Commons Sitting of 10 May 1895

Preamble
The House met at Five minutes after Two of the Clock.
MOTION.

  INCLOSURE (UPTON ST. LEONARDS) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Herbert Gardner, "Bill to confirm a Provisional Order of the Board of Agriculture relating to the inclosure of certain lands in the parish of Upton St. Leonards, in the County of Gloucester."
  Bill presented accordingly, and read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills and to be printed.—[Bill 235.]

  RESIDENT MAGISTRATES (IRELAND).
  Return presented—relative thereto (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 107, of Session 1892) [ordered 5th April; Mr. Dane]; to lie upon the table, and to be printed.—[No. 262.]
QUESTIONS.

  EVICTIONS IN ROSS-SHIRE.
  MR. J. G. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether his attention has been called to the eviction of a family named
  904
  Ross at Millcraig, Alness, Ross-shire, on Monday, the 22nd ultimo, with the concurrence of the proprietor; whether he is aware that Mrs. Ross, the occupier, is 80 years of age and bedridden; that she was carried out of the house in a blanket and left lying, with her goods and chattels, at the roadside, where she and her family had to pass the night; and that immediately after Mrs. Ross was carried out of her house, in which she had lived for 30 years, it was demolished by the agents of the proprietor; and, whether it is proposed to take any steps to render such evictions in the Highlands impossible in the future?
  THE SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Sir GEORGE TREVELYAN,): I have received a Report from the Sheriff of Ross and Cromarty, in which he states that the Ross family were not tenants of Sir Kenneth Matheson of Ardross, but were found after a protracted litigation to have no right of occupancy, which belonged to the other party in the litigation. Their removal was necessary on account of the person who was found by the Court to be the real tenant; and they were required to remove. Sir Kenneth Matheson took special care to provide another house for Mrs. Ross. Mrs. Ross was not permitted to accept this offer by her son Donald, who is stated to be an able-bodied man. The decree of eviction was obtained in December, but was not enforced until 22nd April, out of consideration for the Rosses. It is not a case for the interference of the Government.
  MR. WEIRasked the right hon. Gentleman whether he was aware that the house in question was simply an old wooden shed, and quite unfit for human habitation?
  SIR GEORGE TREVELYANreplied that that was not stated by the Sheriff.

  THREATENING AN EXCISE OFFICER.
  MR. JASPER TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether he is aware that at the Mullingar Petty Sessions, on Saturday, 13th April last, the local excise officer brought a prosecution against a resident of the town, charging him with drawing a revolver and threatening to shoot him when he

  905
  entered his shop for the purpose of levying income tax which the defendant was declining to pay; (2) whether he is aware that the excise officer was corroborated by a witness, who was in the employment of the defendant, and that the defence was that the threat to shoot was a joke, and that the resident magistrate, Major O'Brien, who presided, announced the decision of the Court that he dismissed the case; and (3) whether, as the excise officer acted under the direction of his authorities in bringing the prosecution, he will order an inquiry, and direct the attention of the Lord Lieutenant to Major O'Brien's action in this matter?
  MR. JAMES TUITE: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers may I ask him if he is aware that there were six magistrates on the Bench during the hearing of the case instead of one as implied by the question; that the witness referred to in the second paragraph swore that the defendant had no revolver in his hand as alleged; that a magistrate of the county Westmeath swore that the defendant in his presence immediately after the occurrence apologised to the plaintiff for what had taken place, that the plaintiff accepted the apology, and that the case was dismissed by the unanimous decision of the Bench. Further, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that the plaintiff did not take out a summons for about six weeks after the occurrence?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. JOHN MORLEY,): I am not sure that I am acquainted with all the details just now set out by my hon. Friend, but I am informed that the facts are generally as stated in the question. The evidence on both sides was gone through very carefully before the Bench, consisting, I think, of five magistrates, and the hon. Member who puts the supplementary question is quite right in saying that they were unanimously of opinion that neither the complainant nor anyone else was in danger from the defendant, and that they unanimously dismissed the case on its merits. Although, of course, I cannot pretend to approve of such a proceeding, even though practised by way of a joke, I do not think the case
  906
  requires the action suggested by the third paragraph of the question.
  MR. TULLY: Will the right hon. Gentleman bring the action of the excise officer under the notice of his authorities, as either the excise officer or the resident magistrate must be wrong.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: I think the only course open to the Crown is to convey a warning to the defendant through the police to be more careful in the use of arms in future, and I should think that is a lesson which does not need all the forces of the Crown to be brought to bear to bring home to them.

  ARMY FOOD SUPPLY.
  MR. W. FIELD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it is a fact that in Ireland, a meat exporting country, the troops are mainly rationed upon foreign meat; whether he can state the percentage of native and foreign supply; whether the conditions of contract in Dublin have been recently changed, so as to further enable this importation; whether the live stock hitherto supplied has given satisfaction to officers and men; and whether it is upon economical ground that frozen and refrigerated meat is brought into a meat-producing country?
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN,): The troops at the Curragh have only meat killed in the camp. Up to the end of this month the same system is applied to the Dublin garrison. In the rest of Ireland the troops may, under the contracts, the conditions of which were fixed in 1890, have 60 per cent. of foreign meat, but the actual quantity supplied cannot be stated. I explained very fully on March 28, in answer to the hon. Gentleman, the changes about to be made as regards the Dublin garrison, and the reasons for those changes. It is not known that the live stock hitherto supplied for Dublin failed to give satisfaction, and the change of system is due entirely to the fact that the abattoir system is no longer necessary.
  SIR H. MAXWELL: Would the right hon. Gentleman say why it is impossible to give the proportion of American and home meat supplied to the troops in the rest of Ireland?
  MR. R. W. HANBURY: I would like to ask upon what definite principle this percentage of home and foreign supply is based.
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I have already stated that this percentage was fixed in 1890, and no doubt for a very good reason. I do not know on what principle it was fixed then, but I found it in existence when I came into office. In answer to the hon. Baronet opposite, I imagine that the reason is that although there is a condition laid down that not more than 60 per cent. of foreign meat should be so supplied, so long as that percentage is not approached, no check is kept upon the quantity of that meat. So long as those receiving it are aware that the amount of British meat is greater than might be tendered, they do not keep any check.
  SIR H. MAXWELL: How can it be known that the amount of British meat supplied is equal to 40 per cent. of the total unless some returns are kept, and, if they are kept, why should not we be made acquainted with them?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I understand that the deliveries are checked day by day, or at the periods at which they are delivered. So long as they do not exceed the permitted proportion, nothing is said about them. There is thus no record kept of the precise proportion.
  MR. HANBURY: When the right hon. Gentleman talks about a percentage, does it apply to beef only? Is there no limit as to mutton?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: What I have said is 60 per cent. of foreign meat.
  MR. HANBURY: Yes, but that is not so.
  SIR W. LAWSON: Is there any reason why the Army should not be supplied with meat at a rate as cheap as we can get it?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: No doubt that is a sound principle as far as it goes.
  MR. W. FIELD: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered the last part of my question, in which I ask whether it is upon economical grounds that frozen and refrigerated meat is brought into a meat-producing country?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN:
  I again say I was not in Office in 1890 when this percentage was fixed. It was, I presume, mainly upon that reason that the system was introduced.
  MR. FIELD: Am I to understand that the contract for frozen meat is cheaper at present than the contract for the supply of Irish meat? What is the saving effected; how much per cent?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I cannot without notice answer matters of detail beyond those referred to in the question on the Paper.
  SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD: The answer of the Financial Secretary to me last Tuesday was to the effect that the question of cheapness does not arise, but the question of quality. Did he mean to infer from that that the foreign meat is better than the home meat?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I should be afraid to make any such assertion. I understand that cheapness is the main element in the case.

  SANDYCOVE HARBOUR.
  MR. W. FIELD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether soldiers were employed at cleaning Sandycove Harbour; whether they were engaged at cutting at the boat house or portions of a pier leading to the harbour; and, whether, during the time they were so employed, they wore civilians' dress?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Before I can answer this question I must have some more definite particulars as to the locality and the date on or about which the transaction is supposed to have taken place.
  MR. FIELD: If I give the right hon. Gentleman the particulars which he wants, will he give me private satisfaction? [Loud laughter.]
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I hope it has not yet come to that. [Renewed laughter.] If the hon. Member will give the particulars I have indicated, it will enable me to make the necessary inquiries.

  PEA AND BEAN WEEVILS.
  MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether he is aware that a considerable acreage under market garden cultivation is infested by the pea bug;

  909
  whether it has been imported from abroad; and, if he will order an inquiry, through the Agricultural Department, with a view of checking its ravages?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. HERBERT GARDNER,): My attention has been directed by a correspondent at Braintree to the prevalence of what are commonly known as pea and bean weevils, in that district, and I propose to recirculate the information as to the life-history of the insect, and the preventive and remedial measures which may usefully be adopted, which was contained in the Report on Injurious Insects which we issued for 1892. No special inquiry is necessary, the insect being well known in this country, and there being no reason to suppose that it has been imported from abroad.

  LIGHT RAILWAYS.
  MR. GRANT LAWSON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the reports from Her Majesty's Representatives abroad on Light Railways, presented to the House on the 23rd August 1894, will be printed and distributed before the Second Reading of the Light Railways Bill is taken?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (MR. J. BRYCE,): There is no objection on my part to the printing and distribution of these Reports; but this is a matter entirely for the House to decide. I do not think they are of sufficient importance to make it desirable to postpone the Second Reading of the Light Railways Bill until after their distribution.
  MR. GRANT LAWSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me where those interested in the question can see these Papers?
  MR. BRYCE: I presume in the Library of the House. It is perfectly easy, of course, to move to have them printed.
  MR. W. E. M. TOMLINSON: If a Motion is made for the presentation of these papers, will the Government assent to it?
  MR. BRYCE: It is not a question of the Government assenting. The papers have been presented to the House already
  910
  —in last August. It is for the House to order their printing and distribution.

  IMPORTED MILK.
  MR. A. F. JEFFREYS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he has received a copy of a resolution lately passed by the Central Chamber of Agriculture, in which they express their opinion that it is unjust that foreign milk should be permitted to be sold in this country, unless it has been sterilised in the interests of consumers, until the Board of Agriculture is satisfied that there is no possible risk of the introduction of disease; and, whether he proposes to take steps to carry out this Resolution?
  *MR. HERBERT GARDNER: I have received a copy of the resolution to which the hon. Member refers; but the protection of the public health is a matter which falls within the province of my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board and not of my own Department. I may refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend to the similar questions addressed to him on this subject yesterday.

  PREFERENTIAL RAILWAY RATES.
  MR. JEFFREYS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he has received a copy of the resolution passed lately by the Central Chamber of Agriculture with reference to the uncertainty of the law as to the preferential rates on foreign produce charged by English railway companies; and, whether he will introduce a Bill to define the law on the subject and to give powers to the Board of Trade to carry the law into effect?
  MR. BRYCE: Yes, Sir; I received the Resolution referred to, but I am not prepared to admit that the law on the subject is uncertain. The Railway Commissioners in a recent judgment gave a very clear and able exposition of its meaning, and were able to give practical effect to their interpretation by directing an alteration in certain rates which, in their judgment, were open to question, and it is possible that other cases may arise in which further declarations of the meaning and effect of the Statute may be given. It would,

  911
  therefore, seem premature to consider the question of altering the law at this moment.

  PROPOSED VETERINARY COLLEGE IN DUBLIN.
  MR. W. FIELD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether he can state when the Bill to provide the promised £15,000 for the Veterinary College in Dublin will be brought in; and (2) whether the Government have under consideration the establishment of a Board of Agriculture for Ireland?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I hope to be in a position to introduce the Bill referred to at an early date. As regards the second paragraph I have nothing to add to the views I have already, on various occasions, expressed on the subject. I would it were otherwise.

  TECHNICAL EDUCATION (IRELAND) BILL.
  MR. W. FIELD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether the Government will give facilities to enable the passing of the Technical Education (Ireland) Bill as a private measure, or whether they will adopt it as a Government Bill?
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: Having regard to the very limited time at the disposal of the Government, and the large demands made upon that time, I am afraid I am not in a position to give the undertaking asked for.
  MR. FIELDasked whether the right hon. Gentleman would assist a private Member in passing a Bill on this subject through the House.
  MR. J. MORLEY: I have informed the hon. and learned Member who has charge of the Bill now before the House, that I shall be glad to do anything I could without prejudice to the time required for more important measures.

  BELFAST LOUGH.
  MR. MICHAELMCCARTAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade, with reference to the fog siren on Mew Island, at the entrance to Belfast Lough, whether he can now state what has been the result of the experiments in which the Commissioners of Irish Lights have been so long engaged, with the view of improving
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  the fog sirens there and elsewhere; and, whether, considering the danger to life and property arising out of the insufficiency of the fog siren at present on Mew Island, and the further expenditure already sanctioned by the Board of Trade for improving same, he will inquire what improvement is likely to be made, and when it will be commenced?
  MR. BRYCE: The Irish Lights Commissioners have informed me that a preliminary comparative trial between the siren placed on the balcony of the Lighthouse Tower, and the original siren in the siren house down on the ground, has already been made by their engineer, and that they only await one of their steam vessels being available for the purpose to arrange for the carrying out of an exhaustive series of comparative experiments from different directions and ranges. They add that no defect has been so far found in the siren which has been in use since the Mew Island Lighthouse Station was first established. It is with regret that I find that these experiments, sanctioned in March of last year, have been so long delayed.

  NEWCASTLE PIER, COUNTY DOWN.
  MR. McCARTAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury—(1) whether he is aware that the pier at Newcastle, County Down, is a wreck, and the harbour most dangerous to the fishermen following their calling there; and (2) whether, considering the faulty construction of the harbour works by the Board of Works at the commencement, and the tax imposed upon the people of the neighbourhood without giving them any voice in the expenditure, and also the serious danger to which the fishermen are now exposed, he will consider the desirability of sending an independent engineer to report what, if anything, can be done to remedy this state of affairs?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Sir JOHN HIBBERT,): The state of Newcastle Pier is as described in the first paragraph of this question. The pier is vested in the County Authorities, and its ruin is due, not to faulty construction, but to their neglect to make timely repairs. If the Grand Jury is prepared to present for the amount required, the Government

  913
  on their side would be willing to assist by making a loan repayable in a term of years, and the Engineer of the Board of Works would make the necessary report and estimate, under the provisions of the Act 16, 17 Vict., cap. 136.

  "JOURNAL OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE."
  MR. RADCLIFFE COOKE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture what is the present circulation of the Board of Agriculture Journal; and, whether any, and, if so, what steps have been taken to bring the publication within reach of the classes specially interested in agriculture?
  *MR. HERBERT GARDNER: For the reason stated by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, in reply to a similar question with reference to the publications under his control, I am not in a position to give particulars of the present circulation of the Journal of the Board of Agriculture, but I may say that we are well satisfied with the results obtained up to the present, and that the circulation has considerably exceeded the estimate we originally made. We have taken steps, by the issue of special notices and advertisements, and the distribution of copies gratuitously, to make the Journal known to the classes interested, and in fixing the price so low as 6d. we hoped to bring it easily within their reach. I should be only too glad to consider any suggestions as to the means by which its utility could be increased.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHERasked whether the right hon. Gentleman would lay on the Table a statement showing the financial position of the journal.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATON: May I ask does the right hon. Gentleman decline to state the number of copies printed and sold?
  *MR. GARDNER: It has never been the practice of the Department to do so.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: I will move for it.
  MR. RADCLIFFE COOKEasked if the journal could be obtained on the railway bookstalls?
  *MR. GARDNER: I have endeavoured to bring that about, and am in communication with Messrs. Smith on the subject.

  INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY IN BELFAST.
  MR. J. KEIR HARDIE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the conduct of a crowd of persons who, on recent Sunday evenings, have mobbed and maltreated the speakers at the Independent Labour Party meetings at the Custom House Steps, Belfast; and whether he will ensure that adequate police protection is given to maintain freedom of speech?
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: For some weeks past my attention has been directed to the proceedings at the meetings referred to in the hon. Member's question, and I am aware that some hostility has been shown by the large numbers of persons attracted to these meetings. It is the paramount duty of the constabulary to preserve the peace, and they have so far, I am informed, been successful in preventing any attack, either on the particular member of the Party in question who organises the meetings, or upon his supporters at these meetings. The police will continue to preserve the peace on such occasions, and to afford every protection to the parties referred to in the discharge of this duty.

  PRISON CLERKS.
  MR. SAMUEL HOARE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, whether any steps are being taken to secure to those second class clerks in Her Majesty's prisons who paid an examination fee of £3 the prospect of attaining a maximum salary of £400 per annum, according to the scale given in The London Gazette of 9th September 1879?
  SIR JOHN HIBBERT: I am afraid I cannot add anything to the answers given to questions on this subject by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on the 5th ultimo and myself on the 9th ultimo.

  GRANTS BY HENRY VIII.
  MR. A. C. MORTON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether his attention has been called to the statement made by the historian of Breconshire, Theophilus Jones (History of Breconshire, vol. iii.

  915
  p. 709), that at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries Henry VIII. granted the tithes of the parish of Llanspyttid, in the county of Brecon, previously held by the Priory of Great Malvern, to Sir John Price, his Commissioner in Wales, who undertook the dispensation of them towards pious and charitable uses; and, whether he will cause search to be made for the King's Grant, so that on examination it may be ascertained whether the grant of tithes in this particular case to the King's Commissioner was accompanied with the condition or trust stated, that the tithes should still be devoted and dispensed towards pious and charitable uses?
  *MR. HERBERT GARDNER: My attention has been called to the statement to which my hon. Friend refers, but I have no means of informing myself as to its accuracy, nor have I any power to institute a search for the Grant said to have been made by King Henry VIII. The matter appears to be one which might be brought under the notice of the Charity Commissioners, if, as I understand, it is suggested that property devoted to pious and charitable uses has been alienated therefrom.
  MR. A. C. MORTON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether any convenient list is extant of the Grants of tithes made by Henry VIII. to lay owners; and, if not, whether he will cause such list to be prepared?
  *MR. HERBERT GARDNER: I am
  unaware of the existence of any convenient list of the Grants of tithes made by King Henry VIII., nor have I either the means or the power of compiling one. The Board of Agriculture are not in possession of any information on the subject of tithes prior to their Commutation in 1836, when the Tithe Commission was called into existence.
  MR. A. C. MORTONasked if his right hon. Friend would inform him who had this information if the Board of Agriculture had not?
  *MR. GARDNER: I should be glad to tell my hon. Friend if I knew myself.
  MR. C. J. DARLING: Is not the information perfectly open the hon. Member if he will take the trouble to go to the Record Office?

  HIRING SLAVES.
  MR. THOMAS BAYLEY: I beg to ask the Attorney General whether, in fulfilling a contract to carry a boat from Zanzibar to the lakes in the interior, the contractors being British subjects will be entitled to hire slaves, or whether the prohibition of British subjects to own slaves extends equally to the hiring of slaves for long or short periods?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir ROBERT REID,)stated that it was unlawful for any British subject to accept, receive, or detain against his will any person as a slave within the territories of the Sultan of Zanzibar. It was not in his province to state what was going forward in Zanzibar, but he was informed the law was not being violated.

  SCOTCH GRAND COMMITTEE.
  MR. T. R. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he will proceed with the Motion for the appointment of the Scotch Grand Committee?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W. HARCOURT,): I am not able to state what day.
  MR. BUCHANAN: I shall repeat the question on Monday.
  SIR DONALD MACFARLANE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a very strong opinion among a large number of Scotch Members that if any further delay takes place in connection with the Motion and the reference of the Crofters' Bill to the Scotch Grand Committee, they will have to reconsider their action towards the Government?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: My only answer to that question is that it is entirely open to the hon. Member and his Friends to reconsider their position with reference to the Government.
  MR. G. C. T. BARTLEYpointed out that the Government had agreed to certain modifications in the Resolution, and asked when the right hon. Gentleman could put the amended terms in the paper.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I will take care that that is done.
  *DR. MACGREGORI wish to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he means by his answer to imply that he is going to show the white feather to the Opposition.
  [No reply was given.]

  TUBERCULOSIS COMMISSION.
  MR. LEES KNOWLESasked the Speaker's ruling with regard to a clerical error which appeared on the Notice Paper. A Motion standing in his name (Tuberculosis Commission) appeared as a Notice of Motion, instead of as a Motion on going into Committee on Supply, and he wished to know whether that clerical error could be corrected?
  MR. J. CALDWELLas a matter of Order, wished to know if it was competent at this stage to alter the Motions on going into Committee of Supply, regarding which alterations Members had had no notice.
  MR. SPEAKER: I understand from the hon. Member that a mistake has been made in the printing of the Paper, the Motion in question being put down as a substantive Motion, whereas it should have appeared as an Amendment on going into Committee of Supply. The matter will be put right in the evening paper if no substantial objection is taken.

  ADMISSION OF STRANGERS.
  MR. C. J. DARLING,as a point of Order, asked the Speaker whether there was any understanding or tradition with regard to the responsibilities of Members of this House in relation to the character of persons who may be introduced into the Galleries of this House, more particularly with regard to the admission of persons under the gallery?
  *MR. SPEAKER: It is not a question of Order, but, at the same time, there is no objection to my stating what, indeed, is obvious—that there is a very high duty imposed on every hon. Member in introducing strangers within the walls of the House, to take care not to introduce any person who, he has reason to believe, is likely to be guilty of any disorderly conduct. ["Hear, hear."]

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  WAYS AND MEANS (THE BUDGET).
  Considered in Committee.
  Mr. MELLOR in the Chair.
  (In the Committee.)
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT,)THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, Derby) moved—

  CUSTOMS DUTY ON BEER.
  "That, in addition to the Duties of Customs chargeable and payable on and after the first day of July, One thousand eight hundred and ninety-five, on Beer imported into Great Britain or Ireland, there shall be charged and levied on and after that day until the first day of July, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-six, the Duties following (that is to say):—
  In the case of Beer called or similar to Mum, Spruce, Black Beer, or Berlin White Beer—

  £

  s.

  d.

  For every thirty-six gallons thereof where the worts thereof are or were before fermentation of a specific gravity—

  Not exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen degrees, a duty of

  0

  2

  0

  Exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen de-degrees, a duty of

  0

  2

  4

  In the case of every description of beer other than that above mentioned—

  For every thirty-six gallons thereof where the worts thereof were before fermentation of a specific gravity of one thousand and fifty-five degrees, a duty of

  0

  0

  6

  and so in proportion for any difference in gravity."
  Motion agreed to.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER moved—

  EXCISE DUTY ON BEER.
  "That in addition to the Duty of Excise payable on and after the first day of July, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five, in respect of beer brewed in the United Kingdom, there shall be charged and levied on and after that day until the first day of July, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-six:—
  For every thirty-six gallons of worts of a specific gravity of one thousand and fifty-five degrees, the duty of sixpence; and so in proportion for any difference in quantity or gravity."
  The following Amendment stood on the Order Paper in the name of Mr. HENEAGE:—
  "To move to leave out all the words after the word 'that,' in order to add 'it is unjust and inexpedient to retain the sixpence additional duty on beer whilst reducing the duty on spirits, inasmuch as it is a tax on home-grown barley, and most injurious to British agriculture in its present depressed condition.'"
  *THE CHAIRMAN: This Amendment is out of Order. An abstract Resolution is altogether out of Order in Committee of Ways and Means. The second Amendment is also out of Order. The first, which is in Order, stands in the name of Mr. Quilter.
  MR. E. HENEAGE: May I ask you, Sir, to give some reason for your ruling? When I put the Amendment upon the Paper I understood that there was a precedent for it.
  *THE CHAIRMAN: All Resolutions of this character are out of Order in Committee of Ways and Means. I am acquainted with the precedent to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. That Resolution was not moved in Committee of Ways and Means. The application of that precedent must, moreover, be confined to the special circumstances under which it was allowed, and I would add that it has always been regarded as a very doubtful precedent.
  *MR. CUTHBERT QUILTER*MR. CUTHBERT QUILTER (Suffolk, Sudbury) rose to move in line 3, after "brewed" to insert—"from substitutes for barley, malt, or hops." He said that he remembered with gratitude the great consideration extended to him last year, when he was obliged to trouble the House with a good many figures bearing on this important subject. He used the word important because this subject concerned the health, and to a certain extent the enjoyment, of many thousands of our labouring population. It was not necessary to say much about beer as an article of food. On that point he should content himself with quoting the words of the right hon. Member for Midlothian, who in his speech on the repeal of the Malt Tax in 1880 described beer as—
  "A prime convenience, and, even to a great extent, a necessary of life,"
  and also as—
  "The standing and staple drink of the people of England."
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  Then, after stating the grounds upon which the change was proposed, the right hon. Gentleman said, at the close of his brilliant speech, that the policy was recommended to them
  "By yet more urgent considerations of actual justice as connected with the cultivator of the soil in the situation he at present holds, and under the pressure of the competition to which he is now and is likely to be for a long period of time subjected—possibly for a period even with some increased pressure."
  These words were as applicable at the present time as they ever were. The agricultural interest was indeed under the pressure of severe competition, and to all appearances was likely to be under such pressure for a long time to come. He, therefore, submitted that now was not the time to add to the pressure upon agriculturists, and if anything could be done to lighten that pressure he was sure the Committee would be ready to consider a reasonable proposal for that purpose. That was his main object in moving this Amendment. He suggested that by some re-adjustment of the Beer Duty, rendered desirable, he might almost say necessary, by the altered circumstances of the time, the
  impost should be placed upon the shoulders of those best able to bear it. He should probably be asked why they should go back upon the compact, which it is alleged was made by the right hon. Member for Midlothian. He was of opinion that, having regard to the altered circumstances of the case, if a compact existed (which he did not admit) they ought to go back upon it. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian had no idea, when he gave the
  "free mash tun," that the preparation and manufacture of substitutes for malt and hops, would increase to such an alarming extent. Even he could hardly have imagined the wonderful dexterity and ingenuity which had brought so many substitutes into notice and use. Of course there was a difficulty in his (Mr. Quilter's) way—namely, the difficulty of reconciling the benefit of the agricultural classes with the necessities of the national Exchequer. This made him rather anxious not to press upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer any very drastic remedies. He could not believe that his right hon. Friend had not a sneaking fancy for

  921
  doing something for our national beverage. He found from an old history of the English nation that Derby, the town which the right hon. Gentleman represented with so much dignity and ability, had in the 16th century a great reputation for its ales, which were spoken of as the "canary of England." That was not in the time of the Planta-ganets; but no doubt there were then very distinguished ancestors of the right hon. Gentleman, who drank the local canary to their heart's content. He was not, however, without hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would meet him in a kindly spirit. The right hon. Gentleman's connection with Derby must have inclined him to be sympathetic when matters of this kind were brought forward. The town of which he was so distinguished a representative had, as early as the 16th century, a great reputation for its Ales. Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," well said—
  "Now never was the wine of Sarepta better known to the Syrians, that of Chios to the Grecians, of Phalernum to the Latines, than the Canary of Derby to the English thereabout."
  This was after the time of the Plantagenets, but some of the distinguished ancestors of the right hon. Gentleman doubtless took their fail-share of the local "Nectar." He assured the right hon. Gentleman that he appreciated all his financial difficulties. He proposed to quote a few figures showing the diminshed use of malt in recent years. According to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's estimate for 1894–5 the actual yield of Beer Duty in 1893–4, for Imperial purposes, was £9,536,948, and for local taxation purposes, £397,372, making a total of £9,934,325. At the then current duty of 6s. 3d., this was equal to 31,789,720 barrels. If the same number of barrels had been brewed in 1894–95, the yield at 6s. 9d. would have been£10,729,000 instead of, as estimated, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year, for Imperial purposes, £10,120,000, and for local taxation
  account, £392,000, or, in all, £10,512,000. The anticipated deficiency therefore was £217,000. This sum was equal to 643,000 barrels, and if they added the barrels represented by £18,000, the actual deficit on the Estimate—namely, 53,000 barrels, they arrived at a total of 696,000 barrels. At
  922
  the Official Standard this represented 1,392,000 bushels of malt. It was clear, therefore, that a very large diminution in the amount of malt used was taking place, but he could not tell how much of it was barley-malt, or how much was malt made from rice, maize, and other articles. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: "Very little."] He was glad to have that assurance from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The proper definition of beer was beer made from barley-malt, and hops. That had been the legal definition of beer for hundreds of years, and he believed that before long it would be the legal definition of beer once more. He was not now dealing with the Pure Beer Bill, but he was certain that many Members on both sides of the House would be very grateful if the Government would give them an opportunity of discussing that measure, which had hitherto been so unfortunate in obtaining anything like a good place, and which was so universally popular. Another matter that he desired to bring under the notice of the Committee to support his case was the amount of sugar used in brewing. From figures which had been compiled with considerable care he found that the total amount of sugar used in brewing in 1856 was l,790,0001b., in 1886, 10,340,0001b.; in 1876, it had made an enormous jump, and was 98,000,0001b.; in 1886 it had increased to 146,000,0001b.; in 1893 it rose to 237,000,0001b.; and in 1894 it reached the gigantic total of 245,731,4321b. That, he thought, justified the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian of the very large increase in the use of sugar that would probably take place. He had some other interesting figures as to the number of breweries for sale, and the curious tendency of that estimable class of men to disappear from off the face of the earth. The competition that went on seemed to be working off the small brewers. He noticed a smile on the countenance of the Member for Cockermouth, but he was sure the hon. Baronet was not smiling at the disappearance of the small men, for the hon. Gentleman would agree with him that it was not an unmixed advantage that everything should fall into the hands of huge corporations, or that the opportunities for the exercise

  923
  of individual energy should diminish. ["Hear, hear."] In 1853 there were 45,294 brewers and 7,805 maltsters; in 1873 only 29,969 brewers and 4,977 maltsters; in 1893, 10,143 brewers; and in 1894 even that amount had been reduced to 9,240, while, of course, maltsters no longer existed to any extent. He had some interesting returns showing the proportion of malt and sugar used by various brewers, whom he would divide into three classes. He most respectfully asked the attention of the Committee to these figures, because he thought they went very far to prove his case. In 1882 there were two firms in the United Kingdom—he would call them the "Large" brewers—who brewed over 800,000 barrels each, and they used on the average 576 bushels of malt to the cwt. of sugar. In 1893 they only used 350 bushels of malt, and in 1894 they used 358 bushels to the same quantity of sugar. The House would agree that they brewed what might almost be called pure beer, the proportion of sugar being so infinitesimal. He would ask whether there was any quicker way to wealth, magnitude of business, or high honour than the brewing of pure beer. The loss to the House by the removal to another and, up to the present, more serene atmosphere of those to whom he referred had been very great, and he sometimes doubted whether it would be possible much longer to retain within the precincts of the House such distinguished members of the brewing profession as the Member for Bedford and the Member for Wimbledon. They had only to follow the example of the illustrious men to whom he had alluded, and the same disaster would fall upon the House as had occurred when they lost those distinguished persons. The brewers who brewed over 1,000 barrels a year he would call "medium" brewers. Of these there were in 1882, 2,108, and they used to the cwt. of sugar, on an average, 39 bushels of malt; in 1893, 1,834 brewers used an average of only 22½ bushels; and in 1894, 1,748 used the still smaller proportion of 21 bushels to the same quantity of sugar. The "small" brewers, brewing under 1,000 barrels a year, in 1882 numbered 14,499, and they used an average of 165 bushels; in 1893 they numbered 8,307,and used only 94 bushels; and in 1894 the number of brewers had
  924
  fallen to 7,490, and the ratio of malt used was 100 bushels per cwt. of sugar. Summarising these figures, it would be found that in 1882 the brewers, numbering in all 16,609, used an average quantity of 42 bushels of malt; in 1893 they had decreased in number to 10,143, and they used an average of only 26 bushels; and in 1894 the number had fallen to 9,240, and the average quantity of malt used to 25 bushels per cwt. of sugar. Another thing he wished to mention was the depreciation in the specific gravity of beer. There was was no doubt that they did not get anything like as much for their money as they used to do. The real stuff there was steadily diminishing. At a brewery in East Anglia, the specific gravity of the beer sold in 1879 (before the alteration in the Duty) at 1s. per gallon, was precisely the same as that now sold at 1s. 4d. per gallon, and that was by no means an isolated case. Although the alteration of the malt tax to a Beer Duty might have been a great benefit to the brewers and the chemists, the farmer was being ruined day by day, becoming bankrupt and frequently committing suicide. [Laughter.] That was not a laughing matter, and he hoped the House would treat it seriously. He represented 60 miles of agricultural country, and he could say that during last winter hardly a fortnight passed without disclosing some sad case of ruin brought about by the terrible condition of agriculture. He was sure that the Chancellor of the. Exchequer would agree with him that it was hardly possible for the position of the farmer in East Anglia to be worse than it is now, but if in some way they could enhance the price of barley, which was his best product, he might still be able to pay his way. He commended this proposal from a temperance standpoint. The miseries brought about by drinking were due to the drinking of spirits rather than of beer. He was afraid the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not familiar with Hogarth, or else he would have hesitated before exempting spirits from extra duty. Hogarth, perhaps the most accurate, and certainly the most powerful delineator of mankind's virtues and vices that the world has ever seen, has left us striking illustrations of the advantages attending the use of our

  925
  national beverage, and the misery and want brought about by the drinking of spirits. Of beer he wrote:—
  "Genius of Health! thy grateful taste Rivals the cup of Jove, And warms each English generous breast With liberty and love."
  What was proposed by the Amendment was virtually a readjustment of duty; he thought that this extra duty should be levied upon beer brewed with other ingredients, than barley-malt and hops. He had to prove, if he could, that this was a reasonable and practicable proposal. He had in his hand one of the forms used by Somerset House; and any Member could see from it that by the simple addition of a column or two it would be easy for the brewers to record for the information of the Inland Revenue, the quantity of materials other than barley-malt and hops used in brewing.
  That would facilitate differentiation in the duty, relieving a suffering industry and putting the duty upon the use of substituted materials. A readjustment of duty on the lines indicated was not a thing radically new. There had been variations in the duty on sugar used in brewing. The excise duty per cwt. was 3s. 6d. in 1869–70; 7s. 6d. in 1870–3; 9s. 6d. in 1873–4; and 11s. 6d. from 1874 to the repeal of the duty in 1880. At Somerset House, therefore, there was plenty of precedent for the variation. He asked for a readjustment in favour of English barley; and he thought that the proposal should meet this year with a sympathetic response from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in consequence of the falling-off in the duty, evidently on account of the materials used. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman had been considering whether readjustment could be effected without detriment to the revenue and with benefit to agriculture. Beer with a good specific gravity was more refreshing than anything else to the wearied agricultural labourer, aye, and to the workman in the town too. The agricultural labourer worked hard, his outlook was nothing, and his life often dull and cheerless. When he returned home at night, what was he to drink? A glass of good beer would do him more good than anything else. Ask the first man you met in the street, and
  926
  you would find he cared more about pure been than about the Home Rule Bill. [Mr. BROADHURST here spoke to the hon. Member.] He was reminded that he had not yet given the names of the articles that were used in the manufacture of beer. A long list continually appeared in the trade journals, but he would read only some of them. One was called D. G. C., or dextrinous grain caramel; another was Premier caramel chips—he did not know whether the Prime Minister had taken any of them; another he imagined the Chancellor of the Exchequer had sometimes taken a dose of before summing up their Debates—it was Ecumin, or foaming powder—[Great laughter]; another which seemed a great favourite was named Aphrodite. A still later list showed ingenuity in the invention of substances and of names for them, such as Amilona maize malt, Dextro-diastatic malt, and Dexvert, which was the latest brewing speciality. Our American cousins, too, had come on the scene, and were sending maize grits, rice grits, etc., and the latest surprises were caramelose-sucrosan, and antinonnin. He must confess to a feeling of regret that the House of Commons would not pay more attention to this question of the purity of the national beverage, which the right hon. Member for Midlothian had so well described, although it had been ready to spend time in legislating against margarine, chicory, and other products. He seriously asked the House of Commons to consider whether something could not be done for the drink of the people whilst diminishing the burdens upon agriculture, particularly in that part of the country which he represented. In conclusion, he would remind the House of the tribute paid by the poet John Gay to the national beverage:—
  "Inspired by thee the warrior fights, The lover woos, the poet writes And pens the pleasing tale; And still in Britain's Isle confest Nought animates the patriot's breast Like generous, nappy ale."
  [Cheers and laughter.]
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: If my hon. Friend thinks my studies of the letterpress of Hogarth

  927
  have been imperfect, I am quite willing to accept him as an able witness to both Bacchus and Ceres. I was sorry to hear him speak disrespectfully of the mixture Aphrodite, because it has always been supposed that these substances rather went together; and I should have thought that that final quotation of my hon. Friend would have prevented him from attacking that particular mixture. The hon. Member has endeavoured to intimidate us by a threat which, I confess, would have had great force with me; he has held up the condition of the brewers as being one of such magnificence that we could not long hope to retain them in this inferior Assembly. In fact, my hon. Friend regards them as the ancient Romans did their Emperor, who was only waiting his apotheosis, and would only remain on earth a short time before his removal to the skies. Seeing the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Bonsor) opposite, I may say of him as Horace did of Augustus, we hope that that may be postponed to a late period, and that we may keep him long with us. I am always delighted to see him, though not delighted to see him in the opposite Lobby. Really, the labouring oar of the defence to the speech we have just listened to rests with the hon. Member for Wimbledon rather than with me, because the hon. Member is one of the great brewers who have been alluded to by the hon. Member for Suffolk. I have a practical objection to the Amendment, and that is that it will not allow the tax to yield any money at all, because four-fifths of the beer is brewed from malt and hops. [An HON. MEMBER: "Four-fifths?"] Yes, those are the figures given me by the Inland Revenue. So the proposal of the hon. Member is to exempt four-fifths of the beer that is brewed from the tax. My £500,000—or, if taken for the whole year, nearly £800,000—would in that case be gone; and that would leave me with a deficit which it is the object of these proposals to fill up. Worse than that, the proposal would involve an enormously expensive system of supervision in every brewery in the country. It was the object of the reforms of the right hon. Member for Midlothian to relieve brewers from a great deal of this expensive supervision, which was very irksome and burdensome
  928
  to them. If you are to make the proposed change you must, as the Inland Revenue inform me, revise the whole of your system, reintroduce supervision in a far worse form and one more injurious to the manufacture than ever existed before, and go to an expense a great deal more than the remaining fifth which will be yielded by the duty. Therefore, the result would be to destroy the yield from the duty altogether; so that there being a deficit, the hon. Member proposes to leave no method at all of meeting that deficit. What is his charge against the brewers? He says they have deteriorated the article by diminishing the healthy gravity which constituted the better quality of beer 40 years ago. My hon. Friend is looking back to the days, as he thinks, of stronger and better men who drank stronger and better ale. But in these later days the growing demand has been for lighter and brighter beer, and that demand has led to a great alteration in manufacture and to the increased employment of the chemist. It is really that, and not any question of taxation, which is the cause of the change which has taken place in the gravity of a large quantity of the beer that is now consumed. My hon. Friend has said something about large and small brewers, but his own proposal is the one which is most injurious to the smaller class of brewers; there is no doubt about that. The smaller class consists of the men who, from imperfect machinery and want of capital, extract less than do others with better resources from a certain quantity of material, whether it be malt or anything else. So that it is what I may call the medium brewers and the smaller brewers who use the larger quantity of the cheaper material as compared with the greater brewers. What would be done by this Amendment would be to place a tax upon the smaller and suffering brewers and the medium brewers who use the greater proportion of these substituted materials and to exempt the greater brewers—the Basses, the Allsopps, the Guinnesses, and the great London brewers.
  *MR. CUTHBERT QUILTERsaid, the information which had been furnished to him did not quite bear out the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that it was the small brewers who were using substitutes more and more.

  929
  He was assured that in the main genuine articles were being used by the smaller brewers.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: That is not altogether in accordance with my information; but it is not material to my point at present. I suppose it would not be affirmed on behalf of Messrs. Guinness, Allsopp, or Bass, that they were using substitutes, except so far as is necessary for the purpose of producing a finer and brighter quality of beer. I understand that in most cases sugar is the material used for priming; it is this introduction of a certain amount of sugar which makes the beer brighter and more palatable just before delivery. That is a process which seems to suit the customer as well as the manufacturer, and the process is similar to that to which champagne is subjected, as a certain amount of sugar produces the effervescence and brightness of champagne. This is one of the reasons why the use of sugar has increased. Therefore, I say, with regard to the second class of brewers this tax would fall upon them, while upon the first-class brewers it would not fall at all, because, owing to the small quantities of substitutes they employ, they would practically escape. Therefore the Amendment proposes a differentiation in favour of the great brewers. A great deal is said about a tax upon home grown barley. But, so long as barley is used, there is no inquiry whether it is grown in Suffolk, or Norfolk, or whether it is Russian or Egyptian. All that you have to do, according to the proposal of my hon. Friend, is to employ the cheapest foreign barley you can get, and then you escape the tax altogether. Therefore my hon. Friend does nothing at all for home-grown barley. From the cheap foreign barley you may brew much worse beer than is produced by those who employ n certain amount of sugar in the manufacture. What really lowers the price of English barley is not the duty upon beer, but it is the price of imported barley. If you were to take the duty off beer altogether, the brewer would not give a penny more for English barley, because the price of English barley is ruled by the price of imported barley, and all that would happen would be that the brewer would put the whole produce if the duty in his pocket and the change
  930
  would not alter the sale price of English barley at all. This argument was used against the right hon. Gentleman opposite in 1890 when he proposed the extra 3d. duty on beer, and the right hon. Gentleman then maintained that there was nothing in the pretence that the duty would fall on the grower of barley. I do not feel that it is my special duty to defend the brewers, except so far as they are one of my principal customers. After all, even to the, brewers justice is due. What is the position of the brewers with regard to the materials they employ? Let us remember what took place in 1880. The agricultural interest had for many years demanded the repeal of the malt-tax and the substitution of the beer-tax. They insisted upon it, and at last a Liberal Government—which is always willing to oblige everybody—granted the prayer, or rather yielded to the menaces, of the agricultural interest. But so jealous were the representatives of the agricultural interest, that the right hon. Member for Sleaford got up and denounced the Member for Midlothian, and said:—
  "You deserve no credit for this, for you have stolen my proposal."
  Well, the malt tax was repealed and the beer duty was imposed. When that, change was effected the right hon. Member for Midlothian founded a system, which has since been very little altered, described in the phrase "free mash"—that was to say, the brewer was allowed to use exactly what materials he chose, and upon that concession to him he was charged a higher rate. The right hon. Member for Midlothian represented the higher charge at that time on the brewers as between £300,000 and £400,000; but, of course, at the present time the sum was much larger, and he then said that was a sum which they ought to pay for being relieved from the inconveniences imposed by the then existing regulations which had fallen upon the maltster. That was a bargain which, if you are prepared to break it, will necessitate the reconsideration of the whole system of the beer duty. I hope the House will allow me to say that, in dealing with questions of taxation, I always desire to look at the

  931
  matter from the point of view of justice to the parties concerned, and I ask the House to consider whether the proposals I am now placing before the House are not founded on justice. Sugar, instead of malt and hops exclusively, was used before 1880, but not to the extent it is now. The figures for the year before 1880 were 1,120,000 cwt. The right hon. Member for Midlothian said in 1880, "The artificial preference thus given—"the preference to malt and hops exclusively—
  "is a serious evil to import into trade. There is nothing so mischievous as for the Legislature to point out, either by positive enactment or fiscal arrangements, to the manufacturer or trader of this country some particular line in which he must conduct his operations, or else that he must be content with a heavy fine if he deviates from it. Twenty years ago—"
  he went on to say—
  "the belief was that paper was a commodity that could not be made from anything but rags, and those who recollect the paper duty controversy will recollect the plaintive tones in which it was represented how every country would cherish its own stock of rags, would not part with this precious commodity to any other country that wanted it; how, in fact, rags were exalted to an elevation in the estimation of mankind which they never enjoyed before and never since. As the House well remembers, absolute ruin was to be the consequence of the removal of the paper duty and of the scarcity of rags. The paper duty was removed; The paper manufacturers who said they would be ruined are making nearly twice the amount of paper which they made before. The word 'rags' is never heard in the Debates of this House."
  There is not the slightest doubt as to the contract which was the basis of the repeal of the malt tax. I looked to see whether the right hon. Member for Sleaford ever demurred to the arrangement by which brewers were to be allowed to use other materials, 1,120,000 cwt. of sugar being used, as everybody expected this material would be used, to a larger extent than others, but he never demurred for a single moment. I am speaking on information given me by the Inland Revenue, and I say that if the Amendment were carried it would have the effect of subjecting the trade to an amount of Excise supervision and interference ten times greater than that which existed in former years—a process which would be extremely offensive to the Inland Revenue and extremely irksome and injurious to the brewers.
  932
  These are very strong reasons against the proposal, besides which there is a fiscal objection. The hon. Member is only going to apply the principle of pure beer to the extra 6d., leaving the remaining 6s. 3d. to be raised on impure beer.
  *MR. QUILTERstated that he desired to put an Amendment on the Paper to give effect to the view now expressed by the right hon. Gentleman, but was unable to do so by the Forms of the House.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I am only dealing with the Amendment as it stands, but the method suggested by the hon. Member is the worst that could possibly be adopted. No doubt the pure beer Bill prohibits the use of any other material for the manufacture of beer than malt and hops. But an attempt to deal with the duties on a differential basis with respect to the employment of substitutes for malt and hops would be most injurious to the Revenue and would disorganise the whole trade. As I have already endeavoured to show, if the Amendment of the hon. Member were to be adopted, a large proportion of the beer brewed would escape the duty altogether as far as the Revenue is concerned, because the reduced amount received would be entirely swallowed up in the extra expenses of the collection. I appeal confidently on this point to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's. I have already endeavoured to show the House that the proposal of the hon. Member would make no difference whatever to the English barley growers. In the course of the discussion on the Budget of 1890 the right hon. Gentleman said that it was possible that for a certain time the brewers might suffer from the imposition of the Beer Duty, but that the barley growers would not suffer at all. I hope, therefore, that in dealing with this matter the House will not be under any misapprehension as to the effect that, the Amendment would have upon the barley growers of the country. It has been said that a great deal of bad stuff has been used in the manufacture of beer, but in my opinion that statement is not correct. It is not disputed that brewers do not put deleterious articles into their beer, although no doubt they use considerable

  933
  and increasing quantities of sugar in its manufacture. For the reasons I have already given I believe that sugar is a good material for brewing the lighter kinds of beer, and I am told that besides sugar other substitutes for malt and hops are rarely used. I am informed that in addition to sugar a certain quantity of maize is used, but there is nothing unwholesome in that grain. The real truth is that brewers are bound to brew a beer which their countrymen want. There can be no question at all about that. When the 6d. extra duty was imposed last year I was told that the quality of the beer might be affected, not in consequence of the use of worse materials for its manufacture, but because the element of water might predominate in the beer. The information that we have obtained on the subject leads us to believe that for a certain time the addition of water to the beer was tried, but that the experiment was found not to answer. The result, therefore, has been that, notwithstanding the imposition of the extra duty, the brewers brew quite as good beer as they did before the tax was imposed. I know that it is supposed by some people that I have destroyed the brewing interest by the imposition of the extra duty, but I repudiate that charge altogether. The figures which I have before me show that the advantage which the brewers have derived from the fall in the cost of the materials used in the manufacture of beer, or which they will derive in the future from the repent fall in the price of those materials is upwards of £2,000,000 a year. Of that sum the public revenue has received some £500,000, while the other £1,500,000 remains in the pockets of the brewers. I think, therefore, that the position of the brewers in the matter is one that, at least, may be endured. The imposition of this tax, therefore, has not injured the brewers, who can well afford to pay it. I am sure that the brewers will not deny that, in view of the profits which they derived last year, and of the profits which they will make during the present year from the fall in prices of the materials used in the manufacture of beer, the amount of the extra tax has been made good to them several times over. It is for that reason that I have asked the House to renew the extra duty
  934
  for a single year. In my opinion, the position of the brewers, notwithstanding the imposition of the extra duty, is one of exceptional advantage, and the proposition I have made can be carried into effect without any injury being caused to them. Then, again, the consumer will not suffer in consequence of the renewal of the duty, because, as I have already stated, our information leads us to believe that the qaality of the beer has not fallen in consequence of the imposition of the extra taxation upon the article. Then, as regards the production of beer, I find that the imposition of the extra duty has not affected it in any way. In 1891 the number of barrels of beer produced was 31,300,000; in 1892, it was 31,525,000; in 1893, it was 31,486,000; in 1894, it was 31,789,000; and in 1895, it was 31,385,000. That shows a diminution in the production of some 400,000 barrels, which took place in the course of a single month. Up to February last, the amount of beer brewed was the same as in the previous year, but in that month the production fell off to the extent of some 400,000 in consequence of the frost. I am afraid that I have occupied the attention of the House at somewhat considerable length on this subject, but I think that it was my duty to lay all the facts connected with the matter before it. I think that the proposition of the hon. Member is quite indefensible, because it would prevent the revenue from deriving any benefit whatever from the tax, and would leave the Exchequer in a position in which it would be unable to meet the deficit it has to face; and I do not know that the hon. Member is prepared to propose any other plan by which that deficit can be met. Of course, I know that there is always a difference of opinion with regard to direct, and indirect taxation, and that, a great many people would be very glad if there were no indirect taxation at all. I am quite certain, however, that the right hon. Gentleman my predecessor in office will not agree with those who wish to put an end to indirect taxation. It is, of course, open, to any future Chancellor of the Exchequer to repeal the Beer Duties altogether if the state of the finances of the country permit of that being done. It would cost you 4d. or 6d. on the Income Tax. If you like that

  935
  change it is one that possibly might be made. I doubt whether it would be profitable to the landed interest or to the Gentlemen who sit opposite. I venture to indicate that an increase of indirect taxation in the future is not likely to take place. If you are going to spend as much money as you spend now—and it is very likely that you are going to spend more—the weight of that expenditure will inevitably fall upon direct taxation and not upon indirect taxation. Therefore, I should advise Gentlemen to think twice and even thrice before they desire to part with this item of indirect taxation. You may say that we are parting with it in regard to the Spirit Duty. That is true. It would not be justifiable for me to levy more taxation than is necessary for the purposes of the public revenue. I had consequently to choose between these two taxes, unless there is somebody who is bold enough to propose some other tax of an indirect character. I cannot take the responsibility. I do not propose it, and I doubt whether anybody in my position would propose a new indirect tax. I remember in 1885, when the Budget of Mr. Childers was brought forward, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol whispered "tea" as a subject for additional taxation, and he was frightened at the echo of his own words, and withdrew them and apologised for them. The right hon. Member for St. George's supported that Budget in the House and out of the House, especially on the ground of in direct taxation. In these circumstances all I have to say to my hon. Friend is that if I had found it in my power to do anything for the relief of the agricultural interest I should have been most happy to do it. If I had had at my disposal that two millions of surplus which has gone in additional expenditure, I might have found myself in a position, to do that which I should be glad to do. But the House and the country are of opinion that that expenditure is desirable, and, therefore, so far from being in a position to grant boons to any interest, I am obliged to perform a duty far less agreeable, and that is to call upon some interests to bear additional burdens. What I have done in this case is to call upon an interest which is a prosperous interest; and I very much doubt whether
  936
  the hon. Member for Wimbledon will say that the class which he so honourably represents have suffered under the duty that has been imposed in a manner that has been oppressive or injurious to their trade. I am quite sure that it is not the experience of the trade generally. I do not believe, being called upon to ask for a sacrifice from some interest, I could have made a fairer or more reasonable proposal. I do not believe that the proposal will raise any vehement opposition from those upon whom the burden is placed. I am quite sure my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon, representing as he does the great brewers, will not support a proposal the effect of which will be felt principally by the second class or medium brewers. I entirely deny that this tax imposes any additional burden upon the agricultural interest. The price of barley is governed by a totally different consideration—by the price of foreign grain. That being so, I hope the House will not accept the proposal of my hon. Friend, which, from his point of view I have no doubt is a very patriotic proposal, but which, from a financial point of view, is entirely unworkable, which, from its very character could not be administered by the Inland Revenue, and which, in its result, would not give to the Exchequer that which is necessary to meet the national expenditure.
  MR. HENRY CHAPLINsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had again assured the House of his deep sympathy with the agricultural interest. But their experience of the right hon. Gentleman's sympathy was, that it was strictly limited to barren words. If the right hon. Gentleman had not found himself in a position, since he had been in office, to give some assistance to the agricultural interest, they might, at any rate, have expected him to abstain from inflicting on that interest, in the hour of its deepest distress, the additional and crushing taxation which was the crowning glory of his Budget of last year. The right hon. Gentleman, greatly to his surprise, had stated that the Motion would do absolutely nothing for homegrown barley, because of the immense imports of foreign barley. But, unless he was totally misinformed, the great bulk of the Russian barley imported into this country was unfit for, and was not

  937
  used for brewing. He thought he would he able to show that the effect of this Motion and of other proposals would be largely to promote the use of barley in brewing, and if that were so, although it might promote the use of foreign as well as home-grown barley, the price of all kinds would be affected. If the right hon. Gentleman had any doubt on that point, and if he felt inclined to suggest a duty on foreign barley, the agriculturists of this country would not raise any objection. He had come to the deliberate conclusion, after having given to this subject the best consideration in his power, that the additional sixpence which was now imposed on beer would, in the long run, fall upon the producers of barley. What had the brewers said on this point? Only last year the hon. Member for Wimbledon said, that if the House would increase the taxation on beer up to a point at which the brewing interest could not afford to pay it, they would get other ingredients from which to brew, and thus the tax would ultimately fall on the growers of barley. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's reply was, that brewers bought in the cheapest market; but in this case the cheapest market meant substitutes for barley and hops. He desired to submit to the House some information which he had recently received from a very distinguished representative of the brewers. His informant said:—
  "It is not difficult to get figures from individual sources to prove that the increase of the Beer Duty has always brought about a similar increase in the use of sugar, and the consequent decrease in the consumption of barley. A friend has furnished me with the following facts within his own experience:—Up to the year 1880 he used no sugar in brewing. On the conversion of the Malt Tax, with its increase of an equivalent of is. to 2s. 6d. a quarter on barley, he commenced using sugar; the first year he used 5,000 cwt., for the following nine years his consumption of sugar was steady, varying according to the season, but averaging about 5,500 cwt. a year. In 1889, Mr. Goschen added 3d. a barrel to the Beer Tax, or another 1s. a quarter on to barley, and my friend the brewer's consumption jumped at once from 5,500 cwt. to 11,000 cwt. of sugar. From 1889 to 1894, his consumption again remained stationery until the Budget speech of last year. During the last 12 months he has used 17,000 cwt. He informs me his trade is stationery. This absolutely occurred in one brewery; and, no doubt, the Returns to be issued next autumn will show that my friend's experience is not singular, and that the consumption of barley since the late increase has been materially reduced."
  938
  He thought that was a statement which he was justified in submitting to the Committee, because it was a most effective reply to the repeated declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that barley was in no way affected by this tax. As a matter of fact, barley, as they knew from figures which had been quoted over and over again in the House, was superseded by cheaper materials to an enormous extent. They had been told last year by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, in a perfectly straightforward fashion, and with perfect truth, that if the tax was increased the brewers must begin to consider how they were to get it back again. Said the hon. Member:—
  "We cannot alter the price of beer, for we cannot divide it up sufficiently. We must, therefore, give less for our materials; and if we cannot get barley at a price we can afford to pay for it, we must get other things instead."
  Those were the views of the brewers, and they were borne out to the letter by facts and figures and statistics, and had been quoted in the House over and over again. Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer supported those views, for he had admitted that the consumption of sugar in in brewing had gone up.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I would point out that the increase in the use of sugar had gone on steadily before the duty was increased. It did not arise from the increase in the duty, but simply because the brewers found it more advantageous to use sugar in order to accommodate the tastes of their customers.
  MR. CHAPLINthought it was the taste that had to accommodate itself to the duty, and not that the duty had accommodated itself to the taste. What the right hon. Gentleman had said on that point was in direct contradiction to the statement he (Mr. Chaplin) had read to the House from one of the most representative
  brewers of England.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I have quoted the authentic official figures.
  MR. CHAPLINsaid, they must agree to differ on the point. He could not convince the right hon. Gentleman, and he was quite sure the right hon. Gentle man could not convince him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had also said that beer made from the substitutes

  939
  of malt and hops was not deleterious. He wondered how the right hon. Gentleman could have made such a statement after the description given of some of those substitutes by the hon. Member for Sudbury. For his part he was bound to say that, considering the injurious effect which the use of those substitutes had on the growers of barley, and the alarming consequences which must ensue to the consumers of beer made from them, if the hon. Member for Sudbury went to a division he would most certainly support him. He would not enter into the other extraordinary and inconsistent statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he said—
  "I cannot do anything of the kind, because it is so unjust to the brewers."
  The position of the right hon. Gentleman seemed to be this: You must not touch the free mash-tub; that is part of the arrangement, but with regard to the other part of the arrangement—the amount of duty to be put upon the brewers—you can touch that as much as you like. More one-sided injustice than that it would be difficult to imagine. But he frankly owned that he, for his part, would prefer to see the question debated upon wider and broader grounds altogether. It was perfectly true that the disadvantages under which barley growers were labouring at the present time, and which he did think the Amendment would have some effect in lessening, wore very largely due to the repeal of the Malt Tax. Upon that point he had no doubt of any sort or kind. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that the repeal of the tax had formerly been urged by the representatives of the agricultural interest; and that they had accepted the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian when the Tax was repealed. That was quite true, and he was perfectly willing to make a present to the right hon. Gentleman, of any rhetorical advantage he might gain by that admission. But, unless his memory altogether deceived him, the main argument which had always been used by agriculturists in support of the repeal of the Malt Tax was, that it interfered with them in the use of one of their own products grown on their own land, in a form which they found most advantageous for the feeding of cattle, stock and horses on their farms.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: The farmers were relieved of those hindrances before the repeal of the Malt Tax. There were several earlier legislative proposals to remove the difficulty the right hon. Gentleman refers to.
  MR. CHAPLINsaid, he knew of those legislative attempts to relieve the farmers. But they failed altogether; they were found to be absolutely useless; and the cry for the repeal of the Malt Tax was redoubled, and the Act repealing the tax was passed on the demand that was made by the farmers that they should be allowed to use their own produce in their own way. But it was no part of the programme of the agriculturists at that time that a whole variety of substitutes were to be brought into competition with their barley. That part of the proposals came from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian. He acknowledged with great humility and contrition that the evil effects of those proposals were not so immediately apparent to the agricultural party as a whole, as no doubt they were to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian, who had forced upon them a most questionable gift. But they soon became apparent afterwards, and there was no doubt in the minds of agriculturists, after a short experience, that the arrangement was most injurious to the growers of English barley. In fact he found—although he had forgotten all about it—that in the year following the repeal of the Malt Tax he moved a Resolution, calling the attention of the House to the injury it had caused, and also calling for a readjustment of the duty. The effect of the Malt Tax on barley was this: As between barley and other materials used for brewing it gave the advantage to barley; and as between different kinds of barley, it undoubtedly gave the advantage to best barley over inferior barley of the same amount, and for this reason: the duty was then charged upon material instead of being charged on the product, as at the present time; and from the same quantity of material, in the case of barley, a greater amount of the saccharine product could be obtained; and again from the same quantity of superior barley a greater amount could be obtained than from the inferior barley. That was a state of things

  941
  under which barley grown in this country reaped the full advantage of the superior' qualities which Nature in its beneficence had bestowed upon it, but of which it was entirely deprived at present by the conditions under which the Revenue was collected. In his humble opinion, that was the position in which the English barley grower was placed, and that was the manner in which he was affected at the present time. If the Committee would allow him to do so, he desired to make a suggestion to the brewers who, as well as the agriculturists, were concerned in this question. At the present time the tax was charged upon the product, and under that system the substitutes for barley in brewing were benefited to the detriment of barley itself. The duty could be collected, if the Government pleased, either on the material or on the product. As a matter of fact, in some cases the tax was collected on the material. That way undoubtedly favoured barley, and the other way favoured substitutes such as rice and maize. He wanted to know why, if anything else were equal, they should give the preference to materials which were not grown in this country? He therefore put it to the representatives of the brewers whether it would not be well, if at all possible, to revert to the old method of levying the charge on the material instead of on the product, if it could be done without injury to the brewers. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer were correct in his statement, which he doubted, that four-fifths of the beer of this country was made from malt and hops, the charge which he suggested would not be so great as would otherwise be the case. But yet, if such a system were adopted, he was certain it would be a most material help to the agricultural interest, particularly in the districts where the deepest depression prevailed at the present time, and he was also sure that, if it could be done without injury to others, there was not a single Member of the House who would not rejoice at the opportunity of doing so good a work. He could only hope that the proposal which he had ventured to shadow out might be construed in the spirit in which it was offered. He might be asked why he made this proposal now? The obvious answer was that it was because of the deplorable position the agricultural
  942
  industry was in. Nothing to his mind was more extraordinary or remarkable at the present time than the apparent, apathy and indifference with which this subject was treated, not only in Parliament, but also in the country. And yet the agricultural industry was after all the greatest and chief industry of this country, and it had often been said with great truth, that when the chief industry of any other country was declining and upon the verge, or even within measurable distance of ruin, that country was in great danger of declining itself. The evidence as to the decline of agriculture was accumulating from day to day and becoming overwhelming. He hoped the House would allow him to read two very short extracts upon this subject from men of experience and ability, who had been charged by the Agricultural Commission with the duty of visiting the different districts in England, and who had expressed their opinions in the clearest and most unmistakable manner. He took the Report which was issued only the other day dealing with the counties of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Northampton, and this was what he found stated by Mr. Hunter Pringle:—
  "It is my plain duty, and I do not shrink from it, to advise the Commissioners that if prices do not at once make a very great improvement, the country may be prepared to see thousands of acres of good corn-growing land thrown into grass, and thousands of farm labourers cast into poverty and idleness.''
  Much more was said on the subject of the labourers in the same Report as striking or even more so than this, but he did not want to unduly delay the House by quoting it. He turned from Northamptonshire, which stood ninth in the list of counties growing barley, and took another county which grew infinitely more, namely, Suffolk. A witness from Suffolk said, that—
  "The land that is rapidly going out of cultivation would be kept under the plough if the price of barley were not kept down. Barley is the staple product of all the best land in Suffolk."
  In his Report, Mr. Arthur Wilson Fox—all of whose Reports showed that he was a man of great ability and deserving of the greatest credit—thus concluded his observations:—
  "I have had the opportunity of reporting to the Royal Commission on counties widely dissimilar in character, and in which the agricultural depression has made its mark in varying

  943
  degrees, namely, the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. And having hart this varied experience, I say, after an exhaustive inquiry in Suffolk, and with no desire to paint the picture blacker than it is, that agriculture in that county is well nigh strangled."
  He could heap up an accumulation of evidence of this character from numerous districts and counties in England, but he thought he had said enough on this point. It was upon these grounds that he had taken upon himself to make this suggestion to the House, because the Committee might be assured that, if it were possible to do anything in this direction which would by legitimate means promote the use and growth and improve the price of barley in England at the present time, they would be doing something more materially effective for the interests—not only of the owners of land or farmers, but still more of that labouring population who lived by the plough and by the cultivation of the soil, than by any other means which he believed at present it would be possible to devise. And surely it was a modest and reasonable request to make. All he asked for was nothing but a simple re-adjustment of a single duty, the object of which was to promote the larger use of barley and hops in the brewing of beer in this country, the effect of which would be to raise, without increasing, their necessary revenue in a manner more beneficial to the interests of that great industry than that by which that revenue was raised at the present moment. He could only conclude by saying if this task were attempted with a real, a serious, and an earnest desire to achieve that object, he could and would not believe it was beyond the power, the ability, and the genius of an English Government to accomplish it.
  MAJOR RASCHin supporting the Amendment, said, he desired to deal with the subject from the point of view of an agricultural Member. In the eastern counties they did not in the least agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he said that the passing of a Pure Beer Bill, or the carrying of such an Amendment as that of the hon. Member for the Sudbury Division with reference to barley, would not considerably assist the barley growers and relieve them from the pressure of agricultural distress. As to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the latter part of
  944
  his speech, they were quite prepared to furnish him with a substitute to choke the deficit to which he alluded, and which would not hurt anybody, but would give universal satisfaction. He should like to have moved the Amendment which stood in his name, but circumstances over which he had no control prevented him doing so. The 5d. in his Amendment, which hon. Members might think rather an eccentric sum was, put there because he was informed by people who knew the forms of the House, that 5d. was in order, but that a larger sum was not. Had it rested with him he should have liked to put it at 5s. He desired also to say he did not hold a brief for the brewers. He was not a brewer himself; he wished he was. He spoke for the South eastern Division of Essex, and there was no part of England where the agricultural distress was greater. In fact, he might consider himself the absolute epitome and incarnation of agricultural distress in the House. In the years he had been in the House he had never seen that agriculture had the slightest chance of being treated as it deserved to be by hon. Members occupying responsible positions on the Front Bench. Irish and Welsh Members got what they insisted on, and, as for Scotland, they were perpetually carrying on Scottish business in the House. Agriculture, however, was always left out in the cold, and this was a criticism which applied to both Governments. He never knew an instance of such political immorality as that, committed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with reference to this Beer Duty. They all knew why the Beer Duty was continued. The right hon. Gentleman told them that the Spirit Duty brought in next to nothing, and that distillers were overtaxed, but he forgot to tell them that the principal reason for the Beer Duty was the votes of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. How did the matter work out? Perhaps hon. Members were not aware that there were something like 6,000,000 acres under barley cultivation in the eastern counties, and that the best customer of the barley grower was the brewer. The brewers were fellow creatures, who must live. And what would they do if the trade was penalised and a duty like this was placed on beer? They would have to lessen, the oust of production, and

  945
  go to other places, where they could buy cheaper, for their raw material. If they went elsewhere for the raw material, the consequence was that the British barley-grower did not sell what I he had got to sell, and the land which had been under barley cultivation goes out of tillage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the duty of 6d. on beer had done no harm, and that, on the contrary, the brewers rather liked it, and the public did not get any worse beer. But, surely, to lower the specific gravity of beer simply meant taking the money out of the pocket of the agricultural interest, by discouraging the growth of British barley and encouraging the use of foreign barley and substitutes for it with Greek names. They were told that the Amendment would draw upon the agricultural interest the opposition of the brewing interest. His own idea, however, was—and it was the general feeling in the county he represented that the brewing interest and the agricultural interest ought to stand together and fight shoulder to shoulder against the taxes placed upon them by Chancellors of the Exchequer on one side or the other. Although he was a Free Trader himself, he could not understand hon. Gentlemen opposite, who supported Free Trade principles, allowing farmers to be penalised in every way, and raising not the slightest objection to seeing goods poured into the country which paid no duty and no taxes at all, and which took the bread out of the farmers' mouths. There was a simple method by which the deficit, which would be created by the adoption of the Amendment, could be made up. It was so obvious, that it was almost insulting the intelligence of the House to suggest it. If the right hon. Gentleman accepted it, he would have the votes of the brewers, he would promote the objects of the Temperance Party, and he would please everybody all round. Why did not the Chancellor of the Exchequer put a duty on British wines which were alcoholised to the extent of something like 12 per cent., a great deal more than, port and sherry? These British wines were made wholesale in this country; they poisoned the whole community, and were a fraud on the brewer and the virtuous gin distiller; and so choke off the deficit which the adoption of the Amendment would
  946
  involve. He was perfectly aware the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a desire to help the agricultural interest, but his platonic desire to do so never came to anything. The agricultural interest might very well say to the right hon. Gentleman:—
  "Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me downstairs?"
  Even at the eleventh hour he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to help them.
  *MR. H. BROADHURSTalmost regretted that the hon. Member for the Sudbury Division should have brought forward this Amendment, because if he went to a Division he would drive many hon. Members who were in favour of the Pure Beer Bill into the opposite Lobby, and so misrepresent their position. The statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that at the present time four-fiths of the beer brewed is brewed from malt and hops alone, was a revelation to most hon. Members, and especially if it was true, the necessity for the Pure Beer Bill was largely reduced, and the ground was cut from underneath the feet of the hon. Member for Sudbury. He thought the Committee was bound to accept the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, coming, as it did, from the Inland Revenue officers, who had the means of obtaining information throughout the whole country. Under these circumstances, however much one was inclined to favour the Bill of his hon. Friend, he could not follow him into the Lobby. He was in favour of pure beer, and he could not but think that if they could give encouragement to the home brewing of beer in this country, they would do much, not only to lessen intemperance, but also to improve the price of barley, and so aid the farmers in their present struggle. He lived his home life in a community of farmers, and he would gladly do his utmost to help his neighbours to better their condition, but he felt that their minds were being turned entirely in the wrong direction, for many of the remedies proposed were mere delusions. It would be remembered that the malt tax was repealed at the instance of the farmers and the farmers advocates, who advised them that the repeal would do very little good to the

  947
  farmers. If the farmers were misled then by their leaders, what guarantee was there that they were not being misled now? The right hon. Member for Sleaford alluded to the possibility of the Chancellor of the Exchequer putting a tax upon barley, and said such a tax would be welcomed by all the Members on the Opposition side of the House. But he noticed that the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, did not endorse that proposition, or indicate any assent to it. The fact was there was not one right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench who had the courage to act up to the declaration of his right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford, except the right hon. Member for Thanet (Mr. James Lowther). He had no doubt that when the Conservative Party returned to Office they would honour themselves by giving a prominent place to the right hon. Member for Thanet, and then the farmers might have some hope. His right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford held a responsible post in the last Government as Minister for Agriculture; in fact the office was made for him, and he for the office. He meant that there was no man on that side of the House more fitted to hold that office by his knowledge and experience of agriculture than the right hon. Gentleman. But while he had that magnificent majority at his disposal he never raised a single finger of his hand to help agriculture in any way whatever. [Opposition cries of "Oh!" and "The Chancellor of the Exchequer did."] He was not dealing with anything which the Chancellor of the Exchequer did. He was discussing the right hon. Member for Sleaford, and his complaint was that the right hon. Gentleman, who held the great position of Minister of Agriculture for about six years under the late Government, never, during the whole of that time, attempted in any degree to give effect to the suggestion which the right hon. Gentleman had made public that afternoon—namely, that a tax on barley would be welcome. Why had not the right hon. Gentleman the courage to stand up before, instead of deluding his followers and friends with hopes impossible of realisation? No man was the friend of the tenant farmers who led their minds to think
  948
  that they could obtain relief in Protection, and no Government, in this century or the next, would have the hardihood to propose it.
  MR. H. T. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN: I rise to Order. Is it competent for the hon. Member to discuss Protection upon this Motion? I was prepared to discuss that question, but I was told that I should not be allowed to do so.
  *MR. BROADHURST,continuing, said, he wanted to protect the farmers in his part of the country, who might read the speech of the right hon. Member for Sleaford, against the delusion that would be created in their minds that it was possible to put a protective duty on imported goods used in the manufacture of beer, and thus, as was suggested, to better their lot by that policy.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I am sorry I was out of the House when the hon. Member made his remarks about me. I have no recollection whatever of discussing the question of whether it was possible or not possible. That is a matter for Parliament to decide. I merely suggested it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a matter that would be of immense benefit to agriculture.
  *MR. BROADHURSTsaid, that he was totally unable to distinguish between what he had said and what the right hon. Gentleman had just stated in a very open manner. He contended that all those speeches and suggestions, whether made in earnest or not, were an injury to the farming industry, and hon. Gentlemen and right hon. Gentlemen who held responsible positions in past Governments and who would undoubtedly hold them in future Governments, ought not so to delude their farming friends, but should tell them some home truths like the hon. Member for Ramsey had done. He knew the depression in agriculture, and no one acquainted with the agricultural classes—men of honour, sobriety, and integrity—could but sympathise with them in their trouble. Relief must, however, be looked for in an entirely different direction from that indicated by one or two of the speakers that afternoon. For these reasons he should feel it his duty to go into the Lobby against the misleading Motion proposed by the hon. Member for the

  949
  Sudbury Division (Mr. W. Cuthbert Quilter).
  *MR. COSMO BONSORsaid, that he always felt reluctant to enter into these discussions, because hon. Gentlemen appeared to know more about the brewing industry than he did. He should not now intervene but for the remarks of the hon. Member for Essex. He regretted that, on the present occasion, he could not follow his suggestion, and could not vote for the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Sudbury. There were one or two specific reasons why he could not do so. One was because he did not believe that it would be possible to collect the tax at all if it were to be taken off one part of the brewing products, and put on to another part. It would, in his view, be impossible to carry out a preferential tax in the way proposed. Again, he could not vote for the Amendment, because, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had pointed out, it would be an upsetting of the compact made in 1880. He would now pass to the speech of his right hon. Friend, the Member for Sleaford (Mr. Chaplin). The last speaker had absolutely misrepresented his right hon. Friend. He certainly did not understand his right hon. Friend to make any suggestion to put an import tax on foreign articles used in brewing. His right hon. Friend alluded to the fact that the tax was collected in two ways—in some instances, upon the material used in brewing; but, as a rule, in all large breweries, it was collected upon the product; and he suggested that the tax should be shifted so as always to fall on the material used in brewing. His right hon. Friend did not make any particular suggestion as to how that was going to benefit agriculturists, but he gathered that his right hon. Friend wished to give a preference to barley malt used in brewing. For his own part, he did not see why that suggestion should not be taken into most earnest consideration. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that they could not put a tax on materials used in brewing without readjusting the beer tax. He agreed with that statement, and he did not believe that it was possible, by any Amendment, to bring about that re-adjustment. He naturally saw a great many difficulties
  950
  in the way of re-adjustment, though he did not suppose that those difficulties were greater than those which were pointed out at the time of the change from the malt tax. If a conference on the subject were proposed, and if the House desired to assist the great agricultural industry, he believed he spoke on behalf of nearly every brewer in this country in saving that they, at least, would enter into that conference with an absolutely open mind. He could not vote for the Amendment. He wished to remark, in conclusion, that he was amused at the list of the various articles which his right hon. Friend read out as being used in the manufacture of beer. It was news to him. Some of them were articles he had never heard of in that connection, and he thought he was reading the beautiful names of trade marks which were given to the various rice and maize materials so prevalently offered to brewers throughout the country.
  *MR. BROOKFIELDdesired, first of all, to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Broadhurst). He could not congratulate the hon. Member on the change that seemed to have come over his opinions since he addressed the electors in Mid Norfolk the other day. There the main stress of his appeal for their franchises in favour of the candidate he was supporting, was that they should go in for a comprehensive scheme for ensuring pure beer. But, when it came to carrying it out in the House, the hon. Member forgot his friends in Mid Norfolk, and occupied himself in abuse of the proposal made by the candidate whom he was sent there to support. The hon. Member's exordium was the most practical part of his speech, in which he recalled the promise that he made to his constituents at Leicester to the effect that he would never desert the hon. Baronet the Member for Cockermouth (Sir W. Lawson).
  *MR. BROADHURST: Will the hon. Gentleman quote the speech to which he is referring?
  *Mr. BROOKFIELDsaid he would do so. The speech was delivered by the hon. Member at the Temperance Hall, Leicester, on Monday, April 16, 1894. He would read from the report

  951
  which appeared in a local Gladstonian paper, The Leicester Daily Mercury. The hon. Member said:—
  "Another question was with reference to the Local Veto Bill. For an answer to that he referred his hearers to the report of the speech made to the deputation of the Licensed Victuallers Association on that afternoon within two minutes of his arrival in Leicester. His vote would be the same in the future as it had been in the past, and he did not, think he had ever voted in a different lobby to Sir Wilfrid Lawson on Temperance or any other subject."
  *MR. BROADHURST: That is quite a different version from the hon. Gentleman's first quotation.
  *MR. BROOKFIELDsaid, he would leave the hon. Member to explain any discrepancy to his constituents and the friends in Mid Norfolk, whom he had deluded as to his attitude on the pure beer question. It might reasonably be asked what precise benefit was likely to accrue to agriculture from this proposal? He thought it might possibly be exaggerated. But there was this to be said for the proposal. They were constantly asked why the agricultural Members did not formulate some plan upon which they were all agreed—upon which unanimity prevailed. Well, he knew of no question of a secondary character upon which such complete harmony prevailed as upon this question of pure beer. Bills had been brought forward on the subject and Committees had reported in favour of the principle; and the advantage of this proposal, from the Government point of view, was that it was one upon which, in the agricultural community, absolute unanimity prevailed. The Government had been blamed for their supposed motive in giving way on the spirit duty, but their motive in doing so was, at all events, intelligible. What was to him unintelligible was their extraordinary dread of doing anything that could conciliate the farming or agricultural population. They seemed to think that the agricultural districts were too hopelessly Conservative ever to be called back into the fold, and certainly recent events might appear to justify that view. But they were in serious straits at the present moment, and if a substantial temptation were offered to the farmers he had some doubt whether they would not give way to it. He could not understand why the whole Party opposite did not unite in passing
  952
  some such legislation as the hon. Member for Sudbury had adumbrated that day. The real question at issue was the extent to which adulteration took place, and even hon. Members who did not take an extreme view of the matter, would join in denouncing the inaccuracy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he talked about there being such a proportion as four-fifths of beer brewed from malt and hops. The source of information of the right hon. Gentleman was, doubtless, a permanent official, and he imagined the discrepancy in this case had arisen because the right hon. Gentleman had asked what proportion of beer had malt and hops in it; but he led the House to suppose that there was a larger proportion of beer which had nothing but malt and hops in it. He was well aware that the whole case for pure beer might be much exaggerated; so, on the other hand, could the story told of the attitude taken by the hon. Member for the Wimbledon Division be sometimes exaggerated. The brewers had the privilege of stating to the Revenue what was the amount of sugar they used, but even their figures made out that the present system of brewing, which the extra 6d. duty helped to perpetrate, was causing an enormous displacement of agricultural products. It was not scientifically accurate for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that the popular taste demanded larger quantities of sugar. He believed the popular taste to be entirely the other way. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to his taste for beer in his early days; but was it not a fact that people of every rank who, forty, or even twenty years ago, were in the habit of drinking beer, now lamented that they were unable to do so? In those bad times he thought it would be a great advantage to agriculture if pure beer was produced and its consumption stimulated. It used to be supposed that brewers would never use more than 30 per cent. of sugar as compared with malt. But some of them in 1894 used as much as 35 per cent. and upwards. One of the largest firms, which used 32·8 per cent. of sugar, used 30,497 cwt. more sugar and 66,578 bushels less malt last year than in the year before; and if that was the evidence supplied by brewers themselves as regarded the direct displacement of malt

  953
  by sugar alone, what might they fairly infer would be the total displacement of malt and hops by sugar, maize, and rice, and hop substitutes such to quassia.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that one-seventh as to sugar was the absolute figure.
  *MR. BROOKFIELDsaid, he would not dispute an ascertained fact of that kind, but the Return lately issued relating to brewers' licences, from which he took his figures, showed a very large excess in the use of sugar at the present time over times past. With regard to the adulteration of hops, the Committee which sat at his instance a few years ago, took very startling evidence as to the chemicals used. For instance, the substance quassia, when brewers had strong motives for using something of the kind, rose in price from £5 to £40 a ton. In the same year, camomile rose from 40s. to 120s.; guinea grain from 32s. to 60s. per cwt.; Colombo root from 22s. to 95s., and cheretta from 3d. to 3s. per 1b. The Committee to which he referred, though hostile to the main proposals brought forward by those whom he represented, reported that when materials of that kind were used the brewer should declare that he had used them. He could assure the House that there lurked behind this question, as well as others of a similar kind, a strong feeling on the part of the public that means should be given to people to know the real nature of the article they purchased. The conclusion he had arrived at as to the question of adulteration was, that it was very much a question of locality. In the less populated districts, where the inhabitants were still so primitive in their habits as to drink beer for no other purpose than quenching their thirst, they generally obtained an article which, by some stretch of courtesy, might be called pure beer; but in the densely crowded towns, where they drank for many other reasons, and frequently for no reason at all, they were very rarely supplied with pure beer. It was not a little interesting that that part of the United Kingdom where the purest beer was consumed was certainly Ireland. Scotland came next, and in England the most adulterated kinds were consumed. In Galway, where there was practically no adulteration, the number of bushels of malt used
  954
  per cwt. of sugar in 1892 was 7,180; in 1894, 6,456. At the same time, in East London, the number was, 18·1 in 1892; and 15·2 last year, per cwt. of sugar. In Birmingham the proportion was only 11·5 bushels of malt per cwt. of sugar in 1892, and also in 1894. So Birmingham had the distinction of brewing the beer with the least amount of malt, with the largest amount of sugar, which did the greatest damage by displacing agricultural products. He believed it was one of the few places in the kingdom where there was a Radical brewer to be found. The proposal involved in the Amendment of his hon. Friend was, that the authorities should have recourse to the principle of taxing the constituent materials of beer instead of the beer itself. The barley-growers of this kingdom were pretty generally agreed that they were shortsighted, as well as selfish, in clamouring for the repeal of the Malt Duty, and certainly the hop-growers were absolutely unanimous in deploring the taking off of the Customs as well as the Excise Duty in 1861. He supported the proposal because he saw in it the stepping-stone to something more important, namely, the discriminating not only in favour of the material which came from a particular interest, but also of that which came from our native country, as distinguished from foreign countries. He believed that support would be accorded to much more drastic proposals than those they were now advocating; certainly those proposals would have the support of the great bulk of the farmers, and, he believed, of labouring men in the most distressed parts of this country. He appealed to the brewers, if there were any in the House at that moment, to re-consider their attitude. At no previous time had agriculture been at such a low ebb, yet never, probably, in the history of the world were the brewers doing such a flourishing trade as now, making, he believed, some 60 per cent. profit. Out of this very large sum they did not propose to take anything, but, on the contrary, to relieve them from some infinitesimal tax, and he thought they might be charitable to their two humble dependents who asked for their assistance. The pure beer question would have to be settled by one Government or another, and he was sure the proposal of his hon. Friend, which he intended to support, furnished a useful basis for

  955
  an improvement in our whole system of taxation.
  MR. G. J. GOSCHENsaid, that three distinct questions had been dealt with in the Debate, the question of pure beer, of agricultural distress, and the fiscal question in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer was specially interested. His hon. Friend who had just sat down said he believed that the country generally was in favour of pure beer; there was one person who they knew was not in favour of pure beer, he had pronounced against pure beer, and was more in favour of sugared beer—that was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was not touched by the complaints either of the agriculturists or the beer drinkers, and believed, rightly or wrongly, that the public taste was now in favour of beer that was brewed from sugar rather than from barley.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I have never said anything like that.
  MR. GOSCHENsaid, he did not wish to misrepresent the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman said, however, that it was the public taste which preferred the lighter beer, and he most distinctly argued that the increased consumption of sugar was not due in the slightest degree to any alteration in taxation, but was due to a taste which had developed for these lighter beers. After all that would only be the personal view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it was important as it affected the question as to what had or had not induced that increased use of sugar which the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself acknowledged. There was no more complicated question than that of the effect which the taxation of beer had upon barley, or upon the consumer, or the brewer. The right hon. Gentleman himself had, he understood, come to the conclusion that it was the brewer who paid the tax, and had throughout justified its imposition by the large profits that were made by the brewers. If the brewer paid the tax, and the right hon. Gentleman had insisted upon it, what became of his general appeal to them that it was indirect taxation they would be voting against in voting against
  956
  this increased duty. He could not call it indirect taxation if the duty was levied upon one particular class. He did not himself lay down absolutely that it was paid by the brewers, but if it was, would the right hon. Gentleman maintain that it was indirect taxation. A great deal had been said as to the degree to which barley was affected by the Tax, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had quoted an opinion which he expressed in 1890 that the Tax did not affect the price of barley. He thought now, however, that evidence was accumulating in support of the view that the price of barley suffered in consequence of the increased duty. He had been informed by a member of a firm of brewers that on the very day when the Chancellor of the Exchequer imposed the additional duty his firm began to use sugar for the first time. Brewers considered that they were entitled to a certain amount of profit, and that, when necessary, that profit should be got out of the quality of their materials, or the price of their materials. When they could not get it out of the price of some materials, they passed from those materials "which cost more to those which cost less—in other words, they passed from barley to sugar, maize, rice, and other ingredients. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that anyone who studied the question for five minutes would see that the duty could not affect the price of barley, because foreign barley competing with British barley would determine the price of the latter. But if the use of sugar should increase and the demand for beer made from barley should fall off that would affect the prices both of the imported and the home-grown article. He had been told by experts that British barley had superior qualities for malting as compared with foreign barley, and, therefore, if there were an increased use of barley for malting, British barley would benefit. In Radnorshire, since the imposition of the extra sixpence the value of barley produced in the county had undergone a change, and barley had not been as saleable as before. He admitted that fiscal necessities might require that the same sum should still be raised from beer as was raised at the present moment, but if that Tax pressed

  957
  with special severity upon one particular ingredient, why not try some readustment of the Duty which might be expected to produce the same fiscal results? The hon. Member for Wimbledon said that, in his opinion, that would not be an impossible course. That was a very important admission to come from the hon. Member, who also said that every brewer in the country would approach the subject with every desire to ascertain whether, if the duty had to be levied, it could not be so levied as to save agriculture from loss. The important question for consideration was whether this extra Beer Duty was injuring barley, and, if it was, whether the sixpence could not be taken off. The particular Amendment before the Committee he should not be able to support, because it would apparently cause a loss to the Revenue without achieving an adequate result.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERobserved that most hon. Gentlemen who had spoken had shunted the Amendment and devoted their attention to other considerations. The suggestions of the right hon. Member for Sleaford for an alteration of the whole scheme of the Beer Duty it was not necessary that he should discuss now, because the right hon. Gentleman's proposal was not that of the Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's admitted that he had changed his mind as to the effect of the Duty upon the price of barley. His own opinion had not changed, and he could adduce very strong arguments to show that the right hon. Gentleman's former opinion was the correct one. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman put his present views into practice when he was in office between 1886 and 1892? [Mr. GOSCHEN: "We had not had the experience."] Experience which the right hon. Gentleman thought valuable was apparently only experince gained in Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman said the more sugar was used the more the price of barley was diminished. But if the use of sugar were done away with altogether, what effect would it have on the great reservoir of foreign barley which really ruled the price? The amount of sugar used was so infinitesimal that it did not enter into consideration at all.
  958
  Foreign barley would always govern the price. The right hon. Gentleman said that nobody who had been responsible, and might be responsible again, for the finances of the country would support an Amendment which would practically leave the Revenue in a debt. The right hon. Gentleman voted last year against every tax that would meet the expenditure of the country in succession. He voted against the Beer Duty, the Spirit Duty, the Death Duties, in fact, against everything. Therefore, he was quite certain that the right hon. Gentleman this year, when a fair opportunity offered, would vote against any tax that would meet the liabilities of the nation. But for the present they had to deal only with the Amendment before the Committee. His hon. Friend the Member for the Sudbury Division had made an interesting and amusing speech, but his arguments did not support the Amendment; and the hon. Member for Rye advocated a duty on foreign barley. That had no bearing on the Amendment, as the Amendment allowed the unlimited use of foreign barley. The right hon. Gentleman opposite said that English barley was better brewing material than foreign barley. That was not the opinion of some of the greatest brewers. One of them said to him—
  "We use a large quantity of foreign barley because it has not more sun in it"
  and it was quite likely that barley ripened in Egypt had more saccharine matter in it than English barley in a bad year might have. It had also been argued that if there was no duty brewers would use less sugar. Brewers used sugar and other materials because they were the cheapest and answered their purpose. There was no way of stopping the use of sugar except by prohibiting its use, and by prohibiting the use of any materials other than malt and hops. As regarded the question of hops, he did not see that this Amendment touched it at all. In these circumstances he hoped hon. Members would consider that the Amendment had been sufficiently discussed, and would allow the opinion of the House to be taken upon it.
  COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYsaid, he had been

  959
  personally associated with a Bill which aimed in the direction of this Amendment, and he was audacious enough to think that all the arguments in favour of the Amendment had not been thoroughly exhausted even now. He therefore desired to address himself to a few of those arguments, which he hoped might have some effect on the minds of the Committee. Some mistake seemed to have arisen as to what the Amendment did not propose, as well as to what it did propose. The Amendment undoubtedly supported the principle of pure beer, and in that connection he must say that he did not quite envy the position of the hon. Member for Leicester, who feared he would misrepresent himself in the Lobby. He had no doubt he would if he did not vote in favour of the Amendment, seeing that he had supported the Pure Beer Bill both in the House and in the country. Several Members who supported Her Majesty's Government had made this very question their battle-horse in their own constituencies, and he would like to know the reason why when they spoke to their particular constituents—[Cries of "Oh!" and "Question!"] If any hon. Members would interrupt him with coherent interruptions he would be glad to deal with them, but incoherent interruptions would not prevent him from saying what he had to say. The Amendment now before the House made it necessary for its supporters to make, good the proposition that the present arrangement did affect the interests of the industry with which he was connected, and he thought he could support that by pointing to the fact that the representatives of the brewing interest had themselves warned the House that the increase in this tax meant a lesser price to the producers of barley. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech this year pointed out that this tax did not fall on the brewers nor upon the consumers. It must fall on somebody, and, therefore, it was not unnatural that the agriculturists should think that some part of it, at all events, fell upon them. They did not pretend to be great financiers, but he would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to put himself in the position of the simple-minded agriculturist as faced by facts. What had happened in the quarter ending December, 1893? The
  960
  average price of barley in England was 29s. 1d. per quarter. In the same quarter of the subsequent year, after the tax had been imposed, the average price was 22s. 7d., or a drop of about 6s. Was it unnatural that the drop should be connected with the tax the right hon. Gentleman had seen fit to impose? There was something more than that to be said. They had also to make out the proposition that this increased tax vitally affected the concerns of agriculture, and agriculturists would note with dissatisfaction that this Debate had gone through without the interposition by word or look of sympathy from the right hon. Gentleman who specially represented agriculture in the House. They would have been better pleased to hear something from him on the subject. The total quantity of malt and corn used by brewers up to the year ending September 30, 1893, was 55,654,000 odd bushels. In 1894, after several months of the tax, that amount had decreased by 878,000 bushels. It would be a low estimate to say that one-half of that was British-grown barley. Assuming that was so, that would be equivalent to a loss of 54,880 quarters of barley. Agriculturists lost by the direct alteration of the tax 54,880 quarters. If the average price of malting barley were taken at 34s. a quarter, there would be a loss to the barley producers of this country of over £93,000, and if the price were taken at 30s. a quarter, the loss would be £82,000. That was a very serious loss that agriculturists had been called upon to bear within the last year, and surely it was not unnatural that they should connect it with the very-large impost the Chancellor of the Exchequer had put upon them. The effect of those figures did not end there. He was perfectly willing to allow that, when they talked of agriculture, they did not wish to limit agriculture to the interest of the owner and the occupier of the land. He wanted to point out another way of looking at the question. To take an acre of barley as producing four quarters would be a low average, but if an acre of barley produced four quarters there would be 13,722 less acres of arable. If, at a common calculation, one labourer was employed to every 25 acres, by throwing 13,722 acres out of cultivation they would displace 548 agricultural labourers; and

  961
  assuming each man earned 15s. a week, there would be a loss to the agricultural labouring community of £411 a week in wages, or £21,372 a year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed his good intentions towards the agricultural interest in words, but he wished he would do so in actions. The Centre Chamber of Agriculture unanimously recommended the adoption of some such proposal as that contained in the amendment. As for the Party behind the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they flattered the agriculturists of the country; when they wanted their votes, and spurned and despised them afterwards. A step in the direction suggested by the Amendment, if it did no more, would ease the burden under which agriculturists were struggling. They looked forward to the time when the Parliament of this country would recognise it as its first duty to attend to the interests of agriculture, its greatest industry, and not despise it as it was despised by the Party now in power.
  *MR. QUILTER,acknowledging the friendly attitude of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and saying that he was more than satisfied with the debate, asked leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  MR. CHAPLINsaid, the suggestions he had made in support of the readjustment of the beer duty had not been read in a friendly spirit by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, as they regarded the suggestions which had been thrown out as bearing directly on the interests of agriculture, on behalf of the agricultural interest he had to say that they must go to a division.
  Committee divided:—Ayes 230; Noes206.—(Division List, No. 71.)
  Progress reported.

  THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY AND THEIR WELSH-SPEAKING EMPLOYéS.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR,referring to the following Motion standing on the Paper in the name of Mr. Lloyd-George for the Evening Sitting—
  "That this House censures the action of the London and North-Western Company in declining to take into their service monoglot
  962
  Welshmen as labourers in the most Welsh-speaking areas of the Principality of Wales, whilst at the same time they employ in the same districts officials who are completely ignorant of the language of the people with whom they come into contact and have business relations,"
  —said, perhaps it will be convenient if, with your permission, I put a point of Order with regard to the Resolution which stands upon the Paper first for this evening. I wish to ask you, Sir, whether it is in Order to bring forward on such an occasion a Resolution directed against the management of a private enterprise in respect of matters with regard to which it is not suggested that the managers of that enterprise have, directly or indirectly, broken either the letter or the spirit of the law?
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: On the point of Order, may I state that I propose to modify the terms of my Resolution by moving that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the circumstances?
  MR. G. C. T. BARTLEY: If that is the case, may I ask whether, if the Resolution on the Paper, which is in effect a censure on the action of the company, is now to be altered into a Motion for the appointment of a
  Committee of Inquiry? It is not a new Motion, and therefore ought to come at the end of the Motions already upon the Paper.
  *MR. SPEAKER: If the alteration were one which exaggerated, if I may so say, the Motion set down, it would not be in Order without further notice, but as it appears to me to be one to modify the stringency of the Motion which is set down, it may be brought forward. As regards the point of Order raised by the right hon. Gentleman, I am not aware of any precedent for a Motion of this kind for an inquiry into the relations between a corporation or private firm and its servants, and in the form in which was proposed to be moved certainly grave inconveniences might have followed from a decision of this House upon an entirely ex parte statement against a company which might or might not be represented formally or informally in the discussion. But in the form in which it is proposed to be moved I am not able to say that it is within my function as Speaker to rule that it is out of Order. There may be great

  963
  inconvenience in a Motion relating to the matters referred to, but I do not see, in the absence of any precedent for striking out such a Motion, that I should be justified in saying that it was out of Order.

  LAND TRANSFER (CONSOLIDATED FUND).
  Committee to consider of authorising the payment, out of the Consolidated Fund, of any deficiency in the Insurance Fund that may be created under any Act of the present Session to simplify titles and facilitate the Transfer of Land in England (Queen's Recommendation signified), upon Monday next.—(Sir John Hibbert.)
  Sitting suspended at 7 o'clock.

  EVENING SITTING.
  The Sitting was resumed at Nine o'clock.

  THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY AND THEIR WELSH SPEAKING EMPLOYES.
  On the Motion that the Speaker do leave the chair,
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGE MR. LLOYD-GEORGE (Carnarvon District) rose to move as an Amendment—
  "To leave out from the word 'That,' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, 'a Select Committee be appointed to consider the alleged action of the London and North-Western Railway Company in declining to take into their service monoglot Welshmen as labourers in the most Welsh-speaking areas of the Principality of Wales, whilst at the same time they employ in the same districts officials who are completely ignorant of the language of the people with whom they come into contact and have business relations,' instead thereof."
  He said he was sure the Directors of the London and North-Western Railway Company would be pleased that an opportunity had been found of bringing this question before the public, and thrashing it out; and if they had a satisfactory explanation to give, the House and the public generally would be glad to receive it. He understood that objection had been raised to the discussion of the conduct of the Company towards its workmen in the House,
  964
  but he would point out that a Company which existed by virtue of statutory powers, was in a very different position from a private employer. The House had taken upon itself to regulate the rates which a Railway Company charged; it had now taken upon itself the function of regulating the charges of shopkeepers. The reason was that Parliament, having given Railway Companies a valuable monopoly, felt it necessary in the interests of the public to see that their powers were not used to the injury of any portion of the public. Yet the House had taken upon itself to protect traders against excessive rates, he submitted that it was also the duty of the House to see that the workmen employed by the Companies did not suffer. Against a private firm dealing unfairly with its workmen the public had a remedy; they could withdraw their custom. But against a railway company they had no such remedy. They could not set up an opposition line without coming to the House of Commons, and the House of Commons was, after all, the ultimate tribunal which would try a question of this kind. It was the statutory powers which had been conferred upon the London and North-Western Railway Company which had really enabled it to defy public opinion. The House had spent a large sum of money on this Company's line at Holyhead, and he maintained that the House, having conferred these powers, facilities, and exceptional advantages on the London and North-Western Company had, at any rate, some right to remonstrate with the Company if it acted unfairly towards its workmen. What were the facts of the case which they made against a particular official of the company? Three or four years ago complaints were made to the Welsh Members by their constituents that Welsh-speaking Welshmen on the company's line in North Wales were being weeded out. At that time he communicated with the company, and was assured that the dismissal of the men had nothing whatever to do with their nationality or language. In 1894 a number of workmen, put by the company at 11 but as Welsh Members alleged nearer 30, were discharged without any reason being assigned. A sort of examination of these men with regard to their language was

  965
  held by Mr. Dawson at Bangor. There was a good deal of agitation in North; Wales in consequence. Resolutions were passed by municipal corporations, county councils, and benches of, magistrates, and without distinction of class or creed or political party. Then Mr. Dawson offered a denial of these charges. They were now told that the conduct of Mr. Dawson was prompted by a desire to safeguard the public. If that was so he might have taken the public into his confidence instead of misleading them. Mr. Dawson wrote a letter to Mr. McKillop, a county councillor, stating that the company had no intention of dispensing with the services of Welsh workmen who could not speak English. But Mr. McKillop had got hold of a couple of circulars issued by Mr. Dawson to his sub-inspectors. In one of these, issued in June, he instructed these sub-inspectors that the services of men who could not speak English or who could only speak English a little were to be dispensed with, as it was contrary to the company's rules to have such men in their employ. This referred not to signalmen or station masters, but to labourers, and that was the ground of their complaint. In the second circular, issued in July, Mr. Dawson asked for lists of every man who could not speak English, and yet in October, when an agitation arose, Mr. Dawson denied the whole thing. He (the speaker) did not wish to use any strong language. It was quite enough for him to state the fact, and leave it to the House to characterise it as best it could. He regretted that Lord Stalbridge had said that whatever action Mr. Dawson had taken had been taken after consultation with the directors.
  Mr. D. PLUNKET: No: with the superior officers at Euston.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid, he was glad to get that explanation now offered. That was how matters stood in October of last year, When the circulars were made public, when Mr. Dawson could no longer deny the facts, and he had denied them for three or four years, and evidently misled the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for the University of Dublin, who doubtless would reply on behalf of the Company; it was said that the safety of the passengers and the traffic was concerned. For the last half-century the
  966
  Company had employed monoglot Welshmen upon this particular line of railway, and there had never been an accident that could be attributed to the fact that platelayers could not understand their orders. There was another point worthy of notice. There were two or three other Companies in Wales who employed Welsh-speaking Welshmen—the Great Western, the Midland, the Cambrian, and several companies in South Wales. They had found no inconvenience arise from the fact that their platelayers could not understand English. Besides, there would be no difficulty at all in translating the instructions to the platelayers. There were stations at which the by-laws were translated into Welsh for the benefit of the general public. If the Company could translate the bye-laws, why could they not translate the instruction to their platelayers? Even if the right hon. Gentleman were able to give a single instance in which an accident had occurred through the inability of platelayers to speak the English language, he submitted that the rule was a very one-sided one. The particular part of the country which this line of railway traversed was peculiarly Welsh-speaking. From the official census he found that in Anglesey there were only 2,059 of the population who were monoglot Englishmen, 23,200 were monoglot Welshmen, and 7,200 were bi-linguals. In Carnarvonshire there were 12,000 English monoglots 78,000 Welsh monoglots, and 28,000 bi-linguals. There was a similar state of things in Denbighshire, especially in that part of it through which this line passed. How did the Company act with the Welsh-speaking population. Forty per cent. of their station—masters were monoglot Englishmen. At places in Anglesey where there were English—speaking station-masters, quite 90 per cent. of the population were for all practical purposes monoglot Welshmen. The station-masters did not understand a word of Welsh, and often the result was ludicrous, if not slightly pathetic. He knew one place where he did not think there were half-a-dozen men who understood more than half-a-dozen words of English, and yet the Company who were so careful not to have a single navvy on their line who could not speak English, placed a monoglot Englishman there, a man who

  967
  could not carry on any conversation with the people with whom he came in' contact. He submitted that if the London and North-Western Railway Company meant to insist that their platelayers should know English, they ought, in fairness and for the sake of the convenience of the travelling public, to insist that their station masters, porters, and booking clerks should know the Welsh language: they ought certainly to insist upon such a state of things in districts where the monoglot Welsh numbered something like seven to one of the population. He had no wish to detain the House longer. He would be' sorry to use any language which would make it impossible for the Company to give a fair and impartial consideration to the case, and he earnestly appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to give them such satisfaction as would render it unnecessary for them to proceed with the Motion He begged to move the. Motion of which he had given notice.
  MR. BEYN ROBERTSsaid, this was not so much a question of the 11 or 12 men who were dismissed, because the Company had offered those men other employment, which in some cases had been accepted. But the complaint was that the, general rule was still allowed to remain practically in force, and that there were about 30 men whose claims remained un-redressed. The general rule was that no men must be taken into the employ of the Company unless they knew English, certainly to the extent of one man in every gang. The excuses that had been given for the action of the Company had constantly varied. The inference to be drawn from the part of the letter of October 24, which his hon. Friend did not read, was that these were mere ordinary dismissals that took place annually at that time of the year when the summer traffic came to an end. The fact was that some of these men had been years and years in the employ of the Company. When, it was discovered that the circular in question had been issued, that excuse was completely abandoned, and there was great difficulty in obtaining any explanation from the Company. As his hon. Friend had pointed out, nearly all the public bodies in that part of North Wales—county councils, town councils, local boards.
  968
  boards of guardians—passed resolutions of remonstrance and sent them to the Company. All that was received in reply, as far as he was aware, was the simple acknowledgement of the receipt of the resolutions. But some persons, evidently friends of Mr. Dawson, wrote letters to the local papers, in which it was suggested that a reason why it was necessary these plate players should know English, was that they should be able to read the instructions given to them. In answer to that, it was contended that the instructions could easily be translated into Welsh. There was a further answer. A large number of the Englishmen employed on the permanent way were unable to read and write, and therefore the objection that the Welsh monoglot could not read his instructions failed altogether. There were English Gang men who were not very conversant with the English language, and who actually went to their Welsh subordinates to have official instructions explained to them. He brought these facts before the general meeting of the Company in January last, when a third explanation was suggested by the Chairman which had never been mentioned before. He said that the action of the Company was on account of the possibility of accidents, and that it would be dreadful if, in case of an accident, the platelayers, who were the first to be called on, did not understand English, and could not be sent to the nearest signal box to block the line. The answer to this excuse was that no one suggested that all the platelayers should be monoglot Welshmen. Moreover, where Welshmen were taken into the service of the Company they learnt English very rapidly—especially the young men. Even, a Welshman, who at first knew no English, would not, at the end of a week, be so ignorant of any simple phrase, as not to be able to tell a signalman to block the line. He asked Lord Stalbridge whether a single case such as he had suggested, had occurred, and he had to admit that it never had. But accidents and collisions had occurred in Wales—notably at Abergele, in the middle of this district. He told Lord Stalbridge that there were other railways running in Wales—the Great Western and the Cambrian—which had not the same rules; and the answer was that

  969
  those other lines did not run their trains at such a high speed. But out of 11 men whom the Company admitted having dismissed, 10 were not working on the main line, hut on branch lines, where the speed was below 30 miles an hour. When all these various excuses were trumped up, one after another, it was fair to infer that they were mere subterfuges put forward by Mr. Dawson to blind the Directors and the public. This question was not raised in any way with a view to excluding Englishmen from the service of the Company. There was no desire to enlist prejudice against them. It was not a cry of "Wales for the Welsh." That cry had never been raised, for it would be suicidal. It would be followed by the cry of "England for the English," which would necessitate the emigration from England of a vast number of Welshmen. The Motion was made on no principle of nationality as a sentiment. It was simply on the ground of a practical injustice suffered by Welsh workmen. In order that the House might realise that injustice, it was necessary to emphasise the fact that nearly all the labouring population of Wales were monoglot Welshmen. Lord Stalbridge said that one man would be admitted in one gang. That would be altogether insufficient. Seeing that all the peasantry of the three counties concerned were unable to meet the requirements of the Company, it meant the Company carried on its business in Wales and took away employment from Welshmen in their native land because they only spoke their native language. Did such conditions obtain in any other country? Did they obtain in India? The English officials in India had to know the native language; and he asked for the same measure of justice in Wales as was meted out in Hindustan. By being excluded in the first place these Welsh monoglots were practically excluded from the service of the company for ever. It was said, "Why not learn English, when the elementary schools are so abundant?'' But these labouring lads had to leave school at about thirteen years of age; and he would ask English Members how many of the children of English labourers, who got a smattering of French in the elementary schools would be able to carry on a conversation in French after a few years
  970
  spent in the farmhouses where English only was spoken? How many of the shopkeepers' sons who learnt French at the grammar schools, which they left at 18, could carry on a conversation in French 10 years after leaving school? Of course, all wished that the people in Wales should learn English. There was no part of the United Kingdom which had shown a stronger desire for education, and that meant learning English, as far as the schools were concerned. No people had spent more money in establishing educational institutions than the Welsh nation; but the language of nations was a matter of very slow growth, and, after generations of effort, the Welsh language was more spoken in Wales than ever it was. It was not fair to impose such a condition as the Company imposed as an incentive to learn English; because in the interim the people starved. The platelayers and navvies were the only class who, it was asked, should be admitted to employment as monoglots; and no one could say that there would be any harm from such a provision. When they got on the line they picked up English very quickly, because Welshmen were naturally quick at languages. The Directors mentioned a number of Welshmen who were employed at different parts of the line, but most of those men knew very little English when they entered the Company's service. On behalf of these poor men who were his neighbours and constituents, he asked the House to give him an opportunity of establishing these facts, and then the House could take what action it liked. They were not asking fur a vote of censure. He was very certain that if they established their complaints it would not be necessary for the House to take any action. The Directors of the Company would be sufficiently satisfied by the inquiry that their agent in Bangor had made a mistake, and would reverse the? policy which had only been established a few years. Mr. Dawson's predecessor never enforced these conditions, although he was an Englishman. Mr. Dawson alone had created all this turmoil and trouble in the country.
  MR. DAVID PLUNKETsaid that, of course, after the decision to which the Speaker came at an earlier part of the day in answer to a question addressed to him by the

  971
  Leader of the Opposition, he should not say one word as to the propriety of the decision. He absolutely accepted it, and bowed to it. But, as he understood, although the Speaker was not prepared to rule that such a motion as that now before the House was out of order, yet he informed the House that it was one for which he knew no precedent. It was an absolutely new departure. While he did not question the decision which had made the new departure possible, he did say that when the House considered the meaning of it, it was bound to consider it with the greatest caution and the greatest care. He would go further, and say that before the Government could declare what their action on this occasion might be, they were bound to consider what was their duty as, for the time being, in charge of the character and the dignity, as well as the practice of the House. What was the meaning of this new departure? It meant this—that in future it would be the right and the established practice, should the House adopt this Resolution, on the demand of whoever might have the majority in the House for the time being on a Friday evening to call for an inquiry into the conduct of the private business of any private Company or private employer as to whom he shall engage, the laws which shall govern him, and the circumstances in which he shall be at liberty to dismiss his servants. Was not that a grave question in this new departure? The hon. Member who introduced this Motion had argued that because a railway company worked under statutory powers this fact, made all the difference. It made no difference at all to the point he was now arguing. If the practice of the House, be once established, it mattered nothing whether that company might or might not have received statutory powers. If the case were that the regulations imposed on railway companies had been violated by this Company, there might be something in the argument; but to
  972
  say that the affairs of a public company were to be inquired into because it had statutory powers, and the affairs of a private company which had not statutory powers were not to be inquired into, was a distinction which could not be entertained for a moment. If the House set out on this new departure it would be vain for any private employer to come and say, "Oh, the case was different when the subject was a great railway company." Hon. Members must make up their minds that if the House should sanction this Resolution it was taking a new departure which would give power to any chance majority at any time in the future to call in the power of Parliament to appoint a Committee to inquire into the discharge of their duties by companies as employers of labour. The House should consider well the step they were taking in this new departure; and it should be the duty of the Government to hesitate long, and to require the gravest reasons in support of the Resolution before it gave any sanction to it. He appealed to the Government to realise the importance of the position in which they were now placed. With such a House as that assembled this evening their power was paramount; and if they chose to take a hasty view of the subject to establish a precedent, then grave indeed must be the responsibility which they would incur. What kind of a House had gathered? It would be within the mark to say that very little over 50 Members were present. He was afraid that the reputation of the House for the Friday evening decisions it had recently passed had not been altogether a creditable one; and the House by establishing this new precedent would greatly distinguish the Motion now before it from other Resolutions brought forward on other Friday evenings. The previous day there was a full House. Every hon. Member present had heard the arguments on both sides of the controversy very fully and clearly. What

  973
  was the answer the House gave? In a full House those considerations advanced by the hon. Member were rejected and over-ruled by a majority of two to one. But now the House was asked to establish this precedent in one of the thinnest Houses ever called upon to take a decision on any important question. Speaking as a Director of the London and North Western Railway Company, he submitted that never had a more flimsy and trivial case been submitted in support of such a Motion as this. He asserted that the London and North Western Company had not taken the action alleged in the first part of the Resolution. The Company had not refused to take into its service labourers who were monoglot Welshmen, and they had never proclaimed any such intention. The Company had simply laid down a rule that in situations where those men who, unfortunately for themselves, had not acquired a knowledge of the English language, they should not be taken into employment which might bring them into connection with the traffic arrangements of the Company in a way that might produce inconvenience, and not improbably serious risk, to those who had to travel over the Company's system. Even hon. Members themselves had admitted that these discharged men had been taken back into the employment of the Company as labourers. The grievance alleged in the second part of the Resolution had been put forward for the first time as a serious ground of complaint. He had enjoyed the opportunity of communicating with the General Manager of the London and North Western Company who was, himself, for some time in charge of this particular part of the system; and the General Manager informed him that never during the time he was in charge of the system, and never since, had any serious ground of complaint been made to him as to any particular case of inconvenience to the public in Wales having arisen in consequence of persons
  974
  employed in the various situations being unable to communicate in Welsh with the population of the, district. He thought he could dispose of part of the Resolution by saying that if any such complaints as had been suggested were made in a proper manner, he would undertake that the Company would do everything in their power to remedy any grievance. He appealed to any candid and fair-minded man in the House to say whether he had not disposed of this part of the complaint of the hon. Members opposite. He would next proceed to consider the other and only part of the Resolution possessing any substance at all, and that was the two-fold charge of unfair and partial dismissal of certain monoglot Welshmen who had been before last summer in the employment of the Company, and the objection that was raised to the policy of the Company. He would take these points one by one. The very serious charge which had been made against the Company, and which had produced a great deal of excitement in certain parts of Wales, was made under a misapprehension of what was the action of the Company, and what its intentions were, regarding the future. He therefore claimed a fair and candid consideration on the part of the House. One general observation made by the introducer of this Resolution was that the Railway Company should be very glad of this opportunity of satisfying the House that they had no hostile intention towards the Welsh nationality. He thought that charge so absurd, that if it had not been brought forward by the hon. Member it would not have been thought worthy of notice. As it was now before the House, he desired to say that the Board of the Company, so far from having any hostile feelings towards the Welsh nationality, the Company had the most friendly feeling, not only for the, welsh nationality, but for the, Welsh language. They had Welshmen, in all parts of their system. Last year 20 per cent. of the men employed by the

  975
  Company themselves on work at Huddersfield were Welshmen. Not only so, but the Company paid part of the stipend of a Chaplain for them, as they were employed at a distance from their own town and chapel. In Wales itself, 80 per cent. of the whole number of men employed upon the permanent way—and that was the question now under discussion—were Welshmen, who spoke Welsh. Of these, 73 per cent. also spoke some English. And the whole of this excitement, for which the House was going to make a new departure in the practice of Parliament and to appoint a Committee, had reference to only seven per cent. of those who were employed upon this business of the Company in Wales. He therefore asked the House, in view of the fact that it would lead to a new departure and practically to an alteration of its rules, whether it was wise to appoint a Committee to inquire into this alleged grievance. He was curious to know what view the Government and the Leader of the House would take of the matter. He could only say that the company, in engaging, or promoting, or in aiding men in any way did not make the slightest difference between Welshmen and others. The fact was that they never inquired into the nationality of the men, and until this question was raised, he, for one, had no idea of the number of Welshmen, Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen employed by the company. As the company had proceeded in the past, so they would proceed in the future, and he could assure the House that their intention was not to recognise any difference whatever in the nationality of the men engaged. Further, he could say that any servant of the company who had a grievance, had a perfect right, and free and full opportunity of bringing it personally before the directors. He himself had investigated dozens of such cases, and he promised the men, on behalf of himself and his fellow-directors, that any grievance they might bring forward
  976
  would be carefully and impartially investigated by the Board. Now he hoped therefore, as regarded the general charge of hostility to Welsh nationality, the House would consider that it had been disposed of. He was not speaking at random, but of things which he knew. The Company was composed of gentlemen of different political parties, and the directors knew no distinction of politics or nationality in their management. He would now come to the particular case of the alleged dismissal of certain men. The hon. Member who introduced this Resolution, no doubt convinced of the justice of his case, skilfully set up a kind of cobweb of conspiracy on the part of the North Western Railway, in dealing with particular cases that arose last summer. What really occurred was this. Mr. Dawson, the engineer in charge of the section referred to, had his attention called to a rule which a good many years before had been adopted by the Board, but which had lately fallen very much in to disuetude. After consultation between the officers and Mr. Dawson, it was decided that the rule ought to be put vigorously into operation. That rule was, that men, who could not speak the English language sufficiently well and intelligently, should not be employed in connection with traffic arrangements, or in any responsible position in which their inability to speak English might cause serious inconvenience and considerable risk to those persons who travelled over the system of the company. He begged the House to observe that this rule did not apply to Welsh workmen generally who could not speak English, but only to those who were in responsible positions on the line, where a knowledge of English was absolutely necessary. Well, Mr. Dawson proceeded to put that rule into force, and the first thing he did was to issue the circular which had been quoted. The object of that circular was to call the attention of the Inspectors and officers under Mr. Dawson to the fact

  977
  that the rule about placing men who could not speak English in responsible positions had not been carried out. Mr. Dawson received further instructions from the head office, and he was told that, for the information of the authorities at Euston, he was to divide those persons in the employment of the Company, who did not speak or understand English, from those who did. Those circulars were of course issued to bring the rule into force, but by order of the directors, the rule was applied with consideration to those in the service of the Company who were affected. He confessed that if he had been writing the letter written by Mr. Dawson he should not have couched it in the same language. But his object was to allay an apprehension abroad at the time that there would be a sweeping discharge of all Welshmen who could not speak English. But this was more clearly effected by the subsequent action of the Board of Directors. Mr. Dawson had been for a long time in the Company's service. The Company had always found him a most excellent, reliable, and useful officer, with the single exception of this letter—which he, himself, could not approve of—and he had no intention of throwing over Mr. Dawson. Supposing the letter was what it had been described, was there anything in the difference of view regarding it, between the hon. Member for Carnarvon and himself, on which a Resolution should be founded for the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the conduct of the London and North Western Railway. The thing was absurd. The matter to be inquired into was not his conduct on that occasion, but the action of the Company. When the Company came to the conclusion that a mistake had been committed, what was the course they took. They said they were of opinion that the dismissals in the circumstances might have been regarded by the men dismissed as being harsh. If they had only recently come into the
  978
  service he did not think so much grievance could have been made of their dismissal. But some of them had been for some time in the Company's service. The hon. Member for Carnarvon was in error in the number whom he said were dismissed because they could not speak English. The number dismissed were 200 at the end of the summer, when there was usually a reduction of the staff. Of these 200, only 11 were Welshmen who could not speak English. If any of these could show that others were dismissed on the same ground, he would undertake to say that the same rule should be applied to them as to the others. The agitation against the Company was based on two grounds, (1) that it was a harsh thing that men who had been some time in the service of the Company should be absolutely and at once dismissed, and (2) that by being dismissed they would lose their contributions to the pension fund. Three men were dismissed apart from their incapacity to speak English—because they were unfit for the work they had to do. All the others were offered employment under the Company at wages equal to those which they were receiving when dismissed. He thought that of the eight men three absolutely refused the offer of the Company, three accepted it; in the case of another man the offer was still open and the eighth man had gone elsewhere. But to every one of those men the offer was made; and not only that, but whatever sums they had contributed to the pension fund were repaid to them, half by the Society and half by the Company. He asked was it possible for any employer of labour, under the circumstances, to have dealt more fairly or more justly with those men? He thought that disposed of the question which had reference to the dismissal of those men. He came now to the other part of the question which dealt with the general policy of the Railway Company as shown in the rule they had laid down. He must ask the House to

  979
  remember what the rule was. The rule was that men who could not speak English should not be employed in responsible positions in which their ignorance of English might possibly lead to inconvenience in the working of the traffic of the system. He was speaking now in the main of men who might be taken on in the future. It was quite true that a great many of those men had been employed, and might go on being employed, without any harm ensuing. As a matter of fact no serious accident that had occurred on the system could be attributed to the employment of those men. But he would ask people who travelled by the railway whether they would consider it a satisfactory explanation to be told, if an accident occurred to them through the employment of those men, that no such accident had occurred up to the present. He would take, as an illustration, the accident which happened near Crewe at Christmas. In that accident, one of the engines not only blocked the line, but smashed a signal box, interrupting the telegraphic communication, but leaving the telephonic communication, which the box also contained, uninjured. The guard in charge of the train, as soon as he had extricated himself from the ruins of his van, ran back, as was his duty, to give the signal, to prevent other trains from coming on, and thereby prevent further deplorable occurrences. The guard was not able to get along very well, being injured himself, but he met with a platelayer employed on the permanent way, and got him to give the signal to stop approaching trains. That accident happened in England, and the guard and the platelayer spoke the same language. But supposing it happened in Wales, and that the platelayer was a monoglot Welshman, it might have been impossible to give the necessary signal to prevent a further catastrophe. That was the reason why the Railway Company preferred to employ Welshmen who spoke
  980
  English rather than Welshmen who were only acquainted with Welsh. He would ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he was prepared to tell the London and North Western Railway Company, advised as they were by their responsible officers, to disregard the rules, and run the risk to be found in the circumstance he had described? He did not think the right hon. Gentleman would tell the Company anything of the kind. The next thing to be considered was what the Company proposed to do now. He had said that the Company believed it to be their duty to carry out this rule as far and as completely as it could be carried out without hardship or injury to anybody. But if it were found necessary to set aside any men under the rule, the company would offer to those men, as they had offered to the men referred to by the Mover of the Motion, other employment on the railway, at wages equal to the wages they were paid in the positions they were asked to give up. Further than that, in order to make the transition easy, they would, by their re-arrangement of the gangs who worked on the permanent way, endeavour so to re-arrange them that not more than one in the case of a gang of four, and not more than two in the case of a gang of five should be Welshmen who could not speak English. He would ask the House, was that or was it not a fair proposal? This was not a question of refusing to employ or dismissing Welshmen. It was not a question of refusing to employ or dismissing Welshmen speaking Welsh; but it was simply a question whether the Company, in engaging their men, were to consider that a Welshman who could not speak English had a right, on that account to be employed in these places rather than a Welshman who could. It was impossible to escape from that question. That was all that they claimed, and they had not in the least any desire to diminish the number of Welshmen in their employment. But what they did claim as a

  981
  right of their Company was, that in choosing Welshmen, for instance, for occupations which might involve difficulties and even danger, they should have the right of choosing those who could speak English rather than those who could not. Really, if they asserted the opposite proportion, it was to put a premium upon the non-learning of English. It would be an absurd thing for the Government, in face of the fact that they would not give a grant to any welsh school where English was not taught, if they turned round the next day and told the London and North Western Railway Company that they must employ a certain proportion whether it was wise or not, whether it was safe or not, of those who could not speak English. He said that clearly such a proposition was absurd. He had endeavoured, in dealing with this question, to follow the advice of the hon. Gentleman, not to deal with it in a hostile, but in a friendly spirit. He confessed it was difficult for him to do so, not on account of the speech the hon. Member had made this evening, but on account of speeches which he and others had made before now, in which the Company had been, denounced in the most unmeasured language all through Wales. His business there that night was not to express heat, or anger, or resentment on the part of the Company.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEwas
  understood to say that he had made no previous speech on the subject.
  MR. PLUNKET: There certainly has been some speeches made by Welsh Members upon this subject, in which the Company had been assailed in unmeasured language, and if the hon. Member did not make such a speech others did.
  MR. BRYN ROBERTS: The only speech I made was at the meeting of the shareholders of the Company.
  MR. PLUNKETsaid, that at any rate it would not be denied that very
  982
  strong speeches had been made, and he said that on the present occasion he preferred to take no notice of any of those things which had been stated, though he thought the House would agree he had removed any vestige of excuse for such a Motion as this.
  MR. LLOYD GEORGEasked, if it was proposed to employ Welsh-speaking station masters in Welsh-speaking districts?
  MR. PLUNKETreplied that he had dealt with the point. If any grievance or inconvenience was felt to the public from the non-employment of persons who spoke Welsh, let that be represented, and, as he had said already, it would be carefully considered by the company. He contended that a railway company, or any other company, or a private employer had a perfect right to employ whom he liked. He repeated again that there was no feeling whatever of hostility on the part of the London and North Western Railway Company to the Welsh nation or to the Welsh language. He had a great regard for the harmony and antiquity of those of that language, and so far as Welshmen chose to speak it amongst themselves it made no difference whatever to the company as to giving employment. Let them speak in the Welsh language as much as they pleased, but, in regard to certain employments and situations, the company had satisfied themselves as to the policy they had laid down was a right, a just, and a necessary one in the interests of the public. That policy, whatever might be the consequences, they must adhere to until the responsibility was taken away from them by some other persons, and he appealed, finally, to the common sense and justice of the House if he had not removed every particle of foundation for the allegations made against the company. He trusted the House would vindicate the action of the company, and would refuse to lend itself, on such flimsy grounds, to this serious new departure from the old practice and

  983
  precedents which had always prevailed in this Assembly.
  *SIR G. OSBORNE MORGANsaid, that whatever might be the result of this Debate he was quite sure the hon. Member for the Carnarvon Burghs, by the courage, ability and persistency with which he had advocated their cause, would have earned the gratitude of thousands of poor Welshmen who had seen in the action of the company, a desire to penalise them for speaking their own language. The right hon. Gentleman, who had just sat down, had made an eloquent and a very fair and conciliatory speech, and one which, if it had been made three months ago, would have allayed a great deal of justifiable and inevitable excitement which had been aroused by the conduct of the company. But they had not only to consider the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but the action of his subordinates, although he himself had practically thrown over the principle upon which one of those subordinates had acted.
  MR. PLUNKET: I beg pardon. I said distinctly that, while I differed from him as regards a particular case, I was not in the least throwing him over.
  *SIR G. OSBORNE MORGANsaid, the right hon. Gentleman, then, did not throw over the language of Mr. Dawson's letter. That made it the more necessary for them to consider that language. But it was said this was a new precedent, a new departure. Yes, but they all knew new cases involved new departures. Then he said this question had been debated yesterday in a fuller House. But how was it decided? Without a single word of argument or debate, because they were practically precluded by Mr. Speaker's ruling [cries of "Order"]—of course he accepted the ruling in the fullest degree—from discussing even the reasons which the company themselves put forth for asking the House to vote in the company's favour. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that the company disclaimed all
  984
  comparison between a railway company incorporated by
  Act of Parliament, and a private company. He could not in the least follow him. The Legislature had given enormous powers to these railway companies. It had given them practically a monopoly of privileges, and he maintained that Parliament, which had created those privileges, was entitled to see that those privileges were not tyrannically or oppressively exercised. He was told there were no less than 150 directors in this house. When these were banded together, as they generally were, they formed a very strong phalanx. He had a proof of it yesterday when, happening to say that the policy of the company was a high-handed policy, he was received with a perfect howl of execration. He now repeated the statement and said the letters of Mr. Dawson, to which attention had been drawn, and which he understood the right hon. Gentleman not to throw over, were not only high-handed, but disingenuous. Certain men were to be turned out of their situations, neck and crop, unless they learnt to speak English in a week. What would Mr. Dawson have said or thought if he had been told he would be turned out of his situation unless he learnt to speak Welsh in a week? The cases were exactly parallel. But the case did not stop there. The first letter only referred to the new men lately taken on, but in the next letter it was stated that the decision was not only to apply to all those who could not speak English, but those also who could only speak it a little. How could the directors, in the face of those two letters, by which they admitted they were bound, say that there never was any intention to discharge any workman simply because he could only speak Welsh? It was perfectly clear from the evidence of Mr. McKinnop that these men were employed for duties which did not require them to speak and understand English. He was himself interested as a debenture holder in the London and North Western,

  985
  and, as such, he said that the course which the right hon. Gentleman had shadowed forth in his speech was not calculated to advance the real interests of the railway company, while it was highly offensive to the, inhabitants of the Welsh localities through which the lines of the company pass, and cruel to the unfortunate men who were made the victims.
  MR. G. J. GOSCHENsaid that this Session they had had many extraordinary Friday evenings, but this was the most extraordinary of all. It was the culminating evening. He regretted that the Leader of the House was absent, as he would like to hear the views of that right hon. Gentleman on this new departure. The original proposal was that some Welsh Members should come down to the House arid pass a Vote of Censure upon a railway company, but that motion had been modified into a request for a Committee of Inquiry. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that the object was to censure the Company for the manner in which it conducted its business. To interfere in the way proposed, and to prescribe to a railway company what persons it ought to employ, would be a most dangerous precedent to set. It was a mere accident, as Mr. Speaker had pointed out, that there was in the House a representative of the Company who could defend it against this attack. The question ought never to have been brought before them. Let them consider what vistas the precedents opened up. The Dock Board of Liverpool, to take an example, had statutory powers like the railways. What would be said if some English Member were to move a Resolution declaring that the Board employed too many Irishmen, and that the wages of the honest English artisan were lowered in consequence? How could the, business of the railways be conducted on the basis of nationalities? It was singular that they had not heard as yet the views of the Government as to the
  986
  effects of this precedent upon the work of the House of Commons. Did the Government think it wise that the time of the House should be taken up by inquiries as to who were the persons who ought to be, employed by corporations? Were they to inquire into the nationalities of the servants of the County Councils because those Councils possessed statutory powers? A more absurd proposal than this had never been made in the House of Commons, and every statesman who valued his reputation, and every hon. Member who had the honour of that House at heart, ought unhesitatingly to do his best to insure its rejection in to to.
  MR. ABEL THOMASwho rose amidst cries of "Bryce, Bryce!" said the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down began his speech by saying he did not care what the rights of this particular question were, and, having said that, he proceeded to discuss the rights of the question in away which showed to anybody who had listened to the Debate that he knew nothing of those rights. To say this had been made a question of nationality or anything of that kind was ridiculous. It had been carefully stated by every one who had spoken on the Ministerial side of the House that it was not a question of nationality at all. Nobody respected more than he did the judgment and skill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket), but on this occasion the right hon. Gentleman was skilful enough to address him self to matters which were not in conflict, and to avoid the real issue. The question was not whether the Railway Company had dismissed one or two or three or more workmen, and taken back some of them, or put them to other work. The real question arose upon the circulars issued by Mr. Dawson, which the right hon. Gentleman had been careful not to repudiate. If those circulars were not repudiated by the directors of

  987
  the London and North-Western Railway Company, there was not a single labourer, whatever his duty might be—it might be breaking stones half a mile from the line, or to take stone to a quarry 10 miles off—who would not be liable to dismissal. What did Mr. Dawson say in June, 1894? He said—"Notwithstanding my instructions upon the subject." The right hon. Gentleman had suggested that those instructions applied to men in responsible positions on the line. There was no sign of it in the circular; there was no sign of it even in the statement which the Railway Company had themselves issued, because reference was made to platelayers, persons employed on the line itself, and one could scarcely say that a man whose duty it was to tighten screws on a main line was a man in a responsible position. They had not heard anything of that kind until to-night. Mr. Turner said—
  "Notwithstanding my instructions on the subject, I find that a number of men have been taken on who cannot speak English, or who can only speak English a little."
  There was nothing about responsible positions. The circular meant that every man who was employed by the Company henceforth must understand English. ["Hear, hear."] An hon. Member cried "Hear, hear." Let the House consider the position in England itself. Suppose a company obtained powers to construct a line from London to Edinburgh, and made it a rule that no one should be allowed to work upon the line, whatever the circumstances might be, who did not understand French. What would be said by the English people? The circular went on—
  "The services of such men are to be dispensed with, and it is contrary to the Company's rule to have them in their employ. Let me know which of the men you can dispense with first. I do not wish you to serve all the men with a week's notice at once, but they must be paid off gradually, unless they learn to speak English in the meanwhile"
  The next circular was dated the 6th of July, and in it Mr. Turner said—
  "Having reference to my circular of the 19th ult.. you understand the list you are to
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  send in is to include every man who cannot speak English, and every man who can only speak English a little."
  What did that mean? Surely nothing but that every person, however irresponsible, who was employed by the Company, must be able to speak English. The right hon. Member had not repudiated the circular; he should have liked to have heard him say that circulars which made these statements were repudiated by the Company, but they had heard nothing to that effect. The policy of the Company as expressed by their circulars which were sent round to all their servants, and by their statement of facts distributed to hon. Members the previous day, was to get rid in the future of every Welsh-speaking man who could not speak English in their employ.
  MR. PLUNKET: It is nothing of the kind.
  MR. ABEL THOMASsaid, those were the words of the circulars. He again quoted the language used in the circulars. He would like to know how the right hon. Gentleman could express this policy in stronger terms. Even a Welshman understood English sufficiently to know what the meaning of "every man" was. It was said by the right hon. Member that the reason why this rule was made was because some time or other there might be an accident. He never heard a more curious reason in his life. But if this was the reason was it not imperative that every guard employed on these fast trains should speak both English and Welsh? This particular line went through a district in many parts of which more than 70 per cent, of the population spoke Welsh only, and it might happen that the guard, through not being able to communicate with a man who lived in a cottage by the side of the line, and spoke Welsh only, might not be able to signal to stop a train, and so avert an accident. If the London and North Western Railway Company were not going to employ railway guards who spoke both Welsh and English,

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  they ought to buy up all the cottages along the line, and fill them with people who spoke English. That was the ridiculous argument followed to its ridiculous conclusion. Welshmen ought to be treated, at any rate, in the same way as they treated Englishmen, and the Railway Company had no right to make such a rule. What the right hon. Gentleman had not disposed of was the letter of Mr. Dawson, and he did not repudiate the instructions given by Mr. Dawson to the men in North Wales. It was no more wasting the time of the House to discuss this question than it was to discuss, as had been done on a previous occasion, the importation of foreign door-mats.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. J. BRYCE)said, he could not quite agree with the hon. Member who had just sat down that the matter still stood where it did before the speech of the right hon. Member for Dublin University, nor could he agree with the interpretation that had been put upon that speech. It appeared to him that the hon. Member would have done better to address himself to the policy indicated in that speech on behalf of the London and North Western Railway Company than to dwell as he did upon that which belonged to the past and might be suffered to remain there. As to the tempestuous speech of the right hon. Member for Hanover Square, he could not understand why the right hon. Gentleman had thought it necessary to bring in the element of political partisanship from which the discussion had previously been free. The right hon. Gentleman did not hear the case made out by the Welsh Members, and he had heard only part of the speech by the right hon. Member for Dublin University, who with great fulness and care, and with a mastery of details which must have excited the admiration of all who heard him, dealt in a lucid manner with a most complicated
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  question. It would have been wrong of himself as Minister to have spoken before the House had had the benefit and pleasure of hearing that speech, and before the right hon. Gentleman had had a full opportunity of stating the case of the company. Nor could he assent to the doctrine that the Government was bound to give an opinion immediately a Motion of this kind was brought forward, before all the facts had been brought out, or that, on a complex question, and particularly one the knowledge of which must be largely confined to one Member of the Government, he should, by speaking early, be depriving himself of the opportunity of what was said by other speakers, of endeavouring to sum up the case, and to express the views of the Government upon it as a whole.
  MR. GOSCHENexplained that what he thought was, that the Government would take the view that the matter was one which ought not to have been brought before the House at all.
  MR. BRYCEcontinued that that was an opinion which had the disadvantage of having been given in ignorance of the speech of the Mover and Seconder, and of a large part of the speech of the right hon. Member for Dublin University. But it had been a great advantage to the House, and it would be a great advantage to Wales also that that speech had been delivered. He was quite certain that the way in which the question had been put by that speech would make it much easier for these difficulties to be solved in the future. That the matter had excited great warmth of feeling in Wales was a fact of which evidence had reached him from many quarters. It had been discussed all over North Wales, and, rightly or wrongly, an impression had prevailed that the company was pursuing a policy of hostility to the Welsh language which was harsh and oppressive to the persons affected. The Welsh Members had sought an opportunity in the time devoted to public business to raise what they considered to be a Welsh grievance, which

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  they were rightly precluded from discussing at the time of private business; and, although he did not think any complaint could be made of the tone they had adopted, or that sympathy would be withheld from them on account of the deep interest which was felt in the supposed grievance, he should have to express his disagreement with them on the conclusions at which they had arrived. He was not able to agree with the right hon. Gentleman that a railway company was in the same position as a private company, and that was not merely because it had statutory powers—many companies had those powers—but because where Parliament had entrusted a company with special powers it retained a right, which it would not have in the case of a company formed under the ordinary law, if necessary to interfere with or review the conduct of that company. This was specially true in the case of those companies which might be said to be statutory monopolies, and in the case of railway companies which covered a large area of the country throughout which the management and administration of the company were matters of great importance to the resident population. There were many ways in which a company could affect the well-being of the people. A great Company like the London and North Western Railway ought to use its powers in a conciliatory manner. He fully recognised the conciliatory spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Plunket) had spoken that night, and he thought it a pity that the right hon. Gentleman had not spoken sooner, because there must have been, some cause for the agitation, and things might not have arrived at such an acute stage if the right hon. Gentleman's view had been known before. He now came to the practical question with which they had to deal, namely, whether the House ought to appoint the Committee of Inquiry that was asked for by the hon. Member. He did not at all admit that there might not be cases in which it might be proper for the House to inquire into the management and rules of a great Statutory Company. There might, in his opinion, be cases in which it would be quite right for the House to direct an Inquiry, and he understood
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  that to be the principle upon which the ruling of the right hon Gentleman in the Chair was founded. It did not at all follow, however, that this was a case in which the House should take the exceptional course of appointing a Select Committee of Inquiry. The question might be divided into that which had occurred in the past and that which would occur in the future. As regarded the past, the right hon. Gentleman had given an explanation which he did not understand was contested. According to that explanation, out of the eleven men who had been dismissed every one had either been reinstated or else reasons had been given for not replacing them. In his opinion, the Company had acted with fairness in replacing these men, and there was no reasonable doubt that the Board of Directors had been animated by a spirit of justice in the matter, whatever might be said about the issue of the original circulars. As to the future, the right hon. Gentleman had stated the policy of the Company in a way which it seemed very difficult to object to. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the rule as to the future policy of the Company would be that men who spoke the Welsh language only should not be employed in any responsible capacity in connection with the traffic where their employment might endanger the safety of that traffic and the lives of the passengers. The view of the Department over which he (Mr. Bryce) presided was, that the responsibility for the safety of the traffic rested with the Company, and that where the Company said they considered the enforcement of certain rules necessary for the safety of the public, they should never take the responsibility of asking the Company to desist from the enforcement of any rule which they thought needful for securing that safety. The right hon. Gentleman had offered to institute inquiries into any cases of grievance which their servants might bring before them. He thought that the statement of the right hon. Gentleman had gone a very long way, and he was bound to say that the hon. Members for Wales, who had brought this subject under the notice of the House, might feel that they had made a substantial advance in having elicited that statement from the right hon. Gentleman.

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  The responsibility for the safety of travellers rested with the Company, and when the Company said they considered certain rules to be necessary for the safety of the public, he and his advisers would never take the responsibility of asking the Company to withdraw these rules. But he must observe that during the long period in which this particular rule was obsolete, no accident occurred; and the other railways—the Cambrian and the Great Western—had no such rule, and had never sustained any accident in consequence. At the same time it must not be supposed that he desired to minimise the responsibility of the Company in any way. He would ask the House to consider what it was that the proposed Committee should do if it was appointed. The Speaker's ruling would be amply sufficient, even if they had not been alive to it before, to call the attention of the Government to the gravity of the precedent which they would set if they were to appoint a Select Committee to inquire into the relations between a Company and its workpeople for any but the greatest cause. Inquiry by a Select Committee was a serious matter. It was a sort of hundred-ton gun, which was not to be fired off except at considerable expense, and except at a sufficiently large mark. They ought not to bring this powerful weapon into action in case there was reason to believe that the result to be attained was commensurate with the importance of the machinery to be employed. He therefore asked what the Committee would do? He did not see how it could very well throw out a policy for the Company as regards the employment of its workmen. It would not be necessary for it to examine what was already past, because that had been dealt with; and he did not think the Committee could very usefully inquire as to how the Company should be guided in the ordinary conduct of its business in dealing with these men. He came, therefore, to the conclusion that a case sufficient to justify the House in appointing the Committee had not been made out. Perhaps hon. Members for Wales might feel that such a complexion had been put upon the case by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University that they would
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  be well-advised to consider whether they should not withdraw their Motion. But whatever course they took he felt sure that what had been said by the right hon. Gentleman would have the effect of allaying the feeling which had unfortunately existed in Wales, and would leave the question in a much better position than it occupied before this Debate.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have learned with gratification that, the right hon. Gentleman having heard the Debate and the speech of my right hon. Friend, and having brought to bear upon the case the knowledge to which his Department gives him access, has come to the conclusion that the London and North-Western Railway Company is not to be blamed in the matter in which their conduct has been called in question. [Cries of " No, no!" from Welsh. Member] I do not say that that was the view of hon. Members below the Gangway opposite.
  MR. BRYCE: I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that I thought I should best conduce to the interests of peace if I did not express the opinion which the right hon. Gentleman, has imputed to me.
  M.R. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman gave us to understand that the speech of my right hon. Friend near me had put such a new construction on the matter that all grievance had been removed. But let me state to the House at once that I regard the merits of this controversy as of absolutely infinitesimal as compared with the decision the House has come to to-night. I know nothing, I had almost said I care nothing, for the particular merits of this quarrel. What I do care for, and what I do think of vital importance, is that this House, in its own interests, should not embark on an undertaking from which no good can possibly arise, and which may involve it in a conflict with a private corporation, and out of which it cannot come the victor. Suppose a Committee were appointed, what power would it have to compel a single man to give evidence before it, or what power would it have to compel the acceptance of its decision. When this House attempts to proceed by resolution to deal with bodies, be they public or private, over

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  whom it has no control or no authority whatever, it is merely occupied in the undignified proceeding of launching empty thunder at them. The Government have before them a Conciliation Bill for dealing with trade disputes; but if a precedent is set up to-night this House will be constituted a Board of Conciliation in regard to every private company which ever came to Parliament for any powers whatever. A distinction has been attempted to be drawn between the London and North -Western Company on the one hand and private employers on the other. I do not deny that there is a difference, but there is no difference from the point of view now before the House. The London and North-Western Company got compulsory powers for the purchase of land, but I am not aware that they got any other privileges whatever. Is it to be supposed for a moment that the fact that Parliament gave them these privileges carries with it the right, and if the right, the duty also, by means of a Select Committee, to interfere with every controversy that may arise between the Company and its employés? This House is an overburdened House already, and if it is to take up these duties, we had better at once constitute ourselves a permanent Board for managing the great railway and dock systems, and the water companies, and other great corporations. What the result would be to the House is obvious enough. What the result would be to the great corporations and the public they serve my imagination is not sufficiently fertile to guess at. Are we to be told that a Select Committee which has no power to compel the attendance of witnesses, or to administer an oath, or to carry out any decision it may arrive at, is a proper tribunal to deal with those labour disputes between the North Western, or any other Company, and those in its employ? I trust that the House by its Vote to-night will make this, which is the first precedent for such a discussion, also the last precedent, and that we may never again be asked to occupy any of our time by constituting ourselves an amateur Board of Conciliation. Human nature being what it is, these disputes must arise from time to time. The future of the House will rest on the decision we come to tonight, and I can only say how
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  cordially I rejoiced when I heard that the Government had come to the conclusion not to accept the Motion, though I frankly admit that many of the reasons given by the right hon. Gentleman did not appeal to me as in the least justifying the vote I propose to give.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid that after the conciliatory speech of the President of the Board of Trade in meeting the complaints of the Welsh Members, and after the remarks the right hon. Gentleman had made as to the future, he did not intend to press the Motion. [Opposition cries of "Yes!"]
  *MR. SPEAKERput the question, "That the Motion be by leave withdrawn," and as there were loud cries of "No" from the Opposition, he put Mr. Lloyd-George's Amendment, which was negatived without a division, amid Opposition cheers and laughter.

  PLUMBERS' REGISTRATION BILL.
  MR. LEES KNOWLES MR. LEES KNOWLES (Salford, W.) moved the Second Reading of this Bill.
  MR. C. DIAMONDsaid it was intolerable that such a Bill should be taken without a word of explanation.
  MR. LEES KNOWLESsaid that the Bill provided for the registration of plumbers, and the encouragement of their better education.
  MR. DIAMONDsaid that it was a most edifying subject, but the House had no opportunity of adequately realising the importance of the measure at that hour of the night. The hon. Member had hardly given an adequate description of the Bill; and the House, if it agreed to the Second Reading in a few minutes before midnight, might commit itself to some scheme which would be most injurious to plumbers as a class. During the great frost of this year, everyone knew the importance which was attached to plumbers.
  Debate adjourned.
  House adjourned at Twelve o'clock.