Commons Sitting of 12 May 1902

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.
PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY INQUIRED INTO COMPLIED WITH.)
  Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That,
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  in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Beading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.:—
  Bradford-on-Avon Gas Bill [Lords].
  Great Northern Railway (No. 2) Bill [Lords.]
  Rickmansworth Gas Bill [Lords.]
  Ordered, that the Bills be read a second time.

PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERETO COMPLIED WITH).
Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Beading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 6) Bill.
Ordered, that the Bill be read a second time tomorrow.

PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (NO STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE).
Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, viz:—
Land Drainage Provisional Order Bill.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill.
Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time tomorrow.

NORTH WARWICKSHIRE WATER BILL.
Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
DUBLIN, WICKLOW, AND WEXFORD RAILWAY BILL.
Read the third time, and passed. [New Title.]
GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY (No. 1) BILL (KING'S CONSENT SIGNIFIED),
  MIDLAND RAILWAY (STEAM VESSELS) BILL,

    WEST GLOUCESTERSHIRE WATER BILL,
    WHITECHAPEL AND BOW RAILWAY BILL.
    Read the third time, and passed.

GREAT CENTRAL AND MIDLAND RAILWAYS (SOUTH YORKSHIRE RAILWAYS) BILL.
As amended, considered; A Clause added; Bill to be read the third time.
ISLE OF WIGHT CENTRAL RAILWAY BILL [LORDS] NOT AMENDED.
Considered; to be read the third time.
LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAILWAY (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL.
As amended, considered; Amendments made; Bill to be read the third time.
NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY BILL.
As amended, considered; A Clause added; Bill to be read the third time.
NORTH METROPOLITAN TRAMWAYS BILL.
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
RICHMOND HILL (PRESERVATION OF VIEW) BILL.
As amended, to be considered tomorrow.
YORK CORPORATION BILL.
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
ABERTILLERY URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [LORD],
  ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE AND DUKINFIELD CORPORATIONS (ALMA BRIDGE, &c.) BILL [LORD],

    LANCASHIRE COUNTY (LUNATIC ASYLUMS) BILL [LORD],
    LONGWOOD GAS BILL [LORD],
    NEWCASTLE AND GATESHEAD WATER BILL [LORDS],
    SWINDON UNITED GAS BILL [LORD],
    WEST HAMPSHIRE WATER BILL [LORD],
    Read a second time, and committed.

DUBLIN PORT AND DOCKS BOARD BILL (BY ORDER).
Read the third time, and passed.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL (BY ORDER).
As amended, considered; Amendments made; Bill to be read the the third time.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL.
Read the third time, and passed.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (GAS) BILL,
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (POOR LAW) BILL,
    LONDON GOVERNMENT SCHEME (SOUTHWARK) BILL.
    Read a second time, and committed.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 11).
Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Blackpool (two), Cardiff, Hornsey, Leeds, Southport, and Swindon, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Grant Lawson and Mr. Walter long.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 12).
Bill to confirm certain Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Rotherham and West Hartlepool, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Grant Lawson and Mr. Walter Long.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (HOUSING OF WORKING CLASSES).
Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Birkenhead, Bradford (Yorkshire), and Liverpool, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Grant Lawson and Mr. Walter Long.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 11) BILL.
"To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Blackpool (two), Cardiff, Hornsey, Leeds, Southport, and Swindon," presented, and read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 201.]
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 12) BILL.
"To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Rotherham and West Hartlepool," presented, and read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 202.]
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (HOUSING OF WORKING CLASSES) BILL.
"To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Birkenhead, Bradford (Yorkshire), and Liverpool," presented, and read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to he printed. [Bill 203.]

RAILWAY BILLS (GROUP 7).
Mr. Compton Rickett reported from the Committee on Group No. 7 of Railway Bilk; That, at the meeting of the Committee this day, a letter was received from Sir Harry Bullard, one of the Members of the said Committee, stating that he was unable, on account of an accident, to attend the Committee this day.
Report to lie upon the Table.

NORTH METROPOLITAN ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY BILL.
Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 1) BILL.
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered tomorrow.

LEAMINGTON CORPORATION BILL.
Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Bill, without Amendment.
Amendments to—Caterham and District Gas Bill [Lords], without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the Rhymney Railway Company for the construction of railways; and for other purposes," [Rhymney Railway Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to incorporate a company, and to empower such company to construct a canal
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from the River Medway to the River Thames; and for other purposes." [Medway and Thames Canal Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company for the construction of tramways and tramroads; and for other purposes." [Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Bill (Lords).]
And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act for the granting of further powers to the Bristol Waterworks Company; and for other purposes." [Bristol Water Bill (Lords).]

RHYMNEY RAILWAY BILL [LORDS.]
  MEDWAY AND THAMES CANAL BILL [LORDS].

    TYNESIDE TRAMWAYS AND TRAMROADS BILL [LORDS].
    BRISTOL WATER BILL [LORDS].
    Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

PETITIONS.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions against: From Yorkshire; Halifax; and Bedworth; to lie upon the Table.
LICENSING BILL.
Petitions in favour: From Wandsworth; Brighouse and Elland; and Colne; to lie upon the Table.
PUBLIC HOUSES (HOURS OF CLOSING) (SCOTLAND) ACT (1887) AMENDMENT BILL.
Petition from Coupar Angus, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
Petitions in favour; From Retford; Southampton; and Harrogate; to lie upon the Table.
SUNDAY TRADING (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Petition from Dingwall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  MINES AND QUARRIES.
  Copy presented, of General Report and Statistics for the year 1901, Part I. (District Statistics), Statistics of the Persons employed, Output, and Accidents at Mines and Quarries in the United Kingdom, arranged according to the Inspection Districts [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
PENAL SERVITUDE ACTS (CONDITIONAL LICENCE).
Copy presented, of licence granted to Mary Boyle, a convict under detention in Aylesbury Prison, permitting her to be at large on condition that she enter the Elizabeth Fry Refuge, Hackney, E. [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
POLICE ACT, 1890.
Copy presented, of Correspondence relative to the refusal of the Secretary of State's Certificate, under Section 17 (2) of the Act, to the River Tyne Police Force, for the year ended 29th September, 1901 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
EAST INDIA (ESTIMATE).
Copy presented, of Estimate of Revenue and Expenditure of the Government of India for 1901–2, compared with the results of 1900–1901 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 176.]
EAST INDIA (FINANCE AND REVENUE ACCOUNTS).
Copy presented, of Finance and Revenue Accounts of the Government of India for 1900–1901 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
EAST INDIA (HOME ACCOUNTS.)
Copy presented, of Home Accounts of the Government of India [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 177.]

TREATY SERIES (No. 11, 1902).
Copy presented, of Convention between the United Kingdom and the United States of America, extending the period for Accession of British Colonies and Possessions to the Convention of 2nd March, 1899, relative to the Disposal of Real and Personal Property (Treaty
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Series, No. 17, 1900.) Signed at Washington, 13th January, 1902. Ratifications exchanged at Washington, 2nd April, 1902 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES.)
Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 2,786 to 2,789 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
Paper laid upon the Table by the Clerk of the House:—

LUNACY.
Copy of Report to the Lord Chancellor of the number of visits made, the number of Patients seen, and the number of miles travelled by the visitors of Lunatics between 1st October, 1901, and 31st March, 1902 [by Act].
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Naval Store Department Employees.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether it has been brought to his notice that the first and second class store-housemen of the Naval Store Department receive considerably lower wages than those employed in the Naval Ordnance Department, although the former deal with stores of greater value and with far larger stocks; and whether he will give this matter his attention with a view to greater uniformity of treatment as regards these two classes of employees.
  (Answer.) The staff of the Naval Ordnance Department does not include any such grades as first and second class storehousemen. The hon. Member is probably referring to his Question to the Naval Ordnance storeholders, first and second class, who correspond approximately, as regards duties and pay, to the foremen of storehousemen in the Naval Store Department. It is quite a mistake to compare them with the ordinary storehousemen.—(Admiralty)

  Chatham Dockyard Employees.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state the number of men at present employed as storehouse labourers in his

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  Majesty's Dockyard, Chatham, at a weekly rate of wages of 19s.; also the number of temporary or ordinary labourers emyloyed at the same rate. Whether the duties performed by both classes are identical; and whether there is any objection to placing the permanent men upon the establishment for pension.
  (Answer.) There are no men employed as storehouse labourers in His Majesty's Dockyard, Chatham, at a weekly rate of wages of 19s. The pay of this class is from 20s. to 22s. 6d. per week, and there are thirty-eight employed. The number of ordinary labourers employed in the Store Department is six established, entitled to pension, at 19s. per week, and about 250 hired, not entitled to pension, at 20s. per week. There is no intention of placing the ordinary labourers on the establishment for pension.—(Admiralty.)

  Navy—Committees of Inquiry.
  LORD CHARLES BERESFORD: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state the number and nature of Committees now sitting to inquire into matters concerning the Royal Navy.
  (Answer.) Apart from mere Departmental and Standing Committees, the following are the Committees now sitting to inquire into matters concerning the Royal Navy:—

  1. Patent Fuel Committee.

  2. Boiler Committee.

  3. The Committee under the presidency of Admiral Sir Charles Fane, to consider the organisation and work in the Department of the Director of Naval Construction and the Engineer-in-Chief.

  4. The Committee on Naval Reserves, presided over by the hon. Baronet the Member for Northumberland, Berwick.

  5. The Joint Admiralty and War Office Committee, to consider the Amendment of the Transport Regulations in respect of Victualling.

  6. The Committee on Subsidised Cruisers, presided over by the Earl of Camperdown.

  7. The Committee dealing with the electrical outfit of His Majesty's ships.

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  8. The Committee to inquire into the design of the "Cobra."—(Admiralty.)

  Navy—Defects in Water-tube Boilers.
  LORD CHARLES BERESFORD: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will give the number and names of ships of all classes of the Royal Navy that are now under repair, owing to defects in their water-tube boilers.
  (Answer.) The following vessels are at present, or will shortly be, under repair, owing to defects in their water-tube boilers:—
  Battleships: None.
  Armed Cruisers: None.
  Protected Cruisers:
  First class: Three, viz.:—
  "Powerful" and "Europa," undergoing general refit, including repairs to boilers.
  "Diadem," about to undergo general refit, including boiler repairs.
  Second Class: Two, viz.:—
  "Arrogant," about to undergo general refit, including boiler repairs.
  "Hermes," about to be fitted with, new boilers.
  Third Class: One, viz.:—
  "Pelorus," boilers about to be re-tubed.
  Gunboats:
  First class: Two, viz.:—
  "Salamander," about to be fitted with new boilers.
  "Sharpshooter," boilers being re-tubed as opportunities offer, ship remaining in commission.
  In addition to the above, seventeen Torpedo Boat Destroyers, with small tube water-tube boilers of various types are, or shortly will be, under repair, viz.:—
  Torpedo Boat Destroyers: Seventeen,—
  "Sunfish," to be completed 24th May.
  "Bat," "Osprey," "Seal," "Sylvia," "Violet," "Boxer," "Janus," "Lightning," "Spitfire," and "Ferret," boilers being re-tubed.
  "Salmon," boilers damaged by having been in collision. Defects being made good.

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  "Fairy," "Leopard," "Leven," "Teazer" and "Lynx," boilers require re-tubing. Work not yet commenced.—(Admiralty.)

  Overcrowding on Great Eastern and Metropolitan Railways.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that persons travelling to London by the early morning trains on the Great Eastern and Metropolitan Railways suffer inconvenience in consequence of the overcrowding of carriages, more especially of the second and third class; and, seeing that railway companies are prohibited by law from carrying more than a fixed complement of passengers in each carriage, will he consider the expediency of suggesting to the railway companies indicated the desirability of placing additional trains on the early morning service from suburban stations where there is overcrowding.
  (Answer.) I have been in communication with the railway companies named on the subject of the hon. Member's (Question. The Metropolitan Railway Company point out that no particular suburban stations are specified, and state that they are not aware that persons travelling in the morning are inconvenienced by overcrowding. They add that they run a very frequent service of trains, and that this service has been fully maintained, despite a considerable decrease lately in the number of passengers over their lines. The Great Eastern Railway Company inform me that they are endeavouring to meet such overcrowding as exists by widening their carriages, so as to increase the seating accommodation by some 21 per cent., and that they have under consideration the question of providing more powerful engines and longer trains, but this will involve structural alterations at the stations. Railway companies are not expressly prohibited by law from carrying more than a fixed complement of passengers in each carriage. I may point out that the number of trains that can safely be run in a given time is not capable of indefinite expansion.—(Board of Trade.)

  Preferential Railway Rates.
  MR. M'GOVERN: To ask the President of the Board of Trade, can he state what is the rate per ton for the carriage of grain, flour, and dead meat from Chicago and New York to Liverpool; what is the rate per ton for grain, flour, and dead meat from Liverpool to Belfast and from Belfast to Liverpool; and has the Board of Trade any power to prevent English or Irish railways carrying American or Russian produce at a cheaper rate than is charged to English and Irish producers for the same distance.
  (Answer.) Such unofficial information as to freights as is in my possession shows that the through rates per ton from Chicago to Liverpool for the articles named are at present approximately as follows—wheat 15s., flour 22s., dead meat (salted or preserved) 35s., fresh or refrigerated meat about £9. The corresponding rates from New York are—wheat 5s., flour 7s. 6d., and salt meat 10s. No rates are quoted for fresh meat from New York. The rates between Liverpool and Belfast are—grain 2s. 6d., flour 3s. to 5s., according to quantity, salt meat 2s. 6d., fresh meat (by daily express) 15s. The jurisdiction to deal with cases of undue preference on English and Irish railways rests with the Railway and Canal Commissioners, and not with the Board of Trade.—(Board of Trade.)

  Committee on Ichthyological Research.
  MR. LAYLAND-BARRATT: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the Departmental Committee on Ichthyological Research appointed last year has made any recommendations to the Board of Trade; and, if so, whether he is prepared to publish such recommendations before the discussion of the Estimates relating to the Committee; and whether he is prepared to publish the Report of the evidence already taken by the Committee; and whether he can furnish any information as to the reasons of the late Chairman of the Committee for resigning his position.
  (Answer.) The Departmental Committee has not yet made any recommendations, and has not yet completed the taking of evidence. I see no grounds for departing from the usual practice of not publishing the evidence before it is completed.

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  The late Chairman of the Committee, in announcing his resignation, did not make any statement of his reasons for resigning.—(Board of Trade.)

  Factories and Workshops Inspector's Report.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will state when he expects the Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops to be in the hands of Members.
  (Answer.) The Report is now in my hands, and the only remaining stage in its production, printing, will be proceeded with at once, I hope that that will be completed and the Report published by the end of this month.—(Home Office.)

  Postal Delays in County Kerry.
  MR. BOLAND: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that continual delay in delivering letters has been experienced at Sneem, County Kerry, and at places between Kenmare and that village, that letters due at 9.45 have frequently not reached Sneem until 11.30 or 12, and will he cause inquiries to be made with a view to ensuring punctuality of delivery.
  (Answer.) Inquiry is being made with regard to the delay stated to have occurred in the delivery of letters at Sneem and the other places referred to, and the result shall be communicated to the hon. Member.—(Post Office.)

  Postal Arrangements in South Louth.
  MR. NOLAN: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, if arrangements can be made for a daily delivery of letters in the districts of Monasterboice and Tenure, in South Louth, in view of the increase of postal business which has taken place there since the existing arrangement was established.
  (Answer.) Instructions have been given for a delivery to be made every week-day throughout the districts of Monasterboice and Tenure, with the exception of a few outlying houses, where the amount of
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  correspondence does not justify a delivery more than three times a week.—(Post Office.)

  Civil Service—Pay of Boy Copyists.
  MR. MACVEAGH: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he can state when the increased scale of pay for boy copyists will come into operation; whether it will apply to present as well as future boy copyists; and whether he will consider the advisability of giving boy copyists, when competing for higher appointments, an allowance of service marks.
  (Answer.) The change of scale will take effect as from 1st April last. Any boy copyist paid by the week and receiving less than 15s. for a week of thirty-nine hour's will be at once raised to that scale. Application will be made for an Order in Council authorising the allowance of service marks. Boys in the Post Office and Post Office Savings Bank Departments have hitherto been paid by the hour at rates which are less favourable for the first year and more favourable for subsequent years than those current in other branches of the Civil Service. I am considering what new arrangements, if any, should be made in their case.—(Treasury.)

  War Office Clerks—Retirements and Pensions.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that instructions were issued from the Treasury to the War Office limiting the power of compulsory retirement, under Clause 10 of the Order in Council of 15th August, 1890, to efficient clerks with not less than forty years service: and that the Permanent Under Secretary of State to the War Office, on 21st January, 1897, stated that efficient clerks could not be retired with less than forty years service, when sanctioning the retention of a subordinate official of the War Office establishment; and, seeing that this decision was acted on in the cases of at least two subordinate officials after 31st March, 1900, whether he will state what steps will be taken towards increasing the pension of the established efficient abstractor clerk compulsorily retired at the age of sixty, since

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  such clerks, in the War Office and throughout the Civil Service, have served till the age of sixty-two and over.
  (Answer.) I have nothing to add to the reply which was given to the hon. Baronet on the 11th March last.† No steps will be taken to increase the pension.—(War Office.)

  French. Duties on Offal Imports.
  SIR EDWAED STRACHEY: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will state the amount in tons of feeding offals imported into France from the United Kingdom and from other countries, and on which is paid the French import duty of 4s. 10d. a ton.
  (Answer.) The French Customs classify feeding offals with "Bran from all kinds of grains," paying a duty of 4s. 10d. per ton. The quantity of this feeding stuff imported into France in 1900, the latest year for which statistics are available, was 133,305 tons supplied by the following countries—

  Tons.

  United Kingdom

  704

  Russia

  83,081

  Argentine Republic

  22,026

  Italy

  7,267

  United States

  7,226

  Turkey

  3,536

  Canada

  2,989

  Belgium

  2,685

  Australia

  1,227

  Roumania

  742

  British India

  563

  Other Countries

  1,259

  Tons.

  133,305

  The greater part of this, however, consists of bran produced from cereals temporarily admitted into France, and the statistics do not therefore show the actual amount of feeding offal imported into France as such.—(Foreign Office.)

  Jamaica Railway Bonds—Income Tax Deductions.
  MR. COHEN: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Treasury has represented to the bondholders of the Jamaica Railway Company that the deduction of income tax under Schedule C of the Income Tax Acts should be made at the rate in force at the date on which the interest is
  † See (4) Debates, CIV., 1019.
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  received in this country by the agent entrusted with its distribution; and whether he is aware that it is the practice of the Bank of England and other agents, acting under instructions of the Board of Inland Revenue, to make such deduction at the rate in force, not at the date on which it is received but at the date on which the interest becomes due; and whether he will state which of these two principles of deduction of income tax is correct.
  (Answer.) The Treasury have written to the bondholders of the Jamaica Railway Company to the effect stated in the first paragraph. I would refer the hon. Member to a reply I gave to a Question in the House on 17th July, 1900, on the subject, † The principle of assessment laid down as applicable to the Jamaica Railway Company is applicable to all similar cases, and this is clearly pointed out in the instructions issued by the Board of Inland Revenue. The Board have no reason to think that the practice of the Bank of England does not conform to their instructions, nor do they know of any ease where the practice of other agents is at variance with them.—(Treasury.)

  Imports of Linseed, Etc., Suggested Duty.
  MR. FLOWER: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, seeing that linseed, rapeseed, and cotton cake come into this country duty free, and cakes manufactured from these seeds abroad, and seeing that the home manufacturer of maize and rice meal, which come into competition with the above-mentioned materials, has to pay an import duty of 3d. per cwt. on the raw material, and consequently is at a disadvantage of 5s. per ton in competition with the aforesaid products, he will consider the advisability of imposing a similar duty of 3d. per cwt. on imports of the aforementioned linseed, rapeseed, and cotton seed, and cakes made there-from.
  (Answer.) It was not thought advisable to include linseed, rapeseed, and cotton seed in the duty. They were not included in the old duty of 1849–69, and belong to a totally different group from
  † See (4) Debates, LXXXVI., 231.

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  the articles included in it, viz., to the group of articles containing oil. But, if the cake made from them contained any dutiable article, it would to that extent be taxed. (Treasury.)

  Criminal Proceedings in Bankruptcy—Case of S. Wolfe, Glasgow.
  MR. LOWE: To ask the Lord Advocate whether he will state, in explanation of the answer given by him to a Question addressed to him on the. 50th July last in reference to the bankruptcy of Samuel Wolfe, of Glasgow, whether it is in accordance with the general practice of the Crown to withdraw criminal proceedings already instituted with its authority; in what way had the evidence upon which the criminal proceedings against the bankrupt were ordered by the Procurator Fiscal altered between the time of the institution of such proceedings and the abandonment thereof by the direction of the Crown, so as to induce the Crown to order the withdrawal of the prosecution already instituted against the bankrupt with its authority; and, having regard to the wishes of a body of creditors who had no due notice of the withdrawal of the criminal proceedings, will the Crown order an inquiry, in order that these creditors may be heard, as to the circumstances leading to the withdrawal of the warrant.
  (Answer.) It is in accordance with the practice of the Crown to abandon criminal proceedings if in the judgment of Crown Counsel the evidence is not sufficient to make a conviction probable. That, as already explained, was the reason of the abandonment of the proceedings in question. I am responsible for the determination of Crown Counsel, with which I agree; and there is no room for any inquiry in the matter.—(Scottish Office.)

  Motor Car Mail Service in Scottish Congested Districts.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord Advocate whether the Secretary for Scotland is aware that the Post Office now conveys the mails between Liverpool and Manchester by motor car; and, having regard to the difficulty experienced in securing the construction of light railways in the Highland crofting counties, will he have some inquiry made respecting weight-carrying motor cars with a view to the placing of a motor car on the road between
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  Carloway and Stornoway, and between Ullapool and Garve, for the purpose of assisting the fishing and other industries, as authorised under Section 4, sub-section (e), of The Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, 1897.
  (Answer.) I must refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to him on the 20th March last, to the effect that the Congested Districts Board are not at present prepared to subsidise such schemes.—(Scottish Office.)

  Illegal Trawling in the Western Highlands.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord Advocate, whether the Secretary for Scotland is aware that the Fishery Board cruiser "Vigilant" was recently engaged in conveying the Congested Districts Board engineer to various parts of the Western Highlands for the purpose of inspecting works under construction by the Board; and in view of the fact that illegal trawling is carried on, will arrangements be made for the "Vigilant" to be employed exclusively on duties for which she was purchased, viz., the protection of the interests of line fishermen against illegal trawling.
  (Answer.) I am informed by the Fishery Board that the hon. Member is inaccurate in stating that the Fishery cruiser "Vigilant" was recently engaged in conveying the Congested Districts Board engineer to various parts of the Western Highlands for the purposes of inspecting work under construction by the Board. The engineer simply got a passage on board the "Vigilant" whilst she was engaged in her ordinary fishery duties.—(Scottish Office.)

  Education Bill—Relation of County and Non-County Borough Councils.
  MR. GEORGE KENYON: To ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, in view of the fact that under Clause 3 of the Education Bill the Councils of non-county boroughs in Wales, which have over 10,000 inhabitants, will, if they adopt Part III., become the local authority for primary education absolutely, but will only have a concurrent authority with the county governing bodies as regards secondary

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  and technical education, whether he will state what functions or powers under this arrangement will belong to the Town Councils; and whether the effect in these cases will be to create two rival authorities with undefined responsibilities.
  (Answer.) The Bill continues the same relative positions between county and such non-county Borough Councils as are referred to in the Question that have subsisted under the Technical Instruction Acts since 1889.—(Board of Education.)

  Funds of Voluntary Schools.
  SIR CHARLES WELBY: To ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education whether, in the event of the Education Bill becoming law, a fund raised by voluntary contributions as working capital for the general purposes of a voluntary school will remain at the disposal of the managers of that school; or whether it will vest in the new local education authority.
  (Answer.) A fund raised by subscriptions for specific purposes is applicable by those in possession of it to those purposes only. If it becomes impossible to apply the fund in accordance with the intentions of the donors, application should be made for directions to the High Court, the Charity Commission, or the Board of Education, as may be advised. I know of nothing in the Education Bill to transfer the possession of such a fund to the local authority.—(Board of Education.)

  Discriminating Duty on Imported Paintings and Statuary.
  SIR JOHN ROLLESTON: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Government of the United States of America impose a discriminating duty upon paintings and statuary imported from the United Kingdom five per cent. in excess of those imported from the rest of Europe; and if he will cause representations to be made with the view to the removal of this excess duty.
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  (Answer.) It is the case that a remission of duty by five per cent. accorded by the United States, under the provisions of Reciprocity Treaties with Franco, Germany, Portugal, and Italy, to painting and statuary has not been extended to the United Kingdom. Representations on the subject were made to the United States Government in 1900, but have not led to any result. Instructions will be sent to His Majesty's Ambassador at Washington to remind the United States Government on the subject.—(Foreign Office.)

  Indian Customs Duties.
  SIR JOHN ROLLESTON: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether, now that the Indian Exchequer has a surplus, he will remove the duties on goods entering India from the United Kingdom, imposed by the Government of 1894, and thus remove the hindrance to British trade with India.
  (Answer.) I am unable to give any undertaking that the Indian Customs duties, which are levied solely for revenue purposes, and which represent the large sum of £3,500,000 sterling, will be removed or reduced. The estimated surplus of receipts over expenditure in this year's Budget does not allow of any such reduction of taxation, while, for reasons explained in Sir Edward Law's Financial Statement, the continuance of the present surplus cannot be confidently counted on. (India Office.)

  The Dewan of Dhar.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that Bapu Raghunath, who, at the date of his death in 1837, and for several years thereto, held office as Dewan of Dhar, received, in recognition of his services and fidelity to the British Government, a grant of property in the State of Dhar, in perpetuity to himself and descendants; is he aware that a sixth part of this grant, viz., the Jahagir of Ramchandra Rao, one of the six sons of the above named, was confiscated in November, 1857, at which time he was Dewan of Dhar; and will he explain why this confiscation has been held by the Government of India to preclude Krishna Rao Raghunath, who is the son of a younger

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  brother of Ramchandra Rao, from any title to the estate bestowed on his grandfather.
  (Answer.) The hon. Member's Question enters into some details upon which I have no precise information, but the main facts are as follows: Certain property belonging to Ramchandra Rao, in the Native State of Dhar, outside British India, was forfeited owing to his complicity in the Mutiny. Part of the property so confiscated reverted to the State of Dhar, and another part was assigned to the State of Bhopal. In 1879, a question was raised as to the restitution of some of the property to a brother of Ramchandra, and the Government of India agreed that it was impossible to restore the confiscated estates to the family, but that the Dhar State might, if it pleased, make provision for the support of the family of its former Minister. I cannot undertake to interfere with the discretion of the Native State further in the matter.—(India Office.)

  Milk-Blended Butter.
  SIR EDWARD STRACHEY: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his Department has decided that the substance known as milk-blended butter is an impoverished article of food as defined in Section 1, Part VII, of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899; and whether he will take such steps as may be necessary to test the value of the standard for butter set up by the Board of Agriculture under the powers given to his Department by Section 2 of the same Act.
  (Answer.) Section 1 of the Act referred to imposes penalties on persons who import certain adulterated or impoverished articles; but the Local Government Board have no power to decide what is an impoverished article for the purposes of this section. As regards the second part of the Question, the Board of Agriculture have, in the exercise of their statutory powers, made regulations for determining the proportion of water in butter which raises the presumption that it is not genuine. I could not undertake to direct that samples should
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  be procured with a view of testing the value of the standard thus set up.—(Local Government Board.)

  Local Government (Ireland) Act Amendment Bill.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDS: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will say when he proposes to introduce the Bill for the Amendment of certain details of the Local Government (Ireland) Act.
  (Answer.) I trust that this measure may prove non-contentious, and I hope to introduce it almost immediately after Whitsuntide.—(Irish Office.)

  Irish Congested Districts Board—Relief for Sneem District.
  MR. BOLAND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Congested Districts Board has received copies of resolutions passed at a public meeting in Sneem, County Kerry, urging that grants should be made towards the establishment of an agricultural bank, the improvement of the breed of Kerry cattle, and the providing of boats and instruction for the fishermen of the district; and, if so, whether effect will be given to these resolutions.
  (Answer.) The proposals referred to in the resolutions, copies of which have been received are under consideration by the Board.—(Irish Office.)

  Irish National School Teachers—Hand and Eye Training.
  MR. LUNDON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state what percentage of the National teachers, males and females respectively, who attended the course of instruction in hand; and eye training in Dublin in 1900, succeeded in obtaining certificates for competency to teach same.
  (Answer.) 93 per cent. of the male teachers, and 89 per cent. of the female teachers.—(Irish Office.)

  Labourers Acts—Application of John M'Namara, Ballybrood.
  MR. LUNDON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of

  1345
  Ireland whether he will state on what grounds John M'Namara, of Ballybrood, County Limerick, No. 1 Rural District Council, although his application for a second plot under the Labourers Acts was favourably entertained before the sworn inquiry on such cases with the consent of the owner, was afterwards sot aside by the inspector; and, if the cause of failure be rectified, will he recommend that the application should be reconsidered at a future date.
  (Answer.) The inspector was unable to recommend the application of this man, as his existing plot was in a dirty and neglected condition. If these objections are removed, and the application renewed at a future date, it will be reconsidered.—(Irish Office.)

  Labour Schemes in Limerick and Tipperary.
  MR. LUNDON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will explain why the county surveyor for County Limerick, although long since furnished with the instructions necessary to the repair and maintenance of the public roads by direct labour, is not doing the work, notwithstanding the condition of some of the roads in Last Limerick, and that the county surveyor for Tipperary County is working the roads from Tipperary town to Emly by direct labour; and seeing that the labouring population are in want of employment from the time at which the agricultural labour terminates, about the middle of April to the beginning of July, when hay cutting commences, will he take steps so that the labourers may be employed on the working of the roads as soon as possible.
  (Answer.) Directions have been given to the county surveyors of the counties named to prepare direct labour schemes. The schemes, which must necessarily take some little time to prepare, have not yet been brought by the councils before the Local Government Board; but the latter Department feels sure that the councils will not allow any undue delay to occur in completing the schemes.—(Irish Office.)

  Army Remounts—Prizes at Agricultural Shows.
  MR. BLACK: To ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office
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  whether he has come to a decision as to offering prizes at agricultural shows for horses suitable for Army remounts; and, if such prizes are to be offered, under what regulations will they be available.
  (Answer.) The reply is in the negative.—(War Office.)

  Cycle Corps.
  MR. MCCRAE: To ask the financial Secretary to the War Office, seeing that the Cape cyclists, who have been paid at the rate of 5s. per day, are being allowed to retain their cycles on the expiry of their term of service, whether the Scottish cyclists, who are being paid at the rate of Is. 3d. per day, will be granted a like privilege.
  (Answer.) The arrangement mentioned was local only, and did not apply to cyclists enlisted for service in this country.—(War Office.)

  Effects of Deceased Soldiers—Case of Duncan M'Laren.
  SIR JOHN LENG: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that, in the case of Duncan M'Laren, a gunner in the 86th Battery Royal Field Artillery, No. 28,111, who died of enteric fever at Kroonstadt on 3rd February last year, repeated inquiries have been made regarding his effects; and that in March, 1901, and again in January this year, his father was assured his applications were receiving attention; and will he explain why as yet nothing has been done.
  (Answer.) This man was attached to several units in South Africa, and great difficulty was in consequence experienced in tracing his balance, which in all probability will be very small in view of the advances made to him. Steps are being taken to issue the gratuity of £3 to which his estate is entitled; the war gratuity of £5 was issued last November. Any further balance due will be issued as soon as the state of his account is known.—(War Office.)

  Bandoliers and Ammunition Pouches.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: To ask the Secretary of State for War if the reports from the field

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  force in South Africa have been brought to his notice with regard to the constant loss of ammunition from the web bandoliers issued to the Mounted Infantry, Imperial Yeomanry, and other corps, and if a more satisfactory pattern is now being issued; and further, if, having regard to the inutility for field service of the valise equipment, and particularly of the ammunition scattering pouches, what steps are being taken in regard to it.
  (Answer.) The answer to the two first parts of the Question is in the affirmative. With regard to the last part of the Question, no more of the existing pattern ammunition pouches will be issued.—(War Office.)

  Lough Swilly.
  THE MARQUESS OF HAMILTON: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state when the War Office purposes to proceed with the erection of the intended new barracks for the garrison artillery at Buncrana; and is there any intention to provide a deep-water pier in Lough Swilly for the purpose of landing troops in case of emergency to garrison the new forts erected there, should the means of doing so by land be cut off.
  (Answer.) Difficulties have arisen in connection with the purchase of land for the barracks, and negotiations are still in progress. The question of providing a deep-water pier in Lough Swilly is under consideration.—(War Office.)

  Military Guardrooms—Sleeping Accommodation.
  MR. COLSTON: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he can see his way to supply military guardrooms with better sleeping accommodation than the plank bed and wooden bolster now provided for soldiers in the Army.
  (Answer.) This matter will be considered with next year's Estimates.—(War Office.)

  Brussels Sugar Convention.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: To ask the secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that in proceeding to the signature of the Sugar Convention at
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  Brussels on the 5th March a protocol was added declaring that no bounty, direct or indirect, will be granted to sugars of His Majesty's Crown Colonies, and that no preference will be granted in the United Kingdom to colonial sugars as against foreign sugars. If he can explain why such a limitation in the freedom of trading between different portions of the British Empire was agreed to by His Majesty's delegates, having regard to the declarations of the Prime Minister respecting a similar course in the Treaties of 1862 and 1865, and also to the representations addressed to the Colonial Office in favour of preferential free admission of West Indian cane sugar into the United Kingdom; and, having regard to the proceedings which have taken place with respect to the Convention in the Legislatures of Germany and Belgium, if he can state when the Enabling Bill will be introduced, or what opportunity will be afforded, to the House of Commons to discuss the Convention, and particularly this protocol, prior to its ratification in its present form.
  (Answer.) In order to secure the total abolition of bounties and the restoration of the sugar trade to its normal channels it was necessary to undertake that foreign and British colonial sugar should be able to compete for the English market on equal conditions. There will be full opportnuity for the discussion of the Convention and final protocol before it is ratified, but no precise date can be given at present.—(Colonial Office.)

  Scottish Deer Forests.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that the farm of Glenmeanie, on the estate of Strathconan, Ross-shire, which appears in the Valuation Roll at a yearly rental of £200, is about to be converted into a deer forest; and, seeing that this farm contains sheep grazings of repute, will he consider the expediency of taking some steps with a view to check the extension of deer forests, especially in cases such as the present, which deprive the people of land suitable for occupation and lessen the national food supply.

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  (Answer.) The Government have no official information as to the proposed conversion of Glenmeanie into a deer forest. Should this, however, take place no crofters will be dispossessed, and there is no reason to believe that the change will prejudicially affect the economic condition either of the district or the country at large.—(Treasury.)

  Supply—Ordnance Survey Vote.
  SIR BARRINGTON SIMEON: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, considering that there was no opportunity for discussing the Ordnance Survey Vote last session, he will ensure an opportunity for such discussion during the present, session; and, if he conveniently can, will he name some date on which such discussion can take place.
  (Answer.) There is great objection to giving pledges as to particular Votes in Supply, which may ultimately be found to interfere with the most convenient allocation of Supply days; but the wishes expressed in the Question will be noted.—(Treasury.)

  (2.15.) QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    South Africa—Extension of Natal Boundaries.
    MR. BLACK: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether Boer leaders domiciled in the territory transferred to Natal will be permanently banished from South Africa, in terms of the proclamation of 15th September, if they now return to their farms; and are either the Imperial or the Colonial Government to make any payment to owners of farms in that territory to enable them to rebuild their houses and re-stock their farms.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN,): The assumption on which the hon. Member's Questions are based is incorrect. No territory has yet been transferred to Natal, and the questions raised have not been considered.

    Postal Telegraphists at the Front—Pension Grievance.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his
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    attention has been called to the fact that, whereas the men from the 24th Middlesex Post Office Volunteers, when on active service, draw soldiers' pay in addition to civil wages, obtain promotion, and have their military service counted towards civil pension, similar privileges have been denied to men in the postal telegraph service who joined the Royal Engineers upon their return from active service to their department; and whether he will consider the advisability of placing both classes of civil servants upon the same footing in this respect.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): I regret that I have been unable to ascertain from the terms of the Question to whom exactly it is intended to apply. If the hon. and gallant Member will communicate with me privately upon the subject, I shall be happy to give him full information for publication.

    Coronation Review at Aldershot—Accommodation for Members.
    COLONEL TUFNELL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether facilities will be given to Members of the House to see the Coronation review at Aldershot on Monday, 16th June.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Lord STANLEY,): It is not proposed to erect any stands. This review has no connection with the Coronation festivities, and will be confined to the troops immediately available.

    Trans-Atlantic Shipping Combination—Subvention of Merchant Vessels for War Service, etc.
    MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he has now considered the terms of the agreement of, the 4th February, 1902, between Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Company, and Messrs. Richards, Mills, and Company, with Messrs. J. P. Morgan and Company for the sale of the White Star and Dominion lines to the American Syndicate; and whether he is aware that, under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, the vessels concerned will be precluded from retaining a British register.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): I have considered the Agreement of the 4th February, 1902, between Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Company, and Messrs. Richards, Mills, and Company, and Messrs J. P. Morgan and Company. The Board of Trade are being advised by the Law Officers as to the effect of such an Agreement, but I am not aware that, under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, the vessels concerned would be precluded from retaining their British registry.
    MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether Clause 7 of the Agreement of 19th February, 1887, between the Admiralty and the White Star Company, precluding the Company from entertaining, in connection with any of the vessels receiving subventions, offers for sale without first giving the Admiralty the option of exercising their pre-emption to purchase or hire, has been retained or modified in subsequent agreements with this Company, and, if modified, what alterations have been made, and at what times; whether the White Star I Company gave notice to the Admiralty of the offers made to them by the American Syndicate before signing the provisional Agreement, which was finally signed on 4th February and has now been published; and, if so, whether the Admiralty declined to exercise the right of pre-emption.
    The following Questions also appeared on the Paper:—
    MR. CHANNING: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he has considered the terms of the Agreement signed on 4th February between Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Company, and Messrs. J. Pierpont Morgan and Company; and whether he will state what, in view of the sale of the shares, business, goodwill, assets, and property of Messrs. Ismay and Company, is the position of the Admiralty in regard to the ships of the White Star Line on the subvention list under the Agreement between the Admiralty and Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Company.
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he is aware that the Atlantic shipping Agreement includes the sale to Mr. Pierpont Morgan of the whole of the shares of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, owning the White Star-line of steamers; what is the number of Royal Naval Reserve men now borne by the ships of that line; what is the amount of the subsidy payable this year to the Company owning the line; whether the Admiralty intends to continue the present arrangements as to subsidies and Royal Naval Reserve men so far as the White Star Line is concerned; or what action it proposes to take in the matter.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): Perhaps I may be allowed to answer all three Questions at the same time. The Agreement with the White Star Company with respect to the retention of their vessels is about to be renewed. The following additional provision, among others, will be incorporated in it—
    "The Company will not, without the previous consent in writing of the Admiralty, transfer to a foreign flag any of the vessels subject to this Agreement."
    The addition has already been agreed to by the Company, and an instalment of the subsidy has been paid under the terms of such new Agreement. As the subsidised vessels have not passed out of the control of the Admiralty, and as it is provided that they shall not so pass during the continuance of the Agreement with the White Star Company, the necessity for giving notice does not appear to have arisen, nor has it been necessary for the Admiralty to exorcise or decline the right of preemption. The Admiralty are advised that nothing in the Agreement signed on the 4th February, and referred to in the Question of the hon. Member for East Northamptonshire, will interfere with their right to enforce the terms of their Agreement with the White Star Company with respect to the subsidised ships. The number of officers and men of the Royal Naval Reserve now borne on the subsidised ships in question, including the ships retained but in respect of which no

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    subsidy has been paid, is 244. There is no present intention of cancelling the existing Agreement.
    MR. JAMES LOWTHER: What is the length of the term over which the Agreement extends?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Three years.
    MR. JAMES O'KELLY: Can the hon. Gentleman state whether those ships have any fighting value?

    "Arrogant" Class of Cruisers—Draught Fan Engines.
    MR. WILLIAM ALLAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state the names of cruisers of the "Arrogant" class that have their forced draught fan, engines, and fans fitted above the protective deck.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The names of the cruisers referred, to are "Arrogant," "Furious," "Vindictive," and "Gladiator."

    China—Arrests by Americans in the Shanghai International Settlement.
    MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the action of the United States Consul General in authorising the arrest of four Chinese residents in the International Settlement, formerly British, at Shanghai, on the 17th ultimo, is in accordance with the Agreement entered into by Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1854, as embodied in the Land Regulations promulgated at that date; and, if not, whether the concurrence of His Majesty's Consul General has the support of His Majesty's Government.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,): His Majesty's Government have called for a full Report on this question, and are unable to express an opinion in the matter until they are in receipt of the facts.

    Chinese War Indemnity.
    LORD CHARLES BERESFORD: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can inform the House if the price of silver, in comparison with gold, has fallen since the amount to be paid by China as war indemnity was settled; and, if so, can he state to what extent; if he can state the total amount of the war indemnity for which China is liable, and the annual indebtedness for interest and sinking fund; whether he has any official information to the effect that the collection of the taxes to pay the war indemnity will create disturbances in China prejudicial to trade and commerce; and whether the British Government will take into consideration the desirability of consulting with those foreign Governments concerned with the war indemnity as to the appointment of a mixed Commission of bankers or commercial men, in order to propose some means by which the Government of China may be enabled to pay the war indemnity without an undue straining of their resources.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The gold value of the Haikwan tael has fallen from 3s., at which it stood when the final protocol was signed in September last, to about 2s. 3d. The amount of the war indemnity for which China is liable is 400,000,000 Haikwan taels. It is stipulated that this shall constitute a gold debt, the Haikwan tael being converted for this purpose at the rates specified in the protocol of September 7th, 1901. It is stipulated that the debt is to bear interest at 4 per cent. per annum, and the capital is to be reimbursed by China in thirty-nine years. The provisions for the sinking fund are attached to the final protocol, which will be found on page 259 of the Parliamentary Paper, China, No. 1, 1902. No official information has been received that the collection of taxes to pay the war indemnity is likely to lead to disturbances. The questions raised by the hon. Member are receiving the attention of His Majesty's Government.

    English Criminal Statistics.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the

    1355
    Home Department whether he will assent to the Return (Crime in England) standing on today's Paper.†
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. RITCHIE,): No, Sir. The contents of the proposed Return appear to be very similar to what I felt obliged to refuse a few days ago. The hon. Member may, however, like to know that much of the information asked for will be found (though in a somewhat different form) in the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales when the volume for 1901 is published. The material already furnished for the statistics has involved an enormous amount of labour to the police, and, apart from other considerations, I cannot ask them to supply further Returns covering the same ground.
    MR. MACVEAGH: Is there any objection to giving quarterly Returns of crime in England in the same way as it is done in Ireland?
    MR. RITCHIE: As I have said, I do not propose to make any amendment or alteration or addition to the Returns now given.

    Railway Accidents to Railway Servants—Prevention Rules.
    MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will state the steps taken by his Department to carry out the 1901 Act for the better prevention of accidents to railway servants, particularly in respect of the making of Rules under Section 1; the inspection of railways under Section 13; and the making of inquiries and experiments under Section 15.
    †The Return referred to was as follows:—"Return, by Counties, of Offences committed in England under the following heads: Homicide—(a) murder; (b) manslaughter; firing at the person; attempt to murder; assault on the police; aggravated assault; assault endangering life; assault on bailiffs and process servers; cutting or maiming the person; incendiary fire; burglary and housebreaking; robbery; taking and holding forcible possession; cattle stealing; sheep stealing; killing, cutting, or maiming cattle; demand or robbery of arms.; riots and affrays; unlawful assembly; administering unlawful oaths; intimidation—(a) by threatening letters and notices; (b) otherwise; pound breach; attacking
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Early in 1901 the Board appointed a small Committee for the purpose of preparing draft rules under the provisions of the Act in question. Lord James of Hereford, the Chairman of the Royal Commission on whose Report the Act was founded, presided over this Committee. The draft rules so prepared were submitted to the Board in April of last year, and were thereupon made public in pursuance of the Act. Objections to these rules were lodged with the Board before the prescribed date by thirty-six railway companies, thirty-nine joint committees of railway companies, and five other bodies. These objections were referred to Lord James of Hereford and two officers of the Board. Their consideration and the hearings, which, as the Act provides, were given to objectors, necessarily occupied considerable time, and revised rules were submitted to the Board in January last, and forthwith communicated to the several objectors. Some of these objectors were not satisfied with the manner in which their objections had been met, and eleven notices were received by the Board from parties requiring their objections, or certain of them, to be referred to the Court of the Railway and Canal Commission. These references were duly filed, and will, I am informed, come before the Court for hearing on an early date, probably on the 10th or next month. The additional accident reports required under Section 13 (2) of the Act are being duly furnished by the railway companies, and inquiries are held, where that course appears desirable. Inquiries under the Act have also been held, in various cases, to determine whether certain of the proposed
    rules houses; resistance to legal process; injury to property; firing into dwellings; injury to place of worship; injury to or attempt to injure or obstruct railway trains or highways; injury to telegraph wires; perjury; unnatural offences; attempts to commit unnatural offences, between the 1st day of January 1901 and the 31st day of December 1901, showing the number of cases in which Offenders were convicted; the number of cases in which persons were made amenable, but not convicted; the number of cases in which accused are awaiting trial; and the number of cases in which Offenders were neither convicted nor made amenable."

    1357
    should be made applicable, with or without modification, to small railways worked under special conditions. No experiments have yet been made by the Board under Section 15 of the Act, but several railway companies are conducting experiments as to improved appliances, and trials have in many cases been attended and watched by officers of the Department.

    Metropolitan Poor Law Schools—Cost of the Roman Catholic Children.
    MR. ABRAHAM: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, in view of the fact that a Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into the management of Metropolitan poor law schools reported that the average expense per head per annum of the cost of maintenance, clothing, and education of Protestant children averages £24 2s. 1d. per head, and that the sum allowed for Roman Catholic children under this head was £15 12s. per head, whether the Local Government Board will sanction I an increase being paid by the Metropolitan Board of Guardians for the support and education of Roman Catholic children.
    MR. FLYNN: At the same time, may I ask the President of the Local Government Board, having regard to the fact that several applications have been made by Roman Catholic school authorities of London to allow the guardians to pay an increased sum, exceeding the present allowance of 6s. per week, for the maintenance, clothing, and education of Roman Catholic pauper children in Roman Catholic schools, and that nineteen Metropolitan boards of guardians have expressed themselves in favour of an increased payment, whether he will explain on what grounds the Local Government Board has refused to sanction an increase deemed necessary by the responsible local bodies.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG,): A Board of Guardians are only legally empowered to pay, in respect of a child sent by them to a certified school, the reasonable expenses incurred in the maintenance, clothing, and education of the child whilst in the
    1358
    school, to an amount not exceeding the rate of payment sanctioned by the Local Government Board for pauper children sent to the school. The Board received applications for an increase of the rate of payment in respect of certain Roman. Catholic certified schools, but as it appeared that the expenditure of the managers on the maintenance, clothing, and education of the children was less than 6s. a week, the guardians could not be authorised to pay more than that amount. Some cases have, however, since come before me in which it is represented that the average cost of the children under these heads exceeds 6s. a week, and these cases are receiving my consideration.

    Poor Law Administration.—Proposed Committee of Inquiry.
    MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Government intend to appoint a Select Committee to inquire into and report upon the working of the poor law system in the three Kingdoms with a view to reform and economy.
    MR. WALTER LONG: No, Sir. The Government do not propose to appoint such a Committee.

    Drill Area in Richmond Park.
    MR. PARKER: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether he will state over what area troops may now drill in Richmond Park; what bodies of troops are allowed to drill there in, how many have been refused, and on what principle selection is made; also whether Colonels commanding battalions seeking this privilege should apply direct to the Ranger or should make application to the Military authorities of the district, or should ask permission of the War Office.
    THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS,): I am informed by the Ranger's Department that troops may now drill over 640 acres of ground in Richmond Park, viz., 340 acres between the Richmond and Roehampton entrances on the North side of the road, and (except during the fawning season) 300 acres on Kingston Hill between the Ladder Stile and Ham Gate. Volunteers only have

    1359
    been hitherto allowed to drill, the Regular troops having been restricted to inarching through the Park. An application from the 18th Middlesex Volunteers, I learn, was recently refused, as a more extended permission had been given to the local Volunteer Regiment, and it was feared that their operations would clash. The principle of selection has been to favour the local Volunteers. Colonels commanding should apply in the first instance to the Ranger.

    Irish Salt Butter Industry.
    MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether, in view of the fact that the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into the standard of water in butter reported that many witnesses declared Irish salt firkin butter would be injuriously affected by any limit applicable to all other butters, as, on account of its long-keeping qualities, it necessarily contains a higher percentage of moisture than is found in any other butter, and considering that several public bodies in. Ireland are protesting against the new regulations as applicable to this class of butter, he will consider the matter of fixing a separate standard for it.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. HANBURY,): I am not aware that salt butter will in any way be injuriously affected by the new standard, nor was any evidence, I believe, given to that effect. The brine butter, to which hot brine is added instead of salt, with the result of largely increasing the percentage of water, will no doubt be affected, but the practice has for some time been dying out, and at a meeting of the South of Ireland Butter Merchants Association, held in Limerick a day or two ago, it was, I understand, resolved to recommend the use of dry salt instead. I believe such a course will do much to add to the price of the butter, and in any case the Irish Department agreed with me in fixing the standard of water in butter, which is the same in both countries.
    MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that firkin butter
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    does not keep, and that the effect of the new regulations will be to seriously injure the trade? Will he consider the advisability of fixing a separate standard?
    MR. HANBURY: No. I cannot alter the standard.

    Irish Judges' Charges.
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether his attention has been called to the fact that in the Report of the King's Bench Judgments, in Owens and Others. v. Tyacke, Mr. Justice Kenny founded himself in the charge to the jury of Baron Fitzgerald at the Dublin Summer Assizes of 1868 on the law of legal assembly; and, seeing that it is the practice of the Courts to rely upon charges of the judges, and that in the case of Rainsford v. Browne the Irish Lord Chief Baron, in a considered charge on questions which he required counsel on both sides to argue before him, laid down propositions of law and disapproved of the judgment of Lord Halsbury in the "Mermaid" case, whether, with the view of providing Parliament with an accurate report of the opinion of this authority upon the questions involved, be will reconsider his decision and arrange to lay a copy of that charge upon the Table.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,): The Irish Government was not directly or indirectly concerned in the suit of Rainsford v. Browne, nor has it any right to call upon the Lord Chief Baron to furnish a copy of his charge. The object of having the charge laid upon the Table of the House appears from the Question to be to discuss the relative soundness in point of law of the judgment of the Privy Council in the "Marais" case delivered by the Lord Chancellor, and the opinion of the. Lord Chief Baron as expressed in his charge in Rainsford v. Browne. I see no reason to depart from precedent to further this object, and must adhere to the decision already arrived at.
    MR. DILLON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Colonial Secretary, when I questioned him, referred me to the Irish Government?
    MR. ATKINSON: That may be so, but the Irish Government are not responsible directly or indirectly.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: The hon. Member is under a misconception, I think. He never asked me this Question.

    National Library, Dublin.
    MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, having regard to the needs of the library, effect will be given to the frequently-expressed recommendation of the trustees of the National Library, Dublin, urging an increase of the staff.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): The question of the sufficiency of the staff has been referred to a Departmental Committee, on which the trustees of the library are represented.

    Irish Licensing Question.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been directed to the fact that there are four separate Bills before the House seeking to stop for a limited period the issue of new licences in Ireland, and that the names on these Bills represent all shades of Irish opinion; and whether, in view of the present circumstances in Ireland, and the practically unanimous feeling in the country, the Government will agree to support one or other of the Bills in question so that it may become law during the present session.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Yes, Sir; I have studied the four Bills. Some legislation in the direction of these measures is advisable, but no contentious measure could be expected to pass this session. The Bill prepared by the hon. Member for North Dublin is, I am advised, not likely to arouse opposition. If that measure—it may be supplemented and modified—could be taken as an "agreed" Bill, it would no doubt pass. I am prepared to co-operate with those interested to effect this.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I may tell the right hon. Gentleman that there is
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    absolute unanimity among the Irish Members on this question.
    MR. CLANCYwas understood to ask if the right hon. Gentleman would himself take up the Bill.
    MR. WYNDHAMsaid he could not give an absolute pledge for a week or two, but he would be happy to give the Bill all the assistance in his power.

    Warburton Garryhinch Estate.
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the date upon which the Land Court got control of the Warburton Garryhinch Estate. Queen's County, and will he state why offers to purchase their holdings made by or on behalf of the tenants have been declined.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The petition for sale was presented in June, 1885. The order for sale was made in respect of the life estate only of the owner. Consequently no sales can be carried out to the tenants under the provisions of the Land Purchase Acts.

    Irish Loan Fund Board.
    MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has observed, in the last Report of the Loan Fund Board of Ireland, that the Board refer to a Report (No. 259) which was laid before Parliament in 1855, explaining the necessity for Loan Fund legislation of the character therein indicated; and, seeing that, in their Reports to Parliament since that time, the Board have called attention to the fact that effect had not been given to the recommendations of the Select Committee of 1855, and have stated that such legislation is needed to enable them to ensure more efficient local management, and for the security of money invested in the societies, and the development of the system, whether it is the intention of the Government to give legislative effect to the recommendations of the Select Committee.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Legislation dealing with the Loan Fund System is undoubtedly required; but whether such legislation should follow the lines recommended in a Report forty-seven years old is a matter open to great doubt. In any case, I cannot give a pledge to introduce legislation during the present session.
    MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the question of introducing a Bill as soon as possible?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I will consider that, but I cannot hold out any hope for this session.

    Morley Estate Syndicate and Mr. R. H. Johnstone.
    MR. M'GOVERN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is he aware that Mr. R. H. Johnstone, Bawnboy, County Cavan, is a member of the syndicate who recently purchased the Morley estate, and Grand Master of the Orangemen of the County of Cavan and City of Dublin; has he applied to or been recommended to the Government as a proper person to be appointed a resident magistrate and, if so, have the Government any intention of appointing him to this position.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I have no knowledge of the matters alleged in the first paragraph. The inquiries in the second paragraph relate to matters which are properly treated as confidential.

    Belfast Protestant Association.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the speeches delivered in the Belfast Orange Hall on the 2nd instant at a meeting of the Belfast Protestant Association; whether he is aware that the chief speaker at the demonstration, a London clergyman, referred to the possibility of His Majesty the King being beheaded for Romanism, and alleged that His Majesty's present advisers are Papists at heart and are serving to their utmost the throne of Rome; and whether, in view of the effect of such speeches, the attention
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    of the law advisers of his Majesty's Government has been drawn to the proceedings.
    MR. WYNDHAM: A speech of this foolish character does not deserve and will not receive attention.

    Irish County Court Sittings.
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will consent to procure and lay upon the Table of the House a Return showing the number of days in each year which each of the county court judges and recorders of Ireland have sat in court, extending over the past six years; and whether he will consent to embody in the said Return the number of revising barristers appointed for each county within the same period, and the number of days upon which they sat, and the total sum paid for this latter service, in each of the six years.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I am not aware of any precedent for a Return of the character mentioned in the first part of the Question, and the Government see no advantage in creating one. A Return containing the information indicated in the second part of the Question will be granted if the hon. Member will move for it in the ordinary way.

    Aughnacloy Threatening Letter Prosecution.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a Protestant farmer was on Friday week at Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, sent forward for trial to the Assizes on a charge of writing threatening letters to a Protestant clergyman; whether he has any official reports showing that town park lands in this neighbourhood are boycotted; and whether he can state the circumstances in connection with which the prosecution arose.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The reply to the first inquiry is in the affirmative; to the second in the negative. I must decline to make any statement in answer to the last query, since the case, as the hon. Member himself points out, is sub judice.

    Irish Railway Rates for Agricultural Produce.
    MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state what are the statutory powers possessed by the Department of Agriculture in Ireland to deal with railway rates on agricultural produce.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The Department has no power to deal with railway rates, but under Section 17 of the Agriculture and Technical Instruction Act, 1899, it is empowered to appear as complainant on behalf of any person aggrieved in reference to matters which the Railway and Canal Commissioners have jurisdiction to hear and determine.
    MR. FIELD: Has the Irish Agricultural Department ever yet appeared as a complainant in any one of these cases?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I am under the impression that the Department is now taking action in one case. The hon. Member is aware that it can only act on the specific complaint of the party aggrieved.

    Irish Agricultural Department.
    MR. FLAVIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will give a list of names of officials in the Department of Agriculture, their religious persuasions, their positions before appointment, and their salaries.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The religious denominations of the officers in the service of the Department are not officially recorded and I could not undertake to ascertain them. A Return could be prepared, setting forth their names, salaries, and previous occupations; but this would take some little time to prepare. If the hon. Member desires this, I will submit a form to him.
    MR. FLAVIN: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman give us their denominational descriptions?
    MR. WYNDHAM: No, Sir.

    Promotion in the Limerick Post Office.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether
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    he is aware that an officer of the clerks' class at Limerick post office has been performing superintending duties efficiently for the last seven years, while the imported officers were employed as writing clerks in the Postmaster's Inquiry Department; and will he say whether the senior clerk in the telegraph branch or an officer of lower rank was locally eligible for the appointment.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: As the hon. Member is aware, a personal inquiry is now being made respecting the duties of the indoor staff at Limerick. The Postmaster General will see that the subject of the present Question is specially investigated and the result embodied in his reply upon the whole case.

    Crimes Act Prisoners in Sligo Gaol.
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant as to the case of three men at present in Sligo Gaol. They were committed on the 30th April and are due to be released tomorrow but I am informed that they are not to be discharged until the 14th. Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire into this case, and see whether these men are being illegally detained for twenty-four hours?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I will inquire into the matter in the course of the afternoon, and will communicate the result to the hon. Member when it reaches me.

    Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland.
    MR. REDMOND: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is prepared to grant facilities on some convenient day for the discussion of the question of the financial relations existing between Great Britain and Ireland.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I hope to be able to find a convenient opportunity for discussing this question.

    The Education Bill.
    MR. ALFRED DAVIES: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when the House will go into Committee on the Education Bill, whether now or in the autumn.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am afraid I cannot state a particular day or week at the moment, but very soon after Whitsuntide.

Business of the House.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I have to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what the business for this week will be, what will be the duration of the Whitsuntide recess, and what will be the first business when we resume.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am in a little difficulty in answering, as it is not easy to say what time the House will desire for the consideration of the two Bills which I think ought to be read a second time before the holidays—the Budget Bill and the Loan Bill. The House is rather behindhand at present in the number of Supply days, of which only six counting days have so far been taken. I think, therefore, we ought either to have a counting day of Supply on Thursday next or on the Thursday after Whit Monday. I do not see how we can take it on Thursday next unless the Budget can be disposed of in two nights, and the Loan Bill read in an afternoon sitting. In that case I will move the adjournment for the holidays on Friday morning, and the House need not resume until the Monday week. But if the Finance Bill takes a longer time, and Thursday has to be given to the Loan Bill, I shall have to ask the House to come back on the Thursday after Whitsuntide for a Supply day.
MR. DAVID THOMAS: What Supply will be taken on the Thursday we come back?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I must ask that that Question be deferred till tomorrow. I certainly have not received any encouraging intimation that the House will be prepared to follow the course I have suggested in regard to the business of this week.

TRADE DISPUTES BILL.
Order for Second Reading upon Friday, 30th May, read, and discharged.
Bill withdrawn.

NEW MEMBER SWORN.
George Toulmin, Esquire, for the Borough of Bury.

FINANCE BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
(FIRST DAYS DEBATE.)
Order for Second Reading read.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,): I wish, in moving the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, to make a statement in regard to the proposal to impose an extra penny stamp duty on cheques. When I first made the proposal to impose that extra stamp duty on ordinary cheques I did not appreciate to how very large an extent those cheques were drawn for very small sums by persons engaged in business, often of very small moans, for the ordinary transactions of trade. When the matter was discussed, I think on the second evening of the Budget debate, I undertook to consider that question with a view to relieving small cheques. A few days later, in answer to a Question in the House, I made a suggestion for that purpose, which I am bound to say did not meet with a favourable reception. But I think, and it was probably through my own fault, it was somewhat misunderstood. I never imagined that the drawer of a cheque would take the trouble to visit a post office in order to obtain the rebate of a penny on a single cheque; nor did I anticipate that in the working of the proposal those who had drawn the cheques would act personally in the matter at all. I thought that the bankers, who do a great deal in many ways for their customers, would not object to add this to what they already do, and to apply periodically to a collector of Inland Revenue or a post office for a rebate on a number of cheques drawn by their customers. I may say that the Commissioners of Inland Revenue were perfectly prepared to make arrangements by which a banker's certificate as to the amount of rebate due to a particular customer might have been accepted in place of the presentation of drawn cheques. But when I came to consult the bankers on the question I found they were entirely opposed to any such proposal; and when, further, I put to them

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the other alternative, namely, that of having different stamps upon cheques of different values—a penny on a cheque below £2, and twopence on other cheques—I found they considered, perhaps with reason, that this would add, in the case of large banks, so much to the work of their clerks that it would be in practice almost impossible. But I was very much more impressed by the very strong and widespread feeling which I found entertained in the country as to the interference with the ordinary transactions of business which would be involved by this additional stamp duty—an interference which was considered by very many persons to be far in excess of the amount which the duty itself would yield to the Exchequer. I also found that this feeling prevailed to so very large an extent that it soon became clear to me that I could not anticipate to receive nearly as much from the additional duty as I had proposed, owing to the large extent to which payment in cash would be substituted for payment by cheque, which gave some colour to the fear of the bankers that in that way it might even lead to a serious interference with their cash reserve. Therefore, as there is really no principle at stake in this proposal, and as the amount which I could expect to receive from it is comparatively small, I have decided not to press it further on the House. I may add that, of course, it will be necessary to consider whether, and, if so, in what way, the amount of revenue which it was anticipated we should receive from the proposal shall be levied; but I think, in existing circumstances, I may reserve any decision upon that subject until a future occasion. I beg to move.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I am sure the House will have been glad to hear the announcement so frankly made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that, on consideration, he does not propose to insist on the tax which he intended to put upon cheques. I wish he had gone further, and had taken off another tax. He has said that the cheque tax rested upon no principle. I should like to know
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on what principle the corn tax rests. We should like to have some explanation as to that. We have been told that it is a tax which is to exhibit the readiness of the country to support supplies, but that it is not to fall upon anybody. That is not an explanation of the principle of the tax, and therefore I hope that in the course of the debate we shall elicit from the right hon. Gentleman what is the principle upon which this tax rests. I rise to move the Amendment which stands in my name on the Paper, viz.—
"That this House declines to impose Customs duties upon grain, flour, and other articles of the first necessity for the food of the people."
I cannot help thinking that, perhaps, instead of being in the hands of one of the oldest Members of this House, it ought to have been placed in the hands of the youngest Member. He would deal with it in more eloquent numbers than any which I can command. But as he has not had the opportunity of putting down a notice on the Paper, I must deal with it as well as I can.
This Amendment presents a very straight issue. It takes issue on what I will call the blackest spot in this Budget—its most glaring vice. When that has been disposed of, the main Question will be put from the Chair, and the House can then go into the general discussion of the Finance Bill. I wish that to be clearly understood. If this House, after the lapse of more than a generation, is prepared to maintain this tax upon the food of the people, I venture to say that its answer to this question will go far to determine the reputation of this Parliament, and, what is a good deal less important, the sentence which will be passed upon this Government. I will affirm that this is a tax which is bad in principle, and still worse in its application and in its consequences. There are objections, of course, to every form of taxation, but this is a tax which manages to accumulate every possible objection that can be made to any tax. There is no necessity upon this occasion to go into any economical subtleties. They have been discussed at sufficient length in the former debates on this tax. For my part, I may say that we are perfectly prepared to rely upon the arguments that have been presented by my hon. and learned friend the Member for South Shields, upon the very practical speech of

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my hon. friend the Member for South Somersetshire, and, above all, upon that comprehensive and conclusive argument presented by my right hon. friend the Member for East Wolverhampton. In my opinion, to that argument there has been no reply that deserves the name, and therefore the Government are fain to shelter themselves under the great name of Mr. Gladstone. I observe that, even after the exposure that has been made of the futility of that pretence, it is still being repeated; and I therefore ask leave to quote what, as far as I know, is the last recorded declaration of Mr. Gladstone's upon this tax. It was when the tax was reconstructed in 1864. Mr. Gladstone then said—
"I should be reluctant to see Parliament committed to any plan which might appear to assume that a duty of this kind on corn—not a very heavy impost, but still more than a nominal one—which in principle it would be difficult to defend—(hear, hear)—should be regarded as a permanent imposition upon the greatest article of human subsistence among us"
That, then, was Mr. Gladstone's view of this tax. It was a tax which could not be defended upon principle; it was one which ought not to be permanent; and it was objectionable because it was on the greatest article of human subsistence among the people. How, then, can the Government justify their reliance on the authority of Mr. Gladstone?
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: He made it permanent.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: When was that declaration made? It was made in 1864. In 1865 Mr. Gladstone went out of office. He came back in 1868, and the first thing he did when he returned to office was to abolish this tax. You may argue about it as you like, but those are facts that cannot be denied, and I say you have here a clear condemnation of this tax.
MR. JAMES LOWTHER: He did not go out of office till 1866.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: He was not responsible for the existence of the tax in 1866 and 1867, and in 1868 he abolished the tax. Therefore, I say,
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give us some better reason than the assent of Mr. Gladstone to this tax in order to justify your revival of it now. His last act in connection with the tax was to abolish it, and that shows what was his feeling on the last occasion on which he had the power to deal with it. What is your position with reference to the tax if you have to rely upon Mr. Gladstone? Do you say that it is defensible in principle? If so, let us know what that principle is. Mr. Gladstone said it was not. Do you propose it here as a permanent tax? You have never suggested that it is a war tax or anything but permanent. It is, therefore, one of those permanent taxes which belong to your fundamental principle of broadening the bases of taxation. Therefore, do not let us be told that you agree with Mr. Gladstone on that point. Do you agree with Mr. Gladstone that it is an imposition upon the greatest element of the subsistence of the people, or do you say that it is not a tax upon the eaters of bread at all? Let us hear what is your view upon the fundamental principles on which Mr. Gladstone condemned the tax. Then it is said that it was not the act of Mr. Gladstone and his Government, but that it was a vagary of Mr. Lowe's. That is a very extraordinary doctrine of Ministerial responsibility. Are you going to say of this and other taxes that they are vagaries of your Chancellor of the Exchequer? I do not believe anything of the kind; and that is not an argument which any Government is entitled to use. We have heard a great deal about the "pedantry" of Air. Lowe. But the duty was condemned by Mr. Gladstone four years before Mr. Lowe had anything to do with it. Therefore the suggestion that the removal of the tax was a fancy of Mr. Lowe's is utterly unfounded, and it is only made because there is no other I defence for your restoration of the tax.
It is unnecessary for me to go into any elaborate economical discussion as to the incidence of the tax. In some form or another this tax must fall upon somebody. Mr. Gladstone said that it fell upon the greatest article of subsistence of the people, and that is why thirty-three years ago he removed it. Why are you going to restore it? That is the question we have to ask you

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today. The duty raises the price of corn and Hour and other articles. Do you deny that? You are confronted by the facts. The price has been raised of corn, flour, and other articles. Is there any article in the world of which, if you put an increased charge upon it, that charge does not raise the market price? That is a question I should like to have answered. Certainly I should like to know on what principle you assert that, when you put a charge—I do not care whether it is of 1s., 5s., or 20s.—upon an article of the magnitude of corn, that that charge does not raise the price. I suppose even Protectionists would allow that they put on a duty for the very purpose of raising the price. If the price is raised the increase must be paid by somebody. Of course it is paid in the first instance by the importer, who proceeds to pass it on. Nobody contends it is paid by the exporter. It happens in this particular trade that there are a number of middlemen who have to deal with the corn before it reaches the consumer. Each of these middlemen puts on a charge for advancing the duty and the other expenses which he has to meet, and the charge ultimately falls on the man who must have the commodity whatever it costs, and that is the consumer. Those are propositions so simple and so obvious that I do not think even a statistician or a professor of political economy can confuse them, and men of business and common sense recognise them as the very basis of all trade. It is said quite truly that the main element in determining market price is supply and demand. Be it so; but you are going to add some-thing to that price. These are the variants—to use a technical expression—of price, but if you add to these variants a constant tax of course you raise the price. It is a tax added to the market price which depends on supply and demand. It is said that there must be a substantial rise in the price of corn or flour to lead to a rise in the price of bread as charged by the baker. I daresay that is true. The Mark Lane Express of April 28th states that "it is not the custom of the baking trade to advance prices to customers except where wholesale prices rise 2s. a quarter on the wheat, which is tantamount to a farthing on the loaf, and that it is not the custom to reduce the
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price until the total fall of wheat values equals 2s. per quarter." Consider this: the market price, through the operation of supply and demand, rises a shilling. That does not alter the price of the loaf. You put on another shilling, and you have the total rise of 2s., which produces a rise in the baker's charges. Will you say it is not your shilling that has caused the rise in the price of bread? Of course it is. Those, again, are propositions so clear that I do not understand how they are disputed.
I feel that I owe some apology to the House for even having said so much on the subject of price. What is the use of asking whether the duty will raise the price of bread when the price of bread has risen? The price of bread has risen, and where it has mostly risen is on the low-priced loaf, the food of the poorest people. The poor people know this very well, and therefore I affirm that in London and in many parts of the country this tax has caused a rise in the price of bread by causes which are perfectly obvious. This is an answer to all the ratiocination and elaborate subtleties that have been resorted to by the First Lord of the Treasury. Solvitur ambulando. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House told us that we were demagogues—without offence, of course—when we told the people that the duty-would raise the price of bread. Equally without offence, I would say that the Government are blunderers not to have seen that the duty necessarily would have that effect. Then it was said that the effect would only be temporary. A temporary deprivation of bread is a serious matter. What we pray for is our daily bread; and I do not know whether this doctrine of bread once a fortnight would suit anybody. Of course, if the market price of corn fell 2s., the evil would be removed or would be lessened, but the fall would be shown by one shilling than it would otherwise be, but supposing it rises 2s. a quarter? Your shilling always remains a factor in the question. It diminishes the effect and benefit of fall and it aggravates the rise. I should like to know on what principles it is proposed to defend a tax of that kind. I say this is a bad tax—a thoroughly bad tax—from every point of view. It is a bad fiscal tax. The worst kind of tax is one which imposes a

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burden of which the fruits do not go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Is that a test which this tax will stand? Your tax is pretty accurately stated to operate on two-thirds of the supply of corn and flour, and the proceeds of that go into the Exchequer. But you equally raise the price of the other third raised at home, and nothing of that goes into the Exchequer from that. That is the vice of all Protective taxes. You may call this Protection, or whatever other name you choose, but it is a tax which has the effect of laying on a burden of which the public does not derive the full advantage. It is said that the duty is not imposed for the purpose of Protection. We care very little what your intentions are; we have to look at the consequence of your action in this respect.
The right hon. Gentleman also used a most singular argument. He asked, "How many additional acres of land will be brought into cultivation by this tax? Of course that is the only test of what will govern demand and supply." A more fallacious argument was never advanced. If not a single acre of land extra was brought into cultivation, what is the effect of a good harvest or the effect of a bad harvest? In the case of a bad harvest the supply is limited, and consequently there is an increase of prices. In the case of a good harvest there is an increase of supply, and with the increase of supply there is therefore a lowering of prices. The question, then, of additional land being brought into cultivation is entirely beside the mark. This tax, which was removed in 1869 by Mr. Gladstone's Government, was renewed by Mr. Lowe expressly on the ground of its Protective character. They may say that they do not intend it to be Protective, but is that the view taken by the public at large—that it has no relation to Free Trade or Protection? Has it no relation to Protection? Let me apply to it the principle of the judgment of Solomon—"Whose child is this?" Why, we all heard the vociferous applause of the tender mother the hon. Member for Central Sheffield on the introduction of the Bill, and it was caressed with delight, in more prudent ways, by those who hold the views of the hon. Member. We all know perfectly well how it has been
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received by the Protectionists throughout the country, and what they expect from it. Let us ask what this tax has done, what hopes have been raised, and what expectations have been encouraged. Everyone knows that at the bottom of this tax does lie the question of Free Trade or Protection. It is just like the dams in Holland, which, to keep out inundation, the people take very good care shall not be undermined by rats. There is not a partizan of either school, of Free Trade or Protection, who does not know that this step which you are taking has a very significant effect on the situation. Why, everybody believed until you brought in this proposal that this question of a tax on corn had been settled, never to be heard of again. Why have you raised it by the proposal of this tax? How has it been regarded in the Press which deals with this matter specially? I will quote a highly respectable financial journal: not like us demagogues, as the right hon. Gentleman has called us. The Economist is not a demagoggic newspaper. It is a supporter of the Government, and what does it say of this Budget and this tax? In a headline they call it "a vicious and reactionary Budget," a "reversal of our traditional fiscal policy, the adoption of a system of Protection in its worst form—that of a tax on the food of the people." That is what the Economist says in reference to the bearing of this tax upon Protection. Then I turn to the journal I have already referred to, the Mark Lane Express, a Protectial journal. It says—
"The registration duty is not a large item in itself, but it has broken the spell. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has laid profane hands on the sacred ark, and no avenging stroke has fallen."
But that was written before the Bury election. The newspaper goes on to say—
"The discovery that Free Trade was only a fetish after all, a mummy and not a living issue—that it is which pleased the farmer, not because he is a farmer, but because he is, presumably, a sensible man. Protection and Free Trade are the shibboleths of a dead era. The 20th century means to paddle its own canoe."
I have no doubt that those who take that view are discreet enough not to mention it at the present stage, but everybody knows that in its effect it is an advance towards Protection.

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The right hon. Gentleman quarrelled I with me because I quoted Lord Cross on this subject. He said that Lord Cross did not believe it would not have any effect on the price of bread, but Lord Cross said he was; very glad that this tax was removed, because it would remove the suspicion of putting a tax on the food of the people. What have you done? You have revived that suspicion which Lord Cross rejoiced had been done away with when this tax was removed by Mr. Gladstone's Government. I cannot help feeling the greatest astonishment at the introduction of this tax by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He knows very well that I have not been a hostile critic of his financial proposals. I cannot understand how it was that a man of his great intelligence, his firm mind, and his sound sense should ever have meddled with corn at all. That is a thing I am totally unable to comprehend. Of all taxes, it is the one which provokes all the bitter memories that belong to the Corn Laws. My right hon. friend the Member for East Wolverhampton demonstrated conclusively, I think, that there were other taxes, to which the right hon. Gentleman might have had recourse, which are not accompanied by all these difficulties and fiscal objections which are attached to this tax. The right hon. Gentleman took a very extraordinary course—I think the most extraordinary course ever taken by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, for he went down to Bristol months before the Budget, and assured one particular interest that they were safe. That was, I say, a very extraordinary thing to do—to go over the whole range of taxation and tell the people connected with one particular business that, whatever happens, he would not put a tax upon beer. I think the Government will discover that the world does not consist exclusively of brewers. There are other classes, I will not say as important, but which are more numerous than those who brew beer, and, possibly, even than those who drink it. I ask—What have you done in the course of your administration with the finances of this country? You have lavished resources which might now be at your disposal on doles to favoured classes. They would have supplied the money which you are now proposing to put upon corn and the food of the people. You have given the money in the relief of rates
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upon land and in subsidies to the clerical schools. If it had not been for that, you would have had at least some of the money which you are proposing to raise by this tax. You have now withdrawn the cheque tax because you find that among many of the classes affected by it there is a strong feeling against it, and that it was one which it would be difficult to deal with. But what are the bankers compared with the interests of the people who eat bread? Why is that tax to be withdrawn because it is objected to by the men with cheque-books and the bankers who cash these cheques? And this tax is to be imposed on men who never knew what a cheque-book is. Since this tax was proposed the feeling against it is stronger than against any other tax
But, Sir, this tax is to be condemned not only on its financial aspects, but, in my opinion, a great deal more upon its social and its political aspects. I use the word "political," which is not, thank heaven, identified with Party. Polity is a thing above Party, and it is in its political aspect that I condemn chiefly this tax. I challenge the policy of this tax as against sound finance; and what I understand sound finance to be, as I learned it from its greatest masters, is that the fundamental principle is that the burden shall not be cast on those who are the least able to bear it. That was the view of the Liberal finance Ministers who have conferred such lasting benefit on the country. It is not merely that they gave them greater domestic comforts; they bestowed on them greater political contentment. That was manifest in the spirit of the people as compared with the feeling which existed before the repeal of the Corn Laws. Sound finance is not a matter of dry figures. It is a great deal more than that. It demands the statesmanship of the heart. It demands sympathy for those to whom taxation, which is burdensome to all, is intolerable; and it is intolerable to those who have not the means to bear it. And that is what I mean when I say this tax sins against considerations much higher than mere fiscal considerations. You ought to, and you must, so distribute your taxation that it shall not be beyond the capacity of the poorest people to bear it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer paints pretty pictures of his own Arcadia. He tells us of whole I families with 13s. a week who live upon

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meat every day. That picture is so charming that I wonder the whole population, rural and urban alike, do not migrate to Gloucestershire. In the valley of the Colne they will have charming scenery, they will find delightful inhabitants, as I know, and they will enjoy legs of Cotswold mutton and sirloins of beef, which will be the fare of the rural ordinary. That is a charming picture, but that is not the situation everywhere.
Now, the right hon. Gentleman entered upon what I venture to think is the most fallacious of all arguments—the argument from averages. He said there is such and such a population, they have such and such wages, and consequently they must have on an average so much to spend. Sir, of all arguments the statistical argument from averages is the most fallacious. You have a number of people, some of whom have £1,000 a year, some of whom may have £100 a year. Throw in a millionaire and a great many more who have not anything, and you take the average and prove that on the average they all have £500 a year. That is an argument which is absolutely fallacious in a case of this kind. What is the value of an average to a class who are hopelessly below the average? What you have to look at is the absolute condition of the poorest people in this country, quite irrespective of averages of that description. We rejoice to think that, in consequence of that Tree Trade policy which some, at least, desire to destroy, the average condition of the population of this country has vastly improved. But, unhappily, there is always a substratum—there is, and always will be, a residuum of poor people. The poor are always with us. And what are the numbers of those unhappy people? In 1900, according to the last Return I have seen, there were 1,000,000 paupers, out of 40,000,000 people, receiving outdoor and indoor relief. Therefore, one out of every forty persons is in such a condition that he must seek relief. In London last month there were 111,000 people out of 4,500,000—that is nearly the same proportion—who were in that situation. And how many thousands more do you believe are upon the brink of the workhouse, struggling not to become paupers? And these, I think, are the class who
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are most to be considered and who suffer most.
Then the right hon. Gentleman used an argument derived from intemperance. No doubt that is a very painful argument, and it is a great shame to this House that it has done so little to reform it. It is perfectly true that a great part of the people of this country waste their substance upon drink. In my opinion, that makes the argument upon this particular question still stronger. You have a man with high wages; he drinks away his wages and leaves his wife and children with scarcely enough bread to sustain them. This is the result of intemperance, and it is a reason why you should not put a tax upon bread. These are social and political considerations which lie at the bottom of sound finance. I believe that this tax sins against these principles and ought to be condemned on that ground as well as upon fiscal grounds. And that is why I call this a shabby tax—a tax which is not creditable to a nation of this enormous wealth. Are the people who are luxuriating in a superfluity of wealth, the millionaires and the men who have sums of money which they know not what to do with, are they not willing to undertake the burden of this tax? I say you ought to resort to any other tax; there is none, whatever may be the objections to it, which would not have been better than this. For us, at least, who are disciples of these principles of sound finance, our path is clear, our course is taken. We shall oppose, as we have opposed at every stage, the imposition of this tax. I know not whether we shall succeed. I fear not. You are in command of a great majority obtained at an election fought upon false pretences. Gentlemen on the opposite Benches are perpetually telling us that there is only one thing that they suffer from, and that is from the want of a vigorous and united Opposition. Sir, we are amiable people, and we will try to accommodate them as far as we can. It is the darling desire of their hearts that they should have a vigorous Opposition; we will do what we can to gratify their aspirations. You have hoard something upon this subject of a

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united Opposition in the country, and of its result. A very remarkable election has taken place. Various people will give their own interpretations to the cause of it. I observe that the unfortunate candidate—I desire to say nothing hard of him; he is an old friend of mine, who once was a very good Liberal; he is a belated convert to the Unionist camp; but he had chosen a bad time—an unlucky moment. At the declaration of the poll, he said he could not understand or explain the cause of the change, or why the constituency had changed its mind. There is one explanation I would suggest to him, and that is—because he had changed his mind, and the constituency changed its mind also. I will tell him, in all good feeling, that the explanation of his failure upon that occasion is that he put his money on the wrong horse, that he backed a sinking cause, and gave his support to a discredited administration. He would have done better, in my opinion, to have stuck to his old colours. But I should like very much to hear the explanation of it from a neighbouring town. Oldham is not very far from Bury. The Member for Oldham might tell us something about it—proximus ardet. I should like to hear from him whether this tax is one of the results of that Tory democracy of which he is the hereditary representative in this House. Is this his conception of the model finance of the Government of which he is a constant and ardent supporter? I should like to know whether this is a sample of their social progress; whether it is what is called the Birmingham programme of social reform. You promised old-age pensions. This is the sort of pension that you offer to the aged—to people who can no longer work. They ask you for bread and you give them a corn tax. Do you call that social reform? Is this a war gift which you are going to bestow upon the widows and children, who have little enough to live upon? We are very well content with the issue as it stands. Whatever happens upon this division, at all events the country will know who are for and who are against a tax upon the bread of the people. It was hailed on its introduction with a vociferous shout of "well done." There has come back a strange echo from Tory Lancashire, and
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that echo is "ill done," and when this matter is more thoroughly understood and felt throughout the country, I believe the cry against the Government will be "undone." I know not what may be the verdict of the House of Commons upon this tax, placed on the poorest of the people; but it is my belief that there is a feeling in this country, deep-seated and spreading, which condemns the Government—that the people are dissatisfied and disappointed with the manner in which it has mismanaged their affairs, and that they condemn you for the way in which you have wasted and misused the great majority with which they had entrusted you.
Amendment proposed—
"On Second Reading of Finance Bill, to move, 'That this House declines to impose Customs duties upon grain, flour, and other articles of the first necessity for the food of the people.'"—(Sir William Harcourt.)
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: There is a singular contrast between the course which has been taken by the official Opposition in regard to the Budget of the present year and that which the same Gentlemen took only a year ago. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton stood forward as their spokesman. He moved a reasoned Amendment to the Second Leading of the Finance Bill. That Amendment expressed a policy. He stated that he and those on whose behalf he spoke were ready to make adequate provision for the naval and military requirements of the Empire; and in his speech he added that he approved of the main reason for the Budget, which was the expenditure on the war, that he would be behind no one in his support of necessary expenditure on the Navy, and that, although he thought in regard to the Army and education that we might get better value for our money, yet he would pay more to India towards the cost of the Army maintained for her defence and would spend more on education. That was the policy which the right hon. Gentleman put forward in behalf of the Opposition. What is it we are being treated to tonight? Throughout the whole speech of the right hon. Gentleman for West Monmouth there

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has not been the faintest recognition of the fact that we are face to face with an expenditure—a necessary expenditure—for which this House is bound to provide. Sir, I think in his heart the right hon. Gentleman agrees entirely with what was said only the other day by the Leader of the Opposition in this House, who told his followers that it was time to stop the process of widening the basis of expenditure, and that a check must be put on the wild schemes of the Government for military and naval extension. That is the view now adopted by the official Opposition. They will give us no support in obtaining the means for the necessary expenditure on the war in South Africa. Not one word in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman testified to his recognition of that necessity.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I certainly intended to say, which is the fact, that I and all my friends have voted all the supplies.
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: But what is the use of voting supplies if you propose Amendments to the Budget which ignore altogether the necessities of expenditure, and which, if carried, would certainly put an end to the Government and the Budget at once. The right hon. Gentleman's sentiments are very well known. He would have allowed Boer supremacy to be established in South Africa; he would cut down the necessary expenditure of this country on the Navy, and, with regard to the Army, I am certain that he would stint the cost that is required to secure its efficiency. That is the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman thinks that he can run this Empire on the cheap. Our Empire, no doubt, is costly to maintain, to develop, and to defend; but there is one obstacle to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. It is that the nation would not support it, and the nation recorded that verdict unmistakably at the last general election. What has been the complaint often made of my action in regard to the financial policy of this country? I have been told, over and over again that I have failed to provide
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from taxation enough to meet the expenditure of the year, that I have imposed too much on our successors by borrowing more largely than hon. Gentlemen opposite thought was justified by the occasion. That has been the complaint. But, after all, as a Return recently placed on the Table shows, I have provided from the revenue of this country in the course of four years no less than £74,000,000 out of a war expenditure of £228,000,000. Although I admit that that is not as large a proportion as was provided at the time of the Crimean War, yet surely hon. Gentlemen must consider that the larger the cost of the war, the less it is possible to provide the whole of it from the taxation of the year, and the more justified you are in imposing a certain portion of it on posterity.
But this complaint is a curious preface to opposition to the taxation I propose on the ground that it is placed on the masses of the population of this country. What is the argument on which the complaint is based? Why, surely, that it is necessary that the electorate, who govern this country, should realise what the expenditure on war or in preparations for war involves; and that they should be made to realise it by not putting the whole burden of this war, and the preparations for war, on the future. What is the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman? It is to put it on the millionaires. Do you suppose the masses of the population of this country will care how much you spend in war, or in preparation for war, if you make the millionaires pay the whole of it? There were some very wise words, in my humble opinion, used by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Montrose Burghs on this subject last year. He said—
"I cannot conceive a great Empire existing under more dangerous conditions than if a great army of electors is to decide on questions of peace or war or great issues of policy without it being brought home to them clearly and directly what the effects of their acts and decisions will be."
I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman from the Member for West Monmouth. As I am always being twitted with the finance of the Crimean War, let ma remind the House what the finance of the Crimean War was. Were the masses exempted from taxation for the purposes of the war by such Chancellors of the

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Exchequer as Mr. Gladstone and Sir George Cornwall Lewis, who surely cannot be charged with indifference to the burdens of the people? What was the taxation proposed in the year of the greatest expenditure on the Crimean war, viz., 1855–6? At that time the income tax rose to Is. 4d. in the £, a penny more than I propose this year. But the death duties, allowing for the increase in the wealth of the country since that time, are double the burden at the present time on the class which pays direct taxation compared with what they were then. Then, other direct taxation has increased since those days to a considerable extent. In 1855–6 the direct taxpayers of this country bore 41·4 per cent. of the total amount raised in taxation. Last year they bore 52·3 per cent. In the former year direct taxation amounted to 19s. 8d. per head of the population; last year it amounted to 32s, 11d. As to indirect taxation, anyone who looks back to the tariff of 1855 will find it crowded with articles since removed from it; some of them returning a very small amount of revenue, but other articles, such as timber and paper, returning a very considerable amount of revenue indeed. When the right hon. Gentleman told us today that Mr. Gladstone objected to the permanent continuation of the corn duty, and that he took the first opportunity of removing it, I was reminded that in the year 1866, after the statements made in 1864, which the right hon. Gentleman has quoted from Mr. Gladstone, that the corn duty should not be a permanent tax, Mr. Gladstone preferred to remove not merely the duty on timber but the extra duty on bottled wines as compared with wines in casks, in place of touching the corn duty. I have stated something of the indirect taxation of 1855; but what was the taxation then on articles of food? There was the corn duty which we seek to reimpose; there was a duty of 5s. a cwt. on butter, which is gone; tea which is now taxed at 6d. on the lb., was then taxed at 1s. 9d. on the lb.; sugar, now taxed at 4s. 2d. a cwt. was then taxed at 20s. a cwt. Was not that a far higher charge on the working classes, who were infinitely less able to bear taxation in those days than
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they are now, than anything I propose in the taxation now under consideration by the House?
Well, I think I have shown that if we are to go back to the precedent of the Crimean War in our fiscal arrangements, if we are to revert to the last time that this country was face to face with an abnormal expenditure for war, we are bound to impose in our Budget some additional taxation on the masses as well as on the wealthier classes of the country. Then the question is. What shall that taxation be? That was the point to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton devoted a great deal of his speech the other night, and to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth also alluded this afternoon. I do not think I need dwell on the possibilities, although they have been suggested, of direct taxation on the masses of the population. It has been suggested that we should lower the limit of exemption from income tax from £160 to £100. I am glad to see that the right hon. Member for West Monmouth shakes his head at that suggestion. If you did, you would tax, perhaps, the most necessitous class in the country, and the collection would be so difficult that you would add little to your revenue by the change. It has been suggested, too, that we should lower the limit of house duty from £20 to £10. Why, Sir, the very poor in our great cities live so largely in houses of such a valuation that to impose such a duty upon them would be cruelty, and the houses between £10 and £20 in the rural districts are so few in number that any such alteration of the house duty would not produce £300,000 a year. Therefore you are reduced, as I believe anybody who has studied the finance of this country must have been reduced, to new indirect taxation of some kind or other if you are to impose a fair share of the increasing burdens of the country upon the masses of the population. It was suggested the other clay that the sugar duty should be increased. I was glad to see that neither of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite gave any support to that view. We have heard a great deal from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stirling Burghs about sugar being the food of the people, and, as sugar is already taxed to

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something like 20 per cent. of its value, to double the sugar duty would be a greater burden upon the poorest of our population than the imposition of 3 or 4 per cent. on the value of the corn and flour imported into this country.
Then I come to the particular items to which allusion has been made—beer and tobacco. The right hon. Gentleman has blamed me for stating somewhat prematurely my opinion that beer and spirits would not stand increased taxation. I stated it in the House a year ago. I have never concealed it. I do not believe—and I have gone into this matter very closely—that you could take the increased taxation which is necessary from either of these sources. I dismiss spirits because I know the right hon. Gentleman opposite agrees with me on that matter, and I turn to beer. What has been the condition of the revenue from beer for the past few years? Between 1895 and 1900 the revenue from beer, without any increase of taxation, increased by more than £1,500,000. In 1900 we increased the duty, with the result, of course, of an addition to the revenue. But the increase in the yield of the duty was checked, and the increase in the consumption of beer was checked to so large an extent that, in the two years following 1900, the consumption fell off by no less than one million barrels. I do not say that this was entirely due to the increase of the tax. It may have been due partly to other causes, but I will venture to say that to obtain anything like the £2,500,000 from beer which I desire to obtain from indirect taxation in this Budget you would have to impose, as a matter of calculation, at least 2s. a barrel on beer; and, when you had imposed it, you would never get your revenue, because the result of it would be that both the brewer and the retailer would have to increase the price to the consumer, and the consumption would largely fall off, to the serious injury of the revenue.
Now I turn to tobacco. The tobacco revenue, as anybody who has attempted to deal with it will know—and I have suffered from it myself—is a revenue of a very ticklish kind. There are some facts in the history of the tobacco revenue to which, perhaps, I may very shortly call the attention of the
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House. Between the years 1870 and 1877 the tax upon tobacco was rather more than 3s. a pound, and the yield of the duty increased during those years by an average of 3 per cent. per annum. Then Sir Stafford Northcote raised the duty to 3s. 6d. per pound. He anticipated an increase of £800,000 from that change, but he actually got only £500,000. The duty went on at that rate until 1886, and the annual increase from it was only 1·89 per cent. per annum instead of the 3 per cent. per annum as before. Then it was altered to 3s. 2d. the pound, and remained at that figure until 1897, showing an annual increase of 3·12 per cent. per annum. A more conclusive proof than those figures demonstrate as to the danger of raising the tobacco duty much above 3s. on the pound I think it would be impossible to show. But I have something more. The duty is now 3s. on the pound with a legal limit of moisture of 30 per cent., that legal limit being necessary for the security of the revenue. If you wanted to raise £2,500,000 more from tobacco you would have to calculate on another 1s. on the pound at least for that purpose, and when you have done that, what would be the result? You would have asked the consumer of tobacco to pay something like £3,500,000 more in duty in order to return £2,500,000 to the Exchequer. The great bulk of the receipts from the duty on tobacco comes from the working-class consumer—the man whom I have heard the hon. Member for Leicester often describe as the 3d. an ounce man. He buys his tobacco at 3d. an ounce, or l½d. for half an ounce. He has always been in the habit of doing so, and it is everybody's opinion that he will give no more. But, if you were to increase the duty on tobacco by 1s. the pound, the price to him must be raised, and the result would be that he would be charged a halfpenny, or even a penny, an ounce more than he pays now. The consumption of tobacco would inevitably fall off so much that the revenue would receive very little from the change. I am arguing this matter simply from the point of view of the revenue. Of course, it may be said that it would be a very fine thing if the consumption of beer, or even the consumption of tobacco, decreased. I am not concerned with that matter at all. I have to raise a certain

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amount of money from indirect taxation for the purposes of the expenditure of the country; and it would be absolutely useless for me—it would be worse than useless, it would be deceiving Parliament—if I made proposals for increasing the revenue which, however popular or plausible they might be at the moment, in my heart I knew would not tend to secure the money.
I now come to the particular tax to which the right hon. Gentleman objects. That tax is a very small tax upon the value of the article on which it is imposed. The real test of the burden imposed by a tax is the amount the consumption is decreased by its imposition. But will any one think of suggesting for a moment that the consumption of corn or Hour or bread in this country will be decreased by the imposition of 3d. per cwt. on corn? The idea is absurd. The right hon. Gentleman asks who will pay the tax; and he refers to the recent rise in the price of corn and bread. Of course there has been, within the last few weeks, a rise in the price of corn. There always is a rise in the price of corn when stocks are low in the spring of the year; and I suppose if it had been possible for me to impose this duty after harvest, when stocks were large, or during harvest, when anticipations were favourable, there probably would have been no rise at all. But corn has been rising quite irrespective of the duty for weeks past. It has risen in America where the duty could have no effect whatever. It has risen because stocks are low. And when people complain to me, as they have complained, of the high price of maize in particular, anybody who looks back at the records of the market and sees that the American crop of maize last year was hardly more than half what it was in the previous year, and that, as a result, from November until May this year we only imported from America 800,000 quarters of maize, as compared with 11,355,000 quarters in the same period last year, will see what the reason is for the present rise in the price of maize. But even so, at present wheat is only the same price as it was, within a little, in March, 1901, and flour on May 5th in Mark Lane was almost exactly the same price as it was on that date a year ago.
Of course the right hon. Gentleman says this is a bread tax, and he refers to
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a rise by bakers in the price of bread as if it were not only a general, but almost a universal rise. It is nothing of the kind. I have obtained information on this point from the thirty largest cities in this country, including the Metropolis, up to the 5th May. There has been no general rise in the price of bread in London; there has been a rise in the price of bread by a good many bakers in London, but a general rise in price there has not been. And out of the other twenty-nine cities I find that in nineteen there has been no rise in price at all, in nine there has been a rise of ½d. on the quartern loaf, and in one there has been actually a decrease in price since 1st March. But any one who has paid any attention to the price of bread will know that it is extremely difficult to found an argument on ordinary bakers' prices, because the price of bread varies in the most extraordinary way in different towns and villages, and even in different streets of the same town. Therefore I have obtained what I think is something more reliable that statistics of bakers, and that is statistics from co-operative societies all over Great Britain. Even a co-operative society may, I am told, be sometimes influenced in fixing the price of bread by—well, political considerations. But I think generally it may be argued that co-operative societies will not raise the price of bread before it is necessary, but that they will raise it if they find it necessary to do so. I have obtained returns from as many as 284 co-operative societies in Great Britain, and I find that out of those only thirty-two have raised the price of bread by ½d. the quartern loaf. I find that in the north, east, north-midland, west-midland, and south-eastern districts of England there has been no rise at all in the cooperative price of bread, nor has there been in Scotland. In London, in Lancashire, and Cheshire, in the south-midland and the south-western districts of England, there has been an average rise in the co-operative price of bread of ¼d. the quartern loaf. When the right hon. Gentleman talks of the price of bread as if it were a question almost of starvation prices at the present moment, I can tell him this, that out of all these societies the mean co-operative price of bread throughout the United Kingdom

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is not more now than 5d. for the quartern loaf. I do not think that is quite a starvation price.
But, after all, the main argument of the right hon. Gentleman was not so much with regard to the present as with regard to the future. He asked who would pay this tax. Well, I do not think anybody could say with certainty who pays any indirect tax. I should say that it mainly depends on whether the demand is greater than the supply, or whether the supply is greater than the demand. For the moment here we have short stocks of corn and of flour, and we have other elements far more important than this 3d. per cwt. on wheat which have tended to raise prices, and all that you can fairly say as to this duty is that it may, as the right hon. Gentleman said the other night, have tended to cause to overflow a cup which was already full. You cannot possibly attribute more to this duty than that. But what is the position with regard to the future? For the moment the demand is greater than the supply. Is that likely to be often the case in future? The right hon. Gentleman forgets that not only is it necessary for us to obtain wheat and flour from America or other quarters, but that it is quite as necessary for them to sell their productions to us. Does anybody suppose that the imposition of 3d. per cwt. on wheat would cause a single acre less corn to be cultivated in America? Why, the idea is absurd. They will go on producing corn just as they have done before; they must send it here because they cannot send it to other countries, on account of the Protective tariff against wheat in those countries. Therefore, directly the supply of corn becomes greater than the demand, the producer and the carrier of the corn will pay it, because they are obliged to send it here. That is exactly what happened in the course of last year in the case of sugar. An enormous crop of beet sugar was grown in Europe which was obliged to come here because it could not go anywhere else, and the price largely fell. What has happened already? The Millers' Federation in the United States is a powerful organisation. I have seen statements from that organisation which agree in the view
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that the duty here will be a trifle in regard to their exportation of flour to this country as compared with the extra charges which the freight companies make for carrying flour instead of corn, and they have even now persuaded an important railway company in the Western States to carry their flour at cheaper rates than it did before the imposition of the duty. What is that but the payment by the shareholders of that railway company of a portion of the duty?
Now, in regard to the probable future, I have seen a calculation, and I believe it is right in its main particulars, from which it is clear that the production of wheat throughout the world is increasing at a greater ratio than the demand for that production. It is stated that the total wheat production of the world last year was 100,000,000 qrs. more than it was in 1880, while the increased consumption is put at only 37,000,000. We want in this country about 7,000,000 qrs. more a year, taking an average crop, than we did in the year 1880. But again, taking an average crop, the United States, owing to the extension of cultivation, could spare us 15,000,000 qrs. more than they could in that year, and the Argentine Republic could spare us 2,500,000 more quarters; and, therefore, putting aside altogether all the other wheat producing countries in the world, is it not clear that the probabilities are that the supply of corn to us will so far exceed the demand in future as to keep the price down? If so, what becomes of the suggestion that this 3d. per cwt. can by any possibility be a Protective duty to the British farmer, or raise the price of corn in this country?
The right hon. Gentleman said that at the bottom of this proposal lies the question of Free Trade or Protection, and he suggested that we were undermining the dam between the two policies, a dam which in his opinion is absolutely necessary to prevent this country being converted from Free Trade to Protection. Well, if we are undermining the dam by the proposal of this duty, it is very remarkable that the dam was not undermined between the years 1849 and 1869, when the duty existed. All that the right hon. Gentleman has said upon this subject really arises from what my hon. friend the

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Member for Glasgow described the other day as a kind of superstition that has grown about the principles of Free Trade. Those who imposed this duty in 1849 never supposed that it was against the principles of Free Trade, those who maintained it were staunch upholders of those principles. Mr. Gladstone in 1864 continued it, not as an annual but as a permanent tax, and when he had the chance of repealing it he chose instead to reduce other duties which in his opinion were more injurious to the people. The right hon. Gentleman says that it is a Protective duty because it produces less to the Exchequer than the charge which it imposes on the consumer. Granting his assumption, and supposing it to be correct that the duty would increase the price of corn in this country, why, Sir, it sins less in that respect, at any rate, now than it did in the years 1849–1869? For what is the position? In the year 1868, assuming that the duty on wheat increased the price of the whole consumption of wheat in this country by 1s. a quarter, £716,000 would have gone into the pockets of the producers in this country, and only £447,000 into the Exchequer. But now, when we import three-quarters of our wheat, not more than £363,000 could by any possibility go into the pockets of the farmers in this country, while the Exchequer would benefit to the extent of £1,128,000.
There is one thing I cannot understand. The right hon. Gentleman has often stated to the House that above all things he is anxious to bring home to the minds of the mass of the people the cost of war, and our great and growing expenditure, and, I think, only the other day he said he thought this duty was the very thing that would do it. Why does he object to a duty which would have the precise effect which he so earnestly desires? It has been called mean and shabby. Sir, is it mean in us if we believe that even the very poor people of this country, are as patriotic as the wealthy, and that they will be as willing to bear something of the burden of the increased expenditure which is necessary for the policy of which they have approved? This duty has been called a cowardly duty. Was ever epithet so misplaced? Is it a cowardly thing for the Government to face the old cry of "the big loaf or the little loaf," the "tax on the food of the
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people," which, with so little cause, has been so promptly raised by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite? I think it might be cowardly when we had to impose new taxation, if we imposed all upon the few and the wealthy who could not resist it at the polls.
We have faced this danger, and according to the right hon. Gentlemen we have suffered already. But, Sir, Manchester may be placarded all over with posters inciting the people to rise in their thousands against the bread tax; a few hundred electors of Bury may be deluded, by appeals to the memory of the great Sir Robert Peel into opposing the reim-position of the very duty which he himself devised and imposed; but I think that the commonsense of the people of this country will recognise the absurdity of arguments of that kind. I remember what happened a year ago with regard to the sugar duty. I remember an electoral address by a candidate on the other side, which said that the duty would cripple the confectionery and the jam trades, would paralyse the fruit-growing industry, and would make the food of every man, woman, and child in the country dearer, and their lives harder if they were poor. Does any one who has watched the course of the price of sugar during the last twelve months believe that statements of that kind were justified? In a very short time any effect of this duty on the price of wheat and of bread will have found its proper level; and I am convinced that it will be felt generally through the country that the exaggerated anticipations of its result will never be realised, and that a duty which, when it existed, nobody felt, for the removal of which nobody was grateful because-nobody desired it, will no more in the future than in the past, have, to borrow the words of the hon. Member for Poplar, any practical effect on the cost of food.
MR. ROBSON: The right hon. Gentleman has based his case for this tax on totally different grounds to those upon which he based his Budget speech. He has told us that he believes that the working classes are willing to bear their fair share of taxation in order to meet the expenditure for war. He has rather belittled the credit he was

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before entitled to by saying that it imposes no burden upon them at all, and that where it is not borne by the bakers it is borne by the American railway companies; and I think that that goes some distance towards depriving him of the credit for manly courage in the face of theory of the democracy anxious to preserve its bread. Let us take what the right hon. Gentleman said upon the first stage of the controversy, when he introduced this tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer did not then connect this tax with war expenditure, for he was most careful to dissociate it from the war charges. When he proposed the addition to the income tax he was careful to specify that tax as a war tax, and he accompanied his proposal with the statement that the tax would cease with the war. But when he came to the corn tax he put it upon a very different basis.
He introduced this tax, as he did last year the coal export duty, not as an emergency tax, but as a new and additional basis for the taxation of the country to prevail in times of peace. Hon. Gentlemen opposite will not have forgotten what the right hon. Gentleman said when he drew attention to the enormous increase in the ordinary expenditure of the country. He says that it is necessary that the increase in expenditure should be met by new sources of taxation, and as the ordinary expenditure is permanent so, of course, must the taxation derived from these new sources be treated as permanent; and having given us that prelude to the tax he said he did not believe that he could put more permanent taxation upon direct taxation, and in looking for a new source of indirect taxation he had to look to some commodity of universal use. Therefore this has not been introduced as a war tax, but as a deliberate readjustment of the relative burdens of direct and indirect taxation upon the taxpayers of the country. In 1896, when the right hon. Gentleman was dealing not with deficits, but the ample and unbounded surpluses handed down to him by his distinguished predecessor in the office he now holds, the right hon. Gentleman warned us then that we were reaching the limits of direct taxation. What did that mean? It meant that if our then scale of expenditure continued or increased it must be provided for, not by the direct taxes, but by taxes upon the food of the people. That
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was what the right hon. Gentleman and his Party had in view in 1896 before the South African troubles were thought of, or at any rate before they were thought I of on the Front Bench opposite.
Therefore the introduction of this tax is a step in the retrograde policy which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had in view ever since he held his present office. In 1896, although lamenting the increase in expenditure, he proposed to support and advocate a huge transfer to the general taxpayer of the burdens hither to borne by particular classes and he did this at a time when he knew that we were reaching the limits of direct taxation, and that, therefore, sooner or later, the burdens he was putting on the general Exchequer must inevitably be borne by the trade and the food of the people. Tonight the right hon. Gentleman has criticised the various suggestions which have been made as alternatives to this tax, and he has thought fit to ignore the suggestion thrown out by my right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth that he should remit the doles he has given in place of imposing the bread tax. That suggestion the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought fit to ignore altogether. Not for the first time are we able to observe that the silence of Ministers is so much more suggestive than their speech. The right hon. Gentleman has reverted to the argument that the tax will not be a burden upon any one, that it is, in fact, a sort of bloodless victory over the hated foreigner - who feeds us, and that it certainly will not result in any rise in price. The action of the markets has given a very swift answer to that plea. There has been a rise in the price of bread, and where this has been imposed the rise has been out of all proportion to the fraction represented by the amount of the tax. We are all agreed that the price of a commodity in any particular district must be somewhat delusive as to the general price.
The right hon. Gentleman has given us a number of statistics taken under a variety of conditions under which the tax might wholly fail to tell upon the price. There is no doubt that at the places and times chosen by the right hon. Gentleman his figures are quite accurate. I agree that there are

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moments and conditions in any trade when the cost of production of an article and of placing it on the market is almost an unimportant factor. But although at times the cost of production is unimportant, yet, if instead of having regard merely to particular moments we regard the trade as a whole, and if we take not this, that, or the other abnormal conditions of the market but take the markets over a long period of time, it will be seen that not only is the cost of placing the commodity upon the market an important factor, but it is the all important factor, in fact, it is the dominant factor in the price. If the right hon. Gentleman was imposing this tax just in reference to the particular condition of the market, and limiting its operation to some short period of time, then his argument would have an excellent application. But the right hon. Gentleman is making this a permanent tax, and nothing can be more fallacious than to judge it by pointing out that it may have no effect in a peculiar condition of the market. It is a commercial and economic fallacy. There are plenty of men of business on the other side of the House, and I wonder whether there is any one of them who, on sitting down to consider the price which he should charge for his commodity, would have no regard whatever to the cost of placing it on the market, but would simply consider what the price might he owing to the conditions of supply and demand at a particular time. The dominant factor in fixing the price is undoubtedly the cost of placing your goods on the market, and that is the point of view from which we must consider this tax. Instead, then, of this tax being a gain to the producer, it would rather seem to be the case that it is not coins to be a grain to anybody. We have had a great many suggestions thrown out that perhaps the agricultural industry might possibly gain something by this. I do not think that any one who ventured to make that claim would do so now. The farmers have discovered that much of this tax is to be paid by them. Some will gain, but the agricultural industry as a whole will suffer along with the rest of the community. The farmer, unless he is able to shift the cost of his feeding-stuffs on to the consumer of his produce will have the opportunity of learning a somewhat unpleasant lesson. He will
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discover that a Protective tax in his favour does not always bring him benefit to the full extent of the tax. In this case, perhaps, it will not do so, but he will also discover that a Protective tax in somebody's favour—in favour, to wit, of the American wheat producer—puts on him a burden far greater than the amount of the tax.
I need not repeat the argument which has already been admirably developed by my right hon. friend as to the tax increasing the price of the cost of production in a manner out of proportion to the amount of the tax itself. The farmer will find that out. He will have to pay more as a consumer than he will gain as a producer. It may be a fleabite, but, if so, it will be a fleabite in this respect, that the magnitude and irritation of its results will be out of all proportion to the cause. The friends of the farmer have a good deal to answer for. They have been to him throughout the whole of his history very fatal friends. They are always trying to excite his trade selfishness and cupidity. They seek to arouse him as the hon. Member for Central Sheffield seeks to arouse the industrial class by a sort of I crusade against the customers. The customers are to pay more for the goods bought, but then they are to receive for that sacrifice, if not compensation, at all events, comfort in the knowledge that they are hurting the foreigner. That seems to me to be a detestable propaganda. It is detestable whether it is applied by the farmer's friends or by Protectionists. One need say nothing about the morality of it. There are a good many gentleman who seem to think that the moral law does not apply in the economic sphere. I venture rather to believe that there is no sphere of human affairs in which the law applies with more striking scientific precision and severity than it does in the economic sphere. Those rapacious gentlemen who are always wanting to raise rents and prices to some figure beyond that which they can get from free and honest trading, generally find that they are outflanked one way or another. They either do not get what they want, or if they do, they have some convenient reason for ceasing to want it. If the farmer does get any protection out of

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the corn duty then the farmer will very soon be glad to barter that advantage in order to got feeding stuffs free of all duties.
The Government have now hit the three great mainstays of public nutrition. They began by hampering the meat trade of the country by forbidding the import of store cattle, and we are feeling the result of that today in the rise in the price of meat. They went on to try to raise by a legislative act the price of sugar. I confess that I do not see why we should go on giving protection to the German coal owner, as we did last year, and to the American meat producer, as we are doing this year, if we are not to get an advantage from the German in the way of cheap sugar. At all events we determined to forego that advantage. Meat is to be more dear, sugar more dear, and now bread is to be more dear. They have taken care that the consumer shall suffer much more than the Exchequer shall gain. Hence, for instance, the popularity of the sugar tax with the refiners; hence also the popularity of the flour tax with the millers. In each case the right hon. Gentleman has taken care to give a protection bonus, which, of course, is imposed at the expense of the poorest. What does this policy mean to the poorest of the people? We hear a great deal about the prosperity of the working class. Undoubtedly, as we all see perfectly well, the working class of England has advanced enormously in prosperity and social condition since the establishment of Free Trade. But when we talk of the working class it is very desirable to be definite. There are all sorts of classes in that class which we loosely describe as the working class. There are every class and section of the people from the absolutely starving to the relatively comfortable. In the most prosperous times of English trade we have always with us an underfed class.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire drew attention to the number of paupers in England, and he asked us to infer from that that if there are so many who have reached actual destitution there must be many more on the verge of destitution, and that is just the inference to make where we are able to be more precise. We are able to give the proportion of that underfed class with
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extreme precision. When I last addressed the House on this subject on the night of the introduction of the Budget I gave some figures from Mr. Rowntree's book with regard to the population of York. I painted out that by a most admirable calculation Mr. Rowntree had given the family budgets of 1,465 families. He showed that these people were systematically underfed, and that the scale of dietary allowed to them by their means was such as did not permit, I shall not say of their living like the imaginary peasant the right hon. Gentleman has discovered, but did not permit of flesh meat at all if proper allowance were made for other articles of food, and above all, that the scale of dietary of these people was systematically and necessarily less than the workhouse scale of diet. That is in regard to the underfed class of York. Let me give the House figures collected from a wider area with no less precision. They are the figures which Mr. Booth published with regard to the condition of the poor in certain districts. In the collection of the facts he received assistance from all classes. Ministers and School Board inspectors, and a great army of investigators assisted Mr. Booth in ascertaining the condition of the poorest classes in the areas with which he was dealing. He dealt with a population of 904,000, and he pointed out that of that population 111,000 were what he called the very poor, meaning by that that they live in a state of chronic and severe want. By the very poor he means, generally speaking, those who hardly ever have enough. Of course, they have occasionally too much, and no doubt these people will occasionally suffer from excess, but taking their life generally, these people are underfed. Then he goes on to give the class just above them. He gives 75,000 as being people who live on the proceeds of intermittent employment. These people are also generally underfed, though not invariably. Then he gives the class above them, numbering 129,000, of whom he says that their earnings are small and irregular. He proceeds to give their family budgets, showing that they have just barely enough for decent physical subsistence, provided that no unpleasant contingencies come to disturb the equilibrium of their life.

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For instance, if they desire to have anything extra, such as articles of furniture, or clothing, or even boots, it has to come out of what Mr. Booth calls with grim picturesqueness the exchequer of the belly. Adding these together, we have a population of 315,000 out of something like 904,000, making between 30 and 35 per cent., who live in want. In the case of some of them, it is habitual and chronic; in the case of others, general; and in the case of the very best of them, occasional. That is your underfed class, and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer gets up here, and tells us that he believes we ought to tax the poor, I would ask him—Does he think that we ought to tax that class?
Do not let us have these vague generalties about the prosperity of the working-classes. Let us distinguish between one kind of working class and another. Let us distinguish between the working class, of whose existence every now and then we know as the unemployed class, and those who have work to do, and let us know from this Government whether in their claim for financial courage they are going to have the courage to say that these people should be taxed. I say if they do they are placing the tax where it will be most severely felt. We cannot take away the nutriment of the people without attacking the physical stamina of the race. The right hon. Gentleman says that there will not be less bread consumed; but how can he imagine that if you put an addition on the price of bread you will not affect people who are unable to be properly fed? Of course, those people who are already half starving will starve a little more. Why, 15 per cent. of the population of York, and 35 per cent. of the population of the largo districts of the East End of London are in that condition. And these people form our labour reserve; it is from their ranks that our manufacturers draw their extra workmen in times of boom. But they are not only our labour reserve, they are to a far greater extent than I like to contemplate, our army reserve; and we have had lately an exhibition of the diminution of the physical standard of the class from which our recruits are drawn. What does that mean? It means that many of these people come from the underfed class. In these days
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of Imperial expansion are we going to lower and diminish the physical standard of the men who are to fight our battles? I hope it is not too late to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to give some attention to these considerations, for we cannot build a big England on a little loaf. There are a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who were once professed Liberals and who still claim to have some share in Liberal ideas. Are they going to ally themselves with this Tory reactionary policy or will they draw back before it is too late? Will they join in the taxation of the food of the people this year, as they did the taxation on trade last year by the coal duty? This reactionary policy is now pervading every Department, and I ask the Liberal Unionists whether they are going to take part in it. If they ally themselves to that policy let them at least have the grace to drop all pretence of any connection with the Liberal name or Liberal traditions.
EARL PERCY: The hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down is always an able and eloquent speaker, but he will pardon me when I say that many of his propositions and descriptions of the poverty of the working classes are self-evident truisms. His speech only served to confirm me in the general impression I derived from the debate, that the issue between the two Parties in the House is not so much a difference of principle difference of opinion about facts. If Members opposite believed that this tax will not have the slightest permanent effect in raising the price of bread, the bitterness of their opposition to it would, at all events, be modified, while if we on this side really believed that it would be a serious burden on the working classes, more especially on those who are on the borderland of actual want, then not one of us would vote for the tax. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have made no serious attempt to show why the re-imposition of this tax should have a permanent effect in increasing the price of bread, any more than its abolition caused a permanent fall. They have preferred to fall back on the catchwords of a bygone controversy.
The right hon. Member for West Monmouth professed to think that the result of the Bury election—and why the Bury election should be more significant than

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that at Woolwich the other day, I do not know—was owing to the agitation in regard to this tax. I do not believe that that had much to do with the result. I prefer to take as the real opinion of the Party opposite the speech delivered at Newcastle by Lord Tweedmouth, in which he deplored the apathy of the country, and its indifference to the appeals made to it in regard to this tax. No one can say that there has been any real movement of indignation about the tax amongst the great mass of the working classes. At any rate, there would have been a far greater movement if they had thought that they were going to be seriously affected by it. That of itself requires some explanation, for the people are not less, but more educated and more intelligent now than in the days when they did not possess the franchise, and when the cry of a little loaf frequently determined the issues of a general election. The appeals of hon. Gentlemen opposite have fallen on deaf ears, because the people have seen through their antiquated shibboleths, and know that the tax will not put too heavy a burden on their private means or their public spirit.
I do not propose to base my argument in defence of the tax on the proposition that it will not fall wholly or in part on the consumer. I do not say that it will be paid mainly or wholly either by the middleman or the producer, although I believe that the latter argument is supported by experience, and is, at any rate, as plausible as that of hon. Gentlemen opposite whose prophesies in regard to the coal tax were so completely falsified. But I hold it to be a dishonest course to impose any tax or embark on any policy the natural or possible consequences of which you are not prepared to defend. I assume for the purposes of argument that the main part of this tax will fall on the consumer. Even on that hypothesis, and making another assumption, manifestly not warranted by the facts, that the whole amount of this tax will be added to the cost of bread, and that the only people who will pay for it will be the 30,000,000 whose wages range from £3 a week and under—assuming these two propositions, the net contribution
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which this tax will represent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer from the working classes will amount to no more than a penny three farthings per head per month. Is it seriously maintained that such a contribution will make all the difference to the personal comforts of the working classes suggested by hon. Gentlemen opposite? I venture to say that the growing increase of rates, and consequently of rents, in our great towns which goes on year after year, without protest being heard on the part of hon. Gentlemen opposite, imposes a far heavier burden on the working classes than any increase in the price of bread that can result from the corn and flour tax. It is not pretended that in imposing this tax we are disturbing the relative proportion of direct and indirect taxation which recent years have established. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has, if anything, modified that relative proportion in favour of the consumer, and no one will contend that a time of war presents a favourable opportunity for introducing a still further change in that direction.
The objections to this tax are not so much practical as theoretical. It is urged that this is the thin end of the wedge, and that this tax, which in itself is admittedly not Protective in its character—[Hon. Members on the Opposition Benches, "Oh, oh!"]—may lead to the revival of a distinctly and avowedly Protective policy. Now, if I really held that opinion, I should vote with hon. Gentlemen opposite. Free Trade in corn products is, I believe, a necessity for all time for the people of this country, the vast majority of whom are engaged in manufacturing industries. No amount of cereal products which could ever be raised in this country would compensate the people for the rise in price which would inevitably result from the abandonment of the policy of Free Trade, and a return to Protection. I do not think that there is the very slightest chance of a return to agricultural Protection; the voting power is no longer with the classes interested in the land.
Another argument which weighs with hon. Gentlemen opposite, far more than the abstract fear of Protection, is

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their adherence to the doctrine, which has been erected into a fetish, that in no circumstances is it justifiable to put a tax on the necessaries of life. If by that is meant that it is objectionable to increase the profits of one trade at the expense of another, then I subscribe to it. But if your object be to levy a contribution from everyone, then I say that that is a most irrational doctrine, and most pernicious in its effect. Surely it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line as to what is a luxury and what is a necessary of life. Half the articles on the tariff not many years ago were luxuries, but they are now passing into the category of necessaries; and if you are going to contend that on that account these are to be considered as outside the area of taxation, what will be the result? The richer the country grows, and the more widely its wealth is distributed, the larger will be the sphere of exemption, until at last we shall be able to point out to an admiring world that in free and happy England the only members of the working class who really contribute to Imperial expenditure are the people who frequent the public houses. The noble Lord the Member for Greenwich painted the other day the dangers of an Imperialism which consists in the study of trade Returns, and which pays no attention to the intellectual and moral needs of the people. What, he asked, will it profit us if we gain the whole world and lose our own souls? My hon. friend the Member for Oldham and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are less ambitious; they would care less about the conditions of our souls if they were quite certain that we were gaining the whole world, and that our Imperialism was not likely to land us in bankruptcy. Is there any of us so blind that he cannot see that if we are to inculcate in our people that high moral standard which will make our rule a blessing, not a curse, we must plant in them a sense of personal responsibility? If we are to encourage a desire for economy, we must found it in a sense of personal self-sacrifice. I should have thought that hon. Gentlemen opposite would have been most interested in the assertion of a creed like that. They have adopted the cry of peace and retrenchment; they are perpetually, moaning over
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the vast sums spent on war and warlike armaments which ought to be available for education, and I should have imagined that they would have been the first to defend the financial policy of the Government. If these evils exist, they cannot be cured on the principles of homeopathy, you will never be able to teach the people to be pacific by shielding them from the consequences of war. For my own part, I think that hon. Gentlemen opposite are as wrong in their diagnosis of the disease as in the remedy they propose. If the people have no real care for the economic administration of the Empire, it is because they have no visible interest in economy.
There is one real injustice which our financial policy imposes on the people of this country. It is not that the burden is too light or too heavy; it is that the burden is disguised. That is an evil inseparable from the whole system of indirect taxation; but the disguise is least complete when taxes are levied on the necessaries of life. It may be open to argument that the rich do not pay their proper share of the total burden of the expenditure of the country. It may be that too great a strain is put on the people who live on the very verge of destitution. If that be so, then redress the balance, and ask of the poor no more than the widow's mite, which far outweighs all that your rich men cast into the Treasury. But let us ask for the mite openly and courageously, and not filch it from her pocket as if we were ashamed or afraid that she should know what we are doing. The age in which we live has many defects, but it has one redeeming virtue: it is marked by a growing sense of humanity, and a juster realisation of the responsibilities of wealth than was possessed by our ancestors. That is a change in the bringing about of which the Liberal Party have had no small share. But do not let us forget that test is not all that is required—that the supreme test of a nation's faith and fitness for its mission is not the involuntary effort which is made by the rich and poor of the community alike, but the conscious sacrifice which is made by every individual in

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the community in support of the cause in which they each and all believe. Distribute the burden as you will, but I would have one tax, at all events, to which all are proud of contributing, which is ear-marked and set aside for some great national object, and which both Parties in the State agree to regard as sacred, and agree to maintain. If the right hon. Gentleman tonight, instead of moving the rejection of this tax, had moved that it should be so ear-marked—and there could be no greater security against its even becoming Protective in its character—then I should have voted in support of the Amendment. There is no such tax in our tariff today. The nations of Europe around us pay it in the form of military conscription. We call that a "blood-tax." We thank God, and with reason, that He has placed us in a position which dispenses us from the necessity of such a sacrifice, that
"He has isled us here, and roughly set
His Britain in blown seas and storming showers."
Yes, but are we to ask for no equivalent sacrifice from the people of these islands, or from that great family of nations which rests secure under the aegis of our strength? Is there to be no tax apparent in its incidence?—a tax which is levied on all alike; which will be a guarantee of interest in policy and of jealous scrutiny in administration, and which shall represent the visible embodiment of the patriotism of the whole British race. History supplies one instance of such united national effort, so striking, so suggestive in its symbolism, that I may perhaps be permitted to quote it here. More than three thousand years ago an insignificant and persecuted race, whose national glory has long been a thing of the past, but whose very name is associated to this day with the most burning patriotism and love of country which the world has ever known—imposed upon the whole manhood of its people one tax, the principle of which—and it sounds a strange one to modern ears—was that all should contribute alike, "the rich should not pay more and the poor should not pay less." Out of the silver coin they gave were cast the pillar sockets of that moving Tent, in which their highest national hopes, their
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holiest national ideals were enshrined. Is it too much to ask that we who-have spread the curtains of our Empire under every sky; whose harbours are the marts of the world, whose merchants are princes; whose wealth exceeds all the fabled hoards of Some, of Babylon, and of Tyre—that we also should be proud to lay the foundations of that Empire deep in the devotion and self-sacrifice of all who claim a share in that common and glorious heritage?
MR. M'CRAE: We welcome the adhesion of the noble Lord the Member for South Kensington to the principle of Free Trade, and while I listened to his moving and eloquent peroration—his ideals are very high—I remembered that you cannot feed the people on high ideals. We have a much more serious question to face in discussing whether we shall tax the food of the people or not. But I turn from the speech of the noble Lord to that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose ability we all concede, and I think the House will agree with me when I say that today he is less convincing than usual. I was amazed to hear the right hon. Gentleman say in reply to my right hon. friend below mo, that this side of the House had opposed all his proposals, for taxation.
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I did not say that.
MR. M'CRAE: I think the right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten——
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: If I said so it was a mistake, because the right hon. Gentleman himself supported them.
MR. M'CRAE: I have no desire to labour this point, and if the right hon. Gentleman says that I freely accept his statement. Now the right hon. Gentleman is a strong advocate for economy in public expenditure, in theory; but his. Budgets of increased expenditure have been unparalleled in the nation's history. The right hon. Gentleman is a strong, advocate for Free Trade, in theory; but his present proposals for taxation are a departure from the principles of Free Trade. His Free Trade doctrine is not the

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Free Trade doctrine of Adam Smith, but rather that of the hon. Member for Central Sheffield. I would ask the House to pause for a moment and consider the effect of the proposal of the right hon. Gentlemen to put a tax on corn. The Times correspondent in Berlin wrote—
"The Radical and Liberal journals regret that England should have broken with the traditions of half a century; the Conservative newspapers point out that even England is obliged to forsake the policy of Free Trade."
Then I turn to the colonies and in these days the colonies are the final appeal to Cæsar. What does Sir Wilfred Laurier say in the Canadian House of Commons—
"England's new policy is Protection, but not a large measure of Protection; and I do not complain but rather rejoice in it."
And if we take the Press of the country, the Financial Press and many of the newspapers which have supported the policy of the Government in regard to the war, it is easy to sec that it is a Protective duty. Take the Scotsman, which has been commended by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies for its unwavering support of the Government. It had an article in which it dealt with the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he said this duty was not protective. The Scotsman then said there was no use in the Chancellor of the Exchequer making such a declaration as that, because it was Protective; and here I hope the House will allow me to quote from the speech Mr. Lowe made when he was abolishing the corn duties. He said—
"It is impossible to imagine any tax which combines more of the qualities that make a tax odious—that is, it is a duty on an article that is produced in England with no countervailing Excise duty upon it; it is therefore effectual as a Protective duty—that is to say, it not merely raises the price of the portion of the article that pays it, but also raises the price of the portion of the article which does not pay it. It therefore inflicts on the subject a burden more can iderable than the benefit it confers on the Revenue."
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has defended this tax by saying that at the very worst it is a trifling contribution on the part of the working classes to the cost of the war of which they approved. That is a dangerous doctrine, and I will commend to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman an able article, written by a professor of political economy in Edinburgh University, called
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"Little taxes and great principles." We maintain that this tax is economically wrong apart from its Protective character, because it puts an artificial restriction on trade. It is difficult to foresee the complications which invariably result from taxation of this kind. Some are even now disclosed. The price of paper is to be increased because of the tax on starch, we have the horse owners meeting owing to the rise of feeding stuffs; and even in the operation of the tax we have this anomaly that although at the beginning, the tax on whole rice was to be 3d., on rice flour it was to be 5d. I find now whole rice is to be charged 5d. as well as the rice flour. Let me take another instance. The manufacturers in this country of split peas and split lentils are objecting because there is only a tax of 3d. put on the imported article—they have to pay 3d. on the raw material and that will cut them out from competing with the foreigner. I am quite sure if the present Cabinet had a business turn of mind they would never for a moment have proposed such a tax as this. I should like to hear the Colonial Secretary speak in his convincing way in defence of this tax.
We have heard a good deal of the cost of production, and have been told that prices are regulated by supply and demand. But under normal conditions what is the effect of a tax of this kind? What is the result? If I may venture to quote John Stuart Mill upon this point he says—
"When the cost of production is increased artificially by a tax, the effect is the fame as when it is increased by natural causes; if only a few commodities are affected, then their value and price will rise so as to compensate the producer or dealer for the peculiar burthen."
We were told that this tax would not increase the price of bread. We have a conclusive answer to that. It has raised the price of bread. In Liverpool the price of the 4lb. loaf has been increased by one penny; in Swansea it has been increased a penny; and although there has not been a rise all over London. What has taken place in the East and North of London, the poorest districts of London, the 4lb. loaf has been increased a halfpenny.
When we turn to Bury, we are told that the bakers were all Radicals,

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and increased the price of bread in order to influence the electors. But let us go from Bury to Bristol, a district which the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows very well. There we find that the price of the best bread has been increased a halfpenny, but the second class of bread, the bread which is consumed by the poor, the price has been increased a penny. It is all very well for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say the tax does not justify that rise in the price, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have been warned by the political economy of John Stuart Mill, who says—
"A tax on any commodity will as a general rule raise the value and the price of the commodity by at least the amount of the tax. There are few cases in which it does not raise them by more than that amount."
I am amazed at the guileless simplicity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is as refreshing as it is amazing.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer in introducing the duty on sugar gave utterance to a doctrine with which I am sure all on this side of the House would agree. He said—
"I want a tax that shall not be open to the economical objection to which a Protective duty on an article largely produced in this country would certainly be open, namely, that it would raise the price of the whole amount of that article to the consumer by a far larger sum than it would yield to the Exchequer.
Although according to the Chancellor this tax ought to increase the price of bread by only ⅛th of a penny, we know it has increased it by a much larger amount, and that the total increase paid by the people, instead of being £2,600,000 will be at least £4,000,000. We oppose this tax because we feel it will be an unjust burden on the people. It has been called a bread tax, but it is in reality a blood tax, because if you stint the people of bread you lower their vitality. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may speak about the rural labourer with 13s. a week who has meat every day, and it sounds very rural and romantic, but what about the poor in our large towns, some of whom have meat neither every day nor any day. The extra halfpenny a loaf to them means diminishing the supply. We saw an instance given the other day by Dr. Berdoe in the East End of London of a poor widow with four children who will have to pay an increase of 7d a week.
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Sevenpence a week does not seem very much to many, but to the people who live on the borderland of poverty it is a very serious item.
The first principle of taxation, the ability to pay, has been departed from in this proposal, and I would like to ask one question with regard to that. Is this a war tax or not? If it is a war tax, it can only be temporary. It has been imposed, like the sugar duty, under the guise of a war tax, and I wish to know, when the war is over, is the income tax to be reduced and this tax on bread to remain? These are the questions we put to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The fact is, these are not war taxes. They are the price to be paid for Unionist administration of the ordinary functions of Government. Apart from all expenditure on the war, taking simply the increase of the ordinary expenditure of the country, what do we find? That, but for additional taxation, there would have been a deficit in 1901 on the ordinary expenditure as compared with the ordinary revenue of £3,189,000; in 1902 there would have been a deficit of £11,805,000, and an estimated deficit this year of £10,390,000. In the present year the estimated ordinary expenditure is £129,159,000, or if, for the sake of comparison, we add the £2,000,000 by which the Sinking Fund was reduced in 1899, £131,159,000. That, compared with the expenditure of £97,764,000 in 1896 shows an increased expenditure of £33,395,000. To that must be added £2,500,000, the increased expenditure under the Local Taxation Account, or a total increase of £35,895,000. I have taken 1896 as the year in which this Government first produced a Budget. Compared with the year 1895, the last completed year under a Liberal administration, the increase amounts to £40,000,000. I would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider this fact in connection with the taxes he has imposed to meet that expenditure. We talk of taxation direct and indirect; I will consider only the indirect. The new taxes are estimated to produce this year—on sugar, £4,850,000: on tea, £2,150,000; and on corn, £2,650,000; in all, on absolute necessaries of life, £9,650,000. But on what may be called luxuries, taxes have been imposed to the extent of

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£1,333,000 on tobacco, £1,100,000 on spirits, and £1,800,000 on beer: or only £4,233,000 on luxuries, as against £9,650,000 on necessaries. The fact is, if this expenditure is to continue, unless we are to have a permanent income tax of 1s. in the £, we shall require a much larger duty on corn and other necessaries of life. What strikes one in considering these proposals is the want of originality and resource exhibited by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This miserable expedient of a duty on corn is not sufficient to meet the demands of the situation. The right hon. Gentleman claims to be a Free Trader, but he has made shipwreck of his principles, and sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. This corn tax, which means a great deal to the very poor, equals only a single penny on the income tax. We are told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that at the time of the Crimean War the income tax was Is. 4d. in the £. Why not have made the income tax 1s. 4d. now, and spared this great hardship on the poorest of our people? No. the right hon. Gentleman may say he is a Free Trader, but the expression "never again" has been used in connection with this war, and I say, "Never again let the Chancellor of the Exchequer claim to be a Free Trader while he stands by this tax."
Some time ago the right hon. Gentleman said it was impossible for any one, however great his financial ability, to deal completely with our system of taxation, or to impose a new burden equitably on all taxpayers. We, on this side, do not subscribe to that doctrine of despair. We believe it is possible to find a new source of revenue which would act equitably on the people of the country. The right hon. Gentleman says he must broaden the basis of taxation. Yes, but before you broaden your basis of taxation you should see that that basis is a just one. Broaden your basis of taxation if you will, not by taxing the food of the people, but by making that large and increasing increment in the value of land in our large towns contribute to the service of the State. History repeats itself. The landowning Parliaments of old made laws, the operation of which now enormously increased the burden of house rent to
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our very poor; today their lineal descendants are increasing that burden by making the toiler pay a tax on the bread he eats. We, on this side, at any rate, will give the proposal a sustained and determined opposition, not only in this House, but also in the country.
MR. BARTLEY: The speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down seemed to me to be composed of the old-fashioned statements on the subject of Free Trade which do not apply on the present occasion.
MR. MCCRAE: They do apply.
MR. BARTLEY: That, of course, is the point. To my mind, they do not. The real point is that a large increase is required in the revenue of the country. Whenever we are discussing items of expenditure our opponents demand greater outlay; but when the Bill has to be paid they always raise these objections. We believe in Free Trade. I myself believe that a great part of the prosperity of this country, and of our immunity from many of the troubles which other countries have had to bear during the last forty or fifty years, has been due to the policy of Free Trade. If I thought that this proposal was a step in the direction of doing away with the blessing of cheap food for our people, I, as representing a by no means rich population in an urban district, should oppose it altogether. But I emphatically say that this tax is in no way an indication that the Government are departing from the Free Trade principle. I agree with my noble friend—and it is very much for the reasons he gave that I strongly support this tax—that it is necessary to make the people understand that they are subscribing to the great purposes for which this Empire exists. Although we are always talking about educating the people and making them understand everything, I am afraid that politicians, on both sides, are very often afraid to put the real issues before the people. But if ever a matter was put before the country, the questions of the war, and the increased expenditure involved by

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the war and by what is called an Imperial policy, have been. The public thoroughly understand that this war has cost money, and also that if the Navy is to be maintained at its present great strengh, and this country kept in a safe and sound condition, a largely increased expenditure is necessary. That being so, I say that it is wise politically that they should understand and feel that that increased expenditure must, to some extent, come out of their own pockets.
I have devoted considerable trouble to investigating the burden of taxation on a large class of the community. The investigations of Mr. Rowntree and others, referred to earlier in the evening, have been very important and useful, but statistics regarding the incomes of private persons with small incomes are hard to get at, and very difficult to generalise upon. One great item upsets all calculations concerning taxation, and that is alcohol. Theoretically, one would wish the burden of taxation to fall upon everybody in proportion to his means, but as long as we so enormously tax an article like alcohol, it is practically impossible to carry out that theory. On the other hand, no sane person would propose that we should do away with the tax on alcohol in order to adjust taxation according to a theoretically perfect system. It is often said that the poor do not contribute as they should. I emphatically say that many of the poorest of the community pay a much larger share of taxation than any other class. It is because, unfortunately, they pay very largely in the form of alcohol, the tax on which we cannot reduce. If you take the amount of money spent by small families in alcohol, it will be found that the amount paid in taxes by the lower stratum of society is larger than other classes. This all arises from the fact that the tax upon alcohol is so large, and this affects a very large proportion of their expenditure. But this tax, as my right hon. friend has said, is paid willingly, but the poor people do not realise the effect which it has upon them. I cannot help thinking that a great part of this tax will fall upon the poor, and I do not support this tax by saying that it will not be paid by the consumers of
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bread. I prefer to say that it will be paid by them, and I prefer also that the poor people should understand that in this way they are subscribing and helping to pay for the expenses of the war, and for the increase in the expenditure upon the Army and Navy, of which I approve. I think a large number of hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that the policy of this country in the future must be to continue to spend a very much larger sum upon the Army and Navy than we have done before. I think that both sides of the House agree that, at any rate, the expenditure upon the Navy should be permanently increased.
MR. WILLIAM ALLAN: No.
MR. BARTLEY: The hon. Member opposite says "No," but I think his-opposition applies chiefly to a particular sort of boiler. I think it is also agreed hat our expenditure upon education should be increased, and that there should be a growing increase in our expenditure upon various other items. If this is so, the money must be found, and therefore I cannot see why we should not place this tax upon corn boldly upon all classes of the people, and let them understand clearly why it is put on. The poor in large towns have been referred to in regard to what they pay as compared with the poor in agricultural districts. I represent part of a very poor constituency, and, as I have said before, a great proportion of the taxation of the very poor districts is, I think, very high owing to the consumption of alcohol. A most graphic picture has been drawn by the hon. Member of poverty in certain parts of London, where I think he said that 33 per cent. of the population were bordering on starvation. I know the East End of London extremely well, and I do not say that he exaggerates the condition of the locality in the statement he has made. But is it not a fact that in that district at nearly every corner of the street there is a public-house, and if you take the amount spent by these poor people unnecessarily in alcohol in such places, it will be seen that they are inflicting upon themselves

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a far larger tax than anything which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is demanding. When we are talking about the condition of the poor, is it not rather deceiving ourselves to ignore this great and important fact? As one of those who try to improve the condition of the people in this way, it does seem to me unfortunate that in party politics we should ignore the real crux of the whole question. The taxation of this country, in my opinion, heavy as it is at the present time, is light in proportion to the amount of money wasted in this way every year; and, although I for one am most anxious to see the poor people relieved of any unnecessary tax wherever this is possible, I say that we cannot go on adding to our expenditure for war, for the Army and Navy, for education, and even for local matters, and not lot the people themselves see and feel that they are themselves paying; for it. My hon. friend the Member for Oldham is always preaching economy. I agree with him in theory very much, but it is idle to preach economy unless we have the boldness to show where the shoe pinches. If we attempt to conceal the source from which taxation is derived, and wrap it up in indirect taxation, and try to make people believe that they are not paying it, I think it is a mistake.
But so far from this proposal being a cowardly one, I think it is one of the few bold things that the present Government have done. They have distinctly put on a tax which looks as if the people paid it, and I congratulate them heartily upon it. I was amused to see the procession which went along Pall Mall yesterday to Hyde Park, and I saw the big loaf and the little loaf, and I suppose that this tax will be used in an effort to increase the number of Bury incidents. Let the Party opposite use this as much as they like, for I do not believe that the public are quite so ignorant as they seem to think. An hon. Member opposite says that in some places bread has gone up 1d. a loaf. That is simply 8s. or 9s. a quarter, instead of the 1s. which has been put on as a tax. And we all know perfectly well that that state of things cannot last. The public know very well what all this means. They know full well that in the course of a few weeks, the balance of
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trade will right itself. The people understand that this tax does affect them, but practically speaking, the amount is so small that it will not injure them to any appreciable extent. The great question which comes up every year is the question of our increased expenditure. I congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon being bold enough to broaden the basis of taxation. I protest altogether against the idea that we ought not to broaden the basis of our taxation, but simply increase the income tax. It is absurd to think that the income tax can do everything, for it falls upon a large class of people who have great difficulty in saving money. The fact remains that if we add to our income tax we are running enormous dangers on account of the narrow margin we have for increased taxation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has added to our taxation the sugar duty, the export coal duty, and the registration duty on corn, and I hope these taxes will show the public that although it is a very fine thing to spend enormous sums of money on every conceivable object, still the day must come when the Bill has got to be paid, and nothing will tend to promote and increase economy more than the fact that by these taxes the public will see and feel that if they do insist upon these great items of expenditure they must pay for them. Whenever an effort has-been made to suspend the Sinking Fund or reduce the amount, I have always; opposed it because I think the reduction of the National Debt should go on, for it enables the people to see that they are paying off their debts, and I think thrift and economy are encouraged in that way. Inasmuch as our expenditure is now going up by leaps and bounds, I am sure that the country will realise that the Government has done right in putting this tax on corn, and although the people may feel it, still they will also feel that it is only right and proper that they should subscribe something to pay for a policy of which they approve. I am sure that long before a general election comes round the public will realise that this is a right fiscal system, and the Chancellor of the Exechequer will get credit for having raised money

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in an open and honest way rather than attempting to raise it in a way which nobody can quite conceive.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: The hon. Member who has just sat down has spoken on the question of who will pay this tax, and has justified the imposition of the tax upon the ground that certain people will pay it who ought to pay it, and who ought to know that they pay it. It would be desirable that the Government, and those who sit on that side of the House should, at this early stage, agree as to what is the line they are going to take. The story is told that in the last Cabinet, before the dissolution of 1841, when various opinions were expressed on the repeal of the duty on corn as against Protection, Lord Melbourne put his back to the door, and said—
"Let us settle one thing before we go, will it cheapen bread or make it dear."
The question to be settled now appears to be—Will this tax be paid by the poor, or will it not? Will it be a burden on some one whom nobody knows, and about whom nobody cares, or will it administer with proper discipline that stern lesson of public economy which the hon. Member for Islington thinks should be imposed upon all sections of the community?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his speech at the commencement of the debate, complained rather strongly of the action of the Member for West Monmouthshire in proposing the rejection of the tax on corn, instead of following the precedent of last year, and proposing a reasoned Amendment. But in this he followed a precedent which, I think, the right hon. Gentleman did approve. When my right hon. friend in 1894 introduced his great Budget Bill that did not impose a tax upon the poor, but did impose a very heavy tax upon the rich, he was met by au Amendment, moved by the official Opposition, "That the Bill be read that day six mouths." The precedent, indeed, is stronger. For the objection then was to passing the Tax Bill at all. My right hon. friend has only opposed it so far as the corn tax is concerned; but the rejection of the Bill was proposed in 1894, and it had the support of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, who approved of meeting the Bill with an Amendment of that description, on the
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ground that the tax was unjustifiable—and, of course, all the other usual adjectives were used upon that occasion. But whether that precedent be good or bad the right hon. Gentleman is not justified in the mode in which he referred to the debate of last year. It is perfectly true that the Opposition said then, as they have said officially over and over again, that they were ready to furnish the Crown with all the supplies that were asked for for the prosecution of the war; but I said then, and I say today, that the action the Opposition took in Committee of Supply in no way binds them in dealing with a Bill in Ways and Means. If we were satisfied that a large sum of money ought to be voted to the Crown for a specific purpose, are we to take helter-skelter any proposal the Chancellor of I the Exchequer may make for raising the money? Public opinion outside this House has absolutely killed the cheque tax, and my impression is that although the right hon. Gentleman may succeed in carrying this Bill through the House during this session—and possibly this tax may remain for a few years—a similar fate awaits it when it is committed to the constituencies as a whole. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we were trying to run the Empire on the cheap. Well, Sir, I can hardly make that tally with voting whatever supplies the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked for. Since the day he took office until the present hour, not one single shilling he has asked, for the security or defence of the country in time of peace, or for the Navy or the Army in time of war, has this House refused; but we have reserved our right, certainly, to question the mode in which he proposes to raise these funds.
Now, Sir, I wish to say a word about the right hon. Gentleman's history at this stage, and the extraordinary eagerness with which Gentlemen in this House and elsewhere have tried to shelter themselves under the great authority of Mr. Gladstone. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that Mr. Gladstone made this a permanent tax. It was enacted by the statute repealing the corn laws, and it never was an annual tax. Mr. Gladstone refused, when the amount was small and insignificant, to interfere at the time with the various financial projects

1421
which he was proposing, and which were of great benefit to the country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Treasury have accumulated all their adverse criticisms of the repeal of this registration duty upon the head of Mr. Lowe. I can tell the House—I shall not tell them the authority on which I speak, but the House will trust me not to make a statement on unreliable authority—I can tell the House that I know that the first thing Mr. Gladstone instructed Mr. Lowe to propose as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to repeal this tax, and that took precedence of all the other financial schemes in 1869. I think it was my right hon. friend the Member for the Forest of Dean who stated that directly Mr. Gladstone was master in his own house and became Prime Minister he proceeded at once to repeal this tax. That action may have been right or wrong, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at all events, in this matter took all the credit of undoing Mr. Lowe's work as if it was not the act of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone would have abhorred, detested, and adjured any attempt to restore this tax.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that our objection to renew the tax is that we object to impose taxat on. Nothing of the sort. We are not like silly children. Having voted the money we are not going to refuse to find the means to get it. We criticise the proposal the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made, and we contend that this is an unfair application of the principle of indirect taxation which the Chancellor of the Exchequer says is necessary in the finances of this country. I have never denied that at the present rate of public expenditure it is impossible to meet it by direct taxation, but our opposition to this tax is that it is the very worst form of indirect taxation. It is Protection and taxation combined, and you get a minimum of the one with a maximum of the other. I do not know exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer's view is; but I observed that the First Lord of the Treasury said at the conclusion at the debate on the Resolution—
"I do not believe the working men of this country will object to pay a tax which in its effect upon them, in my opinion, will probably be nothing."
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Whoever objects to pay a tax which costs nothing? If the Chancellor of the Exchequer can invent some mode of imposing the income tax so that nobody shall feel it, we will vote income tax to any amount he likes, but I think the people who have to pay would have a very different story to tell. With reference to the feeling of the working classes upon this question, I have received a letter from a working labourer's wife. She writes to me very bluntly, and she draws attention to a point with which she is evidently very much taken, the 13s. a week—the Arcadia in Gloucestershire to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. She seems to be very sceptical about this 13s. a week, but she thinks it might do if there were only a man, and his wife, and one or two children, but she asks what would be the case when there were five or six children, or, as in one case she knows of, a dozen. She says—
"We are asked to pay more for everything since the war began, even for a reel of cotton, or coals, and also on meat and other articles. I have eight children, and I know all about what short commons on 11s. a week mean, and I know there are many who are worse off than I am."
And she adds that the rise in the price of bread will be that the one piece of meat they get on a Sunday will be gone. That will be the result of the imposition of the bread tax. There are men in this House who, no matter what may be the taxation of the country, will not feel a shadow of the burden from January 1st to December 31st, and they appear to regard a rise in the price of bread of ½d. or 1d. per quartern loaf as a trifling matter. What does ½d. on twelve loaves mean? It is a tax of 6d. a week out of wages of 11s. or 13s., and I think that is a pretty heavy income tax.
This is not only a Protective duty on wheat, but a much heavier Protective duty on flour; and, although the right bon. Gentleman may have given the farmer a small amount of Protection, he has given the miller a very considerable amount. I will give the House some figures furnished to me by a large importer of these commodities. He says that a threepenny duty on 100 cwt. of wheat amounts to 25s. If that wheat is imported in

1423
the shape of flour or offal, there would be 72 cwt. of flour, and a five penny duty on that would be 30s., or 5s. more than on the wheat unground, and to that is to be added the duty on the other 28 cwt. of offal. The figures work out in this way: He would pay duty to the extent of 25s. on wheat imported as wheat, while he would pay on the same quantity, if ground in America, 37s.—that is to say, 30s. on the flour, and 7s, on the offal. That is a Protective discrimination of 12s. in favour of the home miller.
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: That is precisely the discrimination Mr. Gladstone established in 1864.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: I have the greatest respect for Mr. Gladstone's memory, but in 1902 let us deal with the conditions existing in 1902. The wheat and flour imported into this country in 1864 was absolutely infinitesimal compared to what it is now, and there is now a distinct Protective advantage to the English miller, in respect of flour, which is not given in respect of wheat. Now, Sir, I come to what seems to be the solace to the right hon. Gentleman's conscience. He asks, "Who pays it?" And the question of price he entirely puts down to the variation in demand and supply. I do not admit that. But supposing it is absolutely true, you must work out the equation on the line of supply and demand being actually equal, and then you put 1s. tax on an article. Who pays it then? The price must be increased by 1s., and somebody must pay it. But take the Chancellor of the Exchequer's theory—it is a good thing to have a weather prophet on the Treasury Bench—and admit it to be perfectly true that there are going to be good harvests in the next few years; but the poor are to get no benefit from the good harvests. They are to suffer from bad harvests, but if prices go down on account of good harvests they are not going to get the benefit. I do not believe in these prophecies of good harvests. Our experience shows that they vary up and down. But I say that what we should have regard to are the peculiar circumstances of taxation on bread, wheat, and flour which do not arise in the case of any other commodity.
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Bread is a prime necessity of life in this country. It is what Mr. Gladstone called the great means of subsistence. Therefore, apart altogether from the question of Protection or Free Trade, we ought to accept, as political economists, as impartial legislators, the principle that the burden of taxation should be fitted as far as possible to the shoulders which are to bear it, and agree that a tax on elementary human food is a tax we should not resort to, because it would be felt by the poorest of the poor to a degree which no other class would experience.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has found fault with my suggestion that additional taxation should be placed instead on tobacco and beer. Therefore I must trouble the House with a few remarks upon that subject, because I think the House and the country should clearly understand what these figures are. The right hon. Gentleman puts them together, but what he says about the tax on spirits having reached the highest possible point does not apply to beer. The revenue from beer in 1895 was £10,494,000. In 1899, before the war, it reached £12,345,000. After the first war Budget, which put on additional taxation, the revenue from beer went up to £13,940,000.
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I cannot accept the right hon. Gentleman's figures.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: I have taken them from the Report of the Inland Revenue. I cannot get a higher authority. The House will take them as being objected to, but I can get no higher authority, nor can I got from the right hon. Gentleman the amount of beer that was brewed in 1901 and what was the amount sold. But, luckily for us, there is the Inland Revenue Report. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said in his Budget speech there was a loss in the revenue from beer last year of £200,000. But the Commissioners of Inland Revenue tell us that there was a decrease in the quantity of beer brewed of half a million barrels, which they attribute to the war, the scare about arsenic, and the abnormal prices of coal. Surely that does not show that there is a closed door with regard to further taxation on beer. That is a question which should be fairly considered. Then, with reference to tobacco, the right hon. Gentleman called it a

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decreasing trade and a decreasing revenue, and he gave the House some percentages—always misleading—showing that the tobacco trade has not grown so rapidly as it might. The revenue in 1896 was £10,748,000, in 1897 £11,000,000, and in 1898 £11,433,000, showing each year a gradual increase. In 1901, when the duty was increased by 4d., the real revenue, after adjusting the forestalments, was £11,338,000, and in 1902 it was £12,065,000. I say, therefore, that the suggestion of further taxation on beer and tobacco is worth the consideration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the House.
It is all very well to say there is no change in our policy, but I say that this Bill is a change in the policy of the country. It is a very small change, perhaps, but it is a change. I am willing to admit it is a very small baby indeed, but it will affect the poorest class of the community. It imposes not only a tax on the elementary food of the people, but a duty which is Protective. It may be a small duty, but the principle of Protection is there. It is said it is not Protective because it is only Is. Would a duty of 2s., 3s., or 4s. be Protective? It does not matter whether it is 1s. or 20s.—the principle is there. The Government now ask us to reverse the policy of 1846. If we once admit the principle, where can we stop, or where ought we to stop? Why should you not tax bacon and butter, as well as bread? That would fulfil the consummation of the noble Lord. All the country would feel it then. They are not so essential as bread. Why, in fact, should you not tax the whole range of the enormous imports of food into this country? At the present moment Canada has made very great concessions to us and given us preferential rates. We have met their views by saying it is against our policy to impose Protective duties. But you cannot say that to Canada now. Canada may say—"We only want to be put in the same position as Great Britain, as we are all members of the same Empire, with common interests." In fact, this may be the commencement of a great Zollverein of the British Empire. But you cannot stop. Australia may say—"We do not send over flour, but we send over great quantities of meat." In my belief, the House is "getting into the rapids" on
1426
this question. It is going whore perhaps the Government did not mean to go, where the House do not wish to go, and certainly where the country will not go. Therefore I think my right hon. friend was justified in moving an Amendment asking the House to declare that it will not agree to this taxation of food, because it is a tax which presses most unjustly and harshly on the poorest classes of the community, and violates those principles of Free Trade to which I thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself believed the commercial prosperity of the country is due. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says, "If I put a tax on this, I cannot get £2,500,000." But, however that may be, this is a foolish thing and an unjust thing. It is a thing the country will not have. You have found that out already, and you will find it out to a much greater extent before long. It is not the question of the big loaf or the little loaf that has so much appealed to the people. It is the reversal of a great policy which the people know means cheaper food, prosperous trade, and good wages, and upon that issue I cordially support the Amendment.
MAJOR RASCH: Perhaps the House will allow me, as representing an agricultural constituency, to say one or two words on this subject, because it is one in which my constituents take great interest. I cannot quite follow the argument of hon. Gentlemen opposite. They are pretty much the same arguments as they used on the Second Beading of the Debates Bill three years ago, which were so completely answered by the right hon. Member for Sleaford, when they said that the relief given under the Bates Act was so small that it could not do the farmers the slightest good; and when the right hon. Member for West Monmouth, who did me the great honour to answer the few words I used, said himself that the relief given under the Bates Act was precisely as if you took a bucket of water and; poured it over a duck's back. The hon. Member for Pudsey, however, took a different line, and found salvation on the other side of the House in consequence, and has sat there ever since. Hon. Gentlemen and right hon. Gentlemen opposite take precisely the same line today with regard to the proposals made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1427
They say the farmer does not benefit in the slightest degree, and on the other hand the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton says that this tax is going to crush the agricultural labourers. Hon. Members cannot have it both ways. They ought to have made up their minds before they came here which line they were going to take. Hon. Members will forgive me if I remind them of what was said by Lord Rochester when he was told by a man, "My wound is great because it is so small." Rochester said, "And 'twould be greater were it not at all." As for the agricultural districts, I cannot say that they are absolutely satisfied with the proposal. They seldom are satisfied, perhaps, about anything. They would rather have the tax on flour than corn, because then they would save the offal. But they cannot have everything, and they are satisfied with what they were going to get. In my part of the country the proposal is not regarded as a measure of Protection at all. It is a pious opinion on the part of the Government in favour of broadening the basis of indirect taxation. And if any hon. Member thinks he is going to raise the old bogey of the small loaf and the big loaf he makes a mistake, because the tax can only raise the price two-sevenths of a farthing. So far as I am concerned, I should be very willing to take the opinion of my constituents, if it were necessary, upon the subject, and I have no doubt as to the way in which they would vote under the circumstances. The right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton just now called this proposal a baby; he said it was a small baby and did not much matter. I have heard that argument used in another way which I need not refer to here, but I may say this, that as it is so small it is not worth while to make any fuss about it.
MR. ASHTON: During the course of his speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us of a number of taxes which would fall on the consumer, but the bread tax was the only one in which the price of the commodity would not be raised and the consumer hurt. The right hon. Gentleman told us if he raised a tax on beer,
1428
tobacco, or houses, poor people would suffer materially and that bread alone apparently was the only thing that could be taxed without the people suffering. I agreed with my right hon. friend who opened this debate, when he said this was a thoroughly bad tax which would injure trade to the maximum and do the minimum amount of good to the people. It will give the maximum of hardship to the poor and the minimum of revenue to the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says it is not going to affect the price of bread, but if he tells us that, how can he at the same time say that he cannot raise the tax on beer, because if he puts more on beer or tobacco he will stop the consumption. When I was a boy at school I was taught that one times nothing was nothing, and that five times nothing was equally nothing; if this 1s. duty is nothing it would follow that a 5s. duty would be nothing. It stands to reason that you cannot raise the price of an article from 4 to 8 per cent. without its affecting the price of the commodity to the consumer. But if, as the right hon. Gentleman says, this tax is not going to fall on the consumer, on whom is it going to fall? Is it going to fall on the producer? I rather gathered from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he thought at any that a tax of this kind would fall upon the producer. I quite admit you can impose a tax which might fall on the producer in the case of an article for which there was only one market. Take Indian tea which has only the British market; in a case of that sort the tax will fall upon the producer, because the producer has no other market, and when the tea comes here it comes into competition with China tea. But that is not the case in an article like wheat because if we impose a tax on wheat it can go to other countries, and if America cannot sell its wheat here it can sell it elsewhere. Therefore, this tax must fall on the consumer. When this tax was announced an endeavour was made on the part of some persons to put it on the other side and persuade New York to pay it, but the reply came back, "A tax on corn does not scare us." But if, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer says, it does not fall on the consumer and if it

1429
does not fall on the producer, as I think I have shown, it must fall upon the middleman. If it falls on the middleman, a small class of the community, then the First Lord of the Treasury is unjust to that class of the community, and is offending against the canons of economic law.
This tax, of course, does come out of the pockets of the consumers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer argued that the tax would not fall upon the consumer, but to wards the end of his speech he let the cat out of the bag, because in the necessities of his peroration he made the usual appeal to all the people of the country to make some sacrifice in a great cause like this. He told us then that the consumers of this country, the working men, would be glad to make this sacrifice for a war which was their own creation. I always thought that Kruger created the war. I will not develop that argument, but I will say this, that the First Load of the Treasury distinctly confessed that this tax did fall on the consumer, and we have ample evidence in the newspapers that the prices not only of bread but of flour also are being raised all over the country. The right hon. Gentleman made a point of the fact that the price of bread had not risen all over the country, but he said nothing of the rise in the price of flour, and the rise in the price of flour is the forerunner of the rise in the price of bread. In the north many of the poor make their own broad, and though the price of the 4 lb. loaf has not increased, the price of flour all over the country has increased as a result of this tax. Then the right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his speech, said that if the price of bread did rise it would settle down again. That is a fallacy. In the case of a commodity like sugar which is taxed by the lb. and sold by the lb., the price may level down, but when you levy a tax on the cwt. and the commodity is sold by the lb., which is another unit, what is the result? The result is, you cannot divide the wholesale unit down to the retail unit, and in order that the baker may save himself from the rise in prices, he is bound to raise his price, not by the amount of the tax, which is one-eighth of a penny, but by one halfpenny, which is the smallest coin he can employ under these circumstances.
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I object to this tax altogether. It is a thoroughly wasteful tax; whereas you are only getting one-eighth of a penny per 4 lb loaf in to the Exchequer, you are extracting one halfpenny a, 4lb. loaf out of the consumer, which moans that a considerable sum of money goes into somebody else's pockets. I had a correspondence the other day with one of the largest importers of grain at Liverpool on the question of how far prices would be raised by the imposition of this tax, and to show how thoroughly wasteful it is going to be, I venture to quote the letter I received in reply—
"There is no doubt that the burden of the tax will fall on the consumer; the millers here have advanced the price of flour 1s. 6d. per sack, though the duty which they pay on wheat is only equal to 11d. per sack of 280 lbs."
I should like to emphasise that further-by saying that this gentleman is himself interested in a very largo bakery company, the capital of which is £40,000, and he told me the rise in the price of bread would put "£10,000 into the pockets of the company. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to get only £2,600,000, but he will take £4,000,000 out of the pockets of the people because the price of home-grown wheat will go up in proportion. Therefore, I am justified in calling this a thoroughly wasteful tax. But the right hon. Gentleman is also going to take £1,400,000 out of the pockets of the consumers on the home-grown wheat. A great deal has been said about the Agricultural Rating Act, and we think the Chancellor of the Exchequer, instead of putting this broad tax on the bulk of the country, ought to have got his money by doing away with the Agricultural Eating Act and the Agricultural Tithes Act. I think a, time of stress like this is the time to repeal those Acts rather than to impose fresh taxation on the poorest people of the country. This is a tax that I would call an infamous tax because it is one which no one can escape however poor they arc. A tax on tea can be escaped because if people are very poor they can drink water, but in this case the poorer the people become the less meat they eat, they leave off meat and fall back on bread. The more you tax these people the more you make them take out of their pocket because you drive them off dearer food and throw them on to the cheaper food. And when

1431
you are imposing a tax like this you are grinding down the poor. That is a phrase that has not been used in this House for forty years, but it is a phrase that must be used now that you are imposing this Protective tax. You are grinding down the poor of England once again.
The right hon. Gentleman says it is nonsense to call a shilling duty on corn Protection, but what did he say when talking about the import of flour? He said that it was not in the interest of this country that the import of flour should be substituted for the import of grain. Why not? I have always thought that the Free Trade policy was that we should be able to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. This is an argument in favour of Protection for the millers, and in favour of getting cheaper offals and foodstuffs for the farmers, but as my right hon. friend the Member for East Wolverhampton said—Where are you going to stop? What a handle you are giving to men like Lord Masham by such a policy as this. What will the silk and the woollen manufacturers say? They will say—Let in the raw material and tax the imports of the manufactured article that we may compote; and the same argument will be used by the cotton manufacturers and the steel manufacturers. But if the right hon. Gentleman wants to get his offals and foodstuffs cheap, why is he putting an import duty on offals and foodstuffs? You are going to tax the farmers for quite as much as you give them. You are going to give 1s. to one set of farmers, but the graziers and the stock farmers and pig raisers you are going to tax to the extent of that which you are putting into the pockets of the corn growers. You are going to tax the labourers on what they eat themselves, on their wheat and flour, and also on the offals they give to their pigs, which go a great way towards paying the rent of their cottages; and, if I may say so, we shall be able to make good play in the agricultural districts with this double taxation. For you tax the poor man's pigs and you allow the American hogs to come in free of duty. From this very point of view the tax is thoroughly bad.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer quarrels with those who say he ought to
1432
put a further tax on sugar, but I should have said, in spite of what the right hon. Gentleman said, that I think it is a tax he might have doubled, for this reason: Although, as he said, it is not fair to put a tax on anything of more than twenty per cent., he said at another part of his speech that this tax had not been felt. He would have got from the sugar tax a far larger amount, and would have added to a tax where there would have been no temptation to increase. One of the worst features of this tax is the largo temptation there will be to increase it. It is as easy to clap on another shilling on the corn duty as it is to put another penny on the income tax. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will reconsider this tax in all its points. During the last forty or fifty years we have made large strides towards prosperity in this country. By the fiery oratory of Mr. Bright, and the quiet eloquence of Mr. Cobden, this House was converted to the true principle of Free Trade. That principle has now existed for fifty years or more, and nobody can say that under it we have not prospered. We have prospered as we never prospered before, and if you reverse that policy you will kill the prosperity. It is lamentable that the right hon. Gentleman should be the man to set the ball rolling down the hill which leads to the abyss of Protection, to the ruin of the country, and to the misery of the people.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE ERESBY: It is not my intention to dwell at any length on the question of upon whom this tax will fall, but personally I believe that any tax, no matter what it may be, will, to some extent, directly or indirectly, fall upon the wage-earning classes. As I understand, we have to face the situation that we require more money, and I cannot help expressing surprise at hon. Gentlemen opposite opposing the tax on the ground that it is a return to Protection. Up to the present time the British farmer has always had the worst of the markets because the foreign producer, and not he, has been protected. No doubt it would be very difficult to prove that charges in the way of rates and taxes at the present moment have the effect of putting up the price of wheat and bread, but it is equally difficult to prove that this

1433
tax on com will have that effect. I have looked into the matter, and I find that if an excise duty of 1s. was levied on all imported corn, and instead of paying rates we had to pay an excise duty on every quarter of corn we sold, I should be a considerable gainer. My rates last year amounted to £75, after receiving the help of the Agricultural Rating Bill; and the quantity of corn I sold, at 1s. a quarter, would have represented £38. Therefore, I do not admit that the people can grumble at this tax on the score of Protection. I should be happy to see no tax at all on the food of the people. I think, however, it would be very hard to disprove that the heavy taxation which has to be borne by the farmers and landlords does not have the effect of keeping some land out of cultivation, and preventing other land being farmed to the best of its ability. Personally, I should have thought that for the good of the country it was of far more importance that every acre should be kept under the plough rather than that the American or Argentine exporter should be relieved from having to pay something towards the revenue of the country. Levy an excise duty, and let us off' the rates, and we will accept it. Up to the present we have had to pay taxes on all we produced, whereas the foreign producer is allowed to enter into open competition with nothing at all to pay. Every single grain of wheat we grow, and every pound of meat we produce, has to pay a tax in the way of rates and other burdens. So far from considering this a Protective duty, I look upon it merely as an excise duty and a matter of justice to the country.
MR. BROADHURST: When the Budget was first introduced I prophesied that the commercial classes would compel the Chancellor of the Exchequer to withdraw the proposal to increase the tax on cheques. That prophecy has been fulfilled. If the right hon. Gentleman had followed my advice on other points, he would not have been in the position in which he now finds himself of being strongly attacked from many quarters in regard to the proposed bread tax. In the first debate the Leader of the House declared that up to 1868, when this duty was in existence, none of the leaders of the working people objected to it. The right hon. Gentleman was
1434
mistaken. All the leaders of the labour movement were strongly opposed to the tax, and were keen advocates of the "free breakfast table." I also was of that party, and voted against the taxation of food then as now.
I was much amused by the description given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the labourers in his part of the country. One almost yearned to become a farm labourer under the auspices of the right hon. Gentleman. Meat, bread, and butter always on the table—I thought he was going to tell us that lamb and mint sauce, duck and green peas, were common food amongst his labouring people. If that is the condition of farm labourers in Gloucestershire——
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I did not say it was the condition of all of them.
MR. BROADIIURST: The right hon. Gentleman said "the labourer"; he did not limit the phrase.
SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I did. I said I knew instances of it; that is all.
MR. BROADHURST: But rare instances should not be brought forward to justify a tax on the food of the people. I spent yesterday amongst farm labourers. I met the wife of one of them—a very intelligent woman. She has nine children; her husband's wages are about 12s. a week; and she is now paying 8d. per week more for her breadstuff's in consequence of this tax. That is 2d. per stone on the flour, because most of the women bake their own bread in that district. I then asked this good woman how she fared with regard to sugar. She uses four pounds a week, making an increase of another 2d., or 10d. per week increased taxation on the necessaries of the one family circle, with a wage of 12s. I then asked about the meat. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may not be directly responsible for the price of meat, but it shows the upward tendency of food since the war began. In that part of the country the labouring people rarely see anything but pork; they are not so fortunate as the Gloucestershire folk. Pork has gone up 1d. or 1½. per pound during the last two years.

1435
Allowing 4lbs. per week, which is not an extravagant allowance for a family of eleven persons, that means 1s. 2d. or 1s. 4d. increased cost of living to the household per week. Is that fair? Coming to the situation today. I met a man whose wages are 16s. a week. He has seven or eight children. In consequence of the illness of his wife, he has been unable to have his bread baked at home, and has had to buy it from the baker. The family eat two 4lb. loaves per day, which means seven pence extra per week for bread alone. These are facts you cannot get over. When the right hon. Gentleman proposed this dreadful scourge on the poor, he said that in 1868, when the tax was taken off, there was no diminution in the price of bread; therefore, why should there be any rise when it was reimposed? I was really amused at his assumed innocence. A reduction in the price of flour is never instantly followed by a reduction in the price of bread, whereas if the price of flour is increased in the least degree those whose necessities are greatest feel it at once, and most keenly. I cannot understand why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have been led back into the paths of Protection against his better judgment and all that he has said or written on the' matter. I remember his election address, and I read his speeches; and if I read those speeches aright, the right hon. Gentleman was all for keeping our national expenditure within a reasonable compass in order that taxation should not be increased. He spoke highly of our fiscal system—
It being half-past seven of the clock, the debate was suspended until the evening sitting.

EVENING SITTING.

  FINANCE BILL.
  Adjourned debate on Amendment to Second Reading [12th May] continued.
  MR. BROADHURST: I do not simply rely on the cases I was mentioning before the adjournment. In my own home we are paying 2d. a stone more for breadstuff than
  1436
  previously, and therefore the evidence I have been able to submit to the Treasury Bench on this point is pretty near complete. The theory of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that no one would be the worse for this increase of taxation is to my mind entirely dispelled by what has actually taken place. You cannot get over the fact that bread is dearer, and that other things have been stiffened in price in consequence. I entirely, strongly, and determinedly oppose any tax on the necessaries of life of the poorest class of workers. The other day one of the minor poets in this House, in answering a communication from a constituent, wrote, "He who taxes bread should lose his head." (An HON. MEMBER: He has lost his head.) I think it might fairly be put in that form, and it has been clearly proved by recent events in the centre of the Conservative County of Lancashire.
  Now, are you going to offer exceptional benefits to one class of traders as against other classes? I represent a great industrial community, the stape trade of which is shoe making. Shoes are imported in large quantities from America free of duty. Why should the poor shoemakers of Leicester have their bread and sugar taxed, while the very articles which make it more difficult for them to earn a livelihood are admitted free? What explanation can you give of this fact to these people? What about hosiery? It is well known that large quantities of hosiery are imported from Saxony and other parts of the Continent. Why-should the hosiery hands of Leicestershire be taxed on their bread and yet have Saxony goods brought free into this country in competition with their industry? A few years back a great controversy arose in this House with regard to the supply of hosiery goods, made, it was discovered, in some of the prison establishments of Saxony. Why should these people of Leicester be taxed to assist the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his lame Budget over expenditure incurred in a cause which many of the electors strongly condemn and disapprove, and have done so for the last three years? I used to represent Nottingham, the staple trade of which is lace. Why should the lace makers of Nottingham be paying a tax on their

  1437
  bread, while French, Spanish and Swiss lace goods are imported into this country free of charge?. You cannot stop where you are. If you favour one section of the community at the expense of another you cannot rest at that point. You must go on till you have taxed all round, or if you do not you will be continuing a grave injustice to those who have to meet foreign competition. I am not advocating a tax on lace, hosiery, or other ready-made goods imported from abroad, but I am condemning this tax on the food of the people because it causes one section of the community to suffer at the expense of another section.
  I do not know how the Government will explain the position. If they will only make haste and wind up the business of the session, abandoning some of the terribly controversial and destructive measures which they have now under consideration, and appeal to the country, we will tell them how to get one of their dilemma. They will be able to leave their liabilities and the debts created by their crimes and their folly for other people to pay. And then it will be seen that they can be paid in some other way than by taxing the food of the people. Some of the poorest people in this country are now paying one-twelfth of their present income as additional taxation to pay for the debts created by the Government, and I venture to say a more shameful proposal has not been made in the history of Parliament for the last fifty years. Surely there are other sources of taxation if the Treasury had only had courage to face the difficulty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that beer, spirits, wine and tobacco will not bear a further increase of even a Id. That is all nonsense, everybody knows that they are capable of still further taxation. Let us take the licensing system. We constantly read of licensed premises, the value of which has been created by law and by monopoly, increasing in value by leaps and bounds, while the licence charges are ridiculously low and absurdly cheap. Why not increase the taxation on these licences and make it proportionate to their value? There is at present no comparison in the proportion of charge for the ordinary beer house and the great taverns which change hands at £20,000 and even £30,000. Surely that
  1438
  would be better than taxing the bread of the people. Again, we have the land values, the ground rents, royalties, and way leaves, which might be properly taxed, but the Government are avoiding these lest they offend their own followers. They only put the tax on food because they think the poor are unorganised and unable therefore to protect their own interests. Take the case of stamps. I am not sure that on its merits a special duty on cheques for sums above £5 or £10 might not well have been defended on its merits. But it was absurd and ridiculous to put it on cheques for lower sums, for it would have been a factious restraint on trade. But the people who deal in cheques are organised and so their protest has proved effective, but the poor farm labourers, the riverside, dockside, and casual labourer has no organisation so he is to be taxed on the first necessities of life. This question of the bread tax is one of the most monstrous I know of. It is well known that labourers depend for nine-tenths of their existence on bread. That and the vegetables produced in their garden they mainly live upon. Meat is only an occasional incident in their lives, so that in taxing their bread you are putting an unequal proportion of the burden on them as compared with other classes. I sincerely hope there will be such a manifestation from the other side of the House as will demonstrate to the Government the weakness of their position, and lead them to drop this tax on bread as they have dropped that on cheques, if not in shame and humiliation, at any rate in such a frame of mind as will prevent them ever again attempting to impose taxation on the very lives of the labouring classes.
  MR. KEARLEY: A fortnight since the Chancellor of the Exchequer threw out the gibe that no one had attempted to show in any way that this duty was Protective. I must say that on that occasion he gave us a very poor opportunity of doing so, for when he made the remark he had risen in succession to the great speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton, and I think he rose quickly with the idea of obliterating the effect that that speech had undoubtedly made on the minds of those who heard it. Now

  1439
  I wish to point out that the tax is a Protective one. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton laid down the general proposition as to what constitutes a Protective tax. He pointed out that if you impose at the port of entry a tax on an article also produced in this country, which you fail to levy here, you are going against the principles of Free Trade. That statement has not been refuted; indeed, it is un-answerable.
  Now, I shall endeavour to prove that this tax is not only Protective but that its intention is Protective. My hon. friend the Member for one of the Divisions of Bedfordshire quoted an extract from a speech delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in reply to the representations made to him by a deputation of flour importers in this country. Since then another colleague of the right hon. Gentleman has been expressing his views in the country as to the desirability of jutting a Protective duty upon flour. The Minister of Agriculture, in pursuit of the policy he has announced of meaning business in his Department, addressed the farmers of Norwich on Saturday last, and said this tax on flour would do a great deal to bring back the milling industry to this country, and that the tax would not increase the price of food, while it would give the farmer his offal. I regret the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not here. I have made three speeches on the Budget, and he has been absent each time. But I will point out to his custodian that in taxing flour imported into this country he is doing something which he does not perhaps comprehend. Is he aware that the English millers are compelled to mix a certain percentage of the flour which comes from America and Manitoba with the English flour in order to produce the flour which is in demand, and that, consequently, if this impost is decided on the English miller's trade will be injured? The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in introducing his Budget, pointed out that formerly when the tax existed the correlative duty on flour was 4½d., as against 3d. on wheat. He said the correlation was based on the average quantity of corn it took to make a certain amount of flour. I presume that that is the basis on which he is proceeding at the present moment. But he has
  1440
  raised the correlative duty on flour to 5d., and the reasons he gave for it were extraordinary. He said, in the first place, that the milling circumstances of this country had hugely changed, and that whereas in the past milling was done by stones, now it was done by a much improved process. He further made the astounding statement that the extraction under the old system of milling was as high as 80 per cent., while under the modern system it was only 72 per cent. He said it was therefore necessary to equalise the duty as between flour and corn, by raising the correlative duty on flour to 3d. But the extraction by the old system of milling was nothing like so high as he mentioned, and on the other hand under the modern system it is higher than it ever was. The correlation that existed under the old duty of 4½d. on flour, and 5d. on wheat, was established so long ago as 1828, when the sliding scale on wheat, ranging from 1s. to 25s. per quarter, was fixed by Act of Parliament. In those days, too, the duty was levied not on the basis of weight, but on that of measure, and 38½ gallons were estimated to weigh 289 lbs.; consequently 289 lbs. of raw material was estimated to give 196 lbs. of flour. Upon that correlation the duty was fixed and it continued on that basis until the corn laws were abolished. When ther registration duty was finally abolished in 1864, Mr. Gladstone substituted weight for measure, but it continued to be worked on precisely the same basis.
  I think that I may claim to have shown that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was wrong in his statement as to the relative amounts of extraction under the old and the modern systems, and that therefore he was not justified in raising the correlative duty from 4½d. to 5d. Taking his own figures, however, I am now going to show that he sets up a discrimination against flour imported from our colonies. Take 100 cwt. of wheat at 3d., and bearing in mind the extraction he suggests, you get 78 cwt. of flour on which the duty is 5d. There remains 28 cwt. of offal. There is a discrimination against flour of 22 per cent., and if you take the flour and offal together you get a discrimination of 50 per cent. Is not that Protection? What

  1441
  are we protecting against? I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that our colonies are very large importers of flour, to this country. Canada has built up in the last 25 years two of the largest milling enterprises in the world, the Albany Mills and the Lake of the Wood. The right hon. Gentleman stated that practically America had no alternative but to send her flour over here. That is not absolutely the case, but it is true in regard to Canada and Australia. Canada cannot send her wheat to the United States because of the high tariff, and consequently her raw material must come to this country. We are talking of doing great things for the colonies in return for the splendid loyalty they have displayed. Yet here we are taking the first opportunity to create a preferential tariff against our own colonies. What ought to be done? If the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks that there is no Protection in this, then he must amend his tariff', and if he wants to make a proper correlation between flour and wheat, he must reduce the duty on flour from 5d. to 4d. I suggest the proper duty would be wheat 3d., flour 4d., and offal 2d. Even then there would be a discrimination of 40 per cent. between wheat and the other two components. I repeat that I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman is not present, for I should have been glad to got some reply from him on these points. He is not unfamiliar with them, for he has met deputations representing the great importers who take enormous quantities of flour, both Canadian and American. I am almost ashamed to take up the line of argument as to who is going to pay for this tax: it is so thoroughly well understood that the consumer is going to pay. I think that before this Budget is finally disposed of we shall have argued this from every point of view, and, unless the right hon. Gentleman is fortunate enough to have a fall of 2s. or 3s. in the market, we shall convince all hon. Members that the burden is going to be paid by the consumer. He may endeavour to show good reason why the tax should not fall on the consumer, or, if it does, why it should only be a temporary burden on him. Indeed, it will probably have been noticed that even time the right hon. Gentleman speaks he brings forward some very ingenious argument. The right
  1442
  hon. Gentleman has stated that he thinks competition will bring this trade to its proper balance and that those who have I put up the price will be left behind by the rest of the trade. The right hon. Gentleman has given us evidence in support of his contention that there has been no rise in the price of bread. The figures he has put before us, in my opinion, have been more than a justification of what we allege, and it wilt require far more ingenious arguments than the Chancellor of the Exchequer has used to convince the consumer that he is not going to pay this tax. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman brings in any expert knowledge upon this question, for the only support he has brought forward is the argument of the First Lord of the Treasury, whom we all regard with kindly feelings, although we do not regard him as a typical authority upon trade in this country. The First Lord of the Treasury has never appealed to me as a gentleman well fitted to give a first-class opinion upon a first-class commercial matter. He says that the idea that this tax will fall upon the consumer is an economic fallacy of the grossest character. We have just had the experience of the people of Bury, and they appear to have come to the conclusion that this tax is a heavy impost upon the food of the people. I understand that those who are students of the doctrine of economics are people with plenty of leisure, and they always take good care that they never take the responsibility, for good or evil, of putting these doctrines into practice on their own account.
  I am no student of political economics, but I do claim to have had some practical experience of how these matters work out; and in reply to the First Lord of the Treasury I will give an illustration of the practice which is in vogue in respect of these articles which are now being assailed. Those large importers who were talking to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day make their purchases direct from the miller. What is the basis upon which they buy? They are having cable communication with their principals continually, and the man who ships the goods has nothing to do with the duty, and he does not take it into consideration. But when the goods arrive in this country the importer immediately comes into contact with the duty, and he has to pay the shilling. Prior to this imposition he had

  1443
  no obligation of that kind. He had no capital to invest in that direction, and no establishment expenses to pay; and nobody can deny that he is justified in taking some additional profit upon the goods to cover not only the shilling but his outlay of capital and time and energy in the direction I have just mentioned. Consequently, the importer pays the duty, and after charging these additional expenses he sells his goods to the merchant. Therefore, the flour comes to the merchant at a duty-paid price, and bears not only the 1s. duty but also the additional profit of the importer. In the ordinary way the merchants are in the habit of taking a minimum trading profit on the cost price of the article. Supposing the merchant was buying before the duty was put on the 20s. After the duty he would probably have to pay 21s. 6d. or 21s. 3d. Of course, the merchant will also want his additional profit, and this goes on all along the line down to the retailer. Consequently, there must be quite another 1s. added as representing intermediate profits. This means that the £2,600,000 which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expects to realise by the tax is going to be duplicated by another £2,600,000 be-fore it gets into the hands of the final distributor. The final distributor will take another profit, and if we could trace this all through we should find that in the end the consumer will not only pay the duty itself but more than double the amount of the duty in addition. This is a serious matter, and I think we shall be able to prove to the country that this is not a mere trifling tax, and that it is not merely a question of a 1s. duty, but that it involves very much more.
  We have heard it stated that the price of bread in some places has gone up a halfpenny per 4lb. loaf. That means 4s. a quarter, or four times the amount of the duty. Therefore, if you multiply by four the £2,600,000 which this tax is expected to realise, you will get what the consumer is going to pay by this tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that in the days of the Crimean War our tariff contained hundreds of articles, but in one twelvemonth, while the right hon. Gentleman has been in office, we have added to the permanent tariff of this country no less than eighty-three taxes. This registration duty is responsible for the addition of no less than
  1444
  fifty-two new taxes to the Customs tariff-Therefore, when the right hon. Gentleman makes this comparison of an adverse character in regard to the articles taxed in the time of the Crimean War, he cannot be aware of the far-reaching effect of this registration duty. He calls this tax a registration duty upon corn and flour. I presume that is the short title, but if anybody studies the Resolution they will at once notice that this tax is very much extended, and it is made to apply to all starchy substances used as articles of food. As a matter of fact, it goes much beyond this, for it includes articles that are not starchy, such as locust beans and dextrine, and many articles which were not in Mr. Lowe's tariff'. We are entitled to know how far this proposal is going to carry us. What has the Chancellor of the Exchequer done? I presume hon. Members have examined the Finance Bill as it is printed. They will find in that Bill that, instead of having fifty-two articles corresponding to the Customs tariff, the Bill only contains about twenty articles, and leaves out about thirty which ought to be included. I want to know what our position will be in Committee if thirty out of fifty-two articles have been omitted in the Finance Bill. I want to move in Committee an Amendment including locust beans and dextrine. One of them is not mentioned, and I am not quite sure about the other. The Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to give us an opportunity of having before us every article which corresponds with the Customs schedule at the Customs House.
  The right hon. Gentleman twitted us, when he introduced his Budget, that last year we tried to raise the cry of taxing the food of the people, and he said that as the people rejected it then, so they would reject it upon this occasion. The people have recently had an opportunity of expressing their views at Bury, and as other opportunities crop up we shall find that the country is emphatic in its condemnation of this system of taxing the food of the people. We were told last year that the working man was proud of the amount he was contributing to the taxation of the country. I admit that many of them have approved of the war, and are in favour of keeping up an invincible Navy, but they are not blind to the fact that the ordinary expenses of the

  1445
  country have increased by many millions, and they have also heard how the money voted for the war has been squandered. They have heard of the remount and other scandals, and these things have gone deep into their minds, and they do not see why their food should be taxed in order to liquidate such mis-management as this. The people wish us to expose this tax, and offer to it a most uncompromising hostility. I do not say this in any obstructive spirit, but we intend to fight this tax line by line, and whatever may be the result of our action in this House, I feel sure in this course we shall finally receive at the hands of the people their approbation.
  SIR EDGAR VINCENT: I desire to take this opportunity of congratulating the Government upon the decision which they announced on Friday, which I think has an important bearing upon the financial administration of the country. I refer to the decision of the Government to appoint a Committee to consider the machinery for the examination of the Estimates. I sincerely hope that the terms of reference will be sufficiently wide to enable good work to be done. Turning to the Amendment proposed my right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouthshire, there are two points which may, I think, be considered as legitimate subjects of regret. The first is that he has not confined himself to a condemnation of the imposition of the corn duty under the present circumstances, but he seeks to commit the House to hostility to the imposition of Customs duties on all articles of prime necessity as food of the people. It appears to me that those words are susceptible of various interpretations, and they might be construed into a condemnation of the tax upon tea and sugar. I imagine that the right hon. Gentleman does not propose at the present moment to interfere with those taxes. Had he confined himself to a mere condemnation of the corn tax, I should certainly have supported him. I decline, however, to bind myself to support a vague Amendment which might, in my judgment, cause considerable embarrassment to our financial administration in the future.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: My words refer only to the various articles I connected with corn and flour which were referred to by the last speaker.
  SIR EDGAR VINCENT: I quite understand the right hon. Gentleman's explanation, but I still submit that the words are capable of another interpretation and they might without undue straining be applied also to tea and sugar. I regret that this debate has been brought on before the discussion of the general financial condition of the country and the financial policy of the Government. It appears to me to be difficult to discuss the proposals of the Government to meet the financial necessities of the hour without coming to a clear opinion as to what those financial necessities are. Would it not have been more logical and more instructive to have settled first the condition, of the patient before proceeding to discuss the remedy? I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his desire to increase the proportion of the cost of the war which is paid from revenue, and to diminish the proportion for which recourse has to be had to borrowing. I would observe, however, that it is somewhat late in the day to make such a proposal in regard to the cost of the war when it has already been in progress three years, and when it has now arrived at a stage at which it is not unreasonable to anticipate that it will be brought to a speedy conclusion. I would also say that an additional argument against the immediate necessity of new taxation is to be found in the expectation which is based upon the declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that a considerable contribution to the expenditure of the war will be made by South Africa. I do not entertain any exaggerated opinion as to what that contribution will be, but we are entitled to consider the official declarations, made from the Treasury Bench, that a sum may be expected from this source which will make a considerable difference in the position of the account.
  If the argument against immediate taxation is not considered sufficient, there is a further one which appears to me to be of a more convincing character. I hold that the House of Commons is justified in refusing to increase the scheme of taxation at present existing, until it has been able to ascertain more clearly than it now has done that the vast sums already voted to the Executive are expended with economy, and in such

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  a manner as to produce the maximum of I efficiency. I see no reason to alter the opinion which I have submitted to the House on several occasions, namely, that our present system of control is lamentably weak and inefficient, and I believe that it is not only wise, but it would be good statesmanship on our part, to insist upon proof being shown that a maximum I of efficiency has been secured, and that the money has been expended with a due consideration to the interests of the taxpayer, before we consent to increase the burdens of the people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the speech in which he introduced the Budget, stated that the crux of the position was the necessity of increasing indirect taxation. I believe that the crux of the situation is the necessity of increased vigilance and prudent thrift. If this House would establish a good system of financial control, and if it would exercise the right which it undoubtedly possesses of revising in a critical way the various Estimates submitted to the House I believe that it would dispose in the course of a few years of a far larger sum of money than can possibly be realised by the imposition of a 1s. duty on corn, or by any similar financial expedient. I will assume for a moment that the contention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that an increase of indirect taxation is necessary is correct. I will admit it for the purpose of argument. The question arises whether this increase of indirect revenue should be obtained by high duties on a few articles, or low duties on a much more extended list. The effort of every Chancellor of the Exchequer who has held office during the last century since the time of Pitt has been to restrict by every means and power the field of interference with commerce, and to render as many articles as possible entirely free for men to deal in. But I gather from the various measures which have been put forward by the Government last year and this year that the present tendency of policy is somewhat toward the reversal of this tradition. New methods have been adopted, and it would seem as though the aim was to establish a large number of duties not of very great extent upon nearly every article of large consumption. Well, I view with great distrust the diminution of the list of
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  articles in which men in these islands may trade and barter freely. I know the reply will be that the duty is light and that the actual burden on trade is insignificant, but outside the actual net cost of the duty I submit that the increased interference of Customs officers is in itself a most potent and undesirable impediment to the exercise of Free Trade. I believe that the great commercial prosperity of this country is due, not alone to the freedom of our commodities from taxation, but also to its freedom from those harassing formalities and restrictions which everyone who has any knowledge of foreign Customs Houses knows to be absolutely inseparable from the administration of an extended tariff.
  The Chancellor has defended this measure by two arguments, both of which appear to me unsound and unconvincing. He has stated first of all that this duty of 3d. per cwt. on corn is so small that it hardly constitutes any infringement of principle. I do not think that a very solid argument to put forward, it is called a registration duty, but it is impossible for anybody to deny that the tax represents 4 per cent. on the value of the corn, rising in some cases to 5, 6, and 6½ per cent. Under modern trade conditions it is undoubted that a tax of 4 per cent. is a very considerable impediment to business, and if it is contended that such a small percentage does not count, I would submit that the argument can be turned another way, and if 4 per cent. is not important, and does not raise the price to the consumer, surely that line of argument leads to the imposition of 4 per cent. all round. If it docs not increase the price in the case of corn, why should it increase the price in the case of any other commodity. The second argument by which the measure was supported was that it does not constitute any approach or progress towards Protection or Fair Trade, but I would ask the right hon. Gentleman from what quarter the most enthusiastic support to his proposal has come. I think the most vehement applause with which it has been greeted proceeded from those who regard the present tax as a mere instalment, a mere stopping stone, to higher duties upon more numerousarticles. I confess that those gentlemen who take this view of the question appear to me to have more reason on their side than the right hon. Gentleman the

  1449
  Chancellor of the Exchequer. For they contend with some show of reason that no man would infringe so important a principle in order to attain such a small result did he not intend to proceed on the same lines at no very distant date. It would be strange, indeed, if while those who most enthusiastically support the measure, and while all those who oppose it, agree in the view that it constitutes a grave question of principle that the right hon. Gentleman should alone be right in asserting that it is a matter of mere financial expediency.
  This tax is either proposed as an expedient or a principle, and it appears to me that in either case it is equally to be condemned, If it is an expedient, I consider it to be a paltry one and the financial result is not adequate; if it is a principle, then I say it is vicious. The right hon. Gentleman, in his speech, was at great pains to show that this duty would not increase the cost of corn to the consumer, and he quoted elaborate tables, both in introducing the Budget and in his speech today, to show that the price of corn had not been affected by the imposition or by the abolition of the duty, but I really think the right hon. Gentleman must realise that the figures he quoted only prove one thing, namely, that the fluctuations in the price of corn largely exceed 4 per cent. in any one year, and he produced absolutely no argument to show that in the duty protected area the price of corn will not be higher than if the duty was not imposed. No attempt has been made to show this, and I am bound to say that until further proof is given that the cost of this tax does not fall upon the consumer I remain convinced that the consumer will pay the full amount, or possibly more than the amount that, will come to the Exchequer. My general comment on the case for the defence is that when so able a disputant as the right hon. Gentleman condescends to produce arguments of this character there must be a great dearth of good reasons for the action he has proposed.
  I shall not venture to detain the House any longer on the present occasion. There are many things which I think require saying on the general financial position, but I understand that they would
  1450
  not be in order this evening. I would venture in conclusion to make one request to the Government. It is that if the negotiations now being carried on with the view to peace should end successfully the Government will then reconsider their scheme of taxation. The pressure of expenditure in South Africa will then be somewhat relaxed, and I venture to think they will do wisely if they retreat in good time from what I consider to be a perilous and illogical position. Let them withdraw the proposal, which I cannot but call foolish and retrograde. The right hon. Gentleman has already first modified and subsequently withdrawn his suggestion respecting cheques in obedience to an agitation among the wealthy classes. I am convinced that the turmoil created by that proposal is nothing compared with the disturbance which will be caused by the corn tax among an infinitely large class. I hope that more prudent counsels will prevail, and that this tax will not be proceeded with, because I consider it a tax, not only fraught with danger to the financial prosperity of this country, but as one which cannot fail to be disastrous to the Conservative party.
  MR. MOULTON: Like all those who believe that this tax is one of the most unjustifiable and most injurious of all import taxes, it was a great pleasure to me to hear the last speaker throw the great weight of his financial knowledge on our side. Having no right to speak as a financial authority, I am going to take a different point in the debate, Some of the arguments that have been put forward, markedly by the Leader of the House in the previous debate, and also by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to-night, in defence of the tax, were on the ground that it was impossible to show that it would come upon the consumer, and that it was so small that it could inflict no evil. I join issue with both of them. There is no import tax that I know where it is more possible to show to demonstration that ibis falls wholly, if not exaggeratedly, on the consumer; and so far from its producing no effect, the more you examine into it you will see that the effect will be inexorable and cruel.

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  The speeches of the members of the Government convince me that they have never thought of this tax in all its industrial incidence. They have no doubt faced the charge of taxing the food of the people; but that is only one point about this tax. I can imagine a tax upon food—that is to say, on articles which can be used for food—in which it would be impossible to say that the whole of the tax was borne by the consumer, but that is not the case with this tax. The peculiarity of this tax is that it is a tax on the cheapest food of the people. It is a tax on the food to which they have recourse when they are so low in the struggle that they are actually fighting with starvation. We all know that wheat and flour, which are the chief subject of this tax, and to which I am going to confine my remarks, are the cheapest staple food of the people in England. From this there follows a most remarkable economic consequence which few people realise. It has passed almost into a saying that when price goes up consumption goes down. The very opposite is the case when you tax the cheapest food of the people. The more price goes up, the more consumption goes up, and I will tell you why. It is because people are driven more exclusively to live on their cheapest food. If I wanted proof of it coming from the months of those who are certain to suffer, I should find it in the letter which was read by the rght hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton today. It was a letter from a poor workman's wife, and she was lamenting that under this tax bread would go up. And what was the consequence of bread going up? Shall we eat less bread? No, she said, we shall never be able to get our weekly bit of meat. What is to take the place of that meat? They would be obliged to have dry bread in place of that meat. Therefore, because of the tax the price of bread goes up, and the poor are compelled to eat more bread. That is a strange peculiarity of the case when we are dealing with the cheapest food of the people, the more you raise the price the more exclusively have the people to take refuge in it, and a larger consumption is produced in consequence. But this
  1452
  leads to another remarkable consequence. I will take a case of something of the nature of food—if you like a luxury—I will suppose for instance that you were to put 2d. on the can of canned peaches. The persons who produce them would know that at the higher price fewer would be bought, and they could not keep up their trade. The consequence would he that in order to keep the market going and to keep up the demand for the article, they would not dare to let the retail price be 2d. higher and they would be obliged to be content that some of their price for producing them should be taken away. They would make sacrifices in order to keep their market. There it could be proved that the producer would have to bear a portion of the tax, because he could not get his market if he threw the whole of it on the consumer. He has to coax his market, and therefore he has to bear part of the tax himself. But the market for the food of the poorest stiffens when the market goes up, because the people are driven more than ever to confine themselves to it. There is no coaxing of the market there. The baker knows that they must take bread, and that they must take it all the more because it is dear. They cannot take meat or other things because they are more costly, and the consequence is that the baker knows that he has not to be afraid of his market, and he puts the whole of the increase duo to the tax on to the purchaser. The middleman knows that he is not to lose his profit, and that his market is just as big as ever. The middleman and the producer know that the baker does not need any coaxing on account of the stiffening of the market. As soon as you get a market that becomes more eager as the price goes up, you will see that the whole of any increase of the cost, whether due to a tax or not, must fall on the consumer.
  Is there any exit from that line of argument? There is only one, and I warrant that we are saved from that being urged against us. If the rise in price drives people to hunger, and not to substitute for their more luxurious foods plain bread, and if the weekly bit of meat is dropped out, and no bread is taken in its place, there might be an answer. But this only means that

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  the poor pay the tax either in money or hunger, and I very much doubt whether the supporters of the Government will choose the second alternative. If they do not do it, if they realise that this rise in price must make the poor take more rather than less bread, the more they think of it the more inexorably they will see that it follows that the poor pay the whole of this tax. But do not they pay more? We will see. First of all, when the price of foreign grain goes up the price of English grain goes up too. Now it is perfectly true that the money by which English grain goes up goes into the pockets of Englishmen, but it comes out of the consumers of bread, and the main consumers of bread are the poor. The consequence is that this money goes from the poorer pockets into the more well-to-do pockets, and when you are estimating the effect of this tax, and considering how it bears on those who are nearest to starvation among us you must reckon the whole of the money you take out of their pockets for the same nutriment they had before, and in doing so you must add to the amount that goes into the Exchequer the whole of the money that goes into the farmer's pocket. I am not suggesting that this tax will, in the end, benefit the farmer. Under this Bill the farmers will pay in another way for that which they get for wheat and flour, but that is a point I am not going to trouble the House with. But I wish to point out that when you are considering the incidence of the tax on flour and corn you must add to that which you collect through the medium of flour and corn what the farmer is able to get by the rise in prices.
  Just for one minute consider the condition of the people who are to pay a higher price for bread. The further you go down in the scale the more exclusively is the food of the people bread, and as I have pointed out the more the price rises still more exclusively becomes that food bread. The consequence is that the burden of this tax is borne mainly by those in need, and the more in need they are the more they bear of it. Then you may say that so far from this tax
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  being adjusted according to the resources of the people who have to bear it, the money you exact is almost in direct proportion to the direness of the people's need. Can it be thought that this great country is going to tax people according to their poverty, and that is the best way to raise £2,000,000? The suggestion is "Oh, 3d. on the cwt. of corn, or 5d. on the cwt, of flour, is so little that nobody will feel that." If slipshod politicians lounging in a drinking bar were to talk like that, one would really not be much surprised, and yet when you think that the Budget is the carefully prepared outcome of months of work by the man picked by the country to look after its finance—when you think that arguments like that can be brought forward here to defend this financial measure—one's heart sinks. The light hon. Gentleman has advanced the extraordinary proposition that you can tax an article and that nobody will have to pay, that you are to get £2,000,000 and nobody will feel it. Inquiries have been made it seems all over the country, and in countless places the price of bread has not gone up. This does not greatly surprise me. In another set of circumstances you might find that there was not a single place where bread had gone up, and yet it would be true that ultimately the consumer would bear the full tax. Such a defence ought not to have satisfied the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  The whole of that defence is based upon the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with all his firmness, insight, experience, and honesty of purpose, has never set himself to ask what, happens when the cost of an article rises and falls whose retail price can only go up by fits and starts. The wheat stuffs and the flour of the country, as mentioned already in this debate, are bought in largo quantities, and the price can be graduated to a nicety; but when you come to the 4lb. loaf this can only be sold for certain coins of the realm and the price must go up by jumps. The smallest variation is a halfpenny except in the poorest parts of the kingdom. What is the necessary consequence? If the price of flour goes up a shilling a cwt. that is not enough to raise the loaf a halfpenny. Will it raise it at all? This depends on the nearness of the baker to the edge of his margin of profit. In places where the baker has just put up his loaf a halfpenny it will not be enough

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  to raise the price again; where he has not already raised his price it may decide him to do it, and it will in every case make a subsequent rise easier. The baker has to sell his loaves at so many halfpennies, but he has to buy his raw stuff at varying prices. He lives on fat years and lean years. There is a time when the cost of the raw stuff is almost unbearably near to the price obtained for the bread. This happens immediately before the raising of the price of the loaf by a half penny. Then the fat year commences until the cost of the raw stuff has risen so much that he starts another halfpenny, and has another good time. But on the average he gets his trade profit. Prices of bread, of course, vary according to competition in one part of the country and another. But the increase of the price of flour by a shilling makes it all the easier for a subsequent rise in the price of the loaf. Thus in some places we are told the price has gone up, in some places that there is no change at ah. But that does not prevent the shilling producing on the average its full effect. It does so by making the price easier to go up and slower to go down. I have been trying to think of some simile which would explain how an average is independent of this inequality due to price going up by jumps. Let us suppose that by a ukase of our War Office the soldiers of the Army are all to be measured to the nearest inch and that the average should be taken. We all know that it would give very accurately the average height of the British soldier, although some of the measurements would be too high and others would not be high enough. Then suppose it were to go forth that they all should be measured in their shoes, which raised them half an inch. In half the cases this would make no difference, in the other half it would make the difference of a whole inch. But on the average it would just make the half inch. In precisely the same way the shilling added to the cwt. will produce on the average the full shilling increase in the price of bread, and there is no possible way of avoiding it. We now see the full consequences of this disastrous tax. It will stiffen the market because the poor will be driven to eat bread more exclusively. The consequence will be
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  that neither the middlemen nor the foreign producers will have the slightest inducement to lower their price, and the poor of this country will have to pay the higher price, and will have to bear this burden in proportion to their poverty; and with this additional aggravation that the poorer they are the more they will be driven to bear a larger share of it.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: As one who has listened to this debate, I welcome most heartily a most eminently satisfactory feature in it. We are all economists tonight. There has hardly been a single speech on either side of the House which has not been carefully prompted by the idea of retrenchment and economy. There are obvious reasons which brought out this important issue, for everyone on the Opposition Benches, as well as on these, could say, "Here, at least, is a common basis of agreement." There is another reason why I welcome the debate—the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has introduced this tax into his Budget has terminated the long annual series of compliments which used to be exchanged across the Table between the right hon. Member for West Monmouth and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which always gave entire and complete satisfaction to both right hon. Gentlemen, but which were always received by a shiver of disgust and disapprobation by the Treasury Bench. The distinct and definite matter before the House is the selecting of the financial sources wherewith to meet the expenses of the country. Whether the taxation should be direct or indirect is the great question, whether either or both these branches of revenue should be selected. We are not now discussing the question of expenditure, but the means of paying the bill for which we are liable. During the debate, which has languished, I have not heard one Member on either side of the House attempt to condemn the Government for not having adopted the easy method of meeting expenditure by having recourse to a further permanent loan. We have had a most tangled argument as to the best tax to impose to pay our bill.

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  The hon. and learned Member for the Launceston Division has given us a most lucid and interesting lecture. As one who has not had the advantage of an academic career, it filled me with awe and wonder, and must have awakened in the minds of hon. Members who enjoyed that advantage many recollections of their early academic days. In the course of his able and lucid exposition of financial principles, the hon. and learned Gentleman has proved, as many Members have proved, I think, perhaps a little more than he would care to verify when the result of his reasoning is sot out in black and white. Very extreme views have been taken by economists on both sides. On one side it has been proved, by unrelenting and incontrovertible logic, that the whole of this corn tax, and more, must fall on the British consumer. On the other hand, it has been shown, by no less indefensible steps, that the whole of this tax will be paid by the foreigner out of his abnormal profits and the love which he bears to this country. I venture to say that the economic view on this side of the House was put most effectively by the hon. Member for Glasgow—a view which most hon. Members on this side of the House pin themselves to. Surely there is a great deal to be said for the argument that it would be as difficult to trace which of the parties were benefitted by the remission of the tax in 1869, as it will be difficult to decide the proportion in which the parties will suffer by its re-imposition now. I would recommend the Government to be very generous in this matter of the argument of hon. Members opposite. At all events, I will make them a present of all the satisfaction they will derive from these arguments that the consumer will pay the tax. If we, on this side of the House, were to admit that the whole of this tax—plus, of course, a certain wastage—should, by the force of economic gravity, fall on the consumer, either in quality, quantity, or price, then hon. Member's opposite ought to admit that where prices have been raised to artificial levels from local circumstances, which levels do not correspond to the increased cost of production, these prices will be adjusted by the ordinary higgle of the market. But if the whole tax, if not more, falls on the consumer, what does it amount to? It is estimated to realise approximately £2,500,000. I have seen
  1458
  the annual national income calculated at £1,700,000,000; therefore, the tax amounts to an equivalent of 2s. 11d. per £100 of the national income. I am the last to underrate its importance, but surety it does not justify all the epithets that have been lavished upon it.
  There has been much discussion as to whether this is a Protective tax or not. If this tax has been seriously prejudiced by the reception it has met with, we have this consolation: that if over a tax was damned with praise not faint from certain quarters, it is this. It will, however, I venture to think, survive the eulogies even of the hon. and gallant Member for Central Sheffield. Practically, it is absurd to call this tax Protective. [Cries of "Oh!" from the Opposition Benches.] I humbly submit to hon. Gentlemen opposite that the essence of Protection is Protection. Now, this tax in no way-facilitates the growing of wheat in England, and nobody would wish to do anything so wicked as that. It cannot practically be said to be a Protective tax; but in economic theory, which is a very different thing, there is no doubt that the tax is Protective in so far as any profit realised by the home producer in excess of the world's market price must go to him. But, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us, the profits of the wheat grower will be strictly limited and will be more than swamped by the increased price of his feeding stuffs. The object of the tax is revenue only. How much Protection is there in this tax? The average juice of wheat in England during the past year was 26s. 8d per quarter. Under the shameful and notorious legislation of 1828 the proper Protective duty upon wheat at that price would amount to £3 a quarter—that is to say, sixty times the amount of the proposed duty. Therefore, hon. Gentlemen opposite would be justified in using, with regard to this tax, only one-sixtieth of the adjectives and expressions which were applied to the Protective duties which formerly prevailed. But the Rules of Order must have been very lax, and the English evoked must have been very extensive, in the old days, if the opponents of the Protective duties indulged in language sixty times as strong as that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth.

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  So much for the economic aspect of the question. The tax is not a new one: it is a revival of an old tax.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: With an ancient and fish-like smell.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: It is a curious thing in our system of taxation how much easier it is to revive an old tax than it is to impose a new one. Last year the sugar tax was passed without any difficulty, whereas the coal tax—the proceeds of which were insignificant—was the subject of prolonged and vehement debates. That was not met with anything like such an unfavourable reception as was given to the small cheque tax, which, I am glad to say, my right hon. friend, in deference to the feelings of the House, and especially of hon. Gentlemen opposite, has withdrawn. Then there arises the question—Is this an equitable tax or not? It is on that that the debate has mostly ranged. Sir, there is not much room for sentiment in taxation. Hon. Gentlemen have asked us, by their Resolution tonight, to say that the House will not tolerate any taxation whatever of the necessaries of the food of the people. They appear to hold what is, to a certain extent, an illogical sentiment in the matter—a sentiment which, of course, is quite unmixed with any taint of Party bias or advantage. Every argument which can be used against the corn tax would be equally applicable to the tea tax. I have listened to the frequent quotations which have been made from Mr. Rowntree's book, which must have impressed everyone who has read it. In all these pitable budgets of the poor, tea figures as universally as bread. I hesitate to embark on this delicate ground, but I venture to say that if in the realm of the very poor any economy is possible, which I do not assert, there would more likely to be economy possible over a crust of bread than over a spoonful of tea. Every argument used against the bread tax could be used also against the tea tax. Do not mix sentiment up with taxation. In taxation what is required is equity, and sentimental notions ought not to be allowed to prevent any Government from taking the correct financial course. Let us look at the question from the point of view of equity alone.
  I have already referred, in discussing these subjects, to the figures on indirect
  1460
  and direct taxation which my right hon. friend the Member for Montrose first introduced to the House. They are figures which may be used in various political controversies, and which, I think, are full of suggestive and significant lessons to both political parties. Direct taxation between 1841 and 1901–2 has risen from 27 per cent. to 52 per cent. Indirect taxation during that period has fallen from 73 per cent. to 48 per cent. Now, Sir, that is a very remarkable process.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: Are these my figures?
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: They are the figures of direct and indirect taxation, and I should not be a bit surprised if my right hon. friend did not obtain them from the same source as I did. What I submit to the House is that there was a tendency going on during all that period, as illustrated by the figures of direct and indirect taxation, which shows distinctly that the ratio of taxation is being altered not to the disadvantage, but to the advantage of the masses of this country. That great evolution has taken place under various Governments of both Parties, and no Government cared or dared to interrupt it. For my own part, I should never feel able to vote for any Government that desired to reverse that process. But the exact contrary has happened in the present case. It has been left to this Government—the Government of class and interest, as hon. Gentlemen opposite are never tired of calling it out of the House of Commons—in a time of war and difficulty and public embarrassment, to make the proportion of labour as a contributor to national taxation comparatively lighter than ever it was before, and the proportion of direct taxation comparatively heavier; to exact a lesser proportionate contribution from labour than was exacted by Mr. Gladstone during all the years he was supreme and powerful in England, and a much lesser contribution than was exacted as recently as 1894–5, in a time of profound peace, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth himself. For my own part, I would charge against the Government that

  1461
  they have allowed the expenditure of this country to get beyond the bounds of prudence and reason.
  Another charge is made against us, I admit not directly in this debate, but very much in the newspapers which support the Party opposite. It is that the Government have endeavoured to shift the burden of taxation from the shoulders of the wealthier classes to the shoulders of the poorer classes. That is a very dishonest charge. The hon. Gentleman the Member for South, Shields has spoken with feeling of the, poor in this country, and he said that so many poor living in such conditions diminished by one-half the glory of this famous Empire; hungry in the midst of abundant plenty, homeless in the heart of our greatest cities, suffering the privations of the savage with the nerves of the civilised man. I would have hon. Members to understand that a vivid realisation of the sufferings of the poor is not the monopoly of the Party opposite. We also possess this vivid realisation. We have just as good a right to speak in the name of the masses of this country, and just as fine a record of work done to ameliorate their condition to point to. The only chance the struggling millions of whom we read in Mr. Rowntree's book, and whom we see in our own constituencies, ever have of enjoying the bounties of nature and science, lies not in any socialistic system of taxation, not in any charitable enterprise, or charitable immunity from taxation, but, solely and simply, in an effective and scientific commercial development. I apprehend very grievously that there will one day come a Government in England which will put upon its programme a great Navy and a great Army; £20,000,000 for old age pensions and the housing of the poor; £25,000,000 for an elaborate system of education, perhaps, more elaborate than either the resources of the country or the needs of the people justify or require, and that the money will be raised, not equally over the whole country, but by the taxation of one particular class, a very small minority, who, in a phrase which has been already used, will not be able to resist it at the polls. If, in the face of the growing expenditure of this country,
  1462
  when the Government is confronted with demands from all quarters, we are so to arrange taxation that the great majority of the electorate will, as it were, be divorced from all real responsibility, and the burden laid on a minority without any great voting strength, we shall find ourselves in a most ruinous and paralysed condition. If ever, in this country, the incidence of taxation falls so as to make this country not a good country for capital, so as to displace it from its position as the clearing house and business centre of the world, then, indeed, the whole of the vast structure of our credit and authority will come clattering down, and the only choice we shall be able to offer to the manufacturing multitude in England will be to emigrate or starve. Let us lead the electorate forward at any rate with their eyes open. This is not so much an agitation for retrenchment. That I should welcome. I wish I could think that my right hon. friend is about to set up any sort of an inquiry into the causes of expenditure and taxation. The demand on the Government is, I fear, a demand, not for education in retrenchment, but for education on future expenditure, coupled with a transference of burdens; and I believe that, although that may relieve the labouring classes from the weight of taxation in the first instance, it will ultimately descend upon them and overwhelm them in difficulties and dangers.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton, in a speech which greatly impressed all who heard it, used about this tax the epithet "mean." I very much regret that the right hon. Gentleman, should have permitted himself to have used that expression, which is at once unjust and inappropriate. It is quite true it has no special significance, but I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, on whom does the reproach more justly fall? On the Government which in a time of difficulty and embarrassment had the courage to choose this method of raising money for what they believed to be a popular policy, or on the Opposition, who, without just cause, and with every species of ornamented exaggeration have endeavoured, for the sake of a vulgar Party advantage, to trade on the half buried prejudices of the past. What would be said of a Government who, believing that a tax on

  1463
  corn was the best financial expedient I to be adopted, refrained from taking the course which financial experience and wisdom dictated because of a fear that an unscrupulous use would be made of the sentimental aspect of the tax? My right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth did me the honour in his speech today to notice me, and to appeal to me to voice the opinion of Lancashire. I will not presume to speak for Lancashire, but I would venture to say to the; right hon. Gentleman that, upon the whole, in dealing with that electorate, and it is a very good one, it is well to count upon it as a class and a mass taking the most generous and most public spirited view of any question brought before it. I will not go so far as the right hon. Gentleman and argue that the whole opinion of Lancashire is the opinion of one bye-election fought under so many local and personal circumstances. My right hon. friend no doubt remembers very well the American Civil War. What was the attitude of Lancashire then? Lancashire, the most prosperous and proudest part of England was reduced to living on the charity of the rest. While the fleets and armies of the Worth were blockading the Southern States, thereby preventing the exportation of cotton on which Lancashire depended, all that time Lancashire was absolutely true to the cause of the North. They are a great people we have to deal with, and it is not well to count too much on the selfish forces which here and there make themselves visible. I shall support this tax to-night, not because I. do not hate and fear the expenditure which makes it necessary; not because it is not painful to think of some on whom it may fall; not because I think it is imperceptible; but because, although it will be perceptible, it will not be onerous, and in so far as it will be perceptible I hold that it will be rightly and healthily perceptible. I shall support it because I believe there is a general consensus of expert opinion that it is the best financial expedient that can be adopted; because it is a brave and honest act of policy, having regard to the permanent welfare of the nation, and not merely to the transient popularity of a political Part, and also because it is a tax which is efficient, economical, and highly productive.
  MR. GEORGE BROWN: The bellicose mood of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the beginning of his speech this afternoon made me hesitate very much about addressing the House for the first time on this corn tax. But his milder accents towards the end of his speech have encouraged me to trespass for a few minutes on the time of the House. The right hon. Gentleman did not seem to me to quite understand the position on this side of the House. There is no question of the war in this matter. Liberals are united against this tax because they believe that the Government might have taken other and better means of raising the revenue, because they believe that the Government are asking them to alter the fiscal policy of the country without adequate cause, and because they believe that the Government have selected a tax which will act in the hardest possible way on the hardest lives lived in this country. The view expressed on the Government Benches about this tax underwent very considerable modifications this afternoon. When I read the report of the first evening's debate on this subject, it seemed as if the Government had discovered a new and original tax which, while Protective in its appearance and its attributes, was guaranteed as genuine Free Trade by its promoters. It was not like our ordinary duties levied for revenue purposes. It was not like the tea duty raised on an article wholly grown abroad, or like the duties on beer and spirits levied equally on home and foreign supplies. It was to be levied on the foreign supply alone, while the home supply was to be free. It was carefully called a corn registration duty, although not really a registration duty. A registration duty as popularly understood in former days was for statistical purposes; now we get all our statistics free of charge. In all these ways it looks very like a Protective tax, and yet its supporters indignantly disclaim any Protective intention. This tax they say was not meant to be and could not possibly be a Protective tax. It was not even "a sort" of a Protective tax. Then they went on to say that the tax would fall on the producer, and not on the consumer as one might suppose.

  1465
  It was a new kind of tax, very like Protection, and yet according to its promoters as different from Protection as it well could be. Although the Chancellor of the Exchequer still argued this afternoon that the producer would have to bear the duty, he let fall some expressions that indicated some hesitation in his mind.
  The noble Lord the Member for South Kensington assumed that a tax would fall on the consumer, although he could not see that if the price of an agricultural product rises the agriculturist pockets that rise, and is thereby protected. It is satisfactory that opinion is changing, but it cannot be too often insisted that this is a tax which will fall on the consumer, and that it is a Protective tax, though only of a small amount. It is very hard to trace the incidence of indirect taxation, but the supporters of this tax have invented a simple rule for doing so. It is something like this. Put a duty of one-eighth of a penny on the flour in a loaf, and if the price of the loaf does not immediately rise ½d. then it is clear that the producer is going to pay the whole tax; but if the loaf does immediately rise ½d. then that is due to entirely different causes. I think that those who do not sec that this tax will protect our agricultural interests, and will be paid by the consumer, are not looking quite deep enough into its incidence. They say that the duty will not increase the price of the loaf. There may not be a general increase of ½d. immediately, although it looks as if that were going to occur. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may have hit upon a time when all those interested in the importation of corn are so exceedingly prosperous that one of them may pay the duty out of his own pocket and say nothing about it, or several may divide it between them. Again, if the price of the loaf does not rise immediately, it may be due to the fact that the tax on the loaf is only one-eighth of a penny, whereas our smallest coin in the bread market is ½d., or to the coincidence of some other factor tending to lower the price at the moment the tax is imposed. But the question is not the immediate effect on the price of the loaf, but the
  1466
  effect in the future. This tax will always remain and will have its effect in lean years as well as in years of plenty. It will always remain in lean years to make the loaf rise ½d. by ½d. a little faster than it otherwise would. It will always remain in prosperous years to prevent the loaf falling ½d. by ½d. as quickly as it otherwise would. Over a period of years it will accelerate the raising of the price, and retard the falling of the price until the eighths paid in duty are recovered in halfpence, and the country has paid for its food more than it otherwise would by just the amount of the tax or a little more. If other factors remain the same, this tax can only be paid in three ways. The first is by the producer accepting a lower profit in his business and the second is by some saving and improvement in business organisation such as often results from a rise in wages in factories. No ground has been shown for supposing that the producer of corn will be willing to do the first or able to do the second, so that there is obviously no other source than the pocket of the consumer. Indeed, the Government might as well say that the duty will lower the price of the loaf, as to say that it will not raise it. In fact their argument resolves itself into this, that the increase in the price due to the tax will be unrecognisable among the many factors which go to determine that price. It is not the first time that the Government have regarded burdens, errors, and abuses which may sometimes evade notice as non-existent. If the price of grain is raised, not necessarily immediately, but at any time, by the operation of this tax, this is then a measure of Protection, and some of the increase in price will go into the pockets of certain classes in this country. Those who grow grain exclusively will benefit thereby; those whose land supports cattle will pay more for their feeding stuffs, and will lose thereby; and those who do both will come out about equal. The tax will transfer a great deal of money from those in cities to those in the country, exactly as under the Agricultural Rates Act. Although, I think, so far as the agricultural class is concerned the history of this country shows that any benefit obtainable from such taxation as this goes ultimately

  1467
  to the landlords, I do not wish to enter into that difficult question now.
  I wish to point out one or two general effects of this tax. The first is that it will introduce a new element of risk, speculation, and un-certainty into the corn business. This unfair tax, which is going to extract £2,500,000 from the producer, may very well be increased some day, and another £2,500,000 obtained from the same source; or, perhaps, a Liberal Government may conclude that the consumer pays, and accordingly reduce the tax, or abolish it altogether. Agriculture is an uncertain industry at all times. It depends upon good seasons and bad seasons, rain, frost, drought, and the uncertainty of markets. In the corn law days, the element of uncertainty introduced by the tax was fully recognised, but it will be infinitely increased in these days of American shipping "combines" and corners, and it will add to the corn trade a new element, more fickle than the seasons—a tax dependent on the caprice, the necessities, or possibly the wealth of future Chancellors of the Exchequer. I do not think that the Government, in proposing this duty, have fully considered its effect on the colonies. The colonies are deeply interested in our food supply. One of the first questions that a Canadian interested in his country's politics, asks a Briton interested in his country's politics is, "Do you think that Great Britain will adopt a preferential tariff for grain in favour of the colonies?" I hope Great Britain will not. For the sake of the effect on the colonies, I think that if the Government really means to maintain our Free Trade system, it ought to give up what I may call flirting with Protection. What will the colonies think when they see the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Free Trader, proposing a tax like this which they regard as Protection, and which Sir Wilfred Laurier has stated to be the first step towards a Protective tariff. What will Colonial statesmen think? Will they think that this country is still true to Free Trade principles, or that it is entering upon a war of tariffs. I can understand a preferential tariff for the Empire, though I would oppose it. But I wonder how the Colonial Secretary will refer to this tax at the Conference of the Colonial Premiers at the Coronation. Will he say that the policy on which it is based is a
  1468
  purely insular policy, that it will do nothing to cement the trade interests of the Empire? Or will he point to it as evidence that the wishes of the colonies will some day be favourably considered by Great Britain? I believe that if the Government do not wish to encourage the desire of the colonies for a preferential tariff, the only way to really resist it, is to maintain Free Trade in its entirety.
  But whether this Protective policy is insular or Imperial, I would not vote for this tax unless under extraordinary circumstances which do not exist at present. It is for practical reasons as much as for economic reasons that I am opposed to it. I have seen too much of Protection in the United States and Canada. I think it is the most malignant disease that can possibly seize on the national life. First single industries are protected, then the system is extended here a little and there a little; next great monopolies spring up, and the rivalry between huge corporations imposes the greatest hardship on the working classes. Railways, even States, pass under the control of a single corporation and the interests of these corporations are maintained by lobbying, speculation, and corners; finally the whole industry of a country is held fast in the iron grip of what is a most vicious system. I know these evils would not occur in this country to the same extent, or in the same form; but I think anyone who has seen Protection in America must dread and shrink from its being introduced in any shape into this country. If I were ever pressed to vote for a Protective duty it would be my last vote, not my first, that would support the tax on bread. If hon. Members are not convinced of the fatal consequences of the step it is now proposed to take, let them read the history of England in the days of the Corn Laws. Let them read the books of Mr. Charles Booth and Mr. Rowntree, and see how the poorer classes are living today, and then ask themselves whether they wish to increase the present army of underfed children who are going to be the future citizens of this country. This is a tax that will fall on the poor, and on the very poor. From the tables in Mr. Rowntree's book it may be seen what a

  1469
  considerable part of the total expenditure by the poor on food is spent on bread, flour, oatmeal. In families just able to keep a servant 10 per cent. of the total is spent, in families with an income of over 26s. a week, 15 per cent. is spent, and in families with under 26s. a week, 20 per cent. is spent. This is only one small bit of evidence to show that the taxation will press most heavily on the very poor, and it has been confirmed by the personal experience of Members tonight. The country is bearing a very heavy load of taxation, and it is bearing it willingly and cheerfully. It would have cheerfully acquiesced in any reasonable scheme the Government might suggest. The Government might even have raised the money it required by special war stamps on all sorts of articles as has been done in other countries, and I believe the country would have acquiesced. Even at the present moment the country is, I believe, willing to broaden the area of taxation in any reasonable way but, instead of that the Government pass by all other suggestions and fix upon a tax on bread, a tax that will fall hardest on the hardest lives lived in this country. You are asking us to alter the fiscal policy of this country without showing any adequate reason for doing so. Liberals are accused of making a fetish of Free Trade. It is unfair. They do not regard it as an end in itself, but as a moans to an end—a full, healthy national life. They see its limitations. They see that under special circumstances, Free Trade might have to be thrown to the winds. But no such circumstances have arisen, and that is why the Liberals are loyal to the principles of Bright and Cobden and opposed to this tax.
  MR. RENWICK: As representing a large working class constituency, I desire to give some reasons why I am going to support this tax. I have listened very carefully to the arguments that have been used by the opposite side against this proposed tax, and it appears to me that the majority of them consist of wire-drawn arguments as to whether this is a tax which is Protective or non-Protective in its character. I venture to think that
  1470
  the working classes, and the people of this country generally, will not discuss whether this is a Protective or a non-Protective tax; what they will consider is whether in present circumstances it is an expedient tax. I venture to think that the conclusion they will come to is that it is an expedient tax. Neither do I think that the people, as a whole, will trouble themselves, as we have been troubled tonight, with long drawn out arguments as to who is going to pay this tax. Ever since I have occupied any portion of my time in politics, and I have done that for some years now, I have always taken an interest in what is called lair and Free Trade. The question has been discussed on every conceivable opportunity as to who paid the import or Protective tax, but we have not yet succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. I think the House will agree that as a result of the arguments we have heard tonight we are no nearer a solution of that problem than we were at the beginning of the discussion.
  Now let me state the reasons why I intend to support this tax. I support it first and foremost because I think it is a tax that is much more preferable than any further increase in the duties on tea and sugar. I agree with the hon. Member for Oldham that tea is almost as great a necessity in a working class family as bread. Sugar had a duty put upon it last year, and I therefore think that it should not be increased. I should have preferred a tax placed on foreign manufactured goods rather than upon corn, and, whenever a Chancellor of the Exchequer has the courage to propose in this House a five per cent. or ten per cent. duty on foreign manufactured goods, I believe that the verdict of the country will be that he had done one of the most popular acts ever performed in modern times by any Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has not decided upon such a tax, but has decided, instead, to put a tax on corn, and I think in doing that he has acted wisely, for one important reason, if for no other. That is, that it places in his hands a weapon he can use in endeavouring to come to some agreement with countries which place a Protective tax on

  1471
  our goods, in order to obtain some modification of these duties. Not only will it do that, but it will also place in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer a duty by which he may enable the Colonial Secretary to carry out some great scheme for giving preferential duties to the colonies; and I believe it will never be possible to bring about preferential duties with our colonies unless we have some duties by which we can give them preference. I remember long ago when Lord Salisbury was urged at a great meeting that he ought to enter into some arrangement with the colonies, he reminded the meeting that that could never be done until we had the courage to place duties on goods sent to this country by countries which placed duties on our goods. Small as this duty is, I believe it is the beginning of the new policy in the direction I have indicated. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth regretted that this duty was going to undermine the dam we had placed between Protection and Free Trade. That dam has been carried away long ago, but not by us; and in its place a dam has been built by foreign countries in the shape of a Protective tariff' which our trade in vain strives to get over. When I have been watching a salmon stream during a period of flood, I have seen salmon endeavouring to leap over the net, and I have seen them driven back. In the same way our traders are at present driven back when they attempt to gain access to the markets of foreign countries. At the present time, we have not Free Trade: we have one-sided Free Trade; and I sincerely trust that one of the effects of this tax on corn will be that we may be able to persuade foreign countries to treat our manufacturers fairly. We cannot at the present time afford to live on the memory of the past. It may be that in the time of Peel and Cobden it was necessary to treat the corn tax as it was treated, but we have nothing to do with that at the present time. We have to look at the circumstances with which we are surrounded. We find that we are threatened by combinations of foreign capitalists, and it is absolutely necessary that we should take measures for our self-protection.
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  We have been told that this 1s. tax is going to raise the price of bread. Let us see if there is any other way in which the price of bread is likely to be raised. Sir John Glover recently read a paper before the Royal Statistical Society in London in which he pointed out, that in 1896 wheat fluctuated to the extent of 11s. per quarter, and barley to the extent of 13s. 5d. per quarter. That was from the exigencies of trade alone. Let us consider what is likely to happen if there is a combination of foreign capitalists, who have made up their minds, not for the first time, to corner foreign wheat. In the paper I have mentioned, it was shown that Leiter's corner in wheat in 1898 caused the price to rise from 25s. to 48s. 1d.—a difference in one year of 22s. 8d. per quarter. What is that as compared with 1s. per quarter? We have lately seen our great fleets of Atlantic ships passing under the control of these capitalists, and, speaking as a shipowner myself, I believe that is one of the most serious things that have happened in this country for many years, because I recognise that not only have these capitalists got control of the ships, but they have also got control of the railways on the other side. These "combines" are not formed from philanthropic motives: they are formed from selfish motives; and the men who have gained control of our ships will not have the slightest compunction in also doing their utmost to corner grain, and, if they decide to do so, what will be the result? Remember that we get nearly 80 per cent. of our imported grain from the other side of the Atlantic, principally from Canada and the United States. I should also like hon. Members to remember that, while that is the case, our imports are falling off' from Australia, India, Russia, and the Pacific Coast, and that our other markets generally are decreasing. That shows how absolutely we can be at the mercy of these foreign capitalists if they choose to do what I believe they have the power to do, viz., to enter into a corner with regard to grain. If it is a serious matter in time of peace, how much more serious it would be in time of war! Speaking as a shipowner, I venture to say we do not place the most implicit reliance on our Navy to help us. I believe it is a good policy not to levy

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  a duty for purely Protective purposes, but to levy a duty of such a character as this upon corn as a measure of encouragement to our agriculturists at home to grow more wheat than they do at present. With an increasing population such as we have it is not safe, with land going out of cultivation, that we should rely entirely on supplies of grain from abroad, and I trust that one of the results of this tax will be the growing of more grain at home.
  I would again impress upon the House the importance of this matter. France grows sufficient corn to sustain some 90 per cent. of her population, and Germany 80 per cent., while the United Kingdom grows only 39 per cent. of her corn requirements. We have never more than a six weeks supply of wheat in this country. I remember the outbreak of hostilities between Turkey and Russia in 1877. That was not a war in which we were implicated. On 7th April, 1877, the freight from Odessa was 5s. 6d. per quarter; on the 21st it had risen to 10s. 9d., and on the 28th to 12s.; that is, in three weeks it had more than doubled. In the same period wheat had risen from 55s. to 70s. per quarter. It will be seen at once from that that this 1s. per quarter on corn is infinitesimal, compared with what may take place, not only in the event of a corner in grain, but on the mere suspicion of a war between this country and Russia, or France, or the United States. I trust, therefore, that the House will give more attention to the practical considerations of the expediency of this tax than to the profitless discussion of who is going to bear it. Certain Radical newspapers have told us during the last few days that this shipping combination is only for the purpose of raising freights, and that it will do no harm to this country. Whether it is for the purpose of raising freights or for the purpose of raising the price of corn, I believe it outrages the teaching of political economy quite as much as the placing of a Protectionist tax on imported corn.
  In conclusion, let me urge this House to bear in mind that we have recently seen a ring of American capitalists acquiring our steamships, and that, in
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  the opinion of many shipowners, is a much more serious matter than the country has yet realised. Whatever may be the effect in time of peace, the effect will be much more serious in time of war. It has become necessary to broaden the basis of our taxation, and, considering that we have recently raised the tax upon sugar, I venture to think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in placing this duty on corn, will have, if not the unanimous approval of the country, at any rate, the approval of the country whole.
  Mr. CHARLES DOUGLAS, said: It has been one of the charms of this debate that we have had such full and fervent assurances from hon. Gentlemen opposite that they are confirmed and convinced Free Traders. Their assurances have a merit which does not always belong to speeches, viz., that they have distinctly contributed to our knowledge, for if they had not told us they were Free Traders, we never should have known it. The House is fully conscious that the matter we are discussing is a large and serious one. An attempt has been made to belittle the importance of the proposal by speaking of the smallness of the suggested tax, but in spite of that attempt, it cannot be concealed that the question is a far-reaching one. Everyone must recognise that a tax upon the food of the people is, in itself, a thing serious, and to be avoided if possible. It is a direct burden upon labour, and it increases the cost of maintenance and diminishes the purchasing power of labour. Such a tax is far more serious when placed upon the food which is cheapest, because it places the heaviest burden, not only proportionately, but actually, on those who are the poorest earners and the largest consumers. This is of extreme importance when we consider it in relation to the fact that there is a very considerable class of earners who work for a wage below that which is necessary for their proper and normal maintenance. The grisly and menacing facts brought out by Mr. Rowntree and Mr. Booth are clear evidence that the number of such labourers is very considerable. I regard the presence of these

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  under-fed and under-paid men as a menace as well as a discredit to the future of this country, and it is a matter which will have to be dealt with by drastic measures before many years are past. It is a serious fact that there exists this great mass of our working population for whom each day's labour under present conditions is so much leakage of life. Each day's labour is a day nearer, not to progress and life, but to death and extinction by what is physiologically starvation. In the presence of such a fact we cannot but realise what it means to levy a tax on bread.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer shares the view expressed on both sides of the House, that the tax-gatherer is the best school-master. For my part, I wish this potent schoolmaster had begun his tuition at some other point in the social scale. When he has to teach his lesson against extravagance, I think there are homes to which he might be sent before he goes to that of the widow with half-a-dozen children and only 12s. or 15s. a week on which to feed them. This schoolmaster has been placed on an even higher plane by the noble Lord the Member for South Kensington, who imparted almost a religious character to the value of taxation. I do not know that the privilege of paying taxes is always appreciated by people in any rank of life. I have heard that taxes are apt to be evaded by those who find themselves able to evade them, as a working man cannot do in the case of a tax on bread. Surely it is a very serious matter that we should deliberately proceed to widen the area in which there exists the state of things I have described, and to increase the number of those whose labour is not really a means of life, but an avenue to death.
  The official argument on this subject, to begin with, was that the tax would not lie on the consumer in this country—that it would be paid by the foreigners—(who seem to be much better people than we have hitherto been led to believe)—by benevolent shareholders in American railways undertaking the carriage of corn at a cheaper rate in order that we should get it here at the same price. That argument requires no answer from this side of the House; it has already been most fully and definitely answered on the side from
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  which it proceeded. The Chancellor's argument in proposing this tax is that it does not rest on the consumer in this country; the argument of the noble Lord the Member for South Kensington in defending it is that it does lie on the consumer here, and that it is both his duty and his highest privilege to pay such a tax. Then the excuse was made that the tax was too slight to affect the price of bread, but it has been conclusively shown that it has already done so. We, on this side, need not press for an extreme Anew on this subject. We may admit that the tax is one-eighth of a penny on a 4lb. loaf, and that the rise which has taken place does not represent the permanent effect of the imposition of the tax, and that the permanent increase in price may represent nothing more nor less than the actual amount imposed. But over a period of years this tax—which is not a war tax, but a permanent imposition—will stimulate the rise and retard the fall, and make itself felt over the average price paid by the eater of bread. The price of bread fluctuates, but the maximum and the minimum alike will be heightened by what we are asked to do tonight.
  Moreover, we have no security that this tax will not be increased. On the contrary, there is strong reason for believing that it will be. It is a tax which can readily and easily be increased. Any argument which is accepted tonight as justifying the imposition of the tax this year will apply equally to the imposition of an increase of a similar amount next year or in any future year. If 3d. makes no difference on the present price, what difference will another 3d. make on any future price? But this is a tax for the increase of which several motives or reasons may be given and the main objection to this proposal is that in its principle, essence, and effect, it is Protective. I do not say that it is intentionally or deliberately Protective. This would be a bettor world if the effects of men's actions were always limited to their intentions. The tax has undoubtedly been supported, because it is Protective. There would be no enthusiasm for it, whatever grudging submission to it there might be, if it were not supposed to be Protective. The enthusiasm of its warmest supporters

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  would be much lessened if it were proposed to accompany it by a corresponding Excise duty on the production of wheat in this country.
  It is not only a Protective tax, but it is the only tax of this character that we have in this country. Whereas the only motive for the increase of all other taxes is simply the revenue they bring in, a Protective tax has the support of those who have an interest in having it increased so that their industry may prosper under it. You will have a new force in favour of a certain kind of taxation, and it is difficult to estimate the effect of that force. This tax stimulates the movement—which I think is more powerful than is sometimes imagined—in favour of Protective finance. It gives the encouragement of a first success, and it introduces a new fact—a protected industry—which does not now exist. Now we are not entitled merely to say in the abstract that this or any other tax is the thin end of the wedge of Protection unless we show what motive it gives for further progress in that direction; and the great motive which I think is bound to lead to further Protection is the inequality of the incidence of this tax. It raises questions between rival interests, and, while it does so, it must engender a perpetual discussion of its Protective merits, and those of other taxes that might be proposed instead of, or in connection with it. There will be the claims of industries to equal treatment. If this duty be imposed, Protection becomes a real factor in our fiscal system. If we persist in levying this tax it must really govern the future of our finance. On the figures of 1901 the present tax on wheat yields about £1,000,000 on grains that are used chiefly for feeding stuffs. That tax is in favour of the British producer of those grains, but it is against the feeder of British stock. It is a bounty in favour of the producer of stock abroad; and to the incidence of this part of the tax on the stock-raising industry you must add, the rise in price of home grown and imported feeding stuff, on which no tax is levied but which have already risen in price, and which are bound to rise in response to and in sympathy with this tax. This incidental inequality between two agricultural industries cannot be avoided under this Bill. It is not
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  an accidental but a necessary consequence of a tax on grain. You cannot avoid it by taxing one kind of grain and not another; you cannot distinguish between the purposes for which grain is to be used and for which it is imported. You cannot have a grain tax at all without creating inequalities between these two great branches of agriculture. The tax levied on the imports of this raw material amounts in the case of maize to upwards of 5½ per cent. of its total value, and involves a substantial increase in the cost of the produce. It gives a substantial advantage to the foreign producer. £1,000,000 is a heavy burden for an industry in which there is keen competition. In the case of pork the addition amounts to two shillings per cwt., and represents about 3 per cent. of the total value of the produce. In regard to poultry, the additional cost in egg-production would be over 3 per cent. on value. These instances do not stand alone, but they are two typical agricultural industries, chiefly pursued by small farmers, largely dependent on foreign grain, and subjected to very keen competition from abroad. The right hon. Gentleman was asked whether he intended to place a countervailing duty on foreign beef and pork to enable the British farmer to compete with beef and pork fed on untaxed grain, and he said—
  "No, the British farmer can easily feed his stock with home grown grain if he prefers it."
  That is to say, the people may evade the tax by using home grown grain. Now in what circumstances would home grown grain be used instead of foreign grain? Obviously only when the taxation imposed had made foreign grain dearer than home grown grain would be. Then the home grain grower makes a new profit, and the Exchequer gets nothing. But does the buyer evade the tax? Really he pays it as much as ever, and the Chancellor's solution is that one set of farmers are to pay taxes to another, while the State gets nothing out of either. This is "broadening the basis of taxation"!
  A tax on grain affects not only that part of the supply which is taxed, but also that which is not. Increased cost of imported grain means increased cost of British grain. It also means higher cost of feeding stuffs with which

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  grain competes. This is so important a point that it ought to be considered in addition to the other arguments which have been brought against the tax. This part of the tax gives a definite bonus of at least £1,000,000, and we do not know how much more, to the foreign producer of meat, and it places the British stock farmers at a disadvantage in competing with his foreign rivals. In connection with the coal tax last year the right hon. Gentleman said the foreigner would through that tax pay his share toward the cost of the war. I suppose this bonus to the foreign producer is some return for paying that share. Our policy in the past has been to allow stock farmers in this country to have the benefit along with their foreign competitors of the chief grain produced abroad. The result of that policy has been that, great as are our imports of animal produce, and greatly as they have increased, our home production has grown also. If you reverse that policy you destroy its result. If we had not repealed the corn duty it is evident we should have been in a much worse position in respect of stock farming than we now are. If we had allowed our foreign competitors to have the whole advantage of cheap grain, we should have suffered a loss of which the best measure is given by the rate of increase in our imports of grain. The advantage in competition which foreign grain growers have had would have been gained by foreign stock farmers also. We should have lost the ability to compete with foreign stock farmers, as well as the cheap food which our policy has secured. That is the loss we are now invited to incur.
  This tax creates a serious inequality, not as between stock and grain farmers, but between different districts of the country. Obviously for grain growing districts it is advantageous, but for Scotland and Ireland, which devote a much larger proportion of their agricultural work to the production of stock, it is a sheer loss to the farmer as well as everyone else.
  The only possible remedy for the inequalities created by a tax on grain is a corresponding tax on animal produce If you persist in taxing grain, I believe that a corresponding tax on animal
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  products will, within measurable distance, become inevitable. Such a tax would be an act of common justice to stock and dairy farmers. Then, again, the value of the respective products is very important. That which is untaxed is more than twice that which is now proposed to be taxed—more than three times as great as the total value of wheat and flour. An ad valorem duty on all animal products imported, equal in proportion to the duty now proposed would yield £6,500,000 of revenue. Moreover the food that would be taxed if a duty were placed on these animal products would he a dearer kind of food, the food of the richer consumer, which would be a far more legitimate object of taxation. Such a tax would produce endless complications. Even the present tax affects forty articles, but how many would you affect if you laid a tax on all the produce of stock and dairy farms? This is our first object lesson, and apparently only our first, in broadening the basis of taxation. It means, in effect, that kind of taxation which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has always hitherto condemned, a large and complicated tariff, with small revenues derived from a large number of articles; since a tax on raw material implies either a tax on every manufactured product or a disadvantage to the home-industry.
  My object has been to show not that such taxation is right or necessary, but that it is a consequence which must result if we persist in levying a tax on the raw material of stock farming and similar industries. The effects of a tax on grain are not now so simple as they were in 1868. You are introducing the tax into a great industrial system which has grown up under the influence of Tree Trade. Such a tax vitiates the whole system of national finance. Any Protective tax of this kind requires the protection of everything that is produced by the labour or from the animals whose food is a taxed import. Failure to afford such protection means loss to the industry which is taxed, and gain to the foreign competitor. We are at the dividing of the ways in national finance. There is more at stake than the mere incidence, of national burdens. It is vitally important to turn the minds of

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  the people, of whatever class or occupation, to the task and duty of gaining and promoting science, knowledge, and skill in business, on which success in industry depends. The effect of such measures as this is in the end to divert their minds from these vital issues, and to attract their attention and political efforts to the task of securing advantages at the expense of the public. Free Trade has been not only a great incentive to commerce, but it has formed a bond of union and agreement between all classes of the people; it gives a security for equal treatment that no tariff can give; it bars out those rivalries and jealousies which are the greatest dangers, not only to the material prosperity, but also to the moral fibre of the country and the goodwill of the people. It is more than a mere fiscal expedient, if is a pledge that one class of people shall not be impoverished to enrich another. By such a proposal as this you withdraw that pledge, and diminish the confidence and goodwill between different sections of the community. The Government have had no mandate to introduce any such policy as this. I do not suppose that 1 per cent. of those who voted for the return of hon. Members opposite believed that any such measure was possible and we have had some evidence already that the country will not endorse it. In the earlier stages of this discussion we were taunted with timidity.
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  There is some timidity, but it is not on this side of the House, it is rather in minds of those who began by calling a corn tax a registration duty, who tried to evade the most obvious consequences of their action, and who have never yet decided on a consistent theory as to the future effect of the tax, but who say in one breath that the working men of this country will pay the tax willingly and in the next that they will not pay at all. Their fears are well founded, and our anxieties are no less justified when we see the occasion of this war being used to urge the House to a course which we believe will be injurious to the interests of the country and the contentment of the people.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (Tower Hamlets, Poplar) moved the adjournment of the debate.
  Debate adjourned till tomorrow.

BISHOPRIC OF SOUTHWARK BILL.
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)

CLAUSE 1.
Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Friday 13th June.
Adjourned at twenty-five minutes after Twelve o'clock.