ALIENS BILL.

HC Deb 02 May 1905 vol 145 cc687-768

[SECOND READING.]

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

SIR CHARLES DILKE (Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean)

Since the last occasion on which we discussed this Bill a new light has been thrown upon its future, if we are to take the statement made in the country by a leading member of the Cabinet. This Secretary of State told his constituents that the Government could not dissolve yet because it was necessary for them first to pass this measure. If we might take it that a dissolution will take place as soon as the Government have succeeded in carrying this measure, then I think a great many Members on this side of the House would be inclined to facilitate rather than throw difficulties in its way. Undoubtedly, to give the country an opportunity to discuss both this Bill and i its history and the whole policy of the Government is a matter so important that we should almost welcome an immediate dissolution, even if the Bill had to be passed as it stands. Personally, the opportunity which I have had with some others who have looked into this question and studied the provisions of this Bill, makes me as determined for my part to divide the House against its Second Reading as I was in respect of the Bill of last year.

The case for this Bill is one which rests upon, no doubt unwilling, misrepresentation—but such complete misrepresentation of the facts and the figures which have been laid before us by the Government, that I shall have to ask the indulgence of the House while I go into those facts and figures, and even into quotations from Government documents, a process which we all abhor. It is necessary to prove the case on figures, because the Misrepresentation—innocent no doubt—which is going on is stupendous. It is undoubtedly the belief of many Gentlemen opposite, and it is the belief of the Press that support this Bill, that there is an enormous immigration of aliens into this country for settlement here and that it has been increasing for years. [Sir HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central): Hear, hear.] The hon. and gallant Member cheers that statement, but, as a matter of fact, I am prepared to show that there has been a falling off in the alien population of this country within the last two years, and I will show that on Government facts alone. Of course, the Home Secretary is personally innocent in this matter. No one in this House would think that he would place before the House any figures upon which he did not himself rely. But he has been the means of misleading the Press and the constituencies, because he has supplied the House with figures given him by other Government Departments. I shall show that he has been misled in the figures he has placed before the House, and upon which he really based his case. The words he used were these. He said the matter is extremely pressing," and that it has "become more acute," and he pointed to the increasing immigration for settlement in this country. He said there "were 82,000 persons, not described as en route, remaining, after seamen were deducted, of whom the greater proportion stayed here for settlement. I take it that these are the 82,000 that are referred to in the Report issued to us yesterday. This figure cannot be gathered from the monthly Reports, so I suppose the right hon. Gentleman or his secretary must have asked the Board of Trade what were the figures for last year corresponding to the figures of the previous year.

THE SECEETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS,) Kent, St. Augustine's

They are from the monthly Returns.

SIR CHARLES DILKE

They cannot be gathered from the monthly Returns. What the right hon. Gentleman said was that the number last year not so described—that is as being en route—was 82,000 after a deduction had been made for sailors, and he used the words— The greater proportion of them come here to settle —of the 82,000, the House will observe. The Emigration and Immigration Report distributed to us yesterday makes a directly opposite statement; it says that the majority are not immigrants in the sense of prospective settlers. It is curious that this same word is used in an important document contained in the Report of the Royal Commission. The secretary of that Commission in what was called Question 21,713 used the word "settled," and used it as the Board of Trade have used it in the Return issued yesterday, showing that these people do not come here to settle, and that they do not settle. From the 82,000, besides the deduction for sailors which the Home Secretary made, there are other deductions which obviously have to be made. That is admitted by the Report. On direct inquiries made with respect to the Port of London it was found that a large number of persons—thousands I may say—not returned as being en route were in fact en route. Of course there must also be deducted from the number who settled all those that are sent on again by the Jewish Board of Guardians and other charitable organizations. Of these there were many thousands who are described as "leaving the country subsequently." The Home Secretary, on the contrary, told the House that the greater proportion of the 82,000 had settled in this country; in other words, that over 41,000 had been added to the alien population of this country during the course of the year 1904. That, I imagine, is the Home Secretary's statement. Last year he made the case for the Bill that there was a large and rapid increase in alien immigration to this country. What he said was that last year the immigration had increased very rapidly. Had it? What was the judgment of the Board of Trade stated in last year's Report? That Report stated that the real addition in 1903 was considerably less than in 1902. Not an increase but a diminution, and a diminution shown by them to be so great that it is impossible to make out that a thousand persons on the balance remained in this country. In 1903 there was practically no addition at all in the alien population. That was the official information of the Board of Trade.

Now what is the alien population? A portion of it must continually increase. Take, for instance, the motor industry, and look at the number of foreign chauffeurs. That industry has brought in an enormous number of new alien population. These men come in as third-class passengers by Newhaven, though they go out again, having made their fortunes, it is said, as first or second-class passengers. They are included in this alien immigration as third-class passengers. These figures were pone into most carefully before the Royal Commission. It was official evidence. Mr. Llewellyn Smith, on behalf of the Board of Trade, conducted this inquiry, and made this Return, and he is responsible for the Return which came to us yesterday. Question 34, put to the representative of the Board of Trade as regarded aliens not described as en route, elicited the reply that the Board of Trade have taken steps to ascertain the actual facts with regard to London. The result of that statement having been throughly gone into, Mr. Hawkey was called before the Royal Commission. He was the examining officer of Customs, but worked directly for the Board of Trade in these investigations. Mr. Hawkey told the Royal Commission in answer to Question 890 that many "pay their fare to America in Russia "(he afterwards added Germany, "and do not receive through tickets."

Question 891— What do they receive?—Simply the address of an agent in London. Question 892— They have to land in London to go to the agent? Yes, to get the through ticket to America…. These people go by the Beaver Line from Liverpool … unless they change their names and go by other lines. Now this was the state of things before last year, and I shall have to allude to the state of things last year which intensified what was described before the Royal Commission. Mr. Hawkey was recalled upon the point of this through traffic, and explained that a large number of persons whom the Home Secretary believed settled in this country were only en route. In answer to Question 1334 he made this statement— I am largely deceived as to destination. Question 1335— Which way?—If they are going further—to America. Question 1336— Do they say they are going on?—They say they are not going on. Question 1337— When they are really going on?—Yes, in-large numbers they do that. Question 1339— What is the object?—The agents to-whom they pay their fares to America enjoin on them that they are not to tell that they are I going on to America. The hon. and gallant Member for Stepney was present at the examination, and it was he who finally brought out the facts-In answer to him (No. 1431) Mr. Hawkey said— The German companies have ships to America and these passengers might go by their ships. Therefore they object to their coming through. Arrangements were come to with the English companies not to book foreign passengers who had not resided six weeks in the United Kingdom. So that the hon. Member rejoined— That is what I wanted to get at. It is indeed the crux of the whole! question. The argument is enormously i strengthened by what occurred in 1904. I In answer to Questions 143V and 1438, I the witness said— The Beaver Line are not in this agreement? It takes passengers to America independently of their stay in the United Kingdom. No other company does that professedly. To Question 1457 Mr. Hawkey replied— If he books through from Germany to America the fare is more than if he books first from Germany to England, and then from England to America. That is really the explanation of the whole thing. This statement was confirmed by the secretary to the Royal Commission in the document to which I have alluded. Is what the Home Secretary stated the other day or what the Board of Trade stated the true account? In Question 21,713 it was asked— Are we to conclude that a largely increased number of immigrants from the German ports-do come to settle, or that we still retain a large proportion for the through traffic? The witness replied— The latter. To retain this trade evasion is necessary. That trade is, of course, a very large trade in this country, and if this Bill is to be passed and to work, its effect will be to kill or greatly to hamper that through trade.

I now turn to the special circumstances of 1904, which I say greatly strengthen the argument against the Home Secretary's facts and figures. The House will find in the Emigration Return circulated yesterday an allusion to the cheap fares in 1904 from England—not from Germany—to the United States chiefly from London but partly from Liverpool. In the Emigration Report these words are used— the great lowering of passenger rates by the Transatlantic steamship companies for several months in 1904 in pursuance of a rate war. I have ascertained the actual facts with regard to this rate war, and they are facts which affect the whole of the figures of last year and which entirely change the case—and change it enormously—against the views of the Home Secretary since our debates of last year. The rate war began in May of 1904 and it was begun by four great emigrant companies—the Red Star, the Holland-America, the Hamburg America and the Norddeutscher-Lloyd reducing their fares from London to New York to £2. The fare from Germany to New York remained at 120 marks average—an enormously higher rate. This was for the purpose of cutting out the Beaver Line, and it had the opposite effect. The result was that an enormous traffic grew up from Germany to England of emigrants who passed on at these cheap rates. All the other lines followed suit more or les—they all reduced their fares greatly from London and Liverpool to the United States, and the rate war lasted in its full severity until September, and in the middle of September several of the line3 raised their fares again, including three of the original lines;some remained at the low fares, and the White Stay" Line suddenly lowered their fares from England to America for several weeks to £2. All that time the rates to New York from Continental ports remained up at the old high figures, and the result was an enormous increase of transmigration of aliens who are not described as being en route. Those are the special facts as regards 1904. How in the face of these facts and the Government Report can the Home Secretary tell the House and the country that the problem has become more acute? Here are the words of the Report of yesterday comparing 1904 with 1903— The recorded balance inward from Europe is only about 1,000 in excess of the recorded net balance, outwards of foreign emigrants from the United Kingdom to places out of Europe. In 1903 the corresponding excess was 19,000.The proportion borne by the inward to the outward stream has diminished. That is the Government Report. Yes, but was there really an addition? Was there really an addition of 19,000 in the previous year to the population of the United Kingdom? Not at all. The Government's calculation was that there was an addition of about 1,000 to the alien population of the United Kingdom in 1903, and therefore if we are 19,000 I better off this year on the balance than S we were last year the result would be a diminution of the alien population by 18,000 in the year 1904. What has happened in the last two years is that the alien population has decreased, but that the alien traffic has enormously increased. And the facts and figures from various alien exporting ports are eloquent upon that point. In the Emigration Report the House will find the special report of our Consul-General at Hamburg, who there says— Of the total number "(133,000) "of emigrants who embarked at Hamburg, 15,546 embarked for the United Kingdom as against 11,010 persons in 1903. That enormous increase is caused by the lowering of the fares, because it is not pretended that there was an increase, but a decrease on the total figures for the year, although the details are made up in this way by an increase of the through traffic. I have, I think, detained the House too long, but it was necessary to go into these figures to show by what a preposterous mistake—of course, on the part of the Home Secretary unintentional—this false impression has been produced. What I shall have to say about the Bill on other points will be short this year as compared with what I have said on the figures, because the figures are the main portion of the case—the special portion of the case—which is, comparatively speaking, new; because our general arguments are, to same extent, the same as those which were used last year. But it must be remembered that in calculating the weight of testimony there is behind the official figures the fact that the yearly figures of the Board of Trade were exactly confirmed by the most careful Census when the Census came. There is the fact that the Registrar-General, in his Report on the Census, pointed out how accurate the Census had been in this particular point, and that the Royal Commission, after going into this question and hearing the evidence, confirmed the Registrar-General: so that you have the Board of Trade, the Census, the Registrar-General, and the Commission all agreed upon the smallness of the figures. The Commission explained what they thought was not a real increase from .58 to .69, on the ground that greater care was taken than on previous occasions, and then they added— The proportion of aliens in this country is comparatively small. Well, now, by the detailed Census Returns which came out in November last from the Ministry of Commerce, there are over one million aliens in France. It is often said that they are not workmen. But they are workmen—Belgian, Italian, Swiss, and Spanish workmen. In the department of the Nord alone there are as many alien workmen as there are alien people in the whole of the United Kingdom. Now these facts are so strong that our opponents, who really understand the matter like the hon. and gallant Member for Stepney, get their figures by counting the children of aliens born in this country. The hon. and gallant Member has often said— It is true the total number is small, but then their children are virtually alien immigrants like themselves, but we must take direct issue with him. Evidence was given before the Commission by the school authorities and others in the East End who are most competent witnesses. The overwhelming weight of testimony is on the side of those who say that these children are completely English. The typical evidence was that of the master of Betts Street School, who pointed out that the English history of the Jewish children was infinitely better than the English history of the average English children, and that the children were proud to become English. I think that the whole history of the United States, where you have seen the whole of the alien emigrants moulded into an essentially English race, proves that the spirit is far more important than the birth.

I come now very briefly to deal with a pleasanter portion of my task—the points in which the Home Secretary has tried to meet some of the Amendments which some of us placed on the Paper last year. Personally, I admit that he has tried to meet myself upon four points in connection with Amendments which we did not reach last year, but which I had placed upon the Paper. The most important is one which interests the House, and that is the subject of asylum for victims of political and religious persecution, and I confess that the words of the Home Secretary, which do not touch religious persecution, appear to me illusory as far as political persecution is concerned. In Clause 1 Sub-section 3 the words are— To avoid prosecution for an offence. What can have been the instructions given to the unfortunate draftsman which led him to put in those words? Take Russia. Russia is the country from which most of the people fly who come here to avoid political and religious persecution. They do not fly from "prosecutions." They would not be able to prove that a charge has been made against them of an offence committed, but that is what they would have to prove under these words. Then there is nothing about the victims of religious persecution, and I shall propose to place on the Paper again the words which I should have moved last year in Committee, namely, "by reason of the treatment of the religious body to which he belongs." The Home Secretary has also accepted an Amendment of mine which was a useful one as far as it goes, but too much importance must not be attached to it. It limits the countries of conviction to those with which we have an extradition treaty. There was a good deal of argument upon it last year, and the Home Secretary refused to take that view, but it has this effect—we have no extradition treaty in Turkey and the result is that Young Turks and Armenians will in some cases receive protection which they would not receive under the Bill of last year. It hardly applies to any country except Turkey. We have extradition treaties with almost all the others.

Then the Home Secretary has tried to meet the very powerful case made against his last year's Bill by the Police Commissioners in regard to the cross-Channel traffic. He has tried to meet them by distinguishing between port and port. There will be difficulties of course. It may have the effect of looking at Newhaven as if a privilegium was being established for Dover. But I name the matter only because it involves the extraordinary definition in this Bill and the form in which the Bill has been drawn. "Immigrants" are denned as being "alien steerage1 passengers." "Steerage" is defined as being other than "cabin" and so far there is nothing inconsistent with the Merchant Shipping Acts, but when we come to "cabin" passengers there is no definition. They are not to be the "cabin passengers" of the Merchant Shipping Acts, but they are to be defined from time to time by order of the Secretary of State. It rather suggests, there-fore, that the Secretary of Stats will establish some new definition of his own, wholly different from that of the Merchant Shipping Acts now known to the law. That matter arises at once and affects all this question of the ports.

The only other point of detail which is worth naming is one that has been subject to a good deal of remark outside the House. The whole of the words with regard to infectious disease which were in the Bill last year, and upon which the Home Secretary spoke, both on the introduction and on the Second Reading, have disappeared from the Bill. There was almost criminal negligence displayed in the instructions for drafting the Bill last year. The Bill was so drawn that there was absolute conflict between it and the Act of 1896 and the Order of the Local Government Board signed "Henry Chaplin" in November of that year. If the Bill of last year had passed as introduced, the medical officer of health would have gone on board a ship partly representing the Local Government Board and partly representing the Home Office. The Home Secretary said the intention was to keep out persons suffering from infectious disease, but under the present Bill the only person who must land under any circumstances will be the alien suffering from infectious disease. He cannot be kept out. He will land under the Public Health Act of 1896 under the Order signed "Henry Chaplin" whether you like it or not.

The case for the Bill in the minds of those who support the Bill on the other side of the House is mainly the economic. We know that the Government are not anti-Semitic and do not desire to encourage that feeling, but I have letters from outside this House on anti-Semitic grounds. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No, No!"]

SIR HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)

Can the right hon. Gentleman quote any letters to prove that?

SIR CHARLES DILKE

I will not quote private letters but can quote the public Press.

SIR HOWARD VINCENT

What papers? Where are they?

SIR CHARLES DILKE

Many papers. We read them—[MINISTERIAL cries of "Quote "]—and in them the object is stated to be to protect the British working man against the competition of the Polish Jew, who, they say, is coming to this country in increasing numbers in order to avoid conscription in the Russo-Japanese War. It has been said that this Bill is the first of a series of measures which we shall have to pass to protect the Briton against alien competition. But I doubt whether the Bill, if passed, would have any effect in that direction. The critical words in the Bill are these— Is in a position to obtain the means of decently supporting himself. What will this be held to mean? Will it shut out competition with the British working man? Do the Government intend that it shall is that their meaning? Supposing a Russian Jew arriving at the Port of London is met by his brother, say a tailor in Stepney, and that the brother tells the examining officer, "I am working for Mr. So-and-So,and I shall be able to get him a job- there." Will that be the position to obtain the means to support himself? I think it will. If so, where will exclusion come in? The trades most concerned agree that sweating should be dealt with by measures such as have been at work in New Zealand and several of the United States. These measures were proposed by us in 1895 and again in 1901, and we believe they would be effective in preventing sweating competition. It was the opinion of the Lords Committee on Sweating that it was not due to the alien, and surely in the face of the fact that the Commission reported that the evil had decreased since the Lords Report it cannot be contended that a case is made out for this Bill as a means of dealing with sweating.

The other point to which I wish to draw attention is the exclusion of victims of political and religious persecution. Of course we have Russia in our minds. The Bill does not touch these victims. There are the religious refugees who are hounded from Russia by fear of mob violence, and there are the political refugees—those who are no" prosecuted but arrested by Administration Order. They are carried through the streets of Petersburg or Moscow in cabs surrounded by sotnias of Cossacks—editors of newspapers and men of weight and authority who disappear clean into space as if they had never existed and are never heard of again. Some are consigned to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, or to the worse terrors of Schlusselburg. In St. Peter and St. Paul they are liable to arrest under Administration Order. The terror is not diminishing but rather increasing. There is no person of the professional class in Russia who does not stand in danger of immediate arrest merely on suspicion. If they get warning, they fly from the country stripped of all their possessions, and perhaps come here to find asylum at our hands. I say that asylum in the past has been of benefit to this country, and I believe we derive benefit from it still. In the face of a case so miserable and so trivial, and in view of the fact that the evil is declining rather than increasing I say the Bill ought to be rejected by this House, and I shall certainly divide the House on the points named in my Amendment.

MR. TREVELYAN (Yorkshire, W.R., Elland)

I was one of those who last year supported the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken in his opposition to the Bill. As far as I can see there is no material difference between the Bill of last year and this one. There may be differences of detail, but there remains the poverty test which was our real objection to last year's Bill, that which we think is in no way an indication whether or not a man coming into the country would be a good citizen. On that ground it is for us to oppose this Bill as vigorously as we can. A campaign of misrepresentation has been going on in the country, joined in by even so eminent a person as the right hon. Member for West Birmingham. It is alleged that those who oppose the Bill are unwilling to exclude diseased and criminal aliens now coming to this country. The events of last year are directly contrary to that. In this House the right hon. Member for East Fife distinctly stated that so far as he was concerned, and he was supported by the whole of the Opposition, he was ready to entertain the proposition for the exclusion of the criminal alien in any practical way, and the same policy was shown perfectly clearly by the action of the Opposition in the Committee upstairs where all the Members of the opposition to the Bill except one—the Member for Bolton—declared they would be ready to pass any legislation which would have the practical effect of excluding criminal or diseased aliens from this country. After the Bill had been deserted by the Government upstairs, the hon. and gallant Member for Central Sheffield brought in a small Bill to exclude the criminal aliens from this country. The Member for Dewsbury and myself put our names at his request at the back of the Bill. It was brought in and it never had a single voice in opposition to it from this side of the House, but it was regularly blocked by Members on the other side of the House, in spite of all appeals. Therefore, if there are burglaries committed by foreign burglars from New York and Paris in the West End of London the responsibility lies with hon. Gentlemen opposite. Of course on this side of the House we perfectly understand the tactics represented by the opposition to that Bill.

We are ready to make allowance for Members making use of this Bill as a Party measure. We are nearing the election, and hon. Members opposite feel it is a very popular measure to go with to the country. But that depends upon the standard of the Government's popularity. It is perfectly true that the Bill does not arouse any furious resentment in the minds of any part of the electorate. It does not lose votes right and left like the Education Act, or Chinese Labour. Taken by the standard of an ordinary Government this Bill would be harmless, and not an unpopular Bill. Taken by the standard of this Government it is a frantically popular Bill. That it is not very popular may be seen by the fact that in the East of London, where if in any part of the country the Bill might be expected to be popular, the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mile End) only managed to get into the House by frantic and desperate efforts and with a drop of a thousand in the Conservative majority.

MR. H. LAWSON (Tower Hamlets, Mile End)

May I interrupt the hon. Member? My opponent at the last moment declared his opinions were the same as mine.

MR. CLAUDE HAY (Shoreditch, Hoxton)

May I point out that Mr. Strauss signed the memorial to the Leader of the Opposition in favour of this Bill.

MR. TREVELYAN

It is at any rate clear that the Party from which alone opposition to this Bill might be expected is not so deperately unpopular in the East of London. We, on this side, may very well adopt this attitude, that until something like proof is brought from the other side that there is any enormous immigration of aliens we are justified m taking the decision of the Report of the Immigration Commission that the best figures to be arrived at are those by deduction from the Census Returns which show that the increase of population due to alien immigration is something like 7,000 a year. Until hon. Members opposite can produce more accurate figures from official sources I shall argue on the assumption that the increase of population from foreign immigration is not greater than 10,000 aliens per year. Now, the question is not merely how many aliens are coming into the country, but how many aliens would be debarred if an Act of this sort were brought into operation. We have the example of the United States of America. In the last; three years in the United States of America the rate of exclusion of immigrants was as follows. In 1902 one alien was excluded out of every 110 who came to America. In 1903 one was excluded out of every ninety-eight, and in 1901 one out of every 101. That is to say, in recent years in America about one in 100 have been excluded of those who came to American shores. Of course: I know it will be said that a fairly large number of aliens are deterred from crossing the Atlantic and attempting to enter. That, of course, has to be taken into consideration, and, I take it the House will think it reasonable if we multiply the number by four for the purpose of what would occur in this country. That would be assuming that three people would be deterred from coming for every one who came over here and was excluded. Taking that calculation, assuming that there are four times as many aliens excluded per 100 as there are excluded in America, there will be 400 aliens excluded in England out of 10,000 that come here.

MR. CLAUDE HAY

Why four?

MR. TREVELYAN

I am taking what I consider to be the outside figure.

MR. CLAUDE HAY

Why not fifty;?

MR. TREVELYAN

I make what I consider an outside estimate. I say it is reasonable to assume that rather more aliens will be deterred by the fear of some of them that they will be excluded if they come over, and I say that taking four times as many as are excluded in the United States will be a quite reasonable calculation on our part. At that rate we should have excluded something like 400 out of 10,000 who come to our shores. I ask what will be the economic effect of excluding a ship-load of 400, or even 800, or even 1,000 if you like, from the labour market of England? Of course, as long as the British public is under the idea that there is an immense immigration of 100,000 aliens yearly, and that this Bill is going to stop about 30,030 of them, this is a large question, but the electoral card castle will fall to the ground when it is known that it is only a question of a few hundreds who can be stopped under this Bill under the best expectations.

The truth is if it were only an economic question we on this side of the House should regard it as almost too insignificant a matter to oppose, although we think it useless protection, but there are two serious results which we foresee from this legislation. The first is that it diverts the attention of the public from more serious remedies for the deep-seated and terrible evils of overcrowding and sweating in our country. Overcrowding and sweating are national institutions which the aliens find when they come here. They want to be sweated and overcrowded as little as the native-born, but at first landing they are naturally more liable to suffer from the conditions of the towns in which they find themselves. Their overcrowding and sweating is only a part of a system from which our population suffers immensely more than the few a liens who come over here. This Bill is practically the only way in which the Government has tried to meet the great questions of sweating and overcrowding. It is important that they should try, but I venture to think they would have won more sympathy from the great mass of social reformers if they had attempted to come to some understanding upon the extension of the Factory Acts, or upon some measures such as my right hon. friend the Member for the Forest of Dean was speaking about, that have been adopted in other countries to deal with the great evils of sweating, and I must say I think it an evil that a small Bill of this kind should be introduced and should turn the eyes of the public from the direction of dealing with the fundamental evils from which the unsatisfactory condition of our great towns comes. But although this Bill can have no very great economic effect, what we fear on this side of the House is that it will have cruel results for some hundreds of unfortunate people who are at this time flying from persecution in the East of Europe. The Government has, it is true, attempted to deal with the question of asylum by inserting words which were not in the Bill of last year that— In the case of an immigrant who proves that he is seeking admission to this country solely to avoid prosecution for an offence of a political character, leave to land should not be refused on the ground merely of want of means, or the probability of his becoming a charge on the rates. The insertion of these words in the first clause is supposed to guard against the exclusion of the political refugee, but, as my right hon. friend has pointed out, in the first place this does not touch the question of religious persecution. I want, however, to ask the House under what circumstances does the political or the religious refugee come to this country? He practically never comes having actually been accused of any political crime. He very rarely comes having escaped from a Bastille or the Siberian Mines. He has to fly beforehand, and the great mass of those coming to these shores are not flying even from the expectation of any immediate evil to themselves, but from the general system of bad government which exists year in and year out in the East of Europe.

Now at this moment there is a great and general sympathy with the oppressed and misgoverned Russian people. For very many years we have been hearing in this country stories of the persecution of the Jewish people in Poland and in Russia. We have read many a statement of the evils of that government which the hon. Member for Stepney has so well inserted in his Reports to the Immigration Commission. We know that in Russia now and for many years there has been practically licensed mob violence against the Jewish population which may break out anywhere and at any time, which is not in any way restricted by the police, but in many cases is obviously sanctioned and encouraged by them, and a great part of the population which is now flying to our shores are people who have been robbed and ruined and chased away from their country, and who, in many cases, naturally come here absolutely penniless, who will not in any sense be defended by this clause, whose want of money is due to the very persecution they are flying from, and who will very likely be excluded by the Bill we are now discussing. Bat within the last six months there has been a new development. There has been an increase of emigration from Poland and Russia, mostly passing through this country, though some of it may be staying. What is the reason of it? It is perfectly well known to those who have studied these questions, it is because of the war in Manchuria and the calling up of the Reservists in Russia. Now there is one very special reason why the Jewish population is flying from the conscription in Russia. The family of the ordinary Russian soldier in case of his death gets a pension of forty roubles, but a Jew's family gets nothing, and I think everyone in this House will agree it is very natural that the Jewish population should be flying from being called up as Reservists when they know well that in the event of death in Manchuria absolute destitution faces their families. But the greater part are native Russians, not Jews, who are fleeing to thi3 country or through this country. This war that is going on in Manchuria is universally detested by the Russian people. In many parts of Russia the barracks are full of Reservists whom the Government dare not arm because they are so discontented that the Government does not know what they would do if they were armed. It is no wonder that at this moment the people are fleeing from conscription, and in fleeing from conscription, what have they to do? They have to make their way across the country by bribing Russian officials or by paying guides, and most of them, by the time they get to the ports, have spent every penny they have got in the world. It is these men you will be either excluding from this country or making it more difficult for them to get to America, and it is odious to think that at this moment the British people should in any sense make it more difficult even for a few hundreds of men to escape from the -tyranny which we all deprecate.

Amendment proposed— To leave out all the. words after the word "That,' and add the words' this House, holding that the evils of low-priced alien labour can best be met by legislation to prevent sweating, desires to assure itself before assenting to the Aliens Bill that sufficient regard is had in the proposed measure to the retention of the principle of asylum for the victims of persecution.'"—[Sir Charles Dilke.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

MAJOR EVANS GORDON (Tower Hamlets, Stepney)

I have listened to the two speeches which have just been delivered with considerable interest. I shall endeavour, in the course of my remarks, to answer the various points raised by the mover and seconder of the Amendment. The hon. Member for the Forest of Dean seems to suppose that the whole increase of alien immigration to this country consists of motor-car drivers, a statement which will be received with some surprise and considerable amusement in the East End of London and other districts.

SIR CHARLES DILKE

I certainly said there had been a decrease of aliens in-this country in the last two years.

MAJOR EVANS GORDON

I hope to deal successfully with that contention later on, when I refer to the figures. But, in the first place, I should like to point out to the House that hon. Members opposite, and the newspapers which represent their views, have been free in their accusations of insincerity against the Government and the occupants of these benches. We have been told that the Aliens Bill is the outcome of a spurious local agitation got up by unscrupulous politicians for electioneering purposes—I do not know, indeed, but that I am numbered among them—and that the Bill of last year was merely "window-dressing" for the purpose of deceiving the public. Regarding the charge of electioneering, I should like to remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that in making it they are not only defaming us, but, at the same time, blackening the character of their own supporters. Hon. Gentlemen opposite say we are on the eve of an election. We have had remarkable testimony of the fact in the East End of London. Every Radical candidate, and two hon. Members of this House who sit for East End con- stituencies—the very districts affected—have taken the very unusual course of sending a petition to the Leaders of their Party in this House, asking them not to oppose the Second Reading of this Bill. I have been interested to hear from the speakers who have just sat down that they do not intend to listen to that pathetic appeal. They are to divide the House against the Bill.

With regard to the charge of "window-dressing," I think the Bill introduced by the Government provides a complete and irrefutable answer. Have hon. Gentlemen opposite really considered what the problem confronting the country is? I would remind the House that year by year some 1,500,000 of human beings of every age, sex, and religion, the healthy and hopeful, the diseased and hopeless, good, bad, and indifferent, are on the move from the South and East of Europe pressing towards the West. The expulsive forces which cause this great movement are in the main misgovernment and oppression. But other influences are at work. The enormous number of these people who have gone before make a drawing force to the people who are left behind, and this great travelling mass of humanity has produced among the shipping companies, and people connected with railways and other transport, a fierce competition. Every single person who can be induced to travel is another ticket sold. All these forces add naturally to the number of people who are on the move. This immigration is not by any means wholly Jewish. The Jewish emigrants do form a very large part of the whole, and in their case it may be said to take the form almost of a national migration. There are 5,500,000 Jews in the Russian Empire, but we cannot consider all these people to be possible emigrants, though a large number of them must be considered in that light, unless affairs in Eastern Europe undergo a profound modification. As things are, it is the poorest and the least fit of these people who move, and it is the residuum of these again who come to, or are left in this country.

Having realised the magnitude of this movement, the problem for us is what steps we should take, both in the interest of the aliens themselves and of our own population, to regulate and control it. Are we to sit still and do nothing, and without reference to our own great social problems and industrial conditions to receive everybody who chooses to come, without limitation as to number and without stipulation as to character, health, or industrial fitness; or are we to attach reasonable conditions to the hospitality we offer and set up reasonable safeguards against this country being used, as it is now being used, as the refuse heap of the whole of Europe. Hon. Members opposite have no hesitation whatever in leaving things exactly as they are. On the other hand, on these benches we are unanimous in believing that legislation is-urgently required. The Party opposite attach great importance to the mostfavoured nation clause in matters of commerce, but in this matter of immigration they seem to desire that we should remain in the position of the least, favoured of all the nations of the world.

The Western tendency carries enormous numbers to America, but the-American law, stringent to-day, is growing more and more stringent, and every indication points in the direction of the law being made still more strict and being still more rigorously enforced. As other channels become narrower, so the flow of immigration here must inevitably increase down the only channel which remains open. We have a remarkable proof of this already, for while the number of aliens arriving in the United States is falling off, the number arriving in this country is steadily increasing. [OPPOSITION cries of "No, no!" and "Oh!"] We have often been told that the American law on this-subject is a failure, and is inefficient, and the number of persons rejected in America is cited as a proof of that assertion. But the effect of the American law cannot be measured by the number of persons who come within actual reach, of that law. As a matter of fact rejections in the United States are steadily increasing, and last year they amounted, to 18,691 persons. But to gauge the effect we must not look to the ports of arrival but to the ports of origin and embarkation. The American law does not operate only at the point where it is enforced, but also in countries far remote from the United States where the American Government has no jurisdiction whatsoever. The numbers deporsed from American ports, though numbered by thousands, are insignificant compared with the vast number of those to whom passages are refused by the shipping companies because they are unable to reach the standard of industrial efficiency and health set up by the American Government. In 1901 the Industrial Commission reported that owing to the increased stringency of the American law in regard to contract labour 50,000 passages were refused in the course of a single year, and in Naples 10,000 passages were similarly refused in the course of twelve months. Unless some such legislation as was now being proposed were adopted, the only country open to this class of aliens would be England.

I cannot establish this point better than by quoting a very brief extract from the Report of the Select Committee of 1899. They found that— The better class of emigrants only arrive in transit to other countries (chiefly America), hat the poorest class remains here. The Committee went on to say that the distribution of these poor aliens both as regards localities and trades is such that the pressure occasioned is out of all proportion to their numbers. Now let us take the port of Grimsby, which is principally concerned in the transmigration traffic—people going to America, and so forth. These people are allowed to land without any medical examination worthy of the name. No sooner do they arrive at Liverpool than they are subjected to a close medical examination by the officers of our own Board of Trade. With what result? With the remarkable result that the very people who have been allowed to land freely in Grimsby are refused permission to leave this country again because they are physically unfit to proceed to other countries.

MR. RUNCIMAN (Dewsbury)

What proportion?

MAJOR EVANS GORDON

I can get the figures from the Return, but I can state that it is considerable. But whether it is one or 500 is immaterial. The question is one of principle, and I consider the present condition of things utterly absurd. It actually appears that we take steps to keep in this country what no other country is willing to receive. But this is not all. Not only does the residuum remain in this country in that way, but we are compelled also to receive people who have made the attempt to go to other countries, but who have been refused admittance in America and elsewhere. Hardly a day passes without people of this character arriving. I have been going closely into the matter on the steamers lately myself. I find that in the year ending 31st March last no fewer than 308 such persons, who voluntarily admitted that they were either rejected in America or other countries abroad, arrived in the river Thames. Seventy-two had been across to the States and had been shipped back here and dumped down in London. I understand that the number rejected by America who come to Liverpool is more serious still. Recently 700 people of this character arrived in Liverpool, and a great number of them are to be found in work houses there to-day. These figures, important as they are, are a mere indication of the position this country occupies in regard to having to receive persons unfit for reception in other parts of the world. The laws of America and our Colonies are perfectly well known, and the consequence is that numbers of people know that it is impossible to apply for passages to the shipping companies because they would not be allowed to go further. The result is that they do not attempt to go, but come to this country instead.

The right hon. Baronet the Member for Forest of Dean in his speech on the introduction of this Bill, and I think again to-day, made a statement to which I should like briefly to refer. He said that the Bill last year—and he was very vehement on the point—broke down solely on the police evidence which was given before the Royal Commission. Well I think that statement will surprise hon. Members who were colleagues of mine on the Grand Committee as much as it surprised me. The Bill broke down because hon. Members opposite had made up their minds to destroy the Bill, and because the procedure laid down for Grand Committees enabled them to carry out their purpose. The obstruction in that Committee was gross, open, and palpable. The hon. Member for Oldham, who glories in strange ambitions, has openly boasted of his share in the performance. The police evidence alluded to by the right hon. Baronet referred to the detection of criminals at the port of landing. Mr. Henry and Sir E. Bradford pointed out, quite rightly, the difficulties in the way. Against these views we may set those of Sir Robert Anderson, who in a recent letter to The Times expressed an entirely different opinion. I hope I have said enough to show that the Bill was not wrecked upon this point.

Now let me turn to another view of this question which is before the House, that is the introduction of disease conveyed by undesirable aliens. Some people believe that not enough disease is imported by aliens to make a medical examination worth while. I will only say that smallpox and scarlet fever have unquestionably been introduced by aliens within the past few months, and that trachoma, a contagious disease, which is the third principal cause of total loss of sight and favus, a disgusting and contagious disease of the skin, have been, and are being, introduced by these aliens on a large scale. It is also probable that the disease known as miner's worm, which has proved a calamity to our mining population, was originally brought into this country by foreign immigrants. Last year out of 121,870 would-be emigrants to America 6,000 were rejected at the Control Stations on the German frontier as diseased, and 2,000 more on the quays by two German shipping companies. What was there then, what is there to-day, to prevent these people from coming to England? Absolutely nothing. That numbers do come is, I think, shown by such documents as the recent Report of the Polish Emigration Society in London, which showed that out of 256 immigrants whom they helped in January, February, and March last, 36 were found to be suffering from serious diseases of the eye. I believe that the moment it is made known that people suffering from disease will not be admitted, they will no-longer be brought, and as we in this House have the power to stop so grave a scandal it is folly to allow it to continue.

But, the gravamen of the right hon. Baronet's objection to this Bill rests upon other grounds. As I understand these objections they are, firstly, that the Bill interferes with the right of asylum without any proof being given of the necessity of any such step; and, secondly, that there is no increase of alien population in this country, or at least that the alien population here is trifling compared with that of every other country in the world. Now, what is this so-called right of asylum? As far as I understand it,, it amounts to this, that this country has consistently refused to surrender persons who, having committed a political and non-extraditable offence abroad,, have sought a refuge here. The Bill will in no way interfere with this long-established and time-honoured practice. The right hon. Gentleman cites instances of individuals who have come here from time to time under these circumstances,. and assumes, quite erroneously, that they would be excluded under this Bill-What ground has he for that assumption? Suppose this Act were now in force and that Maxime Gorky or Father Gapon were to arrive on these shores, would they be excluded? Certainly not. But the right of asylum may be-interpreted in a far wider sense. It may be said that we are bound by some unwritten law to admit any one who states that he is persecuted in his own country. If that contention be accepted, then, of course, there is an end to any restrictive legislation. But I would ask the House of Commons, and I would ask the country, to pause long and consider well before assenting to any such wide and dangerous generalisation. It opens-up very alarming possibilities. It means that we are to admit here, as of right,, any and every one who is discontented, or says he is, with the government in his own country. What is there to prevent art immigration en masse from Turkey, or from Servia, or from Macedonia? Personally, I can see no sense in saying that we must admit people, otherwise undesirable, merely because the political conditions under which they have been living arc unsatisfactory to them. Surely we cannot solve the political problems of every country in Europe by admitting their discontented and superfluous population into this overcrowded island.

I will go further, and I will say that, when we consider the social and industrial position of our own poor working classes, we, who are uninjured ourselves, have not the right to cast such burdens upon those who are less fortunately situated and least able to help themselves. Hon. Members opposite luxuriate in fine and heroic sentiment so long as it is at the expense of other people. They dispense a generous hospitality with other people's money. "As many paupers as choose to come," says the hon. Member for Elland, "we will fight to the death to admit them." He might add "especially as we have not to bear the burden." No, it is others who bear the cost and burden of this misplaced generosity. Hon. Members opposite do not live in daily terror of being turned into the street to make room for an unsavoury Pole, their rent is not raised by 50 per cent. or 100 per cent, in a week, their wages are not cut down, their employment is not taken from them. They do not see opening after opening which formerly offered some chance of employment closed and filled by cheap imported labour; they do not see the business on which they and their parents have lived dwindle and fall into bankruptcy. The Blue-books say that there are no aliens. The bitter cry of the poor people is invented by unscrupulous politicians and has no existence in fact. The clergy of all denominations who live among the people do not know the conditions and the facts. If there should be any grievance it is local and trifling. Ignore it, hide it away, drown the outcry by beating the sentimental drum with the right of asylum for one stick and the traditional policy of England for the other. To me it is a monstrous thing that, while we are at our wits' end to find work and house-room for our own people, we should at the same time be admitting ship-load after ship-load of unskilled labour from abroad, people who must and do add to the congestion of districts and markets already over-congested. The unskilled labour market is so overcrowded that even last summer a great London Liberal newspaper recorded the remarkable fact that for a single unskilled labourer's berth there were literally 1,000 applicants. In spite of this fact, and in spite of the fact that the unemployed problem is still unsolved, can hon. Members opposite look with equanimity upon a state of things by which unskilled labour is being imported by fourteen steamers a week into the port of London alone.

This brings me to the question of numbers, upon which the right hon. Baronet holds such curiously inaccurate opinions. The right hon. Gentleman in supporting his argument as to the figures, said that the Royal Commission unanimously adopted the Board of Trade Returns. That statement, coming from one whose industry and accuracy we all admire, is the more remarkable. What are the facts? The Royal Commission went very exhaustively into this question, and as the matter is of great importance I must trouble the House by quoting our unanimous finding on the point. Referring to the Board of Trade statistics of immigration and emigration from which the right hon. Baronet quoted, we said— It seems to be established that the Returns made under 6th William 4th do not afford any accurate information as to the number of alien immigrants arriving in this country. It follows that we have no accurate guide as to the number of alien immigrants in this country, and that the nearest approach to such information is to be found in the Census Return. Let the House mark the words "nearest approach." We went on to say, with regard to the Census, that the Census itself was by no means accurate, and the Registrar-General himself admitted that fact.

SIR CHARLES DILKE

He said that it was prepared with exceeding care.

MAJOR EVANS GORDON

I have the quotation here. The Registrar-General said that he could not claim for the Census Return complete accuracy. How, in the face of that statement, can the right hon. Baronet say that the Royal Commission accepted and adopted the Immigration Returns of, the Board of Trade I am absolutely at a loss to understand. The direct contrary is the fact. I was instrumental in drawing up this account to a great extent. My feeling was that we were condemning these Returns as being valueless for the purpose of estimating the number of alien immigrants to t his country. That is the point we wished to make, and if our language does not make it clear I do not know what language we could employ. Bat not only that; Mr. Llewellyn Smith, who is the author of the Return, was constrained to make the statement that the Act under which the figures were collected was not a statistical Act, and that, therefore, the Board of Trade has to content itself by making such bricks as it can with such straw as it has got. In view of that statement I wish to make it quite clear that we accept none of the inferences, for they are nothing more, as to the net annual increase of the alien population. These statistics rest on hypothesis, not on actual collected and compared data. They are haphazard and based on supposition. Nevertheless, these figures were announced by the right hon. Baronet as if they were incontrovertible and absolutely accurate. The right hon. Baronet did not, however, quote what Mr. Llewellyn Smith says in this very Return. 'As to the proportion of the inward and outward stream of foreign passengers, he says— More than this cannot with certainty be Inferred from the figures, in view of the possible errors in both the totals representing the inward and outward movement respectively. For example, the slight errors that may arise an connection with the treatment of passengers whose nationality is not recorded, or the understatement of children arriving from the Continent, though small in comparison with the total figures, may be sufficient to make the small balance between these totals in 1904 untrustworthy, except for purposes of rough comparison with previous years. That, to my mind, shows that we need not attach great importance to the figures that have been put forward. With the proviso that the Royal 'Commission did not adopt these figures, and that Mr. Llewellyn Smith himself says that they cannot claim any statistical accuracy—I say that: even if the balance shown were accurate, that does not in the least preclude an enormous increase of the alien population in the East End of London at one and the same time. The figures outward and inward take no account of quality. In course of examination I asked Mr. Llewellyn Smith if these figures dealt in any way with quality. And he replied— Not at all, they are purely numbers; there is nothing to prevent people of high social status leaving this country, being balanced against destitute poor coming into the East End of London. But, Sir, even if these figures were correct, which I do not admit, it does not rob the agitation in the East End of London of the real truth which is behind it, and which has now been admitted by the action of the Radical Members and candidates in that district. Let me give one instance. If these figures are so small as to prove as the right hon. Baronet thinks that there are practically no aliens arriving, how does it come about that in 1902 the Jewish Board of Guardians relieved 17,790 persons and another Jewish Board 1,140, and that in 1904 23,970 persons were relieved? Where do these people come from?

AN HON MEMBER

Where do they go to?

MAJOR EVANS GORDON

The right hon. Baronet said they did not come here; they apparently dropped from the clouds. There is an enormous increase of these people, and they are not only newcomers, but they stop some time here as these figures show.

But the case does not rest upon these-figures at all. It rests upon other evidence. Such evidence as our own senses; those of us who are familiar with the facts have senses, and they should not be despised. The House has to face the fact that during the last few years the area occupied by aliens in the East End of London has increased rapidly; it has doubled, trebled, quadrupled. Streets and districts formerly entirely English have become almost entirely foreign in character. We have the evidence of Chief Inspector Malveney, of the H Division, that in six years 107 whole streets in Stepney went out of English occupation into foreign occupation; and there is the statement of the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who said in his last Annual Report that the alien colony in the East End continued to increase rapidly, and the area which it occupies is extending accordingly. There is not a clergyman or responsible resident in the East End of London "who does not see this process of transformation and wholesale substitution of foreign for English population;going on daily under his eyes. Three years ago the Bishop of Stepney said that— In some districts where there was formerly evidence of comparative wealth and comfort these had been absolutely wiped out, and the East End of London was being swamped by aliens who were coming in like an army of locusts, eating up the native population or turning them out. Their churches were being continually left like islands in the midst of an alien sea. And yet in the face of these statements the right hon. Baronet says that the whole thing is moonshine and a figment of the imagination. Not all the Blue-books or statistics in the world can controvert these incontrovertible facts. I have made inquiry on the spot myself. I went down to Gravesend the other day and looked over the returns of the immigration officer as to the people who were coming here. I found that in a single week 230 men, 97 women, and 60 children had arrived over and above the known transmigrants who the immigration officer, accustomed to these people and speaking their language, said had no prospect really of ever leaving this country. They gave addresses of friends in the East End of London, and for all intents and purposes these people came "to stay. Here, then, we have four hundred persons coming into the congested districts of the East End of London in a single week! Knowing these things as I know them, what wonder that I was surprised when I heard the hon. Gentleman opposite declare that there is no increase in the alien population.

The hon. Gentleman laid great stress upon a comparison between the foreign population in this country and in other countries. The figures for Switzerland, for instance, are said to be much larger than the figures for this country. I would like to show that there is no analogy between the two situations. In the first place Switzerland is a land of tourists, and every tourist is put down in the Returns on Census day as a foreigner. That is a considerable set-off. Then, again, a large foreign population goes there for cheap education for their children, or for reasons of health and pleasure. Again, it was stated that a number of Italian labourers went into Switzerland. Quite true, but they came in response to a specific economic demand and are engaged on railway and other construction works; but when these are completed they return to their own country. They do not create any of the difficulties and problems which we have to deal with in the East End of London. Moreover, Switzerland, with its 9–58 of a foreign population to its total population, is no nation in the true sense, but a confederation of the three principal races of Western and Central Europe, i.e., German, French, and Italian. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that there should be a strong flow of Germans into the German-speaking, of French into the French speaking, and of Italians into the Italian-speaking parts of the country. These people at once find their own language and customs prevailing, and are in no way aliens except in a purely technical sense. In face of these facts it seems difficult to see how this altogether exceptional state of things can be compared to the immigration into our large towns of miserably poor people of an entirely alien race, from the remote corners of Europe. But there are other reasons which render any comparison absurd. In Switzerland the children of aliens are only naturalised as Swiss subjects after coming of age, and then only by leave. The same is the case in Germany. In this country the children of foreign parents born here are enumerated as English. In one trial schedule, in order to ascertain the difference in the figures the children would make if enumerated, it was found that 50 per cent. would have to be added to the foreign population. Thus the foreigners or people of foreign extraction in this country are very largely in excess of the numbers shown in the Census or Board of Trade Returns. The right hon. Baronet says we ought to consider these people as English. I do not care whether we consider them English or not, but what we must consider is the total result of the alien immigration on the industrial employment of our own people.

I have dealt at some length with these points because they are frequently advanced as reasons for allowing things to remain as they are, and because I desire to show that they have, when closely considered, very little relevancy or importance. The economic and industrial question is, on the other hand, a matter of very great importance, and I hope to have an opportunity later to go into it much more closely than I can do to-day. Hon. Members opposite are apparently violently opposed to any legislation which will keep out competitive unskilled labour from this country. They would admit without hesitation an unlimited number of destitute aliens and let them loose upon our already over-congested unskilled labour market. As to that point, I think that the finding of the Royal Commission ought again to be brought to the notice of the House where we said that— On the whole we arrive at the conclusion, after weighing evidence on both sides, that it has not been proved that there is any serious direct displacement of skilled English labour."—[OPPOSITION cheers.] Yes, hon. Gentlemen applaud that, but let me finish— It is, of course, impossible to say how much, if any, work now done by alien labour would have been performed by native female or other labour had there been no alien immigration into this country. But leaving the skilled labour market out of the question, we think it proved that the industrial conditions under which a large number of aliens work in London falls below the standard which ought to exist."—[MINISTERIAL cheers.] I am glad that we are agreed upon that point anyway. But hon. Gentlemen may ask to what extent has this immigration affected the labour market? I will tell them. There was an estimate made by the Jewish Board of Deputies the other day—not confined to Jews at all. They found that, as the result of immigration, no less than 200,000 foreign workmen were employed in this country at the present time. Now I submit to hon. Members that it is nonsense to say that a movement of that magnitude can have gone on without displacing English labour, or that it can continue without a similar result. It is not the fact that alien immigration only affects certain specific trades; it is not the fact that the East End of London only is touched.

It is important to realise, too, the condition of these people after they come, and, if I had the time, I could quote many deplorable bits of evidence showing the circumstances under which these aliens live and work in the East End. So much are they the victims of the very competition they come here to increase that their own representatives are doing all that they possibly can to discourage them from coming. The distress is shown by the figures I have just quoted of the enormous number of people in receipt of relief in the East End, and although it is true that few of them find their way into our own workhouses, still that is no indication of their real state or any proof that a great mass, of pauperism and distress does not prevail among them. I notice that a large number of these people are repatriated by the Jewish Board of Guardians. The harrowing pictures that have been drawn of persecution in Russia and elsewhere may be true, but what I want to point, out is that the Jewish Board of Guardians and other communal authorities have no hesitation in sending their people back to those very conditions; and why? Because there is no room for them here, and because their condition is no better in this country than it would be in their own. The evils of the situation are realised by all Jewish authorities, and at the great conference held at Frankfort the other day, at which representative Jews from all parts of Europe, including this-country, were present, it was unanimously decided that no measure should be adopted which would be calculated to increase the flow of immigration. "Emigration to England and America will further be strongly discouraged," they say; "and the widest publicity will be given to the facts concerning the state of the labour market in England." If no immigrants were coming here at all, what would be the necessity for these reiterated warnings from serious bodies of this kind?

Again, it is sometimes said that we cannot do anything to help our own people without being cruelly unjust to the immigrants who come here, especially Jewish immigrants. Now what are the precepts and practice of the Jews themselves in this matter? Do they allow all their own people, irrespective of their industrial fitness or capacity, to go to their own colonies in the Argentine Republic and elsewhere? Not at all. Everybody is subjected to the closest scrutiny before he is allowed to start—scrutiny as to his antecedents, character, health and fitness in every respect. So much is this the fact that Mr. Zangwill, when recently discussing the proposed East African colony for Jews, made this remarkable statement—he said, "the colony was not to be the dumping ground for refugees." No, Sir; the privilege of being the dumping ground is reserved for this country, and when anyone dares to lift a voice in protest, or ventures to suggest that the same precautions should be taken here as are taken by the Jewish community themselves, we are denounced as Anti-Semites. We have no wish, and I say no reason can be given for saying we wish, to exclude persons from this country because they are Jews. Our desire is not to exclude undesirable aliens because they are Jews but because they are undesirable aliens. At the same time I do not see any reason why we should admit a man otherwise undesirable because he is of the Jewish faith, any more than we should admit a man because he was a Polish Catholic, or a Lithuanian Protestant.

There is another important point with regard to the alleged difficulty of discriminating between desirables and undesirables. I have watched this matter very closely, and I have come to the conclusion that it is very largely a fiction. I went down to the ships and saw the transmigrants separated from the immigrants, and a sample medical examination was taken, and no difficulty was experienced. No one could conduct this duty with more sympathy than Mr. Evan the inspector in charge, who has been at great trouble to learn Russian and Yiddish, and who performed his duty with tact and intelligence, and I say in reply to the charges made last year that these people would be treated with brutality by the officials of the British Government, that such charges are calumnious. I think if hon. Members opposite could have seen these aliens they would have been surprised. We found some of them suffering from loathsome and unmentionable diseases, the importation of which into this country might and does lead to very serious results, and we found most of them verminous. I do not say persons should be excluded from this country because they are verminous, but I do say that if we make it known that people in that condition will not be allowed into this country they will be purified and cleansed before they are allowed to start.

I am afraid I have detained the House for a long time, and I will conclude my remarks by saying that I am quite unable to understand what the attitude of the Party opposite as a Party will be upon this Bill. It is well represented by the condition of the benches opposite. I am indeed sorry that I have bored the Front Bench opposite so that they have had to leave the House in sheer despair, but perhaps I may hope that the weight of my argument has been too much for them. I want to know what the position of the Party opposite is? Their leaders have not always been blind to the great disadvantage of the flow of alien immigration. Just let me quote to the House the words of one great statesman of the Party opposite, Lord Rosebery, who in 1904 said— I take it if there is one certainty in the world it is this, that with the closing of the confines of States to the destitute emigrants of other countries there is no country in the world which will not be compelled to consider and reconsider its position with regard to pauper immigration, unless it wishes permanently to degrade the status and condition of its own workpeople. Quite recently the Leader of the Opposition at Limehouse begged his hearers not to believe that he was indifferent to the inconvenience and disadvantage incident to the settlement of a large school of persons accustomed to a low standard of life and surroundings. I am glad from so influential a source to welcome even the most tentative admission that evils do exist, and that some remedies are necessary. On the other hand, it is true that the right hon. Member for East Fife has expressed himself as entirely and utterly opposed to legislation of this kind. I believe he is in favour of the deportation of criminals that have been convicted in this country, but, broadly speaking, he is absolutely opposed to this kind of legislation. But with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, for whose profound knowledge and political acumen I have the greatest admiration, I do not think that in this matter his opinion is perhaps so well worth having as that of the hon. Member for Poplar, whose constituency, if not immediately affected by alien immigration, is still beginning to feel the pressure, and for the purposes of this question, at all events, is in closer touch with this problem than the constituency of East Fife, which may be considered as somewhat remote. But the hon. Member for Poplar speaking in 1903 in this House, said that he cordially desired legislation against unlimited immigration of destitute aliens, and he strongly objected to the refuse of Europe being dumped down on these shores. There are other Gentlemen opposite who have expressed very strong views on this question. There is the Member for South Wolver hampton, who has studied the subject and is an authority upon it. He said in East London, in 1902, that in his opinion there was every reason to keep these people out, and none for allowing them to come in. He desired to have a notice posted up, stating that "No rubbish to be shot here." These forcibly expressed views are those I hold, and also those held by Gentlemen who are in sympathy with me and who sit on these benches. We do not desire to exclude from this country any man who can maintain himself in circumstances of decency; the skilled artisan will always be welcomed here; we have no desire to rob the country of its ancient reputation for hospitality to foreigners, but we believe that in view of the social problems which confront us and in view of the difficulty of great masses of our own people to find employment, house- room, and even food, there is no place on the face of the earth so little suited as our great industrial centres to receive great accretions of unskilled labourers from abroad. We hold that immigrants coming here should be submitted to the same process of selection as they have to submit to in other countries, and that the people sent here from abroad should be the best and not the worst of the population. We desire to rid our gaols of foreign criminals and our streets of foreign prostitutes and souteneurs, but, above all, we desire to save our own poor and working classes from an influence which must tend to make their lives more painful and more difficult, and deprive them of what we believe to be the most elementary of all their rights, namely, the opportunity of earning a living in their own land. I shall vote with confidence against this Amendment, and I thank the Government with all my heart for having introduced the Bill.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL (Yorkshire, Cleveland)

Many hon. Members opposite thought that there was an inconsistency in those who had actively opposed the introduction of Chinese labour into South Africa opposing also a Bill such as this. But if we are inconsistent, hon. Members opposite are equally inconsistent. If they were against the alien in London, why were they not against the alien in South Africa? But for my part I neither plead guilty to inconsistency nor accuse others of it. The cases are not parallel. The Chinese cannot be absorbed into the population, and the industrial conditions in South Africa are very different from the industrial conditions of this country. I am not sure that we shall all be so convinced by the facts and figures given by the last speaker as to reject the figures given in the Census or the facts brought out by the special inquiry of the Board of Trade. The hon. Member told us, for instance, that in 1903 the Jewish Board of Guardians had 17,000 cases of relief before them, and in 1904 they had 23,000, and he said those figures showed there was an immense increase of the alien population. But he omitted to point out that the year 1904 was one of great trade depression, and surely it cannot be seriously contended that an increase of relief must be taken as an increase of population. In another part of his speech the hon. Gentleman referred to the numbers of aliens who had been refused a passage from this country, and wished the House to believe that these persons were left here to be absorbed in the population of this country. He told the House that 814 aliens in 1903 were refused a passage from England to the United States on the ground of probable rejections by the United States, and that in 1904 the number was 1,721.! But the Report of the Board of Trade stated— A special inquiry was made in 1904 with a view to ascertaining as far as possible what becomes of the aliens sent to London, and the evidence went to show that the great majority of these people eventually succeed in reaching their destination, sometimes after waiting for a time in London, but frequently without doing so. In spite of their restrictive laws, laws immigration in the United States has absolutely doubled within the last four years, and has now reached 800,000 persons a year, whilst a further 90,000 persons emigrate annually to the Argentine.

Hon. Members object to immigration for three reasons. They say that immigrants become a public charge upon this country, that they increase disease, pauperism, and crime; they next say that they come over in great numbers and oust the native workmen from employment as well as lower the wages; and in the third place they say that as citizens the aliens are objectionable because they overcrowd the cities, they are given to insanitary habits, and they deteriorate the national standard of life. If all that were true their conclusion would be irresistible. I am not opposed to the regulation of immigration in all cases on grounds of principle. The Liberals of forty or fifty years ago would probably have adopted the laissez faire view, although, indeed, there is no word on the subject, so far as I am aware, in the utterances of the leading exponents of that school, of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Bentham, Cobden, or Bright. But if that had been the earlier view of Liberals, it would seldom be advanced now. In the cases of Australia and New Zealand there has been a considerable immigration of Chinese, and it has been said that these people could not be assimilated with the white population and that if this immigration is not checked it will make the population of the country more Mongolian than Anglo-Saxon. We cannot blame the Australasians for their measures of restriction. Then as regards the diseased, the criminal, and the paupers, a nation cannot reasonably be called upon to pay the cost of hospitals, workhouses, and gaols for its neighbours to fill; to maintain the unfit which its neighbours have evolved, or to feed the parasites which its neighbours have bred. But are these the true facts of the case? Take the paupers for instance. I asked the President of the Local Government Board for the percentages of the native and alien classes of pauperism. The answer was that amongst the alien population six per thousand, and amongst the native population twenty - four per thousand were paupers on a given day, or four times as many among the native as among the alien population. According to last year's Report on Emigration and Immigration, the total number of aliens relieved represented 0.22 per cent, of the total number of paupers relieved. The total amount spent in England and Wales in Poor Law relief is £13,000,000 a year so that 0 22 per cent. represents. £28,000 a year as the cost of alien paupers to this country as compared with the balance of £ 13,000,000 on the native population. Then take the question of insanity. The Commission reported that in London the insane amongst the aliens were 4–l per thousand, as-against 4.6 per thousand amongst the native population. Take again the question of disease, as to which there is-certainly much contradictory evidence. But this is from the Report of the Royal Commission— Dr. Williams is appointed by the Corporation of the City of London and discharges the duties of meeting the vessels and dealing with passengers suffering from infectious diseases. Answering a question as to the health of the immigrants, on arrival in the Port of London, Dr. Williams said:—As to their health, I should say it was fairly good. The number of cases of infectious diseases introduced that I have detected amongst these people has not been numerous, speaking as a whole. I cannot say that much infectious disease has come into the country among these people.' This view was strongly supported by the evidence of Mr. Herman Landau, the president of the Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter, who stated that during the last six years only one case of sickness had occurred amongst the many thousands of immigrants who had been received in the Shelter. This statement was so remarkable that we sought for, and obtained, corroboration of it.

Mr. Hawkey

the Customs officer, who boards the ships when they leave the Continent, and comes over in them to this country, says— It has very seldom occurred that I have known a case of illness. It is on the point of crime that the indictment against the aliens is best founded. There is, unquestionably, a considerably larger proportion of crime amongst the aliens than amongst the rest of the population. Indeed, the proportion has risen so high that now no fewer than 15 per thousand of the alien population are criminals. But I ask the House to add together these elements, with regard to which it is possible to get exact statistics, and see what proportion they bear to the whole. Of paupers -there were six per thousand on a given day; according to Mr. Charles Booth, whose authority on the question of Poor Law relief will not be disputed. If you double the rate of pauperism for a given day you get the figure for the whole year. Therefore, taking twelve paupers, four insane, and fifteen criminals, you have thirty-one per thousand immigrants who, taking one year with another, become a charge on public funds, and 969 per thousand who do not. My hon. friend the Member for the Elland Division was challenged when he said it would be taking a high figure to say that four per cent, of the aliens were undesirable; but according to the official figures under the heads of pauperism, insanity, and crime, the real figure would be slightly over three per cent. For disease it is impossible to get exact figures. As to these thirty-one per thousand, I say with all heartiness, exclude them if you can. I would warmly welcome any measure which would achieve that end. But these people are not labelled; they do not come to the ports bearing across their chests the legend, "I am a prospec- tive pauper," and so forth. How can you possibly pick out the men who will become criminals, paupers, or lunatics? Take the criminals. The hon. Member for Stepney said that the difficulty of detecting these people was entirely fictitious. Can he detect criminals when he sees them? The are the class against whom the case is strongest, but in regard to whom this Bill will most completely break down. ["No."] We are all in favour of the expulsion clauses, and have been from the beginning. The hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (the Member for Sheffield) says there will be no difficulty. He has had some experience of criminal investigations, but his authority cannot be set up against that of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Royal Commission. Sir Kenelm Digby said emphatically that it would be absolutely impossible to detect the criminals at the docks; Sir A. de Rutzen, chief Metropolitan magistrate. said the same; Sir E Bradford, ex-Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, gave similar evidence in the most emphatic terms; and Mr. Henry, the present Chief Commissioner, also gave evidence to this effect.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

I beg the hon. Member's pardon, but that provision is not in the Bill now; he is discussing the measure of last year.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

I am afraid that that had escaped my notice, but doubtless Amendments will be moved in Committee with a view to excluding criminals, if possible. However I need not pursue the point, as there is agreement on both sides. Hon. Members who bitterly regret they did not carry the Bill of last year now admit that certain of our arguments against the measure were well founded. But in case this matter does come up in Committee I should like to state one fact of interest and importance in this connection. In the United States, where they have most complete and elaborate machinery for excluding undesirable aliens, during the last five years they have rejected 106 aliens on the ground that they were criminals—or twenty a year—but at the end of the five years they had in their gaols and reformatories 9,825 aliens. Hon. Members now admit that they cannot detect the criminal when he lands, but they say they will be able easily to detect the prospective pauper. There is no machinery yet invented which can reveal a man's character and capacity. It is absolutely impossible to say whether a man who comes over here with nothing in his pocket is not destined to rise to quite distinguished heights. But even if you do detect at the eight ports your thirty-one undesirables among the thousand immigrants and send them back, what will happen? If they wish to come to this country they will inevitably embark on a cattle boat or some other ship going to some other port. It is as though you tried to collect Customs duties by setting up Customs I machinery at eight ports while allowing free admission at all others. The right policy with regard to undesirable aliens is the policy of expulsion. So far this Bill will undoubtedly do good, and if the Government would propose the expulsion clauses alone I think we would all give the Bill our benediction and use our best efforts to secure its passage.

Then with regard to employment. The hop. Member for Stepney laid great stress on the evil done by immigration by causing unemployment among English working men. That is one of the chief arguments in support of the Bill. Many people seem to think that any addition to the population must mean an increase in the number of the unemployed. They say that we have a certain number of unemployed, that there is not enough work to go round, and that if, by immigration or any other cause, so many thousand are added to the population it must mean the addition of so many thousands to the ranks of the unemployed. That theory is based upon a complete fallacy. No economist would accept such a doctrine for a single moment. Forty years ago when our population was 30,003,000 we had a certain ratio of unemployed; we have about the same ratio of unemployed now when the population is 12,000,030 greater. According to the theory often advanced the whole of those 12,000,000 ought to be swelling the ranks of the unemployed a reductio ad absurdum which perhaps leaves nothing more to be said. On this point we have the specific declaration by the Royal Commission—the paragraph has already been read—that it has not been proved that there is any displacement of skilled English labour. On the other hand they say— The development of the three main industries—tailoring, cabinet-making and shoemaking—in which the aliens engage, has undoubtedly been beneficial in various ways; it has increased the demand for, and the manufacture of, not only goods made in this country (which were formerly imported from abroad), but of the materials used in them, thus indirectly giving employment to native workers. So that so far from displacing skilled workers alien immigration has given more employment by introducing new trades. On the question of wages, the Board of Trade presented to the Royal Commission a most interesting Return showing the changes in wages in certain trades during the ten years 1893–1902.

MAJOR EVANS GORDON

Is that Return No. 15?

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

It is in the Appendix, Return No. 16, and those which follow. Take cabinet-making and the boot and shoe trade. Take London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Leads, where aliens chiefly go. With one small and temporary exception, in those places all the changes in the wages were increases—in those trades in which aliens were chiefly engaged in the ten years from 1893 to 1902. In face of these figures, how is it possible to declare that the effect of alien immigration has been to lower the rate of wages in those places? It has caused a large development in our export trade. In the tailoring trade our exports for apparel and slops increased by £1,300,000, or nearly 30 per cent. in ten years.

On the score of overcrowding the case against the aliens is strong. White-chapel and St. Georges in the East have a percentage of over 50 par cent, of the people overcrowded, but in other districts where there are very few or no aliens like St. George's, Westminster, St. Saviours, Waterloo, Christ Church, Mary lebone, there is over 50 per cent, of overcrowding, and all these cases can and ought to be dealt with in the same fashion by a rigorous enforcement of the housing law, just as sweating can be dealt with by a proper adjustment of the industrial law.

I come lastly to the indictment that these people, who are mostly Jews from Russia, Poland, and Roumania, are bad citizens, and that this Bill should be passed if only in order to harry the immigrant and deter him from coming here. There is nothing harder than to assess the virtues of a race. Fifty years ago the Japanese were regarded as barbarians of a rather absurd type, but to-day the whole world stands in admiration of their efficiency and bows in reverence before their heroism. It is universally agreed that the Jewish race are a sober, industrious, domesticated, quick-witted people and easily assimilated; and, although many of the Jewish Reservists in Russia and Poland are refusing to fight in the Far East, it may interest the House to know that in the South African War the Jewish population of England lost a larger proportion of their number in the field than the rest of the English nation. A race which has given to Europe in modern times many of its greatest philosophers, statesmen, and scientists, poets, artists, and dramatists; a race which all through the dark ages kept alight the torch of learning, and from whose loins have sprung all the religions of the Western world—that race is not to be despised. Undoubtedly these immigrants have their faults, but if you oppress a people long enough and crush them deep enough, you are bound to give rise to certain vices and defects, and they will be found somewhat lacking in nobility of character. But they have a capacity for better things which soon shows itself, and if you give to these broken plants a little soil and water they will soon revive and they will not be the least useful and beautiful in your garden. I wonder what Disraeli would have thought of this Bill. On April 19th you covered his statue with flowers, but the day before that you introduced a Bill which might exclude from this country such families as his. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No, no! "] Indeed, if they were destitute and could not prove that they were able to earn their own living they would be excluded. A progenitor of Lord Beacons-field was an alien, and there may have been many men who have risen to dis- tinction whose fathers were destitute-when they arrived in this country.

If the argument of hon. Members opposite with regard to employment and with regard to these aliens being bad citizens is true, then this Bill is totally inadequate. What difference will the rejection of one or three per cent, of undesirables make to your economic problems or to the question of citizenship? If the argument is untrue, then your Bill is an evil Bill, and you have no right to reject men who are doing you no harm, merely because they are poor. This Bill is too small to satisfy the expectations it has aroused, and it is much too large for justice. The agitation outside London is an artificial agitation designed solely for political purposes. Hon. Members opposite go down to villages which have never seen an alien and where they do not know whether he is fish flesh, or good red herring. Politically speaking, he is a good red herring. Because the foreigner is unpopular, hon. Members opposite endeavour to play upon the anti - foreign feeling which always exists, and which has existed ever since the reign of Edward III., when a London mob slaughtered all the Flemings in Southwark who could not pronounce the words "bread and cheese." Many Acts such as this have been placed upon the Statute-book, but soon the nation has grown ashamed of them and one alter another they have been swept away. The hon. Member for Stepney asked what was our policy, and what was the view of the Liberal Party? I am not authorised to speak for anyone but myself, but I think the view entertained widely upon these benches is that we should all be prepared to exclude the criminals, paupers, and diseased if possible, but even if we pass this Bill on that head we think it is impracticable. We are in favour of a measure of expulsion for dealing with these classes. I can imagine a tide of immigration so vast that it cannot be absorbed by the rest of the population and then you might have to introduce more restrictive measures, but that time has not yet come; job have no right to shut out oppressed people merely because they are poor. It is the grossest hypocrisy to pass resolutions of sympathy with the victims of misgovernment in Russia and when they fly to us for refuge to shut the door in their faces. If this Bill is passed it will be found that its administration will be beset with innumerable difficulties and it will soon become a dead letter. All the appeals to insular prejudice made by hon. Members opposite, all the gross misrepresentations with regard to the number of immigrants, and all the desperate attempts to enlist racial intolerance to the support of a declining Government will not overcome the attachment of this country to its old traditions of hospitality, and will not reconcile it to so grave a tampering with liberty.

MR. H. LAWSON

It is somewhat fortunate that, as this is the first time I have addressed the House on a Government measure since my return for Mile End, to know that I speak, not only in the name of the majority, but of the whole of the constituency which has sent me back here after many years. It is instructive to me to learn that my opponent at that election, together with every other candidate aid Member for East London on the Radical side, with the exception of one, have joined in a piteous appeal to the Leader of the Opposition to withdraw official sanction from the opposition to this measure. I shall, at any rate, have the satisfaction of knowing that in voting in favour of this Bill I shall go into the lobby with the whole body of East-End Members, Radical as well as Unionist. Whether the leaders of the Opposition will go into the same lobby I do not know, but as in this case the expediencies of electioneering seem to coincide with the dictates of justice, perhaps we may hope that their co-operation will also be secured. Toe hon. Member for Cleveland made a curious slip when he tried to score a point about Chinese labour. He claimed that the Radical Party were opposed to the immigration of the unfit because they were opposed to the immigration of Chinese in South Africa, but the hon. Gentleman did not state that if there were no Aliens Bill on the Statute-book there was nothing to prevent the importation of Chinese labour into this country.

MAJOR SEELY (Isle of Wight)

Yes, there is.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

This Bill will not prevent it.

MR. H. LAWSON

Yes, it would, under the first clause. I want to grapple with an argument which, I think, is unworthy of (he distinction of he right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean. He stated that the agitation in favour of this measure is based upon that damnable heritage from the Middle Ages—the spirit of Jew hating and Jew bailing, which we call Anti-Semitism. So far as I am concerned, being half a Jew myself, I can take no part in such a movement, nor can I vote in favour of a Bill founded on such obsolete and infamous passions. Happily, there has been no anti-Semitic feeling in this country. But if you want to create it, then you only need to burden the Jewish community with the scandal and odium attaching to the criminal. They have to bear, in the eyes of public opinion, all the reproaches which proceed with an unanimous voice from every bench of magistrates and every Court of justice. I was very much struck by the remark made at the Surrey Sessions by the Judge, who endorsed an observation of counsel that it was a great pity Members of Parliament could not spare the time to listen to cases of alien criminals. Unfortunately the alien criminals in this case belong to the Jewish community.

MR. STUART SAMUEL (Tower Hamlets, Whitechapel)

A large majority of the criminals have been shown in the evidence before the Commission to be Americans.

MR. H. LAWSON

As a matter of fact one cannot argue these points at the present moment because the figures are not available as to religion. But there is no question that a great number of those now brought before the Courts of justice in London belong to the Jewish community, are unworthy members of that community, and create an evil which this Bill would do much to prevent. Cases that occur day by day and are reported are sufficient proof—and that is just because they are receiving the black sheep of their own community of which they are themselves rightly ashamed—and it is necessary in their own interest to do something to prevent the recurrent scandals which now occur. And, after all, if you want to see Anti-Semitic feeling it is not on these benches you find it. Those who read the Radical and Socialistic Press of London see more denunciation of Jews than you do in the organs that express the views of hon. Members on this side of the House. The Socialistic Press has often denounced the Jewish capitalists here and elsewhere as Jews. Since I have been in this House I have heard debates on South African affairs, and more than one denunciation of German Jews whose principal offence seemed to be that they belonged to the Jewish community—[Cries of "No"]—because, otherwise, what was the point of the declaration of their religion [Cries of "Hear, hear!"] except to excite prejudice? There is no question that those who have the longest heads and those who have most at heart the interest of English Jews are not opposed to this Bill, and in fact are anxious to see this stain removed from the fair fame of those for whom they care so much.

I do not think it is necessary to point out that apart from the question of criminals, Jews suffer from an invasion of people of their own faith whom they do not want to see here and who are an unnecessary burden. Mr. Joseph, who gave evidence before the Royal Commission, said there are thousands of immigrants who cannot be regarded as refugees, who are chronic paupers, and who come from Russia or Poland in the hope of getting something from the Russo-Polish fund of which they have heard such exaggerated accounts. That is one of the features most noticeable in this recent incursion of Jewish refugees. There have been more beggars in the streets, and more beggars, unfortunately, among children in the streets, and the reason is that you are getting the less fit and capable of these people. That is what we notice in the doctrinaire protests raised against this Bill. There is a want, on the other side, I fear, of the sense of historic perspective. They still seem to think that we are getting the ener- getic, the able, and the competent aliens. That was the fact in the past. Whether they were Walloons or Huguenots or Jews, we had formerly coming into this country those who were most likely to contribute to its prosperity. But now the exact opposite is the case. Now we are getting the untransportable—those who cannot get into America, and whom the shipping companies will not take to America. I have in my hand the last report of the North German Steamship Company, and it states that out of a total of 121,000 persons who were would be emigrants from Russia, Germany, and Austria, the company themselves rejected, at the frontier control stations as medically unfit, 6,000 for various reasons, and that 2,164 were afterwards refused a passage at Bremen and Hamburg by the authorities there and the American Consul. In spite of these precautions eighty-nine reached the United States, whence they were promptly deported. That shows the class of people who are rejected by the steamship companies for deportation to the United States. One of the lion. Gentlemen who spoke this afternoon admitted that the regulations in America might have a deterrent effect in preventing undesirable aliens from going there, but he put it much too low. These regulations have a deterrent effect. That is the most important aspect of the whole matter. They exclude a great proportion. The figures with respect to rejections in America count for very little. It is not the number rejected, but the number held back, which must really be taken into account in this matter. Unfortunately, as we know, the greater number of those who are rejected in America come back here. I have got a case in point where there was a large number of aliens on board the liner "Carpathia "who were refused admission at New York. An attempt was made to land them at Fiume, but the Italian authorities objected to allow this, and these people came to England. Time after time the same thing occurs, and therefore you have this continual immigration of the unfit, and I think the Jewish community has great reason to complain of the undue burden cast upon their charitable funds.

The hon. Member for one of the Divisions of Yorkshire spoke of the figures of pauperism making out no case for the Bill.,The hon. Member knows that a great number of people rely on the un-illimitable generosity of men of their own kith and kin. The undesirable aliens come here as paupers, and it is merely on account of private charity that the rates are not more grievous. What applies to want of fitness or disease applies also to those who come here without means. A great number are reported to have practically no money at all. Five roubles, or 12s., appears to be the largest sum that any of the alien immigrants of this class ever bring into England, and the possessors of such a sum are looked upon as real capitalists. The case in regard to immigration in this country is summed up by the words used by the German official at the ports of embarkation: "Utterly destitute and friendless who can just afford a ticket to Grimsby go to England." I think I have said enough as to the character of the immigrants. The truth is that we get the floating scum—those who would go anywhere and do anybody and those who are a burden to their own community, if not a burden to the public at large. These are the people who bring scandal on themselves and on those with whom they are associated.

It has been said constantly that the question is a small one. That may be so in area, but the intensity makes the grievance the greater. The right hon. Baronet said the figures made out no case for the Bill, but he forgot the figures of crime and immorality. He passed them by as of no account, and dealt solely with the figures furnished by the Board of Trade as to transmigration. We can place no reliance on the figures of the Census, and as little reliance on the figures of the Board of Trade. We have far stronger evidence as to the displacement of population going on in the East End, and in the Borough of Stepney in particular. The right hon. Baronet will admit that there is no better authority than Mr. Charles Booth, who went into the figures. He says— It has been like the slow rising of a flood. Street after street is occupied. Family follows family. I have taken the trouble to get information from the authorities of the Borough of Stepney. The officials there stated before the Royal Commission that over a hundred streets had gone into the possession of foreigners in recent years. These same officials state that the process is continuous. It is all very well for us to dogmatise about the displacement of population and the substitution of industries. An hon. Gentleman has spoken of new industries brought in by immigrants, but we know very well in the East End what that means. In the East End of London at the present time most of the streets are held on leases from individuals and corporations by single owners, and when these leases are assigned the whole of the people are turned out of their houses and the rents raised at least 50 per cent. So that none of those who were former inhabitants are able to remain. Practically a clean sweep is made. Those driven out are compelled to find shelter in new patches of blue and dark blue, as portrayed in Mr. Booth's maps, and they swell the area of poverty. It is those who are forced out of Stepney and the eastern districts that are creating the new cities of casual labour which are being reared around us and of which we hear so much in connection with the strike that is going on against the school rate to day. It is stated that there has been recently a falling-off in rents of about 10 per cent, in the East End. Everybody knows that in the Borough of Stepney recently they rose three times as much as in any other part of London. Ten per cent., even if that is the true proportion, is a very small one, but that is not borne out by the statement of the borough officials. In the last report of the medical officer of health it is stated that the number of inhabited houses has diminished and that there is an increase in the population which tends to cause overcrowding. High rents cause overcrowding and overcrowding causes high rents. They act and react. That is the report for 1903, which is the last one available. Those who are on the spot, the municipal officers, say that the process of displacement is still going on, and that street after street is being denuded of its native population and filled up by those who are to all effects and purposes destitute persons, likely to lower the standard of living and to increase the distress of the East End.

It has been suggested that all this could be remedied if the local officers would pay more attention to their duties. Well, that is a most unmerited stigma on the public officers of health in East London. The magistrates who gave evidence before the Royal Commission said that the Public Health Acts are well carried out in East London, and do not believe that there is in any part of the United Kingdom a greater effort to enforce the sanitary laws, in spite of great obstruction, than in the Borough of Stepney. But hon. Gentlemen said it was not the way to deal with sweating and overcrowding to pass a Bill excluding aliens. They said, "What you must do is to amend the factory laws." That is all very well, but if they refer to the suggested amendments to the factory laws it will be seen that these would involve a far greater interference with individual liberty than this House is ever likely to tolerate, at any rate for many years to come. If they wish to do away with sweating in the East End they must have a national minimum of wages. If they are ready to fix a minimum standard of wages it might be possible in the long run to do away with sweating, though I disagree, but without that the} cannot touch it except by doing away with unrestricted immigration. The Rector of Spitalfields says that the aliens who come to this country are ready-made victims of sweating, and it is stated that many of the male alien immigrants with their families cannot earn more than 7s. a week. How is it possible, unless we fix a minimum wage, to do away with such a patent degradation of the standard of life and comfort among the working population in London? This is not an extreme Bill. The Government has had to steer carefully between the Scylla of exaggeration and the Charybdis of false sentiment, and they have produced a fair and workable measure. Hon. Members had spoken as if this were a Bill to put a stop to immigration. Not at all. It only deals with the incapable arid unfit. The present situation is that we are sending out the fit and the strong and taking in the incapable and the helpless. If hon. Members studied the figures of immigration into Canada, they would find that the very flower of our working class was being sent out there, and in return we are getting those whom it is impossible to induce the United States to accept. And who are left here? The derelicts of Europe. It is no argument to say that this state of things has been evolved by the tyranny of foreign Governments. I do not think that we shall make that tyranny any less by showing that their victims can always come here and find a refuge. As to this country being an asylum for political offenders, this Bill will not affect one of those who have found refuge here in the past. The severe restrictions of the United States have never shut out a single Irish Fenian no matter how grave the charges against him. This Bill will not close the door upon the successors of Mazzini and Kossuth. The Home Secretary has put in a proviso to admit those who-are fleeing from political persecution, and I hope that will also be extended to those who suffer from religious persecution. Then, I think, the whole basis of this argument, which is founded on false sentiment, will be swept away. One feels that this unrestricted flow will be likely to weaken and vitiate the whole stream of our national life. We talk of "man-power," but the-man-power behind the Empire is not likely to be improved by the introduction of new diseases and the constant influx of people dumped down on this country because no other country will take-them. This Bill is not only due, but in the view of those I speak for, is already overdue, and I think it is time that we cried "Halt" to what is becoming a backward march to physical degeneration.I hope the House will pass, by a very large majority, the Second Reading of what is a fair, workable, and practical measure.

MR. ASQUITH (Fifeshire, E.)

I wish to explain my own view—a view which I have seen no occasion to modify, when I spoke on the Bill last year. I said then, and I repeat now, that I am not one of those who do not think there is no occasion for a change in the law. I pointed out, what is indeed proved by the Report of the Royal Commission, that there is undoubtedly an excessive percentage of crime among the immigrant alien population in this country as compared with the indigenous population. I think one cannot ignore the presentments of juries and the declarations of Judges, repeated from time to time, to the effect that prisoners coming into this country, relying on the privilege of hospitality, cannot complain, when they have abused that hospitality by the infringement of our criminal laws, if we cease to extend it to them any longer and send them back to their own country. In so far as this Bill either gives power, after judicial inquiry, to the Home Secretary to expel persons who have been convicted of crimes against our laws, or in SD far as it enables him, again subject to proper appeal, to prohibit the introduction into this country of persons who have been convicted in their own native land of crimes which, according to our system of law, are extraditable offences—in so far as the Bill proposes to carry out these two objects, not only will it not receive my opposition but it will meet with my hearty support, offered, of course, I need not add, in that critical temper in which one ought to approach the precise form of legislation in which a problem of this character ought to be placed on the Statute-book. In so far as that part of the Bill is concerned I have nothing more to say.

Then we come to the other provisions of the Bill. And here I must say that comparing it with the measure of last year, I can hardly remember a case in which the opposition to it, so much criticised at the time, has been more completely justified. What were the main grounds of that opposition? I have been refreshing my memory as to what was said at the Second Reading of the Bill last year, and the position which some of us took up. So far as I was concerned, my main grounds of objection were two. In the first place I strongly objected to the provision which enabled the Local Government Board to set up a number of prohibited areas from which aliens, whatever their character, were to be excluded. That provision has been dropped; it does not appear in the present Bill. It was absolutely indefensible and unworkable. The second main ground for criticism which I mentioned last year was that behind it there was what I thought are almost revolutionary proposal. It vested in the Home Secretary executive power, by his own act, without the protection of any preliminary judicial investigation, without any regard to any law of evidence, which is the safeguard of our liberties, to refuse admission to alien immigrants and to expel them from this country. I point out that that provision is substantially dropped out of the measure now before the House. And what remains? There does remain a feature in this Bill which I regard as very objectionable, and which we shall do our very best to remove. It is the first provision of the third Sub-section of Section 1, which enables the Home Secretary or the immigration officer to refuse admission to an immigrant who "cannot show that he has in his possession, or is in a position to obtain, the means of decently supporting himself and his dependents." I agree with the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean that when you come to analyse the figures, the plea of urgency—if ever there was urgency for a measure of this kind—is less intense now than it was a few years ago. So far as I can make out, after careful investigation, the notion that there is anything in the nature of a steady and increasing influx of more or less destitute immigrants who are competing in the labour market with the British working man and ousting him from employment is one which does not stand the test of investigation. That there are special areas which suffe inconvenience I am not prepared to deny; but I am dealing with the broad general proposition, and I do not think, if you take the country a? a whole, and the statistics as a whole, that any such case as that can be made out. That being so, it appears to me that this provision which enables an immigration offers to exclude an alien on the ground of poverty, and poverty alone, is both objectionable in principle, and will be found unworkable in practice. It is objectionable in principle because some of the best strains in our population were founded in days gone by by persons who could not have stood such a test. Mere poverty—it may be the result of persecution—in a person who comes to this country, of good character and prepared to contribute his stock of ability or intelligence to productive employment here, ought not to be a barrier to his coming. How are you to ascertain whether a man has in his possession, or is in a position to obtain, the means of supporting himself? The test can be evaded in a hundred ways, and will be evaded; and I do not believe, however skilful and energetic your immigration officer may be, that you will find that a test of this sort can be effectually applied, or that it will exclude any appreciable number of alien immigrants.

The hon. Member for Forest of Dean has called attention to the importance of preserving the right or privilege of asylum in this country, not only for the victims of political but of religious persecution also. I gather that the Government itself recognises the importance of this, but the words they have chosen seem to me totally inadequate, and would really mean the exclusion of a large number of refugees. Take those who have arrived during the last twelve months from Russia. I do not suppose that one in ten could show that they were seeking admission solely for the purpose of avoiding persecution. We want words that are far wider and more elastic if we are to carry out the common object of us all—which is that these unfortunate persons, victims of social and political prejudices, shall in the future, as in the past, receive free admission to our shores.

I come next to a provision which is a very substantial improvement upon the Bill of last year—that provision whish enables an appeal from the Immigration Office to what is called the Immigration Board. But I am not at all satisfied with the composition and qualifications of this board, and I hope that a little more attention will be given to its constitution. One other point, and it is a very important one, is that of definition of the alien that is to be excluded by Clause 8. It is absolutely essential that provision shall be made for persons who make this country a temporary residence before proceeding to their ultimate destination. I think the word "immediately" ought to be struck out of the clause. In connection with this point, I may perhaps be allowed to relate a personal experience. Two months ago I was taken to the Jewish shelter in White chapel, where,, for months past, a benevolent body of gentlemen have been devoting their energies to dealing with the Jewish, refugees pouring into this country from Russia. I saw there three or four hundred of these men, and, if one might judge from their appearance and conversation, they were not in any sense undesirable aliens. All of them, or nine out of every ten, had come here not as permanent settlers, but on their way to other countries. The great bulk were drafted to Argentina or Canada where they would find remunerative employment and engage in agriculture. On the other hand, this is a. process which takes time. Many of them had been here two, three, or four months, but they had been perfectly well looked after and every possible provision was being made for their speedy movement to their ultimate destination. Certainly they would have been unable to bring; themselves within the definition of this clause. And it is absolutely essential that provision should be made for persons of this class.

I am strongly of opinion that the expectations entertained bv the Government, that if the Bill is carried into law it will effect important and drastic changes, are not founded upon probability, and I believe that the Bill when it comes to be put into practical operation will turn out, if not a dead letter, to have very little practical effect. In this belief I think I am justified by the experience of other countries. But,, so far as I am concerned, I am not prepared to refuse it a Second Reading,, although when it gets into Committee we shall press these points, which we consider of supreme and vital importance,, with all the energy at our disposal.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

The right hon. Gentleman has told the House he is not opposed to any legislation on this subject. I gathered from his speech of last year and his speech to-night, that he ii practically in favour of the second part of the Bill; that is to say, there is very little difference of opinion with regard to the power of expulsion which we seek with regard to criminal or undesirable aliens. The right] hon. Gentleman asks me Questions with regard to the composition of the examining board at the ports. I entirely agree that there should be a magistrate always on that board, and it is the intention of the Government to make it so. We hope, and have reason to believe, that we shall receive considerable assistance from the Jewish. Board of Guardians. We fully recognise the work they do for these aliens, and we are anxious to get their assistance and let them share in carrying out the regulations which will particularly affect their co-religionists. The Government feel that a magistrate should be brought in, as the matter could not be left to a Court of summary jurisdiction since we could not have a Court of summary jurisdiction always sitting. We hope to secure a magistrate on each occasion the board sits, and I am prepared to make it compulsory that a magistrate should sit on the board. We hope also to get the assistance of those who are accustomed to Poor Law administration.

The right hon. Gentleman has made an appeal to me on behalf of one class, namely, the immigrant who comes here in transit and who waits here until he is in a position to go to his future home. It looks as if the right hon. Gentleman wished to make the alien's time here as pleasant as possible—in fact that we ought to welcome him, that we should rather attract this kind of person. We have a great many transmigrants who come here and stay here, it may be for months, sometimes as long as a year or two years, and during the whole of that time they are obtaining benefits, it may be, from our hospitals and from our Poor Law. After they have obtained, by working at sweated wages, the necessary amount of money they then proceed to America. That class of man is not to be encouraged, because he practically comes here to work off his own "undesirability." That is perfectly true, and the alien could not go on in many cases until he had done that. He comes here and cures his diseases at the expanse of our hospitals, or he is relieved by the Poor Law guardians, or by the Jewish Board of Guardians, and ho receives a good deal of money and a good deal of attention from them, and in that way make himself a desirable alien, and so is accepted by the shipping companies. I think we must be very careful how far we allow men to work off their disqualifications in this country.

I turn to the point the right hon. Gentleman brought to my notice when he first addressed the House. He called into question certain figures which I had given in my speech on the First Reading of this Bill to show the necessity for it, and as showing that there was a greater need for it this year than last. I told the right hon. Gentleman that I had taken those figures from the monthly Returns of Alien Immigration. I hold in my hand that particular Return, and I find that the figures I gave are correct. According to that Return 195,000 was the total number of aliens who arrived in this country. From that number I took off 99,000 for the aliens who were en route, and from the balance I took off the number who were sailors, which reduced the figure which the right hon. Gentleman quoted to 82,000. I further said some further deduction must be made for those who went out of this country in driblets, but that I thought that the greater portion of those 82,000 did remain in this country. These figures are the same as those which appear in the Board of Trade Returns for the year. I had not seen the Board of Trade Return as I explained when I gave them; I gave them from the Alien Return.

MR. STUART SAMUEL

Before he leaves that point might I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he ha3 deducted the number of aliens who have emigrated from this country.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

Yes, as be hon. Member will see if he looks at page 39 of the Return, if he first makes a deduction of the trans migrants and then of the sailors. Then there must be deducted a further 7,000, because the Board of Trade officers say that the officers of Customs have ascertained that 7,000 or so have gone to other countries, but still there remain 75,000 as compared with 59,000 in 1903, and 58,000 in 1902.

MR. STUART SAMUEL

But the right hon. Gentleman has not taken off the number of aliens who have left this country again.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

I am quite aware of the other contention that ha? been made, and the argument which the right hon. Baronet opposite draws from a comparison of the inward and outward "passenger lists." But so far as this Bill is concerned those figures are not relevant. They would be relevant if this Bill aimed at aliens generally, but this Bill is aimed at undesirable aliens who come over in immigrant ships. To ascertain the numbers of those it is right to go to the "Alien lists." The right hon. Baronet was kind enough to say in his opening remarks that he did not think I intended to mislead the House, but that my figures were not correct. I now show the right hon. Baronet that the figures I gave w re those which appear in the Return. I admitted last year, and am quite ready to admit age in, that these figures can be no good test, that it is impossible to obtain accurate figures of those who go out of this country in driblets, but the figures I have given are absolutely accurate so far as the aliens who come into this country are concerned. It is absolutely impossible to obtain with accuracy the figures of those who go out of this country, or whether those who come to this country and do not so out at once, go out at other times. That is the fallacy which I think underlies the figures given by the right hon. Baronet which are obtained from the inward and outward "passenger lists."

Now I do not want to detain the House unnecessarily, but there are several other figures which I have been asked for. There has, I think, been rather a disposition on the other side of the House to make out that there has been no increase in the number of aliens in this country during the last two or three years.

SIR CHARLES DILKE

Hear, hear!

MR. AKERS - DOUGLAS

I join issue with the right hon. Baronet. What about the figures in regard to Boor Law relief and charitable relief? We find that in London poor relief was granted in 1902 to 3,234 aliens, and in 1904 to 4,162. Was there a greater period of distress?

SIR CHARLES DILKE

A greater number passing through.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

Even then there are a greater number of aliens in the country at the time. I have taken out the figures with regard to Boor Law relief granted in Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield, and I find that in 1902 relief was given to 1,381 aliens, and in 1904 to 1,685, so that there has been an increase here. With regard to the relief given by the Jewish Board of Guardians, figures given to me show that in 1902 17,790 aliens were relieved, and in 1904 22,859. All of these figures show that there were a greater number of aliens in the country. Whether passing through or permanently resident here these figures do not show, but at the time there has been a larger population here, and that is the case I have endeavoured to make out to show the necessity for the Bill.

I lave already stated my views as to the undesirability of keeping the trans migrant long in this country. So far as our Bill is concerned we do not propose to interfere with the transmigrant. We want to put the of west difficulties we can in the way of the ship owner who brings the trans migrant or the trans migrant himself, but I do not think we can take into consideration the plea put before us by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean that we should support the practice of allowing the trans migrant to come here, and stay long enough to describe himself as an emigrant from this country. I do not think that it would be in the interest of foreign countries to do so, because they would not be getting from here an English emigrant, but an alien who has come here and has stayed a short time for the purpose of qualifying as an Englishman, and has gone on again. We must make it clear in the Bill if necessary—I believe it is clear—but we must make it clear that the trans migrant who is not interfered with by the examination must have some definite means of showing, whether by his ticket or otherwise, that he is going through to the West or to America, and going through without undue delay. To show the amount of relief which these so-called trans migrants take, also the amount of cost which is put upon the charitable institutions and upon the rates in this country, let me take the figures which are given by the steamboat companies, or first of all by the authorities at Liverpool, to which place some of these people who go to America and are refused admission come back. We know that last year there was an increase, 352 were sent back in 1902 and 1,198 last year. Many of these were suffering from disease, others were lunatics, and they were sent back from America to Liverpool. Besides these, 814 foreign undesirables in 1903 and 1,721 in 1904 were refused passages from England to America by the steamship companies on the ground that they would be rejected when they got there. We have evidence that a certain number of them, but by no means the largest proportion, went to their homes, but a large number were sent to London, and a certain number remained in Liverpool. The vestry clerk in Liverpool said they had considerable expense cast upon them in respect of foreign lunatics sent back from the Unified States, who were dumped down in Liverpool and became a charge on their funds. The Chairman of Hospitals at Liverpool said exactly the same of the large amount of extra work and cost put upon these institutions n dealing with these aliens who have been sent back to Liverpool from America and have been left there. That raises a paint with regard to another question. We shall have to create a staff at Liverpool, in addition to building up a staff at these eight ports. It will be necessary to deal with a case of this sort, and to see that these undesirable aliens are not dumped down in this country at the cost of the rates.

The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean thinks hat this Bill is unnecessary, and that if we wish to deal with the evils which we say exist, and which many Gentlemen on the other side of the House admit do exist, in the East End of London, they can be dealt with by the stricter administration of the existing law, or by the extension of the Factory Acts, that sweating could be entirely stopped, and the chief evils now connected with the undesirable alien in the East End of London put an end to. I am afraid I cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman. There is no doubt that an efficient factory inspection is desirable and is necessary; but I do not think that that alone would deal sufficiently with this question, nor would any extension of the law such as would be acceptable to the people at large. We have never attempted to deal with the hours of labour of adult males in this country. We have never interfered with adult male labour

SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS

Railway-men's hours, and shop hours.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

We have never interfered with adult male labour in the sense of the Factory Act at all, nor have we ever had any legislation to compel: employers to pay a certain rate of wages. Unless you have something of that sort you cannot stop the sweating of the undesirable aliens who land here with little or nothing in their pickets, who have no trade, and who have to go to the lowest grade of labour and get what employment they can. Therefore there is no law at the present moment nor are we likely to pass one which would deal with! this question of sweating. But we propose 'to deal with this difficulty of the undesirable alien in the East End of London by effectively controlling his entry into the country, and I believe that that is the most practical way in which the difficulty can be met.

Another objection of the right hon. Gentleman is against interfering in any way with what is generally known as the right of asylum.

SIR CHARLES DILKE

I did not use the word "right."

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

No. I was about to point out that there is no such tiling as a "right" of asylum, but the practice which has existed of welcoming foreigners who were flying from political or religious persecution in their own lands. The right hon. Gentleman holds that we ought not to depart from a practice which has existed since the Middle Ages, when we readily welcomed a large influx of aliens from abroad. But I would like to point out that there is a vast difference between the class of undesirable aliens which this Bill proposes to deal with and the additions made to our population in those days. Not only were they not undesirable in the present sense of the word, but they brought with them arts and crafts, and Set up many manufactures which have been of the greatest benefit to this country. They would not have been brought within the meshes of this Bill at all. Many of them, at a events the Huguenots—brought a considerable amount of money into this country, and, as every hon. Member who has studied those interesting immigrants knows, the French Ambassador wrote in 1687 to Louis XIV. that 960,000 louis door had been sent to the Mint for conversion into English coin. They were not at all on the same level as the people we wish to deal with. The right hon. Gentleman feared that bona fide political refugees would not be able to come into this country. It is certainly not the intention, nor do I think under the operation of the Bill it would be the fact, that such refugees would be kept out. The right hon. Gentleman stated last year that so excellent citizens who came to this country as Dalou, the sculptor, and the brothers Reclus, the geographers, would have been excluded, but I do not think they would have been caught by the meshes of this Bill', because they would have been able to show that they were skilled artisans, or were perfectly well able to maintain themselves, and that they would not in any way become a charge on the country. We have put in a clause which safeguards, as we think, the genuine political refugee, and the right hon. Gentleman admits that it constitutes an improvement on the Bill of last year. But he says that we do not go far enough. That question can be considered in Committee, but we must be careful in framing words to deal with the point not to allow the whole Act to be evaded by people coming here and saying they are suffering from political persecution?

The hon. Member for the Cleveland Division seemed to think that the Government and Members on this side were creating an Anti-Semitic movement. I disclaim any such intention, and I am certain that that is not the desire of any Members on this side of the House.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

I did not wish to imply that.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

One reason why I am anxious to get a settlement of I this question, of the regulation of the entrance of undesirables into this country is that I believe that if this grievance continues there is a chance in ignorant quarters of an Anti-Semitic movement arising.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

I did not wish to make any such imputation.

MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS

I am very glad the hon. Member does not impute to the Government or to myself any such intention.

We are told that this Bill by its provisions will not keep out the undesirable immigrant. That is not the impression of those who drafted or introduced the Bill. We believe that this Bill will have a very considerable effect in its actual operation, but we also believe that, as in the case of other countries, the passing of a Bill like this will have a further effect of a deterrent kind. Those who know the working of the Immigration Acts of the United States are aware of the great deterrent effect they have. What we are most anxious to guard against is the liability to which we are at present exposed of finding ourselves saddled with the worst and most undesirable aliens, while the better class only come here to qualify themselves for proceeding further. The second part of the Bill, dealing with the expulsion of criminal aliens, has been received on all sides of the House with approval; and I, therefore, need not say anything with regard to it except that it is admitted that there has been a considerable increase in the alien criminal population in our prisons, and that I constantly receive complaints from Judges, chairmen of quarter sessions, and police magistrates of the amount of work that is coast upon them by the indiscriminate welcome which we give to alien immigrants. The right hon. Member for East Fife pointed out to me last year that the Chief Magistrate and the Commissioner of Police were doubtful as to the efficacy of the measures we proposed; I can assure him that the Chief Magistrate is not only satisfied with the terms of the Bill this year, but thinks it both desirable and workable. I do not think there are any other questions I need deal with at this stage of the Bill; other points have been raised, but they are purely Committee matters and can be better dealt with then. I, therefore, will only express the hope that the House will, if not unanimously at any rate by a large majority, pass the Second Reading of a Bill which I am sure will go a great way to meet the difficulty presented by the immigration of undesirable aliens.

MR. SAMUEL SMITH (Flintshire)

I desire to ask for information on one point, viz., whether, under this Bill, there will be power to expel the foreign women who infest our streets, and the vile men who live upon their earnings? If not, the Bill will fail to touch the very worst feature of the question. You talk about undesirable aliens. Are there any aliens so undesirable as these foreign women? They are absolutely irreclaimable; many of them have been expelled from their own countries, but here they crowd the streets, and we have no means of dealing with them. Unless the Bill provides a clear and precise method of procedure for dealing with this great social evil it will fail altogether. But if we get an assurance that the Bill will deal with this class, I, for one, will gladly vote for it.

MR. HAYES FISHER (Fulham)

With regard to the point raised by the hon. Member for Flintshire, I hope that in Committee my right hon. friend will insert words such as appeared in the Bill of last year, under which there would be some chance of relieving our streets of a number of these foreign prostitutes, and more especially of those who live on the proceeds of prostitution.

MR. AKERS DOUGLAS

made an observation which was inaudible in the reporters' gallery.

MR. HAYES FISHER

I had the impression that the words were not in this Bill, or that they were not so clearly stated as in the Bill of last year. Act all events, I take it that if they are not in, my right hon. friend will promise to have them or some such words inserted in Committee. A provision of that character and with that object is in almost every regulation which the various Colonies have for dealing with alien immigration.

In joining the hon. and gallant Member for Stepney in welcoming this Bill, I should like to say that we who sit for constituencies in the far West of London consider that this is not only an East End question, but a London and a national question. I frankly admit that if you could take the who the of the alien population and distribute it amongst all the towns and cities in the United Kingdom it might not be a problem calling for legislation or one that could not be borne. But just an one river could carry a certain amount of sewage, but not the sewage of the whole kingdom, so one portion of London cannot carry the whole of the pauper and diseased alien immigration which comes into this country. I am delighted to hear that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife is going to vote for the Bill.

MR. ASQUITH

Oh. no; I did not say so.

MR. HAYES FISHER

I certainly understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that he would.

MR. ASQUITH

I said I would not oppose. [" Hear, hear!" and laughter.]

MR. HAYES FISHER

The right hon. Gentleman has at any rate advanced upon his statement with reference to the Bill during the recess, when he described it as claptrap and gallery play.

MR. ASQUITH

So I say still.

MR. HAYES FISHER

I think the right hon. Gentleman will find that the Bill [is not so regarded in the country, if he asks the hon. Member for Poplar.

MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (Tower Hamlets, Poplar)

I have always said that the Government are using this measure as a shop-window Bill.

MR. HAYES FISHER

The petty improvements suggested by hon. Members opposite could all have been put into the Bill of last year, because they were actually put down by my right hon. friend the Home Secretary, and if we had not spent six days debating three lines in Committee we should have had ample time to consider those Amendments.

I should like to enforce one or two arguments put forward by the hon. Member for Stepney. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean thinks that the figures show that there is no case for this Bill. But the supporters of this Bill can afford to throw those figures over. No figures were relied upon by the Select Committee of 1888 and the Royal Commission of 1902, and the latter came to the conclusion that the only approach to accuracy was to be found in the figures of the Census Re urns, which showed that the number of aliens in this country had doubled between 1881 and 1901. They had a right to conclude from the criminal statistics that there had been a large increase in the number of aliens. Those figures at any rate were accurate, and it was only the other day that my right hon. friend quoted statistics which showed that the criminal alien population of this country had exactly doubled within the last five years. If the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean was right in his contention that there are only a few foreign aliens taking up their residence in this country, it seems to me than an enormous propor- tion must, sooner or later, come into our gaols. There is no doubt that recently there has been a great increase of foreign alien immigration, and a still mo e serious increase of foreign criminal immigration. I understand from the speeches of some hon. Members opposite that they would not object to this Bill if it gave power to export foreign criminal aliens from this country. That remedy is not needed, and it would merely be an aperient for the disease. Why should we not, in regard to this question, have similar powers to those possessed by the United States and almost every one of our Colonies? We shall have to consider the future, and legislation will be required to meet the probable large increase of pauper alien immigration. I know that in the seventeenth century we practically said, "Let them all come," but even then regulations were made to distribute the alien population, and they were sent away from London into the country because they were too thick on the ground, and they were sent to Norwich and many other places.

There are three great causes at work which will tend to increase the number of aliens coming to this country. In the first place, in the near future you are likely to see. a very great exodus of undesirable aliens from other countries. Secondly, those countries which are rot at the present moment actually congested, and where there is ample space for emigrants, are tightening up their laws and shutting their doors upon these aliens, and they will necessarily be driven to this country. In the third place owing to our more humane Poor Law—and the whole tendency is to make it still more humane—London has become a very desirable city for these foreign aliens. Figures or no figures, the Report of the Royal Commission, and the evidence of our' own Census, has made out a strong case for this country taking similar steps which other countries and our Colonies have taken to regulate and control the immigration of pauper aliens. I have no idea that we are going to make a new heaven and earth by this Bill, or that it. will make Stepney into such a place as I would like to represent, but at the sane time I feel convinced that if the House of Commons passes this measure into law it will have the effect of expelling thousands upon thousands of criminal aliens and bad characters who now infest us, who cause a great increase in our taxes for keeping up gaols, and who lower the whole tone of life amongst our people. The very note of warning which this Bill will sound will send many of these people away. I believe also that you will reduce, if you do not altogether free yourselves from, those; aliens who come here diseased and give to other people the diseases which they have contracted in the countries they have left. In regard to pauper aliens, I am certain we shall largely reduce the number of undesirables. I do not think we ought to press the case of poverty too hard. I think there ought always to be a leaning towards those men whose character, so far as can be ascertained, shows that they are likely to turn out good citizens in this country, but at the same time we must look to the people at home and to the fact that certain people who come here will soon place themselves on the Poor Law and aggravate the burdens our own people have to bear. We must look to the fact that we find ourselves faced with social problems at home, and I think we have a right to protect our own citizens in a way similar to that which has been adopted in the United States and in our Colonies.

MAJOR SEELY

As one who was opposed to the objectionable features of the Bill on a previous occasion, I trust that the House will forgive me if I intervene and state why I intend to support the Amendment of my right hon. friend the Member for the Forest of Dean. After all, the hon. Member for Fulham has pointed out, and the right hon. Gentlemen in charge of the Bill has stated that we in this House are entirely agreed as to expelling the criminal. There is no doubt whatever that most of us desire to keep him out if it is at all possible to do so. Our only doubt is as to whether it can be done. We desire to keep out prostitutes and those who live by prostitution, but where we really differ is in the definition of "undesirable alien." Now, if I may venture to put it in a nutshell, the point is this. This Bill proposes to keep out a Jew when he is poor, and to admit a Jew when he is rich. I thought that probably hon. Members would not appreciate that way of putting it. The undesirable is to be excluded if he cannot show that he is in possession of, or is in a position to obtain, a decent way of supporting himself. I do not take the view of some hon. Members. I do not wish to keep out Jews or anybody, provided they are neither criminal nor diseased. But if you are going to keep out the one or the other, I am not sure that it would not be wiser to keep out the rich Jew and admit the poor Jew. I confess there is much to be said for the view I have ventured to put before the House. It is admitted that there is a great evil in the East End of London—an evil which we all deplore—but that it is confined to London is conclusively shown by the Report to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred. If hon. Members will look at the part in regard to aliens relieved they will see that the number is so trivial as to make it obvious that we should not sacrifice the great principle of asylum for so small a matter. The hon. and gallant Member for the Central Division of Sheffield was responsible some years ago for the Merchandise Marks Act. I think this Bill is very likely to have a similar effect. It will do no real good for the purpose for which it is intended, but it will gravely injure the shipping interest.

SIR HOWARD VINCENT

Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that the Merchandise Marks Act injured the shipping trade?

MAJOR SEELY

I do not suggest that it has injured the shipping trade. I say that that legislation which the hon. Gentleman supported with the view of keeping out foreign goods has advertised those goods and defeated the object he had in view, and I say that probably the result of this measure will be to do little good and much harm to a nourishing industry. Other countries have tried to do what is-now proposed, and their efforts have resulted in total failure. Many hon.. Members have pointed to what has been done by the United States. They made much of the fact that the United States-sent people back. It is obvious that they have not read the Report issued by the Board of Trade as to emigration and immigration. Tb at is not to be wondered at, seeing that it has just come out. If they will turn to page 9 they will find the following— Special inquiry was made by this Department, in May, 1904, with the view of ascertaining, so far as possible, what becomes of the aliens sent to London, and the evidence obtained at that time tended to show that the great majority of these eventually succeed in reaching their desired destination, sometimes after a preliminary period of waiting in London, during which medical treatment is obtained at the hospitals and dispensaries, but frequently without such interval. I think that shows how tiny an effect the measure can have in curing the admitted evils. The evils are great, but the problem is a much deeper one than an alien problem and cannot be dealt with by this method. If once we admit the principle of the Bill, we abandon one of the highest principles on which the State has been built up. I will never abandon it. I agree with the right hon. Baronet that the evils which exist are not concerned alone with alien immigration. The evils are particularly concerned with sweating, long hours, and crowded houses in the East End. These cannot be dealt with by the present measure. We are all agreed as to the keeping out of the criminal, but we are not agreed about keeping out a man because he is poor. I shall support the Amendment as a protest against that portion of the Bill. It is not wise for a Christian people to begin this sinister form of legislation. We can now say that where a man is naked we clothe him; when he is a stranger we take him in. We have not done badly, and I for one will heartily oppose any attempt at legislation such as this.

MR. SYDNEY BUXTON

I take a somewhat different view of this Bill from that taken by some hon. Members on this side of the House. I supported the Second Reading of the Bill last year believing that the Government were in earnest in regard to this question. I think experience shows that at that time the Government did not very much care whether the Bill passed or not. The Bill now before the House is, in my opinion, a better measure than that of last year. I am bound to say that, although I rather objected at the start to the great opposition with which the Bill of last year was met, I am glad that that opposition was developed, because I believe that the present Bill affords an absolute and complete justification of the opposition of last session, for every objection, with one exception, taken to the Bill then before the House has been either met or attempted to be met in the provisions of this measure. Now, I have no desire to exaggerate this question. I have regretted to observe, both inside and outside the House, an attempt to make this a very big question. It is not a very big question, though it affects very materially certain parts of the kingdom. I do not know anybody who supports the Bill who would contend that, if the aliens were distributed throughout the whole of the Kingdom, there would be any grievance, or that there would be any need for legislation. The two reasons which lead me to support the Bill are, first, that we are getting left in the country, year by year, a worse class of aliens than was the case some years ago; and, secondly, that the aggravated position and congestion in those districts whore the grievance is particularly felt is certainly not diminishing, but is becoming worse year by year.

There are three points in connection with this Bill to which reference has been made. First, the principle of asylum; second, the question of criminals; and third, the question of economic undesirables. I entirely agree with my right hon. friends the Member for the Forest of Dean and the Member for East Fife on the question of the admission of political immigrants, and I believe that in Committee the Government will be prepared to give the most favourable consideration to Amendments moved from any quarter of tin House, designed to protect the right of asylum as far as possible. We are all agreed as to the desirability of excluding the criminal alien, but it is in regard to the uneconomic and undesirable alien that I join issue with some of my hon. friends. I feel very strongly that the present admission of these uneconomic and socially undesirable aliens requires regulation and discrimination, and that it is time some entrance standard was set up. The only class of immigrants to which I have any strong objection are Russians and Poles, who, unfortunately, are coming into the country in greater numbers year by year. I am quite certain that very few of them add to the strength, the wealth, or the welfare of the nation. I am sure there is no feeling in regard to this matter because these Russians and Poles happen to be Jews. The question of race does not arise. The objection we have to them is that they are in a totally different state of civilisation from what we desire in this country;! that neither in race, religion, feeling, language, nor blood are they suitable or advantageous to us, and that they are by far the most destitute of [all the aliens who come to these shores. The most serious matter, and the real argument for this Bill, is that this particular class of immigrant has been increasing year by year. The figures in relation to them are so remarkable that they fully justify the! introduction of the Bill. Taking the last ten years—the figures for the last twenty years would have been still more striking—I find that, while, of the total of 28,000 immigrants in 1894, 7,500 were Russians and Poles, last year the number of Russians and Poles had increased to I 46,000 as against an increase to 49,700 of all the other nationalities. That is to say, while the better class of immigrants to which there is no objection had not doubled, the worst Russians and Poles had multiplied six-fold. Those figures show that the time has come when some discretion should be exercised in regard to the admission of these immigrants. Then it is said that some of the number were in transit to America and it would be a pity to interfere with them. That is true, but it means that the best class of immigrants possess sufficient funds to take them on to America, whereas those less efficient and less enterprising are left in this country to do us harm. The regulations in America are so strict that they will not take anything approaching the class of immigrant to which we are now accustomed. We get from the East of Europe the refuse of the immigrants. I confess it looks to me that the time has come to check this great influx of the worst class.

I agree that certain remedies are to be found in the efforts to deal with sweating, housing, and the conditions of labour, and that they are steps in the right direction. Speaking for those in the East of London, I can say that it is not the competent or the ordinarily intelligent alien to which we object. We object to the class of alien which cause the lowering of the rate of wages and of the social position of the worker; which lead to overcrowding and all those evils, to remedy which this House endeavours to apply itself. This Bill is a considerable step in the way of the social reform we all have at heart. One of the greatest difficulties with which we have to contend is the addition from time to time of the lowest class of labour workers who will not join a trade union and who come over here ignorant, poverty-stricken, and very likely not even knowing the language. That is the class of immigrants that breaks down the rate of wages. It is these aliens who are the despair of tin trades unions and the Government officials. Inspector after inspector in their reports have come to the conclusion that one of the greatest difficulties in the carrying out of the Factory Acts is found where this kind of alien has to be met. One or two hon. Members have argued against the Bill because a considerable number of aliens do not come upon the rates. I should prefer them to come upon the rates rather than drive the British working men upon them, as is the case in a large number of trades and the present moment. The Royal Commission, although they did not say that the men employed in skilled trades are actually driven out of work, did say that the competition of the alien has very largely displaced British labour in London.

Whilst not desiring an entire exclusion of aliens, I say that we are entitled to ask that there shall be some discrimination in the way that they are at present admitted into this country. To my mind the real advantage of this Bill is not the exclusion of the particular individual when he is landed from the ship, but the discouragement it will give to the ordinary alien on the Continent to come here at all. We want to put up the notice that "In future no rubbish will be allowed to be shot here," and we shall put the onus of the calculation and the cost of taking back the alien to whom objection is found on the shipping companies. What we want and what America already has is a sort of filter of the alien before he is landed. America has a three-fold system. In the first place the cost of the fare to America is sufficiently considerable to ensure that deterrent and discrimination which is so desirable. Then there is great discrimination shown by the shipping companies themselves. The result is that the best emigrants are selected by the shipping companies for the United States and the residue left over are sent to England. I want it to be understood abroad, as it is understood in regard to America, that aliens will not be received unless they come up to some standard of fitness. So far as London is concerned the civil is very serious, and unless a remedy is found for it we shall find the foreign element increasing to so great an extent that a large portion of London will be practically uninhabitable except by these foreigners. Twenty years ago the percentage of foreigners in White-chapel was 12 per cent.; now it is nearly 40 per cent., and other parts of London are suffering in the same way. I think that any practical step in the direction of reducing the number of these aliens will be a great advantage to the community at large. I cannot vote for the Amendment because it is directed against the Second Reading of the Bill. I shall therefore vote for the Second Reading in the hope that the Government will in Committee amend the Bill in many of the directions indicated by my right hon. friend the Member for East Fife.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN (Birmingham, W.)

I have never yet spoken on this subject, and do not now propose to speak at length; I hope to conclude my few observations before the House adjourns for the interval. I confess that what I have beard of the debate leaves me in considerable difficulty as regards appreciation of the position of hon. Gentlemen opposite. It seems to me that they can hardly have appreciated the principle of the Bill. We have heard the details of the subject excellently treated by the hon. Member for Poplar, but we have not heard anything of what, to my mind, is very much more important—of the principle whit underlies the Bill and makes the Bill only a step towards much greater things. This Bill is defended partly because, as we are told, these aliens are undesirable, because they are frequently diseased and often criminal. I am not inclined to lay the slightest stress on these points, though I do not doubt that there is evidence to show, and that facts do show, that they bring a larger proportion of diseased and vicious persons into our midst than would be the case with ordinary immigrants. But the principal reason why this Bill is brought on and why it is supported by all of us is because it is an effort to protect the working classes of this country against the labour, the underpaid labour, of a class of immigrants sent here. After all, then, we see that the other side have made some progress in regard to fiscal reform. The step, a very small one, between a Bill which keeps out this low class of labour, which prevents it being brought in to reduce the wages and lower the standard of life of the working-class population in this kingdom—the step is very little indeed to another Bill which I hope will be introduced before long to prevent the goods these people make from coming into the same competition. That being so, as it clearly is, I should have expected that the Opposition would have taken the line they took on a former occasion. I should have expected that they would vote against the Bill unanimously, as they would against anything that interfered with the delights of the free import system. I should have thought that they would have known, and would have acted on the knowledge, that it is as vicious to interfere with the free importation of men as; with the free importation of goods. I do not for a moment blame them for the action they took, though I was surprised at the part some of them took, especially those who claim to be the representatives of labour, though I have never seen the slightest ground for the assumption that they represent labour in any more competent sense than other Members who are returned for working-class constituencies—still I say, on that assumption, I was surprised to find that three so-called labour representatives Voted against the Bill and all the rest kept away.

MR.CROOKS (Woolwich)

That is what you always do now when you are in a tight place.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

l am grateful to the hon. Member for an explanation of the reason for their conduct. He and his friends were in a tight place, then? They flattered us by following our example. I am quite satisfied with that admission, and will not ask anything further as to the position of labour representatives. But now I want to ask why other Members who do not claim that title in any special sense, why they, having voted against the Bill on the former occasion, are going to vote for it now? On the last occasion they voted against the Bill; why do they vote for it now?

SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS

It is a different Bill.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

Yes, but the arguments are not different. I think there are other hon. Gentlemen in a tight place. We ask the question, but we do not care whether we get an answer or not. We know the reason. We know perfectly well that in this matter the working people of this country have been too strong for the free importers. There is a grievance here of which it has been truthfully said it is only local, though it affects more localities than hon. Members opposite choose to admit, but while it affects most seriously that district in which every Member and candidate has already been converted, it is beginning to affect other districts than the East End of London, including my own constituency, when the working men begin to complain of the kind of competition of which we also complain when we put before you a program me for giving greater and better-paid employment in this country. They complain that it is not fair competition. The Commission reported that the competition does not materially interfere with skilled labour, and I am not certain that if it did there would be the same reason for keeping it out. If the immigrants, like the Huguenots of the seventeenth century, taught us new trades, new skill, then indeed we might welcome them, but the competition is against unskilled labour, which is the first to suffer from non-employment. We know that when the Board of Trade, in the Labour Gazette, shows that there are 2 or 3 per cent. of the members of a great trade union out of employment, it is of no importance whatever as compared with the number of unskilled labourers which are at the same time thrown out of employment. It is on the unskilled labour the want of employment falls heaviest and first, it is upon the unskilled labour, the casual labour, that this immigration produces the greatest mischief. It must be so; the immigrants come in to compete with our labourers and work at wages they could not earn in their own countries.

SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS

They are protected countries.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

They come in to earn wages they cannot earn in their own country; and I believe that is more truly the reason than the allegations of persecution upon which hon. Members have laid much stress. They come in and they take up work which up to recent times was in possession of the working men of this country, not skilled labour, but that kind of labour which is most urgently required; and they do not themselves benefit by the continuance of the immigration; with the constant influx of these people they cannot do what they otherwise might to improve their position. If by earning a few shillings a week for a short time they remained and gradually raised the letter of payment there would be less to complain of; but there is no chance of that because they are followed by fresh tides of immigrants. It is often said that anybody who looks at this question as I do, entirely from a British point of view, is guilty of Anti-Semitism. There is no feeling of Anti-Semitism in the movement against; this immigration. I remember speaking with Lord Ferdinand Rothschild on the subject; he i3 a most munificent donor to Jewish charities, and he told me that he was alarmed lest by chance the movement should turn in that direction; but he admitted that it was not in the interest of those who thought with him to encourage the immigration, because the result would be that what at present was purely and entirely an economic grievance might become a national grievance. So I believe we are the best friends of those poor Jews who are here in preventing their lot being made worse. But I rose chiefly to point out to the House—as I shall point out to the country and probably to future Houses of Commons—that we have taken the first step; we look it when we passed the Fair Wages Resolution. But what was the meaning of that, if now we do not take the second? By the Fair Wages Resolution no Government order can be given to any man who does not pay fair wages. No order, therefore, can be given for any product of these underpaid aliens. You who are anxious to keep aliens in this country, and encourage them to come by leaving the country open to them, vote against giving them work when they come here. The two things go together. If you are anxious to receive the poor aliens, you must be ready to accept them under their necessary conditions, and you must find them work, even though it deed not fetch the fair wages you have demanded for it. The who is of our action, at any rate, is based on the belief that the time has come to protect the working man in his employment. We agreed with you in the Fair Wages Resolution, and with the same object we agree with this Bill. As I have said, I believe there is absolutely no logic in saying that these men may not come in, but shall remain in Hamburg or Poland, and there produce the goods which you would refuse to take from them if they made them in this country.

MR. EMMOTT (Oldham)

The right hon. Gentleman has made a speech to which we have all listened with the greatest interest, but I do not know that the Government will thank him for it. The Home Secretary certainly did not present the view of the case that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham has done; in fact, the right hon. Gentleman appears to have let the cat out of the bag, in words which cannot be palatable to the Government, or to free-traders on that side of the House, or to my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar who has just declared his intention of supporting this Bill, which we are now told is a protectionist Bill, founded on the principles of protection which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham desires to introduce into this country. It is true it is only a small step, but we are told it is a step in the right direction, and it is on that ground and that ground alone the right hon. Gentleman supports it. As usual, the right hon. Gentleman's intervention in the debate has attracted a certain number of votes to our side, or, at any rate, has prevented a certain number of Members from voting for the Bill who otherwise would have done so. How refreshing it is to hear the right hon. Gentleman unmuzzled! And how refreshing it is to him to be unmuzzled! He has not run away to-day as he has run away before, but he is in his place to speak for and to present his brief in support of the Bill. I should like to ask if the—

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