Commons Sitting of 10 February 1904

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.
UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
  PRIVATE BILLS (STANDING ORDER 62 COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, Standing Order No. 62 has been complied with, viz.:—London, Camberwell, and Dulwich Tramways Bill. North-Western Electricity and Power Gas Bill; Southend-on-Sea Gas Bill. Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.

  SUBSTITUTED BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That in respect of the following Bills introduced pursuant to the provisions of The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, and which the Chairman of Ways and Means had directed to originate in the House of Lords, they have certified that the Standing Orders have been complied with, viz.: —Clyde Valley Electrical Power [Lords]; Lothians Electric Power [Lords]; Young and Bell's Patents Lords].
  Bishop's Stortford and District Gas Bill; Blyth and Cowpen Gas Bill; Cor-bridge Gas Bill; Gomersal Gas Bill; Harrow Road and Paddington Tramways Bill; Norwich Water Bill; Southend
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  Water Bill; South Shields Gas Bill; South-Western and Isle of Wight Junction Railway (Extension of Time) Bill; Sutton Gas Bill; Whitby Gas Bill. Read a second time and committed.
  Cheshire Electricity and Power Gas. Ordered, That Standing Orders 204 and 235 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read a second time.——(The Chairman of Ways and Means.)
  Bill accordingly read a second time, and committed.
  Dumbarton Tramways Order Confirmation Bill. Read the third time, and passed.
  Plymouth and North Devon Direct Railway (Abandonment) Bill. Order [4th February], that the Plymouth and North Devon Direct Railway (Abandonment) Bill be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.—(Mr. Caldwell.)

PETITIONS.
  EDUCATION ACT, 1902.
  Petition from Fife and Angus, for alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  FRANCHISE AND REMOVAL OF WOMEN'S DISABILITIES BILL.
  Petition of the Male Electors' League for Women's Suffrage, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LAL, JEWEN.
  Petition of Jewen Lal, for inquiry into his case; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENCES (RENEWAL).
  Petitions against alteration of Law; from Musselburgh; Dartmouth; Sheffield, Penmaenmawr; Cilfynydd; Titchfield; Fareham; Batley; Margate; Throckley; Glasgow; South Manchester; New Quay (three); Welch Row; North Camberwell; North West Gloucestershire; Fishguard; Forfar; Dumfries and Kirkcudbright; Coupar Angus; Button; Northampton; and East Greenwich; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  COMMONS (INCLOSURE AWARDS).
  Return [presented 9th February] to be printed. [No. 50.]
  IRISH LAND COMMISSION (PROCEEDINGS).
  Copy presented, of Return of Proceedings during the month of November, 1903 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  SEA AND COAST FISHERIES FUND (IRELAND) (NON-CONGESTED DISTRICTS).
  Account presented, for the year ended 31st December, 1903 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  Copy presented, of further correspondence regarding the Transvaal Labour Question [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  GREER LOAN.
  Account presented, up to 31st December, 1903 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 51,]
  NAVY (APPROPRIATION ACCOUNT).
  Copy presented, of the Appropriation Account of the Navy for 1902–3, with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General thereon, and upon the Store Accounts of the Navy [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 52.]
  ARMY (APPROPRIATION ACCOUNT).
  Copy presented, of the Appropriation Account for 1902–3, with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General thereon, and upon the Store Accounts of the Army [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 53.]
  SUPERANNUATION.
  Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated 30th January, 1904, declaring that for the due and efficient discharge of the duties of the office of Inspector-General in Bankruptcy, professional or other peculiar qualifications not ordinarily to be acquired in the Public Service are required [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

  GREENWICH HOSPITAL AND TRAVERS' FOUNDATION.
  Accounts presented, for the year ended 31st March, 1903, with the Report of the
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  Comptroller and Auditor-General thereon [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 54.]

  CHINA (No. 2, 1904)
  Copy presented, of Correspondence respecting the Russian occupation of Manchuria and Newchwang [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TREATY SERIES (No. 2, 1904).
  Copy presented, of Convention respecting Payment of Light and Harbour Dues by Vessels of the United States in Zanzibar. Signed at Washington, 5th June, 1903.Ratifications exchanged at Washington, 24th December, 1903 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copy presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, No. 3121 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  PAPER LAND UPON THE TABLE BY THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE.
  Friendly Societies, Workmen's Compensation Schemes, Industrial and Provident Societies, and Trades Unions.—Reports of the Chief Registrar for the year ending 31st December, 1903 [by Act]; to be printed. [No. 55.]
  AMERICAN MAIL SERVICE.
  Return ordered, "showing the number of days, hours, and minutes occupied in the transit of the Royal Mails, both outward and inward, carried during the year 1903 by steamships between Queenstown and New York, between Southampton and New York, and also between New York and Plymouth. The Return to specify the names of the steamers, and to indicate by asterisk or otherwise those not carrying Mails under contract."—(Sir John Lent).)
  PAUPERISM (ENGLAND AND WALES) (HALF-YEARLY STATEMENTS).
  Copy ordered, "of Statement of the number of Paupers relieved on the 1st day of January, 1904, and similar Statement for the 1st day of July, 1904 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 109, of session 1903)."—(Mr. Grant Lawson.)
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

    Sights of Guns on H.M.S. "Venerable" and "Ramillies"
    MR. HARMSWORTH (Caithness-shire): To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if his attention has been drawn to the fact that a shot fired from one of the 12-inch guns of H.M.S. "Venerable," during recent practice firing in the Mediterranean, passed between the funnels of H.M.S. "Gladiator;" and, if so, will he state whether this was caused by defective sights on the gun in question.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) No report to this effect has been received. If such an incident did occur it was certainly not due to the sights.
    Mr. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state whether the sighting of the turret guns of the "Ramillies" has been found to be defective; and, if so, what steps have been taken to remedy the defects.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The "Ramillies" returned from the Mediterranean and paid off in the autumn. She is now undergoing refit and having her upper deck guns casemated. The sights of the turret guns will be brought up to date as far as the nature of the mounting will allow.

    Admiralty Shipbuilding Programme
    MR. YERBURGH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will explain why, in view of the statement of the late Secretary to the Admiralty upon the 23rd June, 1903, that the battleships of the 1903–4 programme would be laid down at an early date and be built by contract, the said ships were not laid down before January, 1904, and are being built in the Government dockyards; and whether the Admiralty adhere to the intention they expressed in August, 1903, of laying down three battleships in April next.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The hon. Member will find the matter referred to in his Question fully dealt with in the Memorandum of the First Lord accompanying the Estimates, which will
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    very shortly be laid upon the Table; and I suggest the hon. Member should kindly defer any Question ho may have to ask till after he has read that statement.

    Parliamentary Inquiries into Depression in Agriculture.
    MR. FREDERICK WILSON: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he can state how many Parliamentary inquiries were held on the depression in agriculture last century, before the repeal of the Corn Laws, while protective tariffs existed, and the price of corn when those inquiries into depression were made; and describe the nature of the tariffs which existed.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) Parliamentary Committees on agricultural distress sat in the years 1820, 1821 and 1822, 1833, and 1836. Full particulars as to the prices of corn in these years, and as to the tariffs in force, are contained in the Return "Customs Tariffs of the United Kingdom from 1800 to 1897" [C. 8706 of 1897]. See pages 243, 244, 247, and 255.

    Chiefs Clerks to Surveyors of Taxes.
    MR. HEYWOOD JOHNSTONE: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will say whether it is intended to comply with the recommendation of the surveyors of taxes for the establishment of a class of chief clerks in their offices.
    (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) No recommendation to the effect described in the Question has been received by the Board of Inland Revenue.

    Alleged Exemption of Irish Roman Catholic Clergy from Income Tax.
    MR. SLOAN: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will explain why the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland are exempted from the payment of income-tax.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) The hon. Member appears to be under some misapprehension. The Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland have no special exemption from income-tax.

    Annual Saving in Irish Administration.
    MR. FFRENCH: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer

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    whether he will state the amount of the annual saving effected in the Irish administration; and whether he proposes to keep an account of the savings as well as the expenditure, so that the money due to Ireland shall not be lost sight of.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) As the Estimates for Irish Services are not yet completely closed, it is impossible to say at present what reduction will be shown in the estimated expenditure in 1904–5. The Annual Financial Relations Returns afford a comparative record of the cost of Irish Services in successive years.

    Inspection of Boarded-out Pauper Children in Scotland.
    MR. TENNANT: To ask the Secretary for Scotland if, in view of the fact that boarded-out pauper children in Scotland are not inspected systematically by the general superintendents of poor under the Local Government Board, he will consider the expediency of having the children periodically inspected, preferably by lady inspectors under the Local Government Board, as in England and in Ireland.
    (Answered by Mr. Graham Murray.) I am informed by the Local Government Board for Scotland that complaints in regard to children boarded out are of extremely rare occurrence. The subject has been before the Departmental Committee on Medical Relief in Scotland, and when the Report of that Committee is issued the Board will consider whether any action on the lines indicated is necessary or advisable.

    Plans of the House of Commons
    MR. HEYWOOD JOHNSTONE: To ask the hon. Member for Chorley, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, if copies of the plans of the House, similar to those exhibited in the Tea Room, can be obtained by Members by payment or otherwise.
    (Answered by Lord Balcarres.) These plans are prepared for official purposes and the First Commissioner is not prepared to distribute or sell them.

    Sanitary Inspectors' Certificates.
    SIR WALTER FOSTER: To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he can state the number of persons seeking certificates of competency as sanitary inspectors who have been examined in each year by the Board of Examinations constituted by the Local Government Board under Section 108 of The Public Health (London) Act, 1891, and the number to whom certificates of competency have been granted in each year.
    (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I am informed that the number are as follows:—

    Year.

    Number of Applicants for Certificates.

    Number of Certificates granted.

    1890

    18

    16

    1900

    21

    12

    1901

    27

    24

    1902

    70

    57

    1903

    69

    46

    Officers in Indian Native Regiments — Rank other than Military.
    COLONEL DENNY: To ask the Secretary of State for India if officers in the Indian Army serving in Native regiments hold any rank except that granted by the Sovereign, and notified in the Military Gazette; and, if so, who confers this rank, and under what authority.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The answer is in the negative.

    Public Libraries in Ireland.
    MR. BOLAND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state how many rural district councils in Ireland have availed themselves of the Public Libraries Act of 1902, and will he give their names.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) This information will be procured from the local authorities and communicated to the hon. Member as soon as possible.

    Certificates for Trained Nurses in Ireland.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will give the names of the institutions in Ireland considered competent by the Local Government Board to give certificates for trained nurses within the meaning of the first portion of the Nursing Order; the names of the institutions in Ireland considered competent to give certificates for qualified nurses within the meaning of the second portion of said Order; and the position of nurses (who have been in the service of boards of guardians previous to the said Orders and whose service had been satisfactory) as to promotion to other offices, increase in salaries, or appointment to posts in other unions.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) There is no official record kept of institutions fulfilling the requirements of Articles 2 (a) and 2 (b) of the Order in question. The claims of a particular hospital or institution are only considered as the necessity arises in connection with the registration of a nurse or upon the application of the authorities of the hospital. Hence there May be and doubtless are hospitals which would be held by the Board to be competent to Certify nurses as trained or qualified should the occasion for making inquiry arise. Nurses whose employment in union hospitals had been sanctioned by the Board prior to the issue of the Order have not been disturbed in office; their rights have been carefully preserved to them. In no case has promotion or increase of salary been refused to any such nurse on the ground that she did not possess the qualifications prescribed by the Order.

    Building of Technical Schools in Ireland.
    MR. FFRENCH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Agricultural and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act provides no funds for building purposes; and whether, in view of the danger of technical instruction coming to a standstill, or the local bodies ceasing to provide it, he will introduce a Bill providing funds for the building and equipping of technical schools in Ireland.
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    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) I discussed this matter with the deputation that waited on me in Dublin on the 11th January, and have no further statement to make at present.

    Collection of County Rates in Ireland.
    MR. FFRENCH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Wexford County Council passed a resolution requesting the Irish Local Government Board to alter the dates for closing the collection of county rates from the 31st March and 30th September to 1st May and 1st November, and that the Local Government Board refused to do so owing to the existing state of the law; and if so, whether, for the convenience of both ratepayers and collectors, he would undertake to bring about the proposed alteration either by legislation or otherwise.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The financial half-years are fixed by the Local Government Act, 1898, and the Orders made thereunder, and the Board has no power to vary these dates. The present arrangements involve no hardship on the ratepayers, and the collection of the rates has been characterised by remarkable punctuality. It is not proposed to introduce legislation with the object suggested in the Question.

    Irish Land Act.
    MR. FFRENCH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will consider the advisability of inserting a clause in the Bill which he proposes to introduce to amend the Irish Land Act, 1903, bringing tenants of agricultural farms, holding under grants in perpetuity (not being grants under the provisions of the Renewable Leasehold Conversion Act) dated subsequent to the 1st January, 1861, within the scope of the Act.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The classes of tenants described in the Question, if in occupation of their holdings, are within the scope of the Land Purchase Acts. I am not aware that any amendment of the law in this respect is required.

    Belfast Revaluation.
    MR. JAMES O'CONNOR (Wicklow, W.): To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Commissioner of Valuation in Ireland undertook to hear the views of appellants against the Belfast revaluation in person before publishing his revised appeal list; that he invited some of the public bodies to appoint representatives to meet him, and interviewed some classes of Belfast merchants and also delegates from a ratepayers' committee; and, if so, will he explain why the Commissioner did not hear the Belfast publicans, whose valuations have been increased from £27,000 to £63,000.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.)The Commissioner undertook to arrange interviews with the leading mercantile and other public bodies, as well as with individuals whose valuations were seriously affected by the revaluation. In September, 1901, he met a deputation of the Belfast licensed vintners, and in November, 1903, a leading member of that body, who put forward very clearly the views of the licensed vintners.

    Indian Officers.
    COLONEL DENNY: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether Paragraph 5 of the Royal Warrant of the 17th January, 1861, which provides that officers of the staff corps holding military appointments will take military command according to their Army rank, is still applicable to officers of the Indian Army.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The answer is in the affirmative.
    COLONEL DENNY: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether Section 71 of the Army Act, which prohibits a combatant officer being subjected to the command of another of inferior rank, is applicable to officers of the Indian Army serving with Native regiments.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick) The answer is in the affirmative.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Military Camp in Roxburghshire.
    MR. THOMAS SHAW(HawickBurghs): I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland what is the state of the negotiations
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    with regard to the purchase of the estate of Stobs, Roxburghshire, and adjoining land for the purposes of a military camp and military training; has a purchase been arranged or is it to be abandoned; are any arrangements being made for leasing property; and what is the extent of the lands which are the subject of transaction.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER, Belfast, W.): The Stobs Estate, 3,615 acres in extent, has been purchased. As regards the purchase of certain adjoining lands, the negotiations now proceeding have not reached a stage at which any disclosure in regard to their nature or the extent of the land concerned would be expedient. I regret, there ore, that I am not in a position to give the hon. and learned Member the information which he desires to obtain. I may add that at present no arrangements are being made for leasing any property in this neighbourhood.

    The Irish Militia.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been directed to the Official Minutes of Lord Wolseley, dated 3rd November, 1897, contained in the Appendices to the Report Volume of the War Commission, p. 247, in which he stated that the War Office could not afford to explain in Parliament or make otherwise public, the fact that Irish Militia are brought to England to draw the teeth of possible rebellion; and whether, having regard to the different reasons already given by the War Office authorities relative to the transference of Irish Militia to this country, he has any, and, if so, what, explanation of Lord Wolseley's Minute.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I understand that the opinion expressed by Lord Wolseley was a personal one, and I have no knowledge of the reasons which led him to entertain the view he expressed in 1897. I have no reason to believe that Irish soldiers will prove traitors to their King or false to their military oath. The admirable and faithful performance of their duty by Irishmen in the service of the Crown adds to the improbability of any such action. As a matter of

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    fact, the great majority of the Irish Militia perform their training in Ireland.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Will the right hon. Gentleman, in order to encourage enlistment, have this Memorandum of Lord Wolseley's placarded at every recruiting station in Ireland?
    [No answer was returned.]

    82nd Battery R.F.A.
    MR. CROOKS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the fact that the 82nd, Battery R.F.A., who have been in South Africa four years, are still under canvas, and that the War Office propose to send the families of the men to South Africa while there are no quarters in which to house them, he will consider the advisability of putting these men in barracks by bringing home some one of the other units who are on the list for service in India shortly.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Every effort is being made to find suitable accommodation for the families of the troops which will be retained in South Africa, and the General Officer Commanding reports that the families can be accommodated in Indian pattern tents, which are specially suited for this purpose. I am afraid that the suggestion of the hon. Member is impracticable, as there are no barracks at home available for the units alluded to. I may add that in the case of this battery only two families have elected to go out.

    The Imperial Yeomanry.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the fact that according to the Imperial Yeomanry Training Return for 1903 just published, it appears that out of an establishment of 34,594 no fewer than 8,293 are wanting to complete, that 2,593 were absent from training, and that out of a total of 22,610 horses, 10,667 were hired, he will state what steps he proposes to take in order to place this force upon a more satisfactory footing.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: When the maximum of about 35,000 was fixed in
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    1901, the enrolled numbers stood at about 10,000 and those at training in the previous year amounted to 8,657. Since that time the numbers enrolled have risen to 27,054 on 1st January last, and the number at training in 1903 amounted to 23,779. These figures show very satisfactory progress. As regards the horses, without incurring considerable extravagance, it has been found impracticable to avoid hiring.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: Am I to understand that although this is still a paper force, it is less a paper force than it was?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The hon-Member must understand nothing of the kind. A high establishment has been fixed, and a greater approximation to it has been attained every year. The recruiting for the Yeomanry has been most satisfactory.

    Irish Tailors and Officers' Uniforms.
    MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the fact that the adjutants of the Connaught Rangers, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Engineers, and the adjutants of other regiments stationed in Ireland are recommending young officers on joining these regiments to send for their outfits to certain English houses, and that in consequence orders placed by officers in Ireland have been countermanded; and whether in view of the loss to Irish firms by this conduct, he will take such steps as will put a stop to such practices by the adjutants or other officers in Ireland.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: A particular instance occurred in 1903 in which a Commanding Officer gave orders to a young officer to obtain his uniform from selected firms and instructions have been sent forbidding any such action. I am not, however, aware that such action is the practice, and I shall be glad if the hon. Member would draw my attention to any further cases which have come within his knowledge.
    MR. NANNETTI: Has not a special order been issued by the Commander-in-Chief to adjutants in Ireland making this recommendation?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I am not aware of it.
    MR. NANNETTI: I will send the hon. Gentleman some information on the subject.

    Military Courts-Martial.
    MR. H. D. GREENE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can state the number of Court-martial proceedings which in the year 1903 were submitted to the Judge Advocate General's Department in London; in how many cases findings were quashed; in how many cases in which soldiers were sentenced the punishment or part of it had been served before the findings were quashed, or before a remission of the whole or part of the sentence; and whether any, and what, steps have been taken to check the increase of illegalities of Courts-martial.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: During 1903 the proceedings of 11,232 Courts-martial were received in the Judge Advocate General's Office, and in 72 cases the proceedings were wholly quashed. In all cases in which a sentence of imprisonment had been confirmed and then ultimately quashed by the Judge Advocate General, a portion, at least, of the sentence had necessarily been served. As regards the last part of the Question, a circular letter has been recently issued to General Officers Commanding, with the object of preventing the cases of illegality in future.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Having regard to the fact that the Judge Advocate General is no longer a Minister responsible to this House——
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! Notice must be given of the Question.

    Indian State Railway Contracts.
    SIR CHAELES McLAREN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he will for the future adopt the system recently put in force by the London County Council in settling contracts for rails and railway material, by giving preference in all cases in which there is no wide divergence in price, to the tenders of English makers over those of foreign makers; and whether
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    he will allow English firms the opportunity of revising their tenders in cases where foreign firms tender at lower prices.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. BRODRICK,): The practice described in the Question is that which is now in force in respect of stores for State railways in India. In cases where there is no material difference in price and where in other respects the tenders are equally satisfactory or nearly so, a preference will unquestionably be given to a British tender. Where there is a wide difference in price and the quality of supply is reckoned identical, it is impossible, in justice to the Indian taxpayer, to ignore the lower tender. Large contracts for steel and other goods are executed for the Indian Government by Sheffield firms, and I doubt whether any distress in Sheffield can be attributed, as the hon. Member suggests, to the diversion to foreign firms of Indian Government orders in a very limited number of instances. The hon. Member, no doubt, is careful to distinguish between the action of Government, which affects only the State lines, and that of the Indian railway companies, in respect of the purchase of stores.
    SIR CHAELES McLAEEN: Can the right hon. Gentleman answer the latter part of the Question.
    MR. BRODRICK: It would be contrary to the principle on which contracts are made to allow an opportunity of revising the tenders.
    In reply to a further Question by Mr. GALLOWAY (Manchester, S. W.), Mr. BRODRICK said the question of the dates of delivery was always carefully considered.

    German Contracts for Indian Railways.
    SIR CHAELES McLAREN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether, in the case of the orders for tyres and axles recently given by the Indian railways to German makers, tin-specification as to analysis and breaking tests on which the German makers tendered was identical with that on which the English makers tendered;

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    whether inspectors on behalf of the Indian railways were attached to the German works during the execution of the contracts; whether any, and if any, what tests were imposed on the tyres and axles when delivered; and whether he will in future, in cases where an order is given to a foreign firm, cause the lowest price tendered by an English firm together with the price taken by the foreign firm, to be published here.
    MR. BRODRICK: In the case of the order for wheels and axles recently given by the Secretary of State in Council to German manufacturers, to which I presume the hon. Member refers, the specification as to analysis and breaking tests was identical with that on which the English makers tendered. Inspectors on behalf of the Secretary of State are attached to the German works during the execution of this contract. A copy of the specification showing the tests can be handed to the hon. Member if he so desires. I do not propose to depart from the established practice of declining to divulge the prices at which German, or any other firms, have tendered.
    SIR THOMAS DEWAR (, St. George's): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if he will state the number and value of contracts for railway plant placed by Indian railways with foreign makers during the last five years, and what percentage of these contracts were secured by German firms.
    MR. BRODRICK: The contracts entered into with foreign firms by the Secretary of State in Council in respect of material for Indian State railways during the last five years are eight in number, their total value is £135,567; and 25 per cent. of these contracts were secured by German firms. As regards contracts made by Indian railway companies, I am unable to give the information asked for. I may add that the total orders for material given during this period a mounted to £4, 200,000. The percentage, therefore, of orders given to foreign firms was 3½ of the whole.

    Transvaal Labour Ordinance.
    SIR BRAMPTON GURDON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State
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    for the Colonies whether, as requested in his telegram of the 16th January last, express provisions have been introduced into the Transvaal Ordinance for the treatment and care of Chinese labourers on voyage out and home; and whether the transport will be confined to British vessels and the landing to British ports.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): No express provision has been introduced, but I have informed Lord Milner that adequate provision will have to be made by regulation. The point raised will be fully considered. At present it is contemplated, as appears from Lord Milner's statement in the Blue-book, to make use of Durban as the port of landing.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the persons specified in Section 8 of the draft Transvaal Labour Importation Ordinance, whose duty it will be to explain to Chinese labourers the terms of their contracts, will be persons selected and employed by the British Government.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I am in communication with Lord Milner as to the details of the arrangements under Section 8, but His Majesty's Government undertake that the terms of the contract will be explained to the labourers before their departure by some person appointed by and responsible to the Government.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies for what reason the definition in the first draft of the Transvaal Labour Importation Ordinance of the premises to which Chinese labourers are to be confined, so as to include a circle of one mile round the place where they are working, has-been struck out; and what meaning is to be attached to the term premises in Sections 18, 19, and 20 of the amended draft of the Ordinance.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I am informed-by Lord Milner that the definition of the term premises in the first draft was omitted, as, under it, owing to the position of certain mines in Johannesburg, the

    1317
    labourers would have uncontrolled access to the most populous portions of the city, which was deemed undesirable. The matter will be settled by regulation.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Transvaal Government has made any examination of the signatures to the petition in favour of Chinese labour; if so, how many of these signatures were found to be genuine, and of these how many were duplicates.
    MR. LYTTELTON: Lord Milner reported by telegram on 28th January that the petition bearing 47,000 signatures of males only over sixteen years of age, which has been presented to the Council was collected with care and is entitled to as much consideration as such a method of ascertaining popular opinion ever can be. I have no further information.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: Are we to understand that the Government have made no examination of the signatures?
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have no further information to give.
    DR. MACNAMARA: Is it not the fact that a considerable number of white miners have been dismissed because they would not sign the petition.
    MR. LYTTELTON: No such information has reached me.
    DR. MACNAMARA: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire?
    [No answer was returned.]
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will consider the desirableness of deferring the debate on the proposed Ordinance for the introduction of indentured Asiatic labour into the Transvaal Colony, until the House is in possession of the whole correspondence between the Colonial Office and the High Commissioner respecting the changes which have been made in the text of the proposed ordinance.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have to-day received a telegram from Lord Milner confirming my belief that no further changes have been made in the Ordinance in addition to those published in Cd. 1898. I do not propose to defer the debate.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON:: I understand that the right hon. Gentleman has no further information from Lord Milner in regard to these Amendments that he can lay on the Table. Can he not put the House in possession of Lord Milner's reasons for the very drastic changes which have been made in the Ordinance during its passage through the Legislative Council?
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have no information or Papers to produce on the subject.
    MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will state by whom is the person mentioned in Section 8 of the Ordinance to be appointed, and is he to be resident in China or South Africa; and is the unwitnessed Certificate which he presents to the importer in South Africa to be the sole guarantee the Government will have that the labourer is made fully aware of the terms of the contract.
    MR. LYTTELTON: There is to be a protector of the Chinese in the Transvaal, and a representative of the Government will be in China to see that the conditions of the contract are fully explained to the Chinese labourers there and that they are fully understood by them.
    MR. BUCHANAN: Is this official, who is to explain to the Chinese the terms of their contract, to be resident in South Africa or in China?
    MR. LYTTELTON: The Ordinance does not secure that there shall be an official in China. The objection which I have endeavoured to meet by the pledge I have given, is that a Chinaman might arrive at Durban and find out there for the first time from the explanation given to him by the official the true nature of

    1319
    the contract; so I have taken measures, which I have indicated, to secure that the contract shall be understood before he leaves China.
    MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: As a simple and downright matter of fact, will these Chinamen not be treated as slaves?
    [No answer was returned.]

    Recruitment of Labour in China.
    MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has now received a reply to his communication to Lord Milner as to the method of the proposed recruitment of labour in China, by whom it is to be carried on, and what security there is to be that labourers before they leave China will be fully informed of the terms and restrictions of their contract.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have not yet received a reply to my inquiries.
    MR. BUCHANAN: Shall we get the information before the debate is commenced?
    [No answer was returned.]

    Conveyance of Labour to the Transvaal.
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether provision will be made in the regulations relating to the importation of labourers into the Transvaal that the labourers shall be conveyed in British ships so as to secure their proper treatment during the voyage.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The conveyance of the labourers in British ships is a matter which will be carefully considered, but in any case the proper treatment of the labourers during the voyage is a question the importance of which I fully recognise, and every precaution will be taken to secure such treatment.

    British Columbian Labour Legislation.
    MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in the year 1902, the Legislature of British Columbia passed an Act restricting immigration; whether the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs
    1320
    protested against it, in so far as it applied to Japanese subjects; whether the Act was in consequence disallowed by the Governor-General, with the sanction of the Imperial Government; whether an Act to the same effect was passed in 1903, and again disallowed; whether a Bill in similar terms has again been introduced; whether, if it becomes an Act, His Majesty's Government will again sanction its disallowance; and whether any correspondence on the subject can be laid upon the Table.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The answer to the first three sections of the hon. Member's Question is in the affirmative. I have no information as to either the disallowance of the Act of 1903 or as to the re-intro duction of a similar Bill, and I am not prepared to pledge myself in advance as to the course I might think it desirable to take in such circumstances. There has been no recent correspondence on the subject, but there is no objection to laying such Papers as there are, if the House desires it.

    Convict Labour in the Transvaal Mines.
    MR. WHITLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that at a meeting of the Chamber of Mines, held in Johannesburg on 19th November last, a letter was read from the Transvaal Government offering 1,000 more native convicts for the mines; and, if so, will he state whether this offer was accepted, what is the total number of convicts so employed, what is the nature of the offences for which they have been convicted, and on what terms are they supplied to the mines.
    MR. LYTTELTON: Lord Milner informs me that he does not know of any special offer by the Government of 1,000 men to the Chamber of Mines in November. Since 1901 a certain number of convicts have been employed on the Transvaal mines, as has been the practice for many years at Kimberley, where an average of 1,200 convicts are permanently employed on mines. At present 850 convicts are so employed on the Band. The Government agreement with mining companies stipulates that they shall only be employed on surface work, such as roads, dams, and earthworks, and shall not be employed on any work hazardous

    1321
    to life or limb, such as machinery, nor go below the surface of the ground. The mining companies pay the Government 1s. 6d. a day, and provide quarters and water; there is a special visiting magistrate reporting direct to the Attorney-General. The Director of Prisons reports they are excellently housed, they receive the same food as in all the big prisons, and have the same working hours—that is, one hour less than under Cape Colony regulations.
    MR. WHITLEY: What is the nature of the offences for which these natives have been convicted? How does it come that there are so many native convicts?
    MR. LYTTELTON: I am afraid I cannot give the hon. Gentleman information, within a reasonable space of time, which would indicate the general nature of the offences committed.
    MR. WHITLEY: I want to know whether these are natives convicted for serious offences, or whether they have been convicted, for instance, for walking on the sidewalk instead of the middle of the road?
    MR. EUGENE WASON: Is there any other portion of the King's dominions in which convicts are let out for hire?
    MR. SPEAKER: Notice should be given of that Question.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: Are all the native convicts at Johannesburg sent to work in the mines and none left in the prisons?
    [No answer was returned.]

    Education in the Transvaal.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been directed to the cost of administration in the Education Department in the Transvaal, which amounts to 12s. 6d. per child, as compared with 5s. per child in the Orange Colony, and 10 d. in Cape Colony; and, if so, will he state what explanation the Colonial Office has for this expenditure, and what
    1322
    remedy does it propose for its reduction to a basis proportionate with the expenditure of the Educational Departments in the Orange Colony and Cape Colony.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I am not aware on what the figures given in the Question are based and they do not appear to be correct.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Will the right hon. Gentle man telegraph for information?
    MR. LYTTELTON: Yes, sir.

    Korea.
    MR. BRYNMOR JONES: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of the fact that the British and American mining concessions in Korea are situated north of the 39th parallel of latitude, and consequently within the area which Russia desires should be considered the neutral zone, whether, so far as British interests are concerned, that suggestion receives the approval of His Majesty's Government; and whether any, and if so, what, steps have been taken, or will be taken, should necessity arise, to protect British interests in Korea, seeing that the United States have taken active measures for the protection of their interests in Korea.
    THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Earl PERCY,): No suggestion for the creation of a neutral zone in Korea is before His Majesty's Government, and there is consequently no occasion for us to express any opinion on the subject. His Majesty's Minister at Seoul will afford to British interests and subject all necessary assistance and protection. I am not aware of the measures which the hon. Member refers to as having been taken by the United States.

    Niuchwang.
    MR. JOSEPH WALTON (Yorkshire W.R.,): I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in the interests of British trade, His Majesty's Government are taking step with a view of securing an arrangement between the Powers for the neutralisation of the Chinese treaty port

    1323
    of Niuchwang during the Russo-Japanese war.
    EARL PERCY: No, Sir. His Majesty's Government do not consider that it would be practicable to secure the neutralisation of any territory in the actual occupation of one of the belligerents.

    Chinese Railways—British Bondholders' Interests.
    MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the fact that the net receipts of the Shan-hai-Kwan, Niuchwang, Hsin-min-tung Railway are allocated as security to British bondholders, His Majesty's Government have taken any steps for the purpose of safeguarding these lines and maintaining the present management and control.
    EARL PERCY: The answer is in the negative. The Shan-hai-Kwan, Niuchwang, Hsin-min-tung Railway is a Chinese line and is protected by Chinese railway guards and troops.

    Russia and Manchuria.
    MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the omission of the Russian Government in their declaration of the 8th January to renew their assurances as to their intention of evacuating Manchuria, His Majesty's Government have addressed any representations to the Russian Government on this point; and, if so, whether he can state to the House the reply received.
    EARL PERCY: The hon. Member will find the information asked for at page 98 of the Blue-book which will be distributed to-day.

    Chinese Labour in the Transvaal.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether there are any treaties between Great Britain and China under which the assent of the Chinese Government would be necessary before the recruiting of labourers for the Transvaal could be initiated; and, if so,
    1324
    whether the Chinese Government have yet given their assent to such recruitment.
    EARL PERCY: The recruitment of labourers in China is governed by the provisions of Article V. of the Treaty of Pekin. His Majesty's Government have been informed by the Chinese Minister that the draft Ordinance contains nothing which is likely to conflict with the proposals he may have to make when the time comes for negotiating the regulations provided for in this Article.

    Transvaal Mines Recruits from British Central Africa.
    MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Government has sanctioned the recruiting of 5,000 more natives in the British Central African Protectorate for the Transvaal mines; and under what terms is it proposed that they shall be recruited.
    EARL PERCY: The answer to the first Question is in the affirmative. The conditions of recruitment are given in Africa No. 2, 1903, but it has been decided that recruiting shall in future be confined to the colder regions of the Central Africa Protectorate and that the arrival in the Transvaal of those who may enlist shall be postponed until August.

    Colonial Insurances and Income Tax.
    MR. THORNTON: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, as the provisions of the Income Tax Acts which authorise an allowance in respect of life insurance premiums do not include Colonial Government Insurances, he will consider the desirability of so amending these Statutes that Colonial Insurances may be put on the same footing as those issued in the United Kingdom.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): As the hon. Member states, legislation is required in order to extend to Indian and Colonial Insurance Companies the exemption from income tax on premiums which is granted to Insurance Offices with head offices in the United Kingdom. I am making inquiries

    1325
    into the conditions under which Insurance companies carry on their business in the respective Colonies and in India, with a view to finding out whether in each case the same treatment is accorded to companies with local head offices and companies with head offices in the United Kingdom. Until I am in possession of the result of those inquires, I am unable to make any definite statement as to legislation.

    Immature Whisky and Lunacy and Crime.
    MR. MACVEAGH: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the resolution adopted by the Portsmouth Town Council on the 8th instant; and whether, in view of the increase in lunacy and crime in England consequent on the consumption of immature potable spirits, he will consider the advisability of prohibiting the clearing from bond of whisky, rum, or brandy, until it has matured for three years.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The subject referred to by the hon. Member was carefully considered by a Select Committee of this House in 1890. They reported that it was not desirable to pass any compulsory law in regard to age. Any attempt to deal with the subject by legislation would be a matter of much difficulty, and I am not prepared to make proposals such as the hon. Member suggests.
    MR. MACVEAGH: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that such regulations have been made in Canada and other countries? What would be the difficulty in applying them to this country?
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I have no information on the point.

    Departmental Administration.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state the date of the appointment of the Inter-Departmental Committee to consider the duties, pay, and organisation of the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, and other Departments, the names of the Committee, how many meetings the Committee have held, and when it is expected
    1326
    that the Committee will present their Report.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I must ask my hon. friend to refer to the answer which I gave to a similar Question put by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil on the 8th instant. † The Committee have held four meetings, and will sit again this week.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: But is it not the fact that the Committee held only one meeting in six months, and can the right hon. Gentleman say why the Local Government Board took so long to supply the information asked for?
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The Committee held a preliminary meeting and decided to get certain information from the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board, and the long delay before the holding of the meeting was due to the fact that they were awaiting the reply from the Local Government Board.

    Fraudulent Spirits.
    MR. KILBRIDE: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the fact that English spirit simply reduced, coloured, bottled, and labelled is every week being made up and sent out by itself, as Irish or Scotch whisky, according to the needs of the customer; that this takes place in the bonded warehouses in this country with the cognisance of the Excise officials, who are cautioned not to interfere; and that such so-called Scotch whisky is obtained from such materials as molasses, glucose, rice, and sugar, he will give instructions that such alcoholic drinks shall be properly described.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The matter referred to is not one which can be adequately dealt with within the limits of an answer to a Question, but I may say that the objects desired by the hon. Member could not be obtained by the issue of instructions by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    MR. KILBRIDE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Question is
    † See page 580.

    1327
    based on a letter in the Press signed by an Inland Revenue official?
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I have not seen the letter. An Inland Revenue officer has no right to communicate with the Press in regard to his official duties.

    Compulsory Vaccination.
    MR. CROOKS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will furnish the House with the total time lost and the cost incurred through the enforcement of vaccination in all the Government Departments in England.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. VICTOR CAVENDISH, Derbyshire, W.): I regret that it is not possible to give this information without the expenditure of an amount of time and trouble which could hardly be justified by the result.

    Firth of Forth Fisheries.
    CAPTAIN ELLICE (St. Andrews Burghs): I beg to ask the. Secretary for Scotland whether his attention has been called to complaints made by the fishermen on the Fife coasts as to trawlers working inside the enclosed waters of the Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay; and, if so, whether he can make arrangements whereby the light-keepers on the Island of May might report to the police authorities any cases of illegal trawling which might come under their notice.
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON,): Since the beginning of 1903 the Fishery Board have received eight complaints from or on behalf of Fife fishermen regarding illegal trawling in the Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay. In the same period a number of detections were made by the Board's cruisers, and six convictions were obtained, while one case is pending. No arrangement exists for the keepers in the May Island lighthouse reporting cases of illegal trawling to the authorities, and there are grave objections to any arrangement which, in such a situation, could be of any practical benefit.

    Legal Status of Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for; Ireland what is the legal status of Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald under the Land Acts; and whether he is a Judge of the High Court of Justice, and entitled to rank as such.
    THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,): For the purposes of the Land Acts and Land Purchase Acts, Mr. Fitzgerald's status is that of a Judicial Commissioner, but he is not, in my opinion, a judge of the High Court of Justice, nor is he entitled to rank as such.

    Dingle Railway.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord- Lieutenant of Ireland whether any steps have yet been taken with a | view to relieve the ratepayers of county Kerry of the burden which is caused by the Dingle Railway.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): I have been conducting prolonged negotiations with the Directors of the Great Southern and Western Railway with a view to the transfer of this line to the system of that company. I regret to say that even now I have not reached a satisfactory conclusion. But I do not despair of reaching one.

    Kerry Railway and Harbour Guarantees.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received resolutions from the various public boards in Kerry pointing out the burdens in the shape of railway and harbour guarantees which the county, half of which is congested, has to bear; whether he intends to do something to lessen this tax; and whether he could apply a portion of the money accumulating under Section 57 of the Local Government Act of 1898 for this purpose.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Yes, Sir, I have received a number of such resolutions. The reference at the end of the Question

    1329
    should be to Section 58, not 57, of the 'Act of 1898. I am not prepared to indicate the nature of legislative or other action which would be taken in the event of my coming to terms with the Great Southern and Western Railway.
    MR. FLAVIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the extent to which this burden falls on Kerry—several thousands a year?
    MR. WYNDHAM: Yes, Sir, and we have long recognised the desirability of transferring these small lines to the great company.

    Irish Land Court—Purchase of Insolvent Estates.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners have as yet made any proposals to the Land Judge for the purchase of bankrupt estates in his Court; and if any effort is to be made to clear that Court of estates that are hopelessly insolvent.
    MR. WYNDHAM: In pursuance of the provisions contained in Section 7 of the Act of last year, the Commissioners have taken steps with a view to the purchase of fourteen estates, for the sale of which absolute orders had been made in the Land Judge's Court.

    Treatment of the Blind in Ireland.
    MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is the intention of the Government to deal with the condition of the blind in Ireland during the present session, in accordance with the finding of the Royal Commission of 1889, which recommended special treatment for I them.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I cannot give a pledge to deal with this matter during the present session.

    Land Purchase in County Armagh.
    MR. JOHN CAMPBELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Commissioners of Education in Ireland, who own several town-lands near Loughgilly, county Armagh,
    1330
    have through their secretary declined to negotiate with their tenants for the sale of their estate save through their agent who demands twenty-seven and three-quarter years purchase; and, if so, whether he will take steps to induce the Commissioners of Education to sell to their tenants through the machinery of the Estates Commissioners.
    MB. WYNDHAM: The Commissioners are quite willing, I am informed, to negotiate with the tenants. But as they are in the position of public trustees who are discharging their statutory trusts, the hon. Member must see that I have no power to suggest to them the mode in which the negotiations should be conducted.
    MR. JOHN CAMPBELL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the agent in all these cases is the notorious Mr. Johnson.
    MR. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of the Question.

    Iveagh-Pirrie Motor-Car Service.
    MR. JOHN CAMPBELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can give any further information regarding the lveagh-Pirrie motor-car service promised to be set up in Ireland.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Yes, Sir, I should be glad to do so if I obtain an opportunity more suited to a statement which must be lengthy if it is to be comprehensive. Perhaps the hon. Member will await the discussion of the Motion on the subject of transit rates standing in the name of the hon. Member for Cork for the 23rd instant, or put down an unstarred Question.

    Land Purchase in County Galway.
    MR. ROCHE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been directed to the proposed scheme of division and sale of a grass farm in the parishes of Laurence-town and Killimer, county Galway, on the property of M. G. Comyn Kenny; whether he is aware that placards or circulars have been posted or distributed

    1331
    in the district announcing that the landlord is about to mark out the bounds as far as possible to suit the requirements of the people; that it is proposed to put up to competition the several divisions, a fine to be paid in each case preliminary to acceptance as tenant, and their sale to be affected under the Land Purchase Act of last year; and whether, seeing that it is stated in the placard or circular that the Estates Commissioners can advance sufficient money to the purchasers to build dwelling-houses and execute improvements on these projected buildings, he will state if a correspondence in connection with this proposed scheme has taken place between Mr. Kenny and the Estates Commissioners, and whether their sanction has been obtained.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The Commisioners have no knowledge of the matters mentioned in the Question. No correspondence has taken place with them on the subject.

    Arklow Harbour.
    MR. COGAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that for some years past complaints have been made by the Harbour Commissioners and the people of Arklow of the condition of the harbour, resulting in periodical closing up of it to marine traffic; and that for the past five months vessels have been unable either to enter or leave the harbour; and whether, seeing that the Harbour Commissioners represent d to the Board of Works and their engineer the urgency of the matter, and that the engineer finished his survey a month ago, he can state whether the engineer has yet reported to his Board; and, if so, whether the Government is prepared to do anything towards putting the harbour in a safe navigable condition so as to save to the town its existing industries.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The Report of the Board of Work's Engineer has been made to that Department and will shortly be before me. In the meantime it may be desirable to point out that the liability for the maintenance of this harbour is vested in the Harbour Commissioners, not the Government.
    MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: Why has the Report been so long delayed?
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: Was not this defective work done by the Board of Works?
    MR. WYNDHAMasked for notice of the Question.

    Gault Estate, County Tyrone.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether, seeing that the Master of the Rolls made in 1892 an absolute order for the sale of the Gault Estate, Trillick, county Tyrone, he can state what, after twelve years, is the position of the property, and if there is any prospect of the sale of the estate.
    MR. WYNDHAM: An absolute Order for the sale of this estate was made by the Land Judge in 1896. No further-steps appear to have been taken since that date; but I am informed that the solicitors having carriage of the sale have been required to attend before the Land Judge and account for the delay.

    Bruff School Teacher.
    MR.LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mr. Michael Quinlan, of Bruff, county Limerick, on 29th September last wrote to the Office of National Education, Ireland, asking for the extension of the evening school grant to Bruff, and was informed that the application would be referred to the inspector for report; that the school was opened on the following week, a committee being duly formed; that subsequently, as a result of the inspector's visit, aid was refused to the school on the alleged want of qualification on the part of the teacher, Mr. P. J. Casey, who conducts a school in the town with an average of forty pupils, teaching the various branches of English education; that in December, on a further application, a senior inspector was tent down, who also reported that aid could not be granted for the school, although the teacher was not examined and had made sixty two attendances out of the

    1333
    necessary seventy; and, if so, will he say in what way the teacher lacks the necessary qualifications, and arrange that the teacher shall be given the chance of an examination to prove his competency for the position.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The inspector who reported on the first application declined to recommend a grant, and the senior inspector, to whom the second application was referred, also declined to recommend it. The qualifications of the teacher was only one of the considerations upon which the decision of the Commissioners was based. The matter is not one calling for the intervention of the Government.

    Longford Land Commission.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when it is proposed to hold another sitting of the Head Land Commission in Longford for the hearing of appeals; and will he, with a view to effecting the payment of the March rents, direct them to hold a sitting before 20th March at latest.
    MR. WYNDHAM: No date has yet teen fixed; and I am informed by the Commissioners that it will not be possible for them to hold a sitting at Longford before the date mentioned. The delay will not be to the detriment of the parties affected, as the hon. Member will observe on referring to Section 3, Subsection 3, of the Land Law Act, 1898.

    Irish Workhouse Inspectors.
    MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether Mr. O'Connor, the lately appointed inspector of the Local Government Board for Ireland, has any instructions over and above the instructions given to all the other inspectors with reference to his visits to workhouses in his district; and will he state on whose recommendation this gentleman, who was an auditor of the Local Government Board, was appointed, and how long be held the position before being promoted to inspectorship.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The reply to the first part of the Question is in the
    1334
    negative. Mr. O'Connor held the position of auditor for three years before he was transferred to the Inspection Staff. It was upon the recommendation of the Vice-President of the Board, concurred in by me, that this gentleman, who had discharged with efficiency his duties as auditor, was selected for the office of inspector.

    Galbraith Estate, Longford.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether any overtures have been made to the Estates Commissioners for the purchase, as a congested estate, of the Galbraith Estate in the barony and county of Longford; and, if not, will he direct the Commissioners to consider the case of this estate with a view to purchase and resale to the tenants.
    MR. WYNDHAM: No such overtures have been made. I shall be glad, however. to bring the suggestion of the hon. Member under the notice of the Estates Commissioners.

    Irish Development Grant Fund.
    MR.O'DOWD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether any portion of the Ireland Development Grant Fund is available for drainage and the construction and repairing of bridges and byeroads leading into backward districts, the inhabitants of which have no road accommodation; and whether local public bodies in Ireland may make application for grants from that fund.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Many applications have been made by local bodies for grants from this fund. The manner in which it is proposed to allocate it will appear in the Estimate to be laid before Parliament pursuant to the requirements of the Act of last year.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: Will the representatives for Ireland be consulted before the Estimate is framed?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I should be glad of an opportunity of doing so, but I rather think I have their views.

    Limerick Gaol Doctor.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will explain why the services of Dr. John Holmes, Medical Officer to the Female Prison, Limerick, have been dispensed with; what number of years Dr. Holmes has been in charge of this prison; and what pension or compensation in lieu of pension, if any, has been offered to the doctor.
    MR. WYNDHAM: Dr. Holmes held the position of temporary medical officer of the female prison for thirteen years. His services were dispensed with upon the amalgamation of the medical officership of the male and female prisons. He was not entitled to a pension or compensation.
    MR. JOYCE: Will the right hon. Gentleman not consider this doctor's long term of service with a view of giving him some compensation?
    MR. WYNDHAM: I am afraid I cannot give an undertaking of that kind. It is, I am told, impossible to give a pension contrary to the statute.
    MR. JOYCE: I shall bring the matter up again.

    Company Legislation
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury why he has not introduced legislation, as stated by him to the House of Commons on the 19th February, 1903, to meet cases of fraud similar to that of Whittaker Wright; and whether, having regard to the conviction of Whittaker Wright, under the provisions of the sections of the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts referred to by the Judge in passing sentence on him, he still proposes to introduce such legislation.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS,, St. Augustine's) — (for Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The introduction of the Bill in question was postponed pending the recent trial. It is drafted, and will be introduced in a few days.

    Whitaker Wright Trial Costs.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what steps, if any, do the Government intend to take
    1336
    to recoup the expenses sustained by the private prosecutors in the recent trial of Whitaker Wright; and whether there will be any public recognition of their
    services.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS (for Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): As was stated by the Attorney-General on the first day of the session the Government will defray the costs of the prosecution of Whittaker Wright. I do not know what form of "public recognition" the hon. Gentleman has in his mind; but it is not proposed by the Government to promote a testimonial for the benefit of those who undertook the prosecution.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Will the costs to be repaid by the Government include the costs of the private gentleman who forced on the trial?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I am afraid I cannot answer that Question offhand?
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I will put it down.

    Russia and the Dardanelles.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury has the Russian Government approached His Majesty's Government with a request or suggestion that they should consent to Russian men-of-war passing from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles; in view of the fact that such a passage would be a violation of European treaties, what attitude will His Majesty's Government take on this point; and can any Papers be laid.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS (for Mr. A.J. BALFOUR): His Majesty's Government have not been approached with any such request or suggestion. There is no reason whatever for supposing that the Russian Government contemplate a step which would involve a distinct violation of their treaty obligations to the European Powers.

    CHINESE LABOUR FOR THE TRANSVAAL.
    SIR CHARLES McLAREN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury
    †See page 161.

    1337
    when an opportunity will be given to the House of expressing an opinion on Chinese labour in the Transvaal Colony.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS (for Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The hon. Member asks me whether any opportunity, other than the Address, will be given for the discussion of the question of Chinese labour in the Transvaal Colony. I regret that I cannot offer any other day. An opportunity occurs on the Address, and if that opportunity is not taken, seeing the length to which the debate has extended and the amount of financial business which has to be taken before Easter, I am afraid I cannot afford, out of Government time, any other opportunity.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I understand that the right hon. Gentleman adheres to the idea, which has always possessed the Government, that the Amendment on the Address will be a sufficient and seasonable opportunity of discussing this matter, notwithstanding that the undertaking of the Secretary for the Colonies was that the Government would give an opportunity for that discussion. I think that all one can do now is to say that, considering the information which is still withheld from us—I do not say unreasonably withheld, but still not in our possession—in regard to the regulations for enforcing the labour, and other matters, I hope it will be understood that, when these pieces of information now lacking are in our hands, and when the Government have taken action in the matter, it will be open to us, if we see fit, to move a vote of censure.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I understood that my right hon. friend had only given an assurance that an opportunity would be given to the House of expressing its opinion upon this question before the Ordinance was approved. I understand that the opportunity has been taken by an hon. Member opposite of raising the question on the Address. I am afraid I must confirm the answer I have given. Of course it is in the right of the Leader of the Opposition or any other Member on that Bench to claim a day for a vote of censure, which, of course, the Government will give at once.
    MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: Can the right hon. Gentleman not consider the advisability of postponing the final decision of this matter until the views in detail upon the subject held by Australia and New Zealand are laid before Members of the House? There is a strong feeling in Australia and New Zealand, and we are not in full possession of it.
    [No answer was returned.]
    MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: Wait till Dick Seddon comes home again.

    The Fiscal Debate.
    MR. CHARLES McARTHUR: May I ask the Home Secretary, as representing the Leader of the House, whether he is aware that a large number of Members who have risen to speak on the Amendment to the Address now before the House have been accorded no opportunity of expressing their opinion (OPPOSITION cheers), and that, in particular, no representatives of the principal commercial or shipping centres, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, or the City of London (cries of "Bradford" and laughter), have yet taken part in the debate, excepting two members of the Government, who represent Divisions of Glasgow and Leeds respectively; and whether, having regard to the great importance of the fiscal question to the mercantile and shipping interests, he will extend the period allotted to the debate in order that reasonable facilities may be given?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I quite sympathise with the desire of many hon. Gentlemen to take part in this debate, but I do honestly think that it has been extended quite a sufficiently long time. Considering the amount of time at the disposal of the Government before the financial year closes, and as representing the Leader of the House, I have to take care that the House is not brought to a deadlock. (Ironical cheers.) Hon. Gentlemen opposite may cheer, but I venture to point out to them that, Leader as I am temporarily—very unworthily (cries of "No")—I have taken unusual care in this debate to secure the convenience of private Members, and,

    1339
    with the consent of the Front Bench opposite, given to my right hon. friend the Member for Leeds, it was arranged that as few Members of the two Front Benches as possible should take part in the debate. In these circumstances I cannot make any departure from an honourable understanding which has been come to between the two Front Benches.

NEW WRITS.
New Writ for the County of York (Southern part of the West Riding, Normanton Division), in the room of Benjamin Pickard, esquire, deceased.—(Mr. Herbert Gladstone.)
NEW MEMBER SWORN.
John Bamford Slack, esquire, for the County of Herts (Mid or St. Alban's Division).
NEW BILLS.
  COAL MINES (EMPLOYMENT) BILL.
  "To amend the provisions of the Coal Mines Regulation Acts which relate to employment," presented by Sir Charles Dilke; supported by Mr. Keir Hardie, Sir Walter Foster, Mr. William Abraham (Rhondda),Mr. Holland, Mr. Broadhurst, Mr. Brynmor Jones, Mr. Jacoby, Mr. Bell, Mr. Cremer, and Mr. Joseph Walton; to be read a second time upon Friday, 25th March, and to be printed. [Bill 57.]
  LANDS VALUATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  "To amend The Lands Valuation (Scotland) Act, 1854,"presented by Mr. McCrae; supported by Mr. Bryce, Sir John Leng, Mr. Munro Ferguson, Mr. T. W. Russell, Mr. Eugene Wason, Mr. John Dewar, and Mr. Robert Wallace; to be read a second time upon Tuesday, 26th April; and to be printed. [Bill 58.]

  NURSES BILL.
  "To regulate the qualification of trained Nurses, and to provide for their registration," presented by Dr. Farquhar- son; supported by Mr. Haldane, Sir
  1340
  Thomas Wrightson, Sir James Joicey, Sir John Tuke, Mr. H. C. Smith, Mr. Munro Ferguson, Mr. Tennant, Mr. Black, Mr. Colston, Mr. Eve, and Dr. Thompson; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 59.]

  PUBLIC LIBRARIES BILL.
  "To amend the Acts relating to Public Libraries by removing the existing limit to the amount of the library rate," presented by Mr. Tennant; supported by Sir Albert Rollit, Sir William Houlds-worth, Sir Alfred Thomas, Mr. Thornton, Mr. John Burns, Mr. Middlemore, Mr. Hunter Craig, and Mr. Haldane; to be read a second time upon Thursday, 25th February, and to be printed. [Bill 60.]
  FACTORY AND WORKSHOP ACT (1901) AMENDMENT BILL.
  "To amend the Law relating to the provisions for escape from fire in Factories and Workshops," presented by Mr. Tennant; supported by Captain Norton, Mr. Hugh Law, Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, Mr. John Burns, Sir John Dickson-Poynder, and Mr. Peel; to be read a second time upon Thursday, 25th February, and to be printed. [Bill 61.]
  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (KING'S SPEECH, MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
  Ordered, That the Proceedings on the King's Speech (Motion for an Address), if under discussion at Twelve o'clock this night, be not interrupted under the Standing Order (Sittings of the House). (Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.)

  KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
  (TENTH DAY.)
  Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment [8th February] to Main Question [2nd February],"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
  "Most Gracious Sovereign,
  "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech

  1341
  which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament"—(Mr. Hardy.)
  Which Amendment was—
  "At the end of the Question, to add the words, But it is our duty, however, humbly to represent to Your Majesty that our effective deliberation on the financial service of the year is impaired by conflicting declarations from Your Majesty's Ministers. We respectfully submit to Your Majesty the judgment of this House that the removal of protective duties has for more than half a century actively conduced to the vast extension of the trade and commerce of the realm and to the welfare of its population; and this House believes that, while the needs of social improvment are still manifold and urgent, any return to protective duties, more particularly when imposed on the food of the people, would be deeply injurious to our national strength, contentment, and well-being.'"—(Mr. John Morley.)
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
  SIR HOWARD VINCENTsaid that in one respect he enjoyed an advantage in regard to the subject matter of this debate, and that was that there was no one in his constituency who had the smallest doubt as to his opinions upon this matter. To avoid any misconception as to the views he had expressed during the twenty years he had been a Member of the House, he ventured to claim for a short time the indulgence of the House. There was nothing new in the fiscal campaign in which they were now engaged, and he had long felt that this question would ultimately be taken up by a statesman of the first rank and the greatest ability, like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he had opportunities of seeing the terrible destitution and misery amongst the great mass of working classes in the East End of London and other great cities. From the seats under the gallery to which he had access he heard Mr. Wheelhouse in 1880 move for a Committee.
  "To consider the commercial relations at present existing between England and foreign nations, especially with regard to the import of manufactured goods from abroad, as well as the effect caused by our system of one-sided so called free trade with a view, if possible, of ameliorating the condition of the wage-earning classes of this country."
  1342
  Mr. Gladstone's Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget Speech in 1881, said—
  "I wish Parliament to understand that we are not making ground at present, I speak of the last few years and without reference to Party differences I say we are rather losing than making ground."
  As the late Sir Stafford Northcote pointed out, this decline began in the year 1872. Then came Mr. Gladstone's failure to make a treaty with Republican France. A year passed and then came forward the real originator of the fair trade movement in this House. Hon. Members might think he referred to his right hon. friend the Member for Thanet, to Mr. Farrer Ecroyd, then Member for Preston, to the veteran Mr. Cunliffe Lester, now Lord Masham, or to his right hon. friend the Member for Sleaford. Not at all. He referred to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was he who by his extraordinary recantation, last year, of his previous opinions and his refusal to let colonial wheat free into the United Kingdom, was the cause of all this turmoil. If he were to read his speech of 24th March, 1882, making the necessary alterations in the figures, to bring them up to date, it would be the best argument against the Motion of the Member for Montrose. On 24th March, 1882. the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon, then representing the Tower Hamlets, moved unsuccessfully—
  "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the effects which the tariffs in force in foreign countries have upon the principal branches of British trade and commerce and into the possibility of removing by legislation or otherwise any impediment to the fullest development of the manufacturing and commercial industry of the United Kingdom."
  The right hon. Gentleman called attention to the increase of pauperism, to the increase of emigration, and said—
  "The fact was that the country was going back and that retrogression had been attributed by large numbers of the people to the commercial policy of the country, and the want of confidence which it bad engendered, and which had not been diminished by the total failure of Mr. Gladstone's Government in the previous year, in the negotiations for a treaty of commerce with the French Republic. He felt certain that we could successfully compete with all the world if our manufacturers could secure a fair field and no favour. He denied that our progress was mainly attributable to our

  1343
  commercial policy. If the exports to foreign countries were separated from the exports to British possessions the diminution in the exports to foreign countries was very remarkable. Instead of decreasing 30 per cent. like our foreign trade, they increased in 1880 to £75,000,000 or 25 per cent. That increase would have been still greater if it had not been for a decrease of about 20 per cent. in our exports to Canada and 25 per cent in our exports to Victoria, which was an evidence of the effect of their tariff. Nothing could show more forcibly the immense value to us, as outlets for our manufactures, of our colonies and the great importance of doing-all in our power to draw them closer to us."
  There was nothing, said the right hon. Gentleman—
  "Against the principles of free trade in retaliation, but there was, above all, the question of drawing closer together the bonds which united us with our colonies. If that were feasible he was sure it would meet with the assent and support of all classes in the country and of hon. Members on both sides of the House."
  What a change in the right hon. Gentleman. It is he who proposed this resolution who had turned round and become the great opponent. The Motion was strongly supported by the late Sir Stafford Northcote, and my friend, then Member for Preston, Mr. Farrer Ecroyd speaking for the North of England. But it was defeated by Mr. Gladstone's Government by a majority of fifty-one. The movement, however, went on under the auspices of the Fair Trade League and encouraged by the Imperial Federation League, presided over by Lord Rosebery, and founded by that great patriot and Liberal, the late right hon. W. E. Forster, who said to the hon. Sir Charles Tupper, High Commissioner for Canada—
  "I am a free-trader, but I am not so fanatical a free-trader that I should not be perfectly willing to adopt the policy of fiscal arrangements by which the outlying portions of the Empire would be treated by the mother country on a different footing to foreign countries, for the great and important object of binding this great Empire together."
  In 1885, he the Speaker, was returned to this House, and had been four times subsequently, by Central Sheffield, to further this policy by all means in his power. Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon was allured to the Treasury Bench and straightway dropped his previous convictions—for he was sure in 1882 he was sincere—but the movement went on. In 1887 the National Union of Conservative
  1344
  Associations at Oxford passed at his in-instance a resolution by 1,000 to 12 declaring—
  "That the continued depression in trade and agriculture, the increase in the scarcity of employment and the consequent distress among all classes, render reform in the policy of the United Kingdom as regards foreign imports and the influx of foreigners a matter of vital necessity to the people of Great Britain and Ireland."
  Twelve times the Conference of the National Union had after full notice and deliberation endorsed that resolution and urged the Government to carry out to the full the views enunciated by the Colonial Conferences of 1887, 1897, and 1902 on the subject of preferential trade between all parts of the British Empire. The Prime Minister and his right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham had only, therefore, tardily voiced the earnest wishes through many years of the great majority of the Conservative and Unionist Party throughout the country. It became of importance, therefore, to consider what was the attitude of the late Lord Salisbury, four times Prime Minister in the past twenty years, and for all time a beacon light in the annals of the Unionist Party. There had lately been some correspondence in regard to the late Lord Salisbury's view of this question. He had the advantage of having been in frequent communication with Lord Salisbury on this matter during the last twenty years, and he honestly believed that his Lordship shared in the main the principle-which were now advocated by the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. Perhaps the House would allow him to quote one or two expressions of opinion, and to refer to some of the Acts that tended to confirm this view. On 10th November, 1890, Lord Salisbury said in the City of London,—
  "We know that every bit of the world's surface which is not under the British Flag is a country which may be, and probably will be, closed to us by a hostile tariff. It is to the trade that is carried on within the Empire that we look for the vital force of the commerce of this country."
  On 12th February, 1891, Lord Salisbury said—
  "Whenever such a modification of English opinion takes place, so that the idea of discrimination of duties in favour of colonial

  1345
  produce shall be a fiscal possibility, I shall not oppose the wish to have the matter thoroughly discussed between ourselves and the Colonies."
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet would remember heading a deputation that waited on Lord Salisbury on 19th June, 1891, with regard to the treaties which had been negotiated between 1862 and 1865. What was Lord Salisbury's answer to his right hon. friend and the representatives from all parts of the country who accompanied him? He said—
  "Those who believe, as you believe, that you are the representatives of a rising movement in possession of a policy which only requires to be explained to your countrymen to be adopted by them, your duty is plain—spare no pains in the effort of impressing it upon your fellow men, you are invited to go forth and fight for it."
  That injunction was obeyed, and the United Empire Trade League was formed. Under its auspices meetings were held in all parts of the country, and in the large towns throughout the Empire. In 1897 they won their first rampart. After six years hard work on the part of the League, Lord Salisbury, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, denounced the Gladstone treaties forbidding the Colonies putting lighter duties on British goods than upon foreign goods, and gave a year's notice to terminate them in order to enable the Colonies, if they wished, to treat British goods more favourably than foreign goods. On 1st August, 1898, the notices expired, and from midnight one-fourth of the Canadian duty was remitted upon—
  "Articles the growth, produce, or manufacture of Great Britain and Ireland, of India, or any British colony, or upon goods in which at least 25 per cent. of the value was British labour."
  He could quote, if time allowed, numerous other expressions from the public speeches of Lord Salisbury in this connection such as—
  "Under the present conditions of our tariff no one cares two straws about the commercial favour of England,"
  And that—
  "We are fighting with our hands tied against armed men."
  The long and short of it was that he was so convinced of the sympathy of the late Lord Salisbury with this movement, that, with the concurrence of his hon. friends who acted with him,
  1346
  he invited his Lordship, after resigning the office of Prime Minister, to become president of the United Empire Trade League. Lord Salisbury, who was usually very prompt in his replies, took a month to consider the invitation, and his answer was nearly the last holograph letter he wrote. In that letter he said—
  "At this moment so many diverse questions are at issue that I should feel unwilling to accept the presidency you kindly offer me. I might find it difficult to express myself so as to avoid misconception. We do not yet precisely know the form which the discussion will take in our own ranks."
  The House would sec there was no refusal, only a desire to avoid any disagreement in the Unionist Party.
  He would now ask the House to consider the present state of trade and employment, and to consider how much worse was the state of affairs since 1882—that was since this matter was brought before the House by his right hon. friend the Member for Croydon, then a private Member. He would ask hon. Members to consider the facts and to say whether they did not call for a remedy. There were many hon. Gentlemen opposite who not only in private but in public thought with the tariff reformers in this matter. [Cries of "Name."] Mr. Storey, President of the Liberal Federation. It was all very well for hon. Gentlemen to laugh at that name, but Mr. Storey had rendered yeoman service to the Liberal Party as President of the Liberal Federation. But that was the way the Liberal Party treated their old friends. The President of the Liberal Association of the Elland Division took exactly the same view. Another instance was that of Mr. Thomas Brassey, son of Lord Brassey. [Laughter.] They laughed at him, but they adopted him as a candidate. They spoke very highly of him at Devonport and elsewhere. They would find plenty of instances in constituencies represented by Liberals of men who were in favour of tariff reform. He was extremely anxious not to raise any controversial questions, and therefore he would not refer Liberals to old friends who had left them on this question.
  If they would look at the matter dispassionately, they would see that the state of affairs during the last twenty-four, years had become much worse.

  1347
  The Board of Trade Blue-books showed that in the ten years, 1891 to 1900, the imports for consumption increased by £534,000,000, and the exports by only £55,000,000. There was an average yearly excess of £145,000,000 in foreign imports over our exports. Comparing the first ten years with the last, our exports of cotton manufactures fell by £60,000,000; our exports of iron and steel fell by £29,000,000; our exports of woollen and worsted manufactures fell by £23,000,000; of hardware and cutlery by £11,000,000; and of linen manufactures, leather manufactures, steam engines, copper and jute manufactures, over £12,000,000—a total fall of £137,000,000 in manufactured exports. Against that we could only set a rise of £34,000,000 in the exports of machinery other than steam engines; of £5,000,000 in apparel and slops; and of £10,000,000 in chemical products. Were we to submit to this loss of £87,000,000 in our exports of manufactured goods, coupled with a rise in twenty years in the import of foreign manufactured goods of £100,000,000, without inquiry or effort to remedy a state of things so disastrous to the producers of this country? Our exports to France fell in the ten years 1891 to 1900 compared to the previous ten years by £8,000,000; to the United States by £63,000,000; to Italy by £7,000,000. Our exports to some countries, it was true, rose, but while the imports from all sources into all foreign countries was increased by 11 per cent., our export trade to all foreign countries only increased by 4 per cent.; and Return 363 of 1898 shows that each £100 of English foreign trade in 1854 became in 1897 £253 19s. 9d., while each £100 of the foreign trade in 1854 of the twelve principal foreign nations under protection became £454 3s. 5d., or nearly double our progress. On 24th March, 1882, the President of the Board of Trade declared that "our imports of manufactures and half manufactures are only £35,000,000." Last year, 1903, the Trade and Navigation Returns for December showed that they were £134,659,090, or close on £135,000,000. This gain of £100,000,000 sterling of foreign manufacturers in our home market in twenty years was surely enough to make any man reconsider the position, and especially as 10,000,000
  1348
  more pairs of hands had been added to our population, they had lost the £60,000,000 which had been paid in wages to the foreign workman.
  Now what had been the result of this state of affairs as regard the employment of the masses. The Labour Gazette for January showed that 37,500 trades unionists were out of employment, that 3,000,000 workpeople sustained decreases in wages in the last three years, that on a single day last December 370,469 were dependent on poor law relief, and that 261,363 English, Scotch and Irish, in despair of obtaining a living at home, had to emigrate mostly to protected countries, and give place to 80,000 aliens. He would bring the matter nearer home to his own constituency. Nearly every trade was falling. This was what the Sheffield Telegraph of that morning said—
  "The claims on the fund for the relief of the distress in Sheffield are still very pressing, and in order to provide one meal a day for the penniless unemployed and their families further help is urgently required."
  They received only that morning from the Duke of Norfolk, on the occasion of his marriage, a contribution of £1,000, which was only another testimony of his Grace's great kindness to the people of Sheffield. The hon. Baronet the Member for Hallamshire, who generally sat opposite, and whose absence he was afraid was due to illness, said at a meeting in the Sheffield Town Hall on 9th February, that—
  "He was afraid the present depressed state of trade would continue for some time, and that there would be no great improvement in business for a considerable period."
  This was a most lamentable state of affairs; and, if his view was not the right one, do let them have from hon. Members opposite some remedy. He did not see the hon. member for Carnarvon Boroughs, but he was sitting behind the Member for Forest of Dean when that right hon. Baronet said that this prosperity argument had been pushed much too far. The other day when he was banqueted by his friends at the New Reform Club. He said—
  "Mr. Chamberlain was right in so far as he said things were not well in this country. They could not feed the hungry with statistics of national prosperity, and stop the pangs of famine by reciting to a man the prodigious number of cheques that had passed through the

  1349
  clearing-house. They had, therefore, got to propose something better than Mr. Chamberlain. They ought to do something to help the poor from the mire and the needy from the dunghill."
  And Mr. Pickersgill, who was formerly Radical Member for Bethnal Green, on another occasion said—
  "We must meet Mr. Chamberlain with a policy at least as attractive as his own. It must be a bread-and-butter policy."
  During the ast five days debate there had been a score of very interesting and eloquent speeches from hon. Gentlemen opposite, but so far as he heard, and he had listened to nearly everything that had been said, not one single word of suggestion had been offered to remedy this condition of affairs. He had heard a great deal of abuse of the Prime Minister and of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham and those who had been acting under him, but if hon. Gentlemen opposite had a remedy, for goodness sake let the House and the country know what it was. He could promise for himself, and in behalf of everyone on that side of the House, that if they had a remedy for this unfortunate condition of things it would be impartially and thoroughly considered. But if they had no remedy, let them, at all events, give a fair consideration to the remedy which he and his friends suggested. That remedy was to do something to break down the tariff walls opposed to our trade, something to give confidence to labour-employing capital, to prevent British factories being removed to protected countries, to people and develop the Empire, and—that is to trade with those who trade with us, to develop trade within the Empire on mutually advantageous terms and on a preferential basis.
  He regretted the depreciatory tone in which some hon. Members had spoken in regard to the great patriotic action of the Dominion of Canada. He referred to what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Forest of Dean. It was lamentable that the latter hon. Gentleman had upbraided and scoffed at the Canadian Government, which had endeavoured to give a preference to British trade. Let him quote from The Times
  1350
  of that morning the advantage which British trade had received from Canada—
  "In 1897 the exports of British and Irish produce to the North American colonies had fallen to £5,476,161 from £8,141,586 in 1889. They immediately rose in 1898 to £6,154,773, and in 1900 to £8,126,710. Then the Canadian Government increased the preference from 25 per cent. to 33⅓ per cent., and in 1902 the value of the British exports to Canada amounted to £10,720,325, or very nearly double what it was in 1897. The Trade and Navigation Returns show that the improvement in 1903 is continued in almost every line. To take only a few instances, the Canadian purchase of British hardware increased from 4,003 cwt. in 1901 to 8,566 cwt. in 1903, and of galvanised sheets from 7,418 tons in 1901 to 10,900 tons in 1903. The importation of British piece goods also rose from 36,000,000 yards in 1901 to 47,000,000 yards in 1903, and that of British woollen tissues from 3,900,000 yards in 1901 to 5,225,000 yards in 1903."
  Again, last year, South Africa, under the auspices of the late Colonial Secretary, gave British imports a preference of 25 per cent. and the result has been that many orders have come to this country which would otherwise have gone to the fierce and state-aided competition of the United States, Belgium, and Germany. The Report of Mr. Birchenough, the Special Commissioner of the Board of Trade, holds out hopes of orders for £100,000,000 worth of goods in the next ten years. And then there had been the action of New Zealand under the ægis of Mr. Seddon. In proposing the Preferential and Reciprocal Trade Bill that great Imperial Statesman said—
  "In the Bill we are making no distinction. Canada, Australia, India, wherever British rule prevails, all parts of the Empire are treated alike, and a British Zollverein with the passing of this Bill commences so far as New Zealand is concerned, and the increased duties are chargeable only as against alien countries who have fiscal barriers against us. I claim it to be our duty to alter our customs in favour of the mother country."
  and by more than a three to one majority the representatives of our brothers in New Zealand passed the Bill. And were we to sit still and do nothing while our kith and kin conferred these benefits upon us? But for the British possessions, which took last year £109,000,000 of our exports—a rise of £25,000,000 in fifteen years—we should be in a bad way. In 1869, as every one knows, the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest: of Dean wrote a book entitled "Greater

  1351
  Britain." There were many passages in it which he thought the right hon. Baronet must now greatly regret. He saw and wrote as a Radical in the anti-colonial Radical days of thirty-five or forty years ago. For instance on page 398 of the 3rd edition the right hon. Baronet said—
  "With the more enlightened thinkers of England separation from the Colonies has for many years been a favourite idea."
  That was in entire accord with Mr. Cobden's view. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Montrose Burghs said the other day, what was perfectly true, that he was better acquainted with the "Life of Cobden" than he himself was. But on page 231 of the right hon. Gentleman's "Life of Cobden," Cobden's views regarding the Coloni s were given in a very notable letter to Mr. Ashworth. He wrote—
  "The colonial system with all its dazzling appeals to the passions of the people can never be got rid of except by the indirect process of free trade, which will gradually and imperceptibly loose the bonds which unite our colonies to us by a mistaken notion of self-interest."
  That view might still be entertained by hon. Gentlemen opposite, but it was not the view which was entertained by any hon. Gentleman on those Benches or by their supporters in the country. Their desire was to do all they possibly could to draw the Colonies closer to the mother country and to recognise the magnificent services they had rendered to the Empire in recent years. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Forest of Dean was one of the most enlightened thinkers in England, and he would invite the attention of the House to a passage from the right hon. Gentleman's book "Greater Britain." On page 331 he wrote—
  "It would seem as though we free-traders had become nearly as bigoted in favour of free trade as our former opponents were in favour of protection … protection is no mere national delusion; it is a system deliberately adopted with open eyes as one conducive to the country's welfare."
  Let them then deal with the matter not as bigots or fanatics on one side or the other but let them look at it as business men from a business point of view. The conclusion which he ventured to offer was that the best way to develop
  1352
  a business was to develop it on the lines which appeared most promising. The export trade between the Colonies and the mother country showed a return of £3 per head. It was surely better to develop trade in that direction than to endeavour to develop trade with foreign countries which only gave a return of a few shillings per head. The Duke of Devonshire was sometimes thought to be opposed to them in this matter; but he happened to have a prospectus of the British Empire League, of which the Duke was chairman, and of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Berwick Division, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Poplar, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Haddingtonshire, were vice-presidents. The objects of the League were stated to be as follows—
  "To promote trade between the United Kingdom and the Colonies and India, and to consider how far it may be possible to modify any laws or treaties which impede freedom of action in the making of reciprocal trade arrangements between the United Kingdom and the Colonies, or between any two or more British colonies and possessions."
  They were therefore all agreed, and what was the use in wrangling about details. Let the matter be argued without Party spirit, and let them do their best to devise the quickest remedy. Surely the Prime Minister was right when he said that the first step was to regain liberty of negotiation. The Prime Minister said—
  "It cannot be right for the country with free-trade ideals to enter into competition with protectionist rivals, self-deprived of the only instrument by which their policy can conceiv ably be modified. The only alternative is to do to foreign nations what they always do to each other, and instead of appealing to economic theories in which they wholly disbelieve, to use fiscal inducements which they thoroughly understand."
  He appealed to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and also to his hon. friends who did not agree as to the details of the proposals now before the country, to follow the example of those who, although they might not have agreed with everything which had been stated from the Treasury Bench for twenty years, had always supported the Government to the utmost of their power for the sake of the great national issues which were involved. He appealed to his

  1353
  hon. friends, in this very serious crisis of the world's history, not to divide the Party, and not to support a Motion which was designed not so much with reference to the fiscal question, but in order to create confusion in the ranks of the Unionist Party. His hon. friend the Member for Exeter asked a question the other day which he would take the liberty of answering. His hon. friend wished to know to what port the ship in which he was serving was bound. It was bound to the port of National Prosperity through the channels of constant Employment and Good Wages. They had confidence in their captain the Prime Minister, and they had confidence in their pilot the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. If his hon. friend and others of his hon. friends would vote straight for the Party in accordance with the wishes of their constituencies they need not have the slightest fear that they would be left derelict at the next general election. His sporting friend the Member for South-cast Durham was also anxious for an answer to a question he put. He would tell his hon. friend that the horse they were running was the old horse which had been so unaccountably sold by his right hon. friend the Member for Croydon. It was the people's favourite, and was bound to win, although it might be hustled by jockeys whose licences had been withdrawn by the electors of England.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he congratulated his hon. friend on the day of his triumph. His hon. friend could scarcely have expected to see the day when he would hear a highly protectionist speech delivered by him, cheered from the Treasury Bench, not ironically, nor could he expect that he should occupy the proud position of answering for a Government which appeared incapable of answering for itself. The debate had been cheered and enlivened by the concatenation of quotations and figures which had been given by his hon. friend. But even before his hon. friend spoke the debate was one which was not unworthy of this House. They all indeed much regretted the absence of the Prime Minister, and he himself regretted that the debate had not taken place on a substantive Motion but on an
  1354
  Amendment to the Address. Nevertheless, in spite of the absence of the Prime Minister, the debate had been most illuminating and most sensational. The absence of the Prime Minister had deprived the House of an opportunity which sooner or later during the session must be given to it. Five Ministers had resigned and practically a new Ministry now ornamented the Treasury Bench. The concatenation of events by which that result had been achieved must have been of one of two characters. It must either have been characterised by falsehood, treachery, nepotism and jobbery; or Ministers must have left the Government on account of principle and must have left a chief who had treated them with full and frank confidence and to whom they owed the same confidence. They must in that case have left the Government to their own regret and to the equal regret of the Prime Minister; and his right hon. friend must have tilled up their places with a sole eye to the efficiency of the Government. He did not know which of those two accounts was correct nor could any man tell in the absence of the Prime Minister. In his absence a very serious doubt hung over those events and sooner or later answers to the questions raised by the resignations by ex-Ministers must be given and the doubt removed. The debate showed that nobody agreed with the Government. The protectionists did not agree with it because it did not go far enough, but they were most nearly agreed with it. Free traders did not agree with it because it, went too far. The Government did not agree with itself, but it was most nearly agreed on protection and he need scarcely add that that state of affairs caused most profound disappointment among those who were inelegantly known as free-fooders and who, in fact, did attach the greatest importance to the retention in this country of cheap and abundant food.
  They expected, after the declaration of the Prime Minister at Sheffield, that this debate would be signalised by a complete and full renunciation by the Government of the errors of Birmingham. He thought they had a right to expect that, because to some extent the Sheffield declaration was ambiguous and he had confidently hoped that this ambiguity would be now finally cleared up.

  1355
  This expectation was confirmed by the speech of the President of the Board of Trade, after hearing which he had come to the conclusion that His Majesty's Government had at last come down on the right side, and he then determined, as had the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol, that he could not vote for the Amendment. But how the scene had now changed! The Secretary to the Board of Trade had spoken! The Secretary of State for the Colonies had spoken and disclosed quite a different attitude from that disclosed by the President of the Board of Trade. So had the President of the Local Government Board, and while the President of the Board of Trade had begun by declaring for free trade, these other three members of the Government had declared for protection and food taxing. This was what had so unexpectedly placed the free-fooders in antagonism to the Government. It would be hard for a conscientious Member to vote against the Amendment, because it was gospel truth. Every proposition it contained was undeniable, and the Amendment need not necessarily be considered a vote of want of confidence by the Government. It would have been a vote of want of confidence at the time when the Address in reply to the Speech was a recapitulation of the Speech paragraph by paragraph. Then if a paragraph were amended the whole tenour of the reply was changed But this Address was no more than a expression of thanks, and the addition of a further proprosition to it was not a vote of want of confidence in the Government, unless the Government were prepared to deny the truth of the proposition. But even if it be a vote of want of confidence, there were things even more important than the fate of Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench. It was of more importance that the country should have free food than that it should retain the present occupants on the Treasury Bench. On the road leading to the taxation of food he for one would never go, whoever led. And who was leading in that direction? On what road was the Government walking, and to what did it all tend? What the issue before the country would be at the general election he did not know, but the issue now before the House was whether trade should be bond or free whether food should be dear or
  1356
  cheap, whether trade should be left to be conducted by men of business or be taken under the protection of a tariff-loving Government.
  It was said that only men of business were competent to deal with the question. How many men of business were there in the Government? Except Lord Londonderry, who earned a precarious livelihood by selling coals, and who, by the way, was a free-trader, there was not on the Treasury Bench a single Minister who had so much as managed an apple stall or undersold a competitor to his destruction. Not one of them even thought himself a man of business except the Colonial Secretary, who supposed himself capable of earning £100 a year as a working man. Of the merits of free trade, protection, and preference he would say little, for they had been well nigh exhausted, but he would say that this country drew from the uttermost ends of the earth all that contributed to the wants of man; to his comforts and his necessities. And it kept them, for year by year it kept more of all commodities including even gold and silver than it sent away. That had been going on for fifty years. For fifty years we had been accumulating in this way all that man can desire and we might say in the beautiful words of the psalm—
  "Our garners are fall, affording all manner of store. There is no complaining in our streets; happy is that people that is in such a case."
  That condition of things represented plenty, wealth, and prosperity; yet the apostles of scarcity complained and declared that the contrary was the case. Might he not add in the words of the psalmist—
  "Rid me and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood."
  The apostles of scarcity asked the country to believe that a full garner meant impending ruin, that the possession of all that men could pray for or want was the sign of poverty and disaster, that the nation was the loser when we sent out less than we received, better off if we sent out more than we received, and at its best if we sent out all and received nothing. They declared that if we must put up with the curse of imports it were better to take that curse from our

  1357
  cousins, whom it was our object to bind to us with links of affection. They called themselves protectionists and preferentialists, which meant much the same thing. By the protectionists we were asked to protect ourselves against the world to the ruin of our customers; by the preferentialists we were asked to prefer the Colonies to the rest of the world to our own ruin. It had been said, and it might, be that protection had succeeded in other countries, but this country was in such a position in the midst of the sea, at the crossing of all the sea roads of the world, as to be different from every other; nor was the example of any other country applicable to it. Our destiny was marked out as the carriers of the world, and our island as best fitted to be the one great, perpetual free port through which the trade movements of the world should take place. Since 1846 this country had been, on the whole, the freest market and freest exchange ever known in history. Protection and preference had been tried, protection was given up in 1846 and preference in 1860; they were both given up because both had been recognised to be a complete failure. Protection failed even for agriculture. In the years 1821, 1833, and 1836, when the corn duties were in force, people flocked from this country to testify to Committees of this House that agriculture was insolvent. A great agricultural expert, Mr. Bernard, in 1836 was asked—
  "Do yon believe it possible that farmers cad go on at this rate? No. I consider the whole agricultural body is insolvent. On your conscience do you believe that to be true? I do, and consequently my belief is that the whole agricultural body, including all noblemen as well as farmers, is insolvent."
  That was in 1836, when we had a high protective tariff, and he was therefore justified in saying that the protective system was a failure. But if it failed for the landlord and the farmer, it failed worse for the poor. In 1801 wheat in this country was 120s. a quarter, which was 15s. a bushel. In that year the weekly wage of the Hertfordshire labourer—and he had not forgotten it— was 8s. In 1902 wheat was 28s. 1d. per quarter, or 3s. 6d. a bushel, while the Hertfordshire labourer's wages were 14s. 7d., and the labourer could therefore buy
  1358
  to-day four bushels of wheat instead of half a bushel a century ago. That was the condition of things to or towards which the protectionists would have the country return. The great missionary of scarcity had been going about the country preaching a return to a system of this kind. With false dates and falsified figures, he had drawn false pictures and had gone whining and whimpering of impending ruin in order to lure us back to the reconstruction of a false fabric which had starvation at the base and insolvency at the summit. The right hon. Gentleman had changed his mind often, but he had adopted frank protection by his so-called Scientific Budget and by that crowning travesty of a Royal Commission which would never have entered the mind of any one but a statesman who had been received in a civic hall to the strains of "God save the King." The right hon. Gentleman had now temporarily put off the ermine, and. presumably in order to avoid guards of honour and Royal salutes, the had gone. so the, newspapers said, under the incognito of "Mr. Richards," to Egypt where from the summit of the Pyramids forty centuries would contemplate him with some curiosity. [Continued cries of "Oh."] There seemed to be present the neophytes of some new religion who could not bear to hear criticised a person whom they regarded almost as divine. When the right hon. Gentleman reached Egypt and learnt what had occurred in Hertfordshire to his well-beloved and trusty commissioner he would probably revise his opinion and begin to doubt whether so much success was assured to his plan as he had formerly supposed.
  So far as the Government was concerned, there had been a series of manifestoes from the First Lord of the Treasury. In his Sheffield speech he affirmed retaliation, but retaliation which was so limited as not to impose a tax on food or raw material, which was not to involve a high and a low tariff system. which was not to lead to a tariff war, and which was only to be carried into effect with the consent of Parliament. To such retaliation no man, free-trader or free fooder, could have the slightest objection. The rest of the Sheffield speech was a

  1359
  declaration against the taxation of food—and that speech, on the whole, was entirely incompatible and inconsistent with, and contrary to, the Birmingham plan. Since then, further light had been afforded. In October, a most interesting pamphlet, containing the Sheffield speech and other declarations of the Prime Minister, was issued. That pamphlet was preceded by an introduction, which had since been suppressed and withdrawn, and consequently was the more interesting at the present moment. In that introduction the following passages occurred—
  "The Government is agreed as to the proposals which, as a practical policy, are to be put before the electorate at the next general election, i.e., fiscal reform is necessary, and carries with it the liberty, if the threat be unheeded, to effect retaliation. Neither the taxation of food, not any bolstering up of a home industry, which is failing through natural and legitimate competition, is included in the programme."
  That was the official introduction to the official version of the Prime Minister's speech. These words followed—
  "… the chief Liberal attack is bound to be directed against those points which are now debatable amongst ourselves. Such attack is fair and to be expected. It can only succeed if we exhibit weakness and folly."
  That introduction fully reaffirmed and put the dots on the is of the Sheffield speech—but it was withdrawn. Why? Who could doubt that it was at the bidding of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham? Then came a change. There was the Bristol speech, in which the Prime Minister said there were to be profound modifications of our fiscal system, and called free-traders "our opponents." Finally, in December last, there appeared at Dulwich a candidate who entirely shared the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, who had even given £1,000 to the Tariff Reform League, and who yet received from the Prime Minister a letter with best wishes for his success. Thus the Prime Minister, who since his Sheffield speech had been expected to resist, had seemed rather drawing nearer and nearer to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. They must therefore ask was the Prime Minister for protection or for free trade. or did he aspire to found a matrimonial agency destined to bring about the union of the two? When in
  1360
  the great schism of the fourteenth century, Pope Urban was elected at Rome, and his rival, Pope Clement, at Avignon, the two Popes anathematised and excommunicated each other, and each called the other "Anti-Pope." Who was the Pope here, and who the anti-pope? Were they to pay their allegiance to Urban of Downing Street or to Clement of Birmingham, or were they to take refuge in some union of both in the shape of a mythical "Pope Joan"? The contradictory utterances of the Prime Minister were reflected in the Ministry itself. Lord Salisbury, who denounced "rash policies and doubtful statistics,"said—
  "The Government will not be responsible for presenting such a remedy as preference."
  The Lord President of the Council stated that—
  "He never would have subscribed to the Government policy if it had included a tax upon food."
  and the Postmaster-General had made utterances to the same effect. Yes: they made these statements now, but what would they say when "Mr. Richards" came back? Would not the right hon. Gentleman make short work of the free-traders, and be encouraged to do so by the knowledge that his adherents were in a majority in the Cabinet. Of the views of the Chancellor of the Exchequer there was no doubt whatever. He had publicly expressed his sympathy with the Birmingham plan "in all its branches," he launched at the free-fooders the choicest adjectives in the Birmingham armoury, and he had recently declared that—
  "A time was coming when the country would insist upon the Government giving its attention to this matter."
  That time was no doubt coming, but whether the mandate given by the country would be such as the right hon. Gentleman expected was open to question The hon. Member for Central Bradford who was a poet as well as a statesman had compared the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Pitt, and had suggested that in him would be found the pilot that weathered the storm. If the hon. Member had contemplated the Member; for West Bristol, Ealing, and Croydon out in the cold, another verse by the same

  1361
  writer might have occurred to him, and he might have added—
  Praise to placeless proud ability
  Let the prudent muse disclaim;
  And sing the Statesman all civility,
  Whom moderate talents raise to fame.
  The opinions of the President of the Board of Trade, of the President of the Local Government Board, and of the Irish Secretary were always interesting, but the member of the Cabinet whose opinions were of the most importance in this matter was the Minister who held the purse-strings—the Minister who, if any man, would so manipulate the next Budget as to leave the door open for the preference or protection which was to be the salvation of the country. The right hon. Gentleman would no doubt be heard on this occasion. His promotion had been a most encouraging recognition of unsuspected merit, paralleled only in the examples of Phaeton and Caligula, and doubtless his declarations on the question would not be lacking in positiveness. But what was the result of the debate? The President of the Board of Trade declared that the Government policy was not protection or the taxation of food—although the next day he said he would be glad to see a moderate tax on food—and he added—
  "We are prepared to light for free trade."
  If the right hon. Gentleman was sincere in that declaration he would have to go and have it out on the Nile. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade was frankly protectionist, and the President of the Local Government Board had stated that he—
  "believes in a scheme designed to draw closer the Colonies and the mother country,"
  and that—
  "it is in the main a question worth making considerable sacrifices for."
  But in the main this was a question of taxing food, and the right hon. Gentleman was in favour of it, and added that it was unbecoming for an English gentleman to remain in a Government when no longer in sympathy with it. Therefore both the right hon. Gentleman and the Government were in sympathy with a proposal involving the taxation of food. Finally the Colonial Secretary had brought matters to a climax by an academic
  1362
  speech on protection which it was unnecessary to recall; so that while protection and food taxes were tremblingly disavowed in one breath they were as tremblingly avowed in another. Those of the Unionist Party who believed in free food held still the views which the Conservative Party had always professed in the past. They were not the heretics; they were the orthodox members of the, Party. The Colonial Secretary had stated that the Government would support those who "honestly" supported the Government programme, and also those candidates who were—
  "In favour of the Government policy even though their own opinions go further than it."
  that is to say, go as far as preference and food-taxing. The Government, therefore, were in favour both of those who opposed and of those who favoured a tax on food. But the right hon. Gentleman made a most offensive accentuation of the word "honestly," as though to suggest that in this matter some Unionists were honest and others not—an insinuation unworthy of the Minister who made it, and repelled by those against whom it was directed. What did it come to? Take the case of two Unionists standing again each other for one seat— as at Chippenham—one a food-taxer and the other a free-fooder. If the free-fooder was, in the opinion of the Government, honest, he would get Government support. The food-taxer would get it whether or no. Both would receive such assistance as the central office could give, and all the assistance of the local associations. Both would receive a letter from the Prime Minister wishing each of them success against the other, and, although there was but one seat and one vote, every loyal Conservative would be bound to vote for both candidates! Was ever anything so childish? He had used the word "Government," but was there a Government Could there be a Government with two contrary minds, unable to control its own members or to adhere for twenty-four hours to its own statements. Was there anything on the Front Ministerial Bench to inspire confidence at home and respect abroad? Could they view with complacency, in a crisis such as had arisen in the Far East, the prospect of the interests of this country being committed

  1363
  to a Government of settled contradictions and unsettled convictions? The Government had neither managed things, administered Departments, nor controlled events. Things had managed them, departments had administered them, events had smothered them. They had not been a Government but only a debauch of power. Therefore those who thought as he did had no choice. Those who felt for the needy to whom the price of bread was of vast importance could not do anything but vote for this Amendment. To vote against it would be giving a vote for dearer food and taxed bread. ["No, no!"] Whether His Majesty's Government might seek again to renew the assurances they had made and recalled and then made again he knew not. For him it was too late. He could be reconciled by no death-bed repentance, and because he believed in cheap and free food it would be his duty to vote for the Amendment. There was more at stake here than free trade or fair trade, or the binding together of the Empire, for beneath all this was the honour of public men and public life. Parties could only be formed by a common conviction, and could only be kept together by confidence on both sides, confidence mutual in leaders and followers. That confidence they had gone far to lose. It had been seriously impaired, and His Majesty's Government appeared to have entirely abandoned those Conservative principles which they set out with, and which he still believed in. The Government might triumph, they would triumph in the division lobby; but when the great appeal came, his belief was that an indignant and honest people would punish those who had abandoned their principles, and justify those who had stood fast to them.
  MR. ELLIOT: I shall not trespass for more than a very few minutes upon the time of the House. I wish to say that I left the Government because it was perfectly clear that, after the resignation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, and the letter of the Prime, Minister, to my great sorrow, the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government was going
  1364
  to give his support, and was actually giving his support, to the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. After that, as an honest man, I could not remain on that Bench and be in any way responsible for the financial business of the country. Therefore it was my business to make room for someone else with honest convictions, no doubt able to further the policy to which I, at all events, was strongly opposed. The division we are about to take will be the first occasion when the Parliamentary forces come to a distinct issue upon free trade versus protection. We have been told that these are mere phrases used as battle cries, and they have not the precise meaning which ought to be attached to them, and we are told that we should be more particular about our terms. The Prime Minister also tries to rally the country in the cause of fiscal reform. If protection does not mean anything, then what has the right hon. Gentleman to say in regard to fiscal reform? What does that term include, and what does it exclude? My right hon. friend gives us good advice, but "he recks not his own rede." He is bound to be more definite himself in the terms he uses, and this is a matter of considerable importance. I cannot bring myself to believe that this question turns upon the meaning of a phrase. It is perfectly easy to find in the discussion which has been going on expressions and arguments used by the Prime Minister which are in antagonism to the theories and conclusions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. I can find antagonistic passages, and I can set one against the other, but this is no paper war, no question between a pamphlet here and a speech there, but a question as to the action and conduct of the Ministers of the Crown, and whether that has been in support, substantially, of the views which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham has put before the country. No one regrets more than I do that the Prime Minister is not here. I regretted leaving the right hon. Gentleman's Government, because I was proud to serve under him. We know the great importance he attaches to Party discipline, and we know that he is actuated by no unworthy motives. But we have to look at the facts for ourselves,

  1365
  and we have to see where we stand. I was under the impression that this was a fiscal debate. When the late Chancellor of the Exchequer left the Government, and I regained my freedom, I had no idea that henceforth that great Department to which we had belonged was to remain silent in a fiscal debate. Why is my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer there, and why is he silent? He is the Chancellor of the Exchequer ad hoc, and he was put there not only from the high esteem in which the Prime Minister held him, but because he was known to be in favour of the great scheme which his right hon. relative was laying before the country. We are told by the Prime Minister that that policy is not before the country. Why not? There has been a very important controversy throughout all the by-elections, and I refer to them not merely to mention the results of the poll, but also in order to point out what the country thinks is before it. Any hon. Member who has followed those contests will agree that what the constituencies believe is before the country is the question of protection. It is all very well for the right hon, Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham to tell Londoners to "think Imperially," but when an election contest is on. I find that it is a very long time since elections have been fought upon such parochial interests as those which have been before us at the last few by-elections. The right hon. Gentleman is a great Imperialist in the City of London, but at Birmingham he devotes himself to pearl buttons.
  There are some great interests which deserve to be considered as Imperial factors. I will not go into figures at this time of the debate, but I will mention the great shipping and carrying trade. That is a business or trade which, if any business or trade in this country deserves to be called Imperial, is Imperial. Our flag is carried from one end of the earth to the other, and it is responsible for the terrible introduction of imports into this country. Here we see one of the three or four gigantic fallacies on which the proposal for a change in the fiscal system is based. It is a grand fallacy that this country is being ruined by its imports. We hardly need to look at the statistics to know this. We may
  1366
  trust, to a certain extent, to the evidence of our own eyes. For my part, I can only say that if any man looks on the magnificent fleets approaching the ports of London, Glasgow, and Liverpool, and pouring wealth into our docks and wharves from all parts of the world as an element of decay, and if he says that on this account British working men will have nothing to do and that they will have to twiddle their thumbs because of want of employment, then I say to my protectionist friend that he is talking nonsense, and culpable non sense, which is contradicted by experience and the evidence of his own eyes. Am I to be told that all this is disastrous to the trade of the country? Are we to be told that there is a toll to be paid before these ships come into our docks? Imports are merchandise brought into England because English men are in want of that merchandise. They are not brought in for nothing. I am unable to see disaster to this country in the fact that so much wealth comes in to us and comes in so cheap. I do not wish to go into the merits of a question which is not before us, but I would say one word on the merits of colonial federation. We are all in favour of it. The first essential is that we should build on some rather substantial foundation—something that will be durable. Now, is the putting of a duty on corn that stable foundation on which to build? The 1s. duty on corn was taken off a few months ago. We were told that the duty on corn was to be a fixed charge, and that it was not to be increased. What would happen here is what has happened in other countries. If it remains, it will certainly be increased. It is proposed also that there should be a tax on dairy produce. Can anybody seriously suppose that on such an uncertain basis as that we can construct a perfect system?
  As to the position His Majesty's Government propose to take—because that is the real matter which makes our discussion and the vote which will be taken to-night of such great importance—I know that right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench have not held practically the same language. I know that the President of the Board of Trade has not held exactly the same language as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, and I

  1367
  know that an ardent supporter of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said—
  "We need not give any special attention to the President of the Board of Trade's speech because, after all, it amounts to nothing but an interim report."
  Some of us, I believe, on these Benchse were inclined to think that my right hon. friend gave solemn pledges for the Government, and said that the Government were not in favour of the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. I hope that any hon. Members who have doubts about it will remember how that speech has been described by a supporter of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, and how the Secretary to the Board of Trade has dissociated himself entirely from the language of the President. It is not only the language of members of the Government to which I refer but it is to their conduct as well. When contests have been going on in the country gentlemen have gone down as Government candidates with letters from the Prime Minister in their pockets giving them testimonials as representatives of the Government policy. I am informed that at the present moment a noble Lord who is standing for a seat in Birmingham is going down there to represent the policy of the Government. That noble Lord is a very strong advocate for taxation of food, and he is also, I believe, in favour of a 10 per cent. duty on manufactured goods imported into this country. If any one of the right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench gets up and says, "All this is a mistake, we took that line, but we are taking it no longer, and we are determined to dissociate ourselves from the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham," I should in those circumstances doubt whether I should go into the lobby in favour of the Amendment moved by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Montrose Burghs; but while they are using their whole influence and power—because it is nothing less than that—to support the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham I shall certainly go against them in the lobby to-night. It is greatly to be deplored that the Prime Minister is not
  1368
  present, and that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham also is not here. I am not one of those who condemn the Front Bench opposite for sticking to its guns. Irrespective of anything they might have to tell us, irrespective of the details of the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, and irrespective of all the interest and importance of the two right hon. Gentlemen who are absent, I cannot forget that we are here as the House of Commons and that we have a duty to perform. Though we may deplore the absence of the right hon. Gentlemen we are not absolved and cannot be absolved from putting before the country the views which the House of Commons holds on the important matters now before us. It has had too little to say hitherto in this great controversy. If the debate which has been going on and which has brought out so much ability and eloquence during the last eight days could only have taken place last summer much misfortune would have been avoided, and the Government would have been in a stronger position than they are now. Owing to the absence of discussion they have been sinking deeper and deeper in the gulf of protection. I say it is their doings and they are responsible for this condition. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham has now behind him four-fifths of the Conservative forces. The Government should have dissociated themselves from a policy of which they did not approve. They are bound to have a policy on a question of such enormous magnitude. My right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade said "Let it be an open question." I would ask my right hon. friend, if he were present, if he, as a fair-minded man, considered that that represented the situation. Suppose that the most powerful member of any Government next to the Prime Minister left the Government in order to advocate disestablishment, suppose that he won over to himself the caucus, and established a great organisation, suppose that he had been enabled to embark thousands of pounds in the cause and that he had gradually drawn to himself great support, and if the Prime Minister had allowed the regular Party organisation to be at his call, then what

  1369
  would have happened? Does my right hon. friend mean to say it would have been long before questions would have been put to the Front Bench. The Archbishop of Canterbury in another place, and the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich in this House, would have considered it their duty to compel Ministers to speak out, and to find out whether that policy had or had not their support. I believe the Chief Secretary for Ireland is likely to speak this afternoon. I implore him, for the sake of the House of Commons, to do violence to his own nature, and not to make a clever and ingenious speech. I ask that he should use a few simple, straightforward phrases. Do not let us have any more hovering over retaliation. He has got to deal with something other than retaliation. I know that my right hon. friend claimed, I think it was in a speech at Workington, that it is our duty to fearlessly resume our freedom of negotiation. That sounds very great. But, when one looks into the applicability of the circumstances with which we have to deal, we find that there is something less than courage in it. I hope my right hon. friend will not indulge in talk of that kind, but come forward and say whether he is for or against the taxation of food, and a 10 per cent. duty on manufactures, and whether he regards free imports as disastrous to the country. I have had put into my hands a leaflet issued on the authority of the Central Conservative Association deprecating free imports. It says it is a mischievous thing that there should be free imports, and it asks us to substitute a system of reciprocity. That is the way the electors are dealt with at contested elections. I want to know I what is being done by agents and candidates and newspapers, and I want to know whether what is being done is orisnot repudiated by the right hon. Gentleman.
  I am told that the Amendment involves a declaration of want of confidence in the Government. I am bound to say with sorrow, but the most sincere conviction, that my confidence in the fiscal policy of His Majesty's Government is not unlimited. I have no confidence in the fiscal policy of the Government. I see that some of them appear to have no confidence in their own policy. One right hon. Gentleman watches
  1370
  another right hon. Gentleman, and I am told that statements have been made by active representatives of the Government which were in singularly unhappy opposition to each other. We know the position, and the position cannot be altered. It is not a question of words. It is a question of how we are to deal with the facts, and I, for my part, cannot understand how any man who calls himself a free-trader at all, who has any belief in the advantages of free imports, who has any dislike to the system of German and American protection—I do not understand how any such man can hesitate to go into the lobby with the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment.
  SIR A. SEALE HASLAMsaid he thought that in the regrettable absence of the Prime Minister this discussion might have been postponed with advantage to the Members of the House. They had been under very serious disadvantages. They knew generally what the views of the Prime Minister were, but they regretted that he was not there to make known his views and answer the arguments that had been put forward. He ventured to say that if the Prime Minister had been present some of the observations made in the House would not have been heard. Speeches had been delivered by politicians and business men, but he regretted that there had not been more of the latter. He had listened with very great pleasure and satisfaction to the speeches of the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich and the hon. Member for Oldham, although he did not agree with them. I hey were, he thought, not the most competent men to give the best opinion on the subject under discussion. He regretted that these two hon. Members, who were in political partnership, were not in some great business partnership, employing 5,000 men, with their own capital, called upon to compete in the neutral markets of the world, or where protection existed, and where they had no opportunity of trading, or where they would have to face the competition which was recently called "dumping" in this country. He admired the ability of the two hon. Gentlemen and their intellect, but they had not the experience of those

  1371
  who had been engaged in business thirty or forty years, and who knew something of the great trade problems and of the difficulty of finding work for their employees, who knew how men who were only half employed became demoralised, and how men who were wholly out of work-became dangerous to the community, how poverty, hunger, and distress roused the worst passions of men. He ventured to say that if all these things were realised by hon. Members they would strengthen the hands of the Government and enable them to do something to improve the state of the nation. If that were the results of the discussion he believed it would not have been in vain.
  They had been told that the sum of the imports into and the exports from this country indicated great prosperity, and that these amounted to£900,000,000. They had been told that if our imports exceeded our exports that showed that it was all right. They were told that our imports were paid for either by the goods we exported, or by the sale of securities, or by the services we rendered abroad. But the affairs of a State were very much the same as the affairs of an individual. We had enjoyed in this country an apparent prosperity, and a great deal had been said about our home trade. But had it occurred to any of those Gentlemen that our imports might swell very largely when we were getting into debt on a large scale? He thought that those who compared the state of this country and our indebtedness must feel some curious alarm at the increase of the indebtedness of the nation, whether Imperial or municipal. That indebtedness had increased almost 62 per cent. in the last ten years. He himself could not see how we could reduce the expense on the Navy or the Army; but what was worse, our expense was growing in our municipalities. In Imperial expenditure there was charged to revenue in 1903–4 £144,000,000, and to capital £6,000,000, or a total of £150,000,000; and in 1893–4 the charge to revenue was £91,303,000; and the charge to capital £877,000, or a total of £92,180,000. In municipal expenditure in 1900–1 the charge out of income was £98,180,000; and out of loans £35,533,000, or a total of £133,713,000. In 1890–1 the charge out of income was £62,109,000
  1372
  and out of loans £8,528,000, or a total of £70,637,000; while the expenditure for 1903–4 was likely to amount to £150,000,000. What were they to learn from that? That they must raise their poundage rates and assessments. If this expenditure was going on the consequences must be serious. If anyone doubted that, look at the price of corporation stock! Some of these stood at 117 ten years ago and were now quoted at 90, and there was a difficulty in selling them at that figure. As our debt had grown our imports had increased. If our imports went on increasing over our exports it was impossible for this country to enjoy the prosperity in the future which she have enjoyed in the past. The existing extravagance must be stopped. There was no doubt that those who had given the closest attention to this subject were begining to realise that if we were to recover our position we should have to work harder and be more economical. A great deal had been said about dumping. He employed a large number of men, and he was bound to confess that dumping was at present an advantage to him personally. But be feared that if, in the future, dumping went on, our primary industries would be affected by the competition of the dumped goods. He was a free-trader, and had always been a free-trader, but not a one-shied free-trader. He believed that free trade, so long as it was mutual, was a profit to both sides and an advantage to and promoted the prosperity of each.
  A few weeks ago the hon. Member for North-West Durham had come into his constituency and addressed a meeting there. He did not object to the hon. Member going there: it had been a distinct advantage to himself. But he would tell the hon. Member that there was a considerable amount of depression in his constituency, and that there was no use arguing that the state of things was the most perfect ever enjoyed in the country. There were manufacturers who had recently started businesses on the Continent, not because they wanted to do so, or to take work from their, workmen, but because the doors in these countries had been closed against their exports. Those were only a few instances of many which he could bring before the House; but they were sufficient to show that the industries which his friends

  1373
  had started on the Continent were distinctly disadvantageous to and would decrease employment in this country. The 60 per cent. duty which was imposed had put an end to trade with the United States, but the worst of it was that the country's best workmen were emigrating to the United States, and were carrying on industries which supplied all the requirements of the American market. The pottery industry was not perhaps one of the largest, but it was one of the most important industries in the country. Its total value was £3,500,000. The hon. Gentleman the Member for North-West Durham said that imports had not seriously affected that industry, but the imports amounted to £750,000, which was a very serious matter in his constituency, as it meant a reduction of between £300,000and £400,000 per annumin wages. He could quote several other instances to show that the present system was not the best system for the country. With reference to Mr. Cobden, he did not think that anything was to be gained by sneering at him, or by endeavouring to depreciate the magnificent services which he had rendered to the country. He yielded to no man in his admiration of Mr. Cobden, and if he had been a politician at the time he would have voted for Mr. Cobden's policy. But a great many changes had occurred since then, and unfortunately the prophecies of Mr. Cobden had not been verified. Mr. Cobden said that probably within ten years the whole world would follow the example of this country; but, as they now saw, the situation was exactly the reverse. Who would have thought in Mr. Cobden's time that a steamer would carry goods across the Atlantic at 1s. per ton? All the changes which had occurred deserved the most careful attention. Hon. Gentlemen opposite said that the present position of the country was due to free trade, but he thought they ought also to take into account the British mercantile marine, the telegraph and telephone services, and the many other inventions which had contributed to the prosperity of the nation.
  If the present free-trade system were continued, it would bring disaster on the industries of the country. He quite
  1374
  agreed that an inquiry was necessary, and an inquiry would shortly take place with the result that a large amount of information would be collected which would be useful to the Members on both sides of the House. But whether the inquiry would be sufficiently comprehensive was another matter. Hon. Members might recollect the great discussion which took place years ago with regard to a load-line for ships. As a result a load-line was established, but foreign steamers were allowed to enter British harbours without a load-line, and to trade under conditions which would not be permitted to British vessels. He hoped the Government would take a broad view of the situation, and especially consider the splendid British mercantile marine, which was the admiration of the world, and which had conferred enormous benefit not only on this country but on the world. The British people did not like change. They did not like anything that was new or too ambitious; but a great and mighty force had been introduced into politics, and the time had come when they ought to raise their voices and put forth their strength, and have the courage of their convictions, both in the House of Commons and the country, and make the truth known to people who might have been misled by incorrect figures. He had studied very carefully the speech of the Prime Minister and the pamphlet which he wrote, and he considered that the Prime Minister's views were very moderate. The Prime Minister had only one idea with regard to this question and that was to improve the position of the trade and commerce of the country. He thanked hon. Members very kindly for the manner in which they had listened to the imperfect remarks which he had addressed to the House. They might differ from him as to lines of policy; but his friends opposite respected his views, as was manifested by the manner in which they had listened to him.
  MR. ASQUITH: We are now drawing to the close of a debate which, in many of its features, is, I believe, unexampled in the annals of the House of Commons. We are concerned —ostensibly concerned—with an Amendment to the Address on the King's Speech,

  1375
  and I believe it to be the opinion of all impartial onlookers that rarely, if ever, has there been a more one-sided discussion heard within these walls. Some of the ablest and most convincing speeches in support of the Amendment have come from the Government Benches. And what, Sir, has become of the propaganda which has been tearing like a tornado through the country during the whole of the autumn months? It has made a great deal of noise outside, but the air of Westminster, somehow or other, seems to have a sedative effect upon it, and we have heard nothing in the course of this debate but faint and halting and almost apologetic echoes. Still more noteworthy have been the performances of the Ministers of the Crown. Some of them do not seem quite to know their own minds. None of them, so far as I can discover, know the minds of their colleagues. And all of them, when they are hard pressed, to a man take refuge in the undisclosed mind of the Prime Minister. On the first night of the debate the President of the Board of Trade delivered himself of some sound and robust free-trade sentiments, accompanying them no doubt with a plea for the liberty of pious opinion, and a frank confession of his own personal hankerings for some system of preference. Next night he was followed by his subordinate—the Secretary of his own Department—who made an interesting speech. If I might venture, with great respect to the hon. Gentleman, to make one criticism upon it, it would be this—that I think he was unduly liberal in the exercise of a dangerous faculty with which he is endowed, the faculty of stating a fallacy as though it were a truism. However that may be, of one thing there can be no doubt, that the Secretary to the Board of Trade took up, one after another, almost all the most venerable and most vulnerable positions of the most antiquated protectionism. His arguments have been completely disposed of by subsequent speakers on both sides of the House, and I will venture to say by no one with more lucidity, more cogency, or more destructive force than by my hon. friend the Member for Come Valley (Sir J. Kitson), who, by the way, is, I believe,
  1376
  neither a lawyer nor doctrinaire. Well, the next figure in this strange procession was the President of the Local Government Board, of whom I will say with the utmost personal respect that at the close of his speech, when I tried to speculate upon the precise stage which his convictions had reached, I find myself, and still remain, in impenetrable darkness. Then came the turn of my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the tenor and effect of whose speech I am sure is fresh in the memory of the House. When my right hon. friend, in his picturesque way, compared the hapless British producer face to face with his tariff-clad competitors, to the undisciplined Gaul confronting Caesar and his legions, I think no one of us was in doubt as to the sphere of influence in which he moved. I shall have something to say in a few minutes in reference to one or two of my right hon. friend's contentions; but before I part company with him now in the most friendly spirit I should like to make one incidental criticism. In the graceful tribute which he paid to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham he told us that, the more he familiarised himself with the records of his own office, the more he was impressed, not only with the business capacity, but the splendid idealism of his predecessor. This was a very natural and appropiate expression of his feeling; but I could not help thinking that it would have been equally interesting to the House, and perhaps still more relevant to the issue of this debate, if the right hon. Gentleman could have told us that, while ransacking the archives of his Department, he had come across some trace of the missing colonial offer. Friday, so far as the Treasury Bench was concerned, was a day off; but, notwithstanding the absence of the Prime Minister, which we all regret, and whose return to our proceedings will be welcomed with equal warmth in every quarter of the House, there are still Ministers left on that Bench, Cabinet Ministers, whom we have not heard yet. We have not in this debate heard the voice of the Minister primarily responsible for the management of the finances of the country, and it is quite possible that we

  1377
  have not yet come to the end of the I process which is described, I believe, in nautical circles as "boxing the compass." He would indeed be a bold man who at this hour of the afternoon would predict with any confidence in what direction it will point at twelve o'clock tonight. Every one knows the lines which are to be found in the immortal description by a too candid friend of one of the greatest orators and thinkers who ever sat in the House—
  "Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat
  To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote."
  Men come and go—I do not see a Burke at this moment on the Treasury Bench—but Parliamentary necessities survive and recur. I cannot help thinking that, if we knew the whole truth of the situation, the real arbiter, more potent even than the Prime Minister, the hidden hand which holds the musical box and turns on the tune every night, is the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury.
  There is one figure, as almost every speaker has acknowledged, whom we miss from this discusssion hardly less than that of the Prime Minister himself—I mean, of course, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. In common with everybody, I deplore the cause, and perhaps I may venture to say I have special reason to regret the fact of his absence. Ever since the right hon. Gentleman inaugurated his autumn campaign at Glasgow I have been towards him in the relation of an anxious, pertinacious, and disappointed inquirer. I have respectfully put to him a number of questions—simple questions, direct questions, but questions to which, simple and direct as they were, not the semblance of an answer has yet been vouchsafed. I do not think his absence, much as we regret it, makes it incumbent on me and others to suspend the process of interrogation in this place, which is the only place in the country where antagonistic policies and their spokesmen can meet face to face. The right hon. Gentleman has been described justly as the protagonist of the piece, but he has many able "understudies" in and outside the Government, and there is special reason and special relevance for
  1378
  pressing one or two of these inquiries. Ministers who sit on that Bench may talk about retaliation until the crack of doom—which, I suppose, is another way of describing the next general election—though there does not appear to be a single man among them capable of defining it in intelligible language; but it is not retaliation, but protection; it is not the Sheffield enigma, it is the Birmingham policy which interests, and will continue to interest, the electors of the country. They care little or nothing what the policy or the avowed policy of His Majesty's Goverment may be. I will tell the Government why. Because they have the best reasons for doubting whether the Government as they sit on that Bench are strong enough to have a policy of their own, whether they are strong enough to adhere to it, and, above all, whether they are strong enough to compel the allegiance to it of the Party which sits behind them.
  I am not going to rehearse the catalogue of my futile inquiries. I shall confine my interrogations to-night to two points, as to which it appears to me the policy of the right hon. Member for Birmingham and the avowed or official policy of His Majesty's Government rest on common ground. The first question is this. The common assumption which underlies both is that our trade, and especially our trade over sea, exhibits signs, not perhaps of immediate decay, but of imminent and serious danger. Every one knows the now classical phrase of the right hon. Member for Birmingham—the trade of the United Kingdom has been practically stagnant for 30 years. Now, the question I have to ask of those who entertain that view, and make it the basis of the various stages of the policy for fiscal change now before the country, is when and how was this discovery made? I am not going back to ancient history, I am not going back to 1881, to 1885, or even to 1896, I shall come to a date as recent as January, 1902—that is to say, sixteen months before the new crusade was started, and only two years from the time at which we are met here to-night—and I want to ask the attention of the House to some language which was used by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham himself in the city of Birmingham on 6th January, 1902. The House will see in a moment

  1379
  the relevancy of the question I put. The right hon. Gentleman said—
  "I have lately seen a good deal of discussion in the papers about the crisis in British industry. Well, if the crisis means an imminent and pressing danger, I think the accounts are altogether exaggerated. I see no signs of any imminent or pressing danger to the prosperity of this country. During the last five years'—
  That is, within the thirty years—
  "we have enjoyed an absolutely unparalleled condition of trade, and although we cannot expect that this will last for ever, although there are some signs that trade is not so brisk as it was, still, to my mind, the prospects are extremely good, and I am not at all disposed to take a pessimistic view of the situation."
  This, at the time when glass was gone, when silk had disappeared, when iron was going, and when wool was threatened! Yes, but the right hon. Gentleman does see some signs of possible danger, and how does he propose it should be met?—
  "In order to keep the trade we have got, in order that we may develop in proportion as our population increases, employers and employed must do their utmost, they must not go back, ward, they must keep alive to the spirit of the times …. Employers have to bring to bear more scientific intelligence to the management of their business."
  That is the doctrine of the pedants and lawyers whose testimony is scouted, as we know, by the Secretary of the Board of Trade and other practical men of business. This is the despised Charlottenburg policy—
  "The old rule of thumb methods will not last for ever; and in the presence"—
  Of what? tariffs? not at all.
  "of the development of science abroad, it is perfectly certain that we shall suffer seriously, unless our manufacturers take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them to bring the highest theoretical knowledge into combination with practical experience."
  Then the right hon. Gentleman goes on to the workman's side of the question and makes a complaint of what he conceives to be the retrograde methods of trades unions. Here is the conclusion of the whole matter, which I adopt as part of my argument. It is the best statement of the case I have ever read—
  "I have ventured to give advice to the employers to take advantage of the opportunities provided for them to develop their brains. I venture to advise the working classes of this country also to take advantage of their special opportunities to develop the product of their labour. If these two conditions are fulfilled. I for one am perfectly confident that there is no
  1380
  fear for the future, no fear that we shall take an inferior position to that of our ancestors, no fear that we shall not meet competition from whatever quarter it comes, that we shall not meet the rivalries of all the world."
  I ask the House, in view of these wise and weighty words, uttered not in a remote past, but two years ago, does not the whole of this movement, as far as it is put forward in the supposed interests of domestic trade, assume the aspect of a farce? What has happened since January, 1902? Two years have passed. The right hon. Gentleman himself said in his speech at Liverpool that 1902 was one of the best years British trade had ever known, and 1903 is now known as a record year in the whole history of the industry of this country. ["No."] I am speaking of the Board of Trade Returns, and yet we are now assured from the same quarter, by the same voice, that only by a fiscal revolution, and by a return to the stalest devices of protection, can we preserve our decaying trade, and what is more, our dissolving Empire. The right hon. Gentleman would say, if he were here, that he is entitled to change his views. But what we are protesting against is the assumption which underlies his speeches and those of many of his supporters, that because he has changed his views, therefore the facts of history and the rules of logic and the processes of arithmetic and the very laws of nature herself have undergone a simultaneous and corresponding change. At the Council of Constance the Emperor Sigismund, being pulled up for a false concord in a Latin allocution which he addressed to the assembled prelates, made a reply which is famous in history—Ego sum Rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam. I think that a somewhat similar claim is being made for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, only his superiority is alleged to extend over a far wider field than that claimed by the Holy Roman Emperor.
  I come to the other point as to which I desire a little further light, and it relates to the proposed import duty of 10 per cent. on manufactures that come from outside. That was originally proposed, as we know, to fill up the hole in the revenue which would be caused by the suggested remissions of taxation on sugar and tea. But it was not a revenue duty.

  1381
  Why? Because, if it had been, a corresponding Excise duty would have been proposed on the same articles manufactured at home; in other words, it was avowedly a protective duty. If there is one thing that is axiomatic in fiscal theory and practice it is this, that you cannot combine in one and the same imposition a revenue and a protective duty. Just to the extent that it is efficient for one purpose it is inefficient for the other. If it succeeds in bringing in revenue, of course, it fails to protect. On the other hand, if it succeeds in protecting, it follows as a necessary consequence that it does not bring in revenue. Every; speaker on the other side has tried to run this duty of 10 per cent. both as one thing and the other. They have really got two horses running in diametrically opposite directions, and they must elect on which saddle they will sit. I was surprised that the Colonial Secretary, in the course of his speech the other night, suggested that the late Liberal Cabinet were prevented from protesting against the protective character of this proposed duty because we had assented to an import duty of 5 per cent. in the Indian tariff. Was that a protective duty? Had my right hon. friend when he made that charge, which is not very relevant to any question in this debate, read the despatch from the Government of India on 22nd October last, included in the Papers lately presented to the House? I will read the words of the Government of India—
  "In respect of imports the Indian tariff, as you are aware, with one or two unimportant exceptions, imposes duties purely for revenue purposes. It is entirely free from any trace of preference and any protective intention."
  Neither in fact nor in intention is it protective.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): My statement was made entirely with reference to a remark made by the right hon. Member for the Montrose Burghs, that in agreeing with Mr. Charles Booth that an all-round 5 per cent. duty was a possible matter for discussion at any rate, I subjected myself to be called a protectionist. I said that inasmuch as that was the Indian fiscal system the
  1382
  right hon. Gentleman and all his colleagues were subject to the same imputation.
  MR. ASQUITH: That is exactly what is not the case, and this can be shown by a very simple test. Will Mr. Charles Booth, or my right hon. friend, in so far as he adopts his scheme, agree to the imposition of a corresponding Excise duty on all articles produced in this country on which the 5 per cent. import duty is imposed? That is a fair test.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: It is only on cotton.
  MR. ASQUITH: I recommend the hon. Gentleman to read the despatch; he will find all the information there. Cotton is the most important, but there are many others. I wish to ask one or two questions with reference to this 10 per cent. import duty. Is it intended to apply to colonial as well as to foreign products? Is it intended to be an equal preference for all industries here or a privilege only for some? Agriculture cannot gain any benefit from it at all. What about the cotton trade? We manufacture here every year, partly for export and partly for the home market. £100,000,000 of cotton goods. Our imports are £5,000,000. What about the shipbuilding trade, and the building trade, which employs 1,000,000 of workpeople in this country? No one of these trades can derive any advantage from import duties, while, on the other hand, there are ingredients imported which enter into their manufacturing processes, the cheapness of which is absolutely vital to the successful and profitable carrying on of their work. Iron, steel, leather, oil, and flour will all be increased in price. I say that this duty is unintelligent in conception, unequal in application; it protects one trade, and not only does not protect but penalises another; and, finally, as an instrument of revenue it can only succeed to the extent in which it fails as an instrument of protection.
  I should like to deal now with a serious and interesting argument put forward by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The Colonial Secretary suggested that our factory legislation—legislation for the protection of labour against insanitary conditions—is inconsistent with the

  1383
  doctrine of free trade, that it increases the cost of production here, and therefore justifies a compensatory protection as against other countries. This is a very important point. What I wish to make perfectly clear is our position in this matter. How does my right hon. friend attempt to show any inconsistency between the two things? Only by the assumption that our free-trade system is an affirmation and that our factory laws are a negation of some abstract doctriue of laissez faire. That is not the case. The people of this country became free-traders, and will continue to be free-traders, not through the preaching of dogma, but through the teaching of experience. I quite agree with my right hon. friend that some of the early free-traders did not recognise the fact (though it is a great mistake to suppose that Lord Ashley was supported by protectionists only); but the real fact is that our factory legislation and our free-trade system are the proper complements of one another. Why? Because both are necessary to prevent an uneconomic, which means a wasteful, application and distribution of the productive power of the community. Under protection we wasted labour and capital on making things which other people could make better; and under the old factory system of unregulated labour you wasted the lives and strength of the mothers and children of the nation, and by so doing you crippled its productive resources, power and contaminated the very springs of its industrial vitality. It was the part of wise statesmanship to get rid both of the one and of the other. But that is a question of principle. Let us look at the practical application. Does it, as my right hon. friend assumes, increase the cost of production? I absolutely deny it. On the contrary, I assert, and I believe it to be borne out by the experience of every civilised country, that the workman is a more efficient productive instrument, that he does a larger quantity of good work in a given time, if he works under sanitary conditions, with an adequate provision of light, air, and ventilation, and with proper safeguards against the risk of injury from machinery and oilier causes. I say that if the children are sent to school—as, thank Heaven, they are now—in their tender years, instead
  1384
  of being sent to the factory; if the girls and women who work are compelled to observe the special precautions proper to their sex—I say that the extra expense involved is more than repaid by a sounder, more robust, and more intelligent industrial population. My right hon. friend quotes a passage from a speech of mine in which I pointed out that the German workman works longer hours at lower wages, and with an inferior standard of comfort to our own population. That is perfectly true. [An HON. MEMBER: No factory system.] That interruption shows with how much knowledge the hon. Member speaks. The factory code in Germany is more elaborate than our own; and the real reason for the inferior position of the German workman is not a bad factory code, but protection—the shutting out of the free influx of imports and the partial closing of the door of the open market, which raises the cost of living, and therefore cuts down the real remuneration of labour. While I have listened to this discussion I have thought that there was a great deal of force in the suggestion put forward somewhere that we should put together as an enduring monument of the debate a short manual of protection for beginners, the first principles of which should be taken from the speeches of the Colonial Secretary, and the illustrations from the speeches of the Secretary to the Board of Trade. In odd moments I have endeavoured to construct for myself one or two pages of this imaginary catechism, and with the permission of the House I will give a few extracts—
  The first question is, "What is free trade?" And the answer is "A Shibboleth." "By whom was it invented?" "By one Adam Smith, a professor, who had probably never set foot in a factory in his life. A later writer, Carlyle, is a much safer guide." "How, then, did it come to be adopted as part of the policy of this country?" "Through the machinations of a middle-class conspiracy headed by one Cobdcn, whose main object was to lower the wages of labour." "How has the superstition managed to survive?" "Because there are people simple enough and short-sighted enough to imagine that in foreign trade it is well to receive more than you give." "Can you give a practical illustration of this?" "Since the year 18(50 the imports into the United Kingdom have exceeded the exports, according to the Board of Trade Returns, by no less than £4,000,000,000 sterling." "What does that mean? Translate it into terms of wages and employment." "Roughly speaking, the loss in wages to British workmen is £2,000,000,000 sterling." "How then have we

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  escaped ruin?" "By the mercy of Providence." "And how are we to set ourselves right?" "We must wait for the Report of the Tariff Commission."
  I ask, is that a caricature of the arguments that have been used? [Cries of "No, no!"]
  As to this topic of retaliation, there are some Gentlemen, I gather, who are going to absolve themselves selves from the duty of voting for the Amendment because they fancy that they can discern in the official policy of retaliation some form of fiscal change which would not involve a return to protection. The right hon. Member for Bristol said pointedly that he was going to support retaliation because it was a step in the opposite direction to protection. I fancy that nine out of every ten of those who support retaliation will be those who support it because they think it is the first and a long step on the road towards protection. We are entitled to come to close quarters with the Government on this subject of retaliation. Hitherto they have avoided all intelligible explanation on a two-fold plea—first, the absence of the Prime Minister, upon which I think no more need be said; and, secondly, the supposed example of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone is said to have declined to disclose in advance some of the particulars in his Home Rule Bill, especially the position which the Irish Members were to hold. I can speak freely in this matter, because I was one of those who strongly urged upon Mr. Gladstone publicly that he should make the disclosure. But to compare that with the situation of to-day is to make an enormous draft on the credulity of this House. The real analogy would have been if Mr. Gladstone had asked for a mandate for Home Rule, without saying whether he meant to apply it to Ireland or to Scotland. I will ask the right hon. Gentleman who is to follow me two questions. First, what is the nature and what are the limits of the power which the Government are going to ask the country to confer on them? And, secondly, what is the kind of use which they contemplate making of the power so conferred? The first is a constitutional, and the second is an economic question; and a plain answer to both is essential to a clear understanding of the subject. First as to the power.
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  It is a truism to say that any Minister may at any time come to the House of Commons to ask their assent to any measure, legislative, administrative, or fiscal, for which he has a producible and provable case. But it is said that this power is dormant or is unavailable in fiscal policy owing to inveterate tradition. But is it? This House was elected in 1900. Will anyone pretend that it was part of the mandate given by the electors in 1900 to make any change of any sort or kind in our fiscal system? But what have we done? In the year 1902, without any mandate or demand for further powers, we imposed what many of us believe to be a protective duty on corn, in direct violation of our fiscal traditions for many years past. And in 1903 we took the longest and strongest step that has ever been taken in the direction of this policy of retaliation in the shape of the Sugar Convention. In the face of these facts patent recent and notorious, how can, any one say—if a case can be made out to the satisfaction of the majority of the House of Commons; and I think a bad case was made out in both those instances—that the Government have not at this moment every power that any constitutional Minister could require? I must press for a more specific answer than we have yet got to the question put by my right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition on the first night of the session —If you are not satisfied with that power, that is to say, the power of dealing ad hoc with the question as it arise;, subject to the assent of the House of Commons what is the character of the new powers with which you propose to clothe] yourselves? They must take the form of some kind of general legislation—it may be subject to restrictions; I do not know what—but that general legislation, if it is to be effectively and practically worked for the objects which the Government profess to have in view, will have, sooner or later, to take the form which it has taken in every foreign protectionist country—of placing in the hands of the Executive a maximum and a minimum tariff and allowing it to apply the one or the other according to the circumstances of the case. We want to know whether that is the proposal which the Government are going to submit to the House. The second question is.

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  What use are you going to make of this power? I want to have presented, what we have not yet had, an actual concrete case. We hear a great deal of talk about conceivable cases, of outrageous injustice and so forth; I want an actual concrete case. Will the right hon. Gentleman give me such a case I Let him give me an outrageous duty in existence now. Tell me by whom it is imposed; whether it is directed primarily or specially against us, or only against us in common with all the other countries in the world with whom the country imposing the duty is in actual or possible competition. Tell me what is the line your reprisals are going to take? Are they to be only against the commodity which the duty in question favours, or are they to be against the whole import trade of the country imposing it?
  There is this question of dumping. How are you going to deal with dumping? Take the case of iron, which was taken by the Secretary to the Board of Trade. Is it only against dumped iron—that is, iron sold here at a lower price than in the country of origin—that you are going to retaliate I If so, you may go great lengths; for let us never forget that it is of the essence of protection to sell dear at home and cheap abroad. How are you going to find out whether it is dumped or not? Are you going to put your retaliatory duty on all goods which are sold here cheaper than they are sold in the country in which they are produced? Are you going to put it on, even although the dumping may be the result of the temporary action of a syndicate or combination of producers, or are you only going to put it on when there is a direct bounty given in the country of origin? And in that case, let me ask, are you going to discriminate between our Colonies and foreign countries?
  I apologise to the House for enumerating such a series of dry and technical questions, but they are the practical questions upon which the political wisdom and fiscal efficacy of retaliation really depend. I venture to point out once more—as has been pointed out by many hon. Members who have preceded me—first, that in point of fact the countries which
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  have the power of retaliation, and use it, have not fared any better than ourselves in dealing with protected markets: secondly, that you cannot effectively carry out your policy of retaliation, as was admitted by the President of the Board of Trade, against our most serious competitors, or some of them—certainly not against the United States of America—unless you tax both food and raw-materials; and, thirdly, that, as all experience shows, the duty which begins by being retaliatory and provisional almost invariably ends by being protective and permanent. I should like before I conclude to give one illustration to the House of the spirit in which it appears to me this power of retaliation is likely to be used if entrusted to the present Government. I could take many, but I will take by way of illustration some words which fell from the Chief Secretary at Edinburgh in the month of November last, the most remarkable speech that I have read in the whole of this discussion. First of all—it is not exactly the point, but it is interesting to note—the right hon. Gentleman deprecated the magnitude of our foreign investments. He said that they were a sign of industrial decay. Why?
  "In this country,"
  he said,
  "any man with £10,000 or £20,000 would hardly ever dream of putting it into any industrial enterprise at all."
  I wonder how we manage to live.
  "What does he do? He invests it abroad, believing that it is not safe to invest it at home."
  That is pretty serious, but, serious as it is, it is nothing to the tragic consequences which the right hon. Gentleman has discovered to flow from the glut of imports. Let me read this passage—
  "Great Britain, after sixty years of unmitigated free imports was a good place for drones, but let them not mistake"
  I ask particular attention to these words
  "let them not mistake the contented lullaby of the surfeited consumer for the busy murmur of the working hive."
  Well, in all the rhetoric of the recess, copious and variegated as it has been, this sentence seems to me to be a gem that scintillates with unique and incomparable radiance. "The contented lullaby of the surfeited consumer!" Apart from

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  the context the House might perhaps imagine that this was the picturesque description by a special reporter of the state of things which prevail when the loyal and patriotic toasts are proposed at the conclusion of a civic banquet. No, it is a description by a Minister of the Crown of the condition of British trade in the year 1903. "The busy murmur of the working hive!" It is to be found apparently only in countries with a scientific tariff, while we here, we poor Englishmen and Scotchmen and Irishmen, with our lamentable and pertinacious excess of imports over exports, we are a nation of drones feeding idly upon the honey which is benevolently and, I presume, gratuitously provided for us by the eccentric foreigner. What does it all mean? Is this House, is this country, going to put the weapon of retaliation into the hands of gentlemen like the Chief Secretary, who think our foreign investments a proof of domestic insecurity, and who regard the magnitude of our imports as the measure of our industrial lethargy? But every argument which the right hon. Gentleman and many of his colleagues have used, when it comes to be analysed and examined, is seen to be an argument not for retaliation, not for any halfway house, not for any intermediate step, but for full-blown and uncompromising protection.
  This Amendment of my right hon. friend raises a clear issue. It condemns any return to protective duties, and, in face of the language of Ministers which I have read and criticised, can any one say that such a declaration by the House of Commons is not opportune and indeed urgent? For aught I know we are going to-night—I do not know whether the Chief Secretary or the Home Secretary is to be the transforming hand—we are going to have another tilt of the see-saw, possibly renewed assurances of the unshaken devotion of the Government to the principles of free trade. Sir, I venture to say to the House that the question whether the present Ministers are safe custodians of the citadel of free trade is a question which cannot be settled by the utterances of perturbed and bewildered Ministers in the throes of a Parliamentary crisis,
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  You must look to their whole conduct and attitude since the controversy was raised nine months ago—the period of unsettled convictions, the so-called inquiry, the Prime Minister's benediction to the departing missionary, the open patronage which has been extended to the propaganda of the autumn, the promises which have been given even in this debate of electoral support to itsadherents. I submit to the House that it is not to such hands as these that the fortunes of free trade can safely be committed. For my part I think that the Government have been guilty of the vulgar error of being too clever by half. They have played, or tried to play, a game which in the long run never succeeds with the people of this country, a game of manœuvre and mystification. Ever since last May they have been trifling with the nation, just as to-night they are trying to trifle with the House of Commons. What up to now has been the result of a policy so alien to the best traditions of our public life? One has only got to look opposite to see—a discredited Ministry and a divided Party. The country is showing by evidence which cannot be misinterpreted—the last instalment came no later than two days ago from a hitherto impregnable stronghold of Toryism—the country is showing that it realises that in this matter there is one issue and only one, the issue between free trade upon the one side and protection upon the other. That issue is presented to this House to-night; let it by its vote anticipate the verdict of the nation.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): Before the speech was delivered to which I have to reply, a request was made to me by my hon. friend the Member for Durham with which I can very easily comply—namely, that I should not be ingenious and clever in my reply. I shall speak directly on the subject which I believe to be before this House, and I draw the attention of my hon. friend to the fact that, whatever else it may have been—eloquent and forcible as his speeches always are—the speech to which we have just listened from the right hon. Gentleman was chiefly characterised by its cleverness and

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  by its ingenuity, with the purpose, ably followed from start to finish, of drawing me away from answering the request made to me by the hon. Gentleman, of distracting the attention of my hon. friend from the issue which is before the House, and of putting into everybody's mind the idea that we are debating the merits of protection against free trade. He dismissed the Amendment in the opening sentence, and towards the close of his speech he culled perhaps a too gaudy flower of rhetoric which decorated one of my own deliverances. I am not, however, going to be drawn into repeating or defending speeches which I have made [Ironical OPPOSITION cheers], and I am not to be deterred by ironical cheers from speaking as a Minister for my colleagues in definition and in defence of the policy of the Government. I repudiate altogether the absurd interpretation which the right hon. Gentleman has placed on my Edinburgh speech. Are we to be debarred from remarking on the emigration of British capital? Why, Mill himself puts it in the very forefront of his chapter on the taxation of commodities, and points out as one matter which ought to be considered in any inquiry into the working of taxation that with low profits the tendency of British capital will be more and more to go into foreign investments or to be swept away, and he prophesied that that would be the future tendency. I do not accept the interpretation placed by the right hon. Gentleman on my Edinburgh speech, or on many speeches which have been made in this House; but what has become of the anxiety of the mover of this Amendment for British trade? The right hon. and learned Member at an earlier period of his speech invited me if I followed him to defend, not only the policy, but the speeches of my right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham and he quoted a speech of two years ago—I only touch upon these questions because he made it a point against the Government —and asked us, "When did you become uneasy over the state of British Trade?" will take up that point. I will give another quotation out of that speech, and beg my hon. friends to listen to it—
  "We are face to face with a tremendous and strenuous competition; we have to hold our own against other nations, not too friendly; and it
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  is for us a first necessity that we should find new markets and develop them, and that we should keep open old markets. If other nations were as liberal as we are in our commercial relations the burden would be much less."
  Is there, I ask, any justification for the view which the right hon. Member has tried to impose upon the intelligence of my hon. friends that we have raised this question as a mere electioneering cry, and that we are not deeply concerned for the future prospects of British trade? The policy of the Government—and I had better state it in a manner which I think befits the statement of a policy not before the country, but announced as being the policy which the Government will submit to the electorate, that is to say in its broad outlines, but without any doubt in the terms which I use or any possibility of the words I use being susceptible of doubtful interpretation. The Government does ask this country that we should resume the freedom of negotiation for the purpose of attaining commercial advantages, which as a matter of historic fact has not been in the hands of any Government since the year 1860. We say that, in the event of such negotiations proving abortive, there must he an effective sanction behind those negotiations, we say that that sanction ought not to be used and will not be used by us except subject to the effective control of the House of Commons over the financial policy of this country We also add that it should be liberated from the rigour of traditional restriction which has, as a matter of fact, strangled every diplomatic effort we have made and notoriously prevented a commercial arrangement with France, to effect which M. Léon Say came to this country as Ambassador in 1880. What ground have the Government advanced for asking that this new departure should be made? The first reason which we have advanced is that there is a growing uneasiness over the condition of British trade in relation to the trade of other countries. Are hon. Gentlemen opposite free from any anxiety upon that score? Why does the mover of this Amendment abide in this House by words which he has used in the country and still say, as I believe he does, that it is a matter of vital necessity to us that other countries should come round to the policy of the open door? Are we to attach no importance to the fact? I am taunted by the right hon. Gentleman who

  1393
  has just spoken with attaching no importance to the imports which come into Great Britain. There is no foundation for such a taunt, but if we are not only to accept the speeches made from hon. Members opposite, but to take note also of the reception with which certain remarks have met, we might say they think that exports from this country are of no value to this country. Look at the travesty of argument in which the right hon. Gentleman has thought fit to indulge. It is a fact that the average value of the exports per head of this country has not risen in recent years. It is a fact that by comparison with other countries, if we look more particularly to the export of manufactured articles, we can show for this country no elasticity at all comparable with that which has been exhibited by other countries. It is a fact, if we look at the distribution of the exports from this country, that they are suffering because of hostile tariffs. That is asserted in the Blue-book to which so much reference has been made. Upon page 16 of that Blue-book occur the words—
  "There can be no doubt as to the effect of these hostile tariffs in checking the export trade of this country."
  The right hon. Gentleman declares that in my opinion imports are of no value. I have never said anything of the kind. Imports are of enormous value. In that very speech at Edinburgh I took pride in the amount of our imports, but what I did say was that if the amount of our imports continued to increase that was no consolation for stagnation and lack of elasticity in our exports. I held then, and hold now, and the Government hold, that it is not wise to look only to returns from your investments abroad, and because they are great, and you are glad they are great, to take no account of this lack of rebound and lack of progress in your export trade. Then it is legitimate, holding that view — the view which has been announced only recently by the Duke of Devonshire, who said—
  "The existing tariffs of other nations have inflicted, and do inflict, great injuries upon some of our fellow-citizens"—
  to look for a remedy? Is the remedy which we advocate of too drastic a character for the difficulties with which this country is confronted? I recollect very well a
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  significant criticism that was passed upon the late Lord Salisbury for having failed to protect the cotton trade of this country with Madagascar. At that time the value of our cotton exports to Madagascar fell in consequence of the French annexation from £116,000 to £6,000 worth. Lord Salisbury was criticised because that result had not been averted. How could it have been averted? By diplomatic representations? If they had failed the sanction in that case would be war. May not a similar object be sought by diplomatic negotiations, and must not those negotiations have a sanction—not the terrible sanction of war, but the sanction of imposing some duties upon imports from other countries which will make them realise that we are entitled to some consideration at their hands? I welcome this debate chiefly because it has revealed the fact that there is already a deep line of demarcation between hon. Gentlemen opposite and those of us who sit upon these Benches. What is their attitude towards the injuries which have been inflicted on the trade of this country, and what is their attitude towards the remedy we recommend to the country? Do they think it suitable to the occasion to call any Member who speaks from this Bench a protectionist if he recites the facts and the figures which could alone justify the pessimism of the right hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment? They avoid, except in the concluding words of the speech to which we have just listened, any criticism of the policy of the Government, and almost exclusively confine their attacks to the policy which has been promulgated by my right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham. I was asked in a speech delivered this afternoon to state categorically what are my views on a 10 per cent. duty all round, or an average duty of 10 per cent, That is no part of the policy of the Government.
  Sir, almost the only speech which has in the course of this debate been directed to attacking the policy of the Government was the speech, the very able and witty speech, of the hon. Member for Carnarvon. It opened with a coruscating shower of jests, but it was the only speech really delivered against the policy of the

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  Government, and it was not a criticism of the speeches of those who have left the Government; but when he came to the policy of retaliation his objection to it was this. If you bring any pressure to bear on Germany, for instance, Germany will hit us back. We now suffer, without naming any particular country, from hostile tariffs ranging from 25 per cent. in the case of Germany to 75 per cent. in the case of the United States and 131 per cent. in the case of Russia. We suffer from these hostile tariffs. We are being hit by them; and are we to be told that we are to make no diplomatic representations on these points? The hon. Member concluded that part of his speech by saying that the protectionists are the funkers. What is to be said of those who will not stand up for the interests of their fellow-subjects against another Power? Here is Germany who will hit back, and, indeed, I scarcely exaggerate when I declare that we are being warned off even looking into the damage inflicted by these hostile tariffs lest we should be seized with the temptation to deal with them. We are not to inquire. We are not to hit back. This country, in fact, is to be cast in the dignified role of playing in a sort of combination between running the gauntlet and blind man's buff. We alone are to wear the bandage, and we are to accept the stripes. I agree that the policy of retaliation would be futile in the hands of hon. Gentlemen like the hon. Member for Carnarvon or right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I agree in that because we can very well forecast the way in which they would use such a weapon from the speeches they have made in the course of this debate and from the reception given by them to other speeches. When my right hon. friend the Member for Croydon said that retaliation was not theoretically unsound, there was not a cheer from the Opposition, and when he went on to declare that the tin plate trade had been severely injured and for a time destroyed by hostile tariffs—dead silence. When he ventured to apply the epithet "barbarous" to a tariff of 131 per cent. ad valorem, against the exports of this country an uneasy expression of dissent began to make itself heard on the Benches opposite; but when he, or, more notably, the right hon. Baronet who sits for Berwick, went on to
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  explain at great length that negotiations for the purpose of securing greater advantages were extremely difficult, that retaliation was a perplexing, a forbidding policy, why then our political antagonists cheered up, and when the argument was developed, and we were told that, even if we surmounted those difficulties and did apply retaliation, we should inflict a greater injury on ourselves than on the nation with whom we were negotiating, then they burst into transports of joy. Therefore I am justified in saying that such a weapon would be a somewhat futile equipment in the hands of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen, in order to show how difficult such a matter would be of accomplishment, stated that no Government would, or should, move any duty up or down—and I mark that—without the authority of Parliament. More than that, that it would not enter into any engagements to move a duty up or down without the authority of Parliament. Then does the right hon. Gentleman condemn the Cob den treaty? I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that no Government ought to enter into any engagement which would end in putting a duty up or down without the authorisation of Parliament. Now that is a very important point, and I take it up because the question was put deliberately to me by the right hon. Gentleman who spoke last. Of course, a Government entering into diplomatic negotiations must be at liberty to state what it will do in certain events, but the treaty arrived at will be subject to the control of this House if the effective control of Parliament if the financial policy of this country is to be preserved. In the ease of the Cobden treaty the negotiations took place in the year before—1859—and in the "Life of Mr. Gladstone" written by the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment we read that there was some perturbation in the Cabinet over this project of entering into negotiations for altering certain duties without the knowledge of Parliament. But these fears did not weigh with the Cabinet of the day and the treaty was concluded, and what was the result? Why, in, I think, Mr. Gladstone's words, France was persuaded to lower her duties on a number

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  of articles of British production and export, and more especially on iron, which Cobden called the daily bread of other industries. If it was legitimate— and it was legitimate—in 1860 for the Cabinet without the knowlege of Parliament to enter into diplomatic relations with another country and to state that it was the policy of that Government to alter certain duties and thereby get a reduction of duties on articles of British production and export, is it illegitimate to-day to do the same thing? [HON. MEMBERS, "No:"] It is not illegitimate. Then are we to understand that it was legitimate to repeal those duties and that it is not legitimate to say that unless you are met in a fair manner you will impose duties? Because that is what the policy of the Government proposes to do. We shall proceed with negotiations. I may say, in order to reply to the right. hon Gentleman, that negotiations are likely to be embarrassed if, before negotiation begins, Ministers are asked to state, step by step, all the arguments that will be used. Negotiations begin with nothing more than a bland smile and a warm welcome, and they are embarrassed if any further indications are given; and certainly, when I am sneaking for a Government which believes in a policy of retaliation and intend to take up that policy in earnest, I shall not be drawn away by the questions of the right hon. Gentleman, and unfold to him an imaginative forecast of the exact language which Lord Lansdowne may or may not use in three or four years' time with this or that country.
  Either the House trusts the Government or it does not trust the Government. This is not a speculative debate upon the comparative virtues of free trade and vices of protection. It is a vote of no confidence. We should be going very far in a debate on the Address in reply to the Gracious Speech from the Throne if we came down to the House and stated what a policy will include which is only going to be submitted to the country at the next general election. Sir, is it or is it not desirable that steps should be taken to abate the hostile tariffs which are imposed against the exports of this country? Is that a matter of real neccessity or is it not? A great many
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  of us are in agreement, in closer agreement than some suppose, upon many aspects of this problem. We are all agreed that this country must import every year a great deal of food and a great deal of raw material. We are agreed, not so closely, but still very closely, that, in addition to the enormous money value of food and raw material, we must import into this country many appliances for saving labour and many half-manufactured articles and so forth, and that we must pay for these imports. How are we to pay for them? Very largely by our exports, if not wholly. Then we have to place our exports, and having placed these exports, being obliged by the very geographical peculiarities of this country to place these exports in order to get the imports, is it or is it not a cruel disadvantage to this country that outrageous tariffs should be imposed against them? I know there are fanatics in this matter. I know it, because there are some people who seem to think that a very high tariff is an advantage to the country against whose goods it is imposed—that it does so much harm to the country which puts it on as to be comparatively an advantage to the country on which it is imposed. We all know that the exporting country has to pay a certain amount of these duties. I have said there are some fanatics. Will they accept "Mill's Study of Political Economy" in a matter of that kind? He says those are right who say that a portion of an export duty is paid by the country bringing in the imports. That was his opinion, and that is the opinion of the Government. In any case, we believe that a tariff of 73 per cent., or 25 per cent., or 30 per cent. against the articles we must export places a tax on the whole of our community. It cuts down the profits of our manufacturers, and tends to lower the wages of the working classes. That is the reason, the first reason, which we advance for asking the country to authorise the resumption of freedom in our commercial negotiations. But we have a second reason, also announced by the Prime Minister, and that was that the sense of our helplessness was being borne in upon our minds in the face of any repetition of such a menace as that which was

  1399
  directed to Canada at the hands of the German Government.
  We held, and we do hold, that the right of retalaition will prevent the repetition of any such menace. I have said what the policy of the Government includes. I was invited by my hon. friend the Member for Durham to define our policy not only inclusively but exclusively and not to make a rhetorical speech, no one will accuse me of doing that—but to give a straight answer to the straight question which he has put. Well, Sir, the policy of the Government does not include taxation for the mere purpose of fostering home industries which are subjected to legitimate competition. I am asked what about dumping. Is that legitimate competition? I am not going to make a speech about dumping, we know that it inflicts a severe injury upon many classes in this population, we know-that beyond the injury it inflicts it aggravates the sense of injury; it aggravates the feeling of antagonism fomented throughout this country against the treatment which we receive from other countries, and we say, and we know, that the process of dumping is facilitated by the erection of high tariff walls, and therefore to those who complain, and naturally and legitimately complain, of dumping, we say that our remedy will, bring them some redress, that if retaliation leads, as we believe it will lead, to the lowering of tariff walls, then the evil of dumping will also be mitigated. And I will say no more on the subject of large taxes imposed for the protection of manufacturers. It is not part of the policy of His Majesty's Government. The policy of the Government does not include a preferential system of trade with our colonies involving the taxation of food or raw material.
  MR BRYN ROBERTS: Does it exclude?
  MR. WYNDHAM: I am not playing with words. I hear an hon. Gentleman say What about the Colonial Secretary" I am stating the position of the Government upon this matter, and I hold that the eloquent speech of my right hon. friend stands in no need of apology or of explanation. He says, as every man who has spoken from this Bench has said, that the policy of the Government did not
  1400
  include preferential trade with our Colonies involving taxation of food. This has been said by the Prime Minister again and again and by every one of his colleagues who has spoken from this Bench. But are Members therefore not at liberty to safeguard this country against the misinterpretation, for that is what it comes to? Having to define our policy I do deprecate the use of any language in this House which can be heard in our colonies and, above all, in Canada, to mean that we are insensible to what my right hon. friend the Member for West Bristol called the enormous value of the sentiment which underlies the idea of colonial preference. I deprecate the use of any such language, and I would even say to the right hon. Gentleman opposite that I was sorry to read his reference to the "so-called" preference in Canada. He ought not to look such a gift horse in the mouth.
  MR. ASQUITH: I was quoting the language used by the late Colonial Secretary at the Conference.
  MR. WYNDHAM: I am not aware that the late Colonial Secretary ever applied the phrase "so-called" to the Canadian preference, and what I refer to is the application of this epithet to the colonial preference, which I regret, and which is liable to be misinterpreted by Canada. That preference has been of great value to trade. Sir, not only do I deprecate the use of language which might be misunderstood in our Colonies, but I say that we should also use language which will avoid any chance of misapprehension here, and if such a course was legitimate in a Member of the House it is above all legitimate in a member of the Cabinet who is pledged to exclude colonial preference not only as a policy for this year but as a policy which it will submit to the country at the next election. I am not therefore to be drawn into attacks made upon my right hon. friend for the speech which he delivered. We are concerned to lay down a policy which the Government will propose before the next election; that is our duty, and if I may say so, our attitude towards colonial preference, and our attitude also consists in not including in the policy of the Government, but in avoiding any language-which would give umbrage to colonial

  1401
  sentiment. Well, that Sir, again will bring us to the deep line of demarcation which now, as a rule, exists between the Benches opposite and these Benches, We do not make jokes and indulge in gibes about Imperial dumping; for my part if Canada places goods on our market in a manner that would be resented if so placed by another country; I would not look too curiously on that. I should distinguish between the blood relation and the keen business competitor. I should say that the methods of suasion which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite advocate for all countries are appropriate methods for brother members in the British Empire; but that we at any rate, decline to regard the Colonies as in all matters upon exactly the same basis as foreign competitors. If we talk about the Throne and the Flag that is supposed to be high-falutin' and rhodomontade, but we have a Foreign Office for the Colonies as Well as ourselves, an Army and Navy; is it not absurd to incur those heavy expenses for these common services, and then to say that in matters of trade you are only entitled to treat your colonies as foreign competitors? No preference to the Colonies involving taxation of food or of raw materials, but I hope now and ever in this country the warmest possible feeling towards the Colonies, the greatest gratitude for the sacrifice they have made in a common cause.
  Time presses, but if I may I would come for a moment to the Amendment which is before us in order to consider its real import. I hope I have been right in stating the policy of the Government; I have stated it with all the amplitude which can reasonably be demanded of me, when I am dealing not with the details of a policy which is not before the House, but with the broad outline and direction of the policy which will be submitted to the country. I have stated it with all the precision that can be reasonably asked for if I am not to embarrass the course of future negotiation and discount the value of the sanction which may be obtained for that negotiation. Consider what this Amendment is. Its first proposition is a vote of censure dressed up to make that fact appear less apparent than it is. The second proposition is a historical judgment; very interesting I daresay to
  1402
  historical societies, but not so interesting to us. The third proposition is a statement of economic belief. We are not the Cobden Club. The first proposition and the first alone contains a censure; it throws upon us the onus of destroying and impairing the value of contributions which hon. Gentlemen would otherwise make to the discussion of the Budget which they have not seen and which they know on the word of the Prime Minister will deviate by not one jot from the settled condition and practice of the last quarter of a century. It is absurd to ask us to consider that Amendment in any other light than as a blow aimed at the heart of the Unionist Party. Let my hon. friends really gauge the proposal, which is a most ridiculous proposal; we are told that only one of two courses is consonant with the honour and dignity of His Majesty's Ministers; the first alternative course consistent with their honour and dignity is to embrace in their official policy all the views, no matter how divergent, which have been expressed by any members of their Party on contingencies which have not arisen and some of which cannot be foreseen; and the other alternative, apparently consistent with honour and dignity, is to take the one definite issue and then ex-communicate by court-martial any Member of their Party who holds views in excess of that policy, believing in the desirability and feasibility of issues which are beyond and outside the Government programme. Sir, if that is the advice we ought to take, its inherent absurdity is heightened when we consider the quarter from whence it comes. It is offered to us by the only political Party which, so far as I know in the whole political history of this country from the days of King Edward I., has tried both these policies; they tried the first—the policy of the inclusion of divergent and incompatible views—when they hammered together the Newcastle programme, and we know the result. The second policy of unnecessary prescription was tried during the later phases of the late South African War, and they are now during this debate thinking to escape from the consequences of that policy by the transparent device of this debating society Amendment.

  1403
  We here as Ministers to-day accept, we endorse, we intend to prosecute, the Prime Minister's policy of resuming oar freedom of commercial negotiation. We insist that this country, with the greatest trade of any country in the world—I admit it, I glory in it—should no longer suffer herself to be ignored in the reciprocal treaties made by foreign nations, to the material advantage of their commerce and at the sole expense of her own. Our leader is not here; I do not complain that our opponents have been so impetuous as to bring on this Motion in his absence; his presence is not necessary in order that a clear declaration may |be made of the policy of the Government; but, as one of his followers who can speak for every colleague in the Administration in or out of the Cabinet, and speaking, I believe, at any rate for the great majority of those who, to use a time-worn phrase, "have acted with us" in recent years, in dark and difficult times during the war, in arduous Parliamentary struggles over the Education Bill—I say I believe the great majority of them will echo our leader's dictum, and so long as he will lead they will loyally follow. Though I have noted with party regret, and with infinite personal regret, that there are some Members on this side of the House who seem bent on action which may result in the irrevocable severance of ties which have long bound us and the obliteration of memories and obligations which we have all incurred in the service of a most kind, most candid, adroit, and courageous leader, who is not here tonight to speak for himself, the main body of the Unionist Party will, I believe, within the limits he has laid down, follow him in his fight for freer trade. I have not given way to a temptation to which many a man in my position might have yielded. I have not sought to prove there are no difficulties in the way of some of my hon. friends, but I do say that to my mind they are difficulties more apparent than real; no, I have stated the policy of the Government frankly, and have not disguised the fact that it involves a great departure—a great departure, not from the doctrines of free trade, but from the routine of Budget-making and the consequent futility of every
  1404
  diplomatic effort on behalf of the commerce of the country. The departure is a great one, great in itself and greater by contrast with the intrenched obstinacy of right hon. Gentlemen opposite. Its magnitude may be measured by the rigidity of all, the pedantry of some, and the fanaticism of a few, who cling to every defect and disadvantage of a system, not of theoretic truth, but of empirical tradition never enjoined by the founders of free trade, and incompatible with the changing conditions of the world.
  MR. REAsupported the Amendment as a "hardened and convicted" free importer, although he was connected with an industry which, if it was not yet to be numbered with the British industries that had gone, was one of those which, according to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, were going, viz., the distressful industry of British shipping. To the Liverpool shipowners the right hon. Gentleman described the condition to which it had been reduced, and he asked in anxious tones—
  "How long shall we keep it? How much shall we keep of it? Now ray case is that British shipping, admirable as its condition is in many respects, is not progressing so fast as foreign shipping, and I do not like that symptom at all."
  And what proof did the right hon. Gentleman give of his dismal description? The only official figures he quoted were these—that, while the tonnage of British ships had increased between 1890 and 1901 by 1,400,000, the tonnage of the rest of the world had increased by no less than 2,200,000. His case was that we had failed, not to hold our own, not that we failed to increase very greatly, but that in these years we had failed to accomplish so great an increase as that of the whole of the rest of the world put together. We had increased fourteen, and all the world beside us put together had increased twenty-two. Would this be a result to be ashamed of, if it were true even, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham stated it? But his figures required to be examined, for, though quite accurate, they were curiously misleading. In this single case the right hon. Gentleman suddenly substituted the whole British Empire for

  1405
  the United Kingdom. However much he might belittle these islands he was not in the habit of speaking disrespectfully of the British Empire—but suddenly in this case he substituted the term "the whole British Empire" for the United Kingdom, and said, "the total increase in the tonnage of the whole British Empire was only 1,400,000." What would anyone who had heard or read those words understand, except that the United Kingdom was going under so fast that even her young and growing Colonies failed to keep her afloat? But why did the right hon. Gentleman substitute "British Empire" for "United Kingdom?" Looking at the figures only one reason could be seen, viz., that he wished to conceal the real progress of the shipping of our country. The truth, on the authority of that same Blue-book quoted by the right hon. Gentleman, was that the increase of tonnage of this country, the United Kingdom alone, was not less than 1,400,000, but actually 1,629,882, and that he had slipped into his account to our debit, by a sudden change of phrase, a loss of tonnage by Canada of 300,000 tons, caused by the decay of her wooden ships. Such was the fact. The shipping of this country had increased in the years mentioned, not by 1,400,000 tons, but by 1,629,882. Then to deal with the other figure; the ships of all the rest of the world had increased 2,200,000 tons. That by itself was not quite true. The increase in the rest of the world was not 2,200,000, but a little over 2,100,000 tons. That, however, was a small point. Of more importance was the fact that in those years a new maritime nation—Japan—had been born, and included in the tables for the first time. She had created a mercantile 'fleet of nearly a 1,000,000 tons, not out of legitimate commerce, but out of her national resources. Take out Japan, which was a phenomenon apart, and what did they find? Why, that all the States of Europe put together, with the United States of America thrown in, had increased their ocean-going shipping by only 1,200,000 tons, while we had increased ours by 1,600,000, or 30 per cent. more than the lot of them put together. He had not picked out any years such as the year of glorious memory, 1872. These years were of the right hon. Gentleman's
  1406
  own selection. And yet in the face of these facts, to be found in the very same page of the Blue-book, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham asked—
  "What is the use of saying that the house is still standing if you know that there is rot at the foundations? What is the use of saying we are doing very well, when you know we are doing comparatively worse every year?—when you know that behind you you have galloping up at a greater rate than anything you can command your bitterest and severest competitors and rivals?"
  "Our bitterest and severest rivals!" How did we stand in relation to these? While our tonnage had increased by 1,600,000, that of France has not increased 200,000, and that of Italy by about the same amount. Norway, which, in the earlier year was the second largest ship-owning State, had decreased by 250,000 tons, and the United States of America by 50,000 tons. The only nation that could claim to be even a bad second to Great Britain was Germany, with her increase of 600,000 tons. Her increase was more than that of all the other countries put together. Why was this? Why was it that during the recent depression in Germany we were told by one of our Consuls that the shipbuilding industry was the last to suffer? The answer was that amid the and desert of German protection the shipping and shipbuilding industry was a little oasis of free trade. Free imports for the German shipbuilder was the law. From the laying down of the keel to the launch, and from the launch to the trial trip, from the first steel plate and angle to the chronometer and the table napkins—everything for a ship was free in Germany. Germany, so far as shipping and shipbuilding were concerned, made the best of both worlds, the free trade world and the protectionist world. He had stated these facts not for the sake of vulgar boasting, but that the House might consider how the position of shipping would be affected by a policy of national and systematic retaliation—by a policy of protection. The light-hearted manner in which members and supporters of the Government talked of an avowed policy of systematic retaliation was, to his mind, simply astounding. A policy of retaliation must be directed first and foremost against the United States of America,

  1407
  because they were the greatest offenders in the matter of tariff, and because then were the largest exporters to this country. Retaliation not aimed at the United States would be a policy self-stultified. But this was a game in which all the trumps were in the hands of the other party—for the simple reason that America could live very comfortably without us, but we could not live without her. How would America meet any act she considered hostile? We were not left in doubt; her weapon was already forged and tempered, and it was directed against British shipping. Revised Statute 2,502, passed by Congress on 27th August, 1894 (Section 14), was as follows—
  "A discriminating duty of 10 per cent. ad valorem, in addition to the duties imposed by law, shall be levied, collected, and paid on all goods, wares, or merchandise which shall be imported in vessels not of the United States; but this discriminating duty shall not apply to goods, wares, and merchandise which shall be imported in vessels not of the United States, entitled by treaty or any Act of Congress to be entered in the ports of the United States on payment of the same duties as shall then be paid on goods, wares, and merchandise imported in vessels of the United States."
  We were at present in the position of being entitled by treaty to most-favoured-nation treatment. But if those relations were altered this provision would automatically come into play.
  And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.

EVENING SITTING.

  KINGS SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
  Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment [8th February] to Main Question [2nd February],"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
  "Mod Gracious Sovereign,—
  "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for
  1408
  the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. Hardy.)
  Which Amendment was—
  "At the end of the Question, to add the words. But it is our duty, however, humbly to represent to Your Majesty that our effective deliberation on the financial service of the year is impaired by conflicting declarations from Your Majesty's Ministers. We respectfully submit to Your Majesty the judgment of this House that the removal of protective duties has for more than half a century actively conduced to the vast extension of the trade and commerce of the realm and to the welfare of its population; and this House believes that, while the needs of social improvement are still manifold and urgent, any return to protective duties, more particularly when imposed on the food of the people, would be deeply injurious to our national strength, contentment and well-being."—(Mr. John Morley.)
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
  MR. REA,continuing his speech, said— If we began a tariff war by an act, not of a general tariff, but of special retaliation, automatically the shipping interest must suffer. Who would in such circumstances send goods to America in a British-ship, if a French, or German, or Italian, or Norwegian could be obtained? A blow at British shipping was the most obvious, the easiest, the least dislocating to the strikers of any available. In any tariff war, it might be taken as certain, in his opinion, that the shipping trade, like Uriah of old, would be put in the front of the battle. But if a policy of retaliation threatened danger to shipping, a policy of protection would be its ruin. What had built up this trade to be the most important and valuable branch of our commercial activities? Doubtless coal mining employed more men, and our railways had a capital more than five times as great as that invested in ships, but the annual gross earnings of our mercantile marine were about equal to the gross earnings of all our railways put together, which amounted to £106,000,000 in 1902; and considerably more than the value of the total product of our largest manufacture—cotton—which was estimated at £90,000,000. What had built up this great trade? He did not underestimate the energy and genius of the many distinguished men who had contributed to

  1409
  erect this imposing structure, or the national aptitude of our race, and our character, as an island people, but, after all, we were not quite so superior to the rest of the world in energy and enterprise and education as we are in shipping tonnage. There must be other and special causes for this extraordinary and overwhelming superiority in a trade which all nations of the earth most desire. In his opinion, there was not one cause only, but two, that had contributed to it equally. First, our own free-trade policy, and second, but not less, the protectionist policy of our neighbours. They had flung a way their chances of competing with us on equal terms on the open ocean, where we were all equal. It was the foreign tariffs of other nations that had checked our exports of what protectionists called our staple manufactures, and forced us to send them their payments for our imports, and forced them, by the operation of the inflexible laws that govern the international exchange of products, and the financial laws that governed foreign exchange, to receive payment for their goods so largely in the form of the services of our ships. He did not think it was we who suffered most from the substitution. No intelligent English shipowner, looking at the question from the selfish interest of his craft, could favour a return to a policy of protection for ourselves, however much he might desire other nations to continue in the error of their ways. He believed in a theory which the Prime Minister described as—
  "So perverse that it is impossible that any human being can hold it."
  A theory, which, if he had been in the House during this debate, he would have found, to his surprise, to be largely held by free-traders on both sides of the House. The theory was this, that we, a free-trade nation, surrounded by protectionist nations, had so adapted ourselves to our protectionist environment, that we actually thrive in it. This he believed to be our case. He believed American and German protection to be bad for the world at large; and, in their present advanced industrial conditions, at any rate, to be bad for America and Germany in particular; but he was by no means
  1410
  sure they were bad for this country in particular.
  MR. GUESTsaid he should have distrusted this policy much less if it had been put forward by the Board of Trade instead of by the Colonial Office. He had not been convinced either by the idealism of the Colonial Secretary or the realism of the Secretary to the Board of Trade, and he believed it was possible to take a saner and more humane view of our Imperial destiny than that taken by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham. They had had from the President of the Board of Trade and the Chief Secretary for Ireland two remarkable speeches, which appeared to him to be encouraging. But it must be apparent to everybody that there was a very grave discrepancy between those two speeches and the performance of the Government. The President of the Board of Trade declared, in plain and well-advised language, that the Government were prepared to fight for free trade, and if that were so the right hon. Member for West Birmingham must be their most formidable antagonist. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had in almost identical terms described the policy of the Government. Yet at the present moment the official candidate for the South Birmingham vacancy was a declared supporter of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham. The voice of the Government was the voice of Jacob, the hand was the hand of Esau. The Prime Minister had been more concerned in preparing a formula which it was more difficult for people not to follow than otherwise. That formula, was retaliation. It did very well till subjected to examination, and nobody would disagree with him when he said that retaliation for freedom of negotiation meant two very different things to a free-trader and a protectionist. What had to be decided now was whether the next Administration which sat upon the Government Bench was to be a free-trade or protectionist Administration, and on that point no assurance had been given. In the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland there was still the old evasion of the question and the old refusal to indicate how far the Government intended to go. Then there was the benevolent neutrality of the Government which

  1411
  allowed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham to pursue his campaign through the country. Last year all discussion on this subject was discouraged, and they were the victims of a conspiracy of silence. This year they had been the victims of a conspiracy of ambiguity. He supposed that the real object of the Government was to remain as long as possible in office, and he could quite understand a Government stooping to conquer, but he was very doubtful if they could conquer, however low they stooped in this case. The Unionist Party considered this question to be of first-rate importance, and the statement of the Government had neither convinced nor satisfied the free-trade element, nor did he suppose that the protectionists had derived much satisfaction from them. Those who heard the speech of his honourable colleague the Member for Plymouth on the previous Friday, would not say that the Government had been successful in gratifying the protectionist section of their supporters. His honourable colleague was one of the most strenuous as he was one of the most important supporters of the Birmingham policy, and he himself was quite as strenuous a free-trader. If he went into the lobby with the Government he would be regarded as a loyal supporter of the Government, and would be entitled to their support at the next general election, as also would his honourable colleague. No two opinions could be more dissimiliar than his and his colleague's on this occasion, and yet observe what was to be the result. Both of them were to appear before the same electors, were to be supported by the Government, and were to have their benediction and support to the bewilderment of, he thought he might say, a disgusted electorate. Surely by this time the Government had the courage to take one side or the other. They could understand the position of Mr. Chamberlain. He differed from the right hon. Gentleman, and disliked many of his methods, but he could respect him and also hon. Members who had supported him through thick and thin, and stuck to him and the policy he had enunciated. But as for the Government, it seemed to him they gave very little material for respect. The Party was being driven into
  1412
  protection, many members of it quite unconsciously; but whether they knew it or not, this policy of shift, evasion, and dexterous manipulation would carry them into the troublous seas of protection There was no place for the Unionist free importer, and the time would not be far distant when there was not room in the Party for the Unionist negotiator, and it was possible the time might come when even Imperial preference was looked upon askance, and the Imperial preferen-tialist was regarded as something of the nature of a suspect by the members of the Tariff Commission. The Conservative Party was going through the process of voluntary liquidation. The business was being taken up by another syndicate, who had become possessed of the goodwill of the business and were quite prepared to cut the losses involved in the transaction. Surely, under the influence of protection, the Party must change its character, and the policy of the new Conservative Party would be such as his noble friend scarcely recognised, or perhaps cared to recognise.
  He did not want to make too much of the apprehension which had been suggested as to the evil influences of corruption through protection, but it would not be wise to entirely ignore the influence of that factor. The corruption depended almost entirely upon the composition of the House. Now he wondered whether hon. Members had considered how far the composition of the Party was likely to be altered by the introduction of this new element. Protectionists had spoken in terms which they were bound to recognise as honest opinions, but how long would they remain when this new condition of affairs was introduced into the House? How long would they survive the introduction of the professional lobbyist? What position would the old-fashioned politician of to-day find himself in when the necessity for having a distinct representative would have forced business interests to get represented by some individual as their exclusive nominee? Corruption would follow in the wake of protection—it was not the Corrupt Practices Act which mainly guaranteed the purity of that Assembly, seats were not bought now for many reasons, but largely because they were not worth buying. It had come to his personal

  1413
  knowledge, however, that already manufacturing interests were on the look-out for suitable gentlemen, whose election expenses they offered to pay, if they would act as the direct representatives of their trades. What was the position of the free food Party with regard to all this? He did not know whether the Opposition had been congratulating themselves upon the division which existed in the Ministerial ranks. The Prime Minister had been quite unable to get his supporters into line, and they had already grouped themselves into Parties. Observe what an admirable instrument this was for recruiting. Those who were bold-hearted protectionists would enlist under the banner of the right hon. gentleman the member for West Birmingham; those who were merely Party men would meekly follow the Prime Minister; and those entertaining honest doubts might join with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol. If ever there was an occasion when they could say, "He that is not with us is against us," it was the present. He saw no alternative but to vote for the Amendment. He had no confidence in the Government, no confidence either in their intentions or their ability to check the protectionist movement, which he believed was fraught with danger to the country, and which would throw into the melting pot of chance the prospects of millions of people who had under our present system prospered and thriven. He did not see in the speeches of any member of the Government any determination to meet the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. Believing as he did, that that policy would be disastrous to the welfare of this country, he had no alternative course but to vote in favour of the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman opposite.
  Mr. CHARLES McARTHURsaid he could not quite agree with what the hon. Member had said in regard to the speech made by his right hon. friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He had listened to that speech with very great attention, and it seemed to him a clear and straightforward statement of the policy of the Government. Upon the first day of this debate the President of the Board of Trade made an
  1414
  equally explicit statement, and he told them that the policy of the Government was not a policy of protection but a policy of free trade. He further stated that the Government disavowed altogether the policy associated with the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, and he took that programme in detail and showed that the Government did not entertain it, and he also disavowed colonial preference and taxes on food. Although it was true that since the speech of the President of the Board of Trade various members of the Government had to some extent weakened their confidence in the thorough adherence of the Cabinet to the policy then enunciated, yet the Chief Secretary for Ireland had now re-echoed the assurances of the President of the Board of Trade. He himself was prepared to support the policy of the Government if they would honestly carry out their own policy. But there was a serious difference between the words of the Government and their actions. He objected to the way in which the Government had allowed the affairs of the country to drift. He had full confidence in their captain, but who and where was the pilot? A captain who for want of a pilot allowed his ship to drift on the rocks was guilty not merely of negligence but of barratry.
  Alluding to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, he expressed the opinion that they were in danger of sacrificing the national ideal of freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and freedom of trade, to what he would calla blatant Imperialism. There were two kinds of Imperialism, one true and the other false, one genuine and the other spurious. If by Imperialism they understood the spreading abroad of their dominions in the world with the object of elevating the lower races and spreading abroad the benefits of good government and granting the people self-government, that was an idea of Imperialism with which he thoroughly agreed, because it was one calculated to benefit the world. If on the other hand Imperialism meant mere pride in the power of a nation, a mere lust for dominion and a desire to obtain authority over other nations, and to exploit them

  1415
  for our own advantage and for the purpose of building up tariff walls around them, that was an Imperialism which he thought was not desirable. His hon. friend had made a violent attack upon the Free Food League. He was not surprised that objection should be taken to the title of "The Free Food League," because it drew attention to the most objectionable, the most odious feature of the programme, with which the right hon. Gentleman was associated—the taxation of the poor man's bread. MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] He was quite aware that it had been stated that the proposed taxes on food would be so counter acted by remissions of taxation on other articles that it would not increase the cost of living. If they had a guarantee that the tax would not exceed what was originally proposed he did not think it would affect the well paid artisan, but it would press severely upon the poorest of the poor. But what guarantee had they that such taxes would not be increased. Look at the expedience of other nations and they would conclude that it was only reasonable to suppose that taxes on food would be increased. They had heard various inducements put forward for the adoption of this policy. The first time the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham brought forward his policy in this House he covered it with the promise of old-age pensions. What had become of old-age pensions now. The next thing was that this policy would cause a rise in wages, but they heard nothing about that now. Then another inducement was the prospect of more employment, but what was that prospect based upon? It depended entirely upon the transfer of a proportion of the employment of the country from one class to another. The ex-Colonial Secretary in his speeches had often pointed to the large amount of foreign manufactures imported into this country, and had asked why those goods should not be made in England. It seemed to him that this policy, in holding out the prospect of greater employment, which merely meant the transfer of a portion of employment from one class to another, evoked a very low moral tone and appealed to the baser instincts of
  1416
  humanity—greed, covetousness, and combativeness. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] What would become of shipping trade if this policy were carried out? It meant taking bread out of the mouths of the sailors, the railway men, and the dockers in order to put more into the mouths of another section of the community. The grievances attaching to the shipping trade could be rectified altogether apart from the policy of the ex-Colonial Secretary, for if that policy were adopted they would have to pay more for building and working their ships, and there would be less traffic for them to carry. He knew there were many shipowners in Liverpool who agreed with the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, but he disagreed with that policy.
  Although he was an ardent believer in free trade, he acknowledged that a free-trade policy had its dangers. There could be no doubt that some of our industries were suffering from the system of free imports. Even our shipping industry which appeared prosperous was really not so prosperous. It was suffering severely from foreign competition, and our sailing ships to-day were being driven from the seas by vessels owned in foreign countries. Although the Foreign Secretary could protest against the present condition of things in regard to tariffs he could do nothing because he had no weapon. When one man came up after another and said that his trade was suffering from foreign competition he thought something must be done to improve the situation. The reason why the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham had acquired such influence in the country was not so much through agreement with his plan as by the people's confidence in the man himself. He said that, although he believed his plan was thoroughly unsound, he acknowledged that free trade had its limitations and its dangers. It was quite possible for a free-trade country to be crippled or even ruined under free trade, either by its industries being taken away in detail by aggressive taxation on the part of foreign competitors or by such a restriction of the area of competition that free trade had no room to operate. Our trade, he believed, was

  1417
  suffering from both these causes. The country wanted the power to put its foot down and to say, "We are unfairly treated." Everybody was a consumer, but the consumer was not everybody. He was not prepared to vote for the Amendment, for the Government had no desire to return to protection, and they disavowed their intention of taxing food.
  MR. THEODORE TAYLORsaid the question was for frequently asked what we were to do markets if our chief customers shut their ports against us by means of tariffs, as Russia and the United States were doing at the present time. If anyone took the trouble to examine the figures he would find that the two great excluding countries still imported a large amount of manufactures. He ventured to say that if, under any conceivable circumstances, if all the manufacturing nations of the world had a tariff as high as that of Russia, there would still be a large total of imported manufactures. The country which had the advantage of free imports, and, as a consequence, of cheap production, would still do the lion's share of the trade, and an increasing proportion of it. He spoke as a practical manufacturer who had his living to get in competition with German "dumping" in cloth. He was a member of a Yorkshire firm of manufacturers, in the fourth generation, which lost its trade with America in 1864 owing to the Morell tariff, and after that acquired a trade with Germany, France, and Italy. They did a large German trade from 1866 to 1879, when the Bismarck tariff very largely closed it. [Cheers.] He would tell the Gentlemen who cheered something still worse. If ever there was a trade where there seemed to be a very good case for the protection now unblushingly advocated it was the woollen trade, because the imposition of the German tariff not only made Yorkshire manufacturers lose the German market, but by 1890 they had to compete in the English market with cloth made in Germany by means of English machinery and imported English foremen. But the Yorkshire manufacturers had been accustomed to make their own profits and not to look to the Government for them, and so instead of shutting down their mills they thought they would try
  1418
  self-protection rather than Government protection. His firm were manufacturers of cloth both for men's and women's wear. One of the very remarkable things about the woollen and other textile trades was that, whereas in men's wear the foreigners hardly made any headway at all in the English market, they did so in regard to women's wear. Some manufacturers knowing that fact thought that probably there was something more than mere protection to account for the German gaining our market here. If it had been protection only in his own country he would have exported cloth for men's wear to this country. Men wanted durability in their cloth, but he would ask hon. Members who had wives and daughters whether durability was liked by them when they got it. The reason for women being less desirous of durability in dress was quite clear. Women's fashions varied very much, and men's not so much. As an English manufacturer he was sorry to say that manufacturers in this country had not followed the trend of fashion so closely as they ought to have done. The manufacturers of this country had at their back the best labour, English labour, in the world, they had the further advantage of free access to raw material, and the workers had shorter hours of labour; and under these circumstances they had asked themselves whether it was not possible for English manufacturers to retain their own markets? In his own particular firm they had adopted the principle of profit-sharing, which he believed to be a great help in this matter. He agreed with Mr. Carnegie that they could not have the best brains of workers if they had not got their hearts. His firm, by improved machinery, by co-operation with the workmen, enlisting their enthusiasm, putting it to them not merely as a matter of personal interest, but patriotism, had succeeded. Six or eight years ago large buyers of cloth for mantle purpose in the English market used to look at German manufacturers' patterns first and those of the English afterwards. Now they looked at the English patterns first, and the Germans got the leavings which the English used to get.
  What did retaliation mean? It meant, that we were to get foreign nations to

  1419
  give us better terms. Had we the slightest hope of permanently compelling other nations to give our manufacturers better terms in order that we might compete against them? He did not believe any policy could be well founded which was not founded on an intelligent appreciation of self-interest. He for one did not sneer at Canadian preference. He appreciated it as beneficial to the colony and also to us, but it was an approach to free trade and not to protection. Our industry was not in a sound condition if our business depended upon preferences. The best way to command trade was to give good value. As to the argument of the Secretary of the Board of Trade on "dumping" it could only be effectively done by a perfect trade combine consisting of several separate works. And any such combine would prefer to close the more obsolete and un-remunerative of such works rather than carry them on in order to "dump" on the foreigner at an enormous loss. That was what was actually taking place at that moment in the case of the United States Steel Trust, and other American iron manufacturers. It had been said that cotton would never be taxed. It had been taxed, and he showed a brass tag which had been inserted in bales of cotton in the United States, which showed that it was not against the Constitution of certain individual States to levy a duty on cotton. But if there was a Constitutional difficulty about imposing an export tax on cotton in the United States, could it be imagined that the great American nation would not amend its Constitution for the purpose of striking at this country in retaliation for import duties we might impose? He spoke as a Lancashire Member, and he had noticed that no hon. Gentleman engaged in the cotton manufacture had got up and advocated a policy which would be the ruin of Lancashire. On the faith of Mr. Macara, the President of the Cotton Spinners' Association, he could state that 80 per cent of their production went abroad. Even a small protective duty would mean ruin for the cotton industry of Lancashire and Yorkshire; it would be a bad thing for every trade in the country, and, above all, it would be worse for the poorest of the people, whom the House of Commons ought to be the first to protect.
  SIR WALTER THORBURNsaid he had been struck in the
  1420
  course of this debate by the comparative absence of hon. Members representing constituencies affected by foreign tariffs taking part in it. They had had a great deal of argument against the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, but practically nothing against the policy of the Government. There had been any amount of theoretical argument, but he had a strong opinion that practical experience was worth more than theoretical argument. He had the misfortune to be connected with two industries, both of which had suffered at the hands of the foreigners. He referred to the sugar trade and the woollen trade. Last year he had spoken on the sugar bounty question when the Sugar Convention Bill was before the House; now he intended to discuss the condition of the woollen trade as affected by hostile tariffs. Some months before the speech delivered by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham against foreign hostile tariffs, he had made a speech to his constituents, in which he pointed out that these foreign tariffs were practically sapping the export of woollen goods from this country, and that the Government, whether Conservative, Unionist, or Liberal, would some day be compelled to take up the question and deal with it. He said also that he trusted the question would be approached free from Party. He had likewise expressed the hope that the matter would be dealt with by diplomatic means in the first instance, but that if all efforts by diplomacy failed he was prepared to retaliate. He still hoped that if the Government were empowered to negotiate a modification of hostile tariffs might be attained without resorting to retaliation, and he might mention that one effect of the agitation in this country had been to stop the new Tariff Bill, which was to have come into operation in Germany this year. That was a great achievement. High foreign tariffs had had a serious effect upon the woollen trade in this country. The productive power of the woollen trade in Great Britain was much in excess of the home consumption, and therefore any falling off in the exports of woollens abroad was a serious matter for the manufacturers to face. The flood-tide of the woollen export trade in this country

  1421
  was between 1870 and 1880 when the exports amounted to nearly £29,000,000, but they had now fallen to little over £9,000,000 of woollen fabrics alone. The imports of woollen goods in the period to which he referred only amounted to £3,000,000; they had now risen to £13,000,000, including £3,000,000 worth of yarns. The tariffs in America were so high that they practically excluded all British manufactures of woollen goods, and other European countries had teadily increased their protective tariffs against us except the decaying country of Turkey, where the import duty was only 8 per cent. Formerly we had done an enormous trade in woollen goods with France, Germany, and the United States. The trade with America was practically dead, and that with France and Germany was declining. Another test of the decline in the woollen trade in Scotland was the decrease in the number of people employed in the woollen factories, which had fallen from 40,000 to 25,000, and a much worse state of matters would have been shown but for some very considerable Government contracts for army clothing which had been secured by Border manufacturers, in the past three or four years. Preferential tariffs had been given by Canada, and as a result our exports to that colony had increased by 50 per cent. New Zealand and the Cape had likewise passed Acts giving the mother country a preference. The result as regards Cape Colony was encouraging, for certain foreign manufacturers doing a Cape trade found themselves compelled to establish works in this country to enjoy the preference. This was satisfactory inasmuch as our workpeople would enjoy employment, and we should not grudge the masters curving their profits to spend abroad if so disposed. He had neither joined the Tariff Reform League nor the Free Food League, and consequently might be considered an independent witness, and he must cordially, free trader as he had always been, support the policy of the Government, which, in his opinion, would make so-called free trade freer.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: My intervention in this debate for a very few moments is not prompted by any
  1422
  desire to take part in the controversy as between free trade and protection. On the contrary, my object in intervening is to make clear that in the action which the Irish Members intend to take they decline absolutely to commit themselves, at this stage, on one side of the controversy or the other. Were it otherwise, if I had to make up my mind on the merits of the question before the House, I should be in great difficulty, because I do not know what the policy of the Government is, and I do not know what a vote given in their favour to-night would mean—whether it would mean a vote in favour of protection pure and simple, or some sort of colonial preference, or some vague thing called a power of retaliation, which so far as I know resides in the House at the present moment, and which, I believe, this House can never alienate from it. On the other hand, when I consider the merits of the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Montrose, I should find it impossible as as Irishman to subscribe to the statement contained in it that—
  "The removal of protective duties has for more than half a century actively conduced to the vast extension of the trade and commerce of the realm and to the welfare of its population."
  I presume that Ireland is included in the phrase "the realm," and so far as Ireland is concerned I respectfully state that in my judgment that statement is historically untrue. Ireland has unfortunately in the past suffered equally from the protective and from the free-trade policy of Great Britain. It is impossible to conceive anything more disgraceful, more shameful, than the story of the deliberate destruction of Irish industries by the action of the British Parliament. I remember a famous speech made by the present Prime Minister in 1895 in which he said that many of the ills of Ireland sprang from her poverty, and that England and Scotland were largely responsible for that poverty. In those days, before the introduction of steam, Ireland was in truth a formidable rival to Great Britain in commerce and manufactures, and in his great work Mr. Froude said—
  "The mere rumour of a rise of industries in Ireland created a panic in commercial circles in England, and the commercial leaders in England were possessed with a terror of the Irish rivalry which could not be exorcised and

  1423
  again and again the British manufacturers came together and petitioned the British Parliament to save them from the rivalry of Irish manufacturers."
  And finally this Parliament listened to their voice, and when they did take action it certainly was thorough. Mr. Lecky had pointed out in his book that the Navigation Laws prohibited the importation of Irish cattle into England as "a public and common nuisance;" Irish beef, pork, bacon, butter, and cheese were all excluded, and he growth of the great woollen trade was the direct result of these restrictions of trade. That trade in turn was exterminated by the action of the British Parliament. The export of wool and woollen goods from Ireland was prohibited under pain of forfeiture of the goods and ships and a fine of £500 for every offence under a Statute of William III.; the Irish cotton trade had been ruined by a Statute of George II., and was killed by a protective duty in England of 25 per cent. At one time Ireland supplied all the cloth for the sails of the British Navy. An end was put to it by imposing duties upon all Irish-made sail cloth; and so with all Irish products of that day, and the result is summed up in these words, which I will read from Mr. Froude, who was not a witness very friendly to Ireland. "England." he said—
  "Governed for what she deemed in her own interest, making her calculations in the gross balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations to accumulate as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the Statute-book of the universe. England determined to keep Ireland poor and miserable as the readiest means to prevent her from being troublesome. She destroyed her shipping industry by her trade navigation laws. She extinguished Irish manufactures by preferential duties. She laid disabilities even upon its wretched agriculture, for fear Irish importation might injure the English farmers. With their shipping destroyed by the Navigation Acts, their woollen manufactures taken from them, their trade in all its branches crippled, the only resource left to those of the Irish who cherished dreams of improving their unfortunate country was agriculture."
  So the whole Irish nation was driven back upon agriculture; and then, having destroyed Irish industries by your protection policy, and having driven the whole nation back upon agriculture, then you stepped in with your free trade policy to complete our ruin. Mr. Speaker, I do not question for a moment the truth of
  1424
  the statement that for this country free trade at the time it was established was a blessing, and has conduced to the welfare and prosperity of the people of Great Britain. [OPPOSITION Cheers.] But, Sir free trade came to Ireland in a different guise. It brought to Ireland all its disadvantages, and brought to Ireland none of its boons [MINISTERIAL Cheers.] A good free trader and a good Liberal, the late Mr. Childers said, in his draft report of the Financial Relations Commission of 1895—
  "The change,"
  he said,
  "in financial policy is usually considered to have been advantageous to a population, the great bulk of which had come to depend not upon agriculture, but on manufacturing industries and commerce. But it is evident this change was not advantageous to Ireland, a country in which there was little trade or manufacturing industry; and it must be said that just as Ireland suffered in the last century from protection and the exclusive commercial policy, so has she been at a disadvantage in this century from the adoption from the almost unqualified free trade policy in the United Kingdom."
  Now, I say, under these circumstances, it is no wonder there is a state of apathy and indifference on this subject in Ireland. The spectacle presented by Ireland at this moment is very strange. She is an integral portion, so you say, of this Empire. She is supposed to have common interest with the Empire. Well, Sir, this country is ringing from end to end with this great fiscal controversy. It is the topic of conversation in the Senate and in the street. Go to Ireland and to-day it is the one topic no one is talking about. There is no interest at this moment taken in the question in Ireland at all. Ireland might as well be portion of any other Empire as of this, so far as interest in this question is concerned. So you may as well find yourself in Iceland as Ireland, so far as this quesion goes. The last line ever written before his death by Swift seems to me to express pretty well the views of the Irish people when to-day they are told they are to get a tariff for the protection of Irish goods. Swift was driving through the Phoenix Park just before his death, and he there saw a large number of workmen employed building a great powder magazine, and

  1425
  he wrote when he went back the following lines—
  "Behold the proof of Irish sense,
  Here Irish wit is seen,
  When nothing's left that's worth defence
  They build a magazine."
  We have been told that Irish prosperity will revive if only a tax is put upon food, and that Irish industries will spring up again if only a tariff is put upon foreign imported articles, but we are somewhat sceptical about that in Ireland. A far more important question in Ireland is that of transit. Irish industries are strangled and destroyed by the expense of transit and the absence of facilities for transit. Transit in Ireland costs from 30 to 35 per cent. more than in Scotland and England. When the people of Ireland talked of protection they have in their minds protection against England. It is not Germany or any foreign nation but England which is the great dumper in Ireland. For such reasons public opinion in Ireland to-day is apathetic and unformed upon the situation which has arisen. For these reasons my colleagues and I refuse to commit ourselves, at this stage at any rate, upon one side or the other of this controversy. We prefer to hold ourselves in reserve and to await developments. I put this to the House of Commons. What a strange result it would be of the British refusal of Home Rule if the ultimate decision of this vast question should be dominated by the votes of a body of men who are in this House, but not of it, and who, in casting their votes, will refuse to think Imperially, but will be actuated by the sole consideration which course will conduce most speedily to the freedom and happiness of Ireland? There is one consideration which relieves me of any difficulty as to how I should vote on this occasion. The Amendment is, above all, a vote of want of confidence in the Government, and as that alone I regard it. The Irish Party has no confidence in the Government. Not only has the Government recently betrayed its solemn pledges to Ireland on the question of University education, but it has opposed an absolute non possumus to Ireland's claim for self-government. I say that no English Government which denies Ireland's claim for self-government can
  1426
  possess the confidence of the Irish Nationalists in the House. Upon this broad ground, and reserving full freedom of action in future developments in this fiscal controversy, my friends and I will vote to-night in favour of a Motion of want of confidence in the Government.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: We are now coming close to the conclusion of a debate of which I will say that it has probably been more interesting and certainly more remarkable in its circumstances than any debate which any one present can have listened to on a subject of the greatest, of vital and pressing, importance to the interests of the country—importance so vital and so pressing that it was necessary for my right hon. friend to move at the earliest possible moment of the session the Amendment to the Address which we have been discussing. It is often said and urged in the Press and elsewhere that this debate ought not to have been raised in the-absence of the Prime Minister, and I think it well, as that contention goes deeper than may appear at first sight, at once to dispose of that objection. I need hardly repeat what I have already said from this place—how deeply we regret the right hon. Gentleman's absence and how cordially we hope that we may soon see him again among us all in his usual vigour and strength. But if we come to estimate the loss which his absence has inflicted on the House and on different parts of the House I am not sure that we of the Opposition have not suffered more than the Party or Parties opposite. It appears as if some persons have been learning rather too quickly their lesson, and have begun to think Imperially in the more evil domestic sense of the word Imperially. We live in this old country of ours—as yet at all events we live—under a constitutional system and not under an Imperial system. The Prime Minister of this country is, after all, as his name implies, a Minister; he is not the Chancellor of the British Empire, or even of these islands. He has colleagues who know his mind, who have assisted in framing their common policy, who share his responsibility. Am I to be told that no one of them is equal to the task of expounding what that policy is? Why, the theory will not stand for a

  1427
  moment. This Legislature is composed of two Houses, and in the House of Lords it has recently been the late President of the Council—it is now the Foreign Secretary—who speaks the mind of the Prime Minister and his Government, and ex-pounds not only to that House but to the country and to all of us their policy. They find no difficulty in discharging that duty, whether on some intricate and critical question of foreign policy or as to some minor detail in an unimportant Bill. Further than that, down to a year and a half ago the great statesman who was Prime Minister of the country was not a member of this House, and the duty of being his mouthpiece was most perfectly discharged by the right hon. Gentleman who is now at the head of the Government.
  The idea that the Government, when the Prime Minister is absent, are smitten with a sort of aphasia and are not able to speak for themselves is absurd. But there is more than this, Sir. This subject has been for months before the country, absorbing its interest almost to the exclusion of everything else. We have all of us been reading and thinking and talking about it until we are hardly able to think and read and talk of anything else. Nay, more. For the instruction of the Government, so we are, told, an inquiry was directed, and the result of that has been published. There is no doubt or ambiguity whatever as to the attitude and opinion of the Opposition. There is almost as little doubt as to the purpose of that policy which I think, to avoid circumlocution. I may call the Birmingham policy. I suppose I may use that phrase without giving offence to other places, for Sleaford and Sheffield follow cheerfully in Birmingham's train. Besides that, the right hon. Gentleman has surrounded himself with a specially chosen Cabinet. He has put away from among them the unclean thing, and the unclean thing is now sitting below the gangway. This modern Gideon, like his great prototype, has chosen to serve with him those only who lap with their tongue, though I should not be candid if I did not say that some of them seem to me sometimes to overlap with their tongue. With all the time they have had for becoming familiar with their own policy, and having been selected for their
  1428
  solidity and fidelity, it is inconceivable that any one can say that they are dependent on the Prime Minister to tell us what their policy is. But how absurd it would have been if on this plea of the illness of the Prime Minister or any other, we had been content to remain silent 'and inert and to abdicate cur functions. We were shut out from the discharge of those functions last summer by the tactics of the Government. We must not allow ourselves to be any longer silent. We must take our part in this House in pronouncing judgment on the matter before the country, and we must not leave it altogether to the electors. We are constantly being reminded that, after all, we are not the only jury called upon to give a decision in this matter. Another discussion, debate, and decision is proceeding sporadically and intermittently through the country. I referred on the opening night of the session to the extraordinary series of by-elections which has taken place: but during the last few days there has been given the most striking, significant, and reverberating decision of them all in a district peculiarly favourable to the Government, with political traditions and personal attachments all in their favour, in a constituency of well-to-do residents and of industries that have been sorely pressed by foreign competition. Where can you find any place in the kingdom where the Government were more likely to get their own way? am only surprised, and I say so openly, that men who have the ordinary feeling and consideration for their own dignity and self-respect can remain disregardful of such a result. We have known a great Government, a powerful Government with a large majority, which, on the occurrence of a conspicuous proof that there was a revulsion of feeling against them in the country, did not hesitate to put their fare to the test, and win or lose it all. Of course, there are various Governments with varying standards of conduct. What I want to know is—Is there an official policy capable of being reduced to practice and of being expressed in intelligible English? If there is, why do not they produce it? They say it is for the country and not for Parliament or this House to have this policy explained to them. When the country has been consulted and

  1429
  given its mandate—then, and not until then, the information will be given. This much we have gathered from the debate.
  Sir, the situation has no parallel. According to the chief Whip of the Government, there will be no general election this year or next. The Leaders of the Party find the trade of the country in such a position that they have decided that it is necessary to "reverse, annul, and delete" the fundamental canons of free trade. The Prime Minister has said so. The Minister who has been for eight years at the Colonial Office, and who, in the unanimous opinion of his colleagues, is the greatest Imperial figure of this or any age, has gone into the wilderness in order to avert, if he can the dissolution of the Empire. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, not unconnected with him, bids us beware lest the history of the loss of the American colonies is repeated; and all these signs and portents and convulsions which have startled and alarmed the country we are now asked to believe involve nothing more than the assertion of a high-sounding but nonsensical proposition about the resumption of freedom of negotiations. Was there ever such an anticlimax in our political history? If the Prime Minister on 3rd October was able to tell the Duke of Devonshire, as he did tell him, that he saw no difficulty in carrying out the policy by the help of his newly-constructed Government, what has happened since then? To be in possession of a policy which must not be disclosed, which must not be put in operation, while circumstances are clamouring for action, seems to imply that Ministers have only a half-belief in their own policy or else they dread that its reception would not be favourable. Otherwise, why should not some beginning at least have been made before the distant date of the general election—some beginning at least in the work of repairing the alleged desolating ravages of sixty years of free trade? Everything is in favour of the Government. They have a policy which they say they are agreed upon and which they understand themselves. The whole Party is said to be in absolute harmony, which must, of course, be quite true. They have a precedent in their own Sugar
  1430
  Convention, which not only retaliated by the imposition of countervailing duties but by the prohibition of the entrance to our ports of the commodity involved. They have a session with very little work to be done. And yet, according to the President of the Board of Trade and his colleagues, they are going to do nothing, but to wait for a mandate at the next general election. The only impatient person that I have discovered is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol. He, for one, evidently only half believes in this doctrine of retaliation, but with all the fevered and anxious zeal of the half-converted he wishes at once to rush into action. He is impatient of these dilatory pleas. Some Continent d nations, he says, are engaged in framing tarifs de combat There is the opportunity. Why not try your persuasive methods at once? Never mind the mandate, says the right hon. Gentleman. I do not know whether I am right in my suspicion, but it looks to me as if the right hon. Gentleman was anxious that if they are to flourish their weapon in the face of their rivals and neighbours it had better be done before the weapon is loaded, lest the kick of their pistol be more than they can stand. This policy of freedom of negotiation has been dealt with very gingerly as if it were some poisonous draught, and net what it is represented to be, the dearly purchased elixir of Party harmony and fiscal regeneration. Is it uncharitable to suggest that the official policy is, after all, not entirely believed in by any section of those who have adopted it, and that it has in fact been adopted, not to please either the free-traders or the protectionists, for both dislike it, and not in the interest of trade, but as a formula devised to keep in a Conservative Ministry? If this is not the case, why is it that free-traders opposite cannot whole-heartedly support it, and why do protectionists and preferentialists, which is the same thing, show no enthusiasm for it, and in fact pour contempt upon it as a final arrangement, and only tolerate it as a halfway house, or the sign board of a halfway house, on the high road to protection?
  Our efforts have been directed, not with much success, to discover the

  1431
  nature of this policy, what it covers, how far it goes, and whether it includes more than it seems to include, whether it will stand on its own legs, whether it is a practical policy economically and constitutionally defensible. Speeches of members of the Government, Cabinet Ministers and others, have not, I am sorry to say, helped us much; but a most remarkable fact in the debate is this—that in this great financial discussion from first to last not a word has come to us from the Minister of Finance. Was ever such a thing seen before? It is almost farcical; it is a slight to the House and the country.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EX-CHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, Worcestershire, E.): If the right hon. Gentleman knew the facts I do not think he would make that statement. For private reasons it was not open to me to take part in the early days of the debate, and at the request of my right hon. friend who is leading the House I had arranged to speak on Friday. I did not do so because we received a message from the other side to the effect that, owing to the number of Members who wished to take part in the debate, no representative of the Front Bench opposite would speak on Friday, and, as I understood, they hoped no representative of this Bench would speak. In any case, it is not fair to say I was slighting the House because in the circumstances I had not taken part in the debate.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say that I was not imputing any slight to him personally. I meant the Government, who arrange the debate. I would also point out to the right hon. Gentleman that if anyone had known he was desirous of speaking, any self-denying ordinance on Friday, such as he speaks of, would have been dropped at once, and that there have been other opportunities—today for instance. [HON. MEMBERS: Now!] I adhere to what I said—I will venture to say there is no instance of a fiscal, financial discussion of such vital importance having been carried on in the House and the Minister of Finance not taking his part in it. The right hon. Gentleman, to whom, I assure him, we all mean well
  1432
  and wish well, really must be aware of the fact that he is himself in a somewhat delicate position. It is not as if he was a Finance Minister who had been established in his office, and whose benign, serene tranquillity had been suddenly broken into by this troublesome question of tariff reform; not at all—the volcano was in full operation before the right hon. Gentleman was appointed. He was appointed when the policy of the Government was determined upon in order to carry out that policy. If I may adopt a barbarous expression it has been the custom to introduce in other debates, he was an ad hoc Minister, and therefore there was a peculiar obligation upon him to take part in the discussion. I am not going to analyse the speeches of other Ministers who have spoken; their vagueness, inconsistency, and variety will be remembered without quotation. They have obviously been angling day after day for the support of their followers. If a gaudy fly did not provoke a rise from a particular trout whom they wished to catch, although it was acceptable to others whom they could catch any day, then the next Minister would put on a fly of a more sober colour, and so on. These performances went on under our eyes. "We are prepared to fight for free trade," said the President of the Board of Trade. No other Minister said that, and it was pretty clear that no other Minister even thought it; and even the President of the Board of Trade, while saying that the policy of the Government was not protection, yet used all the protectionist arguments, and declared his own personal adhesion to the policy of preference and taxed food. Every other Minister who spoke in this Ministry which is "prepared to fight for free trade," either in open words or by implication, sympathized with the Birmingham policy. The Secretary of State for the Colonies, speaking at Leamington on 26th January, said—
  "The result of the deliberations which he had imperfectly placed before them was that there must be a revision of our fiscal system, which must recover the power of negotiation, and, having brought about such a revision, we shall sooner or later come to colonial preference."
  This is the Government which is, two or three years hence, to go to the country

  1433
  at a general election to get a mandate on the sole question of liberty of negotiation, and who will give no support, as I understand it, to those further policies which the right hon. Gentleman has pointed to as having his sympathy. Then, here is the Home Secretary, who, speaking at Swansea on 27th January, said—
  "The Government did not intend to tax raw material, and have no desire to tax food in such a way as to increase in the aggregate the cost of living to the working man. If without increasing the cost of living to the working man we could construct a satisfactory tariff by shifting the burden from one class of food to another, he did not see why it should not be done."
  The language when we hear it seems strangely familiar. Why? Because the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham put forward this idea at Glasgow, almost in these very terms, and the words seem to cover that further policy with which the Government now say they will have nothing to do. The right hon. Gentleman proceeded—
  "The Conservative and Unionist Party were unanimous as to the first part of the programme. The second part of the programrne desired by Mr. Chamberlain was difficult of realisation at once, but he felt convinced himself that the-country would give in the first instance the mandate which was asked for."
  The mandate is to be given as the first step towards the further policy; if the further policy is not intended, the words were calculated to mislead those who heard them. Again, I quote the right hon. Gentleman on an earlier occasion at Canterbury, when he exhibited an extraordinary intimacy with the mind of the Prime Minister, which really disposes of the whole question of the possibility of any one representing the Prime Minister in this House, because he said this—
  "The Prime Minister had laid down a policy which fell a little short, possibly, of the policy which some of his friends and himself would like to see adopted. The majority"—
  That is of the Party—
  "supported the Prime Minister, who on every other subject but the taxation of food"—
  that is to say, a tax on manufactures and preference—
  "was absolutely in accord with the late Colonial Secretary."
  Those are all the quotations with which I shall trouble the House, except one,
  1434
  and it is from a speech delivered at Dover by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, where he said:—
  "Mr. Chamberlain had laid down a high com-mission"—
  Not the Tariff Commission—
  "in order that he might more freely reconnoitre the route whence he thought the best and surest way towards the closer unity of the Empire. Mr. Chamberlain said he did not wish to commit the main body of the Unionist army to that route until he had explored it."
  The House will see that here we have the same thing. We have the declaration made in this House that the Government are not prepared to go one inch beyond negotiation or retaliation, but in reality their eye all the time is upon further progress upon the line of route towards protection So that, even if the Home Secretary were to come forward with the tongue of an angel or with some pontifical rescript and preach free trade, he could not obliterate the words of his colleagues or exorcise the tone of pure protection which has been sounded in the declarations of the Government in this critical debate, and which has pervaded their electoral action in the country. That is the impression left by the debate upon the House and the country. If was inevitable. Why? Because retaliation on the lines and in the interest of free trade—the sort of retaliation which has been indicated—is both economically and constitutionally impossible in this country. Take the economic view first. A tariff country may take up with reciprocity as a means of advance towards free trade, because it has duties on hand which it can modify or abandon to suit its purpose, and conceivably in such a case something may be done against hostile tariffs. But a free-trade country cannot remain free-trade if it declares war on tariffs and tries to check dumping by duties and prohibitions. It was said by the President of the Local Government Board that when other countries knew that the Government was authorised to use retaliatory powers, the effect would be almost as great as if those powers were actually exercised. But if I may use a word which I dislike—though not so much as I dislike the thing it stands for—that would be bluffing. And how kind and considerate the right

  1435
  hon. Gentleman has been to all rivals in informing them of the nature of his game. Tariff attacks, said the Prime Minister at Sheffield, must be met by tariff replies. If once these tariffs are applied, human nature being what it is, they will remain in force and become the centre of attraction for fresh protection. It was by this line of reasoning that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham arrived at Glasgow at his 10 per cent on manufactured goods. He foresaw the future of this weapon of negotiation; and knowing that tariffs once applied would stick, and be followed by other tariffs, he cut the knot boldly and declared for a general tariff on manufacture.
  The case could not be put more clearly than by the hon. Member for the Partick division. He speaks with no small authority, for if he stands not upon the throne he is near it, and he says—
  "Once accept the principle of using tariffs for other purposes than revenue only, and a great many other things must follow. The country would be asked for a full and deliberate mandate to use the tariff for political purposes, to obtain employment, and a higher class of employment for the people, to draw the parts of the Empire closer together. This undoubtedly means preference, a duty on manufactures, a general tariff, and a tax on food."
  It is no good saying "That is not the kind of retaliation we have in our minds." These things are governed by laws, not by declarations, and if in a free-trade country you begin using tariffs for purposes other than revenue, where can you stop? The acceptance of protection becomes a question only of time and degree. Thus retaliation is fatal to free trade. But it is also fatal to constitutional rule and procedure. Why? You have only to bear in mind the root distinction between a free-trade country and a tariff country, as parties to commercial negotiations, to see it at once, and to understand why the Government will not tell us, in spite of all our questions, what share Parliament is to have in the imposition and the removal of the contemplated tariffs. The distinction is this. A tariff country has only to adjust duties already sanctioned by the Legislature. I ask the attention of the House to this argument. In a tariff country they deal with
  1436
  a tariff already sanctioned by the Legislature, whereas in our case the negotiator, be he Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State, or President of a Department, must of necessity impose duties, whether it be done by Order in Council or otherwise, and the essence of the transaction is that you will have tariffs imposed by Executive action. This House cannot negotiate a treaty of commerce. The part of Parliament would therefore be limited to giving a general assent to the Executive to put on what duties it pleased. That is what it comes to, and there is no other way of it. This is a power which neither this House nor the country, please heaven, will ever grant. The Chief Secretary to-day used a phrase that I think was well calculated to startle us. He said there was to be no departure in their policy from the doctrine of free trade, the only departure would be from the "routine of Budget-making.'" In other words, it would mean the abolition of the immemorial control of this House over the taxation and the finance of the nation. What is Budget-making? It is the imposition or the removal of taxation—
  MR. WYNDHAM: I am very sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but if he quotes one phrase from my speech he must quote another—subject to the effective control of Parliament, or, rather, of this House, over the financial policy of the country.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: A perfectly meaningless qualification ["Oh"] because there would be required a general power given by Act of Parliament to the Executive, the consent of the House of Lords would then be necessary to alter that, and the House would deliberately have parted with its freedom of action in this most vital matter. I conceive that this constitutional effect of this proposal far exceeds in importance the fiscal effect. The right hon. gentleman and his colleagues, if they wish now to negotiate for better terms with any country, can negotiate as much as they like, imposing the condition, as was done with your Sugar Convention, that the assent of Parliament

  1437
  must be obtained. What the right hon. Gentleman points to is a totally different matter; it is the granting to the Executive of a standing power to do as they like in the matter of taxation. ["No."] Yes, and that is such an infringement of the rights of Parliament and the proper constitutional methods followed in this country that I think it deserves to be pointed out in order that the House and country may see in what direction they are being led. Did the Government not know they would be cutting into the fibres of the Constitution by such a principle? If so, what are we to think? If they did know it, and yet went on, still more what are we to think?
  I have addressed my observations almost entirely to this question of retaliation, because that is the question before the House. It is the Government policy which we have been desiring to get at, to obtain information about.
  MR.WYNDHAM: Hear, hear!
  SIR H. CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: I cannot say that either from the right hon. Gentleman who cheers or from any other have we received more than ambiguous and general phrases; but still we know enough from the speeches that have teen made, and the indications therein, the tendency and the mind of the Government and of its members, to be sure that the acceptance of that policy would lead straight, and without long delay, to the doctrines and practice of the Birmingham school; in other words, to full-fledged and unblushing protection. On that ground we are opposed, on this side of the House, root and branch to the whole policy. There must be many on the other side of the House who share that view. We have seen with admiration and respect the courageous action of members of the Party opposite who have sacrificed old associations, old claims upon their affection, and sacrificed to some extent, I dare say, the friendship of their friends in order to adhere to what they believe to be fiscal rectitude and sound policy. They have followed, no doubt at a great interval, the noble example set by the greatest leader their Party ever had. Sir Robert Peel, who
  1438
  made similar sacrifices in his time. I, of course, have no right, no claim, or wish to speak for those hon. and right hon. Gentlemen. As for those with whom I have the honour of acting, I can only repeat that we adhere to the old doctrines on this subject, and that we shall give to any departure from them, whether it be a large departure or a small departure leading to the larger one, the strongest opposition.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS, Kent, St. Augustine's): Mr. Speaker, I cannot but express my regret, although I think it was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Fife who said we had had enough expressions of regret at the absence of my right hon. friend the Prime Minister. I regret it not only on account of his illness, which is a regret, common to both sides of the House, but because it places me in the somewhat difficult position of having to wind up this debate. I trust that in these circumstances I can count on the kind indulgence of the House. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has addressed a few words of congratulation and support to certain hon. friends of mine who at the present moment are sitting below the gangway. He has suggested that through the action they have taken there may be some loss of friendship. May I assure them that, so far as I am concerned, I shall never forget the years we have served together, and that, on whichever side of the House we may sit, I hope there will be a continuance of the same friendly relations which have existed for so many years past? The right hon. Gentleman, and, in fact, nearly every speaker who has taken part in this debate, has hurled against the Government the charge that we are in favour of protection. We are not in favour of protection. We have not advocated it, and we do not intend to advocate it.
  LORD HUGH CECIL: It is being advocated in South Birmingham.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I will not give way to the noble Lord. The noble

  1439
  Lord has interrupted regularly throughout this debate.
  LORD HUGH CECILmade an interruption which was not heard in the gallery.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: The noble Lord says that protection has been advocated in Birmingham.
  LORD HUGH CECIL: Yes, in South Birmingham, by the Government candidate.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I will deal with that subject, if the noble Lord will allow me, a little later on in my speech, lam very anxious to say something about Government candidates and Government supporters if he will kindly bear with me for a few moments; and I hope he will not be disappointed. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has asked us whether we are going to fight the battle of free trade. We are going to fight the battle of freer trade. We are anxious to see a reduction in those hostile tariffs which have been so inimical to the trade and commerce of this country. We have been denounced because, in the absence of the Prime Minister, there was no one who could state the policy of the Government, and it has been said that in his absence the House was entirely gnorant of what that policy was. I venture to think that those who listened to the speech of my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade on Monday last, cannot but think that he worthily filled the position which would have been taken by his right hon. relative if he had been well enough to be in the House and to discharge the duty of explaining our policy. He announced the policy which my right hon. friend the Prime Minister put before the country at Sheffield. That is the policy of the Government, and that is the policy of every member on this Bench. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has another complaint. He has told us that the Government intended to pursue this policy and to bring about an alteration of our fiscal system by Executive action and without taking the House of Commons into consultation. It is not a part of the Government's policy to withdraw in any
  1440
  way from this House any control which it has over the fiscal or financial arrangements of the country. I should like to state again, to my hon. friends especially, what is the policy, as I define it, laid down by the Prime Minister. I will state it in the fewest and clearest words that I can use. The principles of the policy are—that the Government, when conducting negotiations with foreign countries, should have the power, when necessary, to threaten retaliation, and when the threat is insufficient that they should have power to carry it out. The Government have no intention of taxing raw material, and their policy does not include the taxation of food. Neither do the Government propose the imposition of any taxation for the purpose of fostering a home industry which is subjected only to natural and legitimate competition. I think there was some misunderstanding with regard to a remark made by my right hon. friend the Secretary for the Colonies, which has led some of my hon. friends to think that, when a retaliatory duty is put on, the Government's intention is to keep it on for all time. Of course, if a retaliatory duty has been put on to secure a particular object, and that result has been achieved by means of it, naturally the duty would come off.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: And if the object is not secured?
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: If it is not secured it would be kept on. Objection has been taken in the course of the debate with regard to the question of colonial preference. Well, the question of colonial preference does not come within the policy of His Majesty's Government, and that was made perfectly clear by the statement of my right hon. friend the Prime Minister in his speech at Sheffield. That statement was confirmed by my right hon. friend in a further speech which he made at Bristol. He then said that no colonial preference which involved a tax upon food would be included in the policy which he put forward at Sheffield. My right hon. friend said at Sheffield—
  "I am speaking here as one who is bound to give advice to a great Party

  1441
  on the policy that they should regard as their official policy, and, as the best result of my reflection, I am bound to ask them to consider that a tax upon food in the present state of public opinion is not within the limits of practical politics."
  Some hon. Gentlemen seem to think that we are going to carry out this policy without consulting the people of this country. We have distinctly stated that this policy is not to come into operation during this Parliament, and that it is not to come into operation until there has been a distinct opinion given in its favour by the electorate of the country—that is, the policy of retaliation; I have already pointed out that preference is not a part of the Government policy at all.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Do the Government oppose it?
  MR. AKERS-DOCGLAS: Certainly the Government will be bound to oppose it in keeping their pledge, and until the electorate have pronounced in its favour. We should have to have the distinct opinion of the people of the country that that policy should be adopted.
  MR. JOHN MOELEY: Have you no opinion of your own?
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I have a very strong opinion myself that it should not come into operation until those conditions are fulfilled. With regard to the policy of retaliation, some of my hon. friends seem to think that it is a new policy which has recently been adopted by the Conservative Party. My recollection goes back to 1880, when the Prime Minister said in this House that he desired to see a policy of retaliation adopted. In 1882, my right hon. friend the Member for Croydon put forward a Resolution in favour of an inquiry into the fiscal system of the country, and in the speech which he made on that occasion, he distinctly advocated retaliation and said he saw no reason at all why retaliation was in any way a departure from free-trade doctrine. In 1885, Lord Salisbury advised the country that further weapons were necessary in order to deal with hostile tariffs which were in
  1442
  an unfriendly spirit imposed on the goods of this country. Speaking again in 1902, at Hastings, the noble Lord again advocated that policy. It is, therefore, no new policy; it is no new departure, and my right hon. friend will be making no new departure in Conservative policy in adopting a policy of retaliation. Then, Sir, the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich raised some question with regard to the treatment of Government Members and candidates. May I say a word or two as to the policy adopted by the Party to its candidates and to Members, and I think the noble Lord will do me this favour to admit that I am able to speak with some authority? I have been associated with Conservative organisations for as long a time, I think, as any Member of this House, probably with the exception of my hon. friends the Members for Dartford and Cambridge University, and I can say this, that we have never made economic questions a test of Party loyalty. It has been recognised that in the Conservative Party differences of opinion might exist on this particular question. It has been recognised in he course of the debate that men holding very different opinions on this question might be in the same Cabinet. In fact, I remember that my right hon. friend the Member for Thanet sat in the same Government with so strong a free-trader as Sir Stafford Northcote, and again there sat in the same Cabinet my right hon. friend the Member for Sleaford and my right hon. friend the Member for West Bristol. The question or the doctrine rather of Cabinet responsibility is in no wise altered by recent proceedings. The responsibility of the Cabinet affects the action of the Cabinet, but I have never heard it laid down that the Members composing the Cabinet were compelled to Speak with one voice upon questions not included in the policy of the Cabinet or under their consideration, nor have I ever heard it said that it would be possible to take that course. You have the case of coalition Governments. How-could they be formed if Members were precluded from holding different views. And so I go on with regard to the question of Party management now. It has been the invariable rule of the Conservative Party to give support to the central

  1443
  authority and to the candidate who is prepared to support the general policy of the Party as laid down by the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Party, and providing he has the support of the local associations. We have never forced a candidate on the local associations, and we have never refused support to their adopted candidate. The noble Lord wanted to know whether an hon. Member supporting the Sheffield policy and an hon. Member supporting a more advanced policy would receive the same support from the Conservative Association. I should say certainly, as long as they receive the support of their local associations; and my hon. friend the Secretary to the Treasury has observed that he would certainly make no difficulty with regard to the candidates who are standing now. The condition must be that they are supported by their local associations and that they necessarily support the policy of the Government. How else would hon. Members have it?
  LORD HUGH CECIL: If the Government really want to fight for free trade, that is not the way to do it.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I am perfectly prepared to argue this point, though a domestic incident of this sort is one which should be discussed at a Party meeting rather than in the House of Commons. I think I am right in saying that this is a subject which has been not only pressed upon us by hon. Members below the gangway but by an authority like the hon. Member for South Aberdeen.
  May I now return to the Amendment? Apart from being a vote of censure, it would not be very difficult, if the Amendment were dissected, to find reasons for supporting it on this side of the House. The first part of this Amendment says—
  "But it is our duty, however, humbly to represent to Your Majesty that our effective deliberation on the financial service of the year is impaired by conflicting declarations from Your Majesty's Ministers."
  I do not think the preamble of the Amendment has any real effect. I am quite sure that hon. Members can perfectly well
  1444
  discuss the Estimates for the present year, especially as the subject which we have been discussing for six days cannot possibly form a part of the subject of discussion. In other words, the fiscal policy is no portion of the year's Estimates, and Gentlemen interested in Supply will find no difficulty at all in exercising their powers of ample criticism. I am perfectly certain that the hon. Member for King's Lynn will be able to fully discuss the Estimates, and that the hon. Member for Mid Lanark will also be able to criticise them. The chief point now under consideration is contained in the following words of the Amendment—
  "We respectfully submit to Your Majesty the judgment of this House that the removal of protective duties has for more than half a century actively conduced to the vast extension of the trade and commerce of the realm and to the welfare of its population; and this House believes that, while the needs of social improvement are still manifold and urgent, any return to protective duties, more particularly when imposed on the food of the people, would be deeply injurious to our national strength, contentment, and well-being."
  That is not a proposition which in the ordinary way any one on this side of the House would be inclined to dispute. But it is put down as a vote of censure, and therefore the Government are bound to resist it. The right hon. Gentleman has, with that galaxy of legal talent which surrounds him, drawn an Amendment with great success to entice the votes of certain Members on this side of the House. They must know what is the effect of a vote of censure, and I trust that they will not be led away on this occasion, but will support His Majesty's Government. I should like to tell them what would happen if this Resolution were carried. It would mean the breaking up of the Unionist Party on an imaginary issue. Do my hon. and right hon. friends wish to place on those Benches a Government which is supported, as we hear they would be, by the Nationalist vote.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: That depends.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I judge so from the speech delivered to-night by the

  1445
  hon. Member the Leader of the Irish Party. That Government would comprise men who are pledged to the policy of Home Rule, and to all the endless items of the Newcastle programme? At a moment of grave international crisis, when questions of vast gravity have occurred in the Far East, when it is essential in the interests of the Empire that there should be a Government which has shown its desire for the maintenance of the Empire's prestige in order to deal with them promptly and effectively, I would ask my hon. friends below the gangway on this side of the House —Are they going to give their verdict on this question in the absence of Prime Minister? If their loyalty to him is sincere, I appeal to them with all the force at my command not to record a judgment against him in his absence.
  SIR. J. STIRLING-MAXWELL: I crave leave to ask my
  right hon. friend one question upon a point which I did not understand clearly from his speech. I think he wished to make it clear. Is the Government opposed to the taxation of food as proposed by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham? I understand that that proposal is not part of the Government's policy, but I beg to ask whether the Government is or is not opposed to that proposal?
  SIR. LEES KNOWLES: Are the Government opposed to a duty on food or raw material?
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I have said that the Government are opposed to any duty on raw material or food.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 276; Noes, 327. (Division List. No. 2.)

  AYES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.)

  Burns, John

  Devlin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Burt, Thomas

  Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

  Allen, Charles P.

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Dilke, Rt Hon. Sir Charles

  Ambrose, Robert

  Caldwell, James

  Dobbie, Joseph

  Asher, Alexander

  Cameron, Robert

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Doogan, P. C.

  Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbt. Henry

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Duffy, William J.

  Austin, Sir John

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

  Duncan, J. Hastings

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Cawley, Frederick

  Dunn, Sir William

  Barran, Rowland Hirst

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Edwards, Frank

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Channing, Francis Allston

  Elibank, Master of

  Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

  Churchill, Winston Spencer

  Ellice, Capt E C (SAndrw's Bghs

  Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

  Beckett, Ernest William

  Cogan, Denis J.

  Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

  Bill, Richard

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Emmott, Alfred

  Black, Alexander William

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Esmonde, Sir Thomas

  Blake, Edward

  Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark)

  Evans, Sir F. H. (Maidstone)

  Boland, John

  Crean, Eugene

  Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

  Bowles, T. Gibson (King's Lynn

  Cremer, William Randal

  Eve, Harry Trelawney

  Brand, Hon. Arthur G.

  Crombie, John William

  Farquharson, Dr. Robert

  Brigg, John

  Crooks, William

  Farrell, James Patrick

  Broadhurst, Henry

  Cullinan, J.

  Fenwick, Charles

  Brown, Geo. M. (Edinburgh)

  Dalziel, James Henry

  Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

  Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

  Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

  Ffrench, Peter

  Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

  Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan

  Field, William

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Delany, William

  Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

  Burke, E. Haviland

  Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Flynn, James Christopher

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Runciman, Walter

  Foster, Sir Mich. (Lond. Univ.

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Russell, T. W.

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  M'Crae, George

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

  M'Fadden, Edward

  Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

  Freeman-Thomas, Captain F.

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Fuller, J. M. F.

  M'Kean, John

  Scott, Chas, Prestwich (Leigh)

  Furness, Sir Christopher

  M'Kenna, Reginald

  Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln)

  Gilhooly, James

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

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

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

  Shackleton, David James

  Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

  Mansfield, Horace Rendall

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  Mappin, Sir Frederick Thorpe

  Shaw, Thomas (Hawick, B.)

  Grant, Corrie

  Markham, Arthur Basil

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Greville, Hon. Ronald

  Mooney, John J.

  Sheehy, David

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

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

  Simeon, Sir Barrington

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  Morley, Rt Hn John (Montrose

  Sinclair John (Forfarshire)

  Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

  Moulton, John Fletcher

  Slack, John Bamford

  Hain, Edward

  Murnaghan, George

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, E.)

  Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

  Murphy, John

  Smith, H. C (North'mb. Tyneside

  Hamilton, Rt Hn LordG. (Midx

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  Hammond, John

  Newnes, Sir George

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Harcourt, Rt. Hn. Sir William

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydv

  Norman, Henry

  Spencer, Rt. Hn. C. R (Northants

  Harmsworth, R. Leicester

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Stevenson, Francis S.

  Harrington, Timothy

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Harwood, George

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

  Sullivan, Donal

  Hatch, Ernest Frederick Geo.

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary, M

  Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

  Hayden, John Patrick

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

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

  Tennant, Harold John

  Helme, Norval Watson

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

  Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

  Hemphill, Rt. Hn. Charles H.

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  O'Doherty, William

  Thomas, D. Alfred (Merthyr)

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

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Thomas, J. A. (Glam., Gower)

  Holland, Sir William Henry

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

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

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  O'Dowd, John

  Tillet, Louis John

  Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Tomkinson, James

  Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk.

  O'Kelly, Jas. (Roscommon, N.)

  Toulmin, George

  Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

  O'Malley, William

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  O'Mara, James

  Ure, Alexander

  Johnson, John (Gateshead)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Wallace, Robert

  Joicey, Sir James

  O'Shee, James John

  Walton, J. Lawson (Leeds, S.)

  Jones, D. Brynmor (Swansea)

  Palmer, Sir Chas. M. (Durham)

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

  Partington, Oswald

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Jordan, Jeremiah

  Paulton, James Mellor

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

  Joyce, Michael

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  Pemberton, John S. G.

  Weir, James Galloway

  Kemp, Lieut.-Colonel George

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  White, George (Norfolk)

  Kilbride, Denis

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  White, Luke (York, E. R.)

  Kitson, Sir James

  Price, Robert John

  Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

  Labouchere, Henry

  Priestley, Arthur

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Lambert, George

  Rea, Russell

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer)

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

  Reckitt, Harold James

  Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

  Langley, Batty

  Reddy, M.

  Wilson, Chas. Henry (Hull, W.)

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

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

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  Wilson, John (Durham, M

  Leese, Sir Jos. F. (Accrington)

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

  Wilson, John (Falkirk)

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Wood, James

  Leng, Sir John

  Rigg, Richard

  Woodhouse, Sir J. T (Huddersf'd

  Levy, Maurice

  Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson

  Young, Samuel

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

  Yoxall, James Henry

  Lloyd-George, David

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

  Logan, John William

  Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  Lough, Thomas

  Robson, William Snowdon

  Mr. Herbert Gladstone and

  Lundon, W.

  Roche, John

  Mr. William M'Arthur.

  MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Rose, Charles Day

  NOES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Allhusen, Augustus Hry. Eden

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. Hugh O.

  Aird, Sir John

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Arrol, Sir William

  1448

  1449

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

  Hoult, Joseph

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline Fitz Roy

  Digby, John K. D. Wingfield-

  Howard, J. (Kent, Faversham

  Bailey, James (Walworth)

  Dimsdale, Rt. Hn. Sir Jos. C.

  Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Hozier, Hn. James Henry Cecil

  Baird, John George Alexander

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir F. Dixon

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Balcarres, Lord

  Dorington, Rt. Hn. Sir John E.

  Hunt, Rowland

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Doughty, George

  Hutton, John (Yorks., N. R.)

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Jameson, Major J. Eustace

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

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred

  Barabury, Sir Frederick George

  Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

  Banes, Major George Edward

  Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart

  Johnstone, Hey wood (Sussex)

  Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H

  Bartley, Sire George C. T.

  Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.)

  Kenyon, Hn. Geo. T. (Denbigh

  Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W (Salop

  Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Kerr, John

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Fergusson, Rt. Hn. Sir J. (Manc

  Keswick, William

  Bignold, Arthur

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Kimber, Henry

  Bigwood, James

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  King, Sir Henry Seymour

  Bill, Charles

  Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

  Knowles Sir Lees

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

  Laure, Lieut.-General

  Bond, Edward

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

  Fison, Frederick William

  Lawrence, Sir J. (Monmouth)

  Boulnois, Edmund

  FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

  Bousfield, William Robert

  Fitzroy, Hn. Edward Algernon

  Lawson, Jn. G. (Yorks., N. R.)

  Bowles, Lt,-Col. H. F (Middlesex

  Flannery, Sir Fortescue

  Lee, A. H. (Hants., Fareham)

  Brassey, Albert

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Forster, Henry William

  Legge, Col. Hon. Henoage

  Brotherton, Edward Allen

  Foster, P. S. (Warwick, S. W.)

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.

  Brown, Sir Alex. H. (Shropsh.

  Fyler, John Arthur

  Llewellyn, Evan Henry

  Brymer, William Ernest

  Galloway, William Johnson

  Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

  Bull, William James

  Gardner, Ernest

  Long, Col. Chas W. (Evesham)

  Burdett-Coutts, W.

  Garfit, William

  Long, Rt. Hn. W. (Bristol, S.)

  Butcher, John George

  Gibbs, Hon. A. G. H.

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Campbell, Rt. Hn. J. A (Glasgow

  Godson, Sir Augustus Fredk.

  Lowe, Francis William

  Campbell, J. H. M. (Dublin Univ

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

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

  Carlile, William Walter

  Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

  Lowther, Rt. Hn. James (Kent

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Gordon, Maj. E. (T'r Hamlets

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth

  Cautley, Henry Strother

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

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Cavendish, V. C. W (Derbyshire

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

  Macdona, John dimming

  Cayzer, Sir Charles William

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  MacIver, David (Liverpool)

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Graham, Henry Robert

  Maconochie, A. W.

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A (Wore

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  M'Calmont, Colonel James

  Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton

  Greene, Sir E. W (B'ryS Edm'nds

  M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire)

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Chapman, Edward

  Greene, W. Raymond-(Cambs.)

  Malcolm, Ian

  Charrington, Spencer

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Manners, Lord Cecil

  Clare, Octavius Leigh

  Gretton, John

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Groves, James Gamble

  Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

  Coates, Edward Feetham

  Gunter, Sir Robert

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

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

  Hall, Edward Marshall

  Maxwell, W. J. H. (Dumfriessh.

  Coddington, Sir William

  Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

  Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

  Coghill, Douglas Harry

  Hambro, Charles Eric

  Middlemore, Jn. Throgmortou

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Hamilton, Marq of (L'nd'nderry

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Hardy, L. (Kent, Ashford

  Milner, Rt. Hn. Sir FrederickG

  Colomb, Sir J. Charles Ready

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Milvain, Thomas

  Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'ch

  Mitchell, William (Burnley)

  Compton, Lord Alwyne

  Harris, Dr. Fredk. R. (Dulwich

  Moles Worth, Sir Lewis

  Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Haslett, Sir James Horner

  Montagu, Hn. J. Scott (Hants.

  Cox, Irwin Edward Bain bridge

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S

  Heath, Arthur Hoyward (Hanl'y

  Moore, William

  Cripps, Charles Alfred

  Heath, James (Staffords, N. W

  Morgan, D. J. (Walthamstow

  Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Morrell, George Herbert

  Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

  Helder, Augustus.

  Morrison, James. Archibald

  Cubitt, Hon. Henry

  Henderson, Sri A. (Stafford, W

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Cust, Henry John C.

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T

  Mount, William Arthur

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Hoare, Sir, Samuel

  Muntz, Sir Philip A.

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Hogg, Lindsay

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

  Davies, Sir H. D. (Chatham)

  Hope, J. F. Sheffield, Brightside.

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Dewar, Sir T. R (Tower Hamlets

  Horner, Frederick William

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath

  1450

  1451

  Myers, William Henry

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  Tuff, Charles

  Newdegate, Francis A. N.

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

  Nicholson, William Graham

  Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Valentia, Viscount

  Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

  Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. H (Sheff'd

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Walker, Col. William Hall

  Pease, Herb. Pike (Darlington)

  Samuel, Sir H. S. (Limehouse)

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir Wm. H

  Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

  Sandys, Lt.-Col. Thos. Myles

  Wanklyn, James Leslie

  Percy, Earl

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Warde, Colonel C. E.

  Pierpoint, Robert

  Saunderson, Rt. Hn. Col. Edw. J.

  Webb, Colonel William George

  Pilkington, Colonel Richard

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

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

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

  Welby, Sir Chas. G. E. (Nattas)

  Plummer, Walter R.

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

  Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Whiteley, H (Ashton und. Lyne

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Purvis, Robert

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

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Pym, C. Guy

  Spear, John Ward

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Randles, John S.

  Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwich)

  Willox, Sir John Archibald

  Rankin, Sir James

  Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

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

  Rasch Sir Frederic Carne

  Stanley, Edw. Jas. (Somerset)

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs

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

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

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

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Stock, James Henry

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Renwick, George

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart

  Richards, Henry Charles

  Stroyan, John

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Ridley, Hn. M. W. (Stalybridge)

  Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

  Wylie, Alexander

  Ridley, S. Forde (Bethnal Green

  Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

  Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Wyndham-Quin, Major W. H.

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G (Oxf dUniv

  Robinson, Brooke

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  Rolleston, Sir John F L.

  Thornton, Percy M.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

  Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

  Tollemache, Henry James

  Alexander Acland-Hood and

  Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.

  Rothschild, Hn. Lionel Walter

  Tritton, Charles Ernest

  Motion made, and Question, "That the debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. Herbert Samuel) put, and agreed to.

  Main Question again proposed.
  Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

  PUBLIC PETITIONS.
  Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed, to whom shall be referred all Petitions presented to the House, with the exception of such as relate to Private Bills; and that such Committee do classify and prepare abstracts of the same, in such form and manner as shall appear to them best suited to convey to the House all requisite information respecting their contents, and do report the same from time to time to the House; and that the reports of the Committee do set forth a the number of signatures to each Petition only in respect to those signatures to which addresses are affixed:
  1452
  —And that such Committee have power to direct the printing in extenso of such Petitions, or of such parts of Petitions, as shall appear to require it. And that such Committee have power to report their opinion and observations thereupon to the House.
  The Committee was accordingly nominated of Mr. Allsopp, Mr. Edward Barry, Sir Mancherjee Bhownaggree, Mr. Brymer, Sir Charles Dalrymple, Colonel Kenyon-Slaney, Mr. Herbert Lewis, Sir Henry Meysey-Thompson, Mr. Charles Morley, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Philipps, Mr. Tollemache, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and Mr. Henry Joseph Wilson.
  Ordered, That three be the quorum.—(Sir A. Acland-Hood)
  Adjourned at twenty-five minutes before One o'clock.

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Kettering Improvement Bill (by Order). Read a second time, and committed.
Torquay Tramways Bill. "To authorise the construction of Tramways in Torquay; and for other purposes," presented, and read the first time; to be read a second time.

PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1899.
The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS reported, that, after conferring with the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords, for the purpose of determining in which House of Parliament the respective Bills should be first considered, under The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, they had determined that the Bills contained in the following list should originate in the House of Lords:—Clyde Valley Electrical Power; Govan Burgh (Electricity); Lothians Electric Power; Young and Bell's Patents. Report to lie upon the Table.
PETITIONS.

  LICENCES (RENEWAL).
  Petitions against alteration of Law; from Brixton; Upper Norwood; West Dulwich; Prescelly; Cloughfold; Cheetham Hill; Winchester; Peniel; Halifax; Leicester; Tudhoe Colliery; Llansamlet; Clevedon; Hyfrydir; Preston; South Hackney; Cheltenham; Rhayader; Hedgerley; Darlington; Penisarwaen; Maesydref; Port Dinorwic; Bontnewyd; Maybole; Fenstanton; Seat on (two); Haslingden; Glasgow; Bristol; Emsworth; Green Moor; Kilmarnock; Port Glasgow; Newton Heath; Pontycymmer (two); Lindal; Buchlyvies; Bannockburn; Westhoughton; Salford (two); Paisley; Altrincham; Llansantfiraid; Dewsbury; Llwynmaur;
  842
  Glynceiriog; Wilsden; Cullompton Hill of Beath; Aberystwyth; Rhydlewis; Low Leighton; Pencombe; Leominster; Hammersmith; Bampton; Buckland; Crieff (two); Comrie; Derby; and Lower Broughton; to lie upon the Table.

  RATING OF GROUND RENTS AND VALUES.
  Petition from Bermondsey, for legislation; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1903–4).
  Estimate presented, of the Further Sums required to be voted for the Service of the year ending 31st March, 1904 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 44.]
  DUCHY OF CORNWALL.
  Account presented, of the Receipts and Disbursements of the Duchy of Cornwall for the year ended 31st December, 1903 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 45.]
  SUPERANNUATION ACT, 1884.
  Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated 4th February, 1904, declaring that Charles Dyer, Viewer, Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, was appointed without a Civil Service Certificate through inadvertence on the part of the Head of his Department [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  SEA FISHERIES REGULATION ACT, 1888.
  copy presented, of Order made by the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, under the provisions of the said Act, for the variation of the Order creating the Southern Sea Fisheries District [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

    Contracts for Shipment of Stores to Gibraltar.
    MR. PARTINGTON: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, having regard to the increased consignment of military and naval stores to Gibraltar since

    843
    1894, and to the fact that no tenders for transport of same have been invited since that date, he will now consider the advisability of permitting other shipping companies to tender for the contract in question.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The question has been carefully considered in consultation with the Admiralty shipping agents, and, in view of the terms of the present contract and the conditions of the Gibraltar trade, it is not considered that any advantage would be gained by inviting fresh tenders. The contract gives a regular weekly service, and has been carried out very satisfactorily.

    Re-armament of Volunteer Artillery.
    MR. SEYMOUR ORMSBY-GOBE: To ask the Secretary of State for War what steps are being taken towards there-armament of the mobile batteries of the Artillery Volunteers.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) Forty-four batteries have been armed with the 4·7-ineh gun—total 176 guns. The re-armament of the remaining eighty-one batteries with fifteen pounders has been commenced by the issue of forty-eight of these guns from reserves: and further issues will be made as these guns become available when the field artillery is re-armed.

    Revision of Belfast Post Office.
    MR. SLOAN (Belfast, S.): To ask the Postmaster-General whether he has received the reports of the two Dublin officials who recently revised the Belfast office; and, if so, whether their recommendations will be carried out.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The reports in question have been received and are under consideration.

    Removal of Paupers.
    MR. ALEXANDER CROSS: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been directed to a correspondence with the Local Government Board for Scotland in the case of a pauper named George Allsopp, a native of Hull,
    844
    who was removed at the instance of the Halifax Guardians to Glasgow in September last, the man having been sent originally under legal warrant from Glasgow to Hull in 1894; and, if so, whether he will consider the desirability of affording the Scotch authorities similar particulars and an opportunity for appeal against the removal of any poor person from England to Scotland, such as pertains both in England and Ireland in the case of poor persons proposed to be removed from Scotland.
    (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I am aware of the correspondence referred to in the Question. I will take note of the suggestion that some alteration should be made in the Law relative to removals from England to Scotland. I presume, however, that the reference in the latter part of the Question is to the rights conferred by Section 5 of The Poor Law (Scotland) Act, 1898; if so, I may point out that there would be no power of appeal under this enactment in such a case as the present if it were proposed to remove a pauper from Scotland to England. The section does not apply where a pauper is born in the country from which it is proposed to remove him, and it is alleged that this was the case in the present instance.

    Chargers for European Officers in Indian Cavalry Regiments.
    SIR SEYMOUR KING: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether any decision has yet been arrived at by the Government of India in the matter of granting to the European Officers of the Indian Cavalry similar privileges as to chargers as those enjoyed by Cavalry Officers of the British Army, which was stated by the Secretary of State in June last year† to be then engaging the attention of the Government of India; and, if not, if he will state what is the reason for the delay.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The matter is still under consideration by the Government of India, who have been recently addressed asking for an early reply.
    † See (4)Debates, exxiv., 374.

    Payment of Commutation Allowances to Retired Members of Indian Uncovenanted Services.
    SIR SEYMOUR KING: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether, in view of the fact that retired members of the Indian Uncovenanted Services who draw their pensions in the United Kingdom, under the decision of the Select Committee of this House which sat in 1890, at the rate of 1s. 9d. for the rupee, are obliged to commute on a rupee basis the proportion of their pension which is sanctioned under the regulations, thus incidentally depriving them of a part of the benefit to which they are entitled under the settlement of 1890, the Government will allow commutation allowances in these cases to be remitted home at the officially fixed rate of 1s. 9d.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The matter has not been brought before me hitherto. I will give it careful consideration.

    Army Estimates—Publication of Appendices.
    MR. BUCHANAN (Perthshire, E.): To ask the Secretary of State for War whether in the Army Estimates of the present year he will include all the appendices that are usually presented, some of which were from pressure of business omitted last year.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The reply is in the affirmative.

    Expenditure under the South African Loan Act.
    MR. BUCHANAN: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will state the amounts spent under the South African Loan Act for the various purposes enumerated in the Schedule to the Act.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) As I am not at present in possession of Returns of local expenditure on Guaranteed Loan Account up to date, I can only give approximate figures, which are as follows: I. A. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury) £1,500,000 (actual). B. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury) £2,482,700 (actual). C. (Paid to Cape and Natal, but there may have been further local
    846
    expenditure) £1,500,000 (actual). II. (Including repayment of £1,000,000 to Imperial Exchequer for rolling stock) £12,000,000 (estimate). III. A. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury) £3,000,000 (actual). B. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury)†£2,000,000 (estimate). IV. A. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury) £1,600,000 (estimate). B. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury)†£1,800,000 (estimate). C. (Repaid to Imperial Treasury) £600,000 (estimate). Total £26,482,700.

    Transvaal Labour Ordinance.
    MR. BUCHANAN: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will have placed in the Library the Transvaal Master and Servants Law, 1880, Law No. 3 of 1885, and the Peace; Preservation Ordinance, 1903, or the sections of these Acts referred to in Clause 32 of the Draft Labour Ordinance.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) Copies will be placed in the Library.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Artillery Volunteers Armament.
    MR. SEYMOUR ORMSBY-GORE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what steps are being taken towards the rearmament of the mobile batteries of the Artillery Volunteers.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER, Belfast, W.): Forty-four batteries have been armed with the 4·7 inch gun—total 176 guns. The re-armament of the remaining eighty-one batteries with fifteen pounders has been commenced by the issue of forty-eight of these guns from reserves; and further issues will be made as these guns become available when the field artillery is re-armed.

    Indian Administrative Reforms
    MR. HERBERT ROBERTS (Denbighshire, W.): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been drawn to the statement of the Viceroy in his Budget speech of 25th
    † These two amounts include a sum of £500,000, an advance repaid to the Imperial Treasury.

    847
    March, 1903, that he hoped to deal in the ensuing year with the question of the separation of judicial and executive functions; and whether he can state what decision has been arrived at upon the Memorial of 1st July. 1899, presented to the Secretary of State on the subject in August, 1899.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. BRODRICK,): I understand that the subject is still under consideration by the Government of India.

    Labour Statistics for the Transvaal Mines.
    MR. D. A. THOMAS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give separately the numbers of white men and Kaffirs employed in and about gold and coal mines respectively in the Transvaal in January, or at the last available date for which the figures are available.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): In November, the latest month for which I have complete Returns, the numbers were as follows:—Whites in gold mines 12,703, whites in coal mines 469, coloured in gold mines 65,552, coloured in coal mines 7,626, or a total, including metallurgical works, diamond mines, etc., of 13,419 white and 74,299 coloured.

    Chinese Labour for the Transvaal—Wages.
    SIR JOHN LENG: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state the rate of wages to be paid to the Chinamen proposed to be imported into the Transvaal; how this rate will compare with those paid to miners in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Nevada; and whether he can lay upon the Table any official correspondence or reports from our self-governing colonies showing the grounds of their objection to the importation of Chinese labour.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I am not aware what rate of wages will be paid. The correspondence referred to will be found in the recently published Parliamentary Paper Command 1895.

    Transvaal Imported Labour Ordinance.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, before sanction is given to the Transvaal Imported Labour Ordinance, he will secure that regulations shall be made assuring to all Chinese labourers who may be recruited for the Transvaal mines the right-to be accompanied by their wives and children if they so desire, on terms similiar to those that would apply to the labourers themselves.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have already stated that it is my intention to take precautions that all reasonable facilities shall be given for the introduction of the families of labourers, and the regulations will be framed with the object of giving effect to that intention. I am unable, however, to give the pledge which the hon. Member desires, as the preparation of the regulations will occupy a considerable time.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state what is the purport of the laws which are specified in Section 35 of the draft of the Transvaal Labour Importation Ordinance, the provisions of which would not apply to Asiatic labourers imported into the Transvaal.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The first law is one to regulate the relative rights and duties of masters, servants, and apprentices. The second law is printed in translation with an amending law at page 57 of Cd. 7911 and is the law of the late Republic as to Coolies and Asiatics. Copies of the laws to which the hon. Member refers will be placed in the Library of the House.
    MR. BUCHANAN (Perthshire, E.): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether there are any mines in the British Empire worked by indentured foreign labour under conditions similar to those proposed in the Transvaal Ordinance.
    MR. LYTTELTON: No, Sir.
    MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies will

    849
    it be legal, under Section 10 of draft Ordinance, for an importer of labour to convey, for a money consideration, his rights over imported labourers to another licensed person.
    ME. LYTTELTON: The hon. Member will see that Section 10 of the draft Ordinance is replaced by Section 11 in the amended Ordinance given in Cd. 1898 which provides adequate safeguards.
    MR. BUCHANAN: If any further Amendments are introduced into the Ordinance on the Third Reading or before that stage, will they be laid on the Table before the debate takes place here?
    MR. LYTTELTON: Certainly.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the Report, printed as Appendix I. to the Blue-book entitled Further Correspondence relating to the Affairs of the Transvaal, etc., presented to Parliament last week, which purports to be a reprint of the Report presented by the Chamber of Mines of the Witwatersrand to the ex-Colonial Secretary at Johannesburg in January, 1903, is not identical with that Report, seeing that the paragraph which expressed the objection of the Rand mining industry to white unskilled labour on account of the danger of labour unions being formed has been omitted; and, if so, will he state whether this omission is accidental or intentional; and whether he will furnish this House with a copy of the Report in the form in which it was originally presented to the then head of the Colonial Office.
    MR. LYTTELTON: No, Sir. The Report as published is identical with that forwarded by the Chamber of Mines to the Colonial Office as being the Report presented to Mr. Chamberlain. I think it possible that the hon. Member has overlooked the last paragraph on page 341 of the Blue-book to which he refers.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the paragraph omitted from this Blue-book appeared in The Times summary of the Report on 9th February last year, and
    850
    that the version of the Report which has been sent over by the Inspector of Mines: is not apparently the same as that presented to the Ex-Colonial Secretary?
    [No answer was returned.]

    Macedonian Reforms.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs have His Majesty's Government given attention to the declarations of the Bulgarian Prime Minister in the Sobranye on Saturday last, and have they now any information of the intention of Servia and Bulgaria to unite with the Macedonian insurgents in hostilities against Turkey; will His Majesty's Government now propose to the Powers signatories of the Treaty of Berlin to hold a Conference for considering the position of the Balkan provinces of Turkey, and for concerting the means of establishing therein a settled form of government.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Earl PERCY, Kensington, S.): His Majesty's Government have seen in the Press a report of General Petroff's speech in the Sobranye on Saturday last. We have no reason to suppose that either Servia or Bulgaria contemplate a deliberate violation of territorial arrangements guaranteed by international treaty. The speech referred to expresses the sincere desire of the Bulgarian Government to contribute to the carrying out of the Mursteg programme and, so far as Servia is concerned, we understand that a public announcement has recently been made of the intention of that country to follow the lead of Austria and Russia, and to support so far as lies in her power the introduction of reforms. The establishment of a settled form of Government, by the removal of administrative abuses, is the object, and will, it is hoped, be the result, of the measures now in course of adoption in Macedonia.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Has the right hon. Gentleman anything to say in regard to the last paragraph of the Question as to the calling together of a Conference?
    EARL PERCYwas understood to reply; in the negative.

    Lord Curzon's Visit to Bushire
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I bog to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs did Lord Curzon at his recent visit to Bushire, insist that the Prince Governor General of Shiraz should come off in a boat to the Viceroy's ship, and accompany him to the shore, instead of receiving him on the beach as proposed; was this demand authorised by His Majesty's Government; and is it to be regarded as a precedent in future.
    EARL PERCY: The answer to the first paragraph of the Question is in the negative. I have already informed the hon. Member that Lord Curzon's action was unfortunately rendered necessary by the inadequacy of the arrangements locally made to carry out the hospitable intentions of His Majesty the Shah. Under these circumstances no question of precedent arises.

    Central African Labourers in Transvaal Mines.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state how many of the 1,000 natives recruited last summer from the British Central Africa Protectorate for labour in the Transvaal mines have arrived at their destination, and the nature of their engagement and rate of pay.
    EARL PERCY: The number of natives who had arrived in the Transvaal at the beginning of this year was 818. The nature of their engagement and rate of pay will be found in Africa No. 2 (1903.)
    MR. WEIR: How many died.
    EARL PERCY: I cannot say exactly.

    Government of the Soudan.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether arrangements have yet been made for candidates desirous of entering the service of the Government of the Soudan to undergo some educational test, especially as regards a knowledge of Arabic.
    EARL PERCY: Under the new system now in force the selection of candidates is
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    determined by their educational qualifitions, including, if possible, the possession of a University degree. At the expiry of a year from the date of selection they are required to pass an examination in Arabic.

    Canton-Kowloon Railway.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, seeing that the British and Chinese Corporation were granted a preliminary agreement for the construction of the Canton-Kowloon Railway on the 28th March, 1898, will he state when the final agreement is expected to be concluded and the construction of the line proceeded with.
    EARL PERCY: The preliminary Agreement for the construction of the Canton-Kowloon line was signed on the 28th March, 1898. We are informed by the British and Chinese Corporation that as soon as arrangements have been made for financing the Shanghai-Nanking Railway, negotiations for the conclusion of the final agreement for the construction of the Canton-Kowloon line will be proceeded with. The matter is receiving very careful attention.

    Electricity in Mines
    MR. FENWICK: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether any steps are being taken to prepare special rules for the purpose of regulating the use of electricity in mines, in accordance with the recommendations of the Departmental Committee.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS, Kent, St. Augustine's): The Report of the Committee on the use of electricity in mines is now before me, and I am considering the best steps to take with the view of establishing special rules in accordance with its recommendations.
    MR. TENNANT: Will the Report be laid on the Table of the House?
    MR. AKERS DOUGLAS: There can be no objection to that as far as I know. I think it has been done; if not, I will consider the point.

    Christ's Hospital Site.
    MR. COHEN (Islington, E.): On behalf of the hon. Member for the City of London (Sir JOSEPH DIMSDALE) I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether, in arranging for the erection of buildings on the site of Christ's Hospital, he will, by means of lay-byes or otherwise, provide facilities for the increasing traffic of the Post Office service, so that the vehicles of the Department can be accommodated without adding to the congestion of the traffic in the neighbourhood surrounding the site.
    THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,): Yes, Sir. In planning the buildings to be erected the object indicated by the hon. Member shall be kept in view.

    Irish Railway Freights
    MR. FIELD (Dublin, St. Patrick): I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the cost of carriage of a ton of eggs to London from Denmark is 24s., from Russia 22s., and from Galway 94s.; and, if so, whether, in view of the dissatisfaction regarding the charges of Irish Railways, he will recommend the appointment of a Departmental or Viceregal Commission to inquire into and report upon the subject.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): The Department of Agriculture is inquiring into the accuracy of the fact alleged in the first part of the Question. The third annual Report of the Department which was recently presented to Parliament and will be in the hands of hon. Members in a few days, contains an interesting account of the steps taken by the Department with a view to the reduction of railway rates in cases where its intervention was sought. These steps were followed by successful results in a number of instances. The Department is at present engaged in collecting information in respect to charges for the carriage of Irish and Continental agricultural produce, and the question of the necessity for further inquiry, as suggested, can best be decided when these investigations have been completed.

    Russia Japanese War—Duties of Neutrals.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury have His Majesty's Government issued instructions to the authorities of British ports and coaling stations abroad, prescribing to them their conduct, in the event of war, towards belligerent ships of war; will such ships of war only be permitted in such ports to be supplied with so much coal as will suffice to take them to the nearest port of their own country, and no more; will they be prohibited from receiving any further supply of coal in any other British port until the expiration of three months from the date of the first supply; will their stay in such ports be restricted to twenty-four hours, except in the case of stress of weather or distress for necessary repairs; will such vessels be prohibited from bringing prizes into British ports; and will the same rules be enforced in the ports of the British self-governing Colonies. I will further ask whether, seeing that war has broken out, the Government will advise His Majesty to issue a proclamation of neutrality.
    MR. AKERS DOUGLAS: As regards the Question on the Paper I have to say that instructions will be issued to the authorities at British ports, including those in self-governing colonies. They will be similar to the instructions issued on previous occasions. My hon. friend has correctly stated their effect. In regard to the further Question, a Council will be held to-morrow, at which the proclamation of neutrality will be approved, and a special Gazette will appear to-morrow with it.

    OUT-DOOR RELIEF (FRIENDLY SOCIETIES) BILL.
    Order for Second Reading upon Friday, 25th March read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.

KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
[SEVENTH DAY.]
Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment [8th February] to Main Question [2nd February]."That

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an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as followeth:—
"Most Gracious Sovereign,—
"We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. Hardy.)
Which Amendment was—
"At the end of the Question, to add the words, But it is our duty, however, humbly to represent to Your Majesty that our effective deliberation on the financial service of the year is impaired by conflicting declarations from Your Majesty's Ministers. We respectfully submit to Your Majesty the judgment of this House that the removal of protective duties has for more than half a century actively conduced to the vast extension of the trade and commerce of the realm and to the welfare of its population; and this House believes that, while the needs of social improvement are still manifold and urgent, any return to protective duties, more particularly when imposed on the food of the people, would be deeply injurious to our national strength, contentment, and well-being."—(Mr. John Morley.)
Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid that one hole had been picked in the Resolution of his right hon. friend the Member for the Montrose Burghs by speakers on behalf of the Government. On his own side of the House hon. Members thoroughly understood the meaning of the opening words of the Amendment: "But it is our duty, however, humbly to represent to Your Majesty that our effective deliberation on the financial service of the year is impaired by conflicting declarations from Your Majesty's Ministers." Hon. gentlemen opposite, however, complained that no explanation had been given of them and ridiculed their introduction. He attached the utmost importance to them. As to the fact about the declarations being conflicting there could be no doubt that no attempt had been made by hon. Members opposite to prove otherwise. The principal spokesman on behalf of the Government had laughed at the idea that these conflicting opinions had the smallest bearing upon our deliberations
856
on the finances of the year. But what was the case? Those who sat on his side of the House were, and had always been, most strongly opposed to indirect taxation. Three years ago the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol made a statement on the subject of the relation of direct with indirect taxation. He then asserted that he might be able by a wise distribution of taxes to reach what he called a fair balance between them, and he hoped it would be maintained in the future. But last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer took off a far larger proportion of direct than of indirect war taxation, and he had in the recess pointed out to the country that we ought next to reduce the indirect taxation, which pressed most heavily on the poorer—the working classes of the community—that we ought to get rid of the war taxes on tea and sugar. What was the paning then of the introduction of the words which speakers for the Government had ridiculed? It was simply that they saw from the declarations of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer that he, and the majority of the Cabinet who agreed with him, and who agreed with the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham would not attempt the reduction of these taxes this year because they wished to keep them in hand as a future gift with which to sweeten the unpopular taxation on bread and meat to which they were favourable. The speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to which he had referred went to show that there would be no surplus in this year's Budget. He had told them there would be no reduction of military expenditure to which the Government pledged themselves last year, and that it was only to be looked forward to a year hence. What was the object of that? It surely was to prepare the country for the fact that there would be no reduction of indirect taxation. If, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman had omitted to offer the House any explanation of these opening words, it was because those who sat on the Opposition side found perfectly clear, without explanation, words which apparently hon. Members opposite declared to be incomprehensible. He had alluded to the declarations of the Government as conflicting, and had assumed that there

857
could be no doubt on that point. It had been said, however, that there had been a repudiation, or a recantation made in the, course of the debate. He confessed that the recantation was so thin that he could not see it, nor could he believe or trust in it as a policy. The President of the Board of Trade had expressed his opinions pretty freely, but were those opinions entertained by the overwhelming majority of the Cabinet? He was, clearly, still an adherent of the main point of the Birmingham programme, for he said in answer to an interruption that he would be glad to see a moderate tax on food.
The Prime Minister had gone back on that programme on one point, from which, as he understood, other members of the Cabinet had not receded. Last year he expressed his complete concurrence with the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, not only as to the necessity of preference and a tax on bread and meat, but he also agreed that the reform was urgent and of Imperial necessity, and that the means suggested by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham were the only means of securing the end in view. The word "only" was important. At Manchester, however, the Prime Minister stated that he had "changed his opinion." Then he said that while he still held to all he had said upon fiscal union, he was not sure now that it was the only direction in which closer union might be sought, and he then went on to discuss the proposals put forward by the right hon. Member for Huntingdonshire. That was a complete giving away of the situation of urgency for the taxes on bread and meat. What he was anxious to know was, whether the Government followed the Prime Minister in this very essential alteration of the programme. It was an alteration which made the whole difference between mere speculative or academic consideration of the subject such as had gone on for the last thirty or forty years, and the treatment of it as a Parliamentary and electoral question. If the Government adhered to the declaration of the Prime Minister, then the right hon. Gentleman would have succeeded—to use an American phrase—in "side-tracking" the right hon. Member for West Birmingham by shunting his express train into a siding while the Government's slow
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luggage train rumbled past. The declaration welcomed by the free-fooders in that debate was contained in the words that even if the Government obtained a mandate at the next general election they would not be entitled by it to carry out a policy of preference. But the President of the Board of Trade, after making that declaration, went on to deal with the question of urgency, and in response to an interruption he said that urgency was created when the Colonies offered us a preference at the Conference two years ago. But if this was still an Imperial policy as well as urgent, he should like to know to which portion of the Empire urgency applied. India had established, without difference of opinion, that it was totally inapplicable there. The Blue-book just issued was full of most admirable information by which the Government of India, apparently with the concurrence of the Government at home, conclusively established the utter inapplicability of the whole principle to India. It was also inapplicable to our tropical colonies. Australia had never asked for it and had never offered it, and the first thing the Australian Government did last year was to pledge itself not to make any such proposal. That pledge had been renewed since the general elections. There remained only New Zealand and Canada, for South Africa at present was out of the question, as she was importing food and likely to continue doing so for a considerable period. If the urgency was then so great as it affected those colonies, how could the Government resist the demand for a dissolution to obtain the opinion of the country?
In the course of the debate there had been some interesting exchanges of words across the gangway opposite, and he listened with great interest to these intellectual diversions. In one of them the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich, who combined, in a degree never before probably attained in Parliament, eloquence of speech with the power of making most disagreeable interruptions, remarked that they had Conservative Members opposed by Cabinet Ministers. The President of the Board of Trade, who was always much more frank in answer to interruptions than when speaking in measured language, replied that the policy

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of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was much more easy to attack than the Government policy. That was a complete explanation of the remarkable shifts of attitude on the Ministerial side which had been witnessed. The hon. Member for Oldham, who had contributed so much valuable material to the discussion on this question, interrupted the President of the Board of Trade by saying that the policy of the Prime Minister was not very important because it was not the issue before the country. To that the right hon. Gentleman replied that it was the policy before the country, although there was an organised conspiracy to represent the issue as one between free trade and protection. That he absolutely denied. It was useless to say that the policy of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham was not the issue before the country in the face of the assertions of the right hon. Member himself. The peroration of every one of the speeches delivered by the right hon. Gentleman in his campaign, since the 20th May last, put that forward as the urgent issue on which the opinion of the country would have to be taken at the next general election. How could the Government pretend it was not the issue when the programme of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was supported by the private opinion of almost every member of the Cabinet? In his speech the President of the Board of Trade placed the members of the Government in four categories. First there were the free importers. They were not very numerous, indeed, probably the Postmaster-General would stand in that class alone. Then there were those in favour of the Government policy of retaliation; thirdly, there were those who followed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, in favour of preference, including probably every member of the Government except the Postmaster-General; and lastly, there were the protectionists. Of course there were no avowed protectionists in the Government. The President of the Board of Trade defined protection and distinguished it from defence. What he himself would call protectionists must, he suppose, be described as those who advocated de-
860
fensive measures—the President of the Local Government Board, the President of the Board of Agriculture, and the Secretary to the Board of Trade. It was a new doctrine, striking at the root of Ministerial responsibility, that the Parliamentary Secretary of a Board should, in matters which were the direct concern of the Board, maintain a policy different from that of the head of his Department. Such a thing had never been known before, but it was not the least painful or ridiculous feature of the Government's present position. Usually a Secretary followed the directions of his President or resigned. There was an old Provencal saying, written on the base of a statue of Jason in a great fortress in the Mediterranean, which, translated, read—
"How happy are yon, Jason, to possess two jaws.
With one you can eat, with the other drink, without pause."
The words might be adapted to the Board of Trade at, the present moment, whose representatives in the House spoke with such different voices. Both of them supported officially, no doubt, the Government programme of retaliation, and both very probably privately supported the programme of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham for taxing meat and bread; but one came to the House and made a speech full of highly protectionist arguments which the other most expressly repudiated. That was absolutely unprecedented.
The President of the Board of Trade in his speech developed a very interesting definition of protection. He said that there, was great ambiguity in the word, and he drew a distinction between defensive duties and protection. There was not a protectionist manufacturer on the Continent who, when asked to consent to the lowering of duties on goods he was interested in, did not use the argument that because they had conscription in their country they ought to be protected against us. The Secretary to the Board of Trade sympathised with protection, while the President of the Board of Trade declared that it was not protection—it was only defence against, an unfair advantage—accorded to the foreigner. With regard to the proposal of a 10 per cent. duty, the Government spoke of it

861
as if it were a uniform duty of 10 per cent. imposed for revenue. It was nothing of the kind. The President of the Board of Trade could not have read the speeches of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham or the terms of the invitation to the Tariff Commission. The duty was to be one averaging 10 per cent., so that it might vary from nothing to 60 per cent. It was not, as the President of the Board of Trade represented, a duty for revenue purposes only; and it was the extremes and not the average that must be considered. If he had the fortune to be a member of the Commission now sitting on the subject, he would put 60 per cent. on everthing he wanted to keep out, and nothing on everything he wanted to use in the course of his employment or trade. Then the average of 10 per cent. would disappear into space. The Secretary of the Board of Trade had no concern with the revenue argument; he was thinking of our distressed industries. The President of the Board of Trade was a sort of 20th century Cobden, pursuing what he thought would be Cobden's methods were he living to-day, and meeting, he said, in the course of his struggles with a resuscitated demon who was likely to thwart his efforts. He might, in passing, observe that the two sides of the House differed as to who the demon was. The Secretary to that Board of Trade was one of the few people who believed in the value of the Canadian preference.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Everyone does.
SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid the Board of Trade did not believe in it at the time of the conference.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD or TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW,): Can the right hon. Baronet read any passage declaring against it?
SIR CHARLES DILKEreplied that both the Board of Trade and the then Colonial Secretary explained at the conference that it had been a grievous disappointment. But that was not his point to which he was coming.
MR. BONAR LAW: I said that while our rise was £4,000,000 the German rise was £1,000,000.
SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid he then asked what were the percentages, but the question was not answered. The hon. Member further said that until we got preference our trade with Canada was going down; after preference our trade continued to increase. But in the year ending 30th June, 1897, before preference, the percentage of the total imports into Canada which came from the United Kingdom was 27·58, whereas in 1902 it was only 24·95.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Is the right hon. Baronet aware that the British and Irish exports to Canada rose from £5,000.000 in 1897 to £10,000,000 in 1902?
SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid that that had nothing to do with his point. The Canadian preference, which was the only one worth considering, so evidently broke down that it was the very ground on which the right hon. Member for West Birmingham edged off preference, and in his speech at Glasgow and Greenock developed a new argument of a quid pro quo for the manufacturers of this country. His point was that the Colonies would not start new industries in competition with those of the mother country—a very old and very dangerous quid pro quo, but one which would undoubtedly have been valuable. It was that more than anything else that led to the secession of the. United States. But that suggestion had now gone. Everyone who knew the Colonies knew that it would go the day after they heard of it. He agreed with the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich in his very careful examination of the Australian and other figures, an examination which established beyond the possibility of a doubt that this question did not touch India or the Crown Colonies, but Canada alone. That examination went to show how small was the margin of trade into which we could hope to cut under an artificial system of the kind proposed. The opponents of the new policy were not fighting against hypothetical retaliation in some future Parliament, at some distant date,

863
but against a practical policy of protection put before the country with as much power as any policy had ever been put, with the complete applause, except in Lancashire, of the governing bodies of most of the Conservative constituencies. They were fighting against that policy which overshadowed the policy of the Government, and in fighting against it they were fighting against the opinions entertained by almost every individual member of the Cabinet. The Colonial Secretary in a recent speeh took a hint from the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for West Birmingham as to a new necessity for protection. He might call it a defensive rather than a protectionist policy, but it was indistinguishable from protection. Then there was the fact that a leading member of the Government had gone to a constituency to oppose and attack a Conservative Member who supported the policy of the Government as officially announced. The President of the Local Government Board contradicted the statement of the mover of the Amendment with reference to the matter, but what occurred was that the right hon. Gentleman acted as godfather or sponsor to a candidate whom he was bringing out to oppose the hon. Member for the Chippenham Division of Wiltshire on the ground that the latter had opposed the policy of the Government on education, the Army, and the fiscal question. As to education, the hon. Baronet had voted for one Amendment—a sign of independence to be commended rather than condemned.
SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDERintimated that he simply delivered a speech.
SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid that that was an even smaller offence. As to the Army, everybody opposed the Government policy; the Government themselves opposed it. They had now reversed it. Therefore, the fiscal question alone remained, and it was on that question that the hon. Baronet was opposed in his constituency, and a rival candidate brought out by a prominent member of the Cabinet. In the speech complained
864
of the President of the Local Government Board said—
"Sir Audley Neeld, as at present advised, was not in favour of taxing bread and meat… but it was not certain that at a later date he would not be in favour of the fuller and wider policy."
That was simply another case of the adoption of the "at present" of the correspondence between the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. But that "fuller and wider policy" was not the policy of the Government as avowed in this House. Moreover, the scheme constituted an unworthy appeal on different grounds to different classes of electors, for, while hopes of assistance were held out to decaying industries, the labourers were told that the candidate was against taxing bread and meat.
Then there was the new departure of the Colonial Secretary, who developed at great length his policy of protection or defence on account of the labour conditions being more favourable and more costly in this country than abroad. The right hon. Gentleman cited a number of Acts of Parliament from which he appeared to think foreign manufacturers were free. He referred to legislation affecting child labour in factories, the Coal Mines Regulations Acts, the Railway Regulation Acts, the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the Combination Act giving liberty to trades unions. What were the facts? With regard to many aspects of child labour foreign nations were in advance of this country, and there was about to be held an international conference on the subject at which he hoped His Majesty's Government would be represented, although they had not yet announced that they would be. As to the Railway Regulation Acts, the American Acts were enormously in advance of ours. Then, too, the Combination Laws in many countries were in advance of ours as now declared by the courts. But the main items were the factories and workshops legislation, workmen's compensation, and the law of truck. As a matter of fact, truck did not affect the question, but the laws affecting it were better abroad than here, and the Colonial Secretary had just sanctioned in South Africa the most appalling system of truck the world had ever seen. The House of Commons was not

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the place for a detailed examination of the small points in such legislation, but with regard to the compensation principle it was overwhelmingly and triumphantly proved by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham himself that the charge was so infinitesimal that it was utterly ridiculous for capitalists to urge that it could produce any ground whatever for protection. At that time Germany alone had only the compensation law, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was taking what he described as short and halting steps in the direction of such legislation. Since then not only had the German legislation been maintained, but France had passed a law greatly in advance of ours, and under which the benefits were double the benefits under the English law, as was proved by the insurance statistics. Then Belgium, hitherto the most backward nation in labour legislation, had passed a law in advance even of the French. As to factory legislation, in many points foreign countries were in advance of this country, notably in respect of dangerous trades. Generally speaking, foreign countries had drawn closer to us in those points in which previously they were behind, and in many points they were now considerably ahead. The Radicals thought the prosperity argument had been pushed too far, for it was one which struck at the very root of Radicalism, of which the foundation lay in the sufferings of the people. They knew of those sufferings which stood in need of drastic remedies. They were convinced that the remedies now proposed were foolish remedies which would increase and intensify those sufferings.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Oh, no.
SIR CHARLES DILKE: The first to turn the prosperity argument against them would be the hon. and gallant M ember for Sheffield. They could not urge too strongly that the prosperity argument was a dangerous one which would be turned against them. All free traders believed that the suggested remedies would be ten times worse in a period of depression, and they asked the Government to take the opinion of the country before doing anything in this direction. The Government ought to come out into
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the open and declare their policy. They ought to take the opinion of the country, and when a dissolution came those who opposed any alteration would appeal with confidence to the common sense of the democracy.
MR. RITCHIE: When my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade rose to reply to the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment he characterised the Amendment as an expedient, and he applied to it an adjective which he afterwards withdrew. No doubt it was an expedient, and I am bound to say I thought at the time that it was a bad expedient from the right hon. Gentleman's point of view; that is to say, if his desire was, as my right hon. friend seemed to suppose it was, to obtain votes from this side of the House, because it is clear that there are Members on this side of the House who may be in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman's views, and yet are not disposed to support an Amendment of this kind, because it is, and always will be, considered as a Motion of want of confidence in the Government. Therefore, from the right hon. Gentleman's point of view I think it was a bad expedient; but at the same time I quite sympathise with him in his desire to obtain a speedy discussion on one of the most momentous and important subjects it is possible to bring before the House of Commons. I am one of those who regret, and regret very greatly, that the House of Commons was not afforded an adequate opportunity last session of discussing the question. I may say with regard to my feelings on the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman that I agree with every word of it. There is nothing in it from which I dissent. I agree with all the propositions he puts in it. I imagine that the preamble to the Resolution is an insignificant part of the Resolution, and in all probablity did not at one time form a portion of the Resolution. At any rate, the right hon. Gentleman put it in as a preamble. Well, Sir, I had to consider what should be my attitude towards an Amendment of this kind with which I entirely agree. I had to consider whether or not I should take the step of voting for it even if it did imply a vote of want of confidence; and I came to the conclusion that, before coming to a

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definite resolution, it would be necessary, and indeed, only proper, that I should hear from the Government Bench a declaration of their policy with regard to this matter; and I say at once that I listened with great satisfaction to the bulk of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. It seemed to me that it was the speech of a free-trader, and I believe, for myself, that the right hon. Gentleman is a free-trader. He has no doubt got some unhappy surroundings, but I believe that he is at heart a free trader. I was not surprised, therefore, to hear from him what was undoubtedly a free-trade speech. But his speech caused some consternation on some of the Benches near where I am sitting; and because of the consternation that it caused, and because of the speech itself, I felt after it was delivered that it might be possible for me to support the right hon. Gentleman. I have said that the speech caused consternation, and because of that consternation I imagine it was thought politic that some other member of the Government who was free from the charge of being a free trader, and against whom no such charge could be made, should rise and endeavour to do away with the consternation which was caused by the speech of my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade. And I confess that, after having listened to that other speech, I felt myself to be quite at sea as to what the policy of the Government really was. Not that it is remarkable that in dealing with this question the Government should have two voices. On the contrary, during all the time that this question has been discussed in the country, they have spoken, not only with two, but with several voices. But I confess I was somewhat astonished that the Secretary to the Board of Trade should get up and make a speech which was, as I am sure everybody who heard it must consider it, a protectionist speech from a convinced protectionist. Before I make up my mind conclusively on the subject of the action which I shall take, I must hear some further declarations from the Government, and I trust that they may be such as will not compel me at last to go into the lobby against them, as I should be very unwilling to do. My hon. friend, as I have said, made
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a protectionist speech. It was an elaborate attack on free trade. It was a strong plea for protection. The hon. Gentleman considered that Cobden's expectations had been falsified. Cobden would have been the greatest of all prophets I have ever heard of if all his expectations had been fulfilled. But does my hon. friend think that if Cobden could possibly return to this sphere he would be a dissatisfied man? Would he not look around and see a mercantile fleet that covers the sea, a commerce that is the envy of the world, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, pauperism decreased by 50 per cent., the wages of the working classes and their social condition enormously improved, and the comfort and well-being of the people luxurious compared to what it was in Cobden's time? I venture to say that Cobden in his wildest dreams never contemplated a higher state of prosperity than that which is enjoyed by this country and all its inhabitants.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: What about the unemployed?
MR. RITCHIE: The unemployed? I should like the hon. Gentleman to make himself acquainted with the state of employment at the time of Cobden. I should like him to compare the condition of the dwellings of the working classes in the time of Cobden with what it is now. I should like him to compare the wages of any labouring class in Cobden's time with the wages of the same class now. I would ask him to look back at the purchasing power of money in Cobden's time and compare it with the purchasing power of money now, and to judge for himself whether a case has not been made out that Cobden in his wildest dreams never contemplated. It has become the fashion in some quarters to consider Cobdenism and the followers of Cobden as a reproach, as something to be sneered at. I avow, at any rate, regardless of those sneers, that I have no objection to be called one of those who admire and reverence the great work which Mr. Cobden did. My hon. friend told us that Cobden laid a demon, and that the demon had risen again. I think the demon has risen again

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in the guise of a protecting angel. [An HON. MEMBER: He comes from Sheffield.] My hon. friend said that the demon, in the shape of foreign countries, said to us, "You may buy from us, but you shall not sell to us." How can we buy if we do not sell? My hon. friend may have, and no doubt he has, a considerable knowledge of a certain branch of industry, but he has very little knowledge of economics if he fancies that we can possibly be buyers and not sellers. Sir, he gave some figures which, according to him, proved that we do not sell although we buy; but in arriving at these figures he omitted all reference to our services. He took no account of the remittance of interest or the movement of capital. Anyone who attempts to draw comparisons without taking these things into account does not understand the elements of the movement of merchandise. Look at America. My hon. friend asked how is it that their exports exceed the imports. That was received with ringing cheers by many Gentlemen on this side of the House. Has he never heard of the enormous indebtedness of America to all Europe? Does he not know that from 1897 to 1899 America was an enormous purchaser of securities in Europe? Last year they again largely increa3ed their purchases, and have been borrowing largely in our market. How has the interest on all that money been paid? By the export of goods. Not only that but the borrowing by the United States in this country and other parts of Europe has been at a much higher rate of interest than before. Money which they were able to get at 3 per cent., or a little over, they have to pay 5 per cent. for now. All that increase of interest having to be remitted has increased their exports.
The hon. Gentleman made another statement to the effect that exports last year rose, but employment fell. It is quite true the home market is not so good as it was. Can anybody be surprised? Does anyone imagine that we can spend two or three hundred millions of money on unproductive work, without this telling upon the purchasing power of the people? Of course, we have had very dear money. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, when he spoke at the Guildhall, asked how it happened that money was almost for
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the first time dearer in London than on the Continent? Someone at once replied, "The war." I am not saying anything against the war. I am only stating the fact that we cannot expect our home market, until the strain that has been brought to bear on the people of this country is somewhat mitigated, to be as good as it was. High taxation and dear money must tell on the homo market. But in addition to that municipal work is postponed. Municipalities who have work to do, do not want to go into the market and borrow at the heavy rate they would have to pay now, and they defer carrying on work to some rime when they hope they may be able to borrow more cheaply in the money market. That leads to want of employment. And so it is with regard to companies and individuals. Everybody who knows commercial matters knows that companies are not forming as they were, and that enterprise has been checked for the moment. All these things tend, of course, somewhat to make the home market bad. But what do the figures for 1903 show? That though the home trade is bad, foreign trade has been good. Why have foreign exports risen? Because, in consequence of bad harvests, we had to import more wheat. And I recommend this to the hon. Gentleman who does not seem to think that imports and exports have any very great correlation. Notwithstanding the bad trade here, and in consequence in my opinion of the larger imports of food we required, more exports had necessarily to be, sent out. My. hon. friend led us to imagine, though he did not exactly say so in so many words, that he thought large imports meant large unemployment of our people. Now I assert quite the contrary, and I refer him to his own Blue-book, which I am sorry has not been subjected to examination by independent experts on the part of the Government, either in the shape of a Royal Commission or otherwise, so that the figures might have been digested and put into some form easily "understanded of the people." But many things are easily found there, and what is found with regard to employment? In 1889 imports beat the record, The import of manufactured goods rose to £100,000,000. According to the Secretary of the Board of

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Trade this must have produced a record of unemployment. It did produce a record, but it was a record for the goodness of employment. The number of unemployed fell to 2.1 per cent. I assert that this is the lowest possible figure to which unemployment could go. When hon. Gentlemen think of the number of men who are sick, or who, either from one cause or another, are temporarily prevented from working, I think they will consider that 2 per cent. of unemployment is the least we could possibly expect. Well, Sir, imports fell off, and unemployment rose. In 1893 imports of manufactured articles fell to £98,000,000, and unemployment rose to 7½ per cent. From 1893 to 1900 imports of manufactures rose steadily and the number of unemployed declined in almost exact proportion.
MR. BONAR LAW: I am sorry to interrupt my hon. friend, but he has entirely misunderstood the argument I was trying to put before the House. I began by saying it was unfair to use a single year as an indication of the state of our trade. I said that if you do insist on taking that single year, you will find that exports have a greater bearing than impoits—I expressly said nothing more—upon the prosperity of trade. Nothing further than that.
MR. RITCHIE: The hon. Member at that time was speaking about employment. I am not taking one single year, I am taking several years, and I assert that in the years between 1893 and 1900 the imports of manufactured articles rose steadily and the number of unemployed declined steadily in almost exact proportion. In 1896 the imports were £117,500,000 and the unemployed 3½ per cent. In 1899 the imports were £136,000,000 and the unemployed 2½ per cent.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: May I ask my right hon. friend if the statistics of unemployment to which he refers do not relate only to the most skilled artisans of the country reporting through the trade unions to the Board of Trade, and not to the state of employment as a whole? Will he also give the figures for 1903?
MR. RITCHIE: I do not happen to have these figures. The question he puts to me as to the returns, I can only answer by saying that the only means by which we can get an idea of the unemployed is from the returns of the trade-unions, but the hon. Gentleman surely knows that if the trade unionists who are skilled artisans are employed, this must necessarily imply that a corresponding number of those who work with them in the trades with which they are connected must be employed. May I say also that large imports have been marked by an extraordinary decline in emigration? I would advise the House not to believe that an abundance of necessaries is bad. But will unemployment be decreased by protection? That is the great point. How about protected countries? Their state of unemployment is probably much worse than ours. What would protection do? It would decrease our purchasing power and so damage the home market. It would cripple us in our competition in foreign markets, and make everything dearer, and I should like to know whether that is at all likely to help us in our competition with the other nations of the world. Some say "Look at Germany; that protective country has increased exports to a greater extent than we have done." It is true that Germany is making great strides. There is a great deal of enterprise and skill in Germany; but there are other causes at work. Does the House imagine that the export trade of Germany is altogether a profitable trade? I very much doubt whether it is, and, after all, the question of profit or not in the export trade is very material. There is no doubt that the Government in Germany does lend a hand to trade—to the expansion of trade, which we in our system do not. Government railways, whether in Germany or abroad, in China or elsewhere, are made of German material, and by Germans. Whether that is advantageous to German trade in the Colonies and elsewhere is probably a different matter. But take German private enterprise. Look at the education of students. How is it that they have such an enormous expansion of their electrical industries in South America and elsewhere? It is very largely because every great manufacturer in Germany

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strives to provide himself with young men who have been scientifically educated, and who do much to keep manufactures on proper scientific lines. Now I have been told that at Owens College, where education of a similar character is given, there is absolutely no home demand for the students who go up to that college. And I am told that the great demand for the young men who come from Owens College is not from this country, but from the United States. My hon. friend in talking about exports asked us, I think, to exclude raw materials, and I suppose he meant coal. Now, why should we exclude coal? Is he afraid of the supply running short? I do not know whether the Royal Commission that has been sitting on the subject of our coal supply has yet reported; but I have good reason to believe that they will report that the supply of coal in this country is practically inexhaustible for a vast number of years. Suppose we were to put any impediment on the export of coal, are we going to do the same thing with everything that comes out of the earth, because, if we do, it will diminish the occupation of a vast number of people and strike a blow at oar carrying trade.
I shall reserve further remarks on all these questions until I know from some other member of the Government what the views of the Government really are. But in the meantime 1 prefer to take the speech of the President to that of the Secretary to the Board of Trade. If we take the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, taxes on food, preferential tariffs, protective duties, and bounties—all are gone, and only retaliation remains. I agree with my noble friend who spoke last night that if that is all that is left of the Government policy it is a great pity that there should have been so much hubbub. Retaliation, however advisable it may be in some cases, is not a policy; it is only an expedient. It is not a policy to be emblazoned upon the banners of the Government, and in favour of which all the members of the Government are to go preaching a crusade. Of course we all acknowledge that there is nothing economically unsound about retaliation provided that Parliament is asked to
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decide in every case. That is absolutely essential; and I am sorry it is one of the subjects on which I have been able to obtain no information. It was my special duty, in discussing this question of retaliation with my colleagues, to inquire very closely into it, as, occupying the position I did, I should, perhaps, be more responsible than any other member of the Government. Therefore, while I had no hesitation about assenting to this expedient where it was shown that it could do us no harm, and that it would be effective, I felt bound to point out to my colleagues the difficulties in its application. And some of these difficulties I would like to refer to. But before I pass on to their consideration I must notice the remarks of my hon. friend on the tinplate industry. Well, no doubt that was a bad case. The tinplate industry suffered a good deal from the tax imposed in the United States under the Dingley tariff. But I am glad to say that the export trade in tinplates has very nearly recovered to what it was. But what was the effect of the high tariff on tinplates in the United States itself? It did enormous damage to the packing industry, which was diverted to other countries, while it greatly assisted trade in this country. I have no doubt that, although the export did fall off considerably, the consumption of tinplates in this country very greatly increased in consequence of their additional cost in the United States to all packing industries. I would have liked to ask my hon. friend when he was giving the illustration of that industry as to the power which the Government asked for—the power, viz., of retaliation—does he believe for a moment that any power of retaliation which we could possibly exercise would have had the smallest effect on the United States to prevent them passing the Dingley Tariff Bill? Of course he does not believe that, and I would remind him that the President of the Board of Trade stated the day before, that the United States was one of the countries to which we could not apply retaliation.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR: I said it would be more difficult

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to bring it to bear on the United States than on some other countries.
MR. RITCHIE: I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon, but that admission is sufficient for the House, and for my argument. One of the difficulties about retaliation is that we are far more vulnerable than any other country, because the bulk of our imports are not luxuries but the prime necessaries of life. And then our shipping is particularly open to attack. We are, of course, the great carrying power of the world, and if differential duties were put on our shipping it would be a vital blow to that industry. In considering the application of retaliation we should not leave that out of sight. My hon. friend said that the tariff wars which had occurred had been productive of good. My noble friend has given his answer on that question and has shown that the tariff war between France and Italy had caused a loss of £120,000,000, and, as was naturally to be expected, the markets being open to other countries, the trade between France and Italy had been greatly diverted into other channels. And once trade is so diverted, it is very difficult to get it back again. There is only one paragraph in the Report which I should like to read to the House, apart altogether from the question of pecuniary loss. The Report says—
"It disturbs the ancient and cordial industrial and commercial relations which have hitherto existed between the two countries."
I hope that in considering this question we will not I leave out of account the disturbance of our industrial, commercial, and other relations, which would in all probability take place if we were unhappily to revert to the policy of retaliation. My right hon. friend states he did not say that it would be impossible to apply retaliation to Russia and the United States, but that it would be most difficult. Russia, however, is the greatest offender. The duty in Russia is 131 per cent. ad valorem—which, I should say, is barbarous and unfair. In the United States the duty is 73 per cent., and in Germany only 25 per cent. Are we to retaliate against Germany with a 25 per cent. duty, and not to be able to retaliate against Russia with a 131 per cent. duty? The McKinley tariff and the Dingley tariff inflicted great loss on our trade and
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industry beyond comparison, more severe than has ever been caused by any other protectionist measures. Are we to leave Russia with her tariff of 131 per cent. and the United States of America with their tariff of 73 per cent. alone, and retaliate against Germany with its 25 per cent.? Be it remembered that we do a vast and a most profitable trade with Germany. The system of free imports, as I think, and as my hon. friend the Member for Oldham has shown, has its own very effective machinery of retaliation, working under an inexorable law. Germany dumps ship-plates. Here we retaliate by selling the German ships, built of his own steel, at a price with which he cannot compete. The German dumps his steel and we retaliate by underselling his machinery. Take a single instance from the United States Consular Reports as an illustration.
"An English firm has just competed success fully as against German tenderers for the plant of the Municipal Gas Works at Copenhagen, and the cause of their success was this"—
I ask the House to note it—
"They have the command of the raw material dumped by Germans at a price lower than the German manufacturer could obtain it, and were consequently able to undersell him for the finished plant."
This is effective retaliation. My hon. friend the Secretary to the Board of Trade showed that the action of this country in connection with Germany's threat to Canada proves the efficiency of retalition. Well, I had something to do with the compilation of the despatch to Germany on that subject, and I am very glad to think that it had that effect. The hon. Gentleman said—
"It is an object lesson which, if properly understood, would establish the efficiency of retaliation."
But if that be so, it destroys the case for a mandate. If this can be done, as it can be done under existing circumstances, why put the country into a state of excitement by asking for a mandate?
Now, with regard to dumping, dumping may be very innocent, even welcome in some cases, but in other cases, when a great industry is really threatened, it should be resisted. But here the process is by no means easy. Where it is the result of bounties, as in sugar, it can no doubt, be met, if expedient; but it

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may be individual dumping, and where it is individual dumping it is difficult to see how it can be effectually met. It would be difficult to impose a duty on one set of goods dumped and not on another set. We have not quite a free hand on this question of dumping. If we shut out dumped goods where do they go? They are not thrown into the sea. They must go elsewhere, and with what result? Take a case. The American dumper offers us for £90 what it would cost us £100 to produce. We refuse it, and it goes elsewhere. [An HON. MEMBER on the GOVERNMENT Benches: Where?] ft can contain entrance into protected countries notwithstanding their protection, but has the hon. Member never heard of neutral markets? Going elsewhere means competing with our export trade. Yes, and competing successfully. Because he is offering for £90 the same goods it costs us £100 to produce. In other words, for every £90 of dumped goods which we shut out we must lose £100 of our export trade. This is not all. The dumped goods are, in the main, only half manufactured, and the cheaper our manufacturers can buy them the cheaper they can turn out the finished produce, and the better chance of exporting it at a profit. If we shut out dumped goods we must be prepared to encounter competition from countries which are ready to take the cheapest raw material which dumping provides. There is another case which I saw in a Consular Report from Hamburg. Germans cannot buy their ships in Germany. They are buying their ships in England, made from their own iron, which they are unable to buy from German makers because of the price. The whole principle of dumping is to sell very dear at home and to sell very cheap abroad. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade has some experience of dumping, and has no doubt very considerable experience in large iron and steel operations, but others tell a different story. The right hon. Baronet opposite is prepared with a totally different story, and Mr. Hugh Bell, a great authority on the subject, also tells a different story. I am no defender of dumping where any of our industries is deliberately attacked. I stated that to my colleagues and to the Prime Minister. All I do say is that I
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do not believe you can devise anything effectually dispose of dumping. But there is an attack on any one of our great industries we should be bound to protect it. The question maybe asked, "If you do not object to the principle of retaliation, and if you are prepared to deal with dumping, and if you would not remain content in a case where our Colonies were attacked in consequence of allowing us a preference, why did you resign? You are in agreement with the policy of the Government expressed by the President of the Board of Trade." Yes, but the policy of the Government when I left went much further than that. No doubt there was misunderstanding, and I will not enter into that except to say that in a case of that kind there should have been no possibility of misunderstanding. I ask any Gentleman who has been a member of a Cabinet whether he can conceive a Prime Minister's coming down to his Cabinet on such a vital question as that without disclosing his whole mind to all his Cabinet, so that they might be enabled to arrive at a conclusion on hearing the whole case? That is all I have to say on that point. I regret there was a misunderstanding, and in my opinion there ought to have been no room for misunderstanding.
Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton said he thought some explanation was desirable, and even necessary, from those Ministers who had resigned as to the cause of their resignations. I do not intend to say anything more on the very delicate and difficult question of what occurred at the moment of resignation; but I am bound to refer in this House to certain matters which preceded the final stage, because I have been subjected to a good deal of criticism—criticism which was often not correct and of times very unjust; and I feel bound to state to the House—what, indeed, I have said elsewhere on more than one occasion—the circumstances in which my colleagues and I began to diverge, The original proposal was that the corn tax should be used for preference. Naturally, before going to South Africa, my right hon. friend the late Colonial Secretary desired that the matter should be settled. Well, I declined. My right hon. friend went

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away in November. I declined to assent to the proposal for two reasons. First, I declined to make any forecast months beforehand of what I might be able to do at the time of introducing the Budget. I never heard of such a thing being done before. I have been in Cabinets for many years and I have listened while Chancellors of the Exchequer propounded their proposals, but I have never heard of a Chancellor of the Exchequer being asked to settle in November what he was going to do at the next Budget. But, of course, my main objection was one of policy. I felt, though it seemed a small matter, it was the beginning of one of very great importance and leading, in my opinion, to taxation of food of all kinds, and ultimately, if it were to be acceptable to the Colonies, of raw material. That was bound to lead to protection. My right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade suggested it would be possible to be in favour of preference and yet opposed to protection. I differ from him. If, by a tax, corn is protected it will be impossible to refuse a demand for the protection of all other industries. I will do the late Colonial Secretary the justice to say that he did not disguise at all that it was a policy satisfactory for the moment, but mainly satisfactory as a promise of other things to come. For these reasons I declined to assent to the corn tax being used for the inauguration of a preferential and protective tariff, at least without the country being consulted. When the late Colonial Secretary returned a final decision had to be taken. Now, my right hon. friend, very unfairly I consider, in a speech he made somewhere, charged me with "rushing" my colleagues on the subject. We were compelled to choose, he said, between agreeing to the proposal to abolish the corn tax and accepting the resignation of our Chancellor of the Exchequer, and we could not lose him the day before the Budget. Well, if I had been guilty of conduct of that kind I should properly have deserved reprobation. It would have been perfectly unjustifiable to have put a pistol to the head of my colleagues and say, "Either abandon preference or I go" twenty-four hours before I had to deal with the Budget. That would have been monstrous conduct on my part. My
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right hon. Friend returned on 14th March, a Cabinet Council was held on 25th March, the Budget Council on 31st March, another Cabinet Council on 22nd April, and the Budget was introduced on 23rd April. The whole of that time my colleagues, and, indeed, the Prime Minister long before, were in possession of my firm determination not to remain in office if the corn tax was to be used for preference. I have said that incorrect statements were made about this, and my attention has been drawn to the resumés of the year which appeared in The Times and Standard, in which it was stated that I said I would resign if the corn tax was not taken off. That was not the case. If my colleagues had not agreed with me about the remission of the corn tax it is not a subject upon which I should have considered myself at all justified in resigning. What I did say was that I would not as Chancellor of the Exchequer inaugurate this preferential movement, which I considered fraught with the gravest danger, however much I desired to draw this country into closer union with the Colonies, and if my colleagues thought otherwise then they would have to find another Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then began the fiscal campaign, during which preference blossomed into protection pure and simple; speeches were made in that direction in and out of Parliament, and pamphlets by the million were distributed under the supervision of my right hon. friend. I know that the Prime Minister thought that this kind of thing might go on and not break up the Cabinet. But that was not my opinion; in my opinion the position would have been intolerable. I considered it necessary as Chancellor of the Exchequer to come to the House and repudiate in the strongest terms any association with the proposals which were being made by the late Colonial Secretary throughout the length and breadth of the land. The fiscal campaign proceeded. There was no evidence whatever put before myself or my colleagues who had resigned their offices that preference and food taxation had been definitively abandoned, and—this is one of the strongest points—no evidence before us that the Colonial Secretary was not to continue his campaign. In these circumstances nothing remained for me or my colleagues,

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if we were to retain our self-respect, but to resign our offices. Party loyalty would have prompted me to submit to much, but where I believe that the interests and well-being of the country are inconsistent with adhesion to Party I cannot hesitate as to the course it is my duty to adopt. At any sacrifice to myself, what I believe to be the interest of the country must prevail. There is no other course open to a public man if public life is to remain pure, as, thank God, it has hitherto been in this country. Great as have been the sacrifices my friends and I have had to make—and how great they have been only those who have made such sacrifices can thoroughly appreciate—I am glad to think that in the result they have not been made in vain.
MR. RANDLESsaid he thought the proposals made by the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich on the previous evening, when he offered to refrain from voting against them, on condition that the Government should discipline their Party, and put pressure on the Conservative organisations throughout the country to suppress the opinion of the great majority of the Party in the interests of a small minority, offered very little reward to the Government for the course he suggested they should take. The hon. Member for the Colne Valley had on the previous day indicated that, so far as he knew, the iron and steel trade was in a flourishing condition. The hon. Member was associated with a branch of that industry which was not prosperous, that was to say, in the manufacture of steel rails. Now, most of the rails made in the United Kingdom were made in North Lancashire and in West Cumberland, and at the present moment that industry was depressed. Thousands of persons engaged in that manufacture were now in poverty and want, employment not having been possible in more than one month out of the last three. Along the coast there are fifty blast furnaces, not more than one-third in full blast. Each of these furnaces means £20,000 a year to railway companies for carriage, as well as large sums in wages to ore and coal miners, brick-makers and scores of minor industries. English manufacturers—who
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had found markets in Russia, Germany, France, and America—had been driven out of all such markets by hostile tariffs. They had next transferred their goods to Canada, South Africa and to South America; and now our manufacturers, owing to depression in the United States, were driven forth once more in search of new markets. Without these export markets we could not give permanent employment to those engaged in the steel and iron trade. Dumping was perhaps more prejudicial to British manufacturers in neutral markets, where they might expect fair play, than it was in the home market. No ingenuity on the part of British manufacturers, no plant, however modern and up to date, would enable them to overcome a tariff wall which was expressly designed to exclude them from a market. If the Government could show him how, by retaliation, they could remove the effect of those tariff walls he should be quite satisfied to rest there. It was a real danger that we might, step by step, market after market, lose the outlet for those manufactures which were the very life of our industrial population, and he viewed with considerable concern the effect which the deliberate policy of foreign and, if they liked, of Colonial Governments was having upon the exclusion of our manufactures from the markets of the world. Traders and manufacturers wanted to secure a wider market, a freer trade. The Government had to look out and find fresh markets for our industries. We read in the papers that so much gold had been shipped from South Africa to London and that so many American heiresses had arrived in the Metropolis. They were interesting announcements, no doubt, but it was small comfort to the working man or his family who could buy no bread because their employment was gone owing to foreign dumping in our markets. What they wanted was free trade everywhere, but, like the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was in no sense a bigoted free trader. He should like to see outputs growing and spreading every day, for they must recollect that our home trade was not sufficient to keep our people employed. It was facts such as these that we ought to keep in view. They should remember the saying of

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the ancient Greek who remarked that the man who got the best iron would soon take all the gold from Crœsus.
SIR EDWARD GREY: The hon. Member who has just sat down said quite truly that he was not a bigoted free-trader. In that I am sure we all agree. He made an interesting speech because he gave us at first hand some definite information with regard to certain industrial facts. Now we want to get facts at first hand; they are always welcome to this House. But the hon. Member did not succeed, in my opinion, in drawing any very definite conclusion from those facts. It is the conclusion from the facts on which everything depends. He told us that certain steel industries were not doing well. I have no doubt it is so, but what is the reason why they are not doing well? Why, Sir, the reason was given really by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon. He pointed out that our capital has been greatly depicted by what we have spent on the war. It has been greatly depleted. Everybody knows it is exceedingly difficult to borrow money, and everybody connected with large businesses knows perfectly well that large businesses are holding their hands with regard to capital expenditure because of the difficulty of raising money. All that makes for contraction of trade.
MR. RANDLESsaid his point was, not that the volume of trade was contracting, but that orders were being given to foreigners and we were losing orders.
SIR EDWARD GREY: I understood that the hon. Member's point was that there was contraction of trade here, and the United States were doing our trade. Any one listening to the hon. Member would have imagined that, in his opinion, there is no contraction of trade in the United States. In the last autumn the output of steel in the United States has been reduced by from 40 to 60 per cent.
MR. RANDLESsaid that was the reason which he gave why the United States had come into our market—because there was depression in the United States.
SIR EDWARD GREY: I said they had reduced the output—they are not making
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so much. They have got a depression or reduction of trade at least as severe as ours at home. Protection has not saved them from that. And they are "dumping" their goods. Where are they "dumping" them? Into Canada, according to the hon. Member's own showing, a country with high protective duties. Therefore protective duties do not save them from "dumping," because, on his own showing, Canada has suffered (from his point of view) from the "dumping" of American goods. That is where I dispute the conclusions which the hon. Member has drawn. He will excuse me if I do not proceed to deal with the rest of he case, because I think most of it was included in the ground covered by the Secretary to the Board of Trade, who spoke yesterday, and to that I am coming presently. Now this debate is not only a long debate, but a very interesting one. There are so many points of view to be represented. There is, of course, the Opposition point of view, which on this occasion, no doubt, does include the general feeling of the Opposition to the Government. But it is more than that. It is not merely our common disagreement with the Government; it is our real and deep apprehension that there is on that side of the House a policy which is making for national disaster. But, besides our point of view, there are hon. Members on the other side of the House; who want to avoid voting against the Government if they can, and hon. Members who want to vote with the Government, but find a difficulty in doing so. Then there are the protectionists, who will vote for the Government willingly, because at present they have nothing better to vote for, and there are, I suppose, some Members who will vote for the Government policy because they really approve of it. Well. Sir, of all these different points of view I think the Government policy is the least interesting, it is the least intelligible, and I venture to think, it is the least important.
But what is very important is the conduct of the Government. Not only this House, but the colleagues of the Government and the country, ever since this question was raised have suffered from the misunderstandings and confusion which have arisen. We know that last. session there was a misunderstanding.

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We were invited to a discussion in this House, and then were told that we could not have it except on a vote of censure. I need not dwell on the painful misunderstanding which came early in the autumn, to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon and the noble Lord the Member for Ealing have referred, which has left a painful impression in our public life. How have these misunderstandings come about? They have come about, in my opinion, from this—that the Government will treat this question of fiscal policy, not as a question of principle, not as a question of right or wrong, but as a question of tactics. We have not had, I am afraid, the last of the misunderstandings yet. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol is going to vote for the Government because he is satisfied with their policy. He approves of the course which they are steering. I am not surprised that he approves of the Government's course, but I am surprised at his confidence in thinking that course will be maintained. He remains on board the ship because for the moment the course which is being steered is one of which he approves. But the hon. Member for Darlington told him yesterday that five-sixths, in his opinion, of the Party opposite disapprove of that course, and intend to change it; and when it is changed they will throw the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol overboard. I trust that, if that happens, he will not be above accepting a helping hand even from an unexpected quarter. The course of the Government meets with his approval now, and they have undertaken a responsibility in regard to it. They are going to have his vote on what understanding? On the understanding, if there is anything in understandings at all, not merely that that is their course now, but that that is the course they mean to stand by for a reasonable time—they mean to stand by their announced policy, not for an hour or a day, but at least for the next election. What is that policy? Not the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. Every one knows the statement of the President of the Board of Trade that if an appeal were made to the electors and a majority were returned in favour of the Government policy that
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would not entitle them to go further and carry out a policy of preference. From the point of view of exclusion—the negative side of the Government policy—the Government have been perfectly explicit, and if an election were to take place today and a Parliament elected which contained a majority supporting them the Government would be precluded during that Parliament from dealing with preference, and, I understand, from dealing with protection also. That is not, I am bound to warn the President of the Board of Trade, the opinion held by many of his supporters. The Prime Minister desires a change in public opinion which will render the adoption of preference possible. If, a few months or a year heuce, the Government were to say that the change which they desired had taken place and preference were to be included in the policy before the country at the next election, every one will feel, after what has passed, that there had been a breach of faith, at any rate, with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol. I do not accuse the Government of any intention of not going through with their declared policy of fighting the next-election on liberty to negotiate only, and excluding preference and protection. But it is beyond their power to keep the issue to that. They cannot make that the only issue; they cannot make it the chief issue before the country. Can they prevent the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham from being before the country, and can they separate him from his policy? Does not every one know that he announced his policy by saying that he was "in for a big fight?" Yes, Sir, it is a big fight, and, so far, the Government have declared no policy with regard to this fight except that of neutrality. Sir, it is the policy of Korea in the war between Russia and Japan, and it is worth about as much for the purposes of practical polities. The whole question is, not what the Government policy is, but, in this fight between the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham and those who disagree with him, which side do the Government mean to take? The right hon. Gentleman is going to fight the next election on his policy. On which side is the Government going to fight? Are they going to fight for him or against

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him? Are they going to wait to see whether he wins before they fight at all? The President of the Board of Trade reproached us on this side of the House with being fiscal policy Quakers. Fiscally, he made a fighting speech. But did it not occur to him that his most dangerous foes are those of his own household? Did it not occur to him that the fight is raging now, and the question which the country is asking is—On which side is victory to be? Are they going to stand aside at the critical moment and take no part in the fight? No, they are taking a part in the fight—some of them. The President of the Local Government Board has taken part in the fight. He wishes to rob his own Government of one of the supporters of their policy in order to add to the supporters of the Birmingham policy, which is not that of the Government.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG, Bristol, S.): No.
SIR EDWARD GREY: Surely he has opposed a supporter of the Government policy as declared by the President of the Board of Trade. He has opposed the hon. Baronet the Member for Wiltshire in the interests, not of this side of the House, but in the interests of a supporter of the Birmingham policy. He is so generous that he wishes to rob his own Government of a supporter of their policy in order to add one to the supporters of a policy which is not theirs. Surely, if the Government are to play a part which is worthy of any; Government, they must discontinue giving their support to candidates who support a policy which is not theirs, or else, after the next election, they may be in this position—they may find that the policy which is now excluded from their own has obtained a majority in the next Parliament, and they will have to say, "Yes, we are very sorry; it was not our policy, but all the candidates whom we supported were in favour of that policy and we must now give way to circumstances which we could not help." That will not be an honourable or worthy position. But if the Government are to re-establish themselves, one thing more they must do. They must stop the flow of individual opinion, and give
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us more of the collective opinion of the Government. We seem to be getting nothing but individual opinions; but we have a right to have the opinion of the Government and not a mere collection of the opinions of individuals. Even the President of the Board of Trade, though he did speak largely for the Government, spoke also largely an individual opinion, and he has been followed by the Secretary to the Board of Trade, who, having begun by saying that the Government had placed a policy before the country, then devoted an exhaustive speech to defending the policy which was not that of the Government, but the policy of protection.
To protection I will come presently. First let me have a word on the policy of liberty of negotiation, which I observe includes retaliation. Their policy is that liberty of negotiation must be backed by retaliation, or else it is not worth anything. On that they Say they must have an election before they can have liberty of negotiation. I do not think that is a proper way of dealing with the question at all. I will not labour the point because the right hon. Gentleman has already raised it. Do they consider the Sugar Convention Bill an example of the policy of retaliation or not? It is often quoted as an example on their side. If it is there is no need to go to the country before presenting us with another example. If it is not an example let them cease to quote it. I do not object in the least to talk about liberty of negotiation and retaliation. I believe with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose, who laid down three conditions. I once laid down five conditions myself, but three of them are the same, and I abide by his conditions, I do not object to what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol said with regard to retaliation. He says he has no objection to it in principle, nor have I. He says he can imagine many instances in which it would be unprofitable or worse for this country, and so can I. He also says he can imagine many instances in which it would be useful to this country, but there I differ with him, and until he states those instances I can only be content with saying that I have less imagination than the right hon. Gentleman the Member

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for West Bristol, but I think I may say I have an open mind on the subject. We have got no question before us of retaliation at this moment, and with all respect to the Secretary to the Board of Trade, I say he did not provide a very convincing instance that retaliation has succeeded. We want facts to go on. In history, where it has been tried, other countries have raised their duties against each other; they have marched up the hill and found it unpleasant, and then they have marched down, and after much suffering, after the operation of the war was over, found that trade was improved. Give me an instance in which the eventual gain has been greater than the loss incurred by the contesting countries. I have not got that instance yet. These protectionist countries, with their weapons loaded, had no more effect on the Dingley and McKinley tariffs than free trade. Germany was as helpless with the McKinley tariff as we were. In the year after the McKinley tariff was imposed the German exports increased by 34 per cent., and British exports by 60 per cent. We were helpless before them, we both suffered from the blow, but Great Britain recovered with more elasticity and vigour than the protectionist countries. Surely on the Government policy we have nothing to discuss. If you go to the country there is nothing to discuss, because you cannot discuss retaliation without a case before you. You could not go to the country on liberty to go to war without saying whom you are to go to war with. If you go to the country on a policy of liberty to go to war I should say that I agree entirely with the policy that the Government should have liberty to go to war, on one condition, and that is that they would get the authority of Parliament first. If you go to the country on liberty to negotiate, or retaliation, you have nothing to discuss, and all I contend for is that you shall not retaliate without coming to Parliament first for authority. If that really be the policy of the Government as the President of the Board of Trade describes this abstract liberty to negotiate and retaliate—if that really be their policy—then I say that the President of the Board of Trade is infinitely nearer to us on this side of
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the House than he is to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. If his policy is only that abstract liberty to negotiate and retaliate, and if it excludes the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, then he is much nearer to us than the Birmingham policy. He said that he differs not at all from the objects of the Birmingham policy, but with the methods. We can all say that too. What are the alleged objects? More goodwill and closer union with the Colonies. More prosperity for British trade. Those are the objects of all of us. It is not a difference about objects, but it is the methods which form the whole difficulty. The objects we all agree with, but the methods we dread because they will not secure the objects, in fact they would be disastrous to those objects. The Commission which is now sitting is not engaged in drawing up a tariff for hypothetical retaliation, but it is drawing up a permanent tariff, and one which is intended to be permanent. When the Secretary for the Board of Trade was speaking, the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich asked him, in the course of his speech, whether the Government intended it to be a permanent tariff, and the hon. Member replied quite simply and frankly that, as an Under-Secretary, he could not go further into the policy of the Government. Everybody who has been an Under-Secretary will accept that answer as adequate. Everybody who has been a member of a Government knows the high value which is placed upon the reticence of Under-Secretaries, but the question did not disturb the Secretary to the Board of Trade in the least. He quite rightly said he could not answer, but I do not think he minded the question. He wants a permanent tax, and if he does not get it from the present Government he is looking forward to get it from someone else, and this unofficial Commission is engaged in drawing up a tariff. I can imagine what the proceedings at that Commission will be, what wrestling and wrangling and log-rolling there wil be before they agree. And if their tariff comes to be placed before this House for acceptance, the scenes of that Commission will become the scenes of this House, and we shall settle a tariff which will be

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called a scientific tariff, but which will be settled not by science, but by political log-rolling.
Let me now come to the speech of the Secretary to the Board of Trade. I entirely admit the ability of that speech, and he always excites my admiration, but he always fills me with distrust—I do not mean of his personal character, but of the soundness of his arguments. He seems to me to be a master in stating something which appears to be an answer, but which is not really an answer to what has come from this side of the House. He said we attached too much importance to the cheapness of goods. He said trade is better when prices are high, and bad when prices are low. That sounds very well, but it is entirely irrelevant to our point. Trade is good when prices are rising only when the rise comes from the expansion of the natural demand for goods. Protection might raise prices, and yet it would not make good trade, and why? Because the rise in price is to come not from the expansion of a natural demand, but from restricting the supply. Supposing by some unimaginable catastrophe, the output of iron and steel was reduced by one half and could not be expanded, you would have a rise in prices but very bad trade. The Secretary to the Board of Trade dealt with the question of the excess of exports over imports, and he quoted the United States as a prosperous country. How does he account for that great excess of exports over imports? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon answered that point, and answered it completely. May I ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade if he wishes to see our exports exceed our imports? If he does, there is one way in which it can be brought about. Let us embark in another great war. Let us have to borrow some hundreds of millions until we are unable to raise it in this country, and have to raise it abroad, and then our exports will exceed our imports because they will have to go to pay our debts, and no one on the other side will stand up and say that our trade is good then. Free imports are in our opinion one of the essential conditions to our present prosperity. I am reluctant to trouble the House with quotations, and I will not
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give one from Cobden, but I must return to what the expectations of those who introduced free trade were, and how they have been realised, and I would commend this extract to the Secretary of the Board of Trade, who has been studying the history of that time. Here is what Sir Robert Peel said in carrying free trade. Did he look forward to our remaining the sole manufacturing country in the world, and other countries supplying us with raw materials? On the contrary, he looked forward to more severe competition, after the time of free trade, in manufactured goods with foreign countries than we had ever known before. He says—
"The continuance of permanent peace will expose us to more extensive and more formidable competition with foreign nations with respect to manufactures. During war we commanded the supply of nations. Peace has introduced not only new consumers but also formidable manufacturing interests. In order that we may retain our pre-eminence, it is of the greatest importance that we neglect no opportunity of securing to ourselves those advantages by which that pre-eminence can alone be secured. Sir, I firmly believe that abundance and cheapness of provisions is one of the constituents by which the continuance of manufacturing and commercial pre-eminence can be maintained."
Conditions have changed since that time. That is true, but in my opinion they have changed in the sense of making those words even more true and more necessary to us than they were at the time they were spoken. We build more ships in a year than all the rest of the world put together, an extraordinary fact for an island of this size with a population of this size, more ships not merely than the greatest country in the world in size and population, not merely than a group of countries, but than all the world put together. I am astonished at the fact. Some hon. Members who support the Birmingham policy appear also to be astonished at the fact for another reason. They seem to be astonished that any other countries build any ships at all. I am astonished at the amount we do. Does anybody really believe that free imports have had nothing to do with that extraordinary success? some of the hopes of the original free-traders have not been realised, yet by far the greater part of them have been, and some results which they never hoped for and

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could hardly have imagined at that time have been realised.
Now how would protection work? Is it going to give more employment and higher wages? Take the instance given by my right hon. friend the Member for Wolverhampton. He gave the instance of steel imported from the United States—dumped I suppose—which is used in this country to make steel tubes which are again exported to the United States. What is the protectionist theory? That the United States steel ought never to have come here at all, that it displaced so much employment in this country. Very well, keep it out, put the price up to a price which will satisfy Mr. Brailsford or some other great expert in the matter, some one whose works, for whatever reason, are not doing as well as he expects. Keep out the American steel. How do you know that the steel tubes would be made at all, and if they were not made at all there would be no demand for the corresponding steel in this country, and by keeping it out, so far from giving extra employment, you would have destroyed the employment of the steel tube trade, and you would not get extra employment in the steel trade because you would have diminished the demand for it at home. So also in the case of ships. Keep out your dumped steel plates. Well, they will go to other countries. Protection will not keep them out of other countries, because the hon. Member for Cockermouth, who has just sat down, complained that dumped American goods go into Canada. They will go to other countries and our shipbuilding trade will not maintain its preeminence, because we shall have given up that exceptional advantage which distinguishes us from other enterprising nations who might build ships in competition with us. Yes, that is where I think hon. Members fail to see the point when they say that producers and consumers ought to be classed together. They say we are wrong in drawing a distinction between producers and consumers. Well, in a sense they must be classed together. Their interests are the same. The producers in the shipbuilding trade are the consumers in the steel
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trade, and the interests of consumers and producers both together make for the policy of free imports. It has not been proved that protectionist countries without free imports can really manufacture more cheaply than we can do. The Secretary to the Board of Trade gave a case which will be within the recollection of the House, of how by being secure of the home market, as well as having the field in the open market, you can produce more cheaply by extending your works. That was a hypothetical case. It is not proved that it is really the fact that they produce more cheaply. If you can give one trade that advantage and one trade alone, if you can guarantee to one trade the home market, and say: "You shall have free imports of all you require and be secure in the possession of the home market." I think that would be true. But then you cannot do that for one trade alone, and what we contend is that under protection the loss by having to pay more for your half-manufactured raw material, and the loss incurred through rings and trusts, more than takes away the advantage which the producer acquires from having his home market guaranteed to him. Does the Secretary to the Board of Trade really believe that the protectionist country has the free-trade country at its mercy? If he does he must wish that we should not only become protectionist, but that the United States should become free trade. It used to be a commonplace on both sides that if the United States became free trade our manufacturers would be more hardly run in the competition of the world. That is what follows from the argument of the Secretary to the Board of Trade. We have had many statements, some of them perfectly true, that all is not well with our trade, but we do not get it proved that protection would be any remedy. That is where the protectionist case falls through. We have had the Secretary to the Board of Trade and the hon. Member for Cockermouth giving instances of trades that are not doing well. Yes. Sir, but I think the evils are exaggerated. Undoubtedly you can find industries which are not doing well, and industries which are

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falling off. But it is not proved that protection is a remedy. A ruined industry is not in itself evidence that the country is doing badly. You may go to any great city and be told that there used to be a trade there which does not now exist; but you will find that the city his grown and that it is richer and more populous than it was. And what do you find? Why over and over again you will find that trades have disappeared—poor trades paying low wages and making small profits—and that they have been killed, not by foreign competition, but by the rise of other and more profitable trades paying higher wages.
I turn to the question of colonial preference. I spoke of misunderstandings. Misunderstandings between members of the Government are nothing in mischief compared with misunderstandings between ourselves and the Colonies. This policy is to bind the Empire together. Without it we are told that the Empire will fall to pieces. We treat the Colonies well to-day and they recognise it freely. They recognise the advantage of the Imperial connection. Our Fleet, our whole resources, are at their disposal. A small matter in which a small colony is interested is a matter which the whole of our resources may be used to support. Our diplomatic and Consular services are at their disposal, our whole machinery of Government is theirs, and we press them for nothing in return, and rightly so. What they give us we take gladly, but we do not press them and they treat us well. Everybody knows in this country that we recognise freely and gladly what the Colonies have done for us, and if this goodwill were crowned by free trade within the Empire, no doubt it would be a grand thing. But that is not a bargain. That is throwing down all barriers once and for all, and unfortunately that is not in question at the present time. It is not before this country, it is not before any colony, it is not in contemplation in the Birmingham policy. The Colonies think they are being asked in return for the Birmingham policy for what? Not for free trade within the Empire, but simply that they should raise their duties against the foreigner. I am much more interested in the duties which the Colonies impose on British goods then in the duties they
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impose on foreign goods. I would much rather not ask them, "Will you raise your duties against foreigners?" but "Will you lower your duties on British goods?" They have told us quite plainly that they cannot do so. The Canadian Finance Minister has told us that Canada cannot further lower her duties on British goods. Mr. Deakin has told us the same for Australia, and that free trade within the Empire was impracticable. Mr. Deakin has gone further and has explained that preference may mean on the part of the Colonies not a lowering of duties but a raising of duties. He said that before giving a preference to the mother country the South African Federation raised their duties 25 per cent., and that if Australia could take the same step it would not be condemned. Sir, that is a dangerous misunderstanding. The Secretary for the Colonies has been quoting Carlyle and Buskin lately. There was nothing Carlyle denounced more than the danger of a cash nexus. It is a cash nexus we have been asked to establish between ourselves and our Colonies. We are not drawing them towards free trade by the Birmingham policy, but they are drawing us towards protection. It is an essential condition in their minds that they should be left free under preference to protect their own manufacturers against British competition, and then give us much more protection against the foreigner, if you please. But that is not what this country thinks is before it. The country has been led to suppose that, under the Birmingham policy, the Colonies will lower their duties and admit British goods on lower terms. There is where the danger of the misunderstanding comes in, and there is where the Colonies and we are being deceived, and the reaction after great expectations will do more harm to the Imperial connection than people conceive possible. What we want to do is to be perfectly plain to the Colonies in this matter, to admit that if they choose to be protective they are free to remain protective. But get this question back on to sober, sensible lines and let them rely on the goodwill and sympathy with which we regard their progress and prosperity—goodwill and sympathy are weak words—the joy and pride with which we regard their progress and prosperity. We see nations jealous of

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each other, thinking that the prosperity of one is a damage to another We see in the British Empire a number of separate independent units, for that is what they are, looking on the prosperity of each, independent though it be, with joy and pride, and that is the unique thing in the British Empire. I dread the effect which may have been brought about already from the disappointment which well come when the Colonies thoroughly understand that the idea in the minds of people over here is that we are to press them towards free trade before they are ready to take a step in that direction.
I agree with my right hon. friend the Member for Forest of Dean that we must not make too much of the prosperity argument. Our first business is to defeat this disastrous policy. Do not let that blind us to what remains to be done. Depend upon it that if you embark on this policy of tariffs the scramble which will take place will drive out the discussion of these social problems. All we contend for is that in the last two generations we have made progress, more slowly than people would like, but still progress, and we see the possibility of progress, and we are convinced that the conditions of life will become better. The distribution of wealth will become more evenly distributed provided we do not interfere with the prosperity of the country. But to maintain the prosperity of the country is the essential condition of progress; and it is because we believe that this policy will damage the prosperity of the country, and will not only demoralise our politics and depress our trade, but postpone indefinitely any question of social reform, that I shall support the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman.
MR. WALTER LONG: I very much regret that before I offer to the House the few remarks I desire to make on the Amendment under consideration, I have to deal with a personal matter which has been referred to by so many speakers in the debate, and especially by the right hon. Baronet whose eloquent speech has just been delivered. I am accused of having gone down to the country to support a candi-
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date who is a supporter of what is known as the tariff reform policy, and to oppose a Gentleman who is a supporter of the Leader of the Government. I have been attacked, not only by the right hon. Baronet the Leader of the Opposition, and others, but by my noble friend the Member for Greenwich, who has put his case into the clearest and most forcible terms; and I do feel that my noble friend ought to have hesitated before he made so grave a charge against me of using my position as a Minister and departing from the best traditions of public life, and ought to have ascertained that he was accurate in his facts. My noble friend laid down the conditions for himself, and I take them as he laid them down. In his speech last night the hon. Member for Greenwich said—
"There was an instance of something stronger than paradox. That a Minister should go down and oppose a Conservative Member for the sake of a policy which his Leader had not adopted, and which his colleagues had now repudiated—should oppose one who had been a supporter of him so long as he was loyal to the faith of the Party; that, indeed, was a violation of all the traditions of Parry Government and of the best traditions of public life."
Well, if I had acted as the right hon. Baronet stated, or as my noble friend, suggests, I confess I would have been surprised myself; and I am bound to trouble the House with a reference to the actual facts which occurred. The dissatisfaction expressed by the constituency of my hon. friend the Member for the Chippenham Division of Wiltshire, for his action in Parliament, had been manifested in many ways, and, as he knows, for a considerable time before the fiscal policy was ever introduced.
SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER: I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. friend, but I cannot accept his statement. Discontent with my action and attitude has never been expressed from any public point of view, but only by the official organ of the Conservative Party.
MR. WALTER LONG: I did not intend to convey the suggestion that there had been an official meeting of the Party, and I wish to disclaim the smallest desire to do any injustice to my hon. friend. He and I are much too old personal friends for that. But I will say that my hon.

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friend, in addressing his constituents with a courage and candour which, in my judgment, did him infinite credit, and which I should have expected of him, did not limit himself to fiscal reform, but stated that he condemned the policy of the Government in regard to education and also in regard to the administration of the Army and military matters. My hon. friend further, in a very remarkable sentence, admitted that he had been a first-class misdemeanant, and said that he did not propose to trouble his constituents with the long list of his offences under the head of local government and other similar questions. It was upon that statement that action was taken by my hon. friend's constituents, who started the candidature of a gentleman, not as a supporter of fiscal reform, but as a supporter of His Majesty's Government.
SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER: I do not want to unnecessarily interrupt my right hon. friend, but I cannot accept the account he has given. I hope that I may be permitted an opportunity later on of replying to the right hon. Gentleman. [Cries of "Go on."] Well, if I may be permitted, I will give the House my version of the case. At the meeting to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, I told the Association that I had taken certain action in this House last year with regard to the Army scheme of the Government, and in that action many Members on my own side associated themselves much more prominently and ably than I did; but the best vindication of my action was the fact that in the autumn shuffle of the Government three Ministers who were responsible for that scheme were left out and three others put in their place. Since there has been an alteration in the Army scheme I have not had the desire, or the inclination, to say one single word against the Army administration of the Government. With regard to education, when the Bill was before the House I did not vote for any Amendment against it, nor did I actively oppose it at any of its stages; but I pointed out that I thought the provisions dealing with the voluntary schools were not tenable under the altered conditions, and could not last; that they were not practicable, and would shortly have to be
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altered. There are many Members, I believe, on this side of the House who hold a similar opinion.
MR. WALTER LONG: I do not quite understand why my hon. friend interrupted me, because he has only confirmed the original statement I made. He expressed with courage and clearness to the meeting of the Conservative Association his objections to the Government policy on two very substantial questions, education and Army reform, and said that on these questions he proposed to adopt the Radical view. It was because of my hon. friend's views on general questions, outside fiscal reform, that the local association decided that he no longer represented their views. So anxious, however, was the chairman of the Association to find a bridge for my hon. friend that he corresponded with him, and endeavoured to get him to declare that he would be a supporter of the Unionist Party at the next election on their general policy. I hope that my hon. friend does not dispute that?
SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDER: When I know what the policy is.
MR. WALTER LONG: If my hon. friend had declared his intention of standing as a Unionist or Conservative supporter of the Government he would have had the widest field. If his opposition had been confined to fiscal reform, nothing would have induced me to oppose him. Further, I venture to say that if the hon. Gentleman had made such a declaration as that suggested to him, or such a declaration as had been made by my noble, friend the Member for Greenwich last night, there would have been no opposition to him by any members of the Party, and certainly not by the Government. So far as I am personally concerned, I am entitled to say that I am a resident in the county represented by my hon. friend, an elector in his division, and a member of the Association, and that I acted in what I believed to be the right way, and in conformity with what I believed to be custom and practice. I do not think I deserve the charge which was brought against me by my noble friend the Member for Greenwich.

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I pass from that explanation, which I was bound to make, of my own conduct and action, to the Amendment which is under discussion. I am bound to say, having been an attentive listener to this debate, that I heard the speech of the right hon. Baronet who has just spoken with peculiar satisfaction. The right hon. Baronet always makes eloquent and powerful contributions to our debates, and generally makes a practical suggestion at the end of them. In the debate to which we have been listening there has been a singular want of practical suggestion on the part of those who have been criticising His Majesty's Government. The Government, they say, have no policy of their own. They then endeavour to show that the declarations of the Prime Minister at Sheffield and Manchester have been altered by something which has taken place since, or by speeches in this House, and they then turn to a general attack upon and condemnation of that which is not the policy of the Government but which is the scheme of the ex-Colonial Secretary. I have been attacked in the course of these debates more or less severely because of certain statements I have made during the recess in my constituency and elsewhere; and it has been said that I ought not to have remained a member of the Government if I were prepared to make such statements. I confess I am astonished at any comment of that kind having been passed. Believing, as I do, that this scheme of drawing closer together the Colonies and the mother country, of which there are many advocates on that side of the House as on this, is one which I think to be worth considerable sacrifices to carry out, if it could be worked out properly, and if the Colonies were able to make satisfactory replies to our proposals—I am not dealing now with the question of proposals but with the future of the scheme as a whole—and holding that view, I think it would not be candid, or that I should not be playing a proper part, if I had not told my constituents and others who did me the honour to listen to me what my views were. Surely the question whether I should remain in the Government or not is not a question that those outside the Government, who can know but little of
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what passes between colleagues—and I say that deliberately because we heard a great deal to-day at second and third hand—I am not of course referring to my right hon. friend the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer—I am referring to suggestions made as to conversations between Ministers—surely the question whether it was right or not that I should remain a member of the Cabinet was a question for the Prime Minister and myself. I need hardly say to the House of Commons in which I have had the honour of sitting for a great many years and which is as good a judge of personal character as any Assembly or gathering of men in the world, that, however low the House of Commons may rank my powers to discharge the duties which have fallen upon me since I have been here, I am confident they will not charge me with action unworthy of an English gentleman such as I should have been guilty of had I remained in the Government, no longer being in agreement with my colleagues.
I pass from that to the Amendment. After all it is good Party fighting to bring charges against Ministers of making conflicting statements, and it is perfectly legitimate that right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite should do their best to weaken our position if, in anything we have said we have not acted as we ought to have acted. I must, however, repeat what has been said more than once, namely, that I am more and more astonished as the debate has progressed at the determination of right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite to carry it on in the absence of the Prime Minister. Surely that conviction must have been forced on right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen themselves. Almost every speaker has gone into matters, has made demands, and has pressed questions which every man who has been in a Cabinet knows can only with propriety be answered by the head of the Government himself. In the absence of the Prime Minister the debate has lost nearly all its interest and value. I feel, however, from my own point of view that. great though the loss has been which has been sustained by the absence of the Prime Minister, there is one very good reason to rejoice that the debate has taken place, and that is because it has given an occasion for the speech

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of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol. If there had been no other contribution to the debate than that speech I should say that the occasion had been well utilised, because my right hon. friend not only summed up the case in a manner which I am sure commanded the respect and admiration of the House of Commons, but, further, he indicated that in regard to the policy of the Government—the policy of retaliation—not only was he prepared to approve of it in certain cases but he urged its prompt adoption. We heard the speech in which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose introduced his Amendment and other speeches like that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton. In both those speeches, and in many other speeches, we have heard condemnation of the Government and criticism of every proposal we have made having for its object the arrest of bad trade and the improvement of the industrial condition of the country. In the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol we have had, however, a practical suggestion, and, therefore, if we have gained nothing else from this debate we have had that advantage. We are told that the policy of the Government is an unreal policy. We are told by my noble friend the Member for Ealing that if we only mean retaliation why have all this bother and upset in the country, and that we could do it without. My right hon. friend the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in his speech to-day made a statement of what took place in the Cabinet on the occasion which immediately preceded his resignation and other resignations. With reference to that statement I would only say this, I was present on those occasions and I am bound honestly to say that my memory does not exactly tally with my hon. friend's, but here I feel, and I am quite sure my right hon. friend will agree with me, that it would not be proper that anyone but the Prime Minister should deal with my right hon. friend's version of what happened. I for one regret the necessity which led my right hon. friend to leave the Cabinet, and we all listened to his statement to-day with a full realisation that we had lost valu-
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able services. I myself lost my right hon. friend as a colleague with very great regret because he was an old guide and leader to me in my early days in the House of Commons. It is, however, impossible for me or for any other member of the Cabinet, except the Prime Minister, who alone is responsible, to deal with the question of what happened in the Cabinet. Indeed I thought it unnecessary on the part of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton to give us, as he did. a description of what passed in the time of Sir Robert Peel in order to emphasise what he said the policy of a strong Prime Minister would be. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to attack the Prime Minister let him wait until the Prime Minister comes back, when the Prime Minister will be able to answer him, and I shall be very much surprised if the Prime Minister does not satisfy the House of Commons that the course he followed was perfectly right and proper.
It is said we have no policy at all, that the policy of retaliation is not a real one, and could be adopted without coming to the House of Commons or without the authority of a general election. I am not quite sure how it is suggested that we should proceed except by the plan we have adumbrated. Is it suggested that it should be done by Order in Council? If so, that is the very policy which right hon. Gentlemen opposite have condemned. They have demanded to know from us whether in the application of these principles the power of Parliament would be removed and they have been told that that would not be the case. They then suggest that we want no new authority and that we can do all that is necessary as regards retaliation against other countries without coming to Parliament or going to the country. I venture to say there is very little justification for that view. Technically it may be accurate that we could put in force this policy without the authority of Parliament or that of the country having been obtained at a general election. But I venture to say that if this is to be an effective weapon, if it is to be one that can be used usefully—and I believe its greatest usefulness will be found in the power of using it rather than in actually using it—it can only be so

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when it is known that the Government of this country have been authorised by the Parliament and people of this country to use, retaliatory powers, when necessary, in order to prevent injustice being done to our own industries. Then I believe the effect of that knowledge would be almost as powerful as would be the actual imposition of retaliation. But that would be impossible unless the Government are clothed with the power and authority of Parliament and the country. That disposes of the argument that we have the power now. What is the other argument? That retaliation is useless. A great deal of the argument of this debate, and a great many of the opinions advanced and the figures quoted, must be taken after all as figurative of the opinions of different Parties holding distinctly different views, who have put forward from their side of the House what they think will justify their opposition to the policy of retaliation. Hon. Gentlemen opposite advance their own statistics in order to support their own view, but a great deal must depend on the expectations realised in the future. We, at all events, believe that retaliation is an effective weapon. The hon. Member for Glasgow, who made yesterday what I venture to say was an extremely able and interesting speech, however opinions may differ in regard to its arguments, settled that case in an extremely able manner. We believe that the statistics he advanced are correct and because we believe that the conclusions which he anticipated will be arrived at, so we think the policy of His Majesty's Government will be accepted by Parliament as a practical and sensible policy.
My hon. friend said dumping was one of the things we really had to deal with. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton said you will never stop the dumping; whatever you may do, it will go on, whatever your policy may be, whatever your powers of retaliation may be. No doubt it is perfectly true that all dumping will not be stopped, but we believe that a great deal of that dumping which has been most injurious and destructive to the industry of this country would be stopped if we have the power we ask Parliament to give us. Another argument advanced is that this dumping on
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the whole is rather a good thing, that we are not justified in putting an end to it. But that is not the view of the majority of practical business men so far as I have been able to ascertain, and I have endeavoured to make myself familiar with the opinion of representative men of business throughout the country and, almost without exception, the case they put is that in many instances capital could be employed in greater amount and with greater advantage, and that greater employment could be given to the working man here if there was such interference with the practice of dumping as they believe could be effected if we had the powers of retaliation. That is the opinion of business men in this country. What was the opinion of business men in others? I find in the Industrial Commission held in America in 1900–1901 Mr. Charles Schwab, the president of the Steel Commission, described how dumping in his country, under the wall of high tariffs, enabled them to derive great advantage, and kept their manufacturers fully employed; that is to say, while in their own country they were able to sell their produce at a profit, they were also able to make a profit on goods dumped down in this country, and sold under cost. [An HON. MEMBER: HOW about the Steel Trust?] I do not think that is any argument at all, because, if Mr. Schwab's evidence is trustworthy, the more steel made the more would be dumped here. All these arguments point to one conclusion, and, as my hon. friend said yesterday, all practical business men make the same demand, and surely it is worth while to try by some such means as those we have suggested to prevent this state of things, which lessens the demand for labour in this country. The right hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment said he did not dispute that there was some case made out for the consideration of a remedy for this serious state of things. Now we have been told the policy we suggest is no use, and that the policy of the late Colonial Secretary is one that would bring ruin and destruction on this country; but no other policy has been suggested although these evils admittedly exist. It may be urged by some that everything is so prosperous that it is not necessary to make any alteration, but they are only a small

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minority. The great majority of those who have discussed this question admit that there are evils to be removed and cured. At all events the policy of the Government is a real policy of action, while Gentlemen on the other side of the House rest themselves purely on criticism, and make no proposals of their own.
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILLsaid that the House would not be disposed to criticise very harshly the action of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to the hon. Member for the Chippenham Division, as that action had now been explained. But surely it was not usual for Cabinet Ministers to concern themselves very much with the driving out of recalcitrant or unorthodox members from their own Party. The right hon Gentleman said that he went down to Wiltshire in his private capacity.
MR. WALTER LONG: No.
MR.WINSTON CHURCHILL: It was part of the complaint against the Government that no one could ever tell whether a Minister was speaking in his private or in his official capacity. No one had been less strict than the right hon. Gentleman in confining himself to the official policy of the Government: and though he had just made a speech to which no ore could take exception, in the country the right hon. Gentleman had put forth very different doctrines and employed a very different tone. It was unfortunate, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman should be the first to make an attack on one who for so many years had given him consistent support. The speech of the President of the Board of Trade seemed to take no account of the realities of the present situation, and to be remote from the real condition by which it was surrounded. The right hon. Gentleman had suggested that the 10 per cent. duty proposed by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham was for revenue purposes only. Did the right hon. Gentleman believe that the ugly rush to join the Tariff Commission proceeded from any exalted enthusiasm for revenue; that those wealthy manufacturers sitting in conclave day after day, and defraying their own expenses, were there for the sole purpose of discovering a new source
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of revenue to balance the Budget of Imperial preference? The President of the Board of Trade had complained that the Government were abused and attacked as if they were a protectionist Government wishing to carry out a protectionist policy, and suggested that that was an unwarranted assumption, if not an invention. He would state the successive incidents which had led them to that possibly mistaken conclusion. First, the late Colonial Secretary, while a member of the Government, was permitted to make protectionist speeches, to send protectionist letters, and to flood the country with protectionist literature. What would have been said of Sir Robert Peel if he had set up a private printing press at Tamworth? The Prime Minister had been careful in his speeches to use language which neither excluded nor discountenanced the policy advocated by the then Colonial Secretary; the Party Press had been practically unanimous in preaching protection. If the right hon. Gentleman read The Times he would have seen that very odd free trade notions were being expressed in the newspapers which most regularly supported the Government. At by-elections protectionist candidates had stood on the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham with the full support and countenance of His Majesty's Ministers. Then there were the measures, more or less severe, which had been taken against those members of the Unionist Party who had been actively engaged in combating protection. Perhaps hon. Members were a ware that he himself had to rely upon the daily Press for information as to the course of business in this House. Then there was the ejection from the Cabinet of the free-trade Ministers, whose places were taken in every case by representatives of the most extreme protectionist opinion in Parliament, and lastly, there was the appointment of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the face of these facts could it be said that they were unreasonable in imagining that there was in the country a real protectionist movement, that they were confronted with a real movement for the establishment of a general and permanent tariff, that the Government sympathised with that movement, and were prepared to aid, abet, and, if possible, profit by it? His right hon. friend had made a remarkable speech which had not

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received from the Party Press the attention one might have expected from the nature of the declarations it contained. He had declared that he and the Government were opposed to the principle and theory of protection; he had declared against food taxes, even after the next election; he had declared against an average 10 per cent. ad valorem duty on foreign manufactured goods; and he had stated that there was to be no retaliation without the consent of Parliament in each special and particular case. It was true the right hon. Gentleman used a lot of vague language of uncertain import to soothe the feelings of his protectionist supporters, who might not unreasonably have been disquieted by those declarations. Personally he would be quite content with the language and declarations of the President of the Board of Trade if he thought the right hon. Gentleman had power to give effect to them. If they had been made six months earlier he thought there would have been no great protectionist movement in the country, no Free Food League, no Tariff Reform Committee, no speech by the President of the Local Government Board against the hon. Member for the Chippenham Division of Wiltshire, and perhaps no resignations, or only one resignation, from the Cabinet in the autumn. But there was such a thing as making declarations too late. Not only had they been confronted with the official acts of hostility to the cause of free-trade, which he had enumerated, but free-trade Members of the Unionist Party had been threatened by the Tariff Reform League. Mr. Ratcliffe Cousins in his letter stated—
"This League has by resolution determined to oppose the return of free-fooders, whether Unionist or Radical, and we shall use the whole of our organisation for this object."
And a prominent member of the League, who had declared himself, heart and soul, with its objects, was now Civil Lord of the Admiralty! In face of the danger with which they conceived themselves to be confronted, the free-trade Unionists had been compelled to take steps more or less serious, and in some cases, irrevocable. They had had the unpleasant business of differing with old friends and fighting their organisations, and in some cases new organisations had had to be formed with a
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view to possible eventualities. The President of the Board of Trade had stated that the Government were prepared to fight for free trade. Where would free trade have been now if it had been left to the champions on the Treasury Bench? If there was in England and Scotland a strong growing and embattled opinion, ready to fight against any attempt to revert to protection, it was due to the exertions of the Liberal leaders, the exertions and sacrifices of private people who did not usually take much part in politics, and, let it never be forgotten, the sacrifices of the free-trade Ministers on the Government side of the House. These events had produced a profound impression upon the public mind, and a sensible alteration in the existing balance of Parties in the country. It would take more than one hesitating speech to remove the impression these events had caused or to avert the consequences to which they might lead.
The President of the Board of Trade had divided his speech into two parts, in one of which he spoke for himself, and in the other for the Government. So far as he spoke for himself, he (the speaker) accepted his statements unreservedly, and, as a free-trader, was grateful for his emphatic though tardy declaration of faith; but in view of what occurred since the beginning of this dispute, he could not put the same confidence in the statements which he made on behalf of the Government. While the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary to the Board of Trade, and the President of the Local Government Board remained on the Treasury Bench, he could not believe that the assurances which had been given were founded on the conscientious convictions of a united Cabinet. They seemed much more likely to be a tactical expedient suggested by the results of recent by-elections and rendered desirable by the approaching division. How could it be known that after further by-elections another Government attitude would not be taken? It could not be forgotten that the Prime Minister, when he succeeded Lord Salisbury, stated at the Carlton Club that the policy of the Conservative Party should not be altered, but within a year he declared at Sheffield that he proposed to

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make a fundamental alteration of the fiscal policy of the last two generations. There was not much danger of the Unionist free-traders deserting the cause of free trade. If only the issue were put plainly enough, he believed there were 100 Conservative Members who would rather go out of public life than support a definite fully-developed plan of protection. But there was a danger that in the existing uncertainty they might be induced by the difficulties of the situation, or by considerations of Party or friendship, or in the hope of conciliating doubtful friends, or of mollifying adroit antagonists, to fritter away or damage some part of the great substructure upon which the commercial system of the country depended. As his noble friend had stated, it did not rest with the Government to decide what should be the issue at the next election. It rested with them to say what should not be done before the next election, but what would be done at the election; and still more what would be done alter that election they could not with certainty declare. The issue at the next election had already been fixed, as the issue of elections were often fixed, by the force of character of a powerful politician who occupied a private station apart from the political organisation of either of the Parties. The issue had been fixed, and that issue was whether this country should make the same kind of reversal of fiscal policy that Germany was persuaded to make in the 80's by Prince Bismarck.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: Hear, hear!
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: Now the House had that on the highest possible authority. We were confronted with an urgent and vital issue. Ministers on the Front Bench deluded themselves. Nobody cared what might happen to any particular set of Ministers, and after the election no one would care a row of buttons what their particular opinions might have been. All these balancings, limitations, and half-pledges, these little devices by which an embarrassed Government staved off ruin from day to day would, after the next election, be swept as smooth as the ands of the shore after a flood tide. After the election, if the Member for Birming-
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ham was in possession of a Parliamentary majority, he would dictate what the policy of the country would be. He had left the present Government because it would not accept his policy; after obtaining a mandate, was he likely to take less than he was prepared to take before? If the President of the Board of Trade, wishing, no doubt, to carry out the pledges he had given on which Unionist free-taders had recorded votes for the Government, turned up in Hansard the speech he delivered on Monday night, did he think-that would alter by a hair's-breadth the policy of the ex-Colonial Secretary? It would not alter the policy, though it might, he thought, operate in a manner altogether detrimental to the right hon. Gentleman's official career. He could not help sympathising, on the first day the House met, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in having, on the first occasion when he addressed the House in the great office to which he had been called, had such a very bad chance of making a good speech. As he listened to his right hon. friend putting forth all the equivocations and generalities which constituted so large a part of the Government case, he could not help thinking that all the time his heart was on the third bench below the gangway, the headquarters of a policy which, think what they would of it, and some of them thought very ill of it, was a policy put forward with faith and courage.
He had not the smallest personal grievance against his right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham, though the course which the right hon. Gentleman had adopted might possibly end in his exclusion from that House. [OPPOSITION cries of "No."] The right hon. Gentleman was in earnest, and believed in the cause he was fighting for, and believing that it was the best policy for the country and the Empire he was bound to take all constitutional steps necessary to secure the adoption of his policy. But he could not help feeling a certain amount of resentment against a Government, which was prepared to use to the full all the machinery of political excommunication for the sake not of a policy, a principle, or a cause, but of a mere Parliamentary dodge designed to keep in office during a few precarious months the existing Administration. He thought, in the face

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of tactics like that, they must be pardoned if they felt a certain amount of resentment. But it did not matter very much what the Prime Minister said now. For the next ten years the hall-mark of a Conservative would be willingness to work whole-heartedly for the policy of the Member for Birmingham. The Conservative Party had resolved to trust itself to the instinct of the right hon. Gentleman. He supposed about four years ago there was no man in this country better able to gauge and measure beforehand what great masses of the electorate were ready to do. The Conservative Party were trusting a great deal to that instinct to-day. Sometimes he wondered whether perhaps it was wrong, and whether the right hon. Gentleman had lately been so much concerned in managing affairs out side this country that the nice balance of his judgment in domestic affairs had been destroyed. He sometimes wondered whether the right hon. Gentleman might not be found celebrating the relief of Makeing in a world which was moving on to quite different occupations. But whether his instinct was right or wrong, there was no doubt about his power. Could any hon. Gentleman who heard the speech which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham delivered last week in the debate on the war, and who watched the effect of it on the Ministerial Benches, who saw the Government supporter's admiration of that speech, doubt that so long as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham lived he would hold the Conservative Party in his grip? Could anyone doubt that those who belonged to that Party would have to accept the terms he was prepared to offer and submit to the policy which he was determined to dictate. There were some of them, and he did not think he was the only one, who were not prepared to accept those terms or submit to those tests, and in the division which was going to close this debate they would have to think as what Mr. Gladstone said in a famous debate, not for the moment only but for the years that were to come.
He would now turn from the free-trade speech of the President of the Board of Trade to the free-trade speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board
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of Trade. He did not wish to treat the retaliatory policy of the Government with any disrespect, and he would confine himself almost entirely to that particular part of it which was put forward by his hon. friend. Of course, he did not quarrel with the description of the speech as a free-trade speech, but it approached exactly the same conclusions as if the speaker had been a protectionist. He drew exactly the same conclusions, and the result of this free-trade policy if carried out would end in the establishment of duties and a general tariff which would not be wholly dissimilar from the objects which protectionists had in view. He confessed he wondered that members of the Government were so anxious to assume all these immense extensions of their functions. No doubt there were some things which a Government must do, not because the Government would do them well, but because nobody else would do them at ail. What was there in the experience which they had had of the Government during the last few years to encourage them to countenance such a great extension of the administrative functions of any British Government. Was the information on which they had acted always so very accurate? The hon. and learned Member who sat opposite told the House of the mistakes made in the conduct of the late war, and he spoke of the complaints made by various Cabinet Ministers of the information supplied to them by their expert advisers. Only a year ago he himself heard the Prime Minister assure the House with the utmost confidence that on the authority of his legal advisers there was no possibility of successfully conducting a prosecution against Mr. Whitaker Wright. If such astounding errors, made no doubt in perfect good faith, could creepin to the administration of a Government in regard to matters so entirely within its own province as war and justice, how absurd it was to invite them to embark upon this immense extension of their functions into the far mere complicated and unmeasured difficulties of commerce and of speculation. When a tariff or treaty had been adopted and some costly error had been discovered in it, the Prime Minister would say the Government had trusted to their commercial advisers, and that, if there

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had been any error, it was not the fault of the Government or their advisers, but of some defect in the state of the economic law. The Member for West Birmingham would add that the tariff would have worked perfectly well if it had not been for the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition and the traitorous intrigues of the foreign members of the Cobden Club. There was such a thing as pressure. Borne time ago the Prime Minister said it would not be proper to put Members of the House on a Commission to inquire into trade-union law, because of the pressure to which they would be subjected. He remembered the late Postmaster General stating that nothing would be more improper than to put an hon. Member of the House on a Committee to rearrange and consider the wages of the Post Office servants because of the pressure that organisation could put upon Members of Parliament.
There were three perfectly distinct kinds of pressure which could be exerted upon a protectionist Government. First, there was corruption, direct and indirect. Then there was the pressure on individual Members who would not get returned unless they were willing to go in on the basis of obtaining as great trade concessions for their own constituencies as they possibly could. Everybody looked at the tariff from his own point of view. A truly scientific tariff was one a man was able to arrange for himself in the interests of the Empire and the working classes. That was why the hon. Member for Rochester felt sure that no tariff would be complete which did not include a stiff duty on imported cement, and why the Conservative candidate in St. Albans felt that no tariff would be really scientific which did not provide for the free admission of straw plaits. Then there was the third class of pressure—the pressure of organised interests upon political leaders. He expected that if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham were present he would have admitted that he had already learned something about that kind of pressure from his experience in forming his Tariff Commission. A genteel instance of the pressure was seen in the fact that a year ago the ex-Colonial Secretary would not have paid much attention to the opinion of the
916
right hon. Member for Sleaford, but to day he had to shelter himself behind the right hon. Gentleman, because he was believed to be the representative of the great landed interest without whose support no scheme of protection had the slightest chance of passing. There was nothing to justify the assumption by the Government of new burdens which experience had shown them to be little competent to bear, and which their successors would unhesitatingly refuse.
The Secretary to the Board of Trade referred to the argument with which Members had been made familiar in The Times, and which had been frequently put forward by that able young gentleman who spent his afternoons in writing letters over the signature "Tariff Reformer," and his evenings in writing leading articles saying how excellent and conclusive those letters were. He was surprised that his hon. friend the Secretary to the Board of Trade in his speech had not distinguished between two perfectly distinct kinds of dumping which were hardly ever present in combination. There were two distinct causes which led to the sale of goods in this country at prices unremunerative to the producer. One was the deliberate attempt of one set of traders to smash and ruin another set of traders and to capture their business. Free-traders and protectionists alike would condemn that form of commercial piracy. But it was not only practised by foreigners against Englishmen, it was practised by German against German, Frenchman against Frenchman, and, above all, by American against American. [OPPOSITION cries of "Birmingham."] He did not say that they had any occasion to make allusion to old and he believed libellous statements. If a gigantic conspiracy could be proved on the part of a foreign country against any of our principal industries, and it could be shown that the intervention of the Government would save that industry, while its abstention would allow it to be destroyed, what Government would refuse to propose, and what House of Commons would refuse to pass legislation to deal with the matter? He asked hon. Members not to imagine that a free-trade Government would not be able to deal with great trusts. Why! that was the only Government that could deal

917
with them. President Roosevelt, the powerful head of the American Executive, had been practically powerless in dealing with the great combination, which supported the Republican Party. A tree-trade Government caring nothing for great trusts would be able to intervene with crushing effect were it proved that they were injurious to the general interests of the people.
The greater part of the dumping in this country did not arise from the cause just stated, but from the desire of foreign countries to preserve their own market, to be able to charge their people what they liked, and to get rid of any over production. The system of protection which prevailed in Germany stimulated production at the expense of consumption. The protectionist fallacy was to imagine that production was the only thing that mattered. Prosperity depended upon not only the volume of production, but also the harmonious relation between production and the consuming power. He did not deny that dumping was an uneconomic operation, that artificial prices whether high or low were uneconomic and operated in restraint of trade. But the question must be considered as a whole. It was necessary to look, not only at the effects of dumping here, but also at the conditions which gave rise to it. The House was entitled to ask the Government what was their plan for dealing with dumping. It was all very well to talk about being anxious to shut out unfair competition, but how were they going to discriminate between the two? it was obvious that "dumped" steel was the cheapest of steel, and any tariff framed to shut out that must à fortiori shut out all articles produced at a higher price. He did not deny there was a dislocation caused by dumping, but the contention of the free-traders was that, on the whole, the assailant was nearly always more injured than the victim, that in nearly every case we were able to make a profit out of the transaction, that the conditions which gave rise to dumping were unhealthy and wasteful, that although they might result in profit to the manufacturers who were lucky enough to "rig the market" they were a gross injustice to the mass of the population, that they were the direct result of protective tariffs, and that
918
the only remedy they could apply, if indeed there was any remedy, would be, to establish in oar own country those evil conditions which we discover abroad. They heard something last session about "jam and pickles." The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had asked, both in the House and on the platform, now many people who had been turned out of the sugar refineries had found employment in stirring up jam pots and tilling bottles of pickles. Well, the figures had been ascertained. In 1891 there were 5,709 persons employed in sugar refineries, and ten years later that number was reduced to 2,400, showing a loss of 3,300. The despised trades of jam and pickles, which employed in 1891 30,000 persons in 1901 employed 41,000 persons, thus accommodating 6,700 more persons than were displaced by any injury that our sugar refineries had suffered from dumping. The French had a proverb, "Drive away nature and it returns at a gallop." So it was with the high tariffs of foreign countries. Although here and there they were able to create trade, they deprive I the people of the opportunity of moving forward into those high-grade employments where labour was more varied and more generously rewarded, and leadership in which was the greatest mark of industrial strength in the present condition of the world.
Now, his hon. friend preached one thing in this House, and quite another doctrine outside. They had been called upon not merely to make a mere modification of free trade. It was a complete repudiation which they had been asked to make. He would read what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade said when he addressed a meeting in the country. The hon. Gentleman had got up a more refined and up-to-date version for the House of Commons; but he painted with rather a bolder touch in the constituencies. His hon. friend said that there were £150,000,000 worth of manufactured goods imported into the country, which represented a loss in wages of between £70,000,000 and £80,000,000, and he thought that a large part of that sum might, by a stroke of the pen, be secured to the British workmen without any loss to the country. Now, that was a startling development

919
of the free-trade theory. Was that the opinion of the Board of Trade; was that fairly supported by the great Department of which he was one of the chiefs: was it the view of the President of the Board of Trade? Was the right hon. Gentleman of opinion that if you shut out half the imports into this country we should make all these things in this country in addition to all those we already made?
MR. BONAR LAWsaid he did not argue that that result would be obtained by shutting out foreign goods, but that we should secure a fair share of the foreign makets.
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILLsaid he had quoted the words of the hon. Gentleman, and they seemed to favour the impression that by shutting out the greater part of our imports they would produce greater employment. He was grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting him in so friendly a manner, because he was afraid that the hon. Gentleman might apply to him the vitriolic scorn he had used on the unfortunate lawyers who sat beside him on the Treasury Bench. In supporting the doctrines which had been quoted, the hon. Gentleman might be guilty of a fallacy but not of any fraud. But those who regarded that doctrine, in the words of the Duke of Devonshire, as an inversion of fact—if they were to make themselves responsible for supporting its enunciation in any direct manner, would be guilty of a deliberate propagation of error. The importance of this great debate, although it had been robbed of its animation through the absence of the great leaders of the fiscal controversy, extended beyond the limits of our domestic affairs, and even beyond the limits of the British Empire. All the world was concerned in the decision they were going to take. Protectionists and free-traders, rival schools in every country in the world, were watching with the closest attention the discussions in that House. They were waiting with the keenest anxiety the result of the appeal which the right hon. Member for West Birmingham had lodged against the decision of 1846. There were very powerful free-
920
trade movements in Germany, America and Australia. [An HON. MEMBER on the GOVERNMENT Benches: No.] Did not the hon. Gentleman know that the Democratic Party in the United States, which was expected to return to power at some time, was pledged to substantial reductions of the tariff? And that the Democratic platform was largely free-trade. His hon. Friend said, "No"; but the House knew perfectly well whether he was right or not. He thought there was a great deal more reason to hope for a reduction of tariffs from free-trade discussions in these foreign countries than from any facilities for commercial diplomacy which the Government were understood to offer. At all events there was something inspiring in the idea of all these millions of German and American free-traders moving forward, in spite of every difficulty and obstacle which ignorance and prejudice could interpose, towards the beacon light we had long upheld. He believed that that movement was fraught with immense consequences to the permanent interests of mankind, and if, at this juncture in the history of free trade, the British people, in spite of the impassioned appeal made to them and of the popularity of the right hon. Gentleman who made that appeal, in spite of the wealth and influence which supported it—if they found that the British people solemnly affirmed, after sixty years of fighting hostile tariffs with free imports, that the policy of free trade was sound and unimpeachable, that could not fail to be of great advantage to the free-trade cause in these foreign countries. Indeed some of then: might live long enough to see the fulfilment of those venturesome predictions of Mr. Cobden. He thought that in the face of the momentous issues which had been thrust upon them the ordinary considerations of which Party should sit on which side of the House, and what Members would be returned to serve in Parliament, seemed small and unworthy. When so much was uncertain, when so much was obscure, and when everything was shifting and manœuvring around them, they must get on to firm ground: and he, for one, would proudly join in the assertion of those great principles of social justice and of economic truth

921
which were embodied in the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Montrose.
MR. WHITE RIDLEYsaid that the course of the debate had shown two substantial issues presented to the House. The first was as between free trade and protection, and the second was an attempt on the part of nearly every speaker to go beyond and behind he policy which the Prime Minister had initiated. He could not conceive why this should be, except for individual purposes. As he understood it, the policy of the Prime Minister at Sheffield was precisely the same as the policy of the Government at the present moment—viz., the policy of retaliation. Under these circumstances he could not imagine why the tariff-leaguers and the free-fooders should not go into the same lobby at the end of this debate on the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose, and in support of the Government, except for the reason that whereas the majority of the members of the Free Food League distrusted and did not confide in the general policy of the Government, those who supported the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham did trust and confide in the general policy of the Government, He could not see why the members of the Free Food League should taunt the Prime Minister, as the hon. Member for Oldham had done, with having changed the policy of the Party. He had yet to learn that free trade, or what was called free trade, was ever the definite and distinct policy of the Unionist Party. If the records were examined it would he found that very many members of the Unionist or Conservative Party had held strongly that fair trade, as opposed to free trade, was the best thing for the country. That had been an open question for many years, and he had yet to learn that to hold that opinion was inconsistent with loyalty to the Party. It would be remembered that the policy embodied in the death duties had been bitterly attacked by the Party to which he had the honour to belong; but would anyone say that that was the policy of the Conservative Party, because they had not been able to reverse it? In the same way would anyone say that because the Con-servative Party had never been able to
922
reverse the policy of free imports that that was the policy of the Unionist Party?
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol had said that the policy of the Government was entirely incompatible with the farther policy of preference; hut there was no incompatibility between the two policies. The same principle underlay them both. The policy of retaliation, he ventured to think, had for its basis the extension of our area of trade in foreign countries; the policy of preferential tariffs had for its basis the extension of our area of trade in the Colonies. From the point of view he approached the question he did not say that those two policies were incompatible. The policy of retaliation had as its basis the extension of our area of trade in foreign countries and the Birmingham policy had for its object the extension of our area of trade in the Colonies. He admitted there were difficulties to be overcome in both policies in the arrangements of the tariffs and the negotiations with the Colonies, and probably nobody would be entirely satisfied, but because they could not satisfy nobody were they to satisfy nobody, and because they could not have everything they wanted were they going to refuse to take a single step in the direction they desired to go? Were they to consider the question closed because of those difficulties? While this country had been adhering to the present system the other countries had been marching on different lines and had developed their area of trade. The United States and Germany and South Africa had taken real genuine steps in the direction of extending their trade area. Was it not true that England, the greatest trading Empire of the world, had taken no practical steps to really extend her free-trade area. Almost any Member of the House would say if they could get free trade with the Colonies and develop it on the exact lines adopted in the United States, they would support entirely the Birmingham policy. But because they could not get free trade at once were they not going to take a single step? If they would not move in the direction of preference how were they going to get any nearer free trade with the Colonies. The policy they had been pursuing for the last twenty years would not allow free trade even with

923
the Colonies. The argument for continuing the present system was that it had been based upon the moral attitude, but he could not see that free trade was more moral than protection. That argument rested on the theory that it was wrong as well as impolitic to impose any hindrance upon trade. The whole policy of the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for West Birmingham was to impose taxes in order to remove those hindrances. They might differ as to the way in which they were going to remove those hindrances, but the whole design of tariff reform was to remove and not to impose hindrances. If that idea failed he should not be able to support the Birmingham; scheme with the enthusiasm which he now did.
They had been frequently told that those engaged in the cotton trade of Lancashire were opposed to a reversal of the present system. They had been told that whatever industries might benefit from the ex-Colonial Secretary's scheme the cotton industry of Lancashire I could not benefit. The Board of Trade returns showed last year a state of things supposed to fill free-importers with pleasure, but when they went closely into the matter they would find that the increased export of manufactured cotton goods represented a decrease in the amount because they were of a higher value, the! cost of material having considerably increased on account of the price, of cotton in America. Whilst the Board of Trade returns gave this increased value in cotton exports and imports everybody knew that in Lancashire trade depression had be come very serious indeed. The House would see, therefore, that the Board of Trade returns were by no means a certain index of the increased prosperity of the country. What was the reason of this? Was it not because the supply of cotton came almost exclusively from one quarter of the world? What would have been the case if they had adopted a wise colonial policy and developed the growth of cotton in the Colonies. He was aware that it would be impossible to place a tax of any sort or shape on raw cotton. There was an institution called the British Cotton Growing Association on which Members from both sides of the House acted with a common aim, and they were
924
urging the Government to construct railways in East Africa in order to develop the growth of cotton. Free-traders who supported this Association must realise, that, by asking for this money for railways, they were asking for a bounty and departing far from the pure milk of the Cobdenite theory. Upon this quesion what he wished to emphasise was that if the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had been put into force years ago the present difficulties in the cotton trade might have been mitigated and there would not have been such a very serious crisis in Lancashire. It was said that the Birmingham policy would cause a rise in the cost of production and that that would be a serious blow to the cotton trade. Had there not now been a great rise in the cost of production? It was said that they were going to cause the United States of America to put an export duty on cotton, but he would remind the House, that the Constitution of the United States would not allow such a duty to be imposed. Of course they could alter the law, but it would have to be done by a two-thirds majority of each State in the Union, and did anyone imagine that those States which grew the cotton were going to vote for an export duty on cotton which would prevent them selling. Was it not more likely that under our present system of allowing unrestricted development abroad efforts would be made to keep their cotton at home and make it into manufactured goods themselves. In recent years the development of manufactured cotton goods in the United States had been out of all proportion to the development of cotton manufacture in England.
They were told that they ought to devote their attention to remedying the social condition of the people, that they ought to pay more attention to education; and encourage the enterprise of their manufacturers. Were they to encourage social reforms like the housing of the working classes and local option, and at the same time to neglect the most important; of all social reforms which would solve at once the difficulties of the housing and the drink questions, namely, the problem of finding regular employment for the workers. Were they to develop the

925
education of this country in order that men, when educated, would have to go abroad to foreign mills because they could not find a market for their education at home. Free trade had developed in England a race of manufacturers who were not so enterprising, according to the free-traders, as the manufacturers of protectionist Germany. Yet free-traders were constantly saying that free trade developed enterprise and protection discouraged it. He ventured to say that the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham struck at the root of all these things. Some hon. Members thought the Government ought to at once appeal to the country, but in his opinion the Government held a higher trust. He would work whole-heartedly for the policy of preferential tariffs, but he would work for it within the Party; and his reply to the taunt that the Government ought to seek the verdict of the country on fiscal reform was that the Government had committed to their care and defence interests of almost equal importance to the questions of retaliation or preferential tariffs.
And, it being half-past Seven of the Clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.

EVENING SITTING.

  KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment [8th February] to Main Question [2nd February],"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
  "Most Gracious Sovereign,—
  "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg 1eave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. I Hardy.)
  Which Amendment was—
  "At the end of the Question, to add the words 'But it is our duty, however, humbly to represent to Your Majesty that our effective
  926
  deliberation on the financial service of the year is impaired by conflicting declarations from Your Majesty's Ministers. We respectfully submit to Your Majesty the judgment of this House that the removal of protective duties has for more than half a century actively conduced to the vast extension of the trade and commerce of the realm and to the welfare of its population; and this House believes that, while the needs of social improvement are still manifold and urgent, any return to protective duties, more particularly when imposed on the food of the people, would be deeply injurious to our national strength, contentment, and well-being."—(Mr. John Morley.)
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
  SIR WILLIAM HOLLAND (Yorkshire, W. R., Rotherham)said it would be recognised in all quarters of the House that the introduction of the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Montrose had been amply justified by the speeches, or many of them, that had been delivered in this debate. He was particularly grateful to the President of the Board of Trade for the speech he had delivered on a previous evening in favour of free trade, as a good many hon. Members had beer very doubtful as to what his attitude was in regard to this policy. As he understood the hon. Member for Stalybridge, he advocated the policy of the right hon. Member for Birmingham on the score of the benefit that would be likely to accrue to the cotton trade, a trade in which his constituents were chiefly interested. He himself had always held the opinion that no trade was likely to lose more by any tinkering with tariffs than that particular trade, for the reason that there was no trade in this country to-day that depended more on foreign markets. Eighty per cent of our production was sent abroad, nearly two-thirds of which went to foreign countries. Therefore it would be at once seen how much our cotton trade stood to lose by a policy which might have the effect of interfering with the trade in foreign markets and which might close to us some of the neutral markets of the world. With regard to the trifling imports referred to by the hon. Member, when we considered that £70,000,000 or £80,000,000 was sent out of this country every year in

  927
  cotton goods and cotton yarns it would be seen that the cotton trade could afford to regard with comparative composure any slight increase in its imports. He held in his hand a resolution passed by a representative [meeting of the trade, which was in the following terms—
  "That the great cotton industry of the United Kingdom owes its pie-eminence to, and can only be maintained by, the policy of free trade."
  He attached great importance to that resolution, because he knew the character and ability of the men who took part in the discussion of the resolution. A large association with which he happened to be connected had many thousands of workpeople engaged in producing yarns for the German market, and if we became involved in a tariff war with Germany would the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmmghamor, anybody else, guarantee those thousands of workpeople the continuous employment they now enjoyed? It would be poor consolation to those workpeople to be told that although their trade was damaged other trades would benefit or that we could not establish new factories without closing old ones.
  The hon. Member for Stalybridge had said. "Because we cannot satisfy everybody are we not to try and satisfy any-body?" but the great danger was lest there should be more people dissatisfied after such legislation than there were before. He believed that more harm than good would be done by legislation of this kind, and that the great masses of the people would be in a worse position after it than they were before. When the census was taken in the United States, census papers were distributed with several columns ruled in them containing questions which had to be answered, and he understood that one of those columns was headed "Condition as to Marriage." When the papers were collected it was found that one man had filled up this column "Hard up before marriage but ten times worse after," and he believed that a good many who were engaged in the industries and commerce of this country would be ten times worse off after this tariff reform had come into operation than they were before. There was no other country in the world where tariff legislation was so risky as it was in this. We had adapted our industries to a free-
  928
  trade system, and no doubt under that system some of our manufactures had increased abnormally, and had thus become so to speak top-heavy, but that made it all the more important that nothing should be done to jeopardise them because they would be all the more easily upset. The hon. Member had asked whether the cost of production had not been increased owing to the present high price of cotton, but hon. Members would admit that an increase in the cost of production caused by a tariff was an entirely different thing to an increase of the cost of production caused by dear cotton. Dearness of cotton applied equally to all nations, but an increase in the cost of production arising from tariff legislation affected only that country where that tariff legislation was in force. The hon. Member in regretting that preference for the Colonies had not been established years ago, had expressed the opinion that if such had been the case a great deal more cotton would have come from the Colonies, but it was difficult to suppose that that would have been the case unless there had been some discrimination by us against the United States, a discrimination which would be fraught with the greatest danger to this country. It had been alleged that there would be no fear in such a case of an export duty being placed upon raw cotton, because the Constitution of the United States would prevent it. With that he did not quite agree. At present, as he understood the Constitution of the United States, no individual State was allowed to impose an export duty, but Congress was supreme, and would have the right to confer that power on any of the States. That disposed of the contention that if we were involved in a tariff war with the United States we should not be in danger of an export duty being placed on her raw cotton.
  He cordially approved of the opinion expressed by the hon. Member for Staly-bridge when he spoke of the desirability of growing more cotton within the limits of our Empire, and he was extremely glad to observe that that important question had been referred to in the Speech from the Throne. The importance of that it was quite impossible to overstate when one considered that the welfare and happiness of hundreds of thousands of people in the cotton manufacturing

  929
  districts were entirely dependent upon it, and that being so, the Government could undertake no other productive work which could compare with it. It had constantly been argued with perfect truth that our Empire was extremely vulnerable owing to the extent on which we were dependent on foreign nations for food and raw materials. One way in which the Empire could be made less vulnerable than it was now was by growing larger supplies within the Empire. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade had referred to the percentage of unemployed, which, he said, during the last half of last year showed an increase; if the hon. Member took into account the fact that the cotton trade was suffering, even a year ago more or less owing to the cotton famine, then in all fairness he must admit that the increase in the percentage of the unemployed in that trade during the last half of last year was in no way connected with the fiscal question. The same condition of things obtained now. He therefore warned those who were in favour of tariff reform not to quote the cotton trade as an instance of the need of tariff legislation, because the troubles from which the cotton trade suffered were quite apart from any such question, and tariff legislation would tend to aggravate rather than to remove them.
  The hon. Gentleman, although it was late in the day to re-open that question, seemed to argue that where a tariff was imposed the foreigner would pay it and not the importer, but it must be obvious to everyone that in the long run the consumer must pay it. What was the testimony of Germany on this point? It was to be found in the remarkable words in the preamble to the new German tariff law.
  "Prices in the home market have, so far as the circumstances prevailing during the last decade permit a judgment, experienced a rise corresponding pretty accurately to the amount of the duty."
  The hon. Member the Secretary to the Board of Trade seemed to plume himself on the legislation last year with regard to the Sugar Convention. Did the hon. Member or any of those associated with him contemplate at the time the Sugar Convention was passed all the consequences which had ensued since. That Convention prevented
  930
  bounty-fed sugar coming to this country from Russia, and what did she do, she immediately cast about for a means of retaliation, and discovered it in Indian tea. Naturally the Indian tea planter would want to know why his product should be penalised upon entering Russia, seeing that India had done nothing to deserve it.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURpointed out that Russia had quite as much reason to complain of the action of India as of our actions on account of the countervailing duties she imposed upon Russian sugar.
  SIR WILLIAM HOLLANDsaid that the right hon. Gentleman could not deny that Russia's action with regard to Indian tea was the direct result of the Sugar Convention, and, that being so, the Indian tea planter would naturally wish to know why, at this particular juncture, he should be penalised in this way in the interest of the West Indian planter. He asked whether such legislation did not tend rather to promote the disruption of the Empire than its consolidation. When a Government embarked on fiscal legislation generally all sorts of results were apt to occur which were not contemplated at the time when such legislation was initiated. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had in his speech two days previously said he was prepared to fight for free trade. There was a by-election now going on in Mid Hertfordshire in which the Conservative candidate was not a free-trader. Would the right hon. Gentleman fight for free trade in that constituency? If so, he would be compelled to oppose the Conservative candidate, who had described himself as a "whole-hogger," which he presumed to mean that he was prepared to support the policy of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham in its entirety, though on the face of it it looked as if a "whole-hogger" went further, seeing that bacon was excluded from the Birmingham programme. The Conservative candidate in that fight, in a circular which he had issued to the electors, had stated that the British workman's savings were the lowest in Europe. He contended that that was not true. It might be true with

  931
  regard to that portion of their savings which was deposited in the Savings Banks, but it was not true as to the aggregate savings, and, even if the deposits in the Savings Banks were regarded as the sole test, it would be found that Denmark and Switzerland, two more or less free countries, headed the list, which rather tended to strengthen the free-trade argument. The fact of the Savings Bank deposits of the British workmen being the lowest was easily explained. In the first place the interest allowed to depositors was far lower than in any other country; next, the amount allowed to be deposited was limited, but the great reason of all was that here there were other means offered to the depositors for investing their savings in the great building and friendly societies and in other ways, and it would be seen that he was quite justified in controverting the statement issued in that circular. The savings of the British workmen were, he believed, the highest in Europe instead of being the lowest. He was not afraid of any discussion to far as free trade was concerned provided always that those who gained by that policy would speak out as loudly as those who alleged they were injured by it, but the tendency was rather to cry out when the shoe pinched, and, on the other hand, to keep quiet and certainly not to proclaim from the house-tops the fact that under a particular system people were doing well. Now that the question of fiscal reform had been raised the country would insist upon its being thrashed thoroughly out, therefore he would not disapprove of the appointment of a Royal Commission, upon which every shade of opinion should be represented, to investigate the matter. What were the features of the Board of Trade returns of which the tariff-reformers at present complained? First they complained of the largeness of our imports, but when it was pointed out that 70 or 80 per cent. of those imports were raw materials and foodstuffs, he believed everyone would rather see them increase than diminish. Then they complained of the smallness of the exports of manufactured goods. There was not a nation in the world which could hold a candle to us in that matter. If he found a man objecting to the small-
  932
  ness of our exports to protected countries he quite agreed that it would be most desirable to increase them, but he absolutely denied that the policy now be fore the country was likely to do so. In his judgment it was dangerous to dogmatise on the figures of the Board of Trade because they related wholly to the external commerce of the country. In his own business, if he found the home trade sufficient to absorb all his production he would not send travellers abroad to push his trade in foreign markets. It was only when the home trade slackened that he would do that, therefore, if these statistics were an unsafe test as to the condition of our trade, it was little short of a crime for the country to be committed to a reversal of its fiscal policy on the strength of them. A far safer test of fiscal policy than imports and exports was, in his opinion, the general condition of the people at large. Were they well fed, were they well clothed, and well housed? Not so well, perhaps as we should like to see them, but far better than in any protected country in Europe, which were the countries now held up to us for imitation.
  MR. BURDETT-COUTTS: No.
  SIR WILLIAM HOLLANDsaid he thought it was suggested that we should imitate the fiscal policy of the protected countries of Europe.
  MR. BURDETT-COUTTS: As I interrupted the hon. Member perhaps I ought to explain my interruption. We argue from the model of the United States.
  SIR WILLIAM HOLLANDsaid he was of course referring to European countries, the United States being in a category of its own. Measured by the standard he had referred to, our fiscal policy had not been a failure; on the contrary, it had been a great success, but protection would lead to monopoly, and in proportion as they had monopoly they had I an unequal distribution of wealth and consequent discontent and dissatisfaction.

  933
  It put him in mind of a verse he read in an American paper—
  "A millionaire I'd like to be
  Alack 'tis scarcely fair,
  Another gets the million
  And I only get the 'aire.'"
  There would be an increase in the cost of living and of production, and any such increase would paralyse competition in the great neutral markets of the world. If they had protection they would run the risk of losing most-favoured-nation treatment. Other countries had tried the policy of retaliation and the result had been that more frequently tariffs had been raised instead of being lowered. One great advantage of our present system was that it attracted the buyers of the world to our markets, and anyone who had anything to sell knew that it was an advantage to be able to gain the ear of buyers. A vague mandate for retaliation would be like giving the Government a blank cheque. Of that they had had experience which had not been very satisfactory. It was clear that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had unduly magnified colonial interests, minimised the interests of this country, and ignored altogether those of India. The Colonies, so far as he had observed, wished for nothing more than even-handed justice, which they would regard as essential to the permanent maintenance of a strong Empire. He had attended the Imperial Congress of Chambers of Commerce in Canada, and he gathered that the Canadians generally would repel any system of preference which would have the effect of injuring the interests of the mother country, which injury would speedily react upon them. The Colonies stood by the mother country in her distress, and in face of such splendid loyalty every preference which the wit of man could devise seemed unworthy of consideration, inasmuch as it sought to put the existence of the Empire on a cash basis. A fiscal union would involve conflicting and contradictory aims and therefore would not consolidate the Empire. To persist in it would lead to friction, strife, and jealousy. Fiscal reform did not offer the best solution of the difficulty. The best solution would be found in a political union—the formation of a consultative, rather than a
  934
  legislative body, and of this even the Prime Minister did not disapprove. That would be a thousand times more hopeful a solution of the problem how best to draw the Colonies more closely to the mother country.
  SIR J. DICKSON-POYNDERsaid he had always held that the American case could not be advantageously used for purposes of comparison in this controversy. The American Continent was in itself the greatest free - trade continent in the world. Forty-eight States, which were formerly under a system of protection, had now formed themselves into a free-trade continent, possessing a mineral and natural wealth which put it quite beyond any analogy in our own country. The general social condition of America was good, there was a perpetual stream of emigration into the country from protected countries, still apprehension was being created in the minds of thinking people in America because of the intolerable tariffs which had been brought about by the multi-millionaires. He was of opinion that the discussion had fully justified the Amendment, couched as it was in reasonable and comprehensive terms. It had given an opportunity to all free-traders, wherever they might sit, to combine together to give expression to their emphatic condemnation of the protectionist proposals of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, proposals which had been put forward with the greatest assiduity during last autumn, and especially those which related to taxation on food, though for his part he thought it operated with equal force with regard to the proposed taxes on manufactured goods. What was the second object of the Amendment? He took it to be to get an answer from the Government, with regard to which those who were responsible in the Government had spoken with more than one voice in their replies. The object was to get, if possible, from the Government a clear and unmistakable declaration of policy with regard to the fiscal question, for on the distinctness and clearness of that pronouncement might depend not merely some scores of votes in that House, but in the country, he thought, hundreds of thousands of votes. On its directness

  935
  also depended, in his opinion, the integrity and future ascendancy of the Party now led by the Prime Minister.
  What he wanted to ask the House was this: Could any free-trader feel any assurance from the reply given by the President of the Board of Trade? It certainly had differed from the pronouncements of other members of the Government. What, then, was the impression left on their minds by it? There was no doubt at all that protection was distinct and absolutely different from retaliation. The objects of protection were to exclude foreign imports with the supposed idea of fostering home industries. He did not propose now to go into the merits of that question. With regard to retaliation, the proposal of the Government was to temporarily restrict the import of certain articles from certain countries which were behaving most hostilely towards us in the matter of tariffs. Now, whatever might be said as to the merits of the principle of retaliation, the object was to increase the area of trade and to enlarge our markets. They had been told that Parliament was to have a decisive voice in regard to any retaliatory proposals that might be made by the Executive Government in the future, and that was very important, for, if retaliation was to be of any value to this country, it should be made as difficult as possible for the Executive Government to carry it out. If it was first necessary in each case to get the sanction of Parliament, they would not find such proposals very frequently made. Our chief aggressors with regard to high tariffs were Russia, Germany, and the United States, and if they examined the imports from those countries they would find that they consisted in a large measure of food or raw material for our industries, and if a tax were put on them as suggested it would be most fatal to the interests of this country. It might be possible, however, to suggest a small tax on goods coming from less important countries in Europe, as for instance Portugal. If we put a duty on port we might influence Portugal to give us the most-favoured-nation treatment, but that surely was not a very heroic measure, and it could not form a plank in the platform of any Government seeking
  936
  the support of the electors of the country. They were told to distinguish between the two policies, but, having carefully examined the question, he was unable to see how they could distinguish and look upon as separate policies the policy of preference and the policy of protection. Preference must mean a tax on food or raw material, and that was certainly protection. All were in agreement with the objects preference sought to attain. They all desired to draw closer the ties between the component parts of the Empire, but, as had already been shown, it was impossible to devise a scheme of preference satisfactory to all parts of the Empire unless it included food and raw material. It was not a sane or a practicable proposal.
  Another argument, which at first sight was attractive, was that by a scheme of preference this Empire might ultimately become a self-contained empire, independent of all other countries in the world, but close, examination showed that that was a very Utopian idea, which could not possibly b e carried out. It was assumed that the Empire would be sufficiently productive to send us, in all years, the quantity of food we consumed, but it was only necessary to go back a few years to see that a concatenation of circumstances might result in the wheat supplies from all parts of the Empire being absolutely inadequate for the requirements of these islands. In 1897 there was famine in India, drought in Australia, and a failure of the wheat crop in Canada, with the result that from all quarters of the Empire we received only 7,500,000 cwt. of wheat, whereas in 1902, when the adverse circumstances had passed away, the quantity received was 25,000,000 cwt. Owing to our present system of open markets, the price of wheat was not in any way affected in that adverse year, but the adoption of a scheme to debar or discourage the free and rapid introduction of wheat from all parts of the world, would in such a year lead to great fluctuations of price, to the detriment of all classes of the community. It was a curious fact that the scheme would seek to discourage the introduction of produce from those very countries, especially Argentina, in which British capital was most interested. Little had been heard during the debate

  937
  of an argument which had been used with effect in the country, that the proposed taxation would not fall on the consumer. The facts in the Blue-book supported the obvious truth, that ultimately the purchaser must pay the impost. A comparison of prices in New South Wales under free trade and under the system of protection afforded a notable illustration. In 1899 prices under free trade were—beef, 3d.; cheese, 6d.; mutton, l½d. per pound; and flour, 10s. 3d. per 1001b.; under the protective tariff the prices were 5d., 8d., 4d., and! 28s. The cost of clothing also had increased by 25 to 40 per cent. That was an absolutely conclusive proof that the consumer paid. The more the proposal was examined into, the more it would be seen how weak was the case of the protectionists and how unanswerably strong was the case of the free-trader. It was no answer to say that because other countries were thriving under protection we should do the same. The conditions of this country were totally different from those of any other country. We were absolutely dependent on our markets being open to all the world, whether for raw material or for manufuctured goods. He defied any Commission appointed by the Government to define the difference between raw material and manufactured goods. What was raw material one moment was manufactured material the next, and what was manufactured material for one industry was the raw material of another. The House was in possession of the Prime Minister's opinion on his own policy of retaliation, and, vaguely, of his opinion on the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham; they also had the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham on his own proposals, but they had not yet heard his opinion on retaliation. It was true they had his opinions of twenty years ago, when, in the cogent manner of which he was such a master, he put forward unanswerable arguments against such a policy, but nothing could be more interesting than to have his present opinions on the subject.
  But it was not so much with the merits of the case they had to deal; they spoke for themselves; it was with the methods by which this controversy was being
  938
  carried on. The country had a right to demand that the issue should be made clear and intelligible. Did the Government commit themselves really and truly to protection, or did they not? The President of the Board of Trade said a majority in the elections would not entitle the present Government to adopt preference or protection; but what would the right hon. Member for Birmingham say to that? In the absence of the Prime Minister—which they all deplored—they could gather his views on the subject only from his pamphlet, his speeches, and his letters, and, so far as he could judge, the whole balance of the Prime Minister's inclination tended towards protection. But what about his colleagues? Earlier in the debate he had had a slight altercation with a member of the Cabinet. As the House was aware, the President of the Local Government Board, a fortnight ago, went down to Wiltshire and made a speech against him and on behalf of a candidate in the Government's cause. He did not desire to quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman on that account. No doubt he was actuated by sincere convictions; but whether that action was the result of the best judgment he would leave; the right hon. Gentleman to decide. On that occasion, the fiscal case evidently not being strong enough, the right hon. Gentleman raked up other delinquencies to justify the course he was taking, but he was rather unfortunate in the two matters he selected—the Army and education. As to the former, however-instrumental its critics might have been in bringing it about, the fact remained that the whole scheme of the Army had been radically changed since last year, and if the present scheme had been then before the House he would not have felt bound to associate himself with any attack upon it. With regard to education, it was unnecessary to say anything, as he had already given his reasons for the course he took. The London Education Bill undoubtedly underwent a great transformation in the House, and emerged a much better measure than it entered. But it was on public grounds he complained of the action of the right hon. Gentleman. It was all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say he acted, not as a Cabinet Minister, but as an elector.

  939
  A gentleman of his prominence could not divest himself of his official position. The right hon. Gentleman had said that protection was a scientific method of taxation in order to obtain revenue. It seemed to him, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman was sailing in his own boat, because taxation for revenue formed no part of the proposals of the Prime Minister nor of those of the Member for West Birmingham. He believed that the Government's policy of retaliation was the stepping-stone to the wider scheme of the Member for West Birmingham. If that were so, why was the right hon. Gentleman still a member of the Government 1 The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham frankly and fairly left the Government when he took up the cudgels for protection, and it appeared to him that many other Members at present on the Treasury Bench ought to have done likewise. He was drawn to only one conclusion—and it had been strengenthed considerably by the speeches in that debate—that the Government were really protectionists, but had not the courage to say so. He should continue to hold that opinion unless the Government would act up to the pledges given by the President of the Board of Trade. But something more was required. Free-traders should ask for the removal of all protectionists from the Government and of all doubtful free-traders. Orders should also be given and carried out for the immediate withdrawal of all Tariff Reform League branches in the constituencies, and for all Conservative associations to abandon the policy of protection. More than half had adopted the full blown policy; he said that these conditions were the irreducible minimum of any free-trader who was worthy of the name. Whatever might take place in the division at the end of this discussion was quite immaterial, for he was convinced that the country was sick and tired of this ambiguity and shuffling. The electors would insist upon a definite and clear issue, and only those who took up a definite position one way or the other would be Members of the next Parliament.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEY (Islington, N.)said it would have been infinitely
  940
  better if this subject could have been discussed apart from Party feeling, which was likely to take them away from the real question of what was the best position to take up for the welfare of the country in regard to their fiscal arrangements. He was brought up a free-trader, and he always had an inclination to the opinion that free trade had done a great-deal for this country. Under what was called free trade, there was no doubt that the country had developed enormously, but from the discussion that had already taken place, one could not help noticing that many other circumstances had been at work. Even the mover of the Amendment admitted that everything was not as he should desire it in regard to the fiscal policy and commercial relations of this country with other parts of the world. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose; acknowledged that there were questions, positions, and circumstances which they could not consider satisfactory, and which, as a great commercial nation, they would all gladly see changed and put in a way that would commend itself to their better judgment, and which would be to the interests of the community. They talked very glibly of free trade and protection. He did not see why those terms should be matters of reproach, because all sections of the House had only one desire, and that was the promotion of the well-being of the country. They must acknowledge that they had never yet had free trade, although they had had free imports. A good deal of difficulty had arisen because they described these things in vague terms without absolutely defining their real meaning. It might be argued that free imports were a good thing for a country, but they could not say that free imports could in any sense be called, or at any rate in the Cobden sense, free trade. Cobden's idea was a totally different thing to free imports, and his whole idea was that free trade would lead different nations of the world to produce those things which they could produce to the best advantage. Nobody argued that they had got anything approaching that state of things now. He had recently visited most of the chief cities in America, and when he went to the great stores there, he was told that they had no English goods, and could not sell them.

  941
  Of course, as an Englishman, he resented that, and he could not understand how there could be free trade when English goods were excluded. They all agreed that it was outrageously unfair that these tariff walls should be raised so that they could not get British goods into those countries.
  MAJOR SEELY: We are treated no worse than any other country.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid that two blacks did not make a white. The object of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was that something should be done to put a stop to this outrageously unfair stats of things. Lord Avebury had stated that if there was an outrageous case of unfairness all they had got to do was to bring it to the notice of the House, and the Government of the day should bring in a Bill to put a stop to it. He had been a Member of the House for twenty years, and session after session they had tried to do something in connection with the sugar bounties, and it had taken twenty years to do anything. The object of the Sugar Convention Bill was to do away with the gross unfairness of competition in the sugar trade, and that object had now been accomplished. He knew the difficulties, of retaliation, but he could not believe that it was beyond the power of this country to retaliate. It was reasonable and fair, he thought, that somehow or another the Government of the day should be invested—he did not suggest with a free hand, but with the power of retaliation. He saw no difficulty in that. The simple fact that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had brought this question up had already produced an effect in Germany in regard to their threats towards Canada and Australia, and if simple discussion of the question produced that effect, surely it would be possible to give the Government some power of retaliation by which they would be able to break down some of the tariff barriers that now existed.
  Having had a great deal to do with the working classes and the poor, there were two points he wished especially to put forward. First of all there should be ample employment for the people, and
  942
  secondly cheap food for the people. Those two things were essential, and in his opinion, of the two plentiful employment was of more importance than cheap food. Some people were afraid of food being taxed, but he would remind them that they had not got free food at the present time, and they never had had it. Even the free-fooders did not suggest that they should have free food, for they had got taxed food at the present time. They taxed tea, which was almost a necessity, and sugar, and there was another item which was almost food to the very poorest which was taxed, and that was tobacco. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh, oh!"] He knew something of the extreme poor, and he knew that many of them would sooner be deprived of some of their food than their tobacco. He did not think it was a good thing to announce to other nations that whatever happened England would never tax food. He thought if America was absolutely convinced that this country was in earnest they would be prepared to bargain and reduce their tariffs. In the United States they laughed and smiled when we talked to them about our tariff system. If the United States were convinced that we wore in earnest, and determined to have a war of tariffs and retaliation for such time as was necessary, he believed that they would give way to a very great extent. He did not wish to see tariffs increased indefinitely, but he was in favour of putting them on until they secured fairer trade for this country. If America would give way, he was sure that Canada, and Germany, and other countries would also give way. With regard to the importation of goods, there was no doubt that the great increase in the importation of goods, which used to be made in this country, was a serious question, and a very disquieting fact. [An HON. MEMBER: Why?] He knew something of the poorer districts of London, and he considered this state of things disquieting, because he knew that the poor people could do this work, and were willing to do it, and yet those articles were imported ready-made, free of duty, from abroad. This House was always passing legislation to make the manufacture of goods more costly, and he did not object to such legislation. The Factory Acts and the Sanitary Laws were passed to secure the

  943
  well-being of the workers, and they were quite right, and proper, and humane; but it was an extraordinary anomaly that, while in this country they increased the difficulties of production in this way, they did not mind goods being produced abroad under conditions which were not allowed in this country.
  MR. TENNANT: Can the hon. Member mention a country where the laws for industrial production are worse than in this country?
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid that he could mention every country in Europe. While they had laid these restrictions upon the manufacturers of this country, they had allowed foreign goods to be imported to compete with them, which had been made without those conditions, and thus foreigners were permitted to undermine, undercut, and undersell British manufacturers. It might be argued that the importation of foreign goods was due to several causes, and he was not going to say that the sole reason why those goods came in was on account of our fiscal system. But their fiscal system was at any rate one of the reasons, although there might be other reasons as well. It might be true that there was want of enterprise amongst British manufacturers, and it might also be said that trades-union rules had had some effect; some might argue with proof that the people of this country wasted a good deal of their resources upon alcohol; but these after all were only items, and one item certainly was the fiscal system. Was it not reasonable that before a man employed capital in an enterprise in which he would have to pay wages, and add to the wealth and prosperity of the country, that he should be protected from being undersold by the "dumping" system which was allowed at present? There was no doubt that this uncertainty of an enterprise being remunerative, and the possibility that a man, after investing large sums of money in machinery and business, might be hampered or injured by foreign competition of an unfair character, tended to retard enterprise and decrease that employment upon which the welfare of the whole country depended. To meet an evil of this kind he thought exceptional
  944
  measures ought to be taken, and surely that was not unreasonable. He did not agree that this country was nearly ruined, and many people talked very exaggeratedly upon this subject. Wise merchants did not wait to be ruined before considering their position, but they looked at the signs of the time and regulated their businesses accordingly. He thought the Government ought to do the same. The amount of manufactured cotton goods, hardware, cutlery, building materials, iron and steel, and other articles imported into this country were increasing in amount and had largely increased during the last three or four years, and these were matters which required their very careful consideration.
  He did not wish to say anything that he ought not to, but it was a little difficult to understand the exact position in which they stood. But he gathered that the action of the Government was to see why we were getting into the state in which we were getting, and whether anything could be done to stop it. No doubt at the present time the country was not in an extremely bad way. Trade during the last decade had been good, but if there were indications that, owing to the increase in the imports of manufactured goods there might in the future be a want of employment in this country, he thought the Government were right in considering the fiscal question. There was to some people a sort of fetish in the very name free trade, and they would not allow anybody to say a word against it. He was afraid that it was an image only of tinsel and not of solid gold. Whether the Government went as far as the right hon. Member for West Birmingham he did not quite know. He ventured to say, at one time, that they could not by any possible means exempt food from this subject if they were going to resort to retaliation with certain countries. He thought it was not honest to say that they could resort to retaliation unless they had a perfectly free hand. A question allied to this was that of preferential tariffs. He knew the arrangement of preferential tariffs with the Colonies was extremely difficult. When he was in Canada last year he crossed to the Pacific and learned much by the way. He came to the conclusion that Canada was quite able to look after herself. He found

  945
  there was a kindly and loyal feeling towards us in every way, but he thought they would resent any sort of charitable patronage. He was sure they would resent the infliction of any hardship on the life of the people here in order to promote their welfare. Still he could not help thinking that it was not beyond the wit of man somehow or other to give our colonies as much preferential favour as we could. There were many ways in which we could help the Colonies if we chose to do so. He felt that part and parcel of our fiscal system should be in every possible way to give them what advantage we could. Although he did not wish to hint or throw out the idea that we were going to buy their support and loyalty by that kind of action, he said that we could by our fiscal system do much to promote their wealth, and we should certainly do so. In the territory of Canada there were enormous fields still undeveloped where foodstuffs could be produced for this country, and he had no doubt that with a little encouragement and assistance that territory might be the means of contributing, not only to the wealth of Canada, but to the bettering of the condition of our people here.
  The political position here at the present time was somewhat peculiar. The illness of the Prime Minister was most regrettable, because it was not possible to discuss the fiscal question satisfactorily without him. They were handicapped in all directions. He said so with all respect to hon. Gentlemen on the Government Front Bench. Hon. Gentlemen opposed to the Government seemed to think that they were trying to revert to the fiscal system which existed previous to 1846. He could not conceive of the Government ever having such an idea in their heads. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had no such idea. But we had had nearly sixty years experience of the great change which was then made, and, while many benefits had accrued, it had been found that there were also many drawbacks to the present system. He wished they could dissociate themselves from Party feeling, and address themselves to the consideration of the question, whether, having the experience of the past, they could not do something to make things better. The poverty of the people was
  946
  due to many causes, and want of employment was no doubt one of the great factors in producing it. If we looked into the fiscal system and revised it, we might be able to devise some way of decreasing the amount of unemployment of the people. He would be no party to anything that would tend to harden the lot of the people of this country, but he was in favour of a careful consideration and revision of our fiscal system with the view of causing an improvement of their condition. It was because he wished to see their condition improved that he would oppose the Amendment.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid that the speech which had just been delivered showed the advantage of getting this question debated in the House. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had stated that when he asked for English goods in shops in the United States he was told that there were none to be found. According, however to the Board of Trade returns last year the United States purchased nearly £23,000,000 of British goods. The statement contradicted by this figure was the sort of statement made on hundreds of platforms. It was this kind of random gossip which had been used to buttress the case for protection, and the advantage of a debate in the House of Commons was that such statements could be tested and answered on the spot. Another advantage of the speech just delivered was that it showed that even an exemplary supporter of the Government was in grave doubt about the position of the Government. He said he did not know whether the Government went so far as the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. That was a perfect justification for the debate. He agreed that it was an unfortunate thing the Prime Minister was not present, because, among other reasons, it afforded a certain excuse to the Government for not giving the House really a full statement of what they were going to do. It was not that they did not know; and he did not think they were entitled to shelter behind the fact that the Prime Minister was absent. This was not the policy of the Prime Minister but of the Cabinet. It was the gospel of the Government, and they had got a dozen of them in the House, and

  947
  they ought to know something of this gospel of retaliation from these twelve apostles. Throughout the recess they had been lighting protectionist arguments put forward under the auspices of Conservative associations, and what was their surprise to find those arguments thrown over the very first day of the session. At first he thought the President of the Board of Trade had stampeded with the guns, but that was not the fact. It simply meant that the fire was too hot for them, and they were seeking cover. After making protectionist speeches in every constituency, the President of the Local Government Board turned round and charged a Member of the House with having said that the Secretary of the Board of Trade had made a protectionist speech. A few months ago that would have been a compliment. The House was entitled to know the real issue upon which they were to fight. It was a livery well to pretend to be a free trader in the House and to use protectionist weapons in the constituencies. It was not playing the game straight. In recent by-elections two poor Government cruisers that took refuge in Port Arthur had been allowed by the Government, without a declaration of war, to be torpedoed by the Tariff Reform League, probably because they were not in the anner harbour. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had said he was willing to give every latitude to hon. Members on his side of the House; but the latitude was in one direction—that was, in the direction of preferential tariff, though the policy of the Government was free trade. There was no latitude in the other direction. It was Long-itude. He appealed to the Government to put an end to this ping-pong playing with the trade of the country.
  The President of the Board of Trade was a free-trader on Monday; he was apparently a preferential tariff man on Tuesday. He had been shaking his head ever since. Ministers were as variable as the weather. The only thing they were clear about was dumping. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was allowed to make a speech in the country in favour of preferential tariffs. There ought to be an end to this. It was not fair in any Government. The
  948
  sudden change in the last two days proved distinctly that the policy had arisen from no national emergency. It was purely due to political emergency; so it changed with political vicissitudes. In 1895 trade was really bad, and armies o he unemployed were parading the streets, but never a word then, and up to the general election, did they hear about the preferential tariff. The moment the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham came back from South Africa he made his speech. Beginning with the by-elections, which showed what he was thinking about, he referred to what he called smaller controversies. He had nothing particular to say about education, and there was loud laughter when he spoke about temperance reform, but when he mentioned local finance, that meaning rates, there was no laughter. The right hon. Gentleman said that education and sobriety were not an atmosphere favourable to the appreciation of the merits of the Conservative Government, and therefore he began to think Imperially. That was where he started. Trade was excellent. Why, only a year before Ministers went about the country saying that we never had had such trade, all of them suggested that that was due to the blessing of having the country governed by themselves and their colleagues. At any rate trade was flourishing, it was splendid, but in a single night it withered like Jonahs gourd. One speech did it all! Agriculture ruined, woollen and cotton going, pearl buttons gone! Never had there been such devastation wrought by a single speech in history. And observe, in the revised editions, some of those trades had been restored by a single stroke of the pen to their former prosperity! The right hon. Gentleman went about the country preaching this doctrine of our impending doom, and curiously enough the ruined people were delighted at the prospect of ruin. They celebrated their ruin in a series of banquets. They rejoiced in the destruction of the tinplate industry at Cardiff, and finished up with a grand spread over ruined trade at the Hotel Métropole, where they toasted the downfall of British trade in the finest champagne. The President of the Tariff Commission was present, but his boon

  949
  companion, the right hon. Member for Sleaford, was absent. They drank that toast in the finest champagne, but surely they ought to have confined their libations to Tintara However, one should not expect too great sacrifices to be made in the interests of one's country. At any rate they seemed to have had a good time, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer a day or two afterwards said about the tariff-reformers that they were seeing portents in the air. That was the state of things, everything was going well. We were all ruined, and we were delighted at it. Then came the remedy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, who went to Glasgow to unfold it. "We are ruined," cried the right hon. Gentleman, "And what is to be done? The first thing you have to do s to double the supply of pigs." The hope of the country lay in increasing the number of its swine. Well, at first this sort of thing did very well, but the commonsense of the country began to see through it. By-election after by-election showed that after all the people were not to be taken in by all this kind of thing. Then came a change. It was discovered that there was no life in this agitation, and everybody knew perfectly well that it would not survive the political activity of the right hon. Gentleman the Member or West Birmingham. It was entirely his creation. There might be a little guerrill a fighting upon the hills of Sheffield, or in that neighbourhood, but the thing was killed. There might be a few faithful followers left who, however, like the wild Boers in the late war remained out of sight. That was the reason why downright protectionists, like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford, acclaimed the right hon. the Member for West Birmingham as the greatest statesman that ever lived. If he might be permitted to say it, a fisherman was never a good judge of the size or weight of the salmon that he had caught himself. He did not mean to say that trade was exactly what they would like it to be, but, at any rate, it was on the whole good. It had been excellent, although we were now suffering from depression in some quarters.
  There had been a good deal of talk about Scotland, and the iron and steel trade there. The hon. Gentle-
  950
  man the Secretary to the Board of Trade had practically based his case on iron and steel rails, but a very strong supporter of the hon. Gentleman in Scotland, a Conservative, had given him a copy of a report on the progress of the iron and steel trade in Scotland, prepared for, and circulated at, the Glasgow Exhibition. In this report it was stated that in 1883 there were seventy-three steel furnaces in operation, with an output of 290,000 tons, whereas in 1901 there were ninety furnaces in operation, with an output of 945,000 tons; that was, the output had almost quadrupled, notwithstanding trade depression and fluctuations. There had been a steady increase for twenty years. In spite of the competition, especially of our dear cousins across the sea, Scotland was likely to maintain its position, and they were perfectly prepared to fight competition from whatever quarter it came, and to rely on Scotch energy, skill, and enterprise. Protection was really the creed, if he might use the word, of the "funkers." What was the suggestion to meet the difficulty? There was no doubt that dumping was a good, or a bad thing, as they might take it. But if it was a bad thing what was to be done? Retaliation was really a much more dangerous policy than protection, and for this reason. Retaliation was simply an act of war against one particular Power, not for the protection of the whole of your own industries. Take the case of America and the Welsh tinplate trade. We used to sell between £3,000,000 and £4,000,000 worth of tinplates a year to the United States. No doubt that trade had practically disappeared as the result of the hostile tariff set up by America to exclude it from the United States. He was putting the case as strongly as he possibly could. But what happened? Wales was still selling £900,000 worth of tin-plates every year to America, while America was not selling sixpenny-worth of her tinplates here. [An HON. MEMBER on the GOVERNMENT Benches: They will soon.] That showed how much the hon. Member knew about the matter. The Americans could not sell tinplates within 6s. or 7s. a box, of what the Welsh makers could do, simply because these had got their raw materials much cheaper. Suppose we acted on the suggestion of

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  the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, who said—
  "If you had something else, you could threaten America with then she would not impose these duties."
  But, could America do nothing in return? At the present moment we are carrying 59 per cent. of American trade in our ships; we are selling her £900,000 of tin-plates, and she is selling none in return. If you threaten America you must carry out your threat. America is not a country to be threatened. America is a very rich and determined country, and it would suit certain interests in America to have a tariff war with England. It might suit the shipping interests and the tin-plate interests there. The very first thing that America would do would be to give a bounty to American shipping, which would at once reduce our carrying trade with America. At present, America could not get her coal into the Mediterranean, because she could not get a return cargo. If the return freight were paid, as France was doing by bounties to her shipping, America could send her coal to the Mediterranean on better terms than we could. The [policy of retaliation would hit our shipping, it would hit the colliers in South Wales, it would hit the consumers throughout the country, by putting up the price of food, and it would lose the £900,000 of tin-plates—the industry that it was intended to benefit. The same thing applied to Germany. Germany did not charge more for our goods, as a matter of fact, than Canada did. Germany did not exclude us from the coasting trade. It might suit Germany to do that in order to increase her own shipping. She wanted men for her own Navy, but at the present moment she was subsidising our Navy by allowing our ships to carry her goods along her own coasts.
  Then we were told that we were going to get colonial preferences. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said—
  "Why should you slam the door in the face of Canada and the Colonies."
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  Who was slamming the doors? The Colonies sent their goods to our markets free. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was speaking in Lancashire. Did he know that the Canadian statistics showed that Lancashire goods were charged 200 per cent. in Canada, and that Lancashire took from £10,000,000 to £15,000,000 worth of Canadian goods, on which not a sixpence was charged. It was simply trifling with the constituencies to address such arguments to them. He agreed with the hon. Gentleman who spoke last that Canada did not want any preference. He went to Canada a short time ago and met there a gentleman who originally came from West Birmingham, where he had been an artisan, and knew nothing about farming. He began farming in Canada ten years ago, had now 200 acres of land of his own, and a commodious lumber house. He was worth between £1,500 and £2,000, and talked of returning to West Birmingham. If that gentleman had remained in West Birmingham he would still have been working there, getting old, and looking forward to the old-age pension which the right hon. Member for West Birmingham had promised him ten years ago. What was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham doing? He was working hard to tax the food of the people of this country, in order to enable the gentleman he had spoken of to add another £1,000 to his £2,000. That was a monstrous proposition, and no farmer in Canada had ever asked for it. Colonial preference was interfering with the progress of free trade in Canada. The Conservatives in Canada did not propose anything of the kind. The Conservative Leader in the Canadian Parliament, speaking on the 1st March, 1902, said that he did not believe in dealing with the question of Canadian defence by adopting a preferential tariff which would shut up the mills in Canada, and give increased profits to some manufacturers in Yorkshire. That was not, the speaker said, the way to contribute to the defence of the Empire.
  SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid that the Manitoba Legislature had passed a Resolution the other day in favour of Mr. Chamberlain's proposals.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid of course the farmers in the North-West of Canada were perfectly willing that we should impose a preferential tariff of 2s. per quarter on wheat in their favour, but the question was—would the Canadian manufacturers lower their tariff? He challenged the hon. Member to quote a single responsible Canadian statesman who proposed to abolish, or to reduce, the present tariff on British goods in return for any preference we might give to their wheat. He agreed with the hon. Member who had said that there was a great deal of suffering in this country, and we had got to do something to meet it. No Liberal Member denied that. The Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose affirmed the principle that we looked to meet that suffering by social reform. The hon. Member for Tunbridge Division, in his straightforward speech, had said that we must try to do away with fluctuations in employment; but the fluctuations in employment were greater in protectionist countries than here. He himself had been perfectly appalled at the evidence which was given before a Royal Commission on which he had sat, as to the time when the efficiency of workmen came to an end. It was a perfectly horrifying reflection to him that at the time of life when professional men in London, and in the great towns, were at the height of their intellectual vigour and skill, the artisan was done with. We had to meet a situation of that kind, but it could not be done by taxing the food of the poor man. Take this cele-
  954
  brated Tariff Commission. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham would not put a workman on that Commission, because he could not afford to pay the expense. [Cries of "No, no!"] Was it wrong for him to quote the reason given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham? He was not criticising it. [An HON. MEMBER: Want of time.] Want of time If that was the case in regard to workmen, what about the considerable proportion of the community who did not know what would be the effect of these tariffs. They had no trades unions to protect their interests, and could only look to Parliament to see that in any fiscal changes their condition should not be aggravated. What was wanted was to prolong the days of human efficiency in this country, and something might be done in that direction by taking away the temptations to drink. £180,000,000 a year was spent in drink, and yet this Government while talking about protecting the working classes, actually proposed to introduce a Bill to reduce the protection which the working classes already had against drink. He was glad that the controversy had been raised as it had called attention to the position of the people. All they wanted was that instead of resorting to quack remedies they should do something to protect the people against the greed of those great capitalists.
  SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid he was very glad to have an opportunity of saying a few words on the question which had been raised by the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken. The hon. Gentleman challenged what he himself knew to be a fact, namely, the opinion of

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  Ministers of the Crown in Canada and of leading politicians of the Conservative Party in Canada with reference to preferential trade and reduced taxation on British goods. He was very glad to observe that the hon. Gentleman applied to tariffs on goods a different interpretation to that usually held by those who opposed the views of hon. Members on that side of the House. He said that Lancashire people had to pay taxation amounting to £200,000 in order to get their goods into Canada. If that was the case it was not the consumer but the Lancashire manufacturer who paid the tax.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid that that was not what he stated.
  SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid he merely mentioned the point to show the character of the statements which came from those who were preaching the doctrine of absolute free trade which did not exist. With reference to the opinion of leaders of political thought in Canada, he would challenge the hon. Gentleman as to whether for the last twenty years both Parties in Canada had not been in favour of preferential treatment in the British market and had shown their adherence to that principle of preference by offering this country preference in their own markets on manufactured goods. They were told that it did not amount to much, and perhaps 33⅓ per cent. was not a very great deal, but he wished to point out that in 1893 the Canadian House of Commons passed a Resolution in favour of preference with this country, and when that Resolution was referred to the British House of
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  Commons no less distinguished a Gentleman than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol said—
  "I confess that, speaking for myself, I would go a long way if I could secure a Zollvercin between the Colonies and the United Kingdom and some common tariff applicable to them all."
  Again and again on public platforms in Canada the leaders of what was called the Conservative Party in that country had supported the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. More than that they had heard to-night about the conference in Montreal and the resolution which was passed at it. It surprised him that the hon. Gentleman who brought up that matter found occasion to oppose the idea of preference in this House, since he helped to draw up the Montreal resolution which approved of the principle of preference He would ask the House if they thoroughly understood the position taken up by the Colonies in this matter. He thought it was not an unreasonable position They offered preference, but was this country to give nothing in return? He believed that there was no Legislature in the Colonies that was not prepared, according to their situation and to the tariffs which they adopted for their own needs, to give consideration to British goods. That consideration would naturally be in proportion to their opportunities. It would not be of course, as had been suggested, the taking off of all taxation on British goods. That would be an unreasonable suggestion. What they offered was a fair exchange and a greater reduction on British goods than they gave to any other country.
  MR. GUESTasked if the Colonies had offered a reduction.
  SIR GILBERT PARKERsaid that Canada had offered a reduction of 33⅓ per cent., but they could not expect the Colonies to make a general offer until the principle of preference had been adopted by this country. The Colonies had accepted the principle of preference. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, speaking at the Montreal banquet, said he believed that the principle of preference would be of benefit to Canada, but that they did not wish to press their views on their brethren in Great Britain, and would wait until they had decided what course they would pursue. Surely it was reasonable that Canada, having accepted the principle of preference, should ask this country what course it intended to pursue. He would venture to put this point to the House. This country was taking every year from the United States about 50,000,000 cwts. of corn. The quantity was growing less every year, as the United States was producing less corn in proportion to its population than it produced ten years ago, and it was absolutely certain that, in a few years, this country would have to pay more for its corn whether it liked it or not. It would have to widen the area of supply, and was it not reasonable that it should look to those fields which were within the Empire for securing the corn it required. A 2s. duty on corn would mean that in time of peace and in time of war the food supply of this country was secured.
  They had been told by the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken that this question had been sprung on the country in, so to speak, a night. He did not think that was entirely due to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, because before the right hon. Gentleman spoke there were indications that popular opinion
  958
  was being roused in connection with this matter. Only a few years ago Lord Rosebery, in a speech which was reported in the palladium of the Liberal Party, the Daily News, drew attention to the matter. He devoted a great deal of time to showing that there was a distinct decline in British trade, and the remedy he found was technical education, throwing the blame for the decline of trade on the uneducated British working man and the unenterprising British manufacturer. He did not believe that the public in this country quite believed that all their difficulties arose from a lack of technical skill. Sir William Ramsay at Bradford had something to say on this question. He said that it was not by technical skill alone that Germany was successful, but also because she applied a scientific tariff in order to protect and develop her trade and enable her to invade the British market. Germany admitted British manufactured goods of all kinds, especially partly manufactured goods, and applied to them technical skill, returning them when completed to the very district where they were partly manufactured. When it was stated that protection only meant high tariffs put on without consideration of any of the circumstances, it showed that the question was not thoroughly understood. Germany applied to her industries the same scientific industry that she applied to her Army, that this country applied to its Navy, and that this country should also apply to its Army. Germany applied that technical skill which this country first taught her, and which came from educated working men. Now, however, it seemed to him that the apprentice was steadily taking possession of his master's business. He did not think it was a matter of congratulation that this

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  country imported £90,000,000 of manufactured goods from foreign countries, at least half of which could be manufactured at home. Was it reasonable that all silks should be admitted free into this country to the detriment of the home silk manufacturers. 200,000,000 cwts. of flour was imported every year. Could not that be manufactured in this country? In such circumstances they ought to consider whether the decline of British trade was not due to something else than the mere competition of other countries. He believed the time had come for reconsidering the position. At present this country sold to the Colonies goods to the value of £109,000,000, and to foreign countries goods to the value of £140,000,000. If the Colonies bought of this country £1 worth of goods for every £1 this country bought of them, would not that be worth considering? The Colonies were young nations, vigorous, productive, and with immense resources, and they would be a source of strength to this country as the competition of other nations became keener, as the invasion of the home market became greater, and as the struggle of the nations enlarged. For himself, he believed that the secret of the future lay in the development of the resources of those young countries. If he were asked if they were to sacrifice anything for the Colonies he would say no because the struggle of the British workman was great enough already, and the struggle of home industries was great enough. But the Colonies asked nothing for which they were not prepared to give a quid pro quo. They were willing to give this country the corn it needed, and to purchase from this country goods which they now obtained from other
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  countries. They had been challenged on the position they had taken up on the question of tariff reform. He himself could not pretend to any sort of belief that the principle of retaliation was in itself sufficient, for he did not believe they could have effective retaliation unless it sprung from a system of tariffs. How great the tariffs were to be was, however, another question. He did not believe that the people of this country would ever adopt a tariff system like that of the United States. When they were challenged about the success of protective systems in other countries, he thought they were standing upon safe ground. They were challenged about wages, but wages in the United States were double what they were in this country. It seemed to him that he would have the support of the Irish Members, because Irish tobacco was now to receive a bounty and that was an accptance of the principle, of protection. Would anyone deny that the wages of the workmen in Germany had advanced proportionately greater than the wages of the working men in England? During the years 1887 to 1900 wages in England had advanced from 81 to 100 per cent., whereas wages in Germany had advanced from 78 to 100 per cent. That was an important matter, as they had been challenged again and again on the question of wages.
  And, it being Midnight, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed To-morrow.
  Adjourned at one minute after Twelve o'clock.