inquiry. And, again, to what extent were the suggested remedies likely to be also temporary? It appeared to him that neither the Under Secretary nor the right hon. Gentleman himself attached sufficient importance to the permanent character of the forces which were at work, and which had produced the difficulties the Indian Government was not now experiencing for the first time, but which had grown and grown till the Indian Government could no longer surmount them. The Under Secretary cited the precedent of Lord Halifax, then Sir Charles Wood, in 1860 and 1861, as closely resembling the action which was now being taken. True it did; but the circumstances which gave rise to that action, instead of closely resembling the present situation, were, as the hon. Gentleman himself explained, not only not similar to the present circumstances, but were as far as possible removed from them. The action in 1860 and 1861 was resorted to to provide the means for Indian railways, and was taken because of an apprehended difficulty that the Indian railways would encounter in raising the money. It was not a question of exchange, or of scarcity of gold as compared with silver; it was a question of credit. The Chancellor of the Exchequer also appeared to make too light of the present situation, because, when he gave the sanction of his high authority to the present proposals, he gave some very interesting figures of exports and imports, which, undoubtedly, told in favour of the course he was advocating; but he absolutely appeared to ignore the forces which were operating in the contrary direction. His right hon. Friend the Member for the University of London had called it, in his opinion rightly, a gigantic experiment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to describe it as an experiment, but the experiment would fail if the exchange did not. rise; the experiment could only succeed if the exchange did rise. Well, now, of course he admitted—there was no doubt of that—that the course of the exchange, into which it became necessarily very pertinent to inquire, was very much affected by the balance of trade. The figures which the right hon. Gentleman save—which were most interesting—went

  1661
  far to justify his expectations and the universal hope of everybody in this House, and outside it, was that the balance of trade would appreciate the value of the rupee. But that was only one of the factors which bore upon the fluctuation of the exchange. It was not, he should say, the chief factor. He should like to point out one or two considerations, of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was certain, must be aware though he appeared to ignore them, which tended in the opposite direction. First, there was the abstinence, or the alleged abstinence, of the Lancashire merchants to draw for their export of goods in the belief, said the right hon. Gentleman, that the exchange was going to rise. He found it one of the most startling incidents in this Debate, which had not been free from surprises, to see the glee with which the right hon. Gentleman seemed to observe that, besides the accumulations which were being amassed by the postponement of the sale of the bills of the India Council—he seemed positively to rejoice that there were accumulations by merchants up in Liverpool and Lancashire which would compete with and render more impossible the realising of those drafts. And with regard to the accumulations of the Government, they might be quite sure, as the hon. Member for the City of London pointed out, that the Lancashire merchants and still more the merchants and exchange dealers in the City of London very vigilantly watched, not only the amount the Government ought to draw from year to year, but the amount accumulated against them from the unliquidated sterling obligation in this year of 1893. And, lastly, he would come to one most important—perhaps more important than any other element which was operating against this hoped-for and expected balance of trade— namely, the important increase in the sterling debt of India on the London money market. The right hon. Gentleman surely must know that the exchange depended quite as much on the service of the debt in London as it did on the export trade, and the right hon. Gentleman must be aware of what perhaps the House had not perhaps got present to its mind. He had taken the figures from the Parliamentary Papers, 167 and 431. The amount raised by India in London from
  1662
  April, 1892, to September, 1893, amounted to no less than £4,461,000, involving a permanent charge—permanent because it was not in the form of six or 12 months bills—a permanent charge of, at 3 per cent., £140,000. To that might be added the £3,000,000 which had been raised in the form of six months' bills And you thus find there was a charge against India of something like £250,000 of money which had been accumulated in less than two years—in 19 months. He would ask the House, Who could say that this would not continue? And was it not quite clear that by this very measure they were themselves creating—and they will be obliged to continue to create—a force which would neutralise the influence, the beneficial influence, he hoped, of the balance of trade which the right hon. Gentleman expected. And there was one last consideration which must be borne in mind. He did not wish to put this consideration as a pessimist, or as in the least bit indicating the impending bankruptcy of India. But it was unquestioned that, while all the forces—they were very few—to which the right hon. Gentleman referred as benefitting the value of the rupee were matters of expectation, matters of estimate, and matters of speculation about which the right hon. Gentleman might be right, but about which he himself would be the last to dogmatise and be certain he was right —whilst these things were operating in favour of benefitting the rupee, the action of the Lancashire merchants, the accumulation of their own obligations of past years, and the growing and increasing service they had to remit to India—these were not matters of estimate, but were ascertained forces which all worked against the Indian Government. Now, he would like to say just one word on the second point, with which he was about to conclude his remarks. He pointed out this: that it seemed to him necessary to consider not only whether those obligations were likely to be temporary, but also whether their remedies were likely to be likewise temporary. If the Government had desired—and he thought they might take it that the Government did desire—to succeed in this experiment—he would not call it speculation—then, at least, he would press upon the Government, while there was still time, to take care their experiment should be

  1663
  temporary. He did not ask them to declare their intentions. There was nothing which gave him greater satisfaction than the few observations of the right hon. Gentleman, in which he said that he was going to hold his own counsel; he was not going to press for any declaration of the intentions of the Government; but he would ask the right hon. Gentleman to take care that the rule which he was setting down for himself should be observed with a little more care than he (Mr. Cohen) had reason to fear was observed by the authorities in India. He did not know whether his right hon. Friend opposite was correct or was not correct in assuming that there was nothing exceptional or abnormal in the exportation of silver to the other side. But if, as he hoped, there was to be a duty, some day or other—he would not attempt to divine the time— imposed on the importation into India of silver, he did hope that the right hon. Gentleman, if he should be in Office at the time—they could not expect him to hope for that—would take care, if possible, that no leaking out of the intentions of the Government should take place either on this side or the other. He would return for a moment to what he was saying. If the difficulties of the Government were, as the right hon. Gentleman said, temporary, why not make their remedies temporary? Why create capital stock? They knew the right hon. Gentleman had admitted that the precedent of his noble Friend the Member for Middlesex was not particularly tempting. He would not press the right hon. Gentleman to make any engagement to-night, but he did hope that he would bear in mind that, although he had power under this Bill to create capital stock, still, if he were sincerely desirous, as he was sure he was, that his remedies should be as temporary as his difficulties, he would take care that he exercised his powers in a manner which would enable him to arrest his action and liquidate the whole business for good or bad, both of debts which had been created and the assets which had been accumulated on the other side, at any moment he thought it desirable to do so. He did not ask him to pledge himself to the form in which he was going to raise this money—that would be contrary to his canon—but he asked him to bear
  1664
  in mind that it was particularly desirable, as the right hon. Gentleman must be aware from his experience, to make temporary provision of assets to meet what he considers temporary liabilities. And he would only say that he personally should have preferred that the Government had not embarked in this speculation, which, he thought, might more properly have been left to the private adventure of the Lancashire exporters. His hon. Friend the Member for Kingston (Sir E. Temple) told them the other night that when a similar difficulty occurred he collected the gold and sent it home; and the hon. Member for White-chapel (Mr. Montagu), who was an authority on the subject, told them there was as much gold in India as in France. He quite recognised the difficulty of the Indian Government, and hoped nothing he had said was likely to add to the embarrassment of the situation, but he did ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to aggravate by his remedies the disease he was trying to cure, and not to give his sanction to any arrangement which would be permanent in character or which would establish a precedent which might be regretted in the long run.
  MR. MACFARLANEsaid, he desired to say a few words on this subject, having had considerable experience in connection with India. The right hon. Member for Bodmin said that the rise in the value of the rupee seriously affected the natives of India. Well, it might have an important influence on prices; but the great question of exchange did not extend to the remote districts—to the bazaars throughout the country. Even if it were so, however, the right hon. Gentleman forgot that a rise of 1d. in the rupee would be compensated for by a saving in taxation which would about cover the extra charge. A great deal of reproach had been cast upon the Government for having closed the Mints without having immediately affected the affairs of exchange. He thought the Government were to be congratulated that that did not follow, because, if there had been a rush, it would have dislocated all commerce. There had been no appreciable rise; all that the Government had done was to effect a fall in the value. Then they heard of the exports; but the reason why the exports

  1665
  of India were not what they usually were was that this was not the season. This was not the season for grapes, and they were not as plentiful as they otherwise would be, and the same applied to Indian exports. There was one thing that must follow the closing of the Mints, and that was that some day or other, when it may suit the convenience of the Government, a certain Import Duty must be imposed upon silver introduced into India, because as the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen) said the other night, there was no closing the front door and leaving the back door open. Silver was now being poured into the country, and it must affect the exchange. It was being poured in in considerable quantities. He might be allowed to correct one small error in the speech of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. He spoke of the rupee being used by the natives of India as ornaments. There was no such thing. They were never used in that way. When they were used at all they were melted. There was one point that had not been referred to by any of the speakers—it was as to the consequences that might follow. Hon. Gentlemen had spoken of the possible bankruptcy of the Indian Government. He could not conceive anything of the sort while this country was solvent. Was it conceivable that they, as Governors of that great Dependency, would allow the Indian Government to be insolvent? It was impossible while there was £1 in the City of London. He thought it Would be an advantage to the Indian Government if they formally recognised the actual liabilities they had involved themselves in, and made these loans Imperial. They had been contracted, and nobody denied it. They might save £1,000,000 sterling if they did that. Well, he had at this moment a Motion on the Paper for the purpose of moving for a Commission to inquire into the expenditure regarding the Revenues of India.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: In India also?
  MR. MACFARLANEsaid, yes, if the right hon. Gentleman liked. There was an impression that there had been some change. The Revenue of India was a heavy charge. He did not refer, on this question, to such charges as that
  1666
  of the Opium Commission, which were not very large, and applied only to small things; but the Debt of India was a growing Debt, and it had been growing for a great many years. He did not suppose he could bring on his Motion this Session; but he hoped next Session —if they were ever to have another, and his hon. Friend on the other side of the House thought not—the Government would be prepared to give favourable consideration to the matter. He said that the Government of India cost us £36,000 a year on one item alone; there was another item, a charge of £48,000 by the Banks of England and Ireland for managing Indian loans. That was a most unreasonable charge—
  SIR W. HARCOURT: No; it is not £48,000.
  MR. MACFARLANE: No; £43,000. That was the point. It was the question of the home charges that he wanted referred to this Commission. They were growing, as he had said. Since 1886 the Debt of India had increased by £40,000,000. That was a very serious matter. It was a matter to be considered. He had no word to say against this Bill. It was a necessity. He did not understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give this as a permanent loan. If the exchange rose temporarily, that would engage his attention. But hon. Gentlemen had assumed that this would be a permanent loan. He believed that by imposing a duty on silver the Government could raise all that would be necessary. He begged to say that he would support the Bill.
  SIR J. GORST: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I want to say just a few words in order to vindicate-the Government of India against the charge of increasing their expenditure which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made on the authority of a pamphlet he has read. The statement made by him was that, as compared with the years 1892 and 1893—
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I made no statement.
  SIR J. GORST: The statement quoted with his approbation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer quoted this pamphlet to show that in the years 1892–93, as compared with 1879–80, though the loss on exchange had increased by only £4,750,000, the total

  1667
  expenditure had been increased by £22,500,000. Now, that is wholly incorrect. The expenditure of India is, in one sense, always increasing; but it is the profitable expenditure on Railways and Canals, which are being opened every year, that has brought up the total, and the profits on which, although they are now set out in the accounts, the right hon. Gentleman has taken no account of. I have now before me the accounts for two years which were prepared by the pamphleteer, and which have been referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The accounts, which will be found in the Library—Paper 279 of the Session of 1880—show that the net expenditure of India for the year 1879–80 was Rx.45,490,407, while that for 1892–3 was Rx. 49,435,200. Therefore, it appears that in the latter year the net expenditure had only increased by Rx.4,000,000. Against this, however, must be placed the sum of Rx.4,729,200, occasioned by the loss by exchange, which shows that the net expenditure, instead of increasing, has actually diminished by Rx.750,000.
  MR. GOSCHEN: There was an under- standing that this Debate should be brought to a conclusion about this time (7.30 p.m.), and I hope we may all observe that understanding. After the long speech I made on a recent occasion I certainly do not intend to trouble the House myself with more than the fewest observations at present. But I would wish to say this: that I think the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government of India can scarcely be sorry that this Bill has been thoroughly debated. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government of India have had the advantage of some very able speeches indeed setting out the policy of that Government. The hon. Baronet the Member for the Kingston Division of Surrey (Sir R. Temple) took one line and argued with great ability, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin has explained the position of Lord Herschell's Committee. On the other hand, I think it important for the Government at home, and the Government of India, and the various interests concerned, that all the great dangers and complexities that surround the matter
  1668
  should have been debated and threshed out in the House of Commons. Notwithstanding the late period of the Session, this Debate has not been a waste of time—we on this side certainly have not intended it to be such, and I think the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer will agree that it has not been a waste of time. I owe the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin an apology for having conveyed to his mind the impression that I held the Committee of which he was a member responsible for having been blind to the fact that the rupee might not rise. I admit that my observations might bear that construction, and I wish to withdraw any possible blame that might appear to attach to the Committee. But I would point out that it appeared to me to be part of the plan of the Indian Government that a gold standard should be established. That standard was to be fixed at 1s. 4d., so far as it would be called a standard at all.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The Committee fixed it.
  MR. GOSCHEN: The right hon. Gentleman admits that the Committee fixed that point in order to prevent a rise above that line. I did not understand my right hon. Friend to admit that they fixed that with reference to the introduction of a gold standard. They did, believe, expect the exchange to rise to 1s. 4d., and they clearly indicated that a gold standard—to which Sir David Barbour made special reference— was to be hoped for. We seem far from that point now, and the remedy suggested by my right hon. Friend behind me, that gold should be exported from India to pay the debts of India, shows that we are extremely far from any progress in the direction of a gold standard. The other part of the experiment must stand by itself; but so far as a gold standard is concerned, I do not see that we are approaching it, nor do I expect that we should get up to 1s. 4d. rapidly. I will now say a few words on the important point that has been discussed in every part of the House—namely, the question of the Import Duty on silver, The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what his views were on the subject. I must confess I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in demur-

  1669
  ring to answer the question from the point of view of any speculation which it might create. It is a matter on which, naturally, the mouths of the Government are closed, whilst those of other people are not closed. He would be a reckless speculator who would argue from anything that has fallen from this side of the House that the question of Import Duties has been settled one way or the other. It has been suggested that the export of silver to India is based on some idea possibly arising in India of the early imposition of a Silver Duty. Well, if the Government of India had that in their mind it would be their duty to make up their mind upon it without a moment's delay, and act upon their decision, and not leave so extremely dangerous an idea to float, it may be for months, amongst the business community. It is a matter that ought to be dealt with at once, if it is to be dealt with at all. If there is that speculation it is marring the experiment of the Indian Government itself, and, therefore, although I do not expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say one single word with regard to the probability, I think it right to refer to the matter in the way in which I have referred to it. Personally, I must express surprise at having heard an Import Duty upon silver advocated. I can quite see that such a course may be necessary for the success of the experiment that has been entered upon, because, when once artificial measures are embarked on, one artificial measure is obliged to be followed by others in order to make such a course of policy a success. But of this I am sure: that if those who advocate the imposition of this duty will reflect, they will see that it is not by artificial measures that they will be able to remedy the present state of things. I think that it is highly probable that an Import Duty upon silver would greatly aggravate some of the difficulties which exist. I am bound to state my opinion on it as others have stated theirs. And that brings me to one of the last observations I will make— namely, that during the whole of the Debate the defenders of the action of the Government—and I think I must include the defenders of the Committee—have not dealt sufficiently with the effect of the closing of the Indian Mints on other branches of trade besides the trade of India. It is contended that the trade of many
  1670
  other parts of the world is jeopardised by this arrangement, and I mention it now because it is clear that the imposition of an Import Duty on silver would aggravate that part of the question, and make it still more difficult in India to compete with China and Japan, and other silver-using countries. If, therefore, such a step is in contemplation, I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not think that there is an agreement upon the matter. I regret that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer dealt in the way he did with the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford. I think that from the point of view of my right hon. Friend it was a most able speech. He has thoroughly mastered the arguments on both sides of the question, and I think it was scarcely fair of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to treat my right hon. Friend as he did in saying that he knew better than the Committee or the Indian Government, or the Government of the Queen. We all put forward our views and arguments with as much force as we can, and I must say that I think the speech of my right hon. Friend, especially considering how it was supported by chapter and verse, deserved better treatment at the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has got such an immense regard for the Government of India that he finds fault with the right hon. Gentleman for attacking it. Has he himself not attacked it just now? Has he not attacked its expenditure? He took a statement in a pamphlet reflecting seriously upon the expenditure in India. He quoted it to the House in mistake, because it was gross expenditure and not net expenditure, and on that he fastened a kind of attack on the Indian Government for their general expenditure. I must say my right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford examined the facts and figures more closely than the Chancellor of the Exchequer examined them when he made this attack on the Indian Government. That attack has been answered by my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge; but, of course, if the Indian Government can economise they ought to do so, and partly in that way meet the difficulty which has arisen. But I expect it is not by any generalities in this House that they could

  1671
  be induced to pursue that course. The responsibilities resting on the Indian Government at the present time are immense. We are going to read this Bill a third time. I confess that I part with the Bill with some misgivings, but, at the same time, I hope that it may meet the occasion for which it is introduced, and be more successful than the precedent of 1876, which was quoted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer without examination as to whether it had or had not succeeded in its object. I do not know whether the Government have gained or lost by it; but it cannot be called successful, because a portion of the Debt in respect of which the loan of 1876 was authorised has had to be made permanent. I hope that on this occasion no portion of the Debt will be made permanent, and that in six months' time it will be possible for the right hon. Gentleman to tell the House that the forecast of the Government has been correct, and that by the measure they have adopted they have not only staved off this great difficulty for the moment, but that they have paved the way for a more satisfactory course of Indian finance in the future.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read the third time, and passed.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.—(No. 274.)
  COMMITTEE. [Progress, 15th December.]
  [TWENTY-SECOND NIGHT.]
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 19 (Election and qualification of Guardians).
  Amendment proposed,
  In page 12, line 30, before the word " There," to insert the words " The Local Government Board shall appoint to be members of each Board of Guardians a number of persons not exceeding one for every five elected Guardians, and not exceeding three on any one Board."— (Mr. Rathbone.)
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  SIR R. PAGETsaid, he hoped the Committee would remember that at the close of their proceedings the other night they had the benefit of listening to a very able speech by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Go-
  1672
  vernment Board. The right hon. Gentleman clearly put before the Committee the reasons which had induced him to come to the conclusion that a change in those who had the duty of administering the Poor Law would not have any material effect on the administration of the Poor Law itself. There could be no doubt as to the views held by the right hon. Gentleman, because he expressed them very distinctly. The right hon. Gentleman said—
  "He laid down this principle: that the Guardians in rural parishes could not give outdoor relief except under the regulations of the Local Government Board, and those regulations safeguarded the ratepayers."
  Later on the right hon. Gentleman said—
  "There was no power to grant outdoor relief except in accordance with the orders of the Local Government Board, and those orders were in force in every part of the Kingdom."
  The right hon. Gentleman concluded by saying—
  "The Board of Guardians were simply the machinery by which the regulations of the Local Government Board were carried out."
  The right hon. Gentleman's arguments were in the direction of an assertion that so supreme was the power of the Local Government Board that the ratepayers were protected and uniformity of system was assured. The right hon. Gentleman shook his head, but what was the meaning of his argument if it was not— "Don't fear anything; my Department has such complete control that the Board of Guardians are but the machinery." The right hon. Gentleman meant that the regulations were so complete that they were bound to be so rigidly followed that nobody need fear any extravagance. What he (Sir R. Paget) wanted to point out was, that the right hon. Gentleman's own Report, published and circulated within the last few weeks, entirely refuted and confuted the whole of that argument. The ground was taken from under the right hon. Gentleman's feet. Since the last meeting of the Committee he (Sir R. Paget) had referred to that Report. Various comparisons were made in it. One of them was the ratio of expenditure on outdoor relief to the whole expenditure on indoor and outdoor relief. He found that in North Wales the expenditure on outdoor relief bore the proportion to the expenditure on the whole of the relief of 85 per cent. The figure in Shropshire was 40 per

  1673
  cent. Was it possible after that to Contend that any regulations of the Local Government Board were such that they could so control the expenditure that they could have one system in force in every Union? It could not be. The same regulations were in force, but the administration was different. What was to prevent Shropshire, with its 40 per cent., sliding back, slowly and steadily, until it reached the 85 per cent. of North Wales? It was a question entirely of administration. What was to prevent North Wales from pulling itself together, introducing a healthy scale, and gradually improving until it reached the high pitch of Shropshire? Nothing but administrations He had just now asked a friend, who was well-informed on the matter, how it was that the percentage in Shropshire was so extremely low, and the reply was, that it was because they had had a generation of men—men of the stamp of Sir Baldwin Leighton—influencing the Boards of Guardians in the direction of putting their system of Poor Law administration on the soundest basis. Another table showed a comparison of the number of poor relieved— indoor and out—per thousand of the population. In Norfolk they were 44 per thousand; in the West Hiding of Yorkshire they were 18 per thousand. To take the comparison in the larger area for the Local Government Board groups, they found that in the North-West groups the number was 19 per thousand, and in the South-West group 38 per thousand. The Report dealt with figures and facts, but it did not attempt to explain away the matter. Those who knew the secrets of administration knew that it was administration, and that alone, which had caused this discrepancy. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman's attention to another comparison, also from his Report, and that was with regard to old-age inmates of the Unions, those who were over 65 years of age. There was an interesting table showing what was the proportion borne by the inmates of workhouses of 65 years of age and upwards to the whole population of that age. They found that in Hertfordshire there was, per thousand of recipients of indoor relief, no fewer than 364; practically one in three. In Westmoreland the number was 147 per thousand. In the one case the numbers were
  1674
  one in three, and in the other case one in seven. Those differences were extraordinary. Again, in connection with workhouse expenditure, they found that in Rutlandshire the consumption of wines and spirits was nearly 13s. per head of the inmates of the workhouses, whilst in the Leeds Union it was ¼d. per head. To what was the difference owing? Administration.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERsaid, the consumption of wines and spirits was owing to the stimulants being prescribed by the medical officers.
  SIR R. PAGETsaid, he thought that, if the right hon. Gentleman would make personal visits to some of these places, he Would find that this expenditure was owing more to the orders and administration of the Boards of Guardians themselves than to the action of the medical officers. A strict Board of Guardians would say to their medical officer—"We cannot allow expenditure to run away from us in this way." His (Sir R. Paget's) contention was that, no matter what regulations were in force, administrative ingenuity would drive a coach and four through them all. He did not make any charge whatever against the Boards of Guardians of the future, but he wished to ask whether there was any reason to believe that, if the Boards came to be composed of a very different class of persons from that which now supplied the Guardians, the administration of the Poor Law would tend in the direction of strictness and economy rather than of laxity? Since the Poor Law reform of 1834 things had very much changed. The labouring man was better off; he was better fed, better clothed, and better housed; he was more independent, and in every way better fitted for the position he might have to take under this Bill. He wanted the right hon. Gentleman to consider gravely what might be the possible effect of his measure. The question was really of such magnitude, and required to be treated with such minuteness, if it were treated properly, that the circumstances of the moment were not favourable to the due discussion of the measure. The House was attenuated, and the circumstances were such that if surely could not be a reasonable time for entering into so great a question. The lesson of 1834 was a bitter lesson, lax principles of administration

  1675
  having been allowed to creep in until they corrupted the whole of the body politic. That state of things had now been put an end to by a gradual and steady improvement in the administration of the Poor Law. The sum and substance of all Poor Law management and expenditure was administration. They all knew that there was still great room for improvement, and great demand for reform. Since 1834 there had been no great consideration of the Poor Law. The time had come when there ought to be such a consideration, and when full inquiry was needed. The Commission on Old Age Pensions dealt, no doubt, with a very important matter, but something further was needed. There was the question of classification of workhouses—
  An hon. MEMBER, rising to Order, asked whether the hon. Baronet was speaking to the Question?
  THE DEPUTY CHAIRMANcalled on Sir R. Paget to proceed.
  SIR R. PAGETsaid, that those who had heard the important speech delivered by the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. H. H. Fowler) would agree with him that it would be hardly respectful to the right hon. Gentleman if the points dealt with in that speech were left unnoticed. There were no Party polities on this question. There was an earnest desire, on both sides of the House he believed, to improve the system of Poor Law administration. He feared that hasty action without the possibility of proper consideration might lead once more to a state of things as melancholy, degrading, and ruinous as that which was pointed out in the Report of 1834. One could not rest content under a state of things in which one out of every three or four persons of the age of 65 was now receiving relief, whilst one in 18 out of the whole population was also in receipt of relief last year, instead of the gradual reduction which one had been looking for; and finding year by year there was a distinct and marked increase in the number of those who obtained relief, the matter was one of great and national importance, and he thought it was well worthy of the right hon. Gentleman's careful consideration.
  SIR A. HAYTERsaid, he hoped the Committee would not delay
  1676
  long before rejecting this Amendment. It seemed to him that there were three decisive flaws in it, every one of which should induce the Committee to reject it. The first was, that it rendered it compulsory on the Local Government Board to send down and make inquiry as to who were fit persons to serve on the Board; secondly, it would add to the bureaucratic character of the Bill by adding to the duties of the Local Government Board; and, lastly, it was absolutely contrary to the whole spirit of the Bill. The first sub-section of the clause said—
  "(1) There shall be no ex officio or nominated Guardians."
  He would ask any Member of the Committee if the Amendment of the hon. Member for Carnarvon was not directly in the teeth of that sub-section? The Amendment would take the selection of a section of the Guardians out of the hands of the ratepayers and place it in the hands of the Local Government Board. He had listened to the speeches which had been made in favour of the Amendment, and had not heard a single argument which could get over any one of the flaws he had pointed out. For that reason he thought they ought not to continue the discussion.
  MR. CAVENDISHsaid, he ventured to make a few remarks, because he had the honour at the present moment to hold the position of Chairman of a Board of Guardians in North Lonsdale. He was bound to say that that position had not been conferred upon him because of any merits of his own. He had been selected because of the services of his grandfather, who had preceded him in the post, and who, since 1834, had done his best to administer, in a proper spirit, the Poor Law in the district in which he resided. He (Mr. Cavendish) could quite understand, and heartily supported, the desire of the Government to abolish the existing system of ex officio Guardians. Under the present system, as the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill had pointed out on Friday night, the Magistrates were scattered about in such numbers in different parts of the country that there was nothing like uniformity. He, however, should regret to see the ex officio Guardians abolished, and he hoped they would find some means of securing some sort of ex officio membership. Ex officios had, on the whole,

  1677
  and considering their difficult position, done their work well, and it would be difficult for many of these to continue members of the Boards under the elective system, seeing that they had numerous and most important duties to discharge in other capacities. Take the case of the Secretary to the Treasury (Sir J. T. Hibbert). That right hon. Gentleman had done an immense amount of good in the Union with which he (Mr. Cavendish) was connected, but now, having regard to his official duties at the Treasury, he would be incapable of performing the duties of an elected Guardian. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman would consent to serve as an ex officio member, and at certain times, when grave necessity for it arose, would be able to give the Board the benefit of his advice. The right hon. Gentleman had duties to perform in connection with the County Council, and in the future he might have others in connection with the Parish and District Councils. It would be a great misfortune if the valuable services and experience of such manufacturers as the right hon. Gentleman could not be availed of. He, therefore, hoped the Government might discover some way, either by this or some other Amendment, of utilising the services of such gentlemen.
  MR. LUTTRELLsaid, there was now a clear issue before the House. They had to decide whether they should allow these ex officio Guardians to continue, or whether they should require Boards of Guardians to be composed entirely of representatives of the people. They had heard a great deal in the course of the Debate as to the merits of ex officio members of Boards of Guardians. He was sure they on that (the Ministerial) side of the House desired in no way to minimise the efforts of those gentlemen who had given up their time at great sacrifice to themselves to serve the public on Boards of Guardians. But he would point out that it was a question of principle. It was a question as to whether they wished to have a really representative government in the localities —government by the people unhampered and unfettered by any nominees or men appointed by Local or Central Bodies. They wanted to have in the local districts their local representatives carrying on their work unhampered by ex officio
  1678
  Guardians. The hon. Member for Carnarvon, no doubt, was a gentleman of great experience in these matters, and his views were entitled to great respect. The hon. Member proposed that Boards of Guardians should have the power of nominating men to act with them. What was the reason of his Amendment? He told them he moved it because he was afraid that if there were no continuity of ex officio Guardians—that was to say, of men of leisure and wide experience— there would be maladministration of poor relief. The hon. Member told them also that he feared that unless these gentlemen were appointed or nominated in some form or other they would not take part in the work of Boards of Guardians. That was entirely contrary to all their experience. They had found in County Council elections that men who, previously to the Local Government Act of 1888, had taken part in local affairs were willing to stand for election as County Councillors. His hon. Friend wished to almost force the ex officio class on Boards of Guardians. Well, a good many faults had been attributed to the squires, but he (Mr. Luttrell) had never heard before that they were at all bashful, and he believed that they would be perfectly willing to come forward for election. One hon. Member had said that ex officios would not stand for election because they were too busy. If such were the case, how could they afford the time to take part now in the administration of local relief? A great deal had been said about the evils which were apparent in Poor Law administration previously to the year 1834; but these evils had arisen mainly, or very greatly, through the action of the very class of men whom his hon. Friend now proposed to put on the Boards of Guardians. Lord Althorp, when he introduced the Poor Law Bill of 1834, said that—
  "From the conclusion of the last century up to the present time the Magistracy of this country, though acting with very good feelings of humanity, had in the administration of the Poor Laws fallen into considerable mistakes, and he had himself, in his own situation as a Magistrate, not unfrequently felt bound to act upon bad and erroneous principles in this respect. With this view, he should propose that Justices should not in future have the power of ordering parochial relief to persons in their own homes—he meant outdoor relief to the poor."
  The proposal of the Government was to

  1679
  give the people more representative power. By granting increased representative, power in 1836 Parliament, to a large extent, abolished the evils which then existed, and he believed that when a still greater increase of representative power was given the Poor Law administration would be still further improved. It was not necessary to have such Guardians as his hon. Friend proposed, because there was now a Central Authority. The President of the Local Government Board stated the other night that he had ample power to safeguard the interests of the ratepayers and to prevent any wanton or undue expenditure on Poor Law relief. He (Mr. Luttrell) hoped that the Committee would shortly go to a Division, and he felt perfectly convinced that in one Lobby would be found the friends of privilege, and in the other Lobby the friends of democratic representation, unhampered by officialism.
  MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN, in supporting the Amendment, said that, although he did not in any sense approve of the present system of ex officio or nominated Guardians, he felt that a strong case was made out by the President of the Local Government Board when he pointed out that in some place there were too many such Guardians, and in other cases too few. While their attendance was irregular, and many only put in an appearance on special occasions when there were offices to be filled up, all agreed that some change in the system was necessary, but he could not see why they should on that ground get rid of ex officios altogether. No one would deny that ex officio Guardians had rendered most useful service in Poor Law administration. The test to be applied was outdoor relief, and they all knew that prior to 1834 the country was being pauperised by that system of relief. Returns which had recently been published showed that in those Unions which were largely controlled by ex officio Guardians the smallest amount of outdoor relief was, as a rule, paid; and vice versâ. Wales, for instance, stood very badly indeed with respect to outdoor relief; the percentage was 80·8, whereas for the whole Kingdom it was 53·7. That was, he believed, partly attributable to the fact that in Wales the ex officio Guardians were less regular in their attendance than
  1680
  elsewhere. In some cases, too, the proceedings were conducted in Welsh, a language which the ex officios did not understand. Wrexham, however, had a smaller expenditure for outdoor relief than any other Union in Wales. The Wrexham Union, however, was controlled by an ex officio Chairman, and that was the explanation of the low expenditure. He believed that the President of the Local Government Board was heartily in favour of everything which this Amendment was intended to produce. The right hon. Gentleman had told the Committee that he was in favour of the present ex officio Guardians being returned on the Poor Law Boards in the future; that he believed they were sure to be elected, and that their position and influence on the Boards would be strengthened because they were elected. That might be true of a great part of England. No doubt the majority of the most active and most useful ex officios would be elected under the provisions of the Bill. But the Bill applied not only to England, but to Wales; and did the right hon. Gentleman think that in the Welsh-speaking parts of Wales there would be the slightest chance of these Magistrates being elected on the Boards of Guardians? He supposed that the Magistrates who had recently been appointed would be elected on the Boards; but, speaking from personal experience—his father having been for 25 years the Chairman of a Welsh Union—he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that in the greater part of Wales it would be as easy for the camel to go through the eye of a needle as for an ex officio Guardian to be elected under this Bill. Take what had occurred in the case of the County Council of Denbighshire. Of the 48 Councillors only 11 were Magistrates, and every one of these eleven came from the most eastern part of the county where the people were almost entirely English or English-speaking. But in the most western part of the county he was perfectly certain that no ex officio Guardian of the class which the right hon. Gentleman desired to see elected would be returned on the new Poor Law Boards. Surely, if it were important that men who had experience in the administration of the Poor Law—men who were placed beyond the temptations that others might be under; men who had always

  1681
  striven to keep down the poor rates— should be returned on the new Boards, the fact that no such men would be placed on the Boards in a great many parts of Wales was a very good argument in favour of the Amendment, or of some provision excepting Wales from this clause of the Bill. Looking generally at the clause, he should say that he thought it was a disastrous thing to enter into this reform of the Poor Law hurriedly at this season of the year. He thought this question far transcended any other question dealt with in the Bill. It was all very well to set up Parish Councils and District Councils. It was all very well to democratise our system of parochial government of our Boards by which sanitation was carried out. These Boards offered no strong temptations to corruption; but when they proposed to set up a body which not only levied rates, but could distribute these rates amongst the people who elected the members of that body, it was a serious matter to England, while in Wales it would be disastrous. He supported the Amendment because he thought it would give in all cases just that amount of control and that amount of safeguard which was most important when it was proposed to bring a fundamental change like this into operation.
  MR. LAMBERTsaid, he thought the hon. Gentle-man would have some trouble in getting the Welsh Members to agree with him that Wales ought to be excluded from the operation of the clause. With regard to the Amendment before the Committee, he was surprised that it should have been moved by the hon. Member for Arfon, after that hon. Gentleman had passed such severe strictures on the ex officio system as a whole. It should not be forgotten that the principle of the clause had been justified by the Conservative Party. It was a principle that was contained in the Local Government Act of 1888, for which the Party opposite were responsible. The Act disestablished the ex officios. The work of the county had hitherto been carried on by nominated Magistrates.
  MR. W. LONG: They were not ex officios.
  MR. LAMBERTsaid, the Magistrates were not subjected to popular election; and as they were not under popular control the late Government thought it wise
  1682
  to disestablish these gentlemen and bring into existence a body placed on the broadest franchise. They only left one forlorn set of creatures, called the Joint Committee, probably as a sort of remembrance of old times. The evils which existed prior to 1834 were deplorable; but they did not exist because the Boards of Guardians were elected, but because they were not elected; and the Government did not do anything to alter the principle of the Poor Law, for what they did was merely to bring the system of election up to date. He had been a member of a Board of Guardians for the past six years, and that Board felt so strongly on the subject that by a very large majority they voted for the abolition of the ex officio element. He failed to see where the ex officios were superior to the elected Guardians. Magistrates were nominated ex officios because they had some judicial capacity, and not because of any capacity for dealing with Poor Law affairs. He believed that, as the British people had never shown themselves ungrateful to those who had served them well, the best of the ex officio Guardians would be re-elected under the Bill, and would thereby bring a great deal more dignity and weight to the deliberations of the Boards. It had been said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Arfon Division that, as a rule, the ex officios only attended when there was some job to be done and some patronage to be exercised. He would not bring such a sweeping charge against them; but he would relieve them from such a stigma. He did not believe that the existence of ex officios on the Boards was necessary in order to secure continuity of policy. He believed that the provision of the President of the Local Government Board providing that one-third of the Guardians should retire annually was a far better safeguard for continuity than any ex officio element could possibly be. It was not his experience that the ex officios were great economists. It was the elected Guardians that had shown themselves most careful of the ratepayers' money; and he felt perfectly sure that, if any Board were unduly extravagant, it would not be re-elected. He did not know of any body of Englishmen who were partial to the payment of rates. Most Englishmen regarded rates in the same way as Mem-

  1683
  bers of Parliament regarded General Elections—necessary evils, all right once in a way, but if too often repeated liable to become intolerable bores. Hon. Gentlemen opposite declared that District Councils were necessary. But, then, would it not be a palliable absurdity to set up two Boards—the District Council and the Board of Guardians in the same district? As a ratepayer he should protest against any such proposal. Ratepayers did not object to have their money spent on objects of usefulness, but they did object to spend it on costly machinery of administration. The President of the Local Government Board had done his best to conduct the Bill peaceably through the House, and his efforts deserved the praise of all Members; but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would stick to this clause, which would place our local government system on a sounder basis.
  MR. LAWRENCEsaid that, as he had always protested against social questions being treated from a Party point of view, he intended to approach this question solely from the standpoint of Poor Law administration. It would have been more to the point had the last speaker, who said he was a member of a Board of Guardians which voted for the extinction of the ex officio element, given the Committee the acts of those ex officios which had caused their condemnation. The hon. Member said that the ex officios attended the Board meetings to do acts of jobbery and patronage, but the patronage which these Boards gave away was not such as specially recommended itself to the class from which ex officio members were drawn. From what he had seen of Local Boards, the presence of ex officio members had more than once prevented most undesirable jobs which were sought to be done, not in the public interest, but contrary to it. It was because this question was so difficult and so special that he was sorry it was brought before the country at the present crisis when a General Election was so near, and not dealt with in a judicial spirit after a General Election by a Bill with the consensus of the two Front Benches. He was rather surprised that this Government, which claimed to be a decentralising administration, should be so inconsistent as to put up one of its
  1684
  members to argue that the ratepayer should not be defended by his own action, but by a body sitting at Whitehall. If a ratepayer had only to depend upon that body he pitied the ratepayer. It was once thought that the men who paid the rates were fairly entitled to call the tune, but the President of the Local Government Board had given away his whole case by practically acknowledging the soundness of the contention that under the new suffrage people would have the power without the responsibility of payment. He would be quite satisfied if the President of the Local Government Board could do something to do away with the compound householder. In urban districts there was not the same danger there was in rural districts, that there would be a connection between the voting and the administration of out-relief. It was important that those who had advocated out-relief should have brought home to their pockets the result of the policy they supported at the poll; and if only this were secured, he would not hesitate to trust the democratic principle; but it was wrong that the determination of a policy should rest with those who would not bear the cost of it. Whilst it was desirable that there should be uniformity of action throughout the country, it was also necessary that there should be considerable local elasticity, and, seeing the diversity there was throughout England and even in the Metropolis, it was preposterous to say that the Local Government Board had any appreciable controlling influence. They could not in these days control from Whitehall a Local Body elected on the widest suffrage; and it was only in the most extreme circumstances that the President of the Local Government Board could come to the relief of the local ratepayers. It was not a money question only, but it was one of the demoralisation of the poorer classes for beyond all doubt demoralisation would follow the operation of such a clause as this. The ratepayers were perfectly prepared to pay any rates if only they could produce an improvement in the condition of the working classes, or even in the condition of those who did not work. In this matter of the influence of the Local Government Board, he would remind them that in this winter, when there was no abnormal distress, the President of the

  1685
  Board had been urged to issue a Circular to stimulate Local Authorities to do their duty. If this were done in the green tree what would be done in the dry when these Local Boards were formed on an electoral basis, and when there might be pressure not only to extend outdoor relief, but to abolish workhouses? It was not likely that the President of the Local Government Board could ever sufficiently look after the interests of the efficient administration of the Poor Law, while these Local Democratic Bodies have increased power and so little responsibility brought home to them. He was in favour of the Amendment, because it would secure that uniformity which the President of the Local Government Board desired, with the smallest amount of friction. The nomination of two or three specially selected men would do much to secure wise administration In some districts, and would help less-informed men to carry out their duties. It often happened at present that the recommendations of Poor Law Inspectors were not at all attended to; and they would be still less likely to be listened to when there were no nominated or specially selected men to cultivate a wise administration by placing their knowledge and experience at the disposal of others. In some parts of London, and especially at the East End, the influence of ex officio Guardians had been a very beneficial one. These ex officios had been met with cold looks at first, but after a time they made themselves felt; and he knew several who were now the mainstay of wise relief in their districts, and were cordially appreciated by those who had originally given them the cold shoulder. He would say, let the suffrage be as wide as they like so long as those who voted contributed directly towards the money to be spent, and would suggest that the Board of Guardians should be a body ad hoc, elected by all who paid any rates. If the present scheme were dropped, and such a proposal as he had suggested were brought forward with the consent of both Parties after the General Election, he felt convinced they would run no risk of injuring the great mass of the English people, or the true principles of Poor Law relief which were now in jeopardy. He was quite of opinion that it was not necessary that J. P.'s as such
  1686
  should be added to the Boards of Guardians; and he was quite opposed to the Magistrates attending the Board meetings en bloc. He did not think that occurred. He had been an ex officio Guardian for 13 years, and he attended the meetings when he had leisure. But now, unfortunately, he had not the leisure, and did not attend the meetings; yet it was probable that his name went to swell the list that was read out the other day. He did not believe the ex officio Guardians of that Board ever turned up to affect improperly the action of the Board; they had never done so to carry a job for themselves; but he had known, in other rural Boards such happen and elected members come up in strength when they wanted to appoint an auctioneer to the office of road surveyor. In conclusion, he should again express regret that the Government should have brought forward this clause at all. It only showed for the fiftieth time that the extremity of a Government was the measure of its principles.
  MR. H. HOBHOUSEsaid, it was only natural that this Debate should take a very wide range. For his part, however, he intended to confine himself strictly to the Amendment which had been moved by his hon. Friend the Member for the Arfon Division. If anyone listened to the speech of his hon. Friend they would see that he drew a distinct line between the ex officios who did not attend to their duties and those who did. The objection some of them had to the proposal of the Government was not that it interfered with and altered the existing system, but that it indiscriminately swept away good and bad together without putting any substitute, even for a short time, in the place of the valuable elements it would remove. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board gave them very elaborate figures the other night which showed the extraordinary disproportion there was between the number of the ex officio and elected Guardians. He thought the right hon. Gentleman

  1687
  might well have spared them, for, after all, his figures only proved one thing, and that was that the distribution of Magistrates in the different parts of the country was very unequal. The great majority of these gentlemen who had been appointed by one Government or another as Justice's of the Peace had not applied for or accepted the appointment with the view of becoming Guardians at all, but for the purpose of performing the duties of their office as Magistrates. No one would deny that a considerable portion of ex officio Guardians did most valuable work; the fact that about 250 out of 630 Chairmen of Boards of Guardians were taken from the class of ex officio Guardians put that matter out of dispute; and when they considered that the ex officio Guardians regularly in attendance were in the proportion of 1 to 10 elected Guardians, they saw that the services of those who attended were valued most highly by those who had the best opportunity of judging of their services—namely, their elected colleagues. That being so, ought they not to think once or twice before they swept away in this rough-and-ready way all these valuable elements on Boards of Guardians? The President of the Local Government Board told them it was impossible to trace any discrepancies of administration to the proportion of ex officios on the Board, but the right hon. Gentleman did not give them any figures to show that on the Boards where Poor Law administration was conducted most wisely there was not a directing element of ex officio Guardians. He was not sure the right hon. Gentleman would be disposed to deny that on many of these Boards, which ranked highest in the estimation of the Local Government Board, there were not a few individuals belonging to this much abused ex officio class who exercised so much influence that they were the real leaders. He should like to know very much whether anyone would deny that fact. But what the right hon. Gentleman added about the nominated Guardians in London was of considerable importance in considering the Amendment now before the Committee. He admitted there was not a large number, but he thought the right
  1688
  hon. Gentleman said there were 23, and that he had recently added to their number.
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: The 23 included my nominations.
  MR. H. HOBHOUSEasked why the right hon. Gentleman added to the number at all if the nominated and ex officio Guardians were a useless element? Why had he not taken the line he did about the qualification of Guardians and declined to add to the number? His action showed that in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman they formed a valuable element on certain Boards of Guardians. He was not acquainted with the details of Poor Law administration in London, but he was sure there were Boards where the nominated Guardians had done valuable service, where they would be very much missed if swept away, and under the new state of things there would be many other Boards, where similarly appointed Guardians might render extremely valuable service. After all, his hon. Friend's proposal was only to extend to other parts of the country what prevailed in London, and if made more optional in form it would give discretion to the Local Government Board to add to the number where it was considered beneficial, as admittedly was the case in many parts of London. Then he wished to allude to the extraordinary argument used by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the real effect of this clause. The right hon. Gentleman said they were not in any way altering the principles of administration—that no set of gentlemen were more opposed to that than the Government. He (Mr. Hobhouse) thought that by altering the mode of election, by sweeping away all the ex officio element, they were very likely to alter the principles of administration. How was it, if the principles of administration depended on the Order of the Local Government Board, they had such extraordinary differences, in the proportion of indoor and outdoor relief all over the country, and even in the Metropolis? When he

  1689
  spoke of the Metropolis he ought to remind the hon. Gentleman, one of the Metropolitan Members who spoke the other night with such a light heart on the subject of Poor Law reform, that in London they had a great safeguard against lax administration which did not prevail in other parts of the country; they had no common poor fund in other counties in England. If the Government were introducing a form of administration analogous to that, they would have a stronger case for claiming that they would not dangerously relax Poor Law administration in other parts of the country. If, however, the right hon. Gentleman's argument was really a good one, that the administration of the Poor Law depended, after all, on central control, did he not see the proposal of his hon. Friend was the very thing he needed to strengthen his hands and to render the central control more efficient? Surely, if the right hon. Gentleman stood on his belief in his own principles, he ought most readily to accept this proposal—at any rate, in the optional form he (Mr. Hobhouse) had suggested. They were told the Government did not wish to weaken the Poor Law administration, and there was no risk of that being done, in spite of the election being in the hands of the compound householders. That, he was bound to remind some hon. Friends of his who called " question" just now, Was one of the vital changes in the system of Poor Law election, althought it did not fall within the confines of this clause. This was the first occasion on which they had been justified, perhaps, in calling attention to this most important change in Poor Law administration, which was caused by putting the voting power in country districts into the hands of a class who did not directly contribute to the rates. This, to his mind, was far more important than abolishing plural voting or removing ex officio Guardians. Then some hon. Members said that all the good men who sat as ex officios would be able to be returned as elected Guardians. Were they quite sure of that; were there not many of these men who for various reasons would not care to go through a popular election? They were not all so strong and active as his hon. Friend. Some of them were advanced in years; and he thought that age
  1690
  and experience was no disqualification for wise administration of the Poor Law. After all, they must not put physical strength too high in the competition for public service, and they should remember that all men were not equally qualified for these sometimes severe contests. Others might be prevented from contesting from over scrupulousness and from motives that were not fully appreciated in this House, but which, nevertheless, did bear weight with some excellent men, and prevented them from re-seeking by popular election posts they had held by other means. That was not all. They were sweeping away all these ex officio posts, but they were not creating others. They were not adding Aldermen to the District Councils. He was not advocating that at present, though he thought the institution had worked extremely well in the County Councils. If they were adding Aldermen to the District Councils he thought that would provide posts that some of these valuable men could fill; but instead of that they were forcing these men to enter into competition with their fellow-elected Guardians, and in many cases it would be a question whether the squire, who had done great service, should run an election contest against a fellow-parishioner who had been an equally valuable member of a Board of Guardians. These were practical difficulties against these men getting elected. He was not sure, moreover, whether the fact of a man having administered Poor Law relief somewhat sternly, and yet with a full sense of justice, always made him the most acceptable as a popular candidate. In the election of the future they must guard against having promises of lax administration made an inducement to the electors to return a man at the head of the poll. Surely there were many reasons to make them desire to keep some of these men. They wanted continuity in their administration, and he did not see how the fact that the Guardians were to be elected for three years was going to preserve continuity at the first election. They wanted some variety, a certain number of men who were not always looking to their prospects at the next election, who had more of an independent position than any popularly-elected men could

  1691
  have. After all, Poor Law administration was somewhat different from the administration of other local matters. The Guardians did not spend public money on purely public objects, but in relieving private individuals—and there was much more room for favouritism, for the influence of the softer influences of human nature, than there was in the dry administration of sanitary and other local matters. All that ought to be borne in mind when dealing with this branch of local administration, and he thought the Government would be wise, if they could not accept the proposal as it stood on the Paper, to accept some proposal calculated to attain the same results for, say, a limited space of time. He ventured to think that unless they had some power of this kind vested in some superior authority they would not get in the future, in many Unions, what they all, in their heart of hearts, desired to get, a wise administration of the Poor Law, which they had had for the last 60 years.
  SIR R. TEMPLEsaid, there was really such a strong feeling in his constituency upon this subject that he felt bound to say a few words in support, at least, of the principle of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone), and in support also of the very able, sympathetic, and well-informed contention of the hon. Member for Somerset (Mr. H. Hob-house) who had just sat down. The feeling amongst his. principal supporters was this: that the dispensation of relief as a personal aid to particular individuals did differentiate the Poor Law administration from almost all other kinds of public duty. It was thought most objectionable that the dispensers of the public bounty should be elected by the very men who were to partake of the benefits. That was the great and cardinal objection. Moreover, the principle of this Amendment was really carrying out that which already existed. The present Poor Law Guardians, with all their defects and shortcomings, were largely popularly-elected or nominated,
  1692
  or appointed, ex officio; but even those who were elected were not elected by any of those who really did not pay the rates, or of whom it might be said did not properly feel them. That, again, was the great objection to almost everything in this Clause 19. Then it was felt that after the earlier clauses of the Bill whereby it had been declared, despite all their objections, that those who did not pay the rates, or who did not pay the rates directly, should have the voting power, after all that it was thought there was an accumulative weight and momentum of objection against these Poor Law Guardians. They apprehended that there would be probably a great increase of relief if this clause should, unhappily, ever become law, which they trusted devoutly it never would, and which never should if they could possibly prevent it. So great was this danger that his constituents apprehended there would be an amount of unnecessary relief given that might amount to a large system of national corruption. Then there was this further fear: that the best men who now served on the Board of the Poor Law Guardians would not consent to stand. That matter had been so very well put by the last speaker that he need not labour it; but it was felt that many men who were most highly qualified by experience, by sentiment, and by local knowledge for the posts of Guardians were not fitted to go through what they called the rough-and-tumble of a popular election. [An hon. MEM-BER: Why?] He would not go into the reason why; it was sufficient for him to state the fact, and he would appeal to his hon. Friends around him if that were not the fact? They did not speak feelingly; they were prepared to go through this rough-and-tumble, as they did not only for Parliament, but many other institutions; but they knew there were many of the best members of these Boards who would not consent. Moreover, they had not the time, and were not prepared to bear all the rebuffs that beset those who went through this ordeal. If the best men were not secured for the work it would be a great national loss; and there was this further danger: that if these men were displaced they would be replaced by a set of second-rate professional politicians. [A laugh.] The hon.

  1693
  Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey) laughed; his conscience made him do so, . for he knew that would be the case perfectly well. The danger was quite obvious; and whatever happened at the election of County Councils, School Boards, and the like, at all events they should keep out of the Poor Law Boards of Guardians the professional politicians who would run for the purpose of administering the Poor Law for their own political interests; he could not imagine anything more dangerous than that the Poor Law should be administered according to the requirements of professional politicians. Then there was the precedent of Aldermen. Already the principle was acknowledged for the County Council, and he believed there were Aldermen in all Municipal Corporations, and surely what was good for municipal life must be equally good for the Poor Law administration. But there was a far greater argument for having Aldermen in the Poor Law administration, because in municipal life the administration did not dispense benefits as in the case of the Poor Law. These appeared to his friends in his Division to be unanswerable arguments, and to constitute grave objections to the clause, and therefore he should vote, at least, in favour of the principle of the Amendment.
  SIR F. S. POWELLsaid, he spoke on this subject as having had experience as a Guardian in a West End London parish, and as an ex officio Guardian for the Union of Bradford. His first remark would be that the Government, as on the now historic Clause 13, had failed to see the great difference of administration which arose from the difference in the character of the administrators. If they changed the trustees he believed they invariably changed the character of the trust. He happened to be the only ex officio Gnardian on the Bradford Board, but he thought he might venture to say that the judicial faculty acquired by the administration of justice was of great value on a Board of Guardians. He believed a Magistrate who had sat on a seat of justice for some
  1694
  years did acquire the most valuable habit of testing cases on their own merits, and casting aside those feelings of prepossession and prejudice which were so attractive to the novice and so fatal to careful and wise administration. And he wished to make this further remark as to ex officio Guardians, that he believed the Boards of Guardians derived great advantage from these on account of their permanent tenure. He believed that many of the ex officio members who had been chosen as Chairmen of Boards of Guardians had continued to hold the position during a long series of years. Though it might be true the ex officio might be one among many, his experience was large and valuable, and he counted far more in the deliberation of his colleagues than would be expected from their number. If he chose he might refer to a distinguished personage who had for many years a conspicuous position on a. Board of Guardians in the County of Lancaster. During his residence in Lancashire he was present on every occasion that the Board met, and he knew how valuable his services had been to the administration of the Poor Law by that Board. There was this further recommendation —namely, the independence. He believed it was very important that the gentleman exercising the function of a Guardian should be thoroughly independent, and he believed that a man who might lose his seat at the next election might not give that consideration to all the cases which their nature deserved. He did not believe that economy always rendered a Guardian popular; but, on the contrary, the Guardian who was most popular was often the man who was most kind, to use a general phrase, or, in other words, who was most liberal with other people's money. There was another point on which he ventured somewhat to join issue with his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board. The right hon. Gentleman somewhat overrated the effective influence of central authority upon local administration. It was not possible for any Central Board, without absolutely binding down

  1695
  the Guardians with rigid rules, to enforce that similarity of policy which was desirable. He thought they might gain advantage by looking to what had taken place in the East End of London. He regretted the absence from that House of Mr. Pell, who had done so much for the Poor Law administration. Mr. Pell was the first man in the East End of London to do away with outdoor relief over a wide area. He was not aware of any change in the central law corresponding to that change of law in three Unions. The change was so great as to amount to a revolution. Again, he (Sir F. S. Powell) was a Guardian in a parish in the West End of London, and he could remember kindness of a lavish character, which surprised him as a Yorkshire Guardian; then came a Chairman who practised severity, and on this Chairman's retirement there was again a return to liberality. Even the same Guardians could not act precisely alike in good times and bad times. When times were prosperous and work plentiful they would be inclined to regard every applicant for relief as, primâ facie, an impostor, but at other times when work was scarce they would sympathise with any decent man who came before the Board. He believed that the influence of just severity in the one case, and of undue kindness in the other, would cause modifications in the administration of the Poor Law. He did not regret such modifications, because he believed they really gave that elasticity to the administration which was of great value, and, in fact, in some cases rendered the administration of the Poor Law possible. He believed that strict and fair, but austere, Guardians would decline to help a widow in the first days of her widowhood, while Guardians of a liberal tendency would give aid in these cases. Those who were the best administrators of charity told him they had scarcely known a case where a widow had been injured by refusal, because she was sure to have some friend to help her; whilst they had scarcely known a case where a widow received assistance without injury to her independence and force of character. It was impossible by a rigid law to produce rigid uniformity. There was great force in what fell from his hon. Friend with reference to the disparity between the
  1696
  different districts, and it was certain that there should be—he did not say absolute identity, but, speaking roughly, a great correspondence between the amount of pauperism and the amount of education. At the head of the list his hon. Friend had read they had Norfolk, and at the foot they had the West Riding, Lancashire being next. Lancashire and the West Riding were two districts adjoining each other, they were similar, being manufacturing districts, and they stood in a position of nearly complete identity as regarded pauperism, occupying the best position on the list. Wise administration was at the root of the matter. When there was an intelligent and independent population like that in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, and a Board of Guardians who worked with the popular feeling which was in favour of independence and intelligence, there was a low scale of Poor Law relief. When they had such discrepancies as had been pointed out by his hon. Friend, they showed that the mere law from the Central Authority did not suffice to produce uniformity, but that uniformity arose from the administration of individual Guardians acting according to their sense of what was right and best for the people. The truth was, so far as he could see, that what was desired was not the popularity of individual Guardians with the certainty of re-election, but a course of administration which would be conducive to the welfare of the population.
  MR. CHANNINGdid not wish to prolong a discussion which, in his opinion, had occupied quite long enough, but he should like to point out that as the Amendment was narrow and restricted to one point it would be convenient to dispose of it before they proceeded to another Amendment which raised the whole issue. He declared that no act of the President of the Local Government Board had been attended with more satisfactory results to the country than the lowering of the qualification of Guardians. He could bear personal testimony to this. In two considerable parishes in his own constituency it had resulted in the election of popular Guar-

  1697
  dians of a different type from those previously elected, and who, he would venture to say, would discharge their duties even better than the Guardians of the ordinary type. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Carnarvonshire was really as futile as it was inconsistent with the principles of the Bill. What did his hon. Friend expect the head of the Local Government Board to do? Was he to select the best men? The best men would probably be selected by the parishes themselves as elected Guardians, and if the right hon. Gentleman was to select men whom the electors would have rejected that would be a most unsatisfactory result. They had been warned in very eloquent terms by the hon. Member for Kingston that this system of outdoor relief was likely to develop into a grand system of national corruption. He should like to know whether any man who had studied the effects of the Friendly Societies, Trades Unions, and all combinations of men to secure the principle of thrift and to avoid the terrible results such as they had to face in the period before the Poor Law, seriously supposed they could ever drift back to the period before 1834? In order to show the inutility, wanton and unpractical nature of this Debate he should like to ask hon. Gentlemen opposite whether they did not remember the 15th February of this year? They were then challenged to divide the House against this very principle of the qualification and mode of election of Boards of Guardians, but they did not do so, and did not in their speeches seriously challenge the right of this House to do away with ex officio Guardians, and to sweep away plural voting, whilst the only argument they advanced was that the Poor Law administration ought to be dealt with as a whole. Let it be dealt with as a whole. No one would welcome that more than the Radical Party, but when gentlemen opposite did not dare last February to divide the House against the single point now before the Committee he asked was not the whole of this Debate on the Amendment and clause an utter sham and mockery of Parliament and the country?
  MAJOR RASCHexpressed his regret that the Government did not see their way to truncate the
  1698
  Poor Law clauses of the Bill. In reference to the question of ex officio Guardians he remarked that even the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had given them a good character, whilst Mr. Alfred Pell, whose great success to Poor Law administration had been referred to, was for nearly the whole of his career as a Guardian ex officio. At least one-third of the Chairmen of Boards of Guardians over the whole country were ex officio, and he failed to see why, except it was to make the Bill symmetrical, and because they had done their duty, the right hon. Gentleman wished to abolish them. It had been said that they were not absolutely punctual in their attendance, but how could they be, some of them who were ex officio Guardians and also Members of that House, when the Prime Minister desired their attendance there for 11 months out of 12? Ex officios in these days were an anachronism; he did not deny it. He confessed he should like himself to be an ex officio Member of Parliament for the next 10 years, but that was beyond practical politics, and he did not see why men who desired to serve on Boards of Guardians should not go through the mill just as Members of Parliament had to do. It was because the men who had done their duty on Boards of Guardians as ex officios would go through the mill and would be elected that he confessed he did not see the objection to this clause quite as strongly as some of his hon. Friends on that side of the House.
  MR. COLERIDGEdesired to dispel a few of the alarms which seemed to be felt on this clause by Members opposite. It was believed, apparently, that the abolition of nominated or ex officio Guardians would tend to the production of a body of elective representatives who would dissipate public money on behalf of the undeserving poor. He had waited in vain for statistics to discover whether or not it was true, as alleged, that those Boards of Guardians in which the elective principle prevailed were more extravagant in their expenditure of public money than those Boards in which the ex officio element

  1699
  prevailed. It would be paying a bad compliment to the industry and ability of hon. Gentlemen opposite not to suppose that if such arguments were forthcoming, founded on fact, they should have heard them in this Debate. He did not think hon. Gentlemen opposite quite appreciated the extreme horror that the poor had of the brand of pauperism, and he thought that had been exemplified in the late industrial struggle. Nothing was more affecting or praiseworthy than the silent, obstinate resistance on the part of the poor to going as beggars for parochial relief, and that not only in the case of those who took part in the struggle, and of whom it might be said that work was open to them, although not on their own terms, but of those who had no part or lot in the struggle, and who might with a very specious excuse have gone to the parish for parochial relief. Surely they might argue from the known to the unknown, and say that it was a happy augury for the future, and showed them that the poor themselves were not desirous of becoming pauperised, whether through ex officio Guardians or through Guardians chosen by themselves. It was not through elected Guardians that in 1834 the rates were dispensed in an extravagant manner. It was through the ex officio Guardians, who did it for reasons best known to themselves, but which other people believed were reasons not unconnected with the lowering of wages. In his judgment, and in the judgment of all those who had had experience of the working classes, there were no more obstinate or hostile opponents of mendicity than the industrious poor themselves.
  MR. J. G. TALBOTsaid, that this had been a most interesting and, at the same time, a by no means one-sided Debate, having been taken part in pretty equally by Members on both sides of the House. Such being the case, it was rather a strange thing for an hon. Gentleman who had taken part in it to call the Debate a ridiculous Debate, as the hon. Member for East Northampton had done. Besides the well-sustained character of the Debate, the Amendment under consideration had proceeded from one of the supporters of the Government, and, therefore, there could not be said to
  1700
  be anything of an obstructive element in the discussion. This Debate illustrated, what he ventured to say on the Second Reading of this Bill—namely, that when the right hon. Gentleman, for reasons-which were known to himself and not to them, introduced into this Bill the question of the reform of the Poor Law, he must be prepared to look forward to a different state of things to that which would have occurred if he had confined his Local Government Bill to a Bill establishing Parish Councils. No doubt to establish Parish Councils by itself was a very considerable order; but when, in addition, there was added the enormous question of the Poor Law, the right hon. Gentleman must be aware that he had greatly increased the complication of the measure they had to consider. The right hon. Gentleman, with an assurance he was surprised to hear, said they were not dealing with the administration of the Poor Law, but with the administrators. The right hon. Gentleman could not persuade him he was so innocent as that. He could not believe the right hon. Gentleman did not connect the administration with those who administered it, because he knew the practical ability, shrewdness, and grasp of public affairs which the right hon. Gentleman possessed. He was quite certain the right hon. Gentleman was not expressing his real convictions when he used a phrase like that. He sometimes asked himself whether these proposals were really the utterances of the right hon. Gentleman's own heart? Was this Poor Law business really an attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to grapple with this great question, or had it been taken up with a view to anything approaching electioneering? He did not wish to throw out insinuations which were disagreeable, but really the condition of things was such that one was forced to make suggestions which one-otherwise would not utter. When to the ordinary parts of this Bill there was added the whole question of the Poor Law, one was obliged to ask on what reasonable conditions could such an addition be made?
  THE CHAIRMANremarked that the hon. Gentleman was not confining his observations to the Amendment.
  MR. J. G. TALBOTsaid, that on Friday night the President of the Local Government Board made a most elaborate speech, in which he traversed the whole question of the Poor Law, and he did not think the right hon. Gentleman would wish to narrow the limits of this Debate. He was answering the remark of the right hon. Gentleman himself that the administration of the Poor Law was not to be connected with those who administered it. They knew who were to administer the Poor Law, and the hon. Gentleman in his Amendment raised this issue distinctly. Why, he asked, should they remove this ex officio element, against which nothing could be alleged. This ex officio element was deliberately imposed upon Poor Law Guardians when the Poor Law was enacted in 1834, and a very important addition was made in the 25th & 26th Vict., c. 103, when Assessment Committees were for the first time appointed. The section of that Act said that the members of the Assessment Committees were to be not less than six or more than 12—
  "Consisting partly of ex officio and partly of elected Guardians, provided always that one-third of such Committees shall consist of elected Guardians."
  Therefore, in this recent Act, it was provided, not that there might be, but that there should be, ex officio Guardians charged with this important duty of assessing the rates. These Assessment Committees were charged with most delicate duties, and yet what was done in this Bill? The only reference to these Assessment Committees and to the sweeping change that was now proposed would be found in the Schedule, where the repeal of that portion of the Act dealing with ex officio Guardians was provided for. This was a matter which must have escaped the right hon. Gentleman's attention; or otherwise surely in such a question as the constitution of the Assessment Committees, which went to the very root of the arrangements for rating, he would not have consented that this great change should have been left to the Schedule of the Bill, whilst no reference was made to it, and no attempt made in the body of the Bill to supply the place of the ex officio Guardians, who were excluded by this stroke of the pen. The right hon. Gentleman had
  1702
  said that hon. Members need not be afraid, because the Local Government Board would always take care to exercise the control which otherwise would be exercised by the ex officio Guardians. He would give the right hon. Gentleman some statistics which he might consider satisfactory upon the point. He took the figures of indoor and outdoor relief in London. In Lambeth Union, where there was not a very large number of ex officio Guardians, the proportion was 3,295 indoor against 3,082 outdoor— about one-half; in St. George's, Hanover Square, where the ex officio element prevailed largely, the number of those receiving outdoor relief was 481, while those receiving indoor relief was 2,765. In the case of nominated Guardians—where they were concerned—the proportion was still more striking. In Whitechapel, whilst 1,489 were relieved indoors, only 36 received outdoor relief; and in St. George's-in-the-East 1,380 received relief indoors but only 28 received outdoor relief. He had only the London figures by him; but here it would seem that where the ex officio Guardians prevailed, there was much more discrimination in Poor Law relief than prevailed elsewhere. He did not say that the ex officio system as it stood could be maintained without modification. He could understand modifications of it. He was supporting the Amendment, which was an indication that he was not opposed to some reform; he did so because, although the method proposed was not so satisfactory as the present arrangement, he would accept it rather than lose the control of the Boards of Guardians by an element which had been of the greatest advantage in the administration of the Poor Law. The Amendment would give some element which would be of use in relation to the more democratic element. Some gentlemen tried to persuade them that the Bill was not so dangerous since the present ex officio Guardians would be elected on their merits. He did not think the best way to meet an argument of that kind was to say that the present ex officios would not take the trouble to go through an election. He did not know whether they would or not. Some, no doubt, would try to avoid the risk of rejection; but the much more important point, to his mind, was that in the good time

  1703
  coming, under this Bill, there would not be room for both elected and ex officio Guardians, and he was afraid that the result would be that many of the latter class, although amongst the most respected and most useful inhabitants of the parish, Would lose their places upon the Boards. A man who lived in a parish, and was now an ex officio Guardian, and who, like himself, had to come to London to discharge his Parliamentary duty, must stand a bad chance of election as against the farmer or tradesman who, living constantly at home, Would be constantly in attendance, and, indeed he would not wish to stand in opposition to him. The Boards of Guardians as they at present stood, had shown their appreciation of the ex officio element, because they had in the case of one-third of all the Boards in England chosen the ex officio members fort heir Chairmen. He was afraid that the object of the proposal to abolish the ex officio element was a political device rather than an attempt to do what was best for the parish, and he did not think the common-sense of the country or of gentlemen opposite agreed to it. In no. case had it been attempted to be shown that the appointment of ex officio Guardians had been detrimental to the interests of a parish. They had not heard of a single specific case of complaint. General statements they had had, but nothing else. It appeared to him that to persist in a proposal of the sort was the height of political insanity.
  MR. COURTNEY: The hon. Member, in dealing with this question of ex officios, devoted his argument almost entirely to the excellencies of the elected Guardians, and asked us to say that the Boards were well managed where they have control. That was his line of argument. The Amendment before the Committee is for no such purpose as that. The word "ex officio" does not occur in it. My hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon intends something very different from that which the hon. Member supposes, and from that which many other Members who have addressed the Committee suppose. My hon. Friend accepts the abolition of ex officio Guardians. He starts from that basis; and he asked that there may be added to the Guardians popularly-elected
  1704
  a limited number of Guardians nominated by the Local Government Board, who shall have proved themselves to the satisfaction of the Local Government Board to be a valuable element eligible for the position. That is a question far apart from the arguments addressed to the Committee. My hon. Friend simply desires to supplement the popularly-elected Guardians by Guardians who, perhaps, may not be able to command the approbation of a majority of the electors, but who would have the qualifications of experience, knowledge, and character. The qualities which are wanted in men charged with the dispensation of public relief are not always the most popular qualities in the eyes of electors. They are qualities which are not popular; they are, as a rule, disagreeable. But on a Board which is to discharge its duties rightly the presence of a "disagreeable" man ought to be possible—a man who could be severe, and who could foresee the consequences of action taken. That is what is wanted —a man who could be useful, and who would prevent the Board going to mere flummery in its dealings with the question of relief. The man dubbed disagreeable and cynical sometimes proved himself to be really benevolent, as we learned from many of the stories that appear at this, special season of the year. There is one recent novel, I believe, in which a character is drawn on those lines. It has been said that the Amendment is not necessary, because it is not likely that what was done before 1834 would now be repeated. I greatly distrust arguments founded upon a belief that this generation is so much wiser than its predecessors. There are the same characteristics—there is the same tendency now —as there were then to do the smooth and ready thing, to help instantly wherever one meets an object of compassion without reflecting upon any of the possible consequences. We are not so different from our grandfathers that we can be sure that we will never yield to the temptations to which they yielded. We have been told that the poor have a horror of becoming paupers. There is, I am glad to say, a most helpful horror of the workhouse; but I am afraid that, in many districts, there is no horror of outdoor relief, and that it is rather looked

  1705
  upon as the crown and summit of an agricultural labourer's life. [Cries of "No!"] I shall be glad to be proved wrong, but my experience is that this view of outdoor relief is acquiesced in by poor and rich alike. I have known it to be acquiesced in even in this House. Those who can look ahead are as much wanted now on Boards of Guardians as they ever were. I do not say that hitherto such men have been found exclusively, or even mainly, in the ranks of ex officio Guardians, but there is no doubt that there are many men belonging to that class who have learnt their business and know how to administer poor relief so as to check the spread of pauperism, and who are valuable agents in raising the poor man's standard of morality, self-respect, and independence to a higher level than it had ever reached before. I was very glad to hear the President of the Local Government Board say that no body of men in this House are more eager to maintain the true principles of Poor Law than the present Government, but I am rather afraid that they may be led astray and that in their day of trial and temptation they will not be as strong and resolute as they now believe themselves to be. My right hon. Friend said that it was the control of the Poor Law Board that kept everything right. How can that be? Is the power of the Board evinced in the extreme disparity of administration that prevails? If the Board was so powerful as to be able to restrain the injudicious dispensation of outdoor relief, how does it come about that there are parishes side by side, in one of which there is an abundance of outdoor relief given, whilst little or none is given in the other? They do not superintend every Board of Guardians in the country. It is not desirable that they should do so. They may lay down general rules, they may try to secure elements that can be trusted; but no amount of visitation or inspection by any such authority as has been referred to can keep the Poor Law Boards in certain Unions and under certain circumstances from falling into bad habits.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. H. H. FOWLER, Wolverhampton, E.): I did
  1706
  not refer to control. I was talking of administration.
  MR. COURTNEY: If the right hon. Gentleman desires an easy way' of exercising control, and causing these general orders to be obeyed in the spirit as well as in the letter, he could not have a better way than by assuming the powers which the Amendment would give him of having persons in his own confidence—a very limited number—on each Local Board. He may, no doubt, think—I see the difficulty—he would have difficulty in finding out suitable men for every Local Board, but that only drives us to find out some other way of dealing with the matter. There is another Amendment on the Paper which proposes to obtain the necessary elements through the agency of the County Council. There may be other ways of getting these elements supplied. Experience must have taught my right hon. Friend the value of the present proposal in the case of the parishes in the East End of London. I wonder what my right hon. Friend thinks will become of White-chapel and St. George's-in-the-East when he takes away from them those nominated members who have given their energies, their time, their public spirit to reform and regenerate these neighbourhoods, handing them over simply to the representatives of the majority of the ratepayers. The action of these gentlemen in Whitechapel and St. George's-in-the-East has effected a moral revolution; and I cannot but regard the work they have been doing as paralysed at present. [do not see how this scheme gives any security for its continuance and maintenance. It is desirable it should not be imperilled, and therefore we ask for some security. The distribution of the ex officio element is a matter of chance; but in many places they have supplied one or two good members, who have made the unions models of administration. Let us have those one or two good men. Let us have some security, some element which may be relied, on, and which will not over bear the elected Guardians. If my right hon. Friend does not like this Amendment let him take a means of selecting

  1707
  such men. It seems to me that it is a matter of the utmost importance to the national future that we should have some guarantee for the maintenance of the true principles of Poor Law administration; and if you cannot accept this Amendment it should be easy to find another which would meet the case.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir C. RUSSELL, Hackney, N.): My right hon. Friend seems to think that popularly-elected Guardians are not men who can think independently for themselves. He says that nominated Guardians should be placed upon the Boards, because they would foresee the consequences of the action of the Boards. He also says, without any proof, that where the ex officio element under the existing system most widely prevails there is to be found the best Poor Law administration. [Cries of "No!"]
  MR. COURTNEY: What I said was that the distribution of the ex officio element is a matter of chance, but that, in many places, they have supplied one or two members who have helped to regenerate those places, and make them models of good administration.
  SIR C. RUSSELL: But in many places the same may be said of the popularly-elected Guardians. My right hon. Friend has reminded the Committee that the discussion has travelled far beyond the scope of the Amendment itself, and, though I do not complain of this, I want hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to help the Committee to understand where we are. This Amendment, my right hon. Friend says, and says truly, gives the go-by to the system of ex officio Guardians altogether. It pre-sup-poses that ex officio Guardians no longer exist. Is that a position which gentlemen opposite are willing to assent to? There is no response. We stand, therefore, in this position, that while this Amendment is being put, and hon. and right hon. Gentlemen are professing their readiness to vote for it, they are going to vote for an Amendment which gives the go-by to that principle. Every one who has spoken upon it has said he will vote for it.
  MR. W. LONG (Liverpool, West Derby: No.
  SIR C. RUSSELL: I said, every one who has spoken—
  MR. W. LONGwas understood to dissent.
  SIR C. RUSSELL: I understood that the hon. Gentlemen who have spoken from that quarter were prepared to vote for the Amendment. What is the prospect the Committee now has before it? Many hours have already been occupied in the discussion of this Amendment, which does not dispose of this ex officio question at all, for now the right hon. Gentleman tells us that after this Amendment is disposed of others will be brought forward. Why are we not candidly told what is the position taken up by hon. Gentlemen opposite? Are you going to stand by the principle of ex officio Guardians or not? If you say you are, that is a plain issue, and let us come to it; but if you say you are not, let us know what is the plan which you propose to substitute for it. The Amendment before the Committee has received very scant praise from any quarter; and I am not surprised, for what is the proposal? It is that—
  "The Local Government Board shall appoint to be members of each Board of Guardians a number of persons not exceeding one for every five elected Guardians, and not exceeding three on any one Board."
  What is the total number of Guardians which would have to be nominated by the Local Government Board? Something like 2,000 spread or sprinkled all over the country. What special powers, what special advantages in the selection of these 2,000 intelligent and honest men who are to "even the mass" of the popularly-elected Guardians have the Local Government Board? Is the President of the Local Government Board, like another Diogenes, to go about with a lantern looking for suitable and honest persons? I say the suggestion is a, retrograde one, and not one of progressive legislation at all. It would have a tendency to make more bureaucratic than it is at present the Office of the Local Government Board—and it is quite bureaucratic enough as it is. I say,

  1709
  therefore—and I might almost sit down at that statement—that the Amendment does pre-suppose that the ex officio system is gone, and proposes to erect in its place a system which, so far in these Debates, no one has been found to get up and warmly justify and defend. I do not know whether I ought to sit down without noticing what has been said in the course of this Debate. One fallacy which, it seems to me, is running through the Debate is that where there is the smallest modicum of outdoor relief the system is best administered. I deny that that is a true test. The amount of outdoor relief may be great in one Union, and yet if discriminatingly distributed the administration may be better than in cases where the amount is small. And not only may the administration be better in such a case, but it may be the most economical. Again, it has been suggested that when the system was under the Magistrates it was better administered than it might be under a purely elected body, but the facts prove the contrary. No one denies now that under the system of popular control the administration has been largely bettered and not rendered worse. In the Report in connection with the Act of 1834 there is the statement that the members of Parochial Boards who were distinguished for that strictness which some decried as harshness in the administration of relief, were the persons who themselves had risen from the ranks of the labouring men, and that that strictness arose from better knowledge of the wants of the applicants and the means of satisfying them. The Report proceeded to say that the Magistrates, even if they had a general knowledge of the subject, seldom had and seldom could acquire a knowledge of the individual facts upon which they had to decide. I would remind the House — without going through, as I had intended, some of the observations addressed to the Committee — of the discussion which took place on the 13th of February this year. On that occasion a Bill was brought in by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Harborough Division of Leicestershire (Mr. Logan) a short, clearly arranged Bill to provide for the qualification of Poor Law Guardians on the ordinary electoral franchise. The Bill, in the 4th clause, set out that every
  1710
  person qualified to vote at any election for Poor Law Guardians or members of Local Boards should be qualified to be elected as a Guardian or member of a Local Board, and provided further that no person should act as a Guardian or member of a Local Board unless he should have been elected as provided for in the Bill. Well, what was the course of the Debate on that Bill? A number of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen took part in it, and I was particularly struck with the speech of the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool. I did not find in that speech one word of dissent from the principle of the Bill. After that I think we may proceed with the discussion, with the knowledge that there is nobody in the house prepared to stand up for the principle of ex officio Guardians. Nobody has unequivocally supported the Amendment now before the Committee, and what we want to have is a suggestion as to what should be put in its place. The Government would regret the loss of the services of experienced men on Boards of Guardians; but they believe that these men would be without difficulty selected by a popular vote. It is said there is not room on the Boards for the squire and the farmer, and that the former would not be willing to oppose the latter. There is room for fair representation of both, and it has not appeared that in other local elections where the squire is interested he has exhibited any delicate regard for the interest of the farmer or anyone else. So it will be here. If these country gentlemen desire to discharge the duties belonging to their station and position they will find constituencies willing to have them.
  MR. W. LONG: The hon. and learned Gentleman who has just resumed his seat has challenged hon. Gentlemen on this side to state what their views are on the particular Amendment now under consideration, and reference has also been made to the fact that we took part in a discussion earlier in the Session. The learned Gentleman deduced from that that we are pledged entirely to the abolition of the ex officio principle, and therefore pledged to

  1711
  the measure now before the Committee. Well, Sir, the hon. and learned Gentleman in his criticism of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Carnarvon told us that it ought to be opposed, because it would make the measure much more bureaucratic. The Committee will remember that the President of the Local Government Board, in his able speech on Friday, based the whole of his case on the fact that the prohibition of the improper administration of relief would rest in the hands of the Local Government Board. Are we not again entitled to complain that Members of the Government do not consult with one another before speaking on Amendments, so that, at any rate, the opinions they express shall agree? We have the President of the Local Government Board advocating a departure from the established practice, and contending that an increase in outdoor relief will be impossible, because the Local Government Board will prevent it; then when an Amendment is moved by an hon. Member on his own side proposing to . put into the hands of the Local Government Board the duty of nominating certain members of these Boards of Guardians, a Member of the Government gets up and says this is a bureaucratic proposal, therefore they can have nothing to do with it. It certainly does not lie in the mouth of the Attorney General to charge us with inconsistency. Some months have elapsed since the occasion referred to when the matter was before us, but only a few hours have elapsed since the principles were announced which the Attorney General now disavows. It is all very well for the Attorney General to shake his head, but we cannot let him off so easily—I say entirely disavows. The Attorney General told us that he was learning as he went along, that he knew very little about these subjects, and was picking up knowledge as he went from clause to clause. If his speech to-night is proof as to what he picks up, he has plenty to do in that direction. The hon. Member for the University of Oxford said it is all very well to talk about country gentlemen being elected as Guardians if they offered themselves as candidates; but the hon. and learned Gentleman does not realise the manifold duties of the Guardians under the Bill. I do not
  1712
  suppose the hon. and learned Gentleman has had time to look into all the details of the measure. He has failed to realise that the Bill of the Government proposes that the District Councils of the future shall consist of the representatives of the various parishes. Now, every one of those parishes possesses representatives already on the Boards of Guardians. It would, therefore, be absolutely necessary for the Magistrate or ex officio to push out a man who is at present an elected representative of the Board of Guardians of the district. Well, that would be an invidious thing to do. The Attorney General indulged in an undeserved sneer at the landlords of the country. He suggested that they had not had much consideration for the farmers hitherto. The hon. and learned Gentleman had not taken much trouble to inform himself on this matter. He might have found some useful information in connection with the elections for the County Councils. If he had inquired he would have found that in many cases men belonging to the ex officio class who would have been glad to have become members of County Councils had been unable to stand for their own districts, because other men who had not previously belonged to Quarter Sessions came forward and got elected. I can speak for the division in which I live, where a man is regarded as so good a candidate for the County Council that no Magistrate would oppose him. This was a gentleman not agreeing with us in politics, but holding the same views as the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that no one on this side of the House had expressed approval of the Amendments of the hon. Member for Carnarvon.
  SIR C. RUSSELL: I said unequivocal approval.
  MR. W. LONG: The hon. and learned Gentleman, if he has any fault to find, must find it with the President of the Local Government Board, who, in his able and interesting speech of Friday, chose—I think very wisely—not so much the Amendment of the hon. Member as his own, proposal as contained in Clause 19. The right hon. Gentleman practically reviewed and defended the whole

  1713
  scheme of the change proposed in the Poor Law.. The right hon. Gentleman cannot, and I am sure will not, complain if we on this side have adopted a somewhat similar line in the views which we have expressed. But the hon. and learned Gentleman asks some of us to say whether we approve of this Amendment or not. I say frankly, and at once, that this is not all I should like to see done in the direction of, at all events, strengthening these Boards for the future. But I believe this would be a valuable concession, and I confess I should have been glad if the Government could have seen their way to accept it. As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin said, it is not we on this side of the House who are in favour of a particular form. It is not a question whether the Guardians are to be nominated by the President of Local Government Board, or appointed by the County Councils, or of any particular form; but the argument we have pressed on the Committee—and which I will now endeavour to bring before it—is in the direction of showing that those who are engaged in the discharge of the difficult duties of Poor Law relief believe that there would be some risk and danger in the scheme of the Bill, and that it would be wise on the part of the Government to take steps to lessen that risk and danger. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board made a very able speech on Friday, and I venture to say that if it had not been for the time of year, when hon. Gentlemen opposite think more of getting away—[cries of "No!"]—than of the Debates that speech would have invoked considerable criticism. I look upon the President of the Local Government Board as a good man struggling with adversity. His heart is in the right place, but he feels it very difficult to give expression to the views he really feels in some of these questions. I do not mean to say that he is dishonest or acting wrongly, but I do mean to say that he had some small misgivings of his own when he defended the fact that the Government are leaving the Unions alone; and he told us why. He said "the Union is there," and then —most marvellous argument from that side of the House—he told us that not only was it there, but that it had been
  1714
  there for many years. If we had been sitting in the places of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite and had made that declaration Members of the Opposition would have jumped up and denounced us for defending an institution because "it is there and has been there for. years." Why, in their view as a rule it is the strongest condemnation in existence of a thing to say "it is there and it has been there for years." If that argument had fallen from hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House hon. Members opposite would have had something to say about it. I do not admit the argument that it is there and has been there for a certain number of years is a sufficient answer to those who say it would have been better to deal with this Poor Law question as a whole. My own belief is that the Act of 1888 paved the way for a great alteration in the system of local government, and I think you might possibly have got rid of the dual Councils side by side, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, if you did not hand over the administration of the Poor Law to District Councils. I believe the Government in their hearts do not wish to weaken the principles of the Poor Law Act of 1834. But it is not the Government or their wishes that have to be considered, it is the views of hon. Gentlemen who support the Government that have to be taken into account. The views expressed in the country are not the same as those enunciated in the House. The right hon. Gentleman on Friday said that all that was intended was that the Local Government Board should control reckless outdoor relief. He said—
  "The control of outdoor relief would be virtually regulated by the Central Authority, and would not depend on the action or will of local administrators. The orders of the Local Government Beard on this subject applied some to rural districts and others to urban districts. They had what was called an outdoor prohibitory order and an outdoor relief regulation order."
  He also said—
  "The Local Government Board were the Guardians of the trust, responsible to Parliament and the country to see that the Poor Law was properly administered, and the Board of Guardians was simply machinery by which the regulations of the Local Government Board were carried out."
  I venture to say that if he expects the

  1715
  Guardians to discharge these duties in the future he will be mistaken. He will have laid on them not only the heaviest duties they ever had imposed upon them, but duties with which they will never be able to cope. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the Local Government Board will control the administration of Poor Law relief, and hon. Gentlemen opposite have frequently in this Debate referred to it. Now, if this is the case, confirmatory views should be found in the spoken or written opinions of authorities on these Poor Law questions. Let me read a sentence from a speech delivered by a gentleman, once a Member of this House, who is judged by all who know him to be a very high authority. I mean Mr. Albert Pell. On the occasion of a deputation to the Prime Minister, he said—
  "The deputation were not actuated by any Party bias or feeling whatever. In fact, he did not forget that legislation on this subject had been conspicuously connected with the Liberal Party. Personally, he was old enough to remember 1832 and 1834, when his father, himself a Liberal, took no inconsiderable part in the settlement of the question. As he understood it, any qualified person (and he might be qualified if he had received relief for 25 years, provided that he ceased drawing it a year before the election) became a Guardian for any Parish or several parishes, and he could act in one or two unions and one or more counties. Boards electing on the principle proposed in the Bill would administer outdoor relief in the most acceptable form, and the demand for relief would thus be stimulated and means would be taken to get behind the prohibitory orders. As the Bill stood it did not provide a sufficient check on unwise administration, and it would irresistibly tend to the advancement of social debasement, affecting the moral character, not only of the poor, but of the rich, who would shirk their responsibilities."
  Now, that is the opinion of a man who has been an experienced Guardian not only in the country, but also in London. He was speaking, I venture to say, the sentiments of his heart in no way affected by political considerations. All who know him will be convinced that he was actuated solely by a sincere desire that the Poor Law should be wisely and well administered, and that this Parliament should take no false step in its dealing with the matter. I say that Mr. Pell does not confirm the statement of the President of the Local Government Board. We have been told by the Attorney General that the proof of bad administration is
  1716
  not to be found in the decrease of the pauperism existing in the Union. Well, there may be some modicum of truth in that statement; but I venture to say that, as a general rule, it has been accepted that the best test of the administration of a Poor Law area is in the comparison between the outdoor and indoor relief. In some districts, no doubt, you may find the outdoor relief greater than in others owing to local circumstances, such as mountainous country, or the wide separation of towns; but I have here figures of unions where the circumstances of locality, inhabitants, and employment, are practically the same. I take some unions sufficiently near to one another and alike in their characteristics to make it impossible for anyone to say that they are under varying conditions. In Brixworth the outdoor paupers are 5 per thousand; Towcester 43; in St. Neot's 10, St. Ives 30; in Newmarket 15, Linton 62; in Oxford 8, Woodstock 49; in Headington 15, Thame 52; in Bradfield (Berks) 4, Hungerford 35; in Whitechapel 4; in the City of London 41. Now, in the face of such figures it is impossible to say that the statistics of outdoor pauperism are not a fairly accurate indication of the administration of the Poor Law as well as of the needs of the locality. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, and he is entitled to disagree with me, but I venture to say that that is a doctrine hitherto accepted. I say that if Local Government Board control had existed, and if it were to be found in the present administration of the Poor Law, you would find it affirmed in the opinions of existing Poor Law authorities like Mr. Albert Pell. Moreover, you would find the figures of pauperism more or less equal throughout the country, whereas they are as dissimilar as they can be. What is meant by good and bad administration? Good administration may be indicated, as a rule, by the amount of outdoor pauperism compared with the pauperism of the whole district. But what is it that leads to good administration? I will not say that it is the presence of ex officio on Boards of Guardians. I make to the President of the Local Government Board a present of the interesting figures he read to us the other night. No doubt the operation of the ex officio

  1717
  element has been very unequal all over the country. I do not attach very great importance to the retention of the ex officio element. On the other hand, I do not believe, as hon. Members are so fond of representing, that it is a question between the working men of the future and the Guardians of to-day. I am not afraid of the working men of England, and I speak as one who has taken some interest in Poor Law questions; but I am afraid of those weakly, sentimental, but well-meaning people, who belong to both parties, and who believe that good can be done by the free administration of outdoor relief. It is not that we believe in ex officio as ex officio, or that we are afraid of the working man or believe that he will act wildly in distributing outdoor relief that we think that some provision of this kind is necessary. It is for a different reason. It is because unquestionably the argument that the control of the Local Government Board will be real and effective in preventing outdoor relief cannot be sustained. Further than that, we say that there are some risks and that these risks ought not to be run. Now, Sir, what are the figures of the poor rates of this country? In 1892 no less than £8,847,000 was spent on the relief of the poor in various ways, and on outdoor relief, exclusive of such charges as lunatic asylums, nearly £5,000,000. Is it right that the House should lightly deal with a Local Authority which has the expenditure of such vast sums in its hands? In the country districts people, as the hon. Member for Somersetshire has pointed out, are especially unable now to stand any sudden or large increase in the rates for increased expenditure. It may be the case that those Boards of Guardians may not in any way increase outdoor relief. They may be as careful in their administration as their predecessors have been, but there is a risk that they will not be. You may say we take a political view of the case, but you will find that at various meetings held in London, reports of which have no doubt reached the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. H. H. Fowler), and been considered by him, men belonging to all political Parties have united in expressing the belief, which they have formed as Poor Law administrators and reformers, that the Government were
  1718
  incurring some risk by suddenly handing over Poor Law relief to popularly-elected Guardians. The President of the Local Government Board quoted a friend of mine formerly in this House, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, as saying that if country gentlemen left off serving on Boards of Guardians it would be their own fault. Well, my noble Friend is an excellent authority on local government, but at the same time he now belongs to the large army of the unemployed from a political point of view.
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: The statement I quoted was made about 12 years ago.
  MR. W. LONG: Well, then, I am mistaken, and the reason why I made the mistake is that the statement bears a striking likeness to one made by the noble Lord the other day. However, at the present moment the noble Lord is a warm supporter of the right hon. Gentleman's proposal, and he has stated in public that he believes the Poor Law is wisely included in this Bill, and that there is plenty of room for everybody to take part in the work of these Local Authorities. My point is that the noble Lord's opinion is worthless in view of the fact that there will not be room for the country gentlemen in the existing Authorities, and you will have either to enlarge your Board or have these men left out. I have endeavoured to prove to the Committee that if you rely on the argument that safety in the future will be found in the control of the Local Government Board you will depend on a broken reed. If you say that these ex officios are anomalies, and you will have none of them, I ask you which do you desire most—do you desire merely that your authorities shall be uniform, and be in conformity with your modern notions of what Elected Bodies should be, or do you desire to make them the most efficient, practical and useful Local Bodies, so that the administration of the Poor Law in future may compare favourably with its administration in the past? If that is what you wish you will do well to engraft upon your proposals something like that which is to be found in the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr.

  1719
  Rathbone). There are two peculiar features in the general proposals of the Government. One is the proposal respecting the election of members of the Board every three years. It may be that representation of the various parishes may be unequal, and some alterations will have to be made before that part of the Bill will be workable. Then as to the duties of the Assessment Committee. They are of an extremely difficult character. The Committees vary in their practices all over the country. Proposals have been made, I believe, from both sides of the House that some system of outside control similar to that respecting the assessment for the Income Tax should be introduced. I look with some apprehension upon your transfer not only of the administration of the Poor Law, but also of the administration of the onerous and difficult duties of Assessment Committees to newly-elected Guardians, and I think you would do well in your own interest and, above all—what is of much more importance—in the interests of good administration, and in the interests of those whom we are sent here to protect, if you introduce into your measure some element which would not only give a continuity of practice, but secure the presence on these Local Authorities of some people who will not feel that their actions are constantly reviewed, and who are subject to contested election.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: No man in the House speaks with fuller knowledge on these subjects than the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, or discusses them in a more satisfactory manner, and, therefore, I always listen to what he says with the greatest attention. I confess, however, that just now I have listened to a speech which has been somewhat disappointing. We have been told by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Courtney) that he regards this Amendment as assuming that ex officio members are at an end, and that substitutes must be found for them. I have heard nothing from the hon. Member who has just sat down to contradict that view. Let, us, at all events, see where we stand. Are we discussing the question of whether ex officio members ought to be kept up or
  1720
  not? I venture to assume, having listened to the hon. Member's speech, that we are not discussing this question. The hon. Member said something in favour of the ex officio members in the past, and he used one illustration which, I confess, surprised me, of admirable administration which gave the figure 4 in White-chapel as contrasted with the figure 41 in the City of London. I assumed from that that ex officios prevailed in White-chapel and were wanted in the City of London. That surprised me.
  MR. W. LONG: I quoted those figures not in reference to ex officios, but to the argument that the Local Government Board controlled the Poor Law throughout the country.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Well, I do not know how far the Local Government Board controls the ex officio members. I doubt its power on that point. But though the hon. Member may say a good deal, and I have no doubt a good deal is to be said in favour of ex officios in the past, I do not understand him to take his stand on the propriety of continuing ex officio members in the future. Do let us see whether we have agreed so far. Then the hon. Member argues that in the future there should be something to replace those ex officio members, something that shall be different, as I understand, from the elected members. That is the second proposition. If we can agree on that, let us try to go on. The next point is to consider whether the Amendment of my hon. Friend is that something. I cannot find that anybody except my hon. Friend thinks that his Amendment is that something which ought to be substituted. I very carefully watched the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down, and I noticed that he did not say he was in favour of the Amendment. He said he was in favour of something like it. That is what I would call a mild backing of your friends. Just conceive what the proposal practically amounts to. The elected body of members are apparently regarded as a sort of herd of wild elephants who need some tame elephants to train them. My right hon. Friend

  1721
  (Mr. H. H. Fowler) is to have a supply of 2,000 of these State elephants, whom he is to distribute with the object of keeping the wild elephants in order. Just conceive what is to be the task of the nominated members, who are to go amongst those who have been elected as the best men to administer local affairs. They are to walk into the room where the meetings take place, and say, "Gentlemen, you have been elected by your neighbours, but you don't know anything about it. You are very excellent men, but you are ignorant, and rash, and foolish, and the President of the Local Government Board has sent us down to set you right." Well, that may be a very good thing for those gentlemen to do, but how is my right hon. Friend to find out the proper persons in counties all over the country to go amongst the elected Guardians and say, "You do not know your business, and we are sent here to teach you?" In my opinion that is not a practicable proposal. My hon. Friend knows as well as I do that those men could not be selected by a Board witting in London to do a duty of this kind. How, then, are they to be selected? They are to be the cream of the cream, and are to float on the top of the skimmed milk of the elected members. Well, my right hon. Friend could not undertake the task it is proposed to impose upon him. The hon. Member who has just sat down says we must have something like it —that is to say, that we want some countervailing force, some leaven which will leaven the mass of the elected members. Do let gentlemen opposite tell us what they think that ought to be. That is a fair question. We are quite ready to discuss it. We do not say we will not listen to anything of the kind; we do not say that anything of the sort will be peremptorily rejected. We are obliged to vote against the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone), because we do not think his proposal is practicable at all. But gentlemen opposite have hitherto had ingenuity enough in the proposal of their alternatives on this Bill. Do let them tell us now what it is they want. That is, I think, a ,fair demand on our part. We are merely wasting time now in going on discussing an Amendment which nobody supports,
  1722
  and in talking about ex officio members when they are practically abandoned. Do let us come to some practicable alternative to supply the place which you say ought to be supplied of the ex officio members. Let us have some practicable proposal, and we will willingly discuss it.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman takes a very singular view of the functions of the Opposition. He thinks we exist in order that the Government may put questions to us. I have always thought that the Government exists that we may put questions to them.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: We stand by our Bill.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I will not discuss that—
  SIR W. HARCOURT: We stand simply by the abolition of ex officio members. That is the proposal of our Bill. If you want to propose something else, tell us what it is.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman thinks he has replied to my observation by that rather uncalled-for interruption. I can only tell him that he has not replied to it. The Government have, in perfect wantonness of spirit, introduced into a Bill intended to carry out different objects a clause by which the scheme of Poor Law Guardians in this country is revolutionised from top to bottom. They have done so without preliminary inquiry and without giving us the slightest power of framing any alternative scheme based on any special inquiry into the necessities of the case. They have themselves brought forward no argument to show that any special necessity of the case exists. As far as I can judge of the opinion on this side of the House, we are as prepared as gentlemen opposite to admit that the Poor Law which was founded in 1834 — 60 years ago—and which has been scarcely modified since that time, may require some modification, but! we say that to modify it with this degree

  1723
  of public discussion, with this amount of data at our command on which to form a national plan for carrying out any new proposal that may be submitted to us, is too much to ask us. To get us and interrogate us, as the right hon. Gentleman has done, to ask us, "Do you mean to stand by the ex officio Guardians, and, if not, what do you mean to do?" is not the way to treat an Opposition, and, in my opinion, not the way to conduct a Bill. Of course, we all feel—everybody must feel—that when the Government say there are difficulties in the way of the present Amendment, they say what is absolutely the fact. I really cannot myself see how this particular scheme by which 2,000 persons are to be nominated by an Office in Whitehall is to be carried out. It appears to me to be directed to an admirable object, but not to provide the machinery by which that object can be carried out. The Government say "give us your alternative." If an alternative can be provided it can only be with great difficulty, and will require long and careful discussion. I myself ventured, as a matter of personal opinion, to throw out on the Second Reading a scheme which I cannot say is adequate or even fully thought out. It was, however, the best that suggested itself to my mind, and an hon. Friend of mine has placed on the Paper an Amendment which will carry out its object. When we come to that Amendment, I shall be prepared to defend my own views upon it, and to hear what the Government have to say. But we are in this difficulty. The Government have, by a stroke of the pen, destroyed the existing system. To ask us to frame a new system is to throw on us a task of the extremest difficulty, but one which we are prepared to do our best to carry out. We shall approach that task, I think, imperfectly, but, at all events, you must not reproach us, because we have not a plan cut and dried. I agree with the Government that the plan proposed by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Rathbone) is one we can hardly support. I rejoice that the Government have, on their part, declared their willingness to discuss any other plan. Really, however, we are not to be misled by all this rubbish about a uniform
  1724
  system, which is all nonsense, and I hope Gentlemen on both sides of the House, who have at heart the interests of Poor Law administration, will set their wits to work, and endeavour—
  It being Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Wednesday next.

  EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY BILL.
  Ordered, that the Lords Amendments be considered upon Wednesday, and be printed. [Bill 476.]

  MERCHANT SHIPPING BILL.
  Leave to the Committee to make a special Report; special Report brought up, and read; Bill reported from the Joint Committee, without Amendment; Report and Special Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 466.]
  Minutes of Proceedings to be printed. [No. 466.]

  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES)
  Copy presented,—of Diplomatic and Consular Reports on Trade and Finance, No. 1319 (New York) [by Command]; to he upon the Table.
  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL) (LAGOS).
  Copy presented,—of Annual Report for 1892, No. 95 (Lagos) (in continuation of Colonial Report [Annual], No. 58) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EAST INDIA, BEHAR CADASTRAL SURVEY (FURTHER REPORTS).
  Address for "Return of Copies of or Extracts from the Reports not already presented to Parliament, of the local divisional, district, and sub-divisional officers, and other officers consulted on the Be her Cadastral Survey, and questions connected therewith, such as the maintenance of the Record of Rights." —(Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen.)

  ADJOURNMENT.
  Motion made, and Question, "That this House do now adjourn,"—(Mr. Marjoribanks,)—put, and agreed to.
  House adjourned accordingly at One minute after Twelve o'clock.