ADJOURNED DEBATE [FIFTH NIGHT.]

HC Deb 14 November 1893 vol 18 cc899-967

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment [13th November] to the new Clause, as amended (Employments injurious to health,)—(Mr. Bousfield,)—proposed on Consideration of Bill, as amended.

And which Amendment was, in line 2, after the word, "health," to insert the words, "being caused by the employment."—(Mr. Matthews.)

Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

Debate resumed.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. ASQUITH,) Fife, E.

said, the Government could not accept the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman, for the reason the words now sought to be inserted appeared to be either unnecessary or restrictive.

MR. BOUSFIELD (Hackney, N.)

said, it must be a matter for regret to many hon. Members that the Government, having accepted the clarse, had proceeded to do something which would have the effect of emasculating it. The clause dealt with specific cases which had never been dealt with before, and did that in a manner approved of by the general sense of the House. The alteration effected in the clause would have the effect of causing it to fail in the particular case it was meant to meet. But as the clause stood, it would include all sorts of trivial casualties, such as taking cold through the opening of a window—a case in which no one wanted to introduce this remedy. The Judges would narrow down its meaning so that it would not cover the cases it was meant to cover. It was necessary, if the clause was to have effect, to distinguish between risks which were incidental to the employment and risks which were accidental to it. He would suggest to the late Home Secretary that instead of the words, "caused by the employment," he should insert the words "incidental to the employment." It would draw a distinction which, if this clause was to be useful in practice, was necessary, and that was a distinction between the risks which were merely accidental occurrences and not incidental to the employment, and the risks which were incidental to the employment, which were well-known, and which it was tried to guard against. The employer was to take precautions against known risks, but how could he take precautions against risks which were not known? If the clause was to be effective, it must be limited by some such words as "incidental to the employment."

MR. KEIR-HARDIE (West Ham, S.)

said, he would like to make another suggestion as to the form of words which, he thought, would meet with general agreement. He would suggest that after the words "reasonable precautions," in line 3, they should insert the words "on the part of the employer." That would then prevent accidents being raised under this clause which occurred through the carelessness and negligence of the workmen. He would strongly urge, however, that the Amendment of the late Home Secretary be not accepted, because taking again the case which he had referred to the previous night, the representatives of a miner who was killed by an explosion would be liable to compensation, whereas, if the Amendment of the late Home Secretary were accepted, a miner poisoned by black damp would not be liable for compensa- tion from his employer. If they inserted the words he (Mr. Keir-Hardie) had suggested they would place the responsibility upon the employer, but would free him from liability where he had taken reasonable precautious, even though his workmen had failed to carry them out.

MR. MATTHEWS (Birmingham, E.)

intimated that he was not quite wedded to the particular form of words which he proposed hastily the previous night, and he was willing to accept the words of the hon. and learned Member below the Gangway. His only object in moving the Amendment was to point out that the employer should not be liable for accidental cases. If the Home Secretary was willing to accept the words, "incidental to the employment," he would withdraw his Amendment so that these words might be substituted.

* MR. ASQUITH

did not feel able to accept either form of words which would, in effect, reverse the decision arrived at by a very decided majority the previous night. On the other hand, he did not see any objection to the suggestion of the hon. Member for West Ham, which he thought might have the advantage of giving greater definiteness to the language of the clause. Neither the words suggested by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Matthews) or the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Bousfield) would meet the case. The Government wanted to deal with employments which might not be in themselves injurious, yet which, if carried on without reasonable precautions on the part of the employer, would give rise to risks. It was to meet that case that they had proposed the insertion of these words.

Question put, and negatived.

MR. KEIR-HARDIE

rose to move, after the word "precaution," in line 3, to insert the words, "on the part of the employer."

MR. STUART-WORTLEY

said he had a prior Amendment, for he desired to move the insertion of the words "known to the trade," after "precautions."

MR. SPEAKER

thought the Amendment of the hon. Member for West Ham would come first.

* MR. MATTHEWS

suggested the words should come in after the word, "use."

Amendment proposed, In line 3, after the word "use," to insert the words "on the part of the employer."—(Mr. Keir-Hardie.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. FENWICK (Northumberland, Wansbeck)

thought if the Amendment of the Member for West Ham were accepted it would very greatly restrict the operations of this Bill. Such an Amendment was inconsistent with the first principle of the Bill, which did away with the doctrine of common employment. If this Amendment were adopted, and if a man in a mine was injured by a careless official or workman leaving a ventilating door carelessly open, he would have no action against his employer. [Sir H. JAMES said he would.] The right hon. Member for Bury said be would, but upon what ground would he have his right of action? It seemed to him the Amendment considerably restricted and even conflicted with the principles upon which the Bill was founded, and he hoped, therefore, the Home Secretary would not accept it. He thought if was well they should know what their position in relation to this clause was. The Home Secretary, in reply to the hon. and learned Gentleman who moved this clause in the first instance, stated that he considered the object which the hon. Member had in view was fully met by the Common Law. If that were not so, he said he was not disinclined to make an alteration in the Bill, which would fully provide for that object, if that met with the general assent of the House. The right hon. Gentleman accepted the new clause of the hon. and learned Gentleman, on the distinct understanding that the modification or alteration which he suggested should be accepted; and if there were any doubt whatever on the point raised by the Home Secretary, it should be once and for all cleared up by making the principle of the clause general in its application. The Home Secretary having met the general views of the House, they had now this attempt made to whittle away the benefits that were claimed by the various speakers in support of this new clause the previous night. He hoped the Home Secretary would net recede from the position he had taken up, and would resist the Amendment.

SIR H. JAMES (Bury, Lancashire)

said, the purpose and object for which the clause was moved stood quite apart from the general liability of employers towards employés, and was intended to afford a remedy whore an employer found an unhealthy condition of things in his factory or workshop and knowingly allowed his workmen to go into that workshop. There were cases in which a workman knowing well the state of things went into that workshop, and they thought it right, although the proprietor would not be liable at Common Law, on account of the well-known maxim which prevented a person accepting a state of things with his own knowledge from recovering compensation for injuries—they thought in these open and palpable breaches on the part of the proprietor, where a man for his own gain sought to place his workmen in unhealthy conditions, that he ought to be made to suffer although the workman had his eyes open. That was the object of the clause, which went beyond the general liability for negligence between employer and employé. It was also stated that it was not intended to render the employer liable for the acts of the workman himself or for the acts of fellow-workmen, even although they might produce, on an isolated occasion, an unhealthy state of things. What was done by the hon. Member who had moved the Amendment was not likely to interfere with the interests of the employé. He simply said by the Amendment that the precautions which were to be taken were the employer's precautions, and that if he neglected these precautions, and there was injury to the health of his servants, he was made liable. If a man removed a ventilator and caused undue heat or draught to be inflicted on a fellow-workman, it was not intended to make the master, who had no power to remedy the broad defect, liable for the injury he had done nothing to inflict and did not know anything about. He was very anxious for this clause to pass, but it would be unfair if, in imposing liability on the master in respect of injury to health, they imposed it without giving the master any opportunity of altering the condition of things which caused the injury. If this clause was not drawn so as to make the master liable in the sense he had mentioned, they would weaken it, and it would not be applied in the way he had indicated, because its generality would make it so vague. In order to render it efficacious they must make it just.

MR. BOUSFIELD

hoped the hon. Member for the Wansbeck Division did not think the hon. Member who had moved this Amendment or he (Mr. Bousfield) would be desirous to see any whittling down of the clause. The clause, it was contended, was so vague and general that it could not be applied in practice, and the object of the Amendment was to make it applicable. He would point out to the hon. Member for the Wansbeck Division that he was mistaken in supposing it was necessary there should be personal negligence on the part of the employer, and that, therefore, it would be inconsistent with the first clause of the Bill. Of course, the whole clause was applicable to cases where there was some system of working which could be remedied; where the employer settled what was to be done, and the workmen had to carry it out. The words were— Can be mitigated or removed by the use on the part of the employer of reasonable precautions, the death or temporary or permanent disablement of a workman is caused by the neglect of such reasonable precautions. It was not the neglect by the employer, but of anybody, of such reasonable precautions. If the employer settled what precautions were to be taken the workmen might have to carry them out, and if there was neglect on the part of the workmen the remedy would still exist under this clause of the Bill. Nobody proposed to restrict the clause to the neglect of the employer. He would suggest that it would be better to put, "by the employer," instead of, "on the part of the employer," the latter words being somewhat indefinite.

MR. LITTLE (Whitehaven)

said, the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Bousfield) seemed to think that the clause was too wide, and that, therefore, the Judges might in some degree restrict the working of the Bill. In the case of the existing Liability Act, with one or two slight exceptions in the earlier cases, the Judges' decisions had tended to enlarge and give value to the existing Act as far as possible.

MR. BOUSFIELD

explained that what he said was that where they had a clause with vague and general words which would apply to a lot of simple cases obviously not within the purview of the Legislature the judicial interpretation would be probably strained to cut the clause down and make it less general.

MR. LITTLE

said, he understood the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument to be that from the past conduct of the Judges when they came to this clause they would endeavour to whittle it down. That, however, had not been the manner in which the Judges had dealt with the existing Employers' Liability Act. Let them see whether the clause was so wide that the Judges would be liable to do what his hon. Friend assumed. First, it must be employment in which there must be some risk of injury, because the words of the proposed clause wore clear on that point. The Judges would make the inquiry, first—was it employment in which there was some risk of injury? The next thing they would have to consider was whether the risk of injury could be mitigated or removed, because if it could not be mitigated or removed by some reasonable precautions, then this clause would not apply. But having these two risks, the risk of injury to health, and then that risk which might be mitigated or removed by the use of reasonable precautions, why the employer should not have to use these reasonable precautions he really could not see. The employer was to be the person who was to be responsible. If he understood the argument of the right hon. Member for Bury it was that in this case they were going beyond the general purview of the statute, because even in a case where the employer could not look after his workmen, where the employer did not neglect reasonable precautions, but where they were neglected by his servants, they were making the employer responsible. But that really was the principle of the whole Bill. The object of the Bill was to abolish the doctrine of common employment, and to make the employer responsible for certain acts or omissions of his servants, for which he would not have been responsible if the doctrine of common employment were still to remain. He, therefore, suggested that there was no reason what- ever for endeavouring to further limit this clause. To deal with the question of health was of the highest importance, and how could they effectually deal with it if they did not make the employer liable for the negligence of his servants? They wanted to make the employer keen himself to see that all his men used reasonable precautions, and he should object to any alteration which would limit the obligations of the employer in this respect.

MR. STUART-WORTLEY

believed the Home Secretary had not yet spoken on this Amendment, therefore he rose for the purpose of asking the right horn Gentleman to tell them exactly how he stood with regard to the Amendment, which he said he would accept, but which he was quite sure neither the right hon. Gentleman nor the House understood the effect of at this moment. It appeared that the hon. Member for West Ham wanted to insert these words so as to limit the matter to the conduct of the employer. The hon. Member opposite interpreted the intention of the hon. Member for West Ham as being to cause his Amendment to apply to the conduct of the employé or fellow-servant, and, obviously, if that was the intention of the hon. Member for West Plain, that would cause a possible exception to the rule laid down in Clause 1. They had not yet heard from the Home Secretary whether he still consented to the Amendment in the first place, whether he considered it necessary in the second place, and, if so, how he stood in regard to limitations of this kind. It was impossible for them to forget that, at the outset of the discussion, the Home Secretary gave it as his opinion that the clause was unnecessary, and did not alter the present law. The right hon. Gentleman must be taken, to some extent, to have modified his opinion, on some such theory, he presumed, as that there was a lower degree of negligence which was not covered by the very simple and direct words in Clause 1, and that this lower degree of negligence might consist in a negative attitude on the part of either master or man towards certain possible things which might be done. He supposed, therefore, that when the Home Secretary accepted that Amendment he meant that he intended, where the master was guilty of that lower degree of negligence, he should be made liable. Altogether, he thought it very necessary they should know how they stood, and he thought the moving of this Amendment made it necessary gravely to consider whether they would not by adopting the clause at all—which they still had an opportunity of objecting to—be bringing into the law an ambiguity which the Home Secretary at the outset said he feared.

* SIR A. ROLLIT (Islington, S.)

fully followed the object of the Member for West Ham in moving the insertion of these words, which, he took it, would fix the employer with responsibility and liability, and also the object of other Members in thinking the result would be to limit the operation of the section. But he did not think that either one result or the other would follow. He thought the addition was needless, and would be ineffective. In the first place, the context, especially the word "workman," which occurred twice, led to the inevitable conclusion that the responsibility for want of reasonable precautions must be on the part of the employer. It could not be anything else, because the workman was to be at liberty to recover, and the recovery would be against the employer. He thought, therefore, that the alteration was clearly implied and unnecessary; and, secondly, that the words proposed, "on the part of the employer," would not prevent the operation of a well-known rule of law, qui facit per alium facit per se, and if a servant had been guilty of negligence, it would not absolve the principal in any degree whatever, who, having done that act through an employé, would still be liable for any injury resulting therefrom. He, therefore, thought there was no real need for the Amendment, and that it was designed to make clearer what was already clear and inevitable.

MR. ABRAHAM (Glamorgan, Rhondda)

thought the Member for West Ham would be the last man to desire to whittle down the benefits of this Bill, but he was afraid if the Amendment was accepted it would make it more difficult to maintain their position as they had it now under Clause 1. They were told that the liability was fully covered and provided for by Clause 1, therefore it was quite useless to have these words at all, and he hoped they would not be pressed.

MR. ASQUITH

desired to say a word or two upon this Amendment. When it was proposed he rather hastily, perhaps, threw out the suggestion that the Government were disposed to accept it; but he confessed that, after listening to the discussion, he did not think it would, if inserted, mitigate in any way the effect of the clause, or produce the bad results anticipated by some hon. Members below; the Gangway. He did not think that the clause would be construed by any Court as referring to precautions to be taken by anyone else than by the employer, or by someone else under his direction for whom he was responsible. What was the case they were dealing with? It was the case of an industry which, although not in itself necessarily injurious to health, yet unless the employer carried it on on a wholesome and reasonable system, might produce risk to those whom he employed. Therefore, it was obvious that the burden of taking the precautions was a burden which the law cast on the employer, so that the insertion of the words would not really make a great difference to the construction of the clause. With regard to the words "the neglect of such reasonable precautions," whether the words "on the part of the employer" were inserted or not the neglect might be neglect on the part of anybody in the service of the employer, but that would be neglect for which the employer was always responsible. On mature consideration he had come to the conclusion that the insertion of the words might give rise to ambiguity, particularly in the comparison of the first and second clauses, and as they were not necessary for the object the hon. Member had in view, and with which he sympathised, perhaps the hon. Member would be well advised in withdrawing the Amendment.

* MR. MATTHEWS

said, the result of what had just fallen from the right hon. Gentleman was this: In his view the Amendment of the hon. Member for West Ham would not have the effect which the right hon. Gentleman led them to believe in the first instance he expected from it—namely, that it would not exempt the employer from responsibility or liability for the negligence of any servant in his employment by whom a fellow-servant was injured. Just let them see what they were doing by this clause. As he read the clause it created a new sort of negligence, actionable negligence, which was not negligence at Common Law. He believed that to employ men in an employment that was dangerous to health without taking precautions, provided always they laid no traps and there was no concealed danger, was not negligence at Common Law. They were saying by this clause that they would treat it as statutory negligence to carry on an employment dangerous to health unless they took reasonable precautions. He thought that was the true effect of the clause, and that being the effect of the clause whether they put in these words or not, and however careful an employer might be, it would be in the power of a servant to make him liable to an action by frustrating or suspending the operation of these precautions. Take the case of a manufacturer in whose place of business, by reason of the operations carried on, there was a good deal of dust. That employer might have the best apparatus known, and have adopted every precaution to destroy or allay the dust, so as to obviate injury to his workmen; but notwithstanding all these precautions, suppose the health of some of his workmen was injured by the neglect of a fellow-workman, there could not be a doubt that as the clause stood there might be an action against the employer, although he had done his best to adopt the greatest possible precautions, and even with the words of the Member for West Ham in the clause the employer would be liable. He understood that was what the Government meant; but to say that of all employments, and not to confine it to employments dangerous in themselves, was to enlarge the scope of the clause into a field in which he had not surveyed the whole extent. He did not know that there was any employment which did not carry with it some risk of injury to health. For instance, a man could not be a stable boy without risk of being kicked by a horse, and there was no employment in which there might not be, under given circumstances, some injury to health. It seemed to him that under this clause they were laying down the proposition that not only the employer himself should take every reasonable pre- caution to prevent that possible injury to health arising, but they were going to make him liable for the frustration of the beneficial action of those precautions by the negligence of a servant. In the case of Common Law negligence the House had decided that the employer should be liable to his servant for such negligence as would render him liable to a third person; but this clause introduced a new kind of negligence, a definition of wrong which was not known to the Common Law as it now stood. The Court would experience great difficulty in saying what was the neglect of reasonable precautions by a servant which would render his employer liable for injury to another servant.

MR. D. CRAWFORD (Lanark, N.E.)

said, the late Home Secretary appeared to suggest the extraordinary proposal that, whereas the doctrine of common employment was to be abolished in every other part of the Bill, it was to be retained in this clause. He was quite sure the House would not listen to suggestions so extraordinary as that. The real truth was, this clause professed to do what was no new thing in Acts of Parliament. It was mainly declaratory. That was to say, if there were any doubt as to whether the Common Law would cover cases of that kind, such as employment injurious to health in which special precautions ought to be taken, then that doubt would be removed by the clause before the House. He was inclined to agree with the Home Secretary that the Common Law would cover cases of this sort, and he did not think the Leader of the Opposition was very well founded, the previous night, in his sneer at the view taken by this House that the exposition of the Common Law was naturally expansive, and as the needs of society changed a more liberal view was taken on these points than might have been taken 25 years ago. If there were any doubt as to whether the Common Law would cover such a case, it was quite appropriate that that doubt should be removed by such a clause as the present.

* MR. LEIGH (Stockport)

said, that an employer might have the best possible appliances for removing injurious elements from his place of manufacture, but if he neglected to look alter these appliances he might almost as well be without them. He thought it was of the greatest importance, not only that the employer should be compelled to use the best appliances, but also that he should be compelled, under penalty, to see that these appliances were well looked after, and not allowed to fall into disuse. He knew from experience that though a manufactory might be well equipped, yet through the negligence of those employed to look after them many appliances were allowed to fall into decay. The clause would make an employer liable in such circumstances, and he hoped it would not be altered.

MR. JACKSON (Leeds, N.)

felt that the clause had entirely changed the character of the Bill, and that the House had adopted it without mature consideration. The Bill was laid before the House after having been considered by probably the whole of the employers of this country, who expected that it would become law as it then stood. The clause, as it was originally drawn, might have been particularly appropriate and applicable to certain trades distinctly injurious to health, but to apply the clause as it now stood, mutilated as it had been, to the whole of the employments of this country, was a step the employers had never had an opportunity of considering, and it might do great mischief to the interests of the working people of this country. It was too much the fashion in the House of Commons for Members to speak of employers as if they constantly neglected their duties towards those in their employ. Let him give the House his own experience. He had had experience of workpeople, as an employer, all his life. He was brought up in a manufactory, had worked alongside of workmen, and knew something of their habits, and he had tried to care for the health of his workpeople. On one occasion, thinking the temperature in a certain part of his works was unhealthily high, he wanted to introduce some ventilation. He tried to induce the men to adopt various plans for improving it, but without success, and finally he put in "Tobin's ventilators." What was the result? He never went into the works but what he found these ventilators stopped up by the workmen, who would not have them. This was a clear instance of the difficulties of employers who cared for the health of their workpeople. Yet under the clause, if one of his work- men died from a cold taken there, he supposed he would be liable. Had one of his men taken his death from cold contracted through the ventilators he supposed he would have been liable. There were two sides to this question. The instance he had given was only one of hundreds of such cases. It was the experience of every employer of labour who desired to care for the health of his workpeople that his great difficulty was not to provide the means of promoting the health of his workpeople while they were at work, but to induce the men to adopt them. In adopting this clause the House, without due consideration, was taking a step which might handicap employers of labour, and which was against the interests of the workmen themselves. It was too much the fashion to speak of these questions as the interests of the employers; but the interests of the employers were the interests of the employed, and the House could take no step which would limit the employment of the workpeople of this country by increasing their difficulties of competing with their competitors without inflicting injury on the mass of workpeople of the country. He should certainly vote against the addition of the clause to the Bill in its present form.

MR. KEIR-HARDIE

said, that, in deference to the opinion of the Home Secretary, he would ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

SIR R. WEBSTER (Isle of Wight) moved, as an Amendment, to insert after the word "precautious" the words "known in the trade." He said that nothing could be worse in an action brought for injury than to have scientific witnesses employed ad hoc suggesting all kinds of precautious which might have prevented the injury in respect of which an action was raised. It was not sufficient to say that the precautions should be reasonable. There ought to be some safeguard that the precautious ought to be those fairly in the contemplation of the master when he was made liable for neglecting to mitigate or remove risk of injury to health, and not those merely suggested by scientific witnesses. He begged to move the Amendment.

Amendment proposed, In line 3, after the word "precautions," to insert the words "known in the trade."—(Sir R. Webster.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

* SIR C. RUSSELL (Hackney, S.)

said, the Government thought the clause as it stood would not lead to the dangers which the hon. and learned Gentleman apprehended. The question would have to be decided before a jury of business men, and what better tribunal could there be to decide what, in all the circumstances of the case, were reasonable precautions? It would be a very strange jury which would come to the conclusion that the absence of some ingenious contrivance, unknown to anybody employed in the trade, was the absence of reasonable precautions.

MR. TOMLINSON (Preston)

said, that, after all they had heard, it seemed to him that the clause was a good lawyer's clause. There were many questions in it which would have, to be determined hereafter, probably at enormous expense. Here was a proposal which the hon. and learned Gentleman who had moved it said would carry out the meaning of the clause; and if that was so, why not insert it in the clause? He contended they should not leave it to a jury to determine what Parliament could decide itself by the insertion of the words proposed.

SIR H. JAMES

expressed the hope that the Amendment would not be pressed. There was great liability unconnected with any trade. The Bill, for instance, gave a remedy to domestic servants. How could they in such a case deal with precautions "known in the trade" when no trade existed? To accept the Amendment, he considered, would be to indirectly limit the clause to known trades

* MR. GERALD BALFOUR (Leeds, Central)

said, the effect of this clause would be to extend the scope of the Bill, not merely to cases of injury arising from accidents, but to cases of illness. The Amendment was not an unreasonable Amendment. In its original form the clause applied only to dangerous trades, and so long as it was thus limited, it was obvious that the reasonable precautions would have to be germane to such dangerous trade. The limitation having been eliminated, and the clause made general in its character, it appeared to him that unless the Amendment were accepted serious danger of litigation would result, and for this reason; causes of illness were excessively vague, whilst the cause of an accident was perfectly definite. It would be very difficult to decide, if the precautions to be taken were not in some way defined, whether illness was caused by carelessness on the part of the employer or whether it arose from some other cause. Some words were necessary, he thought, and he hoped the House would take the words suggested by the late Attorney General. If some such words were not inserted it was perfectly clear that the dangers against which the clause provided would have no necessary connection with the particular character of the employment. He believed that as matters stood there was danger in leaving the clause in its present indefinite form, and he hoped the question would be decided by the acceptance of the Amendment.

* MR. MATTHEWS (Birmingham, E.)

said, the object his right hon. Friend had in view was not imaginary. There were factories in the North of England where difficulties might arise, and it was evident that the words were necessary for the protection of the masters in particular kinds of trades. They provided that a master should not be liable for a thing that was not known to be dangerous. He took the case of ventilation in factories, and he would point out that there were various methods of ventilating recommended by different experts; and a manufacturer might be held liable for having adopted one method instead of another which the jury might consider superior. He thought the Government would see that a man should not be liable if he was not exactly in the, van of science, and did not adopt the latest and best methods of protecting his workmen.

* SIR A. ROLLIT (Islington, S.)

said, he thought there was ground for giving a little more serious consideration to the Amendment. There were limitations which ought not to be lost sight of, and which should be met by the clause. He thought the words "in the employment" might meet the objection raised by the right hon. Member for Bury to the words proposed. There would then be no reference to the trade at all. The chief ground on which he supported the Amendment was that matters of science, though known to the leaders of the trade and to scientific men, were very slow in filtering down to the general body of the community, and what might appear reasonable to a jury, after the fact, might not have been so clear previously. New inventions were often long in debate as to their practicability or otherwise. Again, it was said that the best tribunal to decide what was reasonable was a jury; but it must be remembered that it would have to be a jury of five, not of 12, as had been said, in a County, and not a jury in a Superior, Court which would have to decide in this case. While he thought that all precautions for health were in the end economical and beneficial to the employer, and while he disagreed from the observations of the right hon. Member for Leeds, he thought that if such matters were pushed too far, the consequences and cost and loss would ultimately fall upon the employé as well as upon the employer.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 97; Noes 230.—(Division List, No. 313.)

* MR. SPEAKER

The next two Amendments on the Paper, in the name of the hon. Member for Maldon Division (Mr. Dodd) and the hon Member for North Hackney (Mr. Bousfield) are out of Order.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES moved the following clause:— (Employer not liable in certain cases.) No employer shall be liable for the act of any person whose employment by him is compulsory under the provisions of any Act of Parliament, nor for any act done by such employer under the compulsory provisions of any Act of Parliament, nor for any act or thing which has been certified by any public official acting, or purporting to act, under the provisions of an Act of Parliament, to have been rightly done. He said, he intended this clause to clear up matters about which there was some doubt. In the first place, there was some doubt as to whether a pilot imposed upon a ship by Act of Parliament was or was not in the service of the employer. His own opinion was that the pilot was in the service of the person who employed him. He was bound to take a pilot. The pilot was on board for the purpose of indicating the dangers of the channel and the proper way of avoiding them; but he had not complete charge of the vessel. On the contrary, it had been again and again established that if he neglected his duty or made serious mistakes the owner or captain had a right to supersede him then and there. He (Mr. Gibson Bowles) had had to do this himself in a case where the pilot knew the danger of the shore, but not the handling of the ship. It would be a great hardship if, when an Act of Parliament had imposed upon him a man to take charge of his vessel, and if, in consequence of any neglect on the man's part, an accident happened, the owner should be held liable for the negligence. It would be harder still if the owner were held liable for the negligence of a person imposed upon him by the law of a foreign State. As to the second point of the clause he would point out that an owner was not allowed to choose his own officers or captain, but was restricted to a certain number of persons who had passed specified examinations and received specified certificates from a Public Department acting under Act of Parliament. In like manner an owner was not allowed to choose his own anchor or cable. If the cable had a secret flaw in it and broke in consequence, killing a man, surely the owner ought to be exempt from the negligence which was not his, but which, if it was anybody's at all, was that of the Board of Trade or the testing house. He merely wished to make it clear as to where the responsibility should rest.

Clause (Employer not liable in certain cases,)—(Mr. Gibson Bowles,)—brought up, and read the first time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."

* MR. ASQUITH

said, the House would agree that the hon. Member in this proposal was providing for an imaginary danger. There was no dissentient voice amongst the lawyers in the House to the principle that an employer was not liable for the negligence of a pilot he was com- pelled by law to employ so long as he did not interfere with the pilot. When the hon. Member took control of his ship he became liable, but up to that moment he was perfectly safe.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, he did not think the right hon. Gentleman would find that theory laid down in the Merchant Shipping Act.

* MR. ASQUITH

said, it had been lecided by Courts of Law, and was a well-established principle in law. The came observation applied as to anchors and cables. The owner could not be held responsible for latent defects if he was not aware of their existence.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, that after that assurance from the Home Secretary he was ready to withdraw the Amendment.

* SIR E. HILL (Bristol, S.)

said, he desired to draw attention to one matter. In a case where the captain of a ship died in a foreign port and a new captain was appointed by the Consul, the owner, who was not responsible for the appointment, should not be held liable for the captain's negligence.

* SIR C. RUSSELL

In such a case the Consul would be acting as the agent ex necessitate of the owner.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. KEIR-HARDIE

said, he wished to move the following Clause:— (Mother of orphan, &c., may sue.) In the case of an accident resulting in the death of an illegitimate child or an orphan, the mother of such illegitimate child or the guardian of such orphan shall, for the purposes of this Act, be entitled to take out administration and sue for damages. He trusted the Government were prepared to accept this very reasonable proposal. He had known several cases in which the mother of an illegitimate child killed at its employment had been barred from raising any action solely on account of the illegitimacy, the claim being otherwise a good one. He had also known a case where a person who had adopted an orphan had been barred in like manner in consequence of not being the parent, or legal personal representative, of that orphan. His clause would not widen the liability of employers in any appreciable degree; but if it were accepted it would be an act of justice to persons who might otherwise suffer serious wrong.

Clause (Mother of orphan, &c., may sue,)—(Mr. Keir-Hardie,)—brought up, and read the first time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."

* SIR C. RUSSELL

said, the Government had considerable sympathy with the object the hon. Member had in view; but it was necessary to point out that his proposal would go far beyond Lord Campbell's Act. A still greater objection to the clause was that, after all, it touched only a small corner of a great question, and in the opinion of the Government this was neither the time nor the way to deal with those cases. They were, therefore, unable to deal with the question.

Question put, and negatived.

*SIR E. HILL moved— In Clause 1, page 1, line 9, to leave out from "compensation," to end of section, and insert "from his employer in accordance with the scale in the Schedule to this Act, provided that the injury has not been caused by his own wilful act, and he shall have given notice of his claim within three weeks of the accident, or if on board ship, within three weeks of the vessel's arrival in a port of the United Kingdom. He said, that an Amendment identical with this had been on the Notice Paper for some time past in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain), who, he regretted, was not present to give it the force of that eloquence and experience so peculiarly the right hon. Gentleman's own. The hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Provand) had also given notice of the Amendment, but he, too, was absent. They had now been discussing the Bill for some days, and the discussion had only made him the more feel that the Amendment which he proposed provided what was really the only way out of the difficulties which surrounded the vexed question of employers' liability. During the Debate a good deal had been said about employers wishing to whittle away their liability, and about shipowners even desiring special exemption. He did not wish to make himself the defender of employers generally or of shipowners in particular; but as regarded the last-named, he would only point, in answer to remarks which had been made, to the position in which our Mercantile Marine stood at this moment and to the vastly improved position of sailors as regarded wages, food, and lodging. Were anything further reasonably demanded than was already given he was sure that the shipowners would not be opposed to it. They were all anxious to do justice to the workers of the country. He claimed that his Amendment should be accepted for that very reason. The Bill, as it now stood, would, he thought, tend to stimulate those feelings of opposition and irritation between employers and employed, which were so very detrimental to the public interest; whilst his Amendment, be ventured to say, would smooth away difficulties and tend to foster those feelings without which he was sure the prosperity of this country, and the commercial supremacy of this country, would not be maintained. There could be no doubt that the House—and possibly the country also—accepted the principle that employers should compensate their workmen under certain conditions. Some persons might have the opinion that workmen got paid somewhat in proportion to the danger of their various employments, and that, therefore, it should be left to them themselves to make such provision for accidents as might be desirable. He admitted that there was something to be said for that argument, though at the same time he should deeply regret to see any Act of Parliament put on the Statute Book which would discourage provident measures on the part of employers or employed. They were not, however, at present called upon to discuss this point. They were practically all agreed on the principle of compensation for accidents. It only remained to be considered to what extent it should be carried. The Bill of the Government might be briefly described as one for unlimited compensation for accidents when, and only when, negligence could be proved. If the Amendment which he now proposed were accepted, the Bill would become a Bill for limited compensation for all accidents. He was quite aware that this was a very serious extension of the Bill, but great as the extension might be it was desirable that it should be brought about. The Bill before the House had, in his opinion, two cardinal vices: First, it left the cases of personal negligence, misadventure, or the act of God untouched; and next, it must of necessity lead to much litigation, and put money into the hands of the lawyers instead of into the hands of the workpeople. There were many accidents—indeed, they were the majority—which had no possible connection with employers' negligence. Such, for example, were many explosions in pits, the bursting of boilers, wrecks in storms, entanglement in machinery, or injury to the eye from sparks. But the families of the poor men injured in such cases equally as much required compensation as if the accidents had occurred through the negligence of the employers. Industries could not be carried on without such accidents happening from time to time. Compensation should be paid, and would fairly belong to the cost of production. It should, in fact, be of the nature of an increase of the wages sheet. If the negligence of the employer must be proved before compensation was given, there would be a natural tendency on the part of the workmen to assert that there had been negligence, and on the part of the employer to deny it. Other considerations than of a pecuniary nature would arise. No man would care to sit down quietly under the charge that through his negligence people had been killed or injured. An employer would naturally be disposed to fight the question as a question of character and regardless of the money compensation which might be sought. Thus, under the Bill, a chronic element of discord between masters and men would be inevitably introduced—and he thought they had heard enough about the strained relations between those two classes. They could not possibly desire to have any legislation which would tend to increase that, tension. No doubt large sums might at times be recovered from employers under the Bill, especially where the jury were vindictive, ignorant, or misinformed; but in some cases the expenses would exceed the amount of compensation, and in the slighter cases the workmen would be indisposed to bring forward proof of negligence, and would get no compensation at all. In many cases, again, the workmen would not have the means of taking legal proceedings. He submitted that it was for the benefit of the workmen that the masters should be induced to insure their risks, and he should see no objection to the insertion of a clause compelling insurance in a Society having the approval of the Government of the day. It must be remembered that all employers were not rich—that, in fact, at times some of them became insolvent. If I he Government in its wisdom saw fit to accept his Amendment, all the difficulties the House had been discussing for some nights would disappear. The injured workman would only have to prove that he was injured, and he would get compensation according to a graduated schedule which had been carefully prepared, and the plan would work automatically. There were only two conditions required for the obtaining of compensation—one was that the injury should not have been wilfully self-inflicted, and the other that there should be notice. The period he had put down was three weeks, but he was not wedded to that period. At the same time, he thought it only fair that the master should have notice that—

* MR. ASQUITH

, on a point of Order, asked whether it was competent for the hon. Gentleman, by means of an Amendment, to raise the question of notice, seeing that it had been already determined by the House?

MR. SPEAKER

On the face of it such a course would be irregular.

SIR E. HILL

said, that in that case there would be only one condition—namely, that the injury should not be self-inflicted. It would be objected that the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham contemplated universal insurance. Well, that might be the view of the right hon. Gentleman, but it was certainly not his (Sir E. Hill's). He had some inclination to regard favourably universal insurance, but he had never seen any scheme which, to his mind, was practicable. However, the Amendment should be considered, not in relation to such a proposal as that, but on its own merits. Another objection with which he did not agree was that if compensation for accidents were universal it would lead to negligence on the part of workmen, an argument he would not follow; for if an employer were made liable for all accidents, be would naturally take all means in his power to prevent any. If the House would accept this Amendment it would simplify the Bill, and would be a boon to the working man. It would tend largely to the development of good feeling and confidence between employers and employed.

Amendment proposed, In Clause 1, page 1, line 9, leave out from "compensation," to end of section, and insert "from his employer in accordance with the scale in the Schedule to this Act, provided that the injury has not been caused by his own wilful act, and he shall have given notice of his claim within three weeks of the accident, or if on board ship, within three weeks of the vessel's arrival in a port of the United Kingdom."—(Sir E. Hill.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. ASQUITH

said, that this matter had been discussed very fully on the Second Reading upon an Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham; it had also been discussed at great length and with considerable ability on the part of the advocates of the alternative scheme before the Grand Committee, and this was the third time in the course of the Bill upon which the question had been raised. Shortly stated, the alternative plan was this: instead of rendering the employer liable to his workmen, as he was already liable by the Common Law to a third person, for injuries caused by the negligence of his servants acting within the scope of his employment, the employer should be liable to the workman for all injuries, of every kind whatsoever, caused in the course of his employment, unless, indeed, the)' were due to the wilful act of the workman himself. Well, he (Mr. Asquith) need not point out that if this Amendment were adopted the Bill would practically be gone. There would be substituted for it an entirely different scheme, a novel scheme resting on no principle which, so far as he was aware, had ever yet been applied in our law. The scheme would, as the hon. Gentleman had said, require a carefully-graduated Schedule to carry it out, but in the present state of our knowledge such a Schedule must be regarded with the greatest perplexity and doubt. His first answer to the proposal of the hon. Gentleman—and he thought it was almost a sufficient answer—was that, whereas there was in this country, and had been for years past, a well-defined and persistent demand on the part of the great body of the working classes for legislation such as it was proposed to embody in this Bill, there had not been any articulate demand on the part either of employers or workmen for such legislation as the hon. Gentleman proposed. As he had stated before the Grand Committee, he had received innumerable communications from all parts of the country from persons representing both employers and employed on the subject of the Bill, but he could count upon the fingers of one hand the suggestions for this alternative scheme of universal liability. He did not say anything in point of principle in hostility to such a plan. The time might come when public opinion would demand from Parliament a plan of that kind. That time would not come until public opinion was better informed of what would be the consequences of such a departure from the principles of our law, and of the legislative experiments on the subject. Attempts were being made in Germany and Austria, and in other European countries, to establish universal insurance, but up to the present the results of such attempts were open to grave doubt, and he was not at all satisfied that the position of the working man under any of the schemes of those European countries would be as favourable to him as it would be under this Bill. The hon. Gentleman had said—and it was a favourite argument in favour of the alternative plan as against the plan of the Government—that the Amendment, if adopted, would to a large extent do away with the necessity for litigation, the Government measure giving the workman his remedy only when he could show that the employer or some person in the employer's service had been guilty of negligence. In adopting that principle they were simply—as he had over and over again pointed out—removing an exemption engrafted by judicial decisions on a principle that was almost as old as the Common Law itself; that was to say, that a man who for his own purposes and profit employed others to carry out his interests and to act in his service ought to be, from a civil point of view, liable for accident caused to a third person through their negligence. It was said that because that principle was embodied in the Bill litigation was being multiplied. This alternative scheme was also recommended as doing away with litigation altogether. He thought it was by no means entitled to claim such a superiority. The hon. and gallant Gentleman did not propose that employers should be liable in cases where the injuries were caused by the wilful act of the workman himself. That is not such a simple expression as the hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to think. He thought the Courts of Law would give it a much wider interpretation, and cases might arise under the doctrine of contributory negligence, which would lead to costly litigation, even where the injuries were not due to the workman's own wilful act. The Government took their stand on the well-settled principle of our law, that as the employer selected his workmen for a particular purpose, as he had the means of ascertaining whether every man was competent to perform the duties entrusted to him, as he had control over the course of the man's employment, and could dismiss him for negligence or want of skill, the employer was morally, and he ought also to be legally, responsible for all his workmen. That was a simple and plain principle, and in its application the Courts would be guided by the precedents in the cases which have been decided for generations past. In his view, there was a fatal objection to the alternative scheme, quite apart from the vague and indefinite character of the base upon which it stood. In the Government's view the main object of a law of employers' liability should be not to provide an easy system of pecuniary compensation for injury, but the safeguarding the health and the life of the workpeople in the performance of industrial operations by imposing on the employer a liability for the conduct of those operations being reasonably safe. It was not enough to have an insurance scheme against accident if they did not supplement, or rather preclude, it by rigorous enactments making it the interest of the employer to take every possible precaution against injury. The scheme of the hon. Gentleman, if incorporated in the Bill and substituted for the scheme of the Government, would simply provide a system of compensation for workmen. The employer, he did not say would have no motive or incentive to be careful, but would not have the motive or incentive which the Government's proposal gave. If they ever came—and on that he made no prediction—to a time when it became practicable to provide by a general system of insurance for all injury sustained by all persons in the course of industrial operations he was certain they should at the same time have to enact a stringent Code, possibly of Criminal Law, imposing on the employer the obligation, the sanction of which would then, he supposed, have to rest on fine or imprisonment, to take duo care for the safety of his workmen. But the one without the other would be absolutely fatal to the object which they all had in view, which was to promote the greater safety of the workmen in all the various operations of industry.

* MR. MATTHEWS

said, that when the Home Secretary stated that the scheme now suggested would practically do away with the Bill of the Government the right hon. Gentleman could not be met with a contradiction. It was quite true that his hon. and gallant Friend had proposed another and a different scheme from that of the Government; and that, of course, at this late period of the Session was a serious objection. But when the Home Secretary went on to say that the scheme of the hon. and gallant Gentleman only provided compensation, while the scheme of the Government provided also a safeguard for the safety of the workmen—that was a statement which he had challenged and controverted every time it had been made, and which he believed to be perfectly illusory. He maintained that it was not correct to say that the Bill supplied additional motive for care on the part of those it affected. It could not be repeated too often that the Common Law guarded against the negligence of the employer, and that this Bill did not add one jot to the remedy under the Common Law. The only thing that Bill did was to make the employer liable for the carelessness of fellow-workmen. Of course that was good, so far as it went, for it increased the opportunities for obtaining compensation which the workman had hitherto at his command; but to say that by giving the workmen greater opportunities for going before a jury and claiming compensation against the employer would ensure care by the malfeasant fellow-workman more than a scheme by which the amount of compensation was fixed without any appeal to a Court of Law, seemed to be trifling with the common sense of the House. The Homo Secretary should not say that there was no demand for the scheme of his hon. and gallant Friend. Thousands of workmen most eagerly and passionately desired to take the scheme rather than take the chance of litigation, which was offered by the Bill. The best method of feeling their way towards this proposed system of insurance against all accidents—which he was sure was the inevitable end to which they were all tending, and without which the system of labour in this country would never be satisfactory—would be to allow people to contract themselves out of the Bill and to set up schemes of their own, provided always that assent to the scheme was given with entire freedom of conviction on the part of the workmen themselves that it was the best course to pursue. In that way they would get experience as to which was the best scheme, and which gave the best results to employer and employed. But the right hon. Gentleman had shut the door against any chance of that kind. He firmly believed that the end at which they ought to aim was based upon this principle—namely, that all the risks which were incidental to any employment were properly part of the cost of carrying on that employment. The compensation for the risks was not, and ought not in justice to be, based upon the footing on which damages were given as a compensation for negligence, because there was no personal fault in 80 per cent. of the cases in the employer himself. Justice would be amply satisfied by compensation based upon the damage suffered by the injured person, rather than upon a theory of punishment. There was often no personal or moral fault in an employer for an accident, and he ought not to be treated as if there were; but he ought to be called upon to provide out of the profits of his undertaking a reasonable and moderate compensation to the victims of accidents, while he was left liable to the full for the consequences of any proved neglect of his own. The Home Secretary suggested that the scheme of the Bill would have to be assisted by provisions imposing criminal liability. He, for one, should not at all object to such a provision. It was right that the law should treat as criminal not only neglect which caused death, but also neglect which caused maiming or physical injury of any kind. But when the right hon. Gentleman talked of a criminal enactment against employers, it was a little singular that he should leave out of sight the expediency of also attaching criminality to the negligence of a fellow-workman. If they enlarged the Criminal Law they must enlarge it against employed as well as against employer; and then, with compensation for all accidents, whether due to negligence or not, they would have a satisfactory system. The Bill was certainly not final. He believed it would result in a vast amount of litigation, with hardships to both sides, sometimes to the employer and sometimes to the working man.

* MR. BARTLEY (Islington, N.)

said, he thought the aim of all Parties must be to cover, in some way or other, all the dangers to which workmen were liable in the course of their employment. He did not understand it to be a Party question to endeavour to get the best they could for the workers of the country. He was a little surprised, therefore, to hear the Home Secretary say that if the scheme of his hon. and gallant Friend wore adopted the Bill of the Government would be gone. Surely the right hon. Gentleman should not care about the Bill of the Government going if they got something better for the working people in return. The right hon. Gentleman also said that this proposed scheme was going into untried fields. But the whole measure was going into untried fields. The House had just passed a clause which revolutionised the Bill. They had not only made it an accident Bill, but a Bill of health. It seemed, therefore, most unreasonable to complain because they took the opportunity of making the Bill a really effective one for all classes. What the working people wanted was a certain provision in case they were injured in any way in their business. That was perfectly reasonable. Now, the Bill only provided for at most 45 per cent. of the accidents which occurred, for the number of accidents in which there was negligence did not amount to nearly half the number returned. He was anxious to see all accidents provided for, providing it did not tend to decrease the care which the employer and the employed should take to prevent accidents occurring. But it was childish to say that the Government Bill, which would affect only half the cases, would be a greater incentive to the prevention of accidents than a scheme which proposed to give compensation for all accidents, however they arose. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted that there would ultimately have to be some extension of the measure towards covering all accidents. There could be no doubt about that. It seemed to him only right that if a man was bonâ, fide injured in the course of his business he should have some compensation, and that if he were killed his representatives should be looked after. The scheme put forward by his hon. and gallant Friend went a long way in that direction. It made every man understand distinctly that he would be provided for in every accident that might occur, if it were not wilfully brought about by himself, and it would prevent troublesome litigation. Therefore, in the interest of the working people whom he represented, he strongly urged the adoption of the Amendment. If it were carried it would be a real and effective step in the direction of securing a bonâ, fide Employers' Liability Act.

MR. BOUSFIELD (Hackney, N.)

said that upon the Second Reading of the Bill he seconded the Amendment moved by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, and he addressed the House at some length in reference to the principle of the present Amendment. He recognised that the Debate was somewhat forlorn—that it was too late, or if not too late that there was no hope of being able to induce the Government to accept the principle which they had advocated then and which they again put forward now. But he could not help thinking that a vigorous protest against the half measure of the Government, when they had the opportunity of giving a complete measure with the consent of both sides of the House, was a very proper thing to make. His right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, speaking against the Amendment, based his opposition to it on a foundation which, on reflection, he must see was not a genuine basis of opposition. He said the object of the Government was not compensation, but to safeguard the lives of the workmen. There was absolutely nothing whatever in the Bill which tended to the greater safeguard of life than under the law as it at present existed. The Bill added nothing to the penalty under which an employer came for his own negligence, which was the only way of safeguarding life. What they wanted was to make it as expensive as possible for an employer to neglect proper precautions in the conduct of his business, but the Bill did absolutely nothing whatever in that direction. The Bill made the employer liable for the negligence of a servant. It, therefore, did nothing to increase the probability that an employer would take care that the injury to life was as small as possible. In fact, the Bill when passed would lead to an extension of the present system of insurance by which employers provided for their liabilities, and therefore, by taking the risk off the shoulders of the employer, would make him more negligent than he would otherwise be. If the Government were anxious to meet the Opposition in the matter there were many ways out of the difficulty which the Home Secretary had suggested. For instance, while the Amendment would form an insurance fund dealing with all classes of accidents the Common Law liability of the employer might be allowed to remain, and might be used as a cumulative penalty. They might say that while an injured workman got compensation from the insurance fund, be would have an additional remedy against the employer at Common Law in case of culpable negligence. The right hon. Gentleman had said that there was no articulate demand for this. But the Government had not always waited for that, and certainly when they introduced the Home Rule Bill the demand from Great Britain was very small and very inarticulate. There was, however, a demand of a most unquestioned kind, and it was shown by the fact that in the absence of legislation this system had been introduced voluntarily on a very large scale; and what could point more definitely to the necessity for some system of insurance? Unfortunately by this Bill the Government were inflicting a death-blow upon the extension of the voluntary funds, and were taking measures which might lead to the aboli- tion of the Societies already in existence. Although they could not hope to produce any impression on the Government, he felt that this opportunity of entering a protest was one that should not be lost sight of.

MR. TOMLINSON

said, a very important matter had been alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman, who stated that one great element in considering the proposition would be the fixing upon the employer of a general responsibility. But as regarded one important class of workmen that responsibility already existed, because in the mining industry every owner, manager, or agent of a colliery was liable not only for his own acts but for those of the people under him. The Committee which sat upon the question of Employers' Liability in 1886 had before them a gentleman of high character, a late President of the Miners' Federation in Lancashire, who was widely respected, and was thinking day and night of nothing more earnestly than the greater safety of working miners. He was asked if it was his view that the Act had contributed to the more safe working of mines in Lancashire. His reply was that such was his view, but he added that safety was to be obtained under the Mines Regulation Act of 1872, which Act the Committee materially amended. Thus they had a high authority taking the view that there already existed that kind of protection in law which the right hon. Gentleman said that he desired to establish by his Bill. He could not understand why the Home Secretary declined to receive a deputation of workmen who belonged to existing Societies, seeing that he had received a deputation of working-men on the other side.

MR. JESSE COLLINGS (Birmingham, Bordesley)

said, that a remark fell from the right hon. Gentleman to the effect that no communication in favour of this proposal had reached him. Well, he thought that a most remarkable statement, because those who had moved personally among, and questioned, the working classes, knew what their real feeling was upon this point. He agreed with the hon. Member for Hackney that, while he could not hope to get this Amendment or anything like it accepted, they ought to enter a protest. He feared that the main reason for the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman was to be found in the fact that the Bill had emanated from the extreme section of Trade Unionists, and the Government were pledged not to depart from its terms, no matter what harm it might do to the great mass of the working classes. This was a Bill to give compensation to about 30 per cent, of the working men who met with accidents, and the Government refused to make it a Bill to include 100 per cent. Even the limited compensation now offered would be subject to all the delays and heartburnings of litigation. The Bill of the Government ought to be styled a Lawyers' Relief Bill rather than an Employers' Liability Bill.

* MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! The right hon. Member is out of Order in discussing the whole Bill upon this Amendment.

MR. JESSE COLLINGS

said, he was going to make his remarks in Order by pointing out that if this Amendment were accepted the measure would be converted into a real Compensation Bill. With regard to the feelings of the men themselves, he had questioned many of them on the particular point whether they preferred the Government Bill to a scheme under which all would get compensation, and the invariable answer was in favour of the latter plan. The suggestion of the Home Secretary, to the effect that the Bill would make employers more careful, did not hold good, for the workmen knew that all good employers, not only in their own interest, but as a matter of goodwill, used every possible effort to make the security of their workmen as complete as possible. Messrs. Tangyes, of Birmingham, might be cited as furnishing an answer to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. The workmen in that firm had received over £2,000 under such a scheme as the Amendment suggested, whereas under the Bill as it stood they would receive about £100. Let the right hon. Gentleman ask those workmen what their view was, and he would find that 90 per cent, of them were in favour of the Amendment. Then what came of the very great stress he laid on the statement that he had received no communication in favour of a general scheme such as was provided for in the Amendment? The Government by their present attitude might secure the votes of a certain class of Trades Unionists, but they would lose the support of a great majority of the workmen, for, after all, the Trades Unionists only numbered 700,000 or 800,000 men, not a very large proportion of the 13,000,000 of the working classes in this country. He protested against the endeavours of the Government to defeat a proposal which would prevent many heartburnings among those who expected great things from the Bill, and which would make the compensation under it as general as possible.

SIR A. HICKMAN (Wolverhampton)

said, the evil the House ought to guard against on this matter was the promotion of litigation. He happened to take up the other day a recent number of the Labour Gazette, which contained a return of litigation which had occurred under the Employers' Liability Act in the given month. There were 10 cases litigated; five were decided in favour of the employer, and five for the workmen. In throe cases there were appeals, and the net results of the 13 trials was that £384 was recovered. He would leave the House to judge what costs were incurred in those 13 trials; they might be sure, however, that the amount was far in excess of the sum recovered. In fact, the present Act was absolutely a dead letter so far as compensation to the men was concerned. More money was spent in law than the workmen received, and this no one desired. At any rate, the employers, while quite willing to give fair compensation to their workmen for accidents from whatever cause, were anxious that the money should go to the men, and not be spent in law.

* SIR J. GOLDSMLD (St. Paucras, S.)

said, he did not think that the Amendment carried out what the workmen themselves desired. He had had a great deal to do with railway insurance funds, and the essence of the principle on which these funds were established was that the workmen contributed something towards them, the result of the contribution being that it made the men themselves more careful. He should vote against the proposal of the hon. and gallant Member for Bristol, although he desired to see a general system of insurance, because the Amendment would encourage in the worst form, instead of diminishing, carelessness on the part of the men in the discharge of their duties, inasmuch as, whatever accident might happen, the masters would be bound to compensate them. Experience had shown that men constantly working in danger became familiarised with it, and in time utterly ignored that which would terrify other men who were not accustomed to it. If the men had to contribute some-thing to the fund they would be careful to avoid accidents, either to themselves or to their fellow-workmen. He had never heard any workmen with whom he had discussed the matter demand that the masters should be responsible for all accidents without any payment from themselves, and he did not believe that workmen generally desired such a system. Some day he hoped a satisfactory system of universal insurance would be established. That in operation on the Brighton line had worked very satisfactorily so far as the men were con-corned, but it would not be suitable to all industries; and if the Home Secretary in his leisure could draft a satisfactory scheme for general use he would accomplish a very great work.

MR. STUART-WORTLEY (Sheffield, Hallam)

remarked that unexampled and unexpectedly rapid progress had been made with the Bill that evening, the only checks to that progress having arisen on the Government side of the House. Pie rose to support the Amendment, which he admitted had been moved under very disadvantageous circumstances, for if it were carried the Bill would have to be totally recast, and a very difficult Parliamentary situation would be created. The hon. and gallant Member was not altogether to blame for bringing forward this Amendment; but those persons were responsible for Amendments of this kind who, upon platforms outside the House and who inside the House, had made electioneering, partisan, and inflated statements as to the imaginary benefits which this Bill would confer, and, on the other hand, had indulged in misleading discouragement of all alternative schemes. The Bill itself provided no real protection, because it only gave a pecuniary indemnity or compensation, which was of loss value than the indemnity or compensation which would be given if the Amendment were passed. It was clear that they were going to get nothing but an inferior indemnity unless they adopted some such Amendment as that before the House. Under the old Bill employers, by the exercise of discrimination and care in the selection of their foremen and superintendents, could afford something more like protection to their workmen than this Bill could afford. The employers' liability would, on the other hand, be by the present Bill increased to an amount that would render all care on their part useless, and it would extend to cases of those whom they did not select or pay, whom they could not dismiss, and over whom they had no control. He would support the Amendment, because he did not believe it would promote want of care on the part of the workmen. The Home Secretary had asked if there were any precedent for the policy of the Amendment. He did not suppose there was any actual precedent, but there was a precedent which to a certain extent applied in the case of the liability of common carriers, but even in that no artificial system of obligatory compensation was sot up. The hon. Member for St. Pancras objected to the Amendment on the ground that it, would not promote care on the part of the workmen. He did not think it was open to that objection. It would still be to the interest of the workmen to have their own fund side by side with the employers' fund, and they would stand in a sort of relation of policemen or guardians to one another, thereby protecting the common fund. As compared with the Amendment, the Bill would positively promote want of care. It was the biggest insurance Bill that the House had yet seen, and it would greatly increase the number of employers' liability insurances. The cost of these insurances must come either out of the employers' profits or out of the workmen's wages or out of some addition to the prices which consumers paid for the manufactured articles. The chances were that the cost would fall upon the workmen. That was the issue they had before them. He admitted that they could not at that time give effect to their views, but he heartily supported the Amendment as a protest against the Government resistance to schemes which would confer a real benefit on the working classes.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 148; Noes 50.—(Division List, No. 314.)

MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis) moved an Amendment to Clause 1, page 1, line 7, after "the workman's employer," insert "acting within the scope and duty of his employment." He said, the clause did not simply place the workman in the same position he would have been in had he not been in the employer's service; it put him in that position if, and only if, negligence occurred on the part of the employer or of some other person in the same employment. That being so, it seemed to him that the limiting condition of negligence ought to be very closely scrutinised. It might be, without the words he proposed, that one servant might, without instructions, and not in the course of his duty or employment—even contrary to the express orders of his employer—do something which he had no business to do, and, through negligence, injure another workman in the same employment. It seemed to him that that could not be the intention of the Bill, and surely in such a case there ought not to be an action against the employer. Again, the servant might be in a place whore he had no right to be—a place where he ought not to be in accordance with his duties—and in that case, if negligence took place, the employer ought not to be liable for an injury so caused. He quite understood that he would be answered by a reference to the Common Law, and he would be told that in the case of a man not acting within the scope of his duty and employment, the employer would not be liable now to a third party under the Common Law. But they really did not know what the Common Law was, and it was on account of the uncertainty of the Common Law, and on account of what the Home Secretary himself had held to be an undue extension of the Common Law, adopted by the Judges during the last 40 or 50 years, that this Bill had been rendered necessary. The Home Secretary had based the necessity for the Bill upon the uncertainty of the Common Law. They were now making an exceptional Statute, and it seemed to him that they ought to give the Judges such directions as would enable them to apply it according to the principles they intended to set up.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 7, after the word "employer," to insert the words "acting within the scope and duty of his employment."—(Mr. Gibson Bowles.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

* SIR C. RUSSELL

said, the Amendment was wholly and absolutely unnecessary, and he thought if the hon. Member would read the clause he would see that under the Bill the liability to a workman was to be the same as the liability to a third person, and the liability to a third person was very clearly defined by the law. If a man who caused injury to a third person was acting outside the scope of his employment, the employer was not liable for his negligence.

Question put, and negatived.

* MR. GERALD BALFOUR (Leeds, Central)

said, the principle of the clause appeared to be that the employer ought to be under the same measure of liability to his servants for any injury that might be caused by the negligence of those in his employment as he was under to the public at large. The Amendment he had to propose did not abrogate that principle, but was intended to mitigate the cases of hardship and injustice which would, he thought, arise from its universal application. The first part of his Amendment did but repeat in slightly different words the purport of the Home Secretary's clause—that was to say, it swept away the doctrine of common employment; and he only altered the form of the words to prepare the way for the proviso that followed. The essence of the Amendment was contained in the proviso. It could not be denied, even if, as the Home Secretary asserted, the employer could be held to be morally accountable for the negligence of an ordinary workman, that his moral responsibility for the negligence of a manager or person in a position of superintendence must be very much greater; and the object of this Amendment was to enable the jury, or if there should not be a jury to enable the Judge, to give expression to that difference in assessing the damages to be 'paid to the injured person. The Homo Secretary rested his proposal to sweep away the doctrine of common employment on the principle of the Common Law. The right hon. Gentleman took it for granted that the Common Law, which made the employer liable for the negligence of any person in his employment, was a just, equitable, and expedient law. The right hon. Gentleman also assumed that where the Common Law made an employer legally responsible there was also a, moral responsibility corresponding to the legal liability; and, further than that, lie assumed that the same considerations of justice and expediency by which the Common Law might be defended in the case of third persons were equally applicable to the relation between master and servant. He had listened, he believed, to every important speech the Home Secretary had delivered upon this Bill, and he must say he had never heard any speaker of equal ability in whose argument dogmatic assertion played so large a part as it did in speeches of the right hon. Gentleman. Every one of the propositions he had stated seemed to him highly disputable and contentious. First of all, there was the assumption that the doctrine of the Common Law as applied to the relation between au employer and the public in general was a just and expedient law. It might possibly be expedient, though there was a good deal to be said even on that question, but be was bound to say that he entirely differed with the Home Secretary when he described it as being a just law, and in that opinion he did not stand alone. He might remind the House that the Select Committee of 1876, the first Committee to investigate the question of the employer's liability, pronounced the opinion that the Common Law of negligence was very unjust, and operated with extreme harshness. The passage in which that opinion was given was so clear and explicit that he ventured to read it to the House. The Committee said— That a man should be liable for injury occasioned by his own act, neglect, or permission is obviously just. That a man should be liable for injury occasioned by acts which he has neither done or permitted, which have resulted from no neglect of his, or disobedience to his order, or which he may have forbidden, is a result the justice of which it is not easy at once to recognise, and one which some eminent lawyers do not hesitate to de-scribe as essentially unjust. Such, however, is, and since the reign of Charles II. appears to have been, the law of this country as to injuries occasioned by servants in the course of their employment 'to persons not in the same employment. For such injuries the masters employing the servant is liable, notwithstanding that the acts which occasioned them may not have been ordered or authorised, or may even have been forbidden. There is a strong concurrence of authority against the justice of tins law, though there seems to be some difference of opinion as to its origin and historical development. It would appear from that extract the opinion of the Committee of 1876 was that the Common Law on this subject was certainly unjust, and yet it was that very Common Law that his right hon. Friend bad taken for the foundation of this Bill. If the Committee of 1876 was right, as he had held it was right, in saying the Common Law of liability for the negligence of servants caused great injustice and hardship even its between the employer and a third party, still greater hardship and injustice was involved if the doctrine of common employment was to be swept away. And for this reason: that strangers, except in certain special cases, rarely came within the possibility of injury from the servant of an employer acting within the scope of his employment. The case of fellow-servants under the conditions of modern industry was very different. There was hardly any industry carried on upon the large scale that had become common during the present century, hardly any employment which did not involve dangers of injury caused by one workman to another; in almost every industry there were dangerous things to be done, and where a considerable number of men combined together in dangerous work, the negligence of one of them was almost certain to cause injury to another. It was clear those dangers must be regarded as dangers incident to the employment, which no care of the employer could wholly eliminate. The Home Secretary had described the doctrine of common employment as absurd; but he (Mr. Balfour) thought it was only fair to remind the House that the so-called absurd doctrine of common employment arose from an endeavour to correct those very defects of Common Law which he had been calling attention to. It was Judge-made law, no doubt, which made common employment a bar to an action for damages in the case of a servant who had suffered from the negligence of a fellow-servant. But for that matter Common Law itself was Judge-made law. He was ready to admit that Judge-made law was carried too far before the Act of 1880 was passed. He thought to lay down that the manager of a works, as well as the humblest workman in the works, came within the definition of a fellow-servant for whose negligence the employer was not liable was distinctly unjust; but it appeared to him they ran the risk of an opposite injustice when they said that no difference was to be made between the manager and the humblest workman in an establishment, but that the employer should be liable to pay the same amount of damages for an injury which was caused by the negligence of one as for an injury which was caused by the negligence of the other. It was all very well to say the employer was legally responsible for do-fault of his servants in the case of third persons; but it was impossible to exclude all considerations of moral responsibility from the equities of the case. It appeared to him most extravagant to pretend there was an equal amount of moral responsibility attaching to an employer in the case of au injury which was caused by the negligence of one who was the representative and delegate of the employer, and in the case of an injury caused by the negligence of one who was merely a fellow-workman with other workmen in the employer's service. It seemed to him to be the height of extravagance to pretend there could be the same responsibility; and this was, in fact, the fundamental objection to the Bill, that while professing to preserve a correspondence between legal and moral responsibility, it wholly failed to do so. The legal responsibility of the employer was equally great, whether the injury for which he had to pay compensation had been caused by his manager and representative or had been caused by the humblest operative in his employment. He said it was very desirable, if the Home Secretary really desired to maintain any correspondence whatever between the moral and the legal responsibility, that there should be some way of meeting this objection. He had, therefore, put down the Amendment he now moved as an honest attempt to find a way out of the difficulty, and as such he commended it to the Government.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 8, to leave out from the word "shall," to the end of Sub-section (1) of Clause 1, in order to insert the words "not be deprived of the right to compensation and remedies against the employer by reason only that he was a workman or servant of the employer or engaged in his work. Provided that, in estimating the damages to be recovered in any action brought under the Act the jury (or Judge if there be no jury) may take into account the relation of authority, if any, in which the person whose negligence in fact caused the injury stood towards the person injured in respect of the work on which that person was engaged."—(Mr. Gerald Balfour.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'have' stand part of the Bill."

MR. ASQUITH

My hon. Friend who has moved this Amendment has very frankly admitted that, so far as his object is concerned, the substance of the Amendment—not so much the words he proposes to substitute for the concluding language of the first clause of the Bill—is, in the proviso by which he seeks to qualify and cut down the general principle of liability, thereby instituted. I apprehend the real question we have to consider is the question raised by the proviso—namely, whether it ought to be the duty of the Court, acting through a jury or a Judge if there is no jury, in an action brought under this Act to discriminate in the quantum of damages awarded to the plaintiff from the defendant—that is to say, from the employer—according as the person who immediately caused the injury stood to the employer in a lesser or greater degree, and was higher or lower in the hierarchy of the employment? With reference to that proposition, I have only a few observations to make. In the first place, it is conceded by my hon. Friend that according to Common Law if the injured person does not stand in the relation of servant or fellow-servant to the person whose act or default is the direct cause of the damage—if, in other words, the injured person is what we customarily call a third person—it makes no difference; but if lie stands in the relation of fellow-servant, the amount of the responsibility is to rest on what may be the degree of importance of the servant who caused the injury; therefore my hon. Friend proposes to establish a distinction in law as between the case where a third person is injured and the case whore a fellow-servant is injured. That is, of course, contrary to the fundamental principle of the Bill, which is to place the two persons in the same category and to abolish the doctrine—I will not go into the question whether it is wise or foolish, expedient or inexpedient—of common employment. The Amendment is totally contrary to the principles the framers of the Bill endeavoured to embody in the first clause. Then my hon. Friend goes on to the second part, with which I have to deal. He says, however that may be in point of moral justice, and I suppose of public policy, it is inexpedient that the employer should be held equally liable and answerable in the same amount of pecuniary compensation, whether the person whose act or default caused the injury was a person in the position of manager or foreman, or whether he be an ordinary servant. In reference to that argument I have to say that it has long been established that it is impossible in the actual course of litigation to discriminate between the relative degrees of responsibility of the employer in regard to the different persons who, for purposes of his own, he has taken into his employment and over whom he exercises equal control. And further, my hon. Friend must know the damages that are awarded a plaintiff for negligence resulting in personal injury are not damages in the nature of a fine or punishment, but damages in the nature of compensation to the plaintiff for the injury he has sustained. I am not aware—I am subject to correction on this—but I am not aware that, if a ques- tion of this kind were to come up in the present state of the law, where a fellow-being, not a stranger but a fellow-servant, had received an injury through the negligence of a fellow-servant, that the Judges would be justified in directing the jury to have regard, in assessing the damages, to the particular position of the servant hurt. At any rate, whether it be a misdirection in point of law, I am perfectly certain the uniform practice both of Judges and juries has been to give the plaintiff, when you have once established the relation of master and servant, the amount of damages that is proportionate to the actual injury he has sustained. The Government cannot assent to the proposition.

* MR. MATTHEWS

said, the right hon. Gentleman lays down as a canon that every Amendment was to be judged by this one rule: that the fellow-servant was to be in the position of a stranger.

MR. ASQUITH

As good a position.

* MR. MATTHEWS

As good a position; but the right hon. Gentleman put a stronger meaning upon it than was covered by Statute. A Stranger dealing with a carrier might make a contract with that carrier whereby the carrier contracted out of all liability. That was perfectly lawful; but when they asked that the workman should be allowed to do it, this great principle of the right hon. Gentleman was Hung to the winds, and he set his face against any clause of that sort enabling the fellow-servant to do anything that a stranger could do. His hon. Friend's argument rested really on this: that this vicarious responsibility was unjust in itself, and no argument would make it otherwise; it was tolerated in the case of a stranger, but the cases of the stranger were very few. When they dealt with a stranger everyone felt there were two men perfectly innocent, the stranger on the one hand, and the employer on the other. Which was to suffer? Not the stranger, who knew nothing whatever of the business, and could not foresee the danger, hut the responsibility must fall on the master who employed the servant, whose act of negligence caused the injury, and employed him in a business of his own with which he must be supposed to be acquainted. That consideration did not apply to this case, and not all the ingenuity of the right hon. Gentleman would ever persuade the common sense of this country that men engaged in a dangerous business of which they knew the danger, and only by their own vigilance could avoid the danger, and entered into contracts of service without making stipulations against the danger, no amount of ingenuity would persuade ordinary men of sense that they stood in the same position as a perfect stranger; therefore, this attempt of his hon. Friend was a very ingenious and, he thought, a very laudable attempt not to make it necessary that the jury should discriminate between the ranks and the higher hierarchy, but to enable them to do so. Surely it was not extravagant to say that, even in relation to a stranger, the grossness of the negligence formed an element the jury might take into account in assessing the damages. Obviously negligence by a man who was in authority, who was trusted with the management of the concern, was a much graver offence than negligence on the part of a mere servant, and the master might be expected to bear a greater responsibility than in the case of a fellow-servant, who might be one of the very lowest in the concern. It might be a case of a miner. The superior provided safety lamps, with a man to attend to their being properly locked and cared for, and had established the most rigid rules against the use of naked lights. Nevertheless, some subordinate servant picked the lock of his lamp, exposing the naked light, and thereby an explosion occurred. Surely that was a different matter, and ought to lead to a lighter responsibility on the part of the employer than if he had not supplied safety lamps at all. If his hon. Friend went to a Division he would vote with him.

* SIR J. GOLDSMID (St. Pancras, S.)

said, a man injured through the carelessness of a foreman suffered exactly in the same degree as if his injury were caused by the carelessness of a workman. He could not, therefore, agree with his hon. Friend who moved the Amendment. The whole gist of the matter was that if a man suffered from an accident he ought to be properly compensated. He could not draw the distinction which his hon. Friend sought to draw. He was surprised that there should be any objection to vicarious responsibility. If the master was to be responsible at all it must be vicariously. On the points raised they should not endeavour to instruct the jury; they must leave them and many other points to the common sense of the jury, who would have a perfect right to take all these matters into consideration. He hoped the Amendment would not be accepted.

* SIR C. RUSSELL

said, the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment and the hon. Member who followed him ran full tilt at the doctrine of vicarious responsibility, and yet a little before his hon. Friends opposite sought to throw upon the employer the responsibility for every accident, even though he had nothing to do with the causing of the accident at all.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

I did not vote for that.

SIR C. RUSSELL

said, be should be surprised if the hon. Gentleman did. If a man had established his right to compensation the only question was the amount which would indemnify him for the loss he had sustained. The Amendment would be impracticable in application. It proposed that the compensation should be considered with relation to the authority of the person who caused the injury; so that where a man lost a leg, if the person who caused the injury was of inferior degree, then the man would be compensated as for an inferior leg, or as if he had lost a finger.

SIR R. WEBSTER

said, the Attorney General twitted his hon. Friend with a change of front, but he thought that observation came with a bad grace from occupants of the Treasury Bench. There was, he held, fair ground and reason for change of front, and, although his friends might have performed such a change, they were only expressing opinions that were consistent with one another. The reason they supported the last Amendment was that they were anxious to have words defining a system of funds for dealing with the question.

SIR C. RUSSELL

said, the last Amendment did not deal with funds.

SIR R. WEBSTER

bogged pardon.

SIR C. RUSSELL

said, the last Amendment had nothing to do with that question.

SIR R. WEBSTER

said, the Attorney General had twitted his hon. Friend with voting for that Amendment, but he thought such observations were not calculated to facilitate the progress of the Bill, lie would suggest to him that is hon. Friend was not, inconsistent. Te was bound to say there was much force in the observations of the hon. Member who moved the Amendment. When they were extending the rights of the workmen they should be allowed to take into consideration the relations between the master and the servant. It was said that an attack was made upon the principle of vicarious responsibility. That was not so. When they made a master liable for an accident caused by a workman they imported the doctrine of vicarious responsibility. But it was not an unfair thing, in connection with the increased liability imposed upon the master, to consider whether the question of damages should be so strictly pressed against him. If his hon. Friend went to a Division he would support, him, though he freely admitted that the question opened up wan a large one, and he doubted whether it could be dealt with now.

Mr. PARKER SMITH (Lanark, Partick)

said, the Home Secretary said the principle under this clause was that the workman was to be put in the same position as a stranger. But, a stranger was not a person of one kind. There were various kinds of strangers. What kind of stranger was the workman to be? It was very ambiguous at present. If the workman was not, to be a workman, what was he to be? They should not, leave it to the Judges, but define it now. If a workman was damaged through the negligence of the head of the works or of some one in a considerable position of authority it was a, matter of elementary morals that be would have a higher claim to compensation than if he were injured through the carelessness of a person in an inferior position. It seemed to him they were bound, in introducing new rights for the benefit of different classes of people, to see that they were in some way brought into accord with elementary principles of justice. The language of the clause was very unsatisfactory; and the Amendment dealt with the question. He thought they should have a proper definition of the workman's position.

MR. TOMLINSON (Preston)

said, if the Amendment was one that would secure greater safety he would be glad to support it.

Amendment, negatived.

MR. PARKER SMITH moved— Clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end, insert "but had been as of right in the position where the injury was caused to him. He said, this was an Amendment covering what he had said just now. It defined a great deal more early what was the meaning of the clause—the meaning of what a workman really was. The question was whether he was in the works as of right or whether he was a mere trespasser? The point was very ambiguous as the clause stood. The man might get there in a great many different ways. It appeared to him I lint this was an extraordinary way to draw a Bill. He took it that the man would have rights—that he would not be as if he I were in the works by invitation, but that he would have some remedy for injuries that might occur to him. It was a matter of drafting, which could be remedied by the insertion of the words which he now moved.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 11, after the word "work," to insert the words "but had been as of right in the position where the injury was caused to him."—(Mr. Parker Smith.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. ASQUITH

said, the words were wholly unnecessary. The clause provided for the same remedies as if the workman had been a third person or a stranger. So far as he was working in the place the words were unnecessary. How could they show that a man was there "as of right"? He thought the Amendment should be withdrawn.

Question put, and negatived.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, the next Amendment was as follows:— Clause 1, page 1, line 11, after "his work," insert "but no action at law under this Act shall be commenced until fourteen days after a notice in writing has been given by the workman or his representatives to the employer, stating with reasonable particularity the act of negligence relied upon, the nature of the personal injury, the amount of compensation claimed, and the date when, and the place where, the injury occurred. No such action shall be brought unless such notice be given within fourteen days of the day when the cause of action arose; the notice shall be signed by the workman, or by some person on his behalf, and may be served personally or sent by registered post to his last or most usual place of abode. He was not in love with the Amendment himself, and he would withdraw it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, the next Amendment was also in his name, and read as follows:— Clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out sub-section (2), and insert,—"(2) Provided that a workman or his representatives shall not be entitled under this Act to any right of compensation or remedy against the workman's employer in any case where it was the negligence of the workman himself which caused the injury, or where the workman knew of the negligence and failed, without reasonable excuse, to give or cause to be given within a reasonable time information thereof in writing to his employer or to some person having authority to remedy the negligence in the service of his employer. He presumed that this Bill was to be made a Statute rendering the employer liable for acts done by himself or those in authority on his behalf; but it seemed unreasonable that the employer should also be held responsible for the act of the workman himself when the workman caused the injury. That could not be understood to be the meaning of the Bill. The employer might not know of the injury at all—if it were caused by the workman himself. The Amendment was, he thought, worthy of consideration.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 12, to leave out sub-section (2) of Clause 1, in order to insert the words,—"(2) Provided that a workman or his representatives shall not be entitled under this Act to any right of compensation or remedy against the workman's employer in any case where it was the negligence of the workman himself which caused the injury, or where the workman knew of the negligence and failed, without reasonable excuse, to give or cause to be given within a reasonable time information thereof in writing to his employer or to some person having authority to remedy the negligence in the service of his employer."—(Mr. Gibson Bowles.)

Question proposed, "That subsection (2) of Clause 1 stand part of the Bill."

* The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR,) Clackmannan, &c.

said, the Government could not accept the Amendment. As regarded the first part, it was unnecessary, because it was simply an expression of the existing law as to contributory negligence. The second part raised a question of policy which the Government had fully considered, and on which they had arrived at an opinion adverse to what the Amendment proposed to enact. It had often been made a question whether a workman who continued to work in the presence of a seen danger should be considered to have thereby contracted to accept the risk and to have waived his right of action; but there appeared to be a preponderance of considerations against that by itself constituting a waiver. A man might know very well that if he gave notice of a danger he would be dismissed on the spot; and a succession of men might be sent away because they called attention to a danger. If it was the duty of the master, by inspection or otherwise, to see that the danger was not there, if he had not proper inspection he could not complain of a workman not having given notice of the dangers, and this should not form an answer to an action nor constitute evidence that ho had contracted to work under dangerous conditions.

* SIR E. HILL (Bristol, S.)

said, he was surprised at the reception accorded this Amendment. They were told that the great object of the Bill was to prevent accidents; but now they had it that when an accident occurred or danger was known to be at hand the workman was not to report it. That was a monstrous proposition—that a workman should not be expected to give notice of a known danger. It was absurd to say that in such a case, if notice were given, the man would be discharged. He hoped the Government would re-consider the matter.

MR. TOMLLNSON

said, there might be good reasons for leaving the form as it stood, but they should be better reasons than the Lord Advocate hail given. This point ought to be met in some special way. It was said the matter had been fully considered, but that was no reason why they should not again consider it in this House. They were told before they ought not to have any Second Reading Debate, and now that they should not re-consider so important a point as this. He protested against that idea. They were told the man would not report because he might be dismissed. That was a very extraordinary view to take, and he did not see why it should have been brought before the House. A workman was not in a helpless condition, because he could communicate with an Inspector. It ought to be obligatory on workmen to make known dangers, some of which might escape the observation of others and be known only to themselves. There ought certainly to be some duty resting on the workman. He thought a reasonable case had been made out for the Amendment.

MR. J. H. WILSON (Middlesbrough)

said, this clause would introduce a most unreasonable principle. Its effect would be to deprive seafaring men of any chance of obtaining compensation for injury. They must obey the orders of their officers without disputing—there was no time to argue on board ship—whether compliance with them was safe or not. He trusted the clause would not be pressed.

MR. STUART-WORTLEY (Sheffield, Hallam)

said, hon. Members seemed to have forgotten that this clause was in the original Bill. He thought it might be accepted now; but it might be embodied in the clause that reasonable fear of dismissal was a good excuse for not giving notice.

MR. FENWICK (Northumberland, Wansbeck)

said, he would point out that an Inspector might be 100 miles away when a workman became aware of a particular risk.

MR. TOMLINSON

said, he had known cases being reported, and having immediate attention, and that on the application of the men.

MR. FENWICK

said, no doubt, but he had known of cases where the Inspector was away. Besides, the Inspector was not always ready to run at such a call. As to the question of dismissal, he had known a case where a miner sent to an Inspector, who came down, and the miner's name was disclosed, with the result that be was dismissed, and was never again able to obtain another day's employment in the district as a working miner. So that a, workman reporting to an Inspector ran great danger, and there was little to be wondered at if the men, in such circumstances, thought they should not enter into those matters.

SIR E. CLARKE (Plymouth)

said, he would be sorry to see the Amendment added to the Bill, but not for the same reasons as those just given. He did not believe that there were many employers who would dismiss their workmen in the way just alluded to. Frivolous complaints might perhaps be made, and men might be dismissed for making them. But that was another thing; and he did not think there were many employers who would act in that way simply because a man reported some danger or an accident. There were two parts in the Amendment. He agreed with the Lord Advocate that the first part of the Amendment was not wanted at all. In his opinion, the other part, although it might have been extremely useful in the old Act, was entirely inapplicable to the present case, in which the employer was to be liable for the negligence of any one of his workmen. He thought the Amendment would defeat the object his hon. Friend (Mr. Gibson Bowles) had in view.

Question put, and agreed to.

* MR. BRUNNER (Cheshire, Northwich)

said, he desired to move the following Amendment:— Clause 1, page 1, line 14, at end, add,—"(3.) A workman shall not be deemed guilty of contributory negligence when the acts or defaults alleged to contribute to the injury were caused by fatigue due to excessive hours of labour. He confessed frankly that he was not able to argue the matter as a lawyer would argue it, hut he moved his Amendment under a great sense of responsibility, for the reason that some years ago a man in his employ met with his death when fatigued after 13 hours continuous labour. Ho was in hopes last night, when he heard the Home Secretary speaking of the present condition of the Common Law, that workmen under the circumstances mentioned in this Amendment would be able to claim compensation. The right hon. Gentleman went so far as to say that even physical discomfort might be a reason for claiming compensation. A few moments afterwards the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bury had said that he did not agree with the Home Secretary, and later the late Homo Secretary said the same thing. He intended to move the Amendment in order, as far as possible, to clear up the doubt. It had been suggested to him that it would be a difficult thing for a Court or a jury to decide whether a man under given circumstances had been subjected to undue fatigue in consequence of excessive hours of labour. Well, from the newspapers he saw that Courts of Law and juries every day decided questions quite as difficult, and unless he heard a better argument he should press the Amendment to a Division. He would go further, and say that unless the Government could assure him that this difficulty was met by the existing law, or that it was or would be met by the Bill, he would press his Amendment to a Division. If the right hon. Gentleman would accept the principle of the Amendment, and bring up words of his own to give effect to it, he (Mr. Brunner) should be satisfied.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 14, at the end of Clause 1, to insert the words,—(3.) "A workman shall not be deemed guilty of contributory negligence when the acts or defaults alleged to contribute to the injury were caused by fatigue due to excessive hours of labour."—(Mr. Brunner.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. ASQUITH

said, he was sure that the House would sympathise with the object the hon. Member had in view and with the opinion he had expressed as to the duty of employers in relation to this matter; but he would suggest to the hon. Member that he should not press his Amendment to a Division. The truth was, as he thought everyone would agree, that if the state of facts contemplated in the Amendment were proved to the satisfaction of a Court or a jury, the tribunal would certainly not hold the workman to be guilty of contributory negligence. If the tribunal was satisfied that the injury was caused not by any negligence of the man, but was due to physical exhaustion, which was itself produced by excessive hours of labour, he was perfectly satisfied that the workman would not be in the least danger of having his right of action defeated or of having a verdict found against him by a jury. He (Mr. Asquith) would suggest that it would be very inexpedient in the interests of the workman to define in the Bill one particular state of circumstances, and to declare that it should not constitute contributory negligence when there were a number of other conditions which, in the experience of employers of labour, incapacitated workmen from the performance of their duty, and ought equally to be taken into account in deciding the question of contributory negligence. He hoped that the Amendment would not be pressed.

MR. J. BURNS

said, he was anxious that the House should be clear on this point. He was pleased that the hon. Member who had moved the Amendment had done so in most kind terms. The Amendment came with grace from him, particularly when he told them that it was in consequence of a man in his employ having died whilst at work for an undue length of time that ho had thought it desirable to move in the matter. He (Mr. Burns) would give the Homo Secretary one or two cases to which his language would not apply and where the workman would not be protected. Ho was, unfortunately, in an engine-room when all the stokers under him were down with yellow fever; they the workman had been down in the stokehole for more than 36 hours alone. One of the stokers who had partly recovered came down to help, because they had to get their boat on. This poor fellow was not sufficiently recovered, and while stoking the fire he suddenly fell forward, from excessive fatigue, on the furnace and then back on the bunker, and broke his arm. That was a case in which, partly through illness and partly through excessive fatigue, a man was laid up with a broken arm, nobody contributing to the accident but the bunker. Then cases happened of a man through his anxiety to save a mate from falling off a scaffold having a great weight suddenly placed upon him, and bearing it heroically until he fell from exhaustion. No one contributed to that, yet it was clearly a case where a mail was over-weighted, and where probably the injured man had been suffering from excessive fatigue. A more common case was that of the stokers in the gas houses. They would often see a poor fellow labouring in the gas houses, who had been out of work for some time, and had not sufficient strength to do his work properly. He had seen a man who was stocking a bench of retorts, drop at the "T" end of a retort from fatigue. A man only the other day had burst his heart through excessive fatigue. In cases of this kind the employer ought to be held more responsible than he was held under the Common Law, and under the Bill as it stood. He had known men in distilleries and alkali works taken from the stage, and put in a van, helpless from fatigue. If the Home Secretary would accept the Amendment even temporarily until the Bill could be amended in a clearer way, he would be doing justice to a number of men who suffered, not through any negligence of their own, but because they stuck to their work.

* SIR C. RUSSELL

thought that the hon. Member had not shown his usual clearness of perception on this occasion, because the illustrations he had given had no connection with the Amendment. His right hon. Friend had pointed out that if the state of affairs contemplated by the Amendment were proved to the satisfaction of a tribunal, no jury would say that the workman had been guilty of any contributory negligence.

SIR E. CLARKE

said that ho wished to help forward the progress of the Bill, and would express concurrence with the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary in the proposition he had laid down as to this Amendment. He thought the acceptance of the Amendment would hinder rather than help object of the hon. Member proposed it. No doubt in the specified in the Amendment it be held that there had been no contributory negligence at all. Falling asleep through excessive fatigue was not negligence on the part of the man who fell asleep. The Amendment, therefore, was not only not wanted, but if put in the Bill would limit the action of the tribunals who had to deal with the question. But the hon. Member for Batter-sea had introduced an entirely new set of considerations, no doubt of considerable importance. In the case of the unfortunate stoker who fell through fatigue and broke his arm, the employer would not be liable under the Bill, nor would the Amendment impose any liability. The Bill only referred to accidents caused by negligence on the part of the employer or some person in his employ.

* MR. DODD (Essex, Maldon)

said, the House was clearly of opinion that if the facts of a case were those provided for in the Amendment, the workman would not be debarred from obtaining compensation. That being the case, what harm could it do to make the point perfectly clear? It seemed to him that it would make litigation more simple if they stated in the measure that this state of facts did not amount to contributory negligence.

* THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR,) Clackmannan, &c.

said, he thought there was a serious danger here. If they selected one or more out of a large category things which were not now contributory negligence, and declared that they should not constitute contributory negligence, this would give rise to the inference that the other things not enumerated would be contributory negligence.

* MR. BRUNNER

said, that if he found that the Bill did not render the employer solely liable in cases where the workmen were employed excessive hours, he would try to introduce the Amendment at a later stage.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, he would move to leave out Clause 2 (provision against contracting out beforehand). His desire was to raise the question at large which was raised in particular on a former occasion as to whether or not workmen were to be allowed to contract out of the Act.

CAPTAIN NAYLOR-LEYLAND (Colchester)

rose to Order. He asked whether it was competent for the hon. Member to again raise the question of contracting out, especially as the Motion would prejudice the bringing forward of the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton?

* MR. SPEAKER

I am afraid that the next 12 Amendments are for that very reason out of Order. If anything has been settled during this discussion, it is that the House will not allow contracting out of the Bill. These Amendments seek to re-open the question.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, that the deprivation of the workman's right to contract out of the Bill was put on the ground of kindliness to the workman. The Home Secretary contended that it was necessary to have protection against improvident contract.

* MR. SPEAKER

Inferentially, and I hold directly, objection to this clause cannot be taken. It has been settled that there is no contracting out of the Bill, and there is no Question put from the Chair that this clause stand part of the Bill. The hon. Member is out of Order, and I rule the next 12 Amendments also out of Order. The next in Order will be the Amendment at the top of page 16.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

said, he begged to move, in Clause 3, page 1, line 27, to leave out "or will be paid," in order to insert "paid or will be payable." He said the clause made provision for employer's contribution to benefit fund in case of action being brought against him. The object of the Amendment was to secure that the Court or the jury in assessing the amount of compensation should treat as a payment on account of the employer's liability so much money as "has been paid or will be payable" out of the fund. He submitted that it was impossible to take into account a sum that would be paid. No one knew whether the sum would be paid or not. The proper thing to take into account was the sum that was liable to be paid or payable.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 27, to leave out the words "or will be paid," in order to insert the words "paid or will be payable."—(Mr. Gibson Bowles.)

Question proposed, "That the words 'or will be paid' stand part of the Bill."

* MR. ASQUITH

said, that was merely a verbal question. He appreciated the hon. Member's criticisms, but the words had been left in their present form in the Standing Committee. He preferred the words in the Bill for the reason that the insurance fund might be insolvent, and the amount might be "payable" out of a fund whether it was solvent or insolvent. Under the words as they stood the Court would satisfy itself before it made the set-off-either that the sum had been actually paid, or that it would, in fact, be paid.

* MR. MATTHEWS

said, the only payment taken into account was the payment attributable to a contribution which had been made by the employer.

MR. LEES KNOWLES

said, it seemed to him that there should be some provision in the Bill to enable the employer to recover his costs from the fund.

* SIR C. RUSSELL

was understood to say that if the workman recovered no more than the amount represented by the offer of the employer, he would get no costs.

Question put, and agreed to.

Amendment proposed, In Clause 4, to leave out the words after "action," in line 1, to "employer," in line 4, in order to insert the words "against an employer in respect of injury to a workman caused by negligence."—(The Lord Advocate.)

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, the course the Government had adopted was not a convenient one. He understood that this proposal was consequential upon the new clause adopted on the previous day. It would have been for the convenience of the House if this Amendment had been placed on the Paper. They would then have been able to understand its purport and judge of its bearing, and discuss it rationally. At present, as the House would agree, they had a very obscure idea of what the Government were aiming at.

MR. ASQUITH

said, this was a very simple matter. There was no change in the construction of the Bill involved, but the Amendment was necessary owing to the adoption of the clause making the head employer liable for the servants of the sub-contractor in executing work within the scope of his own liability. Clause 4, as it stood, dealt, only with actions by workmen against their employer.

* SIR H. JAMES

said, the principal contractor was not "the employer" of the workman of the sub-contractor. It was because of this that they made the principal contractor responsible for the default of the sub-contractor.

MR. HUNTER (Aberdeen, N.)

said, the difficulty pointed out by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bury could be dealt with in the Definition Clause.

SIR H. JAMES

said, that course could be adopted with advantage.

SIR C. RUSSELL

said, that when the Definition Clause was reached the alteration would be made if it were found necessary.

Amendment agreed to.

MR. PARKER SMITH

said, he wished to move, in Clause 4, page 2, to leave out "may," and insert "shall." The effect of this would be to require that every case should be brought in the County Court instead of leaving it optional. He did not understand for what reason it should be made optional. It was of the first importance that proceedings should be taken in the simplest and cheapest Court, as much in the interest of the plaintiff as of anyone. He was afraid the power given in the Bill would do no good to anyone except the speculative attorney, whom the whole House seemed anxious to discourage. Of course in these actions working men would always be the plaintiffs, and it would be in the power of the attorneys to take the cases where they liked. Naturally, those attorneys who desired to get hold of what costs they could would always take the cases into the Court where the costs were the highest. They had had bitter experience of this in Scotland. There the Act of 1880 gave an option, and the result was that an astounding proportion of the cases were taken to the Court of Session, where the costs were three times as great as in the County Court. According to a Return obtained by the hon. Member for Morpeth, in England during the four years previous to June, 1892, there were 711 cases tried in the County Court, and of those only 27 were taken to the High Court. In Scotland 676 cases were tried, and of those 184 were taken to the Court of Session. In Edinburgh alone there were 150 cases, of which 39 were taken to the Court of Session. In Glasgow where there were 371 cases, 115, or just one-third, were taken to the Court of Session. No one but the writers benefited by this arrangement. In the Bill very elaborate provisions had been introduced for the purpose of stopping up that hole; but while a side door was thus closed, in a later clause a still wider door was opened by substituting "may" for "shall." He was told it would be in the power of any greedy writer to take a case straight into the Court of Session in order to secure costs on the higher scale, and that seemed to him to be totally foreign to the principle of the Bill, which was to provide cheap and easy justice. He trusted the Home Secretary and the Attorney General would take a lesson from the experience of Scotland, and not expose England to the dangers and disadvantages which had been felt so seriously in Scotland during the last few years.

Amendment proposed, In page 2, line 4, leave out the word "may" in order to insert the word "shall."—(Mr. Parker Smith.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'may' stand part of the Bill."

MR. J. H. WILSON

said, that no doubt the intentions of the hon. Member were very good, and in the interests of working men; but there were two sides to this as to all questions. He was not in love with the County Court Judges and juries, but he believed in the Judges of the High Court of Justice as a rule. In the High Court they had a superior class of Judges, and he submitted that it ought to be left entirely optional to the workman whether he should bring his action in the County Court or in the High Court. If the workman was a member of a Trade Union his Union would advise him, and not the attorney, as to the Court in which he should bring his action. It was not a matter of the legal shark, of whom they had heard so much in the course of these Debates, for Trades Unions would advise their members on these points, and therefore he urged the Government to leave it optional to a plaintiff to enter his action in either Court.

* SIR A. ROLLIT (Islington, S.)

said that, as one who had had considerable experience of County Court work, he took the same view. Many of the County Court Judges were able and excellent men; but there were exceptions, and in those cases he could quite understand the workman or the employer having strong objections to the trial of the action in the County Court. The County Court almost inevitably meant a low allocation of damages, especially in Ireland. Again, what had been said about the juries in these Courts was perfectly correct, and there were no means of obtaining a special jury, which might be a matter of importance to an employer.

Amendment agreed to.

DR. COMMINS (Cork Co., S.E.)

said, he had to move the Amendment in his name enabling actions to be brought in other inferior Courts as well as County Courts. He thought this would be a great convenience to workmen.

Amendment proposed, In page 2, line 5, after the word "Court," to insert the words "or any inferior Court of Record."—(DR. Commins.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

* SIR C. RUSSELL

The Government see no objection to that.

SIR H. JAMES

hoped the Government would pause before accepting that Amendment. It had a very wide bearing, for there were inferior Courts scattered all over the country.

MR. STUART-WORTLEY

reminded the House that the late Mr. Bradlaugh obtained for the House a Return of all the inferior Courts in the country. The list was an extremely long one, and he advised the Government to refer to it before accepting the Amendment.

SIR R. WEBSTER

thought the House ought not to accept these words without further examination. There was the Mayor's Court in London, the Recorders' Court at Bristol, similar Courts at Hull and Newcastle, and in many of the Midland towns. He knew that during the last few years active steps had been taken to transfer to the County Court the jurisdiction of these Courts, and it would be very unwise now to confer new powers on them to try cases involving claims up to the amount of £300. Many of these Courts, too, had not the power to summon a jury.

MR. TOMLINSON

said, that many of these Courts had powers totally different from those possessed by County Courts. There was one of these Courts at Preston, and he did not know where there was any machinery there which would make it desirable to bring an action of this kind in it. He thought the Government should not accept the Amendment without some more intimate knowledge of its probable consequences.

MR. ASQUITH

said, he might save the House the trouble of further discussing the matter. The Attorney General agreed with him that it was undesirable to accept the Amendment in its present form. There were, undoubtedly, some Courts of Record in which it would not be desirable to bring these actions, and as it would be invidious to draw any dis- tinction, the better plan would be to I leave out the words.

Question put, and negatived.

MR. GIBSON BOWLES

proposed to leave out "three," in line 6, and insert "one," so as to lower the limit above which it was optional to move the action to the High Court. The object of the Amendment was to diminish the compulsion of the Bill as to the Court in which the action should be brought. Clause 4 provided that an action might be brought in a County Court, but that f in any action so brought the sum exceeded £300 the action should be, on the implication of either party, removed to the High Court. He suggested that the limit should be reduced to £100. He thought the High Court was the only Court which offered the proper machinery for dealing with actions of this kind, as in the County Court the jury was limited to five, and both parties in these actions would certainly prefer the ordinary British jury of 12 men.

Amendment proposed, In page 2, line 6, to leave out the word "three," in order to insert the won I "live."—(Mr. Gibson Bowles.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'three' stand part of the Bill."

MR. J. H. WILSON

said, he hoped the Government would not accept the Amendment, as workmen ought to have absolute freedom as to whether they brought the action in the County Court or the High Court.

MR. ASQUITH

said, he had no intention of accepting the Amendment. The limit of £300 was fixed as a compromise between two opposing proposals, one put forward by the hon. Member for King's Lynn, and the other by the hon. Member for the Cower Division of Glamorganshire, and the Government thought £300 was a fair sum at which to put the maximum amount that might be sued for in the County Court. He thought the House would agree that if they were to have expeditious proceedings under the Act they ought not to place the maximum limit under £300.

MR. TOMLINSON

said, he did not wish to express a contrary opinion as to what the amount should be, but he was bound to say that the Government had not given them a very satisfactory reason for their proposal. In the Bill as originally framed the sum was fixed at £100, and that, no doubt, represented the views of the Government at the time. Now £300 had been decided on, and surely they ought to have more definite grounds for the change than that a balance had been struck between opposing views.

SIR E.WEBSTER

said, it was hardly satisfactory to them to be told that £300 had been fixed upon as a compromise, as if the hon. Member for Glamorgan had happened to propose £900 instead of £,500, the limit would have been considerably raised by the process of splitting the difference. The sum ought to have been fixed upon some principle, and personally he thought £300 too high under the circumstances.

SIR W. HARCOURT

said, the object of the Government was, as far as possible, to promote cheap methods of deciding actions under the Bill. The Government did not wish to fix a very high or a, very low figure, hut a figure which would encourage in all these cases that a cheap form of litigation should be adopted. Although £100 was the sum originally fixed upon it was struck out, because it was thought that such a low limit would lead to more expensive litigation.

SIR E. CLARKE

said, ho thought too much importance was being attributed to the clause. He held it was desirable to have rather a high limit in order to deter solicitors prosecuting these actions in the High Court.

Question put, and agreed to.

MR. TOMLINSON

said, he now wished to move, as an addition to Clause 4, the substance of a clause which he put on the Paper some time ago, but which he abstained from moving on the previous night, because he and his friends after consultation came to the conclusion that in its then form it was not best adapted to the end they had in view. The addition ho now desired to make was in these words— In case any employer shall be sued by any workman for any injury caused by the negligence of any person in the service of the workman's employer, then the employer shall be at liberty to bring before the Court in which he is so sued such person as a third party to the action, and the employer shall, upon satisfying the plaintiff's claim, have the same remedy against such person as the workman would have had if he had sued such person instead of the employer.

MR. J. H. WILSON

What clause are we dealing with?

* MR. SPEAKER

So far as I can gather the purport of the clause it may be moved as au Amendment, but I am not quite sure it will come in properly at the end of Clause 4.

MR. TOMLINSON

said, he thought it would do just as well as an addition to Clause 4 as it would in the form of an independent clause. His object was to get the whole question of liability settled by one action, instead of making it necessary for the employer to enter on a second action. It would be admitted that wherever there was a covenant of indemnity the employer could ask the Court to deal with it in the action in which ho himself was being sued. Where there were two workmen in the same position, and the action was for injury done by one to the other, there was no covenant of indemnity between them and the employer; there were no means by which in the same action the employer could bring the person guilty of the act of negligence before the Court. If the object of the Bill was to make workmen more careful, no better course could be taken to effect this than to make the workman feel that if, by negligence or carelessness, he caused an injury to a fellow-workman he was liable to be brought before the Court. No doubt in many cases the effect of bringing the workman before the Court would not be very substantial so far as mere damages were concerned. The employer, no doubt, would have to pay the damages, but he would get an order before the man, and might partially indemnify himself. [A laugh.] It was only a matter of common justice that the employer, who might not have been in any way personally responsible for the injury, should have this power, and he could not see what there was to laugh at in a proposal to give it to him for what it was worth.

Amendment proposed, In page 2, line 9, at the end of clause 4, to insert the words,—"In case any injury caused be sued by any workman for any injury caused by the negligence of any person in the service of the workman's employer, then the employer shall be at liberty to bring before the Court in which he is so sued such person as a third party to the action, and the employer shall, upon satisfying the plaintiff's claim, have the same remedy against the said person as the plaintiff would have had if he had sued such person instead of the employer."—(Mr. Tomlinson.)

Question proposed, "That those words I he there inserted."

* SIR C. RUSSELL

, after pointing out that there were two classes of cases in which a third party was interested, said that the clause agreed to on the previous day gave the chief employer the right of indemnity against the sub-contractor, or second employer. It was further provided that as regarded that indemnity the County Court, or any Court having jurisdiction to entertain the question of liability, had also jurisdiction to deal with the matter of indemnity and give effect to it, and there existed as regarded that arrangement in the procedure of the County Court a set of provisions applicable to the case in hand. No doubt, as pointed out on the previous day, these provisions were only conversant with cases of contract, and did not touch the question of indemnity, but in this Bill power had already been given the Court deal with that question, and in one and the same action to settle the question of liability between the parties. There existed in the procedure of the County Court a set of provisions applicable to the case in hand. He, therefore, thought that the whole ground, so far as related to cases of indemnity, and so far as it was safe to go, was covered.

SIR R. WEBSTER

said, he found it difficult to follow his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General in this particular matter. There were two classes of cases—first, that of the subcontractor, and, secondly, that of the foreman or other person in the service, who might he well able to pay compensation, and against whom there ought to be a remedy. With regard to the first class of cases, it could not be suggested that the clause passed last night included an action by the master against the foreman. Then, as to the other class of cases, he did not understand what the Attorney General's object was in reading the passage from the text-book of the Comity Courts. It had been expressly decided by the Court of Appeal that the third-party clause did not apply in the case of damages at all. Suppose a foreman in the employment of the master had handed out some insufficient tackle which hail caused the death of a person. They had had such a case lately in the House of Lords, which laid it down that in an action for damages you cannot call in a third party to have the matter of the action determined as between you and him. The whole argument of the Attorney General came to this, not that this case ought not to be met, but that it was met. He would say, on the contrary, that there was no clause in the Bill to meet it. Anyone who considered the matter would find that there was a substantial case to be met. Surely, in the case of a foreman with a salary of £100 a year who had been grossly negligent of his duties, and had thereby caused the death of a labourer, it was a proper thing that the master should have a remedy against him. But, as the Bill stood, although the action might be brought for a sum which the foreman might be able to pay, and I though the accident might have been caused by him, the unfortunate master could not call him in as a, third party in the action, and have the question decided once and for all, but he must institute fresh proceedings when judgment in the original action had been marked against him. He had consulted a barrister, Mr. Ruegg, who had great experience in cases of this kind, and he declared that the existing procedure was quite insufficient for the purpose. The Amendment proposed that where mi action was brought against a master he should be entitled to bring before the Court the workman, inferior or superior—if he was not worth powder and shot, of course he would not be brought in—who had really caused the accident, and have the question decided there and then. Nobody except a man who had the interests of the lawyers at heart, could suggest a second set of proceedings. It might happen, if there were two proceedings, that one jury would find that the master was liable and the foreman negligent, and the next jury find that, the foreman was not guilty of negligence. He, therefore, appealed to the Government to introduce into the Bill the sensible practice that the decision of the question between master and servant should be given in the same litigation.

* SIR J. RIGBY

said, the Government were entirely at one with the object of his lion, and learned Friend, but they did not think there would be the slightest chance of the necessity for two actions. Last night he undertook to look into the matter, and, if there was the slightest occasion for doing so, to bring forward an Amendment. They were told, in the most reckless fashion, that, there were no Rules in the County Courts applicable to third parties.

SIR R. WEBSTER

Who was reek-less:—

* SIR J. RIGBY

Anyone who said so without knowing it. Many people cheered it because they thought the Government had made a mistake. He, consequently, looked carefully into the third-party Rules both of the High Court and the County Court, and he round that, though it was quite true that the third-party Rules had nothing to do with cross actions, they expressly dealt with any claims for indemnity, and it was because they did so that they made this a claim for indemnity. The clause gave a right to indemnity to every person who would be, by the clause made, liable to I he workman. If his hon. and learned Friend looked at the third-party Rules he would find that any person who had a claim to indemnity was entitled to come under those Rules.

* SIR H. JAMES

said, that perhaps it was his fault, but he had not the slightest power to comprehend what the Solicitor General meant. This was an Amendment to Clause 4, and the Solicitor General was talking about the clause introduced into the Bill last night, making the principal contractor liable for the sub-contractor, and it was only in connection with that clause that the question of indemnity came in. The employer who sued his manager, or the shipowner who sued his captain, did not sue under a contract of indemnity, but by virtue of a Common Law liability. The Solicitor General mixed these things up, and had spoken about a matter they were not considering. The question before them was simply whether, if an employer of labour was driven to sue his manager, there should be two actions and trials or only one. He understood it was the wish of the Government that there should be only one action. He said most positively that the County Court Rules did not effect the object in view, which was to give the power, in cases of indemnity, of having one action instead of two.

* MR. MATTHEWS

said, the whole argument of the Solicitor General assumed the clause that was passed last night met the case, but the fact was that it did not.

MR. ASQUITH

After the discussion that has taken place, I think the best plan would be that we should have the opportunity of seeing the Amendment on the Paper in order that we might carefully consider whether it is necessary or not, and as it is very nearly 12 o'clock I beg leave to move the Adjournment of the Debate.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Asquith.)

Motion agreed to.

Debate adjourned till To-morrow.