Commons Sitting of 27 October 1902

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

IMPRISONMENT OF A MEMBER.
MR. SPEAKERinformed the House that he had received the following letter relating to the imprisonment of a Member—
"58, Palmerston Road,
"Dublin,
"25th October, 1902.
"SIR,—I beg to inform you that in the hearing of an appeal by James Patrick Farrell, Esq., Member of Parliament for the North Division of Longford, against orders of a Court of Summary Jurisdiction formed pursuant to the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, upon a summons,
"That he, the said James Patrick Farrell, between the 15th July, 1902, and the 8th September, 1902, did, by the publication of certain matter in a certain newspaper, called the Longford Leader, in the town of Longford, in the urban district of Longford, same being a proclaimed district under the provisions of the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act. 1887, wrongfully and without legal authority unlawfully use intimidation towards one William Martin, in consequence of the said William Martin having done certain acts which he had a legal right to do, namely, having taken legal proceedings to recover, and for having by such legal proceedings recovered possession of certain lands and premises theretofore occupied by one Patrick Hughes.
"And, further, that he, the said James Patrick Farrell, between the said 15th July 1902, and the 8th day of September, 1902, did, by the publication of certain matter in the said newspaper, called the Longford Leader, in the said town of Longford, in the said urban district of Longford, same being a proclaimed district as aforesaid, wrongfully and without legal authority unlawfully incite certain persons, whose names are unknown, unlawfully to use intimidation towards one William Martin in consequence of the said William Martin having done certain acts which he had a legal right to do, namely, having taken legal proceedings to recover, and for having recovered, possession of certain lands and premises theretofore occupied by one Patrick Hughes.
"And, further, that he, the said James Patrick Farrell, between the said 15th day of July, 1902 and the said 8th day of September, 1902, did, by the publication of certain matter in the said newspaper called the Longford Leader, in the said town of Longford, in the said urban district of Longford, same being a proclaimed district as aforesaid, wrongfully and without legal authority unlawfully use intimidation towards Patrick M. O'Reilly and other persons whose names are unknown, to wit, persons who had taken, used, or occupied farms of land from which tenants had been evicted in consequence of the said Patrick M. O'Reilly and such other persons as aforesaid having done acts which they had a legal right to do,
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namely, to take, use, and occupy such farms as aforesaid.
"And further that he, the said James Patrick Farrell, between the said 15th day of July, 1902, and the said 8th day of September, 1902, did, by the publication of certain matter in the said newspaper, called the Longford Leader, in the said town of Longford, in the said urban district of Long ford, same being a proclaimed, district as aforesaid, wrongfully and without legal authority, unlawfully incite certain persons, whose names are unknown, unlawfully to use intimidation towards Patrick M. O'Reilly and other persons, whose names are unknown, to wit, persons who had taken, used, or occupied farms of land from which tenants had been evicted in consequence of the said Patrick M. O'Reilly and such other persons as aforesaid having done acts which they had a legal right to do, namely, to take, use, and occupy such farms as aforesaid.
"And further, that he, the said James Patrick Farrell, between the said 15th day of July, 1902, and the said 8th day of September, 1902, did, by the publication of certain matter in the said newspaper called the Longford Leader, in the said urban district of Longford, same being a proclaimed district as aforesaid, wrongfully and without legal authority unlawfully use intimidation towards certain persons whose names are unknown, to wit, persons who had not theretofore joined or become members of a certain society or association commonly called the United Irish League, with a view to cause said persons to do an act which they had a legal right to abstain from doing, namely, to join or become members of the said society or association commonly called the United Irish League.
"I, on the 24th day of October instant, convicted the said James Patrick Farrell, Esq., on the said several five charges, and sentenced him to one calendar month's imprisonment with hard labour on each of the said first four counts.
"And to two calendar months' imprisonment with hard labour on the fifth charge, and at the expiration of that period to find sureties for his good behaviour for twelve calendar months, himself in £50, and two sureties of £25 each, and, in default of finding such sureties, to be imprisoned for a further term of one calendar month, except such recognisance be sooner entered into, each and all said sentences to run concurrently.
"I take the liberty of adding that after I had pronounced sentence, I informed the said James Patrick Farrell, Esq., that if he would promise me to cease publishing in his newspaper, boycotting notices or intimidatory matter, by means of which he was creating a state of terrorism in the county, I should remove the rule of bail and remit so much of the sentence as imposed hard labour.
"This Mr. Farrell point blank refused to do.
"Therefore my sentence as pronounced stood.
"I have the honour to remain, Sir,
"Your obedient servant.
"JOHN ADYE CURRAN,
"County Court Judge and Chairman of Quarter Sessions for the County Longford.
"To The Rt. Hon. William Court Gully, K.C.,
"Speaker of the House of Commons,
"Speaker's House,
"Westminster, S. W."

UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
  WATER PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  WICK BURGH EXTENSION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  Read a second time; to be considered tomorrow.

  LONDON UNITED ELECTRIC RAILWAYS BILL.
  MR. PERKS: May I ask if the Motion which stands on the Paper, which proposes to substitute the names of promoters of a Bill which has been reported to the House by a Committee as withdrawn, is in order?
  MR. SPEAKER: The first Motion is to recommit the Bill. Does the hon. Member oppose that?
  MR. PERKS: Yes.
  MR. SPEAKER: Then the Motion must stand over.
  MR. PERKS: On the Instruction, I beg to ask whether it is in order?
  MR. SPEAKER: There is a Motion to recommit the Bill, and that must be dealt with before any question can arise on an Instruction. It can in any case only arise if the Motion to recommit is carried.
  MR. PERKS: But is a Motion to recommit the Bill in order when the Bill has already been reported as withdrawn?
  MR. SPEAKER: That was not the hon. Member's question. The hon. Member has taken objection to the Motion, and the matter will now stand over till Wednesday. My impression is that it is not in order, but I understand the hon. Member who set it down desires to call my attention to some precedents.

PETITIONS.
  CANADIAN CATTLE (IMPORTATION).
  Petitions for abolition of restrictions: from Stainland; Sowerby Bridge; Hebden Bridge (two); Boldon; Haltwhistle; Wainstalls; Midgley and Blaenavon; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions against: from Todmorden; Hebden Bridge Leicester; and Stewarton; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions for alteration: from Stainland; Hebden Bridge (two); Haltwhistle; Wainstalls; Midgley; Boldon; and Blaenavon to lie upon the Table.
  IMPERIAL DEFENCE SCHEME.
  Petition from Baildon, for adoption; to lie upon the Table.
  OLD AGE PENSION SCHEME.
  Petition from Baildon, for adoption; to: lie upon the Table.
  PLUMBERS' REGISTRATION BILL.
  Petition from Leamington, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  PREVENTION OF CORRUPTION IN TRADE.
  Petitions for legislation: from Stainland; Sowerby Bridge; Hebden Bridge (two); Haltwhistle; Boldon; Blaenavon; Wainstalls; and Midgley; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  INEBRIATES' REGULATIONS.
  Copy presented, of Regulations made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department by virtue of Section 20 of the Inebriates Act, 1898, for carrying into effect the provisions of Section 5 of the Licensing Act, 1902, respecting the detention of Inebriates committed to Retreats [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 361.]
  COLONIAL CONFERENCE, 1902.
  Copy presented, of Conference between the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Prime Ministers of the Self-governing Colonies, June-August, 1902 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL.)
  Copy presented, of Colonial Reports, No. 369 (Hong Kong, Annual Report for 1901) [by Command]: to lie upon the Table.
  Paper laid upon the Table by the Clerk of the House.
  Inquiry into Charities (County of Montgomery), further Return relative thereto [ordered 14th February, 1900; Mr. Grant Lawson]; to be printed.[No.362.]

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

    Somaliland Operations—Cost.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether any, and, if so, what portion of the cost of the Somali War will be borne by the revenues of India, or will the whole cost be borne by British revenues; do His Majesty's Government propose to submit any estimates and to ask for any grants for the cost of this war; and, if so, when; and, if estimates are to be submitted, will they be submitted as military or as Civil Service Estimates.
    (Answered by Mr Ritchie.) India has ceased to have any interest in Somaliland, which is a Protectorate under the Foreign Office. The whole cost of the operations against the Mullah will be borne by Somaliland Protectorate funds, supplemented by a grant in aid from Imperial funds. There is already a grant in aid this year of £25,000 under the Protectorates Vote in connection with these military operations; but it is of course probable that before 31st March next an additional grant will be necessary. If so, it would be borne by Civil Estimates like the original grant in aid.

    Congo—Arrest of Mr. Rabinek.
    SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, if he can say whether in the Rabinek case the prisoner was taken by the Congolese authorities from a British ship in British waters; and, if so, what course His Majesty's Government propose to adopt.
    (Answered, by Lord Cranborne.) It is at present uncertain whether Mr. Rabinek was actually on board a British vessel when arrested, or whether the ship was at the time in British waters. Inquiries are, however, being made, and on receipt of definite information His Majesty's
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    Government will be in a position to consider what action should be taken in the matter.

    Waima Arbitration.
    MR. C. BILL: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the award of the arbitrator in the Waima case has been accepted by the French Government; when the compensation money will be paid; and how will it lie distributed.
    (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) The French Government have informed His Majesty's Government that the compensation money will be paid as soon as the sanction of the Chamber can be obtained. It is proposed to distribute the amount, £9,000, in the proportion of—.£4,000 to the widow and three children of Lieutenant Listen; £2,000 to the mother of Captain Lendy;£2,000 to the mother of Second Lieutenant Wroughton; £1,000 among the families of the non-commissioned officers and men of the West India Regiment and the Sierra Leone Frontier Police who were killed, and among the non-commissioned officers and men of those forces who have sustained permanent injury in consequence of the wounds which they then received. Of course the sums actually distributed in the several cases where advances of the compensation money have already been made will be less than those I have mentioned by the amounts advanced.

    Russia and Afghanistan.
    SIR SEYMOUR KING: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will lay upon the Table copies of the communications which have passed between the Russian and British Governments on the subject of the Russian proposal to establish certain relations with Afghanistan.
    (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) The matter to which my hon. friend refers is the subject of communications which are still proceeding between the British and Russian Governments. No Papers can be presented at present.

    Avoch (Ross-shire) Lights.
    MR. WEIR: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether arrangements will be made for

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    the scheme for four lighted buoys and one lighted beacon for marking the channel off Avoch, Ross-shire, to be carried into effect next year.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) The scheme for lighting the channel off Avoch, Ross-shire, will be considered with other proposals for new works in connection with the Estimates for the next financial year.

    Braunton (North Devon) Lighthouse.
    MR. SOARES: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will see that the necessary steps are taken in order to provide the money to be expended in connecting Braunton Lighthouse, in North Devon, with the telephone.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I understand that the Post Office authorities have at present no funds available for this purpose, but that the: work will be one of the first to be undertaken in the next financial year.

    Strangford Lough Lights—Wreck of the "William Bailey."
    MR. H. C. RICHARDS: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will call the attention of the Irish Lights Commissioners to the fact that a steamer, the "William Bailey," has been wrecked near Rock Angus, at the entrance to the Strangford Lough; and whether he is aware that the light house erected thereon sixty years ago is still unprovided with any light or beacon, and is in a dangerous condition; and will he say whether he proposes to take any steps with regard to the constitution of the Irish Light Commission.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I have communicated with the Commissioners of Irish Lights, and am informed; by them that the steamer in question was stranded during hazy weather off Tara, which is two miles north of the entrance to Strangford Lough. It would appear that she was not, in fact, endeavouring to enter the Lough. The Commissioners had already informed me that the beacon tower on Rock Angus had never been lighted because it was found useless to vessels seeking shelter
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    without leading lights to guide past the dangers at the entrance of Strangford Lough and up to Audley and Cross Roads anchorages, but that they were not aware that the tower was in a dangerous condition. The reply to the final part of the Question is in the negative.

    Case of Typhus Fever at Ness, Lewis.
    MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that the hovel in which a man named Mackay recently died of typhus fever in the district of Ness, Island of Lewis, was unfit for human habitation, will he state why he was allowed by the public health authorities to remain in this insanitary dwelling and thus imperil the public health of this district.
    (Answered by Mr. Graham Murray.) I am informed that the local medical officer of health is of opinion that the house was unfit for habitation, and should be burnt. In the meantime it is unoccupied, and has been closed. It is for the local authority to consider, in light of all the circumstances as disclosed to them, whether it is better to take steps for a particular patient's removal, or to refrain from doing so.

    Sheshader Footpath.
    MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord Advocate if he can state when the footpath which is being constructed from the township of Sheshader to Aird School for the use of the ninety children attending the school is likely to be completed.
    (Answered by Mr. Graham Murray.) The footpath in question is expected to be finished by the end of next month.

    Telegraph Learners—Competitive Examinations.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: To ask the Postmaster General if he can state the number of candidates and vacancies for the post of telegraph learner in London in the last open competition at which the prospect of attaining a salary of £190 per annum was held out to the competitors by the Civil Service Commissioners; and also the number of candidates a ad vacancies for the post

    797
    of male learner in London in the last open competition, held in 1902, as well as the number of marks obtained by the highest successful competitor in each case and the percentage they represent of the aggregate.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) The last open competition for the situation of male telegraph learner in London at which the prospect of attaining a salary of £190 per annum was held out to competitors by the Civil Service Commissioners was held on the 21st January, 1890. On that occasion 415 candidates competed for seventy situations. The first successful candidate: obtained 927 marks out of 1,000, or 92·7 per cent. The last open competition for male learner was held on the 1st of August, 1902, when 88 candidates competed for 75 situations. The first: successful candidate obtained 1,604 marks out of 1,900, or 84·42 per cent.

    Belfast Postal Arrangements.
    MR. MACARTNEY: To ask the Postmaster General whether his attention has been called to the time which elapses between the arrival of the English mail at the General Post Office, Belfast, and the despatch of the letters therefrom for delivery; and whether any steps can be taken to mitigate the inconvenience caused to the public by such delay, especially on Saturdays.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) This matter was already engaging the, attention of the responsible officers, and proposals are being prepared for a revision of the outdoor staff, with the view of expediting the delivery as much as possible. The delay in commencing the delivery is frequently due to the late arrival of the mails at Belfast.

    Reading Postal Staff.
    MR. GEORGE PALMER: To ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that certain learners at the Beading Post Office have been punished by the infliction of extra duty for incorrectly addressing envelopes; and will he state if the course followed on this occasion by the authorities has his approval.
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    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) I am aware that certain learners at the Beading Post Office have been punished, as stated, for careless performance of their duties, leading to serious delay in the delivery of telegrams, and to great inconvenience to the public. I see no reason to interfere in the matter.

    County Sligo Postal Arrangements.
    MR. O'DOWD: To ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that, owing to the present postal arrangements, letters delivered in the Kilfree, County Sligo, postal district cannot be replied to the same day, although the post leaves Gurteen, three miles distant, at 5.20 p.m. daily; and whether arrangements can be made by which the rural letter carrier can take the mails in time to meet the evening post leaving Gurteen.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) As I explained, in answer to a similar Question of the hon. Member's in February last, no improvement in the postal service from Kilfree can be effected without additional expense, which, owing to the comparatively high cost of the present service, I should not be justified in incurring.

    Leek Post Office.
    MR. C. BILL: To ask the Postmaster General whether, considering the amount of accommodation at the present post office at Leek, it is intended to commence the building of the new post office as soon as possible.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain) The plans for the new post office at Leek are under consideration, but it is impossible to state at present when the building will be commenced.

    Muzzling Order in Carmarthenshire.
    MR. LLOYD MORGAN: To ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is now in a position to state when he hopes to be able to withdraw the Muzzling Order which is in force in the County of Carmarthen.
    (Answered by Mr. Hanbury.) The position of Carmarthenshire in regard to rabies

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    is much more satisfactory than it was, no case of the disease having been reported since the 6th May last. I hope, therefore, that it may be possible for me, if no further outbreak occurs, to withdraw the Order at no very distant date; but as the hon. Member himself pointed out in Committee of Supply, Muzzling Orders have not hitherto been attended with the same success in this county as elsewhere, such Orders having had to be re-imposed on three separate occasions, shortly after their withdrawal. I am very anxious to take every precaution to avoid a similar occurrence on the present occasion, and to be quite satisfied that the Orders have done their work.

    Adulteration of Dairy Products—Proposed International Conference.
    SIR EDWARD STRACHEY: To ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether the Board of Agriculture has invited the Belgian or any Governments to a conference on the subject of the adulteration of dairy products, with the view of preventing such adulteration.
    (Answered by Mr. Hanbury.) No such invitation as that referred to has been issued. A resolution was adopted at a conference held in April last, under the auspices of the National Dairy Society of Belgium, calling on the Belgian Government to submit to the Governments of the various foreign countries interested in the butter industry a proposal to appoint an International Conference with a view to adopt some Common basis of legislation as a means to prevent the exportation of adulterated butter, but, so far as I am aware, no official action has as yet been taken in this direction.

    Somaliland Operations—Hospital Arrangements at Aden.
    MR. MOON: To ask the Secretary of State for India, what hospital accommodation and number of nurses are available at Aden for European officers and native troops engaged in Somaliland.
    (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) The hospital accommodation at Aden for native troops consists of seventy-eight beds, of which forty are vacant,
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    and more could probably be arranged for. A native field hospital is about to be sent there immediately. European officers can be accommodated at the Station Hospital, where there are two European nurses.

    Indian Universities Commission Report.
    MR. CAINETo ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been directed to the Report of the Indian Universities Commission; whether any educational policy that may be founded upon the will be carried into effect by resolution of the Government of India or by legislation; and whether, before giving his sanction to any such policy, he will give the House of Commons an opportunity of discussing the matter.
    (Answered by Secretary Lord George, Hamilton.) I have seen the Report of the Indian Universities Commission, which has been referred to the local governments for their opinions. When those opinions have been obtained by the Government of India the Report will be further considered, but at present it is premature to attempt to anticipate the form in which the policy that may he adopted will be announced. Nor can I undertake that before that policy is adopted it will be submitted for discussion in the House of Commons.
    MR. CAINE: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that at one time the only law college in Bengal was in connection with the Presidency College; that, on the affiliation of the other law classes, students left the Presidency College for those classes, where the fees were lower; and that the Government thereupon abolished the Presidency College classes in law; and, whether it is now proposed to revive the Presidency College classes in law and to abolish the affiliated classes.
    (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) The proposal referred to in the Question is contained in the Report of the Indian Universities Commission (paragraphs 121 and 122). As I have said, in answer to the preceding Question, I understand that the Government of India have not yet arrived at any conclusion on the subject.
    MR. CAINE: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the recommendations of the Indian Universities Commission, and to the proposed closing of local law classes: and whether he will protect the interests of the poorer students from suffering through increase of fees.
    (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) I beg to refer the hon. Member to my answer to the last Question but one. The matter referred to will not be lost sight of by the Government of India, who. I am confident, will take due account of the interests of the poorer students.

    Rosslare Railway Company—Damage to Roads in South Wexford.
    MR. FFRENCH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that some of the roads in South Wexford have become almost impassable owing to the damage that has been done by traction engines hauling materials for the Rosslare Railway Company; and whether he will endeavour by legislation or otherwise to compel the owners of traction engines in all such cases either to repair the damage or contribute to the upkeep of the roads.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) Representations have been made to the effect stated in the first part of the Question. Legislation would be necessary to confer on local authorities in Ireland powers analogous to those conferred on local authorities in England in recovering damages for excessive wear of highways by reason of extraordinary traffic The question of legislating for Ireland in this direction is under consideration.

    Promotion Claims of Re-employed and Reserve Officers.
    COLONEL LEGGE: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will consider the claims to promotion of re-employed and reserve officers of Regiments and Departments who have been serving at home during the late war in South Africa, and whose services are still being utilised.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) Among the re-employed and reserve officers whose promotions were gazetted
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    on the 17th instant the names of some who are still employed will be found. Should further cases arise of such officers who had not then completed the qualifying service of eighteen months' re-employment at home and who are recommended for promotion, they will be duly considered.

    Army Hair Brushes.
    MR. SOARES: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that hair brushes are distributed free to the Cavalry but not to the Infantry; and will he explain the reason of the distinction.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) If the hon. Member will kindly refer to Army Order 244 of October 1902, he will find that the issue of a hair brush has been sanctioned for each soldier of the Foot Guards, Infantry of the Line, and Royal Army Medical Corps.

    South African War—Transport—Overcrowding on the "Drayton Grange."
    MR. H. C. RICHARDS: To ask the Secretary of State for War when the evidence and report of the inquiry as to the lack of medical stores and dangerous overcrowding on the "Drayton Grange" will be laid upon the Table of the House of Commons; and whether he will state what action he proposes to take in the matter.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The report has not yet reached the War Office.

    Hong Kong Post Office.
    MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in view of the fact that a site for a new post office at Hong Kong has been purchased, will he state when it is proposed to proceed with the construction of the building.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Chamberlain.) Designs for the new buildings were to have been invited locally, but the calling for designs was postponed pending the Secretary of State's decision as to the proposals for providing quarters for the Chinese Post Office staff on the existing post office site, which involved an alteration in the conditions on which

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    the purchase of the site for the new post office was sanctioned. The Secretary of State's decision was given in a despatch of 4th September, so the Governor has got it by now, and will no doubt call for designs.

    Sierra Leone Government Steam Launch.
    MR. MOON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether the steam launch recently provided for the Sierra Leone Government at a cost of £4,805 has since been sold for less than half its cost.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Chamberlain.) There is no foundation for the statement that the launch recently provided for the Sierra Leone Government, at a cost of £4,805 has since been sold for less than half its cost.

    Secondee Pier.
    MR. MOON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any official reports showing that no steamers, but only small lighters at low water, are able to use the pier at Secondee recently completed at the cost of £26,887, and whether a crane at the end of the pier is so built that it cannot lift boilers or other heavy pieces of railway material on to the trucks on the pier; and will he say by whose advice a pier was constructed where it is.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Chamberlain.) The pier at Secondee was constructed for the use of small steamers and lighters whose draught does not exceed five feet, and such vessels are able to use it. There are four cranes on the pier, three of which can now and always could lift boilers or other heavy articles up to four tons in weight, direct into trucks; and the fourth crane (a ten-ton one), which could originally only lift boilers or other articles of exceptional bulk on to the deck of the pier, has since been raised fire feet, thus enabling it to lift them on to the trucks. The pier was constructed where it is by the advice of Messrs. Coode, Son, and Matthews, the well-known engineers.

    Cirencester Board School and Voluntary Schools.
    SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether his attention has been directed
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    to the case of some children who, having been attending a Church school and having been taken away from that school, their parents being dissatisfied with it, were refused admission to the Cirencester board schools; and, seeing that after the refusal of the School Board to admit the children the parents were fined for neglecting to send their children to school, can he state the grounds on which admission was refused by the School Board, and whether in such cases regard can be had to the wishes of the parents in respect of the training of their children.
    (Answered, by Sir William Anson.) Three children, named Godsell, were removed by their parents from the Cirencester, Watermoor Trinity National School, and were refused admission to the Cirencester, Lewis Lane, Board School, in or about May last. An arrangement existed between the School Board and the managers of voluntary schools in the town forbidding capricious migration of children from school to school. Such arrangements are not uncommon, and they are recognised by the Board of Education as an aid to continuity of teaching. Complaints arising under Article 78 of the Code are dealt with by the Board of Education on their merits. In the present case the parents complained of "unkindness" to the children at the Watermoor School, but sent no reply to a request of the Board of Education that they would specify some instances of unkindness. The Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the School Board interviewed both parents and children, and were satisfied that the complaint was groundless. The Board of Education thereupon supported the School Board in their exclusion of the children as "reasonable" (Article 78).

  (2.15.) QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Repatriation of Boer Prisoners.
    MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what number of those who were prisoners of war at the signing of the terms of peace in South Africa have been sent back to their homes, what number still remain at the places where they were confined, what are the numbers and places respectively, and what arrangements have been made for the return of these.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY To THE WAR OFFICE (Lord STANLEY,): The number of prisoners of war repatriated or en route is about 13,000. The numbers remaining are—at St. Helena, about 200; at Bermuda, about 400; in Ceylon, 2,800; and in Indian camps. 6,200. Arrangements have been made for bringing back 7,000 of those in Ceylon and India before the end of: the year, and the remainder can be sent back very soon afterwards if they have declared allegiance.
    MR. PIRIE: 1 beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, with reference to the fund of.£3,000,000 granted for re-stocking and reinstating Boers on their farms, whether any portion of that sum has been employed in the travelling expenses of the repatriation of the Boer prisoners.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN,): The answer is in the negative. The cost of bringing the Boer prisoners back to the new colonies falls upon Army funds.
    MR. PIRIE: To what use is the fund known as the Repatriation Fund put in South Africa?
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not know to what fund the hon. Member refers. I do not know that any fund is specially called the Repatriation Fund.
    MR. PIRIE: The fund on which cheques are drawn for repatriation purposes. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will inquire.

    Woolwich Arsenal Paymaster and Collection of Income Tax.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will consider the advisability of making arrangements so that Colonel A. B. Williams, now acting as paymaster at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, should not also act as assessor and collector of income duty for the establishment.
    LORD STANLEY: Under the present procedure the paymaster supplies the surveyor of taxes with information as to the wages of the men whose earnings render them liable to income duty, and collects from them the amounts that official states to be due. The money is not deducted from the men's wages, but voluntarily paid to the paymaster. There appears to be no reason whatever for altering this procedure, nor does the hon. Member offer any.

    H.M.S. "Montagu"—Trial Trip.
    SIR WILLIAM ALLAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if His Majesty's battleship "Montagu" has had a trial trip, and if he will state what have been the results, and the condition of the Belleville water-tube boilers after the run.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): The results of the trial trip of the "Montagu" have been unsatisfactory. There was considerable leakage from the joints of sleeves in the boilers, and a number of the lead plugs in the generator tubes blew out, owing to their being incorrectly fitted. The sleeves and plugs are being replaced, and it is anticipated that no further trouble will arise.
    SIR WILLIAM ALLAN: May I ask who bears the expense of repairs to this new battleship under these circumstances?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The contractors for the engines.

    Somaliland Operations—Cost—Financial Obligations of India in matters Imperial.
    MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if any action has been taken between the Imperial and the Indian Governments with regard to the recommendations contained in paragraph 360 of the Report of the Indian Expenditure Commission, urging that His Majesty's Government on the one hand and on the other hand the Secretary of State in Council, after consultation with the Government of India, should

    807
    draw a Treasury Minute authoritatively settling the extent to which India has a direct and substantial interest in certain clearly-defined areas of the Empire outside the boundaries of British India; has such a Minute been prepared and authorised; and, if so, will it be made public.
    I beg also to ask the Secretary of State for India if India is to be held to have any direct or substantial interest in Somaliland; and, if so, to what extent; and will any portion of the cost of the present expedition against the Mullah be chargeable upon Indian Revenues, and to what extent.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON,): Perhaps I may be allowed to answer these two Questions together. If the hon. Gentleman will refer to pages fourteen to seventeen of the Parliamentary Paper, No. 169, which was ordered by this House to be printed in May last, he will see that an agreement has been arrived at as to the matters to which his Question relates, but that it was decided to ratify it by publishing the correspondence on the subject between the Treasury and the India Office, rather than by the drafting of a Treasury minute. He will also see that, under this agreement, the Government of India are not to be regarded as having any direct or substantial interest in the scene of the present operations in Somaliland. Accordingly, no portion of the cost of those operations will be chargeable to Indian Revenues.

    Coronation Medals.
    MR. GEORGE FABER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Coronation medals are all, or any of them, dated 26th June, 1902; and, if so, why, when the date of the Coronation was altered, the date on the medals was not also altered before their issue.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS,): It should be remembered that these medals are the personal gift of the King, and that no Government Department is responsible for them. But it is not, I think, difficult to understand the reasons why the date
    808
    26th June appears on the medals. They were got ready for that date, and to alter them would have taken a long time counting from the date on which the Coronation actually took place, so that they would not have been ready for distribution. Further, it would have cost a considerable sum of money to re-make them, and in all the circumstances to incur further expense in the matter may well have seemed unjustifiable.

    Alterations in the Prayer Book.
    MR. CHARLES M'ARTHUR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that, in a recent edition of the "Book of Common Prayer," the King's printers have made certain alterations from the authorised text, and will he state by whose authority they were made.
    MR. AKERS DOUGLAS: The alterations referred to by my hon. friend raise questions of very great importance and complexity, and involve a long answer which with the permission of the hon. Member I propose to circulate with the Parliamentary Papers.

    Local Loans—Term of Repayment.
    SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he proposes to act upon and carry out the report of the Select Committee on the Term of Repayment of Loans, especially in relation to loans in respect of the better housing of the people; and, if so, when he will introduce legislation for the purpose; or whether the Local Government Board propose to act upon the recommendations in the report as a matter of Departmental administration.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG,): Legislation would be necessary to give effect to some of the recommendations of the Committee, particularly in relation to loans for purposes of the Housing of the Working Classes Acts. It would not be practicable to legislate on the subject during the present Session; but I have the Report of the Committee now under consideration, and I hope shortly to

    809
    arrive at a decision with regard to the proposals in it so far as administrative action is concerned.

    Motor Car Regulations.
    MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he will next session introduce and press forward a Bill to place the law respecting motor cars on a more satisfactory footing, by removing the present hard and fast limit as to speed, by requiring registration, by making the use of public roads by these vehicles subject to respect for the rights, convenience, and safety of all other users thereof, and by enacting a heavy maximum penalty for breaches of these conditions.
    MR. WALTER LONG: In May last, in the debate on the vote for the Local Government Board, I indicated the general lines on which amendment of the law as to motor cars should, as it seemed to me, proceed; but I pointed out that there were considerable difficulties in the way of a settlement of the question, I cannot at the present time give any pledge as to legislative proposals for next session; but it will be a matter of satisfaction to me if I find it practicable to deal with the matter then.

    Alien Immigration Commission.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he has received the Report of the Royal Commission upon Alien Immigration, which was appointed several months ago; and, if not, when he expects to be in possession thereof, or if an instalment of the evidence taken will be laid upon the Table.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): The Royal Commission has not yet made a Report, and I cannot say when it is likely to do so, but I have no doubt its proceedings are being conducted with all necessary despatch.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the pressing nature of this matter, seeing that over 60,000 aliens have come into this country this year?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I have no control over the proceedings of the Royal Commission.

    Underground Telegraph Wires—Wireless Telegraphy.
    SIR JOHN LENG: I beg to ask the Postmaster General if he will state how far underground wires have now been extended in the direction of Scotland; and whether, in the event of another breakdown of overhead telegraph wires, he will arrange for communication being maintained by Marconi's wireless system.
    THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): Pipes and wires have been laid as far as Warrington, and nearly fifty miles of pipes have been put down between Preston and Shap, beyond which point the work has not yet extended. I am afraid that at present the Department could not obtain useful assistance from the Marconi wireless system in such an emergency as that to which the hon. Member refers.

    Open Competitions for the Telegraph Service.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Postmaster General if he can state the number of candidates and vacancies for the post of telegraph learner in London in the last open competition, at which the prospect of attaining a salary of £190 per annum was held out to the competitors by the Civil Service Commissioners; and also the number of candidates and vacancies for the post of male learner in London in. the last open competition held in 1902, as well as the number of marks obtained by the highest successful competitor in. each case and the percentage they represent of the aggregate.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The last open competition for the situation of male telegraph learner in London at which the prospect of attaining a salary of £190 per annum was held out to competitors by the Civil Service Commissioners was held on the 21st January, 1890. On that occasion 415 candidates competed for 70 situations. The first successful candidate obtained 927 marks out of 1,000, or 92·7 per cent.

    811
    The last open competition for male learners was held on the 1st August. 1902, when 88 candidates competed for 75 situations. The first successful candidate obtained 1,604 marks out of 1,900, or 84·42 per cent.

    Conviction of a Metropolitan Policeman for Perjury.
    MR. CULLINAN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General whether he will cause to have laid upon the Table of the House copies of the shorthand writer's report of the trial of Police Constable Rolls in the Central Criminal Court, London.
    THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir ROBERT FINLAY,): There is no intention of doing that. The hon. Member will find the evidence in the records of the Central Criminal Court published this month.
    MR. CULLINAN: Was a special note-taker employed in this case?
    SIR ROBERT FINLAY: I cannot say.

    Glasgow Rectorial Election Disturbances.
    MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether his attention has been called to the serious rioting and disturbances in connection with the rectorial election campaign in Glasgow, and to the fact that an attack was made on the Liberal Committee by the supporters of the opposing candidate, and that police constables were injured; will he say whether any arrests were made in connection with these disturbances; and whether adequate precautions for the protection of life and property during the progress of these rectorial contests in Scotland will be taken by the authorities.
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY,): Inquiry has been made into the occurrences at Glasgow referred to by the hon. Member, and I am informed that they cannot be described as serious, that both political parties among the students have taken part in them, that one policeman was slightly injured but not, it is believed, by the act of a student, that no arrests
    812
    have been made, that no damage has been done to property other than that belonging to the students, and that the assaults on party head-quarters have been carried out in perfect good-humour, and have usually been the prelude to a united smoking concert. The Chief Constable has taken adequate precautions for the protection of life and property, and, in these circumstances, 1 am not prepared to recommend any exceptional measures for the suppression of disorder.
    MR. FLYNN: Is it because the students are supporters of the Chief Secretary that no action will be taken?
    No answer was returned.

    Eligibility of Women under the Education Bill.
    MR. PLUMMER: I beg to ask the Secretary of the Board of Education whether, with a view of making plain the position of women in the work of public education in the future, he will state in what capacities under the provisions of the Education Bill they will be enabled to act.
    THE SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,): Under the Education Bill, women will be eligible for the Boards of Managers of public elementary schools. They will also be eligible for places on the Education Committee of the Local Education Authority. This is plain from the terms of the Bill. It has always been the declared intention of the Government. I may refer the hon. Member to an answer given by the First Lord of the Treasury to a Question in this House on the 10th of April of this year.†

    Meetings on Belfast Custom House Steps—Collections.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will take steps to prohibit the collection of money at the political meetings held every Sunday on Government property in Belfast; and whether he will consult the First Commissioner of Works as to the regulations at present in force in that respect in Hyde Park, London.
    † See (4) Debates, cv., 1456.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYXDHAM,): The collection of money in Hyde Park is prohibited by Statute. I have no power to act as suggested, and do not propose to introduce legislation.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: Is it not the fact that the First Commissioner of Works of the last ten years has made regulations prohibiting the collection of money in Hyde Park, and has not the right hon. Gentleman similar power with regard to Government property in Ireland?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I have said not. The collection in Hyde Park is prohibited under the Parks Regulation Act,1872.

    Sergeant Sullivan, R.I.C.—Evidence of Mr. W. P. Nolan.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as President of the Local Government Hoard of Ireland, whether he has called upon Mr. W. P. Nolan, as one of the clerks of that Board, and as the handwriting expert of the Government in Ireland, for a statement as to the authorship of the forged letter attributed to Sergeant Sullivan; and, if; so, whether Mr. Nolan's Report will be ‡ communicated to the House.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The reply to the first part of this Question is in the negative.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state how often and for how many days Mr. T. P. Nolan has been absent from his duties in the Local Government Board Office, Dublin, for the purpose of working or giving evidence as a handwriting expert; whether he can state what official permitted him to absent himself to give evidence on behalf of Sergeant Sullivan or in other cases in which the Irish Government were interested: what remuneration he received from all sources in each case; and whether any deduction was made from his salary as a Government official by reason of his absence from duty.
    MR. WYNDHAM: No special leave was given to Mr. Nolan for the purpose of engaging in this work or of attending to give evidence. He applied for and obtained leave of absence from the Vice-President of the Board in the ordinary way, from time to time. No deduction from his salary was made when he was. on leave of absence. The payments made to him in respect of his employment as a handwriting expert were as follows:—£21 16s.7d., £19 12s. 4d., £19 17s.3d., £10 12s., £5 5S., £28 8s. 2d.; total, £105 11s. 4d.

    Closing of Irish Prisons.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in view of the number of prosecutions and convictions in Ireland under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, it is intended to re-open the five prisons in Ireland which were closed as unnecessary last December on the order of the General Prisons Board.
    MR. WYNDHAM: It is not proposed to re-open any of the prisons referred to.

    Belfast Orange. Institution.
    MR. DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the hon. Member for South Belfast and Mr. Samuel Boal of Belfast have been summoned to appear before a court of the Orange Institution, with the object of compelling them to adopt a certain course of action; whether he intends to proceed against the persons concerned, under the provisions of The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887; and whether he intends to proclaim the local Orange body as an illegal association.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The reply to this Question is in the negative.

    The Proclamation of the City of Dublin
    MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland why the city of Dublin was proclaimed under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act.
    MR. TULLY: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers the Question—["Order, order‡" from the NATION ALIST Benches]. You are not going to bully me‡
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order‡ The hon. Member has risen to put another Question. That is sometimes done, and it may be in order, but I must first hear the Question.
    MR. TULLY: The Question I wish to ask is whether without this proclamation the right hon. Gentleman could deal with the real offenders as a case of trading under false pretences?
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order‡
    MR. WYNDHAM: The City of Dublin was proclaimed because the Government was advised that a newspaper published there, called the Irish People, had for some weeks contained illegal and criminal matter.
    MR. TULLY: Now will the right hon. Gentleman answer my Question, Does not this paper falsely purport to be edited by Mr. William O'Brien, and has not the hon. Member publicly repudiated it? That's false pretences.
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order‡

    Police Supervision—Case of Pat Meany, Quinn.
    MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, in uniform, have continually followed Pat Meany, of Quinn, since August last to fairs in Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, to the fair of Croom on the 1st of September, Bally-sanders, and Newcastle West 1st October, Tipperary Town 10th October, to Ennis 14th October, and that they are constantly following him; and will he state the reason for this action by the police.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The facts are correctly stated in the Question. The movements of this man are under police supervision because ho is suspected of illegal practice.
    MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: Is a formal charge to be made against this man?
    MR. WYNDHAM: If the evidence justifies it a criminal prosecution will be instituted, and prior to doing that, enquiries must be made.

    Hard Labour Sentences in Ireland.
    MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether ho has observed that Mr. Samuel P. Harris, who was sentenced by Messrs. Horne and Kelly, resident magistrates, to three months imprisonment with hard labour and an additional term of three months in default of giving bail, for a speech at a public meeting, was described by counsel for the Crown as a Protestant gentleman of the highest respectability; and, seeing that if this sentence had been confirmed it would have disqualified Mr. Harris for membership of the District Council of which he is a member, and that County Court Judge Adams declared that he did not want to add to the sentence any unnecessary degradation, and ordered Mr. Harris to be treated as a first class misdemeanant, whether a copy of Judge Adams's judgment will be furnished to the resident magistrates of Ireland.
    MR. WYNDHAM: It has been the rule to furnish resident magistrates with the authorised judgments of the Superior Courts on questions of law arising upon the administration of the Crimes Act. In this case County Court Judge Adams gave his reasons for altering the punishment awarded by the magistrates. It is obvious that his observations on this subject, which have been published in the Metropolitan and local Press, do not fall within the rule, and it is not proposed to circulate them in the manner suggested.
    MR. TULLY: May I ask whether Removable Kelly, who gave this harsh sentence, was one of the noble band of patriots of the Freeman's Journal.
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order‡ I shall have to take strong measures if the hon. Member persists.
    MR. TULLY: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake not to draw any more removables from the staff of the Freeman's Journal?)

    Goods Rates on Irish Railways.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the freight rate charged on goods from Listowel via Waterford to Liverpool is 30s. per ton, while from Newcastle West by the same route, twenty-four miles less land carriage, it is 32s. 6d. per ton; and that the freight from Newcastle West to Limerick is 6s. 3d. per ton, and from: Limerick to Liverpool 25s. per ton, so that the railway company charges 1s. 3d. per ton less for taking in and delivering out goods twice than they do for doing so only once; and will the attention of the Department of Agriculture be called to the matter with the view of facilitating the transit of Irish produce to the English market.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The Department has been in correspondence with the Railway Company in this matter, and has been informed that an exceptional rate of 30s. per ton for butter in casks, boxes, etc., from Newcastle West to Liverpool, via Waterford, has been issued.

    Irish Congested Districts Board Expenditure.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will grant a Return dealing with the expenditure of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland during the eleven years of its existence as distributed over counties scheduled.

    †The Return on the Paper was as follows:—Expenditure in Congested Counties (Ireland)—Return giving Expenditure in the various counties scheduled as congested in Ireland, up to the 31st day of March 1901, in the following; form:—

    Counties.

    Estates purchased.

    Estates improved.

    Marine works

    Inland works.

    Technical instruction.

    Parish committees.

    Planting and fruit growing.

    Industrial free grants.

    Industrial loans.

    Loans for purchase of boats gear.

    Free grants of boats and gear.

    Instruction in boat-building, net making.

    MR. WYNDHAM: I am prepared to give a Return, but it may not be possible to give it in the precise form desired by the hon. Member.† Perhaps he will be good enough to repeat the Question on Thursday next.

    Kerry Fisheries—Coomenaum Slip.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Congested Districts Board for Ireland asked the County Council of Kerry to get their surveyor an estimate of the cost of a slip at Coomenaum, Cahirciveen; whether they objected to his first estimate as too large; whether, when he again sent in an estimate, they objected as being too small; and what steps do they now propose taking with regard to this matter.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Two schemes were submitted. The first was considered impracticable, the second unsuitable. I informed the hon Member on Thursday last that questions dealing with the further expenditure of moneys on works of this character can only be decided after a careful consideration of the whole matter.

    Hard Labour Sentences under the Crimes Act—Suggested Government Instructions to Resident Magistrates.
    MR. ARCHDALE: On behalf of the hon. Member for Mid. Armagh, I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Under Secretary, Sir David Harrel, has given instructions to resident magistrates on the subject of the sentences, or form of sentences, imposed by them in cases brought before them under the provisions of The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Neither directly nor indirectly, verbally or in writing, has the Under Secretary, or any other person connected with the Government, or, so far as 1 am aware, any person unconnected with the Government, ever suggested to any resident magistrate or magistrates what sentence or form of sentence they should impose in cases brought before them under the Grimes Act before, during, or after the hearing of such cases, I desire in the strongest way to resent the suggestion that the resident magistrates in Ireland, in the discharge of their oath-bound duties would be influenced by any consideration, save what they, to the best of their ability, conceive to be the merits and justice of the case before them.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he can explain the remarkable unanimity with which the magistrates on a particular day began to give hard labour sentences to those whom they tried for political offences.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The explanation for which the hon. Gentleman asks is, I think, contained in the answer I have already given—namely, that those magistrates passed sentences in accordance with their views of the justice and merits of the cases brought before them.
    MR. TULLY: What instructions did the right hon. Gentleman give in my case when they sent me to gaol?

    Irish Executions.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether, under the new rules for regulating the executions of capital sentences in Ireland, the executioner is bound to be detained in the prison, or its neighbourhood, until the coroner has decided whether he requires him to give evidence at the inquest; and, if so, who has the power to detain him pending the decision of, the coroner.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The new rules require that the executioner shall remain in the prison until he has completed the execution and until permission is given to him to leave. His detention after the execution would be a matter for
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    arrangement between the sheriff, or his representative, and the governor of the prison.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: But will the coroner's request be recognised by the Governor or sheriff?
    MR. WYNDHAM: It is a matter, I think, for the governor of the prison. The questions the coroner has to decide are as to the identity of the body and whether the judgment of death was duly executed. It may be that in the opinion of the governor there is ample evidence available from persons other than the excutioner, whose attendance at the execution is a statutory obligation.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the case of Dr. Cross, alleged to have been executed in Cork gaol——
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order. The hon. Member must put that Question down on the Paper.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I have put it down several times.
    MR. SPEAKER: That is a good reason why it should not he put again.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: When I put the Question before I was told that under the prison rule there was no power to detain the executioner. Now the rules are being altered.
    MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is asking as to a specific case, and he must put his Question down.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I submit, Sir, it is in order to ask if the right hon. Gentleman is aware that in the case of Dr. Cross, alleged to have been executed——
    MR. SPEAKER: If a Question relates to a particular case, notice must be given.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I will try to put the Question down. I want a satisfactory answer.

    Sergeant Sullivan, R.I.C.—Supposed Promotion since his Trial.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether Sergeant Sullivan, who was tried for perjury in the West of Ireland, and who is now stationed in Dunshaughlin, county Meath, got any step in promotion in the rank of sergeants since he was tried for perjury; and whether his removal to a station of the class of Dunshaughlin, which is the headquarters of a district inspector, constitutes promotion in the Royal Irish Constabulary.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The charge on which Sergeant Sullivan was prosecuted at the Sligo Winter Assizes of 1898, and on which he was acquitted, was, in popular language, for having written a letter inciting to crime. The answer to the remainder of the Question is in the negative.

    Irish Prison Warders—Hours of Duty.
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he will be prepared to extend the scope of the proposed inquiry into the prison system in Ireland so as to include the number of hours of duty of the prison warders in the local prisons as compared with the system prevailing in English gaols.
    MR. WYNDHAM: A sworn inquiry will be held into the special circumstances of Limerick prison and the treatment of Mr. Flanagan. But it is not proposed to hold a general inquiry into the Irish prison system.

    Labourers' Cottages Scheme in Cork Rural District.
    MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state the grounds on which the Local Government Board refuses to sanction the present scheme of cottages promoted by the Cork Rural District Council, and the matters which require arrangement between the Local Government Board and the District Council.
    MR. WYNDHAM: It was proved that occupants of sixteen cottages were
    822
    not agricultural labourers. The issue of the Provisional Order is deferred until the District Council has considered these cases, and to what extent the scheme should be modified accordingly.

    Constitution of Crimes Act Courts— Mr. Harrel, R.M.
    MR. SWIFT MACNILL: I bog to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in view of the fact that Sir David Harrel, the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who advises the Government in the institution of proceedings under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, selects the resident magistrates for the constitution from time to time of the Courts under this Act, will he state how many times and in what cases has Mr. Harrel, resident magistrate, been instructed by Sir David Harrel to attend, as one of its members, a Crimes Court.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The Under Secretary, Sir David Harrel, does not advise the Government in the institution of proceedings under the Crimes Act. Such proceedings are instituted upon the advice of the law officers of the Crown. The orders for the constitution of Courts are given by the Under Secretary in the discharge of the duty of his office. Resident magistrates are detailed for duty at these Courts in accordance with the ordinary necessities of the public service. Particulars of the several Courts attended by Mr. Harrel were given in my reply to the hon. Member's Question of the 7th July.† He has not since acted in any fresh case. On each occasion he adjudicated within his proper jurisdiction, in a district to which he had been appointed long before the institution of proceedings under the Crimes Act.

    Sergeant Anderson. R.I.C.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what is the precise character of the duties at present discharged by Constable Anderson at the depot of the Royal Irish Constabulary in the Phoenix Park; and what measures, if any, have been taken to secure that Constable Anderson will be protected in the performance of his duties.
    † See (4) Debates, cx., 918.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The constable performs the usual routine duties at the depot, such as guard, fatigue duty, and drill. He does not require protection in the performance of his duties.

    McCloskey v. Holmes.
    MR. HEMPHILL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether an action: now pending in the King's Bench Division, Dublin, at the suit of Thomas McCloskey against District Inspector Holmes, R.I.C., for arrest and false imprisonment is being defended at the public expense; and, if so, upon what grounds; having regard to the fact that the charge in respect of which the arrest and false imprisonment took place was dismissed by a full bench of magistrates at the Strabane Petty Sessions, on Monday 29th September, the Chairman in dismissing the charge added that the Bench were of opinion the case was one which should not have been brought into Court.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The reply to the first inquiry is in the negative. I may add that when such proceedings are taken, if the public officer is successful in vindicating his character, the question of defraying his expenses arises, but not before that.

    Agrarian Crime in Queen's County
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, seeing that the last quarterly Return of agrarian outrages in Ireland shows that no offence was committed in Queen's County during the three months preceding the 30th June last, that the Return for the quarter ending 31st March, 1902, shows a similar blank, and that the Chairman of the County Council, and seventeen other local magistrates have protested against the proclamation of the county, he will state upon whose recommendation the county was proclaimed, and when he proposes to withdraw it.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The proclamation was issued by the Executive Government after consultation with the officers locally responsible to Government for the
    824
    maintenance of the public peace. I stated on Monday last that five agrarian outrages had been committed in the county since 30th June, and that it was not at present proposed to withdraw the proclamation.

    Arrest of Mr. Reddy, M.P.—Communication of Arrests to the Speaker.
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the lion. Member for Birr Division of King's County was arrested under a warrant signed by Major Dease, R.M., and Mr. Newel, R.M., and detained in prison awaiting trial from the 14th to the 23rd September last; and will he say whether any intimation of his arrest was made to the Irish Government, and if any instructions on this subject have been issued by the Irish Executive to the resident magistrates in Ireland.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I stated on Monday last that this hon. Member, having failed to appear in answer to the summons served upon him, was arrested on the warrant of a resident magistrate. He refused to give bail for his appearance at the hearing of the case, and was remanded in custody from the 13th to the 23rd September. These facts were duly notified to Government. I also stated on Thursday last that I had directed general instructions to be sent to resident magistrates requesting them to notify to Mr. Speaker the committal to prison of a Member of this House, or his arrest and remand, whether on bail, or in custody.

    Public Meetings in Irish Court Houses.
    MR. POWER: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Sir William Paul, Baronet, recently convened, at the suggestion of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, a meeting of magistrates at the Courthouse, Waterford, to consider the licensing question; and that the High Sheriff of the County Mayo recently expelled from the Court-house, Castlebar, the county councillors of that county who had assembled for the transaction of county business, and who, on its conclusion, proposed presenting an address

    825
    of thanks to the hon. Member for Cork City for his efforts in connection with the redistribution of land among the small farmers of the county; has the; High Sheriff' of a county in Ireland the right of attending meetings of County Councils, and the power to decide what matters may be considered by the County Council; and, seeing that the Court-houses are maintained by the rates levied by the County Council, will he take steps to secure to the elected representatives of the ratepayers the same right as non elected bodies to the use of Court-houses.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I have no knowledge of the meeting referred to in the first part of the Question. The High Sheriff of Mayo did not recently expel the county councillors of Mayo from the Court-house at Castlebar. He informed them that they should be allowed to use the Court-house for the transaction of their duties, but that he would not permit it to be used for the purpose of a political demonstration. The councillors thereupon quietly withdrew. The intention to hold a demonstration of this character in the Courthouse was announced in the Mitropolitan and local Nationalist press. The custody and control of the Court-house is vested in the High Sheriff by virtue of his office.

    M'Hale v. Sullivan.
    MR. CULLINAN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether he will be willing to lay upon the Table of the House copies of the shorthand-writers report of the civil action in the case of M'Hale v. Sullivan, tried in the Fours Courts, Dublin.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,): The Crown have no report of the nature mentioned. It is, I believe, contrary to precedent to lay such a Report upon the Table of the House.

    Cloonacool Excise Prosecution.
    MR. O'DOWD: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that a farmer named Patrick Henry, of Cloonacool, county Sligo, was prosecuted at the Petty
    826
    Sessions Court of Tubbercurry on the 6th February, 1902, for carrying a shot-gun without an Excise licence; that the case against Henry was unanimously dismissed by the magistrates; and that on appeal the finding of the Court below was unanimously upheld by Judge O'Connor Morris and his colleagues on the Bench; and whether, seeing that this poor man has been put to expense in having to defend these actions, steps will be taken to have his expenses refunded.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. RITCHIE,): A similar Question on the same subject was answered by my predecessor on the 2nd of July last,† and I see nothing to alter in or add to that answer.
    MR. O'DOWD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Board of Revenue have already refunded 10s. of this man's expenses, and will he reconsider the matter, seeing that this man was the victim of a bogus prosecution, and compassionate allowances are given to the criminals of the Sergeant Sheridan type?
    No answer was returned.

    Inch Strand, Co. Kerry—Foreshore Rights.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the President of the Hoard of Trade whether he is aware that the farmers residing near Inch Strand, county Kerry, have recently been prevented from taking sand and seaweed there, though during the last 100 years there was no prevention; and seeing that this will prevent many farmers from manuring their land and cause them serious loss, will he have a local public inquiry with the object of deciding the high-water mark.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The Board of Trade have received complaints that the owner of the adjoining land has erected posts upon the beach which are said to interfere with the use of the foreshore at Inch Strand. Inquiry is now being made as to whether these posts are above or below the line of high-water mark of ordinary tides. When this has been ascertained the
    † See (4) Debates, cx., 533.

    827
    Board will be in a position to decide whether they can take any steps in the matter.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: Will the inquiry be a public one
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I do not know that there is any necessity for a public inquiry.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: There is every necessity.

    Limerick Post Office.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether, in view of the result of the recent inquiry into the administration of the Limerick Post Office, he will consider the advisability of reviewing the circumstances attending the punishment meted out to the staff at that office; and whether, when the punishments were being imposed, the conditions under which the staff performed their duties were taken into account; and whether ho will explain why the official safe is placed in its present custody.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: When any punishment is inflicted all the circumstances are taken into consideration, and it does not appear from the enquiry into the Limerick office that there has been any punishment inflicted there which needs reviewing. The official safe is placed in its present custody because the officer who usually takes charge of it is absent on leave.

    Irish County Court Judges.
    MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether in view of the letter addressed to the public Press by County Court Judges Curran and O'Connor Morris, on controversial subjects concerning their part in the administration of the exceptional legislation now in force in Ireland, he will take steps to submit the salaries of County Court Judges in Ireland to criticism in this House.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): No, Sir. As
    828
    at present advised I am not prepared to make the change the hon. Member proposes.

    Local Government (Ireland) Act (Amendment) Bill.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the Amendments to the Local Government (Ireland) Act (Amendment) Bill standing on the Paper, it is intended to proceed with that measure during the present session; and, if so, whether he can say when he proposes to provide time for its discussion.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not yet despair of being able to find time for this Bill, but I am not at present in a position to make a definite statement on the subject.

    Marine Insurance Bill.
    MR. CHARLES M'ARTHUR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will state why the Marine Insurance Bill [H.L.] has been withdrawn; and whether, in view of the representations in its favour by mercan tile, shipping, and underwriting bodies, it will be reintroduced by the Government early next session.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I understand from those who are fully acquainted with the proposals of this Bill that there was no reasonable prospect of sufficient time being available for its discussion during this part of the session. I can give no pledge as regards next session, but I should hope that in that session the Bill may be reintroduced.

    Education Bill—Hiring of Denominational Schools.
    MR. SOARES: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, under the provisions contained in the Educa-Bill, in those cases in which a School Board has been set up, and a denominational chool has been hired by the Board from the denominational managers at a nominal rent, subject to a clause in the hiring agreement permitting the managers to terminate the agreement on giving twelve months notice, it will be possible for the managers to give such notice, and at the

    829
    expiration thereof to turn the Board school into a school of a denominational character.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: At the end of such a lease as that contemplated by the hon. Gentleman in his Question, the buildings would revert absolutely to the lessors—that is to say, to the trustees or the managers of the voluntary school. But if it is desired to use these buildings as a denominational school, this would be a new school, and would come under the provisions of Clauses 9 and 10 of the Bill.

    Brussels Sugar Convention.
    MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can arrange that ample time shall be given for the discussion of the Resolution on the Brussels Sugar Convention, and that it shall be taken at such a period of the session as will give the interests throughout the country which are affected by the Convention as full opportunities as possible of expressing their opinion for the guidance of Parliament; and whether, if the Resolution which the Government will submit to the House should be carried, the Treaty will come into operation even though Parliament should decline to sanction the legislation which he has stated will be necessary to bring its provisions into operation in this country.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, Sir; it is my hope that adequate time will be found for the discussion of the Resolution. That Resolution will bind Parliament to give legislative sanction to the Treaty. I cannot anticipate that Parliament will decline the obligation.
    MR. LOUGH: When is it likely to be taken?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I cannot give any pledge as to the date, but it cannot be very long delayed.

    Employment of Children Bill.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether it is the intention of the Government to proceed, at an early stage of the next session of Parliament, with the Bill for the regulation of the out-of-school
    830
    labour of school children, introduced last July by the late Home Secretary, and withdrawn last week by the present Home Secretary.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Member will hardly expect me to foreshadow now the legislative programme for next session, but this reply must not be taken as indicative of a non possumus attitude on my part towards the particular measure to which the hon. Member refers.

    Voluntary School Endowments.
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether a complete Return has been published of the endowments of voluntary (public elementary) schools; and, if not, whether he will cause such a Return, showing the capital and income of each endowment, to be prepared and published as speedily as possible.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am informed that the preparation of such a Return would involve much hard labour and expense, and I am not prepared to grant it, but I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the Return of the income and expenditure of public elementary schools, published last year.

NEW MEMBER SWORN.
JOHN LOCKIE, Esquire, for the Borough of Devonport.

IRELAND—ADMINISTRATION OF THE CRIMES ACT—MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN,Member for Cork City, rose in his place, and asked leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz., "the proclamation, under the provisions of the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, of the City of Dublin and of nine Irish counties since the rising of the House in August, and the danger to the public peace arising from the harsh and partisan administration of that Act;" but the pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. Speaker called on those Members

831
who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than forty Members having accordingly risen:
The Motion stood over, under Standing Order No. 17, until the Evening Sitting, this day.

EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
Considered in Committee:—
(In the Committee.)
[Mr. J. W. LOWTHER (Cumberland, Penrith) in the Chair.]
Clause 8:—
MR. JOSEPH A. PEASE*(2.50.) MR. JOSEPH A. PEASE (Essex, Saffron Walden) moved the omission of the words "consent of the" from sub-Section (c), with the intention of subsequently moving the omission of "be required to the appointment of" and the insertion of "appoint and dismiss." He explained that the effect of the combined Amendments would be to provide that the local education authority shall appoint and dismiss teachers. His first proposition was that the municipal; corporations of this country and the County Councils as well, had proved themselves worthy of the confidence of the House, and ought therefore to have entrusted to them the appointment of teachers in connection with the elementary education of the country. Very few hon. Members would venture to assert that the County Councils were not capable of carrying out this particular duty. Already there were more undenominational elementary schools than there were denominational, owing to the fact that a large number of voluntary schools were carried on on undenominational lines, and he believed that after the passing of this Bill more and more schools would be handed over to the local authority. They might therefore assume that the House was prepared to give the local authority the power of appointing teachers in the large majority of the schools. He would like to point out how absurd it was that in one parish; the ratepayers should have the appointment of the teacher while in the adjoining parish they should be precluded from having a voice in the matter, simply
832
because in the one case the school was publicly provided while in the other the fabric belonged to a particular denomination. The only logical and sensible plan, in his humble judgment, was that the body which provided the resources for carrying on the work of the schools should also be allowed to appoint, as well as dismiss, the teachers. It should also have the staffing of the school and the decision as to the salaries to be paid. Under Clause 7 the Committee had already decided that the local education authority should be responsible for, and have control of, secular education, and in Clause 8 it was provided that it should keep efficient all public elementary schools and have the control of all expenditure. If they were now to decide that the managers should have the appointment of the teachers, surely they would be acting in violation of the provision which was to secure absolute control to the County Councils. Schoolmasters would naturally look for direction to the individuals who made the appointments, and it seemed to him nothing but a farce to pretend that the County Council would be able to have the control—the supreme control—of the education if it had not the power of, at any rate, exercising the initiative in regard to the appointment of teachers. It would mean that they were going to deprive the County Council of the power of appointing some 75,000 teachers, who were to be paid out of public funds, and not out of funds provided by the owners of the fabric of denominational schools. As a matter of practice, he believed, in many counties, if the Amendment were passed the County Council would delegate to the local managers the power of appointing the teachers. Bodies which were subject to public opinion were not likely to act in an intolerant manner either to Roman Catholic or High Anglican bodies which possessed schools of their own. All they need do was to see that, owing to the narrow views entertained by some exceptional individuals among the clergy, the managers did not abuse the power they would have if the provisions of the BILL were passed as they appeared on the Paper. He knew that most clergymen were prepared to act in conformity with the prevailing views of the people in their respective parishes, but still there were some who took an intolerant view of the opinions held by Nonconformists, and it was in order to safeguard the

833
interests of those Nonconformists that he thought it was essential the public should, if necessary, have the power of initiating the appointment of school teachers. The burden of work on Parliament had grown very much in late years, and it was desirable to devolve more of it on the County Councils. Surely this was a duty which might well be transferred to them. He could not see why the owners of the fabric who desired to teach a particular creed or dogma should be entitled to the appointment of teachers who were to be paid out of the rates. He would point out that after the passing of the Bill no great demand was likely to be made on the pockets of the owners of the fabric, and instead of them paying voluntary contributions to the amount of £750,000 a year, the money would henceforth come out of the rates. As to the maintenance of the fabric, there were in existence large endowment funds—especially in connection with Church of England schools—which would suffice to pay the cost of repairs. Again, many of these voluntary schools had been built to a large extent with public money. Up to 1882 Parliament had contributed £1,767,000 towards the cost of erecting these schools as against the £4,866,000 provided by voluntary effort. Since then many voluntary schools had been erected, because those who contributed to them desired not so much to see a particular creed or dogma taught, but to avoid the expense of a School Board. In 1870 the public contribution represented 34 per cent, only of the cost of maintaining education in voluntary schools; today it amounted to no less than 78¼ per cent., and it was only fair and right that the public who paid that 78¼ per cent, should have the appointment of the schoolmasters, whose salaries represented the main portion of the expenditure. What he and others resented was that there should be a clerical effort to control the civic and political action of the people on the assumption that any denomination had a divine call to appoint public secular teachers exclusively from their own sect. He and those with whom he acted denied the right of a church to deal with this matter without any regard to the free and independent choice of the people or the parents of the
834
children in the schools. It might be said that the public had some little control, inasmuch as they could appoint two out of the six managers. But they would be in a permanent minority, and, in the event of there being a recalcitrant majority, friction was sure to exist between the managers and the local authority; proselytising would be possible, and a denominational atmosphere might be maintained throughout the whole period of secular instruction. The Government seemed to have one tune in the country, and a different practice in the House. The Prime Minister at Manchester said the Government heartily desired that the public control should be a reality. It was because that desire was shared by the supporters of the Amendment that they asked that the public authority should have the initiative in the appointment of teachers. The right hon. Gentleman went on to appeal to the friends of the Bill to turn their attention to increasing the authority of the Borough or County Councils. He (the hon. Member) desired to support that appeal, and to ask that properly elected representatives of the people should be trusted in this matter. Since the re-assembling of Parliament, no concession had been made indicative of a disposition on the part of the Government to give increased powers to the local authority. He believed that the authority could exercise the powers far better than the managers. The work might be delegated from time to time, but in order to avoid friction the supreme control should be in the hands of the authority. Already under the existing law Nonconformity was, to a large extent, penalised. The number of opportunities for the Nonconformist to become a teacher in an elementary school was very small as compared with that possessed by members of the Church of England. Over and over again cases had occurred of Nonconformists being compelled to become communicants of the Church of England in order to secure a livelihood. The Opposition did not want such a system perpetuated. They resented preferential treatment of members of the Church of England, as against Nonconformists, and simply, asked for a fair field and no favour. The

835
County Council could be relied upon to treat with tolerance any particular view in a particular locality. They did not seek to deprive the children of religious education, but they asked that it should not be provided by the State out of public money. The Government, by accepting the Amendment, would do a great deal to placate the Opposition and still the agitation in the country. Ninety-nine per cent, of the parents would be satisfied with the character of the religious instruction given under the supervision of the local authority. No doubt a certain number of clergymen, and probably all the Bishops, would resist the concession, but there were always some individuals not satisfied when any large measure of reform was passed. If the concession were refused, the Government would be handed down to obloquy, as having abused the confidence placed in them at the last election, when they were returned on a very different issue. The State would gain by the concession, the people would be more contented, the great stumbling-block in the Bill would be removed, the children would grow up better citizens, and if the Government sowed their seed well a rich and abundant harvest would be secured for the Empire.
MR. BRYCEon a point of order, submitted that the question of the appointment and the dismissal of teachers were quite distinct matters, one of which had already been partly dealt with. He therefore suggested that the Amendment should be put in such a form as to confine it to the appointment of teachers, and leave the question of dismissal free to be dealt with on its own merits.
THE CHAIRMANsaid the Amendment, which had to be taken in conjunction with a subsequent proposal, raised the question of appointment and dismissal.
MR. JOSEPH A. PEASE (intervening)said that, if it was the desire of the Committee, he would limit the Amendment to the appointment of teachers.
THE CHAIRMANsaid that in that case the present discussion would be limited to the appointment of teachers.
Amendment proposed—
"In page 3, line 14, to leave out the words 'consent of the' "—(Mr. Joseph A. Pease.)
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Committee, having listened so often to my observations on this Bill, will hardly require to be told what attitude the Government felt inclined to take up in regard to this Amendment. I have listened with satisfaction to the statement of the hon. Member that the County Councils are extremely competent to deal with the question of primary education, and that not only are they well fitted both by their constitution and by the time at their disposal to deal with all the provided schools in their respective areas, but he would, without misgiving, be glad to see the area of their responsibilities enlarged, anticipating nothing but advantage from the change. The hon. Gentleman is well acquainted with the West Riding of Yorkshire, the County Council of which has expressed great diffidence as to its power to deal with primary education, and I am glad to know that in his judgment, at any rate, those fears are unfounded. The real essence of the Amendment lies in the fact that it takes away from the managers the right to select teachers in a denominational school. The Government are of the opinion that the change in the Bill cannot be effected without destroying the character of the measure. It is true that in the counties in which, as the hon. Member said, the right to select the teachers is delegated to the managers, the actual working of the measure would be on the lines that we propose to lay down by statutory provision; but the hon. Member must be well aware that, though that might frequently happen, it would not always happen, and there is no security that it would ever happen. The trustees and managers of the voluntary schools would, I think, have every right to consider themselves deeply aggrieved by the proposal of the Government, if we were to

837
insert a provision making it completely dependent on the action of the County Council whether or not the denominational schools were to retain their denominational character. It is a fundamental principle of the Bill that the denominational character of the denominational schools should be preserved, and I do not think it necessary at this stage of our proceedings to repeat the arguments which have been adduced on that subject. Those of us who support the Bill hold that, while giving up the control of secular education, subject to this limitation, to the popularly elected bodies, it is absolutely necessary in order to retain the denominational character of the schools that the appointment of the teachers should be left to the managers. Those who differ from that view will, of course, vote for the Amendment; those who agree with it will support the Government. This is a question, not of detail, but of principle; it affects the very root of the measure, and therefore the Amendment cannot be accepted.
MR. BRYCEwas surprised that the right hon. Gentleman, having admitted that the Amendment raised a question of principle, should have disposed of it in so brief and summary a fashion. The Opposition also looked upon it as a question of principle, and they had expected a much fuller and more serious statement of the objections entertained by the right hon. Gentleman to a proposal which prime facie had every argument in its favour. The First Lord of the Treasury jumped at the conclusion that this Amendment would destroy the denominational character of the schools completely, but the Opposition looked upon the maintenance of the character of denominational schools as almost the only feature of the Bill. As far as elementary education was concerned it was the one feature of the Bill. He felt that he must comment upon the extraordinary jump made in saying that the denominational character could only be preserved by retaining the appointment of the teachers for the denominational managers. Why was that so? They had suggested other methods before the recess. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to be under the
838
impression that the first thing the local authority would do would be to endeavour to mortify or vex the local managers by appointing teachers who would not carry out their wishes.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I never said so.
MR. BRYCEsaid that idea seemed to be in the right hon. Gentleman's mind, and was influencing him in giving this summary refusal to the proposal of his hon. friend. He believed that the local education authority would look out for, the best men and for nothing else. The men who were best for secular education would necessarily be the best for religious instruction. They had had a large experience of this matter in the case of the School Boards, who now choose the masters with regard to their all-round fitness and capacity for teaching, their general character and moral tone, and the record of their lives; and the men so chosen, by the unanimous agreement of those who knew a great deal about religious teaching in our board schools, had been found most efficient in giving religious teaching. Why should that not be the case under this Amendment? He could not see that the right hon. Gentleman was justified in his assumption that the local education authority would override the managers. The First Lord of the Treasury had admitted that the choice of the master was the most vital appointment of a school, and all the professed anxiety of the Government to give the widest control to the local education authority came to nothing if the most essential part of choosing the teachers was withheld. If this duty was not vested in the local education authority, what became of their control over any kind of education? If the managers appointed the master, they would be his master, and the local education authority would be in the distance and rarely accessible, represented by only one person. The managers would be on the spot, possessing official power and social influence, and it was to them that the teachers would have to look as being practically their masters. No man could serve two masters, and the master, if he had to choose, would see his master, in the local managers, and not in the local education authority. For this reason ho looked upon the withholding of

839
the power of choice from the local authority as a negation of their effective control over the school. There were other objections to givng the appointment of teachers to the local managers. There was the very serious objection that they lowered the status of the teacher himself. Teachers in elementary schools preferred to find a place in board schools, rather than in voluntary schools. Why? Not necessarily because the incomes were larger or more desirable, but because they were the servants of a public authority, and felt that they were more secure; they felt that they were not at the beck and call of a particular manager. In board schools, teachers were not required to discharge other functions in addition to teaching. They felt that they had a recognised position as servants of the State, which raised them as members of their profession. Then there was the argument that in enlarging the field of choice they enlarged the excellence of the teachers. By giving a wider choice, the local education authority would be enabled to look for the best men from every quarter, free from denominational restrictions or tests, thus improving the chance which all the schools possessed of drawing the best teachers in the country into their service. Surely at this time of day the arguments which thirty years ago induced this House to abolish tests in the universities, and pretty nearly everywhere else, and which only a few months ago led the authorities at King's College to abolish tests, ought to be weighty and important with regard to nearly half the schools of this country. Surely none would defend a system under which the managers might say to a candidate applying for a position in an elementary school "You are equally able, religious and conscientious with the candidate who is a member of our denomination, and even better, but because you will not declare yourself a member of our denomination the school cannot admit you as a teacher." He sometimes asked himself at what period were we living when we saw an anachronism like this surviving in the era in which we lived to obstruct the progress of education and the development of our schools? He had tried to indicate the objections they had to the plan of the Government, and he would content himself with saying that
840
in addition to the injury to the individual and to the schools, and the trouble and friction which would be produced by this divided allegiance, he felt that the supreme argument to justify this Amendment was that until they gave to the local education authority the appointment of the masters they would not give it that absolute control which the Government professed to give.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I will not detain the Committee, but as I was reproached for the brevity of my speech, may I, in order to understand the right hon. Gentleman's position, put to him two questions? Firstly, in his view would he desire that the education authority should consider the religious qualifications of the teacher to teach in a denominational school? In other words, would it be the duty of the education authority to see that the teacher of a Roman Catholic school was a good Roman Catholic? If not, I think ho will admit that the idea of saying that this Amendment would safeguard the denominational schools is absurd. Secondly, if, on the other hand, they are to consider the fitness of particular teachers to teach the Roman Catholic religion in Roman Catholic schools, is that not applying what he describes as a religious test?
MR. EMMOTTsaid he was going to argue this from the point of view of those who supported denominational schools. The great fact lying before those interested in denominational schools seemed to be that, unless this Bill was a sound one, denominational schools would go. If the people were trusted in regard to this matter sufficient teachers would be appointed able to give denominational teaching in denominational schools, and the Bill would work more smoothly than by this attempt to get all the teachers appointed by the managers, in order to safeguard the interests of those who desired to retain the denominational schools. On those grounds he appealed to the Government to consider the wisdom of the course they seemed inclined to adopt. In regard to his argument, he admitted at once that they must put the Roman Catholics on one side. This Bill was not promoted for the sake of the Roman Catholics, because five-sixths of the denominational

841
schools in England were Church of England schools, and but for those schools this Bill would not have been introduced. He had always maintained that the Roman Catholic case was a separate one, for they attached more importance to a denominational atmosphere; they had made untold sacrifices for their schools, which generally existed in large centres of population where there were considerable numbers of Catholics, and consequently they were entitled to separate treatment. Neither side of the House would listen to separate treatment, however, and some other must be found. He thought if they left this question to the localities to deal with, it would be dealt with by them in a spirit of fairness. They had done it, and were doing it, in the evening schools, held in denominational schools. Every wise School Board had treated these evening schools on the basis, of appointing teachers satisfactory to the denomination, and no complaint or difficulty arose. He believed in that way, if a locality were trusted, Roman Catholics would not suffer the hardships they were afraid they would suffer under a more complete system of popular control than this Bill gave. He appealed to the Government in this way. Was this Bill fair to the country at large, and, above all, to Nonconformists? Had the country at large the chance of getting the best men for teachers or not under this system? Again, he appealed on the question whether it was necessary to have teachers all of one denomination for the denominational schools. Finally, he appealed to the Government on the question of whether, under the Bill which had caused so much irritation and annoyance, the system could last which the Government were now attempting to inaugurate. He need not worry about the question of fairness. Out of 20,000 schools in this country, some 12,000 were Church of England schools. Practically, what the Government said by the managers appointing teachers was this, that in all these 12,000 schools all the teachers must be members of the Church of England. That was, in three-fifths of the schools of the country they must have members of the Church of England, and only members of that denomination. In regard to the other two-fifths, the members of the Church of England had an equal chance. In the past they had a better chance because of their excellent
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training colleges. Supposing the population was divided almost equally between Churchmen and Nonconformists, they would take four-fifths of Churchmen as teachers, and one-fifth from the rest of the country. That was not fair, and no; man could say so. Were they going to get the best men? They could not get the best men if they restricted the choice in this way. On the question of whether teachers should be all of the denomination, he would remind the House that the real difference between the teaching given in most of the Church schools and the batter system of the Cowpor-Temple teaching under our better board schools, was infinitesimal. If they could get at the average doctrinal teaching the parent would like given to the average child, ho believed that the difference between the teaching in the Church schools and that given in the schools of the London, Manchester, and Oldham School Boards—which he happened to know something about—would be found merely infinitesimal. From the point of view of those who were Christians—other than Roman Catholics—in this country, they were, to a large extent, fighting about a mere shadow. In Protestant England they did not need this special denominational atmosphere. It was not fair, in the first place, in a single school district. In such a district, with a Nonconformist majority, what became of the inalienable right of the parent to have doctrinal teaching according to his view? What was wanted was not so much denominational teachers, but the best teachers they could get—true, honest men and women, with, impossible, the fear and love of God in their hearts. They wanted to make the children as good as possible, and for that purpose they ought to have religious teachers, but it was of infinitesimal importance that they should all be Church of England teachers even in denominational schools. This was a national scheme, and ought to be treated from a national point of view. They had no right, as a nation, to settle a scheme which must to a large extent be a scheme of proselytisation, although he admitted it was not meant to be anything of the kind. There were something like 365 sects in this country, and to carry out the claims for a denominational atmosphere in the school to its logical result each sect would require its own school. No

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such scheme as that could be national, it was not under any such scheme that the best men the country had produced had grown up. He asked whether there was any possibility that the system which the Government was going to inaugurate could last. He had no right to expect that his voice should have any effect, but he begged the Government to consider more carefully the wisdom of the course they were taking. He was perfectly certain that even in the interests of those schools which they desired to support this Bill was bound to break down, and with it would go the system they were trying so laboriously to set up.
MR. MIDDLEMOREsaid he deeply regretted to hear from, the First Lord that the question at issue in the proposal before the Committee was vital. He did not believe it was vital to the majority of his supporters on the Ministerial side, and he certainly did not believe it was vital to the very large majority of good sound laymen of the Church of England. From the business point of view he thought the arrangement was bad, and probably in many eases it would be unworkable. For what was it? The headmaster was the principal civil servant, the principal agent of the local authority; after he had been appointed by some one else, they fixed his salary and paid him. They would define his duties, the duties of his subordinates, his relations with his subordinates. They would have power to dismiss him if, on an appeal, they were sustained by the Board of Education—and only in that case—and then another authority stepped in and made the appointment. If they were to apply this method to any other practical business of life they would be laughed at. It remained for the Education Department to out-Herod Herod himself. The procedure laid down in the Bill resembled weather indicators. In foul weather out would come the local authority and dismiss the teacher if, on appeal, it was permitted in London to do so.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There is no appeal, only on secular grounds.
MR. MIDDLEMOREthought, with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, there must be an appeal as to what were secular grounds. Proceeding with his analogy of the weather indicator, out, he said, in fair weather would come the managers and appoint the teacher. That was unbusiness like. But that was not his greatest objection. What civic right, what moral right had the Government to deprive the elected authority of the power of appointment? In England they valued that right so much that he believed if they had it in a written constitution this sub-Section would not have been possible without a prior alteration in the constitution. However that might be, he believed that this fundamental law was indelibly written in the beliefs of the people—that absolute control should be derived from the payment of the money which enabled the institution to exist. Then what moral right had they to inflict this great disability on half the teachers of the country? What had they done against the State that the State should turn and rend them in this way? Why should they be stricken with this disability? The same disability might in future be inflicted on the teachers of the voluntary schools. How had this situation arisen? It seemed to him that a section of the Church—and only a section—wanted public money and distrusted those who would supply it. [Cries of "No‡" from the GOVERNMENT Benches.] They seemed to think that their fellow-countrymen were meditating some injustice against them. He did not believe that at all; and at any rate it was gross injustice to forestall an injustice by making an act of injustice on a very large body of most deserving men who were essential to the welfare of the Commonwealth. He did not believe that Church teaching would be preserved in that way. Church teaching would be threatened far more by the usurpations and exactions of extreme members of the Church than by any direct attack of Dissenters or otherwise. What did they fear from this Amendment to confer on the local authority the right to appoint teachers? In a speech published by his own great leader, the Colonial Secretary—

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[Cries of "Oh, Oh !" from the OPPOSITION Benches]—the right hon. Gentleman was his own great leader. [An HON. MEMBER on the Opposition Benches: "Where is he?"] In that speech the Colonial Secretary drew attention to the condition of things in large communities in Scotland where the School Boards, consisting of grave and stern old Presbyterians, invariably allowed the Roman Catholics to appoint Roman Catholic school masters in their schools, who were thoroughly satisfactory to the Roman Catholic managers of the schools. What should they fear in England? If a difficulty occurred, the managers would communicate with the clerk to the School Board, who would communicate with some member of the sub-committee, and then an arrangement would be made agreeable to all parties. On the other hand, what would happen if the local education authority were deprived of this essential right? First of all, the teachers would be given a grievance with which nine-tenth of the community would sympathise, and that would only be balanced by attaching an equivalent disability to the Church teachers. And in a dispute between the managers and the local authority, it would not be the local authority which would eventually go to the wall. He did not believe that much was to be feared for the Church schools from the hostility of the local education authorities. The guarantees would be of far less service to the Church schools than to the local authorities. He wished that the Church party had been largely generous in regard to this matter, that they had really trusted the people, and that they could have gone in for a great clause safe-guarding religious teaching in the various schools belonging to the different denominations. Having secured that, they might have left the future of the Church schools, both as regarded denominational teaching and general control, to depend only on the loyalty and affection of the community.
SIR WILLIAM MATHERsaid he wished to appeal to the Prime Minister to reconsider the position he had laid down. After the speech of the hon. Member for North Birmingham, the right hon. Gentleman
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should reconsider the expression he had made use of that he could not allow any deviation from the provisions in the Bill in regard to the appointment of the managers and the teachers in the non-provided schools. The right hon. Gentleman had said that it would not be fair to the denominational schools unless those provisions were maintained in the Bill, because these would be handed over, free of rent, for public use, and that a considerable amount of money would have to be spent in altering and repairing the premises. The quid pro quo for this boon was the two Clauses to which reference had been made. Personally, he protested most earnestly, for that was the bane of the whole business. The Government had tried to erect a national system of education under one authority which involved complete responsibility on one side in regard to one half of the children of the country, and only a diluted responsibility for the other children of the country. This Bill was full of checks and counter-checks. It was the most ingenious piece of construction that one could conceive of. It reminded him of the ingenious inventor who tried to make perpetual motion machines which, of course, never worked. He believed that the Bill, in its present shape, was unworkable, and he ventured to say that, while preserving the denominational rights which the right hon. Gentleman was so anxious to preserve, the Prime Minister might easily make an alteration in the Bill so as to make it a practical business measure for the purpose of giving to the children equal instruction in secular subjects throughout the length and breadth of the land, by vesting the appointment of teachers in the local education authority alike for the provided and the non-provided schools. He quite understood the difficulty of the right hon. Gentleman and of hon. Gentlemen opposite. They would not surrender the right of denominational teaching in the non-provided schools. He was not in the slightest degree moved in his opposition by any fear of clerical influence interfering with education in the schools. He did not think that that would make any difference whatever. He spoke only on educational grounds in favour of a

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simple, direct, self-acting plan for securing the education of the country under one authority; and he felt that the right hon. Gentleman might most reasonably concede the nomination of the teachers to the local education authority. There were other means by which the denominational character of the schools might be retained. After all, the denominational character of the schools could not be expressed in any other way or sense than through specific religious instruction. Teachers would be selected by the local authority for their moral and personal qualities as high class teachers; and, of course, every denominational school manager would desire teachers possessing such qualities, just as much as the local authority. If, in addition, facilities for religious teaching were desired, it seemed to him that it would be the simplest thing in the world for any reasonable Churchman to secure, under the Bill, religious teaching at certain hours of the day by teachers selected for the purpose. If they could not secure a national system of education under the Bill by some modifications of the measure, they would be compelled to resist the proposals of the Government that the voluntary schools should be taken over free of rent. They would be prepared to pay rent for the schools, and to put the schools under local control from top to bottom. Let the schools lie taken over at what they were worth, and let them be maintained at the cost of the local authority. Further, they would be prepared to secure that the denominational teaching now given in the schools should be provided for by the local authority at such times as would be convenient, He would ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether that was not a better plan than that now proposed. The right hon. Gentleman was erecting an edifice on sand, whereas they desired to build it on a bedrock foundation.
SIR JOHN GORSTsaid that the hon. Member who had just spoken had denounced the plan for appointing teachers in the Bill of the Government as tortuous and unworkable. In his opinion no other plan was likely to work more smoothly than the method provided in the Bill. He was not speaking on behalf of those
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who thought that the appointment of teachers should be exclusively in the hands of the local authority. He was speaking in the interest of the majority of the House, and he thought the majority of the country who recognised that, in, taking over the voluntary schools, the teachers appointed should be agreeable to the managers and to the local authority; and that on the appointment of teachers there must be a kind of dual responsibility—the religious qualifications of the teachers to be satisfactory to the denominational managers of the school, and the other qualifications of the teachers to be satisfactory to the local authority, by whom their salaries would be paid, and who would be responsible for the efficiency of the teaching. In speaking about teachers, he should like it to be distinctly understood that he was not referring to pupil teachers. He did not think that they were teachers at all; or that in any school, however denominational in character it might be, there should be any test imposed on pupil teachers, or that there should be any obstacle to their entering the teaching profession. With regard to real teachers, he would ask the Committee to consider how the scheme with the Bill would work. The management, by whom the appointment would be primarily made, would consist of a certain number of denominational members and a certain number of undenominational or publicly elected members. Roman Catholic or Church of England or Wesleyan managers, who had hitherto conducted the schools in accordance with their own religious denomination, would naturally pick out teachers of that denomination who, in their opinion, were intellectually qualified to conduct religious instruction in the schools, and would propose such teachers to the general body of the managers. Were they likely to propose anyone who was not intellectually efficient, or not fit to conduct the schools? It would be only in one case in a hundred where any such proposition would be made. The managers would look into the testimonials and antecedents of the teacher proposed, and it would be the duty of the undenominational managers to make a strong remonstrance if an improper person were proposed. That strong remonstrance would, in most cases, be attended to,

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because of the probable sequel that would follow if it were not attended to. If a candidate of obvious unfitness were proposed, and if the majority of the managers insisted on appointing him, then the minority would at once make representations to the local authority, giving the reasons why they objected to the appointment of that particular teacher. In nine cases out of ten, the local authority would take the representation of the minority as a sufficient warrant on which to act; but in case of doubt they would make inquiries into the antecedents of the teacher, and if his antecedents were such as not to warrant his selection then they would exercise their veto. Therefore, in the first place, it was extremely unlikely that any improper person would be proposed; secondly, if an improper candidate was proposed it was extremely likely that, if the minority objected, he would be withdrawn; and, finally, it was quite certain that the veto of the local authority would prevent the employment of an improper teacher.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNNERMANsaid that the right hon. Gentleman appeared to think that he had entirely disposed of the Amendment when he showed how unlikely it was that the managers would propose a notoriously unfit person, and how easy it would be to get over such an appointment if it were made. No one ever suggested that the board of management would go out of their way to appoint an unfit person. What was contended was that the restriction in the Bill limited the choice of the managers, He assumed that they would appoint the best men they could find who came up to the qualifications that would be required of them. What were those qualifications? Participation in Church services or employment in a garden. That was the view that had hitherto been taken. But when the right hon. Gentleman said that the head of management would not be likely to appoint an unfit person to occupy the position of teacher, did not the argument apply with still greater force to the local authority? Would they be likely to select any person who, on religious grounds otherwise, would be distasteful not only to the managers but to the parents. The
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thought that pervaded that proposal of the Government, as it pervaded many other proposals in the Bill, was a want of faith in the commonsense and good feeling of the people. The Government had made great concessions as to increasing the control of the local authority over secular education. Let them trust the local authority in the matter, and believe that they would not do anything outrageous or against the wishes of the managers and the parents. The hon. Member for North Birmingham seemed to him to hit the nail on the head. The hon. Member asked the Committee to put out of sight the denominational difficulty and to ask themselves, was this a businesslike; proposal? The teachers were to be the agents and officers of the local authority, who would be responsible for secular education: were they to be chosen by another body altogether? That, in itself, condemned the proposal in the Bill. They should choose either one course or the other. They could not have the two authorities mixed up in the way proposed: they should trust either one or the other. He would trust the managers, and would make them the representatives of the locality. That was the straightforward, old-fashioned, honest way to which they were accustomed. The Government declined to do that. Instead, they proposed a round-about election of a local authority through means of the County Councils, with a some responsibility, more or less direct, to the public. Let them trust that body and not go running about from one to the other, using each as a sort of watch dog on the other. Surely they could believe that their country men were not likely deliberately to take any administrative step which would have such a ruinous effect on the interests of education as the appointment of unfitted teachers.
MR. LLOYD MORGANsaid he hoped it was not even now too late to express a hope that the Government might vary their decision with regard to this important question. The speech of the hon. Member for North Birmingham, he thought, was one which must commend itself to both sides of the House as the speech of a fair-minded man who had approached the question with an unbiased mind. He was satisfied

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in his own mind that the sentiment expressed by the hon. Gentleman was the view held by a large majority of fair-minded Churchmen. If the Government hoped to get this Bill through without intense bitterness and protracted controversy, he thought they would do well even now to reconsider their decision. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University expressed the opinion that the committee of management was the proper body to select the teachers of the non-provided schools, and had said that if any difficulty arose the public representatives on the board of managers would be able to bring the matter under the consideration of the local authority. Such a statement presupposed that the two public representatives would be men who were not in sympathy with the trust representatives, but in the majority of cases the public representatives were men whose views we were in harmony with the trust managers, and therefore in nine cases out of ten they were not likely to turn round on their friends unless some very grave scandal occurred. It seemed to him that this Amendment dealt with the most serious question which this Bill raised; the question of whether religious tests were to be in vogue in the public elementary schools in future. Under the system at present in force there might be some defence set up for the system; it might be said the voluntary subscribers contributed considerable sums towards the support of the schools, and that therefore it was only right that they should have a right to the election of the teachers. He did not assent to that view, but, even so, it seemed to him that when this Bill passed it swept away every vestige of the defence that existed at the present time. Up to the present the voluntary schools had failed by reason of their religious tests; they had not been able to afford the best teachers, because it was not likely that the best teachers with all the testimonials they possessed were going to apply to be instated as teachers in voluntary schools when the first thing to which they would have to submit would be the humiliation of being cross-examined as to their church opinion. In most cases the question put to these men would not be as to what their religious
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beliefs were, but what their church opinions were. The Government had taken up a most illogical position in reference to this matter. It was admitted that nearly the whole of the time of the persons occupying the position of teachers in the schools would be taken up in secular instruction, yet, notwithstanding that fact, their appointment was to be given to men who had least to do with secular education. It had been said by the Government that the supreme object that they had in view in introducing this Bill was to establish the education of this country on a thoroughly national foundation. He could not for the life of him see how that was going to be done, if they were going to shut out from half the elementary schools of the country men who held certain religious opinions, and, therefore, he was forced to believe that the real object of the Bill was not to establish the education of the country on a thoroughly national foundation, but upon denominational lines. Every penny the master of the voluntary schools would receive would come from the pockets of the taxpayers or the ratepayers; he would; become to all intents and purposes a State servant, and the Government were not doing what was fair to the taxpayers or the ratepayers unless they gave the widest possible basis for his appointment. The bargain was not fair and reasonable. The Church party only gave the use of the building, which they had also to maintain in a proper state in future, but in return they had first of all power, through the clergyman or his nominees, to teach the children a particular form of religion; they had power to appoint all the teachers whose salaries were paid by the taxpayers or ratepayers; they had power to exclude teachers who did not profess certain religious principles; and, by their majority on the committee of management, power to overrule the public managers. He put it to any fair-minded man that that bargain was not a fair and reasonable one. It had been said that the religious atmosphere of the schools must be maintained. If that were so, let it be maintained but not in the manner proposed by the Government. The most serious grievance which the Nonconformists had, and the most serious difficulty they had to meet, arose in parishes where there was only one school, the Church school. Why should the schoolmaster in these schools

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be called upon to do this work? What did the clergyman of the parish and his curate do? It was not a question of their being over-worked, as many were in large London districts; this difficulty presented itself in the small rural parishes. The work might well be done by the clergyman himself. Those were his views on the Amendment before the House, which he considered was founded on justice and reason. He hoped the Government would see their way to accept the Amendment.
MR. KEMPdiffered from those hon. Members who argued that this was not a businesslike proposal. In every bargain the consent of both parties had to be secured, and if the present holders of the voluntary schools were to give up those schools the Government had to make some arrangement to which they would agree. The fears expressed by the Opposition as to the great bitterness that would be aroused in the country were, he thought, grossly exaggerated. A strong argument in favour of the Government case was that in the public schools sectarian teaching of an extreme kind was given, and yet Nonconformist parents had no hesitation in sending their sons to those schools. He hoped, therefore, that the Government would stand to their proposals.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTthought the First Lord of the Treasury was right when he said that the Committee had a clear issue presented by this Amendment. The issue raised was between the principles of the Party opposite and those of the Opposition. The proposal was, practically speaking, to give the control of one-half of the schools in the country into the hands of private persons. If the scheme under the Bill was to be a national scheme, the control of the schools—which really depended on the appointment of the masters—ought to be in the hands of the national authority, whatever it was, to which the education of the country was entrusted. Complaints had been made of misrepresentation. There were complicated details in the Bill which might
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have been misrepresented, but upon this question there had not been, and could not be, misrepresentation—the issue as much too clear. Hitherto, we had a fragmentary and unsatisfactory system of education. It was admitted that the condition of the voluntary schools had not been satisfactory. By the plan of the Government it was proposed to set that matter right: there was to be co-ordination. But in all other departments of educational work tests had been abolished. In the Universities tests had been abolished; they had been done away with in denominational establishments; and the Secretary of the Board of Education himself belonged to a denominational institution in which all tests had been abolished. Denominational tests were not permitted to interfere with higher education; and yet the foundation of all—elementary education—was to be poisoned by their imposition. The Government were building their educational system upon an unsound foundation which would not, and could not, stand. They might pass the Bill by their Party majority, but a system which had its very basis poisoned by this question of sectarian tests would never he accepted by the country. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University had said that if a man was notoriously unfit he would not be accepted. But that was not the question. A good educational system should secure not only the exclusion of the improper candidate, but the acceptance of the best candidate. That, however, was just what the proposed system prevented. Two categories of schools were to be established—the provided schools, the masters for which could be chosen from the whole nation, and the best men selected for the particular posts, and those in the second category for which the masters would be selected from only a section of the nation, and which consequently would be distinguished as second grade schools. Voluntary schools had hitherto stood in the second grade as compared with board schools, and their inferiority had been due not merely to want of funds, but also to the lack of a reasonable choice of teachers. That position the Government wore proposing to perpetuate. What would happen was obvious. If a school wanted a master and two men presented themselves—

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neither of them improper, but one better than the other—it would frequently happen that the better man could not be selected because he failed to satisfy the test of the clergyman. It was a question whether the candidates would even come forward, because they would feel it was useless unless they qualified by becoming members of the Church of England. That was an educational disability which made the measure a bad educational Bill; it was a fatal fault at the very root of the proposal. It could not be denied that the success of a school depended on the character of the master. If, therefore, the entire system was founded on a basis upon which the best master could not be chosen, it would be one which was not national, and which in the long run the nation would not accept. In fact, a question of profoundest principle was raised, and, having the defects he had mentioned, the Bill, as an educational plan, was an imposture, and could never pass as a current scheme in the country. The matter had also its political aspect. There were said to be 75,000 teachers in these schools—75,000 officers in one of the most honourable professions it could be the ambition of men to follow, but from which they were to be excluded on account of their religious belief. What other civil profession was subject to such a disability? That was the political aspect of the question, and it was created by giving this power of appointment to men who would conscientiously exercise it in favour of their own denomination. They had done so in the past, and the object of the Bill was to secure them in the right to exercise that power. The educational system of the country was being founded upon denominational tests in order to secure to a greater degree than even at present existed, by additional grants of public money, supremacy of the Established Church. That was a policy which in his opinion would not, and could not, be accepted, and it was difficult to believe it possible at this time of day for such a plan to be proposed. This was a reactionary measure of the most vicious type reversing the policy of this nation practically for a century which had established civil and religious liberty by doing away with these tests first of all in the case of Dissenters, then by Catholic emancipation, in the case of the Jews, and in the case of all religious
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tests. That was the history of the accepted policy of this country for a century, and this Bill was founded upon a reversal of that policy. The Government were laying the foundation stone and corner stone of this Bill upon the principle of religious exclusion, and that was the question at issue today. That was the question which would be at issue as long as it contained this principle. He had no hesitation in saying that in his opinion any public body or any private individual was entitled by all legitimate means to resist any scheme founded upon such a principle as that. He could understand a public body saying "You offer us this Bill, and you impose upon us the obligation to carry on the education of the people, but you attach to your measure such conditions as we cannot and will not accept. We will not make ourselves responsible for the education of the people unless you give us the free means of choosing the best masters of the school; we will not accept the responsibility of educating the people if you exclude one half of the nation from the persons who shall be occupied as our agents to carry out education in the schools." The Government had raised, and they were raising, resistance to their scheme by adopting as the foundation of their plan a principle which this country had condemned in every other department of the public service, and a principle which had been condemned in the most valuable and essential of all the parts of our civil life in the education of the people. It was for that reason they condemned this scheme by moving this Amendment.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have listened attentively to the speech of the right hon, Gentleman, and I do not for the life of me know whether the right hon. Gentleman is in favour of retaining the denominational character of the voluntary schools or whether he is opposed to it. Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared frankly to say to the Committee: "I want to abolish the denominational schools root and branch, and substitute for them a pure and unadulterated system of provided schools of the Cowper-Temple class"? Is that what the right hon. Gentleman wants? The right hon. Gentleman does not reply.

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The right hon. Gentleman either cannot, or will not, answer that simple and elementary question, But a great many of the right hon. Gentleman's friends have answered it; and said that for their part they wish to preserve the denominational character of the schools. I think my hon. friend behind me, the Member for North Birmingham, took that view, and I am sure the hon. Member for the Rossendale Division took that view, and I think the same view is also taken by the hon. Member for Oldham and other speakers. They want to preserve the denominational character of the schools; therefore, whatever the right hon. Gentleman or those who sit near him on the Front Opposition Bench may desire, those followers of theirs have said that for their part they desire to preserve the denominational character of the voluntary schools, but they do not like the particular method for so doing proposed in the Bill. But let the Committee consider the alternatives. The very fact that we preserve the denominational character of the voluntary schools, and that religious teaching is to be carried on in these schools, surely means—if it means anything—that somebody or other must determine whether or not the teacher is qualified to teach denominational religion. You may evade this question, but that is what it all comes to. If you mean to abolish denominational schools, then do so, but if you mean to keep them then admit it. The teachers must be selected with some regard to their capability of teaching denominational religion. If that be admitted, then you have given up this question that there is a so-called test, about which the right hon. Gentleman was so eloquent. The question is whether you shall, or shall not, take this into consideration. By an irresistible train of reasoning you are driven into that dilemma. The question therefore is who is to see after what I may call the teacher's religious qualifications. It seems to me absolutely clear that there are only two bodies, one of which should have the duty thrown upon it. One of these bodies is the managers of the schools to whom the duty is entrusted by the Bill. The only other alternative is the local authority.
DR. MACNAMARA: And they find they find the money.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Government prefer the managers because they have already got them under Clause 7 a denominational complexion.
DR. MACNAMARA: Who gave it to them?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: At any rate, the majority of the managers are denominationalists. Therefore the managers are clearly qualified to form some judgment as to the capacity of the teachers to teach denominational religion. As to the local authority, do hon. Gentlemen opposite propose to throw upon it by statute the obligation of considering the denominational qualifications of teachers? If right hon. Gentlemen opposite do not propose to throw upon it that obligation by statute, then they leave it absolutely open to the local authority at its will or pleasure to say whether or not religious qualifications shall be taken into account in the selection of teachers for the voluntary schools. I presume that those hon. Members opposite who desire to preserve the denominational character of the voluntary schools will not object to making it obligatory by statute on the local education authority to consider whether a teacher is, from the point of view of religion, suitable to the school to which he is to be appointed. But is that a duty we can place on the local education authority? Surely the objections to such a course are numerous and obvious. One is, that it will arouse a profound and, I think, a just apprehension in the breasts of a large number of people who are interested in the denominational schools. The hon. Member for Oldham has suggested that we should differentiate between Church of England schools, in which I think the local education authority is competent to appoint the teachers, and the Roman Catholic schools, in which, in my view, it is not competent to appoint the teachers. All I can say is that I wish good luck to any Government or any Administration which is going to try to distinguish in this matter of elementary education between the Church of England

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schools and the Roman Catholic schools to the advantage of the Roman Catholics. I promise them a bad quarter of an hour in the country. Let the Committee remember that the local authority is debarred by the Cowper-Temple Clause from introducing the religious question into the schools. But if it were left to the local education authority to decide the religious qualifications of the teachers, it would be compelled to take into account that element of discord. I cannot conceive that such a scheme is a tolerable scheme. As for all the talk about the hardship to the teaching profession involved in the proposal of the Bill, I will not deal with it, for that is but a side issue, simply remarking that that injustice—if it is an injustice at all—is not removed by any plan which preserved the denominational character of the schools. Therefore, if we are to have Roman Catholic teachers in Roman Catholic schools, Wesleyan teachers in Wesleyan schools, and Anglican teachers in Anglican schools, it is an essential part of any plan to preserve the denominational character of the schools. Therefore, I say in the interest of common logic, let right hon. Gentlemen opposite give up these arguments about tests, about the injury to the teaching profession, and come forward frankly and say they were unalterably opposed to the continuance of the voluntary schools and fight the battle out on that issue. This inability to face the real problem at stake reflects very little credit on the logic of our debates, and certainly is not calculated to bring to the settlement of the question that clear-cut decision which I should be glad to see brought to bear upon it.
MR. ASQUITHsaid the right hon. Gentleman had endeavoured by a dialectical artifice to turn the attention of the Committee from the only question before it. The question whether or not the denominational character of the schools should be continued was not the matter now at issue. [MINISTERIAL cries of "It is."] That question was not in the least involved in the Amendment before the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman might have quoted him among those who were willing to retain the denominational character of the voluntary schools. They were at any
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rate prepared to acquiesce in the maintenance of those schools for the purpose of dealing with the Bill and the settlement proposed by the Government. The fallacy underlying the right hon. Gentleman's argument was this—that you cannot preserve in its integrity honest denominational teaching in these schools unless you subject all the teachers to be employed in them to a denominational test. He entirely traversed that argument; there was not the slightest foundation for it. What was the issue which this Amendment raised? It was the issue whether the selection of the teachers who were to be employed in these denominational schools should be in the hands of the local authority or in the hands of the managers. This was now, and the right hon. Gentleman did not dispute it, to all intents and purposes a great State service. Teachers, when this Bill came into law, would be as much employees. of the State as the Army, Navy, and the Civil Service. Every penny which went to their remuneration for the performance of their duties would come out of the pockets of the ratepayers or the taxpayers, and there would not be five minutes of their time given to the instruction of the pupils, whether secular or religious, for which they would not be paid out of public funds. That could not be disputed.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, I dispute it.
MR. ASQUITHasked from what other sources one halfpenny of their remuneration would come. They were constantly told that the pecuniary burdens which would fall on the managers and supporters of these schools would be the consideration for their preponderating share in the management. The pecuniary burdens of the managers were to be measured by the cost of keeping the fabric in good repair, and the interest on the cost of the fabric itself. He would take the value of the schools at £15,000,000 or £20,000,000. What part of that sum went to the remuneration of the teachers, and how could they found on the fact that these schools had been built by the denominations and that the managers were to keep them in repair a claim to the appointment of the teachers? The whole cost of the maintenance of the school, including the salary of the teacher,

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came out of public funds, and to state the proposition in the form of a question was to make it answer itself. Primâ facie the choice and appointment of the teacher ought to be vested in the body which had to contribute the whole cost of keeping the school efficient. The whole dispute arose out of the suspicion—of which the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters could not divest themselves that these bodies publicly chosen could not be entrusted with the duty of appointing the teachers. It was the right hon. Gentleman's rooted distrust, which appeared over and over again in the Clauses of the Bill, not only competence, but of the honesty, of the bodies he was going to call into existence, and to which he was giving nominal control of the education of the country, which formed the sole ground for his opposition to this most reasonable proposal that the local education authority should have the right of appointment. The House of Commons could not start on the creation of a vast new system of public education with a measure steeped in suspicion and distrust of those who were to administer it. When once they credited these bodies with honesty and capacity to discharge their functions, the argument in favour of their having this elementary right to appoint the teacher from the educational, financial and administrative point of view was over-whelming He would not go over the ground so well traversed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire. Let him summarise what lay at the root of the question. In the first place, if the Committee left this power of appointment in the hands of the managers, they were practically confining the area of selection to the members of a particular religious denomination, it was useless and idle to say that the power they were giving to the local education authority to veto the appointment on educational grounds formed a remedy, it was nothing of the kind. It was not an adequate safeguard at all. Therefore they were going to starve these schools. [Cries of "No."] It was starving the schools if they gave them a less efficient instead of a more efficient staff for the instruction of the children. They were going to starve the schools by placing practically uncontrolled power in the hands of denominational and non-representative bodies, so
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that from the educational point of view that was objectionable. From the political point of view it was even more objectionable, because, no matter under what veiled language they might disguise it, it meant that on the entrance to a large public service they were going to impose a particular denominational test. Then there was the administrative objection. Could they possibly imagine a more fruitful source of administrative friction in the conduct of these schools than to have on the one hand a body of managers who did not pay the salaries of the teachers, and on the other hand the local education authority who paid the salaries and were responsible to the ratepayers and yet with no voice in their appointment? Taking human nature as it was, and taking English public life as it was, they could not possibly bring into existence a system more calculated to wear out by constant friction and attrition two independent and practically autonomous authorities, one of which managed and did not control, while the other controlled and did not manage.
LORD ALWYNE COMPTONcontroverted the statement that the teachers would receive their salaries entirely from taxation and rates. To his mind that was a financial fallacy. What was the asset at present of the denominational school? They possessed a definite asset in the buildings and endowments. The value of that asset had been estimated in various ways. Supposing it was £700,000 a year, which was something near the mark, that must be taken into consideration, because that sum of money naturally would go into the total income out of which would come the salaries of the teachers. He had often heard it stated in the course of the debate that the bargain was one-sided, and that the Government in producing this Bill had had to make a bargain with people with whom a bargain had to be made. (Laughter and cheers.) Let him explain what he meant. The asset which he had spoken of was in existence, and nothing could take it away. He did not suppose there was an hon. Member on the Opposition side of the House who would have the hardihood to stand up

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and say that he wished to take away this asset by spoliation. In the case of the Nonconformists, what was the asset which they had brought into the bargain? They might say that their asset was their conscience. He had a great deal of respect for the conscience of those who differed from him in religious matters, but he would ask—where had been their conscience for the last thirty years? He had had a great deal to do with voluntary schools in the country, and he asserted boldly that in 99 per cent. of the voluntary schools of this country Nonconformists' children had been for the last twenty-five or thirty years going to the denominational schools, and although, under the law, the parents had been in a position to withdraw their children at the time of religious education, in the case of 99 per cent, of the children in the rural districts that right had never been taken advantage of. The children, for one reason or another, had attended the religious instruction in the denominational schools. Under statute the teacher was required to publish the days and the times when religious instruction would take place, and there was no disability imposed by the statute on any child who was withdrawn from the school at these times. It was a very curious thing that the conscience of the Nonconformist had been so dormant that he had allowed his child, of his own free will, to go into the denominational school, and to receive the instruction which was there given. Let them hear no more of this question of a one-sided bargain. If it was one-sided he challenged hon. Members to show how it was so. He had shown that there was an asset; he did not know by what means the Government had entered into an agreement that that asset was to be handed over.
MR. M'KENNAreplying to the noble Lord's argument that the denominational assets amounted to £700,000 per annum (he did not say that that was or was not an accurate estimate) maintained that the patronage of the appointment of 70,000 teachers was worth it and far more. The First Lord of the Treasury had stated that the supporters of the Amendment were in favour of the out and out abolition of the
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denominational schools. Whether that was so or not, it had nothing to do with this particular Amendment. Supposing the Amendment was carried, and that the teachers were appointed by the local education authority, the managers would have the right to prevent these teachers giving religious instruction against their views. The managers could bring in other persons, or call in a clergyman to give denominational teaching. Denominational teaching would therefore be secured. The only thing that would result would be that the teachers would not be submitted to a religious test. They had had a very interesting speech from the hon. Member for North Birmingham, but he had waited in vain for one or more of the signatories to the memorial to the First Lord of the Treasury on the question of the appointment of teachers. He was anxious to know what the First Lord had said to satisfy these hon. Gentlemen to induce them to withdraw from the position they had taken, and to commit themselves to support the Bill as it stood. They ought to have some reason from these hon. Gentlemen for their change of view, for it was conceivable that the supporters of the Amendment might also change theirs. He would ask the Attorney General why the Government haggled at this Amendment. They must interpret the Bill by what it said, and not by what they were told were the intentions of the Government. The local authority could give directions as to any matter relating to secular instruction. Now, surely a matter relating to the appointment of a teacher who was to give secular-instruction must be a matter relating to secular instruction, and that therefore the local authority had power in regard to the appointment of a particular master. He was well aware that it was argued that that power was destroyed by reference to sub-Section (c). But under that sub-Section the consent of the local education authority was required to the appointment of the teachers. That merely meant that if the local education authority gave no directions, the managers could appoint subject to the consent of the local education authority when their appointment was made. The inference drawn from that sub-Clause was not a real inference. Was it not time that the Government should consider the children?

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Which was the better method of appointment in the interests of the children? The local education authority would have a far larger choice to draw upon than the managers. He quite agreed with the right hon. Gentleman opposite that the; managers would appoint teachers intellectually efficient, but they could only do the best they could with the material at their hand; they could not have the same chance of making a good selection as a large local authority. If the local authority had the power of appointing the teachers, and not the managers, the former would be the supervisor of the whole school area, both as regarded provided and the unprovided schools. Why not adopt the system of the London School Board which selected a certain number of candidates and asked the managers to choose one, and not to submit the candidates to a religious test? From that point of view he thought the Government ought to give far greater consideration than they had done to the great evil they were likely to create by refusing to grant the appointment of the teachers to the local authority.
MR. EDWARDSsaid that the noble Lord who spoke last from the Benches opposite referred to the Church schools as an asset which the denominations had given to the public. Well, if all the Church schools had been built entirely by means of Churchmen's money, then he thought there might be something in the argument. But he believed the noble Lord would admit that the numerous grants of public money which had been made to the Church had enabled it to build far more schools than it would have been able to do with only denominational subscriptions. There was this further point. There was a school not very far from where he lived. It is now a Church school, and the noble Lord would claim it as a Church asset. But if he went into the history of that school, he would find that it was built by a "voluntary" rate imposed upon the people of the parish, although a great majority of the people were Nonconformists. He admitted that the land was given by the landlord, who was a Churchman, but it was intended that the school should be a parochial school and not a Church school. After the rate was imposed and paid, and the school built, the school was transferred to
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the National Society, and its control was vested in the clergyman and the churchwardens. No Nonconformists had a right to be pupil teachers in that school, although the Nonconformists were, in that parish, in the proportion of twenty to one of Churchmen. The Prime Minister had said that, in order to maintain the denominational character of the schools they must have a Churchman as head teacher. He did not think that was necessary at all. For instance, in the Church schools in his parish the great majority of the pupils were Nonconformists. Now it was an understood thing that on four days in the week what was called undenominational religious instruction was given, and only on one day in the week was the Church Catechism taught by the Church clergyman. It was a very simple thing for a Nonconformist to be headmaster in that school. He felt rather strongly on this point, because in his county they had fifty-two schools, of which thirty-six were Church schools, and sixteen board or British schools. What was the result? In two-thirds of the schools in the county Nonconformists could apply to be headmasters or pupil-teachers. If the Bill passed in its present shape, in a county where the vast majority of the people were Nonconformists, the teaching profession would be shut in the face of the vast majority of the people. That would be a loss to the county, and a national loss as well. They were all agreed that the religious controversy was a great danger, and it was a scandal that it should stand in the way of the education of the people. Some said it was the extreme Church party which was in fault, and others the extreme sectarians, but however it might be, this Bill would not relieve the grievances of the Nonconformists, and therefore he supported the Amendment.
MR. A. J. BALFOURappealed to the Committee to bring this debate now to a close.
SIR BRAMPTON GURDONsaid he had not troubled the House on this Amendment before, and he should not have done so now but he desired to put forward an entirely new view. He desired the Committee to look at the matter from the point of view of the managers themselves. The House did not know probably the very great

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difficulty managers had in the selection of teachers, being themselves such a small body. These vacancies very often occurred suddenly. The managers of a small school could have no knowledge of other teachers, and very probably advertised and never got an answer to their advertisement. At last someone heard of the vacancy. He or she came over on a bicycle, and arrived grimy and perspiring and wanted an interview. One could not find out everything at an interview. He or she brought testimonials. The House knew what was the use of testimonials; if you were thoroughly incompetent you could not be got rid of except with a testimonial. They could not get rid of an incompetent Under Secretary of State without giving him a testimonial as a Colonial Governor; and it was the same with schoolmasters. Then there was the question of salary. Of course the managers of the school said the salary was above the average, and the candidate said it was below. He had no hesitation in saying that 99 out of every 100 managers in the country parishes would be only too grateful if the House would take over this disagreeable responsibility and put it on the local authority. A strong local Committee could keep a register of teachers and candidates, and would know the good and bad teachers. They could also give promotion where it was deserved, and stop it where it was not deserved. He thoroughly agreed with what the hon. Member for Oldham said about religious teaching. The Prime Minister said in a previous debate that most of the voluntary schools were originally Church of England schools. Yes, but what Church of England? The Church of England, when these schools were founded, fifty or sixty years ago, practised and taught what were now called Nonconformist doctrines. If they could now have in all schools the teaching given by the Church of England in the '40's or '50's, he believed it would be found not to differ fundamentally from the School Board teaching at the present day. He hoped the Government would not think this was a denominational question, because there was no reason why the local education authority should not be able to make denominational appointments as well as the managers. This was not a question of denomination, and he wished the
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Government would look at it, not from a sentimental point of view, but from a business point of view, and accept the Amendment of his hon. friend.
MR. LABOUCHEREsaid he approached the consideration of this Bill without the slightest sectarian bias or animus. Every man had a right to his own religious belief. Mr. Disraeli had once said, when questioned as to his religion, that his religion was that of every man of common sense, and, when further pressed upon the subject, said men of common sense never told what their religion was. That was his own view. For his part, he was opposed to even one farthing being given to the voluntary schools out of the money of the taxpayers of the State, and he was opposed to any species of religion being taught in any school in the country at the expense of the State, but that was not the question here. They found here that the voluntary schools were bankrupt, and while the Churchmen had strong opinions as to what should be taught in these schools they objected to pay for them. The Government objected to such a state of things as that, and this Bill was brought in in order to make the people pay what the Church of England would not pay for its own Church schools. Then they were told that the Church did contribute something; that it lent its schools for a certain number of hours to the State, and the Committee was asked, in consideration of that, to allow the Church to appoint all the masters in the schools. Every one knew what occurred in rural parishes; they knew the influence of the parson, the squire, and the chief farmers, and they knew the parson was absolute master of the schools, and would remain so if he had the selection of the teachers. That was the position he would really be in, because the right hon. Gentleman had said that only two teachers were to be appointed by the community, and four by the parson and his friends. Naturally the parson would appoint a member of the Church of England. Was that a religious test or not? These schoolmasters were practically civil servants. It was as bad, atrocious and dishonest to impose a religious test on anyone who wished to

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follow the teaching profession, as it would be to impose it on anyone who desired to take a seat on the Treasury Bench. It had been said that the parents were satisfied; that they did not insist on their children being withdrawn when religious education took place. No doubt that was so. They would be marked men if they did. They did not dare to do so. But to say that the Nonconformists approved of their children being taught Church religion was ridiculous. He would be glad to seethe whole matter settled in regard to these schools by the Government saying that they would pay a fair rent for the school to be used during the hours of secular education, in consideration of the public authority appointing the schoolmasters, but this bargain was an unfair one, and handed over the religious instruction of the entire rural population to the Church of England He considered the proposition of this Bill was monstrous, and if he had his way, the Opposition would withdraw from the House in a body, and leave the Prime Minister to do what he pleased with the Bill. He did not see any use in any of these little tinkering Amendments; they would not do away with the voluntary schools or with any religious teaching in the board schools. But it should be remembered that at the last General Election it was distinctly stated that the sole issue before the country was the war, and it was not fair to use a majority so obtained to hand over the schools of the country to clericalism. He was sorry that hon. Members on his own side of the House were so fond of hearing themselves talk, and that they would not take the advice he gave them of washing their hands of the whole concern by saying, "We have nothing to do with what you pass in the House of Commons beyond the question of the war; we will appeal from the House of Commons to the people outside and make that the issue of the next general election, and we hope that the Government will give us a general election as soon as possible in order that the question between us and you may be decided."
MR. LLOYD-GEORGEdeprecated the course
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suggested by his hon. friend as one which was ill-adapted to amend the Bill. He agreed that they had to face the question of the voluntary schools, and his own point of view was that they should either buy up the voluntary schools or pay a rent for them. The Prime Minister had provided the means. There was to be a financial provision in the Bill, which would, no doubt, be reached some time, allocating a sum of£900,000, half of which would pay a substantial rent for all the voluntary schools in the country. The amount of money needed for this purpose had been grossly exaggerated. He knew many voluntary schools, and knew they were built not only by subscriptions from Churchmen, but also Nonconformists as well—[A VOICE: And by railway companies]—and by contributions of labour as well as money. It had been said that the Bill proposed a not unfair bargain, but no bargain was fair or just, which meant the selling of the civic rights of the community for any sum of money. It was the duty of the community to provide an efficient system of education for the children, and they bad no right for any sum of money to bargain that away to any denomination. Nonconformists were taunted that they were not prepared to make such sacrifices for their consciences as Churchmen, but Churchmen were first in the field, simply because they happened to possess a monopoly in the land. In his opinion Nonconformists who paid for a School Board made greater contribution to education than a Churchman who subscribed to a voluntary school.
LORD HUGH CECIL: We do both.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he would take the case of Lord Penrhyn. His Lordship subscribed £400 a year to the voluntary schools in his district, where the teachers were all Churchmen and the scholars Nonconformists, but if his Lordship were rated for a School Board, as other quarry proprietors were in the adjoining parish, he would pay not £400 a year but £2,200. The schools were vastly inferior, by every educational test, and yet his Lordship, who pocketed £1,600 a year under this arrangement,

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passed himself off as a very religious man before the whole country because he gave £400 a year. The noble Lord the Member for the Biggleswade Division had said that the fact that Nonconformists sent their children to denominational schools showed that they did not object to their teaching, and the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich had also said something on the same point which he did not quite understand.
LORD HUGH CECIL: It is rather late for me now to discuss my religious convictions.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The noble Lord appears to have approved of the religion taught in the board schools and then to have disapproved of it.
LORD HUGH CECIL: If the hon. Member would read the pamphlet by Canon Moberley he would understand my position better.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I shall be very glad to read it if the noble Lord will send it me. If the noble Lord will read Dr. Clifford's pamphlet I think it would not be an unfair exchange. The noble Lord had said that the religion taught in board schools was not religion at all. How many persons had withdrawn their children from the board schools on the ground of undenominational religious education? The noble Lord had no right to taunt the Nonconformists with the first until he could give the figures of the second. The noble Lord had already pointed out that the danger of limiting the area of selection was that they were bound to get more incompetent men. The right hon. Member for Cambridge University had said that if a teacher was unfit they had the remedy of going to the county authority, but there was a vast chasm between absolute unfitness and great capacity, so that the schools would suffer. There were men of whom it could not be said that they were absolutely unfit, yet they were not men of great capacity. Then they had to face the fact that a man was selected for a different reason. He would quote an advertisement for a teacher from the Church Times—
"Wanted, as soon as possible, a schoolmaster, Church of England, lay reader combined; Catholic teaching."
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They might obtain a lay reader who was a good teacher, but he would not be so necessarily; and if Churchmen insisted on the three qualifications here mentioned, the chances were three to one upon getting the services of a good man. This question of the teachers was of first class importance. He knew a Non-conformist School Board, and they had a number of applicants for a position; the best man was a Churchman, and he was selected. If it had been a denominational school, he would not say the teacher selected would not have passed muster, but he would not have been the best man to have been appointed, and the locality would have suffered. Every one who knew the difference that an efficient schoolmaster made would know this. He knew a district where the schoolmaster, in fifteen years, had changed the whole character and complexion of the place and civilised it. It was unfair to the children of the country that they should hamper, embarrass and confine the selection of teachers by any sectarian, test. It was surely not necessary for the purpose of preserving religion. If that was so, why could they not agree on a religious teaching which, in the main, was acceptable to all parties? An hon. friend said the other aide would not agree. But did not that suggest that the real desire was not to preserve definite religious teaching, but some other object? The mass of the children of the land passed through Sunday schools. There were 800,000 more children in Sunday schools than in day schools. There was the opportunity to give definite religious teaching. There was a residue who did not pass through Sunday schools, but neither did they pass through day schools. Probably not more than 90 per cent, of the children passed through day schools. The balance could not be got at, and the proposed system would not touch them. They were chiefly in the poorer districts, where voluntary schools, as a rule, did not exist, for the simple reason that the resources for their maintenance were not forthcoming. He, therefore, put this point to the Committee for the sake of a population that did not go near either Sunday or day school. For the sake of preserving the rights of the clergy to promotion which they ought

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never to obtain, education suffered, the children suffered, and our system of education for a whole generation to come would be crippled. It was absolutely unfair.
DR. MACNAMARAsaid that at present there were 20,000 elementary schools in the country, in 14,000 of which a denominational test existed. The statement of the Leader of the Opposition, made earlier in the debate, that, in addition to that denominational test, demands in regard to extraneous matter were frequently made, which precluded the best men from applying for posts, had been hotly contested by hon. Members opposite. In order to show that where a denominational test existed there was a tendency to look for consideration of other than a purely educational character, he would read a letter from a vicar in answer to an application for a post as head master. [The hon. Member then quoted from a letter, in the course of which the following particulars were asked for—
"What is your manner in school? Are you a thoroughly good disciplinarian? Do you throw the greatest zest into your religious instruction? What experience have you had in organ playing? I want a really good organist. When have you accompanied Gregorian? What Psalter was it you used? Have you ever accompanied a choral celebration? What voice do you sing? "…" What are your church views?"…"Are yon and your wife regular and devout early communicants? What does your family consist of? Has your wife been accustomed to teach sewing? What does she do with this when she is laid up?"]
That was all very well, but where did the children come in? The whole purpose of that correspondence was to get a person who would perform these excellent and desirable Church services efficiently, although at that time the great bulk of the money which would have been spent on the teacher came from public sources. But it was argued that there was now a bargain. What was the "definite asset" which had been put forward?' First of all, there was the upkeep of the fabric. The most generous estimate would not put the Church contribution for that purpose at more than 2s. per child per year. Then there was the building. From 1839 to 1882, places were provided in Church elementary schools for 1,200,000 children,
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at a total cost of £5,750,000, of which £1,250,000 was provided by the State. From 1882 to the present day, 1,700,000 places had been provided in Church schools. No official figures as to cost were available, but going on the basis that 1,200,000 places cost £5,750,000, and allowing for the greater demands of the Board of Education, the increased cost of materials, and the properly enhanced value of labour, the cost might be estimated at £10,500,000. That made a total of £15,000,000 for the building of Church voluntary schools. At 3 per cent, that represented £450,000. The noble Lord the Member for Greenwich had put it at £700,000. Even at that figure, what did it mean? The buildings were wanted by the local authority for only six days of five hours out of seven days of twelve hours—considerably less than one-half. Let the local authorities portion of the Church assets for the time they were in the building be taken at £300,000 a year—again a generous estimate. There were 3,000,000 voluntary school children, and the Church was giving value to the extent of £300,000 a year, or 2s. a child. Again, being generous, let it be called 3s., and what had they? First of all the State found the entire maintenance, 55s. per child per year, if the voluntary schools came up to the level of the board schools. The 2s. for repairs and the 3s. for the use of the rooms made a total of 60s., of which 5s. was provided privately. The State, therefore, found eleven-twelfths, and the Church one-twelfth, and yet the latter were to have the whole appointment of the teachers‡ The demand was unfair and absolutely preposterous. The First Lord of the Treasury said, "We must have these schools, because we intend to perpetuate denominational teaching" The scheme was impossible. He proposed to put the whole cost of that denomination practically upon the public funds, and that could not be done. They had either got to provide public money for all denominations or for none at all. This was practically a provision for one denomination. There were other alternatives which would not in any way militate against the continuance of the denominational system. He had endeavoured to mention this in a scheme in which schools which had hitherto been

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voluntary schools and board schools would be under public control, while the public authority wanted the buildings. Both schools under the scheme he suggested would begin with a common form of religious worship, which 99 per cent of the people of this country wanted. They might then easily devise full facilities for the giving of specific denominational teaching to those who wanted it. That would perpetuate denominational teaching without all this fuss about the appointment of teachers. The managers would appoint a head teacher and send in his name to the local education authority. They would say that they had no control over the religious qualifications but they had over the secular, and they might say that the teacher recommended was not the best for the secular instruction, and that they could get plenty better teachers. Consequently they would have many deadlocks. The scheme was bound to break down in practice. Take the case of the School Board for London. They had a perfectly workable system which carried on denominational teaching as hon. Gentlemen opposite desired. They received all applications for teachers, and they went through them and reduced them down to seven for a head teachership. Then they took these seven and selected the three best out of the seven. Then they sent the three names down to the managers, who were permitted to make the final appointment. Why did not the Government try that system? Did they think that the local authority were not people of common sense? Did they think that without going into the plan of testing a person—which was always putting a premium upon hypocrisy—the local authority would not take care to see that the persons they sent down to the man-

AYES.

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Banbury, Frederick George

Brookfield, Colonel Montagu

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Bartley, George C. T.

Brown, Alexander H, (Shropsh.

Aird, Sir John

Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

Brymer, William Ernest

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Beckett, Ernest William

Bull, William James

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

Bullard, Sir Harry

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Butcher, John George

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Bignold, Arthur

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

Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

Bigwood, James

Carew, James Laurence

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Bill, Charles

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

Bain, Colonel James Robert

Bond, Edward

Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton

Balcarres, Lord

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

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

Baldwin, Alfred

Boulnois, Edmund

Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire

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

Bousfield, William Robert

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich

Balfour, Capt. C. B.(Hornsey)

Bowles, Capt. H. F. (Middlesex

Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. (Birm.

Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W.(Leeds

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J. A. (Worc.

agers would be agreeable to them? He knew of School Boards in Scotland who had sent down Roman Catholic teachers to meet the particular needs of a particular case. If they would apply to Father Brennan in London he would tell them, that under a public school system they had been able to select teachers quite agreeable to him, and he had said that the system had worked most admirably. He did not know whether a compromise was possible now. They ought to see that the best person was selected from an educational point of view, and they ought not to put a premium on hypocrisy by retaining a denominational test. Why not adopt some such plan as that of the School Board for London, which he thought; would be the more practical plan. The plan proposed would lead to great difficulties and would result in an entire breakdown of the denominational system itself.
MR. LUCASthought it was necessary that somebody should get up to repudiate the statement which had been put forward by the hon. Member for Northampton, that the Government was returned at the general election for the sole purpose of finishing the war in South Africa. He did not propose to further detain the Committee.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (SIR ROBERT FINLAY,)rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
Question put, "That the Question be now put."
The Committee divided:—Ayes, 25O; Noes, 119. (Division list No. 424.)

Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

Helder, Augustus

Peel, Hn Wm. Robert Wellesley

Chapman, Edward

Henderson, Sir Alexander

Percy, Earl

Charrington, Spencer

Higginbottom, S. W.

Pierpoint, Robert

Clive, Captain Percy A.

Hoare, Sir Samuel

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.

Hobhouse, Henry (Somerset, E.

Plummer, Walter R.

Coddington, Sir William

Hogg, Lindsay

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Hope, J. F.(Sheffield, Brightside

Pretyman, Ernest George

Colomb, Sir John Chas. Ready

Horner, Frederick William

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Colston, Charles Edw. H. Athole

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Purvis, Robert

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Howard, John (Kent, F'versh'm

Pym, (C. Guy

Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Randles, John S.

Cranborne, Viscount

Hutton John(Yorks. N.R.)

Rankin, Sir James

Cripps, Charles Alfred

Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

Cross, Herb, Shepherd (Bolton)

Johnstone, Heywood

Ratcliff, R. F.

Crossley, Sir Savile

Kemp, George

Rattigan, Sir William Henry

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Kennedy, Patrick James

Remnant, James Farquharson

Davies, Sir Horatio D (Chatham

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.

Ridley, S. Forde (Bethnal Green)

Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

Keswick, William

Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Kimber, Henry

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

Doughty, George

Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Lawson, John Grant

Round, Rt. Hon. James

Doxford, Sir William Theodore

Lecky, Rt. Hn. William Edw. H.

Royds, Clement MoJyneux

Duke, Henry Edward

Lee, Arthur H (Hants., Fareham

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.

Llewellyn, Evan Henry

Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

Faber, George Denison (York)

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Seely, Maj. J. E. B. (Isle of Wight

Fardell, Sir T. George

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham

Skewes-Cox, Thomas

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

Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S

Smith, James Parker (Lanarks

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Lowe, Francis William

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

Finch, George H.

Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

Spear, John Ward

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Stanley, Hon Arthur (Ormskirk

Fisher, William Hayes

Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset

Fison, Frederick William

Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred

Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Macartney, Rt Hn W. G. Ellison

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Macdona, John Cumming

Stroyan, John

Flower, Ernest

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Forster, Henry William

M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W

Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

Foster, Philip S. (WarwickS. W

M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Galloway, William Johnson

Majendie, James A. H.

Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ.

Gardner, Ernest

Malcolm, Ian

Thorburn, Sir Walter

Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans)

Manners, Lord Cecil

Thornton, Percy M.

Gordon, Maj. Evans-(T'rH'mlets

Maxwell. Rt Hn Sir H. E (Wigt'n

Tollemache, Henry James

Gore, Hn G. R. C. Ormsby-(Salop

Middlemore, John Throgmorton

Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

Milner, Rt. Hon Sir Frederick G.

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Goschen, Hon. Geo. Joachim

Milvain, Thomas

Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Valentia, Viscount

Graham, Henry Robert

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Vincent, Col Sir C. E H (Sheffield

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Greene, Sir E. W (BrySEdm'nds

Morrell, George Herbert

Walrond Rt Hn Sir William H.

Grenfell, William Henry

Morrison, James Archibald

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Gretton, John

Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

Warde, Colonel C. E.

Greville, Hon. Ronald

Mount, William Arthur

Welby, Lt-Col. A. C. E(Taunton

Gunter, Sir Robert

Mowbray, Sir Robert. Gray C.

Welby, Sir Charles G. E. (Notts.

Hall, Edward Marshall

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Murray, Rt Hn A. Graham (Bute

Williams, Rt Hn J Powell-(Birm.

Hamilton, Rt Hn Lord G(Midd'x

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

Hanbury, Rt. Hn. Robert Wm.

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

Wylie, Alexander

Hardy, Laurence (Kent Ashford

Myers, William Henry

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Newdegate, Francis A. N.

Younger, William

Harris, Frederick Leverton

Nicholson, William Graham

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Nolan, Col. John. P. (Galway, N.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Mr. Anstruther.

Heaton, John Henniker

Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlingt'n

NOES.

Allan, Sir William (Gateshead)

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Barlow, Jonn Emmott

Allen, Charles P. (Glouc., Stroud

Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire

878

879

Black, Alexander William

Horniman, Frederick John

Reckett, Harold James

Bolton, Thomas Dolling

Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

Broadhurst, Henry

Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

Rigg, Richard

Brown, George M.(Edinburgh

Jacoby, James Alfred

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs)

Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

Kearley, Hudson E.

Roe, Sir Thomas

Burns, John

Kinloch, Sir JohnGeorge Smyth

Runciman, Walter

Burt, Thomas

Labouchere, Henry

Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

Caine, William Sproston

Lambert, George

Shipman, Dr. John G.

Caldwell, James

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

Cameron, Robert

Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington

Sloan, Thomas Henry

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Leigh, Sir Joseph

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Causton, Richard Knight

Leng, Sir John

Soares, Ernest J.

Crombie, John William

Levy, Maurice

Spencer, Rt Hn. C. R. (Northants

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

Lewis, John Herbert

Stevenson, Francis S.

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

Lloyd-George, David

Strachey, Sir Edward

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Lough, Thomas

Taylor, Theodore Cooke

Duncan, J. Hastings

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen E.)

Edwards, Frank

M'Kenna, Reginald

Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

Ellis, John Edward

Mansfield, Horace Rendall

Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr

Emmott, Alfred

Mappin, Sir Frederick Thorpe

Thomas, F. Freeman-(Hastings

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Markham, Arthur Basil

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

Fenwick, Charles

Mather, Sir William

Tomkinson, James

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

Mellor, Rt. Hon. John William

Toulmin, George

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

Wallace, Robert

Fuller, J. M. F.

Moss, Samuel

Walton, John Lawson(Leeds, S.

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Moulton, John Fletcher

Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir E. (Berwick)

Newnes, Sir George

Weir, James Galloway

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Norton, Captain Cecil William

White, Luke (York, E. R.)

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

Harmsworth, R. Leicester

Palmer, Sir Charles M. (Durham

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Harwood, George

Partington, Oswald

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth

Hayne, Rt. Hon. Charles Seale-

Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

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

Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

Philipps, John Wynford

Yoxall, James Henry

Helme, Norval Watson

Pickard, Benjamin

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

Pirie, Duncan V.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Hobhouse, C. E. H. (Bristol, E.

Priestley, Arthur

Mr. Herbert Gladstone and Mr. William M'Arthur

Holland, Sir William Henry

Rea, Russell

(6.33) Question put accordingly, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause"
The Committee divided:—Ayes, 245; Noes 123. (Division List No. 425.)

Flannery, Sir Fosteseue

Lee, Arthur H (Hants., Fareham

Rankin, Sir James

Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

Flower, Ernest

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Ratcliff, R. F.

Forster, Henry William

Llewellyn, Evan Henry

Rattigan, Sir William Henry

Foster, PhilipS. (Warwick, S. W

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Remnant, James Farquharson

Galloway, William Johnson

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Ridley, S. Forde (Bethnal Green

Gardner, Ernest

Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham

Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson

Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans)

Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Gordon, Maj Evans-(T'rH'ml'ts

Lowe, Francis William

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Gore, Hn G. R C. Ormsby-(Salop

Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

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

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Round, Rt. Hon. James

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Graham, Henry Robert

Macartney, Rt. Hn. W. G. Ellison

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Macdona, John Cumming

Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

Greene, Sir EW (B'rySEdm'nds

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool

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

Grenfell, William Henry

M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Greville, Hon. Ronald

M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire

Skewes-Cox, Thomas

Gunter, Sir Robert

Majendie, James A. H.

Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.

Hall, Edward Marshall

Malcolm, Ian

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

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Manners, Lord Cecil

Spear, John Ward

Hamilton, Rt. Hn Lord G (Midd'x

Maxwell, Rt. Hn. Sir H. E (Wigt'n

Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Robert Wm.

Milner, Rt. Hn. Sir Frederick G.

Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset

Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd

Milvain, Thomas

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Stewart, Sir Mark J. M 'Taggart

Harris, Frederick Leverton

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

Stroyan, John

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Morrell, George Herbert

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

Morrison, James Archibald

Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

Heaton, John Henniker

Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Helder, Augustus

Mount, William Arthur

Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ.

Henderson, Sir Alexander

Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

Thorburn, Sir Walter

Higginbottom, S. W.

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Thornton, Percy M.

Hoare, Sir Samuel

Murray, Rt. Hn. A. Graham (Bute

Tollemache, Henry James

Hobhouse, Henry (Somerset, E.

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

Hogg, Lindsay

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Hope, J. F. (Sheffield. Brightside

Myers, William Henry

Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

Horner, Frederick William

Newdegate, Francis A. N.

Valentia, Viscount

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Nicholson, William Graham

Vincent, Col. Sir CEH (Sheffield

Howard, John (Kent, Fav'ish'm

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Hozier, Hon. Jas. Henry Cecil

Nolan, Col. John P. (Galway, N

Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Hutton, John (Yorks, N. R.)

Pease, Herbt. Pike (Darlington)

Warde, Colonel C. E.

Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

Peel, Hn Wm. Robert Wellesley

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

Johnstone, Heywood

Percy, Earl

Welby, Sir Charles G. E. (Notts.

Kemp, George

Pierpoint, Robert

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Kennedy, Patrick James

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.

Plummer, Walter R.

Wylie, Alexander

Keswick, William

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Wyndhham, Rt. Hon. George

Kimber, Henry

Pretyman, Ernest George

Younger, William

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow

Purvis, Robert

Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

Pym, C. Guy

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

Lawson, John Grant

Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

Sir Alexander AclandHood and Mr. Anstruther

Lecky, Rt. Hn. William Edw. H.

Randles, John S.

NOES.

Allan, Sir William (Gateshead)

Caine, William Sproston

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Allen, Charles P. (Glouc., Stroud

Caldwell, James

Fenwick, Charles

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Cameron, Robert

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry

Campbell Bannerman, Sir H.

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

Barlow, John Emmott

Causton, Richard Knight

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Fuller, J. M. F.

Beckett, Ernest William

Cremer, William Randal

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Black, Alexander William

Crombie, John William

Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir E. (Berwick

Bolton, Thomas Dolling

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Broadhurst, Henry

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

Harcourt. Rt. Hon. Sir William

Brown, George M. (Edinburgh

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Harmsworth, R. Leicester

Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

Duncan, J. Hastings

Harwood, George

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

Edwards, Frank

Hayne, Rt. Hon. Charles Seale-

Burns, John

Ellis, John Edward

Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

Burt, Thomas

Emmott, Alfred

Helme, Norval Watson

882

883

Hemphill. Rt. Hon, Charles H.

Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

Spencer, Rt. Hn C. R. (Northants

Hobhouse, C. E. H. (Bristol, E.)

Moss, Samuel

Stevenson, Francis S.

Holland, Sir William Henry

Moulton, John Fletcher

Strachey, Sir Edward

Horniman, Frederick John

Newnes, Sir George

Taylor, Theodore Cooke

Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

Norton, Captain Cecil William

Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.

Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

Jacoby, James Alfred

Palmer, Sir Charles M. (Durham

Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

Jones, William (Carn'rvonshire

Partington, Oswald

Thomas, F. Freeman-(Hastings

Kearley, Hudson E.

Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

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

Kinloch, Sir John GeorgeSmyth

Philipps, John Wynford

Tomkinson, James

Labouchere, Henry

Pickard, Benjamin

Toulmin, George

Lambert, George

Pirie, Duncan V.

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Priestley, Arthur

Wallace, Robert

Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington

Rea, Russell

Walton, John Lawson (Leeds, S.

Leigh, Sir Joseph

Reckitt, Harold James

Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

Leng, Sir John

Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

Weir, James Galloway

Levy, Maurice

Rigg, Richard

White, Luke (York, E. R.)

Lewis, John Herbert

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

Lloyd-George, David

Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Lough, Thomas

Roe, Sir Thomas

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter

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

M'Kenna, Reginald

Runciman, Walter

Yoxall, James Henry

Mansfield, Horace Rendall

Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

Mappin, Sir Frederick Thorpe

Shipman, Dr. John G.

Markham, Arthur Basil

Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Mather, Sir William

Sloan, Thomas Henry

Mr. Herbert Gladstone and

Middlemore, John Throgmort'n

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Mr. William M'Arthur.

Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen

Soares, Ernest J.

THE CHAIRMANsaid that the Amendment on the Paper standing in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Dundee—
"Page 3, line 14, after 'shall,' to insert 'notwithstanding the provisions of any trust deed.'"
was unnecessary and mere surplusage.
MR. EDMUND ROBERTSONsaid that in drafting the Amendment he had followed the precedent set by the right hon. the First Lord of the Treasury himself in an Amendment put down on 30th of July, although he did not know what had become of that Amendment. With all respect to the Chairman he held that his Amendment was not only relevant and usual, but necessary, in order that it should be made perfectly clear that what was in an Act of Parliament was not to be impeded by any legal instrument whatever.
THE CHAIRMANsaid that the hon. and learned Member had a better acquaintance with the Law Courts than he had, but he could hardly believe that any Court of Law would decide that a Trust deed was of more force than an Act of Parliament.
SIR. ROBERT FINLAYwas understood to say that he agreed with the ruling of the Chairman.
MR. LLOYD MORGANsaid he believed the Prime Minister had stated that the question raised by this Amendment had received his consideration, and he hoped that when the right hon. Gentleman came to express his views, he would admit that the Amendment was a reasonable one. It seemed to him that the Amendment followed logically from the earlier part of the Clause, which gave to the local authority power as to the directions to the managers of the non-provided schools. The Amendment was, he submitted, absolutely required for the protection of the teachers. If the teachers could be dismissed without the consent of the local authorities, their position would be very unpleasant and precarious. The letter read by the hon. Member for North Camberwell showed clearly the kind of pressure which could be brought to bear on teachers. A row took place, after a teacher had been appointed, on a matter which had nothing whatever to do with the academic qualifications of the teacher. It might be that, although he was an excellent teacher, and that no kind of objection could be taken to him on academic grounds, he was an independent man, who objected to and refused to discharge duties which had nothing to do with school duties. Difficulties were sure to arise. His Amendment made it necessary that before a teacher could be dismissed the

885
managers must get the consent of the local authority. On general grounds it appeared to him that the Amendment was perfectly fair and reasonable; while it was absolutely essential that the local authority should have this power, otherwise, on a very important particular, the managers might set the local authority at defiance.
Amendment proposed—
"In page 3, line 15, after the word 'the,' to insert the words 'dismissal or.'"—(Mr. Lloyd Morgan.)
Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid he had much sympathy with what he understood to be the object of the hon. Gentleman, but his particular method of carrying out that object was not one which the Government could with propriety or advantage adopt. They must assume now that the Committee had decided, of course after debate and vote, that the denominational character of the schools was to be maintained, that it must be maintained by having teachers qualified to give the denominational teaching, and that the managers, so far as they had to deal with the denominational aspect of the teaching, must do so independently of the education authority. He thought that the hon. Gentleman would see that if his Amendment were introduced into the Bill, it would, as a matter of fact be impossible to give the denominational managers that control over denominational teaching which they had agreed to give them Take a concrete instance. Let them suppose the case of a teacher, very highly qualified to give instruction in all matters of secular education, appointed by the managers of a Roman Catholic voluntary school. Suppose that that teacher, while retaining all his qualifications for secular teaching, changed his opinions in regard to religion, and became an avowed Agnostic. He thought the Committee would not desire that the Roman Catholic school should be required to continue the services of this gentleman, but they might be required to do so if the Amendment were carried in the form proposed. The teacher whose imaginary
886
case he was postulating, might appeal to the local education authority, and that authority might say: "We have nothing whatever to do with the denominational character of the teaching; we are instructed by the Act not to withhold our consent to the dismissal of any teacher except on educational—that is secular—grounds; but so far as we are concerned we regard this man as perfectly well qualified to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and, therefore, we cannot consent to his dismissal. "The result of that would be that the education authority, acting within the limits laid down by this Amendment, would compel the denominational school to retain the services of a teacher whose opinions were violently in conflict with those of the denominational managers and trustees of the school. He did not think the hon. Gentleman desired that. The intention of the hon. Gentleman he understood to be, that if the managers, through caprice, or some mistaken notion of what was good for the secular education of the school, dismissed the teacher, and if the education authority were of opinion that such dismissal would lie really injurious to the education of the school, they should have the power to stop it—that up to that point there should be an appeal to the education authority. He thought that that might be very properly granted. It appeared to fall in logically with the scheme of the Bill. The desire of the Government was to increase and strengthen the grip of the education authority on secular education, and this power was evidently in conformity with the general scheme of the scope of the Clause as they had conceived it. But, of course, they must so draw the Amendment that if the dismissal was on religious grounds there should be no right of survey on the part of the education authority. The hon. Gentleman's Amendment could not be accepted in its present form, but he thought it could be accepted if it were moved in this form—after the word "grounds" in the sub-Section to insert the words "and the consent of the authority shall also be required to the dismissal of a teacher, unless the dismissal be on grounds connected with the giving of religious instruction in the school." He thought those words were precise and would

887
carry out the general feeling on both sides of the Committee in favour of some movement in this direction, and hoped the Committee would consent to accept them without any prolonged debate.
DR. MACNAMARAsaid he had no doubt that the First Lord's Amendment and his speech would be of enormous importance in the schools themselves. He accepted the Amendment, which shut off the religious instruction from the local authority, and he believed it would be a simple act of justice to a very deserving body of public servants. He understood the effect to be that the local authority might veto the dismissal of a teacher unless the dismissal was given on the grounds of religious instruction. He would, however, like to put this point to the right hon. Gentleman. Supposing there was a dismissal nominally in connection with religious instruction, but not actually so—what would happen? Would one of the managers be at liberty to make representation to the local authority, would the local authority then make representation to the Board of Education, and would the Board of Education thereupon be in a position to examine the facts, and, if it should appear that the dismissal was actually on other grounds than those connected with religious instruction, instruct the local authority to set its veto upon that dismissal?
MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid he did not think the danger apprehended by the hon. Member was conceivable under the new system of management. As he understood the question, it would work out in this way. Let them stretch their imagination and try to conceive such a case—he thought it was an extreme case. What would happen would be that the member of the management body representing the local authority would say to the localauthority: "The majority of the managers are pretending to you that this dismissal is upon religious grounds. It is nothing of the kind, but is on grounds quite different." Then he thought it would be in the power of the education authority to veto the dismissal. There would be an appeal to the Board of Education, not to discuss whether the teacher had or had not
888
done that which was antagonistic to denominational teaching in the school, but to determine the demarcation between that which was connected with religious and that which was connected with secular instruction. The Board of Education would come in as a committee of delimitation.
DR. MACNAMARAexpressed his obligations to the right hon. Gentleman, and said he thought his Amendment, with the explanation he had just given, was an entirely satisfactory settlement of the subject.
MR. SAMUEL EVANSsaid he desired to regard the matter from two points of view, the substance of the Amendment and then its form. He was not quite sure that the words of the First Lord of the Treasury were as satisfactory to Members on that side of the House as his hon. friend the Member for North Camberwell seemed to think. What they wanted to secure was that nothing outside the conduct of the school as an elementary school should justify the dismissal of a teacher, and here he would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education this question. Had the management the right to dismiss a teacher in circumstances which did not touch the education in the school, either religious or secular, during school hours? Could anything which was not done to the satisfaction of the minister of the denomination, either on Sunday or outside school hours entirely, be made the subject-matter of a dismissal? He thought they ought to have some explanation on that point. With regard to the form of the Amendment, he thought it was objectionable, because in his opinion they ought to require the consent of the local authority as a preliminary step to the dismissal of a teacher even more than to his appointment, but here they could have a dismissal first. [Cries of "No."] At least, that was his opinion.
SIR ROBERT FINLAYsaid the dismissal could not take place without consent except on religious grounds.
MR. SAMUEL EVANScontended that they could have the dismissal first without consent. What ever the intention

889
of the Government might be, he thought that the sub-Section should read—"The consent of the local education authority shall be required for the dismissal of a teacher, but such consent shall not be with-held if the dismissal be not on grounds connected with the giving of secular instruction in the school" The other point on which he desired to have an answer was, whether it was perfectly clear that the intention of the Government was that, when once a teacher was appointed, he should not be dismissed it he performed his duty on the secular side and in the denominational teaching of the school.
THE SECRETARY of THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,)said the intention of the words proposed by his right hon. friend was that dismissal should not take place on general grounds without the consent of the local authority, but if the dismissal was on grounds connected with religious instruction there would be no reference to the local authority, and no consent would be required, unless there was a representation from some of the managers that the dismissal was not bonâ fide on religions grounds. In such a case there would be a reference back to the managers, and in case of the managers not giving way the matter would go before the Board of Education.
MR. SAMUEL EVANSwished to know if it was clearly understood that religious instruction was to be the instruction given within school hours and not outside the time-table.
MR. H. BROADHURSTpointed out that it constantly occurred in rural parishes that the school master was the best person to act as clerk to the parish council. An energetic clerk of the parish council often came into contact with the managers of the schools. Under this Clause it would be open to the managers to object to the progressive work done by the schoolmaster, and obtain his dismissal upon the ground of incapacity in regard to religious teaching. Village schoolmasters were often also invaluable in friendly society work, and he had known many cases where they
890
would come into conflict with the local managers in that regard. He would like the Amendment drawn in such a way that the managers should not be allowed to dismiss a master unless they had the full sanction of the local authority. It would, in his opinion, be a great misfortune if the local schoolmasters should not be allowed to continue the very useful social work they carried on.
MR. ERNEST GRAYexpressed his entire concurrence with the statement of the Prime Minister, and thanked him for the concession he had made, which, in his opinion, would cover all cases.
MR. FLETCHER MOULTONsaid it seemed to him that the Prime Minister in his reply had indicated that sub-Section 2 would be kept in such a form that the dismissal of a teacher would come within its provisions. If that were so, he would be perfectly satisfied, because he quite agreed that there must be some provision of that kind. But he was a little afraid that unless the attention of the Committee was called to it, some alteration might take place in the sub-Section which would exclude the matter from its operation.
MR. LLOYD MORGANsaid he was prepared, with the sanction of the House, to withdraw his Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Committee report Progress: to sit again this evening.

EVENING SITTING.

  IRELAND—ADMINISTRATION OF THE CRIMES ACT—MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIENin rising to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz.—
  "The proclamation, under the provisions of the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, of the City of Dublin and of nine Irish counties since the rising of the House in August, and the danger to the public peace arising from the harsh and partisan administration of that Act,"

  891
  said: I am sure it is a relief to all of us that we have at last come to the end of the long wrangle as to the right of the representatives of Ireland, without suppression by one English party and without patronage from the other, to have the affairs of their country discussed even for a few hours in a rational manner, instead of our being driven to whatever violent or sporadic means we may be able to find to express our discontent. On my own behalf, Mr. Speaker, and I think I may say on behalf of all my colleagues, I may be allowed to express our deep regret that an unfair portion of the inconvenience of this struggle should have fallen on your shoulders. I will pass from that topic by making an observation which, unfortunately, has a direct bearing on this Motion, and it is to the obstruction which has been offered to this Motion from the first day of these sittings down to the Notice Paper of Friday morning. It is a perfect epitome of the vices and follies of your government of Ireland, which we arraign at this moment, because, as invariably happens in Irish affairs, it turns out that it is we who are in the right, and it is the Government who are wrong. And yet your temper has been tried and our temper has been tried; your business has been obstructed and our business has been obstructed, for the mere pleasure of some puerile dialectical exercitation. As usual, the Irish people have been taught the old lesson that, whatever is not given with grace by this House, must be, and may be, extorted by rougher methods. Under this Motion we have charged the Administration in Ireland with partisanship as well as with hardship. The keynote of that charge—in fact the keynote of all that is occuring in Ireland at the present moment—is to be found in the statement which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary a few weeks ago published in reference to the proposal of Captain Shawe-Taylor for a Land Conference. Here are his words:
  "No Government can settle the Irish Land Question. It must be settled by the parties interested. The extent of useful action on the part of any Government is limited to providing facilities, in so far as that may be possible, for giving effect to any settlement arrived at by the parties."
  892
  I venture to say that that is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable confessions that ever fell from the lips of an English Governor of Ireland, and if he had the logic and the courage of his convictions it would be one of the most creditable, because it is a confession of a fundamental truth. The right hon. Gentleman by that statement confessed the powerlessness of any English Government to settle the question which is at the root of all good government in Ireland. He confessed that to effect that settlement is a task which will have to be entrusted to the parties interested—that is to say, to the organisations representing the parties interested, because at this time of day to attempt to ignore these two organisations would be just as if you had tried to terminate the Boer War by opening negotiations between the old women and children on both sides. I am glad to find that The Times newspaper, for once in a way, agrees with me in the view of the right hon. Gentleman's statement. The Times of this morning says—
  "By giving his blessing to the proposed Conference between Mr. Redmond and Mr. W. O'Brien, on the one hand, and the Duke of Abercorn and Lord Barrymore, on the other, Mr. Wyndham admitted the claim of the United Irish League to be as much officially the organisation of the tenants as the Landowners Convention is of the landlords."
  With that declaration of impartiality on his lips he immediately plunges into coercion up to the neck, and for what purpose? In order to gag and persecute one of the parties interested, and that the party that is ready for peace, and to make himself and his Removables and policemen the abject slaves and partisans of the rival combination who will have nothing but war. I ask, Has any English Minister ever more completely given away the case for English rule in Ireland, or more completely condemned his own position? I have no doubt he will say that the settlement was to be effected, not by bitter internecine war, but by friendly agreement between the parties. Yes, but there again he has given away the landlords, and the landlords have given away themselves and him. Because what happened? One of the parties interested, the Tenants Combination, instantly and unequivocally accepted the peace proposal, the only

  893
  practical proposition that was made. The governing body of the United Irish League unanimously approved of the Conference, the Irish Parliamentary Party unanimously approved of the Conference, and we did so genuinely and in good faith because we believed, and we believe still, that if the landlords had entered into that Conference in the same spirit as we were prepared to enter into it, it would have been perfectly possible to have arrived at a friendly agreement that would have been acceptable both to landlords and tenants, and, if necessary, without asking the British taxpayers to contribute a single shilling of additional taxation beyond the Imperial expenditure in Ireland at the present moment. If such a Conference had been followed by a Conference between representatives of the two English parties, as Mr. Gladstone, in one of his great inspirations, once suggested, there never was a moment that such astonishingly good results could have been brought about in the way of the appeasement of Ireland. That was the attitude of the tenants; what was the attitude of the landlords? The leaders of the Landowners Convention summarily and insolently rejected these proposals, notwithstanding that, if rumour does not belie him, the right hon. Gentleman took the trouble to travel all the way from County Cork up to Barronscourt in the extreme north, to implore them to save themselves and the country. That was the attitude of the landlords, and now you have the extraordinary result that at this moment it is the men who responded to these peace proposals that are being coerced and persecuted; and it is the gentlemen who scoffed at the right hon. Gentleman's own advice, it is the Landowners' Convention, who by seventy-seven votes to fourteen rejected the proposals of the Conference—these are the men in whose interests the right hon. Gentleman is prostituting the power of England, in order to pander to a clique of selfish territorialists, and play their own selfish game of political intrigue and influence at the expense of certain unfortunate tenants, and at the expense of the people of England, for whom they are laying up a fresh harvest of trouble. That is the right hon. Gentleman's notion of impartiality and statesmanship
  894
  in the administration of this desperate and exceptional law. We do not forget that it would be unfair to include all the landlords of Ireland in the same breath. There have been some very remarkable developments, and it would be a very shallow and stupid Irishman who would deny that the action of men like Lord Dunraven, the O'Conor Don, Lord Mayo, and Lord Castletown, might be capable of producing results of considerable importance to their own class if they were seconded by a Minister strong enough to grasp the situation, and fearless enough to look to high ideals rather than that of scoring a point, or attempting to do so. These men, undoubtedly, compare not unfavourably in every respect even with those intellectual giants—Lord Londonderry, Lord Ardilaun, and Lord Barry-more—who have hitherto had the courage of their opinions. Unhappily, Lord Dunraven and his friends have to deal with a class—I am afraid with a Ministry—who are not strong enough to stand up to this syndicate of brewers and colliery owners who are rushing the Irish landlords to their ruin. I regret it truly and unfeignedly. If these gentlemen would take a suggestion from me—and I can assure them it is made in no petty or Party spirit—instead of writing letters to The Times newspaper to convert gentlemen of the peculiar cerebral formation of Lord Londonderry, they would frankly and honestly join the United Irish League, and trust their own countrymen, within three months they would have settled the Irish Land Question to their own advantage and to the immeasurable advantage of Ireland. We are used to a great many ridiculous misunderstandings in this House and in this country, but there never was a more idiotic notion than the notion that we cling to agitation for the mere love of it. We are ready to act justly and generously, to give more than generous terms to the landlords of Ireland—we do not grudge them, on the contrary, we would welcome them, on the one simple condition, of these landlords recognising that they are Irishmen instead of their playing the part of country less half-castes, Anglo-Irish Octoroons, who have not at the present moment an atom of power or respect in Ireland and who, I suspect, enjoy very little more respect

  895
  or love in England. The fault, or perhaps the weakness, on our part is that we have been always too ready to respond to the first genuine touch of kindness. Even the most extreme amongst us are not altogether exempt from the weakness, if I may call it so. Be that as it may, under the present circumstances there is very little fear of even our extremists being subjected to any weakening, because the right hon. Gentleman is proceeding in his government of Ireland upon the principle of persecuting the men who are reconcilable and who are in the right, in the interest of the men who are irreconcilable and who are in the wrong.
  What are the crimes for which the right hon. Gentleman has placed Dublin and these nine counties under such severe disabilities and degradations? The first fact that I would ask the House to bear in mind is that, broadly speaking, there is no real agrarian crime in Ireland—nothing except the technical crime of free speech, which has been created by the Coercion Act, and which even a Unionist so irrational as your own County Court Judge O'Connor Morris has confessed to be free from moral blame. If Englishmen only took the pains of going through the statistics of the present time in Ireland and compared them with the state of bloodshed and terror in reference to which other Coercion Acts were proposed, I am convinced that even the bitterest of our English opponents would feel humiliated and ashamed that proceedings so tyrannical should be put in force in a country from which crime has been so absolutely absent. If the Government had attempted to pass the Coercion Act through Parliament this session, with even their ironclad majority of 130, they could not have got the Bill through the House; and I venture to say there is no Minister on the Treasury Bench who would be case-hardened enough to propose it, knowing how utterly destitute were the materials to justify it. At The Times Forgeries Commission evidence was given that there had been eighty-seven agrarian murders during the three years of the Land League, in spite of the heroic efforts of Michael Davitt to avert them. The United Irish League has been four
  896
  and a half years in existence, and during those years there has been just one agrarian murder in the whole country, and that took place three years ago, and it did not take place in the province of Connaught, where alone at that time the United Irish League was in existence. When the Liberal Government were proposing the Coercion Act of 1882 they produced statistics showing that there had been 9,023 agrarian outrages from 1879 to 1882. I have got here the latest quarterly Return of agrarian crime in Ireland, and it is like a certain famous history of snakes in Ireland. Snakes there are none‡ Except a few threatening letters, there are only twenty-one petty agrarian offences returned in the whole country for three months. Under all the important headings there are long columns of blanks from many counties, and from whole provinces. It is exactly the same story in what are called the disturbed counties. Not a single crime of any sort; nothing that even the imagination of Dublin Castle could dress up and represent as a crime in the ordinary sense of the word, except threatening letters, of which I myself in this House have received in a single night as many as have been charged against the whole people of Ireland. I have no grievance against the threatening letter writers, except when they forget to pay the postage. It is not as if we made these representations about the state of Ireland. I have referred to your reports. Let me now refer to a still better witness. On the 14th March, in this House, the Chief Secretary stated, much to his credit, "Therefore, I have always held it my duty to say that of violent crime against the person or property in Ireland, there is less now than in any period of which we have record" Well, grossly though the people have been exasperated, I do not think that it will be pretended that any serious change has taken place since, except, as the House heard today, that no less than five county jails in Ireland have since been closed for want of any ordinary criminals to occupy them. This is the country in which the right hon. Gentleman has proclaimed the City of Dublin and nine other counties—this is the country in which you are attacking Members of Parliament, your own colleagues in this House, more savagely

  897
  than you sometimes treat your wife-beaters and garrotters in England. This is the country in which, I venture to say, within the last twelve months yon have attacked more newspapers—you who love the freedom of the Press—for reporting Irish meetings than have been suppressed in Russia during the same period—a period of exceptional danger to Russia, and I know what I am talking about perhaps a little better than the yellow journals who are so fond of giving the Czar a lesson on constitutional matters.
  There is another point. It is not you, but these very Members of Parliament, and these very newspapers and this organisation that you have attacked, that have got rid of agrarian crime in Ireland. You could not do it. For the one crime you ever put down you create a hundred. The agents of Dublin Castle are themselves the worst disturbers, and very often the worst criminals, and yet, as I told the House the other night of a police crime, which, if it had succeeded, would have covered the reputation of this Party and organisation with mire and blood, you heard the Attorney General for Ireland really arguing as if the criminal were not the police forger but the man who, in defence of his own honour and the honour of the country against one of the foulest wrongs ever attempted, inconvenienced Dublin Castle by attempting to bring that man to justice. We have given you a country absolutely free from bloodshed or from any deeds which shun the daylight. You are dealing now, not with a country of moonlighters, but with a country of broad daylighters, thanks to the teaching of the United Irish League. This organisation has now for nearly five years been in operation, every year with decreasing agrarian statistics, and in all that time our watchful enemies in Dublin Castle and the landlord camp have never been able to fasten upon a single deed of bloodshed which by any perversity of malice could be traced to the teachings of our organisation. There is no fathoming the infatuation of English rule in Ireland. A wise English statesman would frankly and honestly acknowledge the work of the League. It may literally be stated that adjectives, strong adjectives, have been substituted for bullets in agrarian controversy. A wise statesman would go down on his knees and thank his stars that the Irish people have
  898
  been brought to look upon peaceful and combined public action in the open day instead of looking to the blunderbuss and to the midnight outrage for weapons of agitation.
  What has been the statesmanship of the right hon. Gentleman, or rather of the Landowners' Convention, whom he has ignobly, for a man of his admitted mental stature, permitted to run the show, and to pull the strings, and to direct his performance? The men behind him have been striving to wrest from the people the weapons of open and legitimate agitation; they have been trying to persuade the people that an editor or Member of Parliament who fearlessly speaks out public opinion is doing a more dangerous thing for himself, and, perhaps, a more ineffectual thing, than the man who would fire at a landlord from behind a ditch. These men know that the absence of crime is our strength and their weakness, and horrible as it undoubtedly is to have to say it, I say deliberately these men are longing for crime, and working for crime, because they know it is their only hope of putting down the public opinion of their countrymen, and of arousing English prejudice and passion against us. Anyone knows that crime would be our ruin. The House has heard a good deal about County Court Judge Curran, the gentleman who threw in the face of twenty-three grand jurors their resolution referring to the peaceful condition of the county. That gentleman in passing a sentence of hard labour upon one of our colleagues, made this remarkable and eloquent statement—
  "I have some experience of the terrible crime of boycotting in other times, and I deliberately say that as the result of that experience I should far prefer going back to the time when there would be a calendar containing twenty or thirty cases of serious crime, ordinary crime, than to see systematic boycotting practised in any county."
  That is to say, this gentleman would be happier if there were twenty or thirty cases of murder or midnight outrage, instead of the state of things in which the people are peacefully combining to deal with their friends instead of dealing with their enemies. I know how difficult it is to criticise this gentleman's conduct. The Prime Minister declined to give the House an opportunity of doing so. I do not desire to say anything particularly unfriendly of Judge Curran,

  899
  owing to his earlier life, but I am sorry for him, and all I can say is, if I had read that statement anonymously, I should have thought it a statement more worthy of a ghoul than of a Judge.
  Now, what are those terrible crimes for which practically you have put an end to trial by jury and to freedom of the Press, and have been carrying on all these savageries against your own colleagues in this House? I hope I have shown that it is not really agrarian crimes you are dealing with, as of old. It is not a strike against rent, as of old. There is absolutely no trace of a rent strike in any part of the county outside the immediate neigh bourhood of the De Freyne estate, where it arose out of peculiar and sad local circumstance and without consultation with the governing body of the United Irish League ["Oh"]. Who is the Gentleman opposite who interrupts?
  MR. ARCHDALE: Is the hon. Member for East Mayo not one of the governing body?
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: The hon. Member for East Mayo will be mighty well able to speak for himself. I assert most distinctly that in no way whatever was the governing body of the League consulted.
  MR. TULLY: Then why am I attacked?
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to his own constituents, who, I think, will inform him that the English House of Commons is not the proper place for an altercation among men calling themselves Irishmen. For myself, the first whisper I heard of the fight on the De Freyne estate was when I was 12,000 miles away, and in a speech in which the right hon. the Chief Secretary charged me with having organised it. I invited the right hon. Gentleman in this House, and I invite him now, to cite from any of the four or five hundred speeches I have delivered in the course of this fight, a single sentence in which I countenanced non-payment of rent as a weapon in this agitation, and certainly I do not claim to be gifted with the talent of concealing my thoughts through so long a series of speeches. No, Sir, you have no crime to deal with, no
  900
  no-rent strike to deal with, and I venture to say to this House that the only crime of any kind against which this Act is directed is the crime of free speech and of free newspaper writing, based on the principle of trade union law in England, and asserting the right of exclusive dealing.
  I am afraid of absorbing an unfair proportion of the time available for this miserably restricted debate, or I should be glad to quote the strongest of the speeches that have been made the basis of charges against my colleagues. I suppose I may safely leave that task to the Chief Secretary, and I ask the House to watch those speeches, and to see for themselves if this were a question of a big miners' strike in England, or a big dockers' strike in London, whether any one of those speeches would have attracted any particular attention in England if it were delivered at an English Trade Union Congress. There is an easy test. Lord Londonderry is a colliery owner in England, as well as a leader of the land war in Ireland. If there were a strike of his miners in England I should like to see Lord Londonderry and his colleagues facing the working men of I England at a General Election, I should like to see the Prime Minister of England facing the working men of Manchester, or the Member for West Birmingham facing the working men of Birmingham, if for speeches of that character to the strikers in England, men of honour and noble lives like the Member for Morpeth and the Member for Battersea had been treated as our colleagues have been treated—had been treated with the same cowardly and beastly violence and foul play.
  Now we come to the proclamation of Dublin. Today the right hon. Gentleman, with a candour on which, I must say, I compliment him, made to this House the astonishing confession that the city of Dublin, the capital of the country, had been proclaimed under this frightful Act, for no other reason under the sun except to enable him to deal with the Irish People newspaper. I congratulate him on his candour and thank him for its gigantic advertisement; but I ask the House was there ever such a declaration made by a Minister before, as that the capital city of a country, counting with its suburbs something like 500,000

  901
  inhabitants, should be stripped of the right of trial by jury and reduced to a state of minor siege in order to deal with a humble weekly newspaper? An hon. Member opposite interrupted me just now when I was referring to the Member for West Birmingham. There are two Members for West Birmingham—the Member of the present and the Member of the past. I would ask the hon. Member opposite just to fancy the Birmingham of old times being proclaimed under this Act and being stripped of the right of trial by jury, in order to get at a weekly newspaper in Birmingham, or even at the Birmingham Daily Post, for publishing the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, the speeches of those old, old times of his Radical, or rather of his Republican, days when we are assured on high authority that he was preaching the doctrines of Jack Cade. No, Mr. Speaker, Birmingham is not to be proclaimed, though Dublin is a very much more peaceful city than Birmingham, as I think the hon. Member for Carnarvon can testily.
  I have something else to say to the House, and I will not waste the time of the House [some MINISTERIAL cheers, and Irish cries of "Order" and "The gentlemen of England ‡"] I can only attribute that interruption to what the French call "inferior mentality" I will not waste the time at my disposal by dealing with the three or four trumpery paragraphs denouncing landgrabbing, for which the Irish People was prosecuted. I am sure that the Chief Secretary will make up for the deficiency, and will read those paragraphs in full, and I ask the House as soon as they have heard them to say if ever there was a more ridiculous mouse produced than that which the Government had produced, after putting a mountain in labour and after reducing a city of half a million of inhabitants to slavery. We accuse the Government in this Motion of harshness, as well as of partisanship—harshness is the very meekest word that I could find in the dictionary. We do not intend to make any appeal to this House in reference to the brutal way, the blackguardly way, in which these Coercion Courts have been conducted. The more those courts are conducted in
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  that manner the sooner will any decent Englishman be revolted at them. Do not for a moment think that we on these Benches want to be one whit better treated than the humblest man who appears before those courts for taking our advice—I mean, of course the advice we really do give, not the hideous caricature of that advice that passes current with the Party of invincible ignorance on the other side of the House. I only mean invincible ignorance as to the affairs of Ireland which they will persist in running into. If the expression of public opinion is to be a crime, by all means do not spare us. On the contrary, I felicitate the Government upon having the courage of their convictions, and upon treating the representatives of Ireland with more brutality even than you are treating the people. You are now laying down as your principle of government that the more faithtul and fearless a representative of the people is, the heavier will be his crime and the heavier will be your disgusting punishment. That is your pretty theory of constitutional Government in the twentieth century, and you are surprised that a race of 20,000,000 do not kiss the rod and do not bow down and worship and love you.
  In the old times, before you passed the Local Government Bill in 1892, you fell back upon the empty cry that the elected representatives of Ireland were not the true representatives of the people. Even so late as last Saturday I saw in the newspaper that Lord Cadogan had made a speech with some questionable taste, knowing as he well must, that if he had made that speech the day before he quitted Dublin the men he had used for his own purposes had only to raise their hands, and he would have been hooted through Dublin to the ship's side. But by your own Local Government Act you have blown Lord Cadogan's ideas sky high. In the local councils of Ireland there is as intensely localised a representation of the people as it would be possible to have, and what is the consequence? In 30 out of 32 counties you have been forced to make war on the County Councils and the District Councils, just as you are making war on the Irish representatives. It is a war directed not so much against Members of Parliament,

  903
  whom you cannot disqualify and dare not expel, but against the local representatives of the people—a war to intimidate the men who have carried on a system of local administration so excellent that the Local Government Board, hostile as it is, has borne testimony to its good work. Instead of honestly con fessing that you have the people of Ireland against you, instead of admitting that all Irish representatives in every shape and category, in Parliament, in corporations, in district and county councils, are against you, your brilliant idea is to try to terrorise by these disabilities and these disgusting torments of public men—in order to drive from public life the men whose character and public spirit would be the treasure and security for the good government of any other country on the face of the earth.
  The treatment of these men is opposed to the usages of civilisation. Englishmen have been political prisoners before now. I am not speaking of the Jameson raid, with reference to which incident the right hon. Gentleman hawked a begging letter round the House. When the right hon. Gentleman remembers, the way he is treating Irish Members, let him not forget how they enabled him to secure civilised treatment for his own friends. I do not envy the right hon. Gentleman's feelings when he reflects that at this moment some of the men who signed that petition at his request are now lying on plank beds under his orders. But Dr. Jameson was not merely the prisoner of this country; he was the prisoner of President Kruger, whom hon. Members opposite are accustomed to abuse. Was Dr. Jameson stretched on a plank bed, or was he hanged by the neck from the nearest tree, as Mr. Kruger would have been justified in doing by every canon of international law? English soldiers and officers in thousands fell into the hands of those poor, rude, uncultured, peasant farmers in South Africa, and they knew what Boer prisons were like. No doubt the English soldiers had to rough it and to put up with a good deal of discomfort; but I ask them to say whether they were treated by their Boer gaolers as the Irish Members are being treated by the Chief Secretary in Ireland. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Question,
  904
  question"] Irish Members, after all, have feelings as well as the officers of the Imperial Yeomanry, and I ask what would hon. Gentlemen opposite think if they had been treated by the Boer Generals as the right hon. Gentleman's gaolers have treated an hon. friend of mine who is sitting on these Benches at this moment not far from me—I will not name him, because it is a matter too horrible for the ears of civilisation. A member of the Irish Party has been sentenced for a speech to his constituents, and he has been ordered into the prison wash-house and invited to wash the underclothing of abandoned women from a neighbouring ward. [Some MINISTERIAL laughter, and Irish cries of "Shame," "Only a cad could laugh," and "Cecil."] The hon. Member who laughs is not worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoe of the man to whom I have referred, and I pity the England that can produce a noble Lord that can jeer at such a circumstance. It is one of those things almost too horrible to mention, one of the things from which history loves to avert its gaze. But this is the way in which the Government are vindicating the glory and humanity of England against the Irish Members. What were the offences for which these two sets of men found themselves in prison? I do not want to say anything against the soldiers, who, of course, only obeyed orders. The Government entered upon the Transvaal war in order to plunder the Boers of their gold. [Cries of "Order."]
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is speaking of subjects outside the question before the House.
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I was only going to point out that as far as the men who are imprisoned under this Act are concerned, their one crime is that they strove to preserve some remnants of the population of their own country, which is less within the last ten years by some 430,000 of the very flower of the inhabitants. Those who live in this rich country cannot imagine the feelings of Irishmen when they see the population in Ireland wasting away like a consumptive patient, coughing away its life

  905
  every week, and who feel that unless something heroic is done it may be too late. The Chief Secretary may have a brilliant career before him, but up to the present his only achievement in Ireland has been to invent a new way of stretching his political opponents on the rack, a war from which the present Prime Minister shrunk under the old Coercion Act. The right hon. Gentleman read out the other day a list of 1,200 sentences of hard labour under the old Coercion Act, but in nearly all those cases they were directed against instances of resistance to the police and to the bailiffs, none of which are taking place at the present moment, while as to the large number of Members of Parliament, priests, and editors of newspapers who were prosecuted then, only the merest insignificant fraction of them were sentenced to hard labour. I should be very sorry for one moment to suggest that the right hon. Gentleman derives any pleasure from sending his colleagues to hard labour, but it will not do for the Chief Secretary, as he did this afternoon, to state that it is not by his orders, and that he has not given any directions to these removable magistrates. Who ever suspected Dublin Castle of doing anything as clumsy as that? But mark this fact. These removable magistrates suddenly began to pass sentences of hard labour the moment the cue was given them, and every man in Ireland knows thoroughly well that, at one word of reprobation of this savagery from the right hon. Gentleman, his miserable creatures would drop their new plan of campaign just as quickly as they took it up. Some of the resident magistrates are honourable men, but most of them are creatures who are as amenable as the right hon. Gentleman's valet to his slightest word.
  These proceedings are only worthy of your concentration camps in South Africa. But we have no appeal to make to you. These things degrade and disgrace you and not us, and you are only in the beginning of them. I could have quoted to you what happened to my hon. friend the Member for North Longford, who was sentenced to two months hard labour for publishing reports of the branches of the United Irish League. You remember his answer when he was told that the sentence of hard labour would be dropped if he undertook to refrain from such conduct. Do you suppose that you are
  906
  going to frighten him by hard labour? Will you frighten the hon. Member for South Mayo, who was not frightened by your policemen who pulled him down, without a shadow of legal right, by brute force, and pulled him off every platform from which he attempted to address his own constituency? Do you suppose you will frighten my hon. friend the Member for East Galway, who will be face to face with a sentence of four months hard labour? You may torture these men, you may kill them, and you will kill them if you go on in this way. These hon. Members have announced that they will risk their lives in resisting your prison treatment. Any man who knows the hon Member for North Longford and the hon. Member for East Galway knows that when they pledge their lives they mean what they say. Do you think you will dishonour my hon. friend the Member for East Galway in the eyes of the Irish people, for whom he has already given up the greater part of his noble and unselfish life? Do you think you are going to frighten the local bodies of the country? No; these bodies have only at any moment to cease holding their meetings, and they would land the Government in chaos and paralysis. They are not in a hurry to be driven to such steps, but they could do it, and if they are driven to it they will do it. The right hon. Gentleman has had a great opportunity in Ireland, and has still, for we never nourish a personal grudge against any man who will do good work for Ireland.
  Tomorrow, or the day after, a great many of us will be going back to Ireland, and it will be for this House to send us back with a message of peace or war. With the Government will be the responsibility, and, sooner or later, with them will be the retribution. If you send us back with the message that this House has no sympathy for the people you persist in governing against their will, and who have never done you any wrong and upon whom you have inflicted centuries of almost uninterrupted cruelty and wrong, yours will be the responsibility. The Irish people may be beaten down by the force of England, but they have never been beaten down for long. Cromwell could not do it, and I do not think that even the right hon. Gentleman's rashest flatterer would suggest

  907
  that he is likely to succeed where Cromwell failed. The attitude of the Irish Party and of the Irish people towards our enemies in this House, or out of it, may be summed up in a rough and ready way in a couplet which is familiar to us in Ireland, in which the stalwart peasants of Tipperary are made to say to their landlords:
  "We have a hand for the grasp of friendship, and another to make you quake,
  And you are welcome to whichsoever it pleases you most to take."
  CAPTAIN DONELANsaid that after the exhaustive and powerful speech which his hon. friend had delivered it was not necessary for him to go into detail in seconding this Motion. It would be generally agreed that a more powerful indictment of the Government had never been presented to this House. He felt sure that many hon. Members sitting in different quarters of the House who had listened to the speech just delivered could not but feel ashamed of the coercion policy at present pursued in Ireland, and of the brutalities at present being perpetrated upon their political opponents and the public men of that country. He ventured to think that even English Conservative Members could not fail to recognise that the existing situation in Ireland was a disgrace to England. It was difficult for any one who did not reside in a proclaimed district in Ireland thoroughly to understand the conditions of life which prevailed there and under which the people had at present to live. Not only were public men flung into gaol for asserting the right of free speech, but members of public bodies were unable to transact the business of the boards to which they belonged without being compelled to pass through rows of policemen stationed at the doors, who entered their names in note-books, just as if those public men were bent upon some desperate enterprise. Within the past fortnight he had attended a business meeting in the board room of one of the unions in his constituency. On entering the gates of the workhouse he passed through files of police, stationed there for the purpose of entering the names in their books of his friends and himself, just as if they were ticket-of-leave men. He wondered how long the English
  908
  people would submit to insults of that character. He would ask hon. Members to turn this matter over in their minds, and put themselves in his place and the place of his colleagues. One would imagine that the Unionist policy would be a policy of conciliation, and that an attempt would at least be made to cultivate good relations between the two countries, but apparently the policy, at least of the present Unionist Government, was as far as possible to widen the chasm between them. What greater outrage could be inflicted on any people than to heap insults on their elected representatives? It appeared to him to be the deliberate aim and object of the present Government to heap every species of indignity and insult upon the Irish Nationalist representatives in their own country. Irish Nationalist Members were sent to pick oakum, and in this country they were targets almost daily of the vilest abuse from the so-called Unionist Press. He regretted to say that the abuse was not confined to the Unionist Press, for within the past two days the late Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who was always treated with the utmost courtesy by the Irish Members, joined in the chorus. It surely must at length be apparent to the English people that the present situation in Ireland was impossible. He ventured to say that the sooner the British electors recognised that no country could be constitutionally governed against the will of the vast majority of the people, the sooner would they adopt the only possible remedy of Home Rule for Ireland. He begged to second the Motion.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. William O'Brien.)
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid the debate tonight was worthy of somewhat more respectful attention than some, at least, of the hon. Gentlemen below the gangway on the Ministerial side had given to it. He rather regretted that some of the younger Members opposite thought it desirable to interrupt his hon. friend with observations which were not worthy of them, the House, or the subject. Though this was a very serious and

  909
  violent question, he wished, so far as he could, to give the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary no provocation to choose the worse instead of the better way of dealing with the Irish problem. His own opinion of the present situation in Ireland, whatever the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else might say, was that they were nearing the close of the land struggle in that country, if the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues were equal to the situation. The landlords and the tenants were approaching each other by stress of circumstances, and the right hon. Gentleman therefore had the opportunity, which no Statesman who was responsible for the government of Ireland ever had before, of dealing with the question with everything in his favour. But if the right hon. Gentleman wished to clear the way for this settlement of the Land Question forever, he was going in the very worst way about doing it by his policy. If the right hon. Gentleman proceeded on the sinister path of coercion he would produce a state of feeling in Ireland, and in England as well, which would make it almost impossible for him, or for any Government, to deal with the Land Question in a large and statesmanlike way. Their complaint against the right hon. Gentleman was that his administration of the Coercion Act was partisan—that it was used in the interests of one great class in a class war. What would have been said of President Roosevelt if, at the very moment when he was trying to produce reconciliation in connection with the great coal strike he had proclaimed the organisation of the miners, and proceeded by officers dependent on the Executive Government, instead of by independent judges to try the leaders in special courts, and to send them to prison? What would have been said of the leaders of the capitalists on the other side if they had insisted on the insane and childish policy of the landlord party in Ireland, and had refused to meet Mr. Mitchell and the other leaders of the workmen on the ground that they were not representative of the miners' organisation? The right hon. Gentleman had said that he gave no directions to the resident magistrates. It was not necessary that he should. What was their position?
  910
  They could be removed, promoted, dismissed, or pensioned by the right hon. Gentleman. They were absolutely at his mercy. With regard to sentences, he thought the right hon. Gentleman had improved upon the Chief Secretary in the administration of coercion. He did not know whether the House understood what was meant by the addition of hard labour to the sentences which were passed now. The meaning was that if a district councillor were sentenced to hard labour he was for five years debarred from serving his country as a member of those Boards. Was it statesmanship to exclude from the Government of Ireland the most trusted and respected leaders of the people—those men who had gained encomium even from a hostile Local Government Board? He had the honour of being a member of the Select Committee of this House which a few years ago dealt with the whole question of the prison treatment of this country and of Ireland. That Committee had the honour of abolishing the system of starvation which existed in the prisons of England and Ireland. They endeavoured to make the distinction which was made in every civilised country in the world between political and ordinary prisoners. Was there any country where it was not made except this? He was going to say Russia, but it was made in Russia to an extent that very few people knew. Transportation to Siberia for political offences, which was deprecated as something beyond human endurance, was a far better fate than being sent to several years penal servitude. It was reserved for England, which claimed to stand in the van of civilisation and humanity, to treat political prisoners in a manner unknown to the despotism of Russia. He was sorry to see hon. Members opposite burst into laughter when the prison treatment of political offenders in Ireland was described. He should have thought that the ferocious attempts which were being made to degrade political opponents would have made every decent Englishman blush. During this great war which had recently been closed thousands of Englishmen were treated with the utmost humanity by the manly and courageous foe with whom they were dealing, and he thought that Irishmen had a right to ask that

  911
  their countrymen should be as well treated by the British Government as the Boers treated British prisoners. There were hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House who brought the petition in favour of the better treatment of the participants in the Jameson Raid to the Nationalist Benches. Was it consistent that these very hon. Gentlemen should now cheer the Minister who refused to distinguish between political and other prisoners in Ireland? Some of the sentences which had been passed were savage and unworthy of any Government. Hon. Gentlemen opposite might complain that some of the language from the Nationalist Benches had been hot and strong, but he should like to know how, if they had come from imprisonment with the plank bed and bread-and-water diet, they would feel if a Liberal Government were to debar them from the opportunity of making the facts known. He had no doubt the right hon. Gentleman desired to settle the Irish Land Question if he had an opportunity of doing so. He hoped and prayed that the right hon. Gentleman would now avail himself of the opportunity which had presented itself for carrying out a right land policy and of closing the struggle of centuries. He asked him to turn away from the dark and sinister paths of coercion.
  MR. TULLYsaid there had not been a Coercion Act passed in Ireland for the last twenty-five years where he was not one of the first to be taken up under it. When the right hon. Gentleman came to Ireland and issued his first Crimes Act summons, it was against him it was issued. He wished to protest not only against the proclamation of nine counties, but against the mean, underhand manner in which the operations of the Crimes Act had been extended by the Chief Secretary and his colleagues on the Front Bench. Section 2, sub-Section 8, was one of the most dangerous provisions in the Crimes Act. It dealt with cases of unlawful assemblies. Owing to the action of the right hon. Gentleman, and he supposed the Attorney-General, that sub-Section bad now been extended to every part of Ireland without any proclamation and without any notice being
  912
  given in this House. The old legal writers held that an unlawful assembly should be one that would create terror and fear to His Majesty's subjects, but owing to the refinements of lawyers and judges in Dublin this had now been extended to attending assemblies which were perfectly peaceful, and at which no riot and nothing exciting fear or terror occurred. At first it was held that if a person took part in an unlawful assembly he should do so knowingly or unlawfully, but the law had been extended so that the mere fact of being present at a meeting in Ireland brought a man within the meshes of the Crimes Act. It had been decided by the Lord Chief Baron that under Section 2 of the Crimes Act such a meeting as he had described was an unlawful assembly, and that anyone taking part in that assembly was knowingly taking part in it. That was how the law had been strained and extended in Ireland in a mean and underhand manner. What happened in his own case? He attended an ordinary crossroads meeting on a Sunday. It was sworn by the police officers that the meeting was perfectly peaceable, that there was no riot, or anything tending to excite fear or terror among His Majesty's subjects. The Crimes Act had not been proclaimed in the district, and no notice had been given to anybody that the meeting should not be held. Yet he was dragged before two removable magistrates for attending and speaking at it. The judges in Dublin decided that the Chairman's speech was legal, that the resolutions were legal, that the speech of the man who spoke before him was legal, and that they could not point to a single sentence in his speech which was illegal. In fact, it was not half as strong as some of the speeches he had made in the House. But because two other gentlemen made speeches, which he himself did not hear, the meeting was declared to be an unlawful assembly. [Laughter from the MINISTERIAL Benches.] The judges declared that they could not split an assembly up into compartments. [Renewed laughter.] That might be very funny to hon. Gentlemen opposite, but he had to lie on a plank bed for it. That was the law as laid down in Ireland dealing with every meeting, even County Council and District Council meetings, where any

  913
  man got up and made a strong speech; any man who took part in such a meeting could be tried, as he was, by removable magistrates, and packed off to the nearest prison. What he complained of was that the second section of the Crimes Act had been construed in a mean and insidious manner. The hon. Member for Cork and the hon. Member for Scotland Division of Liverpool had now taken up the very attitude for which he had been ostracised and denounced. They had come round, in fact, to his way of thinking. He did not wish to embitter this matter, but he had been denounced for publishing a letter suggesting a conference on the De Freyne estate, a conference which he knew would have been successful, and would have saved the tenants all the law costs and ruin which had fallen upon them; and a conference which would have led to a large number of these tenants being now on their way to become peasant proprietors. Because he would not give the name of the writer of that letter, he had been denounced in the most scandalous manner. He was glad to think that the hon. Member for Cork had now accepted his views in regard to the conference. He hoped the Chief Secretary would give up his policy of coercion and would deal with the land question. If the land question in Ireland was to be settled, it could only be so on a fair basis that would give to the landlords as much for their investments of the price of their property as they were now getting from their rents, and which would enable the tenants to obtain their land on the same terms as they would get it by voluntary purchase. It was said that the landlords were willing to accept twenty-seven years purchase, and that the average tenants were paying, by voluntary agreement, eighteen and a half years purchase for their holdings. He understood that the rent-roll of Ireland at the present moment was between seven and eight millions. The difference between twenty-seven years purchase and eighteen and a half years purchase would be about fifty-six millions. That fifty-six millions could easily be saved by abolishing the Land Commission, and reducing the bloated strength of the constabulary in Ireland, and the whole thing could be carried
  914
  out without the loss of a farthing to the British Exchequer. He supported this Motion because he was always against coercion, he did not care from what quarter it came. He had been put in prison by Liberals as well as by Tories, and had been coerced in every quarter of the House, although he had always managed to survive.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): I do not rise either to re-argue the legal points involved in the case which led to the hon. Member's being sentenced to a term of imprisonment, or to confirm or dispute his anticipations of the details of the solution of the land question which he believes will put an end to all future troubles in respect to the land in Ireland. I know everybody nowadays has a solution of the land question in his pocket; and, indeed, I can say quite sincerely I think we are nearer a solution than we have ever been before. Sir, I rise to answer a sweeping indictment which has been brought against the Government. The major parts of all the speeches to which we have listened have consisted in a charge that the Government, and myself as the Minister responsible to this House, have instituted in Ireland unjustifiable and partisan prosecutions; that the persons who have been found guilty before the tribunals in Ireland have, owing to the administration of the Criminal Law and Procedure Act, had less than justice, and during their incarceration they have not received that humane treatment which, I suppose, they should have received had the general prisons rules been properly administered. Well, that was a sweeping indictment. But hon. Members were good enough to suggest the line of my defence. It was very obliging of them to challenge me to read out three paragraphs in one newspaper on which I founded the recent action taken by the Irish Government. Sir, my defence will not consist in reading out this or that paragraph from a newspaper, or this or that passage from a speech. My defence, if I have time to develop it, will consist in showing there has been a steady, persistent, and deliberate encroachment upon liberty in Ireland; that the Government, after long delay, and perhaps

  915
  after undue reluctance, have taken the steps which in their opinion were necessary if the existing system of land laws, or any other system of land laws, in Ireland is ever to have a fair chance to assist that country.
  But I cannot pass altogether by a certain note which was sounded more than once in the speeches to which we have listened. The hon. Member who moved the Adjournment concluded his speech by asking whether he and those who sit with him were to be sent back to Ireland with a message of peace or of war. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool re-echoed that language. They seemed to indicate that we were at a parting of the way. The words "peace" and "war" came again and again into the speech of the mover of the Adjournment of the House. He charged one set of Irishmen with being in favour of war, and another set of Irishmen, including himself, he credited with a desire for peace. I have often, I hope not in a priggish or pedantic way, deprecated the importation of these military terms into the discussion of economic and constitutional questions. But there are, I suppose, some civil contentions to which the terms of war may aptly be applied. In Ireland we talk of the land war when we speak of the land; but, whether in respect of actual warfare or in respect of such civil contentions, I have always found that those who have most personal experience either of actual warfare or of such contentions are the slowest to begin war, because they know what the cost of war is. Just because they do know, they hold it right when this course has been undertaken to see that value has been received from it, and the men who are slowest to begin war are found to be the slowest to make peace. In the first period, they are unpopular with the war party, and in the second period, they are unpopular with the peace party; but I think they are right all through. There is room for diplomacy before the outbreak of war; there is room for sentiment after the conclusion of peace; but between these two epochs there is, I deeply regret to say, room only for fighting. Fighting must go on until the question has been determined one way or the other.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: That is an extremely foolish observation.
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: Be it so.
  MR. CREAN: We accept the challenge.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Go on.
  MR. WYNDHAM: That is so. Nor do I think what I have said points by any means to the necessity of war. What is the question at issue? In our opinion it is a simple one. Our contention has been one of one point alone—that intimidation ought not to be used in order to coerce people into courses, good, bad, or indifferent, from which they have a right to refrain. We contend that it is used in Ireland, that it is used for an object which inflicts injury, not only on the immediate victims of such intimidation but on the general welfare of the Irish nation; and, in any case, we contend that such intimidation is illegal, and consequently that those who are guilty of using it for this purpose ought to be made amenable to the law. But the contention of hon. Members is not simple; it is complex, and even confused. Whereas some of them speak, as hon. Members have spoken tonight, of insisting on the necessity of passing some Large measure of land purchase which would enable the tenant to own the holding he now occupies without, the delay adequate for that purpose, others say that all the great grazing ranches ought to be split up and distributed. Stated in that extreme fashion, it is an economic absurdity and legislative impossibility. There may be room, there ought to be room, for working into any general Bill for land purchase, as a subordinate corollary, facilities for dealing with congestion wherever it exists, for not selling a holding to anyone who is to be a debtor to the State and who cannot count upon making a livelihood. But there is a third section of opinion, and I could quote sheaves of speeches to prove it, who state that the object of this land movement is not a solution of the land question, but that it is necessary to expel what they call the British garrison. These are not the great titled noblemen, but some of them are themselves farmers who came forty or fifty

  917
  years ago from England, and some men who came from England in the time of Cromwell. These men are to be expelled from Irish soil. Then there is the fourth school of thought, if that is the proper phrase, who seem to think that this question ought to be used, not in order to settle the land question, which, I think should he done, but to render Government in Ireland impossible. That, again, is subdivided into minor classes, some of which, if we are to judge from the Roscrea case, hold that tenancies in towns ought not to be determined according to the ordinary process of law. And there are some who advocate that in towns all shopkeepers ought to be boycotted who will not join a particular political organisation. There are others who advocate openly that through the length and breadth of Ireland, local boards who have received great power under the Local Government Act should give their contracts, not to the lowest tender, but to the highest tender if the person who tenders belongs to the political organisation. I do not rehearse these different views in order to bring any acrimony into the debate. It is my duty to refrain from stating anything offensive, but it is also my duty to state facts, even if these facts may offend. It is my duty to state that week in and week out for months past all these positions have been advocated from one point of Ireland or another. If that is so, can there be peace if there is illegal intimidation? Eager as I am to see the restoration of social peace in Ireland, desirous as I am of seeing the end of illegal intimidation applied to the land question, and an end also to the perfectly legal litigation which is the curse of Ireland and inflicts a heavy burden on the population—eager as I am to see these things come about, I must decline to purchase peace by receding an inch from the position it is the duty of the Government to take up in protecting those who are exposed to intimidation and to prosecute all, even where it is necessary before exceptional tribunals, whatever may be their crime, who are guilty of intimidation, and who break not only the common law, but the statute law of this and every other civilised country. I pass from that. It is not intended to be a bellicose utterance, and I do not think
  918
  it is a bellicose utterance, unless, indeed, hon. Members who desire to see the land question settled still believe, after twenty-three years of disillusion, that this weapon which is employed against their own countrymen leads up to settlement, or induces hon. Members of this House to look favourably upon attempts which one Chief Secretary or another may make to effect it. I must not in this way evade the indictment brought against the government of Ireland.
  Sir, the hon. Member for Cork City attacked the application of this Act to large sections of Ireland, and he reverted once more to a statement, which is perfectly true, that in Ireland at the present moment there are not many crimes of violence against the person or of destruction of property. I have always said so. I said so during the first debate upon this subject in June, 1901. There are some crimes of that character which stand out, because, apart from agrarian crime, Ireland is so crimeless, and therefore agrarian crime, even upon a small scale, looms large in the eyes of the Irish people, and if there be but 20 or 30 incendiary fires in the course of the year, why, that acts as the steel tip to the spear of verbal intimidation, and it acts forcibly in a country where many men can remember the horrible time to which the hon. Member alluded, when there were, I think he said, 9,000 agrarian outrages in the course of three years. But I do not weigh upon that, I never weighed upon it. Before there were any proclamations—before the beginning of the last session—I stated that it was the duty of the Government to defend one set of Irishmen against organised intimidation at the hands of another set of Irishmen. We did that in the first place by mere police measures. We did it in the second place by proceeding under those sections of the Act which do not need a proclamation, and we were successful. Meetings with bands to march about and terrorise individuals have ceased altogether. They were used, I may inform the House, not only against those who may be supposed to be in favour of paying rent, but in one case, on the Morley estate, against two tenants who had failed to pay rents. There was a settlement on the estate on the condition that one year's rent should be paid by

  919
  every one. Two tenants did not pay their rent, and the others turned out to intimidate them with a band and a procession, so deeply has the lesson sunk into the Irish people that that is the only proper way to persuade any one to do anything. The police stopped that procession, just as they would have stopped any other. Then we had on the De Freyne estate a recrudescence of intimidation indistinguishable, in my opinion, from the Plan of Campaign, The hon. Member has stated that we were responsible. I will refer him to the debate which we had on 24th July, But whoever was responsible, there was a great breach of social order a commencement anew of an evil which only fifteen years ago wrought indescribable havoc over large areas of; Ireland and reduced thousands of men to a ruin from which they have never yet recovered. It would have been impossible for the Government to overlook such a breach of social order as that, and we proclaimed in April those sections of Ireland where such crimes were prevalent—for they are crimes—acts which are declared to be illegal by competent authorities on law; and hon. Members cannot cite one judge, whereas I can cite all the great legal luminaries of the last thirty years, to prove the proposition that to coerce a man to take a course from which he could lawfully refrain is a crime, and a very serious crime. A third feature that has to be taken into account is the practice of boycotting. I have been criticised because the Irish Government did not at an earlier date proclaim certain parts of Ireland. When I was so criticised in June, 1901, the number of cases of boycotting in Ireland had fallen, and whereas it had stood at thirty-three in 1900, in June, 1901, it had fallen to twenty-five. With a decreasing number of cases it was right to refrain from a measure, the gravity of which I have never sought to minimise. But the numbers did not continue to fall, they began to rise, and when in April I asked the House to sanction our action in proclaiming a number of counties and our action was challenged the number stood at over fifty. Well, I am glad to say the numbers have begun to fall again, and now stand at forty-three. When the Irish Government are placed
  920
  on their trial in this way, when they are accused of acting in a partisan manner, and using grave powers of the law without adequate cause, when we are charged with error of judgment in not relying on the ordinary law, I think I am entitled to ask the House to consider some of the things which have been happening in Ireland, and which did happen there for a long period of time before we determined to have recourse to exceptional tribunals. I wonder if the House grasps what such a thing as the Tallow case means? Tallow is a small I town of 1,080 inhabitants, and in that town are two tradesmen—one called O'Keefe and the other Walsh.
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: May I interrupt. We have often been prevented from making reference in this House to cases in which a trial is pending. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that another trial of the Tallow ease is pending?
  MR. WYNDHAM: If that is the case I have no more to say on the subject, and I think the hon. Member is justified in intervening. It will shorten my present remarks, and when a third or fourth jury have disagreed I will return to the subject.
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I submit that the right hon. Gentleman is prejudging the case.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman may have spoken unconsciously, but he spoke of three or four juries disagreeing. I submit that that is prejudging the case by anticipating what the action of the jury may be; and I hope, Sir, you will see your way to ask the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw the observation.
  MR. SPEAKER: I see no occasion for my intervention.
  MR. WYNDHAM: I gave way to the hon. Member and allowed his point, and I am not going to reopen the subject, though I think I might be amply justified in doing so. I take the case of the Thompsons at Templemore. What is urged against these gentlemen? I will ask the House to realise the condition of

  921
  things there. Because some forty or fifty years ago there was a land quarrel there, between the holder of the estate and his neighbours, suddenly war is declared against a man and his family who have lived there in perfect peace for two generations. The case was brought before the Land League in the old bad days of 1879–81, and the League refused to take cognisance of it, but now an irresponsible stranger arrives and stirs up strife in the district, lights a blaze, I think the expression is, which is not to be extinguished in Tipperary until every man of English and Scottish descent is driven out of the county. [Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: Nonsense. It is absurd.] I am glad to hear the hon. Member for Cork disclaim the doctrine preached by an agitator of the name of Corr, but it has been put forward again and again as part of the doctrine proclaimed by the organisation to which the hon. Member belongs. [HON. MEMBERS: No, no.] If challenged on that I am quite prepared to cite proofs here or elsewhere. [Interruption.]
  MR. SPEAKER: I would appeal to hon. Members to remember that they have received a courteous hearing, and, in the spirit of fair play, to allow the reply to be heard.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Hon. Members from Ireland object to my making the only form of defence possible against the sweeping attack they make in general phrases on the administration in Ireland. What other form of defence is there when we are accused of attacking the liberty of speech and of the Press? Our case is that we interfered after months—after two years—of persistent and steady development, of encroachment on the liberty of individuals, which not only subjected them to pains and penalties from which they are entitled to be free, but ruined the whole country side in which they lived. [Interruption.] If hon. Members are so impatient that they will not allow me to tell the stories of these cases, I will take another opportunity of doing it. I only select them as they come to ray mind at random from scores which could be adduced, and which all have the same characteristics. There is the Corofin case, an old quarrel which the National
  922
  League of 1887 refused to take up. A man's brother-in-law had advanced him £400, or security to that extent, and becomes the owner in occupancy. Eighteen years afterwards a stranger to the district marches in and states that this is a contravention of the unwritten code, and this man, who lent £400 and spent £900 of his own money, is suddenly subjected to ostracism and every form of petty and even of grave annoyance, and that is done against the repeated protest of the Catholic priest in the place. There is no more pathetic figure in all this sorry story of Ireland than that of the priests, who, with exceptions that can be counted on one hand, have been for the past two years doing their best to hold back this movement. Hon Members laughed. When an interruption is not relevant, ironical laughter may be supplied in its place, but I repeat that in almost every one of these cases the priest has joined the League very often in order to restrain it; he has tried again and again to restrain it, and finally found he was powerless to do so. In this very case Father O'Donovan stated in evidence that the man who brought his plea before the secret tribunal made the best case he could and had no case at all. Even Bishops have openly stated that, in their opinion, this social evil should come to an end. [An HON. MEMBER: Name.] The Bishop of Elphin and the Bishop of Meath. That being the situation in June or July of last year, the Government found a new practice, namely the avoiding of a district which they had proclaimed by going just over the border of it and there delivering speeches to keep up those flames which had been lit around certain individuals, and which were devastating certain tracts of Ireland. Finally, when open intimidation by mobs and by meetings was abandoned, its place was taken by an almost uniform and sudden movement over Ireland by the local Press. Up to June, 1901, there was not to my knowledge a single boycotting resolution naming an individual published in any newspaper in Ireland. The first event of that kind took place in October 1901 and led the Government of that day to think that the time had come when it was necessary to make

  923
  use of the force placed at the disposal of the Government in 1887. During the last week of July and during August these local papers consisted of little else except column after column of resolutions culled from secret meetings of the League, in almost every one of which names were given. In the Longford Leader, which has been referred to tonight, this practice was adopted, the threatening effect of which will be easily realised. Three weeks ahead it was stated that at the end of the three weeks all the names would be published of those who were members of the League and of those who had not joined. The pressure was kept up week by week by further threats against those who were not named, and finally the day came when their names were given in the black-list or the white-list as the case might be. Will any one who realises what the Templemorc and the Corofin cases mean, not only to the victims, but to the country, say that the Government ought to stand aside because of a regard for the liberty of the Press—we should always have regard for the liberty of the Press—when that liberty was used as a vehicle of intimidation in substitution for those others which had been abandoned?
  Then there was another feature. The war was transferred from the county and from the land question to the towns. There was what was known as the Roscrea case, which has been decided and to which I can therefore refer. A Mr. Menton evicted a caretaker from a house of his in the town of Roscrea. There was no quarrel about rent. The tenancy had been determined. The victim, himself, I believe, an advanced Nationalist, asked those who were working up the public feeling against him what was their intention, what was the reason of their extraordinary conduct. He said, "If you mean to wage this war against me in my own town, why have you not the pluck to do it yourselves?" and the answer was as stated on oath, "Why should we, when we have an organiser to do it for us?" Well, then take another case which has also been decided. Some sports were got up in the
  924
  town of Birr by the Gaelic Association, which, I believe, is a Nationalist Association, though not the association which the hon. Member for Cork patronises. The hon. Member lives in the sublime belief that any one who does not join his association is not a Nationalist or an Irishman. The Gaelic Association believes in building up a nation by drawing all the component parts of the nation together. An organizer of the rival partisan association—the United Irish League—was sent down and a rival set of sports was arranged in which the amusement was to consist in a number of bands assembling and a number of men armed with hurleys. A breach of the peace would have taken place had not the Government sent down 160 policemen. And what followed? A resolution was passed at an impromptu meeting to the effect that the meeting desired to show their hearty approval of the principles of the United Irish League, and called upon all the business people of Birr to at once become members of the organisation, otherwise they would be compelled to regard them as supporters of Castle rule and landlordism, and refuse in future to patronise their shops. Hon. Members cheered. I am glad to hear those cheers, because earlier in my remarks, when I said that there was a section in Ireland who were in favour of boycotting shopkeepers who would not join a particular organisation those remarks were met with coldness and shudders of disapproval from the Benches opposite; and when I read out a resolution which is to that effect and no other, the sentiments are warmly applauded.
  But, Sir, let us come closer to this matter. We were invited to send back hon. Members from Ireland with a message of peace or war, and I understood that a message of peace would mean a promise to deal with the land question. But even if the land question were dealt with to the satisfaction of every

  925
  tenant, every landlord, and every agent in Ireland, it would be all to no purpose if, while it was being settled and after it had been settled, people were to be at liberty to convene a meeting with the object of declaring that every shopkeeper in a town who has nothing to do with land is to be boycotted because he will not join a particular organisation. Then, finally, a more recent feature which I deplore is that bodies which have been clothed with the powers of local government have passed one resolution after another to the effect that tenders are only to be accepted from members of this particular political association. I notice that some of them are not quite convinced that that is a proper course to pursue in discharge of their duties. [An HON. MEMBER: Coercion for Coercion.] One gentleman the other day said, "It looks rather bad to accept a contract of £2 a ton more than another." That not only looks bad, but it is almost the most deplorable thing that has happened in recent years in Ireland. The Local Government Act in Ireland is working well, I am glad to say, but nothing can bring it into greater discredit than that such courses should be pursued. It corrupts the whole civic life of the country, if persons who are in the position of trustees are to abuse that trust and place upon the ratepayers burdens heavier than need be Placed on them in order to favour a set of persons holding particular political opinions at the expense of others. When we reflect that even when the land question is settled in Ireland, the rating question, and it is formidable enough, will be there, when we reflect that even now many Acts have been passed to deal with many parts of the country where the rateable value is low, and districts have been scheduled, as congested, is it not idle that I, or any other Minister
  926
  in my place belonging to any Government, should hope to persuade this House to deal boldly not only with the land question but with the rating question, when any critic can point to the fact that popularly elected local bodies think nothing of putting £200 or £300 a year on to the present rates of 7s. to 8s. in the £ in order to show their hostility to a particular section of the community?
  I have only a few minutes more at my disposal, which I fear will not suffice to deal with the attack which has been made on the administration for which I am responsible—the attack that the magistrates are removable at the pleasure of the Government. There is not a case in which their decision has not been upheld by the County Court judges, who are not removable. Then all the charges against the resident magistrates disappear, and in their place charges are to be levelled against the County Court judges who are as secure as the judges of the Superior Courts in this country. It is idle to argue against critics who shift their ground with such agility. I do not believe that these men, distinguished Irishmen, are banded together to break their oath or to put an unnecessary slight upon their countrymen. If time availed I could quote passages from resident magistrates and County Court judges, showing that they felt bitterly the painful necessity of sentencing men who have sat with them as magistrates on the Bench to imprisonment. I believe them. I am sure that every man in this House regrets when a Member of Parliament has committed an offence which leads to his imprisonment; but every man in this House will agree on reflection that when a Member of Parliament breaks a law which exists for the protection of the liberties of all, and when

  927
  that breach of the law leads to social tyranny and ruin, he must suffer, and ought to suffer, the same penalty as the men whom they have incited to act a subordinate part.
  I must now draw my remarks, imperfect I admit, to a conclusion—imperfect not because my material is not strong, but because in replying to a sweeping indictment all that a man can do is to ask hon. Members to listen to typical cases, and then consider whether the action of the Government has been unjust, or arbitrary, or hasty. I maintain that it has been just, and that it has not been hasty; and I maintain that such action had to be taken if the existing land legislation in Ireland, or any legislation that may succeed it, is to be of the slightest avail. That we shall see legislation on the land question in Ireland hon. Members know.
  I can now take up the challenge of the hon. Member for Cork with reference to the statement I communicated to the Press on the subject of land legislation. It was not a hasty generalisation. It was a concise summary of what I stated in greater detail in the month of January last. I then asked if any sane man would say that the Irish landlords and the tenants could afford to go on in definitely with this fighting and litigation. I said:
  "The land question in Ireland must in the interest of Ireland lie settled. By whom? It may seem a hard saying, but I believe it is true that no Government can settle a question of purchase and sale. Many have tried and failed. The question can only be settled by the parties concerned—by the party on the one hand who knows what he can afford to take, and by the party on the other hand who knows what he can afford to give. But is the Government to stand aside? By no means. The Government has many duties to perform, three of which are to use its best ability to
  928
  bring the parties together, to assist the party ready to sell to turn the price which he gets to the best account, and to assist the would-be purchaser to give to the vendor a price he could accept without crippling his resources. In a word, our business as a Government is to bring Irish land into the market."
  I still believe that to be true. To whom will fall the honour and glory of doing that, I do not set any estimation whatever. If I had a solution which I confidently thought would settle the land question, and if I thought that the hon. Member for Cork would be still more likely to settle it, I would drop my solution anonymously into his letter box. I believe sincerely that this question will be settled by many people combining together; and yet if it were settled at the price of abandoning the duty of protecting those who are exposed to intimidation and of making those who break the law in order to intimidate others amenable to the law, then such a solution of so great a question, inestimable as it would be in itself, would in that event be to Ireland, not a blessing, but a curse.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: It is greatly to be regretted that the right hon. Gentleman was obliged to compress his statement of the policy of the Government owing to lack of time. But I would point out that if he were inconvenienced and if the public interest has suffered—as I believe it has—it is because the Government did not choose to respond to the appeal of the Irish Members for a day—that the Irish Members have been driven into the irregular and altogether imperfect resort of having a short evening sitting. The right hon. Gentleman has now told us what the case of the Government is for the action they have

  929
  recently taken in Ireland. I am sorry to say that I have listened on many occasions to a Minister either introducing some exceptional law or accounting for the application of some exceptional law which has already been in existence in Ireland, and there were two things on all such occasions that I can remember that were invariably done. In the first place, a case was made out of an unusual and extraordinary prevalence of crime, or a case was made out that the ordinary law had been attempted to be applied and had failed. Now, in both of those instances the right hon. Gentleman has had little or nothing to tell us. He admits, as everybody knows, that Ireland is almost crimeless. Well, I have taken the advice that the hon. Member for Cork has tendered to all who are interested in this subject, and I have looked into the statistics of crime, and one fact, at all events, I will quote to the House. It is with regard to indictable offences, which cover a large range. There were in Ulster 195 cases—[An hon. Member laughed] oh, I jotted the figures down carelessly, and my gallant friend is perfectly justified in finding fault with me for not being more accurate. But, at all events, in Ulster, which is not proclaimed, which is not subject to exceptional law, there are 195 cases of this kind; in Minister there are 139 cases, and in Connaught 89. Surely that goes far to show that it is not in those parts of Ireland in which crime is most prevalent that this exceptional law is applied. I fully expected that the right hon. Gentleman would have based his case on boycotting, that boycotting had been carried on to such an insufferable extent in connection with land agitation that it was necessary
  930
  to interfere. But the cases of boycotting, as the right hon. Gentleman himself tells us, have fallen to forty-three, an almost insignificant number, over the whole of Ireland.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Forty-three cases—not persons.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Well, surely that would not justify intervention under exceptional law. But I turn to the second plea, which has always been urged by a Minister in taking these steps—that is to say, he has always shown that recourse had been made to the ordinary law and that it had been found insufficient. The right hon. Gentleman has made no such allegations here. He has said that there is a great deal of intimidation in different places, directed not apparently against any particular class, not against any particular section of opinion, because he quoted the case of ardent Nationalists who have been subjected to intimidation. No doubt every one here has as much horror and as much indignation as the right hon. Gentleman at any violent course of intimidation such as he described. But we want to know has an attempt been made to deal with it under the ordinary law before he has resorted to this extraordinary course? [An HON. MEMBER: Yes]. The hon. Member seems to know. It has not been alleged at all events, and I believe, as a matter of fact, the ordinary law has not been resorted to. The right hon. Gentleman has quoted cases, and they do not excite any sympathy in me, but there is another thing which we must always bear in mind. When we find a disturbed state of society, with a tendency to take a violent course, it always arises from a deep-seated

  931
  grievance under the surface which causes those who suffer from that grievance to resort to such methods. Now we all know that the thing which disturbs society in Ireland, agrarian society, is the question of land purchase, and how can we expect that Ireland can be peaceful and contented while the present state of things as to land purchase continues? You have advanced, as we have often said in this House, on an inclined plane, and you cannot expect your equilibrium to be maintained while you are going down the incline. You have introduced the idea, you have familiarised the Irish farmer with the idea, that he would have his farm cheaper as an owner than as a tenant. Unless by some method or other you can reduce all the tenants to the same position and give them the same advantages, you are bound to have always disturbances. As to these cases which have been tried before magistrates, who, whatever the right hon. Gentleman may say, are subject to the Executive of the day, the one essential thing in Ireland, as elsewhere, is to divorce the judiciary and the tribunals, high and low, from the Executive Government, and make them perfectly independent. But these resident magistrates are sent about on the instructions of the Executive Government. It was my good fortune to be a Member of the Mc Hugh Committee which sat last summer, and that made us perfectly familiar with the Courts before which these men were brought. The next fact which strikes the eye is the severe sentences which are being given—sentences far more severe than any that have been given before in similar circumstances; sentences of hard labour; sentences of a degrading kind,
  932
  and of an unnecessarily cruel and severe kind. And sentences of hard labour have this consequence—that any one undergoing them is, under an existing statute, disqualified for five years from serving on any public body. This is the punishment for a political offence—no offence of violence or outrage—by men who, on the authority of the Local Government Board, have admirably carried out the duties under the new local government system. I will not dwell on that. But what do we gain by the whole of these transactions? Can the right hon. Gentleman really hope to put an end to the state of disturbance and confusion by these hardships inflicted on individuals? No, Sir, the way to arrive at the removal of any disturbance of social order, such as the right hon. Gentleman has described, is to remove the causes which create that disturbance. The party opposite has been engaged for nearly sixteen years in carrying out the "twenty years of resolute government," which, we were told, was all that was necessary to make Ireland perfectly peaceable and contented. Now they come on with the adoption of these measures beyond the ordinary law more inexcusable than any the House of Commons has known before. The condition of Ireland is certainly not a very happy one when it has the Crimes Act apparently for its Magna Charta, and Sergeant Sheridan as the embodiment of law and order; and with the magistracy in some degree—in a fatal degree—subservient to the Executive. It is not we who deserve the name of Separatists. It is those who govern Ireland, and apparently can only govern Ireland, by methods like these—methods which are not to be

  933
  found in any part of the Empire outside these is lands. That name ought not to be applied to us, who have shown, and will continue to show, a more excellent way of dealing with the difficulty.

  AYES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.

  Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Allan, Sir William (Gateshead)

  Joicey, Sir James

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

  Ambrose, Robert

  Jones, William (Carnarvonsh.)

  O'Malley, William

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Jordan, Jeremiah

  Partington, Oswald

  Barran, Rowland Hirst

  Joyce, Michael

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

  Kinloch, Sir John George Smyth

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Black, Alexander William

  Priestley, Arthur

  Brown, George M. (Edinburgh)

  Labouchere, Henry

  Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

  Lambert, George

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.)

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Rigg, Richard

  Caldwell, James

  Leamy, Edmund

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington

  Runciman, Walter

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

  Carew, James Laurence

  Leng, Sir John

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton

  Levy, Maurice

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Lough, Thomas

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Lundon, W.

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Crean, Eugene

  Cremer, William Randal

  MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Cullinan, J.

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Spencer, Rt Hn C. R.(Northants

  Delany, William

  Mac Veagh, Jeremiah

  Sullivan, Donal

  Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

  M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

  Taylor, Thedore Cooke

  Doogan, P. C.

  M'Cann, James

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

  M'Kean, John

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr

  Edwards, Frank

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Thomas, F. Freeman-(Hastings

  Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

  Mansfield, Horace Rendall

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

  Fenwick, Charles

  Markham, Arthur Basil

  Tomkinson, James

  Ffrench, Peter

  Mooney, John J.

  Toulmin, George

  Field, William

  Murphy, John

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Tully, Jasper

  Fuller, J. M. F.

  Nolan, Col. John P. (Galway, N.

  Wallace, Robert

  Gilhooly, James

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn Herbert John

  Norman, Henry

  White, Luke (York, E. R.)

  Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir E. (Berwick)

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Griffith, Ellis J.

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

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

  Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard. B.

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Woodhouse, Sir J T (Huddersfi'd

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William

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

  Young, Samuel

  Harwood, George

  O'Brien, William (Cork)

  Hayne, Rt. Hon. Charles Seale-

  O'Connor, James(Wicklow, W.

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  Holland, Sir William Henry

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

  Captain Donelan and Mr. Patrick O'Brien.

  Horniman, Frederick John

  O'Dowd, John

  NOES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Balcarres, Lord

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

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

  Bignold, Arthur

  Archdale, Edward Mervyn

  Balfour, Carpt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Bigwood, James

  Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

  Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W. (Leeds

  Bill, Charles

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Banbury, Frederick George

  Bond, Edward

  Bailey, James (Walworth)

  Beckett, Ernest William

  Bowles, Capt. H. F. (Middlesex

  (11.57.) Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 121; Noes, 215. (Division List No. 426).

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Hall, Edward Marshall

  Myers, William Henry

  Brookfield, Colonel Montagu

  Hamilton, Rt Hn Lord G (Midd'x

  Nicholson, William Graham

  Bull, William James

  Hamilton, Marq of (L'nd'nderry

  Nicol, Donald Ninian

  Burdett Coutts, W.

  Hanbury, Rt Hon. Robert Wm.

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlingt'n

  Butcher, John George

  Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd

  Pemberton, John S. G.

  Carlile, William Walter

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Percy, Earl

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Pierpoint, Robert

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

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Cavendish, V. C. W (Derbyshire

  Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

  Plummer, Walter R.

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Helder, Augustus

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. (Birm.

  Henderson, Sir Alexander

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J. A. (Worc.

  Higginbottom, S. W.

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Chapman, Edward

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Purvis, Robert

  Charrington, Spencer

  Hobhouse, Henry (Somerset, E.

  Randles, John S.

  Churchill, Winston Spencer

  Hogg, Lindsay

  Rankin, Sir James

  Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.

  Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

  Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

  Colomb, Sir John Charlos Ready

  Horner, Frederick William

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  Compton, Lord Alywne

  Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

  Howard John (Kent, Faversham

  Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

  Hutton, John (Yorks, N. R.)

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter

  Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  Crossley, Sir Savile

  Kemp, George

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Cust, Henry John C.

  Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Keswick, Wiliiam

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Davenport, William Bromley-

  King, Sir Henry Seymour

  Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

  Davies, Sir Horatio D. (Chatham

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Denny, Colonel

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

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

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

  Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Dimsdale, Sir Joseph Cockfield

  Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

  Sloan, Thomas Henry

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Lawson, John Grant

  Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.)

  Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

  Lecky, Rt. Hn. William Edw. H.

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

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants., Fareh' m

  Spear, John Ward

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

  Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset

  Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

  Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

  Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

  Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

  Lockie, John

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

  Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.)

  Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S

  Stroyan, John

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

  Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft

  Talbot, Rt Hn. J.G. (Oxf'd Univ.

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

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Finch, George H.

  Macartney, Rt Hn W. G. Ellison

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Valentia, Viscount

  Fisher, William Hayes

  MacIver, David (Liverpool)

  Walker, Col. William Hall

  Fison, Frederick William

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Walrond, Rt Hn. Sir William H.

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

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

  Warde, Colonel C. E.

  Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

  M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W

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

  Forster, Henry William

  M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire)

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Foster, PhilipS. (Warwick, S. W

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Galloway, William Johnson

  Malcolm, Ian

  Willox, Sir John Archibald

  Gardner, Ernest

  Manners, Lord Cecil

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

  Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans)

  Maxwell, Rt Hn Sir H. E (Wigt'n

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Milvain, Thomas

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

  Gordon, Maj Evans-(T'rH'ml'ts

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Gore, Hn G. R. C. Ormsby-(Salop

  Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.)

  Wylie, Alexander

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

  More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

  Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  Morgan, David J (Walthamst'w

  Younger, William

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Morrell, George Herbert

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Greene, Sir E W(Bury SEdm'nds

  Mount, William Arthur

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Muntz, Sir Philip A.

  Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Mr. Anstruther.

  Gretton, John

  Murray, Rt Hn. AGraham (Bute

  Greville, Hon. Ronald

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Gunter, Sir Robert

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Mr. SPEAKER, in pursuance of the Order of the House of the 16th October, adjourned the House without Question put.
  Adjourned at ten minutes after Twelve o'clock.