§ 1. "That a sum, not exceeding £536,607, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1897, for the expense of the Post Office Packet Service "—
§ *MR. J. M. MACLEAN (Cardiff)said, he desired to refer to an attack made upon him in his absence by the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Burns) in reference to the employment of Lascars and Seedee boys on British mail steamers. The hon. Member said he claimed his (Mr. Maclean's) vote because of an election placard issued during the election at Cardiff, which pledged him, if returned, to endeavour to secure the employment of British sailors on British ships. He did not want to defend that placard, and all he now had to say was that the employment of so many foreign sailors in the British Mercantile Marine was a serious matter that ought to engage the attention of Parliament. But that was quite distinct from the question of the employment of Lascars on mail packets. He would not wish his bitterest enemy to undertake stoke-hole duty on Red Sea steamers. As to the employment of Lascars, the hon. Member for Battersea had quite misrepresented the case as regarded what he (Mr. Maclean) had said at Cardiff. The people of Cardiff did not judge him by a few election squibs on the walls, they had known him and his opinions on every question of foreign and domestic policy for 15 years, and as regarded the question of the employment of Lascars, his record was perfectly clear and strong. This hare was first started by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, who went to Cardiff and opened a campaign, attacking Lascars, and showing such colossal ignorance of the most elementary facts of the situation that he spoke of these sailors as foreigners, whom it was disgraceful to employ under the British flag. Indignant at that speech, he (Mr. MacLean) took the earliest opportunity of addressing a public meeting at Cardiff. 1137 The speech he made was published in the newspapers and afterwards in pamphlet form by the Conservative Association, and circulated by tens of thousands. That speech being made he was never asked any questions on the subject, and the electors of Cardiff accepted his views. It would have been disloyal to India to take any other view. He had made many voyages to India on steamers manned by Lascars. Those men did not approach in training and discipline the men of the British Navy, who were probably the finest specimens of humanity the world could show; but they were excellent sailors in point of discipline and capacity for doing their work, and he meant to say that ships navigated by Lascars were as well handled as most of the ships in the Mercantile Navy of England. These Lascars belonged to a seafaring race, who for centuries had been daring and skilful sailors. These men crossed the Indian Ocean and Red Sea long before England was heard of in India. England had taken possession of India, and were they to deny these men the right of earning their own living under the British flag? They were as much entitled as our own sailors were to do that. It would be a very shameful thing to prevent them doing so. What was suggested by the hon. Member for Battersea would be a very shortsighted policy. What would be the result of driving these men out of employment? The Indian Government would be bound to protect its own people by subsidising steamers for the special service of the Indian Government, and employ Lascars, and thus we should lose the carrying trade which at present we enjoyed. He could not allow a slur to be cast on him on this question. He expressed his regret that any Member of that House should have brought forward these intolerant views against the people of India at the very time they were employing Indian troops to fight their battles in Central Africa, and they hoped soon in the Soudan.
§ *MR. JOHN BURNS (Battersea)said he was not going to be led away by the excellent red herring of the hon. Gentleman on whom he had thrown no slur. He had seen from his bedroom window, when at Cardiff, on an election placard issued by the then candidate now the Member, that the hon. Member was in 1138 favour of "British labour on British ships." He therefore claimed the hon. Member as in favour of the exclusion of Lascars. He did not think the hon. Member had strengthened his position by his qualified denial. He did not deny the authenticity of the placard, and he hoped he should not deny the authorship. [Mr. MACLEAN was understood to deny the authorship of the placard.] Out of our mercantile marine, supposed to number 200,000 men, there were, according to Lord Brassey, an undoubted authority on marine matters, not more than 55,000 British-born sailors. That must be a matter of serious concern to every one who had at heart the social condition of our sailor population, and must appeal also to every man who had any regard for the military and naval position of the country from a strategical point of view. The hon. Member for Cardiff said he would be sorry to see any countryman earning his living by stoking in the Red Sea. He challenged the hon. Member that, if he went down to Cardiff and at a mass meeting of sailors put to them the question whether they would prefer hanging about Cardiff waiting for ships to stoking in the Red Sea, he would find that the sailors, to their credit, would far prefer the latter. The hon. Member spoke about the fitness of the Lascars as seamen. He did not depreciate them. But he held that the average British sailor was the best man at sea in times of difficulty and danger. One of the most creditable things he ever heard of about the British boy was that the day after the Victoria went down he saw ten times the number of London boys outside the recruiting offices of the Royal Navy in Spring Gardens than he had ever seen before during his daily walks for eight years to Spring Gardens as a Member of the County Council. That showed that the spirit for the sea was reviving, and it was their duty to encourage it by providing places in ships for those boys. He believed that since Friday, when this subject was before the House, the Secretary to the Treasury had inquired into the truth or otherwise of his allegations, and that the right hon. Gentleman's unsatisfactory reply on that occasion was due to the fact that, as he had to do two men's work in the House—to which he (Mr. Burns) objected on the principle of one man one job—he was ignorant of the facts.
§ MR. HANBURYI beg the hon. Member's pardon. I was not ignorant of the facts at all.
§ *MR. BURNSsaid he was sorry, and he would now have to prove that the right hon. Gentleman was ignorant of the facts, which he had been under the impression was due to the circumstance that, as he was not directly connected with the Post Office, he was not well posted in the proportion of Lascars to British sailors employed by the Peninsular and Oriental Company. It was not fair of that Company to employ nearly 7,000 Lascars in the vessels for which they were receiving a subsidy from the Government at the rate of £1,000 per day for the carrying of the mails, and that, apart from the European officers, they should not have, side by side with those Lascars, a single British able seaman, or a single able seaman who was a stoker. That was a disproportionately large number of foreigners as compared to Englishmen; but he was not asking to have the proportion reversed. He only asked the Secretary to the Treasury to promise a sympathetic consideration of the case. Mr. Williamson, of Liverpool, one of the best authorities on the mercantile marine, said that the chairman of the P. and O. Company told him that 5,000 British seamen were displaced in 1876 by foreigners; and everyone knew that it was simply because the British sailor had got out of hand. But that this unreliability now disappeared was shown by the fact that there were English seamen and stokers who had been continuously employed for five, ten and fifteen years on the White Star, Cunard, Orient, and other lines. He simply claimed that British sailors should have an equal and fair treatment. His case was a reasonable one, and he had rather under-estimated it. He claimed that it was not fair for us to add to our naval defence expenses, to be continually talking about the advantage of a Naval Reserve, to spend millions of money in attracting men to the Army and the Navy, and when these men had served their time, then we should deprive them of the opportunity of being more effective Army and Navy reserve men by saying that Lascars and other foreigners should be employed to their exclusion. He did not want the mantle of Protection thrown over the 1140 English sailor, but he objected to capitalist steamships using the low wages of the Lascar, his ignorance and inability to combine, in order to deprive England of 7,000 or 8,000 of the best reserve men she could possibly get, he objected to a company subsidised by national money and employing a disproportionate number of foreigners and turning English sailors on to the streets.
§ *MR. LEWIS MCIVER (Edinburgh, W.)observed that the hon. Member for Battersea disclaimed any desire to wholly oust the Lascars, but in that case it became a question of how many were to be ousted in the interests of British seamen. It then became a question of degree and then a question of who was to settle the degree, and upon what principle it was to be settled. If it was to be a question of efficiency, who were better able to settle that question than those engaged in the trade? if it was a question of money, who ought more properly to settle it than those who had to pay the money? The Treasury and the Post Office had adopted and approved the present system, and had accepted a contract which was based upon that system. The hon. Member for Battersea then shifted his ground and contended in the alternative that if Lascars were to be employed on contract ships, they should come under the Fair Wage Resolution. That was a very interesting development, and an unexpected expansion of the theory of Fair Wage. By what standard was the fair wage to be judged? Was the Lascar to be paid according to the standard of the British A.B., or by the Bombay standard? It was a dangerous proposition, because why should it not be extended to the Bombay millowner, who should be called upon to pay his men at the same rate of wages as the Lancashire millowner. He suggested that the supporters of the fair wage theory should be content with what they had got. Some hon. Members might have inferred that the P. and O. Co. was a powerful corporation, largely supported by Members of the House, who had an interest in the Company, and that it had thus been able to secure a profitable contract, to the exclusion of competent rivals. He could not conceive a more ludicrously inaccurate statement of the actual facts. The P. and O. Co. had the contract because they alone, 1141 in the estimation of the Department, were able to supply guarantees of efficiency and price. There was no shipping company in the country in a position to replace it. The appeal on behalf of the British seaman had been unfairly twisted into an attack on a company which had served the Post Office for a long series of years and had never lost a mail bag, which performed 2½ millions of miles of mail contract every year, and which was at present the only company competent to fulfil the work.
§ THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. R. W. HANBURY,) Prestonsaid that originally there was an idea that some hon. Members wished to drive the Lascars out of this trade altogether; but the discussion had cleared up the point at least that this was not the intention of the hon. Member for Battersea. The only substantial question was how far the House of Commons' Resolution touched a case of this kind, and he did not believe that it touched the case at all. It would be stretching the Resolution to an extreme point if they were to apply it to cases in which subsidies were given to railway companies or steam packet companies of this kind. The point as now raised by the hon. Member for Battersea was a very small one. It was merely a question of degree. The hon. Member based the claim for the employment of more British seamen on these packets on two grounds, the first being that England paid a very large proportion of the subsidy. The other and far more important ground was that we ought to have upon these subsidised boats men who could be of use to us for naval purposes. He would bear these points in mind, and when the opportunity arose he would consider how far it would be possible to provide for the employment of a few more British seamen on these ships.
§ DR. CLARKasked whether the Treasury would consider the advisability of modifying the existing contract with the P. and O. Company in the sense that had been indicated, or whether the change which his hon. Friend advocated would only be effected when the present contract terminated From Brindisi to Bombay a Lascar was probably as efficient a man as a British seaman, but between England and Brindisi the Lascar was not so useful a man, especially when 1142 there was bad weather in the Channel and the Bay of Biscay. The P. and O. Company had also an Australian and China service, and on that service British sailors ought to be employed in greater numbers. If the Caledonia, to give an example, were wanted suddenly for the naval purposes of the country, a completely new crew would have to be supplied for her, for none of her present crew were Royal Naval Reserve men. Almost all the crew were natives of India, the only white men employed on board the steamer being the officers, quartermasters and stewards. The P. and O. Company had also been transporting soldiers to India and Africa, and the steamers by which that work was done were also in the hands of Lascars. For such work they were not efficient. He wanted the Secretary to the Treasury to see, when the new contracts came in for China, India and Australia, that the conditions should be such that other companies would be able to compete, and not such as to give the P. and O. Company a monopoly. The Orient Company had now one half of the Australian service; and if the India and China trade were put up separately, it would give a fair opening to other companies. He objected to such a large subsidy being paid to the P. and O. Company, because he did not think that they required it. All the important correspondence between this country and India, and the colonies, was done by telegraph, and there were plenty of large steamers constantly running to India, China and Australia, which would take letters at a less rate.
§ MR. BURNSsaid that, in consequence of the sympathetic answer of the right hon. Gentleman, and the expression of his intention to communicate with the proper authorities, he did not propose to put the House to the trouble of a Division, because he believed this would be made a Party question and the sailor would not benefit.
§ Resolution agreed to.—
§ *MR. C. HARRISON (Plymouth)said, he desired to call attention to the inequitable method pursued in the assessment and rating of Government property. Upon the discussion of a Resolution on the subject in 1874, the Chancellor of the Exchequer read a statement of the principles upon which Government 1143 property was to be rated. These were that it was to bear its due share of local taxation, and to contribute to local rates equally with other property, and that the valuation was to be, as far as possible, on the same principle that was applied to the valuation of private property. This undertaking had been inadequately carried out by the appointment of a Treasury Officer, on a comparatively small salary, to assess Government property and say what it should be rated at. Thus the assessment of forts, Custom houses, and the like, was settled by a Treasury Clerk in London, without local knowledge, and without examination of the circumstances of each case. This was a matter which largely affected Plymouth and Devonport.
§ MR. HANBURY, interposing, said, the hon. Member was referring to ancient history; the whole system had been altered.
§ *MR. HARRISONcontinued, that the system had been made by Treasury Officials; it was not made and worked under the ordinary law; and the result to Plymouth was that the assessment was reduced a penny in the pound simply because an old sewer ran from the barracks into the Sound, and they did not make use of the borough sewers. In 1875 Government property was assessed at £3,231; in 1895, at £3,898; and in 1896 it was suddenly raised to £4,997, an increase of 40 per cent., without any extraordinary expenditure having been incurred by the borough. Either the estimate of 1896 was correct, in which case 40 per cent. had been under-assessed this year, or there must have been some great neglect with regard to the assessment. That being so, they found, when they came to examine what the increase had taken place upon, that the Post Office, which was assessed at £520 in 1895, without a single alteration or structural addition, had been raised to £600. Which system was right? If, instead of resorting to the valuation list of the Treasury in London, the ordinary system of assessment had been adopted, they would have had a totally altered, just, and proper system. That idea was perfectly practical. The matter was thoroughly investigated in 1873, and in the Bill introduced by Mr. Bruce, when Home Secretary, and the present First Lord of the Admiralty, and which was amended by the Committee upstairs, there was an 1144 elaborate clause with regard to the rating of Government property, and the rating was to be ascertained by arbitration under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts in the ordinary way, and after the umpire had decided the valuation, it was to be put into the scheme, and brought to the House in the form of a public Order. Now there was no reason why the system proposed in this Bill should not be adopted, or some alteration made in the present antiquated system. If ordinary property in Plymouth was assessed, an appeal lay from the Assessment Committee to the local justices, and from them to the Recorder, and, if any principle of law arose it could be carried up to the highest Court in the Kingdom, and there was no reason why Government property should not be assessed on the same principle as the rating of other property. He therefore urged that the present Resolution, and the Treasury Minute of 1874, under which these Government assessments were made, should be amended, and some other principle adopted, so that Government property should be assessed on the same basis as was now applicable to all other property.
§
Resolution agreed to.
2. "That a sum, not exceeding £2,009,281, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1897, for the Salaries and Working Expenses of the Post Office Telegraph Service.
3. "That a sum, not exceeding £1,701,036, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1897, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Inland Revenue Department.