Commons Sitting of 3 April 1894

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TOWER BRIDGE SOUTHERN APPROACH) BILL (by Order.)

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
    MR. ALBAN GIBBSsaid that when he gave notice of opposition to this Bill he did not, of course, intend to oppose what he might call the subsidiary clauses of this Bill—that was, the proposal to construct an approach leading from the south to the Tower Bridge. He did not regard the plan that had found favour with the London County Council as altogether the host plan that might be made, and he did not think it reflected credit on the management of the London County Council that the plan was only now going to be begun after the Tower Bridge was on the point of completion; but his objection to the Bill was to what he might call the principle of the Bill—namely, the 37th clause, which was commonly called the Betterment Clause. That it was the main principle of the Bill was practically admitted by the London County Council last year when they refused to proceed with the Bill after this main principle had been taken out. He was most anxious not to trespass on the time of the House by making a Committee speech; therefore, he would briefly allude to the objections that might be made to this particular form of the Betterment Clause, such as the arbitrary way in which certain areas were scheduled for betterment, the preposterously long time during which this sword of Damocles, in the shape of a betterment charge, was kept hanging over the head of the unfortunate owner and occupier, to the preposterously short time that was allowed to him to object to the betterment charge made on him and to the entirely new principle of denying the privilege of a jury to assess what pay-
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    ment was due from him instead of putting it on the ipse dixit of an arbitrator, in whose appointment he obviously had no voice whatever. He admitted that as the arbitrators were to be appointed by a Public Department they would be fairly and justly appointed; at the same time, he thought a Public Department would be rather inclined to be against an individual, and he did not think they would appoint an arbitrator who had any leaning in favour of private persons. If it were shown that some scheme could be devised by which the owner and occupier of a property, which would be improved by some scheme, should properly and justly pay their share, he would be the last man to object to it; but he contended that the present system, under which a fresh rating was made as soon as an improvement was made, so that the occupier paid as long as the property was in his possession, and then the freeholder, as long as the improvement lasted, did all that was necessary. Under the proposed system the property might be placed under a perpetual rent-charge for some improvement which appeared to benefit it, and some future improvement might leave the property high and dry, vet it, would have to go on paying the same betterment charge. Moreover, he submitted, it introduced a very great and new principle which was entirely new to our law. Of course, he knew that an instance was adduced in the time of Charles II., immediately after the great fire, when a charge something in the nature of betterment was imposed, but it was only done once; it evidently did not answer, for it was never tried again; therefore he was justified in saying it was a new principle. That being so, he held that it ought to have been brought forward as a Public Bill by a Minister of the Crown, after due inquiry by a Royal Commission or something analogous. Last Session the House of Lords proposed a Joint Committee to look into this thing, but at that time Ministers were not ready to accept any suggestions made by the House of Lords, and, therefore, they pooh-poohed it. He was much obliged to the House for listening to him on this dry subject, but he thought it right that they should make some protest against this Betterment Clause in order that it might not be supposed that they, on that

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    side of the House, were in any way agreed to it. At the same time, this clause appearing as it did in a Bill for a very desirable object, he might say tacked to the Bill, he did not propose at this time to move the Resolution that he had placed on the Taper, therefore, he should content himself with this protest, and should take a further and more convenient opportunity on some further stage of the Bill of opposing the Betterment Clause.
    MR. R. G. WEBSTERsaid, with regard to this Bill before the House he wished to emphasise the remarks that had fallen from his hon. Friend the Member for the City (Mr. Alban Gibbs), but it appeared to him it would have been more desirable and better if a great change in the system of taxation had been introduced into this House by means of a Public Bill. Regarding this most beneficial improvement of the Tower Bridge, hon. Members on that side of the House per se did not wish to oppose this most useful improvement made by the City of London, but they did oppose this novel principle of betterment in the Bill that they had now to consider. They were told the improvement was to be made by the whole County of London. Why by the whole county? In the past there wore valuable improvements made that were purely Metropolitan, and paid for by the Metropolis as a whole. There were other improvements made in various districts in London, which were purely parochial improvements, and paid by the individual parish concerned, and there were others that were partly Metropolitan and partly parochial, and paid for partly by the general rate over the whole of London, and partly by the parochial rate. Therefore, he would like to ask why the whole of the cost was to be paid by the County of London? It was calculated in another place, in regard to another Bill, that the amount to be received for the betterment principle, contained in the Bill now under discussion, would only be about £150 a year; but he would ask why the parish of Bermondsey, which would be greatly benefited by the bridge, should not pay its quota? The real reason, in his opinion, was this: that it would not then have made such a strong case for betterment had the parish of Bermondsey to pay its fair and just quota. Hon.
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    Members opposite claimed that property did not pay when it was bettered by improvements; but he would point out to them that by the Metropolis Valuation Act of 1869, Section 46, that not every five years only, but by means of supplemental and provisional lists every year, and every mouth, a man's rating might be put up and down according as the value of his property rose or fell. By this Bill the introduction of the betterment system meant that for all time, to the end of the world, a certain charge would be put on the property; there would be no revaluation every five years, and there would be no power as under the existing law to re-value property every year or every month. There were many other schemes more advantageous to the ratepayers, and he was very much surprised that the London County Council had not carefully considered the recoupment system that worked so well with regard to Northumberland Avenue. The ratepayers of London, by that particular system, not only were gainers by that magnificent thoroughfare itself, but also received in aid of local taxation a sum of £250,000 or £300,000. He was willing to admit there were cases where landowners received benefit by improvements made by the Public Authorities, and he thought it would be desirable for a strong Committee to inquire into the matter, so that a Bill could be brought in which should provide that when a landowner was shown to have derived benefit from public improvements he should be called on to pay his just quota. But, at the same time, if that was admitted, they ought to consider this other fact—that if, on the other hand, an individual had his property injured by a public improvement the community ought to bear the loss with him. So far as this Bill was concerned, it appeared to him that the community was to take half the profit, if there was any, and that the individual, whether in Bermondsey or any where else, took the whole of the loss. In fact, to use a somewhat sporting expression, this scheme was nothing more nor less than "Heads I win, tails you lose." Now, he would not dispute the proposition that where property was specially benefited it should be specially assessed in respect of that increment. But how was that to be considered by the London County Council? It was to be in this way—that

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    if an arbitrator appointed by themselves considered that the property had been benefited, then for all time it would be a, fixed charge on that property. There was, no doubt, a sort of appeal, but it would be, as he would show later, both of an expensive and dilatory character, and it was only in reality an appeal from the surveyor of the London County Council to that of the Local Government Board. In this particular instance the London County Council had been very wise and had not attacked any very important vested interest in London; they had not attacked the brewing interest, or large manufactures, or the large and wealthy men of influence, or the residential landowners, but they had attacked a body of individuals who were, comparatively speaking, poor men, although, no doubt, amongst those properties that would be included in the betterment clauses were Messrs. Sloes' vinegar works, which happened to be very close to the bridge. He understood this firm of vinegar manufacturers had a, 40 years' lease on their premises, but could any reasonable man allege that a vinegar manufactory would be benefited by a road being put in proximity to these works? They had to look at the actual value of the property as it was at present and not to a prospective value. Such a valuation could only be absolutely arbitrary and speculative. Last night he attended an important discussion at the Surveyors' Institute where he heard a member of the London County Council deliver a lecture on ground rents, but he defied any of the eminent surveyors he met then; to say what would be the value of property in London 40 or 50 years hence in any definite area, but that would be the duty of the surveyor in considering the question of betterment. Under the clause a surveyor would have to say what, in his opinion, the value of certain property would be 40 or 50 years hence. The system of betterment introduced a totally new system into our system of taxing the capital value of real property. That had never been the principle on which they had taxed property in this country. It was, no doubt, a principle which had been introduced into America, but it had never been the custom hitherto in the United Kingdom; and if they
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    were going to alter the system of taxation in local municipal areas, he ventured to say they should do it by means of a Public Bill. Now what was this system of betterment? it was an objectionable expression denoting the moiety of an undefined quantity—namely, the enhanced value of property affected by the improvements of the London County Council. He ventured to think that a scheme might be devised by the Loudon County Council which would really benefit the locality in a very much more satisfactory way than the present scheme. And what did the present scheme do? It went behind the great principle that had hitherto been one of the grand principles of the Liberal Party in this House, that representation should accompany taxation. By this betterment system they were going to tax the landowners in the various local districts of London, whilst they gave them no voting power as owners either for County Council elections or for local ones. The system by which they had hitherto carried on government with regard to local taxation was that the burden of the year should fall on the annual value of the property, but this betterment charge would remain an unvarying one for all time. With regard to one principle in this scheme—namely, the proposed "limits of deviation," he should like to say a few words. Might it not be the fact that even on the London County Council they might have a surveyor or somebody who might be biased in regard to his action, and might it not be impossible that in selecting individuals as subjects for this arbitrary form of impost to disassociate entirely from his mind the question whether those individuals did or did not support the views of the majority of the Council? They knew also that fashions changed with regard to important districts in London. They know that at one time that district north of the Park, including Portland Square, Russell Square, and Bedford Square was higher rented than at the present time; they know that fashion had changed and gone further south to Grosvenor Square, and why should not fashion change equally with regard to other areas of London? Therefore, it seemed to him it would be a great injury and wrong to inflict on any landowners a tax for all

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    time on their property by the ipse dixit of some officer of the London County Council. Some people denied that this was either a tax or a rate; he would not therefore call it either, but would describe it as an impost in the nature of a mortgage. If the payment of this charge became in arrear, the Council had power to enter and sell the property in question to satisfy their claim for so-called betterment? Up to the present time it had been the rule that only chattels, movable property, could be seized in payment of rates and taxes due by the ratepayers of the Metropolis, but by this Bill the property itself could be seized and be specially disposed of by the Loudon County Council. In his opinion, it would be very difficult to dispose of property when for six or seven years the cloud of this betterment award might be hanging over it. It should be noticed by the House that seven years might elapse, and in some instances eight, ere the arbitrator's award for betterment of a certain property was settled; and it must, too, be borne in mind that it was a charge on the supposed capital value of a given property not at the moment, but for all time. This could only be a matter of speculation, whereas the annual value of a property, as it now existed, was a matter of fact. He was ready to admit they ought to take every step to reduce the local taxation of London, which was a very heavy burden upon the people of London. At the present time he might mention there was a local debt of no less than £40,000,000 sterling on the Metropolis, but the mode by which the London County Council wished to relieve the ratepayers was not a good or beneficial one. In the last three years the Council had spent in the Parliamentary Committee-rooms upstairs no less a sum than £30,000 in fighting various schemes that came before Parliamentary Committees, and he could not help thinking they must regret that in 1886–7 and 1888 they allowed the Coal and Wine Duties to be repealed, which, whilst their abolition had not decreased the price of coals, £300,000 a year was lost in aid of London rates and for Metropolitan improvements. In fact, the betterment system was only an idea which might enter the mind of the arbitrator as to what the enhanced value would be at some future date. They knew very well
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    that people dreaded going to law in this country. Even the great landowners knew very well the great expense of appearing before Parliamentary Committees, and would consider long before doing so in defence of their rights; but, on the other hand, the London County Council, having the whole taxpayers of London behind them, would not hesitate to bring in Bills imposing any particular system of betterment in any part of the Metropolis, and to that extent they would oppress the individual owner, more especially the least wealthy of them. The cost the London County Council had already gone to in this betterment scheme of theirs would have paid three or four times over any sum they could ever receive by this particular proposal. He did not really believe in his heart of hearts that the hon. Members composing the London County Council were so impressed with this system as they pretended; their object was to have a good fighting question on which to attack the House of Lords. It was a remarkable fact that the members of the County Council did not see that by causing a feeling of uncertainty to arise as to the future onus of taxation on any given house or property they would increase the house rent to the individual occupier; for it was an obvious fact that the landowner had, by the contracts he had entered into, contracted himself out of any obligation with regard to taxes; he had placed that obligation on the individual taking the building lease, who had placed the obligation in his turn on the occupier, so that unless these leases were done away with—and he did not think that Parliament would, in its wisdom, go to the extreme measure of abolishing all leases and contracts made with regard to the whole of the property in London—the whole cost of this betterment would in reality fall on the occupier of the houses in the particular locality. Hon. Members opposite would hesitate before advocating, either in this House or before their constituents, any tax on food used by the working classes, and yet they were apparently anxious to put on a tax that would increase the cost of house rent in London. With the exception of the precedent when a great part of London was re-built after the great fire of London, he did not think there was any analogy to the present

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    proposal in this country. But to consider this question in all its bearings one would have to look at the obverse side of the question. Hon. Members imagined that whenever they made a new road or a new street in a given locality they were always going to benefit that locality. They might benefit the locality, but it could not be said that in all cases it benefited individual proprietors in that locality. What did they find when this subject was discussed in the Committee upstairs? Mr. Field, one of the surveyors retained as a witness by the London County Council, said that no doubt street improvements occasionally created worsement, and he granted it was impossible to assess the compensation for that worsement. That being so, why was it more easy to assess compensation for the betterment? Surely the two were co-relative. A learned counsel, who was a witness for the London County Council, Mr. Fletcher Moulton, Q.C., in his evidence before the Committee, granted that if two several parts of the same property were affected by alterations made by a Public Authority, one of which bettered and the other worsened the several parts of the property affected, the owner ought to be allowed to set off the worsement against the betterment, and pay or receive as the case might be. The late Mr. Saunders, who appeared for the Loudon County Council, bound his clients to insert words in the Bill to enable the owner of the various properties concerned to receive compensation for worsement, where it was caused by the alteration in question. What was the result? Notwithstanding, Mr. Saunders, having given this distinct pledge that words should be introduced in the Bill for the worsement principle, in the result no such words were so introduced; it passed through this House, and was sent up to the other House without those words being inserted. If, however, it was right to give to a single proprietor the right to set off the worsement of his property in one part against a betterment in another, it should be equally done in the case where no betterment occurred, and compensation should also then be given for worsement. The worsement area would, it were needless to say, be, for obvious reasons, not coterminous with the "limits of deviation" for betterment. He did not,
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    however, wish to occupy the time of the House further than to say that he did not believe a proposal that would do less benefit to the ratepayers than this betterment principle could be conceived. He found that in America, where it had been tried, it had been found absolutely and completely wanting. In New York and elsewhere in America they had three or four systems, working even in one given city at the same time, all of which wore found to, in many instances, work oppression on the individual, on the one hand, and cause the danger of bribery on the other, by the fact that the area of "the limits of deviation" were an unknown quantity, subject to the will of the Municipal Surveyor, or a small works committee of a given Municipal Authority, and he thought they would hesitate to copy the Americans in that respect. He found that nearly all the leading American jurists said it was a doubtful system; and one who wrote to a friend of his, Mr. Baumann, who used to be a Member of this House, said the way it occasionally worked was this. The working classes, finding themselves in a majority in a certain town, had a towns' meeting, which decided that a certain betterment system should be introduced, as in America in some townships such matters were settled by a sort of plébiscite. It was not shown that the proposed public work was required, but the result was that the inhabitants of the district had to have it, and the landowners were obliged to bow to the decision, and probably 500 or 600 of these men who voted for it received wages at the rate of two dollars a day for being employed on the works, which was a rate over the market wage in the United States—the whole cost of the so-called improvement, or the major part of it, being paid by the unfortunate landowner, for so-called "betterment," though in many instances it practically injured and decreased the value of the property. Hitherto they had carried out their local government system on very different principles to that, and he would impress upon the London County Council that if they were going to attempt to alter our principle of rating they should do so on a sounder principle than the system of betterment. Their legislation at the present time left the House in a

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    sufficiently chaotic state, and it would be a great injury to the legislative system if this principle were introduced into Private Bills from time to time. He ventured to say that our laws would he even more chaotic than at present, for this betterment system did clumsily and arbitrarily the same thing that was done now by the ordinary operations of the market.
    MR. J. STUARTsaid, he had hoped the Bill might have gone forward without being delayed by speeches which, so far from making a straight attack on a principle, wandered round about it. He should not follow the example of those hon. Members. The Bill had been introduced under somewhat peculiar circumstances. There was a Bill brought forward on which there was really no contention, except on one clause, the Betterment Clause. It went before a Committee of this House, and, having been investigated and local evidence taken which had been published to this House by that Committee, the clause referred to was twice adopted in this House by overwhelming majorities—first, of two to one; and, secondly, of nearly three to one. After the clause had been rejected by the House of Lords without consideration it was adopted and sent back to the House of Lords; but under those circumstances the House of Lords refused to introduce the clause, and the Bill fell through. Now, in the present year, in this Session of Parliament, the London County Council had re-introduced the Bill, and it was re-introduced, so far as the Tower Bridge was concerned, in exactly the same words in which it was passed by this House. The Bill was not altered in one jot or tittle; it was brought forward again, and he should almost have expected that its adoption by this House would have been regarded as a matter, more or less, of form; that it would have passed through its various stages and been sent up to the House of Lords there to receive that consideration it had not received. In respect of the action of the House of Lords in this matter the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition made the following remarkable statement. He said—
    "The Lords desire to inquire whether there is any equitable machinery by which the per-
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    son the value of whose property is increased by an improvement can be made to contribute to the cost of the improvement. That is my view of what the words mean, and the words are certainly capable of that construction."
    The right hon. Gentleman expressed that as the desire of the House of Lords in asking for a Joint Committee at that time last Session. He did not see that was the meaning of the Resolution, but they were willing to accept that interpretation from the right hon. Gentleman. By passing this Bill through its various stages in this House as it had been already introduced the House of Commons had the opportunity of enabling the House of Lords to carry out that wish which the right hon. Gentleman expressed as the wish of the House of Lords—that was to say, to inquire into the matter. The right hon. Gentleman further said—
    "I believe that the majority of gentlemen on this side of the House have only one difficulty in regard to betterment—which is, how to carry it out: and if they could see any machinery by which that end could be attained, they would be as anxious to see the principle introduced into our Private Bill legislation as anyone on the other side of the House."
    And the right hon. Gentleman then said—
    "It is not fair to allege that the Lords as a body, collectively or individually, are opposed to the principle of betterment."
    They wished to let the Lords have the opportunity of sending it to a Committee which could make the inquiries they desired to make. He might give another quotation from Lord Morley in the other House. This was what Lord Morley said, and the quotation was taken from Hansard, as corrected by Lord Morley—
    "He was inclined to agree that it would be extremely difficult by a Public Act to lay down principles which would apply to every variety of case that could occur, not only in London, but elsewhere. He was not at all sure it would be desirable or safe to lay down general principles which would be at once adopted without any experience being obtained on these grounds, and on the grounds that the application of the principle in this case depended entirely on local circumstances; he thought it was a subject that might legitimately and rightly be left to private legislation. They would then have the advantage of the application of the principle to individual cases, and by the growth of experience they would gradually get such an amount of knowledge as to be able to lay down, principles for individual application."
    Now that was the attitude which they called on the House of Lords to take in

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    conformity with the declaration of their view as expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. This Bill was introduced again to the House, and he should have thought they might have been spared a discussion on the principle of betterment. He had no intention of entering into the discussion of its general principles and that particular phase which had been already as greatly misrepresented by the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken as by Lord Salisbury; and the hon. Gentleman had fallen into the same error that Lord Salisbury fell into when he spoke of the London County Council venturing to assume that, wherever there was an improvement, there betterment would arise. On the contrary, that was not the assumption of the Bill. Lord Salisbury said—
    "The principle of the 41stclause of the Bill"—now the 37th—"which your Lordships declined to accept, was that proximity is the one test of improvement, and that, if yon are near a public improvement, it says that your property must have improved by that public improvement. A more senseless suggestion was never put—and that is saying a good deal—into a Bill presented to Parliament."
    MR. R. G. WEBSTER: There is no proposition in the Bill with regard to worsement.
    MR. J. STUARTsaid, that was a totally different question; the point he was dealing with was that the hon. Gentleman fell into the same error as Lord Salisbury when he assumed the only test of betterment was the proximity to the improvement. The essential point of the method of charging for betterment was this—that no one should be called on to contribute any part of the charge who was not clearly in receipt of betterment on which the charge was made. The hon. Gentleman, when he ventured to oppose the Bill in this House, and the late Prime Minister in the Upper House should make themselves aware by the simple perusal of the Bill of what were its contents. There were only two points in what had been said it was incumbent upon him to answer, for, as he had said, he did not intend to enter into a general discussion. The two main points were these, and they were points of misstatement. The first was as to recoupment, to which the hon. Gentleman who spoke last referred. The hon. Member referred to the
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    method of recoupment in London as having been a satisfactory method to the ratepayers, and one that provided a large sum of money. If the hon. Member looked into the figures before the Committee upstairs, it was shown, and could not be disputed, that the recoupment, system as introduced and carried out in the Metropolis had been an extreme pecuniary burden to the ratepayers, and it was owing to the failure of that system that the betterment system was substituted. The other point he wished to call attention to was one on which they had often been misrepresented in the County Council, and in this House. It had been said, with respect to this Bill and with respect to their action on the betterment section of it, that, they ought to have proceeded with the Bill for the Tower Bridge approach without waiting for any Betterment Clause, because they were bound in honour to make an approach to the bridge that was made by the City of Loudon. He understood the hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Alban Gibbs) signified by his action his approval of that statement. Now, would the House believe that, the main Petitions against the Bill as it stood were the Corporation of the City of Loudon, and would the House believe that the Petition against, the Bill laid on the Table by the Corporation of the City of London was not, only a Petition against, betterment, but, against the actual improvement itself? The Petitioners went into some detail, and said the betterment system was had and could not be applied; they put themselves in direct opposition to the great majority of this House and the Committee upstairs. Therefore, by going on without the Betterment Clause they should not be meeting what, the City of London wanted. The London County Council, who had introduced the Bill again, looked on the Betterment Clause as one of the most important clauses brought before this House in any private legislation, and in regard to it they had now got the assistance of the Corporation of Manchester, whose Bill down for this day contained the same Betterment Clause. He could not doubt that the House would willingly assent to this principle as it, did last year, and would send the Bill to the House of Lords, which would then have the oppor-

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    tunity of giving that consideration to it in Committee which they and their most trusted advisers said it ought to have, and which it would have had last year but for the complete misunderstanding of the Bill by their Lordships when it was before them.
    MR. KIMBERsaid, the speech of the hon. Member for Hoxton (Mr. Stuart) would have been noticed for one peculiarity, and that was that it contained no reason in support of the Betterment Code which was included in this Bill; the only reason in support of the Betterment Code in the Bill which was given was that a similar clause was in another Bill last year which was passed by this House by, as he admitted, a considerable majority. The merits of the Betterment Code had never been threshed out in this House, and the hon. Member omitted to state the important fact that when the Code got to the House of Lords the House of Lords threw the Bill out. The hon. Member might attach no importance to that, but he thought the country would attach importance to it, and desire that there should be a dispassionate discussion. Lord Hobhouse had recently accused the opponents of betterment of having never given a hint or a suggestion of any kind as to what should be the method of applying the principle. The noble Lord told them that they were met by a mere negation; but he could not have paid attention to the proceedings of three Committees of that House, on two of which he sat. He maintained that there were means under the existing law of applying the principle of betterment. He was in favour of the application of the principle under the existing machinery. The London County Council were not satisfied with the methods then in use for assessing the rates, but they considered it necessary to devise some new system, and in order to conceal as much as possible what they were doing they invented the principle of annual annuities. They did it in a more insidious manner. They provided that an annuity of £3 a year should not be redeemed or redeemable in all time except by payment of £100 in cash. It was all very well for Lord Hobhouse and hon. Gentlemen to say that the plan devised was one which should receive the unanimous support of the House, because it was a plan by
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    which those who secured the benefits from the working of the Act would be the persons directly called upon to contribute to the expenses incurred in carrying out the improvements. It was also very well to say they had never suggested any alternative plan to secure that those who got the benefit of the improvements should pay for them; but the existing arrangement under the Valuation Act of 1869 had been found to work, on the whole, very fairly; it had been in force now 25 years, and every year it was revised by means of supplemental lists. He would ask any gentleman on the opposite Bench who lived in a fashionable part of Loudon whether he was willing that his rent should be increased, say, £60 a year, and the capital value of his house raised from £200 or £300 a year, as now, to six times that figure, because the London County Council chose to think that they had a right to assess his house, not at its present value as now, but at what they considered would be its value at a future time. It was frequently the case that the value of a house suddenly disappeared, and in such a case he would like to know if the annuity was to remain a burden on the property for ever? Yet no provision had been made for any deterioration in the living value of a house during the period over which the assessment extended. Was that a reasonable, fair, or just method of levying a tax? He would like to point out to the hon. Member for Hoxton that this one clause contained 17 sub-clauses, and a number of sections, so that it constituted a regular Code in itself. Although this was in one sense a Private Bill, in so far as it affected private taxation, yet it dealt with a matter of general public interest, and involved an alteration of a great public principle; and it seemed to him, therefore, to be very inconvenient that no explanation had been given hon. Members of the grounds upon which it had been brought forward. This way of bringing in a Bill put Members who wished to oppose a measure in a difficult position, as they could only meet the questions raised in the negative, and do their utmost to show that in their opinion the proposed innovation was had and that the existing law was good. He therefore need make no apology to the House for entering into those particulars. He had already given

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    his definition of the just principle of betterment. He would apply it by an enhanced rate while the enhanced value of the property continued, and no longer. But what was the system proposed to be adopted? First, the value of the property was scheduled in the document which the London County Council called "the award," Assessment Committees fixed the amount, and ratepayers and individuals were not allowed to go before the County Council itself to show cause against the award, but the authorities were entitled to say to any ratepayer, "Your property will be increased in value by this improvement to the extent of £200, or £6 annual value, and we put you in the list on that assessment." The list actually became the award, and if the ratepayer felt aggrieved the only course open to him was to resort to the expensive method of taking legal steps to have his appeal tried, not before the ordinary tribunals of the country, but before an arbitrator. Being compelled to go to law in such a matter as this was doubly serious, because not only was the result uncertain, in which case the appellant would be saddled with very heavy costs, but it was a case of a private individual having to fight a public body who were perfectly irresponsible for any expenses which they incurred. Therefore, the proposal of the Council involved a very serious innovation—indeed a violent innovation in the accepted law. He was well aware that the Loudon County Council had no respect for Rules and Regulations held sacred by our grandfathers; but he thought they should show some kind of respect to the present laws relating to taxation, and not bring in such great innovations without giving very good and substantial reasons for so doing. The second serious innovation which this House was asked to sanction was the conferring of a power upon the London County Council to alter the incidence of taxation between owners, lessees, and occupiers of property. This innovation was also smoothed over by a statement that the tax would be levied on the landlord of the premises and not on the tenant, and that where the house was not occupied by the owner the Act would not apply. This was altogether a false cry. The present system was to assess the house and the site with everything upon it, and he maintained that they rightly assessed that at its gross
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    value. But there were generally three persons interested in a property—the owner, the lessee, and the occupier, and now the assessment was divided between the three parties in such proportions as they might agree upon. But this Bill proposed to do away with the existing freedom of arrangement, and to differentiate between the parties. On the previous night he received an intimation from some of the members of the County Council that they intended to oppose the Instruction he had put on the Paper, and he was, therefore, unable to move it that day. But he trusted the Leader of the House and the Government generally would support the proposal he intended to make, which was to the effect that such a matter as this should be brought in as a Public Bill, and thoroughly discussed as a public measure. He hoped, also, that the Government would take steps to have full inquiries made as to whether the facts that had been put forward were really true. He wished to have ascertained the effects of these changes on the exising law of the country. The third innovation consisted in a restricted area of taxation, and the plan submitted by the County Council showed that while outside the lines of the plan certain properties would be bettered, other properties inside the lines would not be bettered. This would be manifestly a gross injustice, to be founded on an arbitrary decision in the office of the surveyor to the London County Council, into the reasons for which no outsider could inquire. So far they had never had submitted to them any reason for constituting this restricted area. Again, the existing legal remedies were abolished by the Bill. Now aggrieved persons could go before the Assessment Committee, which was fairly constituted, without counsel, solicitors, or surveyors; and from this Committee there was now an appeal to Quarter Sessions, which was simple and inexpensive. For this generally equitable tribunal there was to be substituted a Judge selected on the application of the County Council to the Local Government Board, and persons appeared before this tribunal with the peril facing them of having, in all probability, to pay costs. They were, in fact, to lose the benefit of the existing tribunal on which they could rely. The House of Commons, by two important Public Commit-

    1235
    tees, in 1870 and 1889—a Committee on the subject of Local Taxation and the Committee on the Town Holdings Act of 1882—reported that if and when local taxation was so altered that the immediate and direct incidence of it fell not upon the occupier as now, and through him upon the owner, but upon the owners direct, representation must be given to the owners on the body which spent the money. But no such representation was here vouchsafed. The County Council had, moreover, abandoned the system of recoupment, the principle of which was the purchase of such laud as would be bettered by the proposed improvement in order by re-sale to recover the cost of the improvement. It was, however, admitted that recoupment had been a loss, except in two cases, one of these being the Northumberland Avenue, from which a large profit was made, and the loss had been caused by every man who was worsened having to be compensated before he was turned out. Now, the County Council thought that they would escape compensations for worsement. Was this a just principle to sanction? The Council further proposed to tax vacant land and unproductive property. The first principle of our system of taxation was that the needs of the year, as regarded local expenditure, should be met out of the income of the year—an income drawn from all properties within the area. This principle it was now proposed to depart from, and by saying they would tax everything that existed, whether it produced anything or nothing, they were reverting to the crudest forms of American taxation. He should not move the Instruction to the Committee of which he had given notice, because it would occupy the House for another day; but when the Government referred the Bill to a Committee, he was anxious to ensure that they had a Report, aye or no, whether the Betterment Clause contained the inequalities which had been suggested. He wanted that in black and white before the Bill went to the House of Lords, where he hoped it would be examined on its merits. He hoped the-Bill would not be referred to a Hybrid Committee, which was the worst possible Committee for a Bill of the kind, and that the House would support the Instruction to the Committee which he had placed on the Paper to report generally on the principle of "better-
    1236
    ment," and how far and to what extent it interfered with our existing laws of local taxation.
    SIR J. LUBBOCKsaid, he was glad that his hon. Friend who had initiated the discussion had expressed his intention of not dividing the House. His hon. Friend spoke on this occasion rather as the representative of ancient traditions than as Member for the City, and rather as an individual than as a Conservative. Not as a Conservative, because the Manchester Corporation proposed a similar plan in a Bill which bore the name of the Leader of the Opposition; not as Member for the City, because more than one meeting had been held at the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce, where unanimous opinions had been passed urging the great importance of making the southern approaches to the Tower Bridge. Indeed, he did not understand his hon. Friend to contest the importance of the improvement, but only to object to the single clause dealing with betterment. The hon. Member who had just sat down complained of the reference of the Bill of last year to a Hybrid Committee. That was not the choice of the supporters of the Bill; and the Hybrid Committee was only agreed to to conciliate hon. Members opposite from whom the suggestion originated. The hon. Member also complained that no speech had been made on the introduction of the Bill. The Bill was introduced without a word of comment to save the time of the House, because the same discussion had already occupied the House several times.' He believed that the differences between the hon. Member and the supporters of the Bill arose partly from the fact that some hon. Members did not quite understand what the Bill effected. In a pamphlet on the subject the hon. Member said that the area of betterment was arbitrarily drawn by lines on a map, and, while including property which was not bettered, excluded property which was very much bettered. From that statement it might be supposed that all the property within the area was to be taxed; but such was not the case. No property could be taxed unless it had been shown that it was materially improved. The hon. Member further stated in his pamphlet that the tax was imposed, not on the

    1237
    ascertained increased value, but on the basis of the County Council's own opinion that the property would be improved. This was an entire misapprehension. Truly, no claim would be made unless the County Council were of opinion that the property had been improved; but before the tax could be levied an arbitrator, appointed by the Local Government Board, must be satisfied that the claim was just. In this matter it was impossible to do absolute justice; the only thing to be done was to arrive at a system which would do the least injustice all round. Under the old system half the cost of improvements fell 011 the district and half on the Metropolis; and it frequently happened that property not benefited at all paid both the district and the Metropolitan rate. He could not but feel that the ratepayers of London had reason for complaint against the Government in reference to this question. The whole amount which this betterment tax was expected to raise was £5,000. The expense of promoting the Bill before the House last Session was about £5,000: the expense of the present Bill would be considerable; and the delay in opening the approaches to the Tower Bridge would inflict great inconvenience on the trade of South Loudon. If the Government had accepted the proposal of the House of Lords for a Joint Committee on the question last year all this extra expense would have been saved and the Bill would have been passed a year sooner. The unreasoning animosity of the Government against the House of Lords had inflicted this additional expense on London and entailed great loss and inconvenience on trade and commerce.
    MR. COHEN (Islington, E.)said, that while absolutely agreeing in the last observations which fell from the right hon. Member for London University, he should like to point out to the House that he thought his right hon. Friend was under a misapprehension when he said that all that was to be done was to satisfy the Local Government Board as to the equity of the increased assessment that was proposed to be placed on certain property. If hon. Members would refer to the Bill they would observe that the Local Government Board never interfered in any way whatever. The Local Government Board had, indeed, to appoint an Inspector, who was to be
    1238
    satisfied with the increase in the value of the property proposed to be taxed; but that procedure was only resorted to when some intrepid, wealthy, and public-spirited individual ventured into the arena to fight the London County Council with his own money, while the County Council fought with the money of the ratepayers. In the House or elsewhere he had never neglected an opportunity of advocating the principle of betterment—a principle which he thought would have more quickly and more efficiently become law if those in authority in the London County Council who were promoting this Bill had not for four years wasted thousands of pounds of the ratepayers in the at last successful effort to rescue £5,000. If, instead of that, they had put pressure on the Government to assent to the principle, it would have done away with controversy, it would have secured an automatic operation of the principle, which his hon. Friends and Colleagues opposite professed to advocate, though their action must in the minds of impartial persons, and certainly in the minds of the suffering ratepayers, throw doubt on the genuineness of their views.
    MR. THORNTONsaid, he would like to point out that in the Hybrid Committee the Betterment Clause was carried only by one vote, that of the hon. Member for West Fife, who had stated he had been able to find out all the arguments on the question from the Report of the Committee, and therefore did not think it worth while to be present at the discussions. He ventured to think the Loudon County Council had made a mistake in ignoring expert individual opinion on the question such as that of Sir Whittaker Ellis.
    Motion agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed.
    MR. KIMBER: With regard to the Instruction which has been placed on the Taper by me, I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen opposite intend to oppose it.
    MR. J. STUART: Yes, Sir; we oppose the entire Instruction.
    MR. KIMBER: I am not going to subject the House to a second Debate on this question to-morrow; but perhaps

    1239
    the Government may suggest some means for the elucidation of this subject.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE,): The Government cannot accept this Instruction, because it proposes that the Committee should go into all questions which were thoroughly investigated by a Committee appointed for the purpose three years ago. I was myself a Member of that Committee; we went most carefully into the question, and though we did not report at length we came to a conclusion in the matter. Under these circumstances, the Government cannot allow this Instruction to pass.

  POLICE AND SANITARY REGULATIONS.

    APPOINTMENT OF A COMMITTEE.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GEORGE RUSSELL, North Beds.): I understand that last week an arrangement was arrived at between the hon. Member for South Islington and Her Majesty's Government that the Motion for the Police and Sanitary Committee should be moved in the terms in which it stands on the Paper. I have only to observe that we fully agree with the view of the Association of Municipal Corporations that Standing Orders 150 and 173a are already applicable and the Government will not move an Instruction. I beg to move—
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That the Committee of Selection do appoint a Committee, not exceeding Nine Members, to whom shall be committed all Private Hills promoted by Municipal and other Local Authorities, by which it is proposed to create powers relating to Police and Sanitary Regulations which deviate from, or are in extension of, or are repugnant to, the General Law.
    That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records.
    That Five be the quorum of the Committee."—(Mr. George Russell,)
    SIR A. ROLLITsaid, that as some exception had been taken by Municipalities to the action of the Police and Sanitary Committee in excising and restricting certain of their Bills, he had feared it might have been necessary for him to oppose the Motion. No doubt the Committee had been controlled to a large extent by a special Instruction which had been passed by the House previously for
    1240
    their guidance, with the result that its operation in the last two or three years had been undoubtedly of a character to produce what was felt to be a too centralising spirit on the part of the Department in dealing with the local Private Bills of Corporations. However, the matter had been met in a very cordial and generous spirit by the Local Government Board, the Under Secretary of which had seen him, and done his best to meet the Corporations' wishes; and therefore he would not divide the House on the subject this Session. He would only express the hope that in the coining year the Committee, unfettered by an Instruction and with a greater representation of the Municipalities on it, might allow more liberty to that spirit of local legislation which had been the chief means of building up the statutes of local government, such as the Public Health Act and others. In that hope he assented most readily to the Motion.
    MR. W. LONGsaid, that as he had been Chairman of this Committee during the last Session of Parliament, he might be allowed to say a few words on the Motion. He regretted that his hon. Friend the Member for Islington had not thought fit to promulgate more definitely the charges he desired to bring against the Committee, because he questioned whether it would be possible for his hon. Friend to establish the central charge he had advanced—namely, that the Committee had been governed by a Departmental feeling of centralisation, and had been narrowly controlled by the Instruction of the House. Of course, it was impossible for him to say who would compose the Committee in the future, or who would be Chairman of it, and he did not know whether notice would be taken of the suggestion of his hon. Friend, that there should be a larger representation of Members representing Municipalities on the Committee; but he ventured to point out this simple fact in connection with the previous Instruction—that all the House of Commons had done hitherto, and all the Committee did last Session, was to decline to allow any changes in the law to be effected in eases where the existing Statutes had been recently passed. Undoubtedly, it would be a serious thing if the Debate had been

    1241
    allowed to pass without a single word being said against the impression which had been conveyed to the House, that because the Instruction moved last year and the year before was not moved this year, therefore the Committee, however composed, was to understand that it was not to be governed by that Instruction. He did not know whether his hon. Friend the Member for Islington had actually in mind what the Instruction was; but he ventured to repudiate the idea that there had been on the part of the Committee any attempt at centralisation, or any inclination to give into the representations or recommendations of Government Departments. He could show that on many occasions the Committee did give special powers to the Local Authorities, when they were able to show that their local circumstances made it absolutely necessary that there should be some small changes in the existing law; but the House would agree that it would be intolerable if a small Committee sitting upstairs were to allow the law to be extended, curtailed, or materially altered, when the House as a whole had within the four or five years dealt with the identical subject in a comprehensive way, and had declared what the intentions of the Legislature were on that subject. To allow anything like that would be throwing on a small Committee a very great and serious responsibility; and he, for one, would feel himself absolutely unable to serve on the Committee if it had to accept that very onerous task, which properly belonged to the House, and of which the House could not divest itself. He thought it his duty to say so much, because if it were his fortune to be on the Committee again this year he should not like his hon. Friend to think that, because he had allowed the matter to pass in silence, he had acquiesced in the suggestion that the action of the House in not moving an Instruction relieved the Committee from the course it had taken up last year, which was supported by every Committee, and was not desirable in the interests of well-conducted legislation. He would, however, suggest that the quorum be reduced from five to three, as on some occasions there had been a delay and inconvenience caused to witnesses through the failure of the required number of Members turning up early.
    MR. HOWELLthought the Committee should have access, more than hitherto, to the Reports made to the Local Government Board with regard to those particular measures when they dealt with the law as it existed. In fact, he thought all Members of the House ought to have no difficulty whatever in getting access to-such Reports.
    SIR F. S. POWELLsaid, that as he had been for six years a Member of the Sanitary and Police Committee, he might be permitted to say a, few words on the Motion. His hon. Friend had made some reference to what was known as the adoptive Acts. Those Acts had been passed because in their absence the labours of the Police and Sanitary Committee had become almost crushing. The subject-matter of many of those adoptive Acts came before the Committee in a most perfect form; every one of their clauses had been fully discussed; and the body of adoptive Acts presented the result of the most careful consideration in such a form that any Local Authority might adopt one or all of those Acts, and have the advantage of that body of legislation. He was sure it would be a great injury to Public Health Pills if the whole subject were thown again, as during former years, in a confused shape before the Committee. He was sure that legislation would be less satisfactory than at this moment, and that the duties of the Committee would become so formidable that no Committee could possibly undertake them. He hoped the Police and Sanitay Committee would act in a thoroughly independent spirit. It was their duty to stand between the Departments and the public and to investigate the recommendations of those who appeared before the Committee. Sometimes they must decide in favour of the promoters, sometimes in favour of the objectors, and sometimes in favour of the Departments, but they should proceed from first to last in a judicial spirit and, guided by the arguments, decide according to the facts as they arose. He believed good work would continue to be done by the Committee if the adoptive Acts were not interfered with, but if they were private legislation would sink into chaos.
    MR. WHITELEYsaid, that with the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean and the hon. Member for South Islington he had been requested by the Association of Municipal Corporations to support their complaint on this point. He could assure the House that great injury and injustice had been done the Municipalities by the manner in which their Bills had been mutilated by the Police and Sanitary Committee, He ventured to hope that that would not occur again. It, was local action which the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Long) had referred to on the part of the Municipal Corporations of the Kingdom which had resulted in the building up of the Statutes.
    MR. W. LONG (interrupting)said, he had referred to proposals to deal with subjects which had been dealt with by Parliament within the past three or four years. The hon. Member's statement was based on existing Acts of Parliament passed before the general law was laid down. It did not refer to recent Acts—those of 1889 and 1892.
    MR. WHITELEYsaid, they were the re-enactments and consolidation of the existing law.
    MR. W. LONG: No, no.
    MR. WHITELEYsaid, that at any rate he ventured to hope that Municipal Corporations would not have this injury done to them during the present Session.
    MR. SHAW-LEFEVREsaid, that objection had been made that hon. Members had not access to the Local Government Board Reports. The Local Government Board would have no objection to the Sanitary and Police Committee having access to these Reports.
    Motion agreed to.

QUESTIONS.

  UNDER THE WHITE ENSIGN.
  MR. MUNTZ: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, as a general rule, the wearing of the white ensign is reserved to Her Majesty's ships alone, or whether the Admiralty are in the habit of granting warrants to private persons authorising them to wear the white
  1244
  ensign on private ships; whether such warrant are personal to those to whom they are granted, and whether they authorise the wearing of the white ensign by the ship in the absence there from of the person named in the warrant; whether these warrants are granted to such persons on account of their personal position or public services; or, if not, on what other grounds; whether they are ever granted to other persons than British subjects; whether any misapprehension or inconvenience has arisen at the Dardanelles or elsewhere abroad through the wearing of the white ensign by private ships causing them to be taken for British men of war; and whether the Admiralty will consider the propriety of refraining henceforth from issuing warrants to private persons to wear the white ensign, and of withdrawing those warrants already issued?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Sir U. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH,): The white ensign is, as a general rule, reserved for Her Majesty's ships, and warrants are not granted to private persons. The exceptional privilege enjoyed by the Royal Yacht Squadron was conferred on that Club in 1829 by a general warrant, and a personal warrant is issued to each yacht owner in the Club who is a British subject for his convenience; this warrant neither authorises nor forbids the wearing of the white ensign when the owner is 7rot on board. As a special case, the German Emperor was granted a warrant in July, 1891, as owner of a yacht in the Royal Yacht Squadron. In 1883 Lord Annesley's yacht, the Seabird, was detained by the Turkish Authorities at the Dardanelles consequent on her wearing the white ensign, Lord Annesley being a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron. On account of this, all yacht owners were warned that should they wish to pass the Dardanelles under the white or blue ensigns they must first obtain an Imperial Iradé, otherwise they were recommended to wear the plain red ensign. There is no intention of taking action in the sense suggested by the final paragraph of the question.

  OCCASIONAL LICENCES.
  SIR W. LAWSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department

  1245
  whether he is aware that the Dover Magistrates have been in the habit of granting occasional licences for the sale of liquor and permitting such sale after 10 p.m. on occasions other than a public dinner or ball; and that, on a recent occasion, such an occasional licence having been granted for a smoking concert, the local Inland Revenue authority took exception to the sale after 10 o'clock p.m., as being contrary to the Acts of Parliament; and, on communication with the Board of Inland Revenue, was instructed not to interfere but to fill up the licence in accordance with the Justices' consent; and, if the facts be as above stated, whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. ASQUITH, Fife, E.): By the Act 26 & 27 Vict., c. 33, s. 20, a person having obtained an occasional licence is permitted to sell excisable articles at any public dinner or ball during such hours as shall be allowed and specified in the consent given by the Justice of the Peace for the granting of such occasional licence. The Commissioners of Inland Revenue, acting in the spirit of this section, extend this privilege to the holder of an occasional licence for any other form of entertainment or amusement upon the production of a Justice's consent specifying the hours within which it is desired to sell excisable articles. But I would suggest that this is a matter affecting the Treasury rather than the Home Office.

  TITHE TROUBLES IN SOUTH WALES.
  MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the disorderly scenes which have recently been taking place in connection with the collection of tithe rent-charge in Cardiganshire and in other parts of South Wales; whether Mr. Robert Lewis, the County Court bailiff, was seriously assaulted on the 14th of March at Ffynonfadog, in the parish of Pembryn, when attempting to collect tithe, and whether any arrests have been made in connection with this outrage; will be explain why the police force protecting Lewis was suddenly withdrawn on the 18th of March, although the Chief Constable had undertaken to pro-
  1246
  vide a force until the 23rd, and also the number of orders of the Newcastle-Emlyn County Court for tithe rent-charge which are now unexecuted; whether he is aware that a series of night attacks have been made on the vicarage of Llanfyhangel Rhosycorn, in the course of which a valuable horse belonging to the vicar has been cruelly mutilated; whether any arrests have been made in connection with this outrage; and what steps he proposes to take to restore law and order to this part of the country?
  MR. ASQUITH: I have received Reports from time to time on the disorderly proceedings in connection with the collection of tithe rent-charge in Cardiganshire and other parts of South Wales. Mr. Robert Lewis, County Court bailiff, was twice assaulted, but, as I am informed, not seriously, on March 14 at Ffynonfadog while attempting to collect tithe. The assailants were well known to the police, who thought it more advisable not to arrest them, but to proceed by summons. It is true that a verbal arrangement had been made with the bailiff for the continuance of police protection until March 22, but it was found necessary to withdraw the protection temporarily after the 17th, after duo notice had been given, as applications had been received for protection from the bailiffs of another County Court, and the presence of an unusual number of police was required in another part of the county. The Chief Constable will shortly be again in a position to give assistance if required. There are, I am informed, 118 unexecuted orders for distress, and 87 orders under Sub-section 3 of Section 2 of the Tithe Act, 1891. I am informed that on four separate occasions damage was done by parties of men in the stables of the vicarage named, including the cutting of the hair from the tail of a horse; and although no arrests have yet been made, the offenders are believed to be known, and it is hoped will shortly be brought to justice. I understand that the village named is in Carmarthenshire, not in Cardiganshire; and I am further informed that these outrages have nothing to do with the collection of tithe rent-charge; and the vicarage is now protected. I have given a good deal of time and attention to the state of things in this county, and have endeavoured by

  1247
  personal interviews with the different authorities concerned to bring about a more harmonious and effective co-operation between them. I gather from the latest Reports that there has been substantial improvement in the facility with which the law is executed. The main difficulty lies, as I have often pointed out in the defective character of the remedy which the Act of Parliament provides.

  DR. GRIGSBY.
  MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the Report of the examination of the Directors of the Solicitors Government Trust Company by the Official Receiver on 19th February; and whether Dr. Grigsby is to resume his duties as Judge in Cyprus?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. S. BUXTON,): The Secretary of State has carefully considered Dr. Grigsby's case; and, on a review of all the circumstances before him, he arrived at the conclusion that Dr. Grigsby should be allowed to resume his duties.

  COMPULSORY RETIREMENT IN QUEEN'S COLLEGES.
  MR. PINKERTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of certain legal difficulties in the interpretation of the Order in Council prescribing compulsory retirement at 65, it has been decided to apply the principle of the Order to the Queen's Colleges and Queen's Letters; whether all officials now in office have been exempted from the operation of the Queen's Letters; will be explain why this exemption has been made, seeing that it is in direct conflict with the recommendation of the Royal Commission, which states that compulsory retirement at a specified age is absolutely necessary; with the Report of the Committee of Public Accounts, which states that such a Rule is absolutely necessary in the case of the Queen's Colleges; and with the opinion of the Treasury expressed in 1891, and then concurred in by the Lord-Lieutenant, that the Rule should be applied to the Colleges; and whether payments out of Parliamentary Votes
  1248
  have been, or will be, made to those officials disqualified by age?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Sir J. T. HIBBERT,): The Government are anxious to prevent the Presidents and Professors of the Queen's Colleges from continuing to hold office after they have become by age or infirmity less competent for the performance of their important and responsible duties. The Law Officers of the Crown in Ireland have, however, advised that the Presidents and Professors are not within the terms of the Order in Council of August 15, 1890, and that the retirement of the present holders on the ground of age, or the discontinuance of payments from the Vote of Parliament to which they are entitled, cannot be enforced under the terms of the Order. As regards the future, the Irish Government has undertaken to make it a condition of appointment in every case that the appointee shall retire at the age of 65, with an extension of not more than five years in any case in which the Treasury is satisfied that an earlier retirement would be detrimental to the interests of the Public Service.

  THE NAVAL RESERVE.
  MR. COCHRANE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether Her Majesty's ships Superb and Galatea have now returned from their cruise to Shetland for the purpose of training the Naval Reserve there; what number of men of the Naval Reserve have undergone the course of training in each of these ships respectively; and what has been the cost to the country of sending these ships on this duty?
  SIR U. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH: These ships have not visited Shetland. The Galatea has returned from Lerwick, and the Superb from Stornoway. Only four men of the Naval Reserve have undergone the course of training in the Galatea, and none in the Superb. This is the first year of an experiment new to the men. Unfortunately, the season turned out to be inopportune, and the inducements offered seem not to have been considered sufficient to make the men volunteer. This service has entailed no additional expense to the country, the cost of the fuel expended being covered by the amount provided in the

  1249
  Estimates for the ordinary cruising of these ships.

  ACCIDENTS TO RAILWAY SERVANTS.
  MR. CHANGING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will consider the advisability of requiring Railway Companies, in making Returns of accidents to railway servants under Section 6 of the Act of 1871, to state whether an injury arising from an accident is of a temporary or permanent character; and whether, in the latter case, he will in future direct Railway Companies to send in, after a suitable interval, further Returns showing the then condition of the injured railway servant, and stating whether the injury has resulted in permanent disablement?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE HOARD OF TRADE (Mr. MUNDELLA,): I have appointed a Committee to consider the question of the Accident Returns, and the points raised by my hon. Friend shall receive the consideration of that Committee.

  THE TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT.
  MR. MACDONALD: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he expects to receive the Report of the Departmental Committee upon the working of the Telegraph Department at an early date?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. A. MORLEY,): The Committee, I am informed, are now considering their Report, and I have reason to believe that it will be in my hands in a few weeks. I ought to add, however, that the Committee, which was mainly intended to inquire into the possibility of introducing economy into the Service, will report for the information and guidance of the Department, and it is not consequently certain that their Report will be one which can properly be laid before Parliament.

  PASSENGER FARES ON THE LONDON, BRIGHTON, AND SOUTH COAST RAILWAY.
  MR. BENN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company's ordinary first and second-class passenger
  1250
  maxima were raised ¼d. per mile by the Act (Local and Personal) of 1868, c. 134; that these maxima are higher than those of the London and North-Western Railway Company and many other Companies; that the Company runs more trains without third-class carriages attached than all the other railways of England put together; and that competition with the South Eastern Railway Company is precluded by an agreement sanctioned by the Act of 1890, c. 39; and whether he will undertake to introduce a clause in the Company's Bill now before Parliament which shall provide for a return to the Company's former passenger maxima, and also for the carriage of third-class passengers by all the Company's trains?
  MR. MUNDELLA: The Board of Trade have not received complaints as to the manner in which the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway manage their passenger traffic. I am not prepared to introduce a clause into a Bill of a particular Company to repeal fares which have already received the sanction of Parliament. To compel this Company to carry third-class passengers by all trains would impair the facilities, both as to expedition and cost, afforded by the Company to the public.

  ANTHRAX.
  MR. FELLOWES (Hunts, Ramsey): I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether the recommendation made by the Central Chamber of Agriculture last November, and by other Agricultural Bodies, that Local Authorities should be empowered, in the case of the death of an animal from anthrax, to award to the owner the market value of the carcase (not to exceed £1), has been adopted; and, if not, whether he will state the objection, if any, to its adoption as a means of securing early notice of outbreaks of the disease? At the same time, I may ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the greatly-increased prevalence of anthrax and the serious consequences of the disease not only to live stock, but in some cases to human beings also, he is prepared to appoint a Departmental Committee to consider how far it is possible to adopt further measures for its prevention?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. H. GARDNER,): The recommendation to which the hon. Member refers could not be carried out without legislation; but, in any case, I do not think its adoption would be of any material assistance in preventing the spreading of disease. I cannot conveniently state the objections to the proposal within the limits of an answer to a question; but if the hon. Member will communicate with me personally I shall be happy to explain them to him, and I may also refer him to the letter I addressed to the Central Chamber of Agriculture on the subject on the 22nd of November last. With regard to the suggestion for the appointment of a Departmental Committee, which the hon. Member makes in a separate question on the subject, I shall be happy to consider whether such an inquiry would be of advantage; but I wish, in the first instance, to be in possession of certain Reports for which I have called respecting the feasibility of inoculation for anthrax, and as to the measures adopted in foreign countries to prevent the spreading of the disease.

  CLASSIFICATION IN THE DOCKYARDS.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state whether the system of classification has been abolished in Her Majesty's Dockyards?
  THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. E. ROBERTSON,)(who replied) said: If the hon. Member will refer to page 5 of Parliamentary Paper, 429, he will find a list of the trades in which classification has been abolished.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN: Then, is the announcement which has appeared in the papers incorrect?
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: No fresh additions have been made since last year.

  BANDS IN THE ROYAL PARKS.
  MR. AIRD: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works if arrangements can be made for bauds to play in the Royal Parks, similar to the arrangements made by the County Council in the Parks under their control, on Saturday afternoons and on general holidays?
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. H. GLADSTONE,): Arrangements have been made under which bands play at certain times in Hyde Park, Regent's Park, and Greenwich Park. The expenses are defrayed by private effort, as no public money is provided for the purpose. I am in full sympathy with the object of the hon. Member, and will see what more can be done.

  BOARD OF TRADE RULES.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis): I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the Rules made by the Board of Trade, and laid upon the Table of this House on the 13th of March last, were prepared and advised upon by a committee of 15 persons constituted as required by "The Merchant Shipping (Life Saving Appliances) Act, 1888,"or, if not, how and by whom they were prepared and advised upon?
  MR. MUNDELLA: Yes, Sir.

  GAME LAW PROSECUTIONS AT DINGWALL.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate if he is-a ware that, in the case of trespass for game tried on the 13th February last before Sheriff Hill, at Dingwall, in which Baron Middleton, of Appleeross,. was the plaintiff, and William Mackenzie,. Ardneaskan, was defendant, the only witness for the prosecution was a game watcher named Macbeath, who admitted that his knowledge of English was very limited, while Sheriff Hill, who sentenced Mackenzie, had no knowledge of Gaelic; and whether there is any interpreter attached to the Court House at Dingwall; if not, whether it is proposed to engage the services of competent interpreters at those places where Sheriffs are ignorant of the language of the people?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR,&c.): I am informed that Macbeath was the only witness in this case, but that it is not the fact that his knowledge of English was very limited; that, on the contrary, he was examined and cross-examined in English—which he spoke quite easily—and that it was never suggested, either by himself or by the agent

  1253
  of the accused, that he should be examined in Gaelic. There is no interpreter attached to the Court House at Dingwall, but the Sheriff Clerk Depute, or some other competent person, is employed to act as interpreter in the comparatively rare cases in which an interpreter is required.

  THE BLACKWATER FISHERY.
  MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, as it is doubtful if the "culch" in the Blackwater, Essex, is Crown property, and as action calculated to lead to riot is being taken by the Tollesbury fishermen against the Burnham dredgermen for removing it, he will protect the Burnham men in the exercise of rights hitherto admittedly legal, and which are necessary to them in the conduct of their trade?
  MR. DODD: Could not these public fishing-grounds be protected by putting in force the Crown rights?
  MR. MUNDELLA: Whatever may be the merits of the claims involved in this case, it is not within the province of the Board of Trade to determine them. The protection of those who may be disturbed in the exercise of legal rights is a matter for the police, and I understand that proceedings before Magistrates are now pending.
  MR. DODD: Has the right hon. Gentleman taken the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown on the subject?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I believe that has been done.

  CROWN ESTATES.
  MR. YERBURGH: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether he will undertake that on the Crown Estates, so far as is consistent with the requirements of the farms, the cottages of the labourers shall be held direct from the Crown?
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Sir J. T. HIBBERT,)(who replied) said: As stated in the Report of 1890 from the Select Committee on the Woods and Forests, the present practice of the Commissioner of Woods, &c., is to let to the farmers such cottages as are necessary for their farms, and any others not so required
  1254
  would be usually let by the Commissioner direct to labourers or artisans.
  MR. YERBURGHgave notice that he would on another occasion address to the right hon. Gentleman a question dealing with assertions made in a certain publication on this subject.

  THE SALTCOATS CROFTER SETTLEMENTS.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he has yet had an opportunity of conferring with Sir Charles Tupper on the grievances of the Saltcoats (Canada) Crofter Settlers; and, if so, will be state the result?
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Sir G. TREVELYAN,): I have conferred with Sir Charles Tupper since his return from Canada. Sir Charles Tupper is preparing a Report, on the Crofter Settlements in that country, which will be presented to Parliament in due course.

  MEAT IMPORTS.
  SIR H. MAXWELL (Wigton): I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is now able to announce the result of his consultation with the President of the Board of Trade in regard to American and foreign meat imports; and whether any steps will be taken by these Departments to enforce the laws framed to protect British producers and consumers from fraudulent trading?
  MR. SEYMOUR KEAY: At the same time, I will ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, having regard to the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the marking of foreign meat, Her Majesty's Government will take steps with the object of preventing the fraudulent practice of selling foreign meat as meal of home production, whereby great injustice is done to farmers, particularly to those in the North of Scotland?
  MR. H. GARDNER: In reply to the hon. Baronet, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Elgin, I would say that as the result of the best consideration we have been able to give to this matter, we have come to the conclusion that the law as it stands ought to be sufficient to prevent fraudulent misrepresentation as to origin in the case of meat,

  1255
  and what I would suggest is that home producers should utilise their various Organisations with a view to bring under the notice of my right hon. Friend cases in which there is evidence to show that the Merchandise Marks Acts have been infringed, or themselves take action in the same way as the Bacon Curer's Association have recently done so successfully. The Board of Trade have the power to prosecute in cases in which the general interests of a section of the community or of a trade are affected; but the Board of Trade cannot exercise this power unless they are moved to do so in specific instances.
  SIR H. MAXWELL: Are these recommendations intended to apply to such feeders as the crofters of the Western Highlands and the farmers of Aberdeenshire?
  MR. H. GARDNER: There are such bodies as the Highland and Agricultural Society, which can take up the matter.

  RAILWAY COMMUNICATION IN ROSS-SHIRE.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is now prepared to give effect to the conditional promise made by the late right hon. W. H. Smith, M.P., to provide for the development of railway communication on the western mainland of Ross-shire?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W. HARCOURT,): I have nothing to add to the answer which I gave on March the 9th last year.
  MR. WEIR: Will the Government appoint a Committee to consider the question, as was done by the late Government?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The Government see no occasion for appointing another Committee.

  THE DEPUTY SPEAKER.
  SIR D. MACFARLANE: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, considering the labours now devolving upon the Chair of this House, he will consider the desirability of appointing a Deputy Speaker in addition to the Chairman of Committees?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The Government have had the matter under consideration, but have formed no opinion on it.

MOTIONS.
  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

    MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
    SIR A. ROLLITsaid, that his Motion for the appointment of a Committee to consider and report upon the procedure, practice, and forms of the House was dictated not by party, but purely by business, considerations. Some such Committees had been previously formed, and there was an impression that their proceedings had not been fruitful, but, after a careful comparison of their proposals with the present Standing Orders of the House, he had come to the conclusion that many of their suggestions had proved valuable, and had been incorporated with advantage in the law of Parliament. Moreover, time had now elapsed, and some of the recommendations of such Committees, which, when made, had been in advance of public opinion, might now with advantage be reconsidered in the light of more recent experience. And he was also of opinion that, but for what such Committees had effected, the present state of Parliamentary business might have been much worse than it was. Such experience showed that business in the House of Commons had become more and more congested, and one of the Committees had reported that this feature of Parliamentary life would be likely to increase rather than diminish. There were now more speakers, and the Sessions were longer; indeed, it might be said that there were practically no vacations, and that Parliament had been for nearly 18 months in almost permanent Session. Yet, notwithstanding this sacrifice on the part of Members, the promises of Parliament were being less and less fulfilled. The programmes of Governments on each side of the House were but slightly carried into effect. The list of promises was long—of performances, extremely short. And in the case of non-official Members, the proportion of performances was almost infinitesimal, inasmuch as during last Session 309 such measures were introduced, while only 23 were passed. Even for the completion of the

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    financial work of the year, the Government had been dependent upon the courtesy of the Opposition, and, while such cordial relations had an excellent effect on business, they could not be relied upon amid the stress of Party feeling. Yet Governments were constantly promising what it must be known could not be performed, and thus public opinion was greatly misled and public misapprehension produced. Equally, non-official Members were encouraged by the existing Rules to what he would call trying their luck at legislation. Some hundreds ballotted for the chances, and yet it was well known that, under the circumstances of the most favourable Session, only 10 or 15 places were worth having, and this year there were not more than five. Yet Members gave their time, and the time of the public, to the ballot. They remained midnight after midnight on the off-chance of passing a Bill, notwithstanding the fact that, even if they were successful in the ballot, nevertheless, if the measure was opposed, it could not possibly pass through all its stages in tin; House of Commons, as was indicated in the case of the Sites for Public Worship Bills of the last Session. Hence, there was a strong and growing feeling both inside and outside the House of Commons that, if Parliamentary institutions were not to be endangered, there must be some change—some reform. The Prime Minister himself, in his recent speech at Edinburgh, frankly admitted, and indeed, invited such proposals. The Prime Minister was, beyond doubt, sincere in this, and meant what he said. Moreover, he expressed a general public feeling, and he impressed upon the Government the duty on this occasion of following their own Prime Minister's recommendation by helping forward this Motion both in the House and in Committee. What, then, were the chief evils and their causes? They were: pressure of Parliamentary work out of all proportion to Parliamentary time, the want of business-like economy in dealing with that time, and the ever-present and all-pervading element of chance and uncertainty. It might not be possible to eliminate chance entirely, but he protested against making it, as they did, a principle of action. For instance, non-official Members' Bills and Motions, which had been useful in the past as
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    themes of discussions, and as suggestions, and which, in many cases, had been carried into legislation with the best effect, were subjected to a series of chances and uncertainties. The first chance was the ballot itself. Was there always "a survival of the fittest" Bills? Some were good, but sometimes Wednesdays were wasted by talk on proposals which had no chance whatever of becoming law, which were even talked upon to stave off more important propositions, and which were sometimes put down with that very object, to which, unfortunately, the forms of the House too often lent themselves. This was the real origin of the Bill - Syndicates, which, though irregular, had at least the excuse of being organisations to forward the more important measures. Again, on Tuesdays and Fridays Motions were often dealt with in just the same way, and, as a result, they had those "counts-out" which often destroyed an evening's work when it was too late to devote the time to any other purpose, one remedy for which would be to count out a useless Motion, instead of the House, and then to proceed to the next Order. The second chance was the prospect that Governments might at any moment take the whole time of the House, indeed often Government work was so pressing that they must have it. Governments were always on the "pounce" for this purpose, as they were thought to be even last night. And, thirdly, when Bills came on at midnight, their being taken, even if entirely non-contentious, was still a matter of the greatest doubt. He admitted the objections to late Sittings; he himself had had no reason to complain: indeed, he acknowledged the courtesy of the House in permitting the passing of so many of his own Bills, and, personally, he was as much opposed as anyone to unduly late Sittings, except for the formal passage of unopposed, or, as he would rather call them, uncontentious Bills. If there was a real objection to them he had nothing to say, but he had gathered from a recent exclamation, as well as from Members themselves, that there were some on his side of the House who were opposed to all such legislation. He understood this feeling, though he did not share it, but, on the contrary, considered that legislation had advanced, and might more advance, the welfare of the

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    people. Moreover, the Standing Orders contemplated the passage after 12 o'clock of uncontentious Bills, and he certainly objected to all progress being stopped by the simple words, on the part of a single Member, of "I object," especially when the objecting Member had not even read the Bill. He therefore proposed, though only suggestively, and, as in all cases, for the consideration of the Committee, that an effort should be made to reduce the elements of chance and caprice, and to secure more certainty, and that this might be effected by some system of selection in favour of the Bills which were relatively the more important and useful.
    LORD R. CHURCHILL: How?
    SIR A. ROLLIT: Well, it might be done in many ways, one of which was by Members undersigning the Bills which they approved upon a list in the Library, on the same principle as they now backed them. Or, by requiring more than one, say 10, Members to give notice of opposition, as had been suggested by the hon. Member for Rushcliffe, and, indeed, the Speaker had already effected an improvement, which he heartily acknowledged, in giving time to Members to disarm opposition by a few words in explanation of their Bills. And there were other ways in which time might be saved and obstacles removed. There was what was called "obstruction," which came from both sides of the House, and which he need not define. With such dilatory tactics he had no sympathy, though he had no objection whatever to deliberate discussion, for which time must be gained by the removal of obstruction. St. Paul had said, "the strength of sin is the law," and the strength of obstruction was the present law of Parliament. The remedy was to strike at inducements to, and at the motives of, obstruction. For example, even now, if the Twelve o'clock Rule were suspended, merely in terrorem, the effect was magical, because Members knew that the time must come at some period of the early morning when there must be an end of the discussion. Consequently, they obstructed no longer, and generally all was over by midnight. It was the same
    1260
    with that somewhat barbarous instrument the guillotine. When once applied it was effective, but its application involved debate, in which time was often lost rather than gained, and in the Party struggle the merits were often wholly lost sight of. Hence, the guillotine was injurious, but there was very much to be said for producing its effect beforehand, and that considerately and impartially, by allotting a certain time to sections of a Bill, and to the Bill itself, through the action of the Speaker, aided by a Committee, such as the Committee of Selection. By this means, discussions would be devoted to the main points of measures, instead of often leaving them wholly unconsidered. But perhaps it might be necessary to take some securities for points developed during the Debate, by giving power to the Speaker to extend the time; indeed, he was in favour himself of giving much greater powers to the Chairman, as in the case of other public assemblies. Moreover, if the limitation of the time prevented some points being discussed, there were still many other stages in which this might, be remedied. Again, suggestively, the carrying over and on from one Session to another of Bills in progress, upon a Resolution moved by the Minister or Member in charge, might prevent their destruction and the consequent waste of public time, and remove a great incentive to Party obstruction. The last long Session of nearly 18 months showed that Sessions were, after all, only arbitrary divisions of time, and an incidental advantage would be the limitation of the necessity for the Closure. The Chambers of Commerce had resolved 10 times in favour of thus carrying over Bills, and again this year; and they had been actuated by the yearly fate of such an important, industrial measure as the Bill for Exempting Machinery and Tools from Rating, a subject which had received attention in most competing countries. This Bill had several times passed its Second Reading, and early last Session by a majority of 173, yet it never got further. Lord Salisbury had said that the practice of measures dying with each Session was as sensible as that of a business man who should annually destroy and recommence all his unfinished correspondence; and out of the 15 National Assemblies of Europe 12, and also the United States, had adopted the more

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    modern practice he had suggested, which had vindicated itself by experience. Much, too, might be said for similarly carrying over measures from day to day, as in other public assemblies, as being likely to get more omnibuses to their journey 'send instead of their jostling each other to pieces by overcrowding Temple Bar. Again, much more devolution was wanted. Private Bill legislation ought to be delegated to Commissions or to the Town and County Councils, and at the last meeting of the Chambers of Commerce—which were formed of business men and men versed in public life—the voices from every part of Ireland—from Belfast to Dublin and Cork and from all political Parties—from Scotland and from England, were universally favourable to at least this form of business like Home Rule. These views he urged in the Debate on Scotch Committees last night, and he would now only add that the Estimates might well go to a Standing Committee. The time in Supply was greatly increasing, owing very much to the encroachments by the Government on the time of non-official Members, who were forced to take this opportunity of airing and redressing grievances. Thus, in 1869 the Civil Service Estimates were in Committee of Supply for 16 days, and in 1887 for 31 days; and this rate was progressive. True, in Supply, attention was given not only to finance, but also to points of policy and administration, and this was of value. But such discussion was desultory; the reductions of expenditure were utterly inadequate to the period expended on them; and, as the Secretary for India had said, there was a waste of public time to little or no purpose in preventing a waste of public money. Through a Committee there would be real revision of expenditure; the officials might, be examined; and the saving of time in Supply would give much greater opportunities of raising Motions for redress directly, and for securing their regular and adequate discussion. There was, indeed, already a plethora of such opportunities in the various stages of Supply—on first going into Committee, on the Motion that the Speaker leave the Chair, on Votes on Account—when discussion was most discursive, as it was on Supplementary Estimates and on the various stages of the Appropriation Bill,
    1262
    and also on Report of Supply. Surely all this was more than sufficient, if the time were economically and profitably used. And, indeed, the Committee of 1886 had recommended that every Public Bill should be referred to a Standing Committee (as was generally the case in the Lords), and that in one of such several Committees the Bills of non-official Members should have precedence, the Committees meeting on Thursdays and Fridays in the day time, and the House at 9 in the evening. These were all matters worth the consideration of a Committee, as were some of the technicalities, and what he might call the anachronisms, as well as the many anomalies, of present Parliamentary procedure. To learn that procedure was almost the work of a lifetime, which no business man could give, and the practice ought to be simplified and more closely adapted to modern life and to the procedure of other Public Bodies. For instance, there were the ancient forms in introducing Bills. These had been recently somewhat shortened and improved, but the discussion of the subject had consumed much of the time of the House, and the result had shown that there was still need for more consideration and change. After the ballot Members had to march to the Par, just as they did two centuries ago.
    LORD R. CHURCHILL: Hear, hear.
    Sir A. ROLLIT: Yes, but in the reign of William and Mary time was more plentiful than now; and the rule was frequently broken by Members not going to the Bar at all, but only a yard or two from their places, and then countermarching to the Table. Next, the Order Paper, carefully prepared though it was by the Speaker and the Clerks, was dictated by ancient precedents. Once, no doubt from its name, it indicated the actual order of business, but now it was almost misleading to any but those who were experts in Parliamentary procedure. Then, the recent discussions of Lords Amendments showed that the system was cumbersome and restrictive of those opportunities for the adjustment of differences between the Houses which ought always to be effected, for the sake of both and of the country,

    1263
    if at all possible without sacrifice of principle. The reasons given for Amendments, compiled in a sham Committee meeting held behind the Chair, were often the very worst reasons, only worthy of such a mock proceeding; and the obstacles to conferences were such as to practically prevent them. Such a proceeding on Privilege as that of the noble Lord the Member for Paddington the other day—
    LORD R. CHURCHILL: I raised it to test the validity of the Rules.
    SIR A. ROLLIT: I only need to say that the noble Lord raised it, not why he raised it, and I was going to thank him for having shown that the Sessional Order against Peers taking part in elections was an annual sham; as was the like Order of the House threatening Members with every severity for bribery and corruption, which was obsolete now that, by the Act of the right hon. Member for Bury, the House's judicial jurisdiction was delegated to the Judges, the annual Order being merely a relic of a procedure which was once a real one, but is no longer so, and one which could now hardly be constitutionally placed in operation. Lastly, the process as to Petitions was almost a misleading of the public. The Press even did not now notice them, as it once did. They were seldom if ever read; they were plunged into the dark profundity of a bag behind the Chair; and yet it was discovered the other night upon the Estimates that the cost of counting these Petitions was some hundreds a year, and the cost of printing what was seldom, if ever, read might be some thousands. He would be the last to propose to abrogate the ancient and once useful right of public petition, but he did propose to reform and make it real, and to put an end to an idle form and a useless expenditure. Other Committees had sat, and done good work, but experience was constantly extending. New conditions and circumstances affected the House like other institutions, and, with a view to the speedy and efficient despatch of public business—for public time was not their own, but the nation's—it was necessary that the House should possess itself of the most effective means of conducting its business and proceedings. Hon. Members were
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    there in the performance of great public duties, at great cost of both time and money; they occupied both public time and attention; and anything in their forms and procedure which detracted from the public estimation of their services or tended to create misapprehension ought to be ended. He therefore asked the House, which had been indulgent, to agree with him that there were grounds for inquiry, consideration, and report by a Select Committee, and to take the opportunity of more economically utilising public time, of lessening what might be a source even of some danger to the State, and of adding to the usefulness and dignity of Parliamentary institutions. The hon. Member concluded by moving for a Select Committee.
    SIR C. W. DILKE: There was one expression which fell from my hon. Friend in respect of which the noble Lord (Lord R. Churchill) opposite dissented. He said there was a strong and general feeling in the House and outside the House with regard to the cumbersome methods of procedure which we adopt. The noble Lord dissented, and I must say I share his dissent, because I do not agree with my hon. Friend, whose Motion 1 second, that there is any strong feeling within this House as to our cumbersome proceedings. No one can be found in Parliament to contend that our Forms and our way of using them are perfect, and outside the House of Commons there is an almost unanimous agreement that they are disgracefully had. If it is necessary to offer any proof of this statement I would give, for example, the mode of moving the adjournment of the House, and so bringing some unexpected subject, not however generally (as was intended) of a sudden nature, but often such as would bear postponement, before the House, in lieu of the business appointed for the day. This was never intended when the Form was devised to meet emergency. Then, again, there is the consideration of Estimates. We now debate the early Votes every year on every Vote on Account and on the main Vote far too fully, and we do not debate the later Votes at all. Then, again, there is the period of the year for the Sittings

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    of the House. The theory is that we sit during the season, and Members take their houses upon that theory. The practice is beginning to be that we sit all the year round, and I venture to prophesy that in the present year, if the Government survive the Budget, we shall sit, as we did last year, throughout the autumn. There is a great deal of chance about our proceedings which gives a portion of our time to the Government, the organised opposition being able to select another portion—but only for the sterile purpose of moving Votes of Censure, while private Members are left to the chance of a chance, to individualism run mad—a single Member by the luck of the ballot obtaining the time which he may misspend. Our Forms are not business-like. The Assembly is less business-like than any County Council or Town Council in the country; and the democracy, or, to be precise, the new voters, enfranchised in 1867 and 1885, have never had the smallest sympathy with us in our inability to transact our work. One of their Representatives in this House, the hon. Member for Batter-sea, in a most able recent speech upon this subject in London, took a view which is almost exactly similar to that of the most experienced of our Chairmen of Committees, my right hon. Friend the Member for the Bodmin Division of Cornwall, and to the view taken by those very experienced gentlemen the Clerks at the Table, as expressed in the evidence of two of them before several Select Committees, and in the suggestions which have been made by Mr. Milman at various times. There was only one point in which I myself differed from my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, as there is no point in which I differ from the gentlemen at the Table and from my right hon. Friend. I am content, in the great difficulty of selecting arbiters of our proceedings, to fully trust the Speaker of the House from time to time, as he is both the choice of the whole House and the natural protector of every minority. It is much easier, however, to point out the extent of the disease than to bring about agreement upon the remedy. The' various Committees which have sat have made many suggestions which have not been adopted, besides those which have. The Committee of 1886 suggested that
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    every Bill should go to a Standing Committee unless otherwise ordered, and accompanied this proposal to divide the whole House into Standing Committees by suggestions, which I believe had the great authority of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin, for getting rid of that private business which the House no longer transacts as well as it once did. The Committee of 1888 appeared to share the views of the Committee of 1886, but also desired that the Estimates, or at least certain Classes and certain Votes on other Classes, should go to Grand Committee. The Committee of 1890 made suggestions which were far less unanimous than those of the Committees of 1886 and 1888, for they were carried against the Liberal Party, I myself agreeing with the majority of the Committee and not with my Party upon the subject, and they were for the carrying over of Bills. Since 1890 we have had a complete breakdown of Committee Closure, which it has been found impracticable to make use of in the manner which was undoubtedly intended by the House, and I say this as a strong friend of Closure, which I have supported for a great number of years, whichever Party was in power. But here I speak for myself only. To me it seems (although holding extreme views I am generally in a minority) that the House should be looked upon as a place of business, and not as a place of display, and that the democratic constituencies are far from agreeing with those in this House who look upon it mainly as an enjoyable arena of Debate. No one, I think, who was present throughout the proceedings in Committee on the Local Government Bill can think that they were wholly satisfactory, and, from my own experience of Select Committees and of Standing Committees, I cannot have a doubt but that the Bill would have emerged from Committee and come to the House on Report in a more workable form had it been examined by such tribunals, especially if there were power (which exists in most other countries) for the direct consultation by the Committee on technical points of the Government draftsman and experts. Against the evils of chance in private Members' time the private Members of the House have been righting by means of syndicate balloting, a practice, however,

    1267
    which has been condemned in the strongest terms from the Chair as a gross evasion of the Forms. This in itself seems to mo a sufficient base for inquiry by a Committee. If we could agree upon nothing else than to make, on behalf of private Members of this House, practical proposals for the allocation of private Members' time by a reasonable system of preference as against chance, I think that there would be a full justification for our proceedings of to-day. The Leader of the House has declared in the House that he thinks syndicate balloting (but for the former condemnation of the Speaker) a useful means of expressing preference. We are at present working by a rough plan, and are obliged to use rough means on behalf of private Members for forcing on the Government those measures on which the largest numbers of us are agreed—such as the Miners' Eight Hours, for which we are going to obtain time this year. But surely it does not transcend the resources of our statesmanship to find apt and scientific means of doing that which we all wish to do. The Committee of 1888 dealt with this matter in its evidence, though, strictly speaking, it lay outside the scope of the Committee, which was on Estimates. The Committee went far beyond Estimates, and had placed before it plans of the gentlemen at the Table and of my right hon. Friend the Member for the Bodmin Division of Cornwall, for underwriting Motions. Perhaps this is not the best form for carrying out our end, but surely we must all concur that power ought to be given to groups rather than to mere individuals—some proportion of the time to large groups, and some to small. There is a great deal to say for the view that half-a-dozen gentlemen ought to have their chance of bringing questions before Parliament. But in these days of pressure there is not much to say for the view that a single individual, who cannot obtain the support of any other, should be able to prevent business by monopolising its time; and at the present moment not only are private Members' days themselves an uncertain quantity, but success in the ballot is a chance upon a chance. Any power of the House to exhibit preference should apply to Bills as well as Motions. Some years ago, I think at the suggestion of one of the gentlemen at the
    1268
    Table, I was able to induce Sir Stafford Northcote's Committee to adopt the plan which is now observed of preference after Whitsuntide to the Bills which have passed through their first stages. This is the concession of the principle, and could easily be extended, and I have also seen a suggestion, which I believe also has the authority of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin, that we should do well to give a certain proportion of our Wednesdays to small and uncontentious Bills which have a reasonable chance of passing—Bills which would be allowed to remain in this class according to their freedom from unpopularity evinced by their not being under-written against. To sum up our suggestions, we press for the principle of preference by large groups and small groups of Members, as against the mere individual Member, and for the business aspect of the House against the show point of view.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That a Select Committee be appointed to consider and report upon the procedure, practice, and forms of the House and Committees."—(Sir A. Rollit.)
    LORD R. CHURCHILLsaid, that the right hon. Baronet opposite, like the hon. Member for Islington, had dealt entirely in paradox and generalities and had not descended to details. Though he had listened most attentively to the speeches just delivered he had been unable to discover that the subject had been treated by the speakers apart from generalities. He would deal for a moment, in the first place, with the statement of the hon. Member for Islington as to the private Members' Bills introduced last year. The hon. Member had I stated that of 369 private Members' Bills introduced last year only about 20 had passed.
    SIR A. ROLLIT: Twenty-three.
    LORD R. CHURCHILLsaid, the hon. Member had left out a most important reason, which was the fact that the Homo Rule Bill occupied 80 days, and that the rest of the Session was given up to Supply. How could 369 Bills, or any large proportion of them, have any chance in such a Session? The right hon. Baronet and the hon. Member said that the ballot operated unfavourably to legislation by private Members, and the former said that the country was largely

    1269
    in favour of private Members' Bills being advanced and thought that the time allotted to private Members should be enlarged.
    SIR A. ROLLIT, said, he must lake exception to the noble Lord's statement; be was under an entire misapprehension as to what had really been said.
    SIR C. W. DILKLEalso disclaimed the purport of the remarks attributed to him. He had said nothing of the kind, but that the system of procedure was most unworkmanlike.
    LORD R. CHURCHILLsaid that, at all events, the general tendency of the two speeches was to impress upon the House that not only the House ought to be unanimous on this point, but that there was a strong feeling in the country about it. He had gone about the country a great deal—nobody went about the country more than he did last year—and he never met with anybody, any ordinary intelligent elector, who could explain what a private Members' Bill was. It was a most absurd name to give, and the ordinary elector had never heard of such a thing. The hon. Baronet had asserted that there was a strong popular feeling in favour of a great reform in the procedure of the House of Commons; but he questioned that statement from his own experience of public opinion. The hon. Member proposed that the range of discussion on the initiative of private Members should be enlarged by some process, which, however, he did not indicate. Personally, he bold that the use of Bills introduced by private Members was this—and it had been slightly hinted at by the right hon. Baronet—that subjects should be brought under the notice of the House and pressed upon its attention from year to year, until finally, if the Bills were in fact wanted, if they were really wise Bills, both parties would take them up and they would ultimately be carried. He had known several instances of that having occurred. It was absolutely impossible for the Government nowadays to afford sufficient time for the discussion of private Members' Bills, even if their Bills were excellent, and nobody could devise a scheme which would enable them to do so. The present Government would very soon be compelled by the pressure of circumstances to make the usual raid on the time of private Mem-
    1270
    bers, partly on account of the late period at which the Session opened, and partly on account of the immense amount of business to be got through. The hon. Member suggested that on the Opposition side of the House the feeling was unfavourable to private Members' legislation, but he would find that that statement was quite unfounded.
    SIR A. ROLLITsaid, he was very reluctant to again interrupt the noble Lord, but he was not aware that he had said anything of the kind.
    LORD R. CHURCHILLwas alluding to the statement that an opinion was entertained on that side of the House that legislation was undesirable.
    SIR A. ROLLITassured the noble Lord that he had only said that an opinion was entertained by some Members on that side of the House. The noble Lord would, of course, accept his assurance.
    LORD R. CHURCHILLwould pass on. The right hon. Baronet wanted to supersede the Ballot. There was a good deal to be said for and against the Ballot, but it was rather odd that one of the most Radical Members of the House should wish to do without any system of ballot. A system of selection, however, might operate most unfairly on a minority. Whatever measures were adopted, the majority on a, Committee would correspond with the majority in the House, and that majority would take care that the Bills of private Members in the minority should not proceed. That would be a very great hindrance to the equality of Members, and a great injustice; but the Ballot prevented that, for it gave everybody an equal chance; it gave the same chance to the minority as to the majority. They should not rashly and without thought adopt a proposal which would rule the House of Commons for it was impossible to say how many years. He pointed out that the procedure of the House of Commons had never been dealt with except under the Loaders of the Government, and generally with the support of the Opposition. He thought that some Committee had been appointed to consider the procedure of that House, and the character of those Committees was remarkable. They were composed of the most experienced Members of the House, but the Mover and Seconder of this Motion had given no

    1271
    indication whatever as to who should constitute the proposed Committee. Nothing could be more dangerous than that Members not well acquainted, as some Members of the House could not be well acquainted, with the Rules and Forms of the House and with its general procedure should decide what their new Rules, if any were adopted, should be. No man was a stronger opponent of constant alteration of the Rules of Procedure than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian. That was his attitude up to last Session, when, no doubt, great alterations were made in order to pass the Home Rule Bill. Up to that time no one was more averse to the alteration of the Rules of the House than the right hon. Gentleman. When it was proposed to carry on Bills from one Session to another, the right hon. Gentleman was absolutely opposed to the suggestion. In 1881 and 1882 the right hon. Gentleman made alterations in procedure. He was Prime Minister at that time, and there was trouble with the Irish Party, who were very strong. A Coercion Bill was being passed in 1881 and certain Rules of Urgency were adopted. From an authoritative source he had received the information that those Rules were passed on the initiative of the Chair. In 1892 the Closure was passed, and that also rested on the initiative of the Speaker. The procedure of the late Government was on this wise. The late Government passed the Closure in 1887 in much the same form as it had been passed in 1882, but it rested with the Speaker as well as with the Chairman of Committees whether the Motion should be put. It never was intended, he thought, except for the great political purpose of the Party opposite of carrying the Home Rule Bill, that the Closure should be used for the purpose of oppression or tyranny, but simply when the course of business became embarrassing. The late Government also passed in 1888 15 new Rules, the best which had ever been passed for regulating their business. He protested against the theory of the right hon. Baronet with regard to dealing with little Bills. They were often more contentious than big Bills.
    SIR C. W. DILKEdesired to state what he really did say. He merely endorsed a suggestion of his right hon. Friend
    1272
    with regard to small Bills which had not met with more than a certain measure of opposition.
    LORD R. CHURCHILLsaid, these interruptions showed that he was very unfortunate in his appreciation of what had been said. He protested against placing small Bills on a level with large Bills such as the Eight Hours Bill. He thought there should be a Ballot, and that private Members' time should be extended as much as possible. Their time was always very contracted—it was certainly never too largo. He had never known a period when private Members' time was not encroached upon by the existing Government. To put the reform of procedure into the hands of private Members without the concurrence of the Leaders of the Opposition would be the gravest departure from precedent ever adopted by the House of Commons.
    MR. J. E. ELLISsaid, he agreed with the noble Lord that the term "private Members" was an absurd phrase. They were all public Members, and he was glad to see that in the latest edition of Sir Erskine May's book the term used was "unofficial Members," which seemed to him to convey a much more accurate description of the position occupied by those who wore not Members of the Government. He thought also that a proposal of this character should be brought forward under the aegis of the Government, and no Committee would command any confidence unless a commanding Member of the Government was its Chairman. At the same time, he did not concur with the optimistic view expressed by the noble Lord (Lord R. Churchill) of the present position. He cordially endorsed all that had fallen from the Mover and Seconder of the Motion with respect to opinion outside concerning Parliamentary procedure. He was bound to say there was a large amount of impatient bewilderment out of doors, and it seemed to him that the necessity of some further devolution of business was self-evident. The situation had become almost intolerable from its uncertainty. This matter affected the Government just as much as it affected unofficial Members. During the last eight or 10 years Queen's Speeches had always contained five or

    1273
    six times as many measures as could possibly be carried into law. No stronger condemnation of the procedure of the House of Commons could be found than in that single fact. The case with regard to non-contentious measures was oven more serious. During last Session of Parliament there were two Committees appointed by the Government dealing with matters in which the House, at least, had very great interest, and which were not Party matters at all. The Committee on Railway Rates sat a great many days, and after the most exhaustive inquiry with practical unanimity adopted a Report drawn by the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre). The President of the Board of Trade had announced that a Bill, founded on the recommendation of that Committee, would be brought before the House; but everybody knew that in the present state of business, and with the present procedure, it was almost hopeless to expect a good Railway Rates Bill. Then the Committee on Building Societies of last Session spent five hours in maturing its Report. He was sure that in the judgment of every Member of the Committee a Bill was needed dealing reasonably, carefully, but still firmly, with Building Societies throughout the country. If a notorious person happened to arrive in this country there might be such a feeling produced by the revelations which would be made at the particular trial as would almost compel the House to pass a measure on the subject. The cases of the Rating and Machinery Bill and the Eight Hours (Mines) Bill had been mentioned. Those two measures had passed a Second Reading by large majorities more than once; but unless something very unexpected happened and the Government gave facilities, neither of them had the slightest chance of passing into law. It almost came to this—that in regard to non-official Members' Bills the House began each Session with an unmitigated farce. Something like 250 Members put their names in the Ballot this Session, but even the first five of those who came out of it had very little chance indeed of seeing their measures become law in the present year. The reasons for the present state of things were not hard to see. There was a constant pressure from outside for new legis-
    1274
    lation, and constant promises from candidates in response to it. There was undoubtedly arising outside a feeling that an Act of Parliament could do almost everything, and cure all the ills that flesh was heir to. Accompanied by this the House had to contend with the fact that it had very much less time in which to transact its business. The alterations made in procedure in 1888 created an enormous revolution. A certain hour was fixed when business should stop, and this put for the first time in the power of persons who desired to obstruct or delay particular business the opportunity of doing so. It also put it in the power of one man out of 670 to stop all business after a particular time. Such a state of things would not be tolerated for a single moment in a Town Council or a County Council, or in any other body. Mr. Speaker had, much to the gratification and admiration of Members, mitigated the operation of the Rule in some respects, but he thought that before long the House ought to take the matter into its own hands. The real remedy for the present state of things was, after all, to bring the Standing Orders into harmony with the requirements of the moment. What he thought was most required was certainty in the way in which business was conducted. The Committee of 1861 quoted Mr. Speaker Shaw-Lefevre as saying in 1854—
    "In all the improvements that we have yet made in the conduct of Public Business we have endeavoured as much as possible to let the House understand exactly what questions they have to discuss to prevent surprises and to give some certainty to our proceedings."
    Mr. Speaker Denison, speaking in 1861, said that the most important thing to which the attention of the House could be directed was certainty in the business of the House from day to day, and that certainty was to be regarded as the primary object. At the present time one did not know in the morning what would be done in the evening, or on one day what would be done the next. Who was responsible? Primarily, of course, the Government of the day was responsible. The appropriation of the time of the House by the Standing Orders was antiquated and obsolete. The Government had only two days out of five in which to conduct their business, and even the most inveterate non-official Member would agree

    1275
    that this was absolutely too small an amount of time for the Government to have at its disposal. One might see how absurd the Standing Orders were on this subject by looking at the annual Return respecting the manner in which the Government made inroads up on the time of the House. It was not well that the Government should so frequently have to alter the Standing Orders. It had been stated that Standing Committees had never been used for the purpose of considering non-official Members' Bills. This was an error. Twice last Session Bills which had no connection with the Government whatever were submitted to the Committee on Law. The Committee of Lord Harrington in 1886 specially contemplated their being so referred. As to the discussions in Committee of Supply, driven as they were almost universally now until after the last day of July, these were becoming of very little practical use, and he agreed with the suggestion of Lord Hartington's Committee that the actual financial examination of the figures might very well be regulated elsewhere. Some plan was needed whereby the volume of opinion with respect to particular Bills should be able to make itself felt. He thought also the valuable principle of classification of Bills, which was already recognised in the Standing Orders, should be adopted after Easter in place of after Whitsuntide. He was not sure that the question of carrying over did not involve much graver considerations than appeared from what was said either by the Mover or Seconder of the Motion. The Report of the Committee of 1890, and especially the Report brought up by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), raised the very gravest Constitutional questions on the subject. There were a great many recommendations strewn through the Reports of the various Committees to which time did not permit reference; but he was one of those who had always felt that there had been, on the part of the predecessors of the present Members of the House, the very wisest caution in dealing with the Standing Orders. The Report of 1861 said that the maintenance of the old Rules was preferable to new but speculative Amendments. In the present Parliament some experiments had been made that had not been altogether successful, and he did
    1276
    not desire to rush into any rash experiments. The Seconder of the Motion had alluded to the Closure. He thought its use should be very carefully adjusted to the requirements of the business before the House. During the last Parliament he had seen the Closure used in a way which he thought was detrimental to the efficiency of the House and to the dignity of its Leaders. He had always held the opinion expressed by Sir Stafford Northcote that they should limit opportunities of debate rather than restrict freedom of discussion, and he agreed entirely with what had been said by the present Leader of the Opposition (Mr. A. J. Balfour), that the House of Commons must not be judged, like a mine, by the output. Whether the time had come for the appointment of a Select Committee was for the House to decide; but he thought that the Mover and Seconder of the Motion might be well satisfied with the manner in which the proposal had been received by the House. He was sure the discussion would be useful, and that sooner or later the House of Commons would have to reform its procedure, and do its business in a businesslike way.
    MR. HANBURYsaid, he thought the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Islington (Sir A. Rollit) was a most interesting and strong speech as far as it consisted of a denunciation of the present system, but that there was a great, falling-off in it when it came to the suggestion of remedies. That, he thought, had been the defect of the whole of the present Debate. His hon. Friend had made one suggestion which immediately had cold water thrown upon it by the right hon. Baronet (Sir C. W. Dilke), and that was about "syndicating Bills" or "underwriting."
    SIR C. W. DILKEsaid, the hon. Member was mistaken. He had said, in passing, that possibly under writing might not be the best form of carrying out the intention, but, with regard to general principles, he had entirely endorsed the view expressed by his right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Courtney.)
    MR. HANBURYsaid, that hitherto, at all events, the House had set its face against that method. It had been one of the great complaints of private Members that all the Wednesdays had been taken up by the Irish Members. The right hon. Baronet

    1277
    admitted that in the House itself the feeling against the present system was not very strong, but said that a strong feeling existed outside. Of course, people outside could not know what the difficulties were; they could not know how difficult it was to frame Rules which would enable the hundreds of thousands of subjects that had to be discussed by Parliament to be brought before the House. He (Mr. Hanbury) agreed that a good deal of the private legislation of the House might be done locally. Even if it were not devolved upon Local Bodies it would no doubt be more economically done if done on the spot. No doubt a great many reckless promises were made by Members as to the legislation that was going to be passed, and constituents were naturally disappointed when those promises were not fulfilled. Reference had been made to a variety of the most useful Party measures, such as the measure arising out of the Report of the Railway Rates Committee. There was no doubt, however, that all Governments unfortunately gave too great a precedence to mere political measures over the measures which were supported by Members on both sides. His hon. Friend (Sir A. Rollit) had said there were some Members on that (the Opposition) side of the House who objected to legislation altogether. He (Mr. Hanbury) did not think there were any who went so far as that. There was, however, a strong opinion amongst many that it was better that a few measures should be passed after having been properly considered than that a whole host of measures should pass without much discussion, especially when they were passed after 12 o'clock at night. So far as he understood the suggestions of his hon. Friend, the result of all of them would be that they would sit later at night; that they would begin the Sitting earlier in the morning, and that they would sit during a longer period of the year. A great distinction ought to be drawn between Government Bills and private Members' Bills after 12 o'clock at night. He had always objected to Government Bills coming on after 12 o'clock, because the Government were the masters of their own time, but he was opposed to the blocking of private Members' Bills of a good and useful character. But they must recollect that
    1278
    if the suggestions of his hon. Friend were carried out they would every night have private Members' Bills discussed after 12 o'clock until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and thus, if at the same time they extended the Committee system, they would be lengthening the time of the House at both ends. The House was becoming more and more a House of business men, and it was utterly impossible for those men to sit there regularly on Committees at 12 o'clock in the morning. They had already gone too far in the matter of Committees. Queen's counsel and barristers and other Members were excused from attendance, and the result was that pretty much the same Members were found sitting on every one of the Committees. Therefore, if the suggestions of the hon. Member were carried out they would have fewer and fewer of the most useful Members coming to the House, and the work of the House would be thrown into the hands of a set of professional politicians. He entirely agreed that it would be well if there were more certainty as to Government Business, because at present they never knew what was coming on. Therefore, while he sympathised with the object of his hon. Friend, he could not see that any reasonable suggestion had been made as yet to meet the difficulty, and he was bound to say that he feared his hon. Friend's suggestions would rather increase than decrease the evil.
    MR. COURTNEYsaid, he was afraid that the present state of the House justified the observations which had been made by his right hon. Friend the Member for the Forest of Dean, that this was a subject in which Members themselves did not feel very strongly interested. There was no doubt, on the part of the older Members of the House, a constant tendency to make idols of the Forms of business, and he was afraid they thought that there existed the best possible arrangements for the despatch of business. He was, however, quite satisfied that his right hon. Friend was right when he said that in the country there was a strong feeling that somehow or other they did not do as much business as their constituents had a right to expect. Work was not done. They talked about things, but somehow or other consumed their time without performing, not all that

    1279
    was required, but even a very moderate portion of what was expected of them. On the balance of argument, he thought the Leader of the House would see that there was a very strong case for a Grand Committee. There were only three ways of improving their position. They must enlarge their time, or diminish their work, or economise their time. As to enlarging their time, no doubt, as had been shown, their recent experience had been that it was curtailed. The recent experiment made of closing contentious business at 12 o'clock had very materially shortened the time at their disposal, and lessened to a very great degree the amount of work formerly done after that hour; but by reducing their work and economising their time they might still recover a great deal of lost ground. If the House were relieved of Private Business they would be able to devote much more time to Public Business without increasing the demand made on the time of hon. Members. If they also referred the Committee stage of Bills and certain branches of the Estimates to Committees outside the House, and got a considerable portion of work discharged concurrently by three or four Grand Committees, they would be able to get through much more Government Business. A good deal of time was now lost on Friday nights, and to save it he suggested that they should permanently adopt the practice of holding on that day a Morning Sitting from 2 to 7 o'clock for Government Business, and an Evening Sitting from 9 to 12 o'clock for private Members' Motions. That would be no waste of time, because a great many hon. Members who were not interested in the subjects to be brought on might go way into the country on the Friday night, after the Government Business was brought to a close for the day. With regard to private Members' time, there was a much greater power of economising that time which was at their disposal. A "system of voice" might be arranged by which the majority and the minority of private Members might each in turn proportionately get an opportunity of bringing forward their measures. They could, by an easy arrangement, secure that the time at the disposal of private Members might be so arranged that it could be devoted to subjects which they had at
    1280
    heart. This would facilitate legislation by private Members, especially if their measures, after reaching a certain stage, were allowed to be taken up again at that stage the following Session. No doubt under such a system the majority of the private Members would obtain the pull in the first instance, but the minority would also obtain their fair share of the time of the House. Reference had been made to some Members who appeared to think that all legislation on the part of private Members might be dropped, but he did not think that anybody of experience would approve of that. Bills introduced by private Members had been largely instrumental in influencing the legislation of this House. In some cases private Members had succeeded in passing their Bills: in other cases they had brought them on year after year until the Government had been bound to take them up and carry them through. He would refer to one of the most recent cases—the Cruelty to Children Act, which had been carried by the exertions of a private Member. The experience of the working of that Act must convince everybody who had any doubt about it before of the extreme necessity there was for passing such a measure. It had brought to light the most horrible cases of cruelty to children on the part of parents and others, and much evil had been redressed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London and other private Members had been able to pass Bills which were of great interest to the community at large. It had been owing to the action of private Members on Wednesday afternoon that church rates had been abolished, the Burials Act carried, and many vexed questions of a similar character settled. The Deceased Wife's Sister question also, although not yet settled, had been dealt with on a Wednesday. By the proposal he had made many measures that were much desired by different sections of the House might be carried through. It had been suggested that an hour might be set apart once a week or once a fortnight for carrying measures to which there was little or no opposition. He entirely approved of that proposal. Of course, in such a case, if a sufficient number of hon. Members were to signify their opposition to any measure of the kind in

    1281
    writing it would come on in the ordinary way. These were all measures which might well be taken into consideration by a Committee without the Government being called upon to express any opinion with regard to them at the present moment. They said that there was a case for submission to a Committee, as public time was not now used as efficiently as it might be. Both in respect of Public and Private Business there was a case for examination, and for practical suggestions to be inquired into, and he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite the comparatively small attendance at this Debate, would see his way to granting the Committee asked for.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid, that when he first read the terms of the Motion he felt very much inclined to support it by his vote, but every speech he had heard had made him less inclined to do so, and the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin had finally decided him to vote against the Motion. The speech of the Member for the Forest of Dean did not greatly affect his opinion of the Motion one way or the other, because the right hon. Gentleman had confined himself to generalities. The hon. Member for South Islington, who moved the Motion, was, he was bound to say, the Member who began the impression on his mind which induced him to vote against the Motion; but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin had clearly shown, in that magisterial manner with which he was wont to address' the House, that the Motion should not further be proceeded with. The right hon. Gentleman, who was a man of great authority, had shown that two things only could be done to improve the forms of procedure of the House—namely, that Private Business, or business connected with Private Bills, should be delegated to some other authority; and that the Estimates, instead of being thrown, as it were, on the floor of the House in their thousands and left to the industry, or want of industry, of Members to go through them in order to acquire the knowledge necessary for discussing them even in a most cursory fashion, should be referred for examination to a Committee upstairs. There was something to be said for both these points. Private legislation undoubtedly
    1282
    partook of a judicial character, and it would be an advantage to remove all judicial business from the Chamber, which was nothing if not legislative. Again, the reference of the Estimates to a Committee would be an advantage if the Committee were empowered to have before it the permanent officials responsible for the Estimates. The difficulty in dealing with the Estimates was that the Treasury Bench was occupied by a number of gentlemen who really knew little or nothing about them, and who, when they were asked a question about them, could not answer until they had consulted their prompters who sat under the Gallery, or else could only say that the matter was under consideration, or give some other sort of unsatisfactory reply. It would, therefore, be of considerable advantage to have the Estimates examined by a Committee, who would have the officials who prepared the Estimates before them, instead of Ministers who knew nothing, and could know nothing, about the details. But, at the same time, he should be sorry to see the Estimates taken outside the purview of the House altogether, and he did claim that the right of examination of the Estimates, and of cross-examination of the Ministers upon them, was a right most essential to the performance of the most important duties of the Committees of the House. The hon. Member for Islington talked of discussion on the Estimates as a waste of time. He knew not from what fount the hon. Gentleman got his Constitutional knowledge; but he had always understood that one of the most important functions of the House was the guardianship of the Public Purse, and he did not see how the Public Purse was to be guarded unless the Estimates were duly discussed. The hon. Member for Islington had also used words that shocked him with regard to the Rules and Forms of the House. The hon. Gentleman said they were cumbersome, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean added that the outside world was convinced they were cumbersome. He challenged that assertion. He believed that no such feeling existed outside the House. There was a strong feeling outside the House that people did not understand the Rules and Forms of the House, and that was only natural; but he had never found any widespread public feeling that the Rules of the

    1283
    House were too cumbersome. He used the word "too" advisedly. Having regard to the great complexity of the business which came before the House, it was inevitable that the Rules should appear cumbersome to those not acquainted with them, but he denied that they were cumbersome as a matter of fact. Instead of being cumbersome, he considered that the Rules of the House were admirably good Rules. Undoubtedly, he had come across Rules which seemed to him at first to be without good reason, but he soon came to understand that there was excellent and sufficient reason for the Rules, and that without them the business of the House could not be well conducted. He would cite as an example of what seemed a trifling Rule the Rule which said that no Member might stand above the Bar. If that Rule had been strictly observed the scene which took place in the House last Session, and which they all regretted, would not have occurred. He should strongly condemn the hon. Member for Islington for presuming to tell the House that its Rules were cumbersome; and he had been pained to find that even the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin was inclined to adopt the same tone, and cast ridicule and contempt on some of the Rules of the House, which were entitled to great respect. The Australian Parliament was, like all Parliaments worthy of the name, based upon our Parliament, and an Australian Minister recently writing on the subject had said that they had thought they could improve on some of the Rules that had been adopted from the House of Commons; but when they had changed the Rules, they found that things did not go so well; they saw that there was good reason and sound principle at the bottom of the Rules they had abandoned, and so they quickly re-adopted the Rules again. That was a very strong testimony of the value of the Rules of the House. He believed that the Rules were admirable. They had grown up from the experience of a thousand years, and if and when they were had it was because they had been subjected to hasty, unreflecting, and inconsiderate Amendments, contrived to meet the supposed exigencies of the moment or the imagined convenience of a Party. The Rules were good, and all that was required was that they should be understood and properly
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    carried out. The Debate had turned on the point of the allocation of the time of the House. He ventured to say that it was impossible to read attentively through and understand the Rules of the House without seeing that the ordinary allocation of time was most excellent as between Ministers and non-official or unpaid Members. The allocation of the time of the House as between the unpaid Members and the placemen was good. But what, happened? The Session was hardly begun when the Government appropriated nearly all the time for their own measures, and there was very little opportunity left for any other business. The offenders against the Rules of the House, the purloiners of its time, were not the private Members, but the Government; and so long as private Members neglected to combine together, irrespective of Party, to maintain their rights and to refuse the Government permission to take all the time of the House in this unconstitutional fashion, so long would the. House suffer from what was the great complaint of the present time. The hon. Member for Islington had also declared that the results obtained under the Rules had not pleased him. There were not enough Acts of Parliament passed. The hon. Member complained that only 27 out of 357 Bills introduced last Session had passed. His own opinion was that 27 were rather more than ought to have been passed. The remaining 330 were extremely had, haphazard, ill-considered Bills, which ought never to have been introduced at all. The Member for Islington wanted more Acts of Parliament and less consideration. He, on the other hand, wanted more consideration and fewer Acts of Parliament. The Member for Islington had his pockets full of Bills, some Conservative and some Radical, but other Members took a more prosaic view of their duty. They were there to see that the business of the country was well conducted, and to prevent the hon. Gentlemen opposite from spending too much money. He also considered that the Twelve o'Clock Rule was a good Rule and required no alteration. It was not reasonable to ask the House to accept Bills after 12 o'clock, unless they were of a non-contentious character, and it was perfectly right that Members with sufficient public spirit should object to Bills being considered at such an hour, when there was no time for

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    full and free discussion. It was suggested that they should have a system of underwriting Bills; but if Bills were to be underwritten, they must also have underwriting against Bills. That was only a natural corollary; and consequently they would have Members in charge of Bills occupying the whole of their time getting Members to back their Bills, while their opponents would be running about on the other side getting other Members to underwrite against the Bills. Then he presumed that there must be a quorum of underwriters. What would be the quorum, 50, or 90, or 120? He thought that half the House would not be too large a quorum. Therefore, it would be necessary to get 335 Members to back a Bill before it could be taken out of its turn and considered. He thought such a suggestion might be dismissed without further attention. Technicalities and Forms had been treated with great contempt by various Members who had spoken in the Debate. He defended the technicalities and Forms of the House as being a protection of the weak against the strong. He would remind the House that the Form of requiring a Member introducing a Bill to appear at the Bar of the House was taken from the ancient practice of Bills being brought into the House from outside, and when agreed to by the Parliament, becoming Acts. The time taken in this operation was extremely small, and it seemed to him that it was a Form to which meaning and traditions attached which ought not to be cast aside, but should be preserved. He was not prepared to deny that there were directions in which the Rules of the House might possibly be amended; but if there were, it was rather in reversion to old principles and forms and the language of old Rules than by—if he might use the term—getting into back parlours and inventing new Rules to fit particular occasions. There was a time when placemen were not allowed to sit in the House. There was a time when, according to Prynne, 40 was not considered a quorum except for Prayers and unimportant business; and when for the consideration of grave and serious Public Business it was held necessary that the whole or greater part of the House should be present. That Rule had been not invented, but borrowed from this House by the United States, so that while this House had gone back through the usurpation of the
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    Long Parliament to a quorum of 40, the United States House of Representatives required that, before serious business could be considered, there should be half the House, plus one, present. That might be a reform worthy of consideration. Again, there was the "call of the House," such as was made in 1628, moved by Sir G. Moore—
    "That any Members of the House being in town and not attending here the Serjeant to be sent for them. The Serjeant to be sent for all the Members of the House now in town as well lawyers as others"
    There was no privilege for lawyers then. No; the country wanted them—
    "to be here presently and to attend every day."
    Again, next year, this was placed on the Journals of the House—
    "Ordered, No Member of this House shall go out of town till this great business is ended without special leave of the House."
    In 1628 it was ordered—
    "The House shall be called upon Thursday next week, and every Member of the House then to attend upon pain of £10, to be disposed of as the House shall appoint, besides such further forfeiture as the House shall inflict."
    That "call" enforced in that manner was one which might conceivably be reverted to by Members jealous of the honour and dignity of the House. Again, he was informed, there was a practice which consisted in an arrangement between two Members that one should vote one way and the other the other without hearing the question. That was a practice he did not indulge in. He was told, however, that it existed to a large extent, lasting sometimes over several months. That seemed to him to be a practice that might be mended by the Rules of the House. He had ventured to make a few criticisms on the Motion. He had set forward the grounds on which he found it impossible to vote for it, and he submitted, in conclusion, that the Rides of the House as they existed were extremely good, if only the Government would not use its majority to prevent their observance; and, if they required alteration in any way at all, this should rather be in the direction of reverting to some of the ancient Forms and Regulations than by the adoption of crude, unreflected, and unconsidered Motions such as that presented to the House upon the present occasion.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 41; Noes 136.—(Division List, No. 11.)

HOME RULE (SCOTLAND).

  RESOLUTION.
  MR. DALZIEL (&c.): I rise to move—
  "That it is desirable, while retaining intact the power and supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, to establish a Legislature in Scotland for dealing with purely Scottish affairs."
  I am not unconscious of the fact that, having regard to the proposal submitted yesterday by the Government, closely affecting the position and character of Scotch business, there may be a disposition in some quarters to regard my proposal as somewhat unnecessary and inopportune. That is not my view. On the contrary, I doubt whether, if I had been privileged to select my own time, I could have chosen a moment more calculated to bring home to the mind of the House and the country the force of my Resolution, and the expediency of adopting the principle which it involves. What are the circumstances? Yesterday and to-day two proposals have been made for Committees—one by the Government, and the other by an influential Member of the Tory Party. The proposals differ in character and in detail; but they are alike in this—that they proceed upon the assumption that the state of business in the House has arrived at the point when, if the Parliamentary machine is to discharge all the functions that are properly expected of it, some new and bold departure will have to be undertaken. We are agreed that the disease from which the patient is suffering is congestion. We only differ as to the remedy that is to be applied. If there was any doubt about the nature of the disease, I would mention one fact, and call one witness. Having taken pains to ascertain the number of Bills introduced last Session, I find that there are no fewer than 386, and that, putting aside purely Departmental Bills, only 58 come under the consideration of the House. I do not claim that that is an absolutely reliable test, but it is fair to assume that every one of the 386 Bills embodied a proposal desired by a certain section of the community, and the fact that only 58 of them were even discussed is an indication that further time is necessary for the Debates in this House. The witness
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  I will call will not be thought to be violently enthusiastic on behalf of reform. It is The Scotsman newspaper. Some three years ago a pamphlet was published from The Scotsman office putting before Scotland and the country a proposal for what was termed a local National Assembly, and I have no hesitation in saying that it is one of the most remarkable contributions that have been made to the Home Rule controversy. What did the writer say? He said—
  "The Imperial Parliament cannot adequately cope with the legislative requirements of the different parts of the United Kingdom. The Imperial Parliament has admitted its own incapacity to deal with all the subjects it once used to take in hand. It has parted with some of its work from time to time, delegating it to other hands. Still the pressure increases, and it is simple fatuity to suppose the question of further and wider delegation can be long delayed."
  That is a Unionist opinion, certainly not tainted with any Radical fallacy. As a Scotch Member, I am grateful to the Government for having, even at this late hour, arrived at the decision that something must be done in order to carry through Scotch legislation. But it is four or five years since my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries Burghs (Mr. R. T. Reid) put forward the proposal for a Grand Committee. It was again brought forward on the day on which the present Parliament assembled by the Member for North Aberdeen. Being then supported with a requisition by an overwhelming majority of the Scotch Liberal Members, the Government were asked to give one or two nights in order to set up a Scotch Grand Committee, and I think there is some reason to wonder that the Government did not see the force of the proposition that was then made. The best that can be said of the Grand Committee is that it is one stage, and one stage only. All that we should be able to save by it would be the Committee stage; and we have to face the possibility of the other stages being in consequence considerably prolonged. I accept the proposal for the Grand Committee in the spirit in which I am sure it is offered by the Government, that is as a temporary makeshift, and not as an integral part of the fabric of the Scottish Government. It is fashionable in some quarters to suggest that there really is no solid demand in Scotland for the principle embodied in my Resolution. The hon. Baronet the

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  Member for Wigtonshire (Sir H. Maxwell) took upon himself the responsibility of saying that there is no demand on the part of Scotland for Home Rule. I wish to ask, by what means are we to test the feelings of the Scottish people upon public questions? Are we to take the opinion of the hon. Baronet, who is identified with a Party which has only a minority out of the whole representation of Scotland? The legitimate way to find out the opinion of the people of Scotland is to look to their Representatives in the House of Commons, and the Representatives of Scotland, by an overwhelming majority, voted on the last occasion this Motion was before the House for the principle of Home Rule. The demand in Scotland is a growing demand, and is formed upon the solid opinion that in the direction of Home Rule lies the only possible way in which the judgment of the people of Scotland, as expressed at the polls, can be translated into legislative action. The progress of this movement has been remarkable. In 1889, when the Motion for Home Rule was brought forward by the Member for Caithness, it was rejected by 121 votes. In 1890 it was rejected by 40. In 1892 it was rejected by 20; and in 1893 it was rejected by 18. This Resolution is not brought forward in any spirit of enmity or resentment against England, and, if it were, ruin and disaster would be immediately brought upon the cause. The proposal is offered to the House as a practical solution of the difficulty that 1ms arisen through the neglect of Scottish business in the House of Commons. I will quote two authorities, to give an idea of the general feeling that has existed with regard to the treatment of Scotland in the Imperial Parliament. Professor Aytoun, writing in 1853, said—
  "The form in which our affairs have been administered for well-nigh 100 years is quite inadequate for the purpose for which it was originally intended, and the rapid development of the wealth and population of the country ought long ago to have suggested the propriety of a more rational arrangement. The case is a very clear one, founded upon justice and public policy: and if properly argued no Government can venture to treat it lightly."
  The late Prime Minister, when receiving the freedom of Aberdeen 23 years ago, said—
  "I admit without the least hesitation that the present condition of the action of Parliament
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  with regard to Scotch business is unsatisfactory. You have much more reason to complain that we have not been able to deal with several subjects interesting to the people of Scotland, and material to its welfare, with the promptitude that we should all have desired."
  But it is on what has happened since 1886 that I desire to base the demand which I put before the House. In that year the Local Government Bill was brought in. It was a Bill which did not raise any great Constitutional question. It was approached in a non-Party spirit by the great majority of the Representatives for Scotland; and yet I find that on every vital feature of the Bill the opinion of the majority of the Scottish people was practically set aside. On the question of the control of the police, 48 Members for Scotland desired that that should be given to the County Councils, and 18 were against it. With respect to giving the County Councils the same licensing power as the burghs, 48 were in favour and 12 against. On the question of the compulsory acquisition of land 46 were in favour of giving power to the County Councils and 12 were against. And there was practically the same unequal division with respect to the question of rights of way. In face of facts such as these it is beside the question to pretend that Scottish opinion is fairly considered or even receives any respect at all in this House. To pass from Government Bills, I come to other questions which have been brought forward, or attempted to be brought forward, in this House. There is the question of access to mountains. That is a question to which a great deal of importance is attached by a large section of the people of Scotland, and yet the Chancellor of the Duchy, year after year, for nine different years, brought the question before the House, and it was only through what, I think, was an inadvertence on the part of the Conservative Government, that another Member was able to secure a majority in favour of that proposal. The year afterwards the Conservative Government brought forward a Bill dealing with (he question, but I think I may fairly claim that it was not considered a satisfactory measure by the great body of Scotch Members. I take next the question of the Local Veto Bill—a question of some importance. Apart alto-

  1291
  gether from the merits or demerits of that question, we must admit that in Scotland the local veto question receives the support of a very large and influential section of the population. For 10 years Mr. M'Lagan, recently a Member of this House, attempted to get a settlement of that question, but he was never able to do so. There is another question of equal importance—the question of the amendment of the Crofters Act. That Act was passed some six or seven years since, and the most important flaw in it, from the point of view of the crofters' Representatives, is that it does not apply to leaseholders. Every year since that Act was passed an attempt has been made by the Member for Caithness and other crofters' Representatives to obtain an opportunity for amending that Act in the direction of the inclusion of leaseholders. They have never been successful, and there is not the slightest hope that the question will be dealt with during the present Session, or even during the present Parliament. Coming to last Session, there was the Fatal Accidents Bill. That was a Bill, again, of a non-Party character, and it was sent to a Grand Committee, I believe, without a Division. It passed through the Grand Committee, and was brought into the House, and because what I consider a perfectly legitimate Amendment, suggesting that juries should be called in case of injury, was put in the Bill it was withdrawn by the Lord Advocate on the ground that it was impossible to get the two or three hours necessary in order to discuss that Amendment. The result was that that Bill, which was supported by every Representative Working Class Organisation in Scotland, by every Trades Union, and by every Representative Association, was lost. In the face of facts such as these it is idle to pretend that Scottish desires and Scottish opinion can ever be properly considered in this House. It is agreed by Parties on both sides of the House that, so far as the financial relations between the two countries are concerned, Scotland has a very great deal to complain of, and I am glad that the Government has, after several years, seen their way to promise that an inquiry will take place into the matter. I would just remind the House, in considering the general position of Scot-
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  land, that by general consent it is admitted that Scotland is overtaxed at the present time to the extent of £1,000,000 or £1,500,000 per year. Not only so, but Scotland is not treated in the same liberal way with regard to Imperial grants as the other parts of the Kingdom are, or have been in the past. I would also remind the House that from the point of view of population the average contribution per bead in Ireland is £1 11s. 3d.; in England it is £2 2s. 3d., and in Scotland it is £2 5s. 8d., so that in that respect we have something to complain of. Then there is the question of Private Bill legislation. That is a very old complaint of Scotland. It was brought forward in 1876, and it has been renewed in almost every successive year. I will give the House just one or two figures as to the cost of Private Bill legislation. I have had supplied to me by the Treasurer of Glasgow a statement which shows that from 1865 to 1892 no less than £283,028 14s. 6d. were spent in the promotion of and opposition to Private Bills. From Edinburgh I learn that from 1872 to 1893 £75,000 were spent in the same fashion. In Dundee, since 1871, upwards of £60,000 were spent in connection with Private Bill legislation, and I believe the full total for Scotland for the 14 years from 1872 to 1885 is not less than £1,294,812. [Cheers] I understand the cheers from gentlemen opposite. I suppose their reply to me on this point will be that they introduced a Bill when they were in Office, and that if that Bill had been allowed to pass the whole question would have been properly settled. But the Government was in Office for six years, and how was it they could not find time to pass the measure? I am aware that it was opposed by certain Members, but that is no answer to the complaint that if it was a good Bill time ought to have been found to pass it. I think that Bill was an excellent Bill as far as it went, and I would like to see a Bill of the same character introduced again, but I hope it will be a more thorough-going and complete measure, and will deal with Unopposed as well as Opposed Private Bills. What is the Tory position on this question? Are they going to oppose all idea of decentralisation? I do not think I am justified in assuming anything of the

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  kind. The Leader of the Opposition put forward last night one of the most revolutionary proposals which I ever heard. The Government brought forward a proposal that Scotch Members should practically be supreme so far as Scotch Bills were concerned, and what was the attitude of gentlemen opposite? They complained that the proposal did not go far enough. They said they wanted it for England, for Ireland, and for Wales. I think if they go that length they will very soon be prepared to go a little further, and to recognise that if it was good for Scotch, for English, and for Welsh Members to be supreme on their local questions in this House it is, perhaps, a little better that they should discuss the questions in the localities more particularly concerned. It is no longer a question of whether Home Rule is to be granted, but it is a question how that decentralisation can be applied. Therefore, the conclusion which I arrive at is, in the first place, that Parliament is overburdened, and that relief is necessary; secondly, that Scottish interests have been neglected in the past, and that there is no prospect that they will be better attended to in the future; thirdly, that the principles of representative government demand that Scotch opinion should be supreme in Scottish affairs, and this is only possible by the establishment of a Scottish Legislature; fourthly, that Scotland presents an ideal field for a great experiment in local self-government. [Laughter and cheers.] I can hardly suppose that those Members opposite who are Scotchmen will take up the view that Scotland does not possess an ideal field for local self-government. I am in favour of Home Rule all round. I believe that is the only possible way in which we can properly carry forward the legislation of the country. My idea is that this House will have to undergo a very great and material change so far as the business laid before it is concerned. We are too much occupied in discussing purely local questions which can be better settled in the localities concerned. Let this House devote itself—first, to the consideration of all the great questions which have the same application to all portions of the Kingdom; and, in the second place, to the consideration of the great Colonial, Indian, and Imperial
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  questions which ought to engage more than they do at present the close attention of the House. It is because I believe my Resolution is a step in that direction that I submit it to the House.
  MR. BIRRELLsaid, he desired to second the Motion. He did not suppose there would be many persons within the House found to disagree upon its merits, or with the proposition that if they were given a geographical area—he used the words "geographical area" because he preferred to avoid the word "nation," which always excited the worst possible passion in this House—with a separate Judicature of its own, with separate laws of its own, the best, and he should suppose the most obvious, mode of legislating for such an area would be a Representative Assembly within the jurisdiction itself. It was a great disadvantage for any country to be separated by a distance from the seat of Government, and he believed the newly-awakened interest in regard to London legislation was due to the Metropolis possessing an admirable Local Body to look after its affairs, and to the fact that they were surrounded by a horde of London Members within easy cab fare of their constituencies, and who were able to bring to bear upon this House a constant pressure which those constituencies at a distance were unable to do. He had no doubt that a Legislative Assembly of Scotsmen sitting in Edinburgh would develop a most useful representative activity in many fields which were at present unexplored. There were numberless law reforms and land reforms which, he was sure, if there was a Legislature in Edinburgh, would engage the attention of Scottish lawyers which did not engage them at present, when Scottish legislative reform was a hopeless dream. There was public health, which engaged much public attention in a country largely inhabited by doctors. They complained of the very inferior and obsolete weapon which the old Public Health Act had put into their hands to wage warfare against insanitary conditions, which were not altogether undeserving of attention. There were questions of right-of-way, liquor traffic, and educational questions, and the last, if Scotland was to maintain her pre-eminence, would certainly require great consideration. He believed a Scottish Legislative

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  Assembly would deal with these questions in a grave and useful spirit. Then there was the crucial question of the Scottish Church. He believed that there were some Imperialists of such a complexion that they really believed that the Scottish people should not deal with their own Church without first taking the opinion of the Calvinists of Wales and other parts of the Kingdom. His view was that the question was purely one for the Scottish people. It was idle to talk of a referendum, or to suppose that the United Kingdom would ever consent to a General Election which would turn simply on the question whether one section of the Presbyterian Body should have an Establishment or not. They might wish to confine people's thoughts to the restricted area, but in practice they would find it perfectly impossible. He did not believe that even in a Scottish Legislative Assembly they would be able to do it, but a General Election there which did turn on that question would practically amount to a referendum on that question, because the Scottish people would recognise the importance of the question, and give it precedence over all others. Although a Disestablisher to the backbone, and baptised into the spirit of the Disruption, he still believed it was a monstrous thing that the Scottish Church should be disestablished by the votes of English Nonconformists, who might be giving their vote simply with an eye to the disestablishment of the English Church at home. Here was an opportunity for Tory Members who had been so active on platforms during the last few weeks in making the assertion that Disestablishment was a question for the Scottish people. They had now an opportunity to assent to a proposal which would remit that question to a Scottish Assembly. The objections to Scottish Home Rule were not serious in character. There were no Fenians in Scotland and no Orangemen. Though some miserable and cowardly attempts had lately been made to fan the dying embers of religious bigotry in Scotland into a flame, they had miserably failed, as they deserved. The objections were not serious. They were mainly of a personal character. Scottish Members opposite had a great objection to what they regarded as a one-
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  horse Legislature sitting in Scotland. The Member for Buteshire (Mr. Graham Murray) on the last occasion when this subject was before the House wound up an eloquent speech by declaring his unwillingness to barter the heritage of an Imperial Parliament for any miserable Parliament that might be offered in its stead, and he would never forget the expression on the face of that distinguished man, now the Lord President, when as Lord Advocate he contemplated the bare possibility of the existence of a Scotch Legislature. The hon. Member had said it would be a bleak and barren prospect. But, after all, a Representative Assembly existed not simply as a playground, and for the amusement and edification of its Members, however distinguished, but for the purpose of attending to the legislative needs of the country in whose service it was summoned. If by any chance even a dull Scotch Assembly transacted Scotch business better than that House—and he admitted that many of the local Scotch Assemblies were dull indeed, though he could not speak with the authority of the late Lord Advocate—then he could quite imagine that Scotland would prefer a Parliament of its own in Edinburgh, although its proceedings would be enlivened by those flashes of wit and philosophic discourses which made a seat in the Imperial Chamber at once a liberal education and a round of cheap amusement. Scotch electors had given their Representatives no mandate to be witty—if they had it might be discharged, at all events, to their own satisfaction—but they sent them to Westminster, in the first place, to look after the affairs of the Empire; and, in the second place, to pass laws for Scotland. As a matter of fact, they had very little time for either of those duties. The interests of the Empire were almost entirely overlooked, and the affairs of Scotland were neglected, while Members were kept there month after month engaged in pursuits in which their constituents certainly took no interest whatever. He would point out that there was no need for those gentlemen who had such an unconquerable objection to appear in a Local Assembly at Edinburgh to sit there at all. The difficulty arose, he supposed, from a feeling that the grant of Scotch Home Rule would necessitate the same grant for

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  England, and that the latter would seriously interfere with the present system of Cabinet Government. But that would not necessarily follow at all, even assuming there were an English Administration apart from the Imperial Government. He did not think that Scotch Members were in the least degree anxious to interfere in matters purely English, and, having regard to the condition of Scotch business and also to the common-sense reasons of the case, he thought that the time had come when devolution should be allowed to take its natural course. All purely Scotch legislative business in which Englishmen really did not take any interest should be left in the hands of Scotchmen, who, he submitted, had a right to demand that they should be allowed to pass those laws which only operated within the jurisdiction of Scotland. Those were some of the reasons why he had great pleasure in seconding the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That it is desirable, while retaining intact the power and supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, to establish a Legislature in Scotland for dealing with purely Scottish affairs."—(Mr. Dalziel.)
  MR. HOZIERsaid, he must congratulate the hon. Member on his witty speech, but, at the same time, he could not help thinking that it had been intended to be delivered last night. He could not agree with the remarks of the hon. Gentleman that Scot-laud was an "ideal" field for an experimental Home Rule Bill, and he would be exceedingly sorry to think that Scotchmen should have Home Rule or any other measure forced upon them against their will. He was a Scotchman himself, and it was only natural, therefore, that he should object entirely to apply the old maxim Fiat experimentum in corpore vili when such a question as that was raised, and he regretted to hear that the hon. Member considered Scotland to be an "ideally vile body" for such an experiment. The speech of the hon. Member for West Fife was clearly intended to be delivered last night, for he actually told the House at the commencement of it that the "rose to support the appointment of this Committee." The hon. Member had said
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  that there were no Orangemen in Scotland. That was not the case, for if he would investigate the matter he would find that there were many of them, and that, too, in Lanarkshire, the greatest county of Scotland. Having spoken at considerable length last evening on a cognate subject, he would not detain the House by offering any extended observations then. The Highlanders from Black heath and the patriots of Putney had been putting on their kilts, and it was only right that those who were not real Scotchmen should take a leading part in that pseudo-patriotic Debate. He would like all those gentlemen to be allowed to have their Highland fling to their hearts' content. He was sure that the real Scottish Members were all anxious to hear the Englishman who happened to be Home Secretary as well as a Fifeshire Member explain his pseudo-patriotic views, and to hear the English Solicitor General explain why he went to Forfarshire at the behest of the English wirepullers in order to secure what was supposed to be a safe seat to advance his professional career. Above all, they were anxious to hear their English Secretary for Scotland, who last year supported Home Rule for Scotland, and who was subsequently "hauled over the coals," ridiculed, and scorned in the other House by the Scottish nobleman who was now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. There was, indeed, one movement in which, like his hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy, he, too, took the deepest interest—the movement in favour of an improvement in the Private Bill legislation for Scotland. He was certain that the Scottish Members on the Opposition Benches were unanimous on this point. A Bill had been brought forward by the late Government, but it was obstructed and destroyed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stirling Burghs, who was now Secretary for War. Personally, he (Mr. Hozier) could only say he would do all he could to promote such a measure. He denied that Scottish constituencies had declared in favour of Home Rule for Scotland, and the fact that the present Gladstonian Members supported it did not show that that was the case. In the vast majority of instances Home Rule for Scotland had never been before the constituencies at all. Practically, all

  1299
  Unionists were opposed to a separate Parliament for Scotland; the Unionist vote was solid against Home Rule for Scotland, and no one pretended that even the Gladstonians were unanimously in favour of it. In most of the Gladstonian constituencies Scottish Home Rulers were a very small minority, even among Gladstonians, but that small minority was like the mosquito—it made a very great deal of noise for its size, and it was able to make its presence felt. This small minority, for example, could make its presence felt in the selection of a Gladstonian candidate; and, again, oven after a candidate had been selected, he might still he "heckled" into shape by the Home Rule minority. He wished to put a question to the hon. Member for Caithness, who was the President of the Scottish Home Rule Association, and to the Secretary for Scotland. If a separate Parliament were granted to Scotland tomorrow, would the question of the Disestablishment of the Church of Scotland be handed over to it? Perhaps the Secretary for Scotland would kindly either nod or shake his head in answer to that question. He was going to Scotland soon, and he would like to be able to take back an answer. As the right hon. Gentleman made no response, perhaps the hon. Member for Caithness would answer. There was no answer given to that question. An election was going to take place in a few days in a constituency neighbouring his own, and he had every right to know the opinion of the Government. He should also like to know whether the Secretary for Scotland "homologated," to use the Scotch term, and concurred in the statement made last week by Mr. Caldwell, the Gladstonian candidate for Mid Lanark, when the President of the Scottish Home Rule Association, the hon. Member for Caithness, was on the platform? Mr. Caldwell said—
  "Disestablishment is a matter of principle with the Liberal Party, and the Liberal Party having denied, or intending to deny, the right to Ireland, has no right whatever to leave the matter"(of the Established Church)"to be determined by a vote of Scotland, even although there should be a majority of the people of Scotland in favour of the Established Church."
  That was a curious statement to be made by a Scotch Home Ruler. If these words meant anything they meant that, even if a separate Parliament were given
  1300
  to Scotland, it would not be competent to deal with the Church question; and that, even if a General Election were to be held on the question of Disestablishment in Scotland, and a majority in favour of maintaining the "auld Kirk" were returned, the Government would still be bound, as a matter of principle, to disestablish and disendow the Church of Scotland in spite of the strongest protests of the people of Scotland.
  MR. HERBERT LEWIS (Flint, &c.)entirely agreed with the hon. Member's statement that the cause of Home Rule for Scotland was rapidly gaining ground, and had been doing so year by year. It was quite evident that the Scotch people had made up their minds on the question, and when Scotland made up her mind on any particular subject she generally succeeded in attaining it. The certainty of her doing so in this instance was in the not very distant future. He wished to explain his attitude on this Motion as a Welsh Member. Home Rule for Scot-laud was, as he had said, a certainty at no distant date; and he would impress on the House that Home Rule for Wales must not be left out of the question. Not much had been said of the neglect of Welsh business, though Wales had waited Session after Session for her legislation, until weariness had almost ripened into disgust with the lumbering and clogged machine called Imperial Parliament. Last year a Local Veto Bill for Wales passed its Second Reading, and only one Welsh Member opposed it, while 26 supported it. Yet there was not the least hope of that Bill passing into law. A large number of Bills in which Wales was interested were pending, but, with one single exception, there was no chance of their being passed this Session. The same might be said with regard to this Session, because they knew they would have no opportunity of passing that Bill into law. There were two principal objections to Home Rule for Wales. The first one denied the nationhood of the country, and the other was founded upon the small population of Wales. With regard to the first objection, he should imagine that there was hardly anyone in the House who would

  1301
  venture seriously to assert that the Welsh were not a nation. The people of Wales were becoming more and more a National Body; separate acts of legislation were being continually passed for the Principality, He did not know whether Scotch or Irish Members were accustomed to hear the vernacular spoken in their countries, but he might say that there were a considerable number of Welsh Members sitting in that House who used it in Wales as the usual mode of communication. He would now come to the objection that Wales was too small for Homo Rule.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman must remember that this Motion applies to Scotland only. He is entitled to use the ease of Wales as an illustration, but he is not entitled to go into the whole question of Home Rule for Wales.
  MR. HERBERT LEWISsaid, he would only mention the ease of Wales in reference to its bearing upon Home Rule for Scotland. With regard to the objection that Wales was too small for Home Rule, he had only to remind the House of what was the ease with regard to other Legislatures all over the world. Canada had nine Parliaments, and Australasia, with a population of 4,000,000, had also a large number of Parliaments, while Germany, with a population of 26,000,000, had 22 separate Parliaments. He entirely agreed that the arguments against Home Rule for Ireland did not apply to Scotland. The case of Wales was similar to that of Scotland in several respects, and the arguments against Home Rule for Ireland did not apply to Wales. Both Scotland and Wales were, at all events, willing to be made the subjects of a Home Rule experiment. He could not go into the ease of Wales because of the Speaker's ruling, and he simply wished to say that, knowing something of Wales, and that the circumstances of that country were in many respects identical with those of Scotland, he hoped as an adoption of the principle of Home Rule this Motion would be carried by the House.
  SIR C. PEARSONsaid, he would not follow the hon. Member at any great length into the analogy, which
  1302
  no Scottish Member would for a moment grudge, between the cases of Wales and of Scotland in this matter, although he did not agree with him that there were so many points of similarity between the two countries as the hon. Member seemed to imagine. Nor did he think that there was really the rivalry between the two countries to present the body politic for any anatomical experiment which the Government might wish to make in the direction of the Resolution. Nor would be examine the theory which he presented upon the reproductive powers of Parliaments. He desired to look at the subject mainly from a Scottish point of view. This subject evidently demanded very careful treatment, and no subject could have been treated more dissimilarly than it was by the Mover and Seconder. They had the "severe" and the "lively," and he was glad that the Member for West Fife, in the course of a most entertaining speech, at last recognised that this was a subject which had its difficulties. What were the grounds on which this Motion was made at the present time? They might have expected to hear some now aspect of the case—some development of the circumstances, some stronger arguments than had previously been put forward. But they only had the old arguments. They had the old assertion about the neglect of Scottish business in the House, and that they would get rid of that neglect only by applying this ridiculous specific of Home Rule as the remedy. He was disposed to dispute both these propositions. He would remind the House that this proposal was to have a Legislature in Scotland for purely Scottish affairs, while retaining intact the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. Upon the latter part they had heard nothing. Yet it was the more important, and they all knew how it was felt to be most difficult—practically impossible—to reconcile the existence of a separate Legislature and Executive with the supremacy of an Imperial Parliament in the Debates on a measure relating to another part of the Kingdom in the present Parliament. And yet this abstract Resolution was moved without any allusion whatever to this most difficult subject. They would notice further that as usual England was not in it. They were getting accustomed to the idea of Federation with the

  1303
  omission of the predominant partner. But it was felt throughout the country that any such scheme should be disclosed on the responsibility of a Government and submitted as a whole for the discussion of, and consideration by, the House. He was not surprised to find that the Mover experienced a difficulty in discussing the Resolution apart from the discussion of the previous night. But he was yet to learn that certain statements then made committed gentlemen on the Conservative side of the House to certain views as to the propriety of Federation. That was a suggestion which was utterly baseless. He asserted, in the first place, that there was no demand whatever in Scotland which ought for a moment to move the House in the direction of this Resolution. He went further, and said that the cause which had been championed by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy was, so far as indications enabled them to judge, a back-going cause in Scotland. He observed the hon. Gentleman omitted the year 1891 in his Parliamentary history of this matter. That happened to be the only year in which a Bill was tabled embodying anything approaching to the details pointed at in this Resolution; and what happened to it? The discussion upon it was set down for a particular evening, and the keenness of the interest which hon. Members for Scotland felt in the subject, and the urgency of the demand in Scotland, were set forth by the simple fact that the House was counted out.
  MR. DALZIEL: I did not include that, because it is well-known that the Bill came on quite unexpectedly, almost at the end of the Sitting. The Scottish Members did not expect it to come on, and I did not think it was worthy of being considered an important factor.
  SIR C. PEARSONsaid, he should have assented to the hon. Member's view of the matter had it not been for the use which had been made of the fact in Scotland as representing the way in which Scottish business was neglected in the House of Commons. So far as he could judge, the Association which had already been mentioned, and of which the hon. Member for Caithness (Dr. Clark), he believed, was still the President, had been largely availed of—he did not say created—by Members of this House for what he
  1304
  might call English consumption. He did not know how many Members were Vice Presidents of it. He thought the time had come when they must protest against the use which was attempted to be made of such an Association—on the one hand, holding out to the people of England that it expressed the views of Scotland on the matter; and, on the other hand, in Scotland assuming the position of renouncing the Association and all its works, and severing connection with it. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy said Scottish business had been neglected for a long series of years, and was still neglected. The hon. Member made two quotations upon the first point—one 20 years old, and the other 40, the latter being, if he (Sir C. Pearson) mistook not, a complaint which pointed not in the direction of this Resolution, but rather in the direction of the restoration of the ancient office of Secretary for Scotland, which had been done. The other part of the hon. Member's remarks on the neglect of Scottish business led him to say that the words "neglect of Scottish business" hardly expressed the truth of the case. It appeared to him they were all, or nearly all, agreed in regretting that Scottish business did not get faster through the House, but, at the same time, it was not absolutely exceptional in that particular. He was not aware that English business got on any faster. But it was not a case of neglect, nor did he regard it as a case of the machinery of the House breaking down except up to a certain point. He regarded the persons primarily chargeable, not for neglect, but for mismanagement in delaying the progress of Scottish legislation, as the Government of the day, if that delay had happened. They were the parties responsible for the division and appropriation of the time of the House. He pointed to the fact that he did not think it would be disputed, whatever might be thought opposite of the conduct of business all round by the late Unionist Government, that during the six years that that Government was in Office Scottish business showed in at least as good a proportion relatively as the legislation for England, Wales, and Ireland. That demonstrated, to his mind, at all events, that there was something not inherent in the machinery of Parliament which was primarily re-

  1305
  sponsible for the present state of matters. There were, he admitted, two limitations under which all Governments must approach this question. One was the great difficulty, both as regards the House as a whole, and individual Members of it, which was brought about by the enormous increase of Private Bills. He could only say that the late Unionist Government did their very best, by the introduction of Bills, to remove that difficulty. If the proposals were had, they might have been amended by fair criticism. The other direction in which they were all agreed that this House could be relieved was by devolution of powers to Local Bodies. Local government had been awarded both to England and Scotland. The bodies thus created were bodies upon whom large administrative or executive powers might be, and no doubt would be, devolved to the relief of the necessity of legislation in this House in certain directions. To say that English votes overbore Scottish opinion was simply one mode of saying that this was a united Parliament, and that England was the predominant partner. They did not in one sense object to English votes overriding, as was said, Scottish opinion, because, if it was a price to be paid, it was one they were willing to pay for membership of an Imperial Parliament, and it was astonishing to him to find Scottish Members taking objections to the Divisions on the Scottish Local Government Bill when not so many months ago they had welcomed Welsh and Irish votes, not to speak of Scottish votes, to vote down the English majority on purely English questions. Another consideration ought to make this House throw out the Resolution. This Legislature was proposed to sit in Scotland to deal with purely Scottish affairs. Passing by the difficulty of drawing a distinction between affairs that were purely Scottish and those which were not, was it not too much for any hon. Member to move such a Resolution without even telling them what he proposed as to the relation between the membership of the Scottish Legislative Body and the membership of the Imperial Parliament? Were the Members of the proposed domestic Legislature to attend the Imperial Legislature at Westminster or not? If the Members of the Scottish Legislature were not required to attend at Westminster
  1306
  the scheme would bear separation on the face of it, and, not only so, but would deprive Scotland of her fair share of the management and control of Imperial concerns. On the other hand, if they were required to attend at Westminster, was it not plain that the difficulty which was expounded at length last year would arise—namely, that either the Scotch Members, besides having a Legislature of their own, would turn the balance in the Imperial Parliament on Irish or English affairs, or else that they must walk in or out according to the subject-matter of discussion? The Bill of 1891 enacted that they should be ipso facto Members of the Imperial Parliament, or rather that the Members of the Imperial Parliament should be ipso facto Members of the Scottish Legislature. The present Prime Minister (Lord Rosebery), speaking in Edinburgh in 1892, said—
  "I am far from being one of those who would throw any discredit on the simple and elementary proposition that to discuss distinctly Scottish affairs the best persons are elected Scottish Representatives, but I will say in all seriousness I have great doubts as to whether that obvious proposition is best carried out by making them Scottish Members of the House of Commons. I believe that you elect your Representatives to go to Westminster on one footing, and that if you had to elect your Representatives to a local Parliament you would choose them from a more large and a more restricted point of view."
  The noble Lord added that it would be necessary to draw a clear line between the persons elected as Imperial Representatives and those elected for local purposes. Until a repudiation of that position was forthcoming from someone who was responsible for the only Bill on the subject that had yet been put in, he must assume that that Bill represented the views of average Scottish Home Rulers, and, if so, he must leave them to settle their accounts with their chief, Lord Rosebery. The situation in which the House had been placed by this Motion was one of extreme interest. The Motion had been introduced, of course not intentionally, in the middle of a discussion upon—he did not like to say an alternative scheme of Home Rule—but, at all events, a proposition which was supported last night upon some such grounds. What he was anxious to get at was the position of the Government upon the Motion now before the House. Which of the two proposals did the Government mean to support? Did it mean

  1307
  to say, "We desire a Scottish Legislature sitting in Edinburgh, and also a Scottish Grand Committee sitting upstairs?" He thought it was too late for the Government to say, as they had done on previous occasions, that the matter was one on which they had no views and no policy. Did they mean business on the present occasion, and, if so, did they mean business upon their own Grand Committee Resolution, or were they still in the frame of mind in which the Prime Minister was about nine months ago in another place, when he said, referring to a Scottish Home Rule Motion—
  "Is this fatal Motion to become a precedent for future deliberations? If so, I can see what will happen. Some noble Lord will rise and ask Her Majesty's Government what are their views about the Creed of St. Athanasius. No one will deny that that deals with subjects much more vital, and much more important, and on which it is much more imperative to form an opinion than on the question of Scottish Home Rule."
  What had the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland (Sir G. Trevelyan) to say to this? A Government which had pledged itself, first, to give Home Rule to Ireland, and, secondly, to give nothing to Ireland which it was not ready to give to Scotland, was bound to answer the question, and not to put it off as they had done on a previous occasion by a statement that they had no policy upon the subject.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Sir G. TREVELYAN,): Mr. Speaker, last year I took part in a Debate on this Resolution, and I then made a speech in support of it. Certainly, I am very unwilling to repeat a speech of that length to-night; but I know that there may be some hon. Members present now who were not present then, and I certainly am unwilling to give a silent vote upon this occasion. My vote will be given in favour of the Resolution of my two hon. Friends who, like the hon. Friend I supported last year, ask for a separate Legislature for Scotland. [Ironical Opposition cheers.] Oh, I do not mind any scoffs of hard words that come from the Opposition. I have learnt by the experience of yesterday that it is not necessary to bring forward a sweeping change and to accompany it with violent, subversive, and revolutionary language in order to be charged with subverting the
  1308
  Constitution of the country. Yesterday I brought forward a practical and workmanlike proposal for adding a third to the two existing Grand Committees in this House. [Opposition laughter and ironical cheers.] I think, Sir, that, considering how the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down was listened to, gentlemen opposite might give mo a fair hearing. Well, that was a proposal for enabling Scottish business to be better done in this House and English business to be better and more easily done. On that occasion I was denounced in language the which would have been quite strong enough if the Government had then and there proposed to separate the two Kingdoms. That proposal represents what the Government, as a Government, intended to do in order to meet the great demands of Scotch business and the great and growing national feeling of Scotland. They believe that in making that proposal of a Grand Committee they have done a really useful work for Scotland, and they are more confirmed in that belief by the opposition which it has aroused, and which shows that something has clearly been done for the great principle of devolution and for the great principle of management of national affairs in accordance with national opinions. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir C. Pearson) asks me whether the Government mean business in this matter. They do mean business.
  LORD R. CHURCHILL: In which matter?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: In the matter of the Grand Committee. They intend to carry the Grand Committee through by every means which they can possibly employ, and by staking everything upon it, and up to that extent they are prepared to pledge and bind themselves to the Scotch Members. Further than that on this occasion the Government, as a Government, do not intend to go. As regards individual Members, whether on this Bench or elsewhere, they must use their own judgment and their own way of looking at the public interests in order to determine in what direction they should vote. For my own part, I am very glad that this question has been brought forward. There is very great use in an abstract Resolution for the purpose of promoting public questions, and there is very great use in taking a Division in order to show what real, solid

  1309
  backing of public opinion, represented as who believe that public opinion is, by the balance of Parliamentary opinion, there is in the country. It was the opinion of the late Professor Fawcett that there is no means by which a great public question can be pushed forward with such certainty as by the advocates of that question showing their belief in it by supporting their opinion in the Lobby. This question is going forward, although the right hon. Gentleman opposite thinks it is going backward. In the last Parliament 30 Scotch Members voted for a separate Legislative Assembly in Scotland; 40 Scotch Members voted in favour of it in this Parliament, and we shall see how many will vote for it to-night. I believe the question has progressed. Another 12 months have gone by, and there has been another 12 months' block of Scotch business. There is great unanimity in Scotland in favour of the measures they cannot get, and a greater determination to have them. The right hon. Gentleman opposite gave other reasons for the block in Scotch business than those which were given in the two excellent speeches in which this Resolution was moved and seconded. The right hon. Gentleman said the Government were responsible for the appropriation and division of the time of the House. I thoroughly allow that, but they are not responsible for the amount of the time. The time is limited in amount; and the Government, as Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo said when he was asked for more infantry, cannot make time which does not exist. There is no way of making time except by the received method of developing the work of the Committee of the whole House upon Committees upstairs, and by the more heroic remedy proposed by my hon. Friend below the Gangway, of devolving the business of the House upon Local Bodies of sufficient dignity. The right hon. Gentleman opposite says he is in favour of devolution to Local Bodies. I did not quite catch the full meaning of his argument, but he spoke of County Councils and, I presume, District Councils, Parish Councils, and Municipal Councils, and said that we could devolve the work of Parliament upon them. Well, Sir, there is very little of the legislative work of Parliament that you can devolve upon any body unless it be to a Committee or a genuine local Parlia-
  1310
  ment. But I must own that whenever we tried in the last Parliament to devolve on Local Bodies some little part of our own duties, we met with very small success. We proposed to devolve on the County Councils the power of acquiring land for public purposes instead of obliging them to come to Parliament for Provisional Orders. Forty-six Scotch Members were in favour of that change and 12 against it, but unfortunately the Scotch Members were not allowed to have their own way. We proposed that County Councils should have power to protect rights of way—power of a sort which in some degree is at present held by them. Forty-three Scotch Members were in favour of and 12 against that proposal, but the Scotch Members were not allowed to have their own way. We proposed that the County Councils should be allowed to regulate their own duties of health. Forty Scotch Members were in favour of that proposal and 12 against it, but again the Scotch Members were not allowed to have their own way. The right hon. Gentleman told us that those who had spoken up to this time in support of the Motion had only used the old arguments. Well, after a reform has been for some time before the country you may be pretty certain of one thing, and that is that if you have a good argument in its favour it probably will be an old one, because the arguments in favour of a reform are few, simple, and strong, whilst those against it, if it is a good reform, are many, new, and ingenious. In what respect, I would ask, has it been shown that it would be dangerous to have a Parliament for Scotland? Have we been told that the country is too small and unimportant, when it has a population as large as a second-class Kingdom, and is a country with manners, customs, and laws of its own, and an administration of its own? Have we been shown that the population to which these powers are asked to be entrusted is a population that cannot be trusted with them? Have we been shown that the Scotch people are a people in which classes are divided by deep and bitter differences, and cannot be allowed to fight their own battle within their own confines without being kept in order by a Parliament sitting in Westminster? Have we been shown that Scotchmen do not understand and are

  1311
  unfit to manage their own education, their own Universities, their own municipal affairs, their own local traffic, and all the other matters which concern the morality, the welfare, and the prosperity of the country? No, Sir; let hon. Gentlemen show that Scotchmen are not fit to have that self-government which is enjoyed by many smaller, poorer, and much less intelligent nations, or let them allow that we have indeed a good case. My belief is, that this feeling in Scotland in favour of Scottish self-government is growing and will grow, and I hope the Division to-night will show that many Scotchmen want it and that many Englishmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen are willing to help them to get it.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am inclined to think that the speech we have just listened to from the right hon. Gentleman is a unique performance in our Parliamentary annals. The Prime Minister of the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman is a Member, speaking upon this very question of Home Rule for Scotland not long ago, said—
  "I have not the gift of enthusiasm possessed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Scotland, which carries him a great deal further than that, and I am not responsible for all his opinions."
  I do not think that when the Prime Minister delivered himself of that interesting verdict upon his own colleague, he could have foreseen the performance upon this very subject which that colleague was destined to execute within a few months of the time at which that utterance was made in the House of Lords. For what is it the right hon. Gentleman has just done? On Monday, the 2nd of April, he comes down to this House and makes a speech in favour of Scotch Grand Committees which will have the effect of handing over to Scotchmen a power over the legislation dealing with Scotland not possessed by Englishmen, Welshmen, or Irishmen. That proposal is discussed, but is not divided upon. Some of the most important criticisms on it have yet to be delivered. But on one of the days of the week sandwiched in between the day on which that proposal is made, and the day on which it has to be decided upon, the same right hon. Gentleman comes down to this House and tells us that he, though an Englishman, is so enamoured of Scotch liberties that,
  1312
  not content with getting Scotchmen privileges in this House which no other nationality possesses, he desires in addition to give Scotland a separate Legislature ! Sir, was there ever such a comedy performed in this House; was ever legislation made more ridiculous? Have we ever seen—has the oldest Member in this House ever seen—a performance like this, in which the same Minister proposes on two successive days these two inconsistent schemes, and on the second day, when he himself is advocating a change which will rend in pieces the Constitution of this country, finds himself supported during his speech upon the Bench by three Law Officers, two Under Secretaries, and no Cabinet Minister at all? The Secretary for War (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) and the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre) are present, but they only came in for the peroration. During the progress of his speech I anxiously watched to see who were the supporters on that Bench of this second edition of the right hon. Gentleman's proposal for expediting Scotch legislation, and I am accurate in saying that they consisted of two Scotch Law Officers, one English Law Officer, and two Under Secretaries. Sir, this is to make the House of Commons ridiculous. I did not hear the speech of the hon. Gentleman who proposed this Motion, and I am ready to believe everything good of it; but I have heard all the other speeches, and the idea that we are to sanction a change which will fundamentally alter the Constitution of this country and which will reverse in its most essential particulars the Act of Union passed some 180 odd years ago—that we are to reverse that legislation after a Debate of this kind, in which my countrymen have evidently set it before them as an object that they are to prove to the world at large that they can appreciate a joke—is really too absurd. Now, Sir, I listened to the admirable literary exhibition of that English Member for Fifeshire, whose books we have all read with delight and whose speech to-night was very interesting and amusing; but it was not a speech, if I may venture to criticise the hon. Gentleman, which was an adequate preface for a great Constitutional change. The humorous treatment of Scotch legislation is a very good pastime for the House of Commons in its more wearied moments,

  1313
  but it is not, I venture to say, a proper preface for passing a, Resolution, which, if acted upon—and I believe it never will be acted upon—would make a revolution in our affairs which hardly any patriotic Scotchman has contemplated without horror for the last 100 years. The element of comedy, the elements contributing to this Parliamentary farce which we have been listening to to-night, have not been contributed by my own countrymen alone. A Member for Wales intervened in the earlier part of the Debate, and that hon. Gentleman the Member for Flintshire, was only stopped by your intervention, Mr. Speaker, from giving us his views on Welsh Home Rule, and although he was not permitted to develop at length his argument upon that great theme, he made it perfectly clear to the House that there was no argument to be advanced in favour of Scotch Home Rule which could not be advanced with equal force in favour of Welsh Home Rule; not only with equal force but with greater force, for whereas about half the Scotch electors who voted at the last Election were strongly opposed to Scotch Home Bule, I believe, though I have not verified the figures, that the proportions who supported Members holding the political views of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Flintshire are probably greater. But even Wales does not stand alone in this appetite for a separate Legislature, which is gradually growing up in every part of the Kingdom, [Ministerial cheers] London wants one. Why is that not cheered by hon. Gentlemen opposite? Why are they going to refuse to London what they pant to give to Wales and long to give to Scotland? London is larger in population than Scotland, a very great deal larger than Wales, and I believe even larger than Ireland, and I cannot conceive any argument that can be advanced in fax our of Home Rule for Scotland, Wales, or Ireland that cannot be advanced in favour of Home Rule for London. If there be such an argument I desire to hear it. It has not been advanced in this House, and I wait for it. If we are to have Welsh, Scotch, Irish, and London Home Rule, why may I not, as a Lancashire Member, claim Lancashire Home Rule? The population of Lancashire is not inferior to the population of Scotland. Certainly, Lancashire and Yorkshire together are far in excess of the population
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  of Wales, and I do not know that they are inferior in intellect and in the power to manage their own affairs. Do you propose to have a separate Parliament for Lancashire and Yorkshire? If not, why do you not propose it? Why are we to be put off with this futile and inconsequent treatment of a great Constitutional question? Why are we to be dragged down here at the fag-end of a Tuesday evening in order to hear Scotch jokes upon Scotch business, but not to hear one single argument worthy of the great subject which hon. Gentlemen in their more flippant hours appear anxious to treat of? Is the constitution of this country a matter to be treated upon in this House in the absence of the Leader of the House—in the absence of every Cabinet colleague of the Leader of the House, except one Scotch Member and the President of the Local Government Board; are we actually to be asked to come to a decision on questions like this when our natural guides have chosen the better part and gone to bed? It is turning, if I may venture to say it, the privileges of private Members into a farce when they ask us to come to these momentous decisions under circumstances and upon grounds like these. Neither the arguments that they have advanced nor the circumstances under which they have been advanced nor, if I may say it with respect, the men by whom the arguments have been advanced are of a kind to command the assent of the House of Commons in a controversy which touches nearly in its issues the greatest topics which this House can deal with. I have abstained, as the House will see—and it is only following the example of every speaker who preceded me—from touching upon the real merits of this question, because I consider that the circumstances under which it is brought forward have rendered discussion of the merits absolutely absurd. In no speech that has been delivered to-night, neither in the speech of the Seconder—I did not hear that of the Mover—nor in the speeches of those who have supported him, nor in the speech of the Minister for Scotland himself, has this topic been treated on its merits; and the idea that the Act of 1707 is to be reversed on a Tuesday night between half-past 9 and 12 upon such speeches as we have heard is to say that this House has repudiated its main functions. I think before the

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  Secretary for Scotland asks us to accept the Motion for which he is going to vote he ought to induce at least a moiety of his own Cabinet to support him by their presence; but in the absence of the Government, and in the absence of any argument urged from any quarter of the House adequate to the great theme on which we are nominally engaged, I trust the House will show its contempt for the proposal and the manner in which the proposal is introduced by rejecting it without ceremony in the Lobby.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 180; Noes 170.—(Division List, No. 12.)
  Resolved, That it is desirable, while retaining intact the power and supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, to establish a Legislature in Scotland for dealing with purely Scottish affairs.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Am I in Order, Sir, in asking the Government whether they propose to bring in a Bill?
  [No reply was given]

PUBLIC BUILDINGS (LONDON) BILL. (No. 79.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  COLONEL HUGHESmoved the Second Reading of this Bill, the object of which, he explained, was to give Local Authorities the same powers of acquiring lands for public buildings as was possessed by every Local Board under the Act of 1875. The President of the Local Government Board, the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool, and others, who had seen the Bill, all agreed that it was a non-contentious measure which should not be opposed. He did not, therefore, anticipate any opposition from any quarter of the House.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Colonel Hughes.)
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. SHAW-LEFEVRE,)had looked carefully into the Bill, and he did not see why these powers should not be conferred on the Local Authorities.
  Motion agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed for To-morrow.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 2) BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
MOTIONS.

  SOLICITORS (IRELAND) (NO. 2) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Carson, Bill to amend and consolidate the Laws relating to Solicitors and to the service of Indentured Apprentices in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Carson. Sir Albert Rollit, Mr. ONeill, Mr. Maurice Healy, Mr. William Kenny, Mr. Barton. Mr. O'Keeffe, and Mr. Macartney.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 133.]

  WILD BIRDS' PROTECTION ACT (1880) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bill to amend "The Wild Birds' Protection Act, 1880,"ordered to be brought in by Sir Herbert Maxwell, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Joseph Pease, Mr. Loder, Sir William Ingram, and Captain Bagot.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 134.]

  BOARDS OF CONCILIATION BILL.
  On Motion, of Sir John Lubbock, Bill to confer additional powers on Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, ordered to be brought in by Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Charles Fenwick, Mr. Howell, Mr. Mather, Mr. Montagu, Sir Francis Powell, and Sir Albert Rollit.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 135.]

  PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS (COUNTY OF LONDON SATURDAY POLL BILL.)
  On Motion of Captain Norton, Bill to provide that at Parliamentary Elections in the county of London the Poll shall take place on a Saturday, ordered to be brought in by Captain Norton, Mr. Pickersgill, Mr. James Stuart, and Mr. John Burns.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 136.]

  HOURS OF LABOUR (LOCAL AUTHORITIES, &C., SERVANTS) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Macdonald, Bill to limit Labour in the service of Local Authorities and of Railway Companies to Eight Hours a day ordered to be brought in by Mr. Macdonald, Mr. Beaufoy, Mr. John Burns, Mr. Samuel Evans, and Mr. Keir-Hardie.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 137.]

  TEACHERS' REGISTRATION BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Macdonald, Bill to provide for the Registration of Teachers, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Macdonald, Mr. Bousfield, MR. Grove, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, and Mr. Henry J. Wilson.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 138]

  EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Seton-Karr, Bill to amend the Law relating to the Liability of Employers for injuries to their workmen, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Seton-Karr, Mr. Walter M'Laren, and Sir William Houldsworth.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 139.]
  House adjourned at two minutes before Twelve o'clock.