Commons Sitting of 14 April 1902

Preamble
The House met at Three of the Clock.
The Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means.
PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
  BARKING GAS BILL.
  Read the third time and passed.
  CENTRAL ARGENTINE AND ROSARIO RAILWAY BILL [LORDS].
  As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL ELECTRIC EXPRESS RAILWAY BILL.
  As amended, considered; clauses added; Amendments made; Bill to be read the third time.
  WEST HAM GAS BILL.
  As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  LONDON UNITED TRAMWAYS BILL.
  "For conferring further powers on the London United Tramways (1901), Limited, for constructing tramways and widening and altering roads in the counties of London, Middlesex, and Surrey; and for other purposes." read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL,
    ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
    Read a second time, and committed.

  DUNDEE CORPORATION LIBRARIES ORDER CONFIRMATION.
  Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Dundee Corporation Libraries (to be proceeded
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  with under Section 7 of the Act), ordered to be brought in by the Lord Advocate and Mr. Solicitor General for Scotland.

  DUNDEE CORPORATION LIBRARIES ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  "To confirm a Provisional Order under The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Dundee Corporation Libraries," presented accordingly; and, under 62 and 63 Vic, c. 47, s. 7 (2), ordered to be considered upon Monday next.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY).
  Petition, and Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Cohen and Mr. John Burns.
PETITIONS.
  BEER BILL.
  Petition from West Ham, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING BILL.
  Petitions in favour: From Crewe; Dover; Oswestry; New? Quay (two); Glasgow; Doncaster; and Llanelly; to lie upon the Table.
  MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.
  Petition from Lichfield, against; to lie upon the Table.
  PLUMBERS' REGISTRATION BILL.
  Petition from Limerick, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  PUBLIC-HOUSES (HOURS OF CLOSING) (SCOTLAND) ACT (1887) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petitions in favour: From Coatbridge; Selkirk; and Wishaw; to lie upon the Table.
  RATING OF LAND VALUES.
  Petition from Maidenhead, for legislation; to lie upon the Table.
  RATING OF MACHINERY' BILL.
  Petitions against: From Dover; Shanklin; Battersea; and Maidenhead; to lie upon the Table.
  ROMAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN IRELAND.
  Petition from Hawick, against establishment; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  Petition from Doncaster, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  VACCINATION PROSECUTIONS BILL.
  Petition from Battersea, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  INQUIRY INTO CHARITIES (COUNTY OF LANCASTER).
  Return [presented 11th April] to be printed. [No. 137.]
  LOCAL TAXATION (ROYAL COMMISSION).
  Copy presented, of final Report, so far as relates to Scotland, of His Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject of Local Taxation [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL TAXATION (ROYAL COMMISSION).
  Copy presented, of final Report, so far as relates to Ireland, of His Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject of Local Taxation [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS (INCORPORATION OF BEXHILL).
  Copy presented, of Charter of Incorporation of the Borough of Bexhill, dated 7th April, 1902 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  COAL EXPORTS, ETC.
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 20th January—Mr. David Thomas]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 138.]
  EVICTIONS (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Return of Evictions in Ireland for the quarter ended 31st December, 1901 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ACT, 1877 (CAMBRIDGE).
  Copy presented, of Statutes made by the Governing Body of Jesus College, Cambridge, on 16th December, 1901, amending Statutes VII and IX of the statutes of that college [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 139.]
  UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ACT, 1877 (OXFORD).
  Copy presented, of Statutes made by the Governing Body of Balliol College, Oxford, on 10th December, 1901, amending Statute V of the statutes of that college [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 140.]

  FINANCIAL STATEMENT (1902–3).
  Copy ordered, "of Statement of Revenue and Expenditure as laid before the House by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when opening the Budget."—(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 141.]

  IMPERIAL REVENUE (COLLECTION AND EXPENDITURE) (GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND).
  Return ordered, "relating to Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure) (Great Britain and Ireland), for the year ending 31st day of March, 1902 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper No. 91 of Session 1901."—Mr. Joseph A. Pease.)
(3.35.) QUESTIONS.

  South African War—Peace Negotiations.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether any communications, with a view to peace, have been received from the Boer leaders by the authorities in South Africa, and whether the Government have any statement to make as to their nature.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I do not think it is possible for us to go farther at the present

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  moment than to say that a message from the Boer leaders was communicated to us by Lord Kitchener on Saturday, that a reply has been sent to it, and that we are expecting a further communication.
  SIR H CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I would further beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the uncertainties of the situation, and the strong hope of peace, it would not be wise to defer the making of any statement as to financial proposals which might have the effect of adding to the public burdens, and which in their nature must necessarily depend, to a great extent, on the results of the present events.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,): I do not think that the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman is one which can be complied with, for reasons which I shall explain when I make my statement.

  Martial Law in Cape Colony—Case of Mr. Cartwright.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether Mr. Albert Cartwright, now undergoing a sentence of imprisonment in Cape Colony under martial law, has applied to the Military authorities for permission, after the expiry of his term of imprisonment on 22nd April, to leave the Colony for England; and, if so, whether he stated in his application that he made it partly on grounds of health and partly on the necessity of earning a livelihood, for which he saw no opening in the Colony; and whether he has been informed that he will not be allowed to go to England.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE WAR OFFICE (Lord STANLEY,): Mr. Cartwright applied for permission to proceed to England, but the authorities in South Africa did not consider it desirable to grant it. His views, as the right hon. Gentleman is probably aware, are strongly anti-British, and it was not deemed desirable by the authorities in South Africa to increase the number of persons in this country who disseminate anti-British propaganda.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: Are we to understand from the noble Lord that these tribunals administering martial law not only have the right of excluding militant Dutchmen from South Africa but also of banishing Englishmen from England?
  LORD STANLEY: I have given to the right hon. Gentleman the answer my right hon. friend would have given if he had been able to be in his place. He is suffering from a chill in the throat which prevents him being here to answer Questions. At the same time I may say that the answer I have given has my right hon. friend's entire concurrence.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: I am very sorry to hear the cause of the right hon. Gentleman's absence. I shall put the Question in another form.

  Imprisonment of Boer Suspects.
  MR. BRYN ROBERTS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that letters have been received in this country from Mr. D. I. De Wet, written from the military camp, Matjesfontein, showing that he is imprisoned there, and that he states in one. dated 11th February, 1902, that in another five days it would be five months since he had been away and placed in that camp; whether he is aware that Mr. Du Plessis was deported last summer to Port Alfred; and, seeing that these Gentlemen are British subjects, and were peace delegates to England from the Graaf Reinet Congress, whether he can state the reason of their confinement, and whether they have been tried for any offence.
  LORD STANLEY: Mr. D. I. De Wet has been detained in the military camp at Matjesfontein since 18th September for using seditious language and for furnishing rebels with information. Mr. P. L. Du Plessis was ordered to reside at Port Alfred in July last for omitting to report that rebellion was brewing in his ward; he admitted having used his influence against the formation of the district mounted troops. It appears that my reference to South Africa on this Question was previously misunderstood, and that the answer that these persons had not been interfered with had reference to

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  their mission to England. The offences mentioned above were subsequent to their return and caused action to be taken.
  MR. BRYN ROBERTS: Have the charges on which they are imprisoned been communicated to them, because their letters say they are not aware of them?
  LORD STANLEY: I do not know what may have been stated in letters.
  MR. BRYN ROBERTS: That is not my Question. I ask whether the charges on which these gentlemen are imprisoned have been communicated to them, and I ask this because they themselves say they do not know the charges.
  LORD STANLEY: I cannot say.
  MR. BRYN ROBERTS: I must further ask the noble Lord whether, seeing that these gentlemen are men of consideration—[Laughter]—certainly as worthy of consideration as any Member sitting on the opposite side of this House—whether he will make inquiries whether they have been furnished with the charges against them.
  LORD STANLEY: No, Sir. My right hon. friend has implicit confidence in Lord Kitchener's discretion, and is not prepared to interfere with it.

  Medical Comforts for the Boers.
  MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether General Delarey made a request of Lord Kitchener, either immediately before or shortly after the release of Lord Methuen, to allow medicines and bandages to be forwarded through the British lines by friends of the Boers; and, if so, whether he can state what was Lord Kitchener's reply to that request.
  LORD STANLEY: I have no information as to the request alluded to.
  MR. FLYNN: I gave three days notice. Has the noble Lord applied for information?
  LORD STANLEY: No, Sir.

  Glasgow Postal Volunteers for Active Service.
  MR. BAIRD: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury,
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  as representing the Postmaster General, whether, seeing that the Post Office Circular of the 18th March last contained a notice to telegraphists inviting applications for vacancies in the postal service of the Transvaal Colony, he will explain why, with this circular, a notice was posted in the Telegraph Department of the Glasgow Post Office intimating that the circular notice did not apply to the Glasgow Office; whether the Postmaster General is aware that many telegraphists at Glasgow are anxious to join the Transvaal service, and what is the reason for their being debarred from applying for vacancies.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): The notice intimating that the circular notice in question did not apply to the Glasgow Office was posted because, as stated in the House last Tuesday, so many officers from the Glasgow Office have gone to South Africa in different capacities that the exigencies of the service rendered it impossible to allow more to go at present.

  British Telegraphists at the Front.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it has been brought to his notice that forty-two British telegraphists volunteered for service with the Royal Engineers in May, 1900, for a period of twelve months or till the end of the war in answer to the call for recruits for the 24th Middlesex Field Army Post Office; and seeing that while other Volunteers have been allowed to return, these men are not being relieved, whether he can see his way to either relieve these men or reward them for their prolonged service in South Africa.
  LORD STANLEY: My attention has been drawn to the case of these men. Every effort has been made to relieve them, but owing to the increase in the number of telegraphists required in South Africa, it has been found impossible to spare them so far. I must remind the hon. Member that they are in receipt of full civil salary in addition to their military pay.
  CAPTARIN NORTON: Seeing that these men have been treated differently from other men will they receive any special reward for this prolonged service?
  LORD STANLEY: No, Sir.

  Highland Regiments—Jackets and Kilts.
  MR. NICOL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it is proposed to discontinue the issue of the white jacket to the Highland Regiments and to restrict the use of the kilt.
  LORD STANLEY: As regards the kilt I must refer the hon. Member to the reply given in the House on Friday last.† The retention of the white jacket is under consideration.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the regulation prohibiting the use of the kilt by Highland regiments has the sanction of Lord Roberts.
  LORD STANLEY: The kilt is not prohibited.
  MR. WEIR: Where can a copy of the new regulation be seen? Can it be furnished to the House?
  LORD STANLEY: The kilt is not prohibited.
  MR. WEIR: I understand that a new regulation has been issued. Has it been approved by Lord Roberts, and where can it be seen?
  LORD STANLEYdid not reply.
  MR. WEIR: May I press for an answer?
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member had better give notice of the Question in the usual way.

  Remounts—Depôts in Canada.
  MR. MALCOLM: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he can now state what answer has been
  † See page 13 of this volume.
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  returned to the Province of Ontario and the North-West Province of Canada in reply to their application that Government remount depots may be established in those provinces.
  LORD STANLEY: No such applications have been received at the War Office.
  MR. MALCOLM: Do I understand that neither directly nor indirectly has any such application been received from Canada?
  LORD STANLEY: Not from the Government.

  Canned Provision Contracts.
  MR. MALCOLM: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office, whether he can state the numbers of canned provision contracts for the Field Force in South Africa held respectively by Canadian and American firms.
  LORD STANLEY: Fifty-one Canadian and a hundred and one American contracts have been made since the beginning of the war.
  MR. MALCOLM: When was the last contract made?
  LORD STANLEY: I think some are being made at the present moment, but I will inquire.

  Anti-Typhoid Inoculation.
  CAPTARIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state whether the report on the results of anti-typhoid inoculation has been received; and, if so, will he say whether it shows a diminution in mortality in the inoculated attacked by the disease as compared with the uninoculated; whether it shows a diminished evidence of the disease in inoculated; and whether the full report will now be laid upon the Table.
  LORD STANLEY: The report has been received. It deals with only 4,138 cases and the aggregate results show a mortality of 8.2 per cent. in inoculated persons as against 15.1 per cent. in uninoculated. The report, however, does

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  not appear sufficiently conclusive in itself, and it seems expedient to obtain further statistics from the Admission and Discharge Books before publishing it.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: The noble Lord has not answered the last paragraph of the Question.
  LORD STANLEY: No, Sir, it will not be laid.

  Army Canteen Committee.
  CAPTARIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state how many officers of the infantry of the line are members of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Army Canteen business, and how many members of this Committee were at one time members of the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society; whether there is any intention upon the part of the Government of taking over the above-mentioned society as the nucleus of a future general scheme of Army Canteen Co-operative Supply; and whether, in the event of it being decided to establish a society for the supply of the troops, he will consider the advisability of it being started as a new concern after a Committee of the leading commercial men in the country, and officers of the longest and widest experience in Army canteen management have carefully considered the matter in all its aspects.
  LORD STANLEY: This Committee is composed as follows—

  Earl Grey, President.

  Major-General Eaton, Grenadier Guards.

  Colonel Bridge, Army Service Corps.

  Colonel Lambert, 2nd Dragoon Guards.

  Major Stopford, Irish Guards.

  Captain Boehmer, late East Surrey Regiment.

  George Harwood, Esq., M.P.

  Colonel Barrington Foote, R.A., Secretary.

  Major Stopford served previously in the Derby Regiment for eighteen years. None of the above-mentioned are members of the Canteen and Mess Cooperative Society or have had any
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  financial interest in it. Colonel Bridge served at one time on the Society's Committee of management which is unpaid. I am not prepared at present, pending the receipt of the Committee's Report, to discuss the other points raised in the Question.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: Then am I to understand that there is only one infantry of the line officer represented in the entire Committee?
  LORD STANLEY: If the hon. Gentleman looks at the list he will find he is entirely wrong. The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: Of the line?
  LORD STANLEY: Then there is Captain Beecher, late of the East Surrey regiment, and Major Stopford of the Irish Guards who previously served for eighteen years in the Derbyshire regiment and may well be considered to represent the infantry of the line.
  CAPTARIN NORTON: Still am I not right in my contention that there is only one officer belonging to the infantry of the line on the Committee?
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!

  Waltham Royal Gunpowder Factory.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that the chargemen and workmen at the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham have to strip and hang up their clothes together, and thus render it possible for a man coming in on a later shift to plant a match in some person's pocket, either for spite, or in order to get rid of an incriminating match brought in by accident; whether he will take steps to prevent the occurrence of such a thing in future by providing each man with a locker or chest with a padlock attached; and whether he will consider the possibility of making some compensation to persons discharged through mistakes of this kind by finding them employment in a Government factory where their services would count, or by the gratuity usually given to discharged persons on reduction of staff.
  LORD STANLEY: As men are not searched for matches when going out, it is not apparent what object would be gained by the transfer of matches suggested. The provision of chests would necessitate a considerable increase in the size of the shifting rooms which I am not prepared to undertake. Men discharged for coming to work in danger areas with matches are not blacklisted, so that there is nothing to prevent their obtaining suitable employment elsewhere, but I cannot consent to find employment for persons discharged for a breach of the regulations.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: Will the noble Lord give me an interview on this matter?
  LORD STANLEY: Certainly.

  Woolwich Arsenal—Reduction of Working Staff.
  MR. ROBSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that although there have been over 1,000 dismissals and suspensions of workmen at Woolwich Arsenal recently, there has been no reduction in the numbers of the foremen or of the official staff generally; and whether he will state what steps he proposes to take in this matter. I beg also to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether, while reductions are being made in the working staff at Woolwich Arsenal, and plant there is consequently standing idle, increasing quantities of Government work are being given to private contractors; and whether, in order to induce such contractors to tender for the work, the Government has given them guarantees or promises of future employment of their plant for some years to come.
  LORD STANLEY: In reply to the first Question. I am aware of the facts stated, and I do not propose to take any steps in the matter. In reply to the second Question, during the recent pressure increased quantities of work were given to the Ordnance Factories, who, therefore, took on extra men, and to contractors. As the work has now diminished less work is being given to both, and the extra men are being
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  discharged from the Ordnance Factories. No guarantee has been given by the Government, but, in accordance with settled policy, a portion of the work is always given to the trade. It is not desirable to continue working the Ordnance Factories to their fullest power of production.

  Woolwich Factories—Sales of Ashes.
  MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will explain why ashes from the brass foundry and rolling mills of the Royal Laboratory and other factories at Woolwich are sold at £6 2s. 6d. per ton; will he state what are the component parts of such ashes which give them so high a value; and will he cause such changes to be made in the processes producing the ashes as will prevent such waste for the future.
  LORD STANLEY: The ashes are being sold at £6 7s. 6d. and £7 7s. 6d. a ton. They contain some splashes of metal, the larger of which are recovered. It would be expensive to pick it all out and reduce it. There is no waste, as there is every reason to believe that the fair value of the stuff is obtained.
  MR. CAINE: Is the noble Lord aware that in every ton there is at least 2 cwt. of brass waste?
  [No answer was returned.]

  Pewsey Roads—Damage by War Office Contractors.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if his attention has been called to a statement made by the district surveyor of the Pewsey (Wiltshire) District Council on the 24th of March at a meeting of that council, viz., that it cost£3,152 in the district to repair the damage done by the contractors to the War Office to the roads of the district; that this expense could have been almost entirely saved had the War Office specified that all material should be conveyed to the nearest railway station to Bulford Camp, viz., Porton or Grately, instead of to Ludgershall, which was several mile" from the camp, and that had this been

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  done £500 would have covered the damage; and will he explain why the arrangement was made to deliver the materials at Ludgershall instead of at the nearest station, and if the War Office has accepted liability for the above sum of £3,152 or part of it, as damages for extraordinary traffic.
  LORD STANLEY: The sum of £2,042 has been paid to the Pewsey District Council in respect of damage to roads of the district alleged to have been caused by extraordinary military traffic, and a further claim is at present under consideration. It is not usual to specify a particular route by which a contractor shall bring his goods to the site of a proposed work, and no particular route was specified in this case. The contractor was subject to heavy time penalties, and doubtless chose the route most convenient and most expeditious under the circumstances.

  Lord Charles Beresford and Naval Organisation.
  MR. NORMAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether his attention has been called to a statement by Rear Admiral Lord Charles Beresford that the fleet is not properly organised and prepared for war and is therefore unable to act immediately if called upon; whether this statement is consistent with Admiralty regulations; and whether he has taken or proposes to take any action in consequence of it.
  THE SECRETARY OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): The attention of the Admiralty has been called to the statement referred to and it is to be regretted that a false impression may be created by it. The Fleet in case of war could act immediately. There is not, and never can be, finality in organisation for war. The improvement and perfecting of that organisation continuously occupies the attention of the Admiralty, and is the special responsibility and main function of the Senior Naval Lord. The interests of discipline do not require that the discretion of officers on half-pay should be regulated to the extent which is necessary in the case of officers on Active Service, who come under the Naval Discipline Act.

  Naval Coal Supplies in the Mediterranean.
  MR. NORMAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether a letter was received by the Admiralty from the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Station, covering a letter addressed to him by his second in command, in which the latter expressed anxiety at the shortage of coal in the Mediterranean; whether this shortage existed; if so, who was the official responsible for it, and what steps have been taken to remedy it.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: In the opinion of the Board of Admiralty, all communications received from Commanders-in-Chief must be regarded as absolutely confidential. I am not, therefore, prepared to make any statement as to the contents of communications of this character. The Admiralty desire, however, to afford the House all information in respect of the coal supply to the Fleet which can be given consistently with the interests of the public service. The stock of coal in the Mediterranean—including in that term the current supply to the Fleet and the Reserve—has always been fixed by the Admiralty in communication with the Commander-in-Chief, and there has been no shortage from the authorised standard within recent years. Early in 1900 the Admiralty, in communication with the officers locally responsible for the maintenance of the supply, namely the Commander-in-Chief and the Admiral Superintendent at Malta, decided that the authorised Reserve was becoming insufficient owing to the increase in the size and I.H.P. of the Mediterranean Fleet. An increase was approved on the 5th February, and since that time the stock has been steadily and greatly augmented, and a new standard fixed. An increase of the stock, however, is no simple matter. Coal, if long stored, deteriorates rapidly, especially if not under cover, and it cannot be stacked more than a certain height without risk of combustion, for which reasons, the Admiralty two years ago decided to adopt patent fuel largely for part of these reserves; moreover, neither coal nor patent fuel can be advantageously or economically stacked except in close.

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  proximity to deep water. Much additional storage ground has had, therefore, to be acquired or created at Malta and Gibraltar. This has been continuously done since the autumn of 1899, with the result that the stock has been greatly increased, and full provision was made in the Naval Works Loan Act of 1901, in respect of any further requirements of storage ground, and all accessories.
  MR. NORMAN: Arising out of that answer, Sir, will the hon. Gentleman say whether, when such confidential statements have been made in responsible quarters, the Admiralty think it desirable to take action upon them or not?
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: That depends entirely on the nature of the communication.
  MR. NORMAN: I meant the statement in my Question.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Whether it is the statement referred to in the Question or not, the same answer applies. The action of the Admiralty depends on the nature of the communication and the authority of the person making it.
  MR. NORMAN: The hon. Gentleman has not answered my first supplementary Question, whether the Admiralty propose to take any action in this specific case in consequence of this particular charge.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Action was taken, not in consequence of the statement, but prior to it. The results are now being seen.

  Coronation Naval Review—Members' Visits to War Ships.
  MR. LOUGII: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he will arrange, on the day previous to or succeeding the proposed Naval Review at Spithead, in connection with the Coronation, for such Members of Parliament as desire to visit the various classes of warships belonging to this, and any foreign country that may take part in the review.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The Admiralty cannot make any arrangements with regard to foreign ships, but
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  every facility will be given to hon. Members desiring to visit His Majesty's ships on the occasion of the Coronation review. If a sufficient number of Members desire to visit any special ship or ships, arrangements will be made for their convenience, and I shall be glad if hon. Members will communicate with me in respect to the matter.
  MR. LOUGH: Is it not possible to make arrangements for visiting foreign ships?
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I do not think the Admiralty could undertake that responsibility.

  Maximite.
  MR. O'SHEE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether any report has been made to the Lords of the Admiralty as to the new explosive called Maximite; if so, can he give the results reported, and state whether the Admiralty have acquired the right to use it.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Reports have been received of the results of experiments carried out in America. They have been referred to the Explosives Committee, who are carrying out experiments with various high explosives, the results of which are not published.

  Coal for the Navy—Experiments with Mixed Coals.
  MR. WILLIAM ALLAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he will state what was the nature of the experiments carried out by the Admiralty with anthratite and Scotch coal mixed, what were the proportions used of each kind in these experiments, and what was the calorific value determined by the engineers during these trials of the combination of such coals; also, whether similar experiments were carried out with north country coal; and, if so, what were the results obtained therefrom.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I cannot ascertain that experiments have actually been made with anthracite and Scottish coal in combination. Welsh smokeless coal has been tried on many occasions

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  in combination with various qualities of bituminous coal, but the result has not been satisfactory. Experiments with anthracite are in contemplation, and I think trials may with advantage be made of the results obtainable with anthracite in combination with bituminous coal, including Scotch coal.

  Irrigation Works in India.
  MR. HERBERT ROBERTS): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff's Commission has already made progress in its investigations of existing projects for water supply in India; whether provision can be made for a larger allocation of funds for that purpose out of the Budget's surplus; and whether it is the intention of the Local Governments of Bombay and Madras to proceed without delay with the construction of such water works, tanks, dams, or embankments as can be provided by the provincial funds at their disposal.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord G. HAMILTON,): The Irrigation Commission has not, I believe, submitted any Report, and its investigations will not be completed for about a year. In the meantime the Government of India have in their Budget made a special allotment to Local Governments for minor works, as they are of opinion that in this way the most direct and immediate benefit is likely to be realised; and that the larger schemes which they have in view require careful consideration, and should not be hurriedly undertaken. This allotment will be used by the Local Governments without delay.

  Government Grog Shops at Assam.
  MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if his attention has been called to a statement in the twenty-sixth half-yearly Report of the Bishnath Tea Company, Limited, Assam, which said that fifty-one deaths occurred in the gardens of the company during the half-year, including several deaths from excessive drinking at the Government grog shops; is he aware that the Commissioner of Excise for Assam, in his last published Report, 1901, says in
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  paragraph 8 that the consumption of country spirits shows a net increase of 7.37 per cent. over the previous year, and in paragraph 11 that endeavours were again made by the Department to settle country spirit shops on tea gardens; and that the total excise revenue of the province was the highest figure vet attained; and, seeing that the excise revenues of Assam have increased 35 per cent. during the last ten years, and that the Tea Planters' Association have made repeated protests against the wax-in which the Government force liquor shops upon them, will he state what steps are being taken, if any, to remedy this growing consumption of liquor.
  LORD G. HAMILTON: I have not seen the statement to which the hon. Member refers in the first part of his Question. The Excise Commissioner's Report states that the increase of 7.37 per cent. does not relate to the consumption of spirits, but to the revenue, and that the Commissioner states that it was due to keener competition at the auction sales of licences. Country-made spirits are consumed in Assam almost exclusively by the immigrant coolies, and the consumption, as well as the revenue must tend to rise with their numbers. On the suggestion of the Assam branch of the Tea Association, attempts have for many years been made to get the planters to take control of the liquor shops already existing in the vicinity of their gardens. I consider this plan likely to conduce to good order and sobriety, and I am not aware that any protests have been made against it by the Tea Planters' Association. Any complaints as to the location or the management of liquor shops have received, and will continue to receive, prompt attention.
  MR. CAINE: IS there any necessity whatever for forcing these shops on the planters who do not want them?
  LORD G. HAMILTON: My information is that they are wanted.

  Plague in the Punjab.
  MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, can he state how many deaths from plague have occurred daily in the Punjab; and whether the

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  recommendations of the Plague Commission, with regard to securing the cooperation of the people in administering plague measures which were followed in the Bombay Presidency, are being adopted in the Punjab.
  LORD G. HAMILTON: I receive no daily returns of plague deaths. The telegraphic reports are for periods of four weeks, and these are subsequently supplemented by certain weekly return; and details. The numbers of plague deaths in the Punjab since the autumn of 1901 have, I regret to say greatly increased, and are as follows—

  For the four weeks ending 18th Jan. 1902

  9,438

  For the four weeks ending 15th Feb. 1902

  16,784

  For the four weeks ending 15th March 1902

  42,788

  No later reports have yet been received Regulations enjoining measures based on the recommendations of the Plague Commission and designed to avoid coercion and to attract the co-operation of the people as much as possible, have been adopted, and a specially qualified medical officer has been deputed to supervise the preventive arrangements.

  Army Service in India.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state in what public document the War Office have given an interpretation of Section 87 of the Army Act, justifying the recent order of the Commander in-Chief in India that 7 years service becomes 8¼ years, 12 years service becomes 13¼ and 21 years service becomes 22¼ and whether the words giving power to prolong the service for such further period not exceeding twelve months as the competent military authority, may order, are in practice construed as subject to a further addition of three months under the words directing discharge with all convenient speed.
  LORD STANLEY: In reply to the first paragraph, the public documents are the Royal Proclamation continuing soldiers in Army Service and Army Order 184 of 1899 giving effect thereto. It has been decided that three months should be adopted as the limit of
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  convenient speed, and that after that compensation should be granted in accordance with the terms of Army Order 210 of 1901.

  Anglo-Japanese Treaty.
  MR. BLACK: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, under the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, the Government is empowered to conclude a general alliance on the part of Great Britain with any other European or American Power without prior consultation with or consent of Japan.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,: The only provision of the Anglo-Japanese Agreement which has reference to the point raised in the hon. Member's Question is Article IV. If the hon. Member will refer to that Article he will see that its language is perfectly clear.

  Motor Cars—Speed Regulations.
  CAPAIN DONELAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he can say what public body has authority to regulate the speed of moter cars in the streets and suburbs of London; what is the maximum speed permitted, and what steps, if any, are taken to prevent excessive speed.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. RITCHIE,): The answer to the first Question is the Local Government Board, and to the second, twelve miles an hour, or such lower speed as is reasonable and proper, having regard to the traffic on the highway, and will not endanger the life or limb of any person or be to the common danger of passengers. The police are under detailed instructions to check furious or reckless driving by strict enforcement of the law.
  CAPTARIN DONELAN: Are the drivers registered, licensed, or required to pass any test of efficiency?
  MR. RITCHIE: I believe not.
  A further Question by Mr. FREEMAN THOMAS (Hastings), should, said Mr. RITCHIE, be addressed to the Local Government Board.
  MR. FLYNN: Is it not the fact that on the roads leading to London many of these cars go at fifty miles per hour.
  [No answer was returned.]

  North Sea Fisheries.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state what is the exact present position as to any international conventions, agreements, or conferences touching the North Sea Fisheries; docs the Government propose to take any, and, if so, what steps, independently, with a view to the preservation of such fisheries.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,: His Majesty's Government have agreed to take part in the international scheme of investigation connected with fishery problems in the North Sea and adjacent waters as proposed by the Conferences held at Stockholm and Christiania, and Parliament will be asked to make a grant to defray the cost of the British share of these investigations. These funds will be administered by a Departmental Committee with the advice of scientific experts. The details of the investigations will no doubt be finally settled at the forthcoming meeting of the International Council at Copenhagen, at which Great Britain will be represented, but the date of which has not yet been fixed. The Board of Trade have also appointed a Committee under Minute dated 13th August, 1901, to inquire and report as to the best means by which the State or Local Authorities can assist Scientific Research as applied to problems affecting the fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland, and in particular whether the object in view would best be attained by the creation of one central body or department acting for England, Scotland, and Ireland, or by means of separate departments or agencies in each of the three countries. Quite apart from this important question of Scientific Research the Board of Trade have, with the assistance of another Committed, considered how the present system of collecting fisheries statistics in England and Wales could be improved and extended. That Committee has already made a report. The Board of Trade have acted upon it
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  and made certain arrangements which they hope will be beneficial to the interests concerned.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Board of Trade intends to take any independent action to arrest the depletion of our North Sea Fisheries apart from the Conference?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: No such independent action is at present contemplated.
  MR. HELME: Were the interests of Great Britain represented at the second Conference directly?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Yes, Sir.
  CAPTAIN SINCLAIR: Is the right hon. Gentleman in consultation with the Scottish Fishery Board in regard to this matter?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Yes. Sir, I am.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Will the right hon. Gentleman lay on the Table the Report of the Committee, which he states he has already received, as to the investigation.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: So far as I am aware, there will be no objection. I may add I am in communication with the Scottish Office, not directly with the Scottish Fishery Board.

  Current Rate of Wages for Skilled Labour.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR:: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he can state in what districts of England the current rate of wages for skilled labourers is no higher than 16s. or 17s. per week.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: If the hon. Member will specify the particular: classes of labourers whose rates of wages he wishes to know, any information in the possession of the Board of Trade shall be placed at his disposal. The term "skilled labourers" is too vague to enable an answer to be given to the Question.

  Tottington Workhouse Children.
  MR. LEES KNOWLES: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if his attention has been callen to a meeting of the Leigh Board of Guardians, held on 3rd April. at which allegations were made as to the ill-treatment of workhouse children at Tottington, and when it was stated that, out of 230 children in the school, only 84 were free from disease; whether industrial schools are subject to surprise visits from the Local Government Board inspectors, besides the annual formal visit of which notice is given; if not, whether he will institute such visits; and whether he proposes to take any action with regard to the school at Tottington.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG,): I have already made some investigations with regard to the allegations concerning the children sent by the Leigh Board of Guardians to the school at Tottington, and I have decided to direct an Inquiry on oath to be held on the subject. Schools certified under the Poor Law Certified Schools Act, 1862, may be visited any time by a Local Government Board Inspector at any time. Notice of such visits is not required, and is not usually given.

  Smallpox in Essex.
  MR. JOSEPH A. PEASE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that a patient suffering from smallpox is now being treated in a fever hospital within a few yards of a public road between Hedingham and Halstead, in Essex; and whether he will take steps to secure the better isolation of the patient.
  MR. WALTER LONG: I am informed that by arrangement between the Hal-stead Urban and Rural District Councils, the hospital of the latter Council at Castle Hedingham has been exclusively reserved for the reception of any smallpox cases occurring in the district of either authority, any other infectious eases in the two districts being received in the hospital of the Urban District Council. Recently, a mild case of smallpox was, in accordance with this
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  arrangement, removed to the Castle Hedingham Hospital, where it is still under treatment. I understand that this hospital is twenty yards from a highway, and is in a very isolated position—the nearest dwelling being 300 yards distant. The District Councils concerned consider that the arrangement adopted is the best that could be made in the circumstances; and at present I sec no reason for dissenting from their view.

  Government Departments and County Councils—Transference of Powers.
  MR. DAVID THOMAS: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether any transfer to the County Councils of powers of certain Government Departments and other authorities has been made by his Department under the provisions of Section 10 of the Local Government Act, 1888, and particularly whether any powers have been transferred, under sub-Section 3 of Clause 10, to the County Councils of two or more counties jointly, to be exercised and discharged by a joint committee of such councils; whether there has been any demand on the part of County Councils, either in England or Wales, to have any of the powers exercised by Government Departments transferred to themselves; and if he has any official reports indicating that, the attitude of the non-county boroughs has materially changed since 1889 in respect of such transfer.
  MR. WALTER LONG: The answer to the first paragraph of the Question is in the negative, and to the second in the affirmative. In 1898, a Departmental Committee, which had been appointed to consider, amongst other matters, how far it would be possible to devolve on County Councils certain work done by the Local Government Board, reported that the hostility of the non-county boroughs, and of the majority of the Urban Councils, to the transfer of any further powers to the County Councils, and their preference for the control of the central authority were declared, by the witnesses examined on behalf of these authorities, to be stronger even than they were in 1889.
  MR. ALFRED DAVIES: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will

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  state generally what powers and duties he has the right to transfer to Welsh County Councils under Clause 10 of the Local Government Act of 1888.
  MR. WALTER LONG: A Provisional Order made by the Local Government Board under the section mentioned may transfer any of the powers and duties referred to in sub-Section (1) of the section, provided that the draft is approved by the Government Department or body whose powers or duties would be affected. As the law now stands, however, any transfer under the section must he made to County Councils in England and Wales generally, and it would not be practicable to limit it to Welsh County Councils only.
  MR. ALFRED DAVIES: My Question has not been answered. I want to know generally, what powers and duties can be transferred to County Councils?
  MR. WALTER LONG: And I have told the hon. Gentleman that any transfer can only be made generally, and not to individual County Councils.

  Government Workmen and the Coronation.
  MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether arrangements will be made to pay the wages of all workmen employed by the Government for the two holidays at the Coronation; and whether the Government will use its influence with all contractors employed by them to secure that this example is generally followed.
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS,: With regard to the first part of the hon. Member's Question that matter is under consideration; but with reference to the second paragraph, I cannot undertake to interfere between contractors and their men.

  Members and the Coronation.
  SIR MARK STEWART: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works if he can state what facilities will be afforded to Members to see the Coronation procession with members of their family, whether in the precincts of the House or elsewhere.
  MR. AKERS DOUGLAS: It is proposed to provide the same facilities to view the Royal progress on June 27th as were afforded to hon. Members and the Officials of the House on the occasion of the Jubilee in 1897. The actual site of the stands has not yet been decided upon. The hon. Baronet is no doubt aware that on the day of the Coronation seats will be provided in Westminster Abbey for Members and their wives.

  Carloway and Stornoway Road.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Congested Districts Board have yet considered the expediency of providing funds for the construction of the middle section of the road between Carloway and Stornoway: and, if not, will he explain why the Government decline to take the necessary steps to secure the completion of this road.
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY,): The answer to the first paragraph of the hon. Member's Question is in the affirmative; and that to the second is that the advantage to be gained does not seem to be commensurate with the outlay involved.

  Dog Tax in Scotland and Ireland.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, seeing that 2s. 6d. only is paid for dog tax in Ireland, will he consider the advisability of reducing the tax to 2s. 6d. in Scotland: and will he state the amount derived from this tax in Scotland and Ireland respectively.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The Quesion raised by the hon. Member is one that principally affects, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the local authorities, as both in Scotland and Ireland the proceeds of these licences are devoted to local purposes. In the year ended 31st March, 1901, dog licences in Scotland produced £42,459. The Irish tax is a police licence, and I cannot say how much it yields.

  Parcels Post Regulations.
  COLONEL PILKINGTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to

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  the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, in the event of a parcel deposited with a post office for delivery being lost, and the postal authorities being able to trace such parcel through one stage or another of their system, he will provide that this should be deemed sufficient proof of depositing with them; and whether, under such circumstances, compensation will be made to the owner of the parcel so lost.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: One of the published conditions governing the payment of compensation in respect of parcels lost in the post is that a certificate of posting shall be produced when required. But this condition is not insisted on when the particulars which a certificate of posting would have proved are established by other satisfactory evidence.

  Parcels Posts Receipts.
  COLONEL PILKINGTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, in consideration of the increasing number of parcels carried by the Post Office, the Postmaster General will inaugurate some simple system of giving receipts for all parcels deposited at post offices for delivery.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Certificates of posting, prepared by the county officers, are already given for all parcels on which a special fee is paid for registration, and in the case of unregistered parcels anyone bringing a parcel to post can obtain a certificate of posting if he will fill up one of the forms provided for the purpose, and present it to the counter clerk. To give a certificate for every unregistered parcel, whether required or not, would involve considerable labour, and the Postmaster General does not think that the circumstances are such as to call for a modification of the present practice, which is advertised in paragraph 8, p. 8 of the Post Office Guide.

  Civil Service Clerks—Retirement Rules.
  MR TREVELYAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the statements made by the Secretary to the Treasury on 16th May, 1901, and 26th
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  July, 1901, that legislation would be necessary to make the Order in Council based on the Report of the Ridley Commission applicable to the clerks of the several divisions of the High Court, and, considering the opinion expressed by the Judge of the Probate Court in common with the late Lord Herschell in favour of retiring rules working automatically, His Majesty's Government propose to initiate such legislation during the present session.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: No Sir.

  Free Medical Attendance for Postal Servants.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, if he will explain why sub-office rural postmen, who are not allowed free medical attendance, are compelled to furnish the Department with a weekly medical certificate when they are on the sick list at their own cost; and whether the Department will dispense with weekly certificates in cases where the men's illness is known to be of several weeks duration; also whether the Department can see its way to refund to the men the cost of these certificates.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: All servants of the Department are required to furnish weekly certificates when absent through illness, and at places where there is no medical officer attached to the Post Office the certificates must be obtained from the patient's own medical adviser. The Postmaster General is not prepared to alter the rule which requires medical certificates to be furnished, nor can he undertake to refund the cost of them to those officers who are obliged to obtain them at their own expense.

  Teachers' Register.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether the names of teachers who possess a certificate under the Code of Regulations for Elementary day Schools, but no further certificate, and who are now teaching in recognised schools, not being Elementary Schools, will be placed on column A of the Register of Teachers.
  THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL ox EDUCATION (Sir J. GORST,): Column A will contain the names of all persons for the time being recognised by the Board as Certificated Teachers under the Code of Regulations for Elementary Day Schools.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the names of teachers who are, and for the past three years have been engaged in recognised schools not being elementary schools, and who possess not only a certificate recognised under the Elementary Day Schools Code, but also a university degree or some other diploma included in Appendix A and B of the Order in Council relating to the Registration of Teachers. will appear in both columns A and B of the Register.
  SIR J. GORST: If a teacher holds a certificate under the Elementary Day School Code and can also comply with the conditions of admission to column B, there is nothing to prevent his name appearing on both columns.

  New Education Bill—Probable Cost of Working.
  MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether he can state what is the approximate annual expenditure for elementary education which the local authorities will require to incur, in addition to the present expenditure, for efficiently working the new Education Bill.
  SIR J. GORST: No, I am afraid it is impossible at present to make any estimate that could be relied on.
  MR. HUMPHREYS-OWEN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General whether he will lay upon the Table lists of the non-county municipal boroughs in England and Wales having a population of over 10,000, and of urban districts having a population of over 20,000; and whether he will also lay upon the Table copies of the Acts set forth in the Fourth Schedule to the Education Bill (except those proposed to be wholly repealed) showing the
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  effect of the proposed legislation: and whether section 13 (1) (d) of the Education Bill will compel the local authority to charge on the area which formed the school district any liabilities by them in respect of that area after the transfer.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As regards the first part of the Question, I shall be able to lay the statistics referred to on the Table of the House, though they may be easily extracted from the preliminary Report of the census of 1901. I do not think we can carry out the request of the hon. Gentleman with regard to the schedule of the Bill in the form in which he makes it, but I will consider how far it is possible to furnish a memorandum explanatory of the repeals effected by the schedule. With regard to the last paragraph of the Question, the effect of the Bill as presented is to leave existing liabilaties upon the areas which are at the present moment bearing the charge, and to charge any future liability of the kind in the counties upon the parish or parishes served by the schools.

  Labourers' Cottages in County Antrim.
  MR. MACARTNEY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland wh is at the amount of the share of County Antrim in the residue of the Exchequer contribution applicable towards the cost of providing labourers' cottages under the Labourers' (Ireland) Acts, and what is the share respectively of the rural districts of Aghalee, Antrim, Ballycastle, Ballymena, Bally money, Belfast No. 1, Larne, and Lisburn No. 1 in this amount.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): The share of the County Antrim in the grant is £12,321 9s. 2d. No cottages were completed in the county during the year ended 29th September last, consequently no rural district is entitled to participate in the grant.

  Conolly Estate, Ballyshannon.
  MR. SWIFT MACNE1LL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he canst ate approximately the date on which

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  the Conolly Estate, Ballyshannon, will be sold to the tenants, who are about to become purchasers of their holdings under the fortieth section of The Irish Land Act, 1896, the land judge having requested the Land Commission upwards of a year ago to have the estate valued with a view to the sale thereof to the tenants; whether he is aware that the receiver and solicitor having carriage of the sale applied for the adjournment of the hearing of applications by tenants on this estate to have fair rents fixed at the last sitting of the Land Commission in Ballyshannon, on the ground that the fixing of rents would delay the sale; and, whether any measures will be taken to expedite the sale to the tenants of this estate.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The inspection of this estate has presented many difficulties owing to the numerous subdivisions and the nature of the tenancies. It is expected, however, that the inspection will be completed before the end of May. Every expedition will be used to conclude the preliminary steps at as early a date as possible, but it is not possible to state, even approximately, when this event will be reached. Several fair rent applications were adjourned for the reason stated.

  Irish National School Teachers' Salaries.
  MR. DONAL SULLIVAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that on 8th February last the Commissioners of National Education ordered payment of salary to be made to the second assistant in Roll No. 1754, National School, District 33, for services rendered in the year ended 31st December last; and will he explain why this teacher has not yet been paid the amount to which he is entitled.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The teacher's claim for salary in this case having been found to be excessive the Inspector was directed to visit the school and report. On his recommendation some deductions were made for absences. The balance has been remitted to the manager.

  Irish Illicit Stills—Constable's Disguises.
  DR. AMBROSE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord
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  Lieutenant of Ireland, whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that on 20th March, Constable Dunleavy, of Pontoon, Castlebar, County Mayo, went about the country in the guise of a pedlar selling jewellery; is it usual for, and is a constable acting within his right in assuming such a character: has he had any complaints from the inhabitants of the district in which this constable is stationed that he, on 20th March, endeavoured to induce several of them to establish illicit stills; and will he cause a sworn inquiry to be held into the allegations against Constable Dunleavy and other constables of the same and neighbouring police stations that they, on several occasions, endeavoured to induce persons to establish illicit stills.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The County Inspector, who has made personal inquiry into this matter, informs me that the allegations made in the Question are absolutely without foundation.

  Irish Railway Workers and the Labourers (Ireland) Acts.
  MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the fact that railway permanent waymen and milesmen are not entitled to labourers' cottages and allotments of land under the Labourers (Ireland) Acts; and, seeing that they are labourers will he consider their case in the proposed legislation for the better housing of the working classes in Ireland.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The suggestion in the Question will be considered. I am inclined to think, however, that the housing of men employed on a railway is more properly a matter for consideration by their employers, the Railway Company.

  Petitions under the Labourers (Ireland) Acts.
  MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, having regard to the fact that petitions under the Labourers' (Ireland) Acts involving important issues were heard at the meetings of the Privy

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  Council on Wednesday and Thursday last, he will lay copies of the evidence and decisions in each case upon the Table of the House for the information of hon. Members.
  MR. WYNDHAM: These inquiries tinder the Labourers' Acts are always open to the public. No useful purpose, commensurate with the great expense that would be involved, could be served by laying on the Table the voluminous evidence taken at the Inquires, and I am unable, therefore, to accede to the hon. Members' request. The decisions arrived at by the Privy Council in the particular cases mentioned will be published in the Gazette, and otherwise promulgated to the parties concerned.

  Treatment of Crimes Act (Ireland) Prisoners.
  MR. DELANY:I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the hon. Member for South Mayo, and Mr. Denis Johnston, who are at present confined in Tullamore Prison, under Criminal Law Procedure (Ireland) Act sentences of four and five months respectively, are obliged to exercise in the ring with ordinary prisoners; and whether he will consider the advisability of relaxing the prison rules so as to permit Mr. O'Donnell and Mr. Johnston to take exercise apart from the common prisoners.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: Has the attention of the right hon. Gentleman been called to the published statement of the hon. Member for North Mayo (as an expert) to his constituents that the moral tone in these institutions is much superior to that in this House?
  MR. WYNDHAM: I have not seen the observation, and in any case I am not prepared to draw invidious distinctions. The sentences of imprisonment without hard labour passed on the hon. Member for South Mayo and Mr. Johnston will respectively expire on the 16th instant and 14th May. After that they are condemned respectively to two months and three months as first-class misdemeanants. Under the first sentences they are, I am informed, exercised with prisoners belonging to the classes in
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  which they have been placed. Under the second sentences, they will not be exercised with other prisoners.
  MR. DELANY: Why is this treatment given specially to these men?
  MR. DILLON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that under the Coercion Act of 1887, those of us who were imprisoned were after a certain period exempted from taking exercise in company with ordinary criminals?
  MR. WYNDHAM: There is perhaps some misunderstanding as to the term "ordinary criminals." Prisoners are, under the rules which have been laid on the Table of the House, divided into three categories. Those rules are being put in force in this case. I am not aware of any special exemption such as has been suggested by the hon. Member, but if the hon. Member will give me further details I will inquire.
  CAPTARIN DONELAN: What object is to be gained by treating these men in this way?
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!
  MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Why is it that the Member for South Mayo is compelled to associate with ordinary criminals?
  MR. SPEAKER: That Question has been answered already.
  MR. PATRICK O'BRIENrose.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member cannot continue the debate, for that is what it comes to.
  MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I took no part in it before.

  Publicans' Licences at Belfast.
  MR. MOONEY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury is he aware that the Collector of Inland Revenue at Belfast made objection to a magistrate's certificate for renewal of publicans' licences in cases of rebuilding of premises, and in one case required the

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  trader to produce a recorder's certificate; and, although the increased amount of duty was tendered, it vas refused by the collector, and he instituted proceedings against the trader for selling without a licence, and obliged the trader, who had erected new premises on the site of the old licensed property, to apply for a new licence for these premises, although the renewal had been granted with the approval of the police and the sanction of the magistrates at annual petty sessions; and will he state by what authority the collector has acted in this manner.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The facts are as stated. The Collector acted under the authority of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, who were advised that a fresh certificate from Quarter Sessions was necessary, and that a licence should not he granted on a renewal certificate. The proceedings have, however, been withdrawn, an understanding with the parties having been reached, under which the necessary application will now be made to quarter sessions; and deposit of the duty has been accepted meanwhile.

  Limerick Postal Staff.
  MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that delay and inconvenience are occasioned by the inadequacy of the arrangements at the Limerick Post Office, which is a distributing centre, affecting several surrounding counties, and that the enforcements of high averages has been found to be inoperative owing to the scarcity of expert operators at subordinate offices and the withdrawal of male officers for postal duties, and that such has been represented by responsible officials; and, seeing that reliefs cannot be obtained when necessary, and that supervising officers are forced to perform instrument duties, whether an inquiry will be made as to the delay which occurs in this office in making early provision for pressure of business.
  I beg also to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that females have been detained for periods up to thirty minutes beyond their official time without payment; and, in
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  view of the strain imposed upon the female staff in an unhealthy building, will he cause an inquiry to be made in this case.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The Postmaster General has not the information necessary to enable him to reply in detail to the hon. Member's Questions; but he has ordered a personal inquiry to be made into the duties of the indoor staff at Limerick, both postal and telegraph, with a view to remedying any defects that may exist in the present arrangements and securing general efficiency in the performance of the service. In due course the hon. Member shall be made acquainted with the result of the inquiry.

  Dublin Sorting Office Duties.
  MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that in nearly every case when an officer was called upon to perform extra duty in the Dublin Sorting Office, three attendances had to be given, which commenced at 5 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m.; and that recently certain officers giving such attendances were paid at the rate of extra duty for an hour or an hour and a half; and, seeing that instructions have been issued to clerks supervising sections to compel men on extra duty to sign off early on the morning attendance, whether the Postmaster General will undertake that an arrangement be made by which officers compelled to perform extra duty under such conditions be allowed an opportunity of making at least three or four hours extra by way of recompensing them for the strain entailed by such duties.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: It has been necessary to require a third attendance from sorting officers in the Dublin Post Office, on a good many occasions recently, owing to pressure of work and to the staff being somewhat under-manned. Whenever the total duty in each case, including such attendance, exceeds the regular limit, overtime payment is, of course, allowed for the excess; but the Postmaster General could not sanction payment for any extra duty beyond the amount actually required to

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  be performed in each ease. He hopes, however, that under the scheme which is about to be brought forward for increasing the staff the necessity for a third attendance will be rendered much less frequent than has hitherto been the case.

WAYS AND MEANS.
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
[Mr. JEFFREYS (Hampshire, N.) in the Chair.]

WAYS AND MEANS.

  THE BUDGET STATEMENT.
  The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,)The receipts of the Exchequer, under our system of taxation, depend so closely upon the prosperity of the people that it is always advisable, in arranging the financial proposals for the year which is to come, to consider what has been the state of the country in the previous year. But, Sir, the year 1901 affords us no very certain guidance in this respect. It was not a year of exceptional prosperity. The ebb in our commercial and industrial activity, which began in 1900, although not augmented, had not yet turned. Some trades suffered by the national mourning, others by the depression that prevailed in foreign countries, especially Germany, with which we have great commercial intercourse. The thoughts of all of us were occupied by the war, and thousands of workers were removed from productive labour by the same cause; and yet, owing to a decline of prices, in some cases there was a fall in wages. On the other hand, though the year showed nothing to elate us, yet it showed nothing to depress us. Such records as the returns of our Bankers' Clearing House, of deposits in savings banks, of our railway traffic and the coasting trade, showed no diminution of business at home; and, though there was a fall in value in our foreign trade, yet there was a satisfactory increase in its volume; and the fall in value was mainly due to the fall in the price of coal, which, however disagreeable to those connected with that great industry, was, I think, eminently satisfactory to everybody else, including especially the iron and steel trades, which I hope, in the year that is before us, will show an improvement in consequence. There has been, therefore,
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  on the whole, in the course of the last year, no reason for us to consider that there is any falling off in the consuming power of the people, and that we may not have good hope for the revenue for the year that is to come.
  Certainly, in some great items of our revenue from Customs and Excise there has been a large falling off. The receipts from tobacco, from spirits, and from beer show a considerable decrease. So far as spirits and tobacco were concerned, that decrease was due to forestalments of duty in the previous year (1900–1901), which deprived last year of a considerable part of the revenue that properly belonged to it; and although, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am bound to regret that there has been a decrease in the consumption of beer, yet perhaps the House generally may be disposed to feel that on the whole the great increase in the consumption of tea and cocoa is a countervailing advantage.

  ESTIMATES AND RECEIPTS, 1901–1902.
  I have been singularly fortunate, as compared with some of my predecessors in time of costly war, and increased taxation, in that for the last two years the receipts of the revenue have exceeded my anticipations. Last year my estimates of revenue were £142,455,000, but the Exchequer receipts exceeded that amount by £543,000. The expenditure estimated for in the Budget was £184,212,000. Afterwards the House voted Supplementary Estimates of £12,631,000, nearly all of them connected with South Africa, and £73,000 was an: increase which was not anticipated in the Consolidated Fund charges. On the other hand, there were savings on various-heads, mainly in respect of the year 1900 1901, amounting to £1,394,000, as compared with the Estimates, so that the total Exchequer issues last year were £195,522,000. If you deduct from this the Exchequer revenue of £142,998,000, the deficit is £52,524,000. That was provided for out of the Consols loan issued last Spring, which produced a net amount of £56,553,000, leaving, therefore, a balance to the good in the Exchequer of £4,029,000.
  I hope the Committee may consider that this was not an absolutely unsuccessful result of my financial arrangements for the year that has passed. At any rate, it was a much better result than

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  was prognosticated by high authorities on the other side. I remember one evening in July when the hon. Member for the Carnarvon Boroughs, the hon. Member for Northampton, and the hon. Member for Poplar united in assuring me that I should have to provide many millions more for the cost of the war in South Africa than I had provided in my Estimates, and that we should have to hold an Autumn session of Parliament in order to find the money. And, Sir, two months later the leading organ of the Opposition in the Metropolitan daily Press—[Opposition cries of "Which is that?"]—I am not sure that I ought not to say the only organ—the Daily News [Opposition cries of "Oh!]—in an elaborate article, after what it described as a careful study of the financial position, assured its readers that my estimates of revenue were not likely to be reached by £3,000,000, that my estimates of expenditure would be exceeded by 17¾ millions, and that, allowing for what I had in hand from the Consols loan, I should want to borrow at least £10,000,000 more before the close of the year. Sir, I do not complain of those prophecies; I recognise that it is the ordinary duty of a self-respecting Opposition to view with suspicion even statements of fact by a Minister, and always to refuse to credit his anticipations; but at any rate I may congratulate myself that on this occasion their prophecies have been completely falsified.

  WAR EXPENDITURE—SOUTH AFRICA AND CHINA.
  Out of the total expenditure of the year £73,197,000 was for war charges in South Africa and China. This sum includes £3,367,000 for interest on the war debt; deducting this, as a continuing charge, there remain £63,230,000 military expenditure and £6,600,000 civil expenditure, special to the year for the war, a total of £69,830,000. Towards this, £17,306,000 was contributed from the revenue, including revenue saved by the suspension of the Sinking Fund to the amount of £4,681,000.

  TOTAL EXPENDITURE.
  In addition to the sum of £195,522,000, expenditure chargeable to the income account of the Exchequer, the State provided out of revenue during the
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  year £9,713,000 for the Local Taxation account, and an expenditure on Capital account of £7,548,000—namely, £1,700,000 on military works, £2,906,000 on naval works, £870,000 for the Uganda Railway, £1,061,000 for the Pacific cable, £881,000 for Post Office telephone services, and £130,000 on public buildings in connection with the Land Registry Office. So that the total expenditure provided by the State in the year was £212,783,000.
  I must detain the Committee, I hope not at any great length, on the details of the revenue of the year. The Exchequer receipts from the Custom were £30,993,000—£993,000 more than my estimate. The two most interesting items to the Committee undoubtedly will be sugar and coal.

  SUGAR DUTY.
  Sugar produced £6,390,000, as compared with my estimate of £5,100,000. The main reason for the great excess was that there were large forestalments of sugar in December, January, and February, in anticipation, perhaps, of an increased duty. I think I may claim that the sugar duty has been a most successful tax. It has been successful in two ways, and for two reasons. In the first place, I wish to bear my strong testimony to the admirable work done by the Customs authorities in devising the details of the tax, and the tact and judgment with which they have carried it into execution. That has contributed greatly to the smoothness with which it has worked. In the second place, I have had a stroke of good fortune in the circumstances of the year. There has been, as the Committee are perhaps aware, an exceptionally good harvest of beet sugar; and that has lowered the price of sugar to such an extent that, so far as wholesale purchasers of sugar are concerned, I believe for several months past they have been paying only from 1s. 10d. to 2s. a cwt. more, including the duty of 4s. 2d. per cwt., than they paid a year ago. And although no doubt at first, as I anticipated, the retail purchaser of sugar had the price raised against him to the extent of ½d. in the pound, yet even that has gone down in many places certainly to ¼d. in the pound; and I believe in some cases to no increase at all, as compared with the prices last

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  year, when there was no duty on sugar. I hope it will be felt by the Committee that the somewhat doleful prophecies which came from some hon. Members whom I now see on the Benches opposite, including the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, as to the terrible burden that this sugar duty was about to impose on the working classes, have, to a great extent at any rate, been falsified.

  COAL DUTY.
  Now I come to another tax, which was even more bitterly opposed than the duty on sugar—the export duty on coal. We do not hear much about that now. That duty produced last year £1,314,000—a little more than my estimate, after allowing for the exemption granted to certain contracts made before the date of the Budget, and for the rebate on coal not exceeding the price of 6s. per ton free on board. The total export of coal in the twelve months ending with the 31st of last month was 44,064,000 tons; in the previous twelve months it had been 45,153,000 tons. I anticipated a decrease on account of what everybody knows has occurred—the great commercial depression in Germany, which is a large purchaser of our coal; and similar conditions though less in extent, in other coal importing countries. But, comparing the exports of the year ending March 31st last, with the exports of the year ending March 31st, 1900, which were 43,694,000 tons, it will be seen that the exports of last year were higher than those of any-previous year except the record year which immediately preceded it. Although no doubt the imports of coal into Hamburg from all sources have been less than in the previous year, yet our coal in that market has held its own; and, having carefully consulted our Consuls at several places in the Mediterranean, I think I am in a position to form a pretty certain estimate that the competition of American coal in the Mediterranean, which began owing to the high prices in the year 1900, is not likely to be continued to any extent in the year that is now before us.
  Sir, there has been a curious matter with regard to this export of coal. I alluded last year to the effect the duty
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  might have on our great shipping interest, and ventured to suggest that our ship-owners, when clearing from home ports, might with advantage devote a little more space on board their ships to coal than they had previously done, so as to save them from paying the duty on coaling abroad. That was laughed at at the time; I was told I knew nothing about shipping. But the shipowners have acted upon my advice. In the year 1901 the exports of bunker coal, which, as everyone knows, is duty free, amounted to 11,827,000 tons; in the year just ended. March 31st, they amounted to 13,966,000 tons, which pretty well proves that many shipowners have taken coals for the round voyage instead of coaling, as they did formerly, partly at foreign ports, and thus a change has been effected which cannot but be to the advantage of our coal industry at home. On the whole, I will venture to say that, as far as the experience of this last year goes, there has been no ground whatever shown for those prophecies of ruin to our great coal mining and exporting industry of which we heard so much in this House last year from the representatives of that industry. I do not say that the experience of last year is conclusive, because, of course, a large part of our exports were under contracts made before the date of the Budget. The year that is to come will be a much fairer test. But this I will say, that, if the result should show that there has been in that year no increase in the export of our coal, or even a decrease as compared with former years, that will not be to my mind any proof whatever that this duty ought to be repealed.

  WINE DUTIES.
  I have little more to say with regard to Customs revenue. Some people are fond of suggesting to me, and I have even had such suggestions from Members of this House, that I might raise a great revenue by increasing the wine duties upon such articles as champagne. [Opposition cries of "Hear, hear!"] I see that that opinion is held at the present moment. The wine duties produced £38,000 less than in the year before, and the falling off was entirely in the stronger and higher taxed wines.

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  I venture to say that it would be absolutely impossible to obtain an increased revenue from the wine duties, and that the only result of attempting to do so would be this, that more people would drink English champagne than think they drink it at the present moment. I allowed a considerable sum for the effect of forestalments in spirits in the previous year in my estimate of the receipts from foreign spirits, but the decrease of the revenue from that source somewhat exceeded my expectation.

  TOBACCO AND TEA DUTIES.
  The tobacco revenue is one which should be noticed. The Exchequer receipts from tobacco in the year before last were£12,839,000. Of that, £1,500,000 was due to forestalments and really belonged to the revenue of last year. Therefore, in estimating my revenue from tobacco last year, I put that estimate as low as £11,100,000. But the actual yield to the Exchequer has only been £10,565,000. I am afraid that I cannot say that the revenue from tobacco is a growing revenue, but this year, at any rate, I expect a better yield, because fortunately there were no forestalments this Spring. I think that those gentlemen who attempted it in the previous year a little burned their fingers. We have from tea an increased revenue of £490,000 above my estimate. That concludes my review of the Customs Revenue.

  EXCISE, BEER AND SPIRITS.
  I now turn to the Inland Revenue. Excise shows a heavy falling off. The receipts last year were £31,600,000 as compared with £33,100,000 in the year before. Beer fell by £200,000, producing only £13,300,000, and this has been the second year in which there has been a decrease in the consumption of beer. I think the reason has been that brewers generally, instead of adding the tax to their price, have decreased the gravity of their beer; but their customers do not like the diluted article as well as the previous article. Certainly it has happened last year that fewer balk barrels, as they are technically called, have gone into consumption from the breweries than went into consumption the year before. The revenue from home spirits has largely decreased. Last year it was£17,630,000, a decrease of £1,370,000 as compared with the year before, but nearly all this is due, not to decreased
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  consumption on the part of the people, but to forestalments of the duty, by clearances of spirits in the year before, depriving last year of the revenue which properly belonged to it. Here again, though I cannot say that the revenue from spirits is buoyant, yet I shall expect increased receipts from spirits in the year before us. We received from glucose £64,000 under excise duty in nine months.

  DEATH DUTIES.
  I now turn to the death duties. They produced £18,398,000, namely, £14,200,000 to the Exchequer, and' £4,198,000 to the Local Taxation Fund. The Exchequer receipts were £1,220,000 more than the previous year, and £200,000 more than my estimate. These high receipts were due to two causes on which I had calculated. In the first place, I had made arrangements to clear up a good many outstanding arrears, for the benefit, not only of the Exchequer, but also of the parties concerned, as a preliminary towards adopting in the death duty office certain arrangements for expediting business which were very much needed for the advantage of the public, and which will result, I believe, from the recommendations of a Committee presided over by the hon. and learned Member for Haddington. In the second place, at this time last year, I had reason to anticipate that the duties on certain large estates would become payable during the year. I am afraid both of those causes will not be so operative in the year now before us, and that I shall have-to make a lower estimate of the yield from death duties. I may say generally, that the receipts from death duties have already suffered from the heavy fall in value of Stock Exchange Securities, especially Railway Securities, which has led, not only to a lower value in the case of the estates which fell in for death duty, but also sometimes to estates paying a lower rate of duty than they would have done three or four years ago. The total capital value of the property paying estate duty last year was £264,000,000 or £2,000,000 more than in the previous year.

  STAMPS.
  Stamps produced £7,800,000, £25,000 less than in the previous year. There was no real revival of business on the Stock

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  Exchange, and there was a curious forestalment in the year 1900–01, of the Companies' capital duty, owing to the passing of the new Companies Act, which came into operation on January 1st, 1901, and led to a great many promoters taking care to register their companies in December, 1900, in order that they might escape the operation of the Act.

  INCOME TAX.
  Last, but not least, I come to the income tax. I may say that though sometimes, no doubt, the death duties—the reform and extension of which we owe to the right hon. Gentleman opposite, as I have always acknowledged—may be a useful lifebuoy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a time of difficulty, yet the real ship which bears the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this country over a stormy ocean is not the death duties, but the income tax. The yield from income tax last year was £34,800,000, a million more than my estimate. Last year I pointed out to the Committee that the yield per penny of the income tax had in the previous year been higher than had ever previously been known, although the tax stood at as high a rate as 1s. in the£1. And I believe I stated that the natural result of increasing it to 1s. 2d. would be that the yield per penny would show a decrease. That had been in accordance with the experience of years gone by. But this has been so far from being the ease, that the yield from income tax last year was more than £2,500,000, higher than has ever been known before. I am grateful for the prompt response of the payers of income tax to the necessities of the country. There has been no attempt whatever—there never is—on the part of the inland Revenue authorities, to accelerate the collection of the income tax, this year more than in other years. But, nevertheless, the collection has been as I have stated; and I can only hope that, although no doubt the Income Tax at the present rate is a heavy burden in many cases, yet those cases are not quite so numerous as some persons would suppose.

  EXCHEQUER BALANCES.
  The Exchequer Balances show a satisfactory change. On April 1st,
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  1901, they stood at £5,597,000. On the same date this year they stood at £8,567,000, and indeed they would have stood at a higher figure by £1,264,000 if there had not been some slight delay in repaying an advance which had been made by the Exchequer for some capital expenditure, and which has since been repaid. Of course the increase in the balances was mainly due to the £4,029,000 surplus receipts from the Consols loan of last year.

  NATIONAL DEBT.
  The account of the National Debt, I am afraid, is not quite so satisfactory. On March 31st last it stood at £768,408,000, but that included £20,532,000 expended in reproductive works, and repaid, as the Committee are aware, by Votes on the annual Estimates both as to interest and capital. Deducting that, therefore, as I have done in previous years, the total dead weight of debt was £747,876,000, being £59,884,000 more than last year. That, of course, is due to the Consols loan of £60,000,000 last Spring. The Funded Debt showed a net increase owing to that loan of £58,405,000, because £1,595,000 was paid off owing to the operation of life annuities and the redemption of the Land Tax. There was also an increase of £1,479,000 included in the total, on account of the increased value of terminable annuities, due to the further fall in Consols and the larger amount of stock which would have to be created to replace the annuities. I may state that the Unfunded Debt has not been increased in the year, and that, so far as Treasury Bills are concerned, the average rate of discount at which I have been able to place those Bills in the last six months has been £2 18s. 9d., more than ¾ per cent. less than in the same period of the two previous years.

  WAR EXPENDITURE, SOUTH AFRICA AND CHINA—THREE YEARS ESTIMATE.
  Perhaps it may be convenient if I add to this statement an estimate, which can only be a rough estimate—for the accounts in many cases are not yet completed—of the cost of the wars in which we have been engaged in South Africa and China during the three years ended March 31st last. The total expenditure on these wars has

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  been £165,034,000, made up in this way:—Interest on war debt charged to consolidated fund services £4,967,000; supply grants for South Africa £154,407,000, and for China £5,660,000; making a total of £165,034,000. This has been defrayed by loans to the amount of £119,614,000, and out of revenue, including the revenue set free by the suspension of the sinking fund, to the extent of £45,420,000. I may remind the Committee that, besides the anticipations which we have, and which are coming nearer, of repayment from the wealth of the Transvaal towards the cost of the war in South Africa, we have our share of the Chinese indemnity, which amounts to something like £6,000,000, and which, although not yet realised, has been treated as a very valuable asset by other European Powers, to set against this expenditure. When realised it ought, I think, to be devoted to the reduction of our debt.

  GENERAL ESTIMATE FOR THE NEXT FINANCIAL YEAR.
  Now I have completed my review of the past, and I turn to what I know you are all anticipating—the prospects of the future. I will take the expenditure for the year first. The Consolidated Fund services, including the charge for the sinking fund on the old debt, and £3,650,000 for interest on the war debt, will amount to £29,450,000; the Army Estimates £69,665,000; the Navy Estimates £31,255,000; the Civil Service Estimates, including £1,800,000 special grant in aid in "South Africa, £26,448,000; Customs and Inland Revenue Services £3,039,000; Postal Services £14 752,000; making a total of £174,609,000.
  The revenue on the present basis of taxation should yield as follows: Customs, allowing for a full year's yield of coal duty, £32,800,000; Excise, in which again there are no forestalments, £32,700,000; Death Duties, which I must put at a million pounds lower than last year for the reason I have stated £13,200,000; Stamps, £8,200,000; hand Tax and House Duty, £2,500,000; Income Tax, £36,600,000: total Tax Revenue, £126,000,000. Then comes the non-tax Revenue: Post Office £14,800,000; Telegraphs, £3,630,000; Crown Lands, £475,000; Suez Canal
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  and similar receipts, £880,000; miscellaneous revenue, £2,000,000, making a total non-tax revenue of £21,785,000. This makes a total revenue on the present basis of taxation of £147,785,000. Deducting that from the estimated expenditure will leave a deficit of £26,824,000.

  FURTHER WAR EXPENDITURE.
  But, Sir, I have a material addition, I am sorry to say, to make to that sum. I would remind the Committee that in the Army Estimates of this rear there was included a sum of £40,000,000 for war expenditure. My right hon. friend the Secretary of State for War stated that that sum would permit of the maintenance of our force in South Africa at its present strength for a period of between eight and nine months, but that it included no provision for gratuities at the end of the war, for transport home, or for any of those charges of great magnitude which had been included in the similar Estimates of last year, the total of which was, I think, 58¼ millions, subsequently increased by Supplementary Estimates of 5 millions in all 63¼ millions. Now, although at the time when that Estimate was made three months ago this was as much as it seemed right to include in the Estimates for War purposes, yet the progress of the war since that time has not been as rapid as the country could have wished; and it will also be clear that if the cost of the war is to be provided for through the whole of the year that is before us, a very large addition must be made to that estimate of £40,000,000. I calculate it at something between 16 and 17 millions. But perhaps I may be asked. "Are you really going in the present circumstances to ask the House of Commons to make such an addition to these Estimates?" Well, Sir, I am. I will tell the Committee why. In the first place, it is my bounden duty as Chancellor of the Exchequer, when I am making the financial statement of the year, when I am asking the Committee to provide for the expenditure of the year, not to take a rosy view, but to put the worst before them, to ask them to provide for the worst rather than the best, and, as I hope I have done before, however unpleasant to myself, honestly and frankly, to lay the position before them.
  But, Sir, more than this. We know that there are conferences proceeding at the present time. I may be asked, "Have you no hope of the happy result of those conferences?" Sir, I have hopes; but I cannot allow myself to be influenced by such hopes on such an occasion. I must put them aside, and I will ask the House to put them aside also, and I will say why. There is great truth in the old maxim, "If you want peace, prepare for war." And those of us who are most anxious for peace—and no one is more anxious for it than the Chancellor of the Exchequer—I think perhaps will see most clearly that nothing is more likely to conduce to peace at such a crisis as that at which we now stand, than a proof by the House of Commons of a firm attitude on the part of the country and of our determination that, if our hopes should unhappily not be realised, at any cost the war shall be carried to a successful issue. Therefore, Sir, I have to ask the Committee to make a large addition to the deficit which I have already stated.

  OTHER ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE.
  I have also to provide for three other matters. In the first place, the Committee are aware that up to July 1st next, either by Votes passed last session or by Estimates already laid on the Table, the whole cost of the equipment and maintenance of the Constabulary in South Africa has been provided for by this country. I am glad to be able to state that, whatever may be the result of what is now going on, Lord Milner has every confidence that in the next financial year of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, which will commence on July 1st, these Colonies will be able to provide for the whole cost of 6,000 of the Constabulary, in addition to what they are at present providing for, the cost of their civil administration, besides the interest on their debt, and the interest due to the bond holders and shareholders of the railways: provided that the railways by July 1st, as I hope may be possible, can be handed over to the civil administration. But, Sir, the whole strength of this Constabulary was fixed at 10,000 men, and assuming that it will be necessary, as I think it will be necessary, to maintain the force at that strength throughout the
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  present financial year, we must provide for the cost of 4,000 of that force. I put that down at £750,000. Then I think it will be necessary for us in the course of the session to ask Parliament for some assistance to our sugar growing Colonies in the West Indies, pending the time when bounties are abolished by the Convention which has just been signed at Brussels. And, finally, I shall have to provide for interest on the fresh debt which will have to be incurred this year. Therefore, taking all these items together, I would ask to be allowed to add 18½ millions to the 27 millions I have already stated, making a total deficit of 45½ millions.

  EXPENDITURE AFTER THE WAR.
  Perhaps, Sir, I may be asked what is to happen if peace should come in a few weeks, and if the large sums of 56 or 57 millions I have suggested should not be all required for the purposes of the war. Well, I would remind the Committee that, in the first place, though war is a very costly thing to wage, it is also a very costly thing to terminate. We shall have to provide for gratuities and bounties to our soldiers who have served in the war. We shall have to provide large sums for disembodiment; considerable sums, I hope, for transport of reservists and others home, and for the maintenance, no doubt, of a considerable force in South Africa. Means will have to be provided for something more—something which I am sure will be more agreeable to the minds of all of us than expenditure on war. Means will have to be provided for the relief and re-settlement of the two Colonies which have been so terribly devastated by the war. Means will have to be provided for rebuilding and restocking farms—farms, I should hope, not only of those who have been our friends in the war and have fought on our own side, but also of: those who boldly and honestly have been our enemies in the war, and whom we hope to make our friends in the future. I think the House of Commons, if peace is made on terms which in our belief will be satisfactory, enduring, and safe, will be generous in these matters; and yet I do not believe that they need involve any great charge upon this country. For I am convinced, looking

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  at the remarkable progress which has been already made even, during the war in the restoration of industrial prosperity in the goldfields and in the more important centres of the Transvaal, that it will be perfectly possible for the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, if we were to advance to them loans for the purposes I have described and for other similar purposes—for railway extension, for enabling them to obtain on fair terms control over their own railways, and matters of that kind—to repay such advances, both capital and interest, on terms which would be eminently satisfactory to the taxpayers of this country. Of course, any proposals of this kind could not be carried out by the Government without being fully explained to the House of Commons and without the authority of the House of Commons, and therefore no one need fear, as I think the right hon. Gentleman's Question tonight rather suggested, that, if the money which I shall ask the Committee to provide primarily for the possible cost of the war is not expended on that service, it will not be expended beneficially, and in matters which will be infinitely more agreeable to us than any war expenditure can be.

  PROPOSALS TO MEET THE DEFICIT.
  I have, therefore, to deal with a deficit of 45½ millions. This is, however, not the net deficit, because I propose to reduce it by suspending the Sinking Fund, as I did last year and the year before, which means rather more than 4½ millions. The deficit would therefore be reduced to 41 millions. Now, how is that to be met? I hope that the Committee will be of the opinion, as they have been of opinion during the last two years, that part of it shall be provided by increased taxation. It is primarily a war deficit, and. being a war deficit. I think part of it ought to be provided for, by a call on the direct taxpayers as well as on the indirect taxpayers of the country.

  INCOME TAX.
  I make that call again on the payers of the income tax. ["Oh, oh!"and cheers]—I think I can show, in spite of the protests of my right hon. friend, that that is necessary and justified by the circumstances of the case.
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  Sir, why has the income tax always been regarded as our great financial engine in the time of war? Why, surely for this reason—that it can be increased without that disturbance of trade, commerce, and industry which the increase of any other tax must always necessarily involve. That is, so to speak, the one redeeming feature in what otherwise would be a most disagreeable operation. There is a converse side to this question to which I wish to call attention. I have referred to the situation when the war comes to an end. I do not know when that will be, but I think there is almost a universal feeling, even in quarters most hostile to this country, that the war is now approaching its end. Well, Sir, if during the war we do not shrink from bearing that part of the cost of the war which we fairly ought to bear, then at the end of the war must come the reduction of taxation. On previous occasions it has always been felt that the income taxpayers had the first claim to such a reduction.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: They have never had it.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: Never had it!
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: No.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: The income tax rose to 1s. 4d. in the pound during the Crimean war, and when the war was ended it was reduced to 7d. in the pound. I am not prepared to promise so large a reduction, because there are other circumstances to be considered; but this I will venture to say, that the increase of 1d. in the pound which I now ask, ought, in our opinion, to be considered as the first item to be reduced when the happy days of peace and reduction of taxation are reached. That increase will produce £2,000,000 in the present year, and next year an additional £500,000

  STAMP DUTIES.
  Now I come to another form of direct taxation, as to which I shall ask leave to

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  make a slight addition. I refer to the stamp duties. As every one knows who has studied our finances the stamp duties are remarkable in their vicissitudes, but there is one kind of which it may be said it regularly increases, and that is a small and uniform stamp duty, which gives no trouble, and does not tempt evasion. Amongst the small stamp duties is a stamp duty of 1d. on bills at sight, and amongst these are reckoned dividend warrants and the cheques that we draw upon our bankers. Sir, I am going to ask that this 1d. tax may be 2d. I think hon. Members will be surprised when they hear how much it is anticipated that this will yield. The Inland Revenue authorities know pretty well how much is derived from this tax, because, of course, it is the custom for bankers to have their cheque-books stamped by the Inland Revenue authorities before circulating them to their customers; and, assuming that time is given, as it ought to be given, before the tax comes into force, to make the necessary arrangements, say up to July 1st, the yield for the current year of an ad ditional 1d. on bills at sight may be no less than half a million. That is the yield for the year 1902–03. The 1d. stamp duty on cheques yielded in 1901–02 the sum of £800,000. The fact is, cheques have so enormously increased that they have become the paper currency of the country; they are used for any sum, however small. It is possible that some economically minded persons may not give quite as many cheques at 2d. as they have given in the past at 1d. If so, no one ought to be more delighted than the bankers, whose accounts will be greatly simplified. But I do not believe myself that that will be largely the result, for the simple reason, that we have all got out of the practice of carrying much cash about us; and if it costs 2d. to send a money order for£1, and as much to send postal orders for 21s. 6d., I do not see why you should be able to transmit money through the post by cheque cheaper than you can by the recognised postal tariff. I hope the Committee will consider, bearing in mind the enormous convenience of cheques, the delights of a banking account, the charm of overdrawing that account
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  whenever your banker will allow you that 2d. on a cheque is not too much to pay to the State for these privileges.

  INDIRECT TAXATION.
  Now, Sir, I come to indirect taxation—
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Hear, hear!
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I am afraid that our old favourites, beer, spirits and wine, are even less promising subjects for increased taxation than they were a year ago. I think I have said something already to show the Committee that any attempt to increase taxation on those articles would not, in present circumstances, be likely to add to the revenue. Tobacco is in a similar position; nay, it is even in a worse position, for, although it has always hitherto been considered as a most peaceful and soothing article, it is now the subject of an internecine warfare on the part of rival manufacturers which I hope may result in ultimate benefit to the consumer, but which at present has utterly disorganised the trade; and I know from past experience how very sensitive a subject tobacco is to any changes in taxation, and how dangerous it is to attempt changes with a hope of greater yield to the revenue. Then, Sir, I come to tea. Well, I have listened to the pitiful cry of our fellow-subjects the tea-producers in India and Ceylon, and bearing in mind that tea, which is almost a necessary of life, is already taxed to as much as 75 per cent. of its average value, I confess I should be sorry to increase that tax. I turn to sugar. Several very astute individuals, who have no doubt cleared sugar very largely in anticipation of an increased duty, have suggested to me that sugar would well bear an addition. I have no particular desire to enable them to charge to their customers duty which they have not paid, and put it into their pockets instead of paying it into the Exchequer. But I may say this. The manufacturing industries which use sugar as a raw material undoubtedly were affected by the imposition of the duty on sugar last year. I do not think it would be fair to disturb those industries again, having before them, as they must necessarily

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  have, the possibility of having to work under altered conditions when the bounties are abolished eighteen months hence. And therefore, Sir, I do not propose to increase the duty on sugar.
  But I have a stronger reason than anything I have named for preferring, in my search for new indirect taxation, to add some article or articles to our tariff—
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Hear, hear!
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: Rather than to increase the taxation of articles already on our tariff. Sir, I ventured last year to impress strongly upon the Committee that the financial difficulty with which we had to deal was not only the war difficulty, but the rapid increase of our ordinary expenditure. I pointed out to them that in six years our ordinary expenditure had increased by no less than £28,000,000, and I think I went so far as to say that, in my judgment, if that rate of increase continued, the country must come within reach of actual financial ruin. Well. Sir, I am happy to say that that rate of increase has not continued—I am speaking, the Committee will remember, of ordinary expenditure, not of the war expenditure. Last year the ordinary Estimates and the Consolidated Fund services showed together an increase of ordinary expenditure over the previous year of no less than £12,468,000. That is what I was mainly alluding to. This year, Sir, I am happy to say, there has been a salutary change. The increase over the original Estimates for last year is £1,787,000, and the increased interest on our war debt is £1,650,000, a total of £3,437,000, as against nearly 12½ millions the year before. But, Sir, that is still an increase, and I cannot conceal from myself that, looking to the continual augmentations of military and naval armaments in other countries, looking to the ever-increasing demands made upon the Exchequer, flowing from our modern civilisation, we must expect some increase in our expenditure in years to come. I am therefore endeavouring now, as I endeavoured last year, when I asked the Committee to raise additional
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  taxation in order to meet the charges of the war. so to frame that taxation that when peace returns and it is possible also to return to ordinary expenditure, we may have no difficulty in settling our financial system on a basis which will be equitable to all the taxpayers of the country. Sir, I have heard the cheers of my hon. friend the Member for Central Sheffield. I know that what he would tempt me to is a small tax upon a great many articles.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Foreign articles.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: Now, Sir, I do not agree with that. In my belief the great clearance of the tariff with which the names of Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone will always be associated, which cleared it of many—I might almost say of scores and hundreds—of articles, many of them producing very little revenue, was a greater relief to the springs of industry in this country, was a greater advantage in increasing trade and commerce and the chances of employment at good wages of our working men, and therefore in promoting their well-being, than the removal of any particular tax on any particular article, however necessary that article might be to their comfort. Therefore, in seeking for new indirect taxation, what I desire to find, as I desired to find last year, is an article practically of universal consumption, from which, therefore, a large revenue could be produced to the Exchequer without any injurious or oppressive burden on any individual or upon any class. I have had, of course I always have, many suggestions with regard to taxation; but in nearly all of them I have noticed this—that the interests of the Exchequer are not the first thing which my correspondents have at heart. There is a sort of thin veneer of regard for the Exchequer over the suggestions; but when I look underneath I discover generally that they desire to tax some odious object out of existence—such as, for example, betting advertisements in newspapers—and they would be perfectly satisfied if they were taxed out of existence; although, of course, that result would not yield one single penny to the Exchequer.

  HISTORY OF THE REGISTRATION DUTY ON CORN AND FLOUR.
  Now, my primary duty is to look for revenue, and my ideal of a tax is that which will yield the most revenue with the least injury and inconvenience to the community. Some persons, Sir, have thought that they have discovered such a tax in what used to be called the old registration duty on corn and flour. Well, I should like to say something to the Committee on the history of that tax. When Sir Robert Peel, in the year 1846, proposed the gradual abolition of the protective duties on corn, which according to the tariff of 1842 might have amounted to as much as£1 a quarter, he deliberately retained the duly of a shilling per qr. upon corn, and 4½d per cwt. upon flour and meal: and that tax. which was remodelled in 1864, went on for no less than twenty-three years, paying part of the cost of the Crimean War, until Mr. Lowe, not quite knowing what to do with his surplus—I wish I was in that position—abolished it in the year 1869 at a loss to the Exchequer which even then amounted to £900,000 a year.
  Why did Mr. Lowe abolish that tax? He gave two reasons. The first was that he believed that, though, of course, it was a very small duty, it had the effect of preventing this country from becoming the commercial entrepôt for the corn trade of the world; and that if it were abolished, this country being situated between America on the one side, and the corn-growing countries of Eastern Europe on the other, would become such a commercial entrepôt for the corn trade, to the great benefit of our merchants. That was very plausible: but Mr. Lowe's expectations have been entirely disappointed. Out of the enormous imports of corn and flour into this country, the most trifling proportion is ever re-exported.
  But Mr. Lowe gave a more important reason. He said—
  "This is a lax on only one-third of our total consumption of corn and Hour."
  At that time only one third of our consumption was imported from abroad whereas at present two-thirds are, imported from abroad. Mr. Lowe said that to levy a tax on only one-third of the total consumption of an article
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  is wrong in two ways. In the first place, it raises the price of the whole quantity of the article consumed—that which is produced in this country as well as that which is imported from abroad. It therefore takes more out of the pocket of the consumer than it gives to the Exchequer; and it gives protection to the home producer at the cost of the public at large. That is, I think, a fair statement of Mr. Lowe's argument. It was a beautiful theory, but with regard to this registration duty it was only a theory, and it had never occurred to anyone before.
  When Sir Robert Peel in 1846 alluded to this duty he evidently felt that its effect upon the price of the article was absolutely nothing. If hon. Members refer to the debates of that period, they will find what I am quoting. When he announced that at the end of three years from that date—1846—the protective duties on corn and flour would entirely terminate, and that foreign corn would be imported duty free, almost with the very next breath he interpreted "duty free" to mean that it would be subject only to what he called the nominal duty of one shilling. And in later years, when Budget after Budget saw more and more articles removed from our tariff, this duty still remained. Through times which may be regarded as the heyday of free trade doctrine, no one ever objected to the duty on the ground of its being a protective duty. This was not because the attention of Parliament was never called to it.
  In 1864 Mr. Gladstone deliberately remodelled the duty, which had been 1s. a quarter. He altered it to 3d. hundred weight, with the result of increasing the duty on some kinds of corn and decreasing it on others; and he even proposed to include some kinds of grain which had not previously been included. Did any one then suggest that it was a protective duty? No. Was there ever any greater free-trader than Mr. Gladstone in 1864? Never. And yet what did he say of the tax? He did not desire it to be a permanent tax; but even while he was, in that very year, reducing the ditties on tea and sugar, he said with regard to this tax that I it was a tax which produced a considerable revenue and which it would not be convenient then to part with.
  Then I come to a later date—the present day. I heard a cheer from the hon. Member for Poplar. He has given some study to financial questions. His words may be listened to with deference, at any rate on the Opposition side of the House. The hon. Member has written a book on this subject, and in that work he has referred to the abolition of this duty by Mr. Lowe. He states his opinion, and I have no doubt that he still holds it that the registration duty on corn and flour violated in theory the principles of free trade; but the hon. Member goes on to say that it did not violate those principles in practice. He says—
  "There was something to be said against the permanent relinquishment of a branch of revenue profitable in itself and collected with very little trouble, expense, or hindrance to trade; and practically not affecting the price of food. And it is pretty certain that if the duty were now in existence it would be retained."
  I agree with the hon. Member when he adds that it was "a reckless act" to relinquish this duty. And it was proved to be so by the result; for, as I will proceed to show, the abolition of the duty, as the hon. Member states, practically did not at all affect the price of food—not even of corn like wheat, barley, and oats, which are so largely produced in this country.
  The duty was abolished on June 1st, 1869. The monthly average price of wheat in January of that year was 51 s. 7d. per quarter. It fell from that time until, in the last week of May, it was 45s. 2d. That was also the last week of the duty. On June 1st the duty was abolished, and the price of wheat remained the same; then it went stead ly up until August, when it amounted to 52s. 1d.; and it was not until the following December that the price of wheat was again as low as it was in the previous May. What does that prove? It proves that the price of wheat is regulated by factors infinitely more potent than that of a duty of 3d. per cwt. It is regulated by questions of demand and supply, by questions of plentiful or bad harvests, by questions of the cost of transport; and as to the effect of a 3d. duty per cwt. on the price of wheat, it could be nothing more at the most than that of the dock clues
  184
  which are charged on the vessel landing its cargo; it could be nothing nearly so much as the protection now given to foreign wheat by the difference between the freights for that wheat and the rates charged by the railways for our own wheat.
  Did the duty check the imports of corn into this country? Did the repeal of the duty increase those imports? From 1849, when protective duties were abolished, until 1859 there was not much change in the total imports. In 1862 they rose to 74,000,000 cwt.—double what they were in 1859. Then they fell. Then in 1869 they rose to 80,000,000 cwt., which was the year of the repeal of the registration duty; and in the following year, when anybody would have supposed that, if the duty had anything to do with the matter, they would have largely risen, they fell again to 74,000,000 cwt.
  Did the repeal of the duty have any effect on the price of flour? I find that the price of flour in the Mark-lane returns for the eleven weeks before the repeal was 39s. per sack of 280lb.—precisely the same as it was for the eleven weeks after the repeal. Did it make any difference in the price of bread? I think all who have studied these subjects know that the price of bread does not vary with small changes in the price of corn. The retail price of bread, like the retail price of all articles, is established by averages over a wide range of quantities and qualities, and over considerable periods of time. I have no doubt that our bakers are extremely ready to seize any excuse for increasing the price of bread, and I am afraid that the bakers and dealers together have made proportionately very much more profit out of the low price of foodstuffs in this country than has ever come to the retail consumer. But this 3d. duty on corn would amount to a very small fraction of a farthing indeed on the 2lb. loaf; and there is sufficient competition among the bakers to make it certain that, if any one attempted to raise the price of bread on such a ground as this, he would soon find it to his advantage to return to the former price. The records of price in 1869 are very imperfect; but I find that the fall of wheat between January and May of that year was 6s. 7d. a quarter; and the

  185
  fall in the price of the quartern loaf in the East End of London was rather less than ½d. And when the duty was abolished, it had no perceptible effect whatever on the price of bread.

  RE-IMPOSITION OF THE DUTY.
  I think that the Committee will not feel astonished if, after the arguments I have laid before them, I say that in my judgment the repeal of this duty by Mr. Lowe in 1869 was a great mistake; and that a time when it is essential to the country, in my judgment, to increase the yield from indirect taxation is a time also when it ought to be reimposed. The duty will be leviable, as before, at the time of importation when passing the Customs entry, on documentary evidence of weight, unless intended for re-exportation, in which case bond will be taken for the duty until it is re-exported. With this exception no bonding will be allowed, nor any drawback, for the same reason for which they were not allowed before, as the duty is so low. The duty will be 3d. per cwt. on all corn and grain.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Well done; well done.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: Assuming that to be the duty on corn and grain, what should he the correlative duty on flour and meal? In the years to which I have referred that correlative duty was 4½d. per cwt.—50 per cent. more. It was based, of course, upon a calculation of the average quantity of corn which it took to make a certain amount of flour. But since that time the circumstances of the milling industry have undergone a considerable change. In those days the amount of flour produced from, let me say, 100cwt. of wheat was calculated to be 80cwt., it was then produced by grinding with millstones, a process now practically extinct—at any rate in the countries from which our flour comes. Under the present process of grinding flour. 100cwt. of wheat would only yield 72ewt. instead of 80cwt. of flour: but the flour would be of much finer quality, because it would not include the offal which was formerly included in the old flour. Therefore, I think it
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  is clear that in order to equalise the duty as between flour and corn we must put the duty on flour somewhat higher than it was before, and I propose to put it at 5d. per cwt,. The duty will be imposed on all kinds of flour and meal. The total yield of those duties for the current year I estimate at £2,650,000, making the total estimated receipts from new taxation £5,150,000.

  BORROWINGS.
  As my estimated deficit was 41 millions, that would leave a deficit still remaining of about 35½ millions. I shall propose to borrow 32 millions of that in a form which I will state to the Committee when I propose the Resolution; and to find the rest by a draft upon our Exchequer balances, which, as I have already explained, are nearly double what they were last year.
  But I have to add something more with regard to borrowing. Last year I pointed out to the Committee the difficulty in our present circumstances of financing the Exchequer during the first, second, and third quarters of the year, because, with so large a part of our revenue coming from the income tax, and being almost entirely received in the fourth quarter, and expenditure going on as it goes on in wartime throughout the year, it would be necessary to enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day to obtain funds temporarily from some other source than the ordinary borrowing on Ways and Means, or by deficiency advances. I may have to ask the Committee later on for temporary borrowing powers, which would be by Treasury hills, or some short loans of that sort, to the extent of ten or twelve millions. I think the Committee will see that the necessity for anything of that kind will depend upon circumstances which we cannot now foretell. Therefore I do not include these temporary borrowing powers in the borrowing powers for which I shall ask the Committee to pass the Resolution.

  FINAL BALANCE-SHEET.
  My final balance-sheet will therefore be as follows—Expenditure, after suspending the Sinking Fund, but including the addition of £18,500,000 beyond the present Estimates, £188,469,000. Revenue—Customs. £35,450,000; Excise, £32,700,000; Death Duties, £13,200,000; Stamps, £8,700,000; Land Tax and

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  House Duty, £2,500,000; Income Tax, £38,600,000, making a total tax revenue of £131,150,000. Add the non tax revenue of £21,785,000, and the total revenue will be £152,935,000. Deducting this from the estimated expenditure, there will be a deficit of 35½ millions, to be provided for by a loan of 32 millions and by a draft on the Exchequer Balances, to which I have already referred.
  I have endeavoured to explain, to the best of my ability, and under somewhat difficult circumstances, the proposals which I have to make to the Committee for the financial arrangements of the coming year. I hope that these proposals may receive their favourable consideration. I have felt it my duty not to prophesy smooth things. I have felt it my duty to put the worst, rather than the best, before the judgment of the Committee. It would have been a much more agreeable task to have fallen in with what was almost the suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition, and have made my Budget depend upon hopes which possibly may not be realised.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I did not suggest that.
  SIR M HICKS BEACH: Well, that was what I thought was the suggestion. It may be felt that my demands are too large for the circumstances of the case. It may be felt that what I have asked for may never be required. But, Sir, I venture to say it is always best to choose the disagreeable task. It is not agreeable to me to feel that this year again I am to some extent undoing the good work which my predecessors have done, and which I imitated in more prosperous times, in the reduction of the National Debt. It is even more unpleasant to be obliged to ask a limited class of the community—those who pay income tax—to bear an additional burden, and to restore to our tariff an article of universal consumption which has been free from taxation for a generation. But, Sir, I remember something winch Mr. Gladstone said when, in the early days of the Crimean War, after a series of Budgets in which article after article
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  had been freed from taxation, he had to propose new taxation for war expenditure. I remember he then warned the Committee whom he was addressing that, in the vista of expenditure opening before them, it was impossible to say how long a continuance of exemption from taxation would be accorded to the articles which he had himself freed from it, among which, it will be remembered, corn and flour were not included.

  GENERAL FINANCIAL SITUATION.
  The position today is much the same, to my mind, as it was in Mr. Gladstone's time. The crux of the situation is the necessity for increased indirect taxation. I have proposed such an increase. I know very well that the very name of a duty on corn may arouse prejudices strong and deep, born in the days when such a duty meant a duty intended to make corn dear, which, sometimes at any rate, was but too successful in its object. That, Sir, is not the duty which I propose today. It may be that attempts will be made to fan these prejudices in to a flame by a renewal of the cry of taxing the food of the people—[Opposition cries of "Hear, hear!"]—a cry which has always seemed to me somewhat absurd, considering that some kinds of wholesome food have always been taxed in our tariff. I cannot myself see that it is more wrong to tax an article that is consumed by a man than to tax the means by which he purchases it. I remember this cry was attempted to be raised last year when I proposed the duty on sugar. I remember that the good sense of the people at large rejected it; and I believe they will reject it again. I am convinced that they know and feel that, with the high wages of the present day (and bread so cheap that even in comparatively poor households I fear it is sometimes wasted), the tax I am proposing could at the very worst be but a very trifling contribution on their part to the cost of a war which the great bulk of them approve, and to the ever-increasing charge for the Navy, one of whose primary duties it is to protect the food supply of the country. Of this I am quite certain—that by no other indirect taxation could by any possibility so much money be found for the Exchequer

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  with so little effect upon the price of the article on which it is imposed, with so little injury to any manufacturing industry, or with less general disturbance of the trade and commerce of the country. I beg to

  B.—CUSTOMS—CORN, GRAIN AND MEAL &c.
  Motion made, and Question proposed. "That there shall be charged on and after the 15th day of April, 1902, the following Customs import duties:—

  £

  s.

  d.

  Corn and Grain of all kinds, and peas, beans, and lentils - - - per cwt.

  0

  0

  3

  Flour and all kinds of meal and prepared grain, starch, and all farinaceous and starchy substances used as articles of food - per cwt.

  0

  0

  5"

  —(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I am sure the House has listened with satisfaction to the speech in which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able, with all the incapacities from which he has been suffering, to introduce his financial statement tonight. With a great deal of what he has said and with many of the principles which he has laid down, I tonight, as I have on former occasions, have been able to cordially concur; but with the last proposal which occupied the conclusion or his speech I must express my entire and absolute disagreement. Much as we all regret the enormous burdens placed on the people of this country as the consequence of this war, I do not think there is anything that will bring home to them more completely the real results of the war in all its branches than will the taxation proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer tonight. In his third war Budget the right hon. Gentleman has been compelled to again increase the income tax, and has also been obliged to place, on the first necessity of the food of the people, a tax from which they have been so long free. I believe I can say that, on this side of the House at least, that proposal will meet with the most decided opposition.
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  The right hon. Gentleman asked why there should be any more objection to this proposal than to the sugar tax. Well. Sir, sugar is a comfort, but corn is a tiring of the first necessity, and. therefore, a tax upon corn fails upon the very poorest of the poor. And it is a tiling in which they are not able to economise, for many of them are not able to obtain sufficient of the bare necessaries of subsistence.
  What is the argument on which the right hon. Gentleman relies? His argument is this—that this is so small a tax that it will not affect the consumption of the commodity. Why, Sir, that is the old fallacy of the old Protectionists; but, if the argument is true that the tax will not affect the price, why did the right hon. Gentleman say that he objected to putting a tax upon a great number of commodities? You may say of a great number of commodities that if you put a shilling duty upon them it will not affect their price. In that way you may go through the whole scale of commodities. The right hon. Gentleman's own arguments are self-destructive. I do not propose now to go into detail upon this Point, because we shall have and we ought to have many other occasions for discussing this tax before it is imposed upon the country. I think this is quite the most formidable proposal for taxation that has been made for many a long year. I think too, it is far the most objectionable proposal, and if I had to select the one tax which was the worst that could be chosen I should say it was the tax on corn. The right hon. Gentleman says that it is prejudice to say that it is a tax on the food of the people. It is a tax on the food of the people, and you cannot alter that fact. It is a tax on the very commodity which is the most extreme necessity of the poorest of the poor, and is a tax which of all taxes ought to be avoided. The right hon. Gentleman says it existed for a good many years, and so it did.
  Every body will feel that this means a great deal more than is implied. My sympathy is entirely with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the position in which he finds himself. I do not know anybody who has suffered more from the vicissitudes of fortune in his financial

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  career. He began with three years of extraordinary prosperity. He came into a land flowing with milk and honey. He revelled in surpluses, one after another, though he laid down the proposition that to enjoy a surplus was a proof of the incapacity of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and only showed what a bad calculator he was. If that is discreditable, he has retrieved his reputation, because his surpluses no longer exist. The right hon. Gentleman in that period when I say he revelled in surpluses was able to gratify a good many favoured interests, and he found, even in the extremity of his surpluses, an opportunity of reducing the Sinking Fund. Upon the strength of an Extraordinary Treasury Minute, which expressed its alarm at the prospect of there being a, Sinking Fund of £9,250,000 in the year 1906, the Sinking Fund was reduced by one-third. I think the Treasury need not have been alarmed. At all events, they may be reassured that in 1906 there will not be a Sinking Fund of £9,250,000. I doubt very much, considering the rate of taxation and the rate of expenditure, whether there is any one in this House who will ever see a Sinking Fund again.
  But the right hon. Gentleman has seen lean years, and year after year he has had to repeat the process, which he says is so painful, of increasing taxation. I am sure it is not congenial to the right hon. Gentleman to perform such a task. There is a celebrated comedy of which the title is "A Physician in Spite of Himself." I am quite sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a spendthrift against his will. But, Sir, what we are more concerned with than anything else, and what I desire to know is, what are the prospects we have of a diminution of this rate of expenditure and taxation? Is the taxation we are now paying likely to be diminished when the war is over? That is a question upon which the country ought to have some understanding. The right hon. Gentleman last year in his Budget speech made the remarkable statement that of the taxes imposed in the year 1900, which amounted to £12,000,000, if the war was over in the next month or two not a penny could be remitted. That is the situation. He stated that that £12,000,000 of additional
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  taxation was voted by the House as a contribution to the war and as a war tax. In that year, however, nothing was contributed by taxation to the war. The whole of it was met by loan. I want to know whether the right hon. Gentleman will lay on the Table of the House a statement which will show distinctly how much of the additional taxation that has been I imposed in the last three years has I gone to the war. He told us last year I that none of the taxation of 1900 went to the war, and that it would have been equally necessary if the war had not been going on. In order to ascertain how much of your taxation has gone to the war you ought to defray all your normal expenditure and then see how much of the additional taxation was available for the war. Up to last rear it is quite plain that none lad gone to the war at all. And I think we ought to have a statement in an official form of how much of the additional taxation has gone to the war after defraying normal expenditure. Last year you imposed £11,000,000 of taxation. How much of that has gone to the war? As I understand it, you imposed £12,000,000 in 1900, and £11,000,000 in 1901. How much of that additional taxation has gone to the war, and how much was necessary to meet your normal expenditure? You will find, then, that what has generally been supposed to be a contribution to the war out of taxation has been nothing of the kind. It has been merely ordinary taxation, which would be necessary without the war; and you will find that almost an insignificant fraction has been contributed by taxation to the war. I would, therefore, ask the right hon. Gentleman to give us a clear official statement of the matter, and to let us see exactly how we stand in reference to it. I do not know that the figures are exact, but there may have been £12,000,000 raised in 1900 and £11,000,000 in 1901—that is to say £23,000,000 and of that nearly a half, at all events, has not gone to the war at all, but to ordinary expenditure. That is a matter which. I think, is not clearly understood, and has a very strong bearing on what are the prospects of a reduction of taxation after the war is over.

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  So much for that. Then the right hon. Gentleman has spoken of what are going to be the consequences if, as he devoutly wishes, and as I hope everybody wishes, the war comes to an end. There are, I regret to say, in the War Press those who seem to desire that everything shall happen which will prevent the conclusion of peace. I feel sure that it is not the feeling of this country and of the Members of this House. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said quite truly that there will be heavy expenses in winding up a war. There is no doubt that bringing a war to an end does not bring the expenditure to an end, least of all where you are annexing territories of immense extent. I think we ought to endeavour to form some idea of the hopes that can be held out to the country as to the extent to which the present taxation which you have imposed is going to be diminished when the war is over. I doubt very much whether it will he diminished at all. In 1815, and at other times, when war was over the income tax was at once repealed. The deficit this year is practically as large as last year. You borrowed a margin of ten millions for war, which, as I understand, is all gone, and the £10,000,000 advanced for deficiencies, which was to be replaced at the end of the year, has not been replaced. You propose to ask again the sum of £10,000,000 or the rea bouts for the purpose of deficiency bills, and you have not repaid the "£10,000,000 you borrowed last year. You have taken out of that £10,000,000, £6,000,000, leaving only £4,000,000, which you propose to apply to the expenditure of this year. That, of course, is an entire failure to fulfil the conditions under which that £10,000,000 was voted by the House.
  SIR. M. HICKS BEACH: I explained to the House that if the war ended by the middle of the year, or at a reasonable time before its close, I should be able to pay off either the whole or part of the £10,000,000 which I borrowed for temporary purposes by redeeming Treasury bills; but I said that if the war went on the money would have to be expended for the purposes of the war. That was quite understood.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I do not quite understand why in the world this additional £10,000,000 should have been asked for only to meet deficiency bills. The only pretence for voting that money was that your income came in largely at the end of the financial year, and that then you would thus be in funds to repay it. That was the bargain, and it has not been fulfilled.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: In discussing the Loan Bill I explained to the House that if the War ended I would be able to repay the money which I had borrowed by redeeming Treasury bills.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The only pretence for voting this money was because your income would come in largely at the end of the year. It was quite independent of the duration of the war. The country may endure this enormous expenditure with greater patience if they are satisfied that all of it has been necessary for the purposes to which you assert that you devote it. But the country is not satisfied of this, and that is why it is impatient under this enormous expenditure. If at the beginning you had perceived that you would need a more mobile Army, and if you had provided yourselves with a properly mounted force at the beginning or even at an early date, the war would have been over long ago. That which you are now beginning to do, you should have done much earlier, and so saved many lives and many millions. Everybody knows that the policy, the strategy in the earlier part of the war, led very largely to the continuance of the war. The country is not satisfied that the money paid on the contracts is money that ought to have been paid, that there has not been a great deal of waste; that when you bought too few horses you did not buy them at too high a price, and too inferior quality. One thinks of the meat contracts. Is not there disquietude in the public mind due to the feeling that, after all, this taxation and this borrowing to such an extent might have been avoided? You have refused an inquiry; you have removed all means of satisfying the country that this expenditure has been necessary and prudent.

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  There is the Still more important question which the House has to consider: What is going to be the expenditure after the war is over, the expenditure on the country you have acquired? It has to be seen whether it is not more expensive to repair than to ruin a country. What is the situation in this enormous territory, in these two colonies which were once independent Republics? What is the condition of your Cape Colony itself? The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of compensation, of restoration, in language which, I am sure, the House will agree with. He said that it was a policy to be applied, not only to out-own people, but to our gallant foes. But does anyone form a conception to himself of what that means? Where is the money to come from? What does it amount to? If we "think in continents" we have to pay in continents. This megalomania is a very fine thing, no doubt, but it is a very costly luxury. All this passion for the extension of territory and the annexation of independent countries involves a ruinous expenditure. Let us see a few of the things it involves. You have to pay first of all the compensations. What will that amount to? You are maintaining the people in the camps. What are you going to do with them when peace happily arrives? There is the settlement expenditure. Where are you going to get the people to settle in the conquered territory? I saw the other day a reported conversation with the late Mr. Rhodes, in which he gave his idea as to what the character of the settlement was to be. He said you ought to have 2,000 people, to whom you should give £4,000 apiece, to settle them as farmers in the Transvaal. That involves a sum of £8,000,000. But what would 2,000 people be, scattered over this enormous territory If you multiply this number by ten, you will not have an inadequate estimate. And who are to go there? I have no doubt you can always pick up people to go and settle anywhere if you give them £4,000; but I should like to see any gentleman conversant with land in this country giving persons without experience, going to farm country which they do not understand, and manage cattle which they have never managed, £4,000 apiece. What would become of that £4,000, and how
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  long would it last? At the end of six months the £4,000 would be gone; and the recipients would not have settled in the country. They would have gone to the Johannesburg diggings to pick up gold there. That would be the history of a settlement scheme of the kind which, if carried out, would cost scores of millions, I see an hon. and learned Gentleman opposite who has studied these matters much. He will confirm me when I say that you can do nothing in that country, which has a great lack of water, without irrigation. Irrigation is costly; and if you are going to irrigate districts as large and France and Spain together, how many millions do you propose to-appropriate for the purpose?
  Then there is another thing to which the right hon. Gentleman alluded—the army of occupation. How many men do you estimate you will require to keep there? The hon. and gallant Member for Sheffield informed us the other day that there ought to be 100,000; and, if possible, a still greater military authority—Sir R. Giffen—appropriates about £25,000,000 of English taxation for the annual cost of the new provinces we have acquired. Well, that means a shilling income tax. But I do not know what the Government estimate is, and I think we ought to have some idea of what the cost is likely to be. The men are to be mounted, and so the force will be more costly. What will be the cost of many thousands of mounted men as an occupation force? At least, you will require, I suppose, half as many men as you have in our Indian possessions, about 30,000, but for the force in India you make India pay. We are told this war is waged for the Empire; but it is to be observed that it is net the Empire that pays: it is this miserably insignificant part of the Empire called the United Kingdom that is to pay for it all.
  And this brings me to the consideration of what the right hon. Gentleman said, that we were Hearing the time when the Transvaal would be able to pay something. I know this—it has been said as a consolation to the country—that when peace comes the gold industry will pay; but that I believe to be founded on fallacy. If loans are made to the

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  Transvaal with the hope of developing the gold mining, I believe the security would not be a good one for anything like the expenditure which will have to be incurred. I believe such loans would have to be defrayed exclusively by the British taxpayers. I have seen, within the last few weeks, some remarkable letters written by a Special Commissioner of the Economist newspaper as to the character of the goldfields in South Africa, and it is to be supposed that what is written specially for such a paper can be accepted with some confidence. He says there have been enormously exaggerated ideas of mining development and gold production in South Africa. I will not weary the Committee with long extracts, but this Commissioner refers to a remarkable speech recently made by Lord Milner, a speech made after dinner, and addressed to some of the leading citizens of Johannesburg, in which he referred to Johannesburg as likely to become "one of the greatest cities of the world, and, not wishing to encourage schemes that were doubtful and too ambitious," he was moderate in the expectations he formed. But, looking forward to 1904, he hinted at a population of five millions. Well, if the population of Johannesburg in two years was to exceed that of Canada and nearly equal that of Australia, by all means let them bear the whole of the war debt. Commenting on this statement, the Special Commissioner said—
  "Lord Milner lately ventured the statement that before long there would he live million white people in the Transvaal—the inference being that they were to be supported mainly by the mining industry. If his Lordship knew that country as well as I do, he would realise that even in twenty years from now there will not be five million whites in the whole of South, Africa. The mistake of Lord Milner on a problem connected with gold mining in South Africa is typical of the far greater ignorance in the average lay mind on the same subject. I suppose that at the present moment there are really hundreds of thousands of people in Great Britain who believe that South Africa—and especially the Transvaal—is simply teeming with thousands of potential mines, which the narrowness and ignorance of the Boers caused to lie undeveloped, and which are about to be floated off by generous capitalists, and make rich everyone who is now shrewd enough to buy the shares. As regards the already flouted mines, they believe that, under an enlightened Government, there is now going to he an all-round reduction of live or six shillings a ton in the cost of treating the ore, and that the dividends are going to be far higher than before. No wonder, seeing how widespread are these
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  beliefs, that there has been a strong market in South Africans, and no wonder that the company promoters are now preparing some hundreds of quite worthless flotations for the acceptance of this gullible multitude.
  "In this paper, for the twelfth time, let me say that the Transvaal has been prospected over and over again from one end to the other, and that no payable patches of ore are known to exist which have not already been worked for years. When I first went to the Transvaal to mine, not only was the Rand an important field, but there was much activity at Heidelberg, Klerksdorp, De Kaap, Lydenburg, and all over the Low Country.' As the years passed by, one mine after another in these outside districts closed down. When the war started there were, I suppose, not six outside mines working at a profit. And yet there had been hundreds of companies to commence with. There are hundreds of reefs all over the country—banket reefs, or any other variety you fancy—but they are no good. Not only are they unpayable, but no sophistry can make them anything else. They might get dynamite for nothing, and be relieved from all the other oppressions of the 'corrupt oligarchy.' and still they would be unpayable. And yet all these mines are going to be refloated very soon, and pulled in the good old-fashioned way, and the public is again going to lose heavily on them. This time I expect the losses will be greater than before. The promoter floats with a bigger capital now, and will have a bigger public to sell to."
  Without wearying the House with further quotations, I may say that there are three or four letters in which this gentleman proceeds to show that the production of gold is limited, and that outside mines already worked the re is little to be expected, and that the whole of these representations are really in preparation for a great scheme of flotation for mines not promoted for working but for selling. This I believe to be perfectly true, that in South Africa enormous fortunes have been accumulated not by the productions of mines, for the mines have failed, but by the sale by projectors of worthless mines to ignorant and credulous people. That is the real secret of the enormous fortunes that have been made. Therefore, the notion that these millions to be spent in the development of the country would be realised in any considera le part from new gold fields of payable gold in the Transvaal is a delusion by which the country has been deceived, and is likely to be still more misled.
  The Chamber of Mines, through its chairman, has spoken very much in this sense. The chairman has expressed his opinion that a great extension of production cannot be expected, and that little taxation ought to be imposed, and he

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  expressed the utmost confidence in Lord Milner. But Lord Milner has nobody to rely on except these gold gentlemen; there is no other population, there is nobody else Lord Milner can act with or upon, and they oppose taxation. The hope, therefore, to realise this money from the Transvaal is an utter delusion. These are matters upon which we really ought to have a great deal more information than we possess, and I hope that before the debate closes the right hon. Gentleman will place us in a position to form some idea what the future chances are of this heavy burden of taxation being less than it is at present. He has pointed out, unfortunately too truly, that great as has been the expenditure at home, it is still going on increasing, and it is likely, with the spirit which has been developed in the country, to increase in the future. If this is so, there is very little hope that when peace is concluded the people of this country will be released from the weight of taxation it has been his painful duty to impose. One thing I must ask the right hon. Gentleman, and that is what opportunity will be given to the House for the discussion of his proposals. A good many people will not be satisfied with them, and they would like to have full opportunities of considering their effect. There was a misapprehension upon this subject last year, when it was said we might discuss the general bearing of the question at a later stage.
  Such a statement as has been made tonight by the right hon. Gentleman, is one that cannot be discussed in the course of one night. It seems to me that there ought to be an opportunity given on which we should have a discussion on the whole financial position as it has been affected by the war, and as it will be affected by peace. There was a misapprehension on this subject last year, and I think we ought to have a clear understanding on the matter tonight. It should be understood, too, that the chairman of the Committee is a party to the arrangement, so that it may be carried out. I hope that, before these debates close, we may have a statement as to what the Government propose to do in this respect.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I merely wish to say a word with regard to the concluding remarks of the right hon. Gentleman. It is the invariable practice
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  for the Committee to grant the new Taxation Resolutions the first night, with the understanding that a future opportunity should be given for a renewal of the debate. If we are permitted to obtain tonight, as I think we should obtain, the new Taxing Resolution, we should endeavour to meet the wishes of the right hon. Gentleman, and, by arrangement, set aside a night for a full debate on the subject. Then there is a second consideration. I have stated that it will be necessary for us to borrow on loan, and that, for obvious reasons which any one acquainted with financial matters will understand, is a matter that must be dealt with promptly by the House. What therefore, I would venture to suggest is that, if we are permitted to take the Resolution with regard to the loan as well as the corn duty, the Government will arrange that some other Resolution, like the Income Tax Resolution, should be taken on a future night for the general discussion. That, I think, would meet the general wishes of the Committee, and would be in accordance with the practice of previous years.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: With reference to the loan I do not think that any inconvenience occurred last year in consequence of the loan being postponed. Last year the difficulty was that the Chairman of Committees understood he was bound on the introduction of the Resolution to allow nothing to be said on the general question and that understanding was strictly adhered to in all the other Resolutions. I raise the point because I think it is only fair to the House to do so.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I am sure nothing is likely to conduce more effectually to the successful issue of the peace conferences in South Africa than the Chancellor of the Exchequer's generous expression of opinion and intention towards the foe with whom we have been so long in conflict. I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in thus stating the views of the Government, expressed nothing but the feeling of hon. Members in all parts of the House and of all classes in the country. I rose, however, particularly to make some reply to the

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  observations of the right hon. Gentleman opposite with regard to the duty on corn. My principle object in rising was to make a few observations in reply to that part of the speech in which the right hon. Gentleman objected to the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He complained very much of the course adopted by my right hon. friend in making this new proposal for taxation, and stated that he would offer to it the most earnest and determined opposition in his power. The right hon. Gentleman is an expert in these matters, and his opinion is entitled to great weight and authority. But I think the House cannot have failed to perceive the extreme exaggeration which pervaded the right hon. Gentleman's speech throughout. What are the facts with which my right hon. friend is con fronted, and what is the position he has to meet? The facts are perfectly simple He has an enormous deficit, which must be provided for and met in some way The position of my right hon. friend, a Chancellor of the Exchequer, is that he has pretty well exhausted all the ordinary resources for obtaining any great additional revenue from existing sources of taxation, and he is obliged to try others. Among them he is going to try the revival of the old 1s. duty upon corn. One must admit, at all events, one advantage which this proposal has. It is not a new one; we have had experience of it before. We have had experience of its effects as a tax. and we have had experience of its repeal. As a tax I defy any human being to prove that it ever did the slightest harm in this country. Its repeal did not the slightest good to anybody. In consequence I entirely agree with my right hon. friend upon that point. I have always regarded the repeal of that tax as an act of considerable financial unwisdom, if, indeed, it might not be better described as an act of great financial folly. So much for the past.
  But what are the recommendations which can be urged in favour of this proposal as a tax to be imposed upon the country in the future? In the first place, the burden of the duty will be absolutely infinitesimal at the present
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  time, In the second place I will undertake to say that the price of bread to the workers and the labouring classes will not be raised by even the fraction of a farthing. Therefore, if that be so, the main part of the objections urged by the right hon. Gentleman falls entirely to the ground. In the third place, I venture to say that no other tax could be named, producing an equal amount of revenue, which would so little injure or affect the general public of the country. No argument can be adduced against it, except on the ground of sentiment, and, in the present financial position, as I have often thought and said, sentiment in these matters is a luxury far too expensive for us to indulge in. I quite admit that, as a Protective measure, the effect of this tax will be practically nil. On the other hand, it will produce no less a revenue than £2,650,000 a year. I should like to ask this question of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who has had many years experience in the position now held by my right hon. friend—Where will he find another tax to produce an equivalent revenue to this one, with so many recommendations and so few objections? I believe my right hon. friend in taking this step has adopted a most wise and courageous course. The proposal he has submitted to the House and the country is supported by justice, by reason, by the results of experience, and also by expediency, and I believe it will meet with far more general acceptance and approval among different, classes in the country than many hon. Gentlemen think at all likely. In a word, I believe the verdict of multitudes of people will be—"Thank God that in connection with the financial policy of this country we have brought to bear a little common-sense at last!"
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid be would have not troubled the Committee but for the pointed reference to himself in the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. On the occasion referred to by the right hon. Gentleman he was discussing the question from the point of view of the expenditure and the reduction of the debt of the country. In his opinion, thirty years ago there was a reckless relinquishment of taxation, while very

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  little was applied annually to the reduction of debt, and his argument in the passages referred to was that it would have been better, instead of relinquishing the duty in question, to apply it to the reduction of the Debt. Moreover, at that time, Mr. Lowe, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Gladstone, as Prime Minister, could not have anticipated the enormous increase which had taken place in the expenditure of the country. Certainly, not having the gift of prophecy, they could not have anticipated the advent of the Colonial Secretary, or of the right hon. Gentleman who preached economy but did not make his colleagues practise it to any large extent, He would also point out that it was one thing to repeal a tax, but quite another to impose it. When this tax was left on, it was purely for the purposes of registration, and produced a very small amount, It was afterwards admitted chat the imports of corn could be registered perfectly well without the imposition of the tax, and, when relinquished, the duty was producing less than£1,000,000 a year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was now going to reimpose it, when it would produce over £2,500,000—surely a very different tax. The right hon. Gentleman himself had pointed out that, while thirty years ago it affected only one-third of the whole trade, it would today affect two-thirds, so that it was a much more Protective duty now than then. ["No."] A larger amount was levied on foreign corn, and a smaller amount of home-produced corn would he benefited by it.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACHasked if the hon. Gentleman really meant that if only a single quarter of corn was produced in this country, the tax would be more Protective than if a large quantity was produced?
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid the result would certainly be to raise the price of that particular quarter of corn. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for Oldham laughed, but surely that would be the result, and the right hon. Gentleman himself would probably not deny that any duty would have some effect in raising the price. At all events, that was his
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  opinion. It ought also to be remembered that thirty years ago the price of corn was almost double its present price. The reimposition of the corn duty was a very serious step in retrogression of all the principles of taxation to which the country had been of late years accustomed.
  He did not intend to go into the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; he rose simply to point out that, although the right hon. Gentleman did not misquote him, he did not give the qualification which he very carefully made. His withers, therefore, were entirely unwrung. and he would certainly oppose the tax, which he believed would cause unnecessary interference with and worry to the trade of the country. But he cordially supported the proposal to impose another penny on the income tax. Indeed, as the right hon. Gentleman was raising only a very inadequate proportion of the deficit by increased taxation, he wished he had taken it wholly out of the income tax by an addition of twopence instead of a penny. It would have been better for trade, for the consumers, and for the country at large, rather than to have reimposed a duty which could only have the effect of hampering and harassing trade.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: During the earlier part of my right hon. friend's speech tonight I took a very hopeless view; he appeared to me to be floundering along very much on the old lines. Towards the end of his speech, however, there was introduced what my right hon. friend the Member for the Sleaford Division has called the element of common sense. I do not wish to be misunderstood in this connection. There is not an element of Protection in this proposal. It is not as a Protectionist who has, during the whole of his lifetime, advocated those principles, that I welcome this recurrence to common sense after an aberration of more than a political generation? welcome it upon financial, and purely financial, grounds. We know perfectly well that the narrow basis upon which our taxation rests is now generally condemned by all thinking persons who deal with matters of finance. A few

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  days ago I received a copy of a memorandum by the Committee of the Cobden Club, entitled, "How to Increase the Public Revenue." Of course there are in it many points from which I wholly disagree, but there is one under the head of "Direct Taxation" which I would seriously commend to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to all who oppose his proposals. The Cobden Club says—
  "We now pass to the question of direct taxation, In a country where almost every man who likes can secure a vole, the present wholesale exemption from the payment of direct taxes forms a serious political danger.…We therefore urge that direct taxation should be extended, either by lowering the present limit of exemption from income tax, so as to include all incomes over £100 a year, or by extending the inhabited house duty to all houses and tenements above £10 in annual value, and making the rate of the house duty fall and rise with the rate of the income tax"
  I shall not go into this point at the present time, but it shows that even Sir Robert Giffen recognises this principle. [An HON. MEMBER: But those are not the views which he expressed years ago.] I do not welcome this proposal as a return to Protection, but as an admission that the present system is a danger to the State. This document says—
  "it is only by direct taxation that the responsibility for national expenditure can be brought home to the taxpayer, for an indirect tax is always uncertain in its incidence, and often appears to be no tax at all."
  I maintain that, on purely revenue grounds, the new tax on corn announced tonight is a proper one, and one which, at any rate, has nothing to do with the treatment of home industries. I hope the time will come when we shall decide to raise the greater portion of our revenue by indirect means. The Chancellor of the Exchequer several years ago propounded an absolutely novel doctrine—that direct and indirect taxation should as far as possible, be brought to a level, ignoring the fact that the income tax payer has to pay a larger proportion, relatively, of the indirect taxes than any other class of the community. I suppose it is in conformity with this novel but indefensible doctrine that my right hon. friend now proposes to put another penny on the income tax. I would like to know what the right hon. Gentleman
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  means by that doctrine. Does he mean that when an indirect tax is put on, there ought also to be an equivalent tax put on as a direct tax? Does he mean that what he calls the income tax payers, as a class, should pay this additional direct tax and at the same time ignore the fact that they already pay a larger proportion, relatively, of the indirect taxes than any other class of the community? I suppose my right hon. friend holds the view that, after putting a tan upon sparkling wines, which are wholly consumed by the income tax paying class, he makes it fair to them by putting another penny on the income tax besides.
  I notice that my right hon. friend has tried to balance his indirect taxes by putting another penny upon the income tax, which is evidently done to carry out this theory. Nobody except the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth ever endorsed this extraordinary theory of taxation, that direct and indirect taxes should be equalised. The Cobden Club suggests very properly that exemptions from income tax should be, diminished, and that the great mass of voters should contribute. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, leaves the incidence of the income tax exactly as it is and proceeds upon the old lines. That is a very dangerous doctrine, which is absolutely unsound. My right hon. friend produced no authority whatever in support of this extraordinary theory. I hope my right hon. friend will not persevere with this untenable theory, which is contrary to all sound finance. My right hon. friend always displays an indifference to any attempt to weld the Empire together upon commercial lines, and he is essentially a Little Englander in finance. As I said last year, he draws no distinction between a Canadian and a Belgian, and he rather prefers the Belgian on account of his proximity. I think a great opportunity has been missed for framing our fiscal system upon a basis that will meet the requirements of the great bulk of our fellow subjects in various parts of the world, and which would have placed our financial system upon a sound basis.
  As regards indirect taxation. I should have thought that those who talk so

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  loudly about protecting the food of the people from taxation would have suggested that some articles of manufacture not produced here should take the place of such articles as coffee and tea, which are regarded as necessaries rather than luxuries. I am not going to say a word against the tea or coffee duty from a taxation point of view, but I have never been able to understand why indirect taxation should be raised on articles not produced here that formed the staple of life, while articles which compete with the products of our labour are admitted without let or hindrance in to the country, and without the manufacturers of those goods bearing any of the burden of the rates and taxes which other producers of food and other commodities have to bear in this country. This may be considered a narrow system of finance, but it is coming rapidly to the front at the present time. I have been told that it is no use talking about a registration duty on corn, but I have gone on with this principle notwithstanding that warning, and I do not think that I am now so very much out of my reckoning. I want to know why the people of this country should have to pay rates and taxes upon the production of articles when other articles are allowed to come into this country free of contribution towards the rates and taxes. I say that this system is unjust and unsound. It is contrary to commonsense, and I venture to say that the public opinion of this country will not allow it very much longer. The people do not want all this claptrap about free trade. The people know perfectly well that a large revenue has to be raised, and they are not going to be curtailed in their financial operations by any old-fashioned prejudices of that kind. My right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer lives in the financial world of fifty years ago, and he is several generations behind his time. He believes in the doctrines of a. school, the teachings of which have become more and more discredited as time goes on, and he has closed his eyes to what must be the inevitable result. We have not only this country to think of, but also all our colonies and dependencies, the representatives of which will shortly be amongst us. I think my
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  right hon. friend will find that his obsolete prejudices of a century ago will not enable him to deal with the crisis of the present day, and I hope the time will come before long when we shall decide to raise the greater portion of our revenue by indirect means.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Hear, hear!
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year promised him that he would consider some means by which the working man could get cheaper tobacco, or the equivalent in better quality. His complaint then was that the poor man upon his tobacco paid as much revenue as the man who purchased the best class of tobacco. The Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted the anomaly in that respect, and he said that he would, during the ensuing year, make some arrangement by which that anomaly might be considerably reduced, if not done away with altogether. Apparently he had forgotten all about that promise in his excitement of levying these new taxes, and he had lost sight altogether of that promise. He hoped it was not too late now for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tell the Committe whether he would be able to give proper consideration to this point during the ensuing year.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I did consider the matter, and made a good deal of inquiry, but found that what the hon. Member had in his mind would distinctly not be to the benefit of the consumer, although it might be to the benefit of the manufacturer of tobacco.
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid that something might be devised for the benefit of the poor consumer, and he could not see why something of the kind could not be worked out. It was monstrous that the man consuming the very dregs of the tobacco trade should pay the enormous duty on tobacco that he did pay, while those who smoked the very best material only paid the same amount. He sincerely trusted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not give up the problem as one which could not be solved. He must warn the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this.

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  new tax upon corn would he fought with all the strength they could command on the Opposition side of the House. A more monstrous tax he could not imagine. We had been engaged in a war for three years, spending £200,000,000. It was contemplated now at a cost of £200,000,000 to build up that which we had knocked down, and for the pleasure of the foreign mine owners in South Africa we were now going to tax the bread of the widows and orphans at the centre of the empire. [Laughter.] Yes, but we were going to do it. Hon. Members might say that it would not tax them, but why were the right hon. Gentlemen the Members for Sleaford and Thanet pleased with the proposal? They regarded it as an instalment of better things to come. Only a few moments back the Member for Thanet said this was a very good start, but that we had nothing like reached the limit to which we ought to go in the taxation of foreign imports.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: The statement I intended to have made was that I regarded this proposal for the taxation of corn as not in any shape or form of the slightest use as a fiscal measure. I went on to say that a vast deal more of our revenue should be raised by indirect taxation.
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid he knew this was an instalment of a tax that had been demanded for years by the right hon. Gentleman and his friends. Take the meetings of the agricultural associations all through the country next Saturday, and they would find this tax; would be welcomed in all directions. What did it mean? It meant that it was a tax in favour of the industry of farming and of agriculture. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of the fallacy of Mr. Lowe in having stated in abolishing the registration duty of 1s. on corn that it would cheapen bread. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer was under a similar fallacy. It did not always follow that when flour was cheapened bread would be lowered in price, but it always followed that if flour was increased in price, bread was immediately increased in price. So it would be, and so it must be, in the case of bread, when this tax came to
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  be levied. It was absolutely monstrous that the poor of this country should have to pay for the Empire fireworks of other people through the increased want of the necessaries of life which would follow as a consequence of this corn tax. He entirely agreed with the extra 1d. on the Income Tax. He wished the Chancellor of the Exchequer had put on 2d. or 3d. It was one of the best, most direct, and most justifiable of taxes if it was properly levied. He would not impose it on any incomes under £500 a year, and he would double it on those of £5,000 and over. The income tax was a splendid piece of revenue machinery if levied according to the means to pay it. That should be the first consideration, and the basis on which the income tax should be worked. He did not think for a moment that the increase on bills at sight—the cheques the people used through the banks—would be imposed. There was not the least doubt that the city would knock it out before it became law. The banking and financial influences were so enormous that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have to give way. He disliked the Budget very much. He wished the Chancellor of the Exchequer had taken another £5,000,000 a year out of direct taxation as he ought to have done. He regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had fallen on the evil days of departing from his free-trade faith, and that he now proposed to tax the necessaries of the people. Had he held fast to the faith that was in him he would not have proposed this tax, but he had no doubt given way to others. He hoped and believed that this taxation of corn would prove one of the most disastrous strokes of policy that this Government had initiated for many years past.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he would begin by congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his restoration to health. The malady which they all regretted came the more inopportunely last week because it coincided with a malady on the part of the Colonial Secretary. The simultaneity of the recovery of the two right hon. Gentlemen furnished the House with suitable matter of congratulation. It was extremely

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  inconvenient to be promised a discussion on the Corn Resolution after it had been passed, and it was equally inconvenient to debate the authorisation of a loan of £32,000,000 after the Resolution dealing with it had been agreed to. Those were the only Resolutions for which there was any urgency, and he suggested that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should take the Loan Resolution this evening, but that the Corn Resolution should be taken for a certain portion of the year only, say, three months. That would leave the rest of the year open, and if by any chance, which he certainly did not believe would occur, the Committee should decide against the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it would still have the remaining nine months in its hands. He understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that there was a deficit of £45,500,000, and by the proposals submitted to the Committee that would be met to the extent of £41,600,000; so that there was a gap of close upon £4,000,000 still to be filled up. He heard with the greatest satisfaction the hope expressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that peace might result from the conferences now taking place, and he was also interested to know that the right hon. Gentleman considered the time was drawing near for the repayment by the Transvaal of the money we had spent in conquering the country. He was afraid, however, that the right hon. Gentleman would be disappointed in that expectation. The time would come no nearer until the sovereignty of the Transvaal had been transferred from Mr. Schalk Burger to the British Government, and until that was done this country was not in a position legally to charge a halfpenny on the revenues of the Transvaal. He was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman express a readiness to rebuild and restock the farms destroyed in the course of the war. It was a generous intention, which he was sure the people of this country would respond to.
  He had risen to make a few suggestions suggested at the first sight of this Budget. The income tax already provided the Chancellor of the Exchequer with nearly £35,000,000, and the proposed addition of 1d. would raise the amount to £37,000,000. This was a stupendous amount of money to be raised from a single tax, especially when it was
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  remembered that owing to exemptions and abatements not more than half of the taxable incomes were taxed. He held it to be a sound principle never to increase the income tax without endeavouring to spread it over some of those who had not hitherto paid it but who ought to pay it. He was convinced that persons with incomes of £200 and £300 who approved the policy of the war would be ready to pay income tax; and the whole question was how to discover a convenient method by which the tax could be levied upon them. The true method was the smallest possible tax over the largest possible area. The Post Office revenues had shown the great virtue of the penny in point of productiveness. He thought, therefore, it would be reserved for some future Chancellor of the Exchequer, when looking about for further subjects of taxation, to endeavour to apply the penny system to the income tax. When we talked of the extension of the Empire it should be remembered that it was not the Empire that paid, but Great Britain alone; and that in Great Britain it was almost exclusively the richer classes who were made to pay for the maintenance of the Empire. The poor man scarcely paid anything. [HON. MEMBERS on the Opposition Benches: Oh, oh!] He did not say that the poorer man did not pay what was really a considerable portion of his income; but the aggregate sum that he paid was almost infinitesimal, and, as the right hon. Gentleman had said, it constituted a very great danger to the Empire; because when a man voted for war, and was not made to feel the payment for it, he was inclined to vote for a war in regard to which he might be otherwise in doubt.
  On one point he agreed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His ideal for this country was that Great Britain should be an absolutely free port, with no customs duties. But we were now in financial straits, and he was bound to say that he knew of no method by which so large a sum could be so easily raised, and with so little injury to the people, as that adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this case. It must also not be put out of consideration that the tax might be of use in putting us in a better position for bargaining with such a country as, say, the United States in

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  regard to a diminution of their tariff, because incase of necessity that might be increased.
  With regard to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal to raise the stamp duty on cheques to twopence, he thought that a peculiarly mischievous proposal. There was no country in Europe that had so largely availed itself of the cheque system as this country, and the tendency of this tax would be to turn it from the cheque system to a system of transferring money in coin—a tendency which he regarded as a relic of commercial barbarism He thought he saw a latent purpose in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to protect the Post Office by this tax, and he imagined that the Post Office had already had too large a share of the business which properly belonged to private banks.
  SIR H CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: We have arrived at a critical moment in the evening, when we ought to come to some understanding as to the progress of the debate. I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer regards it as desirable, if not absolutely necessary, from the point of view of the public interest, to take the Resolutions regarding the corn duty and the loan to-night. If the right hon. Gentleman gives us that assurance, I hope that the House will not place any impediment in the way of his obtaining these Resolutions, although some of us may, according to our views of the question, be disposed to vote against them. As to the proposed duty on corn, for instance, I would myself vote against the Resolution, but I do not wish to prevent its being taker tonight. I trust, however, that the light hon. Gentleman will be able to promise that on the Report stage we shall have a full and complete separate opportunity of discussing that question. As to the general discussion and criticism of the whole financial position of the country, and of the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman, I would venture to submit to him that instead of taking it tomorrow, we should have some longer time to consider it. If we are to discuss with advantage the most important and elaborate statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we
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  ought to know as much as possible what the opinion of the country is upon it, and we ought to have an opportunity of studying it deliberately and most carefully. I trust, therefore, that after taking the two Resolutions that he requires tonight, the right hon. Gentleman will adjourn the general debate to some more distant date than tomorrow.
  MR. DILLONsaid he regretted very much the absence of his hon. friend the Member for Waterford, but he must on his behalf protest in the strongest possible manner against the Resolution sanctioning the Loan being taken tonight. Everyone recognised that the new taxes had to be passed on the first night of the Budget, but he had yet to learn that the Resolution sanctioning the Loan had the same urgency. Nothing had been said which would justify the assumption of such a position. It was not taken up last year, and he thought it would be a gross abuse to commit hon. Members, as they would be committed if they passed the Resolution, to the extraordinary system of finance which was wrapt up in the loan. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had asked for an enormous loan, and for an immense margin to play with; and, therefore, when the Resolution was brought forward, hon. Members ought to have a fair and reasonable opportunity to discuss it on its merits. On behalf of his hon. friend the Member for Waterford, of whose views on the matter he had been informed, he strongly protested against the Resolution sanctioning the Loan being taken to-night.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I should like to ask your ruling, Sir, as to the position, because I am very desirous of meeting the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and the convenience of the House generally. Supposing the Resolution in regard to the corn duty is taken tonight, and that the Loan Resolution is taken tomorrow—and I can assure the hon. Member it cannot, without the greatest public injury, be postponed later—[Mr. DILLON: Nobody objects to that]—could the debate tomorrow be confined to the Loan Resolution, leaving the general discussion on the Budget to be taken on Thursday, and giving another day, at some later period, for a full discussion on the Report of the corn duty?

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  Perhaps I am acting beyond my powers, as my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Treasury rather objects to that. Still, I thought that, possibly, the whole of the night would not be required for the discussion on the loan, if the discussion were confined to the loan itself.
  THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN: The precedent of former years on the Budget was to have a general discussion on the first Resolution, as is usual in the first Vote for the Army or for the Navy. After that, the debate is strictly confined to the Resolution before the Committee, but at the same time, I believe it has been usual to select one particular Resolution, by agreement on both sides, and with the approval of the Chair, on which there might be a general discussion. Therefore, the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be in order.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: It seems to me that the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a very reasonable one. and would meet the views of the Irish Members, as expressed by the hon. Member for East Mayo, He said he would be perfectly satisfied to discuss the Resolution on the loan tomorrow. You, Sir, have ruled that the discussion must be confined to that Resolution. I do not suppose it will take a very long time to discuss it. Then on Thursday, on the Income Tax, there might be a general discussion on the Budget, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has suggested, and that a day should be fixed later for the discussion on the corn duty on Report. That seems to me to be a very fair proposal.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I ought to add that if, as I think is very possible, the discussion on the loan does not take the whole of tomorrow night, I should be allowed to proceed further with the other Resolutions, of which there are some half a dozen, but not, of course, for general debate. (8.30.)
  MR. HOLLANDconfessed that, in common with many of his colleagues on the Opposition Benches, he should not have been disappointed if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had announced his
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  intention of postponing the introduction of his Budget in view of the conference which was at present proceeding in Pretoria. And yet he did not for a moment quarrel with the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to proceed with his Budget, for he admitted that in a matter of this kind the right hon. Gentleman was the best judge as to what was the right moment at which to bring forward his proposals. He further admitted that putting off the Budget might have rendered the situation liable to this misconstruction—that the enemies of this country, or some of them at any rate, might have suggested that we had got to the end of our financial tether, and that we were faltering in the task to which we had put our hands. Nevertheless, he did not see why the Chancellor of the Exchequer could not have so arranged his Budget that certain of his proposals might, so to speak, have been earmarked with a view that if circumstances required it, those proposals might have been readily dropped without interfering with the general construction of the Budget. He felt sure that many hon. Members would rejoice to hear the announcement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that in his judgment, and also in the judgment of Lord Milner, after the 1st of July it might reasonably be expected that a substantial contribution would be forthcoming from South Africa from the mines. He thought that the oftener such pledges were given by responsible Ministers, the better were the chances of such pledges being ultimately fulfilled.
  There was one part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech which commended itself to his mind much more heartily than any other, and it was that part in which he expressed the desire to give the most generous treatment to those in South Africa who had suffered so severely in consequence of the war. The right hon. Gentleman had expressed his desire to make large money grants for the rebuilding and restocking of farms in South Africa, and he thought that was a sentiment which would meet with cordial approval in all parts of the House. He ventured to say that the echo of those words would be heard

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  the next morning in Pretoria, and would do much to facilitate that result which they all so anxiously desired. He wished to say a word or two about the doubling of the stamp duty. He submitted that an additional penny stamp upon cheques would disturb very greatly their business transactions. The yield of this tax would be only a very small one, while the irritation would be very considerable. During recent years the use of cheques had been enormously increased in the business of this country, and the French bank manager referred to by the hon. Member for King's Lynn seemed to him to be only fit to be placed in a museum of curiosities, for it was hardly conceivable that any one holding a responsible position in a banking institution should confess himself an entire stranger to and unacquainted with the appearance of an English cheque. The increased use of cheques proves them to be a great convenience, besides which our commercial and banking system effect a great economy by restricting the use of currency. Discourage cheques and every cashier in the country will have to enlarge his till, and provide far more gold and silver than he at present needs. He did not think that remittances would be made with the same alacrity if the use of cheques was discouraged, for there was something in human nature which made it easier to pay an account by cheque than to part with hard cash.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that the sugar tax imposed a year ago had been more or less a successful tax, and he had said that the price of sugar in the retail shops had not advanced, or had only advanced to a very small extent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, knew as well as anybody else that the reason of that condition of things was because the fates had been very kind to him, and the abundant harvest enjoyed in beet growing countries had produced this result. The enormous increase in the production of beet sugar had reduced the price, and that reduction had enabled the duty to be paid without any substantial increase in the price to the purchaser. There was another factor which the Chancellor of the Exchequer could not afford to overlook, and it was that sugar bounties were at present being paid by
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  continental nations, and when they were abolished next year under the Brussels convention the price of sugar in this country would inevitably rise, precisely to the extent to which those bounties had made sugar artificially cheap.
  He was very much interested with the reference made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet to the pamphlet issued by the Cobden Club. He had never heard the right hon. Gentleman say a civil word for the lob-den Club before, but he had now expressed his commendation, of some part at any rate, of the pamphlet issued by that club. He was rather inclined to think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet had read the pamphlet only in a cursory kind of way, or else he had skipped over those portions which did not answer his case. He noticed in the pamphlet, for instance, that there were some very strong arguments against the imposition of a tax on corn. It was obvious that any proposal for enlarging the basis of taxation ought to receive the most careful examination, for a tax, once imposed, was no easy matter to get rid of. There was an enlargement of the basis of taxation last year, when the coal tax was imposed, and not a word had been said on the present occasion about removing that impost on the coal industry. He did not complain that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said nothing in that direction, because until peace was once more restored it was unreasonable to expect any diminution in the taxation of the country. In the pamphlet which had been referred to one of the arguments urged against imposing a tax on wheat was because wheat was a necessary food of the people, and one quarter of the population of this country was at present living in absolute poverty. Therefore, it would at once be seen that in their case there was no taxable margin available from which the revenue could be raised. By this proposal those in receipt of the smallest wages were to be hit the hardest. Tables had been put before them by economists showing that in the family budget of the labouring classes 50 per cent. of the income was spent on food, so that any tax on food must hit those classes more hardly than others.

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  Another objection was that this proposal violated and indeed inverted that sound principle which was first introduced by the right, hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire in 1894, that the burden of taxation should be proportionate to the ability of the people who were called upon to pay. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to suggest that this tax on corn was so small in amount that it really would not affect the price at all. Did the Chancellor of the Exchequer seriously argue that the price of bread would remain unchanged if a tax was put upon corn? Somebody must pay that £2,500,000 sterling which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected that this tax would yield. And if the middleman pays it today depend upon it he will transfer the burden to the consumer tomorrow. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to have argued that the registration duty upon corn was proved not to have affected the price of bread at all, because during the period from January to May in 1869, when the duty was on, the price of the 4lb. loaf fell a halfpenny. But the argument of those who resisted this tax was that the price of the four pound loaf would either have fallen sooner than it did or that the fall would have been larger in amount if there had been no registration duty in former years. He did not know precisely in what month in 1869 the four-pound loaf was reduced by a Halfpenny, but it might have been in the month of April. His argument was that if the registration duty had not been in existence the price of the four-pound loaf might have fallen in the month of February and then the people would have got the advantage of the reduction in the price earlier than they did. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that the price of bread was fixed by the law of supply and demand, and no political economist would wish to diminish the effect of the law of supply and demand. He would be a very poor economist who did anything of the kind. He was certain, however, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would admit that if the cost of producing any commodity was increased, other things being equal, its
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  price would rise, and demand for it be proportionately diminished. A diminished demand for bread stuff would mean, of course, that less was being eaten, and if the number of mouths to fill were as numerous as before it followed that more would be hungry after the tax was imposed than before. The duty would be received with enthusiasm by the corn-growing interest, although if there was to be no rise in price such enthusiasm would be hard to justify, but in the great centres of population an outcry against it would be raised. It was a revolutionary and retrograde proposal, and there was great danger that the prospect of peace would so gild the pill as to induce people to swallow just now that which they would reject under other circumstances. It was right and proper that the burden of a great war should be as widely diffused as possible. It was right that all classes should be called upon to make sacrifices when a great national undertaking had to be carried through, and in his opinion there had been no difference in connection with the South African war, in the sacrifices the rich and the poor had been willing to make in allowing their loved ones to go to the front, But when the poor lost their relatives the parallel was no longer the same. It was true that the grief under such circumstances would be precisely the same, but the hardship afterwards would be by no means the same. If the breadwinner of a poor family fell at the front or was maimed during the war, there was imposed on his dependents at home a struggle and burden for the rest of their lives which the rich were not called upon to bear. Therefore the poorer section of the population was entitled to special consideration at a time like this, when it was a question of apportioning the sacrifices entailed by the war equitably between both rich and poor. And it was because he thought a tax on corn inflicted undue hardship on the very poor that he would oppose it, not only in this House but wherever he had the opportunity.
  MR. JOHN WILSONsaid there was nothing in the remarks of the

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  Chancellor of the Exchequer he more heartily agreed with than when he spoke of the peace negotiations, and that, while willing to do the best we could to secure peace, the best way to secure it was to be prepared for war. The right hon. Gentleman's War Budget would undoubtedly receive the support of the House. He did not approve of all the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but as the money must be found to carry on the war he would support them. He had expected that at least the right hon. Gentleman would announce that he intended to raise the loan of £32,000,000 on the security of the mineral wealth of the Transvaal. He was sorry to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire talk in a rather disappointing way of the mineral wealth of the Transvaal. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman, on the authority of those most competent to judge, that the Transvaal was well able to pay the cost of the war. He was himself a mining expert and his opinion would be taken for what it was worth. He had been to the Transvaal and had examined the country, and as to its resources he was fortified in the opinion he had expressed by Mr. Henry Hays Hammond.
  The hon. Member read an extract from a speech by Mr. Hays Hammond, at a date before the outbreak of the war, referring to the enormous benefits that would accrue to South Africa from the gold mining industry under firm rule.
  One of the difficulties in the past had been with regard to natives and the illicit liquor traffic. When the natives were able to obtain liquor their labour was intermittent, and it was caculated that under other conditions there would be a saving on this branch of £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 per annum. Then, again, there was the dynamite monopoly. That would no longer be the prey of the gang of swindlers who presided over the destinies of the Transvaal. It was said there would be a saving under this head of £700,000 per annum. There would be an efficient system of police, on which a large saving would be effected. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, instead of imposing new taxation, should have proposed to raise a loan of £50,000,000 as a mortgage upon the minerals of the
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  Transvaal Why should not the gold miners pay for the benefits which would accure to them from British rule? He should like to have heard from the Chancellor of the Exchequer an explicit declaration that the minerals of the Transvaal would have to bear ultimately the whole cost of the war.
  As to the coal tax, he wished candidly to point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the incidence of the coal tax was unfair. As a matter of fact, all that it had brought in to the Exchequer had been lost in the fall in freights and the consequent loss to the shipbuilding industry. In one class of coal in Scotland the lowest price was realised. How, therefore, could the Chancellor of the Exchequer maintain that a tax of 1s. a ton, even if it was fair in the case of a coal fetching 16s. a ton, was fair in the case of a coal that fetched only 8s. a ton? He had all along hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would have had something to say on that point. Further, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had scarcely been fair in the manner in which he had dealt with patent fuel. The patent fuel which was manufactured in Wales, and which fetched a high price, had been exempted from the tax, while another similar article manufactured in Scotland was not, notwithstanding the fact that a memorial on the subject, signed by twenty-three Scottish Unionist Members, lad been presented to the Chancellor of she Exchequer.
  MR. ROBSONsaid the Chancellor of the Exchequer had claimed some credit for the fact that, although negotiations for peace were proceeding in South Africa, that was no reason why he should postpone his Budget. It certainly was not. Seeing that we all knew that a new taxation had no relation whatever with the war, the right hon. Gentleman must provide for normal expenditure, and for that alone—for that new taxation was required. We had now to deal with a return to the old policy of taxing food, just as last year we had to deal with a return to the policy of taxing trade. The Chancellor of the Exchequer relied on the old financial policies which were heard in the last generation, and which every one thought were exploded. The right hon. Gentleman pointed out that when the registration tax was removed

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  prices showed no considerable variation, and he asked the House to believe that, because that was so, the removal of the tax had no effect on the price. There could not be a more elementary fallacy. Price was affected by many causes—the right hon. Gentleman said principally by supply and demand. Anything that added to the cost of production permanently of an article affected its price. There might be some fluctuation in the price, and, although those fluctuations might obscure the cost, they would not alter the fact, any more than the law of gravitation could be said to have ceased to exist because a man went up in a balloon. So that the mere fact that this had no effect did not alter the law, which not even Chancellors of the Exchequer could alter, that any addition to the cost of production must mean an increase in price. The instance given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in order to reduce an argument of the hon. Member for Poplar to an absurdity only illustrated the extraordinary want of consideration and reflection on the part of those who, when they proceeded to tamper with economic laws, apparently never considered either their general operation or their particular effect. The right hon. Gentleman asked, did the hon. Member suppose that if we imported only a quarter of corn, the price of that quarter would be affected by this tax, He had listened with amazement to that suggestion. Let the House suppose on the other hand that no corn was grown, but that it was all imported: would the right hon. Gentleman suggest that the price would not then be affected by this duty? It would all go on to the price; not even the right hon. Gentleman could deny that. The right hon. Gentleman gave another reason for this tax; he said he desired to find a tax that could be conveniently collected, and he gave several arguments in favour of the convenience of the collection of the tax, It evidently did not occur to the right hon. Gentleman that the convenience of this tax was its greatest danger. That would constitute to every other Chancellor of the Exchequer its temptation. Did hon. Members think they were going to stop at a shilling, with our expenditure increasing by millions per annum, and with a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had avowed his determination to vary the incidence of direct and indirect taxation? The hon. Member for Central Sheffield
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  knew that, or he would not be so happy tonight. He knew perfectly well that it would not stop at a shilling a quarter on corn, but would be made to extend to manufactured articles. Did anybody believe that an impost of two and a half millions put on corn would produce no effect on price? He could not understand how the Minister for Agriculture would agree with that. Who was going to pay that tax?
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: The foreigner.
  MR. ROBSON: Then we did not pay the taxes, and we were only receivers of money from foreigners. As our deficits arose, we must expect to have our Chancellors of the Exchequer telling us how much more we should receive from the foreigner. The foreigner did not pay it. He might pay some part for a time. But it was going to be paid by the English consumer. It was going to be put upon bread, and he asked the House to consider on whom it would fall. The middleman would not merely add to the price of the twopenny loaf a fractional part of a farthing. He would get his tax on his capital back in the shape of an appreciable coin of the realm. Now, taking Mr. Rowntree's figures in his remarkable book about poverty in York, it appeared that there were dependent on less than 18s. a week 474 families, numbering 1,589 persons. Their total income was a little over £274. Of that amount £68 went for rent, leaving less than £207 per week for 1,589 persons, or about 4½d. per person per clay for the necessaries of life—not for food alone, but for every purpose except rents. Having regard to food alone, he pointed out that if these people were paupers they would under the workhouse scale be entitled to £21 more, or about £227. Then Mr. Rowntree went on to narrate how these people supplied themselves with necessaries of life, and he said there were two ways, by charity or by starvation. When they required something extra for clothes or fuel or anything else, they had to take it out of their food. He would like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to go down to these families at York—there were hundreds of thousands of persons—and say to them, in his admirable Parliamentary manner, "I fear a great deal of bread is wasted."

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  In Belgravia it might be, but not among the people Mr. Rowntree described. These people who lived on the margin of existence were the people on whom the tax would fall. And were Members of the Liberal Party to listen in silence and patience to this iniquitous proposal? He hoped that every Member, from his duty to his constituents, and as a humane man who knew anything of the condition of the poor in our great cities, would fight this wicked proposal from end to end. Not only was it bad in itself, but it was welcomed by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite as the dawn of a better day, and it was said that bringing corn within the area of taxation would give this country a means for securing commercial advantages. That was the true mind of hon. Gentlemen opposite. The food of the people was to be one of the counters in the game of bungling diplomatists, of whom they had had so much experience in other matters. Never was there a more fatuous delusion of financial heretics than to suppose that you can bully or threaten other nations into financial concessions. If this was to be material for a war of tariffs, then it was not a mere brututn fulmen but would be put into practice. The reasons given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer should nerve the mind of every Liberal in the country to opposition by every legitimate means. The Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned a fall in the price of coal as eminently satisfactory. But this was an effect, he said, the tax be imposed would not have.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I did not say that. I absolutely deny that anything of the sort can be proved. The fall in coal is due to other causes entirely. I said it would not injure the coal trade.
  MR. ROBSONsaid he contested that position; the tax had borne its part in the reduction of price, and he proceeded to give facts in regard to the operation of the tax, The right hon. Gentleman told them that in the German market our coal held its own. We were certainly still selling coal there; but was the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the best of test markets, that of Hamburg, although the fall in price might be taken to indicate a general fall in consumption, our exports had decreased and that German exports were taking their place?
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I can show a decrease in both. Unfortunately, I have not the figures with me tonight, but I can show them to the hon. Gentleman.
  MR. ROBSONsaid he would deal with the right hon. Gentleman's figures, when he produced them. They would then see over what area he calculated his percentages. He had not the figures, but from his recollection of them he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that the monthly returns some months ago showed that English coal was being displaced in the test market of Hamburg. The right hon. Gentleman wound up his remarks on the coal tax by saying that, if it had caused a decrease in exports, that would be no reason for repealing it. That meant that a tax laid upon a trade which had the effect of contracting its area was, according to the present financial principles under which they were governed, no reason for repealing it. He ventured to say it was the one all-sufficient reason for repealing such a tax, So they now understood—and he hoped it would not be forgotten—that the taxation of trade and of food was among the cardinal points of Tory policy precisely as it was in the past. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet had stated that they were behind the times, but he had really done an injustice to his own Party. The bulk of that Party had never altered their views with regard to Protection. At every election since he (the hon. Member) had had any connection with English public life, at which the Tories had invited the suffrages of the people after a period of Opposition, they had made Protectionist promises, though they had never kept them until now. With regard to the income tax, he did not intend to go into any financial argument, but he desired to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the irritating manner in which the Treasury agents throughout the country were collecting this tax, In his own constituency, men of undoubted position and of the best financial standing had had the bailiffs walking into their houses without notice, in some eases even where there had been no refusal to pay, and seizing part of the furniture.

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  He was quite willing to give the right hon. Gentleman names, and he mentioned the matter in order that it this procedure was the result of any general order from headquarters, that order might be modified.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENTexpressed his gratification at the initial statement of the right hon. Gentleman that it was not intended to diminish in any way the pecuniary resources of Lord Kitchener in carrying on the war. That was undoubtedly the most satisfactory statement that could come at the present moment from the Treasury Bench, and could not fail to have a material effect on the early con elusion of peace and the settlement of affairs in South Africa. It was also satisfactory to note that the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised that, although peace might come in the early future, there would not be any great cessation of expenditure for some little time to come. The war expenditure in South Africa was in the most capable hands, as Lord Kitchener supervised every detail himself, and so long as Lord Kitchener was at the head of affairs the Committee might rest assured that not a single sixpence would be wasted.
  He had no intention of going into the details of the proposed new taxation. The Committee could not have failed to be impressed, not alone with the sincerity and honesty of the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but also with the great desire of the right hon. Gentleman to take the House of Commons entirely into his confidence, and to tell them exactly the state of affairs. The right hon. Gentleman had repeatedly laid before the House the dangers of increasing the normal expenditure of the country. In the last forty years the expenditure had risen from about £70,000,000 to the £180,000,000 or £190,000,000 now required. A portion of that was, of course, war expenditure, but there could be no doubt that the ordinary expenditure of the country had gone on increasing. It was, therefore, absolutely essential that the basis of taxation should be widened in every possible way.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: And the expenditure, if possible reduced.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT(continuing): And the expenditure, if possible, reduced, but there was great difficulty in reducing expenditure. When his hon. friend the Member for Oldham had been longer in the House, he would see that the great pressure upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not to reduce but to increase expenditure, that great pressure came not from one quarter only, but practically from all quarters of the House and country. It was, therefore, only right that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should lay before the country the enormously increased demands it was necessary for the present and future Governments to meet and the necessity, if possible of enlarging the basis of taxation.
  He would say but a very few words on the increased taxation. For his own part, he thought it would have been possible to raise with the greatest ease a larger amount from increased taxation. The payers of income tax were lucky to be let off with an increase of only a penny. He was by no means in favour of a large income tax, but it could not be denied that many people thought that income tax should provide a very large proportion of the taxation of the country. Undoubtedly this tax weighed extremely unfairly upon many people, especially upon small professional men and those in small industries, and it was gratifying to have an indication that when the war was over a substantial reduction of the income tax might be looked for. As regarded the stamp duty, he did not altogether agree with the right hon. Gentleman's proposals. He had always understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be of the opinion that it was not worth while to impose a tax unless it produced a substantial amount. Whether the amount estimated to he-produced by this additional tax would be sufficient compensation for the great annoyance it would cause was a matter of considerable doubt.
  Then as to the registration fee on corn. There could be no better opinion than that of the late head of the late head of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. Sir Robert Giffen had recently written a letter to The Times on this very subject, in which he said—
  "We have only to go back to a date just before these wanton sacrifices of indirect

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  revenue began which have landed us in our present difficulty—that is a date prior to the Gladstone Government of 1869–74. … No taxpayer one has ever heard of ever recognises himself as better off by the repeal of the 1s. a quarter upon grain."
  That was the opinion of Sir Robert Giffen, who was in no way concerned with the politics on that side of the House, but who had given a lifetime to the study of the question. After hearing the opinions which had been expressed by hon. Members on the other side of the House be could not help quoting the opinion of the leading article of The Times—
  "The great value of Sir R. Giffen's letter is that he is able to disengage himself from the causes of financial conditions and to look political and economic facts in the face as they exist at the present day, and not as they were accepted, in the character of unalterable axiomatic truths, thirty or forty years ago."
  It was to be hoped that hon. Members would adopt that freedom of mind, and look at facts as they were now und not as they were thirty or forty years ago. It would, no doubt, be possible to obtain a certain amount of cheap applause on the platform by speaking against this tax, but he did not hesitate to say that when he met his constituents, as he intended to do, they would approve of the course taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They would recognise that it was only the ordinary toll which every article in the neighbourhood of Sheffield paid to go into the Corporation market—that it was a toll which foreign corn would pay to come into the markets of this country for the use of those markets. It was not protection. It was merely a means of raising money which had been advocated on many platforms in urban constituencies and he had no hesitation in saying that the majority of the people of Sheffield would approve of the tax a. being one of the best ways which could possibly be devised for raising moneys But, although he approved of it, he confessed he did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone nearly far enough. He would have been glad if the right hon. Gentleman had been able to see his way to make some distinction between foreign and colonial grain, which, he thought, would have done a great deal to bind the Empire together
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  and bring about that commercial federation which was the only means of preserving the Empire in the future. He believed that the taxation of foreign, manufactures would conduce to our financial and industrial prosperity, by recreating again that supremacy which this country once enjoyed and which, unfortunately, it had lost in some considerable measure.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: I rise for the purpose, not of taking any prolonged part in the debate that has arisen on this Budget, but because I think no time should be lost by those who represent Ireland in this House in entering their protest against this demand of further taxation upon the people of Ireland. The House must excuse me if I commence by repeating a remark which I have made on, many occasions such as this in the past. It is one of the commonplaces of English statesmen in dealing with Ireland to say that we ought to congratulate ourselves upon the fact that a poor country like ours is associated in partnership with a great and wealthy country like England. How docs this work out in practice? We see the great fact that we are bound to this country and forced to pay a share, and as we believe an unfair share, of those enormous Imperial expenses which are entered upon by this country, and in which we have practically no concern whatever. I suppose this is the largest Budget ever proposed in the English Parliament. The amount is well over £200,000,000, and it is necessitated by a policy which is absolutely repugnant to the bulk of the people of Ireland, and from the success of which they can derive no possible benefit whatever. The voice of Ireland in this House has always been heard on the side of economy. I remember in the debate we had last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer lamented the days had gone when statesmen of different periods advocated a policy of economy, and he said he thought there was no party of economy left in this House. I may remind him that the representatives of Ireland in this House have always raised their voices in the interest of economy, and in spite of that the expenses of the empire have

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  gone on increasing at a ratio which is absolutely appalling, and we, because we are bound up with this country by the Act of Union, are bound to pay an exorbitant share, as we believe, of those extravagances into which the empire is forced by a policy we disapprove of and oppose. All this time, while the increase of the expenditure of the empire has gone on, Ireland's prosperity has been diminishing. In this country you are able to bear increased taxation, and you are able to regard with some degree of equanimity the enormous increase year by year of your budget. Your population is increasing and your prosperity has been increasing by leaps and bounds, but in Ireland our population has been going down, and certainly by comparison with any other country in Europe our prosperity has been declining, and yet all this time our taxation year by year has been increasing. Although it may seem to many old Members of the House like repeating an oft told tale, yet we are bound to repeat on every occasion of this kind some of the facts connected with the over-taxation of Ireland. A Commission in the year 1895 appointed by this House, and consisting in the majority not of Irishmen but of gentlemen belonging to Great Britain, came to the conclusion that on the figures for the year 1893–94 Ireland was overtaxed according to her relative taxable capacity as compared with this country to the extent of £2,750,000, and that figure was arrived at on a supposition which, I for one always regarded as a false supposition, that the amount which Ireland ought to pay to Imperial charges according to her taxable capacity was one twentieth of what England ought to pay. I believe that was a false figure. I believe that one thirtieth or one thirty-fifth rather than one twentieth is the correct figure. But taking one twentieth as correct for the sake of argument it was shown that we were overtaxed that year£2,750,000. What has happened since? According to the figures for 1893–94, which were the figures taken for comparison, the taxation of Ireland amounted to £7,500,000. Since then £3,000,000 has been added to the taxation of Ireland, and to-day we are asked to agree to a Budget which will still further increase the unjust burden which is east
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  upon our country. Therefore, we who represent Ireland in this House are bound on every occasion such as this to raise our voices against any taxation which increases the financial burdens under which we suffer. As to the methods of this new taxation I shall say very little. I am not inclined to agree with the hon. and learned Member for South Shields, He is an upholder of the war; and if so, he ought not to be afraid to put upon the shoulders of those he represents a fair share of the burden of the war. The complaint I make against the Chancellor of the Exchequer is this—he boasts that the bulk of the people of this country approved of this war; and if so, why has he not the courage to put the bulk of its cost upon those who were in favour of it? He has to make up a deficit of £41,000,000 and he raises a beggarly £5,000,000 by direct taxation and the balance he raises by loan. That is neither an honest nor courageous policy. If the bulk of the people are in favour of this war, the bulk of the increased taxation necessary to carry on the war ought to be put upon the shoulders of the people who approve of it. What is the case in respect to Ireland? Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not pretend that the bulk of the people of Ireland approved of the war. He knows perfectly well that the bulk of the population of Ireland abhor this war and regard it as a most unjust and iniquitous war, and that if they had the power they would refuse to pay a sixpence towards the cost of it. Yet he proposes to put on us an unjust burden of taxation in support of it. It would have been far more honest and courageous on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he had put not a penny but 6d. on the income tax, and instead of raising a loan to meet the bulk of the £4,000,000 deficit he had put the entire amount of that taxation upon the people. Then we should have seen whether Gentlemen like the hon. and learned Member for South Shields approved of the policy of the war when he went down to address his constituents on the subject. I have risen, not to take up the time of the Committee in discussing the Budget, but for the simple reason of voicing Ireland's protest. We protest against it, first.

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  because we pay an unfair share of the taxation, and we protest against it also, and chiefly, because the bulk of the taxation is one we absolutely disapprove of. There is one thing upon which I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, und that is that in the proposals of this terrible Budget he has not apparently concealed anything—he has put the full truth before the people; and if he had only been consistent and shown what this war was costing in money to the people of England—if he had gone further and put the cost upon their shoulders—I should have thought better of him. With reference to the tax on corn, we in Ireland are differently situated to you in England. There is no doubt that the free trade which was productive of so much benefit to this country has been little short of a curse to Ireland, and if this duty gave any protection to the Irish agricultural industry, which is unfortunately the only industry Ireland has left, it might be a serious responsibility fur us to take up an attitude antagonistic to it. But this is so small a thing that it cannot help our agricultural industry in Ireland. It is a very sad thing to say, but it must be confessed that a certain portion of the population of Ireland largely subsists on meal and flour, and even a small increase in the price of the staple food Stuff's may amount to something like disaster to Ireland. But apart from that consideration we take a clear, intelligent resolution that we object to pay for a war which we regard as unjust, and which we believe future generations of Englishmen would look upon in the same manner as we do.
  MR. BARTLEY: I do not think that the complaint about Ireland, so far as the income tax is concerned, is reasonable, because the new taxes will hardly fall on the Irish people at all. The Budget is, I consider, a very bold measure on the part of the Government. I am a free trader in every sense, and have always been so. I represent a very dense population.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: "Natural selection."
  MR. BARTLEY: If I have made any remark that is unparliamentary, I am
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  very sorry; but I represent a very densely populated district, and I am bold enough to say that the great bulk of the people approve of the war, and inasmuch as they profess to approve of the war, I accept the principle that they should in a small degree, even if they are poor, help to pay the cost of it. There is a sort of fetish worship in the objection to any taxation of the people. The speech of the hon. Member for South Shields showed exactly what we have to put up with. No doubt the corn duty will be used all over the country as an attack on the food of the people; but a shilling duty on the quarter of imported corn would only represent the half of a farthing on the 8lb. loaf, which probably would have to be paid by the middleman. I think the two pence on cheques is a mistake, and will lead to a great deal of irritation for a very small sum.
  SIR JOHN KINLOCHsaid that the tax on grain would be most objectionable from the point of view of cattle feeding farmers in Scotland, who bought enormous quantities of maize and other feeding stuff's from America.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILLsaid that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had selected the least of the evils among which he had to choose. He had not listened to the seductive whispers which urged a borrowing Budget. He had held firmly to the principle that no new borrowing should be undertaken unless accompanied by the imposition of new taxation. As for the stamp on cheques, the proposal which seemed to have excited the most disapprobation, he thought it ought to be welcomed as a step in the direction of taxing those elusive forms of personalty which had so long escaped their proper share of the public burdens. The increase in the income tax was, no doubt, a source of grave concern to all of them. Nevertheless, taking the propositions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a whole, he was inclined to think the House would admit that they were the best that could have been made in the circumstances. What were those circumstances? A visitor from another

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  planet, who made himself acquainted with our Budgets since 1880 and saw the rise in expenditure which characterised that period, culminating in an extraordinary upward bound in the last three years, would probably ask what great accession to the national wealth had taken place in those three years. If he were told that the only new asset had been the existence of a costly colonial war, he probably would return to his own planet with a peculiar idea of the intelligence or even the sanity of this nation. He was not, he observed, attacking the war expenditure. How very different was the present rate of increase of expenditure as compared with our former experience. Let him take three six-year periods. In the six years before 1890 the increase was £4,500,000; in the period from 1890 to 1896 the increase was£13,750,000; and from 1896 to 1901–02 the increase was no less than £36,000,000. Thus the increase in the first period was 5 per cent.; in the second period 15 percent.; and in the third period 36 per cent.
  These were facts which, however stale, ought to be brought to the notice of the country on every occasion. He held that these increases were out of all proportion to the national enrichment, and that there was no adequate explanation or excuse. But, however explained, this grim fact remained, that the cost of government was nearly half as much again as it was seven years ago. Did anyone suppose that it was half as good again? Side by side with the increase in the Imperial expenditure and the march of indebtedness, municipal expenditure and indebtedness, no doubt encouraged by Parliament, had gone on increasing all over the country. It had been said that this was a wealthy country. No doubt that was so; but there were also very poor people in the country. This extra taxation might, in the case of the poor and distressed, interfere with the comfort of their homes. When the Committee extended their view over the last seven years, the prospect was still more unsatisfactory and alarming. They had yet to deal with the Finance Act of 1894, of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire was so proud. That Act ought to have
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  been modified or amended by the Conservative Government. Today it imposed on the taxpayers of this country a burden of about £14,000,000, as against £7,500,000 which was the product before the passing of the Act. All that had been swallowed up mainly by an increase in normal expenditure, as well as by the war expenditure. That showed how absurd it was to institute any comparison between what was happening now and the financial policy of Mr. Pitt. In the days of Mr. Pitt, by the most austere and rigid economy, and by adopting every shift to keep expenditure down, nearly the whole, and in some cases actually the whole, of the yield of the war tax was secured, and not as in the present day frittered away, or at any rate consumed in domestic expenditure. So much for the past. The question which now immediately arose was—did the people complain? The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said this afternoon that there was no falling off in the consuming power of the people, and no diminution in business at home, that we were living in a time of great prosperity, and that our prosperity was ministered to by the wealth of neighbouring nations. There had been many years of peace and plenty in Europe, and many years of light taxation at home. America had been developed, and the application of scientific invention to industry had continued. All these facts had so accumulated wealth in the world that there was a great reserve fund, and a fine inheritance for extravagant or imperious hands. The income tax payer thought that the money was wanted for the war, and his public spirit would not allow him to grumble while the war was going on. The glut in the sugar market covered the imposition of the sugar tax, and the great gamble in the coal trade the year before last favoured the imposition of the export duty. But these things were not going to last. Let hon. Members think of the lean years and the evil days of reaction which in the next five or six years might threaten the prosperity of the country. There was a revenue of £150,000,000 for ordinary domestic purposes, and if the details of the Estimates might be challenged, at least as much might in justice be said as to their distribution. How were they distributed?

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  The resources of the British Government were not unlimited. They might be as vast as even Sir Robert Giffen conceived them to be, but they had their limits, although they were not easy to ascertain accurately. But those limits should be respected, and to transgress them was to incur swift automatic retribution. Therefore, the question which all who advocated retrenchment should take up was, not that of gratifying the demands of Departments, but of adjudicating between those demands. It was no longer a question of the Army, the Navy, and the Civil Service having all they wanted, as one would think to hear some people talk. It was a question of spending a limited although vast income to the best possible advantage.
  He wished to ask if at the present moment there was any effective direction of expenditure, any holding back of some Departments in order that others might have their enterprises put forward. Everyone knew there was nothing of the kind. They looked in vain to the constitution of the country to find any machinery or force which could effect such an accurate allocation, It was not much good looking to the country itself, because the country could only judge of grave issues at infrequent and very often uncertain intervals. In the House? They were told with convincing force by the Leader of the House the other night that the control of the House over Supply had practically passed away. He thought it had inevitably passed away, and that Supply was now brought before the House, not that it might be controlled, but in order that certain questions of administration might be discussed. They could not look to the House of Commons, therefore, to arrest and apportion expenditure. There was not much good in looking to the Press to arrest the progress of expenditure. The Press merely exaggerated popular caprice. There was no good looking to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, except when he was also the First Minister of the Crown. There was only one force which could make the necessary allocation of public expenditure, and that was the Cabinet, controlled by the Prime Minister, who in the Party system of the country very often stood as a surety for certain great principles and as a guarantee that the King's Government should be carried on in an orderly and
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  honourable manner. That was the only force that could be depended upon. Something no doubt was desperately done by the Treasury. He wished hon. Members to understand clearly what the Treasury was. There was an opinion abroad that the Treasury had certain statutory, or even constitutional powers, apart altogether from the ordinary government of the country. Ultimately however, the control of the Treasury was neither more nor less than the influence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet. Of course, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were able to persuade the Cabinet that what he considered the maximum of taxation should be accepted, naturally the Treasury would be in a very strong position in dealing with Departments, the heads of which had all signified their acceptance, as Cabinet Ministers, of that standard. Sometimes a Chancellor of the Exchequer was overruled. He did not say that that had happened. He did not venture to insinuate that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been overruled, but he hoped that he had, from the point of view of the position he would occupy in history. Something was done by the Treasury, but in the main we drifted, and the result was—he hoped the Committee would forgive him for putting these matters forward with such assumption, but he felt he would not be able to bring them forward in any very apologetic tone—that there was a lack of proportion in the distribution of expenditure between different objects, without any regard to their relative importance. He would take the greatest and most notorious instance, namely, the ratio observed between the Naval and Military expenditure of the country. No one, however great an enthusiast, not even the Duke of Wellington—he did not mean the great Duke but the present Duke—not even the Secretary of War himself, would deny that the Navy was much more important than the Army to an Island Empire, yet we spent an equal proportion of our national resources on both. Surely that was an anomaly. Let them look at other countries. Germany, like Great Britain, was a country which required two defensive weapons, but, unlike Great Britain, her primary weapon of defence was her Army, her secondary weapon being her Navy. The German Army was to Germany what the British

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  Navy was to England—a matter of life and death. Germany was anxious above all other nations to increase her Naval strength, but she did not make the mistake of making her secondary weapon compete with her primary weapon, and she was spending three times as much on her Army as on her Navy. Then, again, France more than any other nation approached the conditions of expenditure in which England stood. She aimed at being a first-class Naval and Military Power. The result was that in 1870 her Army was found to be unequal, and her Navy was thought to be unequal as recently as 1898. France appeared to be making an unwise disposition of her forces, but she had spent twice as much on her Army as on her Navy. There was no nation, look where we might throughout the whole world, which spent as much on its secondary as on its primary weapon of defence. He ventured to think that if one examined the details of expenditure and saw where the money was actually spent, a great many more facts not less striking than the present ratio between Naval and Military expenditure would be discovered.
  He should like to say a few words about the manner in which we were spending, roughly speaking, £150,000,000 for domestic purposes. Did any one suppose that we were going to stop there? He would name to the House three different causes of increased expenditure which would have to be met in the immediate future. First of all there would have to be an increase in the pay of the Navy. We had increased the pay of the Army, and we were now calling for more men for the Navy, and their pay would have to be increased. There was also certain to be an increase for primary and secondary education, and there would also be an increase in expenditure due to the garrison in South Africa. That last-mentioned expenditure had been estimated by people who did not take too gloomy a view to be about £10,000,000 a year. It might very easily be more, unless the peace which was now being made was one which would command the acquiescence of the Boers. There were one or two other considerations which would arise as soon as the war was over. The Sinking Fund would have to be revived—he thought they were all agreed about that—and the
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  income tax would have to be reduced. He held that the Income Tax pressed more heavily than any other tax, It pressed upon the brain workers of the country, but that was no reason for its reduction, as it was the elbow of the country in time of war, and could meet ordinary fluctuations on the Budget without adding to the cost of collection or dislocating any trade or industry. After the war we would have to meet new and possibly large demands out of resources diminished by the revival of the Sinking Fund and the reduction of the income tax, and would have to meet them during a period when we would not have the patriotic stimulus due to the war, and when very likely the good trade conditions which new prevailed would be absent. What would it come to? The basis of taxation would have to be broadened, and he thought it well that the Committee should realise that further expenditure meant serious taxation of bread and meat and other necessaries of the food of the people. He held that if the basis of taxation were further broadened, two gigantic issues would be raised. In the first place the fair trade issue would be raised. A tax which in the first instance would be honestly imposed solely for the purpose of revenue would, no doubt, under the influence of the hon. and gallant Member of Central Sheffield—not less gallant in the field of economics than in the field of war—became Protective in character, for the hon. and gallant Member would say, why not kill three birds with one stone—raise the revenue, support British industries, and consolidate the Empire. He wondered what would happen if the fair trade issue was openly raised by some responsible person of eminence and authority in the country. They would stand once more on the old battlefields, with all the old broken weapons, and amid grass grown trenches and the neglected graves of heroes who had fallen in former conflicts. Party bitterness would be aroused such as the present generation could furnish no parallel for except in the brief period of 1885–6. He wondered how the advent of such a tremendous issue would affect the existing disposition of political parties. These were questions for the

  241
  future on which he would not, however, detain the Committee, but the time would come when they would have to be answered.
  There was another issue, and one not less important, even more important, which would be raised if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were called upon to increase taxation beyond its present limits. Let them indulge in no illusions. Perhaps a Chancellor of the Exchequer with great power—he did not mean any reflection on his right hon. friend—and with the demand of the country for retrenchment behind him. would come; yet he would not be able to pull down expenditure which had bounded up nearly £40,000,000 in seven years by more than £7,000,000 or £8,000,000. All that economists should work for was to insist that the sums now voted should be made to meet the demands of the near future, and that the present expenditure should be kept stationary. In 1885 the suggestion of a £100,000,000 Budget was scouted as a wild idea. A £100,000,000 Budget was now ancient history. We had a £150,000,000 Budget for domestic expenditure, and a £200,000,000 Budget loomed portentous in the future. He could quite conceive such a Budget being extremely popular, and supported by the enormous mass of the voting strength in the country, but he wondered who would pay. That was a serious question for hon. Members on his side of the House. Was it seriously to be supposed that the democratic electorate of the country in time of peace would accept such a burden? He made no aspersion on the patriotism of the people. He thought the Government had received unflinching and unselfish support from the masses of the people in connection with the war. By the courtesy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer be had been able to verify the figures showing the ratio between direct and indirect taxation. They showed that, as the franchise had been extended, the proportion of direct taxation to indirect taxation approached more and more closely. Direct taxation was increasing, and indirect taxation was getting less and less. Two years ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we had succeeded in establishing a financial equilibrium between direct and indirect taxation, but last year, for the
  242
  first time in the history of the country, direct taxation amounted to 52 per cent. of the total, and indirect taxation to only 48 per cent. Did not that show in the most convincing manner that any attempt largely to extend indirect taxation would run counter to some very potent instinct far down in the hearts of the people? To "broaden largely the basis of taxation" would raise not only the fair trade issue but something much more formidable than a political issue; it would raise an issue directly social.
  By way of recapitulation he would say that the increase of £40,000,000 in the cost of governing the country during the last six or seven years was not to be explained by the indulgence of the Government in new ideas, or by the assumption of new functions of government. It had not been governed by any just sense of proportion in distribution; and he very much doubted if there had been any proportionate corresponding gain in efficiency. It had been largely, if not mainly, due to a more open-handed administration of public Departments, resulting from the confusion of our finances due to the war and from a shocking lack of Cabinet control. We had reached the extreme limit of practical and prudent peace time taxation, and unless effective means were taken to curb and control the growing expenditure of the country, we would be confronted with important social, economic, and political problem, which might be most dangerous to the country and the Empire, and very damaging to many causes which the Conservative Party held near and dear to their hearts.
  MR. SEELYsaid he did not wish to follow the hon. Member who had just spoken into the general question of the expenditure of the country, but he should like to explain the reason why he objected to the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to put a tax on corn, and why he intended to oppose it at every stage. They had just listened to an eloquent speech in favour of general economy in the management of the finances of the country. There was no doubt that in the minds of some it was thought to be a certain advantage

  243
  to put on a tax which would be felt by everyone in the country, but he regretted very much indeed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have selected for that purpose the particular article he had.
  In the first place, a tax on wheat was a bad tax in itself. It was a tax which pressed most hardly upon those who were least able to bear it. Those who were most dependent upon bread were the people whose incomes were the smallest. That class might contain the largest number of voters, but it also contained a large number of people who had no votes at all. Every widow, every soldier's wife, living on the allowance considered by the Government sufficient for her support and that of her children, had to spend a much larger proportion of her income upon bread than those in more comfortable circumstances. He regretted the tax for that reason, and also because it was a revival of the evil custom which we got rid of fifty years ago of imposing protective duties on the food of the people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had declared, no doubt honestly, that it was not a protective duty, but when the people of the country read the debate which had taken place and saw who were those who had accepted with pleasure and gratitude the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman, it would be difficult to persuade them that the tax, at all events in its future results, if not in its immediate effect, would not be protective to a very large extent. It was protection of the worst kind. According to a rough calculation made at the moment, it appeared that about £300,000 would be taken from the food of the people and given to the producers of wheat—the farmers and the land
  244
  owners. The total amount which the agricultural producers would get was, of course, more than that—probably about £1,300,000. With regard to barley and oats, it was not so serious a matter. It was to the taxation of wheat, which was the food of the people, and especially the food of the poorest of the people, that he objected. The tax was being levied in such a way that out of the amounts paid by the people in the increased cost of food, a certain proportion would go, not for the support of the general taxation of the country, but into the pockets of a particular class of inhabitants. He sympathised as much as anyone could do with the difficulties of farmers and landlords, but it could not for one moment be asserted that they were not as a class distinctly superior in wealth and comforts to many of those upon whom would press most hardly any tax upon corn, and consequently upon bread. It had been asserted that the tax would be paid by the foreigner or the middleman. Taxes could not be obtained, by any manœuvring, out of other countries. Especially was that the case with regard to wheat. The only way in which any portion of an import tax could be obtained from other countries was by the consumption being diminished. If an import tax diminished the consumption, then to a certain extent it diminished the demand and might diminish the price abroad. But the peculiarity of wheat was that if the price was increased the consumption was not thereby diminished. If the price of bread were increased, so far from the people eating less, lame numbers of them would eat more, because their surplus being diminished, they had less to spend upon meat and other forms of food. No por-

  245
  tion, therefore, would be obtained from the foreigner; the whole of the burden would fall upon the people of this country.
  He would not go further into the question at the present stage. The speeches from economists to which the House had listened would come in far more usefully in the discussion on the expenditure of the country, rather than in connection with the raising of the money made necessary by that expenditure. He looked forward to the time when the war would he ended, as all hoped it would be soon, with honour and credit to this country, and with good feeling towards our opponents, and when he hoped a serious attempt would be made to reduce the expenditure of the country. He would oppose the imposition of this tax upon the food of the people, because he believed it to be in itself wrong, socially wrong, and that it would raise social feeling in the country. In addition to that, there would be interested in its maintenance large numbers of people in the country who might prevent the tax being taken off in the future. For these reasons he regretted the step which had been taken, and would oppose it at every stage.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: We have had, as is always the case upon the introduction of the Budget, a debate ranging over a great variety of subjects but of all the speeches delivered, I confess the most interesting to me has been that of my hon. friend the Member for Oldham. It was, to my mind, an admirable and eloquent speech, and, though there are parts of it I could criticise, and statements in it which I think, if time
  246
  permitted, I might question, yet, taken as a whole, I welcome it most sincerely as some aid to me in what I think even my hon. friend must admit to be the extremely difficult task of keeping down expenditure in such times as those in which we live. I can speak now from an experience of seven years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and no one but myself knows the arduous, continuous, disagreeable nature of the duties of that office in attempting to control expenditure, and nobody but myself knows how much I have succeeded, or how much I have failed, in this. But this I do say most sincerely—that I welcome the assistance of my hon. friend, as I have often welcomed the assistance of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth, and of all Members of the House who will regard something more than the popular outcry of the moment for expenditure upon this or that hobby of the day, and who will look at the expenditure of the country as a whole, and will, as my hon. friend has rightly said, endeavour to weigh the different classes of demands for expenditure one against another, and have the courage to refuse what really ought not to be acceded to at all.
  My hon. friend has referred to a point which was also referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth. The right hon. Gentleman was anxious to obtain a statement of the amount of the new taxation which has been imposed during the last three years for purposes of the war. I think I laid on the Table last year a statement on that subject, but I will refer to it, and will endeavour to see that the information the right hon. Gentleman desires is presented to the House.
  SIE WILLIAM HARCOURT: The expenditure in the year just closed?
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: Quite so. It should be. I think, for each year, so as to show, as far as possible, how much of the taxation has gone for the war. But let me say this. It is extremely difficult, when, as in several cases of this new taxation, the increase of taxation has not been by way of a new tax, but by way of an addition to an old tax, to decide precisely how much of the increase of taxation is due to the addition to the tax and how much to the growth of the old tax itself. I think the more satisfactory statement would be to take the taxation of the country each year as a whole, and show how much has gone to ordinary expenditure and how much has been devoted to the purposes of the war. I will endeavour to put such a statement before the House.
  The hon. and learned Member for Waterford has, with perfect consistency, stated that he was opposed on two main grounds to the proposals of this as to the proposals of former Budgets. In the first place, he considers that Ireland pays an unfair share of general taxation. Well, that is a subject I have often attempted to argue in the House, and on which I have always found myself in direct opposition to the hon. and learned Member. I will not attempt tonight to deal with it further than to say that in regard to this, as I think I have shown in regard to former Budgets, though I entirely admit that Ireland has had to bear increased taxation in these later years, yet the proportion of increase is much less than that borne by Great Britain, and will, I believe, be found to
  248
  disappear altogether, if you consider how much of it is devoted to what may properly be called Imperial purposes. I demur, therefore, to the view taken by the hon. and learned Member, and those who sit around him, as to the grievance of Ireland in this respect. But the hon. and learned Member took another objection. He said that he and those whom he leads, object altogether to the war for which the increased taxation and borrowing proposed in this Budget is mainly required, and that we ought to put the taxation for the war on the people who approve of it. I do not think, if the hon. and learned Member attempted to apply that doctrine to Great Britain, that he would find it a practicable or a reasonable policy. You cannot allocate taxation for a certain purpose to those who approve of that purpose, and relieve those who disapprove of it. That is obvious. What he really means is that the majority of his fellow-countrymen in Ireland, in his opinion, disapprove of the war, and that, therefore, Ireland should not contribute to it at all. That is a separatist doctrine, to my mind, in which, I am afraid, I am quite as far—if not farther—apart from the view of the hon. and learned Member, as I am on the other subject.
  The main criticism of the Budget tonight has not been on the increase of the income tax, or even the increased duty on cheques, though something has been said on the latter subject, but on the proposed new duties on corn and flour. Those have been objected to on different and sometimes almost contradictory grounds. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth and

  249
  the hon. Member who has just sat down did not trouble about what I endeavoured to argue, the practical side of the question. They object to the tax in theory. They assume without the slightest reason—I defy them to prove it—that the old registration duty on corn and flour increased the price of bread. Until that is proved, I will venture to say that all this talk of the increase in the price of the food of the people, of its being a protective duty to home producers, of its putting, as the hon. Gentleman who last spoke suggested, a large sum into the pockets of the owners and occupiers of land in Great Britain and Ireland, are propositions which it is unnecessary to argue. When you have shown that this tax caused an increase in the price of bread, then I think there will be something to be said for the arguments which have been adduced against the tax.
  But there have been other arguments. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford referred to this tax, and used a very curious argument. I thought he was going to approve of it. He said he thought that free trade had been an absolute injury to Ireland, but he could not support the duty I have proposed because there was so little protection about it. He went on to argue that he was also opposed to the duty because it would increase the price of cheap meal, which was much consumed in Ireland. I do not know whether that is protection or not, but the duty cannot be open to objection on both these grounds. Then the hon. Gentleman the Member for Poplar, who is an authority on this subject, admitted that it was a good tax while
  250
  it lasted, so long as it was devoted to paying off debt; but why it should be a bad tax to re-enact again now that it is proposed for the purpose of avoiding debt is an argument I entirely fail to understand. Then the hon. and learned Member for South Shields made an impassioned oration against the duty, very like that which he delivered against the coal tax last year. I feel now, as I felt then, that if he has made up his mind that the tax will have the effect which he anticipates, I cannot wonder at his violence, and I could not convince his prejudices. Some of the arguments that have been addressed to the Committee against the duties on corn and flour remind me of my old friend "the thin end of the wedge." I can remember in my younger days in this House, when I was a Member of a Party which was always in a minority and perhaps occasionally addicted to rather out of date opinions, that "the thin end of the wedge" argument was a very favourite one indeed. A proposal used often to be objected to because of what it might lead to; and so this little duty which is suggested tonight, which when it existed was never considered by Mr. Gladstone or Sir Robert Peel as in any practical effect protective, now is considered to bear all the worst marks of protection, not because any thing practical can be alleged against it, but because my right hon. friend the Member for Thanet gave it his benediction, as a tax for revenue, and then went on to express his wish that it might be made much heavier, or turned, as my hon. friend the Member for Sheffield would desire, into a beginning of colonoial preferential taxation. How so small a tax could be usefully trusted on preferential lines I

  251
  really fail to see. These, however, are matters which do not affect the rights or wrongs of the proposal. I only ask that it may be fairly considered and dealt with on its merits in accordance with its previous actual history, and not according to prejudices which belong to another order of things altogether. I hope that after the discussion of this evening we may now be allowed to take the Resolution.
  MR. LOUGHsaid the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that he had not discovered any serious opposition to the addition to the stamp tax, He thought it was one of the most worrying and annoying impositions.
  (12.10.) Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes, 254; Noes, 135. (Division List No. 108.)

  AYES.

  Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir Alex. F.

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Gardner, Ernest

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Colomb, Sir John Charles Ready

  Garfit, William

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

  Gibbs, Hn. A. G. H. (City of Lond.

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Compton, Lord Alwyne

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Archdale, Edward Mervyn

  Corbett, T. L (Down, North)

  Gordon, Hn. J. E. (Elgin&Nairn)

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Cranberne, Viscount

  Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby-(Linc.)

  Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

  Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  Arrol, Sir William

  Crossley, Sir Savile

  Graham, Henry Robert

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Cust, Henry John C.

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Green, Walford D. (Wednesbury

  Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury)

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline Fitz Roy

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Greene, W. Raymond-(Cambs.)

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Band, John George Alexander

  Davies, Sir Horatio D. (Chatham)

  Gretton, John

  Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Manch'r

  Denny, Colonel

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W. (Leeds)

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

  Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.)

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Banbury, Frederick George

  Dickson-Poynder. Sir John P.

  Bartley, George C. T.

  Digby, John K. D. Wingfield

  Hall Edward Marshall

  Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

  Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

  Hamilton, Rt. Hn Lord G.(Midd'x

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Dorington, Sir John Edward

  Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Robert Wm.

  Bignold, Arthur

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford

  Bigwood, James

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Bill, Charles

  Darning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Bond, Edward

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

  Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley)

  Bousfield, William Robert

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Heath, James (Staffords., N. W.)

  Brassey, Albert

  Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

  Helder, Augustus

  Brookfield, Colonel Montagu

  Henderson, Alexander

  Bull, William James

  Hermon-Hodge, Robert Trotter

  Burdett-Coutts, W.

  Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.)

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Butcher, John George

  Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

  Hobhouse, Henry (Somerset, E.)

  Fergusson, Rt. Hn. Sir J. (Manc'r

  Hogg, Lindsay

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Hope, J. F.(Sheffield, Brightside)

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H

  Finch, George H.

  Hornby, Sir William Henry

  Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire

  Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

  Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Firbank, Joseph Thomas

  Hoult, Joseph

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Howard, John (Kent, Faversham

  Chamberlain, J. Austen (Worc'r)

  Fison, Frederick William

  Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

  Chaplain, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Chapman, Edward

  Flower, Ernest

  Charrington, Spencer

  Forster, Henry William

  Churchill, Winston Spencer

  Foster, Sir Michael (Lond. Univ.)

  Jackson, Rt. Hon. Wm. Lawies

  Clare, Octavius Leigh

  Foster, Philip S.(Warwick, S. W.

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

  Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E

  Johnston, William (Belfast)

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Galloway, William Johnson

  Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex)

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Shaw-Stewart, M. H. (Renfrew)

  Kenyon, James (Lancs., Bury)

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

  Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Keswick, William

  Smith, Abel H.(Hertford, East)

  Knowles, Lees

  Nicholson, William Graham

  Smith, H. C (North'mb, Tyneside

  Nicol, Donald Ninian

  Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.

  Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset

  Law, Andrew Bonar

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

  Lawrence, Joseph (Monmouth)

  Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M Taggart

  Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

  Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

  Lawson, John Grant

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareh'm

  Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

  Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.

  Pemberton, John S. G.

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

  Penn, John

  Talbot, Rt. Hon. T. G. (Oxf'd Univ.

  Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S

  Percy, Earl

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Pierpoint, Robert

  Tomlinson, Wm. Edw. Murray

  Lowe, Francis William

  Pilkington, Lieut.-Col. Richard

  Tritton, Charles Ernest

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

  Lowther, Rt. Hon. James (Kent)

  Plummer, Walter R.

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

  Pryce-Jones, Lt. Col. Edward

  Valentia, Viscount

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth

  Purvis, Robert

  Vincent Col Sir C. E. H (Sheffield

  Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred

  Pym, C. Guy

  Warr, Augustus Frederick

  Macartney, Rt Hn W. G Ellison

  Quitter, Sir Cuthbert

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Webb, Colonel William George

  Maconochie, A. W.

  Welby, Lt.-Col. A. C. E.(T'nt'n

  M'Calmont, Col. J.(Antrim. E.)

  Randles, John S.

  Welby, Sir Charles G. E (Notts.)

  M Killop, James (Stirlingshire)

  Rankin, Sir James

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Malcolm, Ian

  Rattigan, Sir William Henry

  Willox, Sir John Archibald

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Wills, Sir Frederick

  Maxwell, W. J. H (D'mfriesshire

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)

  Middlemore, John Throgmorton

  Richards, Henry Charles

  Wilson, John (Falkirk)

  Milvain, Thomas

  Ridley, Hon. M. W. (Stalybridge

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Mitchell, William

  Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson

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

  Molesworth, Sir Lewis

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

  Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.)

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Wyndham-Quin, Major W. H.

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Moore, William (Antrim, N.)

  Round, James

  More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

  Morgan, David. J. (Walthamstow

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  Morton, Arthur H. A. (Deptford)

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Mount, William Arthur

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

  Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Sir William Walrond and Mr. Anstruther.

  Muntz, Philip A.

  Seely, Maj. J. E. B. (Isleof Wight)

  Mnrray, Rt Hn A. Graham (Bute)

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.

  Burke, E. Haviland-

  Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

  Allen, Chas. P. (Gloue., Stroud

  Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan)

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Delany, William

  Caldwell, James

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Dillon, John

  Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

  Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Doogan, P. C.

  Bell, Richard

  Cawley, Frederick

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

  Black, Alexander William

  Channing, Francis Ailston

  Blake, Edward

  Cogan, Denis J.

  Brigg, John

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Edwards, Frank

  Broadhurst, Henry

  Crean, Eugene

  Elibank, Master of

  Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

  Cremer, William Randal

  Evans, Sir Francis H. (Maidstone

  254

  255

  Fenwick, Charles

  M'Govern, T.

  Russell, T. W.

  Ffrench, Peter

  M'Kean, John

  Flynn, James Christopher

  M'Kenna, Reginald

  Samuel, S. M (Whitechapel)

  Furness, Sir Christopher

  M'Laren, Charles Benjamin

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Mather, William

  Seely, Charles Hilton (Linoln)

  Gilhooly, James

  Minch, Matthew

  Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  Mooney, John J.

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Grey, Sir Edward (Berwick)

  Morton, Edw. J. C.(Devonport)

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  Moss, Samuel

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

  Murphy, John

  Spencer, Rt. Hn. C. R, (Northants

  Stevenson, Francis S.

  Hammond, John

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William

  Newnes, Sir George

  Sullivan, Donal

  Harmsworth, R. Leicester

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Harrington, Timothy

  Norman, Henry

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Thomas, F. Freeman-(Hastings)

  Hayne, Rt. Hon. Charles Seale-

  Thomas, JA (Glamorgan, Gower)

  Helme, Norval Watson

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Thomson, F. W. (York, W. R.)

  Holland, William Henry

  O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)

  Tomkinson, James

  Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

  O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  O'Dowd, John

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

  Ure, Alexander

  Jordan, Jeremiah

  O'Malley, William

  Joyce, Michael

  O'Mara, James

  White, George (Norfolk)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Palmer, George Wm. (Reading)

  Whiltaker, Thomas Palmer

  Lambert, George

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Wilson, Fred. W. (Norfolk, Mid.)

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accringlon

  Price, Robert John

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

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Priestley, Arthur

  Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)

  Leng, Sir John

  Woodhouse, Sir J. T. (Huddersf'd

  Levy, Maurice

  Rea, Russell

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Reckitt, Harold James

  Lough, Thomas

  Reddy, M.

  Yoxall, James Henry

  Lundon, W.

  Redmond, John F. (Waterford

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries)

  Rickett, J. Compton

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

  MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.

  Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Robson, William Snowdon

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Roche, John

  Mr. Herbert Gladstone and Mr. M'Arthur.

  M'Crae, George

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Resolved, That there shall be charged on and after the 15th day of April, 1902, the following customs import duties.

  £

  s.

  d.

  Corn and grain of all kinds, and peas, beans, and lentils the cwt.

  0

  0

  3

  Resolution to be reported tomorrow, Committee to sit again tomorrow.
  Adjourned at half after Twelve o'clock.