Commons Sitting of 30 April 1900

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PRIVATE BILLS [Lords] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY INQUIRED INTO COMPLIED WITH.
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.:—

  Birmingham (King Edward the Sixth) Schools Bill [Lords].

  Birmingham University Bill [Lords].

  Burnley Corporation Bill [Lords].

  Dorking Water Bill [Lords].

  Edinburgh Corporation Bill [Lords].

  Exmouth Urban District Water Bill [Lords].

  Fishguard Water and Gas Bill [Lords].

  Manchester Ship Canal Bill [Lords].

  Mountain Ash Water Bill [Lords].

  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERETO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of

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  Petitions for Private Bills, that, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill.
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.

  PRIVATE BILL PETITIONS (STANDING ORDERS NOT COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for the following Bill, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, viz.:—
  Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company.
  Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

  PRIVATE BILLS (PETITION FOR ADDITIONAL PROVISION) (STANDING ORDERS NOT COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for additional Provision in the following Bill, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, viz.:—
  Tottenham Urban District Council Bill.
  Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

  PRIVATE BILL PETITIONS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for the following Bill, originating in the Lords, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, viz.:—
  London and San Francisco Bank Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

  LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAILWAY BILL.
  Read the third time, and passed.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
  Queen's consent signified; read the third time, and passed.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (SPITAL- FIELDS MARKET) BILL.
  Read the third time, and passed.
  LONDON COUNTY TRAMWAYS (No. 2) BILL.
  Prince of Wales's consent signified; read the third time, and passed.
  ST. DAVID'S RAILWAY (ADDITIONAL POWERS) BILL.
  Read the third time, and passed.
EXETER CORPORATION BILL.
  HAMILTON, MOTHERWELL, AND WISHAW TRAMWAYS BILL.
  As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  LONDON AND SOUTH WESTERN RAILWAY BILL.
  As amended, considered; Amendment made; Bill to be read the third time.
  GREAT INDIAN PENINSULAR RAILWAY COMPANY.
  Petition for Bill; referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

  DUBLIN ELECTRIC LIGHTING BILL (BY ORDER).
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. FIELD: I beg to move the rejection of this Bill, for the following reasons:—The Bill proposes to incorporate a company, and to empower such company to light by electricity the City of Dublin, and certain urban districts adjoining thereto. The Corporation of Dublin are authorised by Provisional Order, granted to them by the Board of Trade, under the Electric Lighting Acts, to supply electricity for public and private purposes within their district, and they have, at great expense, constructed a generating station, and

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  laid down electric mains and works, and are now supplying electricity, in most of the principal streets in the City of Dublin. I think it well here to enumerate the streets in which mains have to be laid:—Rutland Square, Sackville Street (Upper), Sackville Street (Lower), Earl Street, North, Talbot Street, Sackville Place, Eden Quay, O'Connell Bridge, Henry Street, Mary Street, Capel Street (part of), Grattan Bridge, Parliament Street, Burgh Quay, D'Olier Street, Townsend Street (part), Great Brunswick Street, Westland Row (part), College Street, Fleet Street, Anglesea Street, Westmoreland Street, College Green, Dame Street, South Great George's Street (part of), Trinity Street, Suffolk Street, Grafton Street, Wicklow Street, Chatham Street, Stephen's Green, Merrion Row, Merrion Street, Upper, Merrion Square, Kildare Street, Dawson Street, Nassau Street, Leinster Street, Clare Street. These streets comprise the principal thoroughfares of the City, and arrangements are being made to enable the necessary developments. I would ask the House to give particular attention to this: The present Bill entirely disregards the rights of the Corporation, and seeks power to break up the streets of Dublin, and to light the city by electricity, in competition with them. By the Electric Lighting Acts, Parliament imposed on the Board of Trade the duty of considering applications for Provisional Orders in cases where electric lighting powers are sought, and it is submitted that it has been constantly the policy of Parliament to decide that when certain things can be done by Provisional Orders, they should be done by such means and not by an Act, and that no good reason exists why the time of a Committee of your Honourable House should be occupied in considering the present Bill. It is submitted that the passing of the Bill would not only do great injury to the City of Dublin and to the ratepayers thereof, but would also encourage attacks on the rights and privileges of local authorities generally, and would practically set aside the existing law. There is a great principle involved, that public utilities should not be administered by irresponsible private companies. To a certain extent this House has recognised that principle in recent years, for up to the present there is not a single
  258
  case in which a company has been given powers to carry out the supply of electricity in a district where a local authority have established electricity works under the Electric Lighting Acts. The existing Electricity Generating Works of the Corporation in Fleet Street, Dublin, were created ten years ago, at a time when the public supply of electricity was in its infancy, and when the demands for electric lighting were comparatively small. Since then the industry has made great progress, and the Fleet Street works, situated in the centre of the City, at a spot which did not afford favourable facilities for extensions, became inadequate for the requirements. The development of the Dublin Corporation Electricity Undertaking has been hampered on account of the impossibility of getting a suitable site within the City for the generating works. This statement will be adopted by those who know the facts, and the necessity for the extension of the city boundaries. Ultimately, however, it was decided to utilise the old Pigeon House Fort for the works, and Mr. Robert Hammond, a member of the Institutions of Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineers, and an eminent consulting engineer, has been appointed to design and carry out the scheme. He recommends the Corporation to spend at once £96,000 on the generating works and £118,500 on mains and connections, and £40,000 on public street lighting; and, following his advice, the Corporation, on December 28th last, decided to apply to the Local Government Board for sanction to the borrowing of £254,500 for these purposes. This they have since done, an inquiry has been held, and there is no doubt that the Local Government Board will approve of the proposed loan—in fact, their assent is daily expected by the Corporation. The generating works have been designed and the system of mains devised, and full specifications for the building of the works and their equipment with plant of the most modern type and the supply mains have been prepared, and tenders from manufacturers are being invited. When these works have been got into operation the Dublin Corporation will possess one of the best electricity supply systems of the kingdom. It would not be to the advantage of the public generally that a company should have the light to lay mains and supply

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  in competition to the Corporation of Dublin. On the other hand, it would be a serious interference with business and a loss to the community to have the streets broken up by two parties. It will no doubt be urged by the promoters of this Bill that the Corporation have not sufficiently progressed during some years past. But they did all that their resources enabled them—for their borrowing powers were exhausted. But the application of the Markets Act relieved them, because under a clause in that Act money borrowed for waterworks purposes shall not be taken into account by the Local Government Board. Under this clause the Corporation were able to extend their borrowing powers, and they made application at once to the Local Government Board. Now, I would again point out to the House that a great principle is at stake. Public utilities should not be abandoned to private enterprise. There is already in Dublin a gas monopoly, a company which practically does what it likes with the consumers, and pays enormous dividends. If we are going to establish an electric light private company, then probably Dublin will have to choose between the devil and the deep sea, particularly if any understanding is arranged between the two companies. It is generally conceded that gas, water, and tramway should be the property of municipalities, and worked by them for the benefit of the community at large. If this Bill would not be sanctioned for an English, Scotch, or Welsh city, why should it be passed for Dublin? The Corporation of Dublin have managed a splendid water supply. Compare their system of municipal water supply with the private water companies of London, where every hot summer you have a water famine, low supply, and high prices. It may be urged that power will be given to the Corporation to purchase the company after a term of years, but the experience of such legislation is not encouraging. Many years ago Mr. Gladstone passed a Bill giving power to the community to purchase railways on certain terms, but no railway has yet been purchased; on the contrary, the carrying companies have increased their power, and as time goes on it will be more difficult to purchase them. If this Bill is passed it will be precisely the same thing with the electric lighting company. Therefore, Sir, having explained why the Dublin Corporation
  260
  have partially failed in carrying out the electric lighting from the want of funds and space, both of which are now forthcoming, I trust the House will not take a retrograde stop by sanctioning the principle of private management of public utilities. I beg to therefore move the rejection of the Bill.
  MR. AUSTIN: I beg to second the Amendment.
  Amendment proposed—
  "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day six months.'"—(Mr. Field.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: As one of the Members whose name is on the back of this Bill, I think the House is entitled to a few words from me in explanation of the position I have taken up. I would like at once to ask the House to remember that this is not a case of a private company or corporation seeking for the first time, in competition with the Dublin Corporation, to enter upon a virgin field, because the Corporation of Dublin have had electric lighting powers since 1892. I want to tell the House what, under those powers, they have done and what their present position is. During the eight years they have had possession of those powers they have spent £80,000 of the ratepayers' money on electric lighting. I have been told that the sum expended amounts to £100,000, but this morning I got official information from the Town Clerk of Dublin that it is only £80,000 that has been wasted in this manner. And what have they got in return for the money? Eighty public street lamps are lighted with electricity and there are 250 private consumers, and that is all we have to show for the £80,000. No doubt the Corporation have a generating station in the centre of the City, but they have just received an intimation from the Courts that if they increase their power they will be restrained, and it must be borne in mind that the power at present made at the generating station is even insufficient to light the Post Office in Sackville Street. From start to finish nothing could have been a greater failure or fiasco than the attempt of the

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  Dublin Corporation to supply electric lighting. They not only give a very limited and inefficient supply, but at the present moment they are losing £2,000 a year. They are doing nothing themselves to improve it, and, if you ask any trader in Dublin, he will tell you that it is a standing and real grievance that electric light cannot be obtained. Now, the Corporation having had a fair trial, the traders of Dublin think they are entitled to have an independent corporation in the field to supply what is becoming an absolute necessity. There is one other point I wish to dwell upon. Under their Provisional Order the Corporation are empowered to make a maximum charge of 7d. per unit. And they have done so. Now, in Cork City, where the electric light is supplied by the Tramways Company, the charge is only 3d. per unit, and the promoters of this Bill believe it would be possible to supply an efficient electric light to the traders of Dublin at 4d. per unit and make a considerable profit even then. I hope the House will come to the conclusion that it is time the traders in Dublin should get some relief from the system of which they are the victims. It seems to mo that not only will the Corporation not give an efficient light, but they will not allow other people to do it for them. Personally I have not a penny of financial interest in this matter, but I may point out that the promoters of this Bill are mercantile men in Dublin of every shade of politics and party. This is a bona fide mercantile undertaking of which the people of Dublin are really in need, and I therefore ask this House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I do not wish to deny a good deal of what has boon said by the hon. Member opposite with regard to the electric lighting of Dublin. I admit that it is very far from perfect, and that it would be a waste of time to try and argue otherwise, but I do submit that, under the circumstances, the supply is as good as the Corporation could be expected to give. Remember that they have to fight against an enormous gas monopoly, and in the past they have not had the means at their disposal with which to improve the system. Now, however, they have both the means and the determina-
  262
  tion to do it. I do not believe that those who are promoting this Bill have any intention themselves to supply the city with electric light. Their idea is to obtain powers which they may sell, and for which they will make the ratepayers of Dublin pay very heavily. It is contrary to the usage of this House to grant such powers under these circumstances. I have on many occasions voted against monopolies of this kind, and even in this session Bills of a like character have been thrown out with ridicule. I have in my mind a scheme by a company to purchase property required for improving the Thames Embankment, and it will be in the recollection of the House with what scorn that proposition was treated here. As I take it, the tendency nowadays is to municipalise these undertakings and to vest them in corporations. And yet you are now being asked to set up a rival in the matter of electric lighting to the Dublin Corporation which would have done better in the past had it had more money at its disposal, and which would have been furnishing an adequate supply at this moment had its resources not been jobbed away by old Tory corporations. You are asked by this Bill to stop the clock, to put it back and to deprive us in Dublin of the little bit of Home Rule we possess. I hope the good sense of this House will reject the measure. I believe if hon. Members knew who were the promoters of the Bill they would come to the conclusion that they are not so disinterested as has been suggested.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: The proposal before the House is not to put the people of Dublin into the hands of monopolists. It is rather to allow a Committee of this House to inquire into the relative merits of the two schemes, and I trust the House will not, by assenting to this Amendment, prevent this Bill being considered on its merits. It appears to mo that it has in its favour a strong primâ facie case. It is not promoted by any external body of speculators. The gentlemen who are concerned in its promotion are not only consumers of the light, but are among the largest ratepayers of Dublin, and they declare that they are only acting in self-defence. They complain that the attempt of the Corporation of Dublin to supply the electric light has resulted in a dismal

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  failure, as out of a population of 300,000 people there are only 250 private consumers, and within the last fortnight the Post Office, which is within the compulsory area, has been refused a supply. The corporation has had its powers for ten years. It has done absolutely nothing outside its compulsory area, and even within that area it has again and again refused requests for the supply of the light. There are persons who have been waiting in vain two, three, and four years for a supply. The quality of the light is also a substantial ground of complaint, and although the maximum charge is imposed upon the consumers, the ratepayers have to supply a deficit of over £2,000 a year. It seems to me that these are matters which could be more properly dealt with by a Committee of this House, and I therefore hope the Bill will be read a second time.
  MR. DILLON: If this matter is pressed to a division, I shall feel bound to vote for the rejection of the Bill, and, as I am a citizen of Dublin, I think I ought to explain my reasons. On principle I have always voted against any measure which proposes to set up monopolies in regard to either lighting or water supply. I entirely demur to the suggestion that this is a matter of detail which ought to be dealt with by a Committee of this House. I think it is a question of principle which the House itself should deal with. The Bill involves a great principle. It involves the handing over to a private company of the right of breaking up the streets of Dublin whenever they may desire to do so, and I find, according to the schedule attached to this Bill, all the principal thoroughfares of the city are to be handed over to the company. It may be, and indeed it has been, said that the supply of electric light to the city by the corporation has up to the present been unsatisfactory. I fully admit that. But then good reasons have been advanced for it. Dublin has suffered from the gas monopoly, which has done its best to block the progress of electric lighting. But although the corporation has been so strongly denounced in this matter, I would point out that the same body has supplied the citizens with one of the most excellent systems of water supply to be found in the whole of the United Kingdom, and there is no reason to doubt
  264
  that, now it is in a better financial position, it will be able to do all that is required in the matter of supply of electric light. I have another reason for opposing this Bill. I do not believe that the gentlemen whose names are given as its promoters have the slightest intention of themselves supplying the city with the electric light. Their idea is to get the concession and to sell it to another company of which we have no knowledge. It is not therefore a banâ fide scheme. I hope the House will reject this proposal to hand Dublin over to another set of monopolists.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. RITCHIE, Croydon): The hon. Member who last spoke says he desires to protect Dublin against a monopoly. I thought the object of this Bill was to give power to a company to compete with the corporation, and I certainly must say I have never heard the word monopoly used in the sense in which the hon. Gentleman uses it now.
  MR. DILLON: Private monopoly.
  MR. RITCHIE: I do not care whether it be private or public. How can it be a monopoly when it is a proposal to set up another supply in competition with the corporation? You cannot create a monopoly in that way. It is admitted, even by those who oppose this Bill, that the Corporation of Dublin have not used the powers they possess in such a manner as to be of service to those whom they desire to serve. We are told that there are large traders in Dublin whom the corporation have been unable to supply with the light. What the House is asked to do is to read this Bill a second time, in order that its merits may be examined into by a Committee. I think, judging from the speeches of hon. Members who have spoken against the Bill, the House would be justified in reading it a second time, and I trust that it will pursue that course.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: It has been the invariable rule of Parliament, when a company comes to this House for power to construct a railway, not to allow another company to enter within the area of competition, and the same policy has been pursued in regard

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  to both water and electric lighting schemes.
  MR. RITCHIE: Not at all.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: Can the right hon. Gentleman quote a precedent to the contrary?
  MR. RITCHIE: There are several areas in London where there are competing supplies of electric light. Further than that, a Committee was appointed some years ago for the express purpose of considering this question, and they advocated competition.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: That is only a general statement. Can the right hon. Gentleman mention a single district in London into which, after one company has got its powers, another company has been allowed to enter?
  MR. RITCHIE: Yes, the City of London.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: And why? Because of the flagrant way in which the City Corporation allowed its rights to be invaded by a private company. Even in this last session there have been a number of Bills introduced in the House of Commons to supply electricity in bulk. Various Corporations objected to them and the House of Commons threw the Bills out. Only this year a company sought to invade the area of the Batter-sea Municipal Supply, and the House of Commons threw the Bill out by a majority of forty-six. I repeat it has been the invariable rule of Parliament, where one company already has the right of supply, not to permit a competing company, and not to permit also a private company to compote with a municipal authority. I ask the House to recognise the fact that the Dublin Cor-
  poration has shown its ability by supplying the citizens with a magnificent water system. They have a supply of water which is at once plentiful, cheap, and of good quality, and for giving it the corporation deserve well at our hands. Judging from that it is only fair to assume that the corporation, now they have the means, will also be able to provide an efficient supply of electric light. It seems to me that Dublin has already quite enough private companies in its midst, and, if I am not mistaken, the present proposal is to hand over the supply of electric light to the very persons who run the Cork Electric Light and Tramways. If this Bill is passed a very dangerous precedent will be established; a precedent which will, no doubt, soon be extended to England, Scotland, and Wales. Every sensible man admits that a municipality ought to have in its hands its electric supply, as well as its water and tram undertakings. But if this Bill is passed you will do a thing which will delight all who are opposed to what is broadly known as municipal trading. I cannot understand why the people of Dublin should object to the city having the power of illumination in its own hands. It has recently shown itself pre-eminently successful in administration, and with a little more experience it may do equally well with illumination. I ask the House to support the Members for Dublin, who are advocating the cause of the municipality as against the seekers of ten per cent. profits. Do not deprive the city of the opportunity of making from its electric supply a profit which, instead of going into private pockets, might well be devoted to removing some of those terrible slums which now exist.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 103; Noes, 83. (Division List No. 105.)

  AYES.

  Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir A. F.

  Campbell, Rt. Hn J. A.(Glasgow)

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbysh.)

  Denny, Colonel

  Anstruther, H. T.

  Cecil, Evelyn (Hertford, E.)

  Doughty, George

  Barry, Rt. Hn A H Smith- (Hunts)

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Doxford, Sir William T.

  Bartley, George C. T.

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Faber, George Denison

  Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Bethell, Commander

  Cornwallis, Fiennes Stanley W.

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Courtney, Rt. Hon. Leonard H.

  Flannery, Sir Fortescue

  Boulnois, Edmund

  Crilly, Daniel

  Fox, Dr. Joseph Francis

  Bowles, T. Gibson(King's Lynn)

  Curran, Thomas B. (Donegal)

  Gedge, Sydney

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Curran, Thomas (Sligo, S.)

  Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Gull, Sir Cameron

  Long, Rt. Hn. Walter(Liverpool)

  Simeon, Sir Barrington

  Gunter, Colonel

  Lowther, Rt. Hn. James (Kent)

  Smith, J. Parker (Lanarks.)

  Hasley, Thomas Frederick

  Lowther, Rt. Hn. J. W. (Cumb'land)

  Spencer, Ernest

  Hamilton, Rt. Hn. Lord George

  Macaleese, Daniel

  Stanley, Sir H. M. (Lambeth).

  Hanbury, Rt. Hn. Robert Wm.

  M'lver, Sir L. (Edinburgh, W.)

  Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

  Haslett, Sir James Horner

  Malcolm, Ian

  Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

  Heath, James

  Maxwell, Rt. Hn. Sir Herbert E.

  Sullivan, Donal (Westmeath)

  Helder, Augustus

  Milward, Colonel Victor

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Hobhouse, Henry

  Morgan, J. Lloyd(Carmarthen)

  Ure, Alexander

  Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

  Morton, Arth. H. A.(Deptford)

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir W. H.

  Howard, Joseph

  Murray, Rt. Hn. A Graham(Bute)

  Warr, Augustus Frederick

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Myers, William Henry

  Wilson-Todd, Wm. H.(Yorks)

  Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

  Newdigate, Francis Alexander

  Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R.(Bath)

  Johnson-Ferguson, Jabez E.

  Nicol, Donald Ninian

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Johnston, William (Belfast)

  Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay

  Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart-

  Joicey, Sir James

  Paulton, James Mellor

  Wrightson, Thomas

  Kay-Shuttleworth, Rt. Hn. Sir U

  Pilkington, R. (Lanes, Newton)

  Wyvill, Marmaduke D'Arcy

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Purvis, Robert

  Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

  Kimber, Henry

  Renshaw, Charles Bine

  Younger, William

  Lafone, Alfred

  Rentoul, James Alexander

  Lawrence, Sir E. Durning-(Corn)

  Ridley, Rt. Hn. Sir Matthew W.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. William Moore and Mr. Arthur O'Connor.

  Lawson, John Grant (Yorks.)

  Ritchie, Rt. Hon. C. Thomson

  Leighton, Stanley

  Russell, Gen. F. S.(Cheltenham)

  Llewelyn, Sir Dillwyn (Swansea)

  Scoble, Sir Andrew Richard

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)

  Hogan, James Francis

  Price, Robert John

  Allan, William (Gateshead)

  Horniman, Frederick John

  Pym, C. Guy

  Asher, Alexander

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

  Austin, M. (Limerick, W.)

  Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

  Reid, Sir Robert Threshie

  Baker, Sir John

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  Richardson, J. (Durham, S. E.)

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Kinloch, Sir John Geo. Smyth

  Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

  Blake, Edward

  Labouchere, Henry

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

  Broadhurst, Henry

  Langley, Batty

  Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

  Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

  Laurie, Lieut.-General

  Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cumbl'la'd)

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  Burns, John

  Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington)

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Leng, Sir John

  Steadman, William Charles

  Caldwell, James

  Lloyd-George, David

  Tanner, Charles Kearns

  Cameron, Sir Charles(Glasgow)

  Lough, Thomas

  Tennant, Harold John

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Lyell, Sir Leonard

  Thomas, Alf. (Glamorgan, E.)

  Channing, Francis Allston

  Maclean, James Mackenzie

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Dewar, Arthur

  M'Crae, George

  Wallace, Robert

  Dillon, John

  Maddison, Fred.

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Doogan, P. C.

  Mappin, Sir Frederick Thorpe

  Wason, Eugene

  Duckworth, James

  Monk, Charles James

  Whiteley, George (Stockport)

  Emmott, Alfred

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Williams, John Carvell (Notts)

  Farquharson, Dr. Robert

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Williams, J. Powell- (Birm.)

  Foster, Sir W. (Derby Co.)

  O'Brien, James F. X. (Cork)

  Wills, Sir William Henry

  Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Wilson, John (Govan)

  Gold, Charles

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Yoxall, James Henry

  Harwood, George

  O'Malley, William

  Hayne, Rt. Hn. Charles Seale-

  Palmer, George Wm. (Reading)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr. Field and Mr. Carew.

  Hazell, Walter

  Perks, Robert William

  Hedderwick, Thomas Chas. H.

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Bill read a second time, and committed.

PETITIONS.
  AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH (PROPOSED LEGISLATION).
  Petition from New South Wales and Sydney, for the retention of existing rights of appeal to Her Majesty in Council; to lie upon the Table.
  COUNTY COURTS BILL.
  Petition from Glasgow, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES BILL.
  Petition from Wellington (Salop), in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LAND REGISTRY (NEW BUILDINGS) BILL.
  Petition from St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington, against; to lie upon the Table.
  AND VALUES TAXATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions against, from Edinburgh and Leith; to lie upon the Table.
  LANDS VALUATION (SCOTLAND) ACT (1854) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petitions against, from Edinburgh and Leith; to lie upon the Table.
  LONDON GOVERNMENT ACT, 1899.
  Petition from Marylebone, for alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  MINKS (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  Petition from Deep Pit, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  POOR LAW AMENDMENT (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1845.
  Petition from South Knapdale, for alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  RAILWAYS (PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS) BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, for alteration; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  Petitions in favour, from Clevedon and Werrington; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS TO CHILDREN RILL.
  Petitions in favour, from Sleaford; Chester; Shotts; Dawley; Greenock (two); Luton; and Thaxted; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS TO CHILDREN (No 2) BILL.
  Petitions in favour, from Moorside; Eccles; Morton Green; Highbury; Dalston; Sheffield (ten); (Headless; Street; Winchester; Nuneaton: and Cardiff (four); to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LTQUORS TO CHILDREN (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour, from Newington and Montrose; to lie upon the Table.
  SCHOOL HOARD ELECTIONS (LONDON) BILL.
  Petition from Marylebone, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SUNDAY CLOSING (MONMOUTHSHIRE) BILL.
  Petitions in favour, from Luton and Sleaford; to lie upon the Table.
  TEMPERANCE REFORM THREEFOLD OPTION (SCOTLAND) HILL.
  Petitions in favour, from Govanhill and Turriff; to lie upon the Table.

  YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS BILL.
  Petition from Moorside, against; to lie upon the Table.
  Petition from Denbigh; to lie upon the Table.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  EDUCATION (SCOTLAND).
  Copy presented, of Return showing the expenditure from the Grant for Public Education in Scotland in the year 1899 upon Annual Grants to State-aided Schools; the number of Schools); and the results of Inspection and Examination during the year ended 30th September, 1899 [by Command]: to lie upon the Table.
  UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.
  Copy presented, of Abstract of Accounts of the University of Glasgow for the year ending 30th September, 1899 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 153.]
  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (GENERAL REPORTS).
  Copy presented, of General Report for the year 1899 by the Chief Inspector of the West Central Division [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (EVENING CONTINUATION SCHOOLS).
  Copy presented, of Code of Regulations for Evening Continuation Schools, with Explanatory Memorandum, Schedule, and Appendices by the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  METROPLITAN POLICE.
  Accounts presented, of the Metropolitan Police, the Police Pension Fund, and the Metropolitan Police Courts, for the year ended 31st March, 1900 [by

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  Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 154.]

  LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT (EVICTION NOTICES).
  Copy presented, of Return of Eviction Notices filed during the quarter ended 31st March, 1900 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 2407 and 2408 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  QUESTIONS.

    SOUTH AFRICAN WAR—SPION KOP DESPATCHES.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether, between 9th March, the date of the receipt by the War Office of the Spion Kop despatches and Lord Roberts' comments thereon on 17th April, the date of the publication of those documents, any communications were held between the War Office and Sir Redvers Buller with reference to those despatches and their contemplated publication.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. WYNDHAM, Dover): No, Sir. No communication passed between the War Office and Sir R. Buller directly between the dates mentioned, but communications did pass between Lord Roberts and Sir R. Buller with regard to the publication of the despatches.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Will the First Lord give us an opportunity of raising a debate? How about the blocking notices?
    [No answer was given.]

    LORD ROBERTS AND LORD METHUEN.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether the War Office authorities have any explanation to offer with reference to the absence of all comment, stricture, or expression of opinion by the Commander-
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    in-Chief on the operations of the battle of Magersfontein, and his comments on the operations at Stormberg or Spion Kop.
    MR. WYNDHAM: No, Sir. I must say I think the hon. Gentleman will realise that he is asking not a question of fact, but a question of opinion, which must be highly speculative.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Then, may I ask this—Have these operations at Magersfontein been exempted from criticism because Lord Methuen is a society peer, in Court favour?
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! Obviously that is not a proper question.

    COUNT ADALBERT STERNBERG.
    MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he can now state whether Count Adalbert Sternberg, the author of the article on England in the Gaulois of 21st March, who was captured with General Cronje and allowed to come to this country after his release, was a war correspondent only, or whether he had borne arms and directed operations against British troops.
    MR. WYNDHAM: No, Sir. Count Adalbert Sternberg has been represented both as a non-combatant and as a combatant. But his own statements, so far as I know, afford the only evidence for relegating him to either category.

    SUPPRESSED SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that a package of pamphlets brought by the Union mail steamer "Norman," on 28th February, to Cape Town for the South African Newspaper Company were not delivered having been seized by the Customs authorities as being treasonable; whether he is aware that all the pamphlets thus seized, including copies of a well-known pamphlet, entitled "The Scandal of the South African Committee," were delivered to the South African Newspaper Company on 10th March, with the exception of thirteen copies of "A Century of Wrong," by Mr. F. W. Reitz, which were detained; and that copies of the pamphlets thus

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    seized and detained by the Governor of Cape Colony from the South African Newspaper Company were advertised for sale by two local firms of booksellers in the Cape Times, of 7th February and 15th February, without interference on the part of the Governor; did Sir Alfred Milner, in directing the seizure and detention of these pamphlets, act on the advice of the Cape Cabinet or of any Member of that Cabinet; and what, if any, explanation can be given for the seizure by order of the Governor of Cape Colony of pamphlets criticising the policy of the South African War which have had an unprohibited circulation in Great Britain and the Colonies, and have in several instances been referred to in debate in the House of Commons.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN, Birmingham, W.): I have not heard anything from Sir A. Milner upon the matter referred to, but I am asking him for a report.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: When may I expect a reply?
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: It will take about six weeks.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: You are worse than the War Office.
    DR. TANNER: Say next Christmas.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I cannot expedite the boats. The voyage to and fro takes about six weeks.

    SETTLEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA OF VOLUNTEERS, &c, AFTER THE WAR.
    MR. FABER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether, in the case of those who have gone as Volunteers from this country to South Africa for the period of the war, or whose time of service shall have then expired, wishing to settle in South Africa on the conclusion of the war, they will be able to obtain their discharge there without first returning to this country; and if so, whether the Government will contribute towards the cost of passage from this country to South Africa of the wife or family of each of such soldiers the
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    amount that it would have cost the Government to transport each of such soldiers from South Africa to this country, or any larger amount, with the view of encouraging their settlement in South Africa.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The Secretary of State for War has already placed himself in communication with the Colonial Office on this subject. The policy suggested by the hon. Member is one which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, certainly deserves favourable consideration.
    SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD (Somersetshire, Wellington): May I ask if, in the case of all men who apply for discharge in South Africa, the Government will first ascertain whether they are married or not, so that there shall be no cases of destitution or wife desertion in this country?
    MR. WYNDHAM: This is a large question of policy, which will have to be carefully considered in every direction, and that is one of the points which certainly will not be left out of account.

    IMPERIAL YEOMANRY HORSES.
    MR. WARNER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War where the horses for the Imperial Yeomanry were procured from; whether they were horses purchased at the Cape, or whether they were supplied from the horses sent out for remounts; or from what other source they were obtained.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The horses were procured from the following countries:—England, 6,384; Ireland, 1,355; Cape,. 862; Australia, 625; from other sources, 3,811; total, 13,037, 4,060 of these were supplied by Yeomanry commanders, the remainder by the Imperial Yeomanry Committee. None were supplied from the horses sent out as remounts.

    RESERVE BATTALIONS AND MILITARY PENSIONERS.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if he can state the number of reserve battalions and their strength and establishment both in officers and men;

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    whether all military pensioners now serving in response to the Queen's appeal are liable at any time to have their pensions stopped, although all non-commissioned officers and men draw both pension and pay, and when married separation allowance in addition, while some who are in Government civil employment draw half pay of their civil salary as well; whether an officer who has retired upon a pension or gratuity, or partly pension and partly gratuity, is liable to be recalled to service without his consent; whether this condition of service for pensioners applies equally to all military pensioners irrespective of rank; and whether he will consider the advisability of making an allowance to officers of this class who respond to the Queen's appeal to compensate them for breaking up their home establishment.
    MR. WYNDHAM: In reply to the first paragraph there are at present eleven battalions with an establishment of twenty-eight officers and 978 men each, and a total strength of 149 officers and 13,187 men. The total number of applications for all arms was on Saturday 28,009. The reply to the second paragraph is in the negative and to the third in the affirmative. The regulations under which retired officers are liable to recall are shewn in Article 486c. of the Pay Warrant, and those for non-commissioned officers and men in Article 1212. In regard to the last paragraph, the officers receive an outfit allowance, and a gratuity when their services are no longer required.

    WOOLWICH DOCKYARD STRIKE.
    MR. STEADMAN: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether a strike took place at the Woolwich Dockyard Commissariat Department for an increase in wages; and, if so, whether, in order to avoid a repetition of this, he will increase the wages of the workmen employed there.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE AVAR OFFICE (Mr. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS, Birmingham, S.): A considerable proportion of men temporarily employed in the Supply Reserve Depot at Woolwich stopped work on the morning of the 23rd instant on an announce-
    276
    ment being made that their overtime work would no longer be necessary. Their services would shortly have had to be dispensed with in any case, as the work is diminishing rapidly in amount. They were unskilled day labourers, receiving 21s. for a week of forty-eight hours, with "time-and-a-quarter" for the first two hours' overtime, and "time-and-a-half" afterwards. There is no difficulty in carrying on the work of the depôt.

    DEFENCE OF LADYSMITH—REVIEW OF THE NAVAL BRIGADE.
    MR. W. F. D. SMITH: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether any stands will be provided from which Members will be able to see the Naval Brigade reviewed on 7th May.
    MR. BOULNOIS: I beg at the same time to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether facilities will be afforded for Members of Parliament to witness the inspection of the officers and men of H.M.S. "Powerful" on the 7th May by the First Lord of the Admiralty.
    THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS, Kent, St. Augustine's): I find that the stands usually erected by the military authorities for the trooping of the colour will be available for the Naval Brigade inspection; but these have already been allotted to the full extent to the naval and military services. I have given instructions for the erection of a small stand, in the only space available, for the use of the Houses of Parliament; and so far as space permits, two tickets will be allotted to each Member who desires them, at the price of five shillings per ticket. Applications should be made to Mr. Speaker's secretary, before Thursday next at 5.30 o'clock, when the list will be closed, and, if necessary, a ballot taken.

    INDIAN HORSES FOR SOUTH AFRICA.
    MR. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, what is the meaning of the entry in the Indian Financial Statement of 22 lakhs, or £150,000, on account of the replacement of additional horses sent to South Africa, and whether this sum will be repaid to India by the Imperial Government.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord G. HAMILTON, Middlesex, Ealing): All animals and stores supplied by the Indian Government to the Army in South Africa will be either replaced or paid for by the Imperial Government. Repayments in respect of such supplies figure on the receipts side of the Estimates; on the other hand the outlay on purchases to replace horses, as in the case in point, or other articles supplied to the Imperial Government, necessarily figure on the expenditure side.

    PLAGUE IN INDIA.—CAWNPORE REGULATIONS.
    MR. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether, since the plague riot took place at Cawnpore, the regulations have been modified, and the compulsory removal of plague-stricken patients to hospital has been abolished, and why this change was not made before the riot broke out.
    LORD G. HAMILTON: The Viceroy has informed me by telegram that "The Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces arrived at Cawnpore on the day after the riot. He found the tumult due in part to gross ignorance, partly to unwillingness to submit to any plague preventive regulations; and partly to false reports that had been fomented by Marwaris, who are foreigners. The Lieutenant-Governor issued a notification explaining the plague regulations, and on the 16th April (five days after the riot) shops were opened and business was resumed." I have received no further information on the subject of the hon. Member's question; and I do not expect to receive any until detailed reports on the occurrences reach me.
    MR. MACLEAN: Were the regulations modified after the riot had broken out?
    LORD G. HAMILTON: I cannot answer that question. Evidently they wore not withdrawn.

    GREAT INDIAN PENINSULAR RAILWAY.
    MR. COHEN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he can inform the House of the principle on which the calculation was based whereon the Governor of the Bank
    278
    of England fixed £2 17s. per cent. as the rate of interest in settling the annuity for the purchase of the Great India Peninsular Railway Company by the Govern merit of India.
    LORD G. HAMILTON: The principle is defined in the contract as follows:—".… the rate of interest which shall be used in calculating such annuity being determined by the average rate of interest during the preceding two years received in London upon public obligations of the East India Company, and which shall be ascertained by reference to the governor or deputy governor of the Bank of England for the time being." The Governor of the Bank of England was asked to state his average rate, and he replied £2 17s. per cent.

    INDIAN FAMINE—PROPOSED PARLIAMENTARY GRANT.
    COLONEL MILWARD: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, with reference to the famine now desolating India, whether Her Majesty's Government will reconsider the question of a Grant in Aid, having especial regard to the financial prosperity of this country, to the continuous calls upon the private benevolence of this nation in connection with the war in South Africa, and to the large contributions from the native princes and others in India to the war fund; and, whether, seeing that the objections hitherto raised by the Indian Government to such Grants in Aid have arisen largely from the fear of the creation of a claim for financial interference, he will consider the advisability of placing the proposed Grant under the unfettered control of the Viceroy in Council.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.): I have nothing to add to the answer I gave on this subject to the hon. Member for Cardiff last Thursday.† The hon. Member may be assured that the progress of events in connection with the famine in India is being carefully watched by Her Majesty's Government.

    INDIAN PILGRIMAGES—WRECK OF THE "CHEBINE."
    MR. COHEN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade, will he explain
    † See page 15 of this volume.

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    why the steamship "Chebine," belonging to the English Khedivial Company, which left Suez on 8th March with 300 deck passengers, pilgrims bound for Jiddah, besides the mails and cabin passengers, was not subject to the general regulations for the safety of passenger ships issued by the Board of Trade, although the vessel flew the British flag, belonged to an English company, and was commanded by a British officer; whether the attention of the Board of Trade has been drawn to the finding of the Naval Court held at Suez, that the "Chebine," though registered a British vessel, had left Suez not properly found nor in good seaworthy condition, and besides other defects stated, that in the judgment of the Court no survey had been held after her repairs, nor any certificate of seaworthiness given; and whether, if the "Chebine" was not subject to Board of Trade regulations, it will be possible to prohibit vessels exempted from those regulations from flying the British flag in future.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. RITCHIE, Croydon): The "Chebine" was not subject to the specific regulations referred to in the question, because trading as she was between ports abroad she was neither a passenger steamer nor an emigrant ship within the meaning of the Merchant Shipping Act. My attention has been directed to the finding of the Naval Court at Suez with regard to the condition of the vessel, and I shall consider whether it is right for me to take any, and, if so, what steps in the matter, but I am certainly not prepared to assent to the proposition that British vessels trading abroad which are exempt from any of the requirements of the Merchant Shipping Act should not be allowed to fly the British flag.
    COLONEL PRYCE-JONES: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the wreck last month in the Red Sea of the ship "Chebine," conveying pilgrims to Mecca, and of the circumstances appertaining to the same; and whether, if it be practicable, he proposes to amend the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 to meet such cases; if not, whether he will take action through the Foreign Office or otherwise for an international reform to bring about the
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    same result. I may say that as the right hon. Gentleman has already answered the first paragraph I will confine my question to the second.
    MR. RITCHIE: I will inquire into the matter.

    SALE OF POISONS—CARBOLIC ACID.
    SIR J. LENG: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has observed that the Reports of the Registrar General show that the scheduling of poisons has greatly diminished the number of fatalities from the accidental or suicidal use, and has not interfered with the use of potent poisons such as arsenic and potassium cyanide, for industrial purposes, while from the Report for 1898, recently issued, it appears that the fatalities from carbolic acid alone number 206, being nearly as many as for the whole of the scheduled poisons; whether he is aware that since he stated last session that the Privy Council are prepared to consider whether carbolic acid can be advantageously dealt with in some way, but cannot take any step except on the resolution of the Pharmaceutical Society, the Council of that Society have passed a resolution declaring that carbolic acid in crystals, commercial carbolic acid, and liquids containing more than 3 per cent. of phenol are to be deemed poisons and added to the second part of Schedule A of the Pharmacy Act; whether, although that resolution was communicated to the Privy Council in July last, it has not yet sanctioned the resolution; and, whether he will represent to the Privy Council the expediency of at once giving effect to it with the view of preventing many cases of suffering and death.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir M. WHITE RIDLEY, Lancashire, Blackpool): Without going in detail into the first paragraph of the question, I think there is no doubt that the number of deaths caused by carbolic acid is deplorably great, and shows that some remedy is desirable. I am informed that the Pharmaceutical Society have passed a resolution in the terms quoted by the hon. Member; but I must explain that the matter is by no means a simple one. It is, however, now under the active con-

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    sideration of the Departments concerned in consultation with the society, with good prospects, I hope, of steps being taken in the direction desired.
    DR. TANNER: Can we not have systematic returns dealing with this highly important matter?
    SIR M. WHITE RIDLEY: It is not a question of getting returns through my Department, it is rather one of forms.

    BUCKINGHAM GATE ROADWAY.
    MR. STUART-WOETLEY: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether the Office of Works is responsible for the present disrepair of the roadway in Buckingham Gate along the south side of Buckingham Palace.
    MR. AKERS DOUGLAS: No, Sir.

    LAND PURCHASE LOANS FOR PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
    MR. HAZELL: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether his attention has been called to the desire of many local authorities for a longer period for the repayment of loans raised for the purchase of land required for public improvements; and whether, as the Poor Law Act of 1897 makes the maximum period of repayment sixty years, subject to the sanction of the Local Government Board, he will consider the desirability of issuing a circular to the effect that the Board is willing to consider making the maximum period sixty years, for repayments for land only, instead of fifty years, as indicated in their last circular.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. CHAPLIN, Lincolnshire, Sleaford): I am aware of the desire referred to in the first paragraph of the question. The Local Government Board have in special cases allowed a term of sixty years for the repayment of money borrowed under the Poor Law Act, 1897, for the purchase of land, and they will continue to do so in the like circumstances. I am quite willing to consider the point as suggested. But it does not appear to be necessary that any special circular should be
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    issued to boards of guardians on the subject.

    LONDON TO BIRMINGHAM UNDERGROUND TELEGRAPH CABLE.
    MR. WYVILL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, seeing that the underground telegraph cable from London to Birmingham is on the point of completion, it is the intention of the Department to extend the cable to the great industrial centres of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. HANBURY, Preston): If the underground telegraph cable from London to Birmingham proves successful, the Postmaster General will carefully consider in what other directions underground wires can with advantage be laid down with a view to increasing the stability of the telegraph system. He is not at present in a position to give any assurance in regard to any particular locality. It is an entirely new experiment.

    POST OFFICE—TELEPHONE RATES.
    MR. KIMBER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, what is the cause of the delay in the announcement expected by the public of the telephonic arrangements proposed to be offered by the General Post Office, and when they are likely to come into operation; and is he aware that the National Telephone Company are serving notices upon the present telephone renters that they may at any moment have their telephone communications withdrawn in consequence, as the company alleges, of the refusal of the London County Council to give the company underground way-leave, whereas the County Council have in fact offered to give such leave if the company will give the public intercommunication.
    MR. HANBURY: As I explained in answer to a previous question of the hon. Member, it is not considered expedient to announce the rates of subscription to Post Office Telephone Exchanges until further progress has been made with the arrangements. The Postmaster General has no means of knowing what notices are sent by the National Telephone Company to

    283
    their subscribers except from the ordinary sources of information. But the hon. Member for Battersea on Friday stated in this House the terms upon which alone the County Council would give underground wayleaves to the company.* The conditions imposed are wholly in the public interest, and I am in entire agreement with the County Council in the course they are taking.
    MR. KIMBER: But what is the cause of the delay?
    MR. HANBURY: Naturally we do not care to announce our rates until we are ready to ask for subscribers. We do not want to give any advantage to the National Telephone Company.
    MR. KIMBER: When will the new system be ready?
    MR. HANBURY: I hope the proposed arrangements will come into operation during the autumn or before the end of this year.

    NATIONAL TELEPHONE COMPANY— AGREEMENTS WITH THE POST OFFICE.
    MR. THOMAS SHAW: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is willing to lay upon the Table of the House, as a Parliamentary Paper, the documents constituting the agreement under which the Department of the Post Office holds itself bound, at the request of the National Telephone Company, to make application for leave to open up the streets of burghs for the laying of telephone wires, etc., and to cede the use of such wires to the National Telephone Company.
    MR. HANBURY: The draft of this agreement was printed in Parliamentary Paper No. 267 of 1894, and the agreement itself was printed as Parliamentary Paper No. 128 of 1898. The purport of the agreement does not appear to be accurately expressed in the latter part of the hon. Member's question.

    INCOME TAX—JAMAICA RAILWAY DEBENTURES.
    MR. COHEN: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is
    * See page 194 of this Volume.
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    aware that income tax at the rate of 1s. per £ is being deducted from the arrears of interest now being paid by the Crown Agents for the Colonies on the Four per cent. Railway Debentures of the Jamaica Government which matured at various periods before the 24th January last; and whether it is correct that income tax: should be deducted at 1s. per £ in respect of dividends which became due before and during the month of January last, and which, had the dividends been paid at maturity, would have been subject only to an 8d. income tax.
    MR. HANBURY: It is understood that payment of the interest in question could not have been claimed or obtained on or before the 5th instant. In these circumstances I am advised that it is correct that income tax should be deducted at 1s. in the £, being the rate chargeable for the year in which the interest actually becomes payable.
    MR. COHEN: But the interest became payable before the date named.
    MR. BARTLEY: Is it not the fact that this interest has been due for the last three years, and has not been paid, and that therefore it can hardly be said to be payable on 5th April?
    MR. HANBURY: The answer has. been put into my hands by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for whom I have replied. I can add nothing to it.

    CIVIL SERVICE- HIGHER DIVISION CLERKS.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury, whether in the case of Second Division Clerks who become clerks of the Higher Division by success in open competitive examination, approved service in the Second Division counts towards superannuation; whether, in the similar case of Assistants of Excise who become Assistant Surveyors of Taxes through open competitive examination, approved service as Excise Assistants counts towards superannuation; whether the act of resignation imposed upon Civil Servants who thus attain higher rank by open competitive examination constitutes a break in their service, so that the years spent in their lower rank do not count towards superannua-

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    tion; whether, if such resignation involve such disability, the fact is clearly set out in the regulations issued by the Civil Service Commissioners; and whether, if such disability exists, the Lords of Her Majesty's Treasury see their way so to revise the regulations for superannuation that all permanent employment in the Civil Service may count towards pension.
    MR. HANBURY: When a man is transferred from one branch of the Civil Service to another as a result of success in a competitive examination, his previous service, if of an established character, reckons for pension, and this rule applies equally to both the cases mentioned by the hon. Member. No resignation is necessary in order to compete.

    IRELAND—LUNACY GRANT IN AID.
    SIR JAMES HASLETT: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what arrangement has been made for payment of capitation grant for lunatic poor in Ireland, for three months preceding the beginning of financial year, under the Local Government Act, 1898, and when the amount will be paid to the local bodies.
    The following questions on the same subject also appeared on the Paper:—
    MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if his attention has been called to a resolution of the Ennis Asylum Committee, in which they called on the Treasury to refund to the asylums of Ireland the amount of the Rate-in-Aid withheld by them in respect of the first three-quarters of the year 1899; and whether the Government will favourably consider this request.
    SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he is in a position to state the result of the Treasury examination of the case submitted to them with reference to the Asylums' Grant-in-Aid for Ireland for the year 1899; what sum will be refunded to Ireland as the result of this examination; and how will the refund be made.
    MR. HANBURY: The last payment from voted moneys was in respect of the calendar year 1897. The income of the Local Taxation Account did not begin until
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    the beginning of the financial year 1898–9—namely, 1st April, 1898. There is, therefore, a gap of three months in respect of which payment is due to the Local Taxation Account from the Imperial Exchequer.

    LABOURERS COTTAGES AT DROGHEDA.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that houses for labourers are much needed in the Stamullen and Julianstown Divisions of the Drogheda Rural District, and that three labourers named Peter Cullen, Patrick Wade, and Patrick Coyle, whose present residences were certified by the medical officer as unfit for habitation, have repeatedly applied to the Drogheda District Council for cottages, and wore refused; whether a memorial from the ratepayers of these districts has been received by the Local Government Board praying for an inquiry into the necessity for house accommodation for labourers in the districts named; whether he is aware that one of the applicants, Peter Cullen, was ordered by the District Council to vacate his house owing to its dangers and unsanitary condition, and was offered a cottage instead, which is two miles from his place of employment; and whether, under the circumstances, he proposes to take any steps to induce the Drogheda District Council to provide the necessary houses for these labourers. I beg at the same time to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his recovery from illness.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. G. W. BALFOUR, Leeds, Central): I thank the hon. Member for his kindly reference to myself. I am informed that 341 cottages have already been erected under the Labourers Acts in the Drogheda Rural District, and that the Rural Council propose to build forty-five additional cottages. The selection of particular labourers as tenants of the cottages is a matter entirely within the discretion of the local authority, and the reply to the last paragraph is therefore in the negative.

    PROCLAIMED MEETING AT NEWMARKET, Co. CORK.
    DR. TANNER: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any information about

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    what occurred at Newmarket, co. Cork, yesterday, when my colleague, who had announced his intention to address his constituents, was treated in the old-fashioned way, and——
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! Notice must be given of the question.
    DR. TANNER: I give notice.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
MR. BRYCE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can state when it is intended to introduce the Australian Federation Bill.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am afraid I cannot fix a date for this Bill, though I hope the debate will not be long deferred. It is possible we may be able to introduce it next Monday. In any case it will not be introduced this week. As I am referring to the course of business, perhaps it would be convenient if I told the House that I propose on Thursday to take the discussion on the Education Code and the minute which has been laid on the Table in connection with elementary education. I shall put that down as the first Order of the Day on Thursday, subject to this reservation, that if I am not able to get the Report stage of the Uganda Bill—which I hope will be regarded as a purely formal operation—on Tuesday or Wednesday, I may possibly put it down on Thursday before the Education Vote. As to Supply on Friday, I should be glad if a question could be put to me tomorrow. But I may state at once that it seems to me desirable that the misconceptions which have gathered round the public controversy connected with the publication of the Spion Kop despatches should be dealt with as soon as possible in this House. I notice that one or two gentlemen have put down notices on the Paper; I am not aware that there is any reasonable chance of their coming on. I think the sooner the question is discussed within these walls the better. Misconceptions cannot be adequately or wholly dealt with by question and answer in this House. I shall therefore put the salary of the Secretary for War down for discussion first on Friday. I shall be able to state tomorrow the Supply I shall take afterwards.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The arrangement the right hon. Gentleman has proposed with regard to the discussion of the publication of the Spion Kop, despatches, will, I think, be satisfactory. But with regard to the Uganda Railway, I wish to ask when the right hon. Gentleman contemplates that the House should discuss the question? Would it not be more convenient to discuss it on the Second Reading of the Bill, rather than at the present stage?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, Sir. My own impression is that it would be more convenient to the House to discuss the subject on the Second Reading of the Bill, when they will be in full possession of the statement of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs and will have had time to consider it.
MR. BROADHURST: When will the Second Reading of the Factories and Workshops Bill be taken?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Not this week.

UGANDA RAILWAY [CONSOLIDATED FUND].
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
[Mr. J. W. LOWTHER (Cumberland, Penrith) in the Chair.]
THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. BRODRICK, Surrey, Guildford): I rise to call the attention of the Committee to the present state of funds with reference to the Uganda Railway. It will be in the recollection of the Committee that this project was brought before Parliament five years ago. Originally it was brought before Parliament by the late Government, and the then House of Commons gave its consent to the construction of the railway. A few months subsequently, after the change of Government, the subject again came before the House on a resolution proposed by my predecessor which was unanimously accepted. In the next Session of Parliament, 1896, detailed estimates were submitted to the House of Commons, and a Vote of £3,000,000 was passed for the construction of the railway. The House on one or two occasions has discussed, either in Committee or on other occasions, the progress of the railway, and, naturally, has asked for information. Up to fifteen months ago it was hoped that the original sum would not be exceeded, but those expectations have been disappointed. We had then little account of the progress of the proceedings. I should like to say at the outset that the application I have to make to-night is not, as far as I can judge, to be attributed to any want of foresight or assiduity in the forecast of those responsible for the inception of the railway. Many circumstances in the course of five years have
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occurred which have greatly affected the cost of constructing this railway, and to a greater extent than usually affects undertakings of this character. The Committee must also recollect that the original estimates, upon which all parties were agreed, when upon a unanimous resolution of the House the Uganda Railway was begun, were, as compared with other undertakings similar in character, necessarily very imperfect, because over 580 miles of the distance to be traversed practically no survey had been made at all. As regards the nature of the country, there were only the most general characteristics to guide those who made the estimates. It is true a party of engineer officers had started to make a survey of the country, but it is impossible that, travelling with an armed escort over 580 miles of tropical country, the same accuracy could be arrived at as in the case of surveys undertaken in European or Asiatic countries. I propose as briefly as I can to put before the Committee what has been the cause of the large increase in the estimated cost of the railway. I am sure it will be satisfactory to the Committee to get the best forecast we can give, and the best guarantee we have in our power to offer as to the sum which is now asked being sufficient to complete the railway. Although the insufficient survey is not an unimportant factor in the increase of cost, it has not been the main cause of that increase. A great number of quantities were no doubt under-estimated. My predecessor, in bringing the subject before the House, pointed out that, in regard to bridges, surveys had been made at the dry period of the year, and at that time it was impossible to tell from the appearance of the stream what would be necessary in bridge building to meet the requirements in time of flood. On that point alone there has been a large increase of cost due to the necessity for building satisfactory bridges. But one of the two main causes which make it necessary for Parliament to vote a large extra sum is that the original idea of all the exploration parties—the original idea put before Parliament—has been frustrated. The original project accepted by Parliament was that, seeing that there would be but a moderate amount of traffic on this line of railway, in the first instance there should be no attempt at elaborate construction with all

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the appurtenances of a complete railway, a full equipment of locomotives, or anything elaborate in the way of railway stations, that there should be no attempt to do more than was done with the Egyptian railway, to carry the line as rapidly as possible over the desert; but one of the points that brought us to the present position was that the attempt to lay an unfinished line, as I may call it, was absolutely impracticable, and would have been false economy. In the first place, the engineer's of the line thought it would be possible to lay the railway without ballasting except in places where the line is exposed to very severe storms. That, however, has been found to be a mistake, the nature of the soil not being sufficiently binding to dispense with ballasting. It was found that ballast would have to be employed throughout the whole course. So also in regard to bridges. The original intention was to carry out the plan adopted upon some lines in America—that of building temporary timber bridges, following these with iron work when the line was in operation. That, again, was found to be a mistake, and it is held to be desirable to build substantial bridges throughout the whole length of the line. The change in the difference between a completed and an unfinished line has been faced, and accounts for a considerable part of the additional cost. You have also to take into account the fact that there has been a change which could hardly have been foreseen in almost every one of the circumstances under which the line was originally contemplated. First let me speak of the question of labour. A strong opinion was expressed in the House against the use of forced labour, and a pledge was given that this should be avoided, a pledge which has been rigidly observed. It would, no doubt, have been possible to obtain labour by force, as the line was carried through tribal districts, but this was not deemed desirable or justifiable, so we had to depend on voluntary effort entirely. Now, voluntary effort does not go far in a country like Africa, and we have not much to offer the tribes as recompense for undertaking the severe labour involved in railway construction. The result has been that, whereas it was estimated that actual natives would provide something like
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half the labour required, the remainder being obtained from India, in practice it has been found that of 16,000 men employed 14,000 had to be obtained from India, and only 2,000 were obtained in those parts of the country where it was supposed they would be forthcoming. In estimating the cost of labour, that of the tribes was set down at id. per day. The labour has been obtained at 6d. per day. The Indian skilled labour could not be obtained under 1s. a day. With the cost of bringing Indians up country and repatriating them, the actual expense would not come to less than 1s. 2d. per day; therefore for the labour, forming the most important item, instead of paying part of it at 4d. per day we have to take an average of 14d. per day throughout the whole body of the labourers employed. Here I may perhaps refer to exaggerated reports which have appeared as to the rate of mortality among the labourers. I am unable to understand how these reports of terrible loss of life and of sickness have arisen. Last year, with an average of 16,700 men employed, the deaths per thousand from all causes, from attacks by wild beasts, diseases, and accidents, amounted to 29 per thousand, which is not an excessive rate considering the whole body of men engaged on the railway, and the average of sick was, and I believe now is, 7·4 per cent., while those, invalided back to India amount to 1·07 per cent. I do not think that, looking at these figures, we can say that there is any justification whatever for the extravagant estimates of mortality published in the press. I have accounted for one great item in the increase of cost, and the second is one that could not have been foreseen; it arises on the question of carriage. The system contemplated was the telescopic method, by which the line as constructed carried its own supplies day by day. In this way the cost of conveying labourers and material from Mombasa was saved, and the estimated cost was put at 1d. per ton. It was well known beforehand that water was scarce for the first 250 miles, and engineers had to depend on a limited river supply; but it was not known that the water upon which they had to rely had in it chemical properties which made it impossible to use for the purposes of locomotion. It became necessary to bring large quantities of water from Mombasa for train consumption, so that

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the cost of carriage of stores was increased from 1d. to 2¼d. per ton. Therefore, while the cost of labour was doubled, the cost of inland carriage was more than doubled during the last four years. Another great portion of the increase is due to a point which will be appreciated by all Members engaged in any manufactures in which the iron and steel trade is concerned. I believe in almost every branch of that trade there has been enormous increase of price in the last five years, and at the moment I believe it is almost impossible to get orders for locomotives executed, and prices have gone up. Considering ail these facts, what is the present condition? It was estimated that the railway of 580 miles would be constructed at about £5,500 per mile. The total that was asked from Parliament worked out at £3,020,000. That sum is now exhausted and that exhaustion brings us to the Committee again, and forces us to ask for a further sum of £1,930,000 for the completion of the railway. This makes in all £4,950,000. I would like to ask the Committee to follow me for a moment in some figures, so that I may show as clearly as possible what has been accomplished with the £3,020,000. In the first place, of the 580 miles, 362 miles have been constructed and are open for traffic; earthworks have been made for the following 50 miles, and materials are in hand for 155 miles more.
MR. PERKS: Are the 362 miles which are open for traffic completely finished?
MR. BRODRICK: Yes, completed. I do not know whether there are any small works to be carried out, but that portion of the line is open for traffic, and actually working at the present time. On the other hand, very heavy purchases of material have been already made and paid for out of the £3,020,000. I will put it to the Committee in another way. We have spent 60 per cent. of the money, including the sum now asked for, and for that we have completed 62 per cent. of the railway mileage. Earthworks are completed to the extent of 71 per cent.; materials are in hand and on the spot to the extent of 88 per cent.: and locomotives have already been procured to the extent of 100 per cent.
MR. LABOUCHERE: Would the right hon. Gentleman kindly give the amount of material in hand?
MR. BRODRICK: I am afraid I cannot give the actual number of the locomotives, but the whole of the rolling stock has cost £400,000. I can get the hon. Member the cost of the locomotives if he desires it.
MR. LABOUCHERE: Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to state the amount in cash of the materials now in hand, exclusive of the rolling stock?
MR. BRODRICK: I do not quite know what the hon. Member means by "materials"; I had better give the whole of the figures, which are as follows: —Surveys, £80,000—(I am giving round figures);—lands, £26,000; formation of earthworks, 844,000; bridge works, 669,000; fencing, £11,000; telegraphs, £8,000; permanent way, £1,379,000; ballast, 349,000; station buildings, £371,000; rolling stock, £400,000: jetties on the lake, £28,000; administration, £283,000: and we have put down £252,000 for contingences. The result is that for 6) per cent. of the money which we propose to spend we have got on every one of the items a great deal more than 60 per cent. completed. Therefore we may reasonably hope that the sum now asked for should properly complete the work. The question we have now to face is not really whether the work can be completed, hut whether the estimate as now presented is in itself an excessive one. I have been at some pains to look at the cost of other light railways, as this small gauge railway is more approximate to a light railway than an ordinary railway, and I find that the expenditure on this railway, having regard to the immense distance the materials have had to be carried, is not exceptional. The cost of two of the railways in India which correspond somewhat to that in Uganda works out at an average of £6,500 per mile, and £6,400 per mile respectively. In Ireland, which is not such a difficult-country, the Cork and Bandon Railway cost £7,900 per mile, and the Cork and Macroom Railway £8,400 per mile. In Scotland there were of course great heights to be traversed, but the Highland Railway, which represents a rather

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different class of line, worked out at£13,500; per mile, while the Cambrian Railway cost nearly £20,000 per mile. The cost of the Uganda Railway, when the whole of the money now asked for is expended, will come to £8,500 per mile. This, having regard to all the considerations I have brought forward, is not an exceptionally heavy charge. The hon. Member for Northampton has many times asked what would be the final cost and what would be the advantages we should obtain from this railway. I do not propose to go into its political advantages. The questions of policy which caused both sides of the House to decide to make the railway have been, I venture to say, amply vindicated by the events which have occurred since 1895. No one could feel more thankful than we have done that the railway was set going, and we have every reason, as I told the Committee a month ago, to be satisfied with what we hear from Sir Harry Johnstone as to the prospects of the Uganda Protectorate. The Committee may like some sort of forecast of what the extent of the traffic is likely to be. With regard to that, I have been at some pains to discover what traffic we may expect. To a large extent, of course, it is guess work. Up to the present, we have been running full trains with railway materials and supplies in one direction and empty trains, to a large extent, in the other direction. But, even up to now, the amount the railway has earned has more than paid its working expenses. The hon. Member for Northampton jeered some time ago at the idea that the estimate of £61,000 for traffic receipts would be realised. Up to the present moment that rate has been more than realised, and in talking of that, I wish the Committee to understand that I put aside all question of the charges connected with the construction of the railway. Obviously, the only traffic we can expect in the future is the traffic in connection with the Protectorate supplies or individuals unconnected with the construction of the railway.
MR. PERKS: May I ask whether the food for the coolies has not been charged?
MR. BRODRICK: That has been charged, hitherto, to the construction of the railway. The amount of Protectorate stores carried up to the end of 1899 was 4,900 tons, which at a cost of 2¼d. per
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ton per mile represents £39,000. If these stores had been carried by porters, I understand the cost would have been about 7s. 4d. per ton per mile, making a total of £294,000, so that upon that item alone there is the material difference between £39,000 and £294,000. This saving in itself is some justification for the railway, quite apart from the damage to the stores which has been avoided by the quicker means of transit. The present estimate of traffic, even if we do not receive, as we have every reason to hope we may do, a certain amount from the carriage of produce from Uganda to the coast, justifies us in assuming that not £61,000 will be the receipts per annum, but £120,000. This, I am assured, is the minimum we may hope for, on the present basis, when the railway is finished. To sum up, we expect to spend close on £5,000,000. We are carrying already the stores which are required at the cost of about one-tenth of what they would have been carried at by porters. We have up to now a traffic which amounts to double that which was suggested to the Committee five years ago, and we have every reason, from the experience of our officials out there, to expect that the traffic will be considerably increased. It is always unsatisfactory, of course, to come to this House and tell them that an estimate has been exceeded, but I would remind the Committee that, to a large extent, the estimates were speculative ones, and that this was an undertaking which was liable, if any undertaking ever was, to an increase in the cost, and was one which specially required indulgence. I believe that in submitting to the Committee this resolution we may have every confidence that the railway will be completed for the amount we now ask for. There has been very close and careful supervision of the whole expenditure from first to last. I believe the officials on the spot, as well as the officials in this country, have spared neither pains nor labour to bring the railway to a satisfactory conclusion. There has been no sort of muddle or confusion, and there has been no work undertaken that had to be done over again for want of appreciation of what was required. I believe, therefore, that I may confidently commend the undertaking to the Committee, not merely on the political grounds which have on previous occasions been expressed in Par-

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liament, but also because the Government in carrying it out have shown as much ability and have produced as satisfactory a result as it would be possible to produce if the matter had been placed in private hands, and if it had been possible to find a contractor upon reasonable terms who who would undertake the laying of the railway. I beg to move to authorise the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of £1,930,000 for the Uganda Railway.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That it is expedient to authorise the issue, out of the Consolidated Fund, of a further sum not exceeding £1,930,000 for the Uganda Railway."—(Mr. Brodrick.)
MR. LABOUCHERE: The hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in speaking just now, said I had jeered him. I did not, but the right hon. Gentleman jeered at me on many previous occasions. I contend and have contended for several years that this railroad would cost a great deal more than the £3,000,000 estimated, and whenever I did this, the right hon. Gentleman jeered and laughed at me, and told me that the Foreign Office understood railroads better than I did. But if they did, they did not understand enough to make a railway. I was the person jeered at upon those occasions. Now the right hon. Gentleman says that he has made out a clear case in favour of the Foreign Office making railroads. It seems to me that we could not have a more clear case made out that if we ever intend again to make a railroad in any part of Africa the very last men we should put at the head of it is a committee of Foreign Office clerks. In almost every single instance the estimates have been wrong. The right hon. Gentleman has explained why they have been wrong, but supposing a contractor had undertaken the work and it was found that his estimate of the bridges, the soil, and what was required of ballast was all wrong, and the cost of labour was all wrong, what would he have said to that contractor? I will briefly point out to the Committee what we have really done in regard to this railway from the commencement. In 1892, there was, the Committee knows perfectly well, a company in East Africa called the East African Chartered Company. It was suggested that a railroad should be made up to Uganda, and this company had made
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a treaty with the Ugandese, under which they claimed certain rights, and they wanted a railroad made through which would be an immense advantage to them,. just as it would be an advantage to any agriculturist if anybody would be good enough to build a railroad to his farm. This is the usual plea put forward. We were not told much about the advantages to the company, but we were told that those were the grounds upon which it was suggested that a railroad was desirable, and that it might be economical, because we have now to keep a very large squadron to prevent the slave trade being carried on along the coast. We wore told that caravans now came down, but if we had a railroad they would not be able to come down, and that what we spent upon the railroad would be more than balanced by the reduction of the squadron along the coast. I doubt very much whether that squadron has been reduced by a single vessel. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us that it has been reduced? I allude to the squadron to guard the slave trade on the coast of East Africa.
MR. BRODRICK: No.
MR. LABOUCHERE: The right hon. Gentleman says it has not been reduced.. He knows that it is a mere pretext when we are asked to spend this money to put these arguments forward about the slave trade, for it has not prevented one single slave being carried away, because they are not taken down to Mombassa but are taken down to the coast and embarked in dhows. As I took the liberty of pointing; out upon a previous occasion, not one single person has been saved in regard to the slave trade. We took over the Uganda Company, and we have had what was called a survey, and a great deal has been said about it. We have had a large sum of money voted, but I observe that in recent documents the survey has disappeared and it has become a reconnaissance survey. We want to know whether we are making an estimate of the cost of a railway upon a reconnaissance survey. Major Macdonald was at the head of that survey, and when he arrived at the mountains he did not survey any further but put upon his survey "mountains," and so there was practically no survey. That was the state of things in 1895. Then a bright idea occurred to Her-

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Majesty's Government. They determined to have a committee of Foreign Office clerks to look into the matter to settle how the railway was to be made and what it was going to cost. They naturally wished to reduce the cost as much as possible in order to induce the House of Commons to agree to this railway. Out of their moral consciences they came to the conclusion that by reasonable economy the original estimate of £2,240,000 might be reduced to £1,755,000. Then they gave an estimate of what "would be the result. Their estimate was that there was to be one train a week, and they said that would be quite sufficient. It was true this might grow, and in the end there might be more trains, but the first estimate was for one train a week. They calculated that this train would bring in £60,000 a year, and that the cost of working would be £40,000 a year, while the charge for interest on the capital sum borrowed would be £56,000 a year. Therefore, the sum lost to the country for a few years until the policy developed was to be £37,000 per annum. This estimate was made upon a calculation that the railroad was to charge £17 per ton for every ton brought from Uganda to the coast. I ask anybody connected with railways whether he thinks that a great deal of commerce would be done in wheat and coffee and such goods to be carried at £17 a ton from Uganda to the coast. The House was so taken up with these remarkable details and with the impression that these gentlemen knew all about it that they voted £20,000 at once as a recognition that the railroad should be made. The next year the Foreign Office came forward and asked for £3,000,000, and why they asked for this sum I do not know. They had investigated the matter a little, and had come to the conclusion that the railroad would cost a great deal more than these gentlemen had anticipated. Last year the right hon. Gentleman told me that we had made 250 miles of the railroad. He now says that we have made 362 miles, leaving 183 miles yet to be made.
MR. BRODRICK: 221 miles.
MR. LABOUCHERE: We have spent now over £3,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman says we have spent a good deal in locomotives and material—by
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which I presume he means rails for the lines which have yet to be laid. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman quite gathered what I wanted to know. You have a certain amount of material in hand for this 221 miles you are about to make. I want to know not how many rails and locomotives, but what the actual material was worth in cash that has been accumulated for these 221 miles which remain to be laid. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman was quite able to understand me.
MR. BRODRICK: I can only tell him what I told him before, that the percentage of material in hand necessary for the whole of the line is 88 per cent. That is on the spot and has been paid for.
MR. LABOUCHERE: I do not doubt that it has been paid for, but I do not yet understand this point. We have still got to make this 221 miles. How much have we paid for rails or bridges, and how much have we got in hand?
MR. BRODRICK: I do not know the exact amount expended upon each of these items.
MR. LABOUCHERE: I want the total amount, but perhaps we shall have that information upon the second reading. The right hon. Gentleman in saying that this railroad has not cost more than was estimated has blinked this very important fact, that this line is to be 105 miles shorter than was originally intended. The right hon. Gentleman has blinked that fact entirely, for he did not tell it to the House. I think the original estimate was for 650 miles, but now you must reduce that by 105, because when they made this survey they did not take into account a mountainous district, which, when it was looked into, they found offered many difficulties in the way of carrying out the railway to Uganda. They therefore decided to carry it to another point on the lake, and by that course they saved this 105 miles. They did this because they found that they could not carry the railroad to Uganda only at a very large cost, and they did it to save money and keep within their estimate. Up to the present time the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has never asserted for a

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moment that the line would cost more than £3,000,000, and we have always been told that that sum would suffice. We now hear that the railroad will cost £5,000,000, and possible a good deal more. Now you will have all the difficulties of the task before you. So far as I understand, we have at the present moment no survey—at least nothing that a railroad contractor would term a survey—to enlighten us as to what exactly is the route that should be taken in order to arrive at this point on the Lake, and what will be the cost of making the railroad to that place. There was a remarkable statement in the report of Sir Guilford Molesworth which was issued last year, to the effect that judging by the cost of two Indian railways, to a certain extent similar to the Uganda Railway, the cost of the latter would be, not £3,422 per mile, as estimated by the Foreign Office, but at least £7,000 per mile, and probably much more. But even then Sir Guilford Molesworth only made his estimate up to this escarpment, and did not state what the cost would be beyond it. The railway at present goes through a plain, most of it a desert. The right hon. Gentleman in his speech stated that we had to reckon among the losses of the unfortunate people who are making the railway a certain number eaten by lions. As Sir Guilford Molesworth pointed out, there are also wild tribes, and the railway stations have to be fortified against them, and it cannot be expected that any very great trade will take place between the coast and this desert tract. The right hon. Gentleman in his speech blinked the fact that even when the railway is complete there will still be great difficulty in taking goods to Uganda, because the railway is taken to Florence Bay, a place on the middle of the Lake near the German frontier, and goods for Uganda will have to be transhipped there and put on steamboats. Everyone knows that the cost of transhipment is one of the principal items in the cost of transport, and the distance between Florence Bay and Uganda is about 100 miles. The right hon. Gentleman said he would not tell us specifically what we shall gain by this railway. The fact is he could not tell us. When I ask what we will gain by Uganda I am answered, in that vague sort of way which does duty in connection with African
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affairs, "Oh, the natives can grow wheat and coffee, which they can exchange for your cotton goods." I do not believe that Uganda will ever grow wheat or coffee. The climate is so bad that Europeans cannot settle there and bring up their children, and if a European goes there he has to return in two or three years. What about the Ugandese themselves? They are without exception the very laziest of that laziest race in the whole world, the African negro. They have a fruit from which they produce an intoxicating liquor. All labour is regarded as derogatory on the part of men; the women do the labour, and all the labour the men do is to make the huts. The Ugandese sit round and drink this intoxicating liquor, when they obtain it, until they get into a state of excitement, and as they regard fighting as the noblest attitude of man—somewhat as we do at present as regards South Africa—when they get drunk they immediately begin to fight, and as the whole country is divided into Protestants and Catholics, the Catholics fight with the Protestants, and the Protestants with the Catholics; and when they have injured one another to a certain extent and killed a few, they make up their little feud and sit down to drink again. Do you suppose that these people are likely to cultivate wheat? In Uganda bananas can be raised almost without any trouble, and these people, like many others, have no desire for luxuries, and are perfectly content to live in their huts, eat their bananas, and drink this intoxicating liquor, making their wives do a little hoeing, and wearing the cotton goods made by their wives. In all these places you do get a certain amount of trade, but not enough to make it worth while to build a railway 600 miles long. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the railway is now paying its expenses. But how is it paying its expenses? It is paying because the cost of carrying the goods up for the employees is charged against the railway. The right hon. Gentleman also stated that the passenger traffic had increased. I have looked into the matter and I find that the passenger traffic has been increased simply to throw dust in the eyes of the House of Commons. The superintendent has decreed that the coolies are to be allowed to go down to the coast on holidays, and the

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amount of passenger traffic has increased by the number of coolies who went down. I should like to know who will use this railway. Is there any person in Mombasa who is likely to go up the country for amusement or on commercial business? The traffic at present consists of passengers and goods traffic of the employees of the railroad plus a certain amount of goods that has to be sent up to the English garrison in Uganda. I have no doubt that if you make a railroad costing £5,000,000 you will reduce the cost of carrying up provisions from the coast for the garrison, but I have never yet heard any practical man say that it was a reasenable thing to build a railroad 600 miles long in order to be able to send up at a cheaper rate the amount of goods required by a garrison of 2,000 men. I am opposed entirely to this sort of railways in Africa, and I have been opposed to this railroad from the very commencement because it is a gigantic folly. Why do you not make light railways in England, for 'which the agricultural population would thank you? They would increase the profit of the agriculturist by reducing the cost of carrying his produce to market. If you want to go abroad, go to China with its vast population, but do not make a railroad such as this, simply because you have an idea that at some future time the Ethiopian may change his skin, and that Africa will be likely to want your goods. The right hon. Gentleman said he could not understand the statements in the press to the effect that the coolies were not in a healthy state. Well, I think I have got him there. In the official report for 1897 (Africa, No. 4) these happy, healthy coolies are described as follows—
"During the months of November and December, 1896, and January and February, 1897, the health of the staff and labourers was very bad. The effect of the turning up of the soil of tropical Africa almost invariably results in a great increase in malaria which in the present case has been aggravated by unseasonable and heavy rains during November and December 1896, and January 1897 Ulcers are prevalent among the Indian coolies, and 80 per cent. of them were down with malaria, and the whole European staff also suffered from the latter."
That hardly bears out the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, and considering all the circumstances the natives are as healthy as could have been expected.
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The right hon. Gentleman said that one of the reasons why the railroad was costing so much was that they were determined not to employ slave labour. Was it determined to employ slave labour when money was first asked for this railroad? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us that the bargain is made with each individual man? Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that an application is not made to a chief to send a certain number of men, and that he is paid for it?
MR. BRODRICK: The bargain is made with and the money paid to the individuals.
MR. LABOUCHERE: How much is paid them per diem?
MR. BRODRICK: I think it is fourpence, and sometimes sixpence.
MR. LABOUCHERE: That seems to be pretty nearly the same thing as slave labour. I should like to know what would be said in this country if any man were induced by the Government to work for fourpence a day. [Several HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!] Hon. Members say oh, oh! I know their views. Working men in England have votes, and working men in Africa have not.
MR. MALCOLM: Does the hon. Gentleman know the price of living in East Africa?
MR. LABOUCHERE: It seems to me that the wages of the European employees are pretty high compared to the amount paid to the natives. If they can live on so very little, then the wages ought to be adapted to the cost of living. I should like to know something about the British employees such as the engineers. I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has received a telegram sent by the British employees bitterly complaining of the way in which they are treated, and if there is not evidently almost a strike among them. And have they not complained that the superintendent treats them most unfairly, and what was the answer of the right hon. Gentleman?
MR. BRODRICK: The question is being dealt with.
MR. LABOUCHERE: The question is being dealt with! Fifty per cent. of the coolies are suffering from ulcers and malarial fevers, the African workmen are paid 4d. per diem, and the British employees are almost on strike—and the question is being dealt with at the present moment!That does not say much for the wisdom of the Foreign Office. This railroad has been from; the very first commencement a gigantic folly. It owed its existence to the African craze which leads this House to be ready to spend vast sums on schemes without any consideration as to their advantages or disadvantages. The estimates of cost have been falsified from the very commencement. They began with an estimate of £1,700,000; then it jumped up to £3,000,000, and year after year when the vote for Uganda came on for discussion, we were told that that would not be exceeded. And now the right hon. Gentleman comes here and, pluming himself on having carried out his own estimates, asks us to vote almost two millions additional; and he shows us in no sort of way that the last estimate of £5,000,000 is based on solid ground any more than the £3,000,000 estimate, or the £1,700,000 estimate. Under these circumstances, it does seem to me that we ought to do one of two things: either—as was suggested in some of the reports that we had at the commencement of the railway—that it should only be carried to the difficult district at the foot of the mountains, and then a road made into Uganda; or, if we are to go in for making a railway all the way, we should have a Committee—not of this House, but a committee of experts sitting to tell us really what will be the cost. We ought not to vote any more money until we have had a full practical business-like survey. We ought to know what this additional 221 miles will cost, and whether it is desirable, in the circumstances of the case, to alter the line as originally traced out for this railway from the sea coast to Uganda or from the coast to a point on the lake from which a line of steamers is to run to Uganda. I trust we shall oppose this Vote and every other Vote until we have had clear business figures set before us, vouched for by business men. I have no doubt the gentlemen of the Foreign Office are all honourable men, and make out their figures according
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to their lights; but they have been wrong from the commencement, and the right hon. the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs has been deceived when he tells us that without any survey and any clear data the cost would be——
MR. BRODRICK: The hon. Member says that there has been no survey and no clear data. It is on clear data that the final survey has been made and the final sections have been taken.
MR. LABOUCHERE: Then why have we not got these? This is new light. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that such a survey has been taken in detail as could be submitted to a contractor, and that contractor asked to give an estimate for construction? I do not think he means that. I think he means another reronnaissance survey. If the Government have had such a detailed survey we ought to have had it before us before being called on to vote this money. There are many Members in this House who are connected with railways far better able to speak on these surveys than myself and who can give us a sound opinion on the matter. But do not let us throw good money after bad; do not let us in this reckless fashion vote this additional £2,000,000 on the loose statements of the right hon. Gentleman.
MR. BRYCE: I agree with the view expressed by the right hon. the Leader of the House that a detailed discussion on this subject should be reserved to a later stage. I only rise for the purpose of putting a few questions to the right hon. Gentleman in order to elucidate the statement given us by the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Upon the main issue a good deal will, no doubt, have to be said at a later stage—not so much on the policy of the railway, because unhappily we are committed to that policy. When it was decided to take Uganda it was found that, if the country was to be occupied, that could be done more economically by a railway than without a railway, and therefore a discussion on the policy would not be profitable at this stage. I may observe, in passing, that the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs stated very fully the points on which the estimates had been exceeded, but he did not excuse the errors of the original estimates, having

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regard to the fact that we had so large an amount of Indian experience to guide us. We knew that Indian labour would be employed in the construction of the railway, and we knew what that Indian labour would cost. We had had large experience in India of questions of gauge, appliances, and the style in which these railways ought to be made. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there have boon not a few cases in India in which railways have been constructed on the narrow gauge, which wore afterwards found to be bad in an economic sense, as the lines had to be relaid and furnished with proper appliances. It had been confessed that these mistakes had been committed, and some subsidiary lines had also to be made to remedy the mistakes. Therefore it cannot be said that we were without experience, and I was consequently disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman was not able to give a more complete explanation of the errors that had been committed in Uganda, particularly in regard to the gauge and equipment of the railway. Coming to the points on which I desire information, and on which I think it is desirable that the House should have information before proceeding to a full discussion of the whole question, I would ask the right hon. the Under Secretary for a little more specific information as to how far the line has progressed toward the Man escarpment? Is it over that escarpment, and has it begun on the other side to descend to the shores of Lake Tangyika? This escarpment is one of the great difficulties of the whole matter, and we know that if we are over it, we are to a certain extent out of the wood. But we know, at least we are told, that there is to be a new line, and that there has been a new survey. Are we, therefore, in a position to say, "Here is a survey, here are certain bridges, certain embankments, and certain tunnels which must be made "; or is the matter in a conjectural position? I hope the right hon. Gentleman will furnish us with complete information on this point. Then I want to know how far the country we are now entering is a country better peopled than the country through which we have been passing. My impression has been that the least peopled country is that towards the coast, that the middle part was at one time largely peopled, but devastated by hostile tribes, but that some hope was offered, owing to the quietness
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of these hostile tribes, of a restoration of that population, and that, therefore, there was reasonable prospect of greater traffic to and from the coast than would otherwise obtain. I cannot help thinking that the Foreign Office would find it worth their while to publish Papers, giving us details of the surveys and the information which must have been acquired during these surveys and in the making of the line so far. Lastly, I would ask what is the estimate which the Foreign Office now form of the probable traffic on the line and the probable cost of the working of the railway. I understand them to say that they estimate the probable traffic at £165,000 a year.
MR. BRODRICK: I said that the original estimate of the traffic was £65,000 a year; but that now the minimum estimate, based on the traffic carried, quite apart from the transit of material and railway construction, was £120,000.
MR. BRYCE: Assuming that to be the present estimate of traffic, I want to know the present estimate of the working expenses. An estimate was given some time ago. It is material for us to know, when dealing with the gauge, the appliances, the financial aspect of the question, and how the old debt is to be covered, the returns from the railway, and what the working expenses will be as against the probable traffic, which the right hon. Gentleman now estimates at a minimum of £120,000. These are points which are worth the attention of the House, and if the right hon. Gentleman will furnish us with any further excuses, which can be offered for the confessed failures which have been made in the past he will facilitate the task he has in hand in passing the Bill to be founded on the resolution before the House.
MR. PEEKS: The construction of the Uganda railway under the control of a Works Committee is a somewhat singular experiment to make on the part of this country, and it is rather important, in view of the possibility of similar experiments being made in days to come, that we should consider what is the result of embarking on this undertaking, involving an expenditure of £3,000,000 already, and ultimately of

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£5,000,000 or £6,000,000 for the construction of a railway through an uninhabited country under the direction of the Foreign Office Committee of Works. The London County Council is sometimes blamed for the comparative failure of the works undertaken by their Works Committee, but their errors—if they were errors—were extremely small compared with this gigantic fiasco in Uganda. I think if the gentlemen at the Foreign Office, who can by no means be described as clerks, for they are gentlemen who claim great distinction in their professions, who form this consultative and: managing Committee, happened to be directors of a limited company with a capital of £3,000,000 sterling, and they bad presented such a series of reports as those that have been presented to this House, they would long ago have been cashiered. We were told by the predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Foreign Office that this line was not a difficult line to construct. Lord Curzon rather plumed himself on having taken a course which the Liberal Government had, he alleged, not the pluck to take. On the 30th August, 1895, Lord Curzon said—*
"The obligation tardily accepted by the late Government, is assumed with readiness by the present Government, and the action they are now taking is an indication to the House that they intend to push forward this scheme with as much energy and force as are at their disposal."
Later on in the same discussion Lord Curzon said—
"The line will not be a difficult one to construct. It runs over a fairly easy country."
The Government plunged with a light heart into this difficult enterprise. I am not going to argue that having started with this railway and spent all our £3,000,000 with only half the work done, we should stop in the wilderness, recall our employés, and leave the line to be dealt with in the way in which it was at one time proposed to deal with it by a distinguished Committee which had to deal with these subjects, namely, make Kikuyu the terminus of the railway and get access to the lakes by improving the remaining 200 miles of the caravan road. It seems to me that having got ourselves into this difficulty, and having already
* See The Parliamentary Debates [Fourth Series], Vol. xxxvi., page 1290.
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on the ground large quantities of rails and stores required for the other 200 miles, it would be folly on our part not to press forward even if we have to provide the deficiency we have heard of to-night. It does cause some doubt in our minds, when the Government undertakes to construct railways in this manner, as to the way in which they conduct other great Departments. But I wish to call attention to one or two statements which do not quite tally with what has been said before. One of the statements is that the additional cost is due to the line not being a ballasted line, and that the sleepers were laid on the surface without ballast. I would point out that the expenditure of £3,000,000 was justified and defended in this House in 1896 as the basis of a Treasury Minute of the 10th of April of that year, in which it was said that the £3,000,000 would provide for a fully ballasted and equipped line of a permanent character. It cannot be alleged that we were asked for £3,000,000 of money in 1896 for a line laid without ballast. Then we were told we were to have this railroad constructed on timber trestles which were to be substituted subsequently by steel bridges; but if the House looks at the original report of Major Macdonald, which is the fairy tale upon which all this expenditure is based, they will find there were to be no timber trestles; they were to be the steel bridges which one would expect to be employed in enterprises of this description. Then as regards stores, we are all well aware that the price of steel rails has gone up from about £4 per ton to very nearly three times that value, and the same may be said to a proportionate extent of timber and cement and coal.
MR. BRODRICK: Hear, hear.
MR. PERKS: The right hon. Gentleman says "Hear, hear," but how does a prudent contractor deal with a matter of this sort? When he has contracted to construct a railroad he buys all his materials and stores ahead. He does not buy them as he requires to use them; he does not become a speculator in coal, steel, or stores. He goes to a manufacturer and contract; for what he wants. Does any one suppose that a contractor who had undertaken to build some great railway or dock at homo or abroad would be able to make

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out a case at all if he came to the promoters of the railway which he had contracted to construct, and said, "I am extremely sorry I did not protect myself in the matter of steel rails; they have gone up in price, so please pay me the difference on some thousands of tons of rails"? The promoters would naturally say, "If you know no better than not to protect yourself, it is quite time we got a new contractor to replace you." Now I want to say something as to the labour. It is true that at the present time the wages are paid direct to the labourers, who, work in gangs, but that was not so at the commencement. At that time the works were sub-let to Greek middle men who supplied the labour, and the effect of that was that in the early stages of this enterprise, when there were these Greek gangers, or sub-contractors, as middlemen between the promoters and their labour, the earthworks cost price was 10d. per cubic yard, and it was not until a later date that the Government woke up to the position, and they are now executing the earth-works at a cost of sixpence per cubic yard, and even this sum is far in excess of their estimate. We ought in my opinion, instead of importing so many thousands of Indian coolies, to have employed a good deal more African labour, because natives have been dying by thousands of starvation in the neighbourhood of this railway. It has been most distressing to see the natives dying in the ditches by the side of the railway, and when trains have gone up the line little starving and dying children have come and begged for food, for a little rice, or anything from those on the train. That is not the sort of thing that ought to occur where the British Government are building a railway, and they ought to have engaged labour to a much larger extent from the neighbourhood. I should like to call attention to one or two passages in the report of Sir Guilford Moles-worth, of 28th March, 1899. He was sent out very recently to make a full report upon this matter, and he puts his finger at once on the initial blunder. On the top of page 5 in his report he says—
"A mistake has been made in regarding the barometric reconnaissance as one on which anything like an accurate estimate could be based."
That is the fundamental error. There was no reasonable survey taken; there was a
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flying survey, and the whole of this money has been expended on a basis which would not be justified by any body of business men in the City of London for the expenditure of £500 in a foreign country. Even for the remainder of the railway from the escarpment to the lakes, 200 miles, I do not suppose for one moment that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to say that a proper survey has been made upon which a contract could be made. I desire to have some information as to the remuneration of the Works Committee and the Crown Agents who worked for them. How was this large sum of £162,000 for administration expended and dealt with? I remember some years ago when I spoke on this subject I had a distinct promise from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the accounts for Uganda should be presented to Parliament in the form that the accounts of the railways of this country are presented to the shareholders. That has not been done in this case. If that system had been adopted we should have been able to see what the salaries and wages were, what was the revenue and expenditure under the usual heads, and the number of people travelling. Even now we do not know what the cost of the line will be, nor have we anything to guide us as to the future revenue.
"Of the ultimate cost," Sir Guilford Moles-worth warns us, "and date of completion of the railway to Victoria Nyanza it is premature to form any estimate…. A large and possibly the most difficult portion of the project has not yet passed beyond the stage of reconnaissance."
Of the country through which the railway passes, he says—
"The country actually traversed is in a great measure desert, and as a rule sparsely populated, waterless and without resources, while a large portion of it is fatal to all transport animals."
I do not see why the accounts just published should not show us something more recent than the figures up to Maxell last year. No railway company would be justified in presenting to a meeting of shareholders a report with the figures eighteen months in arrear. I should like to have some explanation of how the loss on the exchange has reached the enormous sum of £131,000. I also want to have details of the large sum charged for administration, and also why the Government did not

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protect itself fey buying material ahead, as any prudent contractor would have done. I wish to know also whether the surveys to the lakes show the quantities of earthworks, masonry, ironwork, and other materials, so that some accurate estimate may be given of the future cost. Then the revenue statement is muddled up in this account in a way that would not be tolerated by any respectable railway company. We are told that after deducting the traffic expenses there is a balance left of £10,000 on the receipts. We are told this evening that the revenue—if the whole of the railway was open—calculated at the present ratio of gross receipts, would amount to £120,000. I rather gather that was what was meant. But we ought to know exactly what the revenue has been. We ought to be told what the gross receipts have been and whether they include anything for traffic arising from the conveyance of material and stores, and what has been the percentage of working expenses. These are some of the questions which I hope the right hon. Gentleman will answer.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: With reference to the interesting point raised by the hon. Member opposite, I hope I am right in concluding that these accounts will be submitted and passed by the Auditor and Comptroller General.
MR. BRODRICK: I don't know.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I am very sorry there is any doubt about it. If that were so, as I should hope it would be, that would furnish a means of obtaining information on the points referred to.
MR. PERKS: This functionary has already certified on page 4, and passed the accounts in this curious condition.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I hope the hon. Gentleman will remember that the Auditor and Comptroller General is an Officer of this House, in whom the House should have confidence. If he has passed the accounts, probably there is a detailed account by him. Probably the Report in the course of time will come before the Public Accounts Committee, so that all the details can be looked into and challenged.
MR. BRODRICK: Of course the accounts are audited.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: That does not meet my point. I have always had: the very greatest doubts about this Uganda venture. When we propose to i establish a claim to any country in the far interior of a continent, as we did in India and other places where we have successfully established ourselves, we should establish ourselves on the coast, and work up to the interior. That is the proper course. It is what I believe the hon. Member for Northampton would call British aggression. But here we have taken a flight from the coast of 1,000 miles into the interior and entered this wild country of Uganda. This railway, if it ever be finished—it may be in the course of time—will be made at a, much greater expense than the right hon. Gentleman contemplates. It will be a railway with two ends and no middle. There is no possible traffic along the route. The whole of the traffic will be between the two ends, and for that traffic we are dependent on the probability of Uganda beginning to grow wheat, which it does not grow now, and beginning to want cotton goods, which it does not want now. In fact we are dependent on the transformation of Uganda from its present position into an entirely new and different country. At the present moment Europeans who go there have to be entirely dependent for their supplies on that which they can bring with them by railway. There is no corn grown there now. There is nothing grown there now that an Englishman wants. These are some of the reasons why I have always had considerable doubt of the political wisdom of undertaking this Uganda venture at all. When I heard the present Viceroy of India speaking with respect to the taking over of this damnosa hereditas of the previous Government, I thought he was a little too enthusiastic. After it has been assumed it has been carried on in the most unfortunate manner. The Foreign Office is an admirable organisation for the negotiation and for the discussion of protocols and treaties, but it is an organisation for nothing else. It has not the beginning of a notion for the making of a railway, nor has it the beginning of a notion for commanding armies and constructing railways. It has done extraordinarily well

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in regard to the Uganda Railway, but still it has not been a success. The late Government took over the responsibility, but the real work had to be done by the present Government. From the moment the present Government came into power the Foreign Office, equipped and arranged for an entirely different purpose than that of constructing railways, has been engaged in selecting officers who have been engaged first in getting up and then trying to put down an insurrection. It is now engaged in finishing a railway. So far there has been no product from the country. Nothing in the world has come down that railway except war and rumours of war. The Foreign Office, as I have said, has done extraordinarily well in this matter, but it has made some strange mistakes. It was supposed that the bridges were to be temporary. That was a mistake. It was supposed there would be 7,000 native labourers at fourpence a day, and instead of that only 2,000 have been found. The difference between the number expected and the dumber obtained is only 5,000, and the difference in cost would be represented by the difference between fourpence and fourteenpence per day. Then there is carriage from the coast of water and other things. It does seem to me that every one of these matters could have been foreseen by an intelligent contractor. I am a little sorry now that the Foreign Office did not get hold of some simple-minded and patriotic contractor and try to get him to make the railway for £3,000,000, which was the original estimated cost. We are now told that the cost is to be £5,000,000. I am quite convinced it will never be made for that. Have hon. Members seen the sketch of the gradients published in the Blue-books? If so, they will have seen that by far the most difficult part of the work has to be faced. It is true that the railway has reached 8,000 feet above the level of the sea, but it has to climb 8,500 feet before it begins the final descent to the lake. That undertaking will be very arduous indeed. The Under Secretary of State says he anticipates a total income of £120,000. When the working expenses are deducted I presume that will leave a net income of £50,000, and therefore putting it in a commercial form, what we are asked to do as a national investment is to lay out £5,000,000 with some prospect of getting 1 per cent. for
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our money. Why, it is worse than a Greek loan. I do not quite know, nor have we had any hint given to us, how the money is to be provided. Is it to be voted by Parliament? I suppose we should have another vote in Ways and Means for this, because it is not provided for in the present Budget. Having, shown myself fully sensible of the gravity of this Uganda venture, and having shown myself thoroughly aware of the mistakes made, nevertheless I do feel it right to say that having gone this distance and spent this money we have really no choice but to go on. I think it would be absurd, having thrown away or expended £3,000,000 out of £5,000,000, to hesitate at the remaining two millions. It be haves Her Majesty's Government to consider very seriously now whether they should go on leaving—I do not say the construction of the railway—but this matter of the administration and conquest of the country with the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office is concerned with other things. I am perfectly convinced that the Foreign Office would be much relieved if it was taken out of their hands, and I think it would not be beyond the resources of Her Majesty's Ministers to discover some method by which the Foreign Office could be relieved of what I am certain is a very undesirable task, and one for which they are not properly equipped and arranged. I hope the railway when completed will bring down cereals, and other products, and take up British manufactures. I again impress, upon Her Majesty's Government the propriety of considering, even if it should be necessary to make a Uganda Department, whether this matter should not be taken away from the Foreign Office.
MR. BAYLEY: I heartily concur with the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. The right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary has acknowledged in his own statement that there was not a proper and efficient survey made before the railway was commenced. We have spent £50,000 for a proper and efficient survey, and I think the Foreign Office in their management as business men ought to have seen that for the money spent they had proper and efficient surveyors. The right hon. Gentleman told us a short time afterwards that one of the reasons of the great expense was that the water

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was not surveyed and not properly analysed. Your surveyors, if they had done their duty, ought to have done that at the time, and reported what extra cost would be incurred in regard to the water. You have also a serious question with regard to the accounts here. The auditor and Comptroller General says at the end of his report on the accounts of last year that he has not the accounts up to date. We ought to have the accounts up to date before a Vote of £1,900,000 is asked. We ought to have them audited up to date, and if we were business men, and not party men so much, we would not allow this Vote to go unless we had the accounts properly audited up to date. In the last statement he makes in his report, he says there are certain questions in connection with the accounts which are at present the subject of inquiry. They should not be the subject of inquiry. They should have been audited as they were given. There must be something that requires a good deal of inquiry, because the Foreign Office have made a bad and indefinite bargain—a bargain under which they do not know at the present time how much they may have to pay. It seems to me that the accounts of the Foreign Office itself require to be kept up much closer. No proper business concern or railway company would be a year in arrears in the audit of their accounts. There is an old saying that a Jack of many trades is a master of none. The Foreign Office, if they were doing their work well as a Foreign Office, would naturally be bad railway builders and bad railway contractors. It would be best for the Foreign Office to say, "We have done our best in connection with this railway, but we are not railway contractors or business people with a knowledge of railway work." Would it not be better for them to say, "We propose to put three or four expert railway managers in that country—men of great experience in the making of railways in this country or in foreign countries—and to put the whole management and responsibility in their hands subject to the control of the Foreign Office and the House of Commons"? If that had been done at first the estimate would have been something like £3,000,000. We have to pay £2,000,000 extra as the result of putting the work into the hands of men who have no practical experience of the work they have
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undertaken. I, for one, decidedly protest against the reckless and careless way in which the management of the railway has been conducted up to the present time.
MR. BRYN ROBERTS (Carnarvonshire, Eifion): I voted against the original survey when it was brought before this House by the previous Government. Those in the section of the House to which I belong are perfectly consistent in this matter. I entirely differ from the hon. Members who have just spoken, that the policy of this railway is now beyond question, that we are let in for it and must finish it. I entirely deny it. The experience we have had has shown that this is altogether and thoroughly a worthless speculation. The point of view from which we ought to consider this matter is not that because we have spent £3,000,000 we ought to spend £2,000,000 more. We ought to consider it in this way: supposing we had not spoilt a single shilling, but that we had the information we have now, and the experience and knowledge of the country we have now before us, and that we were asked to undertake an initial expenditure of £2,000,000, which is the expenditure asked to be incurred now, I venture to say we would not spend it at all. Why should we. spend £2,000,000 because we have spent £3,000,000 already? I take the purely commercial view, and that is that it is a foolish thing to throw good money after bad. I venture to say that no one can state with any certainty or anything like hope that an adequate return will ever be made in any reasonable time on the £2,000,000 we are asked to spend. The real reason for this proposal is to hide from ourselves the fact that we have frittered away £3,000,000 already. That is the sole object why we are asked to continue this railway. We are ashamed to allow this monument of English folly and Imperialistic folly to be exhibited to the world for all future generations in the form of an unfinished railway. Uganda is not worth retaining. I opposed the retention from the outset. There was a significant disclosure made at the beginning of last year as to the reason why Uganda is retained. Uganda was retained in the first instance in order to help Mr. Cecil Rhodes in his wild-cat scheme of a Cape to Cairo railway. That is on the authority of Mr. Cecil Rhodes himself. On the 21st January last year

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there was an interview published in the Outlook by one of the special correspondents with Mr. Rhodes, and in that he stated that Mr. Gladstone in 1893 sent for him——
THE CHAIRMAN: That has nothing to do with the question of the railway.
MR. BRYN ROBERTS: I bow to your ruling. I was dealing with the argument from the other side, that it was necessary to make the railway if we were to retain Uganda.
THE CHAIRMAN: That is too remote.
MR. BRYN ROBERTS: I will not proceed with it further. The retention of Uganda is absolutely unnecessary. We retained it for a purpose I must not refer to.
THE CHAIRMAN: I have already pointed out to the hon. Member that the policy of the retention of Uganda does not arise on this question. It is too remote.
MR. BRYN ROBERTS: I hope it will be equally out of order for hon. Members to urge the completion of the railway in order to retain Uganda. It has been stated that an exchange loss occurred amounting to £131,000 with respect to the transmission of money. That of itself is a strong proof of the utter valuelessness of this enterprise. There could not be such an exchange loss if there was exportation from the country. We have sent goods there, and there is no equivalent on goods from Uganda. Why should we go on spending money? The accuracy of these estimates must be judged from the accuracy of previous estimates, and when we find that an estimate of £1,700,000 for the construction of this railway has swollen to three times the amount, what ground have we for supposing that this present estimate of a net profit of £50,000 may not be reduced to £12,000 or £15,000? If this estimate is as fallacious as other estimates have been, the result will be a return of less than ½ per cent. on the outlay. I strongly protest against a single shilling being spent on this foolish and wild venture. The consideration of the money spent on this railway will have a very great
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influence on the electorate at the coming; election. The electors will consider how much might have been done with these millions. Every light railway required in the kingdom could have been constructed with this money. But this. House, under the Imperialistic influences which now govern it, is willing to. spend any amount of money upon foreign, countries, whereas if our own people, the persons who provide all this money, require funds for local enterprises, even of the most necessary character, they must find the money themselves. On these grounds I shall continue in the future as I have done in the past, to record every possible vote against spending the taxpayers' money upon this railway.
MR. ALLAN: I have listened to the speeches which have been, made upon this subject, and have come to the conclusion that the engineering of this job by the Foreign Office has been anything but satisfactory. When I look: at the figures in this statement, and at the engineering element of the question, am brought face to face with some things, of a very startling character. The first conception of the railway was a 3ft. 6in. gauge—the gauge which obtains on the railway from the Cape to. Bulawayo—but I find that the bulk of this branch line, 600 miles in length, was 3ft. gauge. What is the use of that if there is to be a continuation of the line northward? Why not make it a 3ft. Gin. gauge so that the rolling stock could run over both lines? I point that out merely to show the engineering fallacy underlying the construction of the line. It is an abnormal gauge. If the great undertaking of a railway from the Cape to Cairo is carried out, the gauge will be 3ft. 6in., and then this railway will be of practically no use. as the rolling stock of the one will not be able to run over the other. There are also some figures here which are startling; to me, looking at the question from a business and engineering point of view. There is an expenditure on administration, in one year, of £74,161 4s. 5d. What is it for? Who gets the money? I wish the right hon. Gentleman had given us a more elaborate statement. He gave himself away entirely in not being provided with a true and practical statement as to the condition of things. I voted for the money when this matter first came for-

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ward, fully believing the undertaking would be carried out in a sensible way. I am perfectly alive to the difficulties of making railways and to the fact that the revenues to be derived there from are often, even in this country, problematical. But the right hon. Gentleman did not command enough information. How many waggons and locomotives have they got? How many stations have been made? Where has this money for administration gone? The right hon. Gentleman should have come to the House armed with a true and succinct statement as to where this money has gone, and how it has been expended. Coming now to the engineering aspect of the question, I fully realise, as I have already said, the difficulties in making such a railway as this. It is not an ordinary railway such as we make in this country. Here we can take our levels and make our surveys without any difficulty, but when you go to the interior of Africa, from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza, you are brought face to face with a rise and fall of something like 9,000 feet. What does Sir Guilford Moles worth say? I pin my faith to him, because he stands in the front rank of his profession. Sir Guilford says—
"From the peculiar conditions of the country, the density of the jungle, and the difficulties of transport, he—that is the surveyor Major Macdonald—was practically tied to the caravan route, so that detailed examination at any great distance on either side of the route was in most instances impracticable."
Sir Guilford Molesworth himself admits that Major Macdonald's conditions were almost impracticable. He says further that in making his survey—
"The direction of the line had frequently to be determined from trigonometrical points, and the barometric observations on the actual line were necessarily far apart."
Under these conditions it is impossible for any surveying engineer to tell what is ahead of him in making his line. The consequence is that your estimates, your so-called values per mile, are knocked on the head. The cost may be £3,000, or it may be £8,000, per mile, and I believe the latter figure will be more nearly correct before the line is finished. What more does Sir Guilford Molesworth say—
"Under such conditions it is not surprising that an estimate based on this reconnaissance should prove to be somewhat wide of the mark."
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That is a purely engineering question, and I care not who he may be, any engineer or surveyor, given like conditions, would exceed his estimate. There has never been a railway made in this or any other country which came up to the expectations submitted, and therefore, speaking as one who knows something of these matters, I have great sympathy with the making of this line. But the real question is, is the line to be of value or not? What is to be the result of the railway? Many hon. Members say it will not pay, and no doubt it may not immediately. Other hon. Members say it is a venture, but all railways are ventures more or less. I hold the view that the British policy of opening up unexplored and unknown territories, putting down railways, and spreading the light of civilisation has in the long run been beneficial to the native tribes in those territories. This may not appear just now to be a paying line, but we are not going to pin our character to a mere, commercial venture; we are going to higher things, and if we can bring all these tribes under the good guidance and enlightenment of British influence, I think we shall accomplish a good work. I believe, therefore, it would be a great pity to leave this line unfinished—in fact, we cannot afford to do so. It is partly made and we must finish it. To leave £3,000,000 lying there without any return would be an unbusiness-like action, and I shall support the proposal to advance the rest of the money to complete the line, leaving the future to prove who were right and who were wrong as to the prospects of the railway.
MR. DILLON: For a great many years I have made it a rule to support the hon. Member for Northampton in resisting the building of this line. I do so on the present occasion with the more pleasure as an Irish Member because I consider the building of the Uganda Railway to be one of the first of those evil fruits of the spirit of Imperialism of which I have no doubt we shall have a, very large crop in the future. The hon. Member who has just spoken opened up a glorious prospect. According to his idea the whole of Africa is to be laced by railways constructed at the expense of the taxpayer's of the United Kingdom for the purpose of carrying the blessings of civilisation and enlightenment and prosperity to the tribes of Africa. What

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have you brought to Uganda? Thirty years ago, when Uganda was first entered by Sir Samuel Baker, it was a prosperous and comparatively peaceful country, and, what you have brought by your railways and civilisation is ruin and desolation, disaster and destruction, until those who know the country best are beginning to calculate the date by which you will have wiped out the population altogether. One of the grounds upon which I more earnestly oppose this scheme is that I see in it the precedent for and the germ of other vast schemes, now that the whole of the western part of the Continent of Africa has been taken under the protection of this country. If it be good policy to construct at an expense of £5,000,000 to this country a railway through a desert to a region which will probably never pay, is it not, à fortiori, far better policy to construct railways throughout the Niger Protectorate and Northern Nigeria, an infinitely more valuable country and one in which there is a far better chance of making the railways pay? We are told that the building of this railway is a policy to which both Front Benches are committed. That may be true, and so much more the pity. If so, it is not the first time the two Front Benches have agreed upon a policy utterly mistaken and thoroughly false from beginning to end, and which after many years they have been compelled to admit was entirely wrong. But it is not true that we are committed to this policy. When this railway was being commenced two alternative policies were placed before this House. One was to build a railway to Uganda or to the Lake, and the other was to build a railway through that region which by reason of the swamps and the condition of the country is not easily traversed by beasts of burden, and consequently has to be traversed by caravans and the goods carried on the backs of porters. The alternative policy submitted in the report was that the railway should be built to the top of the plateau, from which, as I understand, it is perfectly easy, with a good road, to carry the goods on to the Lake by carts or wagons and beasts of burden, thereby dispensing with porters. It is accordingly, quite untrue to say that because £3,000,000 have been wasted and the railway built for 362 miles, the House is committed to the policy of continuing the line through this more difficult country,
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It is perfectly consistent with the original Vote that we should stop at the point now reached, save the £2,000,000 we are now asked to provide, and spend £50,000 on improving the roads. There were one or two points in the statement of the right hon. Gentleman which astonished me. In defending the enormous increase of the estimate, he says that every single circumstance connected with the railway has turned out totally different from the original anticipation. That reminded me of a saying made in the time of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, which has passed almost into a proverb, that it was not the business of the Foreign Office to indulge in intelligent anticipation of future events. I suppose that in this case the right hon. Gentleman desires to maintain that tradition of the Foreign Office, because apparently every anticipation of the Foreign Office has not only been falsified, but falsified in the most extraordinary way. He told us that the cost of materials has doubled, that the cost of labour has doubled, that the water on which they were compelled to rely has turned out to be destructive to locomotives, and unfit for human consumption. Surely, as they were going over caravan routes which have been traversed by travellers for twenty or thirty years, they might have known the character of the water. In reference to the labour bill an even more extraordinary statement is made. The right hon. Gentleman says that the reason of the enormous increase in regard to labour is that originally the committee calculated on obtaining 7,000 or 8,000 native labourers, but were unable to do so, the consequence being that they were obliged to fall back on Indian skilled labourers at 14d. per day. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that the Indian skilled labourer at 14d. per day is dearer labour than the native un-trained African at 4d.?
MR. BRODRICKwas understood to say that the Indian labourers were un- skilled.
MR. DILLON: The hon. Member below the gangway who has spoken asserted that according to his information where African labourers were employed the earthworks cost 10d. per cubic yard, while with the Indian labourers at the higher wage they cost but 6d., so that

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by employing the Indian labourer at higher wages you reduced the cost of the work. That is the experience all the world over. Very often, particularly in railway work, it is much cheaper to employ a better class of men at higher wages than men who do not understand the work at lower wages. It therefore is no argument for the right hon. Gentleman to tell us that he had to fall back on labourers at the higher rate of 14d.; he has to show whether the result of that substitution has been really to increase the cost of the work..But even if we accept his excuse about the mistake in the cost of labour, is it not a monstrous thing for a committee of experts to come forward and say they were utterly deceived as to the conditions under which labour could be obtained on the East Coast of Africa? Labour has been hired on that coast by Europeans for thirty years past, and all the circumstances and conditions were thoroughly well known. In no part of Africa will you get native labour at the low rates contemplated by the right hon. Gentleman, unless you adopt that intelligent policy now advocated in Rhodesia and the Transvaal—namely, taxing the huts and then compelling the natives to work in order to pay that tax. One argument is that the labourers being free men, with no rent to pay, and with gardens round their huts, are not compelled to labour for the wages offered by contractors and mine-owners; they can ask their own terms. What. settles the price of labour in this country is the fact that a man cannot retire to his garden and his house and wait until the employer must have him at his own price; he would starve; therefore he must make the best terms he can. But in Africa the labourer is comparatively a free man, unless you have forced labour, as is so often advocated. We have seen the result of that in South Africa, where men come from long distances to work, but they come because they can get very high wages. In East Africa the same condition of things prevails. I know the wants of the East Africans are not so great as those of the people in South Africa, but I venture to think that the irate of wages has something to do with the supply of labourers in that part of the country as in every other part of the earth. Now I turn to the question of the future of this railway. Why does not the right hon. Gentleman give us some
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real information on this subject? He told us that the railway is now earning £60,000, and that there is every reason to calculate on £120,000 in future. But it was perfectly evident from his own words that the whole earnings of the railway are simply freights on Government goods going up to the garrison at Uganda. There was not a single word to indicate that up to this hour there are any earnings from the natural traffic of the country. Therefore, we gather from the speech that the railway will not pay for the oil for the carriages, to say nothing of the working expenses, unless by the entirely artificial traffic which arises from the English garrison at Uganda. On that principle you could justify the construction of a railway into the heart of the Sahara Desert. Before we can approach the question of the possibility of this railway paying its expenses in the future we ought to have some figures as to the actual traffic of the country, disentangled from the Government goods and the carriage of coolies. My conviction, from what I have read of the country, is that there is no such traffic. I would not say that there may not arise after many, many years a certain amount of traffic, but the bulk of the country through which this railway passes is a wilderness and a desert country unsuited for cultivation, and the only prospect of traffic is with the people of Uganda and the Lake. I therefore feel convinced that it will be many, many years before any profitable traffic to pay for the cost of the railway will spring up. I further object to this railway on the ground that it is part and parcel of a policy which has already heaped upon the taxpayers of this country additional burdens amounting to nearly £25,000,000 per annum since this Government came into power. It was the beginning of this policy of staking out claims for posterity, as it has been called. Instead of staking out claims for posterity, I think we are piling, burdens on the shoulders of posterity, for which they will curse this policy of which they are the result. This policy, which has been described as Imperialism, and which I regret to say has captured a considerable portion of the Liberal party, making them false to all the traditions upon which that party was built up, is a policy which is responsible for this Uganda Railway and for the innumerable other curses which have

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followed in its train. It is because there is no argument which can be used in support of this Uganda Railway which cannot be used with greater force in support of a railway system throughout the whole of Northern Nigeria, Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, and the heart of Africa itself, that I consider it is the duty of every man who believes in his trusteeship for the taxpayers of this country, and in his obligation to protect their interests against the monstrous and outrageous burdens such as are now being heaped upon those taxpayers, to protest on every possible occasion against such proposals as this.
MR. BRODRICK: I will reply generally to the points which have been raised in the debate, and I hope the hon. Member for East Mayo will not think me disrespectful to his arguments if I do not enter, in reply, upon the very wide range opened by him in his speech. I would remind the hon. Member that the initial steps in the construction of this railway were taken from his own side of the House in the year 1895.
MR. PERKS: No, no!
MR. BRODRICK: The original statement which pledged the House to the construction of this railway was made by the hon. Baronet the Member for Berwick. With regard to many of the points which have been raised, I propose upon the Second Reading of the Bill to lay on the Table of the House a statement giving a considerable number of the figures and details which have been asked for by various hon. Members in the course of this discussion. Upon two questions which have been raised I should like to say a few words. In the first place, the hon. Member for East Mayo and several other hon. Members have spoken upon the labour question; and the committee which had control of the construction of the railway have been blamed for not informing themselves of the conditions under which labour was obtainable. Anything more absurd it would be impossible to conceive, for how could a committee be expected to decide how many would be willing to accept service under any circumstances and upon any terms which they might offer? The only thing the committee could do, considering the many difficulties they had to encounter
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in those countries, was to form an estimate of the number who were willing to accept service. The hon. Member opposite said that, after all, the result is less satisfactory than if native labour had been employed.
MR. PERKS: I asked was it so.
MR. BRODRICK: The labour was found to be unsatisfactory.
MR. PERKS: My point is that the excessive cost of labour is due to the Greek sub-contractors who, as middle men, employed this cheap labour.
MR. BRODRICK: Whatever system was originally adopted to induce the men to work, arrangements were made with the individual and payments made to him. A great deal of criticism has been passed on this committee, and certain points have been urged in exaggerated language. It has been said that large sums have been lost in the construction of this railway by not employing, an expert committee of railway managers. In the first place, I very much doubt whether this House would have been prepared to ask railway managers in this country—men of great experience to whom large sums of money would have had to be paid—to give that close attention and that amount of time which would have been necessary for the making of a railway in the centre of Africa. I altogether deny that large sums of money have been lost or spent by the employment of this committee which has had the control of the making of the line. A great deal has been said about the Foreign Office clerks, but what has been said is not a fair statement of the case. I do not believe that a committee has ever been formed for such a work by any commercial firm or any public body upon such reasonable terms. The Chairman and the Vice Chairman receive no salary at all, and the Crown. Agent only receives the commission which is properly given for the heavy labours which fall upon him, and which, obviously, for labour of that kind, should be paid.
MR. DILLON: How much does that commission come to?
MR. BRODRICK: I cannot give the amount without reference. Sir Clement

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Hill, another member of the committee, also receives no payment. Then the consulting engineer receives £500 per annum. The total amount paid is less than £1,500 a year for controlling this very large affair. I think that is a very satisfactory state of things.
MR. BRYN ROBERTS: Who gets the discount on the materials supplied?
MR. BRODRICK: I have already explained that there is no discount. The materials are obtained at the lowest possible figure, and there is no question of discount going to any party. Any discount goes to the credit of the railway. With regard to the sum spent on management in Africa that sum amounts to £283,000 upon an expenditure of nearly £5,000,000. That is to say, the total cost of management, including the engineer's staff, the storekeepers, and cashier, and the administration generally of the whole of this large concern, only amounts to six or seven per cent. on the expenditure, which has been carefully watched throughout. I think this is a very moderate amount. The next question that I will reply to is one which I was asked by the hon. Member for Gateshead, who desires to have some information about the rolling stock. I may inform the hon. Member that there are ninety- two locomotives on the work and 942 waggons, besides goods and passenger rolling stock. I think that will be considered a fair equipment for the railway when it is completed. The hon. Member for East Mayo and one or two other hon. Members have contended that the work of making this line should be taken away from the Foreign Office, but they must first prove that the Foreign Office has acquitted itself badly in this respect. I think it is very undesirable to distribute the administration of such work among different Departments, because the Foreign Office must continue to administer the affairs of Uganda. I may also point out that this work is being done by the officials at the Foreign Office without any additional payment. I think I have now proved two things. The first is that the public have not been losers financially by this work, and, secondly, that certainly there is no inducement to the Foreign Office to continue this heavy work for too long a period. The right hon. Gentleman the
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Member for South Aberdeen and other hon. Members have asked me questions in regard to the present condition of the survey. I have endeavoured to make it clear that the survey and the sections have been completed right up to the Lake. The right hon. Gentleman asks if they are in a condition in which they can be handed over. We have the results of the survey up to 480 miles, or about 120 miles, further than the line is actually laid at the present moment. The remaining, part of the survey has been finished in Africa, and is now on its way home. The survey, as it now exists up to the Lake, is equivalent to a Parliamentary survey which would be required in the deposit, of plans before a Private Bill Committee. Therefore I think the Committee will see that a survey so far advanced as that is really considerably in advance of the survey described by the hon. Member for Northampton. I do not think it would be practicable to lay the survey on the Table of the House, but the Committee may take it from me that the surveys are well advanced. The right hon. Gentleman has also asked a question about the prospects of the country in the future. In regard to this question I am very anxious not to be too sanguine in any statement I may make to the Committee. But as I have said before, I hope before the end of this session to be able to lay upon the Table of the House a report from Sir Harry Johnston with regard to Uganda. When that report arrives it will speak for itself, but at present I have only got from Sir Harry Johnston his first impressions of Uganda. I may say that those impressions are exceedingly favourable, and it is only because I fear that they are too favourable in regard to the productive capacity and the power of the people to bear the burdens of taxation that I do not wish to be too sanguine in the matter. But although I do not wish | to put these opinions too high, at the same time I can only say that Sir Harry Johnston sees matters from a very favourable standpoint indeed. The right hon. Gentleman asks also what will be the working expenses, but that is an extremely difficult question to answer at the present time. Our expenses are undoubtedly very heavy at present, but if we should reach one train a week it has been estimated that that would be covered by the £120,000 a year from traffic receipts. It may be found desirable to

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have three or four trains a week. In regard to the total sum I think we have shown that full value has been obtained for the £3,000,000 which has already been expended, and I trust the Committee will agree to the extra sum which is now asked for.
MR. PERKS: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly state why the Government did not protect themselves by buying materials in advance when they knew that they would be required?
MR. BRODRICK: I do not know that that is the custom of the trade, but undoubtedly the rise in prices which the hon. Gentleman alluded to has affected the cost of the railway.
MR. JOHN BURNS: Much of the criticism which the right hon. Gentleman has sustained is due to the fact that nearly every one of the Papers on the Uganda Railway has been insufficient in detail, and if we had had more details I am sure this discussion would not have been as long as it has been. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to let us have the total number of the European staff, the total salaries paid, and the amount of salary paid to each individual officer? The next thing we ought to have, more especially in the light of the right hon. Gentleman's statement as to percentages and commissions, is the amount paid to Sir Clement Hill. I find by this account that in three years the administration has cost £327,000. The details of that administration ought to be set forth in subheads, and above all we ought to know how much Sir Clement Hill has had in commission out of the £327,000 which has been put down for administration. I want to know whether the amount paid to him is £10,000, £30,000, £40,000, or £70,000. It may be any one of these sums, and the public is anxious to know what commission he has had. The other point I wish to bring forward is this—I want to know the total number of men, both European and native, employed since the commencement of the railway; and also the number who have been killed, the number who have died; and the number invalided back to Mombasa, because from information I have seen in the Indian papers I find that the number of coolies killed and who have died in the course of the construction of this railway
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is, in some cases, given as ten times more numerous than the number embodied in the official reports. This report says that twenty-eight natives were killed by lions during the execution of the work on the railway. I find that the Indian papers state that over 400 natives were killed upon this particular work. The difference between twenty-eight and 400 is a rather serious discrepancy. If the statement that the number is 400 be not true then let us have it contradicted. The other point I wish to mention is that I hope the right hon. Gentleman will see that the European staff employed upon the railway between now and the Second Reading of this Bill are not subjected to the pettifogging intimidation which has been up to the present exercised by the officials. European engine-drivers, because they dared to send a telegram, have been compelled to ride third class with the natives, and the right hon. Gentleman ought to stop this kind of thing. I should be pleased to show the right hon. Gentleman a letter which I have received upon this question. European engineers working in a beastly climate should not be subjected to the tyranny of some Jack-in-office, who looks upon engineers from England as an officer would look upon native troops. That is not the way to make railways. I could, if time permitted, have put a number of other points, but I shall be pleased to give them privately to the right hon. Gentleman. I say again that this discussion would not have taken place if the reports had been as complete as railway reports generally are. If the points which have been raised are not answered we shall have an interminable discussion.
MR. BRODRICK: With regard to the grievances complained of by the hon. Member for Battersea, I shall be glad to furnish any facts that it is possible to give. I am bound, however, to express my extreme surprise at the insinuation made by the hon. Member against Sir Clement Hill, who is a distinguished public servant.
MR. JOHN BURNS: Before the right hon. Gentleman makes a misstatement, and before he misapprehends what I did say, I wish to state that I made no such insinuation. What I said was that I want to know, and the public has a right to know, the total amount that Sir Clement

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Hill has had for the ordering of stores; and supplies, and I object to that statement being misinterpreted and drawn from its proper meaning. I ask, how much has Sir Clement Hill received? Is it £10,000, £40,000, or £70,000? I shall be quite content when I hear that information. Frequently the right hon. Gentleman states that hon. Members who are only criticising him in a mild way are making insinuations. I made no insinuation, for I only asked for the total money which Sir Clement Hill has received in i the way of commission.
MR. BRODRICK: Sir Clement Hill has not received a farthing. He has done the work in addition to his other duties, and he has only received his ordinary salary.
MR. JOHN BURNS: The right hon. Gentleman told the Committee distinctly that Sir Clement Hill received ½ per cent. upon the stores and supplies ordered.
MR. BRODRICK: That is not so, and I now see the mistake into which the hon. Member has fallen. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the item of administration.
amounting to £327,000, but that amount covers the salaries of the officials employed upon the spot. It is unquestionable that Sir Clement Hill has not received a farthing from anywhere for this work. The Crown agent receives ½ per cent. commission, and the amount of that commission varies according to the quantity of stores sent out. The exact amount of the commission earned I will undertake to lay before the House at the proper time before the Second Reading.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: My impression is that the commission received by the Crown agents is 1 per cent; the right hon. Gentleman says it is ½ percent., and of course he should know better. That commission is, I should imagine, paid for the exercise of proper forethought in the purchase of stores, and my right hon. friend never did suggest that it was received by Sir Clement Hill. It is received by the Crown agents.
Question put.
The Committee divided:—Ayes, 185;. Noes, 40. (Division List No. 106.)

AYES.

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

Allsopp, Hon. George

Cook, Fred. Lucas (Lambeth)

Goschen, George J. (Sussex)

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Cornwallis, Fiennes Stanley W.

Griffith, Ellis J.

Asher, Alexander

Cox, Irwin Edw. Bainbridge

Gull, Sir Cameron

Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.

Curzon, Viscount

Gunter, Colonel

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Davies, M. Vanghan-(Cardigan)

Hamilton, Rt. Hon. Lord George

Bainbridge, Emerson

Denny, Colonel

Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Robert W.

Baird, John George Alexander

Dixon-Hartland, Sir F. Dixon

Hanson, Sir Reginald

Baker, Sir John

Donkin, Richard Sim

Hardy, Laurence

Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Man.)

Dorington, Sir John Edward

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Balfour, Rt. Hn. G. W. (Leeds)

Doughty, George

Haslett, Sir James Horner

Banbury, Frederick George

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Hayne, Rt. Hon. Chas. Seale-

Bartley, George C. T.

Doxford, Sir William Theodore

Heath, James

Beckett, Ernest William

Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart

Hedderwick, Thomas C. H.

Bethell, Commander

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph D.

Henderson, Alexander

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Evans, Sir F. H.(Southhampton)

Hoare, Sir Samuel (Norwich)

Bousfield, William Robert

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Bowles, T. Gibson (King's Lynn)

Fenwick, Charles

Houston, R. P.

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Finch, George H.

Howard, Joseph

Brown, Alexander H.

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Howell, William Tudor

Bullard, Sir Harry

Firbank, Joseph Thomas

Hughes, Colonel Edwin

Butcher, John George

Fisher, William Hayes

Jackson, Rt. Hon. Wm. Lawies

Caldwell, James

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmund

Jebb, Richard Claverhouse

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lanes.)

Foster, Harry S. (Suffolk)

Johnson-Ferguson, Jabez E.

Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbysh.)

Galloway, William Johnson

Johnston, William (Belfast)

Cecil, Evelyn (Hertford, East)

Garfit, William

Kearley, Hudson E.

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

Gibbs, Hn. AGH (City of Lond.)

Keswick, William

Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans)

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Charrington, Spencer

Giles, Charles Tyrrell

Kinloch, Sir J. George Smyth

Clare, Octavius Leigh

Gladstone, Rt. Hn Herbert John

Lafone, Alfred

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Goldsworthy, Major-General

Laurie, Lieut.-General

Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

Pilkington, Rich (Lanes Newt'n)

Tennant, Harold John

Lawson, John Grant (Yorks.)

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Thornton, Percy M.

Lecky, Rt. Hon. William Edw. H.

Plunkett, Rt. Hn. Horace Curzon

Tollemache, Henry James

Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accring'n)

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Tomlinson, Wm. Edw. Murray

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Pretyman, Ernest George

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Llewelyn, Sir Dillwyn(Swansea)

Purvis, Robert

Usborne, Thomas

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Liverp'l)

Remnant, James Farquharson

Wallace, Robert

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Renshaw, Charles Bine

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Lopes, Henry Yarde Buller

Ridley, Rt. Hn. Sir Matthew W.

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Lowe, Francis William

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. C. Thomson

Webster, Sir Richard E.

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Welby, Lt.-Col. A. C. E (Taunt'n)

Lucas-Shadwell, William

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

Welby, Sir Charles G. E.(Notts.)

Macartney, W. G. Ellison

Round, James

Whiteley, George (Stockport)

Maclure, Sir John William

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Whiteley, H.(Ashton-under-L.)

M'Crae, George

Runciman, Walter

Williams, J. Powell- (Birm.)

Malcolm, Ian

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

Maxwell, Rt. Hn. Sir Herbert E.

Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos Myles

Willox, Sir John Archibald

Mellor, Colonel (Lancashire)

Saunderson, Rt. Hon. Col. E. J.

Wilson-Todd, W. H. (Yorks.)

Monk, Charles James

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-

Moore, William (Antrim, N.)

Shaw-Stewart, M. H.(Renfrew)

Wyndham, George

More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

Skewes-Cox, Thomas

Wyvill, Marmaduke D'Arcy

Morton, A. H. A. (Deptford)

Smith, Abel H. (Christchurch)

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Murray, Rt. Hn. A. Graham (Bute)

Smith, J. Parker (Lanarksh.)

Young, Commander (Berks, E.)

Myers, William Henry

Smith, Hon. W. F. D.(Strand)

Younger, William

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Yoxall, James Henry

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Stanley, Sir Hy. M. (Lambeth)

Pease, Joseph A. (Northumb.)

Stone, Sir Benjamin

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir William Walrond and Mr. Anstruther.

Pender, Sir James

Strauss, Arthur

Phillpotts, Captain Arthur

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

NOES.

Abraham, Wm. (Cork, N. E.)

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Priestley, Briggs

Abraham, William (Rhondda)

Field, William (Dublin)

Reckitt, Harold James

Barlow, John Emmott

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Richardson, J.(Durham, S. E.)

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Jacoby, James Alfred

Roberts, J. Bryn (Eifion)

Broadhurst, Henry

Jones, William (Carnarvonsh)

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

Lawson, Sir W. (Cumberland)

Souttar, Robinson

Burns, John

Macaleese, Daniel

Steadman, William Charles

Channing, Francis Allston

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Sullivan, Donal (Westmeath)

Crilly, Daniel

M'Dermott, Patrick

Williams, John Carvell (Notts.)

Curran, Thomas B. (Donegal)

Montagu, Sir S.(Whitechapel)

Wilson, Henry J.(York, W. R.)

Curran, Thomas (Sligo, S.)

Norton, Capt. Cecil William

Dewar, Arthur

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Price.

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Dillon, John

O'Malley, William

Doogan, P. C.

Pickersgill, Edward Hare

Resolution agreed to.

Resolved, That it is expedient to authorise the issue, out of the Consolidated Fund, of a further sum not exceeding £1,930,000 for the Uganda Railway.
Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

BURIAL GROUNDS BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
Order for Second Reading read.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir M. WHITE RIDLEY, Lancashire, Blackpool): I do not think it necessary that I should occupy much of the time of the House in explaining the reasons why the Government have introduced this Bill now. As
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to its details, the Bill is sufficiently clear on the face of it regarding its intention and the mode of carrying out its proposals. For some years the subject of the burial laws has from time to time engaged the attention of the House, and in 1897 the Government accepted—for they did not initiate—a proposal that the subject should be referred to a Select Committee in order that some arrangement might be come to by those specially interested which would enable legislation to be passed. I am thankful to say that that Committee, under the presidency of my distinguished friend the Member for the University of Cambridge, did exceedingly good work, and came to conclusions which were almost unanimous; and I have reason to believe that those who were parties to that arrangement, if I may

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so describe it, are still of the same mind. There was a great deal of disappointment not alone on one side of the House, but among all interested in this question, that the Government had not been able to deal with it last session; and before the commencement of this session I had the pleasure of receiving a deputation, including the noble Lord the Member for Rochester, the hon. Member for the Mansfield Division of Nottingham, and others, who urged that the Government should introduce a Bill based on the lines of the Report of the Committee. The Bill which I now ask the House to read a second time is an attempt practically to carry out in the main the suggestions of the Committee. I will say at once what it does not propose to do. It does not propose a consolidation of the Jaw; and I think it will be felt by hon. Members, that, although it would be very desirable to consolidate the law, still, when we are attempting to amend it in several important particulars, we should only be introducing fresh difficulties if we attempted to consolidate at the same time, and therefore this Bill does not propose consolidation, though I hope it will go a long way towards paving the road for future consolidation. Then there is another point in which the Bill does not exactly follow the recommendations of the Committee. It does not give the whole administration of the burial laws to one Government Department. It proceeds upon the principle that the management of burial grounds may be said to be partly ecclesiastical and partly sanitary and financial, and it proposes to give the ecclesiastical part of the administration to the Home Office and the financial and sanitary part to the Local Government Board. The sanctioning of sites for burial grounds, the closing of burial grounds and the sanitary regulations respecting them are all handed over to the Local Government Board, as well as the fixing and varying of the charges for burials, the letting of unused ground, and the disposal of surplus income. I propose to retain in the hands of the Home Office questions as to the consecration of grounds and chapels, and the fees taken by the clergy. On all those points I propose to amend the law almost exactly on the lines proposed by the Committee. There are other minor points to which I have not alluded, but
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which are sufficiently explained in the Bill, and I am sanguine enough to hope that those interested in the question will think that it is an honest attempt to deal with a difficult question on the lines and in the spirit of the Report of the Committee. If the House will give the Bill Second Reading I propose that it be referred to the Standing Committee on Law, and I shall make every effort to secure its passage into law this session.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(The Secretary of State for the Home Department.)
MR. CARVELL WILLIAMS: The last time I addressed the House on the subject of the burial laws was in support of a Bill read by a considerable majority in the last Parliament, but rejected in this. The promoters of that measure had, however, this consolation in their defeat. The opposition to the Bill was of a much milder character than on any other previous occasion, and during the discussion the admission was made by the opponents of the Bill that undoubtedly the burial laws required revision, and that some grievances existed which ought to be redressed. The Home Secretary going beyond that plainly stated that if an inquiry had been proposed into the character and operation of the burial laws the Government would have assented to it. The hint of the right hon. Gentleman was at once 'acted upon, and the hon. Gentleman the Member for the High Peak Division of Derbyshire very quickly proposed the appointment of a Select Committee, which the Government assented to. The Committee sat towards the end of one session and a considerable part of the next. It was composed of gentlemen all anxious to arrive at a satisfactory settlement of this question, and the evidence adduced was of such a character as to greatly strengthen that amicable feeling. The result was that the Committee were unanimous except on two points, to which I mean to refer. As the Home Secretary has stated, the Bill does not propose to follow the recommendation of the Committee with regard to the consolidation of the law. I admit the force of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, though I remember Bills which combined consoli-

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dation with amendment. However, I will not contest the point with the right hon. Gentleman, but will only urge upon him that if this Bill should happily become law the Government should feel it their duty to follow it up within a reasonable limit of time with a measure for consolidation. Otherwise this Bill will simply increase the existing confusion without having done anything very essential to bring order out of chaos. With regard to the departure from the recommendation of the Committee with respect to the administration of the law, I cannot help thinking that the arrangement which the Bill proposes will be found to be inconvenient, because it divides the administration of the law between two Government Departments, and that is likely to cause inconvenience and loss of time. But that is a point which I do not regard as vital to the Bill, and therefore I do not pro- pose to do more than protest against it. There are two other recommendations of the Committee which have not been adopted in the Bill, and to which the right hon. Gentleman has not referred. One has reference to the two methods of rating in connection with burial grounds. Obviously this is an anomaly which ought to be considered. It may be that the right hon. Gentleman will reply that this anomaly concerns a general measure of local rating. Then the Committee recommended unanimously that burial authorities should possess compulsory powers for the acquisition of land. Here again the right hon. Gentleman may reply that this can be best dealt with in a general measure relating to land: but I wish to impress on the right hon. Gentleman the fact that burial authorities are sorely in want of the means of obtaining grounds for new cemeteries. I have spoken of two points in regard to which there was a difference of opinion with the Committee. One related to the fees payable to clergymen, and the Committee were unanimous in recommending that in all new cemeteries clergymen henceforward should not receive fees for the opening of graves, the erection of monuments, and such like, but should receive fees only for services rendered. That, I admit, is a very important concession, but this Bill has reference only to the new cemeteries to be provided under the Act, and the existing fees are to continue during the lifetime of the incumbent who now receives them, and on his death it is provided that the fees
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should continue for a period of fifteen years. The argument for this extension is that in some cases it may cause considerable inconvenience if the fees ceased on the death of the incumbent, but I may remind the right hon. Gentleman of the fact that the Select Committee on Burial Foes, which sat in 1882, recommended that compensation should be paid only in cases where the fees constituted an important portion of the income of the living. A minority of the Committee were in favour of fixing ten years as the limit, but on consideration I have come to the conclusion that it is far more important to establish essentially sound principles in connection with this measure than to haggle over monetary details. The promoters of burial reform have always been willing to conserve existing interests, and for my own part on this question of fees I would rather err on the side of generosity than on the side of niggardliness. The result of the provision in the Bill will be that the ancient fees which are virtually condemned as being improper fees will continue to exist in many parishes for a very lengthened period. That, I think, is likely to cause some ill-feeling, and therefore the Committee, in my opinion, very wisely recommended that facilities should be afforded for the commutation of fees, so that they might come to an end at as early a period as possible without inflicting pecuniary loss. In this connection I venture to suggest to the Government that the process of commutation, which I think most desirable, would be considerably facilitated if that clause of the Bill which provides that commutation funds shall be vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners should be so extended as to put it in the power of the Commissioners to make grants in certain cases with a view to commutation. I think it would greatly conserve the interests of the Church of England if Parliament does all it can to put an end to those old fees which have been a source of so much discontent and friction in the past. The second point in regard to which the Committee were divided in opinion was the allotment of portions of the unconsecrated parts of cemeteries for the use of particular denominations. The Burial Act of 1853 enacts that "the unconsecrated part of a cemetery shall be allotted in such manner, and in such portions, as may be sanctioned by the Secretary of State." In my opinion,

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that was intended only to require the sanction of the Home Secretary as to the portions to be consecrated and left unconsecrated. Mr. Byrne, the representative of the Home Office, told the Committee that he could "not explain in any way what denominations were referred to; it is only a sort of guess one has to make that it is intended to be allotments to different sects." Yet, on the strength of that mere guess, the Home Office has sanctioned a considerable number of allotments to Roman Catholics or Jews. It has also advised burial authorities that such allotments are under the exclusive control of the bodies to whom they are given; that they are free from the obligations of the Burial Act of 1880, and that the Home Office has no power to vary or to withdraw the allotments. That has become a serious matter, because of the idea evidently entertained by some of the members of the Committee that it may be possible to extend the system to the Church of England. In justification of that statement, let me quote these passages from Mr. Byrne's evidence. He was asked, "Could the Church of England apply for an allotment?" and answered, "According to the strict words of the Act, I do not see why not, because the Act is so extremely vague." Asked if the part allotted could be consecrated afterwards, he expressed a doubt whether without the possession of a freehold it would be possible. Being further asked whether, if the Church obtained an allotment, it would be free from the obligation of the Act of 1880, his reply was, "That is the Home Office view, if an allotment can be given to the Church of England at all." He was further asked if the allotments already made are free from that Act, and answered, "We hold it is so; but we cannot rely on any legal decision to that effect." Finally, asked if Roman Catholics, Quakers, Jews, and any Nonconformists having allotments are not in a privileged position not at present enjoyed by the Church of England, his answer was "Yes, certainly." Now, I hold that this allotment system is a vicious system, because the ground the public pays for should be used by the public without regard to sectarian distinctions, and those who wish for burial grounds for the exclusive use of one religious body should pay for them themselves. If this system is to be extended it will be a distinctively retrograde step;
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it will be contrary to the spirit of recent legislation, and, so far as cemeteries are concerned, it will practically repeal the Act of 1880, which was passed with great difficulty after many years of struggling. I hope, therefore, that if the Government maintains the allotment system it will place it on a more satisfactory footing, and that it will resist all attempts to extend it, lest the Bill should become the cause of fresh contention. If this matter can be satisfactorily adjusted, and some minor Amendments can be made in the Bill, I see no reason why it should not become the means of putting an end to strife in connection with the burial of the dead which ought never to have existed.
MR. JEBB: I had the honour to be the Chairman of the Select Committee which inquired into this question, and I offer my congratulations to my right hon. friend on the measure he has just introduced. I believe it is a reasonable and equitable compromise, one which will go very far indeed to remove the painful dissensions which have occurred in the past. I should like to say a word on one of the points referred to by my right hon. friend, in which the Bill differs from the Report of the Select Committee. I do so merely to guard against the difference being thought more important than (in my opinion) it really is. The Select Committee recommended that the one central authority for the administration of the burial laws should be the Local Government Board. The Bill proposes to leave the ecclesiastical administration to the Home Office, and gives only the sanitary administration to the Local Government Board. Now, in proposing that the Local Government Board should be the sole central authority, the Select Committee, as their Report has shown, did so from no failure to appreciate the efficiency, the discretion, the patience, and the tact which have marked the exercise of functions which were sometimes exceedingly delicate by the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors at the Home Office. I need not detain the House by entering into the reasons which led the Select Committee to think that, on the whole, there should be one central authority, and that the supreme sanitary authority would be the best. I may say that, in my own opinion, the plan suggested

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by the Bill is not open to very serious objection, even on the part of those who, for certain reasons, might have preferred the scheme suggested in the Report. It is not quite so, however, with regard to the consolidation of the burial laws. I was very glad to hear from my right hon. friend that he regards the present Bill as one to pave the way for consolidation of the laws of burial. The Government of Lord Beaconsfield in 1877 introduced a Burial Acts Consolidation Bill which was not passed; and I may mention that a central feature of that Bill was in making the Local Government Board the sole central authority. It is permissible to hope that at no distant period the Government may see their way to bring in another measure for the consolidation of the laws of burial. That was one of the objects which the Select Committee most earnestly desired. The hon. Member for the Mansfield Division has described with perfect correctness the spirit in which that Committee worked, and this may be recognised in the Bill before the House. It was animated throughout by a desire for conciliation. Concessions were made on both sides with the view of arriving at a satisfactory result, and an equitable compromise. That spirit animated every member of the Committee, and none more so than the hon. Member for the Mansfield Division himself, and a Member of the House who is now doing duty in South Africa, the noble Lord the Member for Rochester. I think the Government may be congratulated on this Bill. It will certainly go far to remove causes of dissension which sometimes were very acute, and the intrusion of religious discord is never more painful when it arises in the presence of death. I think we may hope that the operation of this Bill will go far to promote peace and goodwill.
MR. PERKS: As a member of the Select Committee I venture to endorse what the Chairman of the Committee has just said as to the anxious desire which the different members, whose ecclesiastical opinions were of the most diverse nature, had in endeavouring to come to a practical working compromise concerning the future position of the burial grounds of this country. But I would point out also that the Government has not accepted in this Bill what certainly
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some of the Nonconformist members of the Committee considered was one of its vital features, namely, the consolidation of the Burial Laws, and the passing of the control of the burial grounds of this country out of the hands of the Home Secretary and his officials to the Local Government Board. Now, the recommendation to which the Committee unanimously came, and which has not been accepted by the Government, arose, I think, from a sort of conviction arising, from practical experience extending over many years, that on the whole the Local Government Department was more modern in its methods, was perhaps more businesslike, and was not so ecclesiastical in its sympathies and tendencies as the Home Office. That certainly was the view which I myself took, and it was the view which many of the local authorities throughout the country take, because the tendency of modern times has been to adopt what is called the Martins Act, and to fight shy of the old Burial Acts when new cemeteries have to be acquired by local public bodies. But I gladly recognise that in the Schedule to this Bill many important powers have been transferred to the Local Government Office, and that the duties which are retained by the Home Secretary are those which I would have thought he would have been most anxious to get rid of, namely, the settling of ecclesiastical disputes between Anglican and Free Churchmen in this country. However, he has thought proper to retain these delicate powers, perhaps partly because he considered them an enjoyable exercise of his duty, and does not credit the Local Government Board with sufficiently mature judgment or well-balanced convictions to administer the whole of these measures. Now, I would like to. say that this Bill does not entirely com-mend itself to one of the great religious bodies of this country, a church which did not present any evidence before the Select Committee, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which ranks next in numbers to the Church of England in Great Britain. I trust we shall all recognise that there is a legitimate demand which we endeavoured to meet in the Report of the Select Committee—a demand on the part of the members of the Church of England for the consecration of a reasonable portion of any cemetery which, may be purchased and laid out with,

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public funds. We cannot ignore the very strong feeling which a very large number of people in this country have, that they will, when dead, rest in peace better if their bodies have been laid in consecrated ground. The Wesleyan Methodist Church, like its great founder John Wesley, attaches not the slightest importance to the consecration of burial places and graveyards. John Wesley's may have been an extreme opinion, but his contention was that consecration was a very modern institution, and he went so far as to say that it was a remnant of Pagan superstition. Nevertheless there is no doubt that very many of the people of this country do like to be buried in consecrated ground; and the Committee felt, and I am glad the Government recognise, that in public cemeteries which may be constructed by the money of the taxpayers in towns where the Church of England is in a very considerable minority—even there provision should be made for consecrating a proper area for the burial of the members of the Church of England and others who desire to rest in consecrated ground. But I do trust that we shall not sanction in this Bill the chopping up of our cemeteries into a number of little, isolated ecclesiastical camps, Jewish, Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Anglican; and the Anglican section again chopped up possibly into many sub-sections. I can conceive of nothing more tending to create a spirit of sectarian bitterness and folly than a process of that description. I hope that Bill does not provide for any such contingency. There is another point which was referred to by the hon. Member for Mansfield. I do not myself see why a clergyman who discharges no duty whatever in a cemetery, and who has received for many years income from what he calls his own graveyard, should receive fees for burials in the consecrated portions of the cemetery which has been constructed purely out of public money. Why should he continue for fifteen years to draw a large income from the consecrated portion of the cemetery when he renders no services, because he had originally an income from the parish churchyard? I would, with a very light hand indeed, wipe away all these fees. I do not desire to swell the income of the clergy of this country by giving them a tax on the burial of the dead. The Bishop of London lately
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told us that there were only 110,000 communicants belonging to the Church of England in his great diocese of over three million souls. If these figures be correct, and probably they are put as high as possible, it shows that there is a very small percentage of the people in the parishes of London who belong to the Church of England. Nevertheless it is apparent that there is a vast, an overwhelming proportion of the people of this country upon whom a burial tax is levied in behalf of the clergy of the Established Church, who render no services whatever in connection with the burial, and who never were associated with the dead in any shape or form. Therefore I am not so happy as my hon. friend the Member for Mansfield in making this provision for these clergy. There is only one other point to which I wish to call attention, and that is that while this Bill has undoubtedly met a grievance, and I trust will have the effect of putting an end to some local controversies which have been sometimes extremely inconvenient, and often extremely painful, I want to call attention to the fact that the most troublesome annoyances connected with the burial are not covered by the Bill. To some extent they are perpetuated. I mean the circumstances connected with parochial graveyards, to which I have often had occasion to draw the attention of the Home Secretary—the refusal, for example, of a bier for the burial of a Dissenter, the refusal to toll the parish bell for a Dissenter, the arbitrary refusal to allow wreaths to be put on the graves of Dissenters, the arbitrary refusal or selection of sites, the obnoxious condition with reference to forty-eight hours notice in the parish churchyard. It is true that these are dealt with so far as public cemeteries are concerned, but nothing is done to remove the grievances of which Dissenters complain with reference to the control of the parish churchyards by the parish clergy. At the same time, we on this side have to be satisfied with small mercies while the present Government is in power, and I hope that this Bill will have the effect of putting an end to some of those controversies which have arisen concerning the purchase and laying out of rural cemeteries.
SIR F. S. POWELL: I hope that the House will allow me in a few words to express my great satisfaction that

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the Government have seen their way to introduce this Bill. I feel that we are under great obligations to the Select Committee which gave so much attention to the subject, as well as to the Government for giving effect to the result of their deliberations. I do not intend to follow my hon. friend who has last spoken in his observations upon subjects beyond the scope of the Bill. This is a Bill which will remedy evils which have lasted too long, and I express satisfaction that the end of these strifes and struggles should be so near. I have had the opportunity of observing some of these strifes in the West Riding of Yorkshire. They are injurious to good neighbourhood and to the cause of Christianity wherever they break out. There has been no doubt a feeling of hardship on the part of members of the Church of England that they have not been able to secure that consecration to which they attach great importance, and also a feeling on the part of Nonconformists as to the present laws to which this Bill will put an end, if it passes. The Acts with which we are dealing are not ancient Acts. They do not involve sentiment except that which must always be connected with the burial of the dead. Indeed, many Members of the House can very well remember the passing of the first of these Acts. I remember the inquiry which preceded the passing of the first Act; and therefore we are not dealing with anything in the nature of the old parish churchyards, but with something which, in its essence, purpose, and operation, is a modern institution. The burial grounds are in themselves intensely prosaic; in some cases they are even commercial in their character, and I rejoice myself that the difficulties and incongruities which have arisen in regard to the burial laws will be put an end to in the course of the present session. I, however, would express the desire that the Government would take in hand the consolidation of these Acts at an early day. I believe that when this Bill comes into law consolidation will be an easy task; and even this session a Consolidation Act might be put on the Statute-book. It would not occupy much time, and the present session would be the best time to undertake it, because the subject is fresh in our minds.
MR. BROADHURST: There is one desirable concession which I
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would like to see embodied in this Bill—the compulsory power to acquire land for the purpose of forming a cemetery. So far as I know there is no such power in existence. There is a case within my own knowledge where they have been four or five years endeavouring to negotiate for a site for a cemetery, but up to the present moment they have utterly failed. I do not know what they will have to do shortly. Of course there is the sea at their command, and unless they obtain authority from Parliament for compulsorily acquiring land for cemetery purposes resort may have to be had to the sea. I would ask the Home Secretary whether he can put a clause of that kind in the Bill as it passes through Committee. There is no determined opposition to the Bill, and such a clause would not take a long time either in this House or in the Committee, and it would meet a great public necessity. I could have wished something would have been done to put an end to the heart-rending scenes with which we have been made acquainted owing to the arbitrary character of some of the unwise clergy Laws are made to control unreasonable and ill-conditioned people, and I think the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary should have provided in this Bill some control calculated to prevent the out- rages we hear of far too frequently in many parts of the country, which are caused by a section of the clergy of the Church of England. This Bill, which is termed a Consolidation Bill, goes, as I understand it, rather in an opposite direction. You are not only not going to consolidate the law, but you are going to divide the authority. The authority is now in part to rest with the Local Government Board and part with the Home Office, as my hon. friend says, probably for ecclesiastical reasons. The Local Government Board is not so noted for its spiritual gifts as the Home Office, and therefore all that relates to ecclesiastical questions will be retained by the Home Office. I am at a loss to understand why that should be so. As I regard it, the local burial boards have quite enough difficulty to deal with without their not knowing what authority to write to when disputes arise; hut by the Bill greater difficulties are provided, and I think the right hon. Gentleman will see that that is the case. However, I am not going to take any hostile action upon this Bill. Like my hon. friend I do not

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at all agree with the fifteen years provision for fees of present incumbents I do not see that it is either just or necessary, but, as has been pointed out to the House, it might have been worse: therefore we must be thankful for small mercies. I do, however, appeal to the Home Secretary to tell us what difficulty, if there be a difficulty, and what reason, if reason there be, against inserting a clause in the Committee stage as to compulsory powers to acquire burial grounds. The grievance is a real one, and the difficulties are great, and I think it is only right that we should take this opportunity of appealing to the right hon. Gentleman to see that this is done.
MR. HERBERT ROBERTS: I join in the congratulations that have been passed on the introduction of this Bill at this period of the session. I was not on the Committee which considered this question, but I was one of those who took the opportunity of urging on the Government the necessity for this Bill to be brought in this session. I am glad to see that it was possible for the Committee to agree on certain points, and several reforms even, in regard to the different questions which were involved, and I wish to join in the congratulations to the Committee on the patience they have shown, and the conduct of the hon. Members who formed that Committee. But I would like to say a word on this occasion as briefly as I can in relation to the Bill with regard to Wales. This question of burials, I am sorry to say, is very acute there, and the nature of the opinion of Wales makes it impossible that any other condition of things should exist. I think it is quite time that the House of Commons, not in any partisan spirit, but as men dealing with a national grievance, should join together in coming to some general agreement on these different questions, which would at all events do away to a certain extent with the disagreement of opinion which now exists about the country, and especially in the principality of Wales. On this point I cannot disguise from myself that, however useful certain of the reforms in this Bill are, they cannot from the condition of things touch the real evils of the case in Wales. I am aware that it was impossible for the Committee to go into the question of amending the Act of 1880, or the laws generally with regard to churchyards, but what I wish to make clear to the House
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is this: however useful this step may be, so long as it does not touch the mischief and evils connected with burials in churchyards and cemeteries which have been already alluded to, it cannot so far as Wales is concerned be regarded as a solution of the question. There are two Amendments on the Bill upon which I would personally lay special importance; first, the Amendment which has been already alluded to in favour of altering that clause of the Bill which makes it impossible for any change to take place in the payment of fees in cemeteries, at all events for fifteen years. I hope I may in that spirit of harmony which has characterised this discussion urge that before the Committee stage the Government will, at all events, consider the advisability of shortening that period, and that we may look forward to a shorter period than fifteen years. The other point is the granting to burial boards compulsory powers to acquire land. Instances in England have been quoted with regard to this point. I also could quote instances in Wales. I hope on both these points it may be possible for the Government to reconsider their position to a certain extent. I am glad it has been possible to agree in certain measures of reform on this subject, and so far as it is a step in the right direction I shall give the Bill my cordial support.
SIR M. WHITE RIDLEY: I congratulate myself on the way in which this Bill has been received, and, with one or two exceptions, on the spirit in which it has been treated. I would remind the House that it is not directly a Government proposal. It is taken up by the Government because it represents the agreement arrived at by a Committee which did excellent work on a very controversial question. My answer with reference to some of the points raised by hon. Gentlemen opposite is that they are not included in the recommendations of the Committee. On the other hand, if fault is found for keeping the ecclesiastical fees going for fifteen years, my reply is that that was distinctly a recommendation of the Committee, and that is the reason why it is in the Bill. The Committee gave us no lead as to the treatment of the larger question of the differences of rating, and no guidance with regard to the compulsory acquisition of land. It is quite true that the Committee did speak of these questions, but they gave us no lead as to the desired

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amendments of the law, which, however desirable they may be, form, I think, a difficult and thorny subject. I have no personal objection to these matters being considered in the Committee stage, but I would remind hon. Members that they cannot have it all their own way—that if concessions are made by one party there ought to be reciprocity by the other party. I think the hon. Member for Leicester is under some misapprehension as to the Central Departments already involved in the administration of the burial law. For instance, in the acquisition of ground by a Burial Board there frequently has first to be obtained the approval of the Home Office as to the site, and then the approval of the same site by the Local Government Board from a financial and sanitary point of view—the drainage and water questions and all that sort of thing—matters with which the Home Office does not deal. Under the present Bill all ecclesiastical questions will still be under the Home Office, and all the sanitary arrangements will be under the Local Government Board. This does not mean extra complications, but, on the contrary, it will greatly simplify the existing methods of dealing with the whole matter.

SEA FISHERIES BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(The Secretary of State for the Home Department.)
SIR CAMERON GULL (Devonshire, Barnstaple): In rising to move the rejection of this Bill, I wish to say that I think the House has some ground of complaint that a measure which proposes to take away what would be the natural right of the fishermen to exercise their calling on the sea should be moved formally, not by the Minister in charge of the Board of Trade, but by the Home Secretary, and that at the present moment we are in complete ignorance of the grounds which the House is to consider sufficient for dealing with this question. At the outset let me say that I have no desire to pose as in any way an advocate for the indiscriminate destruc-
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tion of undersized fish, and if this Government, or any Government were to propose some measure which, without interfering unduly with the rights of the fishermen to take the fish, would really have the effect of preventing the destruction of immature fish or lead to the still greater increase of the supply of fish, certainly that measure would have my cordial support; but I hope I shall be able to convince the House that this Bill, even if it is passed, will not conduce to the prevention of the destruction of immature fish, while at any rate it will cause unnecessary interference with the fishermen, and in many cases certainly will cause a considerable amount of friction and annoyance. The history of this question is rather a lengthy one, and I think I shall be justified in very briefly calling the attention of the House to what has gone before. Really, I think, if the House will look at the question, it comes to this, that for a great many years there has been continual friction between various kinds of fishermen—those who fish one way and those who fish another way; and, at any rate at the beginning of the history of this question, it was a question between the trawlers and the other fishermen. We have had already four public inquiries. There was one in 1864, another in 1878, another in 1885, and another in 1893, and the result of these inquiries is that the Board of Trade takes out of the Report of the last inquiry—one of very many recommendations—a recommendation that certainly was keenly opposed on that Committee, was carried only by a majority of seven against three, and that though the Committee itself consisted of seventeen members. Therefore the Committee have not even a majority of members in favour of this Report, and the Government press that recommendation while they leave out of sight many other very important recommendations which I am sure the House will be very glad to have brought before it. I do not know that I should be in order in dealing with those recommendations directly as a ground for moving the rejection of the Bill, but I think I am entitled to point out one or two of the recommendations. With respect to the question of police, the fishermen have very little protection indeed against the foreigner. Foreigners come into our waters and poach upon our preserves, and questions are constantly

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being put, certainly as regards the Scottish fisheries, which show that they have not the protection they ought to have. I do not think that in England they have that protection either. The Report of 1893 asks for the consideration of the improvement of harbours for fishermen. We have pressed that over and over again in this House and got nothing at all but kindly words of sympathy from the President of the Board of Trade, and, as far as I can gather, the total amount of beneficial legislation that a large number of fishermen—especially the smaller class of fishermen—get from this House is in the form of certain boards for imposing bye-laws, and thereby fining the fishermen in carrying on their trade. The Reports of these various Commissions are by no means all consistent. The Commission of 1864 was appointed to consider whether the supply of fish was increasing, stationary, or diminishing, and whether any of the methods of catching fish involved wasteful destruction of fish or spawn. Beam trawling they determined was not, and as regards the taking of small fish they said there was no evidence. On the 14th of July, 1878, Mr. Secretary Cross—the present Lord Cross—appointed commissioners to deal with the question of net and beam trawling, and also to again report whether the modes of fishing cause the wasteful destruction of fish. Again, the Commission report that there is no evidence that the fish on the coast is decreasing, but they recommend that there should be power in the Secretary of State to issue a prohibition order. That is the recommendation of the second Commission. The first recommended that if the destruction of small fish should ever be satisfactorily proved the best remedial measure would be to place a restriction on the size of the fish to be sold, In the first of these Reports there is the satisfactory conclusion that there is no evidence of any wasteful destruction of fish, but if there was, and it could be proved, one Commission says you should limit the size of the fish to be sold, and the other says you should close certain areas. Then there is the Commission of 1885. There, again, there does not seem to have been any clear evidence as regards the unnecessary destruction of fish, and the recommendations of that Commission certainly do not deal with the prohibition of the sale of small fish. Then we come to the last inquiry, so far as I am aware—
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that is, the Select Committee of 1893. That Select Committee reports that as regards round fish there is practically no diminution, but when they come to the class of flat fish, which this Bill proposes to deal with, they say that the circumstances differ. The Committee in their Report say—
"Off the south coast of England the evidence seems to show with regard to these fish also that there has been little or no falling off in their size or abundance; but when we turn to the great fishing grounds of the North Sea, from the evidence which has been given by all persons interested in the fisheries, whether trawlers or linesmen, whether smack owners or fishermen, whether scientific experts or statisticians, there seems to be no doubt that a considerable diminution has occurred amongst the more valuable classes of flat fish, especially among soles and plaice, and that this diminution must be attributed to over fishing by trawlers in certain localities. … The great falling off, too, in the size of the flat fish caught on the older fishing grounds in the North Sea is also a matter of universal observation. An immense number of these smaller sized fish are caught on the shallow, sandy grounds on the east side of the North Sea, oil the Dutch and German coasts."
On the greater part of the coast of this country there is no falling off of small fish. Therefore, on the evidence, so far as we can find at the present moment, there is no sufficient evidence for the passing of a general Act dealing with this question. If it is true that in the North Sea and the neighbouring coasts there is this serious diminution of fish, then there may be good ground for some local measure dealing with that part of the sea, but at present I cannot see that there is any evidence of any diminution over all the areas that are fished. Then there is no evidence that the lessening of the supply of fish is caused by the destruction of immature fish. If we look at the Report of the Commission of 1885 the evidence is certainly against that contention. The Report says that though the evidence is very conflicting, Professor Macintosh seems to think that there is not really anything like the destruction of immature fish that is suggested. But there are other very obvious means of accounting for the smaller catches of fish of this kind in the North Sea. There is no doubt at all that by the constant trawling over certain areas where these fish were once found these trawlers have destroyed all the spawning fish and there is practically very little fish left. Apart from that, in an area constantly fished over it is natural to suppose that the fish have been driven out of the area

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they once occupied and have gone to other places in the sea, and though there is plenty of evidence both for and against the destruction of immature fish, I do not think it is so conclusively proved that we ought to pass a Bill of this kind, affecting the interests of the whole of the fishermen all round the coast. But supposing these fish are caught? Let us assume there has been a decrease of these kinds of fish, and that it has been largely caused by the destruction of immature fish. Take the case of the North Sea—and that is the only district this last Select Committee held to have been proved to be depleted of its stock of fish —I do not think it would be denied that the vast amount of fish caught in the North Sea are caught by trawlers. Therefore, if you are to lessen the destruction of these fish, you must interfere with the way in which the fish are caught, because of the fish which are caught with a trawl when they come on deck 90 or 95 per cent. are either dead or so hopelessly mangled that there is no chance of their living if thrown back into the sea. But what does this Bill purport to do? It does not prevent, or attempt to prevent, these fish being taken. The men are told that they should not sell them, but that they are to waste them. Therefore, this Bill, if it is a Bill for anything, is a Bill for the further wasting of fish. The evidence on that point is quite clear. There was one of the fishermen called before the Select Committee, a Mr. Dyer, and he was asked:—
"If this small fish was not saleable what would be done with it? (A.) It would have to be thrown overboard. (Q.) Do you think it would be caught all the same? (A.) It would be bound to be. (Q.) In what state would it be if thrown overboard; would much of it live? (A.) No; 90 per cent. of it would be dead."
Then there is another fisherman—Mr. Scott—called, who gives the same evidence—
"Do yon catch many small fish? (A.) Yes, a tremendous lot of small fish. (Q.) Do you find any sale for them? (A.) No. (Q.) What becomes of them? (A.) We have to throw them overboard. (Q.) In what state are they when they are thrown overboard? (A.) There is a certain class that lives, the greatest part of them, such as small plaice; small plaice will live a considerable time out of water, but a dab will live only a very short time. The consequence is, if you throw that fish overboard he is very liable to die, but a plaice will live considerably longer than a dab."
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He does not give any evidence as to what the effect of being kept on deck for a considerable time is on soles, brill, or turbot, but I. think most hon. Members who have been out trawling and seen the trawl hauled up after being down for several hours, will agree with me that a very small proportion of the fish have any chance whatever of living if they are put back into, the sea. It seems to me that the provisions of this Bill are absolutely ineffective, and would not conduce to the survival of any number of these small fish. The right hon. Gentleman, in, answer to a question in regard to this Bill, put last session, said, "We have no statistics as regards the survivals," and he suggested that the object of this Bill was really not to prevent the fish being taken, but to prevent trawlers going to districts, where they knew only small fish were. I do not know where those areas are, but no doubt there may be two or three of them, possibly more; but, if that is the case, why does not the Bill deal with them directly? Why does not the right hon. Gentleman propose to have those areas closed? If they are in foreign waters, the obvious remedy is to have an international agreement. We are asked to put our fishermen in a different condition altogether from that of foreign fishermen. [An HON. MEMBER: No.] I know the hon. Member who interrupted me says there are restrictions. So there are; but I also know this, that even now these small fish, which are not worth bringing to our markets, are constantly exchanged with foreign fishermen. Therefore, while you are not preventing these small fish being destroyed, you are not taking steps which might, and probably ought to be, taken towards closing, if you can find them, these areas which are supposed to be entirely filled with small fish. Why a trawler who can get a certain number of good fish, for which he can get a good price, should occupy his time in catching a whole lot of these little fish, for which he can get very little, I cannot imagine. There is another recommendation which was made by this last Select Committee—that of a close time for these fish. You are allowed to catch these fish at all times of the year, in the spawning season and out of it. Important as is the supply of fish to this country and foreign countries, we ought to do all

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we can to have an international agreement upon the question. As far as I can see, while this measure will not stop the destruction, it will unquestionably cause a considerable amount of hardship, especially among the smaller fishermen. If any man is convicted of the sale of fish under a certain size he is to be liable to a penalty of £2 for the first offence and £10 for a subsequent offence. To the big fishermen that is an insignificant matter, and I do not wonder, on the whole, that they have accepted this measure. They can, no doubt, see the red light in the distance and realise that unless they are prepared to accept some kind of legislation such as this, which clearly will not interfere with them or their methods of fishing, they may find themselves face to face with much more stringent regulations in the future. But when you come to the smaller men, the men who have not these big capitalists at their back, these measures may work extremely hard for them. There is something further than that. Not only are they liable to a fine, but if there is any suspicion that any closed box or receptacle contains small fish an officer of Customs, or an officer appointed by the Board of Trade, may detain the package and open it, and in the event of the fish being or becoming unfit for human food it may be destroyed. Although there may be some case made out for the North Sea, there is no evidence whatever in favour of the extension of these provisions to the whole of the coast, and certainly the men from Torquay, Brixham, and similar places, in their evidence before the Select Committee, showed clearly and conclusively that they had no desire or wish for any such legislation. With the consent of the House, I will read one short extract from the evidence on this point. It is on page 56, Mr. Little's evidence—
"You have heard the evidence of the Hull and Grimsby witnesses that it would be desirable to prohibit the landing and sale of the undersized flat fish; do you agree with that or not?—I agree with that from their standpoint, but I disagree with it from our standpoint.
" Will you explain your position with regard to that?—My position is this: We say that on our grounds, and on any ground where no steam trawlers are at work, there is no falling off in the supply of flat fish; and as we are not sinners in the same manner as the Hull and Grimsby men are, we disagree with any legislation which would do us an injury without doing any good. We say, where our vessels work there are no known breeding-grounds, there is no place I know of in the whole of the
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English Channel where a vessel would go to-catch a larger proportion of small fish than others, so that whatever legislation was enacted on the subject it would be simply making us throw away saleable fish, and it would not improve the supply of flat fish at all."
That shows the very reasonable position men of that kind take up—that while they have not, on that part of the coast, at any rate, any of these districts where the small fish congregate, and while the Bill would not prohibit the taking and the practical destruction of these small fish, they would be compelled to waste them instead of making what they can out of them. The admission of the right hon. Gentleman that he is going to send this Bill to a Select Committee shows that he has no great opinion as to the use of it. I do not quite know why he should ask the House to agree to the Second Reading on that condition. Either the Bill is a right one or it is a wrong one. This is no new subject; it is not as if we were absolutely in the dark, and had no evidence to go upon. We have had Report after Report, and, instead of having a Committee which can deal with the whole of the question, not only of the destruction but of the various methods by which it might be prevented, we are to be asked to send this Bill——
MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member is anticipating the motion for a Select Committee.
SIR CAMERON GULL: I bow to your ruling, Sir. I was only attempting to point out a reason why it was rather hard to expect the Second Reading of this Bill, unless the right hon. Gentleman could show us there was some good ground for it; I thought we had all the evidence before us, and that we should not have much added to our knowledge by delaying the matter any further.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. RITCHIE, Croydon): Hear, hear!
SIR CAMERON GULL: The right hon. Gentleman says "hear, hear," but my point of view is that that evidence is quite sufficient to show that this is a bad Bill. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to kill the measure by that method I have no objection, but it is because I am not satisfied that there is over the whole area for which we can legislate a general decrease in the supply of fish, and because I feel that even if that were proved the

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present measure would be wholly ineffective for preventing the destruction of immature fish, and that, while not preventing the destruction, it will cause a very considerable waste of fish which are perfectly edible and useful, and give rise to considerable friction in a large part of the country, I ask the House to accept the Amendment that this Bill be read a second time this day six months.
MR. PRICE: I rise to second the Amendment. I was one of the members of the unfortunate Committee which sat through the summer of 1893 to inquire into this matter of undersized fish, and the meeting of the Committee at which the Report was finally considered took place on the cheerful date of the 17th August. I do not know whether our Report was as good as it might have been, but I confess, though I speak for no one but myself, I was thoroughly glad when the work of the Committee was over, and I think that must have been the common feeling of all the members of the Committee. The Government of the day very kindly and graciously selected one of the very numerous recommendations we made. I believe that throughout the greater part of the Report we did talk fairly good sense, but the one part of our recommendations that was hotly fought and very much disagreed with in several quarters was the one and only point which the Government thought ought to be turned into law. At that time the Gentlemen who sit on this Front Bench were on the Treasury Bench, and one of my honoured leaders had put down a Bill somewhat similar to the one now before the House—I am not sure it was not a trifle more offensive. I remember he was intensely indignant because some of us objected to it, but the fact of the matter was that although we had great, affection for him we had even more affection for our constituents, and our constituents very strongly objected to being fined £2 whenever they had a small dab in the middle of their shrimp net or mixed up with their whitebait. The evidence is, of course, well in the minds if hon. Members; they will naturally have waded through the whole of this volume. But if they have not read it they will take it from us who were present through the whole of the debates of the Committee upstairs that substan-
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tially the evidence was that from 75 to 100 per cent. of the under-sized fish caught in the six-hour trawl were dead when the trawling was at an end. Consequently, from that point of view, this Bill would not be of the slightest use in saving fish. The Report states that there was considerable difference of opinion as to what the size should be. There was the ideal size, given by the scientific witnesses. These gentlemen said that unless the fish reproduced or were in a condition to reproduce their species they could not be said to be mature, and they advocated as the ideal, the height of excellence, some enormous-sized fish—I think it ran into feet sometimes. From the scientific point of view, in all probability they were quite right. But this Bill does not pretend to be scientific; in point of fact it is eminently unscientific. The evidence as regards other measures was a good deal stronger than that as to the advisability of saving these minute fish. There certainly was very strong evidence that owing to some mysterious operation of nature there are certain areas where the small fish do mostly congregate. The evidence distinctly was that the fish, after being spawned in deep water in the middle of the North Sea—and it was really only the North Sea the evidence was about; there were practically no complaints as to any other part—get over to the Dutch and German coasts in the neighbourhood of Heligoland, where there is a long, shallow, shelving bank of sand something like seventy miles in length by thirty miles wide, where these small fish are in millions and millions and thousands of millions. Most unfortunately for these poor little fish, who are doing their best to grow up to be good useful fish, there are a certain number of good-sized—what they call sizable—soles which will go intruding into the nursery. I dare say they are unfortunate fish that have never had a family, and that is the only way in which they can indulge their maternal feelings. The evidence was that you could catch large—well, 3s. 6d., 4s. 6d., and 5s. soles among these small fish. Then down comes the Grimsby trawler, which is the scoundrel of the sea in this department—the steam trawler, that does not care for wind or the bottom of the sea, and killing everything living

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there, in order to catch a few sizable soles. Unfortunately, soles are so expensive and valuable that a few sizable soles will repay these trawlers for dragging a lot of mere offal home again, but in killing these few sizable soles they kill thousands of millions of undersized fish, which may be good for manure, but they are good for nothing else. This Bill is not going to do any good to the little fish or to the consumers of fish in this country, but it is going to be a source of danger in our small fishing districts. Our small fishing districts carried on their business for generation without there being any diminution in the population of the sea. They caught undersized fish, of course; you cannot go out with a shrimp net and not catch undersized fish, but with a shrimp net you can throw those fish back into the sea, and I believe that is what, as a rule, is done. I do not doubt that the small trawler from Yarmouth and such places where they do not go in for this big trawling business do destroy a certain number of undersized fish, but the amount of destruction they do would never interfere with the value of fishing one iota. Fish reproduce at an enormous pace, and it was not until we got these steaming monsters that plough up the sand over and over again in the same place in any class of weather that we knew what it was to have any apparent diminution in the population of the sea. What the Committee recommended as its most serious recommendation, and upon which we were perfectly unanimous, was that it was the duty of the Government to try and arrange terms with foreign nations. There are other people besides ourselves who are interested in this question. Belgium, Holland, France, and Germany are all interested in the fishing in the North Sea, and, I should have thought, interested in their own advantage. I do not believe there would be any difficulty in arriving at an international agreement to keep some of these areas guarded, so that fishing could not take place over them, either at all, or at all events during certain seasons of the year, if a really earnest attempt were made. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what the Government have been doing in reply to this strong recommendation of the Committee. We know what they have been doing about these undersized fish. They have brought in a miserable abortive thing every year since, and the First Lord of
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the Treasury usually, in making the sacrifice of the innocents at the end of the session, talks in a cheerful tone about this Bill having no opposition to it; then we howl out "No!" or something of that sort, and he says, "Oh, I was not aware of any such thing." It is really an interesting feature of every session, and we have come to look upon this Bill as a hardy annual. But we do not know what the Government have done with regard to trying to get this international agreement. I do not think my right hon. friends on this side ever tried. Of course, it is a great nuisance trying to get an international agreement; I should not like it myself. But if I was paid an adequate salary, and had a unanimous recommendation like this handed to me from a Select Committee which had attended to its business so far as to sit up to the 17th August, I think I should take some notice of it, and not allow seven long years to elapse without doing anything at all. I do not believe the Board of Trade have over attempted to get the Foreign Office to put itself into communication with the foreign Powers. I do not know exactly how these things are done, but I do not believe any attempt has been made to get the foreign nations to agree to protect these areas, which undoubtedly are the nurseries of the growing fish, that being a course which would do a great deal more than this Bill in the direction of preserving a very great industry. I hope no one will think that I do not wish the North Sea to be repopulated, and if I thought this Bill would do it would support the measure. It is because I think that this Bill is a mere red herring drawn across the real trail that I have pleasure in seconding the motion that this Bill be read a second time this day six months.
Amendment proposed—
"To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the question to add the words 'upon this day six months. '"—(Sir Cameron Gull.)
Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."—Debate arising:
CAPTAIN PRETYMAN: I think we ought to deal with this matter upon reasonable and commonsense lines. There are other fish besides flat fish, and I am not aware why, in dealing with flat fish, we should adopt any other principle. I think it is

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generally recognised that if you want to get a certain number of fish to maturity it is desirable to protect the young ones. I do not know how we can expect to have any large stock of fish in the sea if we allow this kind of destruction to continue. The question we have to consider is whether there is any destruction now going on which this Bill will tend to prevent. I have done a good deal of trawling myself, and I can speak from personal experience of the condition of these fish when brought to the surface. It has been said that between 90 and 95 per cent. of the undersized fish brought up in a trawl are dead. There is some truth in that statement, but it only applies to deep-sea trawling, and not to inshore trawling. The natural history of these flat fish shows that this destruction is caused by inshore trawlers. The facts are these: when the fish spawn at sea the young fish make for the shallow inshore waters, and for the shallow estuaries about the coast. That is where the inshore trawlers work, and that is exactly where the greatest mischief is done. A few figures upon that point may be instructive to the House. Experiments have been made on the coast of Lancashire in order to ascertain the amount of damage done by the taking of these undersized fish, and here are some of the figures:—Fifty-two scrapes were taken with a 21ft. shrimp trawl. In fishing for shrimps and eels and other small fish it is necessary to use a small mesh net. In these fifty-two scrapes no less than 128,893 undersized fish were brought to the surface. This total gives an average of 2,500 undersized fish per scrape. [An HON. MEMBER: What time of the year were these experiments carried out?] I will quote from the return issued by the Lancashire Sea Fisheries Board, in which these experiments are described as follows—
" Result of some experimental hauls made with the shrimp trawl during the proposed closed time on the Burbo Bank Shrimping Ground during the years 1895-1899. The fish taken were chiefly soles, plaice, dabs, whiting, haddock, codling, and ray. In considering the amount of undersized sea-fish taken in shrimp! trawls, it should be remembered that each shrimp trawler makes several hauls during the day."
The time of the year was July, August, and September. In some of these individual scrapes the actual number of undersized fish was 5,927, 6,000, 5,319,
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4,404, and 3,559; and in one scrape alone there were no less than 567 undersized soles, which are a most valuable food fish. The sole is an extremely tough fish, and has a habit when in a trawl net of working its way up into the pockets. It does not go down into the bag of the net, and therefore it comes up alive and is not killed with the less valuable fish. The majority of undersized soles are brought up alive, and can be returned alive. In the case of deep sea trawling the net is dragged for five or six hours, with the result that the undersized fish are generally crushed and destroyed and cannot be returned to the water alive. Another reason why the inshore net picks up more small fish than the deep-sea net is that the construction of the net is entirely different. The object of the shrimper or eel trawler is to pick up the small fish, therefore his ground rope will almost pick up a pin. The moment the small fish gets inside the shrimper's net, which has a very small mesh, it has no chance of escape. In the case of deep sea trawling there is a heavy ground rope which rolls over the bottom at a considerable height from the surface, and the net is of a very large mesh. Therefore, a very small fish will often pass under the deep-sea net, and will sometimes pass through the mesh. Therefore, there is not the same proportion of destruction with the deep-sea trawler as with the inshore trawler. The question resolves itself into one of stopping this wholesale destruction by inshore trawling. When we see that in fifty-two scrapes, averaging about one hour and a quarter, each scrape produces an average of 2,500 undersized fish; when we bear in mind that around the area where these experiments were carried out as many as forty other trawlers were at work; if you take the number destroyed in that ground alone during the season some idea may be gathered of the destruction of fish life which is going on. No doubt a certain number of these fish are returned to the water, but what is done with the remainder? A large number of those caught by the deep sea trawlers are sent into the London market, but those destroyed by the inshore trawlers are not sent to the market at all, but are sold locally, and people are glad to buy at a very small price a large number of these undersized fish, which they can buy very cheaply. The question we have to con-

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sider is not the advantage to an individual who eats small immature fish, but we have to consider the enormous waste of food supply to the community which is caused by this destruction. I do not blame these people who are enabled to get food cheaply—that is the interest of the individual; but it is the duty of this House, when it is found that a particular advantage which some persons possess of getting what appears desirable food overrides the interests of the community, to provide such protection as may preserve that valuable food supply to the nation. That is the point of view from which I look at this question. We have heard some rather curious statistics about the North Sea, which is not as the hon. Member for East Norfolk seems to suppose, the happy hunting ground of the Gulf Stream, but it is a shallow sea which is the natural habitat of this particular kind of flat fish, and the Gulf Stream has nothing whatever to do with it. That accounts for what we have heard of there being no falling off in the take of fish on the western and the southwestern coast. The reason for that is that the area available for trawling on the south-western coast in proportion to the area of the Atlantic is very small. The whole area of the North Sea is available for trawling, and the present increased take of fish is largely due to the great catching power of steam trawlers, which are working in all directions and causing a great destruction of fish life. I think it is in the interests of the nation that this food supply should be kept up. I have tried to establish that there really is a great waste of fish life going on, and that that waste is largely on our coast. I might mention one other matter of which I have have had personal experience. On the east coast I happen to be the chairman of one of the Fisheries Committees, and we have taken up this question within the three mile limit. Upon that coast fish practically disappeared in consequence of trawling. This particular area was then put under bye-laws sanctioned by the Board of Trade prohibiting trawling, and the consequence was that within two or three years an area which was before practically destitute of fish is now swarming with them. I think that shows what protection will do. If it were possible to have small areas and place them under efficient protection a great deal of good might be done, but this is impossible outside the 3 mile limit. I
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am in favour of procuring an international agreement upon this question, but we all know what a time that takes, and if we are to wait for such an agreement I am afraid there will be very few fish left. It is our duty to do all we can for ourselves, and I believe that most foreign nations have recognised that the ordinary practice which prevails even in this country in regard to undersized fish and small crabs, lobsters, and trout, which are already protected should also be supplied to flat fish. I think that. a natural reply which would be given to any request for an international agreement would be, "Why do you ask us for this agreement while you are allowing undersized fish to be sold in your own markets?" I think we ought to first put ourselves upon a level with them by prohibiting the sale of undersized fish, as prohibited already in foreign countries. I think this prohibition of sale would have the effect of stopping this waste of fish life. If such fish are not saleable there will not be anything like the same temptation to catch them. Shrimpers go ostensibly to catch shrimps, but they now go where they can also catch those undersized fish; but if they were not? saleable they would not go to those grounds. I think prohibition should be extended not only to sale, but also to being in possession of undersized fish. I feel very strongly on that point, because I know from personal experience that hundreds of thousands of these undersized fish, not so big as the palm of my hand, are tied together and strung upon wires, to be used as bait for lobster-pots. That is a waste of fish which, in the course of two or three years, would have become very valuable, and it is a wicked waste of fish life. Therefore, when this matter comes to be discussed in Committee, I hope we shall prohibit not only the sale, but also the possession of undersized fish. I believe that the passage of this measure has been urged upon the President of the Board of Trade by every authority interested in fisheries in this country. [Cries of "No, no!"] But I have sat and heard myself those feelings unanimously and strongly expressed, and I know that the right hon. Gentleman has been most severely taken to task by those interested, because his measure has not been passed. I hope that now we have got this Bill before us, it will be discussed in a businesslike spirit, and that not only the Second

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Reading but also the subsequent stages will be carried, and that it will lead not only to an increase in the national food supply, but that at the same time it will also promote the prosperity of the fishing industry.
MR. HARWOOD: For some years past experiments have been made upon the Lancashire coast, and these experiments prove conclusively that the principle contained in this Bill is totally unsound. This is not a simple matter of detail, but it is a fundamental principle, and upon that ground I venture to oppose this Bill altogether. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has stated that this destruction is the result chiefly of inshore trawling, but if the House reads the Report of the Committee they will see that it is nothing of the kind. The Report states that in regard to herring and round and flat fish there is no falling off, and the only question is as to the great fishing grounds of the North Sea.
CAPTAIN PRETYMAN: That is exactly what I said.
MR. HARWOOD: There is no question about inshore trawling, and there is absolutely no evidence as to any falling off in the general supply in consequence of trawling. On the strength of evidence of that kind, we are asked to pass a Bill founded upon a principle which I venture to think is totally unsound. The hon. Member opposite spoke of an analogy in regard to a close time with salmon. The House must remember that there is a fundamental difference between salmon and other kinds of fish which do not come up the river, and therefore it is not necessary to protect them in that way. I want to call the attention of the House to one thing in regard to fish which must not be forgotten, and that is that there is an illimitable supply of fish in the sea, and it does not matter how many fish you take. I join issue entirely with the hon. Member as regards the taking of these small fish. I do not know what an undersized fish means, but I know that small soles are better than large ones. As to what an undersized fish is I do not think it is for this House to say. Let the House consider these statistics in regard to fish. A cod, for example, lays 9,000,000 eggs a year, and a conger eel lays 15,000,000 eggs a year. A very short calculation will show that if all the eggs which are laid upon the Lancashire
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coast came to maturity, you would not be able to sail a ship in the Irish Sea. Her Majesty would not have been able to cross the Irish Sea recently if the principle of this Bill had been allowed its full scope. I am not alone in upholding this principle, for those who have gone into the matter at all know that Mr. Frank Buckland entered upon this inquiry with the conviction that the principle involved in this Bill was right. What conclusion did he come to? He was at first in favour of the principle of these measures, but after the most exhaustive inquiry he came to the conclusion that there was no reason for thinking that the supply of fish, taken as a whole, was decreasing, or, if there was any decrease, that it was due to over-fishing. Another well-known authority, Professor McIntosh, also gave evidence, and he gives numerous instances. in his recently published book of attempts to carry out this principle in the Forth and St. Andrew's Bay, and after twelve years of operations in his own country he has come to the conclusion that there has been no falling off in our fisheries.
THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY, Buteshire): What is the date of that book?
MR. HARWOOD: It was published in the year 1899, and I think if a writer puts these views in a book published in 1899 they may be taken as representing his views up to that time. It seems to me that if the principle of this Bill and the principle laid down by the hon. Member opposite is at all sound we ought to give over eating eggs and lamb, and we ought to eat nothing but the sirloin of an old bull, old roosters, and aged rams. We know that on land this principle is not carried out. The real truth is that there are thousands of candidates waiting for this fish that is caught. It may be asked,, how do you account for the fact that certain places have lost the supply of fish? That has not been on account of trawling. I can give cases where fish have disappeared for long periods from certain places, and have come back again, and no man can give the reason why. Then look at Fleetwood. I can remember very well when haddock were freely caught, but between 1870 and 1880 they entirely disappeared. And then, after a period of some fifteen years, they reappeared. Then with regard to whiting

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—here is a striking case with regard to the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman—of all fish whiting would be most affected by the prosecutions taken in Lancashire, yet what is the result? Before this Bill operated in Lancashire whiting were brought into Fleetwood by dozens per week, and since this measure has been adopted no whiting are brought in at all. That is not due to the adoption of this measure, but probably to some other cause altogether. Take the case of herrings. Forty years ago there were large takes of herrings in Morecambe Bay; they have now disappeared. But that is not due to trawling, because there has been no trawling there. Then take Southport. Southport used to be called Shrimpopolis; it was the centre of the shrimping trade. What is the result of this measure? I saw only the other day in Southport a number of shrimps marked as having come from Holland, because your irritating Commission has prevented the people catching them off Southport. There is an old saying, "Take a cockle, and have a cockle," that applies to all fish. In 1879 there were 700 tons more cockles taken in Morecambe Bay than last year; that is to say, with all your Fishery Boards and irritating arrangements, you take 700 tons less of these fish than you took. I do not wish to weary the House, but I really think we should use a little common sense in the matter. The whole principle on which this Bill is based is a wrong principle. An hon. Member said we are leaving them to grow, but if that were done the sea would be so full that there would not be enough room for them all to live. It is more than a matter of joking; it is a serious thing. In the first place this Bill interferes a very great deal with the British fishermen. We have heard a great deal of getting an international agreement, but you stop British fishermen catching fish and do not stop the foreigner. Look at the ineffectiveness of the proposal: you get the fish out of the sea, and you are not to sell them. Why are you not to sell them? You are not to let the people have cheap food. Most of these fish would be no use if they were thrown back into the sea. It adds to the difficulty of the fisherman if he has to sort the fish on the trawler and throw them back. Let the House remember the men do not catch these fish unless they are there. They do not go for the purpose of catching immature fish. In
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conclusion I would only say we have heard a great deal from time to time about the grandmotherly legislation of the Liberal party; but I do not think, however guilty we may have been, we have ever been guilty of such grandmotherly legislation as this.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Might I remind the hon. Member that the late Government introduced this Bill first?
MR. HARWOOD: I am sorry to hear it, but I am no defender of the late Government. This Bill seeks not only to teach people what they ought to do, but to teach Nature what she ought to do.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Mr. Speaker, is it not a little humiliating, on the first working Monday after Easter, when this House is wont to treat of some high affair of State or some great measure of legislation, that we should have fallen so low as to discuss the number of inches to which a sole or a brill shall grow before they shall be sold in our markets? I feel under these circumstances like a worm crawling in a pond. The whole of this trouble about fish arises from the initiation of a number of Committees, some of them self-constituted, and some of them worse—constituted by the Board, of Trade, generally composed of farmers, lawyers, and captains of horse, foot, and artillery, who know no more about fish than I do about the mites in the moon. But they all have theories, and can all. quote statistics. My hon. friend on my left, who is always to the fore when there is a weak ease to be supported on behalf of the Government, quoted statistics which had nothing to do with the case. He gave us portentous figures as to the catches of undersized fish, but when I asked him what was fullsized fish and what were undersized fish he could not say; and then it turned out that all his statistics were for inshore fishing. Are you going to limit this Bill to inshore fishing? If so, I have not so much objection to it. But this Bill is absolutely general, and I; was amazed to hear the hon. Member for the Woodbridge Division say that he wanted to get fish food cheap. That is a very good object, but judging from the time he took I imagine he wanted some other generation or some other people to

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get this good food cheap. Now, have these farmers, lawyers, and captains any basis for their arguments? Their argument is that the food supply of fish is in danger. Is it? I turn to the statistics issued on the 15th February last, the last; statistics issued by the Board of Trade, including those for the years 1897, 1898, and 1899. For the moment I am not going to use the figures for 1899, because I notice we are told that those figures are provisional, and subject to rectification, and when the Board of Trade puts that into its statistics we know you can double them or halve them and not do much harm. "Brill, solos, turbot, and prime fish." There was landed in 1897 in the United Kingdom 18,000 cwt. of brill in 1898, 19,878 cwt.; and in the same way with soles and turbot, there was not a decrease, but an increase in favour of the fish which it is proposed to deal with by this Bill. Then where is the foundation for this Bill? Let me remind the Committee that the increase during the last ten years is far greater than the proportionate increase shown by the figures of these two years. In 1889 thirteen million cwt. of fish were landed in the ports of the United Kingdom, and they were worth £6,000,000 sterling; in 1898, the last year of reliable statistics of the Board of Trade, there were landed 16,000,000 cwt. of fish, the value of which was not £6,000,000 but £8,500,000. I want cheap fish food for the people, and that is what it seems to me the hon. Gentlemen who support this Bill do not want. First of all, the foundation for their argument disappears when I have shewn that during the last ten years there has been a vast increase of all fish landed on every part of our coasts. [An HON. MEMBER: Can the hon. Gentle-man say what the increase of trawlers was during that period? There were fewer, and that makes it all the more remarkable. Fewer fishing boats and fewer fishermen, but the methods have so improved that they catch more fish than in former years. But if the number of trawlers had increased it would not affect my argument, because the question we are dealing with is whether there is an adequate increase of the fish food for the people. The complaint is, that it is getting too cheap. I am glad it is getting cheap. The cheaper it is the better. Now look at this Bill and compare it with the Bill of last year. Last year it was
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called the Undersized Fish Bill. This year the Bill is identical with the Bill f last year, word for word the same, but instead of being called the Undersized Fish Bill it is called the Sea Fisheries Bill. This Bill has been brought in every year since 1895, and I have often stood almost alone in opposing it. It has as many aliases as a burglar, or the younger son of a peer. Last year it was brought in by the Lord Advocate of Scotland; this year he has repented himself of the mischief he would have done, and his name is no longer on the Bill. His constituents have looked after him too well to allow it to appear; this year the Home Secretary's name appears upon it. Last year it was said to provide against the destruction of undersized fish, which it did not do, this year it is called a Bill to Amend the Fisheries Acts, which it does not pretend to do. When I look at this Bill I am reminded of the woman of Samaria, of whom it was said in Holy Writ, "For thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." This Bill has had many titles, and the title which it now has is not its proper title. The object of it is to prevent the people getting food cheap. Now I believe there are many good honest people living in inland towns who have never seen a fish or a fishing boat, who believe that if they can prevent people from selling small fish they will add to the supply of large fish. The right hon. Gentleman is one of those, but I am not sure that he has not got the whole of that idea from one of those enthusiasts on the fisheries question with whom we are familiar. There was a gentleman who used to sit in this House, Lord Heneage, who was largely the inventor of this method of preventing the people getting good cheap food, and no doubt he would be with us now were it not for the fact that by exercising the natural tyranny of a Liberal Unionist over a Tory Government, he got himself translated to another place. He brings his Bill down here and forces it down the throat of my right hon. friend, who from the appearance of his countenance does not like the flavour of it at all. But let us assume for a moment, as these good honest gentlemen do, that there is going to be good done to the food supply of this country by the preservation of these undersized fish. What the hon. Member for Bolton said is true, that there are such an enormous number of fish in

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the sea that, but for the fact that they prey on one another like politicians, the sea would be overstocked with them. Man is not the enemy of fish; it is the fish themselves which keep the stock down to what might be termed habitable limits in the sea. I notice that there are only four fish provided for in this Bill. Observe the generosity of Lord Heneage and the right hon. Gentleman: they do not touch whitebait. We do not always know what are young fish and what are old fish, but we do know that whitebait are all young fish, and if ever this Bill gets into the Committee stage, I shall move to include whitebait, and then we shall see whether the right hon. Gentleman and his noble friend will include all the fish in the sea. I believe in some parts of the country, particularly in the West, there is a large amount of unsound opinion, but the vast majority of the fish with which the Bill deals are caught on the East Coast, commencing with Lynn and going round by Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and further: south by Ramsgate, and the opinion on that part of the coast is absolutely solid against this Bill. My first criticism on this Bill is this—I think it is a very serious truism, which will not be controverted—that we do not know absolutely everything about fish. [Laughter.] I have put it in the very mildest form, and hon. Gentlemen who laugh at me must remember that when once they admit that, they have not sufficient ground to begin legislating for fish. My hon. and gallant friend knows a great deal, but even he does not know the size of an undersized fish. I have never been able myself to tell what is an undersized fish, or what is an undersized man, and if you do not know the size of an undersized man, what can you know of undersized fish? And, so far as anyone can tell, in the sea there is no limit to the size a fish will grow if he is allowed to go on living, and always providing he is not eaten by another fish. Then where is the necessity for this Bill of inches? Of course we are told again and again that they are not thrown back into the sea, but they are sold, and sold cheap; that to my mind is the great advantage. Let me tell the House what happens with regard to trawling. It is perfectly true in deep sea trawling you cannot keep the sole alive. Sometimes the sole, being an agile fish, will get up into the pocket instead of remain-
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ing in the sag, but certainly not the small ones; they get dragged down to the bottom of the trawl with a mass of larger fish and seaweed, and by the time the trawl is hauled up they are so nearly dead as to be of no use, even if thrown back into the sea. There is nothing in this Bill to prevent your catching them; something might be said upon that. But to say go on catching them as long as you like, but if you bring them ashore you shall not sell them, is absurd. In the third sub-section of the first clause it says when the fish is in an enclosed box the person who sells it shall not be liable if he has a certificate that he got it from somebody else. By the 4th sub-section the authorities can, if they see any such fish, order it to be destroyed. This is a bad Bill indeed. It prevents the poor fisherman from getting the price of his catch, and the poor man generally from buying cheap food. Let me urge the Government not to pass a Bill which contains nothing but mischief, and which will inflict a most cruel and unmerited injury not only on the poor people who live on such fish, but above all on the brave and honest fisherman who faces so many dangers in the pursuit of his calling.
SIR MARK STEWART: I rise to-night for a few minutes to say this is a question of facts, and not of theories. My hon. friend who has just spoken gave us a good deal of theory, but I doubt if he has much experience in trawling, or the various modes of fishing on our coasts. The fishermen are losing the knowledge of their craft altogether, because there is no fish to catch, and therefore it was high time for the Government to interfere. I thank the Government for having brought in this Bill. In the south-west of Scotland we used to have first-rate fishing, but from the time trawling was introduced the fish began to decrease. This is a question of national importance, because it means cheap food for the people. Fishermen and others who live by the fishing industry are in despair, and they have asked the Government to send down gunboats to take notice of what is going on; but as soon as the "Jackal" or some other Government vessel appears, the trawlers make off south. The question affects not only the sea fisheries, but the fisheries of the rivers of Scotland, England, and Ireland,

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which are losing their fertility, and the fish which used to be bought so cheaply by the working classes is now beyond their means. In my part of the country there was at one time a regular agreement that the farm servants should not be fed on salmon more than six days in the week; and salmon could be bought at a penny per pound. If the rivers were properly administered under proper laws, we should soon have an abundance of salmon and trout, and if trawling was prohibited there would again be a great abundance of fish off our shores. I trust the Government will persevere with this Bill. I am satisfied that, with the exception of three or four fishery districts in England, the whole kingdom will hail any measure which will put an end to inshore trawlers, and in this way the fishermen would get work, and the working classes obtain food in greater abundance.
MR. WEIR: The hon. Member for King's Lynn made a strong appeal on behalf of the fishermen, and the hon. Member who first raised objection to the Bill also made a similar appeal, but the latter gentleman let the cat out of the bag by saying that he was in favour of the shrimpers. It is said that there is a large increase in the catch of fish, although there is a diminution in the number of fishermen in Scotland. Of course there ought to be a large supply of fish, because the trawlers are fitted up with the best machinery and go at the highest rate of speed. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade on his bringing in this Bill. Representing as I do a constituency with an enormous seaboard and a large number of fishermen, I think I should know something of the mischief done by trawlers. We have heard to-night that small fish are more abundant on the south coast of England than on the coasts of the north of Scotland, and in the North Sea. It is just possible that in the south of England the gunboats sent by the Government for the purpose of watching the trawlers are more active. At any rate they have less ground to cover than in the north of Scotland, and that may account for the greater abundance of the small fish. No doubt the trawlers, coming as they do in shore, do an immense amount of mischief, and are
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gradually ruining the industry of the line fishermen. Some object to the Bill, and want an international agreement. We should be very glad if the Foreign Office came to a more satisfactory agreement with the Continental Powers, in regard to the North Sea Fisheries Convention. But these matters move slowly, and in the meantime I prefer this Bill to no Bill at all. [An HON. MEMBER: No!] An hon. Gentleman says "No." I can only suppose he represents the trawling interest; I represent the line fishermen, a class of men for whom we ought to do our best, and, from a national point of view, it is our duty to stand by them. Reference has been made to the diminishing number of persons engaged in the line fishery. In 1894 there were 50,589 persons employed in the Scottish fishing industry; in 1898 there were only 38,508, or a falling off of 12,081. The number of fishing boats—not shrimpers, which are manned by longshoremen—was 11,217, in 1894. In 1898 they had decreased to 10,485, or a falling off of 732. Well, that is a serious matter, and this Bill, I trust and believe, will have the effect of helping the line fishermen materially. When the British trawlers were excluded from the Moray Firth the line fishermen got an increased catch, and were making a comfortable living until the foreign trawlers swooped down on these rich fishing grounds. The foreigners still, I regret to say, infest these waters in increasing numbers, with the result that the line fishermen are being ruined and fishing depopulated. There is one fault I have to find with the Bill, and that is the penalties are too low. What is a penalty of £2! In Committee I shall move that the penalties be increased. I trust the right hon. Gentleman will not give way to those who are apparently more interested in longshoremen, shrimps, and cockles than in the line fishermen, but that he will push the Bill through so that it may become law at the earliest possible moment.
SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: As one of the members of the Committee of 1893, on whose Report this Bill is to some extent based, I thank the President of the Board of Trade for having regard to a great national interest, and making an attempt to deal with this most important subject. The Committee

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of 1893 sat for twenty days, and the fact that they remained at work during the month of August showed their conception of the great interests committed to their charge. They examined many scientific witnesses and had before them a representation of all the practical people connected with the industry. Grimsby, Hull, and other ports strongly and unanimously expressed themselves in favour of these proposals. At the Conference held lately in the Fishmongers' Hall, the proposals in this Bill were carried practically unanimously after a discussion in which the other side had been fully heard. I heartily reciprocate the remarks of the hon. Member for King's Lynn about the importance of fishermen to our Navy and the Naval Reserve, and that unless we take care of our fisheries in that larger sense, we may run some national danger. In France, for the sake of the Newfoundland fisheries, they give large bounties to the fishermen—not, however, that I approve of bounties. The principle on which the Bill is based is that many of us, practically engaged in this industry, are wishful that the interests of to-morrow should not be sacrificed for the interests of to-day. We want to prevent the killing of immature fish, and so prevent our stores of mature fish being diminished. It is not true that there are now proverbially as good fish in the sea as over came out of it. On the contrary, in number and size they are undoubtedly decreasing. Now, how is that? Our Committee heard evidence, which was unanimous, that the trawlers went to the grounds and nurseries of the fish, and to the shelving shores to which the fish come from the open sea to spawn. We have heard about the Lancashire District Committee having gone scientifically and practically to work, and having done great things to improve their fisheries. And in the case of the Humber, whore the same kind of work had been done, soles, which were decreasing, are now becoming much more numerous. To illustrate the extent to which immature fish are caught, I may say it was proved to the Committee that in Billingsgate Market twenty fish were sold to the pound, and that a box of plaice contained 400 instead of forty, which would have been the proper quantity if the fish had been of the proper size. Of course if that goes on we shall have something like a depletion of the sea. The old fishing grounds in the
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North Sea are now becoming vacant, and our fishermen have to go as far south as Portugal, and as far north as Iceland in order to obtain a good catch. When we hear that the catching power of a steam trawler is equal to that of four or five of the old smacks—that their catching power is illimitable, it is clear that you must have a diminution in number and a deterioration in the size of the fish caught. I quite grant that the diminution is not so great in the case of round fish as in flat fish. Statistics have been quoted, but statistics may mislead. Evidence was brought before the Committee even by trawlers, that the decrease in flat fish had been, in less than twenty years, 50 per cent. The price of fish has risen from 5½ millions in 1889 to 8½ millions in 1898, showing that the quantity caught now commands an increased price. Those who talk about the increased quantity of fish brought to market, never alluded to the greater catching power of the fishing vessels, and the greater area fished. The Committee went into most of the points which have been discussed to-night. They did not fail to consider the question of closed areas; but closed areas mean limits, and definite boundaries, which at sea are matters of the utmost difficulty. The Government has been urged times without number to enter into a convention with the Continental Powers in regard to this matter, but the reply has always been that we must, first of all, put our own house in order, and that they would see afterwards about putting their laws in operation. The Committee also considered the question of close times; but inasmuch as the maturity of different fishes and their re-production varies, it is impossible in dealing with a sea area to say there shall be a close time generally for a particular species. You cannot discriminate in the processes of catching. This is altogether apart from the question of a Sea Fisheries Convention. The conclusion to which the Committee arrived was that the only practical mode of dealing with this matter was to remove the inducements to the fishermen to go to the districts where these fish are caught, and to take care that if they did go, when they came to land they would not find their voyage remunerative. Therefore, we did not object to the fish being consumed for food and being brought on shore and given away or otherwise dealt

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with. We had ample evidence to show that when the fish were so very small, even the poor would not buy them. Many witnesses came forward who said that if these small fish were returned at once to the sea there would be no difficulty in their living, and that a great portion of the evil would thus be prevented. The Committee felt that from every point of view they had had a very difficult question to determine, one which involved most material national interests. They were agreed that it had been conclusively proved that there was a great diminution in the harvest of the sea, and that the best course, as I have said, was to remove the temptation to catch fish that are not sizeable, and so in the end benefit, not only consumers, but even those who now think their interests may be injured by this class of legislation, and at the same time preserve a most valuable and wholesome food for the people of this country.
MR. BRYCE: This Bill is no stranger to the House. It was brought in as far back as 1894, or at any rate 1895, and has re-appeared every year since. I believe that this Bill has the support of by far the larger number of people in this country. I remember in 1894 receiving a deputation representing all the Sea Fisheries of the United Kingdom on the subject, and they were unanimous in asking for a Bill of this kind, and I believe that they are unanimous now. I am informed that all the Sea Fisheries Committees are in favour of it, and I believe that at the Annual Conference held in Fishmongers' Hall it has always been approved by an overwhelming majority. So far from it being the case that the important trawling centres are opposed to the measure, I can speak for my own constituency, which is one of the most important of these centres—having tripled or quadrupled the trawling tonnage during the last few years—as being in favour of the Bill. The truth is that the case is overwhelming, considered in regard to the real facts. It has been alleged that there has been no diminution in the supply of fish. Yes, but what is the difference of the areas from which the fish come? These trawlers, instead of confining themselves to our shores, go far into the North Sea and into the Atlantic; and some spend a
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great deal of time off Norway, Denmark, and even Iceland. Some trawlers are so well equipped as to take coal for these long voyages; and the catch of fish is therefore immensely greater than it was a few years ago. Therefore, any reasoning based on a comparison of the statistics of the fish sold in the United Kingdom a few years ago and now, must be useless, because the area from which the fish come is so extensive that although there may be a large diminution of the take off our own coasts, there may still be an immense increase in the supply in our markets.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Fewer boats catch more fish.
MR. BRYCE: The tonnage is larger, and the quantity of fish is greater owing to that great increase of tonnage. That being so, it is quite plain that this increased catch is quite compatible with the diminution in the supply around our coasts. There is no doubt about this diminution. I believe it has been perfectly well established, and the local authorities, who are in a position to know, are unanimously of opinion that it exists. Furthermore, it is a fact that other countries abutting on the North Sea, which are largely interested in fishing, have adopted similar legislation. It has been adopted in Germany, Holland, Denmark, and, I believe, also France. The result in the case of Denmark has been very beneficial, and the Danes are very well satisfied with it. The objection which has most plausibility in it is that this measure might affect many of the fishing towns. That is true to a certain extent, but not altogether. The real argument in favour of the measure is that in the shallower parts of the sea the proportion of small fish is extremely large, and that trawlers resort to these districts and catch large quantities of these small fish, and if this measure is passed that practice will be no longer worth their while. It is from that point of view that it is likely to prove beneficial. I think that a primâ facie case has been made out for it, and I hope, therefore, that the House will pass the Second Reading, and that we shall all do what we can to diminish a large amount of preventable waste in one of the most important elements in the food of our people.
MR. RITCHIE: During the discussion on this Bill one very important fact has been admitted, even by hon. Gentlemen who have spoken against it, and that is that immense quantities of immature fish are killed every year. Starting with that admission, surely the argument follows that when immense quantities of immature fish are killed there must be a corresponding decrease in the available food of the people. Surely it stands to reason that if you kill a largo quantity of immature fish which would, if allowed, have grown into large fish, you ultimately decrease the quantity available for food. Of that there can be no question whatever. When hon. Gentlemen speak about depriving the poor of a large and valuable supply of cheap food, I say the object of this Bill is not to deprive the poor of a large supply of cheap food, but to secure to the poor that large supply of food which is ruthlessly destroyed year by year by the operations of some of our fishermen. It has not been denied that the quantity of fish landed is decreasing. The hon. Member for King's Lynn established, to his own entire satisfaction, that instead of the quantity of fish landed being smaller than it was, it is increasing considerably. I will give the House one or two figures with regard to that point, and I will direct the attention of hon. Members not only to the quantity of fish landed, but to the price that it fetched in the market, as compared with five or six years ago, and the House will see whether the effect of this Bill is likely to decrease the cheap food of the people or the reverse. The estimated value of the fish landed on the coast of the United Kingdom in 1899, excluding shell fish, was £8,871,000, and the quantity was 14,796,000 cwt.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Those are provisional figures, subject to rectification.
MR. RITCHIE: Yes, subject to rectification. In 1896 the value of the fish landed was £7,057,000, and the quantity which in 1899 was 14,796,000 cwt., was in 1896 14,711,000 cwt., so that the House will observe that whereas the quantity of fish landed in 1896 and in 1899 was estimated to be almost exactly the same, the value was £1,800,000 greater in 1899 than in 1896. Now, let us go to the fish dealt with in this Bill. The average quantity of flat fish landed in 1894 was 4,530,000 cwt., and in 1899
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4,592,000 cwt., or only an increase of 1½ per cent.; but, as hon. Gentlemen know, there has been a greater increase in population in the period between these two years than 1½ per cent. I should like to give one or two figures with regard to the average price which this fish brings in the market. In 1894 brill fetched £2 10s. 1d. per cwt.; in 1898 the price was £2 10s. 4d., and in 1899 £2 15s. 6d., or an increase of 10 per cent. Sole also increased in price 10 per cent., and turbot 8 per cent. Plaice is much more the food of the common people than any of the other fish I have mentioned, and a large rise in the price and a diminution in the catch of this fish is an exceedingly serious matter for the working class population. The quantity of plaice landed in 1894 was 855,000 cwt., and in 1899 only 752,000 cwt., and the price, which was 19s. 6d. a cwt. in 1894, was in 1899 £1 3s., or an increase of 17 per cent.; and if we take a period of five years the increase in price is no less than 26 per cent., accompanied by a diminution in the catch of 100,000 cwt. These figures are taken from the Board of Trade Returns, and I think nothing can speak more eloquently as to the necessity of something being done in order to endeavour to increase the available fish supply than they can. And let it be remembered that we are dealing not only with a growing population which requires more and more of this kind of food every year, but we also have to consider the fact that the diminished catch and the increased price have taken place notwithstanding the enormous increase of the facilities for catching fish, which has taken place within the last few years. An hon. Gentleman opposite quoted some figures of a somewhat ancient character, when nothing like the present facilities for catching fish existed. The circumstances have entirely altered, and the figures I have given the House must convince hon. Members that when we appeal to the House to assist us in endeavouring to preserve the supply of fish for the poor we are acting on a sound statistical basis. Who are the chief persons who are asking for this legislation? They are those who are engaged in catching fish. I heard some murmurs of dissent when an hon. Gentleman opposite said that the Sea Fisheries Committee was in favour of this Bill. I have presided over their statutory meetings

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every year since I have been at the Board of Trade, and they have continually pressed upon me, above all other matters of reform, to represent to the Government that the one thing necessary for the preservation of the fishing industry was that we should adopt the recommendations of the Select Committee; and when it is alleged that they are not unanimous in favour of this Bill I absolutely deny it. There was only one occasion on which a single voice was raised against the proposal advocated by the Committee, and that was by my right hon. friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet, and in order to judge the strength of the opposition I asked the members of the Committee who agreed with the speech of my right hon. friend to hold up their hands, and not a single hand was held up. The hon. Gentleman the Member for King's Lynn said that the Committee was composed of officers and merchants and farmers, but I tell him it is composed of representatives of the fishermen themselves, of representatives of steam and sailing trawlers, and that it is fully representative of the industry it professes to represent. My hon. friend has made a great confession. He has told us that there is one thing which he did not understand, and that was fish. I was surprised he should make any such; admission, as I thought he knew something about everything. I can assure him that he is entirely mistaken in. supposing that the Sea Fisheries Committee is not fully representative. Then we have the Report of the Select Committee, which fully justifies us in proposing the Bill which we now ask the House to accept. No doubt hon. Gentlemen, who have remarked on the fact that this legislation has been proposed year after year are justified in the reproaches which they have directed against the two Governments who did not secure the passage of this Bill, but every Member of this House must know that it is very hard to get even an important matter of this kind pressed forward. But now we have an opportunity, and we ask the House to decide this question. I hope that hon. Members will follow the example set by the other maritime Powers—by Germany, France, Holland, and Denmark—who have all passed a law regulating the size of fish which shall be sold. As regards an international agreement, I
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entirely concur with my hon. friend, who said that would be most desirable, but if we are to wait until that is brought about we shall have to wait for many years. I do not see what good answer we could give if we approached foreign countries and they said, "We have our own laws on this matter. Why do you not legislate also." We would have no answer to that. Surely if we pass this Bill we do not in any way damage our position to make representations to foreign Powers; on the contrary, we greatly improve it. A great deal has been said about our own coasts, but our own coasts are nearly all protected by the Sea Fisheries Committee, Nine-tenths of our coast is already protected within the three-mile limit, and no destruction takes place there. But there are parts of the coast, represented by the hon. Member for King's Lynn and by other hon. Members who have given notice of opposition to this Bill, where they will not have any local authority or bye-laws set up, and it is from them that this opposition comes. I hope the House will, notwithstanding all that has been said against this measure, assent to the Second Reading. There has been much criticism on the details, but these can easily be dealt with in Committee. I hope the House, by passing the Second Reading, will agree with the Government in saying first of all that there is a large destruction of immature fish at present; secondly, that the quantity of fish which is being landed is not increasing but decreasing; and, thirdly, that that being so we are justified in asking the House of Commons to take some steps such as were recommended by the Select Committee for the purpose of stopping this destruction, and to pass legislation on similar lines to that which has been passed in almost every other European country.
MR. H. S. FOSTER: I am glad that after six years the House of Commons has an opportunity of discussing whether or not it is practicable to prevent the destruction of under-sized fish, by prohibiting their landing and sale in this country. During this discussion a number of curious misstatements have been made, but I think no misstatement has been more curious or unjustifiable than the gross misstatement that this measure has practically the unanimous support of those engaged in the great fishing industry. I have the

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honour to represent in this House the third fishing port in the kingdom—Lowestoft. Other hon. Members representing other important fishing centres hold the same views as I do, but, speaking on behalf of Lowestoft—whose opinion is entitled to be heard on a question such as this—I say that the opinion of those engaged in the fishing industry is absolutely unanimous against this Bill. I may perhaps be permitted to call the attention of the House to the fact that in 1899 the fish landed at the port of Lowestoft amounted to 50,000 tons, of a value of £638,000. It is also a curious fact, and a fact to be noted, that when the Select Committee on whose report this Bill is supposed to be founded—a Committee of which I had the good or ill fortune to be a member—sat in 1893, statements were made to us on behalf of those who supported a measure of this kind that the fishing industry was going to ruin, and that in a few years the whole of the supply would, be exhausted. In that year the quantity of fish imported into Lowestoft was 31,000 tons, as against 50,000 tons last year, and the value was £530,000, as against £638,000 last year. It is quite true that there has been a great alteration in the methods of catching fish, and a great improvement in the catching capacity of vessels. But the arguments which were good enough a few years ago, when the change first came about, no longer apply to-day, and I think it is unfair for the President of the Board of Trade to advocate this measure with statistics which might have furnished a good argument in 1893, but which do not support that argument in 1900. We have statistics which show us the number of men employed and the tonnage of the vessels during the last three years, and the House will find that with a smaller catching power in 1899 than in 1896, and with a smaller number of men employed, there was a larger catch of fish. I think in fairness the President of the Board of Trade should have pointed out to the House that during the last few years the argument of an increased catching power is no longer applicable to the statistics he has quoted. The Bill now before the House is supposed to be founded on the Report of the Select Committee of 1893. The President of the Board of Trade, in reply to a question from me last week,*
* See page 15 of this volume.
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stated that, in the event of this Bill being read a second time, he was prepared in the first place not to consider that as in any way prejudging the question as to whether the prohibition of landing and sale would affect the destruction, and in the second place that he was prepared to refer the Bill to a Select Committee. I must confess that, to a very large extent, that minimises the objection which I have to this Bill, because if it is referred to an impartial Committee of this House, with power to call evidence, and if that Committee considers the question in the spirit of its not having boon prejudged, I am perfectly satisfied that the Committee will unanimously report that this Bill would inflict a maximum of irritation on a great industry with the minimum of good. A great many matters connected with the fishing industry were referred to the Committee of 1893, and among them was the question of regulating certain methods of fishing. I can say, without contradiction, that it was proved conclusively that the great destruction of fish is due to the new methods employed during the last few years by the introduction of steam trawlers. It was pointed out in evidence before the Committee that sailing trawlers were subject, by nature, to a close season of wind and tide, whereas steam trawlers knew no such conditions. It was pointed out that sailing trawlers were frequently subjected to calms for days, and sometimes practically for weeks, whereas, as some of the witnesses said, steam trawlers scraped the bottom of the sea independent of wind and tide, and practically destroyed all animal life over the area of their operations; and it was also pointed out that the increased catching power of the steam trawlers had largely affected the habits of the fish.
It being midnight, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed upon Thursday.

SUPPLY [20TH APRIL].
Resolutions reported:—

Civil, SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1900–1901.
CLASS III.
1. "That a sum, not exceeding £34,694, be granted to Her Majesty, to

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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, 1901, for the Salaries of the Law Officers' Department; the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of the Solicitor for the Affairs of Her Majesty's Treasury, Queen's Proctor, and Director of Public Prosecutions; the Costs of Prosecutions, of other Legal Proceedings, and of Parliamentary Agency."
2 "That a sum, not exceeding £22,689, 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, 1901, for certain Miscellaneous Legal Expenses, including Grants in Aid of the Expenses of the Incorporated Law Societies of England and Ireland."
3 "That a sum, not exceeding £185,490, 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, 1901, for such of the Salaries and Expenses of the Supreme Court of Judicature as are not charged on the Consolidated Fund."
4 "That a sum, not exceeding £19,246, 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, 1901, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Land Registry."
MR. BILLSONasked if the Attorney General could give any information with reference to the progress of the work of the Registry.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir RICHARD WEBSTER, Isle of Wight): I am very glad to be able to comply with the request of the hon. Member. The work of the Registry since the registration of titles to land has been made compulsory has been extremely satisfactory. It was thought advisable that the parishes should come in by degrees, and the entire county will not be under the Act until 1st November next. Notwithstanding that, the result is that there were in 1899 2,922 first registrations in London. With
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reference to the question asked me in Committee by the hon. Member for East Northamptonshire, only eighteen of those were absolute titles, all the rest being possessory titles, which will mature into absolute titles. The transactions after first registration were 1,301, making 4,241 transactions under the new Act, affecting property of the value of £5,520,210. During the first three months and a fraction of the present year there have been 2,G71 first registrations, of which ton wore absolute titles, and 1,470 transactions after registration, or 4,157 as against 4,241 for the whole of last year. It is estimated that when the whole of the county comes under the Act, there will be an average increase of a further 20 per cent. In consequence of the increased work an extra staff is required, and I am sure the House will be of opinion that, considering the short time the compulsory Act is in operation, the result is satisfactory.
MR. BIERELL: No one rejoices more than I do at the satisfactory character of the statement of the Attorney General. The point, however, to which I desire to direct attention is the artistic appearance of the certificate received on registering property with a possessory title. It is of a most disagreeable character. It contains the names and alleged arms of five Lord Chancellors—the present Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne, Lord Cairns, Lord Hatherley, Lord Herschell. Instead of the old document, to which lawyers attach so much importance, property owners will have to keep an inartistic document of this sort, containing the names of irrelevant and extraneous gentlemen who really have nothing to do with the subject matter, and that is to be substituted for the old pigskins to which we were wont to attach so much importance.
SIR RICHARD WEBSTER: I was not aware of the matter mentioned by the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I will make enquiries.
5. "That a sum, not exceeding £19,925, 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

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the 31st day of March, 1901, for the Salaries and Expenses connected with the County Courts."
6. "That a sum, not exceeding £31,778, 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, 1901, for the Salaries of the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, and of the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District, the Pay and Expenses of Officers of Metropolitan Police employed on special duties, and the Salaries and Expenses of the Inspectors of Constabulary."
7 "That a sum, not exceeding £358,964, 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, 1901, for the Expenses of the Prisons in England, Wales, and the Colonies."
8 "That a sum, not exceeding £121,623, 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, 1901, for the Expense of the Maintenance of Juvenile Offenders in Reformatory, Industrial, and Day Industrial Schools in Great Britain, and of the Inspectors of Reformatories."
9 "That a sum, not exceeding £23,946, 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, 1901, for the Maintenance of Criminal Lunatics in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum."
CLASS I.
10. "That a sum, not exceeding £18,000, 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, 1901, for Expenditure in respect of Diplomatic and Consular Buildings, and for the maintenance of certain Cemeteries Abroad."
11. "That a sum, not exceeding £176,000, 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, 1901, for the Customs, Inland Revenue, Post Office, and Post Office Telegraph Buildings in Great Britain, and certain Post Offices abroad, including Furniture, Fuel, and sundry Miscellaneous Services."
MR. BRYCE: I desire to make an appeal to the First Commissioner of Works and to the representative of the Post Office with regard to the slow progress made in the building of the new post office at Aberdeen. It was decided four or five years ago to have a new post office, and yet only a sum of £2,000 is included for the building in this year's Estimates, which, it is quite obvious, will not nearly complete the structure. The new post office is greatly called for. The postal work is constantly increasing, and the present building is utterly inadequate, and it is practically impossible for the postal officials to discharge their duties properly. I do not like to make a charge against the Office of Works, because where three Departments are concerned delay is necessarily involved, but at the same time I think the delay is greater than it ought to be, and I appeal to the Secretary to the Treasury as to whether he cannot see his way to accelerate the proceedings by bringing in a, Supplementary Estimate which would enable the building to be proceeded with.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF, WORKS (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS, Kent, St. Augustine's): I regret that the progress of the building has been somewhat slow. There has been some considerable difficulty with regard to the plans. The original plans were certainly not of the character they ought to have been, and larger and better plans have now been prepared, and the work will be proceeded with. I will give the right hon. Gentleman an assurance that no unnecessary delay will occur. Of course this particular year has not been a very good one in which to take large sums of money for public buildings. More important matters demand the finances of the country, and therefore all my Estimates have been framed lower than usual. I am afraid I can hold out no hope that a Supple-

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mentary Estimate will be introduced this year. Indeed it will not be necessary, because during the present year it will not be possible to spend very much more than £2,000 in the preparation of the site. A much larger sum will be taken next year, and no unnecessary delay shall take place.
12 "That a sum, not exceeding £188,000, 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, 1901, in respect of sundry Public Buildings in Great Britain, not provided for on other Votes."
13 "That a sum, not exceeding £127,609, 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, 1901, for the Survey of the United Kingdom, and for minor services connected therewith."
14 "That a sum, not exceeding £2,243, 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, 1901, for maintaining certain Harbours under the Board of Trade."
MR. ELLIS GRIFFITHasked what progress had been made in the work at Holyhead which had been going on for some years, and whether Holyhead had been made a port.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. RITCHIE, Croydon): I am not aware of any works which have been going on for some years past. One or two rocks have been blown away, and the general passage into the inner harbour has been made more accessible. With regard to the removal of certain rocks which divide the harbour into two portions, I have made investigations, and I find that the cost would be something like £70,000 or £80,000, an expenditure which would be scarcely justifiable for the purpose. There is one thing which I regret we have not been
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able to deal with, and that is the question of the wooden jetty. A large sum has to be spent annually to keep it up, and I think the time has come when it ought to be removed and a more permanent jetty substituted. I have been negotiating with the London and North Western Railway with regard to the inner harbour, of which they practically have the entire use, but these negotiations have not yet terminated. With regard to making Holyhead a port, that is under consideration, and though I do not like to give a positive assurance, I may say I am endeavouring to look at the matter from the hon. Gentleman's point of view.

COLONIAL SOLICITORS BILL.
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
Clause 3:—
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the clause stand part of the Bill."
Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Wednesday.

NEW BILL.
  TOWN HOLDINGS.
  Bill to give compensation to occupying tenants of Town Holdings for beneficial improvements, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Hazell, Mr. David Thomas, Mr. Kearley, Mr. Bryn Roberts, and Mr. Channing.

  TOWN HOLDINGS BILL.
  "To give compensation to occupying tenants of Town Holdings for beneficial improvements," presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Wednesday, 16th May, and to be printed. [Bill 180.]
  Adjourned at Twenty minutes after Twelve of the clock.