Commons Sitting of 13 April 1905

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

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY INQUIRED INTO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKERlaid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.:—Nine Mile Point Railway Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
  North Sussex Gas Bill. Read the third time, and passed.
  Whitechapel and Bow Railway Bill. As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  Worcestershire County Council (Bridges) Bill. "To transfer the Hundred Bridges in Doddingtree Hundred, in the county of Worcester, to the Worcestershire County Council; and for other purposes," presented, and read the first time; and ordered to be read a second time.
  Croydon Corporation Bill. Reported, with Amendments, from the Police and Sanitary Committee [Section B]; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Heckmondwike Improvement Bill. Reported, with Amendments, from the Police and Sanitary Committee [Section A]; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Great Western Railway (Additional Powers) Bill; Rotherham, Maltby, and Laughton Railway Bill. Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill. Reported, without Amend-
  32
  ment [Provisional Orders confirmed] Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time Tomorrow.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill. Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time Tomorrow.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law) Bill. Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time Tomorrow.
  Andover Lighting and Power Bill; Aylesbury Gas Bill; South Wales Electrical Power Distribution Company Bill; South Oxfordshire Water and Gas Bill. Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Cordoba and Rosario Railway Bill [Lords]; Entre Rios Railways Bill [Lords]. Reported, without Amendment; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Bill; Edgware and Hampstead Railway Bill. Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers on the Corporation of Preston with reference to the Ribble Navigation; and for other purposes." [Preston Corporation (Ribble Navigation) Bill [Lords.]
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers on the Barry Railway Company." [Barry Railway Bill [Lords.]
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the Rhymney Railway Company for the acquisition of lands, the construction of works, and: the raising of capital; and for other purposes." [Rhymney Railway Bill [Lords.]
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the South end and Colchester Light Railways Company to construct piers, to establish and work ferries across the River Crouch and the River Blackwater, to acquire Creeksea Ferry, to raise additional capital; and for other purposes."[South end and Colchester Light Railways Bill [Lords.]
  And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers on the South Eastern and London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Companies and the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Companies Managing Committee for the making of new works and the acquisition of additional lands; the purchase of the Sheppey Light Railway; and for other purposes." [South Eastern and London, Chatham, and Dover Railways Bill [Lords.]
  Preston Corporation (Ribble Navigation) Bill [Lords]; Barry Railway Bill [Lords]; Rhymney Railway Bill [Lords]; South end and Colchester Light Railways Bill [Lords]; South Eastern and London, Chatham, and Dover Railways Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

PETITIONS.
  LIQUOR TRAFFIC LOCAL VETO (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Garliestown; and Kilsyth; to lie upon the Table.
  MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.
  Petition from Banwell, against; to lie upon the Table.
  MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY ACT (1882) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Manchester, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  POST OFFICE (TELEPHONE AGREEMENT).
  Petition from Manchester, for annulment; to lie upon the Table.
  RATING OF MACHINERY BILL.
  Petition from Manchester, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS (SUNDAY) BILL.
  Petition from Chadlington, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ACT, 1877 (OXFORD).
  Copy presented, of Statutes made by the Governing Body of St. John's College, Oxford, on 17th December, 1904 (i) amending Statute III. (12); and (ii) amending Statutes III., V., and XV. of the Statutes of the College [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 125.]
  UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ACT, 1877 (OXFORD).
  Copy presented, of Statute made by the Governing Body of Christchurch, Oxford, on 7th December, 1904, amending Clause 3 of the Statute of the House concerning Westminster Scholarships [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 126.]
  COLLEGE CHARTER ACT, 1871 (UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SHEFFIELD).
  Copy presented, of Application received fro n the University College of Sheffield for the establishment of a University in Sheffield, referred by His Majesty in Council for consideration and Report of a Committee of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council; together with a Copy of the Draft of the Charter applied for [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  CONGESTED DISTRICTS (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1897.
  Copy presented, of Seventh Report of the Congested Districts (Scotland) Board to the Secretary for Scotland [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCOMOTIVES ON HIGHWAYS ACT, 1896, AND MOTOR-CAR ACT, 1903.
  Copy presented, of Order by the Secretary for Scotland, dated 5th April, 1905, prohibiting Motor-Car Traffic on certain roads in the County of Ayr [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  INDUSTRIAL ALCOHOL COMMITTEE.
  Copy presented, of Minutes of Evidence taken before the Departmental Committee on Industrial Alcohol, with Appendix [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS (SUPERANNUATION) ACT, 1898.
  Copy presented, of Rule amending Rules 28 to 30 of the Elementary School Teachers Superannuation Rules, 1899 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS (SUPERANNUATION) ACT, 1898.
  Copy presented, of Rule amending Rules 28 to 30 of the School Teachers Superannuation Rules (Scotland) 1899 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  SOUTH AFRICA (AUTHORITY OF HIGH COMMISSIONER).
  Return presented, relative thereto [Address 15th March; Mr. Bryce]; to lie upon the Table.
  EAST INDIA (POLICE).
  Copy presented, of Report of the Indian Police Commission and Resolution of the Government of India [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  GAS UNDERTAKINGS.
  Return ordered, "relating to all authorised Gas Undertakings in the United Kingdom, other than those of

  Bird Estate.

  Beamish Estate

  Bandon Estate.

  £

  s.

  d.

  £

  s.

  d

  £

  s.

  d.

  Price of estate

  8,017

  0

  0

  2,820

  0

  0

  1,045

  0

  0

  Adjusted Rental

  392

  12

  3

  150

  11

  9

  48

  10

  0

  Poor Law Valuation

  376

  7

  0

  189

  0

  0

  57

  15

  0

  Arrears

  896

  19

  0

  190

  3

  6

  48

  10

  0

  Number of non-judicial tenants

  19

  11

  none

  Number of second-term tenants

  9

  none

  6

  These estates have not yet been vested in the Congested Districts Board, and they have no legal power to alter the
  Local Authorities, for the year ending the 31st day of December, 1904 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 331, of Session 1904)."—(Mr. Bonar Law.)

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Bird, Beamish, and Bandon Estates, near Bantry.
  MR. GILHOOLY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what were the adjusted rents on the Bird, Beamish, and Bandon Estates, near Bantry, respectively, and poor valuations at the date of sale to the Congested Districts Board; what arrears were due of the tenants at that date, the number of non judicial and second-term tenants of these estates; at what price each of these estates were purchased by the Congested Districts Board; and, seeing that a number of the holders on these estates are fishermen, and the fishing season will be in full swing about the middle of July, whether he will send an inspector from the Congested Districts Board to said estates at once to carry out the squaring of boundaries and general improvements.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The following table gives the particulars asked for—
  boundaries of holdings until they become owners.

  Irish Education—Catholic Clergy and Blue 127 (b).
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to a resolution, unanimously adopted by the Catholic clergy of the diocese of Cloyne (including all the Catholic managers of primary schools within the diocese), strongly condemning the Rule 127 (b) recently issued by the Board of National Education; and whether he will give due regard to this expression of opinion when considering the question.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The resolution has now been received, and will be duly submitted to the Commissioners.

  Irish National School Teachers—Amount of Salaries.
  MR. P. A. MCHUGH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what were the amounts paid to Irish national teachers in personal salaries in the financial year ended 31st March, 1900, and in the financial year ended 31st March, 1901.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The total amount of State aid to the teaching staff in national schools in the financial year ended 31st March, 1900, was £1,139,896, and in the year ended 31st March, 1901,.£1,135,962.

  Payment of Teacher of Killarga Evening School
  MR. P. A. MCHUGH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the fees due to the teacher of Killarga, county Leitrim, evening school for tuition given last year have yet been paid; if not, will he state the grounds on which payment has been delayed by the Board of National Education; and will he direct the Board to give this matter their immediate attention.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The manager of this school informed the Commissioners in October, 1903, that the evening school was not in operation for the session 1903–4.

  Estates Commissioners and Purchase of Grazing Lands
  MR. HAYDEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners have declined to purchase grazing land suitable for distribution if it bears any charge to the Treasury; and, if so, in view of the fact that such charge would be redeemed out of the purchase-money, will lie explain why the Estates Commissioners decline to purchase land needed for the enlargement of holdings.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The Commissioners are unable to identify the particular grazing land referred to, but they are precluded from making advances for the purchase of lands from tenant purchasers until the purchase annuities charged on the holdings have been paid I or redeemed.

  Belfast Revaluation
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in view of the fact that the bringing into immediate operation of the recent revaluation of Belfast would involve, now for the first time in half-a-century, the imposition of a burden on occupiers of licensed premises for which it was supposed during that period that no sanction could be found in the law, he proposes to suspend the operation of that revaluation for a definite period or otherwise, so as to prevent any confiscation of property.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The Court of Appeal has decided that licensed premises have been valued on a proper principle. I see no reason whatever to suspend the operation of the new valuation.

  Queen's College (Cork) Students and Art Examinations.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland how many students of the Queen's College, Cork, submitted themselves at the examination in 1904 for first and second arts in the Royal University; of these how many are

  39
  holders of prizes, exhibitions, or scholarships in the Queen's College; how many failed to pass the examination; how many obtained first-class honours, second-class honours, first-class exhibitions, and second-class exhibitions; and how many of those who failed to pass these examinations in the Royal University were holders of prizes, exhibitions, or scholarships in the Queen's College, Cork.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state how many students of the Queen's College, Cork, holders of prizes, exhibitions, and scholarships in that institution, have failed during the last five years to pass the ordinary examinations in the arts course of the Royal University of Ireland; and how many were holders of scholarships, prizes, and exhibitions in the Queen's College, Cork, in the subjects in which they failed to pass these examinations.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) I am informed by the president of the Queen's College, Cork, that no record is kept of the students who present themselves for examination at the Royal University or elsewhere outside the college. The function of the college is considered to have ended when it has supplied a student with the instruction furnished in the classes for which he has entered. The inquiries raised in these two Questions cannot, therefore, be answered.

  Queen's College, Cork—Average Attendances of Students and Fees of Professors.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland how many professors of the Queen's College, Cork, have, during the past five years, less than an average of twelve students to attend their lectures, and in what branches of knowledge has there been so limited an attendance at lectures and what are the salaries of the professors; whether, in view of the fact that in the session of 1903–4 the Professor of Law in Queen's College, Cork, had only three pupils, the Professor of Greek had only three pupils, the Professor of Latin had only four pupils, and the Professors of Logic, Metaphysics, and Political Economy had no pupils at
  40
  all, what explanation, if any, has he to give for the expenditure of £12,000 per annum annually voted by Parliament for the maintenance of this institution.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) During the past five years there have been four professors whose average attendance of students has not exceeded twelve. During the same period the total number of students has increased from 170 to 243. It would be impossible, in the form of an Answer to a Question, to discuss the point whether the expenditure mentioned in the last query is justified by these results.

  Trinity College, Dublin
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that more than one-third of the entire income of Trinity College, Dublin, is absorbed by eight individuals, the Provost and senior Fellows of the college, of the average age of seventy-one years, who have long since ceased to take part in the tuition of the college; and whether, having regard to the undoubted dissatisfaction of the Protestant section of the population of Ireland with this mismanagement of public funds, the Government intend to take any, and if so what, steps to make the income of Trinity College, Dublin, of greater benefit to the advancement of education in Ireland.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The hon. Member's Question has been referred to the Provost of Trinity College, who has replied to the effect that the statements contained in the Question are absolutely inaccurate, and he declines to answer this or any similar Question which he regards as merely the vehicle of unfounded and unjust charges against the institution over which he presides. The Government has neither the power, nor the desire, to compel him to answer such Questions. The reply to the last query is in the negative.

  The Annfield Estate.
  MR. JOHN O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether an advance of money has been sanctioned for the purchase of the Annfield Estate; whether

  41
  he is aware that there are about 300 acres of grating lands on this estate; that there are three congested townlands on its borders, Davros, Mollyroe, and Rathgranaher; and that, in face of this fact, over 100 acres have been given to a man named Ryan, who has already several large farms, and 180 acres to another farmer named Brannick, who has a considerable portion of land elsewhere, leaving only twenty acres of land for the enlargement of holdings on that property; and, if so, whether he will see that these lands will be taken from these persons who have already large areas of land, and divided amongst those whose holdings are uneconomic in the district.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The Commissioners are unable to identify this estate. If the hon. Member will supply the name of the owner and the locality, inquiries will be made.

  The Brown Hall Estate, near Balla, County Mayo
  MR. JOHN O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Brown Hall Estate, near Balla, county Mayo, has been purchased by the Congested Districts Board so far back as May, 1903; that there are 179 acres of grazing land on the estate; that nothing has yet been done by the Board in the way of dividing the grazing land between the tenants who are in need of an enlargement of their holdings; that the sale took place on the understanding that the grazing lands would be divided without delay, and all as resold to the tenants at the price offered by them, seventeen years purchase; and, if so, when will these grazing lands be striped and given over to the tenants; and whether they will be entitled to the benefit of the reduced payments brought about by the sale since the date on which it took place.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) This estate was purchased by the Board in 1903, and possession was obtained in 1904. The Board are at present carrying out the work of striping and fencing the grazing lands referred to, with a view to their immediate disposal. There was no such understanding with the tenants as
  42
  that mentioned, and the reduced payments will not come into operation till the lands are sold to the tenants.

  The Clanmorris Estate.
  MR, JOHN O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether applications have been received by the Estates Commissioners from two clerks engaged in the office of Mr. Ruttledge, agent to Lord Clanmorris, named Goode and Black, for an advance of money to enable them to purchase portions of the grazing ranches on the Clanmorris Estate, now in the hands of the Estates Commissioners; and, if so, how much has been applied for by each; and whether any will be granted, in view of the fact that they, are neither bona fide tenant farmers nor the sons of tenant farmers who could come under the Act of 1903; and whether an inquiry will be instituted into the claims of these gentlemen and the dates on which they got small portions of land from estate bailiffs, and the manner in which these portions were obtained, before steps are taken to make grants in their favour.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The question of the proposed allotment of parcels of land to the persons named is under consideration, and will be fully inquired into.

  Fixing of Judicial Rent of Mrs Donnelly, of Knock Hill, Kilcormac
  MR. REDDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been directed to the decision in the case of Mrs. Donnelly, Knock Hill, Kilcormac, King's County, heard at the last November sittings of the Land Court in Birr; and whether, seeing that Mrs. Donnelly and her family had expended. £370 on drainage and other improvements, he can say on what grounds the Land Commission reduced the rent by only £2 5s.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) In fixing the judicial rent in this case, allowance was made by the Sub-Commission for all improvements on the holding proved to have been made by the tenant. If either party is aggrieved by the order of the

  43
  Sub-Commission, he is at liberty to apply to have the case re-heard in the prescribed manner.

  Instructions Issued to Inspectors under the Land Act.
  MR. DILLON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland why the Irish Government have refused to lay upon the Table the instructions issued to their inspectors by the Estates Commission, dated February, 1904, and under which the Land Act of 1903 has been worked for a full year.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) I have nothing to add to the reply which my right hon. friend has already given, namely, that the instructions in question were informal, and for this reason have not been laid upon the Table.

  Coolie Riot at the Jumpers Deep Mine.
  DR. MACNAMARA: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the breaking out, on Sunday last, from the Jumpers Deep mine, of 500 Chinese coolies, and to the fact that for three hours these coolies stoned the mounted police; whether he can state the reason for this outbreak; and, if not, whether he will get particulars.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) I have not yet received the answer to my inquiry for particulars.

  The South African Police and Coolie Strikes
  CAPTAIN ELLICE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies under what authority the mine-owners call in the aid of the police to settle a strike among Chinese coolies in South African mines; and whether any other punishment except imprisonment or fine can be inflicted on these coolies.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton) Refusal to work is an offence under the Labour Ordinance. I understand that the police were called in to arrest the leaders charged with this offence and to suppress rioting. Besides fine and imprisonment, refusal to work may also he dealt with by the labourer being ordered to be returned to his country of
  44
  origin at the discretion of the superintendent.

  White and Coloured Labour employed at the Transvaal Mines.
  MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state what were the numbers of Kaffirs and of white men at work on the mines of the Transvaal before the war; and what were the numbers of Kaffirs, of Chinese, and of white men so employed, including those engaged on building operations, on the latest date for which figures are available.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) The figures for July, 1899, were—coloured, 107,482; white, 12,530, for the Witwatersrand only. The figures for February, 1905, for the Transvaal were—coloured, 97,882; Chinese, 31,424; white, 15,831. I have no information as yet as to the exact number engaged on building operations.

  Government Inspection of Insurance Companies Operations.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Hoard of Trade whether, in view of the fact that insurance companies are organisations mainly dealing with trust funds, the Government will consider the advisability of introducing legislation to enable them to exercise scrutiny and supervision respecting their operations, and also the conditions upon which life policies are issued and forfeitures enforced of premiums, paid.
  (Answered by Mr. Bonar Law.) The hon. Member is no doubt aware of the provisions of the Life Insurance Companies Act, 1870; the Board of Trade have no present intention of introducing, amending legislation.

  Inverness Mail Delays.
  MR. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Postmaster-General if he can state the number of days on which the down night mail from London to the North of Scotland was late in arriving at Inverness since 30th September last; and to what extent the mail train was behind schedule time on each occasion.

  45
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The subjoined statement shows the lateness in the arrival of the down night mail train at Inverness on week days during the six months from October 1st to the 31st ultimo. I should, perhaps, state that almost every case of considerable delay was due either to unfavourable weather, to some accidental cause, or to the pressure of the Christmas traffic. Greater delay occurred on Sundays, but on that day the working of the mail train is dependent upon the running of a number of trains which are not in any way under my control.
  Arrival of down night mail train at Inverness on week days during the six months ended March 31st, 1905—

  Punctual

  34 times.

  Delay not more than 10 minutes

  81 times.

  Delay more than 10, not more than 20 minutes

  19 times.

  Delay more than 20, not more than 30 minutes

  10 times.

  Delay more than 30, not more than 40 minutes

  9 times.

  Delay more than 40 minutes

  3 times.

  Telephone Exchanges—Fire Risks.
  SIR THOMAS DEWAE: To ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the proposed acquisition of the National Telephone Company's undertaking by the Government, he can see his way to suggest to the company the expediency of insulating their telephone cables in a manner most likely to minimise the risk of fires such as those which occurred recently on the company's premises at Cannon Street and Queen Victoria Street; and will he say whether steps are taken to secure that Post Office cables are satisfactorily protected against the risk of contact with electrically charged conductors.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) I am assured by the National Telephone Company that they are fully alive to the necessity of adopting all proper precautions for the protection of their exchanges from fires of the kind mentioned by the hon. Member. The question is one that has engaged the close attention of my Department, and all possible means
  46
  are taken to guard the Post Office system.

  Glastrigan (Tipperary) Postal Arrangements.
  MR. P. J. O'BRIEN: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he could see his way to so far improve the postal service at Glastrigan, county Tipperary, and in the neighbourhood of the Grenane Creamery, by the appointment of an additional postman for the convenience to the district of an evening post, with a dispatch of letters at about 4 or 5 p.m. to Borrisoleigh, in lieu of a sub-post office at Glastrigan.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) As I informed the hon. Member by letter on the 25th ultimo, the cost of the postal service at Glastrigan is already very high as compared with the revenue from the correspondence, and I should not be justified in incurring the additional expense necessary for carrying out the improvement desired. I regret, therefore, that I am unable to meet the hon. Member's wishes in the matter.

  Postmen's Promotion to Positions of Sorting Clerks and Telegraphists.
  MR. JACOBY: To ask the Postmaster-General whether after passing first in the limited competition for sorting clerk and telegraphist where there is one vacancy how long has a postman to wait before taking up such vacancy; and whether such postman could be sent to any other town to take up the duties of sorting clerk and telegraphist if it is afterwards found that there is no vacancy at the office competed for.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) In order to provide suitable persons to fill vacancies without delay, it is necessary to hold competitions in advance of the vacancies; and in some cases vacancies which were anticipated may not occur at once. If the hon. Member will furnish me with the particulars of the case to which he refers I will consider whether a transfer is practicable.

  Postage on Publications sent to the British Museum.
  MR. MILDMAY:To ask the Postmaster-General whether,

  47
  seeing that under the Copyright Act of 1842 newspaper proprietors are required to supply, free of cost, a copy of each edition published to the British Museum, and to bear the cost of postage of the same, he will consider the possibility of remitting the charge for postage in the case of newspapers sent to the British Museum under this Act, such newspapers being supplied gratis for the benefit of the State.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The question of relieving proprietors of publications of the cost of postage on copies sent to the British Museum is one which has on several previous occasions been brought to the attention of the Lords of the Treasury and of my predecessors; but it has not been considered that there were good grounds for altering the present practice. The Copyright Act of 1842 laid upon publishers the duty of delivering their publications at the British Museum and at certain other libraries. It was no doubt the intention of Parliament, when that Act was passed, that the cost of transmission to the British Museum of copies of books and newspapers should be borne by the proprietors.

  Venezuela.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how matters stand at the present time with regard to Venezuela, and particularly as to the surcharges and other Customs restrictions imposed by that Republic on imports from Trinidad.
  (Answered by Earl Percy.) If the hon. Member refers in the first paragraph of his Question to the British claims, they are being steadily liquidated in accordance with the decision of the Hague Tribunal, and over 50 per cent. have already been paid off. As regards the last paragraph, the surcharges and other Customs restrictions imposed on imports from Trinidad are still in force.

  Repayment of Advances under the Small Holdings Act, 1892.
  MR. LAMBERT: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state the yearly amount required by the Treasury to
  48
  cover interest and sinking fund for repayment within fifty years of an advance made by a county council under Section 19 (3) of The Small Holdings Act, 1892.
  (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) The amount required in repayment of £100 in the circumstances described in the hon. Member's Question is £4 16s. 10d. per annum, payable in half-yearly instalments of £2 8s. 5d.

  Prohibition of Trawling in Devon Bays
  MR. LAYLAND-BARRATT: To ask the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries whether he can state the cause of the delay in holding the local inquiry into the by-laws prohibiting trawling in the Devon bays.
  (Answered by Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.) I had hoped that it would have been possible to hold the local inquiry to which my hon. friend refers on May 1st, but it was found impossible to secure the attendance of all the officers con concerned on that date, and we had, therefore, no alternative but to postpone it for a short time, possibly until the Whitsuntide Recess. Inasmuch, however, as the alteration which the proposed new by-laws would make in the existing local regulations could not in any case take effect until August 1st next, the delay in holding the inquiry, which I much regret, is not of any serious importance to those interested in the matter.

  Sales of Navy Serges.
  MR. BARRAN: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state the cost price of the blue serges sold in December for £3,000 by auction; and also what quantities of blue serges within 10 per cent. in value have been ordered since that date either by the Admiralty or War Office.
  (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The bulk of the serge sold in December was the remains of a parcel bought six or seven years ago, of a light make for hot climates, which was not taken up to the extent anticipated. It was sold to prevent deterioration, and realised about 80 per. Cent. of its original cost price. The

  49
  serge since bought is of the ordinary No. 2 and No. 3 qualities; that sold being known as No. 1.

  Poor Rate Demand Notes.
  MR. LAYLAND-BARRATT: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, when the council of a borough has unanimously approved of the demand note for the poor rate showing in addition to the legal form of demand particulars of the amounts required for specific purposes, including that of education, the Loral Government Board would in any way depart from their custom of not interfering to prevent this being done by those responsible for the collection of the poor rate.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I do not think that I can undertake to say what course the Local Government Board would take in any particular case where the demand note used does not follow the prescribed form.

  British Indian Subjects in the Transvaal.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: To ask the Secretary of State for India what steps he proposes to take to protect His Majesty's British Indian subjects against the agitation now being stirred up against them by certain white traders in the Transvaal.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) His Majesty's Government adhere to the attitude taken up in my despatch of 20th July, 1904, printed at pages 38 to 45 of [Cd. 2239].

  Peat Coal Manufacture.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he could state the name and qualification of the expert selected to inquire into and report upon the various processes of peat coal manufacture in different countries on the Continent; and whether those reports have been forwarded to the Department of Agriculture for Ireland, and if they are available for Members of the House.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) Mr. John T. Tatlow, who has made a special study of the peat industry in its various branches on the Continent, has acted as
  50
  the Department's expert since 1901. A report on this industry appears in the proceedings of the Industrial Conference organised by the Department in connection with the Cork Exhibition, 1902, and the subject is further dealt with in articles published in the Department's Journal for June, 1902, and March, 1904. Reports other than the foregoing are not available for publication. It may be added that the term "peat coal" is not applied to any known successful process upon the Continent.

  Cloncore National Schools
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state what is the accommodation for pupils at the original Cloncore National School, and what was the average attendance for the quarter ending 31st March last; how many pupils is there accommodation for in the new Cloncore School, and what was their attendance for the same quarter; how many pupils attending the new school came from others, and what were the names of the schools they came from; and if he can state what were the special circumstances which led the Commissioners to give a grant for this new school, what there was sufficient accommodation in the existing school under Protestant management for all pupils in the locality.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The original Cloncore School affords accommodation for eighty-seven pupils, and the average attendance for the quarter indicated was twenty-five. The new school (Cloncore Upper) affords accommodation for eighty pupils, and the average attendance for the quarter indicated was fifty-seven. Fifty-six of the pupils came from other schools, namely, Cloncore (old), Tartaraghan (1), Tartaraghan (2), Derry-lard, and Breagh National Schools. The exceptional circumstances connected with this school and which appeared to the Commissioners to justify them in granting aid were considered at more than one meeting of the Board. They are of too involved a character to set forth in a reply to a Parliamentary Question, and under any circumstances the Commissioners consider that no good object could be achieved by making them public.

  Strandtown National School Teacher.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that the manager, in appointing an assistant teacher in Strandtown National School, Belfast, in August, 1902, made it a condition that she should teach regularly in his Sunday school, and that, on the assistant's refusal to do so, she was forced to resign; and, if so, will he take steps to insert a clause in the Irish agreement forms for teachers similar to that in use in the English Education Department, in order to prevent similar occurrences in future.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The agreement between the manager and the assistant teacher, executed on the appointment of the latter in August, 1902, does not contain the condition referred to, and the Commissioners have no official knowledge of any such condition. The

  Station in the New Port district

  Medical attendant

  Distance between his residence and the station

  Achill Sound

  Dr. T. H. Croly

  9 miles

  Dugort

  Dr. T. H. Croly

  —

  Keel

  Dr. T. H. Croly

  4 miles

  Ballycroy

  Dr. J. F. Cleary

  2 miles

  Coolnabinnia

  Dr. M. McSherry

  10 miles

  Brockagh

  Dr. T. Allman

  5½miles

  Newport

  Dr. F. T. O'Rorke

  8 miles

  Mulranny

  Dr. F. T. O'Rorke

  19 miles

  Glenhest

  Dr. F. T. O'Rorke

  16 miles

  Each of the gentlemen named is duly qualified and licensed to practise. The facilities for travelling to attend night are those usual in country districts, namely, the use of a special car or cycle.

  Coolclogher Evicted Tenant—John O'Driscoll's Application.
  MR. FLYNN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant
  assistant teacher's resignation was notified to the Commissioners in the ordinary manner, and they have no knowledge that her retirement was enforced from any cause.

  Newport (Mayo) Police District Doctors.
  DR. AMBROSE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state the names of the police stations comprising the Newport, county Mayo, divisional police district; what is the name and what are the qualifications of the doctor who attends those stations; what is the distance between his residence and each station or barracks; what are the facilities for his travelling to attend a night call at any one of those stations or barracks.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The Particulars asked for are as follows—
  of Ireland, in relation to the claim of an evicted tenant, John O'Driscoll Coolclogher, near Millstreet, whether the Estates Commissioners have received a communication from the evicted tenant's representative contradicting the statement made by the landlady that his father, the late T. O'Driscoll, was not an evicted tenant, but surrendered the farm on receiving compensation; whether he has

  53
  asked the Commissioners for an inquiry into the case; and whether, in a disputed case of this nature, the Commissioners will appoint an inspector to inquire into the validity of the evicted tenant's claim under the Land Act of 1903.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) If the estate in question should come before the Commissioners to be dealt with, John O'Driscoll's claim will be inquired into.

  Mohorough National School Teacher's Pay.
  MR. KENDAL O'BRIEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether, seeing that the salary paid to the teacher of Roll No. 5,094 National School, from 1st June, 1900, to 1st April, 1901, was calculated at £87 per annum, he will say whether there was any departure from the arrangement of calculating the amount of equivalent grant in lieu of results fees, by basing on the average amount earned for the three years previous to the abolition of payment by results; and, if so, under what circumstances, and in what manner, did this departure operate.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The amount of equivalent grant in lieu of results fees paid in September, 1900, to Mr. M'Carthy, teacher of Mohorough National School, was calculated on the actual earnings in results fees, and the Customs and Excise grant paid for the three preceding years. There was no departure from the usual procedure in this case.

  County Mayo Extra Police.
  MR. O'KELLY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state how many of the men constituting the extra police force in the county of Mayo in 1899 and 1900 were drafted in from other counties and how many from the depot.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The extra force consisted of forty-seven men drawn from counties and three men from the depot.

  County Mayo Royal Irish Constabulary Free Force.
  MR. O'KELLY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of
  54
  Ireland if he will state the strength at which it was decided to maintain the Royal Irish Constabulary free force quota in the county of Mayo at the triennial redistributions in 1897 and in 1900.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) At the triennial redistributions in 1897 and 1900 the free force of the county of Mayo was fixed as follows:—In 1897, 474 sergeants and constables; in 1900, 515 sergeants and constables.

  Purchase of Evicted Holdings and Grazing Tracts in Tipperary.
  MR. CULLINAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state in how many cases have the Estates Commissioners been negotiating the purchase of evicted holdings in Tipperary county; how many they have succeeded in purchasing; how many have they failed in, and why; how many grazing tracts they have been purchasing; how many they have succeeded in; how many they have failed in, and why.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) In two cases evicted tenants have been reinstated. In eight cases the Commissioners have been unable to effect reinstatement owing to the unwillingness of the landlord to sell the holding singly. In one case negotiations are still pending.

  Insane Paupers at Cork District Lunatic Asylum.
  MR. GILHOOLY: TO ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received a resolution, passed unanimously by the Committee of Management of the Cork District Lunatic Asylum, calling on him to promote a Bill to enable the committee to deport insane patients of other nationalities and counties who have been committed and remain chargeable to the local rates, and pointing out that those patients occupy the places in the institution erected, maintained, and taxed for local patients, thereby contributing to the overcrowding which at present exists in the asylum; and, if so, whether he purposes to give effect to it during this session.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The resolution has been received. My right

  55
  hon. friend is unable at present to give an undertaking to introduce legislation on it he subject.

  Nolan Farrell Estate, County Mayo.
  MR. JOHN O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Nolan Farrell Estate, near Ballyhaunis, county Mayo, has been purchased by the Congested Districts Board; that there Ms an extensive demesne on the estate; that this demesne has been let to a grazier, named Curran, up to the 1st of May next, although a number of tenants in the vicinity, whose holdings are uneconomic, were anxious to procure it for the use of their cattle; whether the letting was made by the Congested Districts Board or the landlord, and on what terms; and whether steps will be at once taken to ensure that there will be no further letting to this man, and that the place will be divided amongst the tenants on the estate for the purpose of enlarging their holdings or creating new ones.
  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The Board has only recently received possession of these lands. The occupier, Mr. Curran, has been allowed to remain in occupation until 1st May to give him an opportunity of disposing of his stock without loss. He is to pay £15 for the grazing for this period. The Board will take over the lands on the date mentioned and deal with them as they consider best pending the rearrangement of the estate, which cannot be commenced until the Board are legal owners of it.

  Alleged Ill-treatment of Indian Coolies in the Natal Coal Mines.
  SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the frequent Police Court proceedings arising from the alleged ill-treatment of Indian indentured coolies in the Natal coal mines, he will call for a Report from the Natal Government on the subject and suggest the holding of a public inquiry thereon.
  (Answered By Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) There is a protector of Indian immigrants in Natal whose duty it is to watch over
  56
  their interests. I have referred to his last two annual reports and do not find anything which would warrant such action as the hon. Member suggests. Indians are not compelled to accept service in the mines. During 1903 (the last year for which I have a report) the majority of the 504 men who re-indentured themselves did so to the coal mines and other employers not engaged in agriculture.

  British Indian Traders in Cape Colony.
  SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE: To ask the Secretary of Stats for the Colonies if his attention has been drawn to an enactment by the Government of Cape Colony seeking to suppress British Indian traders by means of a clause requiring applications for trading licences to be made in a European language or in Yiddish; and whether, having regard to the fact that such a requirement is calculated to deprive those traders of the rights they have hitherto possessed, he will advise the Crown to withhold assent to the enactment in question.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) I should be obliged if the hon. Member would indicate the special enactment to which he refers.

  Liquor Law in the Transvaal—Treatment of British Indians
  SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that the Liquor Law of the late South African Republic to the effect that no negro, aboriginal, native, or coloured person may be served with alcoholic drink, has been made applicable now by the Transvaal Government to respectable and educated Eurasians and other subjects of His Majesty from India employed on the railways of the country; and whether he will represent to the Transvaal Government that such application of the prohibition is not called for, since the object of the provision in question was solely to prevent intemperance among the natives of the country and immigrants of the uneducated coolie class.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) Under Sections 46 and 48 of the Liquor Licensing Ordinance passed

  57
  by the Transvaal Legislature in October, 1902, no coloured person may be supplied with intoxicating liquor [Cd. 1365], and under Section 1 (c) of Ordinance No. 68 of 1903 a railway employee's liquor licence authorises a sale of liquor only to white male persons of the age of sixteen years and upwards who are employed on the construction of any railway works in the Transvaal. It is admitted that the liquor legislation of the Transvaal has had a salutary effect, bat I will bring the point raised by the hon. Member to the notice of the officer administering the Government and ask for a report. Provision has been made under Proclamation No. 35 of 1901, printed at p. 42 of Cd. 904, for exempting coloured persons of education from special legislation affecting natives and coloured persons generally.

  Army Horses Suffering from Epizootic Lymphangitis.
  MR. HAYES FISHER: To ask the Secretary of State for War what number of the 106 Army horses which were suffering from epizootic lymphangitis in July last have been slaughtered; what number of fresh cases have occurred among Army horses in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively, since that time.
  {Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) Of the 108 horses suffering from this disease in July last sixty have been destroyed. Since that date ninety-six fresh cases have occurred in England, one in Scotland, and five in Ireland.

  Pension of Michael Phelan, late 43rd Foot Regiment.
  MR. O'MARA: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he has received an application for increase of pension from Michael Phelan, Thomastown, county Kilkenny, late of the 49th Light Infantry Regiment, in which he served twenty-one years, obtaining during that period an Indian Mutiny medal and a New Zealand war medal, being eventually discharged on a pension of 1s. per day for life; whether, in view of his long service and present circumstances, he intends to grant Phelan this increase; and, if so, to what extent.
  58
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The man referred to in the Question is Michael Phelan, late 43rd foot. An application for an increase of his pension was dealt with in June last by the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital, who informed Phelan that he was in receipt of the highest rate of pension for which he was eligible under the regulations in force at the time of his discharge, and that he was not eligible for any increase. As he was not wounded or discharged for disability he cannot be granted any increase under the special concession made to Crimean and Indian Mutiny veterans who fulfil either of these conditions.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Distribution of Profits of Natal Field Force Canteens.
    DR. MACMAMARA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can say to what use the £470,000 balance standing to the credit of the Natal Field Force canteens, as described by Lieutenant-Colonel H. O. Morgan before the Royal Commission on the South African War, has been put; whether this sum has been applied in part or in full to the establishment of South African garrison institutes; whether these institutes are now being conducted, as stated by Colonel Morgan, as canteens conducted by a civilian personnel; what War Office supervision, if any, there is over their business transactions; what War Office audit, if any, there is of their accounts; and to what purposes are their profits, if any, applied.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): The Army canteens, during the South African War, were started without any assistance from public funds, and the profits accruing there from have been applied for the benefit of the Army in South Africa, after providing for a gratuity to regiments leaving the country. The alleged credit of the Natal Field Force canteens consisted of a considerable amount of stock as well as cash. At the conclusion of the war, the

    59
    full price was not realised owing to deterioration arising from the goods being stored in the open and the enormous mass of stock thrown suddenly upon the market at the close of the campaign. In round figures, the following sums have been distributed out of the profits of the Field Force canteens—

    £

    Leaving grants to regiments

    111,000

    Building Soldiers' Institute, Pretoria

    40,000

    Working Capital, South African Garrison Institutes

    70,000

    Building officers' clubs, etc

    33,000

    Total

    £254,000

    There still remains an amount of the most unsaleable portion of the Field Force canteen stock, valued, with a heavy reduction for deterioration, at £33,000. Whatever sum may be realised out of this has been placed at the disposal of the General Officer Commanding South Africa, to be expended for the benefit of the soldier, in the establishment of dairies, laundries, etc., and in the better equipment of recreation rooms. The canteens in South Africa are now run in connection with the South African Garrison Institutes, the headquarters of which are in Pretoria, and the profits are applied for the benefit of the troops in South Africa. The institutes are managed by a Board of Directors, composed of officers, one of whom is appointed managing director. The board is assisted by a general manager and a chief accountant, who are civilians. The remainder of the staff are civilians, as serving soldiers are not permitted to be employed in canteens. The accounts are audited by a chartered accountant. There is no War Office audit and the full responsibility for the management of the institutes rests with the General Officer Commanding, as is the case in this country and in the Colonies.

    War Office Payments to the British South Africa Company for the Rhodesian Field Force.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state what was the total of sums paid by the War Office on account of expenditures
    60
    incurred by the Chartered Company during the South African War, in respect of the field force which operated from Beira; how many men that force comprised; and whether detailed vouchers of all expenditures have been called for and received by the War Office.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The total paid by the War Office to the British South Africa Company on account of expenditure for the Rhodesian Field Force was £1,681,618. The number comprised in that force was about 5,400 officers and men. Detailed vouchers of all expenditure were received from the company.

    South African War Contractors.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I bog to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, as a result of the statement put in before the Royal Commission on the South African War, respecting complaints of stores on arrival, as set forth at pp. 250–253 of the appendices to the Report, any firm or firms of contractors were struck off the War Office lists of contractors; and, if so, which.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The reply is in the negative.

    Destruction of Milford Haven Fort Guns.
    MR. LLOYD MORGAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that several nine-inch R.M.L. guns weighing about twelve tons each, lying at Stack and Popton Forts, Milford Haven, have been thrown into the sea; that for a considerable time during the last training the Carmarthen Royal T Garrison Artillery Militia were employed in disposing of these guns in this way; if so, will he say whether it is proposed to employ them during the coming training in similar work and to destroy more guns of this description; and whether the guns cannot be used or disposed of in some useful way.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: In connection with the rearmament of the Milford Haven forts certain obsolete guns, carriages, and mountings had to be disposed of. The contractors who bought the carriages, etc., would not buy the

    61
    guns; and the guns not being worth the cost of removal were thrown into the sea. As the Regular garrison artillery were already fully employed on the work of rearmament the General Officer Commanding decided to employ the Militia garrison artillery in the work of dismounting these guns; such a task would form part of their legitimate training. Endeavours are always made to dispose of guns locally by sale, but if this cannot "be effected they must be disposed of in the cheapest manner.
    MR. LLOYD MORGAN: Are the men to be thus employed again this year?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The dismantling of guns is a very important part of their training.

    Essex Regiment—Case of Major Nason.
    SIR CARNE RASCH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that Major Nason, Essex Regiment, has been detained at Wellington, Madras, although compulsorily retired by age on March 8th; and whether, seeing that he has offered to make himself liable for all accounts during the time he was in command, he will explain why, under these circumstances, he is not allowed to come home.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I am not acquainted with the circumstances alluded to. This matter is one which concerns the Indian Government, and the Question should be addressed to my right hon. friend, who, I understand, is making inquiries.

    2nd Battalion Essex Regiment.
    SIR CARNE RASCH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will explain why the 2nd Essex, which was to have returned home this trooping season, has been countermanded, seeing that this battalion has recently served seventeen years abroad, as against three at home.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: This battalion went abroad in April, 1904, for a short tour of service, which under ordinary circumstances would have lasted until the spring of 1907. When it
    62
    was resolved to reduce the number of battalions in the Colonies this battalion was included in the number to come home in 1905–6. These reductions have not proceeded as rapidly as was at one time expected, and have necessitated the countermanding of the orders for the 2nd Essex to come home.

    Dublin University Military Education for Army Candidates.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the War Office authorities have been in communication with those of the University of Dublin as to the provision of military education for Army candidates, and that the persons appointed by the University authorities to give this instruction (including strategy and tactics) are all civilians; and whether the War Office authorities are satisfied with this arrangement.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Regulations have recently bean approved by which University candidates can obtain Commissions in the Army. So long as these candidates fulfil the conditions imposed by these regulations the War Office does not interfere with details such as the selection of lecturers and instructors. But the War Office is always ready to advise on these matters when the Universities desire assistance.

    Army Act.
    MR. HIGHAM: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether arrangements can be made for the issue of the Army Act, revised to 1904, to Members of this House who may wish to have copies.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Copies of the Army Act revised to 1904 were sent to the library last session. Further copies were sent to the library this session for the debate on the Army Annual Bill, and some additional copies were sent yesterday. I hope this supply will meet the requirement of Members. The Act is on sale and copies may be purchased.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Does not the House order the Paper, and has not every Member a right to a copy?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The Act is not issued as a Parliamentary Paper.
    AN HON. MEMBER: It ought to be.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I think not.

    Army Rifles
    CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether, seeing that orders have been placed for 222,000 short rifles, of which 158,000 are already manufactured, and that the programme for the year only provides for the supply of rifles for the mounted troops, he can state the number of rifles required for the latter, and how the surplus rifles are to be disposed of; and can he give the number of rifles in stock for dismounted troops.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. BROMLEY DAVENPORT,): The number of short rifles at present ordered for land service, exclusive of India, is 165,000. The number required to arm the mounted troops and to replace carbines with other units is 150,000, in addition to which the necessary reserves are required. The stock of long rifles is sufficient to arm all dismounted troops armed with rifles.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: Cannot the hon. Gentleman give me the number in stock?
    MR. BROMLEY DAVENPORT: It is not deemed desirable to publish the number in reserve.

    Army Boot Contracts—Northampton Strike.
    MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the strike now going on in Northamptonshire among the Army boot operatives is due to the setting aside by certain contracting firms of the statement of wages agreed to by representatives of the manufacturers and of the Boot and Shoe Operatives Union; and that it is alleged on the part of the union that the statement of wages thus agreed to and submitted to the War Office represents a reduction of from 7 to 13 per cent. on the corresponding payments accepted as current after the close
    64
    of the war under previous contracts; that it is alleged on behalf of the union that certain firms who have obtained contracts this year have been giving out or offering the work at prices representing a loss to the worker ranging from 3d. and 5d. per pair of boots to 7d. and 10d. as compared with the corresponding prices agreed to in the statement; and that ankle Blucher Army boots have been given out by one of these firms to women for closing at 1s. per dozen, whereas the statement price for this operation is 2s. 6d. and whether this represents an average wage to these women of 6s. a week instead of 15s. a week; and whether, having regard to the undertaking of the secretary of the trade union to make good these allegations if an inquiry is held, he will forthwith direct an inquiry to be made into them; and, if the facts are established, take steps to enforce the fair wage clause of the Government contracts.
    MR. BROMLEY DAVENPORT: The War Department is aware of the fact and allegations referred to in the hon. Member's Question. The duty of the Department, however, in matters relating to wages is limited to securing the strict observance of the Wages Resolution, which is incorporated in all its contracts, and stipulates that the wages paid shall be those generally accepted as current in each trade for competent workmen in the district where the work is carried out. So far as concern the men who are on strike, it would appear to be impossible for the Department to insist upon a particular rate being fixed as current at a moment when such a rate is precisely the matter in dispute. With reference to the latter portion of the hon. Member's Question, in which he indicates what appears to be the payment of a very low rate of wage in a particular case, if he will kindly furnish me or cause me to be furnished with the necessary information, I will at once cause an inquiry to be made with a view to ascertaining whether any action I can properly be taken in accordance with the terms of the current rate clause of the contract.
    MR. CHANNING: Am I to understand that if proper representations—giving names and prices, are made to the War

    65
    Office, not merely in respect of these cases but of others in which the wages are said to be below the current standard, the hon. Gentleman will cause inquiry to be made?
    MR. BROMLEY DAVENPORT: Certainly, if there is any reason to suppose that the wages are below the rates accepted as current in the district.
    MR. CHANNING: Will the hon. Gentleman give special attention to the fact that the trades union guarantee the accuracy of the figures they have given?
    MR. GEORGE WHITE: Is it not a fact that a statement of wages is agreed upon and that the contracts are based on it, so that it is easy to find out on what basis of wages the contracts are taken?
    MR. BROMLEY DAVENPORT: If that statement were accepted throughout the district as the current rate the War Department would be bound by it. But we are not at present in a position to say that it is so accepted.

    Russian Import Duties on Indian Tea.
    MR. RUNCIMAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Russian import duties on Indian tea have been raised in the past few years; if so, when were they raised; whether any reason was assigned by the Russian Government for raising them; and whether any negotiations have taken place on the subject.
    THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Earl PERCY,): My right hon. friend has asked me to answer this. The duties were raised in September, 1903, so far as the European frontiers and Black Sea ports were concerned, but not as regards imports through Dalny and Vladivostock, through which route the trade immediately showed a considerable expansion. It was understood that the step was a protest against the action taken by His Majesty's Government to give effect to the Brussels Sugar Convention. As regards the last part of the Question, the Answer is in the negative.

    Indian Judicial and Legal Appointments'
    MR. HEMPHILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he can state in how many instances appointments to judicial and other legal offices in India have been, since the 1st of January, 1902, made of candidates from home; and in how many of those instances the appointees have been members of the English, Scotch, and Irish Bars respectively.
    EARL PERCY: Three such appointments of candidates from home have been made since the date mentioned—two to Judgeships of Indian High Courts, and one to the post of Legal Member of the Governor-General's Council. Of the three gentlemen appointed two have been members of the English and one of the Irish Bar.

    Nautical Assessors—Age Retirement Regulations.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many nautical assessors are there appointed for service during the present year; how many of them are over sixty, seventy, and seventy-five years of age respectively; how many were appointed when over the ages of sixty, seventy, and seventy-five respectively; and how many belong, or have belonged, to the naval service and the merchant service respectively.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERSDOUGLAS,): There are thirty-two nautical assessors appointed for service during the present year. Twenty of them are over sixty years of age, while seven are over seventy and one is over seventy-five. At the quinquennial revision of the list, which took place at the end of last year, nineteen assessors who were over sixty, including seven over seventy and one over seventy-five, received reappointment. These had all been on the list before, some of them for a number of years. One assessor over sixty was newly appointed last month. Nineteen assessors have belonged to the merchant service and five to the Navy. Several assessors who have belonged to the merchant service are also Royal Naval Reserve men.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: There is one gentleman over seventy-five. At what age was he appointed? Cannot the right hon. Gentleman say how many were appointed when over the age of sixty?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I think my Answer covers that. Some of them had been appointed for a number of years and they grew up to these ages in the service.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to take any steps to deplete the list of these senile assessors?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: It has been recently decided that on the next and all subsequent revisions, all assessors over sixty-five will be retired; and that no one who is sixty-five years of age, or older, will in future be eligible.

    Licensing Rules—Meetings of Compensation Authorities.
    MR. LEIF JONES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, under the licensing rules, the compensation authority is empowered to exclude the Press from the preliminary meeting at which the compensation authority has under consideration the report of the renewal authorities as to licences not required in their districts.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: Rule No. 12 provides that no person shall have a right to be present at the preliminary meeting, other than the members of the compensation authority and representatives of the renewal authority, unless authorised by the compensation authority to attend.
    MR. LEIF JONES: Can they authorise the presence of the Press and the public if they think fit to do so?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: The Secretary of State is required by Section 6 of the Act to provide for consultation with the renewal authorities as to their reports, and the rule quoted was drawn for that purpose. There is a clear distinction of meaning between such consultation and public hearing, which is
    68
    required by Section 1 (2) of the Act, and provided for by Rules 14 to 20; and it appears to be proper that the consultation should be held under such conditions as the authorities concerned think right.
    MR. LEIF JONES: Then may they admit the Press?
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I conclude if they desire they can do so.

    Irish Swine—Restrictions on Importation into England.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether, before imposing restrictions on the importation of Irish swine into England, his Department had communications with the Irish Department of Agriculture; whether the latter made any protest against, or objection to, the proposed action of the English Department; whether he is in communication with the Irish Department to ascertain when swine fever may have so abated as to allow of the rescission of the existing Order; and whether he can hold out now any hope for a change in the Order at a near date.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. AILWYN FEL LOWES,): The Answer to the first two inquiries is in the affirmative. With regard to the third and fourth, I may say that we receive from the Irish Department weekly returns of the number of out breaks of swine fever in Ireland, but, in the absence of any general restrictions on I the movement of swine in Ireland, I cannot hold out any hope of the relaxation of the Order at present.
    MR. FLAVINasked whether the members appointed under the Board of Agriculture Act considered this Order before it was issued?
    MR. AILWYN FELLOWES: The Order was issued after full communication with the Irish Department.
    MR. FLAVIN: But did the Committee appointed under the Act in England ever meet to consider it, and if so, when?
    MR. AILWYN FELLOWES: The whole question was considered by the port sanitary authorities at Southampton Board of Agriculture.
    MR. FLAVIN: Where?
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!

    London Unemployed Relief Expenditure.
    MR. BENN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, in regard to the Unemployed Relief Expenditure, London, whether any £ the borough councils adopted the suggestion of his predecessor to aid the fund out of the rates; and, if not, does he still propose to include in the forthcoming measure rate-aid for the relief of the unemployed.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): I understand that none of the borough councils have contributed towards the funds of the Central Unemployed Committee, and that no application has been made to them by the Committee for this purpose. I cannot undertake to state beforehand what may be the proposals in the measure referred to in the Question.

    Outbreak of Smallpox on the ss. "Nile."
    MR. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Local Government Board is he aware that the port sanitary authorities at Southampton had their attention called on or about March 18th last, on the arrival of the as. "Nile" at that port, to a case of smallpox on board that vessel; that the patient died on that date; that the port sanitary Authorities allowed two men named P. Dalton and P. Smith to go to their destination in the rural district of Mullingar, county Westmeath, after being in contact with this care of smallpox; and that the district authorities were unable to trace these men until the 31st ultimo, when it was discovered that one of them (Smith) was suffering from smallpox in the town of Mullingar; whether, in view of the expense the rural council of Mullingar have been put to in this matter and the danger to the public health, he can state why these men were not quarantined for fourteen or sixteen days before being allowed to proceed to their destination;
    70
    and whether he proposes to censure the port sanitary authorities at Southampton for their action in this matter.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The medical officer of health at Southampton reports that the "Nile" arrived there on March 18th with a case of smallpox on board and that the patient died as the vessel was entering the port. I have no information as to the two men referred to in the Question, but the medical officer states that notification was given to the medical officer of health of every district to which any of the passengers or ore were proceeding. I am, however, sending a copy of the Question to the town council and am asking for a detailed report of the facts as to smallpox in relation to this vessel together with an account of the measures adopted for preventing the spread of the disease on board and elsewhere. I may add that there would be no power to detain any of the passengers or view who were not actually suffering from the disease.
    MR. HAYDEN: Is there no power in England to detain persons who have been in contact with cases of smallpox? My information is that the Irish authorities have done it.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: There is no such power in England at all events.

    Foreigners and British Pilotage Certificates.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he will give the number of foreigners at present holding British pilotage certificates, also the number of such certificates granted by the Board of Trade after local pilotage authorities had refused to grant them, on the grounds of local and national inexpediency.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW,: The number of foreigners holding British pilotage certificates according to information obtained in 1902 was seventy-three, and the present number is estimated to be somewhat larger. Two certificates have been granted by the Board of Trade to foreigners in the

    71
    circumstances stated by the hon. Member, but of these one is no longer in force.

    Civil Service—Assistant Clerks.
    MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that a number of assistant clerks (new class) have received no benefit whatever from the slightly improved scale of salary granted by the Treasury two years ago, and that these officers are thus in receipt of a salary £10 a year less than that allowable to new entrants after the same amount of service; and whether he will take steps to have the officers in question placed on an equal footing as regards salary with junior members of their class, and if any compensation is proposed to be given them for the loss they have already sustained.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. VICTOR CAVENDISH,): I am unable to give retrospective effect to the concession granted in 1902. The officers to whom the hon. Member refers, though they may not have benefited by the concession, sustained no loss whatever thereby.
    MR. NANNETTI: Will the hon. Gentleman look into the Order in Council?
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISHasked that any further Question should be given notice of.

    Prudhoe School.
    MR. TREVELYAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether the Board intend to pass the revised plans for alterations to Prudhoe School forwarded to the Board on February 22nd; whether he is aware of the urgency of the case, and that the condition of the school has been condemned by the Government inspector, and in a Report of the Local Government Board, as well as by the various Northumberland authorities.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,): The plans have now been approved; I am sorry for the delay, which has, however, been unavoidable

    London Education Expenditure.
    MR. BENN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Education if he will state the amount of the additional rate incurred to date in the administration of the London Education Act, 1903; and whether he can at present give any estimate of the total addition to the rates which that measure involves to the Metropo is.
    SIR WILLIAM ANSON: The hon. Member is, I think, in a much better position than I am to make an estimate of the addition (if any) to the rates which the London Education Act involves. The Board have no information on the subject.

    Durness Parish Council—Dispute with Medical Officer.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether he is aware that the legal expenses recently incurred by the Durness Parish Council by their litigation with the parish medical officer have been put upon the parish rates; and whether, seeing that those ratepayers who jointly pay more than two-thirds of the parish rates protested against the action of the chairman and two members of the parish council which led to these legal expenses being incurred, he will say whether the Local Government Board for Scotland have sanctioned the placing of these legal expenses upon the parish rates, and, if so, under what heading.
    THE LORD-ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON,): I am informed that the Local Government Board have not sanctioned the expenses referred to being put upon the parish rates.

    Valuation Bill for Ireland.
    MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland whether he proposes to introduce a Bill this year dealing with the question of valuation in Ireland; and, if so, whether he intends to give effect to the recommendations of last year's Select Committee on Irish Valuation.
    THE ATTORNEY - GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,): It is intended to bring in a Bill dealing with a portion of the machinery of valuation in Ireland. I must decline to state its contents before its introduction.
    MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the latter part of the Question?
    MR. ATKINSON: My Answer covers that.
    MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: When is the Bill likely to be brought in?
    MR. ATKINSON: I hope very shortly.

    Irish National Education—Mr. Strong's Duties.
    MR. MURPHY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what were the special duties on which Mr. Strong, senior inspector under the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, was engaged in the year 1903; and what is the exact position that this official occupies at present.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WALTER LONG): Mr. Strong has been employed at the central office upon special duties connected with the triennial grants of increment and the promotion of teachers under the new scheme. When not so employed, he still acts as senior inspector.

    Training in Elementary Science for Irish Teachers.
    MR. MURPHY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state what action the Commissioners of National Education propose to take to supply the deficiency in the supply of expert instructors of science as pointed out by Mr. Connolly, inspector of the Killarney circuit, and several other inspectors of the Commissioners.
    MR. ATKINSON: It has already been stated that the Head Organiser and two assistants will permanently continue the training of teachers in elementary science, and that arrangements have been made
    74
    for similar training at local technical schools. Instruction for King's scholars is provided for in the training colleges.

    Wynn Estate, County Kerry.
    MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that negotiations for the purchase of the Wynn Estate, Glenbeigh, county Kerry, were opened between the landlord's representatives and the tenants last summer; that it was decided by both parties that the sale should be conducted through the Congested Districts Board; that the negotiations have fallen through because of the interpretation put by the Board on Section 44 of the Land Act of 1903; and can he state whether the Board are entitled, after purchase from the owner of a congested estate, to sell to the tenants at a loss not exceeding 10 per cent.
    MR. ATKINSON: This estate has not been offered for sale to the Congested Districts Board. The section quoted does not apply to the operations of the Board, who in dealing with an estate may incur any loss which they may consider necessary.

    Clifden Union Relief Works.
    MR. O'MALLEY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that, in the Clifden Union, many of those destitute persons who are offered one shilling per day on the relief works have to walk several miles to those works, and that, in the case of Turbot Island, such persons are invited to come by boat to the mainland to obtain employment; and whether, in view of these facts and of the inadequacy of the measures adopted for the relief of exceptional distress, he will take some steps by which the remuneration will be increased, and the burden upon the poor ratepayers lightened.
    MR. ATKINSON: The guardians selected the most central situations for relief works. It would obviously be impossible to establish works adjacent to the residence of every person requiring relief. In the case of Turbot Island the

    75
    names of three persons only were submitted for employment. It is not intended to increase the remuneration of the persons employed, or to enlarge the Government contribution of 75 per cent. towards the expenses of the works.
    MR. O'MALLEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware some of these men have to walk seven or eight miles to the relief works?
    MR. ATKINSON: Yes.
    MR. DILLON: When will the Works Bill be brought in so that we may have a discussion on the subject.
    MR. ATKINSON: I hope soon after Easter.

    Galway Relief Works.
    MR. O'MALLEY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to the resolution passed by the Galway County Council requesting the Local Government Board to make an Order putting Section 13 of The Local Government Act, 1898, into operation in the electoral divisions of Kilcummin, Killanin, and Sellerna, for the purpose of relieving exceptional distress; whether he is aware that the Local Government Board notified to the guardians that they would be prepared to make the Order sought for on 3rd April, but subsequently declared that they would only contribute 50 per cent, of the cost of such works; and whether, in view of the fact that in the neighbouring union of Oughterard 75 per cent. of the coat is defrayed by the Government, he will take the necessary steps to see that on all these relief works the Government will make itself responsible for the 75 per cent. originally promised; and, if not, will he state upon what grounds there is a differentiation between the Government share of the cost of these works in the districts referred to and the Oughterard district.
    MR. ATKINSON: The facts are as stated, save that at no time did the Government promise to contribute 75 per cent. of the relief expenditure in Galway union. The Government contributions
    76
    are fixed according to the ability of each Union to bear the cost of relief measures. The valuation per head of the population in the Galway and Oughterard Union is £1 17s. 7d. and 18s. 0d. respectively.

    Newmarket (Cork) National School— Rule (127b.)
    MR. FLYNN: I beg: to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that Mr. J. D. Lynam, national school inspector, lately visited Newmarket, (county Cork) male national school, and reported that he found the Blue 127 (b) broken by the enrolment of two children of under eight years of age on the 28th March, and that the teacher acted under the written directions of the manager; and, in view of his statement in this. House in respect to postponement or possible withdrawal of said rule, he will say on whose authority Inspector Lynam made this report.
    MR. ATKINSON: The report of the inspector, who is unwell and on leave of absence, has not yet been received. When he resumes duty the matter will be inquired into.

    Adair Estate, Queen's County, Thomas Flanaghan's Claim.
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether a claim for reinstatement has been received from Thomas Flanaghan, Clonaghadoe, who was evicted in 1884 from a holding on the Adair Estate, near Mcuntmellick, Queen's County; and, in view of the fact that the Estates Commissioners are at present in treaty for the purchase of the portion of the estate at present on the landlord's hands, can he say if Flanaghan's claim shall be considered, more particularly as the planter in occupation of Flanaghan's farm has come into possession since January 1st, 1901.
    MR. ATKINSON: The estate in question has not come before the Commissioners. An application for reinstatement has been received from Flanaghan, and will be considered when opportunity arises.

    Birr, King's County, Evicted Tenants.
    MR. REDDY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant or Ireland whether he can state the number of applications for reinstatement received by the Estates Commissioners from evicted tenants in Birr Division, King's County; and how many have been restored to their old holdings or provided with equivalent farms elsewhere.
    MR. ATKINSON: Statistics by Parliamentary constituences are not available. Twenty-one applications have been received from evicted tenants in the Birr Poor Law Union, and, so far as the Commissioners are aware, none of these have been reinstated or otherwise provided with holdings.

    Bird, Beamish, and Bandon Estates, Bantry.
    MR. GILHOOLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what were the adjusted rents on the Bird, Beamish, and Bandon Estates, near Bantry, respectively, and poor valuations at the date of sale to the Congested Districts Board; what arrears were due of the tenants at that date, the number of non-judicial and second-term tenants of these estates: at what price each of these estates were purchased by the Congested Districts Board; and, seeing that a number of the holders on these estates are fishermen, and the fishing season will be in full swing about the middle of July, whether he will send an inspector from the Congested Districts Board to said estates at once to carry out the squaring of boundaries and general improvements.
    MR. ATKINSON: To reply fully to this Question would necessitate reading out a long tabular statement. It will be more convenient, therefore, to furnish a printed reply with the Votes, and, with the hon. Member's permission, I will adopt that course.

    White Estate, Bantry
    MR. GILHOOLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mr.
    78
    Lane, who was appointed inspector on the White Estate, near Bantry, is a member of the firm of solicitors who had the carriage of sale of said estate; and, if no, is the appointment in accordance with precedent.
    MR. ATKINSON: Mr. Lane was not appointed inspector on this estate. Messrs. Guest, Lane & Co. were the solicitors having carriage of sale, but they were in no sense appointed by the Commissioners.
    MR. GILHOOLY: I am informed Mr. Lane was the only person seen at the time of the inspection.

    Kilmallock Labourers' Cottage Scheme
    MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland has the Local Government Board inspector who, some time last autumn, sat in Kilmallock, county Limerick, for the hearing of cases in the present scheme for the building of labourers' cottages yet given his decision; and, if so, how many has he recommended for building; will he say, in case the recommendations have been made, how many altogether, including these and all the other cottages previously built under the Labourers Acts, can be numbered for the union of Kilmallock; how many in a similar way all told for the Tipperary No. 2 District Council and Tipperary Union; how many for No. 2 Mitchelstown District Council and Mitchelstown Union; how many for Croom Union; and how many for Limerick Union.
    MR. ATKINSON: The Board's inspector has reported in favour of the building of 125 additional cottages in the Kilmallock rural district. This will bring the total number of cottages in the Kilmallock Union to 990. The number of cottages already built, or being built, in Tipperary Union is 436, of which 129 are situated in Tipperary No. 2 rural district; the number for Mitchelstown Union is 258, of which 102 are situated in Mitchelstown No. 2 rural district; the number for Croom Union is 281, and for Limerick Union 593.

    Seed Potato Loans—Manorhamilton Board of Guardians' Request.
    MR. P. A. MCHUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Manorhamilton Board of Guardians requested the Local Government Board to sanction an additional loan for the purchase of seed potatoes, and that the Local Government Board refused to give their sanction; and that the Bill recently introduced dealing with distress in Ireland gives power to the Local Government Board to sanction loans up to the 1st September, 1905; and, if so, in view of the hardship and loss that will result from the refusal of the Local Government Board to sanction the loan, will he direct that Board to reconsider its decision.
    MR. ATKINSON: By public notice issued on 12th December last, the 15th February was fixed as the latest date for receiving applications for loans, and this date was subsequently extended to 11th March. The guardians, therefore, received ample notice. Their application for a supplemental loan was a fortnight late. It is not intended to entertain further applications.

    The Civil Service—Case of Mr. Follet Jones.
    MR. P. A. MCHUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mr. Follet Jones, of 7, Clarinda Park, Kingstown, county Dublin, an official employed in the office of the registrar of petty sessions clerks, Dublin Castle, acts as agent on the estate of Mr. Colville Jones, near Grange, county Sligo; if so, is it consistent with Mr. Follet Jones's duty as a Civil servant to act as a land agent; and can he say how many days Mr. Jones was absent from his duty in May and November last in connection with the discharge of his functions as land agent.
    MR. ATKINSON: The Answer to the first inquiry is in the affirmative. Mr. Follet Jones is brother to the owner of this property, and a younger son, I believe, of the late owner; and he himself has a family charge upon the property. Mr. Jones acts as agent over this family property during his ordinary leave of
    80
    absence. He was absent from duty in this connection for four days in November last, but not at all in May last. There is nothing in Mr. Jones's action which contravenes the rules under which he serves.

    Dickson Estate, County Leitrim.
    MR. P. A. MCHUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that congestion of an exceptional character prevails on the Dickson Estate, at Tawley, in the county of Leitrim, and that twenty-seven occupiers of agricultural holdings in Tawley occupy holdings the annual valuations of which are £1 or under; and whether, in view of the tracts of grazing lands adjoining these holdings and of the intention of Parliament in passing the Land Act of 1903, any effort will be made by the Irish Government to have the farms of those tenants enlarged and improved.
    MR. ATKINSON: Proceedings in regard to this estate are being taken under the 40th Section of the Act of 1896, and any application in the matter by the parties interested should be addressed to the Land Judge.

    Colville Jones Estate, County Sligo.
    MR. P. A. MCHUGH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that several tenants on the Colville Jones Estate, near Grange, county Sligo, who paid each a year's rent in November last and served notice to have their rents revised in the Land Courts, are now being proceeded against, some for the hanging gale and some for arrears which have been running on for ten or fifteen years; and whether, in view of the poverty of these tenants, and of the fact that they occupy small patches of land in a congested area, and of the distress prevailing on this estate at the present time, he can take steps to prevent the execution of decrees that may be obtained against tenants who have paid a year's rent within the past twelve months.
    MR. ATKINSON: I have no information on this subject. The matter is not one in which the Executive could interfere.

    County Longford Evicted Tenants
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, whether in the case of the sales of the tenants' interests in grazing farms in county Longford, which had been previously purchased under the Ashbourne Act, the Estates Commissioners have power to buy in such farms; and, if not, whether, seeing that, owing to the scarcity of untenanted land in the county, these farms offer almost the only chance that will arise for providing new or equivalent holdings for the evicted tenants, eighty-six of whose applications are on the books of the Estates Commissioners, he will propose any legislation to extend the Land Act of 1903 so as to include these farms as farms that can be bought by the Estates Commissioners for this purpose.
    MR. ATKINSON: The Estates Commissioners have no power to make advances for the purchase from peasant proprietors of the holdings purchased by the latter until the purchase annuities charged on the holdings have been paid or redeemed.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: When are these evicted tenants going to get back to the land?
    MR. ATKINSONwas understood to say he hoped there would be no long delay.

    Labourers Acts—Unexpended Balances
    MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland will he lay upon the Table of the House a Return for the various counties of Ireland of the amount of unexpended balances of the Exchequer grant where the apportioned sums have not been utilised; and is he prepared to introduce at any future time legislation to enable district councils, where the shilling in the pound on the valuation shall have been expended, to add the second half acre to the one already occupied by the labourers.
    MR. ATKINSON: The information asked for in the first part of the Question will be found on page 264 of the Annual Report of the Local Government Board
    82
    for 1903–4. Having regard to the many other charges falling on the poor rates, it is not considered desirable to increase the existing rating power for the purposes of the Labourers Acts.

    Untenanted Lands in County Limerick.
    MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to tin Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what progress has been made within the past four months in the sale of the untenanted lands of the Synans in Carnane Fedamore, county Limerick: have the solicitors having carriage of sale, or the incumbrancers, made any offer through the Chancers) Court to sell to the Estates Commissioners for the division of the lands to the people in the congested area around, or, pending such, is the receiver making preparation to let the lands for meadowing purposes to those who want meadowing in the immediate vicinity.
    MR. ATKINSON: This estate has not been offered for sale to the Estates Commissioners. I am informed that the petition for sale was only received by the Land Judge in February last, and that the Conditional Order for sale has not yet been made absolute. The untenanted land referred to in the last part of the Question has been let for the present season.

    County Antrim and Belfast Crown Solicitor ships.
    MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is proposed to amalgamate the offices of Crown Solicitor for county Antrim and Crown Solicitor for Belfast; and, if so, what economies will be effected thereby.
    MR. ATKINSON: The question of amalgamating these offices is under consideration; and, until it is decided, the latter inquiry cannot be answered.

    Belfast Courthouse
    MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed by the Belfast Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association at the meeting on

    83
    March. 30th, with reference to the condition of the Belfast Courthouse; and, if so, will he say what action he proposes to take to carry out the alterations and improvements demanded by the Judges, jurors, and all concerned in the administration of the law in Belfast.
    MR. ATKINSON: I have seen a newspaper report of the proceedings at the meeting referred to. The question of altering and improving the Courthouse is one for the local authorities, who are bound to make adequate arrangements for the administration of justice.

    Government Regulations for Guidance of Irish Estates' Commissioners
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when the regulations issued by the Irish Government for the guidance of the Estates Commissioners will be laid upon the Table.
    MR. ATKINSON: I should hope at an early date.

    Evicted Tenants—Government Instructions to the Estates Commissioners.
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether there are now in existence any instructions from the Irish Government controlling the action of the Estates Commissioners in the work of reinstating evicted tenants or in any other department of their work; and, if so, under what section and sub-section of the Act of 1903 they have been issued; and why have they not been communicated to the House.
    MR. ATKINSON: I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. friend to a similar Question on the 20th March†. That reply was to the effect that my right hon. friend the Member for Dover had stated on the 20th February ‡ that no regulations of the character mentioned in Section 23, Subsection 8, of the Act had been made, but that communications of a Departmental and confidential character had passed between him and the Commissioners.
    † See (4) Debates cxliii., 466.
    ‡ See (4) Debates cxli., 609.
    MR. DILLON: But do these confidential communications control the action of the Commissioners in carrying out their work, and, if so, why in fulfilment of the pledge given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover are they not communicated to the House?
    MR. ATKINSON: I have said they do not come under that pledge.
    MR. DILLON: Then I shall raise this, question at the earliest possible moment.

    British and Irish Taxation Comparisons.
    MR. O'MARA: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state what percentage proportions of revenue derived from direct and indirect taxes respectively bear to the total revenue of Ireland and Great Britain taken separately.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): In the financial year 1903–4—the latest for which the figures, are available—the proportions of tax revenue derived from direct and indirect taxes in Great Britain and Ireland respectively are estimated to have been—

    Direct Taxes.

    Indirect Taxes.

    Great Britain

    50·6 per cent.

    49·4 per cent.

    Ireland

    27·8 per cent.

    72·2 per cent.

    MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: Does that include money raised by the Exchequer on the Local Taxation Account?
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I think it does.
    MR. O'MARA: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider a system of taxation fair under which the Irish people pay 72 per cent. of indirect taxation?
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! That is a matter of opinion.

    Tea Duty in England and Ireland.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer to state the amount of duty actually paid on tea in Ireland during the year ending 31st March last; how much tea was cleared at London or English ports, and what duty it brought in; and whether, having regard to the admitted over-taxation of Ireland, he could sanction a sliding scale in Ireland differentiating between the cheaper and dearer qualities of tea.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The amount of duty paid on tea in Ireland during the year ended 31st March last was £436,755. The clearances of tea for home consumption and the amount of duty collected thereon, for the same period, in London and in other ports and places in England, were as follows:—

    Clearances.

    Amount of duty collected.

    lbs.

    £

    London.

    226,278,662

    7,451,369

    Other ports and places in England.

    4,748,179

    155,527

    For reasons which I gave in a speech in this House the day before yesterday, I do not propose to introduce a sliding scale of tea duties; nor, considering the general quality of teas used in Ireland, does it seem clear that any advantage would accrue to that country from so doing.

    Balbriggan Harbour.
    MR. CLANCY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been directed to the condition of Balbriggan Harbour; whether any representations on the subject have reached the Board of Works from the Dublin Port and Docks Board; and whether he can hold out any hope that a Government dredger will be employed at an early date to prevent the harbour in question from becoming entirely useless owing to the accumulation of mud and sand both in the harbour and at its mouth.
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: This harbour is under the control of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, and no represen-
    86
    tations have been received from that Board by the Commissioners of Public Works. I understand that the dredger referred to is engaged for the whole of the current year.
    MR. CLANCY: If representations are made by the Harbour Board will the-dredger be sent?
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: Of course any representations will be considered, but the dredger is engaged for the whole of this year.
    MR. CHARLES DEVLINWhere is the Galway dredger just now?
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!

    Galway Mill Stream.
    MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what action has been taken by the Board of Works in connection with the letter addressed to the Chief Secretary on February 4th, 1905, by the Galway Millers' Trustees, in reference to the record of levels of water for the supply of the Galway mills, and to the leakage of water through the Ferry and embankment.
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: The action taken by the Board of Works was to furnish the Chief Secretary with information as to the statements made by the writer of the letter referred to. These statements were founded upon misapprehension of the facts. No mention was made in the letter of leakage of water through the Ferryland embankment. The Board of Works are informed that slight leakages do take place there, but that they have hardly any effect in diminishing the supply of water to the mills. The works are not under the charge of the Board of Works but of the Lough Corrib District Drainage Trustees.
    MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: Has the Board of Works any control over these trustees?
    MR. ATKINSON: I do not think it opportune to state their relations.
    MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: But have they any power at all?
    MR. ATKINSON: I answered that on a previous occasion.

    New College of Science, Dublin.
    MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, as representing the Board of Works, whether any appointment has been made of clerk of works in connection with the building of the proposed College of Science in Dublin; if so, to whom has this appointment been given; by whom was the appointment made; and whether such appointment is for a portion of the work only.
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: The only appointment of a clerk of works has been made by the Board of Works in connection with a special contract for the removal of old buildings from the site of the proposed college and for the excavation of its foundations. The name of the gentleman appointed is Mr. J. A. Lawrie.
    MR. NANNETTI: Could not a competent Irishman have been found?
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH;I understand they appointed the man who was most suitable for the post.
    MR. NANNETTI: We had a promise that employment for Irishmen only would be found on this work.

    Overflow of the River Riffey.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he has yet caused any memorial to be prepared for the formation of a drainage board for the district of Cam and Clonwhelan, in which periodic floodings occur owing to the overflow of the River Riffey; and, if not, can he indicate the nature of the steps which should now be taken to get this board set up.
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: I would refer the hon. Member to the full Answer I gave to his Question on this subject on February 28th†. The persons desiring to form a drainage district will be informed
    † See (4) Debates cxli., 1490.
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    of the proper steps to be taken application to the Board of Works.

    Irish Postmasters Private Earnings
    MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General if the commission for emigration agency paid to postmasters in Ireland is taken into account in fixing the salaries of these officials; and, further, will he state what would be the average amount received for acting as emigration agent, and from what source this money is derived.
    THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,): The commission received for emigration agencies is not taken into account in fixing the salaries of postmasters and sub-postmasters in Ireland. I am not aware what is the average amount received for acting as emigration agent, or from what source the money is derived.
    MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: Will the noble Lord make inquiry?
    LORD STANLEY: No. I do not think the hon. Member would like me to inquire into the sources of his private income, and I do not see why I should inquire into those of other people.

    Irish Provident Assurance Company.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he is aware that a number of policy holders in the Irish Provident Assurance Company have been refused all information as to the status, liabilities, and nature of securities held by the said company for their protection and the discharge of liabilities guaranteed by them; whether any information as to the status, this company is in possession of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies or Friendly Societies; and, if so, will he cause a Return to be made giving such information for the benefit of these policy holders.
    MR. BONAR LAW: I am not aware of the circumstances to which the hon. Member refers. The company in question is registered under the Companies Acts but is not registered as a Friendly Society. The returns deposited by the

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    company under the Companies Acts may be inspected at the Dublin Registry by any person on the payment of the prescribed fee. I may add, as I stated in reply to a Question recently asked by the hon. Member for West Kerry, that a question has arisen as to the liability of the company to render returns under the Life Assurance Companies Acts, and the matter is under the consideration of the Irish Law Officers.
    MR. J. P. FAREELL: If the policy holders of the company are dissatisfied with its management and believe it is conducted on fraudulent principles, can the hon. Gentleman's Department interfere?
    MR. BONAR LAW: We have no powers other than those I have named in my Answer.

    Agricultural Rating Bill.
    SIR CARNE RASCH: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Tithe Rent-Charge will be included in the Agricultural Rating Bill.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): Yes, Sir.

    Scottish Church Dispute.
    MR. CHARLES DOUGLAS: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, in view of legal proceedings in Scotland in relation to church property the ultimate disposal of which is under investigation by a Royal Commission, whether the Government propose to allow the present results of such proceedings to affect the final distribution of the property.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not presume to pass any judgment on the action of either of the two Churches concerned; but I am perfectly ready to express my deliberate opinion, which is the opinion of the Government, that nothing that has taken place in this interim period ought to affect the final decision that is come to in regard to the matters in dispute.

    Defence Against Invasion.
    MR. CREMER: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, having regard to his statement that the Committee of Defence are clearly of opinion that invasion of these islands in such force as to inflict a fatal blow or threaten our independence is impossible, he proposes to prepare any scheme for repelling invasion.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have already indicated to an hon. and gallant friend that I should favour all Questions on this subject being put off until after the debate on the Vote connected with the Committee of Imperial Defence which I propose to bring on at no distant day after Easter.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Has the right hon. Gentleman any further statement to make as to the business of the House?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I propose to take first on Monday the Second Reading of the Agricultural Rating Bill, and as the second order Ways and Means Report. I do not propose in any event, however, to initiate a discussion on Ways and Means Report after 12 o'clock, nor do I think it at all desirable to have a late sitting to deal with it on Monday. On Tuesday the Unemployed Bill and the Aliens Bill will be introduced, under what is called "the ten minutes rule," to be followed by the Report stage of the Budget Resolutions. At the afternoon sitting on Wednesday I propose to take the Motion for the adjournment for the Easter holidays.
MR. LOUGH: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what will be the first business immediately after the holiday?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I hope to give an Answer to that Question on Monday.
MR. JOHN REDMOND: Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to dispose of Ways and Means on the Budget Resolutions before Easter?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think it very desirable to do so in the interests of public business.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: When does the right hon. Gentleman intend to take his Motion with reference to debates on adjournments? Will it be before Easter, and, if so, when?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It is down on the Paper for to-day, and the House will have an opportunity of passing it if it is unopposed.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Oh, I shall oppose it.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Then it will not be taken before Easter.

PUBLIC PETITIONS COMMITTEE.
First Report brought up, and read; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—Army (Annual) Bill, without Amendment.

SUPPLY (CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES).
Order for Committee read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair (for Committee on Civil Services and Revenue Departments Estimates)."—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)
MR. MURPHYproposed "That, in the opinion of this House, the provision for Universities is totally inadequate, and none can be regarded as equitable which does not secure for the Catholics of Ireland equally with other members of the community facilities for University education without violence to their religious feelings." It was, he said, seldom that a Motion could be sustained by proofs from all sections of the community and all kinds of religious and political opinions. The mass of evidence was so
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great that the difficulty was rather in compressing it than in producing it. He was sorry to say, however, that it did not follow from this condition of things that it would be accepted or anything done in connection with it by the present Government. He regretted, therefore, that under the circumstances the ways of the ballot, which, like other things and men, were peculiar, should have given him the duty of opening the discussion. He knew that it could be done more effectively by many of his colleagues. He was consoled, however, by the knowledge that the hon. Member for East Mayo was back with them once again and that he and others would raise the debate to the level that it ought to occupy.
There was a time when he was not greatly enthusiastic about this question of University education. He was concerned more with the foundations of education and thought little of the superstructure or covering. That feeling arose, of course, from the fact that he considered the class in which he was most concerned were touched mainly by primary education, and his desire would be still to make that education, in the interests of the nation, the teachers, and all concerned, as efficient and full as it ought to be, and as it was not. But the truth had long since been borne in upon him that this question of University education was a question for the entire people also, and every month that passed by confirmed that opinion. He had not had the advantages of a University education himself owing to lack of opportunity. But perhaps that made him feel all the more keenly and bitterly the disadvantages suffered by those who were deprived of it. Thousands of his Catholic fellow-countrymen were deprived of it by the utter incapacity of British government in Ireland. If it were true, as it was, that superior education drew a line between those who profited by it and those who were uneducated as marked as that between the living and the dead, then it was clear that higher education in its proper form was something worthy of consideration if they desired to keep their nation alive. He did not put it forward that higher education would secure all ends, because he had

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a strong view that it changed the size and not the sort of the intellect. The amount of it could never give ability where nature lad not laid the foundations. But just as the rough-hewn steel might possess the qualities necessary for strength and utility, yet skill and training was necessary to enable it to be well used as a heavy hammer or a necessary needle, the skill and training necessary to utilise the intellects of the youth of Ireland were withheld by the methods of the Government in Ireland.
Ireland had education as an ornament in the prosperity of the sixth, seventh, and eight centuries, when, as Dr. Johnson said, she was known as "the school of the West, the habitation of sanctity and learning." British rule in the country, however, killed education, which would have been a refuge in the adversity which followed on it. Some of those who heard this debate, and others who would not listen to the arguments, though they would be ready to vote down the demand, might deny that statement. But it was not so long ago when it was a felony to teach in Ireland. So late as 1901 the Protestant Bishop of Cork prosecuted a Catholic teacher who opened a school in the county. Mr. Porter, in his "Progress of the Nation," told them that the most determined opposition to the system of national education as they styled it, came from the Protestant clergy in 1843. Their policy as to education in Ireland was firstly exclusiveness, then an attempt to denationalise the people by means of a false system, and then pretended reforms under which they opened up Trinity College to Catholics under conditions impossible to their religion and nationality. The people wanted a seat of universal learning, as a University should be, and the Government gave them Trinity College. It was a 2iot-bed of Protestantism and anti-Nationalism.
Minister after Minister had admitted the necessity for reform, but all their efforts had been failures. Disraeli was a failure with his Royal University in 1873 as much as he was in 1868. Mr. Gladstone, in 1873, and in the Home Rule Bill of 1886, tried but without success. Sir M. Hicks Beach, in 1885, told them that "next year something
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would be done," but the promise never fructified any more than the more definite pledge of the First Lord of the Treasury made in the debate of 1889. Years passed by and a Commission was appointed which reported in 1903, in terms favourable to the demands of the Catholics, but nothing more substantial had yet resulted than the flying of a kite by Lord Dunraven, who, during a portion of the period of office of the late Chief Secretary, constituted himself stage manager of the Irish Government. They all regretted the absence of the right hon. Gentleman, though many of them could never appreciate the double shuffle indulged in between the Member for Dover and the Chief Secretary for Ireland on this and other matters. The result of it all was that the Irish people were deceived and justice denied to them in this most important matter. And that had happened too, although all their Lord-Lieutenants, all their Chief Secretaries, even Mr. Lecky and the Solicitor-General, Members for Trinity College itself, every liberal-minded man in the country, and lastly, their own Prime Minister, had again and again declared that something should be done to meet the legitimate aspirations of Irish Catholics in the matter of University education. How the Prime Minister could reconcile his statements in the debate of 1899, and his speech at Partick in December of that year, in which he said "that we ought to give Catholics a thoroughly equipped College," with his inaction in the matter in all the intervening years, passed comprehension. But he supposed anything was possible to one who viewed with an equable mind the operations of a Birmingham tiger and a Greenwich sleuth-hound, and who did nothing to restrain them in the interests of all the unoffending people near by. When the Prime Minister spoke in 1897, he said he—
"Was contriving a University that shall meet the approval or be largely used by those classes of the Roman Catholic population who now refuse to take advantage of the existing institution."
He begged of them all to lay aside sectarian prejudices, and he expressed the desire to set up either a college or a University for the Catholics of Ireland that would compare favourably with similar institutions on both sides of St. George's

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Channel. Apparently he was still contriving, still desiring, as he had done nothing in the interval. In the following year's debate he had proof of the united desire of all Parties to do justice to the claims of Irish Catholics. There was complete harmony in the band of Ministers and Members from all sides who spoke in support of the claim, and the harmony was not broken appreciably, because the triangle and trombone in the shape of the Member for Thirsk or one of the Members for Lincolnshire were unable to play the tune.
Need he seek to prove once again the case against Trinity College? It was Protestant and anti-National. Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, speaking within its walls in 1891, a man who was closely connected with the University, said—
"Their University was founded by Protestants for Protestants and in the Protestant interest. A Protestant spirit had from the first animated the body corporate. At the present moment the guardian spirit of the place was Protestant, and as a Protestant he said, and he said it boldly, Protestant might it evermore remain."
The Prime Minister had declared that if it was Catholic as much as it was Protestant, it would be a very dangerous place for Protestants to send their sons to. A similar declaration was made by Dean Jellet at the Tercentenary of the College in 1893. To do justice to Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, however, it should be stated that when making the declaration he had mentioned he also said—
"That if Trinity were to be made safe from disturbance it should rest on the foundation of justice, and that could only be laid by the State providing for others what Queen Elizabeth and King James provided for that place."
The result, therefore, of this condition of Trinity, was that the Catholic people of Ireland, which really meant the Irish nation, were deprived of University education.
The Member for South Derry told them last year that what was wanted was an improvement below the University but above the ordinary school level. Whilst he agreed that such improvement was necessary, he could not at all agree that University facilities were not also required. The statistics in the matter of secondary education in Ireland showed that in the middle grade 277 Catholics won exhibitions and 2,977 passed in the
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years 1892–1901, while in the case of Protestants, including all other denominations, the numbers were 142 and 1,598, respectively. In the senior grade the Catholics won 110 exhibitions and 1,346 passed, while the Protestants were only eighty-one and 687 respectively. Owing; to present conditions, most of these young Catholics were deprived of a University course. In the Report of the Royal Commission they found that—
"They (Catholics) have at their command great educational ability, and, in some cases, genuine love of learning."
But the destruction of it was effected as far as they were able to do so. The Government wasted thousands on their absurd Queen's Colleges and Royal University, sufficient to effect the change that everyone regarded as necessary. Carlyle once said that—
"The true University in those days was a collection of books."
Though they might doubt the statement they must be thankful that this delay and denial of justice had not closed up all the founts of knowledge to the Irish people. The Government tried to kill their religion, but the days of the golden priests and the wooden chalices were days in which the simple faith of their fathers was indestructibly fixed in the hearts of the Irish people. They tried to kill their nationality, but, though they struck down the people at home by every species of tyranny, like the wild creeping flowers, their children sprang up in every land until they had an Irish nation now whose limits and powers were larger than their own. They tried to destroy the hall-mark of their nationality, but out of its own ashes the Irish language had revived, and the possibilities of the revival were greater than any of them could estimate.
Did they want to have their claim stated once again. Equality was at once its high-water mark and its low-water mark. They wanted what the late Chief Secretary said last year was reasonable—
"A college coloured by the faith of the majority using it."
They asked for no glorified seminary for Catholics alone. They demanded that which, in the next place, perhaps, to self-government alone, would raise up their poor country to their own great advantage and to the loss of

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no other people—a place the name of which would be associated with liberty, progress, and enlightenment, as well as with Catholic faith and Celtic tradition. Some people laid down the plans on which they might secure it. A few there were who would have them advise entrance to Trinity as the best solution. What would be thought of the wisdom of a general who would lead his troops through a dismal swamp without counting his losses likely to be incurred, the years necessary to cover the way, or the net result when he got to the end. In any case they could not wait for years. The question was too pressing and important and must be pushed. And moreover, though Daniel came unhurt from the lion's den, it did not follow at all that Timothy and James and John and Michael would do so. They wanted that their intellects and religion should be emancipated and given a fair chance. Though justice might be blind for a long time, and wink for a little time, she would at last show the way in which their demands should he met when their merits were conceded. A Committee at present sitting recommended the granting of an additional £100,000 a year to English colleges, and they would get it. A far lesser sum would meet Irish requirements, and they must get it. It was no mere begging matter at all. It was merely restitution for the ruined homes and pillaged shrines of Ireland in the past. The Irish people were adopting the policy of the Bishop of Kerry, who said the other day—
"Let there be no truckling with persons who have little sympathy with our wants or aspirations. Have confidence in ourselves. If education is to be raised up from the low depths into which it has fallen it will not be any backstairs influence, but by an honest intelligent union amongst ourselves."
The modern Irish battle-cry would be "Sinn fein, Sinn fein amain." By adopting that policy they must and would succeed. England framed and endowed Trinity College as an exclusively Protestant institution. Its traditions, governing body, teachers, and all connected with it were Protestant. They must therefore do for the majority what they had done for the minority. In spite of all drawbacks nearly ninety per cent, of the population in Ireland could now read and
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write. They should make a ladder reaching from the lowest point to the highest University position up which every child should have the power of climbing as far as he could go. They had given a Charter to a University for Catholics in Quebec. Why deny one to the Catholics of Ireland? Conservatives demanded denominational education in England. They denied it to Ireland. On one side they consulted the Church of England in educational matters in this country. On the other side they desired that the Free Churches should also he consulted. But they would not consult or act on the advice of the Catholic Church, which was the Church of Ireland, truly, in educational matters.
Last year it was shown, on the authority of the Archbishop of Dublin, that no reasonable scheme would be refused. This year they wanted to know from the Prime Minister (1.) If after the many promises made by himself and others he now proposed any scheme to meet the legitimate demands of the Irish people. (2.) If not, would he accept a scheme framed by those representing them and take steps to have it carried into operation. (3.) And if no Answer was forthcoming to either of those Questions would he provide an opportunity to enable the House of Commons, independent of Party, to come to a decision on this question? These were simple Questions and they ought to receive a plain Answer to them. When the Moseley Commission was sent to America it was agreed on as a general principle that schools to be effective must be adapted to the particular needs of the community. The English were so proud of their superiority that they desired that circumstances should adapt themselves to them instead of sensibly adapting themselves to circumstances. Ultimately they must do that in this matter as they had had to do in others in Ireland. The other day the President of the United States said—
"Men of Irish blood are doing their full share towards the artistic and literary development of our country. I hope that an earnest effort will be made in American Universities to endow chairs for the study of Celtic literature and the research in Celtic antiquities."
When would they make that earnest effort in Ireland? The world was all

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gates and opportunities for the educated man, but they closed them all up to Irish men and women as far as they could. Their demand that evening was for the creation of an intellectual headquarters for the faith, the nationality, the language, and the literature of Ireland. They might not receive it now, but it must come. Every necessary effort at reform in Ireland had been again and again repulsed, but finally had had to be recognised. This effort also must be recognised. All through the darkness and sorrow of the past they had been enabled by the strength of hope to follow the kindly light of hope beckoning them onward to the goal. And they would follow it still, confident in the belief that some day it would bring them to a time when the Island of Saints and Scholars would wear the laurel wreath of happiness which the educated intellects of her children would fashion with loving care to place upon her brow.
MR. HAVILAND BURKEsaid he felt that when his colleagues in the Irish party invited him to second the Resolution so ably moved by his hon. friend, they had conferred upon him an honourable but a great responsibility. And he thought he should best fulfil his task by leaving many arguments and details to his Catholic colleagues far more competent than himself to present them to the House. His position was simply that he supported the Resolution from an absolutely non-Catholic point of view, and with a belief that it would, if carried, remove from the arena of controversy a social grievance and an educational injustice which tended to maintain bad blood between the Protestants and the Catholics in Ireland. He was, he believed, only one of many Protestants in Ireland who were not always talking about their Protestantism, who were not always putting Questions on the Notice Paper of the House with a view to wound She feelings of their Catholic fellow-countrymen; who did not believe in the doctrines or submit to the discipline of the Catholic Church, but who were in no way in sympathy with the Orange Party, and who wanted, on the contrary, to live to see the day when it should be absolutely impossible for an Irish Catholic to be able to say, with any reasonable show of jus-
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tice, that he was subject to any educational, social, or political disadvantage as compared with his Protestant fellow-countryman. One of the greatest of writers, Thomas Carlyle, once said that we should not be so anxious to see through people as to see out of them—to endeavour to see with their eyes, to hear with their ears, to feel with their feelings in regard to any great public question. That was what he tried to do in regard to the case of the claim for a University for the Catholics of Ireland.
They probably would be told in the course of the debate, what had been said a hundred times over so far as Trinity College was concerned, that there was no actual disability imposed on Irish Catholics; that they were not compelled to attend religious celebrations other than their own, and that the degrees and fellowships were open to them on equal terms with their Protestant fellow-students. If he were living in some country where the people were overwhelmingly Catholic, and the only available University was Catholic, he would have no hesitation in going to it and getting every possible advantage out of it; but if that country were overwhelmingly Protestant, he would consider the Protestants to be labouring under a grave social injustice if they had no University of their own, and were compelled—if they went to a University at all—to attend one in which the Roman Catholic religion was the only religion officially recognised, practised, and taught. Attempts had been made to prejudice discussion by representing the demand for a Catholic University as an artificial grievance worked up by Catholic ecclesiastics for the furtherance of their own designs. He thought that argument very unreasonable and unfair. Surely, if there were no teaching University for Irish Protestants, their Bishops and clergy would be in the vanguard of any movement to secure it. That would be their proper and natural place, and he would think it grossly impertinent for any Catholic to tell him that he did not really want a Protestant University; that he only made speeches and signed petitions for it because he was told to do so by the parsons, and that the Protestant Primate and Bishops merely wanted a new toy to play with, and that the people were merely subservient tools for carrying on

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an agitation. They had never been secularists in education in Ireland. Irish Protestants themselves had always maintained the importance of the connection between religion and education. If they looked at the long list of secondary schools in Great Britain and Ireland, given in Whittaker's Almanac, they would see that the Protestant clergy had an immense influence in education. In England itself, the headmasterships of all the great public schools were virtually monopolised by the clergy of the Established Church. Was it rational—was it not rather the height of absurdity, to argue as if the Catholic Prelates of Ireland ought to take a back seat in a Catholic University movement? It was absolutely monstrous and unfair, and such an argument in a similar case in this country would not be treated seriously for a moment. All he could say with regard to the prominent part taken by the Catholic Bishops in this matter was that to his mind it was their best defence to the charge made so often, and he thought unjustly, against them that they were what was called obscurantists, that they were medieval, that they had no notion of modern progress. If the Catholic Bishops of Ireland were anxious to close the gates of knowledge against their people, a University, even if absolutely under their own control, would be about the very last thing in the world they would ask for. A University was not a seminary. No rules, however strict, no supervision, however vigilant, could prevent young college men from coming together and discussing the great problems of this world and the next with one another, and of having access to books expressing very conflicting views in matters both of religion and of science; and if the Catholic Bishops asked for a Catholic University it seemed to him that they showed confidence not only in themselves but confidence in their people, and confidence that the Irish faith, which had survived the plunder, the cruelty, and the injustice of centuries, would not be shattered at a blow by the diffusion of modern learning amongst its children.
Some complaints had been made, and some Questions on the Notice
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Paper seemed to hint, that the Catholics in Ireland were taking the aggressive too much just now and were inclined to carry the war into the enemy's country—that they were inclined in some directions to put up the notice is regarded elective public positions that "no Protestant need apply." He did not believe that any such policy existed on the part of any responsible body of Irish Catholics, lay or ecclesiastical. If it did, he for one honestly could and cast the first stone at them. He could not honestly deny that Catholics in Ireland had received about every provocation that human perversity could possibly inflict. When it was complained that this demand for a Catholic University was a sort of Papal aggression, an attack upon Protestantism by Irish Catholics, he was reminded of the story of the man who knocked his enemy down and was kicking him to death, and yet was shrieking aloud for help the whole time. When asked why he was calling for assistance, the assailant replied, "He is trying to get up, he is trying to get up." In the same way there were some people in Ireland who had so long been cocks of the Orange walk that they were amazed that the Catholic should have the audacity, the sheer impudence, to make any demand of any kind whatever for the furtherance of the religion or education of his own people. He thought that, on the whole, this Catholic demand had been advanced with great dignity and moderation. Of course every cause had its injudicious advocates. It was very possible they might rake up things said or written by Catholics that might have been better left unsaid or unwritten, but Irish Catholicism was not the only cause that suffered at the hands of injudicious advocates. For instance, at the time of the great fight against the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, one prominent Orangeman said that if her late Majesty gave her assent to that Bill her crown would be kicked into the Boyne. Another prominent Orangeman, he believed he was the Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order, declared at an immense meeting in the Rotunda that the reason why he opposed the disestablishment of

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the Irish Church was that he honestly and firmly believed that the soul of the Roman Catholic would be everlastingly damned. It was therefore a very dangerous thing to attempt to oppose a cause of any kind by showing that its advocates here and there might not have exhibited the reserve of the trained controversialist.
He proposed to deal with one or two of the stock arguments against the establishment of a Catholic University. First they had what he might call the Oxford argument. They were told that the Catholics in England were allowed to go to Oxford under certain regulations. Why should not the Catholic Church in Ireland make similar arrangements whereby its sons could go to Trinity College? He wished to point out that Oxford was not a centre of anti-Catholic activity. The heads of Oxford University did not publish ferocious anti-Catholic poetry in college magazines. Oxford was not the centre of perennial political intrigue against the religion or the political aspirations of its Catholic students. In England, Catholics were not a big majority as in Ireland, but were a small minority, and they could go to Oxford without the slightest loss of personal dignity. Then they were told, and it sounded very plausible at first, that if the Irish Catholic Bishops were to assent to a certain number of picked Catholic young men entering their names on the books of Trinity College every year, in the course of time the Catholics would not only enjoy a position of great power in Trinity College, but possibly a position of equality and even of numerical predominance within its walls. But it was only fair that they should realise the fact that an Irish Catholic Bishop did not occupy the position of a general who in the crisis of some great battle resolved to sacrifice thousands of his best troops in order capture a vitally important position. The position of the Catholic Bishops was that not for all the honours and emoluments of Trinity College should the faith of the humblest Catholic lad in the whole of Ireland be imperilled. If they knew that at the end of ten years they would have Trinity College in the hollow of their hand they were not entitled from their own point of view to run the risk of one Catholic lad
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having his faith weakened within its walls.
There was another reason upon which he based his support of this Resolution. He thought monopoly was in itself a bad thing, and Trinity College had a monopoly in the matter of University education in Ireland. It would be a good rather than a bad thing for Trinity College itself that it should be roused from its educational slumbers. With the competition of a good University, not closed against Protestants if they chose to avail themselves of its opportunities, he thought that the whole system of education in Trinity College would be brought more up to date, more up to modern needs, and that it would be more of a teaching University in the true sense of the word, and less of what it threatened to become—a factory for the manufacture of parsons. It was notorious that the numbers of students on the books of Trinity College had been dwindling for years past. The Irish Protestant landed gentry very largely boycotted Trinity College, and the son of an Irish Peer at that College was about as rare as a white blackbird. There was not one now on the books. In addition to all this, Trinity College had made itself impossible for a man holding strong Nationalist convictions. It was little better in Ireland than a standing committee for the Unionist Party. It was a centre of intrigue against everything that was Catholic and Nationalist in the country. It had not even justified the theory of University representation—the theory that specially enlightened communities should have specially enlightened representatives in that House. With very few exceptions, what had the representation of Trinity College come to? It was the appanage of members of the legal profession bitterly opposed to the majority of the Irish people, and who wanted a seat in Parliament as an ante-chamber to a seat on the Bench. During a recent Parliamentary contest for Trinity College the bitter remark was made by its respected and beloved Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr. Gwynn, that its Members of Parliament were too often little better than King William's statue on College Green, with their

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backs turned to the college and their faces to the Castle. He would not quote from the speeches of politicians on this subject, for the modern politician had an aptitude for eating his own words with a relish just as he would eat his dinner. But he would like to refer to a speech made by Lady Londonderry in opening some Church schools at Sunderland. Lady Londonderry on that occasion said the reason for Church schools was that religion and education might be intertwined; that knowledge must be the handmaiden of faith; and that godless knowledge was very dangerous and likely to do more harm than good to its possessor. What struck him as being very strange was that while Lady Londonderry was saying that in Sunderland, her noble husband should be opposed to Catholic University education in Ireland.
He would not dwell on the way in which Catholic education had for generations been starved. He would not dwell on the awful period when it was a criminal offence for one Roman Catholic to teach another. If he did, he might be told that he was talking ancient history. But he would say with regard to that, though a man might live till he was a hundred years of age his life was but a day in the history of a nation. When one country ground down another, as England had ground down Ireland, the evil was not remedied at the moment when some of the chains were struck off. It had been truly written that the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children. The evil done by one generation took many generations to repair. Catholic Emancipation was not an atonement to Ireland. It was no more than the preface to an atonement. On these grounds he supported the Resolution. He was not afraid to let the overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland have a University of their own maintained by the State. They were as much entitled to that as Trinity College was to the plunder it got from the Catholic acres of Ireland. He believed that the Catholic intellect of the country if only given a fair chance would, before long, under are extended system of education, bring back he days when the learning of Ireland
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was the glory and the pride of Christendom.
Amendment proposed—
"To leave out the words from the word 'That,' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words 'in the opinion of this House, the provision for Universities is totally inadequate, and none can be regarded as equitable which doss not secure for the Catholics of Ireland, equally with other members of the community, facilities for University education without violence to their religious feeling.'—(Mr. Murphy)—instead thereof."
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
MR. J. F. HOPEsaid he thought this was a question in which perhaps more than in any other there was a great misuse of terms. It was always referred to outside as the Irish Roman Catholic question. That was an utterly wrong conception of the facts. When one spoke of a Roman Catholic University one would naturally understand it to be a University in which there was a religious test, and in which the Roman Catholic hierarchy had some ex officio right, as in the Catholic University of Quebec, or of Freiburg in Switzerland. But that was not the case here, and they were prepared to accept the declarations of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland who in 1897 said that the majority of the governing body were to be laymen, and that there was to be no religious test. What was there in such a University that could by any possibility do any harm? It was said in Ireland that the Irish Unionists opposed this demand for a new University because they wished to keep for themselves the monopoly of appointments for which their better education qualified them. His Unionist friends, he knew, repudiated that, and their opposition could not be based on their objection to an endowment being given to an educational institution of a denominational character, and therefore, he could only assume that their opposition was due to the fact that it was thought that the creation of such a University would provide machinery or an organisation which the hierarchy of Ireland would use to their own advantage. But if there was any danger at

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all in the creation of this University it would be in quite a different direction. When once they set higher education going they could not stop it. His personal conviction was that no one had anything to fear, although he could quite imagine that the old-fashioned or more conservative among the clergy might fear certain results from such a University. But clearly, if the clergy themselves by their official utterances said they were not afraid of a self-governed University, surely no one else need be.
He quite admitted that if Trinity College were an English University, and the conditions were English conditions, some arrangement might, no doubt, be made, just as it had been in England; but the circumstances were entirely different in England, for the reason that our historic memories were not so vivid as they were in Ireland. Here our actions in the present were not so influenced by our visions of the past. In Ireland memories were much more vivid, and the circumstances which gave rise to them more recent, because, after all, it was only 107 years since the struggle in 1798, which gave rise to many bitter memories. But there was another reason for this, which was, that there was a complication not only of religion but of race. He was convinced the difference of race was stronger to disintegrate people than religion to keep them together. That was seen in Germany and Austria. In Germany, where there was great religious difficulty, higher education went on without difficulty. In Austria, where, speaking roughly, there were no religious difficulties, the racial differences were of the acutest possible description, and they showed themselves, above all things, in the matter of higher education. He did not wish to minimise the religious difficulties, but altogether apart from religion he did not think Irishmen as a whole could be expected to accept Trinity College, seeing that it was a kind of historic embodiment of all to which they felt the utmost aversion.
Higher education all round in Ireland was admittedly defective. Quite recently in connection with an important appointment in the statistical branch of the Department of Agriculture it was found impossible to obtain an
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Irishman with the necessary qualifications and a Scotchman was appointed. ["Oh."] Sir Horace Plunkett was, above all things, a patriotic Irishman, and would certainly not have gone elsewhere if he could have found a qualified Irishman. The whole status of higher education in Ireland must suffer unless this side was recognised, as it would be impossible to set up a fully equipped University in Belfast while the wishes of the great majority in the West and South were ignored. He regretted that the question had been brought forward in its present form, as the vote taken would not in any way represent the true opinion of the House. Hon. Members opposite might have either brought forward a Motion on a private Members' night, or introduced a Bill; and even now he hoped the matter would be raised in such a form that technical difficulties would not prevent a true expression of opinion.
It was frequently said that no English Government had anything to gain by making this concession, as no gratitude would be shown for it. He protested against political action in matters of such importance being based on the expectation of favours to come. The Government had received no gratitude for passing the Irish Local Government Act, but that did not alter the fact that it was a right and proper thing to do. The recent Land Act would not affect the Home Rule question in the present generation, but nevertheless it was a great measure, redounding to the credit of the Government and the late Chief Secretary. Similar instance might he quoted in regard to England. The clause dealing with the pupil teacher question, inserted in the Education Act by the Prime Minister, would probably not secure to the Government a single vote, but, for all that, it was designed to deal with an admitted hardship under which Nonconformists laboured, and it was right that action should have been taken. The only principle that could be recognised in the matter was to do the right thing and leave gratitude out of the question. He felt strongly on this subject, because they who maintained the Union most fervently alleged the English Government could under

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the Union solve the problems of Ireland, and they pointed to the instances he had named as bearing out that view. But here was an exception. The Union had failed to grapple with the question of higher education in Ireland. Until that problem had been settled, and settled under the Union, a special responsibility devolved upon Unionists, and they had to admit that there was a special work as yet undone. He trusted his hon. friends would consider this question upon its merits, altogether apart from what they thought were the aims or manœuvres of hon. Members opposite and the turmoil of Party politics. If they did so he believed they would be forced to the conclusion that there was a real want in the government of Ireland which it was time they set to work to supply.
MR. HALDANEsaid it was impossible to take part in this debate without a sense of sadness. Year after year the question had been debated, but nothing had come of it. The Unionist Party had been in power for ten years, with unrivalled majorities, resources, and opportunities, and yet in a most pressing question—probably the most pressing question at this moment affecting Ireland—not one step in advance had been made. It was not because many Members opposite did not sympathise with the sentiments which the hon. Member for the Brightside Division had just expressed. For many years the Prime Minister himself had been deeply interested in the question, and only six years ago he wrote to his constitutents—
"I hope so as a Unionist, because I know not how to claim for a British Parliament that it can do for Ireland all and more than all that Ireland can do for itself."
Last night the Party opposite showed no sign of sympathy with any suggestion of handing over to the Irish people the control of questions which concerned them most closely, and yet here was a burning and urgent question which they would neither deal with themselves nor allow the Irish people to settle. That was a deplorable state of things for the British Parliament. Many Members on either side of the House would be in keen sympathy with
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the desire to do something substantial for the reform of higher education in Ireland; the blame for nothing having been done could not be laid solely on the Party opposite. The shadow of religious bigotry had played on both sides of the House; in both Parties there were men who could not look at this question as a whole, but whose vision was distorted, and whose way of looking at things was coloured by prejudice derived from religious convictions which, although entitled to respect, could not be allowed to dominate the chances of those whose consciences led them in a different direction. He wished to put a point of view which, if steadily held to, would enable this question to be dealt with free from much of the disadvantage from which it had suffered through being treated as a religious question.
There had been considerable misuse of terms. It was deplorable that the matter should have been discussed as a question of a Catholic University. The question which had to be faced was that of higher education in Ireland, and it would have been infinitely better to have spoken of it as such. The task of Parliament was to solve the problem by giving Ireland the higher education she required without offending the conscience of anybody, whether Catholic or Protestant. The present condition of education, whether primary, secondary, or University, was deplorable. There had recently been two Reports on the subject. One was the Report of a Royal Commission—in many respects the most unsatisfactory Report he had ever seen, because nearly every signatory made an addendum dissenting from the Report that he had signed. The Report was of value, however, in that it brought out the strength and reality of the feeling which existed in favour of the redress of the grievance; and supplied a mass of material which previously had not been available in a collected form. The other Report was that of Mr. Dale, an English inspector sent over to investigate the condition of elementary education in Ireland, and to show the relative positions in the two countries. That Report revealed a deplorable state of things. The attendance in primary-

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schools was 20 per cent. less than in England or Scotland; the influence of higher education in the training of primary teachers was almost absent; and there was a general condition of confusion and chaos. The only conclusion to be drawn was that education, whether general or University, in Ireland was thirty years behind anything we had in this country. With technical education they had the same state of things staring them in the face.
The Government had placed upon the Estimates for education of a University type in England and Wales something like £168,000, and that was more by £50,000 as the result of the Report of a Committee upon this question. In Scotland the State spent something like £43,000, but in Ireland the amount was not more than £32,000. With regard to resources, within the past ten years six new Universities had been added in England, at Birmingham, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield. Scotland had four Universities, one to every million of the population, but Scotland enjoyed great advantages through the liberality of a private individual, Mr. Carnegie, who had given the interest upon £2,000,000 to be applied for the maintenance and development of Scottish Universities. Let them contrast this with the state of things in Ireland. Whereas they had done everything they could within the last few years to improve University teaching on this side of St. George's Channel, in Ireland they had done practically nothing. They had in Ireland one single teaching University in Dublin. This University had honourable traditions and he should be the last person to injure or destroy it in any way. One had only to look at the figures of the students to show that it was not prosperous; and the number of students was not increasing at the rate which one would expect from an institution with such honourable and distinguished traditions. In 1881 there were 1,338 students at Trinity College, Dublin, of whom seventy-four were Catholics; in 1891, 1,162, of whom seventy-six were Catholics; and in 1901 the total was 976, of whom seventy-three were Catholics. In the condition of things it was evident that even in the case of this one University things were
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not prospering for higher education in Ireland. There were the three Queen's Colleges, in Cork, Belfast, and Galway. Were they prospering? These colleges were also going down in regard to the number of their students. In 1882 the number of students attending Queen's College, Belfast, was 567; but in 1902 the number had fallen to 319. At Queen's College, Cork, in 1882 the total was 402, and in 1902 they fell to 190; whilst at Galway in 1882 the total was 201, and in 1902 there were only ninety-three students at that college. Altogether these figures represented a drop from 1,170 students in 1882 to 632 in 1902. From these figures it was obvious that things were not going well even with the existing resources for higher education in Ireland. The Royal University of Ireland was merely an examining Board. True there were certain fellowships under an arrangement for the benefit of an institution which had been struggling under immense disadvantages—he meant the Catholic University College in Dublin, a body which had fought under immense disadvantages and had nevertheless been able to keep its feet. Education of a University type in Ireland was deplorable in comparison with what they possessed in England and Scotland. Hope long deferred seemed to have a sickening effect, because they had a specimen of this in the gradual drop in the number of students at the Queen's Colleges, and at the University of Dublin. That suggested that it was urgently necessary that this question should be energetically dealt with, but he felt confident that they would make no progress with it so long as they simply discussed Catholic grievances.
He thought the best way of treating the question for Ireland was to deal with it as an educational question. He thought he had said enough to make good his point that on educational grounds alone this was an urgent problem. Those who knew Ireland best knew the great want of facilities for higher education. A large part of the present facilities were for the education of priests. This system produced amongst the population of Ireland a concentration of the higher education in the persons of the priests, and, if that

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were so, then almost inevitably the laity became separated intellectually from the level of the priesthood. The difficulty went further. If there was one thing more than another which they ought to do in Ireland it was to induce the people who held the religion of the great majority of the people, and who also held their political opinions, to take their part in the administrative work of the country, and encourage them to play a leading part in carrying on the affairs of the State, which must be administered no matter what Government was in power and even if there was no Government at all. And yet these people were shut out from competing for those positions with their more fortunate fellow subjects. This was the inevitable result. A young man commenced his education in a primary school from which he passed on to the secondary education and then his career was barred because there was no University life to carry him further, and no prizes to lift him into a position in which the posts at the disposal of the State would be open to him. In this way they had produced in Ireland an amount of discontent among the young men such as was without parallel in any part of the kingdom. That was one great grievance.
It might be said that these grievances were not disputed but that they could not be dealt with. He held that they could be dealt with. There had been a plain policy before the country associated, with the personal views of the Prime Minister, and if they were in earnest on both sides of the House it was possible to grapple with the existing educational difficulty in Ireland. It was not enough to leave Ireland with a single teaching University. Statesmen had often suffered from rash attempts to meddle with that body. After a careful study of this question the advice he would give to any English statesmen who talked of meddling with Trinity College, and improving it to form the National University, was that he should keep his hands off it. It was like the Ark of the Covenant, and any English statesman that laid his hands thereon would surely perish. The history of the attempts which had been made in the past clearly
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proved that. Trinity College was like the great Universities of this country, for it possessed a history, and he preferred to preserve it with its great traditions and the great names associated with it, and if possible increase its strength, and let it serve those who required its services most. It was not a Catholic college and never would be, because its history had stamped it too much with other associations. It was not a poor man's college and never would be, because it was wanted by the class of people who went to the older Universities in this country and he did not want to disturb that state of things. What they did want was a University life of the type they had been accustomed to in Scotland and which was now growing up in the great Universities in England which had been called into being within the last ten years, and which were accessible to the sons of the poorer classes if they were found to possess sufficient talent.
Was it beyond the wit of man to devise a plan to bring that about? He did not think they would find any real jealousy on the part of Protestants if they showed that they were treating Catholics and Protestants with an absolutely even hand, and with even justice, and that in any case they were creating a University which was not stamped with the hall-mark of any denomination. With regard to the Maynooth resolutions in 1897, they provided that no State money should be devoted to religious teaching, that there should be security against the dismissal of teachers, and that there should be a majority of laymen upon the governing body. He was one of those who thought that the priesthood desired to get as much power as they could in shaping the University, but it was their business not to give them all that they desired in this respect, but simply to give them what was necessary in the interests of education without offending their susceptibilities. He had spoken with many distinguished Irish Catholics upon this question and what they really objected to was that Irish Catholics were not in a Catholic atmosphere at Trinity College, which was a Protestant University. It seemed to him that what was dreaded was that they would find themselves in an atmosphere which was hostile to the religion

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in which they had been brought up. He did not believe that in Ireland any real opposition would be found to University training which was undenominational, if there was something of a guarantee that the atmosphere of the University should be such as not to threaten the convictions of the students who went there. They dreaded more than anything else the influence which University teaching might have on religious conviction. That was nothing new. He knew many strong dissenters who refused to send their sons to the English Universities for fear the atmosphere should lead them in the way of Anglicanism. He thought these convictions were carried a great deal too far, and that they had done a great deal of mischief in the past. Surely it was not beyond their power to found an open University—open not only in the sense of conforming to the resolutions of Maynooth, but in the way of providing the best lay education that could be found in Ireland—and so to select the governing body that there should be a negative assurance that there should not be an atmosphere hurtful in the way of direct aggression on the convictions or early training of those who were sent there.
He did not think it was enough to make cue University of that kind. Nothing more disappointed him in the Report of the Royal Commission of 1903 than the declaration that Belfast did not want a University in the North of Ireland. He did not believe that. In Belfast he had talked with a good many highly interested people, and he could never find that that conviction existed. Things of that kind had been said, but always under cover of the belief that the proposal was to endow the Roman Catholics of Ireland. If one went to Belfast, a city teeming with wealth and activity, where the desire for learning was felt among the people, he would find—and he spoke from experience—the keenest desire that they should be redeemed from the reflection that a great city like theirs should be without any University life. The University had to be fashioned on a modern pattern, free from the stamp of religious bigotry, and to be made big enough; and if founded on those lines they would find that the people of Belfast
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would welcome it, just as a University would be welcomed in the South. It was not beyond the wit of man to establish two open Universities, one in Belfast and the other in Dublin, managed in the main by laymen, and free as far as possible from denominational taint, care being taken in the appointment of the governing body that there should be nothing of that aggressive atmosphere which those who were responsible for the religious training of the young men of Ireland feared in University teaching in that country. That was no new policy. It had been discussed for many years past. It was associated with some of the earlier utterances of the Prime Minister.
He could not but fear that they had reached a stage at which, unless they did something of the kind, this question of Irish University education would remain unsolved for as long in the future as it had remained unsolved in the past. They would reach a stage when it would form the strongest argument for Home Rule. It was surely only by placing this question on the highest educational basis that they could secure the support of the majority of the people which was necessary if such a scheme was to be carried. Let them eliminate from their debates this evil dream of Catholic University education. Let them put before Parliament as their policy that they were seeking to establish in Ireland the highest education for the benefit both of Catholic and Protestant. It might be undenominationalism, but in Ireland it must mean, and could only mean, the equal treatment of denominations. They could at least by equal treatment in such a fashion secure that the University would not be hall-marked as in any way representing on the one hand a priest-ridden Party, or, on the other hand, the dogmas of Protestantism. He did feel it was desirable that they should try to deal with this question so far as possible on non-Partyy lines. He blamed the Conservative Party for not dealing with it for, he thought, they had had an easier time than those on his side of the House were likely to have. He thought that, on his side of the House also there was room for blame. This was not a matter

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for Party recriminations. They should try to deal with this question in an enlightened fashion and on broad national lines, not as affecting Ireland alone, but as something affecting the well-being of the United Kingdom as a hole. He called it nothing short of a menace to the State that higher education in Ireland should be allowed to remain as it was at the present time. It was in the hope that they might come to a new state of things in which they would discuss education for education's sake, and no longer as a branch of religious controversy, that he had taken part in this debate.
MR. GORDONsaid he had heard this question debated several times in the House, but he did not think he had ever heard anything to equal the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Haddingtonshire. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that he had found out a new remedy for this great and troublesome question. According to him they were no longer to call it a question of a Catholic University. They were to speak of the "problem of higher education in Ireland." He was quite willing to accept that view of the question if their Nationalist friends would do the same, and not place it on the basis of denomination. But he thought the right hon. Gentleman would find very small support from the Nationalist Members. The hon. Member who moved the Motion made a fair and moderate speech. He said what was wanted was a University not for Catholics as Catholics but for Irishmen as Irishmen. If the hon. Member had stopped there he should have been perfectly satisfied. When a University of that kind was given to Ireland it was banned after a few years by the representatives of the Catholic hierarchy, because they could not have the control they sought to have. He did not care whether they put control in the hands of Roman Catholic laymen or Roman Catholic prelates, and prelates were not in the position of a Protestant Bishop or Archbishop. No Protestant prelate ever dared to arrogate to himself such power as to say through his layman representing the official religion of the University, "This involves a question of faith and
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morals. I say that the people of my flock are to take their religion from me and that they shall stay away and leave your schoolrooms empty." That meant that the control must be centre in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Unionists in Ireland objected on principle to State aid being given in connection with religion to any University He, as an Irishman, was willing that every Roman Catholic layman should have his fair share of educational advantages in Ireland, and his fair share of educational control, but he was not willing that the University education of Ireland should be placed directly or indirectly under the control of any denominational heirarchy—he did not care what it was.
They were asked what was the objection of Unionists in Ireland to this measure. First, they said in principle there should be no State aid given to a religion in connection with any University. Next, they said no University should be founded upon denominational lines, and for any one denomination more than another. He accepted what the right hon. Gentle man opposite said, that it should be for all Parties. Those were the views which those who sent him held in reference to education. He knew something of the North of Ireland, and he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that even his great intuitive powers had failed him when he came in conflict with the Report of the Royal Commission. He said he had visited Belfast and had come to the opposite conclusion with regard to local wishes. The Belfast people were too wise in their generation. They knew that a small denominational University would carry no weight. They wanted a hall-mark for their young men which would be recognised as the stamp of education in the man. England, with its vast industrial population increasing in numbers, had six Universities. Its large centres wanted a modern type of University to give them something, slightly different from what they got in the higher and technical schools. This was quite apart from any class of population in Ireland. Belfast was building a large technical school and would have its educational requirements met so far as higher and technical education were concerned; but they desired that their University education should not be limited to the students sent into

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Queen's College, but should have a larger basis, and that, if possible, all Ireland should be brought into one University and get its degree from one institution. They felt that everything that widened the area from which the students were drawn would give additional weight to the degrees conferred. Scotland had four Universities, and there was no country in the world where University education was held so high, and where the desire to obtain it so pervaded every class.
What were they to say to the facts adduced to bring them to the conclusion that they should have three Universities in Ireland. The right hon. Gentlemen said leave Dublin University alone; start a University for the North of Ireland at Belfast, and another for the South at Cork. What were the figures he gave to support this proposal. The University of Dublin, which was to be left alone, had dwindled in numbers from 1,300 to 900 in twenty years, and that in spite of a very large increase in Presbyterian students. He did not want to say too much in favour of Trinity College. He had not hesitated to say it had a great deal to answer for with regard to the position of University education in Ireland. He thought if it had been more liberal in its views, and had been governed on a more liberal basis, it could have done a good deal of itself to solve the question. They could not help that, however; they had to deal with existing facts. Take Belfast. The right hon. Gentleman said they had a decreasing number of students in the Queen's College, although the population was growing enormously. In Cork and Galway, also, the number was diminishing, and yet they were to come to the conclusion that they ought to set up two new Universities in Ireland. The class of people for whom Queen's College, Belfast, was founded, had never said they wanted a University, and were they to be told now in the same breath that the numbers were diminishing and that they must start a new University? The right hon. Gentleman said, "Do not talk about any Rom in Catholic atmosphere, or any Presbyterian dogmas, or Episcopalian atmosphere, but get University education for Ireland." If he could persuade the Nationalists to accept that he would not have much diffi-
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culty in getting the people of Ireland to come to the House for money for Universities. But that was not what was wanted. It would not satisfy the requirements of hon. Members opposite.
Now, what were the true facts of the matter? The Amendment spoke of violence to the religious feelings of Catholics, but though he had listened to everything said on the other side he had heard nothing in the nature of any evidence adduced that there was violence to Catholic feeling in any of the existing Universities or colleges in Ireland. Because the managing body of a University, formed from its graduates, happened to be Protestant, and though they had now put the institution on the broadest basis, and had offered to the Roman Catholics of the country the right to built a chapel within its walls for their religious purposes, if they would come in, could it be said that violence was done to the religious feelings of Catholics? They should look at the question as practical men, and not from the sentimental point of view, and it would be found that there was no disability any Roman Catholic suffered from that did not apply equally to Presbyterians or Episcopalians. The fact was these colleges were banned because they could not be controlled by one section of the community. They were told by hon. Gentlemen that they had got in Ireland a purely denominational primary education; but the basis of primary education in Ireland, so far as the House of Commons could make it, was on non-sectarian and non-denominational lines. And it was the duty of the House of Commons to see that any new University set up should be put upon a basis in which no favour was shown to any one denomination. The very thing that was being done was the getting rid of the denominational system, and yet the British House of Commons was asked to establish a new University with an official religion. Certainly that would be a retrograde step and going in a different way from the course which had been adopted in connection with Great Britain. He thought that the British House of Commons ought never in any way—either by vote, or enactment—to show its sanction or sympathy to any such course.

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It had been frequently said that this course had the sympathy of the Prime Minister. He had always understood that the right hon. Gentleman's views were that it was a matter of expediency and not a matter in which he considered it was right or logical or proper to establish denominational colleges in the Universities. He thought it was a great mistake to press this matter now, when there was something better to be done in a few years. So far as he was concerned, and so far as those whom he represented were concerned, they entirely dissociated themselves from the idea of having any separate denominational University either for themselves or anyone else. They dissociated themselves from the idea of being parties to any unfair treatment of any of their fellow-subjects in Ireland. They were perfectly willing to stand on the same footing with regard to University education, and they objected to anyone being put in a different or worst position.
MR. DILLONsaid that for thirty years every Chief Secretary who had been sent from this House to govern Ireland had been a supporter of the claims of Catholics in this matter with the possible exception, he thought, of Mr. Jackson, whose views on Ireland no one could ever ascertain. It was not unnatural, especially after the emphatic declaration to which he gave utterance in the House on Tuesday last, that they were anxious to know the views of the new Chief Secretary on this question of a Catholic University. He thought it was rather a sinister fact that although this debate had been put down for that date at long notice, and must have been known to the right hon. Gentleman ever since he was appointed, he had taken that opportunity of absenting himself form the House, and all the more strange was it that his absence was for the purpose of paying a visit to Lord Londonderry, and that at an early date he was to address a select representation of the Orangemen of Ireland under the patronage of Lord Londonderry, who was a recognised leader of a small bigoted gang of men in the North of Ireland, who for many years had successfully blocked this question. It was rather a sinister omen for Irishmen what had fought in this
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matter for twenty-five years, as to the prospect of a settlement of the question so long as the right hon. Gentleman remained in office.
This question, it seemed to him, was one the importance of which was not recognised in the House. He had spoken at intervals for many years on it, and he remembered that a quarter of a century ago definite pledges were given from the then leaders of the Tory Party that the question would be settled in the following year. In has opinion there was no question of greater importance to the well-being of Ireland than this question of University education. He did not believe there was any grievance which had inflicted a deadlier wound upon the Irish nation than the denial to the people of access to higher education. He had always held that they could not have in any country a proper system of education, primary or secondary, unless they had a proper system of University and higher education. Some people held the view that they should begin at the bottom and then re up a structure. He held a totally different view, namely, that the true foundation of a proper system of education was to make provision for the higher education of the people, and that they could not have effective primary or secondary education until the higher education of the people was properly provided for.
Allusion had been made to the Royal Commission which commenced its labours in 1901. Although that Report had been treated with the utmost possible contempt, and appeared never to have engaged the attention of the Government for a moment, it was really a valuable and instructive document. As to the bearing of University education on the other branches of the education of the people the Royal Commission said that every year more than 300 primary school teachers were sent out by the training colleges in Dublin and Belfast, and that, with facilities such as were provided in Wales, at least 100 of them might obtain the advantages of a University training. Further, the Report said that a large part of the teaching in literary and scientific subjects at present given the training colleges

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might be undertaken much more fruitfully by a University college. He entirely agreed with that view. No language was too strong to describe the condition of education in Ireland. The primary and secondary schools were in a retrograde condition. There was a lack of co-ordination throughout the whole educational system of the country, which had inflicted a deadly wound, and was like a consumption throughout the whole structure of society in Ireland. In Ireland more than in any other civilized country there was necessity for co-ordination on account of the arrears in education and the great poverty of the people.
As to technical education, they had an enormous sum of money set aside for a college in Dublin, from which they were promised great things, and they had an elaborate and wasteful system of inspectors and instructors. Never was there inflicted upon an unfortunate and poverty-stricken country a greater fraud than the whole of this system. Not that he did not approve of technical instruction, or believe it was necessary in Ireland, but he considered they had commenced at the wrong end, and that, instead of beginning by reforming the ordinary system of instruction in the country, they had squandered untold sums on this system of technical education, which could never be got to work properly until they had got the other system into working order. The Irish people were in great danger of having inflicted upon them the very worst form of Socialism by being trained in sham science and technical education when there was no proper foundation of ordinary education on which to build the other structure. He knew of no more contemptible persons than the class of men with whom they were familar in Ireland who had a small smattering of practical science. There was a great danger that these men, who went round the country, would demoralise the whole country, and really they were doing their best to uproot that healthy and glorious love of true knowledge which had always been characteristic of the Irish race. He desired to say a word for that unfortunate individual, the uneducated man, who could neither read nor write and was condemned on all sides. He had met amongst his countrymen in America and
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Ireland those who could not read but who were far better educated men than many of the instructors who were going about Ireland. In the company of the men he had mentioned he would rather spend his time, and from them he could get instruction which could not be obtained from these instructors.
Instead of progressing, Ireland was going back in education, and was in danger of getting worse from year to year. When the question of Irish education was discussed on April 18th last year, the late Chief Secretary said that the Government could not allow a new disparity to be made between England and Ireland in respect of education, and that although the difficulties were great it was the duty of Parliament to get over or round them or in some way get beyond them so as to prevent new disabilities on the rising generation of a country for whose welfare they held themselves constitutionally responsible. In the first week of this session he asked the Chief Secretary whether the Government proposed to introduce any legislation this year dealing with the question of Irish education in any branch. The Answer of the late Chief Secretary was "No, Sir." That was the kind of treatment to which they had been subjected year after year. The loyal crowd which ruled Ireland had gone. They took no interest in education. It was a subject that did not interest the Orange Party. He would dispose if he could of the false statement, repeated ad nauseam in this I country, that what they wanted was to control the University. He noticed that a most respectable Unionist paper in this country which for twenty years had supported their demand for a University did not even seem to appreciate the position. The Spectator said they believed and had always believed that what the Irish demanded as best for themselves, namely, a University controlled by ecclesiastics, was the worst thing they could have, but as they had asked for it they ought to have it. But they never did demand it and would not be willing to accept it. Was it not amazing that this statement was repeated not by their enemies, but by a Unionist paper which had supported their demands for twenty years. They had never demanded nor did they demand now a

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University which was to be controlled by ecclesiastics. The present situation was that the Government had forced upon them a University College, miserably endowed no doubt, but which was kept up by £6,000 a year of the State's money, which was absolutely controlled by ecclesiastics, for, while the Government said they could not have a free University maintained by State money, it compelled them to accept a University governed by a Jesuit. Father Delaney, who appeared as a witness before the Royal Commission, and who was one of the ablest men in Ireland, and who gave his evidence exceedingly frankly, said—
"University College, Dublin, is a Royal College under the management of the Jesuit Order."
and then the Report went on—
"The government of the college is entirely in the hands of the president, who is a member of the Jesuit Order. Appointments for the teaching staff of the college are male by him, and the tenure of office of the professors and other officers is governed by whatever rules he may think it desirable to make."
Was that their idea of a free University. Why did they vote money for that and then have the consummate hypocrisy to tell the Irish people they wanted a University controlled by ecclesiastics? Was it not hard for Irishmen to have patience when treated in such a way as this? The professors of this college were paid £600 annually, and six of those gentlemen gave up all their salary to the college to enable it to buy coals and to pay its rent. The only University Ireland had been able to obtain from the English Parliament was one under the absolute control of a Jesuit priest. The truth of the matter was that the whole of the Government of Ireland was saturated with hypocrisy and make-believe.
They had heard from the hon. Member for South Derry that primary education for Ireland was set up as a purely sectarian system by Parliament and was to give education to all religious denominations. That was the system originally set up by this Parliament, but when it crossed the Channel it was found to be impossible and it was abandoned, and they adopted the only system that would be tolerated, yet they now said they could not give the money for a
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college where there was any restraint on the freedom of the teaching that went on. The ignorance of this country upon this subject was simply amazing. The great argument used was that they could not vote money for a University controlled by ecclesiastics, but they voted money every year to great free institutions like the Queen's Colleges of Ireland. Every professor who went into a Queen's College had to sign the following declaration—
"I, A. B., do hereby promise to the President and Council of Queen's College that I will faithfully and to the best of my ability discharge the duties of professor of in the said college, and I further promise and engage that in lecturing and examining and in the performances of all other duties connected with my Chair I will carefully abstain from teaching or advancing any doctrine or making any statement derogatory to the truths of revealed religion or injurious or disrespectful to the religious convictions of any portion of my class or audience. And I moreover promise to the President and Council that I will not introduce or discuss in my place or capacity of professor any subject of controversy, political or religious, tending to produce contention or excitement nor will I engage in any avocation which the Council shall judge inconsistent with my office, but will as far as in me lies promote on all occasions the interests of education and the welfare of the college."
It was right to point out that the last official statement of the Bishops issued in 1897 did not insist on the strict denominationalism formerly demanded. The Bishops therein declared their readiness to accept the Test Acts and to open the emoluments of the institutions to all comers. They also accepted the principle that laymen should preponderate on the governing body. And they also accepted the principle that the freedom of the professors in their teaching was to be safeguarded by an independent body of visitors. Surely that was not an ecclesiastically-governed University. Taking the demands and resolutions of the Bishops themselves it was a gross mis-statement to say that they wanted an ecclesiastically-governed University. What did the laity demand? This was not, as hon. Members and the Government had all along tried to show, a matter between themselves and the Catholic Bishops. The question mainly concerned the Catholic laity of Ireland, and the laity had a right to be heard. In the debate of 1898, Mr. Courtney, who might fairly

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be taken as a leading champion of undenominational education, declared that he would be quite prepared to grant the Nationalist demand if they would accept a democratically-governed University in which the governing body was recruited from the graduates. In December last he read the speech at a meeting in Dublin of a new society of Catholic graduates and undergraduates, and stated that as a Catholic layman he was prepared to accept and support such a scheme, giving the Bishops, if they chose, a small representation de jure on the board. No objection had been raised by any leading Catholic layman to that view, and he now asked whether the House of Commons was prepared to refuse such a University?
They were not without experience as to the working of such a scheme and the attitude of the Bishops to it. Nothing was more interesting in the history of education in Ireland than the career and present position of the Catholic University School of Medicine in Dublin. When after many years that School of Medicine, having been boycotted by the Government and refused power to grant degrees, came to the end of its resources, and could no longer keep its doors open, the Bishops handed over the arts faculty to the Jesuits, and set up the Catholic School of Medicine as an independent body. They applied to the Commissioners of Education for statutory power to frame a constitution. A very liberal constitution was drawn up; the school was governed by four ex officio members, two being deans in residence and two Bishops; six members were elected by the faculty, and four were appointed by the Bishops from among the Catholic doctors of Dublin. How had that system worked? The ex officio Bishops hardly ever went near the place, and the government of the school had practically passed into the hands of the faculty, who appointed the teachers and controlled the teaching. Without endowment or recognition by the Government that school was to-day admittedly the best medical school in Ireland. In the face of such an example of liberality, was it not monstrous that Irish young men should be blindly refused University education because Parliament was dominated by outworn prejudices and false
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catch cries, which had been handed down from generation to generation, but for which there was not a shadow of justification? In the whole civilised world there was not a more scandalous spectacle than that school presented. Most of its professors had studied in the leading cities on the Continent; there was an enormous number of earnest students; and the professors of physiology and practical chemistry had to lecture twice a day because the lecture-rooms were so small; but the Government would not give them a penny towards the cost of larger rooms, and they had none of those laboratories or expensive appliances which with super abounding generosity Continental Governments supplied to their schools. All these advantages were denied to the Catholic School of Medicine, but at the same time money was being squandered to an appalling amount on every conceivable form of humbug and mock education. The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was spending £41,000 a year in salaries for an army of officials who were of no advantage to the country; but this School of Medicine, doing the best work that the country could show, was boycotted and starved by the paternal Government under which they lived.
What was the recent history of this University question? So far from any progress having been made, they were farther from a settlement than ever. In 1901 the Government appointed a Royal Commission, for which the Nationalist Party disclaimed any responsibility whatever, to inquire into the facilities existing in Ireland for University education; but from the scope of that Commission Trinity College was most carefully excluded. The Prime Minister's speeches had long since ceased to raise any hope in his breast, but on April 22nd, 1901, the right hon. Gentleman said—
"It is necessary in this question that we should have the fullest information on the subject, and I trust that when the Commission reports, which I do not think will be very long, the result will be that the public opinion in this country will render it perfectly possible for the House to deal practically with the problem which I have been endeavouring to elucidate."
The Commission, taking two years to investigate the question, presented their

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Report, and a more interesting document was never issued. If hon. Members would read the three volumes of evidence as he had done—he did not suppose they would—they would obtain really exhaustive information on the Irish. University question. The Commission had a splendid representation of all that was best in the English educational world, but it was characteristically manned, since, although appointed to inquire into the grievances of Irish Catholics, it had not a single Irish Catholic layman upon it. The Commissioners, in summarising their conclusions, declared that—
"The present arrangement by which the degrees of the Royal University are attainable by examination alone has lowered the ideals of University life and education in Ireland and should be abolished, and that the system by which, in making appointments to the senate and offices, account must be taken of the religious profession of the person to be appointed with a view to maintaining an even balance between Churches is educationally unsound."
And so they went on condemning seriatim every provision for University education, and they drew up an elaborate scheme, to which all the Commissioners agreed, suggesting the remedy. One recommendation was that the endowment and equipment of a new college in Dublin should be on the scale required by a University college of the first rank. That college was to be for Catholics, and they framed a constitution not as liberal as the one which he proposed on behalf of the Irish Party. That Report was presented in 1903, but it had since been thrown into the wastepaper basket and not the slightest notice had been taken of it. He had in his hand the separate note of Professor Dickey who represented the Presbyterians of the North, and he appeared to be a more liberal representative of the Presbyterians than they were accustomed to meet in the House of Commons. Professor Dickey represented Magee College, which trained the clergy of the Presbyterian Church, and he strongly supported the proposition of the First Lord of the Treasury, as set forth in his letter to his constitutents, recommending the establishment and endowment of a separate University to meet the wants of the Catholics in Ireland, a proposition which he considered was the only practical solution. He did not need to labour any other portion of that
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Report. He thought the First Lord of the Treasury would agree that he was not at all exaggerating when he declared that this was one of the weightiest condemnations ever pronounced upon the educational system of Ireland. And yet that Report was never discussed in the House, and no attempt had been made by the Government to frame a scheme upon the recommendations of that Report. The men who devoted so much labour to investigating this question were men of great distinction, and he thought they had been treated in a very scurvy fashion by the Government.
In the autumn of 1903, shortly after this Report was issued, rumours began to circulate that the Government had decided to take no action on it but that they had a totally new scheme. Ireland was thick with rumours of this new plan to settle the University question, but throughout the summer and autumn of 1903 not a single Member of the Nationalist Party was permitted to hear what this scheme was. They heard some extraordinary rumours. It was said that Sir Antony MacDonnell went to Belfast and promised them large sum of money if they would agree to this new scheme. He went to Trinity College and promised them £10,000 or £20,000 a year if they would agree to the scheme. He wished to know, did the Government authorise Sir Antony MacDonnell to promise £20,000 a year Trinity College? He thought that a Question on which he was entitled to have an Answer. He noticed that the right hon. Gentleman representing Trinity College was engaged in conversation with the First Lord of the Treasury, and perhaps he would be able to tell him whether he was correct or not when he stated that this offer had been made to Trinity College. If this offer had been made with the approval of the Government he was not finding fault with it, but he wanted to know whether it was the action of the Government. He wanted to know what were the principles and the methods by which Ireland was governed. This kind of thing went on during the autumn of 1903, and finally their hopes were raised by a remarkable letter published on the very last day of 1903 in the Press by Lord Dunraven.

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He thought they were entitled to know from the First Lord of the Treasury whether that letter, which raised the hopes of the Irish people to the highest possible point, was published with the consent of the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, and was the First Lord of the Treasury a party to that transaction.
THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,was understood to say that he knew nothing about it.
MR. DILLONsaid the right hon. Gentleman professed to know nothing about it, but was it not a monstrous thing that the Irish people should be delude in this way. An official offered £10,000 to Trinity College and the First Lord of the Treasury knew nothing about it. Servants of the Government were allowed to offer large financial bribes to the Presbyterians of Belfast [MINISTERIAL cries of "Order, order"] He did not mean anything offensive, and he would say hat servants of the Government were allowed to offer large financial inducements to get them to agree to a scheme, and then they were told that the Government knew nothing about it. He did not wonder that the Bishops of Ireland were so bitter after the way they had been treated. The Bishops asked how far they would go and they accepted the scheme only on the understanding that the Government meant business. Now they were told that the Government never meant business at all. They were to have a great debate later on upon the whole question of these devolution proposals, and the proceedings which led up to them. That would be a very interesting debate; but nevertheless they were entitled to know the relations of the Government in regard to the proceedings of Sir Antony MacDonnell upon this University question. These proceedings took place more than a year ago, and there had been ample opportunities for the Attorney-General to find out who was at the back of the Dunraven letter upon the University question. Why did the right hon. Gentleman not set his detectives to work to discover where the letter was written. He really thought that this was a very significant illustration of the whole method of Irish
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Government, and it had added enormously to the exasperation of those who were so deeply interested in this question.
For thirty years they had been promised by successive Irish Secretaries and successive Prime Ministers that this question would be settled in the House of Commons, but since last year a backward step had been taken which, if adhered to, would put a perpetual barrier between them and the realisation of their hopes. They were told by the Chief Secretary for Ireland last year that no settlement could be attempted, or ought to be attempted, until there was absolute unanimity. The First Lord of the Treasury for the first time stated categorically that this question could never be made a Government question in the House of Commons, and he went on to say that it must be settled in some other way. He said that it must be settled as Catholic Emancipation was settled. Was Catholic Emancipation not made a Government question? What great Irish grievance was there which was ever settled without being male a Government question? Supposing the doctrine had been set up in the past that no remedy should be applied as long as a minority was opposed to it—where would they have been in regard to the land question, Catholic Emancipation, the tithes question, and the disestablishment of the Irish Church? In spite of all the bitter and vehement opposition of the Protestants of Ireland who belonged to the Established Church of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone was not afraid to take up that great question. Why should the Prime Minister and the Government be afraid to take up this greater question, so far as the interests of Ireland were concerned, of higher education for the Catholics of Ireland? Why should he shrink back before a small and diminishing section of the most bigoted Protestants in Ireland, and tell the Irish people that they must do without University education practically for ever so long as they could not convert the Orange Members of Parliament? He remembered seven years ago the eloquent words in which the right hon. Gentleman appealed to the Unionist Party to remove this great reproach. Seven years had passed and they were further away from the goal to-day. No

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Government had the right to exist for one day longer than the time when it had admitted that it was unable to provide for the education of the people. The Unionist Party had now had ten years of power with an enormous majority, and they had through the mouth of their leader admitted the grievance, and although they had been entreated to remedy that grievance they had refused.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down in the earlier portion of his speech was good enough to refer to many statements which it has been my duty from time to time to make in this House, in terms far too favourable for the merits of those statements, but with the addendum that he did not think it possible I should be able to add on the present occasion either to the earnestness or to the force of the appeals which I had made before, or materially to increase the strength of the arguments which have always seemed to me to point in the direction of improving the opportunities of University education in Ireland. The hon. Gentleman spoke quite accurately; there is nothing that I can say to-day which will add, either to the argumentative or to the rhetorical weight of any appeals which I may have before made to the House, and through the House to the country. I have sorrowfully to admit that when the hon. Gentleman says that since those appeals were made this particular cause has as yet made no particular progress, either in the House or in the country, I find it impossible, as an honest man, to say that in my judgment he is wrong, I think that while the hon. Gentleman has done me justice, and more than justice perhaps, in that part of his speech, he has done me something less than justice in the later remarks he made. He hag asked me whether I was aware of negotiations which he says were going on in Ireland, and whether I was responsible for plans that he seems to think had emanated from the Cabinet or from myself in connection with University education in that country. He is entirely mistaken; I have done my best to persuade this House, and my countrymen at large, that the question of higher education in Ireland was one urgently deserving of their sympathetic attention,
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but I have never mixed myself up in any way with—indeed, I was not aware of—the transactions to which the hon. Gentleman referred in the latter part of his remarks.
If we only listened to the argumentative basis of the speeches on either side which have been put forth to-day, it would, I think, puzzle the auditor who for the first time became acquainted with this controversy to say where the insuperable difficulty lay in settling the question of higher education in Ireland. My hon. and learned friend the Member for South Derry made a very able speech against the Amendment, and laid down certain propositions which he said ought to govern any dealings with education, whether primary, secondary, or University, in Ireland, conditions which, if granted, would make him and hon. Gentlemen opposite fellow-workers on the same principles. I cannot make out that the principles laid down by my hon. and learned friend are principles repudiated by hon. Gentlemen; I listened with attention to what he said; he seemed to think that any system of education was satisfactory which, being established by this House, provided that there were to be no tests, and provided that there was not to be anything in the nature of public funds devoted to denominational purposes. But in any scheme which I, at all events, have endeavoured to advocate either in this House or elsewhere, I have never suggested either that there should be denominational tests applied to a new college or a new University, or that the funds which this House might give to such college or University should be, in even the smallest part, devoted to interests which would properly be described as denominational. Therefore, it would seem that my hon. and learned friend and I ought to have no difficulty in agreeing on this matter. I have listened to speeches by hon. Gentlemen opposite this afternoon, speeches of great ability and in some cases of great eloquence, and I do not make out that they have claimed on their part that the principles on which my hon. and learned friend and I are agreed should be transgressed by them if they had their way, and were able to

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obtain the educational advantages which, beyond all question, are urgently required in the interests of higher education in Ireland.
My hon. and learned friend on that last point seemed to hold a view which I frankly admit I cannot agree with. I do agree as to the undenominational character of any new educational establishment which we ought to set up, but where I differ from him is as to the need of setting up such an establishment. My hon. and learned friend appears to think that Ireland is already amply provided for, has all that a country of 4,000,000 and more inhabitants should have in the way of provision of University training; and he took advantage of certain statistics brought before the House by the right hon. Member for Haddington, who pointed out that Trinity College, Dublin, and the Queen's Colleges had all diminished in the number of their students in the course of the last twenty years. My hon. and learned friend asked, if that were the condition of Irish higher education, if that were taken as the true measure of the demand made by the Irish people for higher education, what was the object of spending more or establishing new institutions, when the old institutions are already in excess of any demand likely to be made upon them. I cannot agree with that view. It is true, and it is a melancholy truth, that Trinity College has somewhat diminished in the number of its students; but I take it that is due principally to the great agricultural revolutions through which Ireland has passed since 1881, which have gravely diminished the resources, and have perhaps not inconsiderably diminished the number of that class which used to send their sons to Trinity College. It is impossible in such a state of things that you should expect the number to be kept up to the old standard; and the only indication that that gives of the need for higher education in Ireland is to show that one class, at all events, which greatly desired education is less prosperous and numerous than it was. With regard to Queen's College, Belfast, which, situated as it is in the midst of a wealthy, thriving, progressive, and energetic community,
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ought, one would have supposed, to have increased, as that community itself has, I can see that the diminution in numbers may have more than one cause. But the principal cause is due to the sinister effects which I think the Royal University is having upon the interests of higher education in Ireland.
The Royal University, I believe, does do a great deal of very excellent work; but one thing it does do, and must do by the very nature of its institution, which is not at all excellent—it substitutes openly and avowedly a system of examination for a system of University training. It enables the student who has gone through nothing in the nature of a University discipline, but who has gone to the coach or the crammer with an assiduity sufficient to enable him to pass a degree, to go forth to the world as a Bachelor or Master of Arts, or as one qualified by his training to rank with those who have attended the great Universities of England, Scotland, or the Continent. Let us thrust away this fallacy from among us, let us not give in to the narrowest and shallowest view that can possibly be taken of University education, which concentrates attention on the examination which concludes the University career as if that were the one thing that gave University training value; whereas I am not sure that there might not be very strong reasons given for holding that in those Universities which either have not got final examinations, or attach no value to them, or in Universities in the past when they did not have final examinations, the education was just as good, just as broad, and satisfactory in the culture it gave, as the more modern and elaborate system to which we have become too accustomed. But whether the system of examination now prevailing in England be right or wrong, not one of those who are in favour of it will dare in these days to advocate the heresy that it is the examination, or success in the examination, which gives the true measure of what educational life can give to the out of a country. The Royal University, whatever services it may have done to Ireland, has certainly done her great disservice if and in so far as it has spread abroad the idea that all that a University can

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give may be readily, cheaply, and expeditiously obtained by a success in some examination. I think that accounts, partially at all events, for the diminution in the number of students at the great colleges.
At Queen's College, Belfast, there may be found another reason. I fear that that college in some important respects is without the fund which would enable it to rank as a fully equipped University college. It lacks the means. It may be said that Belfast could provide it with the means I do not argue that; but one thing is certain, this House cannot provide the means. It is impossible for any Government, or any Chief Secretary, to come to this House and ask for additional funds for Queen's College, Belfast, unless while bringing that great institution up to a higher educational level they are not leaving wholly untouched the grievance which has been brought before us by the Amendment. One most unhappy result of leaving this question unsettled is that it not merely injures the higher education which otherwise the Roman Catholic population of Ireland might enjoy, but stunts and sterilises the means of education which are already at the disposal of Protestants and Presbyterians in that college.
While, therefore, for these reasons I am in whole-hearted sympathy with those who desire to see this question settled I confess there is in the methods in which we are asked to assist in it a certain tone which I think Englishmen and Scotchmen naturally resent. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down said, "You refuse to do this, and you refuse to do that. You refuse to give the form of education you desire." In one sense that is true. It is true that this House has not given the money to provide a complete scheme of higher education for Ireland; but then this House has never given money for that purpose either to England or to Scotland. I am one of those who think that the present condition of Ireland justifies special provisions being made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom but I do not think that Irish Members further their cause when they say to Englishmen and Scotchmen, "It is your plain and obvious duty to give us those
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gifts which you do not give to English and Scotch Universities." Even the additional grant proposed to be given to English Universities will not raise the amount given by this House to higher education in England up to the level per head of population of that already given to Ireland. Hon. Gentlemen may think that the money is illused in Ireland, but as regards the mere amount of the Vote from this House, estimated per head of population, it is larger in Ireland than in this country. I think that consideration might modify the tone of hon. Gentlemen opposite. But we all know that, unless this House will come to the rescue of Irishmen in this matter, it is hardly possible that, from their own resources, they should be able to supply all that is required for a completely equipped University college.
Some hon. Gentlemen have discussed the merits or demerits of Trinity College, Dublin; and I think my hon. and learned friend on this side of the House, while sympathising with Trinity College, threw out the idea that, after all, as now at Trinity College there were no tests, as every opportunity was given there, and every advantage extended to Roman Catholics to take advantage of its teaching, it would be undoubtedly foolish to establish another University where already a University exists which would do all that is required. I am not, and never have been, quite certain whether those who use that argument are dealing quite sincerely with their own convictions. Does my hon. friend on this side of the House and those who agree with him on the other side wish to turn Trinity College into an institution in which the majority of the professors and students should be Roman Catholics? I have never concealed my view that I should regard such a result with the utmost dismay. Trinity College has been by character and inception—actually by law and by statute for the greater part of its history, but since 1873 by character and inception—a Protestant institution. Many Roman Catholics, I am glad to think, have gained by its teaching; but the flavour, the atmosphere, as my hon. friend has called it, of the institution is, and always has

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been, Protestant. Is there any Protestant in this House who sincerely wishes that to be changed? And if no Protestant wishes it to be changed, what is the only inference? The only inference is either that they are prepared serenely to say that Roman Catholics are to have no higher education or they are prepared to have some other institution in which higher education can be given to Roman Catholics. There is no other way out of that difficulty if the Roman Catholics of Ireland are to attend University education in anything like proportion to their numbers. Of course the wealthy classes, those who are most able to give their children a University education, are for the most part Protestants, but put the proportion as you like. Do not drive arithmetic to its extreme conclusions, but let us suppose that if as many Roman Catholics as could be induced to take advantage of higher education were to go to Trinity College, it is beyond doubt that that college would change in its character. But if they are not to go to that college, where are they to go? Therefore I say every man who sincerely wishes the two things I wish for—namely, that Trinity College should remain as it is and that the Roman Catholic population should have full advantage of University education—is driven to the conclusion, as I have been driven, that you must find other provision for them. I wish that dilemma would be met by any Gentleman differing from me in this respect who is going to follow me in the debate. It is a very plain issue I put forward, and I should like to know if hon. Gentlemen can solve that riddle to which I can find only one answer and to which I believe only one answer is possible.
I do not propose to add anything more to what the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has rightly described as the countless speeches I have made on this subject. I have never seen or heard any answer to the broad line of argument I have advanced. It only remains for me to deal with the personal part of the question to which the hon. Gentleman has called attention, and which figured largely in the latter part of the speech of the hon. Member for Mayo. I have been attacked—I do not say unfairly or harshly attacked
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—but I have been attacked because, holding these opinions and being a member of a Government which has now been in office a good many years, I have done nothing to advance the views I have consistently advocated. It is quite true that nothing has been done; but have I ever held out from the very beginning of this controversy the smallest expectation that the Government as a whole in the present state of public opinion could be got to agree on this question? I think I may be open to the observation that gentlemen in office have no right to have private opinions, and, if they have private opinions, they should be carefully kept under control, and they should on no public question express a desire for a certain policy unless they know they can give effect to it by the united action of the Cabinet and of the Party supporting them. I think there is something to be said for that view. Certainly it would save those who hold opinions to which their colleagues and their Party do not agree a great deal of inconvenience if it were understood to be correct.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILLsaid that in his presence in August, 1889, the right hon. Gentleman said he would make this the first or one of the principal measures in the next Government, and that he would postpone the training colleges to a University scheme for Ireland. That promise was repeated in September of the same year in a celebrated speech.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not remember the speech to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I have referred to the letters to which constant reference has been made this afternoon, written to my constituents in 1898 and 1899, and there I distinctly laid it down that it was a personal opinion and that it could only be carried out as a Party measure; and I believe I expressed that opinion long anterior to those letters, and I certainly have held it in subsequent years and I do not think events have changed. I have done my best in this House at some personal sacrifice, at the cost of some unpopularity, in a manner by no means approved of by those on whose

141
support I depend in my own constituency. I have steadily advocated this cause. I have not succeeded in converting either the House or the country, or the Party to which I have the honour to belong, or the Cabinet of which I have the honour to be a member. It may have been the fault of my arguments or of my methods of expressing them. If so, I regret it. But it is absolute folly to expect that in matters where religion comes in, as it does in this matter—religion, the great divider of mankind—you will be able to get a Party or a Government in line on a question which arouses feelings, and prejudices, I am bound to add, which have their roots in so ancient a past and whose vigour the passage of years does not appear in any sense to diminish.
The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down said no Government was worthy to exist for a moment which did not deal with this admitted grievance, if there be an admitted grievance.
MR. DILLON: It is an admitted grievance.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Then what Government in this country will be worthy to exist for a moment? Does he suppose that when the occupants of the rather thinly furnished Front Bench opposite in the course of events come into office they will find it easier to deal as a Government with this question? Is there a better agreement among Gentlemen on that side of the House than on this side with regard to higher education in Ireland? If I thought there was, I should for the first time see a reason to congratulate myself upon a change of Government.
MR. DILLON: Gentlemen on this side of the House, recognising their incapacity to deal with the question, are anxious to let us deal with it ourselves.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Are they anxious? They took very good care last night to avoid saying so. I do not see signs of unanimous anxiety on their side. Supposing that is so, I am quite unable to distinguish between giving a form of government to Ireland which we know would produce certain results to which one objects and producing those results
142
directly. There is an hon. Gentleman opposite who I believe has a very violent objection to this proposal or anything like this proposal, but he would have no objection, as I understand it, to doing it at second hand.
MR. PERKS: I should have the strongest possible objection. I voted without knowing that the clause which permitted this to be done in the Bill of 1893 was slipped in at the last moment.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. The last thing I should desire would be to misrepresent him. There is an end of the idea that he is going to get out of the responsibility by wishing to give Home Rule. [A NATIONALIST Member: It does not matter about him.] It is not for me to judge whether the estimate the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Louth Division has formed of the Gentlemen below the gangway or the estimate which the Gentlemen below the gangway have formed of the Member for the Louth Division is the right one. I can only say, as regards the future of this question, which, I fear, has not advanced, that I have no hope of seeing it settled by the formal ordinary action of one Party or of the other. It can only be settled as other religious questions have been settled, not by legislation undertaken formally by any Government, but by the co-operation of the majority of the House if and when the majority of the House, from whichever side it is drawn, come to the conclusion that this is a question which ought to be dealt with.
MR. DILLON: What question does the right hon. Gentleman allude to?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I will not go into the question now.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what religious question was ever settled by this House on non-Party lines? Was the Reformation or Catholic Emancipation?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I will not go into that question. If it pleases the hon. Gentleman, I will concede his present

143
contention and say the question I suggest is a new question. I do not believe, until by some agency which I do not command, you can produce some alteration in the temper of mind of the people of this country, you will be able to have a Government homogeneous on all other points and homogeneous also on this. There is no sign of it at present on that side of the House or on this, and I fear there is no immediate prospect of it. The hon. Gentleman, turning to my friends who represent Ulster constituencies, pointed to them as the true obstacles, and the only obstacles that stand in the way of a solution of this problem. I think if my hon. friends were the only obstacles in the way we should be within measurable distance of a solution, because, earnest and devoted as they are, I do not believe they could or would stand out against the general opinion of the majority of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The difficulty of this question is not Ulster; the difficulty is Great Britain, and that is the thing, the only thing, which makes me take so dark a view of this controversy. It is only by slow degrees you can convert popular feeling on this subject. The progress must be slow; it is slower than I had hoped, and slower than I had anticipated. It is the conversion of England and Scotland that is necessary. When that is effected Ulster will gladly, I believe, acquiesce.
I have spoken with great frankness to the House. I do not know whether what I have said may be pleasing or displeaing. I may not have raised hon. Gentlemen's opinion either of my powers of persuasion or my powers of Party management, but I have frankly told the House exactly what I think of the merits of the question, and exactly what I believe as to the immediate chances of its success. The inveterate belief, and, as I think, the erroneous belief which prevails in this country that this is simply a manœuvre of the Irish Bishops to obtain the control of higher education is one which ought to be dissipated and which, I hope, may be dissipated, but it exists. The opponents of this measure, I believe, quite sincerely desire to see Irish Roman Catholics given the same opportunities as are given to Englishmen and Scotch-
144
men. They say two things. They say, Why is Ireland asking of Great Britain privileges for Roman Catholics which Roman Catholics have not got in America, have not got in Germany, have not got in Austria, have not got in France? The second question is, Are we not in the endeavour to promote higher education in Ireland really handing over higher education to the Bishops? I do not believe we should be doing so. I do not believe that any scheme I have supported would have that effect. What is required more than anything else is not to persuade the people of this country that Ireland needs higher education, not to persuade the people of this country that in giving higher education we should be liberal in providing it, but to persuade them that the means by which that great need is to be supplied will not have as one of its collateral consequences the augmentation of clerical influence in directions to which they have a strong, inveterate, and insuperable objection.
MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid the Prime Minister had made many remarkable speeches on the Irish University question, but never one more remarkable than that to which the House had just listened. The right hon. Gentleman claimed to have made a frank statement. Nothing could be franker than the speech of the Prime Minister, and the frankest and most remarkable statement which it contained was the statement that the obstacle to the higher education of the Catholics of Ireland was to be found in Great Britain. Coupling that observation with others, he thought he saw what the right hon. Gentleman meant was the great obstacle—namely, ignorance, prejudice, and religious intolerance. Only a few hours before the right hon. Gentleman declared that the great binding principle of his Party was the refusal to the Irish people of the control of their own affairs, and now he was confessing that the youth of Ireland were deprived of higher education through the ignorance of the people of Great Britain. That was an astounding situation. He did not intend to quote all the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman; they had indeed been countless—in fact, had there been a little more practice and a little less speaking the

145
question would have been nearer solution—but the Prime Minister had evidently forgotten that he had definitely promised English Governmental action in the matter. In August, 1889, in the debate on the Appropriation Bill, the right hon. Gentleman said—
"…we have no alternative but to try and devise some new scheme by which the wants of the Catholic population shall be met."
Mr. Parnell then asked whether he proposed to embody his attempt at a solution in a Bill early in the next session, and the right hon. Gentleman replied—
"…there is no possibility of dealing with this question or University education except under a Bill. Of course, I cannot give any pledge at this moment as to the exact order in which various questions will be dealt with by the Government next session."
It was clear, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman then contemplated the introduction of a Bill dealing with the question in the following session of Parliament. That solemn pledge, which Ireland was foolish enough to take seriously, was so lightly treated by the Prime Minister that he had absolutely for gotten it. For twenty-five years this question had been fought by the present Nationalist Party, and before that by the then Irish Parliamentary Party, and, he believed, still earlier by Gavan Duffy, but the climax had now been reached of a Prime Minister, supported by the largest majority the House had ever seen, declaring, although himself in favour of the Irish demand, that between him and the settlement of the question there stood the obstacle not of justice, or of reason, or of the Irish demand, or of his own opinion, or of the opinion of all enlightened men, but of the ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance of the people of Great Britain. Irishmen had urged many arguments in favour of Home Rule, but they had never adduced one so powerful as that with which the Prime Minister had now supplied them.
He regretted that a larger body of English Members had not listened to the masterly survey of the situation by the hon. Member for East Mayo. He agreed with the Prime Minister that those who were willing to give an Irish Assembly power to do certain things ought to be prepared to do those things themselves. But the
146
foundation of the objection to the endowment of a Catholic University was that money would be given for sectarian teaching under sectarian influences. The whole principle, however, had already been given away, because, as the hon. Member for East Mayo had pointed out, £6,000 a year was given to University College, Dublin, the president of which—in whom was vested absolute control—and many professors were Jesuits. A great deal had been heard recently about Sir Antony MacDonnell. Why was it that Sir Antony MacDonnell had been able to secure so great a position in the councils of the Empire? Because he had the advantage of a University education. Without that advantage he would have been unable to obtain the high place in the Indian Civil Service examination which enabled him to begin his brilliant Indian career. There were thousands of young men growing up in Ireland who would be deprived of all chance of any such career. Was it not cruel, after the declaration of the Prime Minister fifteen years ago, that there should be a new generation of Irishmen growing up who also would be deprived of the advantage of University education through the ignorance and prejudice of the people of Great Britain?
The only fortune of most young Irishmen was the intelligence, and the climax was to be put to centuries of English misrule by refusing the facilities necessary for the proper development of their intellectual faculties. When he was at Galway, in the same college as the Attorney-General, many men were there getting a University education under the system now condemned by the heads of the Church who would have found it impossible to get a University education in England, and very difficult in Scotland. He knew very well that the poorest of the poor were unable to get higher education. He knew that side by side with the parents who were willing to send their children to Queen's College there were plenty of them who would rather deprive their children of even learning the alphabet than send them to a college which had not the approval of their own ecclesiastical advisers. There were many Catholic boys who were quite as intelligent and quick as other boys, and yet they were kept by a religious feeling

147
and conscientious conviction from getting the advantages of a University education. He thought that was a cruel wrong to Ireland. The last half century of the denial of University education was as great a wrong to Ireland as three centuries of bad government, because it lay at the root of many evils. What was a young man to do now in Ireland? What career had he before him? However intelligent or ambitious he might be, if he were a strong Catholic with strong views he stood outside the doors of University education. There was in Ireland no commercial career open to him, and the young Irishman was compelled either to be a professional man or a Civil servant if he did not go into business, and yet, year after year, session after session, and generation after generation, they went on making this appeal, and instead of finding any relief they found the grievance existing just the same, and the obstacles thrown in the way of University education not diminishing but increasing.
The Prime Minister had now put an insuperable obstacle in the way of the concession of University education to Ireland. The only way it could be settled now, it was said, was by a measure to which all sections and Parties agreed. He thought that if the Prime Minister exercised over his Cabinet the control which he ought to exercise if he had the courage of his convictions; if he would exercise the same mercilessness in driving out of his Cabinet every enemy of education in Ireland as he had showed in regard to every enemy of protection; if he did all that and drove out of the Cabinet the representatives of the faction below the gangway and brought in a University Bill he would tell the right hon. Gentleman what would happen. He would find that he would have the votes of ten or twelve Members below the gangway from Ulster and he would not have the opposition of all the Ulster Members. He would find no opposition from the Leader of the Liberal Party in that House. True he would be confronted by the Orangemen from Ireland who call themselves Tories, and the Orangemen from England who call themselves Liberals. He thought a man was an intolerant Protestant who would not allow a Catholic to be educated in the way he desired to
148
be educated. The right of a parent to have a child educated in his own religion was as sacred as the right to go into any church or chapel. The right hon. Gentleman upon such a measure would have the support of a large majority of his own Party, and he would be supported by all the leading Members of the Liberal Party sitting on the front Opposition Bench. He would have the support of all the Nationalist Members for Ireland, and he would be able to carry his measure far more easily than was the case with the one-sided Education Act which was passed not long ago. He held that the weakness of the right hon. Gentleman was responsible for this question not having been dealt with. To wait until all Parties brought in a Bill by consent was postponing the question until the Greek Kalends. They would never get a settlement from the right hon. Gentleman, and he did not know that they would get it from his successors, but they would press the matter on. The treatment of this question showed that this and all the other affairs of Ireland could only be satisfactorily settled by an Irish Government.
MR. GEORGE WHITEsaid he felt that there were a large number of electors in this country whose voice would have a very important bearing upon the settlement of this question when their suffrages were again asked who had not been at all represented in this debate. He wished to say a few words on behalf of Free Churchmen. If this were a question of education pure and simple, he should not be found in opposition to it. He deeply sympathised with the difficulties of Ireland in regard to higher education, but the question which was forced upon them was, Is it education pure and simple, or is it the extension of the principle of endowment of denominational education of any kind? He was afraid the speech of his hon. friend had dissipated any idea they might have had that this was not the endowment of a denominational institution. It was nothing to him that University College had been set up on the lines described by his hon. friend. He was no party to the endowment of a college of that sort. He and his friends were entirely opposed

149
to the principle of endowing a college by public funds when the governing body was composed mainly of Catholic priests. They believed the principle to be absolutely wrong, and they could not be forced into an extension of it. For thirty years he had been an earnest advocate of the rights of the Irish people to manage their own affairs, and he was prepared to carry out that principle with all the issues which were involved. He was surprised that the Prime Minister and his hon. friend did not see the essential difference between granting the great principle of liberty to a nation and allowing them to take the consequences on themselves, and taking direct action in endowing a denominational institution. Freedom to manage their own affairs who aid entail on the Irish people certain responsibilities. He and those who agreed with him had no responsibility in regard to what they would do with that freedom. He did not see that he was in the least inconsistent. He was prepared to let Irishmen manage their own domestic and internal affairs, and he was not afraid of what the result would be. He was perfectly prepared to take any risk involved in that course.
The position of Trinity College was no doubt very exceptional. He sympathised deeply with his Nationalist friends in their unwillingness to allow their sons to go into the atmosphere of Protestantism with which they did not agree. He thought, however, they were
mistaken. Oxford and Cambridge were a few years ago saturated with Anglicanism, and, indeed, they still were, but Dissenters had sent their sons there. It was not true that they were afraid to trust their sons there. What was the result of their going to these colleges? They not only won a very large and disproportionate number of the prizes at their disposal, but they were gradually changing the atmosphere of these institutions, just as he believed their Roman Catholic friends would change the atmosphere of Trinity College, Dublin. Disabilities had to be removed before their sons had a fair chance at Oxford and Cambridge. Now they could become Fellows and Heads of Colleges. It they could be assured that University extension would be carried out in Ireland on the lines he had indicated he was quite sure that the opposition to a another University would be at once removed, and that there would be the most hearty desire to help forward that higher education which the country so richly deserved and so badly wanted.
SIR CARNE RASCHsaid he was entirely in accord with the Irish Party opposite on this question of education, and he would Support, them in the division lobby.
Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes, 263; Noes, 104. (Division List No. 139.)

AYES.

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Bignold, Sir Arthur

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

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Bigwood, James

Cavendish, V.C.W. (Derbyshire

Allsopp, Hon. George

Bill, Charles

Cayzer, Sir Charles William

Anson, Sir Wm. Reynell

Bingham, Lord

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Arkwright, John Stanhope

Black, Alexander William

Chamberlain,Rt.Hon.J. (Birm.

Arnold-Forster,RtHn.Hugh. O.

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Chamberlain,RtHn.J.A.(Worc

Arrol, Sir William

Bond, Edward

Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

Channing, Francis Allston

Aubrey-Fletcher,RtHon.Sir H.

Bousfield, William Robert

Chapman, Edward

Baird, Jn. Geo. Alexander

Brigg, John

Clive, Captain Percy A.

Balcarres, Lord

Bright, Allan Heywood

Coates, Edward Feetham

Baldwin, Alfred

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

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

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

Brown, Sir A. H. (Shrosph.)

Coghill, Douglas Harry

Balfour, RtHn Gerald W. (Leeds

Brown, Geo. M. (Edinburgh)

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Balfour, Kenneth R.(Christch.

Bull, William James

Colomb, Rt. Hon. Sir John C.R.

Banbury, Sir Frederick Geo.

Burdett-Coutts, W.

Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

Banner, John S. Harmood-

Burt, Thomas

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Barlow, John Emmott

Butcher, John George

Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

Barry, Sir F. T. (Windsor)

Caldwell, James

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

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

Craig, Chas. Curtis (Antrim, S).

Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

Campbell,J.H.M.(Dublin Univ.

Cripps, Charles Alfred

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

Crombie, John William

Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

Hozier, Hon. Jas. Henry Cecil

Randles, John S

Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Rankin, Sir James

Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

Jacoby, James Alfred

Ratcliff, R. F.

Cubitt, Hon. Henry

Jeffreys,RtHon.ArthurFred.

Reid, James (Greenock)

Dalkeith, Earl of

Kennaway.Rt.Hon.Sir John H.

Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Kenyon,Hon.Geo.T. (Denbigh)

Renwick, George

Davenport, Wm. Bromley

Kenyon-Slaney,Rt.Hon.Col.W.

Rickett, J. Compton

Dickinson, Robert Edmond

Kerr, John

Ritchie,Rt.Hon.Chas.Thomson

Dickson, Charles Scott

Keswick, William

Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Kimber, Sir Henry

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Dixon-Hartland,SirFred Dixon

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Law,Andrew Bonar(Glasgow)

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Duncan, J. Hastings

Lawson, Hn.H.L. W. (MileEnd)

Robinson, Brooke

Dunn, Sir William

Lawson, J. Grant (Yorks, N.R)

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

Edwards, Frank

Lawson, SirWilfrid(Cornwall)

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

Lee,ArthurH.(Hants.,Fareham

Round, Rt. Hon. James

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

Eve, Harry Trelawney

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Faber, Edmund B. (Hants,W.)

Leveson-Gower, Frederick N.S.

Samuel,Sir HarryS.(Limehouse

Faber, George Denison (York)

Lewis, John Herbert

Sandys,Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

Lloyd-George, David

Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.

Fenwick, Charles

Long, Col.CharlesW.(Evesham)

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Skewes-Cox, Thomas

Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

Lowe, Francis William

Slack, John Bamford

Findlay, Alex. (Lanark, N.E.)

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Smith, Abel H.(Hertford, East)

Finlay, Sir R. B.(Inv'rn'ssB'ghs)

Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

Smith, RtHnJ. Parker (Lanarks

Fisher, William Hayes

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

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

Fison, Frederick William

Macdona, John Gumming

Spear, John Ward

FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose-

MacIver, David (Liverpool)

Stanley, Hon. Arthur(Ormskirk)

Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

Maconochie, A. W.

Stanley, Rt Hon. Lord(Lancs.)

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

Flower, Sir Ernest

M'Iver, SirLewis (Edinburgh W.

Stock, James Henry

Forster, Henry William

M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Foster, PhilipS.(Warwick, S. W.

Majendie, James A. H.

Strachey, Sir Edward

Gardner, Ernest

Markham, Arthur Basil

Stroyan, John

Gibbs, Hon. A. G. H.

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

Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Maxwell, W. J. H.(Dumfriesshire

Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

Middlemore, John Throgmorton

Thomas, David A. (Merthyr)

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

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Thornton, Percy M.

Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

Mitchell, Edw. (Fermanagh, N.)

Tollemache, Henry James

Grant, Corrie

Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.)

Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Tuff, Charles

Greene, Sir E W(BrySEdm'nds

Moore, William

Tuke, Sir John Batty

Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury)

Morrell, George Herbert

Webb, Colonel William George

Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

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

Grenfell, William Henry

Moss, Samuel

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon

Gretton, John

Mount, William Arthur

White, George (Norfolk)

Griffith, Ellis, J.

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

White, Luke (York, E.R.)

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

Whiteley, George (York, W.R.)

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Nicholson, William Graham

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Hambro, Charles Eric

Palmer, Sir Walter (Salisbury)

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Hamilton, Marq. Of (L'nd'nderry

Parker, Sir Gilbert

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

Harmsworth, R. Leicester

Parkes, Ebenezer

Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

Pease, Horbert Pike(Darlington

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

Haslett, Sir James Horner

Peel, Hon. Wm. R. Wellesley

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

Heath, Sir J. (Staffords. N.W.)

Pemberton, John S. G.

Wilson, John (Durham,Mid.)

Heaton, John Henniker

Percy, Earl

WTilson, John (Glasgow)

Helder, Augustus

Perks, Robert William

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

Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

Pierpoint, Robert

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

Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

Pirie, Duncan V.

Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Worsley-Taylor, Henry Wilson

Hickman, Sir Alfred

Plummer, Sir Walter R.

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

Higham, John Sharp

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Wyndham-Quin, Col. W. H.

Hoare, Sir Samuel

Pretyman, Ernest George

Hogg, Lindsay

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount Valentia.

Hoult, Joseph

Pym c. Guy

Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham)

Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

NOES

Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.)

Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

Boland, John

Abraham, William (Rhondda)

Bell, Richard

Bolton, Thomas Dolling

Ambrose, Robert

Blake, Edward

Burke, E. Haviland

152

153

Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

Horniman, Frederick John

O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

Cautley, Henry Strother

Hunt, Rowland

O'Kelly, James (Roscommon)

Clancy, John Joseph

Jordan, Jeremiah

O'Malley, William

Cogan, Denis J.

Joyce, Michael

O'Mara, James

Condon, Thomas Joseph

Kennedy, P. J. (Westmeath, N.)

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Crean, Eugene

Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W.

Parrott, William

Crooks, William

Kilbride, Denis

Power, Patrick Joseph

Cullman, J.

Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.)

Rasch, Sir Frederick Carne

Delany, William

Lough, Thomas

Reddy, M. (Waterford)

Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway

Lundon, W.

Redmond, John E.

Devlin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

Dillon, John

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Roche, John

Doogan, P. C.

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

M'Hugh, Patrick A.

Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

Duffv, William J.

M'Koan, John

Shackleton, David James

Emmott, Alfred

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

Shaw-Stewart, Sir H. (Renfrew)

Farrell, James Patrick

Mooney, John J.

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

Murnaghan, George

Sheehy, David

Ffrench, Peter

Murphy, John

Smith, Samuel (Flint)

Field, William

Nannetti, Joseph P.

Sullivam, Donal

Flavin, Michael Joseph

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

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Flynn, James Christopher

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

Thompson, Dr. E C (Monagh'n, N

Gilhooly. James

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

Waldron, Laurence Ambrose

Gladstone, Rt Hn. Herbert john

0'Brien,Kendal(TipperaryMid

Wallace, Robert

Goulding, Edward Alfred

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Hammond, John

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

Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

Harwood, George

O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

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

Hayden, John Patrick

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Young, Samuel

Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

O'Doherty, William

Healy, Timothy Michael

O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir Thomas Esmonde and Captain Donelan.

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

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

Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

O'Dowd, John

Main Question again proposed.
And, it being after half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.

EVENING SITTING.

  LONDON PORT AND DOCKS COMMISSION BILL [BY ORDER].
  [SECOND READING.]
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. BENNsaid the position of the port of London was five years ago considered by the Government as so critical that they appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into and report upon it, and when he reminded the House that one-fifth of the whole of the trade of the United Kingdom passed through the port of London they would admit that this was a most important question. The matter had been neglected for 100 years because although certain powers were given nothing was
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  done. The Report of the Commission was of a most disparaging character. The Commission reported that for one reason or another there was dissatisfaction with the condition of the port on the part of all concerned with it, whether ship owners or merchants. They reported that the river was becoming shallower as the vessels entering it were getting larger; that the docks were inadequate and that the delays in the river caused overwhelming injury to the trade of London. It was after that testimony that the Government found it necessary to take action, and he found himself now in the position of supporting the action of the Government. When he introduced the Bill the President of the Board of Trade (then Mr. Gerald Balfour) said the need for doing something was urgent, and that a bold and thorough solution, such as that put forward by the Commissioners and substantially embodied in the Government Bill, would be the one most likely to lead to useful and fruitful results. Those were the words with which the Government Bill was introduced two years ago. It was with the greatest disappointment that the London County Council had

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  recognised that the zeal of the Government in this direction seemed to have utterly vanished. He had been informed on good authority that they would presently have to face a speech from the Government Bench against this Bill, and with regard to that he could only say they had cordially supported the efforts of the Government in the past to settle the question, not because the Bill was entirely to their satisfaction, but because they recognised in it an honest and well-directed effort to help London. They had yet to learn the reasons which caused the Government to run away from this matter when the Government held such strong opinions with regard to the Report of the Commissioners that they thought it necessary to carry over their Bill until the next session, and did not finally drop it until last year. He respectfully submitted that if the Government had really meant business there was no reason why the Government should not support this Bill and pass it into law.
  The present measure was the Government Bill with two comparatively unimportant differences which could well be made the subject of discussion and settlement in Committee. The first difference was an increased representation of the London County Council on the new port authority, because the council was asked to be responsible for the financial success of the new port. The second was the exemption of goods from rates. He would not weary the House with details as to what had been done in other towns and cities. The House - was aware of the highly satisfactory result of what had been done at Bristol and Liverpool in this regard.
  He understood that the principal opposition to the Bill was to come from their old and venerated friend—the City—whom he saw well represented on the benches opposite, but he ventured to hope that, having produced what was practically the offspring of the Government and laid it upon the Table, the hon. Gentleman representing the Government would see fit later to own their child. So far as their hon. friends representing the City were concerned, he could only say the London County Council were not at
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  all anxious to take this matter up, but, finding London was suffering from an inadequate and ill-managed port, they 'felt it their duty to take action. If the City could find the money to carry this thing through the London County Council had no jealousy of the City in the matter. It was supposed that the London County Council were anxious to poke their noses into all sorts of undertakings, and to do everything for everybody. The truth was that they were by no means anxious to take up the management of the London port and docks. If the Government were earnest and sincere in the matter let them bring in their own Bill, and the London County Council would back it rather than see the port of London as it was, ill-managed and languishing for trade. If the London County Council did not consider this a most important matter he would not be now pledging the ratepayers' money to make the port of London what they thought it ought to be. But while this House were discussing academic propositions, the business and commerce of London were going to other quarters, and going to other quarters simply because the Government had not the courage to pass their own Bill.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  LORD ALWYNE COMPTONsaid he did not represent the City. He interposed in the debate as a director of one of the dock companies interested, and approached the question entirely for a business point of view. It was perfectly true that when the Royal Commission was appointed in 1900 there was a certain amount of agitation against the dock companies, much of which, in his opinion, was founded on misrepresentation, which became clear as time went on. The hon. Member had spoken of the critical condition of the Port of London at the time the Royal Commission was appointed. He challenged contradiction when he said that, for the past 100 years private enterprise, without any municipal help, had managed the London port, with

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  the result that it was to-day the finalist port in the world, capable of docking the largest ships in the world, and instead of languishing for trade, as the hon. Member describe it, its tonnage had doubled during the last thirty years. The Royal Commission which sat in 1900 produced a Report in 1901 that had the merit of being unanimous, in which it was recommended that a port authority, consisting of representatives of the London County Council, the City Corporation, and ship owners should be created for the purpose of acquiring and controlling the existing dock companies; that £4,500,000 should be exended on the extension of the docks; that £2,500,000 should be provided by the London County Council for the dredging of the river, and that that body should also guarantee the interest upon the new port stock to be created for purchasing the docks. Then came the Government Bill announced in 1902, and which in 1903 was mentioned in the King's Speech as of national concern which stated the importance attached to the matter. That Bill was read a second time. The hon. Member was anxious to know why the Government Bill, founded upon these recommendations, had been allowed to drop. The reason was that a' number of people interested in the port had discovered that it was not so good a measure as they had at first been led to imagine. The what fingers found that they were not being fairly treated, and there was a great deal of opposition to it, and Member after Member rose up and asked the Government to withdraw it. They knew their own business, which required a great amount of experience to carry on successfully; and they doubted very much the ability of a collection of amateur—swhose qualifications for sitting upon a port authority was to grind their own axe, to look after their own interests—to carry on the trade of the port with a satisfactory result.
  The hon. Gentleman who moved the Second Reading stated that the Bill was in principle the same as the Government Bill; but in his humble judgment it differed from the Government Bill in important and essential particulars. In the first place, there was a vast difference in the compensation provisions; secondly the financial provisions were entirely
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  different; and thirdly, the constitution for the new port authority was entirely different. As to the compensation provisions, he was astonished at the extraordinary ideas of the County Council in regard to the value of existing debentures. He had always understood that a debenture was a legal debt on a solvent company; and it was actually suggested in the Bill that the value which the debenture holders were to receive for their debentures was to be decided by arbitration. As to the financial provisions, he did not know what was the opinion of the County Council as to the value of those undertakings which were to be taken over. He did not suppose that the County Council realised that the companies possessed three square miles of freehold property in the City of London. He did not suggest any value for that property himself, but in addition £4,500,000 were required for dock extension, and £2,500,000 for deepening the river. The hon. Member for Battersea professed to be a man of common sense; but did the hon. Gentleman know where the income was to come from to meet all this? He believed that the County Council would find themselves insolvent at the very commencement, save only that they had the rates behind them. Therefore, they were solemnly entering upon this undertaking, knowing perfectly well that it must at the outset be a heavy burden on the ratepayers of London. He believed that the whole thing was a "try on," and he could not understand how anybody who had considered the question from a finanical point of view could have commended this Bill in the light and airy manner of the hon. Gentleman.
  Then, as to the constitution of the authority. The Royal Commission assigned to the County Council eleven members out of forty; the Government Bill gave them eight or nine; but the Council, with characteristic modesty, gave themselves twenty-four.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: They have to find all the money.
  LORD ALWYNE COMPTONsaid he would put this point to the hon. Member. How about the labour question? They would, of courses be responsible for the

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  labour bill at the docks, which amounted to something like £4,000,000 a year. With all respect, he doubted whether it would be wise that such a body as the hon. Gentleman proposed should have the control of such a huge labour bill. Speaking for himself, he was inclined to think that the work could be carried on commercially without municipal or political control, and that the Thames Conservancy, strengthened and fostered by the Government, and with the assistance of the dues on goods entering the port, as recommended by the Royal Commission and adopted by the Government, would be a better authority to deal with all the difficulties of the case.
  MR. ALBAN GIBBSsaid he desired to second the rejection of the Bill. As a Member for the City of London as well as for himself, he viewed with grave fear the taking away of the management of the port of London from the very able men who were thoroughly conversant with its intricate and complicated business, and the handing of the control over to another body which knew nothing about the business or the administration. He had another objection, viz., that the proper position of the City of London was not recognised in the Bill. With the exception of Westminster, the City had the greatest rate able value of any other section of the area of London; it was there that all the ship owners and merchants who used the port were to be found. In his opinion the Corporation of the City of London ought to have, if not the controlling voice on the committees, at least a great share of authority. In the Government Bill the controlling interest in the committees was given to ship owners and merchants; but that had been entirely altered in the present Bill which centred the whole administration in the County Council. Then, by the Government Bill the what fingers had a representation of four on the committee; now they had no representation at all. There were also no powers in the Government Bill to make wharves and buy land to compete with the what fingers; but that new clause had been introduced into this Bill. Again, the Royal Commission recommended that
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  the dock warehouses should be got rid of as soon as possible. There was nothing about that in this Bill or in the Government Bill; but the Government Bill provided that a separate committee should be formed, on which the what fingers should be represented, to work the warehouses. He agreed with his noble friend that since the Bill of two years ago a very great change of opinion had occurred, and he thought that the Government last year exercised a very wise discretion in not bringing forward that Bill again. He trusted that the Government would not allow this Bill to pass without giving it more consideration. There were many other matters not dealt with in the Bill, such as a great barrage system on the river. He did not profess to be an engineer, but he believed that many competent people argued that such a system could be worked satisfactorily. He, therefore, asked the House to reject the Bill.
  Amendment proposed—
  "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day six months.'"—(Lord Alwyne Compton.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid that the two speeches just delivered were only directed against the details of the Bill. Indeed, it was impossible for any representative of the City to object to the principle, because the Corporation of the City a year or two ago supported the principle of the measure, and proposed to finance the dock question. Everybody who had read the Report of the Royal Commission knew that it would be impossible to hand over this great question to the Thames Conservancy, which was a body not intended for this work and the proposal of the dock companies that they should have a guarantee of 4 per cent, on their stock before they began to improve the docks was out of the question. It seemed to him, therefore, that as some authority had to take action it was the duty of the London County Council to make a proposal for the solution of the difficulty. All that his hon. friend desired was that the House should

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  endorse the principle of the Bill by giving it a Second Reading, which principle was that the docks and waterways of the Port of London should be under some public authority.
  LORD ALWYNE COMPTON: what the financial details?
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid that the value of the docks and of the debentures could be decided on fair lines in Committee upstairs. He was quite sure that the Committee would do no injustice to the shareholders or debenture holders.
  LORD ALWYN COMPTONsaid what he wanted to know was how the undertaking was to be carried on after it had been purchased.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid that what they were deciding by reading the Bill a second time was that the undertaking was to be carried on by a public authority instead of by private companies. He represented a constituency which had a larger proportion of docks than any other in the London area; and he felt strongly that the Government had no right to raise this question if they did not intend to settle it. For five years the trade of the port had been largely paralysed. The noble Lord said that the dock companies had been improving the trade of the port last year. That was in spite of, and not in consequence of, the action of the Government. He did not throw any blame on the dock companies themselves. They, as directors, had to attend to the interests of share-holders. They had reduced their expenditure in the last few years so far as they could, and they had raised their charges to the highest possible figure, the result being that, along with the uncertainty, the port of London had very materially suffered.
  It was necessary to recall what had taken place in regard to this question. The noble Lord opposite said this question was very much due to the agitation against the dock companies. On the contrary, it was the dock companies themselves who raised the question. Five years ago they introduced a Bill in order to enable them to carry out absolutely essential improvements
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  in their docks, which ought to have been carried out many years ago; and they came to this House and said they had not got sufficient revenue to do the work, and asked to be allowed to raise charges, and especially, as the Commission pointed out, to tax their rivals in trade. The House threw out the Dock Companies Bill and appointed a Royal Commission to enquire into the matters. The Royal Commission reported with unusual celerity, and the Government with unusual promptitude introduced a Bill, the Second Reading of which was agreed to after one day's discussion without a division. Certain opposition had subsequently developed from the Members for the City and the then chairman of the Thames Conservancy. But he thought the hon. Members for the City would allow him to say that if it had been a question of the Bill going on they would not have desired to have appeared as obstructionists, and the Amendment they put down would not have seriously delayed the passage of the Bill. If the Government had been in earnest about the measure, and had given one or two days to it in the first session, it would have passed and become law. The Government, however, did nothing of the sort, and made the unusual proposal that the Bill should be carried over to the next session. He believed there was no precedent for it, but the House agreed to the proposal on the ground that the question, having once been decided, ought to be settled. But the Government did nothing whatever the next session; and through the whole of two sessions, had only devoted one day to its consideration, and were consequently very much to blame for the present position. The dock companies, too, had very great cause of complaint at the position in which they had been placed. He quite agreed with the chairman of the dock company, who a short time ago said that an act of great injustice was being done to the companies by the way in which legislation was hanging over their heads, and that a very serious injury was being done to the Port of London by the uncertainty engendered.
  The noble Lord who had spoken that evening objected to the principle of

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  the Bill. He (Mr. Buxton) was prepared to stand on the Report of the Royal Commission, who said that, in spite of the great natural advantages of the Thames and of the port, compared with other ports, it was dear, slow, and vexatious, that its accommodation was altogether inadequate, and that the waterway required a considerable amount of dredging. The Royal Commission further said—and this was really the gist of the present Bill—that it was essential, if the dredging were to be carried out satisfactorily and the dock accommodation put in a proper state, that in the first place the port should be treated as a whole under a public authority, and secondly that the only way to do it was to have something in the way of rates behind it in order that it might be able to raise its capital under proper conditions. The noble Lord opposite said that the dock companies would have been able to carry out this work themselves.
  LORD ALWYNE COMPTON: Under certain conditions.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: The Chairman of the London Dock, Company, in giving evidence before the Royal Commission, said the Government ought to proceed vigorously if they were going to deal with the question. They could not, he said, let the matter stand as it was at present. For good or for evil they had the over.doc of the Royal Commission, and something had to be done. So long as the verdict stood it was impossible for any dock company to face any large expenditure of capital knowing that in a very short time they might be bought out and could not possibly receive an equivalent for the capital they spent. This meant, as he (Mr. Buxton) had said, that at the present moment, thanks to the action of the Government, the port of London was largely paralysed. That being so it was essential that somebody should take up the question. Further the Royal Commission pointed out that unless something were done very speedily Antwerp, Hamburg, and Rotterdam, and other rival ports, would largely increase their trade at our expense, and he confessed to reading with very grave
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  concern a report from the British Consul issued two or three days ago in regard to the trade at Antwerp. The Consul said that the port of Antwerp had made progress both as regarded the number of vessels and the total tonnage, and that the port authorities there were keeping pace in the highest possible degree with the demands of maritime traffic. The question of rivalry was more important than the actual efficiency of the port of London itself. His opinion was that the question, having been raised, ought to be settled rapidly, otherwise they would find not only that the trade of the port would diminish but that its rivals would before very long take away a great deal of its trade. As the Government declined to move in the matter it was the bounden duty of the London County Council to raise the question, and in the way they had done. He frankly admitted he did not agree with the proposal of the constitution proposed in the Bill. The County Council, he believed, would agree that the number of representatives that they proposed was excessive, and would leave that and other details to the Committee. He was quite convinced that the last five years had done a very great deal to injure the trade of the port of London, and unless the matter were settled satisfactorily the trade of the port would continue to fall off and that of its rivals would continue to increase.
  MR. H. LAWSON,hoped that the length of years which had elapsed since he had last addressed the House had established a re-integration of his claims to the indulgence shown to a new Member. He certainly had not come back there to throw stones at the London County Council of which he had the honour to be a member for many years. He believed that no more vital blow could be aimed at the administrative efficiency of the London County Council than to allow this Bill to become law. The hon. Member for Poplar had said that the principle of the Bill was to establish a public authority for dealing with the affairs of the port of London. The hon. Member would forgive him for saying it was nothing of the sort. Many of those who opposed the Bill were in

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  favour of a public authority. He himself would go further and say he would like to see a public authority backed by national finance such as had enabled the Dutch, Belgian, and German ports to attain their present position. The proposal of this Bill, however, was to make the London County Council the port authority for London, and to make the rates of London not only the basis, but the constant support of its finance. Only two things could be postulated—the local authority's sublime ignorance of dock management and the certainty of increased expenditure on the existing service. Though the existing service would be in itself a heavy burden, the House had been reminded by his noble friend that there were many other charges which must fall on the new authority. Whatever might be said of the London County Council, it must be admitted that it had not been illiberal to labour, and just as there had been constant concessions to their present employees, so there would be much larger concessions to the legions now under the management of the dock companies. Even in the case of the tramways there had been constant agitation and concessions to the employees, and at the docks the County Council would have to deal with a highly organised body of men who ever since the strike of 1889 had exercised a great influence on the port of London, and who were perfectly certain to obtain a rising scale of wages. The County Council had surely sufficient to its hand. Its functions were ever increasing. A member had to attend daily in Spring Gardens to fulfil his duties. How was he to find time for the difficult task of managing the docks? It was all very well to say that nothing had happened since a Docks Bill was introduced. A great deal had happened to the London County Council—it had become the education authority for London.
  MR. BENN: Reluctantly.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: We did not want it.
  MR. H. LAWSONsaid he would not quarrel about a word. At any rate
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  they had become the education authority, and it had added largely to the labours of the London County Council. Many of its members, in addition, were on boards of guardians and borough councils, besides having large private businesses to concern them. Two-thirds of the members were seeking seats in Parliament, and some had already arrived. If its members were going to be overburdened by the work of administration under this Bill, what about the ratepayers they represented, who were going to be overburdened by the finance? It must be remembered that this was not going to be a remunerative undertaking. The Royal Commission stated in its Report that the existing revenue would not do more than pay the interest on the new dock stock to debenture holders and shareholders, but the Royal Commission provided for an extra revenue to be derived from goods brought into the port by lighter and landed at the wharves. The London County Council repudiated that source of revenue—quite rightly, he thought, for these extra dues would be a very heavy burden on the manufactures of London—but that repudiation deprived them of the additional revenue open to them. Seventy-five per cent, of the goods discharged in London were delivered by lighter. £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 would have to be borrowed for the purpose, and on March 31st, 1904, the consolidated stock of the London County Council stood at £58,750,000, and the debt of London as a whole was very much larger. The only recourse, then, for the money to be spent on the docks was the pockets of the ratepayers, and, that being so, the finance of the Bill failed hopelessly. He did not know whether the hon. Member for Poplar was prepared to inflict on that borough, which was now paying 12s. in the £ for rates, a part of the new burden which would be incurred by the new docks, and was estimated by the Royal Commission at £7,000,000.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid in his opinion there would be no extra charge through the docks, and there would be a great deal more employment in his constituency if this matter were not hung up indefinitely.
  MR. H. LAWSONsaid the London County Council would not charge upon goods brought into the free water which they prized so highly, and therefore they could get the money in no other way than by burdening the ratepayers. The whole Bill rested on the urgency of the case, but he thought that the urgency had been very much exaggerated. Short-sea traders did not complain to the Royal Commission of the present conditions, and long-sea traders confined themselves mainly to pressing for a better channel for big steamers. It looked as if the agitation had been engineered for a time by the merchants, but the whole spirit had gone out of it since the Royal Commission reported. Other ports had progressed more speedily than London, but London had, nevertheless, increased its tonnage entry in fifteen years by 60 per cent., and was, therefore, not doing badly. Southampton in this country and Hamburg and Antwerp abroad were the main examples, but Southampton Docks had been developed by the private enterprise of a railway company, and the others were to some extent ports of call. If the House were of opinion that in the national interest larger facilities ought to be afforded then he thought it could only be done in fairness to the people of London by something in the nature of a national guarantee. After all. the whole thing was largely a question of dredging the river. Sir Thomas Sutherland, said it was only a question of spending £2,500,000. That ought not to be beyond the resources of the dock companies. He was not against the principle of establishing a public body, but there was no ground for urging this counsel of despair. Certainty as an old member of the London County Council he could imagine nothing more calculated to diminish the efficiency of its work, and as a London Member he could not con-template with equanimity the fated and fatal increase of rates which was driving trade out of the metropolitan boundaries. He therefore hoped, while not in the least declaring himself against the principle of public control, that the House would refuse to read the Bill a second time.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid times had changed since 1889, when he had the honour of fighting in a pleasant
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  way the battle of the dock strike, and he did not think at that time that his name would be on the back of a Bill for creating a dock trust for London. What was more, in the interval of the sixteen years the dock directors would be the first to admit that never by word or speech had he assailed their management from the point of view of a councillor or Labour Member, and never had he been on any but the friendliest of terms with those who sixteen years ago he; had the honour of being an industrial opponent of. He was supporting this Bill not for the purpose of making any attack on the dock managers of London, but because he looked upon them as bold men struggling with adversity, and out of pity for their position and sympathy for their difficulties he desired to help them.
  The object of the Bill was to carry out the desire and intention of the Government. In the last five years dangerous competitors with the Port of London had sprung up where ten years ago they were not the least suspected. No one could read the Foreign Office and Consular Reports without being convinced that with ports like Hamburg, Antwerp, Bremen, and others to compete with it the international trade of the port of London was not where it was five years or ten years ago. ["Free trade"] But for free trade the docks would have been closed, and the Stock Exchange asking for a parade to collect subscriptions for them. But the port was not making the strides that it ought to make Nature had given London the finest commercial river in the world, with two tides up and two tides down, on which they could get the cheapest lighter age to be found anywhere, and with a huge market as its basis. And yet though nature had blessed London, obsolescence of men, machinery, and plant was cursing it. The docks, though not so bad as the opponents of the companies declared, were capable of immense improvement, but it was impossible for the dock companies to improve their position so long as they were assaulted intermittently by Government Departments and by faddists and interested persons. He stood there asking for the municipalisation of the London

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  docks, not on the initiative and at the request of the County Council, but in default of the Government's carrying out its own programme of three years ago. The agitation about the docks and port was not initiated by the County Council, or set up by ignorant misrepresentation. In 1892, before the present controversy arose, The Times said—
  "The basis on which this article starts is a matter of common agreement: it is the deplorable and incontrovertible fact that no port of any considerable size in the United Kingdom is so grossly mismanaged as the port of London. One thing, however, is reasonably certain; it is that, if any body of men, either the Corporation or the City, or the dock companies, or the Chamber of Commerce would take the trouble push forward a scheme for the formation of a public trust to control and manage the whole of the port of London, that body of men would receive the support and the gratitude of the entire mercantile community, with the exception, perhaps, of some what fingers, traditionally opposed to reform, who would find some difficulty in carrying on their business profitably if the dock rates were as low as under economical management they would almost certainly be."
  The reasons for the backwardness of the London port given by The Times in 1892 existed to-day in a stronger form. If hon. Members would go down to the docks they would see ancient methods, inefficient gear, and insufficient accommodation, while the desire of the dock companies to alter this condition of affairs was prevented by their poverty and the refusal of the Government to give them the help they ought to have extended years ago. He could cite the testimony of what fingers, shippers, the Royal Commission, and others proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the port and docks of London were not so good as they ought to be. It was all very well for the City to oppose the London County Council. If only the Corporation would suppress its municipal rivalry, the two bodies, if shut up in a Committer room, would be almost unanimously in favour of the substance of the present Bill. Were they to allow the dock companies to go on with insufficient capital, with lack of Parliamentary powers, were they to allow the City to be always opposing the County Council, and was Parliament to be afraid to tackle this question in a truly Imperial manner?
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  In the matter of ocean supremacy and riverside efficiency this Government of Great Britons were the smallest possible Little Englanders; they were smitten with "the craven fear of being great," and they had neglected the docks and the river to an extent which was deplorable from every point of view. If something had to be done and the Government would not do it, who was to undertake the task? Private enterprise was crippled; Parliament would not allow the City Corporation, with only one square mile out of the 119 in London, to enter upon an expenditure of £30,000,000 or £40,000,000 for this purpose; they would not permit the Thames Conservancy to do it, although that body had immensely improved under the new chairmanship; and they would not entrust the duty to the County Council. He himself was only a municipal Socialist, but the hon. Member for, Mile End really out-heroded Herod, for I he was a collectivist, an Imperial Socialist, and wanted to make the poor Irishman and Scotsman bear a share of the burden by guaranteeing Imperial finances for a local port. ["A national port"] Then what about Liverpool, Glasgow, and Hull? If hon. Members were prepared to nationalise all the ports of the United Kingdom he would withdraw the Bill at once. But what was to be done with the docks and port of London? The companies could not overcome the difficulties by which they were confronted, and the Government showed no desire to help them. Instead of having 23,000,000 or 24,000,000 tons going up and coming out of the river, they had only 17,000,000. Other ports were rapidly taking part of the trade. To avert this the County Council were called in. They did not take the initiative, but they made up their minds that they would, if reluctantly, accept this task rather than allow the docks to go to the dogs. What was to be done? Parliament threw out the Dock Companies' Bill it would throw out the Thames Conservancy Bill, it would not have a City Bill, and it had decided to vote against the County Council Bill. Was it going to tell the companies to reorganise their capital, reconstitute their financial conditions, ask for power to spend money which

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  they would have difficulty in getting, and then promise to back them with the rates or Imperial funds? No; the Government would treat the dock companies even worse than they treated the County Council. As a Londoner, who was fond of the river and proud of the port, and desired to see them improved, he protested against this treatment, and declared it to be such as the House of Commons ought no longer to sanction.
  What was the objection to the Bill? It could not be on the ground of finance, because it was proposed to refer the interests of debenture holders to arbitration. The objection was raised that the County Council proposed not to put dues on goods, or proposed to put them on in a particular way. That, he maintained, was not a matter for the House on the Second Reading, but for the Committee upstairs to deal with. It was objected that the Bill would create a new municipal authority; but precedents all pointed to municipally-managed ports being in a better condition for the ship owners and traders than the port of London was now in. The question of representation could be dealt with by the Committee upstairs. The reasons the County Council asked for so large a proportion were those advanced by the President of the Board of Trade himself, viz., that they found the money and guaranteed the stock upon the rates. The right hon. Gentleman said—
  "The County Council cannot be protected from financial incompetence on the part of the new authority unless the County Council have a majority."
  And he added—
  "That is out of the question."
  There would be no objection to the City having a larger representation if they advanced the money, but they did nothing of the kind, and therefore were not entitled to larger representation than anybody else. The dock companies shareholders held that Parliament ought to, and the County Council might do, more for the port. The County Council had done and was doing all that it could. Besides the £2,500,000 for deepening the river, they had spent or were spending £2,250,000 on the Rotherhithe Tunnel, £3,000,000 on the
  172
  Blackwall Tunnell, and £500,000 on Woolwich Ferry. ["What has that to do with the port and docks?"] It was impossible for the docks to be efficiently worked and goods to be got out and in quickly unless the river was. deepened and the approaches widened and improved, and as their contribution towards that improvement the County Council were doing everything that could reasonably be expected of them. Hamburg spent £9,000,000 in improving her docks and port, with the result that in twenty years the tonnage of Hamburg: had jumped up from 3,000,000 to 9,000,000. The present management of the London docks was inefficient, antiquated, and obsolete. If the port in the course of two or three years met with more serious rivalry the House must blame, not the County Council, but the lack of courage of this Imperial Government, surrounded, as it was, by a small knot of City obscurantists who were jealous of the County Council. If the Bill were not passed the County Council would wash their hands of the responsibility. If, as he predicted it would be, labour in the East End was confronted with greater difficulties within the next five or six years, the responsibility would rest on this unimaginative, irresponsible, and cowardly Government, who, having introduced a Port Bill two years ago, rejected a replica of it when it was presented to the House.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW,)said this subject had occupied a great deal of the time of the Department with which he was connected, and there had been much said on both sides in the present debate with which he disagreed. He did not think, however, that any good purpose would be served by going into those points, and he would confine himself to giving one or two reasons why he strongly held that this Bill should not be read a second time. The first consideration that occurred in connection with the Bill was that the object with which it dealt was far too large to be treated in a private Bill. It was unnecessary to labour that point, but he might remind the House that the area affected by the Bill was so large that it

  173
  returned over 100 Members to this House, and private Bill procedure would not give all those Members an opportunity of discussing the proposals put forward.
  On its merits, too, he thought the Bill was highly objectionable. He did not think there was any hostile feeling towards the County Council. If such a thing did exist at any rate he did not share it. He was bound to say that through all the stages in dealing with the Government the representatives of the County Council showed themselves extremely moderate and reasonable. They really seemed to him to be actuated solely with a desire to present as good a Bill as they could; but that moderation disappeared when they introduced their own Bill. He did not agree that these things were matters of detail where the County Council Bill disagreed with the Government measure. It was true that in form this was a duplicate of the Government Bill, but in principle it was diametrically opposed to it. The principle of the Government Rill was to create a strong port authority and to give it practically unlimited control over the port of London. But the principle was largely embodied in the way in which the committee should be composed, and it was hardly possible to imagine a worse body than that created under this Bill. The principle which should be adopted was the good old rule that the men who paid the piper should call the tune.
  MR. JOHN BURNSHear, hear!
  MR. BONAR LAW: asked who would pay the piper in this case. Those who would contribute to the revenue of London were the payers of dues on goods or on shipping. They would be directly interested if the port was well managed and would suffer if it was badly managed. In this Bill, however, it was proposed that the authority should be in the hands of the County Council; and so long as the port paid its way it would not be directly affected; it would not benefit by good management nor suffer by bad management. If a proper Bill were introduced there would be no danger of the rates of London being called upon.
  174
  Why should London differ from other ports, like Glasgow or Liverpool? If it was a good principle that those who paid the rates should control the expenditure it was broken in this instance. London had a much larger market than other ports, and whether the port of London was well managed or ill managed it would have to pay its own way. He could not understand why the Council had left out of this Bill the power to levy dues on goods unless it was to make it possible s that they should be able to fall back on the rates. It had been calculated that if the same dues on goods were levied in London as were levied at Liverpool there would be an additional revenue of £1,000,000 a year to the port of London. What was wanted in a port authority of this kind? There was no question involved of a political or religious character, and it was simply a question of pounds, shillings, and pence. What was the best class of men to manage these affairs? Obviously the best business men. Were they more likely, as proposed in the Government Bill, to allow business men who paid the dues to elect their own representatives, or to get them out of the representatives of the County Council? He thought that this was a vital point in the Bill. Glasgow and Liverpool elected business men who paid the dues, and their reputation as business men was the safeguard. They were the pick of the business men of those two places. Was that the qualification that secured the election of members of the County Council?
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid the London Chamber of Commerce supported the Bill. There were better business men at Spring Gardens than on the Treasury Bench.
  MR.BONAR LAWsaid the qualifications of members of the London County Council were much the same as the qualifications of Members of that House. One, of the things that secured their election was the power of making good speeches. That was a good thing, but it was not what was wanted for the port authority. He remembered reading a long time ago an essay in which the writer pointed out that everyone read

  175
  the Philippics of Demosthenes, but nobody remembered that Philip was right and Demosthenes was wrong. He would take as an illustration the hon. Member for Battersea—he would not take himself as an illustration, because it would be too ambitious. Supposing the hon. Member for Battersea was a member of the Port trust, and that the chairman was one of the numerous Members of the House who had the reputation, and deserved it, of being good business men but hardly ever opened their mouths, if a dispute arose between the hon. Member for Battersea and the chairman, whom would the betting be on? The chairman would be nowhere, but he might be right and the hon. Member for Battersea wrong.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid he would always be found supporting a business man.
  MR. BONAR LAWsaid only good business men were wanted. In the case he had mentioned good business men would support the chairman and not the orator. What was wanted was the good business man, and nothing either more or less. It was a fact that in the Bill of the London County Council it was suggested that a certain number of men should be elected. But what class of business men did they think would accept nomination to a board constituted in the manner proposed? They would have no authority, they would simply form one of a body which would be nothing more nor less than a sub-committee of the London County Council. He would rather vote for a Bill to transfer the whole dock authority of London to the County Council. That would be an intelligible proposal. If they were to have the authority, let them, at least, have the responsibility. That would be better than constituting a mongrel body like this which would have no authority whatever except that derived from the London County Council. The Government had invariably adopted the policy of refraining from exercising Government pressure in regard to a private Bill, and they would not put on the Government tellers; but, speaking for the Board of Trade, he strongly urged the House not to read this Bill a second time.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid that as a member of the Thames I Conservancy he wished to correct an impression which seemed to have been sedulously brought before the House by the speakers who had supported this Bill. With no intention to mislead the House, the hon. Member for Battersea endeavoured to convince hon. Members that if the trade of the port of London was not decreasing it was in a parlous condition. What were the figures? The figures were so remarkable, both as to the actual increase and the comparative increase, that he hoped his hon. friend would allow him to endeavour to convince him. He would give figures to show the increase of the trade of the Port in the last five years. In 1900 the trade was, roughly speaking, 22,857,000 tons. In 1904 it was 25,700,000 tons, or an increase of about 3,000,000 tons in a port which, according to the hon. Member for Devonport, was "inadequate, ill-managed, and languishing for trade."
  MR. BENNsaid he merely quoted from the Report of the Royal Commission.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid the hon. Member used those words, and they were not to be found in the Report. He had described the trade of the port of; London as languishing, where as that trade had actually increased by 3,000,000 tons in five years. What was the comparative increase as compared with the principal ports of the United Kingdom? Taking the period between 1894 and 1904 the increase at Liverpool had been 28 per cent.; the Tyne ports, 15 per cent.; Glasgow, 29 per cent.; Hull, 17 per cent.; Bristol, 16 per cent.; and Southampton, on a small total, 40 per cent.; while the increase had been no less than 32 per cent, in the Port of London. The increase of trade in this languishing port of London was the highest percentage but one of all the ports of the United Kingdom.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: What about Hamburg?
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid he had been unable to obtain the figures for

  177
  Hamburg, but he had been told that the trade of the port of Hamburg was about 9,000,000 tons, and the trade of the port London was 25,000,000. The hon. Member was very fond of saying in reference to fiscal questions that percentages should not be counted, and that you should go upon the actual increases. He was ready to adopt that standard of comparison. A large percentage on a small trade could not be shown to be more important than a small percentage on a large trade. The trade of the port of London had increased to a greater extent, both as regarded its percentage and actual increase, than that of any other port in the United Kingdom, and to a far greater extent than that of the port of Hamburg. He hoped that this Bill would not be revived in any subsequent discussion in the House.
  The whole case for the purchase of the docks had been argued upon the assumption that the greater part of the trade of London was done in the docks, and the whole argument of the noble Lord the Member for Bedford had been that if the docks were purchased and handed over to the London County Council they would be practically placing under the control of that body the trade of the port of London. He wished to remind hon. Members that they would be doing no such thing. It was not the case that the greater part of the trade of London was done in the docks. The percentage of the trade carried on in the docks was only 40 per cent. The remaining 60 percent, was handled in the river; and as the system of wharves and 'jetties expanded, as it was expanding, the dues received from them would form a valuable addition to the income of the Thames Conservancy. He complained that the Government Departments which sent representatives to the Conservancy did
  178
  not give them of the best material at their command, and appealed to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade to supply them, not with timeworn material, but with the best possible kind of Civil servant he could give them. The revenues of the Conservancy were not fully adequate to the whole of the task set before them; but if they had the power they would not make the mistake being made by the County Council in this Bill, and ask for fresh revenue from the shipping, but they would ask for it from the goods. In every other port the dues charged were on ships and goods, and that system had been found commercially sound. He could not understand why the County Council had omitted all charges on goods from the Bill, for such charges must be the profitable source of income.
  MR. DAVID MORGANsaid that for over twenty years he had been a director of one of the London dock companies; and as a merchant and a large payer of dues to the docks he was convinced that this Bill was not only absolutely unnecessary, but would increase the charges in the port of London enormously or else impose a heavy burden on the ratepayers. The docks might well be left to work out their own salvation. He was perfectly certain from his experience that no Committee or Commission with a large proportion of members of the London County Council upon it could give the same care and attention to the spending of the money which would be required to efficiently manage and work the docks as a body of business men who had been brought up to the work all their lives. The Liverpool representatives on the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board consisted entirely of men who understood the business, and they were people who

  179
  paid the dues. There was no necessity to ask the ratepayers of London to find £30,000,000 to purchase the docks. The present port authority had done much better lately, and they had begun to look more after the requirements of the port. As long as they did all that was required he did not think there was any need to ask the ratepayers of London to find this enormous amount of money.
  MR. PEELsaid that as one of the members of the Royal Commission he could not support the Bill. The Commission was unanimously of opinion that the management of the docks should rather be committed to a board representing all the interests concerned than to the municipal authority. There were reasons affecting the port of London which made it infinitely more important that such a body should not be set up in London than anywhere else. The hon. Member for Battersea said he considered the question of the proposed number of members of the London County Council a matter of detail. Would he agree to reduce that number from twenty-four to eight or nine, as was
  proposed by the Government last year? He was perfectly certain that the hon. Member would not accept that challenge, because he regarded it as one of the main principles of this Bill.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid he was quite prepared to leave that matter to the Committee.
  MR. PEELsaid the measure had no chance of going to a Committee, but he felt sure that the hon. Member would not accept a diminution in the number of members of the London County Council, Although he had stated that it was merely a matter of detail. The only effect of a Bill of this character would be to drive a way trade from the Port of London to Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, and other ports. The shipping trade was a very sensitive and slippery article, and if it was not very carefully handled it could be very easily driven to some other port
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 123; Noes, 191. (Division List No. 140.)

  AYES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)

  Cremer, William Randal

  Gilhooly, James

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Crombie, John William

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Crooks, William

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Cullinan, J.

  Grant Corrie

  Bell, Richard

  Delany, William

  Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

  Blake, Edward

  Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway

  Hammond, John

  Boland, John

  Devlin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

  Harcourt, Lewis

  Brigg, John

  Doogan, P. C.

  Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Bright, Allan Heywood

  Duffy, William J.

  Harwood, George

  Brown, George M. (Edinburgh)

  Duncan, J. Hastings

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Burke, E. Haviland

  Elibank, Master of

  Healy, Timothy Michael

  Burt, Thomas

  Esmonde, Sir Thomas

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Caldwell, James

  Eve, Harry Trelawney

  Higham, John Sharp

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Farrell, James Patrick

  Holland, Sir William Henry

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Fenwick, Charles

  Horniman, Frederick John

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Ffrench, Peter

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  Channing, Francis Allston

  Field, William

  Johnson, John

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Findlay, Alexander (Lanark, NE

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Jordan, Jeremiah

  Crean, Eugene

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  Joyce, Michael

  Kennedy, P. J. (Westmeath. N.)

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Sheehy, David

  Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W

  O'Doherty, William

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Kilbride, Denis

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Lamont, Norman

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

  Slack, John Bamford

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.)

  O'Dowd, John

  Spencer, Rt Hn. C. R. (Northanta

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

  Levy, Maurice

  O'Malley, William

  Sullivan, Donal

  Lyell, Charles Henry

  O'Mara, James

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Thompson, Dr. E C (Monagh'n, N

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Partington, Oswald

  Toulmin, George

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  M'Crae, George

  Reddy, M.

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Rickett, J. Compton

  White, George (Norfolk)

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

  White, Luke (York, E. R.)

  Moss, Samuel

  Roche, John

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Murnaghan, George

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  Murphy, John

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Young, Samuel

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Shackleton, David James

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Benn and Mr. John Burns.

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  NOES.

  Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir Alex. F.

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Dimsdale, Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph C.

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Kennaway. Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

  Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hon. Col. W.

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Kerr, John

  Arnold-Forster, Rt Hn. Hugh O.

  Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart

  Keswick, William

  Arrol, Sir William

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Knowles, Sir Lees

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

  Emmott, Alfred

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

  Baird, John George Alexander

  Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Balcarres, Lord

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Lawson,Hn. H. L. W. (Mile End)

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

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Lawson, J. Grant (Yorks. N. R.

  Balfour, Rt Hn. Gerald W.(Leeds

  Finlay, Sir R. B. (Inv'rn'ssB'ghs)

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants., Fareham

  Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christen.

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Fison, Frederick William

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.

  Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham

  Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

  Forster, Henry William

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

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

  Lowther, Rt Hn J. W (Cum. Penr.

  Bigwood, James

  Galloway, William Johnson

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

  Bill, Charles

  Gardner, Ernest

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Bingham, Lord

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Macdona, John Gumming

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

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

  Maconochie, A. W.

  Bond, Edward

  Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

  Gordon, Maj. Evans (T'rH'mlets

  Markham, Arthur Basil

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St, John

  Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormshy

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Brown, Sir Alex. H. (Shropsh.)

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

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

  Burdett-Coutts, W.

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Maxwell, W. J. H. (Dumfriesshire

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury)

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

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

  Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

  Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.)

  Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire

  Gretton, John

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Cayzer, Sir Charles William

  Hall, Edward Marshall

  Moore, William

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

  Morgan, David J. (Walthamstow

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

  Hambro, Charles Eric

  Morpeth, Viscount

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nderry

  Morrell, George Herbert

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

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'th

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Colomb, Rt. Hon. Sir John C. R.

  Hayter, Rt, Hon. Sir Arthur D.

  Mount, William Arthur

  Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

  Heath, Sir James (Staffords. N W

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

  Nicholson, William Graham

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

  Palmer, Sir Walter (Salisbury)

  Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

  Cust, Henry John C.

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

  Percy, Earl

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

  Pierpoint, Robert

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Hoult, Joseph

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

  Plummer, Sir Walter R.

  Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Denny, Colonel

  Hunt, Rowland

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  182

  183

  Purvis, Robert

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

  Pym, C. Guy

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

  Valentia, Viscount

  Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

  Smith, Rt Hn J. Parker (Lanarks

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Randles, John S.

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

  Webb, Colonel William George

  Rankin, Sir James

  Spear, John Ward

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

  Rasch, Sir Frederick Carne

  Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk

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

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lanes.)

  Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon

  Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Renwick, George

  Stock, James Henry

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Runciman, Walter

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

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

  Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

  Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

  Tollemache, Henry James

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Tomkinson James

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Lord Alwyne Compton and Mr. Alban Gibbs.

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Tuff, Charles

  Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

  Words added.
  Second Reading put off for six months.

SUPPLY COMMITTEE.
Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Question [April 13th], "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair (for Committee on Civil Services and Revenue Departments Estimates)."—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)
Question again proposed.
MR. CHANNINGrose to call attention to Acts relating to the safe working of, and the prevention of accidents upon, railways, and to the hours of labour of railway servants; and to move a Resolution. He said he would not apologise for raising the question in this form. During the present session a large number of hon. Members who desired to bring forward Resolutions bad been interested in the ballot for places, and although be had been desirous of bringing this question before the House on one of the evenings allotted to private Members he had not been successful in the ballot. In his opinion matters affecting the life and limb of railway servants,
184
and especially the excessive hours which2 in many instances, servants still worked, were of very much greater importance than many of the questions which had lately been discussed in the House. If those interested in this question were to wait until the Board of Trade Vote came before the House, this question would be only one of the many raised in that discussion, and the result would be, as frequent experience had shown, that a haphazard, or rather, he would say, a restricted allusion would be made to it in the reply from the representative of the Department. That would be less satisfactory than a statement made on an occasion of this kind.
Parliament had provided the Board of Trade with a great number of instruments which it had used very imperfectly and inadequately to carry out the great objects which were contemplated by legislation in connection with the safe working of railways, and the prevention of accidents to those employed. Great powers were vested in the Board of Trade in virtue of many Acts passed prior to those dealing particularly with this question, but, of course, the main Acts by which they were empowered to deal with the matters involved were those of 1889 and 1893 in relation to working hours on railways,

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and also the Accidents Act of 1900. What he had to say upon the whole of that legislation was that it seemed to him that since the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon left the Board of Trade there had been laxer administration and a less sympathetic attitude, and an absence of insight and initiative in regard to the protection of railway servants and the prevention of the evils arising from the excessive hours worked This condition of affairs was extremely unsatisfactory. From a comparison of the figures for recent years he found that there had been some slight improvements, but what he had to complain of was that the main objects of the Act of 1900 still remained absolutely unfulfilled. His information might not be up to date, but he was informed that no official action had been taken with regard to the question of couplings, whether automatic or non-automatic.
From the Board of Trade Returns as to loss of life and injuries resulting from operations in coupling and uncoupling of wagons, and the marshalling of trains, he found that there had been practically no diminution whatsoever. It appeared to him that the form of the last Return of accidents had been altered in a way which made it less satisfactory than before. There was a less clear light thrown on the causes of the accidents, but be far as he could make out the figures did not show that the accidents differed materially from those which occurred before the Act of 1900 was passed. He would concentrate his attention on this particular point, and he would not quarrel with the Board of Trade in regard to matters where they had rendered valuable service under the Act. Sir Francis Hopwood was one of
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the greatest workers in the cause of the railway servants, and he had had a great deal to do with that admirable official in 3onnection with the inquiries conducted in the United States as to the methods of coupling and uncoupling adopted in that country. The Report which Sir Francis Hopwood had made to the Board of Trade on the subject was of great importance. It showed the remark fact that since the Department which was responsible there for the safe working and administration of the railways really took the matter in hand with energy and determination immense results had been obtained in the protection of life and limb. In 1893 the number killed in America from this class of accidents was 2,727, and in four years after the initiation of legislation on the subject the mortality had been reduced to l693 a percentage of seventy or eighty. The number of injuries had been reduced in like proportion. Every man who knew anything of the mechanical considerations involved in this problem knew that there were very great difficulties to be solved, but at the same time those who had studied the progress of invention in relation to this problem must feel that it was one which was not mechanically incapable of being solved. The Board of Trade ought to have thrown its energies into this question with the view to arriving at a solution of it, and it was no exaggeration to say that the Board deserved the censure of the House of Commons for not having taken more active steps in that direction, and for not having approached nearer to a solution.
The reports of the Board of Trade inspectors previous to 1888 showed that the loss of life and injury to railway passengers were immensely

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greater than they had since been, The secret of the change was to be found in the passing of the Act of 1889, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol was President of the Board of Trade. By that Act the Board of Trade was enabled to make the automatic brake system and the interlocking of signals and point compulsory throughout the railways of this country. This afforded a vivid illustration of the good results which could be obtained from resolute and well-considered action on definite lines. Perhaps the Secretary of the Board of Trade would be able to throw some light upon what appeared to be the inaction of the Board, but it seemed to him that a more energetic policy should be adopted by the Department.
And, it being midnight, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.

SMALL HOLDINGS BILL.
Order for resuming adjourned debate on Question [24th March], "That the Bill be now read a second time," read.
MR CHANNINGasked leave to withdraw the measure. On account of an error of the Public Bill Office and the printers, certain Amendments had been omitted, and he was advised that the proper course to take was to withdraw the Bill and reintroduce it with the Amendments.
Bill, by leave, withdrawn.

POST OFFICE (TELEPHONE AGREEMENT).
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a Select Committee be appointed
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to consider the Agreement of the 2nd day of February, 1905, between the Postmaster-General and the National Telephone Company, and to report whether it is desirable in the public interest that the Agreement should become binding; That Mr. Beckett, Mr. Benn Sir Horatio Davies, Mr. Helme Sir William Holland, Mr. Morrison, Mr. Joseph Nolan, Sir Charles Renshaw, Colonel Royds, and Mr. Stuart-Wortley be members of the Committee; That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records; That Three be the quorum"—(The Postmaster-General.)
MR. KEIR HARDIEobjected to the Motion being passed now on the ground that the Agreement did not protect the interests of the employees, no provision having been made for their transference. No Labour representative was on the Committee to look after the interest of the employees.
THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,)expressed the hope that the first part of the Motion would be agreed to. The constitution of the Committee could be considered afterwards.
MR. KEIR HARDIEagreed to the suggestion.
MR. JOYCEobjected to the whole of the Motion.
The Motion was therefore allowed to stand over.
Adjourned at eight minutes after Twelve o'clock.