Commons Sitting of 9 May 1905

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

MR. SPEAKER'S ABSENCE AND THE ABSENCE OF THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS.
The House being met, the Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. SPEAKER and of the CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS, owing to continued indisposition.
Whereupon Mr. JEFFREYS, the Deputy-Chairman, proceeded to the Table, and, after Prayers, took the Chair as Deputy-Speaker, pursuant^ the Standing Order.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PRIVATE BILL PETITIONS [LORDS (STANDING ORDERS NOT COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERlaid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners, of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for the following Bill, originating in the Lords, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, viz.:—Rhymney and Aber Valleys Gas and Water Company Bill [Lords],
  Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.
  Hessle Gas Bill [Lords]; Holy Trinity, Portsea, Bill [Lords]. As amended, con sidered; to be read the third time.
  Clyde Navigation (Reconstitution) Bill [Lords]. Read a second time, and committed.
  Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 3) Bill; Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill; Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill. Read a second time, and committed.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL.
  "To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to Kilrush (Rural), Londonderry, and New Ross," presented by Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland; supported by Mr. Walter Long; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 206.]
  ULSTER AND CONNAUGHT LIGHT RAILWAYS BILL.
  Petition for additional Provision; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—Southampton and Winchester Great Western Junction Railway (Abandonment) Bill, without Amendment.
Brompton, Chatham, Gillingham, and Rochester Water Bill, with Amendments.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the construction of new railways and works and the acquisition of lands by the Great Central Railway Company in connection with their undertaking; the acquisition of additional lands and the execution of works by the Cheshire Lines Committee and the Manchester, South Junction, and Altrincham Railway Company respectively in connection with their respective undertakings; the acquisition by the Great Central Railway Company of the undertakings of the Wigan Junction Railways Company and the Liverpool, St. Helen's, and South Lancashire Rail way Company; the incorporation of a Joint Committee of the Great Central and London and North Western Railway Companies; and for other purposes." [Great Central Railway Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to extend the time limited for the construction of works authorised by the Dearne Valley Railway Act, 1897; to authorise alterations in such works; to confer further powers upon the Dearne Valley Railway Company; and for other pur-
1324
poses." [Dearne Valley Railway Bill [Lords.]
And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to dissolve the University College of Sheffield; and to transfer all the property and liabilities of the University College of Sheffield to the University of Sheffield; and for other purposes." [Sheffield University Bill [Lords.]
Great Central Railway Bill [Lords]; Dearne Valley Railway Bill [Lords]; Sheffield University Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

PETITIONS.
  FRANCHISE AND REMOVAL OF WOMEN'S DISABILITIES BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from East Bristol; and Horfield and Bishopston; to lie upon the Table.
  LIQUOR TRAFFIC LOCAL VETO (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Glasgow (three); Lanark; Perth; and Saltcoats; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL TAXATION.
  Petition from Whitehaven, for legislation; to lie upon the Table.
  MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.
  Petition from Hastings, against; to he upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS (SUNDAY) BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  WOMEN'S ENFRANCHISEMENT BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Glasgow; Huddersfield (two); and Scottish Women's Liberal Federation; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  NAVAL EXPENDITURE (GREAT BRITAIN AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES).
  Return [presented 8th May]; to be printed. [No. 155.]
  ULTIMUS HÆRES (SCOTLAND) (ACCOUNT AND LIST OF ESTATES).
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 3rd May; Mr. Victor Cavendish]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 156.]
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3365 and 3366 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TAMIL CHILDREN (EDUCATION).
  Copy presented, of Papers relating to the Education of immigrant Tamil Coolie Children employed on Estates in Ceylon [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Irish Education—Infringement of Rule 127 (b) at New market, County Cork.
  MR. FLYNN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that Mr. J. D. Lynam, national school inspector, lately visited Newmarket (county Cork) male national school, and reported that he found the Rule 127 (b) broken by the enrolment of two children of under eight years of age on March 28th, and that the teacher acted under the written directions of the manager; and, in view of his statement in this House in respect to postponement or possible withdrawal of said rule, he will say on whose authority Inspector Lynam made this report.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I am informed that the inspector made no report of the character mentioned in this Question. It is true he found that two boys under eight years of age had recently been enrolled, but he did not draw attention to the fact. On the contrary, he stated to the manager and to the teacher that in his opinion Rule 127 (b) did not apply to the school, inasmuch as the adjoining school was not a "suitable" school within the meaning of the rule.

  Clubs registered during January, 1905, under the Licensing Act.
  MR. NOLAN: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the number of clubs registered during the month of January this year in compliance with the provisions of the Licensing Act, 1902, Part III.; the name of the borough, county borough, or county petty sessional division in which the said clubs are situated; the objects and number of members of each of the said clubs; the terms of subscription; and the hours of opening and closing of the club premises.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I am unable to give more than the numbers of the clubs registered; and on this point information is not yet available for the present year outside London. I am informed that in the Metropolitan police district, 990 clubs have been registered this year, and in the City of London, 59. For the year 1904, the figures were: Metropolitan police district, 1,026; City, 59; other English police districts, 5,186; Welsh, 191. Total, 6,462. For details as to the localities in which the clubs are situated the Annual Report of the Constabulary Inspectors for the year 1903–4 (which will be published very shortly) may b consulted.

  County Licensing Committees.
  MR. HELME: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that in some counties the position and powers of additional members appointed by non-county boroughs to serve on county licensing committees under Section 5 (5) of the Licensing Act, 1904, are made to differ from those of ordinary members of such committees; and, if so, will he, in such cases, take steps to prevent it.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I have not in mind any case in which an exception is being made from the provisions of the Act in regard to this matter. The powers and duties of the borough members are defined by the enactment quoted, which provides that any justice appointed there under shall,

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  for the purposes of the determination of any question as to the refusal of a licence and any matters consequential thereon, be deemed to be an additional member of the committee.

  Road Accidents Returns—Distinction between Accidents Caused by Motor-propelled and Horsedrawn Vehicles.
  MR. BROOKE ROBINSON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether (be Returns annually made by coroners distinguish in the case of road accidents those caused by motor-propelled vehicles from those caused by horse-drawn vehicles; and, if no distinction is made, whether he will direct coroners in future to do so.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) The annual Returns made to me by coroners do not distinguish between accidents caused by horsed and those caused by motor vehicles. They do not even distinguish road accidents from other accidental causes of death, their object being merely to exhibit the legal aspect of the cause of death, i.e., murder, suicide, accident, etc. The distinction suggested could not, I think, be made appropriately in the Return.

  Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Parish of Uig, Island of Lewis.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord-Advocate if he will state why the report of the medical officer of

  Name of county.

  Amount paid to county out of Equivalent grant for 1903–4.

  Amount which would have been paid if the provisions of the Education (Scotland) Bill have been law.

  £

  s.

  d.

  £

  s.

  d.

  Argyll

  1,931

  6

  8

  1,186

  11

  2

  Caithness

  664

  7

  4

  405

  3

  4

  Inverness

  2,039

  0

  1

  1,252

  14

  1

  Orkney

  573

  9

  6

  352

  6

  6

  Ross and Cromarty

  1,854

  6

  9

  1,139

  5

  1

  Sutherland

  631

  9

  8

  387

  19

  6

  Zetland

  533

  4

  11

  327

  12

  3

  health for the parish of Uig, Island of Lewis, is not included with the reports of other medical officers in the current report of the county medical officer of health for Ross and Cromarty.
  (Answered by Mr. Scolt Dickson.) The report of the medical officer of health of Uig had not been received by the county medical officer of health at the time of his annual report going to press, but in any case the publishing of the parish reports in the county reports is a matter within the discretion of the county medical officer.

  Sums paid to Highland Crofting Counties out of the Equivalent Grant—Reduction under the Education (Scotland) Bill.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord-Advocate if he will state what sum was paid last year to each county council in the Highland Crofting Counties out of the Equivalent Grant; and will he state approximately to what extent the sum paid to each of these councils will be diminished if the clause in the Education (Scotland) Bill dealing with this grant becomes law.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) As the hon. Member is aware, the amount of the Equivalent Grant varies from year to year. On last year's basis, the figures are as follows:—

  Suggested Extension of the Benefits of the Crofters' Act, 1886, to small Leaseholders-
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord-Advocate whether he has received a copy of a resolution carried recently at a meeting of crofters at Mulbine, Black Isle, Ross-shire, urging that the benefits of The Crofters' Act, 1886, should be extended to small leaseholders, and that the Crofters' Commission should be empowered to enlarge existing holdings, and to create new ones out of lands scheduled in the Report of the Deer Forest Commission; and, if so, will he state what action he proposes to take in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) A resolution has recently been received by the Secretary for Scotland from the crofters at Mulbine to the effect stated in the Question, but legislation will be necessary to give effect to it, and the Secretary for Scotland does not contemplate introducing any legislation on this subject.

  Education (Scotland) Bill—Meeting Places of Provincial Councils.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord-Advocate whether he is aware that in the Education (Scotland) Bill which was brought before Parliament last year, provision was made for Inverness to be one of the four places at which the proposed provincial councils would meet; and, in view of the fact that the County Council of Ross and Cromarty, at their meeting on the 2nd instant, protested against St. Andrews being substituted for Inverness, will he consider the expediency of falling in with the views of the county council on the subject.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) I may refer the hon. Member to what I said on this matter on the Second Reading of the Bill.

  Southport Telegraph Office
  MR. MARSHALL HALL: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that an officer has been brought from Keighley to fill a vacancy in the Southport telegraph office; and, if so, whether, seeing that at the present time there are several fully-qualified learners in the Southport office
  1330
  awaiting appointment, the senior of whom has now been in the service nearly five years, he will explain why one of such fully-qualified learners was not appointed to the vacancy.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The officer transferred from Keighley filled a vacancy for a man at Southport, and the senior male learner at Southport had less than two years service at the time when the vacancy was filled. The learner at Southport to whom the hon. Member refers as having been in the service for nearly five years is a female, and I regret that, owing mainly to the falling off in telegraph business, it has not yet been practicable to give her an established appointment at Southport. She has, however, been offered appointment at several other offices in the same district which she has declined. I will, however, consider whether the circumstances now admit of her being appointed at South-port.

  Postage on Boss and Cromarty Rate Demand Notes.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Postmaster-General if he will state on what ground the rate demand notes sent out by the county collector for Ross and Cromarty, which have hitherto been charged one halfpenny postage, are now charged one penny; and will he consider the expediency of arranging for the halfpenny rate to be reverted to.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) As I informed the hon. and gallant Member for St. Andrews Burghs on the 12th† of last month, the change of practice referred to was made in connection with the revision of the halfpenny post regulations in January, 1904. It was found that attempts were made to pass under the previous regulations many documents to which it was never intended that the preferential rate should apply, and the privilege of sending notices (other than those which conformed to the conditions applicable to circulars) at the halfpenny rate was accordingly restricted to officers of a Court of justice. I am sorry that I do not see my way to alter the decision then arrived at.
  † See (4) Debates, cxliv., 1399.

  Speed of Motor-Cars.
  MR. CATHCART WASON: To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will, in the interests of the public safety, withdraw the circular letter from the Local Government Board of November 20th to all the local authorities, limiting the discretion of public bodies with reference to the speed of motor-cars.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) At present it does not appear to me to be necessary to withdraw the circular referred to. I may point out that the circular does not limit the discretion of local authorities. All it does is to indicate that in the opinion of the Local Government Board speed limits under Sections 8 and 9 of The Motor-Car Act, 1903, should not be readily imposed until it is found that the provisions of the Act which render liable to severe penalties motorists who drive recklessly or negligently or at a speed or in a manner dangerous to the public are insufficient and require to be reinforced by action under those sections.

  Lincoln Typhoid Fever Outbreak—Suggested Official Inquiry.
  MR. JACOBY: To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he intends to send an official to hold an inquiry at Lincoln into the recent serious epidemic of typhoid fever.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) A medical inspector of the Local Government Board visited Lincoln, and investigated the causes of the outbreak referred to. I am not prepared to direct any further official inquiry on the subject.

  Appointment of Assistant Engineers in the Indian Public Works Department-
  MR. HERBERT ROBERTS: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether he will reconsider the Circular of November, 1904, regarding the appointment of assistant engineers in the Public Works Department of the Government of India; and whether, looking to the race equality enjoined in the Regulating Act of 1833, and in the Queen's Proclamation of 1858, he will modify the condition contained in Section 4, which
  1332
  requires that all candidates shall be of European descent.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The Circular relates to appointments which have to be made in order to supplement the supply of European engineers passing out from the Royal Indian Engineering College this summer, on the completion of the usual course of three years. It was open to natives of India to enter the college in 1904, under certain conditions, with a view to competing for two appointments annually in the Public Works and Telegraph Departments; and they have, moreover, the exclusive right of entering those Departments through the Indian Engineering Colleges. I see no reason, therefore, for modifying the Circular in the way pro posed, but I propose that, when the college ceases to supply engineers for Indian service, the privilege which, within certain limits, natives of India have enjoyed under the college prospectus of entering the Public Works Department from this country, shall be continued.

  Illegal Trawling off the Irish Coasts
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether instructions have been issued to the coastguards stationed along the Irish coast, and especially to the Kingstown, Howth, Malahide, Skerries, and Balbriggan stations, to watch and report unlawful trawling within the limits.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) Instructions have been issued to all the coastguards in Ireland to report to the Department of Agriculture any breaches of the regulations relating to trawling which may come under their notice.

  Trawling off the Irish Coast—Size of Meshes of Trawl Nets.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ire land whether any authority has been appointed by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheriesin Ireland to examine and report upon the size of the meshes of trawl and seine nets so as to carry out the regulations passed to enable the escape of very small fish; and whether he is aware that trawl nets frequently

  1333
  hold sand and destroy numbers of small fish.
  (Answered by Mr. Waller Long.) The Department have issued warrants to the captain and mate of their steam cruiser "Helga," and also of the "Granuaile," which belongs to the Congested Districts Board. These warrants constitute the holders police authorities, and empower them to enforce any law, by-law, or regulation relating to sea fisheries. It is part of the duty of the coastguard to report to the Department breaches of the law regarding the size of the mesh of nets or any other matter affected by the sea fishery regulations. It is a fact that trawl nets sometimes get choked with sand when the vessels are becalmed or are moving too slowly; but the skippers in their own interests take all possible.steps to prevent this from occurring.

  Decay of Irish Fishery Industry.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that around the Irish coast the sailing trawlers, especially the smaller ones, have diminished in number, and that the line fishermen are gradually abandoning their occupation as they cannot earn a livelihood at it; and, if so, whether he proposes to take any action in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) It is a fact that the number of sailing trawlers on the Irish coast has been decreasing for some years past. This decrease, how ever, is most noticeable in the neighbourhood of Dublin, where sailing trawlers have come into direct competition with the more efficient steam trawlers. The decrease in sailing trawlers is not confined to the Irish coast. It has occurred to a much greater extent on the English coast. By-laws have been made restricting inshore trawling, which have the effect of mitigating damage likely to be done to the line-fishing industry.

  Irish Fisheries—Deep Sea and Inshore Fishering.
  MR FIELD: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will cause inquiry to be made whether the alleged good supply of fish landed in Ireland is mainly obtained from
  1334
  steam trawlers; and whether he will cause a Return to be made of the quantity of fish obtained from deep-sea fishing as compared with that derived from inshore fishing.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) Statistics of fish landed on the Irish coast are collected and are published each year in the Annual Report of the fishery branch of the Department. The statistics also deal with the methods by which the various classes of fish are caught. In the Dublin Market, which is the principal one in Ireland, more fish are landed by steam trawlers than by sailing trawlers. In Galway Bay and Dingle, which are the other most important centres of trawling, all the fish are landed by sailing trawlers. With regard to deep-sea fishing in general, the quantity of mackerel landed by boats fishing in the deep sea is about equal to that caught close in shore by row boats. Herrings are caught to a greater extent in the inshore areas than by deep-sea fishing.

  Rebuilding of Guy's School, Ballymena.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a grant has deen provisionally sanctioned by the Commissioners of National Education towards the rebuilding and extension of Guy's Schools, Ballymena; if so, will he state what steps the Commissioners have taken to satisfy themselves that a necessity for the additional accommodation intended to be provided by the re building and extension of these schools exists in Ballymena.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) Yes, Sir. The Commissioners satisfied themselves of the necessity for the proposed new schoolhouse by due inquiry made through one of their senior inspectors.

  Grant to Cloncore School.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Com missioners of National Education have given a grant to the new Cloncore School, where the ave age attendance for quarter ending 31st March was fifty-seven, and fifty-six of the pupils in attendance were withdrawn from other schools in which

  1335
  more than sufficient accommodation already existed, that the Waveney Applicant School, Ballymena, had ninety-one pupils under eight years of age on roll in December last, thirty-three of these were never at school before, thirty-five were withdrawn from an overcrowded school, Guy's Infants (accommodation for 155, average attendance for year with Waveney School in operation 156), and a number came from other schools outside Ballymena, that the Commissioners refuse to recognise the Waveney School upon the ground that the children in attendance were withdrawn from other schools in which sufficient accommodation already existed; and whether, in view of the fact that a grant to Waveney School was refused upon this ground, he will explain why the same objection was not made or insisted upon to the Cloncore application.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The Commissioners granted aid to the new Cloncore ("Cloncore Upper ") National School from May 1st, 1904. According to the inspector's report on the application for aid, dated July 2nd, 1904, fifty-six of the seventy-four pupils on the rolls came from other schools. The average attendance for the quarter ended March 31st, 1905, was fifty-seven, but what proportion of this average attendance represented children drawn from other schools cannot be stated. For the facts as to the Waveney School I beg to refer to my replies to the hon. Member's Questions of the 3rd,† 11th,† and 19th,‡ April last. The cases of the Waveney and Cloncore applications are not identical. The Commissioners gave their most careful consideration to each case upon its merits, and, in the exercise of the discretion vested in them, refused aid in the one case and granted it in the other.

  Guy's Free Schools, Ballymena.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a scheme has been framed under the Educational Endowments (Ireland) Act, 1885, for the government and management of the
  † See (4) Debates, cxliv., 133, 1250.
  ‡ See page 589.
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  endowments in connection with Guy's Free Schools, Ballymena; and that memorials signed by Ballymena residents, protesting against the diversion of the endowments as defined in the scheme, the removal of the schools from their present site, the site on which it is pro posed to rebuild, and asking an inquiry into the circumstances of the case, had been received by the educational endowments inspectors; and, if so, will he state whether it is intended, before any further steps are taken, to grant the inquiry asked for.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The Answer to the first inquiry is in the' affirmative. The scheme provides that the governors shall not move the school to another site without the con sent of the Commissioners of Charitable Donations and Bequests. The Commissioners have not yet received an application for their consent, but when the matter comes before them they will doubtless consider any memorial which persons interested may address to them. The Educational Endowments (Ireland) Commission has long since ceased to exist. The Commissioners of Education in Ireland have received the memorial referred to but they have no control over the endowment.

  Coolie Education in Ceylon—Publication of Papers.
  MR. STANLEY WILSON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will lay upon the Table the correspondence between the Government of Ceylon and the Secretary of State on the education of the children employed on estates in that colony; also copies of resolutions; passed by the Committees or Commissions to which the matter has been referred. together with memoranda by members thereof, and minutes of evidence, if any, taken before such Committees.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) I will lay upon the Table a copy of correspondence on coolie education as published in Ceylon. As regards the last pare of this Question, so far as I am aware the Papers referred to have not yet been presented to the Legislative Council, and

  1337
  I am therefore unable to lay them on the Table.
  MR. STANLEY WILSON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state on what date the last Commission on coolie education in Ceylon was appointed; and when does he expect to receive its Report.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) The Commission to inquire into educational questions in Ceylon was appointed last January, and the Governor informs me that it is expected to report some time in July.

  Army Gymnasia.
  SIR THOMAS DEWAR: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether, with a view to physical development in the Army and the temporary reappointment of the inspector of gymnasia, has he yet made any definite appointment to this position; and, if so, will the curriculum be arranged in accordance with the most modern methods of instruction.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The reply to the first part of the Question is in the negative. As regards the second part of the Question the curriculum is, it is believed, arranged in accordance with the most modern methods of instruction.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    The Black Watch—Place of Training.
    MR. McCRAE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if lie can state whether the 1st Battalion Royal Highlanders (the Black Watch), now stationed at Fort George is to be sent to Stops for training; and, if so, what use is to be made of the manœuvre ground recently leased in the Inverness district for the training of troops.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): All Regular battalions in the Scottish Command, including the 1st Battalion Royal Highlanders, will be assembled for brigade training at Stops about August
    1338
    1st. No manœuvre ground is leased in the Inverness District, except in the vicinity of Fort George, and this land is only sufficient for company and battalion field training.

    Cadet Corps.
    MAJOR SEELY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State or War whether, in view of the fact that officers of cadet battalions are required by the War Office to pass examinations, that the corps are inspected and reported on by officers of the Army, and in other respects subject to Government inspection and control, he will consider the desirability of making some grant to these corps.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Cadet battalions are already granted the monies involved in the issue to them of arms and ammunition and the cost of inspections and reports. These inspections are made at the request, and for the benefit, of the cadet organisations. The question of the grant of capitation allowances has been raised on previous occasions and it has not hitherto been held advisable to increase the assistance given to them. I am not aware of any leasons for departing from this decision.

    Military Service in Nigeria.
    MR. AINSWORTH: I beg to ask the Secretary of state for War whether he will consider the advisability of allowing officers attached to military forces in Nigeria to count each year's service as two as is now the case with non-commissioned officers.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The mode of reckoning service of officers in West Africa received very careful consideration at the hands of my predecessor, who decided that no changes should be made in the system then existing. I am not aware of any grounds for departing from this decision.

    The Colonial Conference.
    MR. RUNCIMAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he has yet taken any steps to ascertain whether any of the self-governing Colonies are willing to send to the proposed Colonial Conference delegates

    1339
    who will be entirely free and unfettered by instructions.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOE THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): No, Sir. Such steps would be in my opinion very premature.

    Establishment of a Marine Post Office on Atlantic Liners.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General if it is the intention to establish a marine post office on the liners plying between England and the United States; and, if so, will he appoint those officers to the sea post office who have successfully dealt with American mails on the Dublin and Queenstown T. P. O. for a number of years, and whose experience of such work specially fits them for, and gives them a claim to, a position on the marine post office.
    THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,): The Answer to the first part of the hon. Member's Question is in the affirmative. The mails between this country and the United States will be sorted at sea by a force supplied partly by the Post Office of the United States, and partly by the British Post Office. The matter is an administrative one of a new kind. I cannot admit that any particular body of officers has a claim to the new duties, and the men selected will be those who are considered the most competent to perform this work.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: Would not the people in the habit of doing this work be the most fit for it?
    LORD STANLEY: Yes, probably.
    MR. NANNETTI: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the non-transference of the men now sorting mails between Queenstown and Dublin will inflict serious injury on them? Will he take that into consideration?
    LORD STANLEY: No, Sir. The only consideration must be that of getting the best men I can for the work.
    CAPTAIN DONELAN: Will the proposed change make any alteration in the existing arrangement for landing the American mails at Queenstown?
    LORD STANLEY: No, Sir.

    Members' Correspondence.
    MR. BRIGG: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General I whether, as above a hundred Members of this House find it more convenient to them to have all their letters which come here redirected to their home address, he will give instructions, failing any better method that can be adopted, that Members' letters shall be delivered to them if they are on the premises, in a similar way to that which is adopted in some Foreign Houses of Parliament.
    LORD STANLEY: I am not quite sure to what method of delivery the hon. Member refers, and I shall be obliged if he will give me particulars of it, in order that the question may be considered.

    Vagrancy Convictions in Manchester.
    MR. TOMKINSON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the fact that at the Manchester City Police Court on the 22nd April last, 135 men of all ages were charged with the offence of sleeping out at a brick croft near Moston, when about 125 of them were sent to gaol for seven days, notwithstanding that some of them stated they had work to go to if they were allowed to depart, while one or two who had means upon them were discharged;. and whether he will consider the advisability of proposing some change in the law to avoid the recurrence of similar action in the case of destitute persons.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS,): I have made inquiry from the magistrates, who dealt with these cases. They inform l me that the evidence against each defendant was duly considered, and due weight, given to their statements as to previous, and prospective employment. In their opinion, however, the defendants who. were convicted belonged to the class of: persons against whom the Vagrant Act is

    1341
    directed. The magistrates add that on further consideration of the circumstances, and with full knowledge of the character of the defendants, they are still of opinion that the defendants did not come within the category of working men, but were tramps and beggars who did not desire work. Considerable damage had been done at the brickfield where the men were arrested. I am not prepared to propose any change in the existing law.

    Underfed School Children—Liability of London Boards of Guardians.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, under the Order and Circular on the Feeding of Hungry Children, any cost incurred by London boards of guardians will be a charge on the parish Poor Law fund or on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,: The cost of relief given by a board of guardians in London is in all cases defrayed in the first instance out of their own funds; but the enactments relating to the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund provide that certain payments shall be paid to them out of that fund in respect of expenses which they have incurred for purposes therein specified. Relief of the kind mentioned in the Question would not in general come within these enactments, and consequently no payment could be made out of the fund in respect of it.
    DR. MACNAMARA: Will the Government consider the desirability of making the change in the law necessary to place the expenditure on the Common Fund?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I can give no pledge.

    Parents of Underfed Children—Electoral Disqualification.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether it is in the discretion of boards of guardians, under the Order and Circular of the Local Government Board on the Feeding of Hungry
    1342
    Children, to enforce the disfranchisement of a parent whose child in the opinion of the guardians is suffering from want of food through no fault of the parent.
    MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON: I beg at the same time to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether it is intended that parents whose children are provided with meals under the powers of the recent Order shall be disfranchised on the ground of such relief.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Perhaps I may be allowed to answer these Questions together. Neither the Local Government Board nor the guardians have any authority or jurisdiction with regard to any question of disfranchisement. The receipt of parochial relief within the prescribed period is a disqualification for being registered as a voter. I am not aware that the fact of the relief being given on loan would make any difference in this respect, but whether in any particular case a person is disqualified on the ground of receipt of parochial relief is a matter for the Revising Barrister.
    DR. MACNAMARA: Is not the Answer to the latter part of my Question practically in the affirmative, so that disfranchisement will occur in these cases?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Yes, so far as I am aware.
    MR. KEIR HARDIE: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that it has been twice decided in the Law Courts that relief given in the form of loan does not disqualify.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I am not aware of it.
    MR. KEIR HARDIE: I will send the right hon. Gentleman the cases.

    Tuberculosis Commission.
    MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board what is the present position of the inquiry being held by the Commission on Tuberculosis;

    1343
    and when the Commission may be expected to complete its inquiry and report.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I understand that the Royal Commission hope to issue a further Interim Report towards the end of the present year, but that it is not possible to say at present when the final Report will be issued.

    Agricultural Bating Act—Clerical Incomes from Corn Rents.
    MR. MALCOLM: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether clerical incomes derived, under certain Acts of Parliament, from corn rents, are entitled to the benefit of the Agricultural Rating Act.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The Act to which I think my hon. friend intends to refer is the Tithe Rentcharge (Rates) Act, 1899. Some corn rents are not rateable, but where a corn rent, whether converted into a rentcharge or not, is attached to a benefice and is rateable, the Act of 1899 applies.

    Smallpox on Vessels—Quarantine Regulations.
    MR. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether there is power vested in the port authorities at Southampton and elsewhere, or in the public health authorities, to quarantine vessels upon which are persons suffering from, or suspected to be suffering from, infectious disease; if so, whether he can state why such power was not exercised in regard to the steamship "Nile," which brought cases of smallpox into Southampton, and through its passengers and crew spread the disease in various parts of England and Ireland; if there be no such power in either authority, whether he will take steps to have it vested in those charged with the preservation of public health; and whether he can state the number of persons landed from the "Nile" who have developed this disease, and also the number of those who came in contact with passengers or crew who have taken the disease, and whether any deaths have resulted.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The local authorities referred to are not empowered to quarantine vessels coming into their districts with smallpox cases on board, but if there is a person on board suffering from any dangerous infectious disorder he. may be removed to hospital under a justice's order. I could not hold out any expectation that the former system o: putting vessels into quarantine would be revived in this country. I understand that sixteen persons in England and Wales who were landed from the "Nile" have since developed smallpox, and that seven persons who came into contact with the passengers or crew have also developed the disease. Four cases of deaths from smallpox at Southampton have been reported to the Local Government Board as occurring since the arrival of the ship. The Board have not received any reports as to deaths from the disease at other places to which any of the crew or passengers proceeded on landing.
    MR. SCOTT-MONTAGU: Was there any failure of duty on the part of the local authorities?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: No, Sir, as far as I am aware the local authorities at Southampton seem to have done their duty.

    City of Winchester Motor-Car Regulations.
    MR. CAWLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he will state the grounds on which the Local Government Board refused the application of the corporation of the City of Winchester to limit the speed of motor-cars to ten miles an hour whilst passing through the city.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: A local inquiry was held in this case at which the application was opposed. The experience gained by the inquiries held in this and other cases led the Local Government Board to the conclusion that the regulation which under Section 9 of the Motor-Car Act, 1903, is only authorised "with a view to the safety of the public" ought not to be applied unless it was shown that the safety of the public is inadequately protected by the other

    1345
    provisions of the Act, and particularly by Section 1, which makes motorists liable to heavy penalties who drive "recklessly or negligently or at a speed or in a manner which is dangerous to the public." Further, that whatever case there might be for the imposition of the speed limit as regards the whole or part of any particular highway, it appeared to be impossible to hold that the safety of the public demanded that throughout the whole of such an area as the City of Winchester no motorist should under any circumstances drive his car at a speed exceeding ten miles an hour. On these grounds the Board felt unable to comply with the application of the town council.
    MR. CAWLEY: Then are we to under stand that in no case will the local authority have power to regulate the speed?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Oh, no, Sir.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the late President of the Local Government Board only got this Bill through on the understanding that the local authorities should have jurisdiction in their area?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    The Valuation Bill.
    MR. BENN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is yet in a position to name a day for the introduction of the Valuation Bill; whether, having regard to the number, difficulty, and importance of the appeals now made in rating cases, he will be prepared in the Bill to substitute an expert tribunal for quarter sessions as the authority for determining all such appeals; and whether, seeing that in London pressure occurs in the year of quinquennial re valuation, he will consider the desirability of inserting in the Government's Valuation Bill some provision for spreading the work of revaluation over the whole quinquennium instead of concentrating it in one year.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The Answer to the first part of the Question is in the negative. I could not give any promise to comply with the proposal in the second part of it. I will give consideration to the suggestion in the last part of the Question, but the matter is not free from difficulty.

    Consolidation of the Poor Law
    MR. KEIR HARDIE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that the guardians of 214 Poor Law Unions in England and Wales have this year adopted a resolution in favour of the Government and the Local Government Board proceeding without delay with measures for the consolidation and codification of the laws relating to the relief of the poor, and the Orders issued by his Department for the administration thereof; and what action, if any, he proposes taking in the matter.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I am aware of the resolution passed by boards of guardians on the subject referred to. I realise the advantages which would result from consolidating the law relating to the relief of the poor, but I am afraid I could not hold out any prospect of legislation on the subject during the present session. The question of consolidating the Poor Law Orders is, however, receiving attention.
    MR. KEIR HARDIE: Will the Government appoint a small Committee to inquire into the possibility of legislation?
    ME. GERALD BALFOUR: No, Sir, we have no such intention.

    Sheep Scab in the Orkneys.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture if the existence of sheep scab has been proved to be existent or to have lately been inexistence in the Orkney Isles; and if he is not satisfied of its existence will he appoint an inspector to examine the flocks before bringing the Order into force requiring that sheep shall be dipped before shipment; if he is aware of the cost to small farmers of putting up sheep dips; and if it is proved that dipping is

    1347
    necessary the Board of Agriculture will erect sheep dips at convenient places where farmers can dip their sheep on paying cost of material used.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. AILWYN FELLOWES,): The last case of sheep scab reported to the Board from Orkney occurred in the quarter ending at Midsummer last year. It is not practicable to adopt the hon. Member's suggestion that an inspector should be sent to examine the 36,000 sheep scattered all over the Orkneys, but I hope shortly to be able to announce certain amendments to the Order, which will, I hope, remove many of the difficulties which have been anticipated. The Board have no funds at their disposal for the provision of dipping tanks or places, but, under the Diseases of Animals Act, 1903, local authorities are empowered to provide facilities for the dipping of sheep, and I have no doubt but that they will avail themselves of this power where necessary.

    Thames Barrage Scheme.
    SIR CHARLE S CAYZER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether his attention has been drawn to the proposed barrage for the Thames by building a dam at Gravesend which would do away with all dredging above Gravesend, keep the water in the river always at a high tide level from Gravesend to Teddington, and increase the navigable area; whether he is aware that Sir Douglas Fox, late President Inst. C.E., from an engineering point of view, and Mr. W. J. Dibdin, late analytical chemist of the London County Council, from a sanitary aspect, have reported favourably on the scheme; and whether he will appoint experts to consider and report to the House if the scheme is practicable prior to the contemplated expenditure for dredging and improvement of the Port of London.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW,): The attention of the Board of Trade has been directed more than once to a proposal for a barrage across the
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    Thames, but they are not aware that the details of a scheme have been sufficiently carefully thought out and formulated. I have also seen communications from the distinguished gentlemen referred to in the Question. I gather, however, that both Sir Douglas Fox and Mr. Dibdin made reservations of great importance. The Board of Trade do not desire to discourage the consideration of the question, and should they be satisfied that the time has arrived for an inquiry, the House may rest assured that they will not resist it. But the information at their disposal is hardly yet sufficient to enable them to recommend the spending of public money on such a report as that suggested.
    SIR CHARLES CAYZER: May I ask whether, in view of the far-reaching importance of the barrage scheme to the Port of London, the Board of Trade will be prepared, if the same is practicable, to appoint a Departmental Committee, together with Members of the House, to investigate the subject.
    MR. BONAR LAW: I do not think an inquiry of that kind would be of any use without expert evidence, which would cost a great deal of money, and the Board would not be justified in recommending it until they see how such a scheme is likely to be supported by public bodies.

    Lightships and Wireless Telegraphy
    MAJOR SEELY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether the work of installing wire less telegraphy on the six lightships for life-saving purposes has now been commenced; and when it is likely to be completed.
    MR. BONAR LAW: The agreement with the Marconi Company has been finally settled, and the work of installation will be put in band forthwith.

    Foreign Prison-made Goods.
    MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what is the amount of prison-made foreign goods which has been prohibited from landing.

    1349
    under the provisions of the Prison-made Goods Act up to December 31st, 1904.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. VICTOR CAVENDISH,): No goods have been prohibited from being landed nor have any further seizures been made by the Customs Department under the Act referred to since the date of my reply on July 14th† last to a Question by the hon. Member on this subject. The total value of such seizures is. therefore, still £183 4s. 0d.

    Mr. Chamberlain's Room in the House of Commons-
    MR. WHITLEY: I beg to ask the hon. Member for Chorley, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, on whose application a private room was allotted to the Member for West Birmingham; in what capacity did the applicant apply; and when was the application made and granted.
    LORD BALCARRES: A room was placed at the disposal of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham at the beginning of last session on the application of the recognised Whip of the Liberal-Unionist Party.
    MR. WHITLEY: Who is the recognised Whip of the Liberal-UnionistParty?
    LORD BALCARRES: The recognised Whip of the Liberal-Unionist Party is the hon. Gentleman's colleague, the senior representative of the town of Halifax.

    Shrewsbury Education Committee.
    MR. BRIGHT: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether his attention has been called to the resolution of the Shrewsbury Education Committee that the children in non-provided schools may be taken to places of worship during school hours, the attendance at such places of worship to count as school attendance; if so, in view of the provisions of the Education Act, what action the Board of Education proposes to take in the matter.
    † See (4) Debates cxxxviii., 23.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,):I have seen the resolution referred to. The local education authority for Shrewsbury is willing in the case of voluntary schools to recognise attendance in church as attendance at school for the purpose of religious instruction on occasions which must be specified by the managers and which must not exceed twelve in number in each year. So long as the conscience clause is observed and no direction of the local education authority as to secular instruction or by-law as to school attendance is in issue, there appears to be no occasion for the Board of Education to intervene.
    SIR JOHN GORST: May I ask under what provision of the Act has this authority made such a by-law?
    SIR WILLIAM ANSON: Under the by-law making powers given in the Education Act of 1870.

    Sanitary Accommodation in Scottish Schools.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate if he will state what provision exists for ensuring reasonable inspection of the closet accommodation provided for school children, boys and girls; and if, where it is found that there is practically no accommodation, the Education Department will, by withholding grants, insist on its provision.
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON,): It is past of the duty of His Majesty's inspectors to report upon the closet accommodation of every school they visit. If that accommodation upon the report of the inspector is found to be defective, or if the offices are badly kept, a reduction of grant, varying from one-tenth to a half according to the gravity of the offence, may be made from the grant.

    Agricultural Rating Bill—Committee Stage
    MR. LAMBERT.I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when it is pro posed to take the Committee stage of the Agricultural Rating Bill.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): To-morrow, Sir.

    Government Redistribution Proposals
    MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Government intend to found legislation upon their Redistribution Resolution which will change the areas of any constituencies within the present year.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have already told the House that the Government will proceed by Resolution, and when that Resolution comes on I shall be able, on being asked, to give the hon. Gentleman further details.

    French Neutrality in the Far East.
    MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Prime Minister a Question of which I have given him private notice, viz., whether he can make any statement to the House in regard to the situation which has arisen in the Far East by reason of the alleged violation of French neutrality by Russia on the coast of Cochin China, and as to the steps His Majesty's Government have taken with a view of averting any danger of an outbreak of war between England and France in connection with this question.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: In answer to the hon. Gentleman I have to say that the following information has been supplied to His Majesty's Government by the French Ambassador. As soon as the French Government became aware of the presence of Admiral Rozdhestvensky's squadron in Kamranh Bay, representations were sent to St. Petersburg with the result that, under orders from the Emperor himself, instructions were telegraphed to the admiral desiring him to leave Kamranh Bay, which he did at once. The Russian squadron were subsequently reported to be at Hon-kohe Bay, a few miles to the north, and Admiral de Jonquières, in command of the French station, was sent to report. He found the Russian squadron at this place, though not inside French territorial waters. Upon this the Governor
    1352
    of the French colony of Indo-China, who had received instructions to see that French neutrality was duly respected, sent the French Resident at Nha-trang, the French settlement nearest to Hon-kohe, with directions to ask the Russian admiral to leave. The admiral promised to do so on May 3rd. As regards the reports that the Russian squadron had received valuable assistance from the French authorities in Kamranh Bay, I am in formed that there are only two Frenchmen, neither of them an official, but holders of concessions from the French Government, in that place.

MR. WYNDHAM'S RESIGNATION—PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
MR. WYNDHAM: I ask the indulgence of the House for the statement which I now wish to make of the reasons of my resignation. I regret that my health prevented me from doing so at an earlier period of the session. I have, however, Sir, nothing to say this afternoon of the interesting character which sometimes attaches to occasions of this kind. I neither differ from my late colleagues on any issue of policy, nor have I found cause to change in the smallest degree the views which I have long held and frequently expressed upon Irish administration. I think now, as I have always thought, that the maintenance of the Union is a fundamental principle of any sound Irish policy. I think now, as I have always thought, and on more than one occasion said, that the plans for what are now called devolution are, from some points of view, more open to criticism than the plan for Home Rule, since they have not even the merit of appealing to any large section of Irish opinion. I insisted on resigning, therefore, not on grounds of policy, but because certain circumstances, partly political and partly personal, convinced me that I could best help the Party to which I belong and the Government as an unofficial Member than as Secretary for Ireland. The situation both in Ire land and here became complicated, as every one knows, by personal misunderstanding and this, as is apt to happen in such cases, produced an atmosphere of rumour and suspicion.

1353
Looking back with the wisdom born after events, I think, and am perfectly willing to say, that I have been myself in part to blame. I have always desired that Irish Unionists, and above all that Unionists in the South of Ireland, should take a more active part in social reform. I have always been aware of the great difficulties which beset them if they attempt to take such a course. The benefit of such action upon their part was abundantly seen in the passing of the Land Act. I greatly wished that they would apply themselves to other problems of a practical character. I was myself absorbed in what seemed to me practical objects upon which all sections of Irish opinion might conceivably agree—upon the housing problem, including the labourers' question, upon Poor Law administration, upon education, upon the development of transit and industry; and, Sir, I was also anxious, perhaps above all, to secure to the Irish Government a greater degree of financial elasticity in order that it might be in a better position to meet needs peculiar to Ireland. Believing that such objects can only be prosecuted under favourable conditions of political calm, I tried to maintain the spirit which had guided the Land Conference to success, in the hope that the projects I cared about and which I had in my mind might also enlist support even from those who are most sharply divided upon constitutional questions. But, Sir, I have never contemplated and I have never approved of any proposal for introducing a financial board into the administration of Irish government. And so too, Sir, with the delegation of legislative powers from this House other than for private Bills. That also I have never contemplated and never approved. I was not, therefore, at the time sufficiently alive to the probability that any body of Unionists could advance into the region of constitutional controversy where I could not follow them, nor, if they proceeded so far in that direction, refrain from expressing my dissent. I did not consequently give that attention which I now think I should have given to the earlier proceedings of the Reform Association which were reported in August last.
I had not, Sir, intended this afternoon to repeat the explanation which I have
1354
already given of the subsequent misunderstanding between myself and the Under-Secretary. Sir, misunderstandings are very rarely to be explained, and they do not occur unless men who believe that they know all that is in each other's minds are, as a matter of fact, imperfectly or inaccurately informed of what is in each other's minds. Subsequent at tempts at explanation rarely lead to any satisfactory conclusion to either party; but, in view of comments which have come to my notice to-day, I wish to make the following observations. At the end of last session I did not know that the Land Conference was still in existence. I did not know that it intended to take a new name and a new lease of life; and, therefore, I did not anticipate the publication which appeared in the Press on August 31st. I paid no heed to that document. I will not, and I feel no obligation to, dwell again upon the considerations that a Minister who goes away at the end of the session in the full belief that he may safely divert attention from the cares of his office may be excused from such an admission. I do not feel called upon to offer any excuses in that respect. I do not base myself on the fact that I gave insufficient heed to that document or on the vague nature of the terms in which it was drawn up. Having read it again recently in a pamphlet which has been published I know that I could, if that were to the point, show that it would not have led me to expect the later proposals. I do not urge that, and I cannot urge that, since I did not attend to the document at the time. No copy of it was sent to me. I was not reading the Irish newspapers. I did not know then, though afterwards I did, that the leading Unionist paper published in Dublin, after studying its proposals on the spot, concluded by saying that, for the present—
"We are content to bid the Irish Reform Association a cordial welcome and to wish success to its patriotic efforts."
The Under-Secretary wrote me a letter. I cannot produce that letter because I have not got it, and I cannot speak of it from recollection because I cannot recall it. I unreservedly accept the fact that it was written, and. that in the mind of the writer it was sufficiently explicit, in

1355
view of the earlier publication, to lead me to expect the later development. I say, however, without a shadow of doubt on my mind, that I did not expect the proposals to which I objected when they appeared. This second manifesto contained concrete proposals to which I strongly objected and which I could not ignore. I at once stated my objections; and here the matter would no doubt have ended but for the fact that the Under-Secretary was cognisant of this document. As I have pointed out he was sincerely, though erroneously, under the belief that I should not object to its contents. It was inevitable that such a misunderstanding should give rise to every species of rumour and misconception as to my own action and aims. Such misconceptions, while they last, are destructive of all efforts for good. I came to the conclusion that my power of doing useful work in Ireland was at an end; and, therefore, I felt justified in pressing on my right hon. friend to accept my resignation, believing that I could best strengthen his policy and support his Government by resigning from his Government, and tendering to him, as I do again to-day, the assurance of my unwavering support as a private Member.

NEW BILL.
  MOTOR-CAR (ALIEN DRIVERS) LICENCES BILL.
  "To amend the Law relating to the grant of Licences to Alien Motor-Car Drivers," presented by Mr. Scott, Montagu; supported by Mr. Arthur Stanley, Mr. Charles James Murray, Master of Elibank, Mr. Bright, Mr. Joseph Albert Pease, Mr. Norman, and Mr. David Morgan; to be read a second time upon Wednesday, 17th May, and to be printed. [Bill 207.]
  NEW MEMBER SWORN.
  William O'Brien, esquire, for the Borough of Cork.

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANrose to move—"That
  1356
  in view of recent events in Ireland and the revelations which caused the resignation of the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Dover, it is in the highest degree desirable, in the public interest, that the correspondence and other information necessary to enable the House of Commons and the country to form a judgment on the policy and proceedings of the Irish Government, connected with and subsequent to the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell, be communicated to Parliament." He said: I know, Sir, that I shall be interpreting the feeling of every Member in the House when I say that we welcome the right hon. Gentleman back among us. I trust that if he has not fully recovered he will soon recover the complete enjoyment of good health, and I shall carry every hon. Member with me when I say that we have the most perfect appreciation and sympathy with him in the troublous times through which he has come. He will find, possibly, his own conduct and the conduct of some of his friends keenly and sharply criticised, but that criticism does not interfere with our admiration of his public qualities and of his devotion to public duty, and with our belief in his perfectly sincere desire to do what he thought was most for the interests of the country whose affairs he was administering.
  I have put on the Paper a Motion which the right hon. Gentleman immediately called a Motion of want of confidence. In its form it is not a Motion of want of confidence. It is an inquiry for further information to enable us to judge whether confidence is deserved or not. But I am bound to say that, as I intend to arraign in several particulars the conduct of the Government, and especially of the right hon. Gentleman himself, I do not disclaim the title which he has himself affixed to my Motion. The Motion asks for light on a strange chapter of Irish history which extends over the last three years. It is not from mere curiosity—although curiosity would be both natural and legitimate; and even I conceive it to be the right and the duty of the House to satisfy its curiosity in any case in which the methods adopted by the Executive Government appear to deserve minute inquiry. But there is more than this.

  1357
  We wish to know all about these transactions, because of the disclosures we may thereby obtain as to the real springs of Unionist action, as to the really dominant and governing influences in the Unionist Party, and as to the degree of consistency and continuity which may be found in the Irish policy of the Government.
  In order to recall and get the tissue of events well before us, let us go back to the beginning. I believe that very many Members will be for the moment surprised when I recall to them the fact that in 1902 the Irish policy of the present Government was not by any means a passive, neutral, quiescent, benevolent policy. It was a policy of active repression. Coercion had been in operation since the previous spring. At the time of Sir Antony MacDonnell's appointment—I rather think the very day before that appointment was announced—the House of Commons was engaged in a debate initiated by the hon. Member who took his seat to-day, during the autumn session of that year, on the proclamation by the Government under the Crimes Act of the city of Dublin itself and of nine counties in Ireland. This had taken place after the rising of the House in August. From that day to this we have not had any adequate explanation of these proclamations. Ireland was admitted to be, even by the Chief Secretary himself, free from crime. That, at all events, was the case, and so fixed Was the idea that coercion was the main policy of the Government that the chief advocates in the London Press of the forcible and anti-Irish government of Ireland actually welcomed the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell on that very ground. These were the words of The Times. After pointing out that the train was laid for an explosion of mad ness that might easily and rapidly pass into crime—how familiar is the language!—The Times continued—
  "The police should be inspired with a sense of the paramount necessity of vigilance and activity. Sir Antony MacDonnell, who in his career in India has shown that he is not a man to be trifled with, is well fitted to infuse his spirit into the force upon which the authority of the law and the defence of liberty so largely rests in Ireland."
  The House will see that this is the view of the Irish Government, which was
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  expressed, I think, by the late Chief Secretary when he indicated his satisfaction that the active influence of administration would cease to be a mere police force. But this article in The Times treats it as mainly a police force. Such was the state of things, and such was the expectation on all hands of the extreme Party in Ireland, represented by, I believe, seven or eight hon. Gentlemen on the bench below the gangway opposite. I find great difficulty in finding any epithet of description that would bring them upon the screen. I always try to call hon. Gentlemen by the names they themselves prefer. On that account, I speak sometimes of the Unionist Party opposite. With these hon. Gentlemen I have tried the name of Ulstermen, and I have tried "extremists," the "Ascendency Party," and so on; and really when there are eight of these hon. Gentlemen sitting opposite, I hope they will excuse me if sometimes I am rather circuitous in my reference to them. But they represent a formidable force in Ireland, and I have really great compassion with their perplexities. Very naturally they said to themselves that the Chief Secretary, who had been employing coercion since April of that year and had been taken into the Cabinet, and whose admission to the Cabinet in the same summer bore witness to the agreement between him and the Prime Minister, never dreamt of taking a new departure in the opposite direction, in which the new Under-Secretary, Sir Antony MacDonnell, was to be the central figure, at a time when the Irish Members were being thrown into gaol and the principal city and a great number of counties in Ireland were under proscription for crime. I mention this to show what a sudden, vast, and evidently intentional change there was in the policy of the Government. I am not sure of the exact date when the proclamations were withdrawn, but it was not long before the new leaven of new doctrine began to work.
  The first sign came from the Viceroy less than a month after Sir Antony MacDonnell's appointment. This was Lord Dudley, who had taken the place of Lord Cadogan in Ireland, but not his place in the Cabinet. So that we had a Chief Secretary who was in the Cabinet and a Viceroy who

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  was not. Therefore, especially as the Viceroy was in his novitiate as a public administrator, he would not speak without consulting with the Chief Secretary. And what did Lord Dudley say? He said—
  "There were those who seemed to believe that the only way in which a great Empire could be successfully maintained was by sup pressing the various distinguishing elements or components; in fact, in running it as a huge regiment in which each nation was to lose its own individuality and to be brought under a common system of discipline. That was not his view. In his opinion, they were very much more likely to break up an Empire by such a method."
  That was Lord Dudley's way of infusing the Royal Irish Constabulary with "the spirit necessitated by the occasion." But he said another thing even more significant. "The opinion of the Government was"—mark the words—"and it was his own opinion, that the only way to govern Ireland properly was to govern it according to Irish ideas, instead of according to British ideas." Surely in the last sentence is to be found the clue to the whole of this extraordinary entanglement. This is putting new wine into old bottles with a vengeance. Ireland was to be governed henceforth according to the wishes of the Irish people—Ireland being at that moment under the active operation of the Crimes Act; and in the opinion of the Government, so Lord Dudley said, this was the only way to govern Ireland properly. There was to be self-government in substance, though not in form. You had a Viceroy, a Chief Secretary, and an Under-Secretary in Dublin who were going to open a new era. How was this to be done? Anyone who has followed closely subsequent events knows what the plan was. We on this side of the House followed this experiment, when it became discernible, with the keenest sympathy and interest, and we were not without hopes that permanent good would come of it, and that the methods to be adopted would lead up rom one stage to another in gradual logical succession to a form of government which the Irish people would accept.
  The first definite sign of this new policy was when the Land Conference was convened under the chairmanship of Lord Dunraven. It was composed of leaders of the Nationalist Party and of
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  one or two leading and representative members of the landlord Party; and let the House particularly note this—that this conference was the direct response to an announcement made by the late Chief Secretary that no scheme for effecting a settlement of the land question could be arrived at otherwise than by agreement, with the people themselves. I do not wish to strain the exact words, but this was, at any rate, a direct act of delegation, and a candid avowal that no British statesman was competent to grapple with and settle this question of the Irish land. The invitation was accepted; the conference drew up a scheme; a National Convention pronounced upon it; and the Land Act, which included the main decisions of the conference, was the result. I have two remarks to make at this point. These things were not done in a corner, but under the full light of day. I never heard that the Ulster Members made it matter of complaint that the joint authors of this Act included the leaders of the Nationalist Party, or that Sir Antony MacDonnell, to whose skilful hand and resourceful diplomacy the scheme was in large measure due, had in any way exceeded his powers by putting himself at Lord Dunraven's disposal. There was nothing heard then of "Papists and rebels." My second remark is that neither the Cabinet nor the Prime Minister censured Sir Antony MacDonnell for making himself accessible to all sorts and conditions of men, or for identifying him self with the proposals known as Lord Dunraven's proposals. Happily, that conciliatory and co-operative method was attended with complete success and the Bill became law.
  Now we come to the next stage. The unofficial President of this informal Irish Cabinet and the official convener of it at Dublin Castle next addressed themselves to the second question on the right hon. Member for Dover's list—namely "the realisation of Mr. Balfour's ideas on University education." Again the Chief Secretary had nothing whatever to do. In his new capacity he had only to stand at the window of the Lodge in Phoenix Park and wait for news of the wishes of the Irish people while the Under Secretary busied himself in interviewing the leaders of Nationalist thought. In due time another

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  Dunraven scheme made its appearance—a scheme which seemed to meet with the general acceptance of all Parties and creeds in Ireland. It is understood that the Chief Secretary, the Viceroy, and the Prime Minister were ready to adopt it, and it only remained for Parliament to ratify that scheme, when a change came upon the scene. One of the representatives of Ulster in the Cabinet went down to Belfast and denounced the scheme. The Fellows of Trinity College broke loose; and then these charges of Sir Antony MacDonnell's collusion with the Nationalists and Catholics, and, still more terrible, his attempts to seduce the Presbyterians of the citadel, began to be noised abroad. But still not even then was there any censure of Sit Antony MacDonnell. The Cabinet, as a whole, found themselves unable to accept the proposals which he had been instrumental in formulating, but they did not tell him that he had transgressed the bounds of official decorum, or that he had failed to apprehend the views of the Cabinet on the subject. This was a serious set-back to the new policy of conciliation and co-operation, and to the theory that Ireland could only be properly governed according to the ideas of the Irish people. I would ask the House of Commons, in the light of recent disclosures, to note what it implies. The Prime Minister has this session stated that no measure for Irish University education can be introduced by a British Minister in the circumstances of the case.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): No.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The words the right hon. Gentleman used were—
  "The question, is not and, as far as I can see, never again can be a Government question."
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It never has been.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: By a Government measure I do not mean the familiar domestic arrangement of putting on or taking off the Government Whips. I mean a question which a
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  British Government could not undertake to deal with. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman consented to Sir Antony MacDonnell's accepting office on condition that he and the Chief Secretary should ascertain the wishes of the Irish people on a matter which he described as vital to their welfare, and then he turns round and says, "I am sorry, I cannot help you."
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No; do not use the words "turns round." I have been perfectly consistent in my innumerable speeches on this subject, and they have all been of one tone.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman was turning round on the expectations and designs that were placed before Sir Antony MacDonnell when he was appointed Under-Secretary.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That is, as far as I am aware, quite incorrect. Sir Antony MacDonnell refers to my opinions. My opinions were contained authoritatively in a pamphlet which had a large circulation, and in that pamphlet the right hon. Gentleman can see the very statement of which he complains.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Then what was Sir Antony MacDonnell to do in the matter? What was the use of his wasting his time and his railway fares in ascertaining what people desired and thought, if all this time there was this cloud hanging over the question, so that, whatever result he might achieve, it could be of no use, because the Government could not help him, or help themselves. I cannot help thinking that this is a weak and cynical position for the Prime Minister to take up. He debars Ireland from settling its own affairs in its own way, and he now declares that he cannot settle this important matter either in his own way or in their way. I should have thought it bad from a Unionist point of view—because I wish to take a friendly view—to let it be understood that there were Irish grievances of the gravest description which no British Government could attempt to heal. For that is what it comes to. I should have thought that to take up a

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  position of such blank and naked Nihilism as this would be going far to undermine the Unionist cause.
  But now we may pass from that. We come to the third stage in this co-operative scheme. The first, as we remember, was wholly successful. The second broke down in the Cabinet. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR dissented.] Well, a Cabinet Minister going to Ireland and making a speech condemning it shows a mischief lurking about somewhere. But now we come to the third stage—to the question of bringing the administration in Ireland into efficient working so as to win the confidence of the Irish people. The landlords' section of Lord Dunraven's Conference Committee constituted itself into an Irish Reform Association and Sir Antonv MacDonnell, with the Chief Secretary's con sent, again placed himself at its disposal. There was an idea, I believe, of forming a Moderate Party with national aims and with a desire to promote the national well-being—a most proper object if it could be accomplished. There were many conversations and colloguings into which we need not go, although they are full of mystery. The scheme was promulgated, constituting a statutory body for legislative purposes, and a financial board partly elected, and at once the cry of Home Rule was raised. Sir Antony MacDonnell was charged with being a leading accomplice in a design not merely for handing the key of Dublin Castle over to the Irish people—they have some right to it, after all—but for basely betraying the cause of Unionism. Now with the merits or de merits of that scheme I do not concern myself to-day. It may have been crude and unworkable, or the reverse, but the point of cardinal importance is that these proposals are repudiated by the Government because they involve the principle of delegation and the elective principle. Ireland is to be governed according to Irish ideas—that the Viceroy has told us at the beginning of this chapter—but Irish ideas are well enough, if you like, but the moment you begin to put them in proper and regular form by invoking a direct expression of opinion then they are an unworkable heresy.
  Who was it that started the mutiny against this scheme? It was the small
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  Party of ascendency, who have so long; been accustomed to secure supremacy in Ireland for their own ideas and not for the ideas of Ireland. It was they who denounced the Under-Secretary, drove the Chief Secretary from office, and forced the Prime Minister and the Party opposite into a white sheet. Sir, Governments may propose, but it is these Gentlemen who dispose. The Prime Minister may make appointments, but it is these Gentlemen who dismiss. I do not blame them. They have acted honestly and straightly according to their instincts and their interests. I do not put it in an unpleasant way. When they see a powerful Government and a great political Party flying like sheep when they give them chase how natural it is for them to make the most of their power.
  Now let us try and understand in the light of all this what is the Unionist policy, what is meant by it. It is not an Irish national policy. It is not the policy which has so often been advocated in this country of governing: Ireland impartially by a British Government and giving the Irish all we should' give to ourselves, of giving them the same laws. How familiar we are with that programme! No, this is a policy under which a small fraction of the people use the British Government in order that the privileges of their own class may be upheld against the rights and liberties of Irishmen, and this was never more vividly shown than by the events we have before us to-day. But was there not something more when a few weeks ago this great bouleversement took place? For the Tory Party to be terrorised by the Ascendency Party is nothing new. They have often fled before them. But is their flight not accelerated by something in the circumstances of this movement, which lends speed to their heels? We have it, Sir, on the highest authority, yes, and concerted authority, that in their despair for their future the Government think of flying to a desperate remedy, the bogey of Home Rule. Yes, the bogey of Home Rule in order to hide the fact that their wars, their extravagancies, their class of legislation and; favouritism, have brought them nothing but sickness, and irritation, and indignation. Even their latest trick of promising

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  to delete and cancel and annul that fiscal provision which has been the keynote of our commercial prosperity, even that has only served to sow dissension among their own followers. They have misused their welcome by the country, and they have outstayed it. They are borne down by the burden of their own unpopularity, and they are bankrupt of future policy. The right hon. Gentleman amuses himself occasionally, and I assure him it amuses me to see him do so, by pointing to us and saying, "What is your policy?" I can hurl at the head of the right hon. Gentleman half-a-dozen good sound policies for the future which we accept and intend to follow.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: One would do.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I doubt whether the right hon. Gentleman has a single policy except to resist all that we should propose. But what, then, were they to do? Happy thought! Fall back upon the old scarecrow; call the Irish people rebels, and say the Empire is in danger—Ah! it is too late! But, Sir, it is too old. That will not do twice. In the meantime your own Land Act and your own Local Government Act forbid you the use of this scarecrow. But at least you could save yourselves from being caught—your Under-Secretary and Chief Secretary, and the rest—caught in the very act of conspiring and constructing a new Constitution in co-operation with the very men whom, in order to construct your bogey, you must denounce as knaves and traitors. Therefore, at all hazards, pacify the Ulstermen; put away this new policy of Irish ideas, so wise, as we think, so necessary, so promising a policy; rebuke one of your agents, and dismiss, discard the other—that is the Unionist Irish policy.
  Now I wish to say a word or two on the circumstances of the resignation of the right hon. Member for Dover, and of Sir Antony MacDonnell's retention. We have been walking among mysteries, and we do not gather much from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. I do not think that he said anything which would alter our opinion on the main question. His own personal action may have been
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  misunderstood by those with whom he acted; with that we have little to do; but the broad lines remain untouched by anything he said. What is the main question we have to consider? It is not why the late Chief Secretary resigned; it is why the Prime Minister accepted his resignation. It is difficult to reconcile the Prime Minister's account with that given in this House by the right hon. Member for Dover and that given in another place by Lord Lansdowne. There are two contradictory views on which the whole thing turns of Sir Antony MacDonnell's status and therefore of his delinquency. The first is that his position was quite exceptional and that therefore he was not to blame for associating himself with Lord Duniaven's reform movement, but that he was guilty of an error of judgment in failing to perceive the point at which the proceedings of Lord Dunraven and his friends fell, so to speak, under the ban; the point at which they passed beyond the pale of what is called Unionist policy. That is the view of Lord Lansdowne and of the right hon. Member for Dover. It is surprising, I think, that they should have joined in stigmatising as indefensible a mistake of such a character, all the more when he who committed the mistake was known to them to be a Liberal and an Irishman with Irish sympathies. But the other view is that Sir Antony MacDonnell enjoyed no privileges beyond those enjoyed by every Civil servant at the head of a department, and that his status was precisely that of a similar official in the Local Government Board or the Home Office. This is the Prime Minister's view. He says—
  "Sir Antony MacDonnell was censured because in connection with the Dunraven scheme he had exceeded the bounds laid down by the particular rules, and, what is even more important, the ordinary practice of the Civil Service."
  And this it was which was called indefensible and received a sweeping rebuke. The House is familiar with the terms of the appointment, the conditions on which it was made. If the Prime Minister ever read the cipher letter of the Chief Secretary before telegraphing and writing his concurrence, it left no definite impression upon his mind. Nothing unusual, he said, had occurred; it might happen in any office. We have it from his own

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  mouth that as respects the policy and the conditions of the appointment there has been much ado about nothing. All we ask him now is to explain why, if that is so, he accepted the resignation of the Chief Secretary. On his own theory, how does he justify accepting that resignation? If nothing in this appointment differentiated it from others and the one solitary cause of trouble was a slip on Sir Antony MacDonnell's part for which he had been admonished, was it not a natural thing to let bygones be bygones? The Prime Minister said on February 22nd—
  "The episode, which we all regret, was due to a misapprehension. Cannot we bury it in oblivion—this episode which, while it reflects discredit on nobody, gives pain to some."
  That was on February 22nd, yet on March 6th he announces the Chief Secretary's resignation because this insignificant and forgettable episode destroys his usefulness. Why did he not tell the Member for Dover when he came to him with his inept and quixotic offer to resign—which on this theory it was—that he wholly misunderstood the situation, that the incident was closed, the offence was condoned, that his resignation had no shadow of justification, and that it would constitute a grotesque miscarriage of justice and give rise to great embarrassments and misconceptions? The right hon. Gentleman said he was unable to resist the appeal of the Chief Secretary. He told us that on March 6th, but in the "Political Notes" in The Times on March 3rd I read this—
  "Mr. George Wyndham, M. P., replying yesterday from Clouds, near Salisbury, to a telegram from one of his Dover constituents, says the report is not correct that he will resign the Irish Secretaryship or succeed Lord Selborne at the Admiralty."
  There is no great sign of insistence on the resignation in this disclaimer two or three days before the announcement of his retirement was made. On March 6th it had become so serious that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister could no longer resist his appeal. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover gave a forecast of his resignation during the debate on the Address, when he spoke with the frankness which distinguishes him. He said his view was that the Government ought to try to make
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  the best of the situation, always subject to the Union.
  "Because," he continued, "I have followed that view I have exposed myself in some quarters to a great deal of hostile criticism. If because I have held that view I am to be condemned, I shall accept the condemnation and leave the Ministry."
  Why, however, has he resigned? Because the Under-Secretary had over stepped the bounds of his office. But then let us assume for a moment that the Prime Minister admitted to the then Chief Secretary what he has not admitted to the House, that political considerations did enter into the question. Suppose he was influenced by the Chief Secretary's plea that a great experiment had been reduced to ruins. Was it not then for the Prime Minister either to tell him that the new policy was not dead, but was to be persisted in in spite of the narrow Ulster opposition, or else to insist that if the Chief Secretary resigned he himself, as jointly responsible for the venture, must accept his share of the liability for the catastrophe, and himself resign also?
  I turn for a moment to Sir Antony MacDonnell—to consider his position. He has been condemned for an indefensible political error. At what date—and it is necessary if we are to understand the matter that these facts should be known—did the Cabinet come to this decision, what were the terms of the censure, and what representations did Sir Antony MacDonnell make either before or after his condemnation? The public censure of a great Civil servant is not an everyday occurrence. I think we ought to know something of the trial and the defence as well as of the judgment. Let me say I have never seen Sir Antony MacDonnell in my life, and am not entitled, qualified, or desirous to speak in any way for him; but surely considering his past career and the circumstances in which he undertook these duties it is neither fair to him nor becoming in the Government themselves to administer and publish this resounding rebuke and at the same time withhold his own statement of defence from the light of day.
  The treatment of Sir Antony MacDonnell seems equivocal, but what are we to say of the Viceroy? Lord

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  Dudley has served Ireland well; he has not spared himself in any respect in her service; and now that he has been detected in the crime of high treason against Unionist policy, he is rewarded by being told by the Prime Minister, "Oh, the Viceroys! The Viceroys are nothing. Viceroys may think and say what they please in the obscurity of their existence outside of the Cabinet.' The House of Commons well knows, and even regards with some little admiration, the dexterity with which the Prime Minister extricates himself from a predicament. But, after all, we have to deal with the facts, and the Viceroy remains in Dublin. He is to occupy a certain position, to maintain relations with the Chief Secretary and the Under-Secretary, even if the Cabinet and the Prime Minister are not aware of his existence. But what a situation is this? The Viceroy, who has made no secret of aiding and abetting the Under-Secretary in his crimes against the Union, the Viceroy, who has leanings towards a statutory body—fancy, what a dreadful thing!—and a financial board, partly elective; the Chief Secretary who regards these opinions as altogether impossibleand disbelieves most fervently in anything of the sort; and the Under-Secretary, who has been caught in the Act and censured with severity—there is a happy family for you! From one's heart one pities the new Chief Secretary, who lives in Dublin Castle with a political suspect on the left hand and on the right, and a chief in London who regards the whole question as antiquarian and belated. As one considers this remarkable trinity of Irish administration I confess I cannot believe we know the whole story. That feeling is deepened when we look across the House and see sitting in an unaccustomed place the man who by his own showing is as untainted with any of these heresies as the Prime Minister himself.
  The House will be pleased to know I come to my last point.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: What is the policy of which Sir
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  Antony MacDonnell—this is a most important matter—was to be the permanent administrator under the new Chief Secretary? We have had distant and ominous mutterings of coercion. I hope there is no foundation for them, but if this new and hopeful policy which has been attempted is to be snapped short off and Ireland is to be given to understand that the present system of government or no government is all she will get, what is the good of telling others, as the Chief Secretary is doing from day to day, that law and order were the first condition of civilised life. You have admitted yourselves that Ireland is badly governed. You have sent a Viceroy to proclaim a better way; you have ran sacked the Empire for an administrator of a sympathetic turn, whom the Irish people might recognise as in a new and peculiar degree responsible to them; you have inaugurated by your legislation with regard to land and local government the view that the Irish people are worthy of confidence and capable of discharging large administrative responsibilities; by every means short of the elective principle and delegation you have sought for a brief time to give Ireland a taste of self-government; and now you are going to slide back into your old function as a mere police force. Do you suppose you can conceal from the British people the real lesson of this experience by representing Ireland in the old colour of a lawless and disloyal country? What a childish expectation! The people are beginning to understand the truth about Ireland, have begun and advanced pretty well in learning the truth about Ireland. When they see standing in the dock together the Chief Secretary, whose dreams have been shattered, the Viceroy, who has been treated with such disdain, and the Under-Secretary, who has been rebuked as no Civil servant ever was rebuked before in our time, they will suspend judgment against the people of Ireland, and they will ask which are the separatists—the Party which in the name of Unionism has promised, and flattered, and cajoled, and abandoned Ireland, faithless to their own traditional principles—if you dignify them by such a word—and faithless also to the expectations they have themselves reasonably created; or the Party which seeks, and

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  believes it will bind the countries together by finding a means for the satisfaction of Ireland's aspirations, for the removal of those manifold evils under whose influence Ireland is wasting away.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, in view of recent events in Ireland, and the revelations which caused the resignation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, it is in the highest degree desirable, in the public interest, that the correspondence and other information necessary to enable the House of Commons and the country to form a judgment on the policy and proceedings of the Irish Government, connected with and subsequent to the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell, be communicated to Parliament."—(Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman.)
  MR. WILLIAM O'BKIENsaid he had listened with deep and sincere sympathy to the loyal and touching effort made by the Member for Dover to bring himself—he would not say to force himself—into harmony with the speech of the Prime Minister before the Primrose League. He joined heartily with the Leader of the Opposition in saying that it was impossible to listen to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman without feeling regretful that a brilliant career had been somewhat roughly, and he thought unfortunately, interrupted, but they were all at one in the hope and the belief that it was only interrupted, and that it would not be interrupted for a very lengthened period. There were portions of the speeches already delivered which left upon his mind an uneasy impression that the debate was likely to degenerate into an English Party fight at the expense of Ireland. Most Members would feel that Sir Antony MacDonnell was badly treated by his colleague the Member for Dover; the Member for Dover also was badly treated by the Prime Minister and very markedly by his successor; and there were others nearer home who perhaps had not been altogether too chivalrously treated by their colleagues. If they had been treated otherwise, and if things had been going on in Ireland as well to-day as at the time of the Land Conference, it
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  was possible that the present debate would not have come on, because Sir Antony MacDonnell would never have been thrown over. But these personal questions were very minor matters. The substance of the debate was that a policy which might have yielded, and to a large extent had yielded, great blessings to Ireland, and perhaps in no lesser a degree to England, was tried, and defeated not by the action of any one man or section, but by a most unfortunate and unhappy concatenation of forces, follies, and misapprehensions, from the responsibility for which no Party could claim to be altogether exempt.
  If the debate was to serve any useful purpose, its real object should be not to toss recriminations and taunts across the floor of the House, but to recognise that they had to go back to the position in which they stood eighteen months ago, before either Party or country could hope to recover the ground they had lost in the matter of clearing away the miseries that attended the Irish nation. Personally he was not able to approve entirely of the action of any Party in the House, nor could he condemn entirely the action of any Party. There was, however, one exception, as with his whole heart he could condemn the action of the Gentlemen from the Ulster corner. In the regrettable absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Armagh, the leadership of that section devolved—if he might use that dangerous word—upon the hon. Member for North Antrim, who at one time did not disdain to be the private secretary of the Member for Dover. He thought the Leader of the Opposition paid far too much attention to the Gentlemen from Ulster, because it would have mattered very little what they did if both English Parties and perhaps some Members who were not Englishmen had been a little wiser in this matter. The debate, however, ought to proceed upon other principles than these personal considerations.
  He did not think that any fresh evidence was needed as to the understanding on which Sir Antony MacDonnell went to Ireland. They had evidence enough in the speeches of Lord Landsowne and the Member for Dover, in

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  Sir Antony MacDonnell's letters, and in the undeniable fact that the Prime Minister was at the time apprised of what was going on and approved of every step that was taken. He knew the kind of man Sir Antony MacDonnell was, and he was glad to get him for the task before him. A great deal of trash had been spoken about the crime of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover in describing the Under-Secretary as a colleague. Everybody who knew Ireland was aware that the Under-Secretary was, in substance and in fact, a colleague of the Chief Secretary; in most cases he was the more important of the two, and he strongly suspected that he was the predominant partner even under the haughty and iron rule of the new Chief Secretary. If Sir Antony MacDonnell had only gone to Parnassus by going to Mount Stewart instead of to county Galway, if he had placed the Irish police indiscriminately at the service of the Irish landlords, or had used his patronage at Dublin Castle to suit the book—of course in a constitutional way—of the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim and his friends, precious little would have been heard of the humbug about the crime of the Chief Secretary in describing him as a colleague.
  If he might say so without disrespect, he did not attach very much importance to what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had most loyally stated to-day. They were on the eve of a general election, and the Irish policy was down in the dust. This was not a reproach addressed to the Member for Dover or to the Prime Minister exclusively, for these things were the mere by-play of Parliamentary debate. The Member for Dover and the Prime Minister, when Sir Antony MacDonnell went over to Ireland, unquestionably had an open mind and kept an open door; and he was perfectly certain that Sir Antony MacDonnell was sent over to Ireland to abolish Irish landlordism, to settle the University question, and to recast the government of Ireland. Whether they called it reorganisation or devolution did not matter; he preferred to call it evolution. As to the first of these three objects, it was now admitted that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover and Sir Antony MacDonnell were brilliantly
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  successful. They did not call it the abolition of landlordism, but that it most certainly was, and they carried it out with the consent of both Parties in this House and in the other House, with an astonishing spectacle of unanimity between the two countries. That was not the victory of any one Party, and in Ireland they did not strive to make it a Party victory. He had been taunted with proposing a vote of confidence in Dublin Castle, but the resolution which was unanimously adopted by the directorate of the United Irish League with the Leader of the Irish Party in the chair was as in the following terms—
  "That while the Act as placed on the Statute-book falls short in various important particulars of the recommendations of the Land Conference and the requirements of the National Convention, and cannot without amendment effect the entire extinction of landlordism within a reasonable time, we cordially recognise that the Amendments demanded by the National Convention have been conceded in Committee to an extent to which no great Government measure in relation to Ireland has ever before been modified in deference to the demands of Irish public opinion, and we think it a duty to make free acknowledgment that next to the exertions of a united Irish Parliamentary Party under the leadership of Mr. Redmond, and of Mr. T. W. Russell, Ulster tenant righters, that happy result is to be traced to the wisdom and active goodwill displayed by that section of the landlord leaders who made the Land Conference possible, and the loyalty with which Mr. Wyndham and his associates in the Government of Ireland endeavoured to make good his pledges to give legislative effect to the recommendations of that conference as well as to the high public spirit with which the Liberal Party resisted the temptation to extract any Party advantage from the situation."
  That was called a vote of confidence in Dublin Castle, and it had been quoted as justification for launching a combination for the destruction of the policy then adopted. Instead of being a vote of confidence in Dublin Castle that resolution was a vote of thanks to a united Ire land and a united England! In fact, a vote of thanks to the United Kingdom, if ever there was one, for passing what he considered the first stage in a policy which would put an end for ever to the methods of Dublin Castle. He did not wait for that resolution to express his own sense of admiration and thankfulness for the part which had been played in this matter by the Liberal Party and

  1375
  their Leader, who had never wavered. He expressed humbly what he felt as to the attitude of the Liberal Party and the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose Burghs, of the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Berwick, and the hon. Member for Battersea. If the suggestion which the hon. Member for Montrose made on that occasion had only been accepted in its fulness, that settlement would have gone through like clock-work. Nobody found fault with the Member for Dover or with Sir Antony MacDonnell for the passing of the Purchase Act. Everybody lauded him and glorified him because the land question which was then put on the road to a settlement was by far the heaviest and the thorniest of the three questions on the programme of Sir Antony MacDonnell.
  The University question was an in finitely easier one, and the moment his hon. friends opposite, who seemed to be troubled with bad dreams about the Pope and the Bishop approached this question in a broad spirit, that moment they would be convinced that they were as much astray upon the University question as they were upon the land question. The constitution of a national University that would satisfy all reasonable people in Ireland was a very light proposal compared with the question which the Land Conference had to face, of getting at a price which would satisfy both landlords and tenants. It was enough for them that those negotiations took place, and his only regret was that they had failed. The Leader of the Opposition had quoted the Prime Minister's statement, that no Government could hope to pass a University Bill under the present circumstances. That was what was said by the Member for Dover in regard to the land question. All that he needed to say was that whereever the fault lay most unquestionably it did not lie with the masses of the Irish people. The situation had been wholly changed from the unanimity and cordiality which had enabled the Land Purchase Act to be passed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover no longer had Ireland at his back, and the policy of conciliation was being trampled out. The hon. Gentlemen from
  1376
  the Ulster corner had got their opportunity of bringing in ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry, and they had done so. If they had been a little wiser they could have settled the University question without the aid of those Gentlemen, just as they had managed to settle the land question without the assistance of the landlords.
  With regard to the third of the items in this programme, about which all this empty and factious storm had been raised, he thought all hon. Members in the House, if they would only confess it, would agree that they ought never to have had that indefensible vote of censure passed by the Cabinet on Sir Antony MacDonnell To that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had made no answer and could make no answer. He certainly ought to have written his letter to The Times after Lord Dunraven's association had published their first manifesto, because it was perfectly, certain that that manifesto indicated the main lines of the devolution scheme every bit as emphatically as the subsequent scheme. The late Chief Secretary knew then that Sir Antony MacDonnell was in communication with Lord Dunraven, and he ought to have known that The Times newspaper was every other day publishing leading articles crying out that this devolution scheme was Home Rule in disguise, and asking the late Chief Secretary to repudiate it. He did not repudiate it, however, until it was found that the devolution scheme was denounced, not merely in the north-east corner of Ulster, but by every Party in Ireland and by the Nationalist news papers. After two years' absence he was. only claiming the light of expressing his views upon an important question and he hoped he was not giving offence to anybody. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover did not make the repudiation until the Nationalist news papers and some of the most important representatives in the country denounced devolution at least as violently as the orators on the other side of the House. The late Chief Secretary made an observation that evening which threw a very great deal of light on what really happened. The right hon. Gentleman

  1377
  stated that he objected to devolution even more than to Home Rule, because he found that it commanded the approval of no section. It was natural that he should come to that conclusion. He saw that devolution had no friends in Ireland and very naturally he came to the conclusion that he himself would soon have no friends in the Cabinet. The right hon. Gentleman then committed what the hon. Member thought was the one mistake in his Irish career. He struck his flag to Lord Londonderry, to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General for England, and to the minor Irish lawyers. He separated him self from Sir Antony MacDonnell instead of gladly associating himself with him to the end in a policy which had been gloriously successful, and which, he believed, would be yet gloriously successful. It would be easy to find strong language to describe that mistake, and perhaps to describe the apologetic tone of the right hon. Gentleman's statement that evening, but he confessed, looking back on his experience of politicians on both sides of the House for the last quarter of a century, and remembering how, on the Irish question especially, nothing succeeded like success, and nothing failed like failure, he did not know half-a-dozen men on either side of the House who were entitled to cast the first stone at the Member for Dover if, finding he had no friends in Ireland, he hesitated to part with his friends in England. He went further than that and said that, to his mind, it would be one of the most unscrupulous things a statesman ever did if the Member for Dover, or if the Prime Minister, were to endeavour to make out of the situation in Ireland the material for an anti-Irish or anti-Home Rule cry at a general election. On the other hand, he said that he thought any endeavour of the Nationalist Members to keep the Member for Dover or the Prime Minister to Home Rule, in their sense of the word, on the strength of Sir Antony MacDonnell's appointment, would be equally undesirable. He said that most emphatically.
  As to what were their first notions of the remedy for the admitted breakdown of government in Ireland—because that was the basis on which all this thing proceeded,
  1378
  when the present system of government by the admission of the other side and. his side had hopelessly become antiquated and indefensible—what were their first notions of what the remedy for that government might be, the only fault he found with his friends on his side was that they did not give more time and more fair play for these first notions to develop favourably, as unfortunately they had since developed adversely. Although they were as far from Home Rule in the full Nationalist sense of the term as he was from being a devolutionist in the sense of Lord Dunraven's present scheme, merely because he was perfectly willing to chat matters over in a friendly way he had never concealed from anybody what to him was as clear as daylight, that it was all nonsense to speak of any final settlement of the question of Irish government until this House devolved upon an Irish Parliament the management of purely Irish affairs under a Ministry responsible to the Irish people. On that point there was not a shadow of difference on the Nationalist Benches, but when prominent Unionists and fellow-countrymen invited them to an inquiry as to the best method of recasting the government of Ireland on the basis of delegating to an Irish statutory body legislative functions in connection with Irish affairs, then he for one had not the least notion of repelling them, and had not the smallest hesitation in entering into friendly discussion with them through any exaggerated apprehension that the reductions of Irish Lords or English Cabinet Ministers might tempt him from the straight path—and, of course, he presumed that the Lords and Cabinet Ministers had a still poorer opinion of any humble seductions of his friends and himself. Devolution, like Home Rule, might mean anything until they got particulars. For instance, in the Nationalists' own camp, one distinguished Irishman on these benches had defined devolution as the Latin for Home Rule, and another distinguished Irishman had defined devolution as lunacy from the Nationalist point of view. He would rather not quarrel about words before he knew what they meant.

  1379
  He could not vote for this Motion; neither did he intend to vote against it, because in the first place he thought Sir Antony MacDonnell stood in no need of defence. Sir Antony MacDonnell was in as proud a position as any man in the empire to-day. In the second place he knew that it was not the fault of the Government alone that the Wyndham-MacDonnell policy broke down in Ireland, and he could not conscientiously be a party to a policy which had driven the hon. Member for Dover from office, and in the third place he believed that Ireland was of higher interest than the cornering of the Tory or the Liberal Party. Ireland would want both Parties. It had been his fate to be denounced as a Whig for helping the Liberals to give them Home Rule, and he had been denounced as a Tory for helping the Tories to abolish landlordism. He dared say that he would be denounced as a Liberal, when, as he hoped, the Liberals began to do good work for Ireland. If they did good work for Ireland it was good enough for him. He was not in the least ashamed to avow that he for one had been true to any obligation of honour he had ever contracted with English Parties. Perhaps he might be allowed to say that, like some of the principal personages in this drama, if lie had changed his opinion, if he had seen reason to change his opinion in this world of change and in this; House of change, he should not think it in the slightest degree discreditable to avow it. But the fact happened to be that, so far as the situation had changed in this House since he first entered it, twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, it was Parties on both sides of this House who had happily changed, and it was not he nor those who thought with him. In the days when it was necessary to rouse English statesmen to the reality and intensity of Irish dissatisfaction, and to do it by pretty rough methods, he was glad to say that he made his humble contribution towards teaching that lesson. He was not a very old man, but he had seen the hair of five or six generations of Irish secretaries grow grey. It was no consolation that his own hair had grown pretty grey in the operation, but these rough methods were necessary, and with out them he and his friends should never
  1380
  have roused the House to the truth. He was as little a peace-at-any-price man now as ever, and if events such as those of Dursey Island the other day, or speeches like some of the threatening speeches of the new Chief Secretary for Ireland should make it necessary, which God forbid, to remind English statesmen again of the facts of Irish life and of the unquenchable spirit of Irish nationality with which they were struggling—well, it was just possible that the Government would not have any reason to complain of any criminal excess of moderation on his part.
  He did hope that that stage of conflict was past. He did believe that they had reached a point at which the progress of their cause for the future would depend not so much upon revolutionary strife, not upon any corner intrigues, not even on their strength in the division lobby, important as that undoubtedly was, but would depend, he hoped, upon combining both English Parties upon this question. It would depend upon their patiently conciliating their opponents. It would depend upon American and colonial opinion in their favour. It would depend upon the living example of successful self-government which was being actually given at that moment by their county councils and district councils, and, above all, the irresistible force of events by which Sir West Ridgeway, a Protestant and Tory, had been brought to the same opinion as Sir Antony MacDonnell. He had said before to those who were amazed at their moderation in the Land Conference that, so foolis hwas the prevalent notion in England about Irish affairs, there never had been a moment, even ill the fiercest struggles against coercion government for the last twenty-five years, when they had not been just as ready as at the Land Conference to close with any genuine manifestation of peace. They were ready for it at the time of the Treaty of Kilmainham with the Liberals, and with what was called the Muncaster Alliance with the Tories. They were ready in 1883, and in 1903, when the most magnificent opportunity was not lost, but only adjourned by one of the inscrutable strokes of destiny which had often crushed the hopes of Ireland. He could not claim to speak

  1381
  for anybody but himself. He had not the slightest desire to do so. But he hoped that he might claim, like an eminent personage, that he occupied the position of ploughing a lone furrow, though, unlike him, he had the hearty confidence that he was not ploughing the sands. He had expressed his views, and he claimed to speak for millions of the Irish people when he told the English House of Commons that, if they were wise at this hour, the opportunity for a settlement of Irish grievances was not now lost but only adjourned. It would yet be recognised that this question had got "to be settled, not by Party debates and divisions, but by the best men of Ireland and the best men of England and in the Colonies coming together into a peace conference which would bring England what would be worth to her more than all the dreams of Empire—and that was the peace, the honest peace, at home in Ireland.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he thought the hon. Members for Ireland who sat below the gangway opposite must feel that they were under a debt of gratitude to the much-despised Gentlemen from the North-East of Ireland who had been the means of inducing the hon. Member for Cork to come over from Ireland to deliver himself of the speech to which they had just listened. It was, however, very unfortunate that when the hon. Member had come so far he had not told the House all that was within his knowledge. He was perfectly satisfied, from reading the correspondence of the hon. Member, that it would go down to posterity, like the letters of Junius, or Swift's letters, that it would be publicly appreciated as "the O'Brien correspondence," which could be had for the sum of twopence. He was satisfied from a perusal of that correspondence that the hon. Member knew a great deal more than any other person of the transactions which had given rise to the whole action of the Unionist Party in Ireland and in England during the last two or three years.
  MR.WILLIAM O'BRIENsaid he was in the position of the needy knife-grinder who bad no story to tell. He knew nothing of the negotiations. If the hon. Member
  1382
  for Waterford knew something of them; at least he knew nothing to the discredit of any one.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he should be sorry to think that the hon. Member for Cork knew anything to the discredit of any one. He, however, would like to know what was the reason that there should come such a remarkable change in the public sentiments which from time to time the hon. Gentleman delivered to the people of Ireland and abroad.
  He had listened with some interest to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Resolution. He noticed the old familiar tone; the effort to elicit cheers from those whom he regarded as his allies. He noticed, too, that the right hon. Gentleman spoke of Irish wishes, Irish sentiment, and the Irish people all through his speech, just in the same way as he spoke of the inhabitants of Cape Colony and Natal, always meaning the exclusion of the loyal British residents in any of those countries. That was the only view the right hon. Gentleman seemed able to take. His sympathies in any part of the kingdom could only be enlisted by those who were in opposition to the general feeling and instincts of the Imperial sentiment in their country. When the right hon. Gentleman referred to the Irish people he always meant the Nationalists. Ulster Members were under no illusions what ever as to the right hon. Gentleman. They knew that in England he and such of those who sat behind him as were his followers posed as the champions of religious liberty. They were always protesting against the domination of the National Church. The right hon. Gentleman himself liked to be regarded as a sort of Protestant Defender of the Faith. Yet there was no one in the House more ready to hand over the Unionist Protestants of Ireland, whom he never lost the chance of sneering at, to the most intolerable ecclesiastical tyranny represented by hon. Members opposite. They knew what the policy of the hon. Gentleman would be if he came back to power. He did not know if that policy had been settled in detail, but its outlines had been divulged by one of the most active Members of the Party the junior Member

  1383
  for Oldham, whose statement at Bradford a few weeks ago had not been disavowed, that it would be the duty and the province of the Liberal Party, when they came into power, to take up the reins so rudely snatched from the hands of Mr. Wyndham and Sir Antony MacDonnell. He took it that that had the assent of the right hon. Gentleman. If that were so they knew his position perfectly well. They had no intention of following him, and if they found them selves in the same lobby as he, it would only be because poverty made strange bed-fellows.
  He should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman a Question. The right hon. Gentleman put down early in the session—he did not pretend to give the exact date—a Question which dealt with the subject they had been discussing in almost the same terms as the notice now on the Paper. The right hon. Gentleman then wished to know what further correspondence there was, and he might say it was singular how completely the right hon. Gentleman, in introducing his Motion, had abandoned what he might call the operative part of the Resolution. They heard now nothing of further correspondence, or of insistence on the production of further documents. For some reason or other the right hon. Gentleman completely abandoned that part of his Motion. Earlier in the session the right hon. Gentleman put on the Paper an inquiry as to further correspondence. The right hon. Gentleman, unfortunately, had a temporary indisposition, and during his absence the Question stood over, and finally disappeared from the Paper. Nothing more was heard of the matter, keen as the right hon. Gentleman's anxiety must have been, until April 12th. Now on April 11th the present Chief Secretary for Ireland, in reply to the Member for South Belfast, stated, in a reply which gave great dissatisfaction to hon. Members opposite, that he would see that the Under-Secretary for Ireland was subject to those powers of supervision and control which were reserved to the Chief Secretary, and which, as far as he was concerned, would be used. It was a very satisfactory Answer, it was right to say, to Irish Unionists. The extraordinary thing was that on the following day the
  1384
  right hon. Gentleman, who presumably was dissatisfied, or was in communication with some one who was much dissatisfied with the reply, put down the notice of Motion calling the attention of the House to the matter of further correspondence. He asked whether there was any relation between the reply of the Chief Secretary on the previous day, and the putting of the Motion on the Paper? Were there communications passing?
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: None whatever.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid that in that case it was a remarkable coincidence, but he accepted the right hon. Gentle man's statement. It was well he could make that statement, because the surmise that there had been communications was very general, considering the dates. He might say frankly, and he had the privilege of speaking for some of his colleagues from the North of Ireland, that they were not going to support the right hon. Gentle man, and that they were unfortunately on this occasion, not able to support the: Prime Minister. He was not accustomed to beat about the bush, and he would like at once to state the reason. They objected to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, but unfortunately in Ireland Unionists had a very strong feeling of suspicion that their own Unionist Government had been emulating or trying to emulate the right hon. Gentleman. When it became necessary to make a change in the personnel of the Irish Executive they felt that both the Chief Secretary, who called the Under-Secretary his colleague, and the Under-Secretary, who called the Chief Secretary his colleague, should be removed from working in opposition to Unionism in Ireland, and until this was done they could not support the Government. If the Under-Secretary was to maintain under a Unionist Government his position as a permanent official in Ireland and the head of the permanent officials in Ireland it made very little difference to Irish Unionists whether the administration was carried on by a Unionist Government or under the aegis of the Leader of the Opposition. It was true that they had been sneered at by the Leader of the Opposition and they were

  1385
  a small Party in the House. He was glad to be able to think, however, that they were at least a united Party. They had the knowledge that not only were they resolute to press these feelings to the logical end, but that they had behind them the whole of those whom they represented in this matter. They had voted Unionist and they must have beyond all doubt a Unionist Government set above suspicion. The Union meant a great deal more to them than to hon. Gentlemen opposite and if the maintenance of it was to be subject-matter for the dissecting table it did not matter whether the knife was a Home-Rule knife or otherwise. The Union meant much more to them than it did to hon. Gentlemen in England, who were apt to consider it as a Party election cry.
  Before he dealt with the matter which he wished to bring before the House he should like to clear away some statements that had been circulated. He did not mind anything the Leader of the Opposition said about them, but in the Unionist Press it had been ascribed to them that they had persecuted and attacked Sir Antony Macdonnell because he was a Roman Catholic. He had heard the hon. Member for Cork repeat that calumny just now. "What were the facts? Sir Antony Macdonnell came to Ireland in October, 1902. He served through the whole of 1903, and it was not until January 23rd, 1904, at Lord Londonderry's meeting in Belfast, that a single Irish Unionist ever said a word against him. Even then his name was not mentioned. His name was first mentioned on the Easter Monday at Orange meetings in the North of Ireland in 1904, because the scandal—in which he was personally and directly implicated—of Constable Anderson was public property. But such was the alleged intolerance and bigotry of Irish Unionists that though Sir Antony MacDonnell was a Roman Catholic he was eighteen months in the country before his name was mentioned on a platform. For the first eighteen months no attack in any shape or form was made by Irish Unionists against him. Another matter was,—and this would dispose of another myth put in circulation—and he had heard it stated even by some of his friends, that Sir Antony Macdonnell had not been six months in Ireland before he
  1386
  found that the place did not suit him, that he was put to too much trouble, that his Indian experience did not stand him in good stead, and that he would have there and then resigned if it had not been for the attack by the Member for North Armagh. He (Mr. Moore) had disposed of that when he reminded the House that Sir Antony was eighteen months in the country before any criticism was directed against him. For his own part he had put himself to great inconvenience from time to time by voting for Roman Catholics who stood at elections. He had voted for Mr. Justice Kerry over and over again and would do the same to-morrow. He must dissent from the proposition that because a man was a Roman Catholic any Protestant in Ireland was to get up and attack him. He had never done it nor would any of his colleagues do it.
  The next charge against them was that they were attempting to limit the Government in their choice of a permanent official. He thought that was a little bit too thin. It was not a question of Sir Antony MacDonnell's appointment. It was a question whether, now that it had become necessary to make a change in the personnel of the Government of Ireland, Sir Antony MacDonnell should be there retained. If he were an ordinary Civil servant he quite agreed that no political Party in the House would have any right to attack him, but they did not consider, and the House did not consider, that he was an ordinary Civil servant. They were going upon his open political record during the last two years, and they said whatever his ability or merits might he his loyalty to his own supporters had not been questioned. They said his political open record in Ireland for the last two years unfitted him for the post of the head of the permanent staff in Ireland. It was not a case of interfering with the choice of a permanent official. The question simply was, had he or had he not, by his action, deprived himself of the protection a Civil servant had always received on the Unionist side of the House? He (Mr. Moore) assented to the proposition of Lord Lansdowne in another place on 17th February that as a matter of principle, and he was

  1387
  accepting the dictum of the English Solicitor-General, it was wrong for Civil servants to concern themselves in political movements. When Sir Antony MacDonnell went to Ireland the one thing he insisted upon was that he was to have a finger in the political pie, and the Leader of the Opposition said none on the Unionist side made any objection to his conference with Lord Dunraven on the Land Bill, or any objection to the various matters in the last two years. But the Leader of the Opposition must know that their grievance was that no Irish Unionist knew the terms or powers under which Sir Antony MacDonnell was appointed until they were read to the House. They did not know he had special political powers. It was hardly right that they should be accused or censured by the Leader of the Opposition for not taking note of these things before.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I did not censure anybody. I merely pointed out the facts.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid then he might take it asapproval on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. But he supposed it would be wrong in three different ways that an ordinary Civil servant should so take part in political movements. First, it would be wrong as between himself and his chief, but in this case he was to have these powers. It was also wrong for a Minister to have these powers unknown to the House in a position in which he could not be answerable to the House. Thirdly, it was distinctly wrong to his subordinates. Dealing with the history of the case, the fact remained that from the moment Sir Antony MacDonnell arrived a perfect maze of intrigue seemed to have set itself on foot. Not so long before the Member for Cork had been preaching in the country his views that if they only had arms he would rather commend the opportunity of making the Shannon run red as the Tugela. This melodramatic action of the hon. Gentleman suddenly vanished and the Government became perfect. Sir Antony MacDonnell was perfection, and he supposed no one on the Unionist Benches had bestowed on the Under-Secretary so much un-
  1388
  necessary laudation as the hon. Member for Cork had. The hon. Gentleman liked being a little extreme. They all had their weaknesses. He did not know whether the hon. Gentleman wrote to Sir Antony MacDonnell offering to black his boots. The fact remained that after being an open opponent of Sir Antony Mac Donnell the hon. Gentleman became his warmest champion. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Waterford delivered a remarkable speech at Liverpool on the 19th March in which he said that two years ago the Land Bill was introduced and that he well remembered the intense anxiety and fervent hopes entertained by the community which he then addressed. They were told at that time that the land, question was about to be settled at one stroke, and upon the lines laid down by Parnell and the Land League. The promise held out went further than that because they were told, and rightly told, that the land question was almost the only remaining great obstacle in the way of Home Rule, and they were told that the Land Act would be followed by a measure of self-government, not perhaps the full measure of Home Rule that was demanded, but such a measure of national self-government as to go a long distance towards the settlement of the Irish national question, and that such a measure would be passed by the universal consent of all political Parties in England. He should like, in the interests of the Unionist Party, to know by whom that promise was made to the Member for Waterford.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: If the hon. and learned Member implies that a promise of that kind was made to me by the late Chief Secretary or any responsible member of the Government that is not so.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: I ask him to say by whom it was made.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid they were told it by the public opinion of this country. It was the current opinion. They were told it in the newspapers, and the trend of all the speeches in different parts of the country went in the same direction.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREaccepted the statement in a common impersonal sense. But, impersonal or not, that was the principle advocated by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork through the country, and Irish Unionists never regarded the hon. Gentleman as dangerous in this matter until he became moderate. It only showed that the hon. Member for Cork had really all the winning cards in his hands, but because it was not a cry that would appeal to popular clamour, his colleagues, who thought more of political and financial support, threw him over, and he had been saving up his wisdom ever since in a sort of comparative exile. But the hon. Gentleman really came out with the winning cards in his hands, and he (Mr. Moore) marvelled at the crass fatuity of his colleagues who sat beside him in not seeing it. If the Member for Waterford in referring to these public speeches and policies throughout the country was referring to the counter programme that was held out by the Member for Cork it was fairly satisfactory evidence of the new policy which was set up in Ireland of conciliating everyone at the expense of Unionists. The hon. Member for Cork and others were not the only people who were conciliated by promises in this way. He had read the very bitter complaints on the part of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick that he had been tricked by promises made with regard to Roman Catholic education at this time. The fact was that promises were on top at this time. Everybody got a promise who wanted it, and it was therefore quite possible when everyone was in a state of contented blessedness to arrange a Land Conference and get the Land Bill through. The Ulster farmers were just as much interested in the Land Conference as anybody else, and no exception was taken to it. The instrument selected was Captain Shaw Taylor, who had distinguished himself in Galway by bringing about a conference for granting additional licences in Galway. The Bishop there was a great friend of Sir Antony MacDonnell, and it was through him that Captain Shaw Taylor was introduced to Sir Antony, so that the Under-Secretary might have the credit of bringing about the Land Conference. The point was that the very men who met to settle
  1390
  the land question were the very men who put their names to the scheme of devolution which was initiated eighteen months later. Looking back at the matter now, he was convinced that the Attorney-General was perfectly right when he said at Derry that this was part of one transaction; that the persons who were brought together for the Land Conference were brought together by the Under-Secretary for the purpose of this scheme of devolution.
  MR. WILLIAM O'BRIENsaid the hon. Gentleman was in error in saying that any one connected with the Land Conference signed the declaration of devolution.
  MR. T. HARRINGTONsaid the hon. and learned Gentle man was using the term "Land Conference" in two senses. The Land Conference was a conference between the representatives of the landlords and the tenants, the "Land Conference Committee" was a committee of the landlords.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid they all knew who the signatories of the declaration were, but his point was that these people were brought together ostensibly in the first instance for the purposes of the Land Conference, and he could only repeat in the words of the Attorney-General that it was all part of the same transaction. It was "a deal" all round. He did not know who was responsible for this, but whoever was responsible there were other matters in which the Under-Secretary was directly and personally implicated; instances of political interference and transactions which showed a bias in his mind which rendered him unfit to discharge his duty impartially as a Civil servant and as Under-Secretary. In the first place, there was his attitude on the question of the Roman Catholic University, and, in the next place, there was the Anderson case, in which the Under-Secretary, at the instance of the Rev. Mr. O'Hara, a Roman Catholic priest, drove from the Royal Irish Constabulary a young constable whose only crime was that being a Protestant

  1391
  he wanted to marry a Roman Catholic lady.
  MR. WYNDHAM: When I I dealt with that question in this House I not only contradicted that view but conclusively proved that it could no longer be entertained.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he adhered to that view, in spite of what the Member for Dover said. The question was determined by Question and Answer in the House, and the Member for Dover then stated that on the identical evidence on which he had reinstated this man the Under-Secretary had dismissed him.
  MR. WYNDHAM: I hope the House will allow me to assert, with the facts clear in my mind, that there is no basis for that charge. This constable was removed by the proper authorities in the force to which he belonged, in pursuance of the views and policy of the Inspector-General. If the matter had come before me as a matter of routine I should have initialed it. I was responsible, because I was responsible to the Inspector-General. Sir Antony MacDonnell was not responsible either technically or in any other way.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he would be sorry to contradict any statement made in that House, but he knew that after the constable was dismissed, and he knew it because the right hon. Member for Dover said it, he sent to the officer in Dublin a certificate relating to the young lady, and that certificate was laid before the Inspector-General, and that after it had lain on his table for three weeks the Inspector-General wrote a letter confirming the constable's dismissal and saying he saw no reason to interfere. He called that dismissing a man on the same evidence, because there was not another particle of evidence on which the right hon. Gentleman reinstated him.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The hon. and learned Member must accept my statement. That letter was a letter of the Inspector-General embodying his views of what the discipline of the force required. It was not for Sir Antony Mac-
  1392
  Donnell to take another line; he did not take another line; and I only took another line when that document was submitted to legal interpretation, and I was led to see that I had an argument which would prevail on the Inspector-General to modify the view he had previously held.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he did not think there was any issue on the facts, whatever inference might be drawn. ["Yes, there is."] Very well, then; he would stick to his own.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKERwas understood to call on the hon. and learned Member to withdraw his statement.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: I say it is a matter of recollection. Is not my memory as good as that of the right hon. Gentleman.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover says he did not say what the hon. Gentleman says he did; therefore he must withdraw.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he should be sorry to put any words into the right hon. Gentleman's mouth which he had not used. The identical evidence on which, for any reason at all—he was not imputing reasons—the right hon. Gentleman reinstated the constable was before the Under-Secretary when he was shown the draft letter of the Inspector-General dismissing the man and approved of it.
  MR. WYNDHAM: That does not controvert what I have said.
  MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he had never said anything else. The House was well able to judge the share of the Under-Secretary in that transaction from the debate of August last. Then there was the Ballinasloe case, the appointment of a constable at Roundstone, and lastly this devolution business, which was only the culmination of a long series of events showing the political bias and favouritism of the Under-Secretary. When the Under-Secretary went to Castlebar one would really have thought he was the Governor of a province in

  1393
  India. He received an address thanking him for his political services and applauding him for having checked "the bigots," by which term was meant all who disagreed with him, the noble Lord in the Cabinet, and the Ulster representatives. All this was tolerated as part of the duties of an impartial and judicial Civil servant. Ha understood the Chief Secretary had promised to reconsider the matter of handing over to the Roman Catholic Bishop the sole control of the lunatics in an asylum at Youghal. [" There is not a word of truth in it."] In view of these facts was it any wonder that Irish Unionists were not satisfied to support the Government while the Under-Secretary remained in his position? Sir Antony MacDonnell obviously intended to stay where he was, and to submit to anything in order to retain office. He had submitted to having his conduct styled as indefensible, and to being told that the Chief Secretary intended to exercise his powers of supervision and control. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover loyally and properly retired when he found he could be of no further use, but such considerations did not influence the Under-Secretary. Of what use could a permanent Under-Secretary be in Ireland when one-third of the people distrusted him? Why did the Government keep him there? Sir Antony MacDonnell had been compared to Thomas Drummond, Thomas Drummond was persecuted by an oligarchy; but in the North of Ireland it was the middle class, the democracy, who were more anxious than anybody else that Sir Antony MacDonnell should be removed. He would say nothing about the victims of the boycotting, disorder, and intimidation which under the rule of the Under-Secretary had sprung up in the South and West of Ireland. The appointment was said to be merely temporary. He did not suggest that the Prime Minister was seeking to evade the point, but he did say that if, after all the assurances that had been given, Sir Antony MacDonnell was keptin Ireland as a permanent official, those assurances were little short of evasions.
  It was said that one reason for Sir Antony MacDonnell's retention was the fear of the Government that he might make further disclosures. He did not
  1394
  know whether that were true, bat the feeling in Ireland was that the bottom of the mystery had not yet been reached. There was more to come out, and to whose credit it would be when it was out, he did not know; but if there were more disclosures, it would be better to get the whole thing out and done with it. The disclosures might be bad, but the inferences which would be drawn from the retention of a Home-Rule colleague would be still worse for the Unionist Party. Ninety-nine men out a hundred on the Government side of the House ware of opinion that Sir Antony MacDonnell ought never to have been appointed; what justification then was there for retaining him? He was a source of suspicion in Ireland and of weakness in England. Some explanation ought to be forthcoming. The position could not be better summarised than it was in a leading article in The Times to the following effect—
  "Still more serious, perhaps, must be the effect of the presence of a doubtful, if not a hostile, element on the spirit and temper of the Civil Service, especially the resident magistrates and police officers, who have been accustomed to look up to the Under-Secretary, in the frequent and unavoidable absences of his chief, and often at other times, 'as the de facto ruler of Ireland.'"
  So long as the Under-Secretary, with his political past, remained in office so long would those officials feel that there was an enemy at the gate, and it would be difficult for them to act with the same freedom as they otherwise would Irish Unionists had no complaint to make of the present Chief Secretary, who had had to face a very troublesome matter. Their complaint was against the Government. They had never asked for the dismissal of Sir Antony MacDonnell, but for his transfer, and for some reason that had become, not a Departmental, but a Cabinet matter. Irish Unionists would exercise all the pressure they could to compass their end. It was said the other day that their grievances were either antiquarian or prophetic. This grievance was neither. It was a pressing, insistent grievance, and he hoped that when the Prime Minister came to consider the unfortunate circumstances which had compelled him to make his choice between this official, with his political past, and his Irish Unionist friends and

  1395
  colleagues, with their record, he would take the only logical and proper course, thereby enabling Ulster Members to vote, as they would gladly do, confidence in His Majesty's Government.
  MR. ROBSONwished the Prime Minister had been present during the speech of the hon. and learned Member, in order that he might have contrasted the statesman he had lost with the Party leader to whom he had succumbed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had had a very distinguished tenure of office, and had written his name for good in the history of both England and Ireland, but the great ability he had shown during his tenure of office had been almost surpassed by the chivalrous generosity with which he had spoken of the reasons which led to his retirement. If one were disposed to find fault: with the right hon. Gentleman it would be that he had taken almost too great a measure of blame upon himself, and had increased the doubt and obscurity surrounding this debate. The hon. Member for North Antrim had stated that the question was whether or not Sir Antony MacDonnell should be retained. That was not the question on the Paper.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: I did not say that was the question before the House, but I said that was the question which affected my colleagues and myself.
  MR. ROBSONsaid obviously that was the question upon which the hon. Member had addressed the House. The hon. Member had made charges against the Government of evasiveness and want of straightforwardness, and those were far more important than the charges levelled against Sir Antony MacDonnell. The real question was not whether or not the Under-Secretary should be maintained, but whether the censure passed upon him by the Government should not now be removed. One listened in wonder and astonishment throughout this debate at the complete absence of anything like an attempt on the part of the hon. and learned Member opposite to prove indefensible conduct on the part of Sir Antony MacDonnell, having regard to the terms of his appointment
  1396
  and the confidence reposed in him by his chief.
  How did the position stand with regard to Sir Antony MacDonnell? It had been admitted and affirmed by the Government that Sir Antony MacDonnell acted in perfect loyalty and in, the belief that he was acting within the terms of his appointment. Was he justified in that belief? That was the real question they had to decide. They knew that in acting as he did with regard to the devolution question he was, in fact, only repeating the procedure adopted in regard to the land question. There was no substantial difference so far as the procedure was concerned between his attitude in both, cases. In the case of the land question he was authorised to communicate with the different Parties in Ireland and to formulate a scheme to be laid before the public for consideration; that was what he did with regard to the land question, and that was what he had done with regard to devolution. That was not a question, to be decided by construing the terms of his appointment. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover told them, without attempting to attack Sir Antony MacDonnell, that the question of the government of Ireland was considered between himself and Sir Antony in many conversations. It appeared that Sir Antony referred to various Indian precedents which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover did not appear to fully appreciate and understand. The right hon. Gentleman said it was due, perhaps, to his colossal ignorance of Indian affairs that he failed to appreciate the all-important fact that when Indian precedents were cited, Sir Antony MacDonnell was citing precedents which involved some measure and degree of the elective principle. He was not astonished that the right hon. Gentleman had failed to appreciate that fact, but was there any fault to be found with Sir Antony MacDonnell on that account? The late Chief Secretary might have asked him about those Indian precedents, and he might have inquired how the members of those boards in India came to be members. He might have asked whether they were nominated or elected by public bodies. He might have asked those questions if he thought that he did not understand

  1397
  and appreciate the full significance of Sir Antony MacDonnell's proposals, and therefore there was no blame attaching to Sir Antony up to that stage.
  What was the next important point? The next all-important point was that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover took a well-earned holiday which nobody grudged him, and he said that in doing so he neglected the House of Commons, and took his mind off politics. That was a very meritorious thing to do, but, unfortunately, Ireland took no holiday and never took its mind off politics, and in the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Irish Reform Association came into being. One could not help suspecting that the right hon. Gentleman was not wholly unacquainted with the gestation of that body. He had told them that Sir Antony MacDonnell was in personal communication with those who were bringing that association into being. He had told them that he could not and did not object to the Under-Secretary for Ireland being in communication with Lord Dunraven upon the question of Irish government which was involved. What was there wrong in Sir Antony MacDonnell's action? He was left alone with the Lord-Lieutenant. Who took the place of the Chief Secretary whilst he was away from Ireland? Perhaps the Prime Minister could tell them that. In the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, who was governing Ireland If it was not the Lord-Lieutenant, who was it Of course it was the Lord-Lieutenant. It would be A somewhat novel practice if the Lord-Lieutenant was not looked upon a; the active and practical head of Government in Ireland. If the Lord-Lieutenant had no authority over Sir Antony MacDonnell, he should like to know if Sir Antony was told that. Was he told that during the Chief Secretary's absence the Government of Ireland was in a state of suspense and that nobody must do anything? Certainly not. Sir Antony MacDonnell was left alone with the Lord-Lieutenant, and from that moment everything he did was amply covered by the Lord-Lieutenant. He was pursuing the same line of conduct as he pursued in regard to the land question. He entered into communication with Lord Dunraven with the Chief
  1398
  Secretary's knowledge and consent, and he was formulating those reports with the Lord-Lieutenant's knowledge and consent; and it was little less than an outrage to subject him to that censure which was passed upon him by the Cabinet. He hoped hon. Gentlemen would consider it their duty, apart from any Party allegiance, to defend Civil servants from unmerited censure like this. The Government did not believe that Sir Antony MacDonnell had done any thing indefensible, for if they had believed it he would have gone before this, and he would have gone before the Chief Secretary. The speech they had heard from the hon. Member for North Antrim betrayed the real spirit which had brought about the resignation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, and the same spirit would certainly have been powerful enough to secure the dismissal of the Under-Secretary for Ireland if there had been any cause for it. He thought they ought to hear what the Lord-Lieutenant had to say about this matter, and he should like the correspondence with the Lord-Lieutenant included in the demand which had been put forward. Had the Lord-Lieutenant apologised or protested? He thought it would be found that, so far from apologising, he had protested, and certainly he had affirmed his opinion upon this matter like a man.
  He wished to refer to another aspect of the question which had been referred to by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech. His right hon. friend had asked the House to consider the state of things in 1902, when Sir Antony MacDonnell was appointed. That was a most significant branch of this inquiry, because in 1902 affairs between England and Ireland were in a critical and interesting state, and in that year the policy of killing Home Rule by kind ness had come to an end. Nevertheless Home Rule was still alive and its would be murderer had passed from the scene. The Unionist Party were then breathing fire and fury against Home Rule, and they were placated with promises of coercion for Ireland, which was the only thing that ever satisfied them.
  MR. CHARLES CRAIG: On a point of order I submit that that

  1399
  is a most improper imputation to make against hon. Members of this House. To say that the only thing that ever pleases them is to see their own fellow-countrymen coerced is, in my opinion, a most improper observation to make.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I think the hon. Member made it as a general remark, and did not apply it personally against any hon. Member of this House.
  MR. CHARLES CRAIG,(who was greeted with NATIONALIST cries of "Name,") said the hon. Member made a statement in regard to himself and his colleagues on the Unionist Benches, and lie considered that was making a personal attack.
  MR. ROBSON,proceeding, said that seemed to him to be quite a novel point of order. The hon. Member opposite might deny his accusation with regard to coercion, but he could not alter the history of his own country and the history of his Party. Who had coercion satisfied if it had not satisfied hon. Members opposite? Who had demanded coercion except the Party opposite, and what other remedy had they ever demanded except coercion? In the year 1902 coercion was being applied to please them. In that year the Prime Minister did not believe in the efficiency of the policy of coercion. The Prime Minister knew coercion well, for he had tried it for a long time and under more favourable circumstances than were ever likely to be given to any Chief Secretary in the future, and the right hon. Gentleman had seen it end in a disastrous failure, and it brought about no better result than the Plan of Campaign. The Prime Minister knew in 1902 that coercion was not a permanent and effective policy in Ireland. It was not only not a remedy but it was not even a policy. The right hon. Gentleman did not give the people of England in 1902 the benefit of his experience and knowledge; he chose another plan. He chose the plan of flaunting coercion before the country in order to placate those Gentlemen who were in favour of it; but, while doing so, he in secret abandoned the policy of coercion. He sat down in secret to hand over the administrative
  1400
  powers to a permanent official, who de tested and denounced coercion root and branch, and who told him so; he sat down to arrange for the wholesale expropriation of the English landlord garrison in Ireland, and he arranged with Sir Antony MacDonnell that there should be a new policy of administrative conciliation. No wonder the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Antrim accused his Party leaders of not being straightforward.
  But it was not merely that the right hon. Gentleman was laying down a new policy both in respect of land and administrative conciliation. He knew perfectly well that it was idle to talk of administrative conciliation in Ireland so long as there was in that country a fixed, fundamental, and irreconcilable hostility between the local and the central bodies concerned in the Government. That want of accord between the local and the central bodies in Ireland was the crux of the whole Irish political administration. It had become intensified since 1897, when the Local Government Act was passed, and now no statesman could refuse to face it. They might talk about coercion or conciliation, but, whether Tory or Liberal, Governments in this country had got to face and to solve the problem how to bring the local governing bodies in Ireland into some kind of accord with the central body in Ireland, and the Prime Minister knew that. When the terms of Sir Antony MacDonnell's appointment were laid before him, and when he saw the list of articles on which Sir Antony insisted, when he saw the reference to co-ordination or correlation., involving the direction and control of the whole administrative machinery of Irish government, what did the right hon. Gentleman suppose that to mean? When he assented to the policy he knew perfectly well that he was making a surrender on the question of Irish administration just as marked as the surrender which he had already made in regard to Irish land. Did the right hon. Gentleman ever inquire what co-ordination meant? He told them the other night that it meant the bringing of these bodies somewhat more under the direct control of the Chief Secretary. Well, they had

  1401
  just heard from Mr. Deputy-Speaker that they must always accept what any Member said in that House, and the rules of order compelled them to accept the statement of the Prime Minister. But what was the position of the Prime Minister? He knew that he had given up the English garrison so far as it consisted of landlords; he knew that he had abandoned coercion, and he knew, therefore, that he must look for the maintenance of law and order to non-coercive means. Were they to suppose that the right hon. Gentleman was going to give up all those instruments of English ascendancy and yet do nothing to bring about that accord between the essential governing bodies of Ireland? He must have known that if lie did nothing he was deliberately weakening his own force, and deliberately strengthening the force of his opponents at its most vital point.
  The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think at that time that if the country only had a statement about coercion that would be sufficient to satisfy those to whom he looked for political support, but let the House consider what followed. After the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell there was an interval of two years before the events which were now the subject-matter of discussion arose. Did the Prime Minister during the whole of the period between 1902 and 1904 never trouble to inquire of his Chief Secretary how co ordination was getting on? The right hon. Gentleman said he did not know what co-ordination was when it was first mentioned. Did he allow two years to elapse without ever asking the question, or did he think that co-ordination was one of those words he would define in due time, according to his own interpretation, as he had done in the case of "retaliation?" He was prepared to believe it, if told, but it appeared to be incredible that neither he nor the Chief Secretary should have devoted five minutes conversation to this most important subject. Let it be remembered that in 1903 the Land Act was passed, and from August, 1903, to August, 1904, Irish devolution—the administrative problem—took the place in public interest of the land question, and, therefore, it was impossible to sup pose that the Prime Minister and his
  1402
  Chief Secretary should never have discussed what the policy of the Unionist Party was to be in relation to this vital subject. If they never discussed this matter during that period it showed what interest these distinguished persons took in the unity of the Empire, of which they claimed to be the only possible guardians. The fact was that the Prime Minister did not ask the meaning of co-ordination from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover because he knew what it meant. He might not trouble about details, but he knew substantially that co-ordination in Ireland involved the control of the whole administrative machinery of government, and that it meant in one way or other a distinct and an irrevocable step towards placing the control of Irish local government in local hands. That was what it did mean, and that was what it would continue to mean. From the position which the Prime Minister had thus taken up no English Party in the future could recede. Whether the Liberals were able to carry out their promises in regard to Ireland or not, it was certain that there was no possible Government for Ireland in the future unless it adopted what was known as the MacDonnell policy, and adopted it in its widest sense.
  Why did the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Antrim complain of the want of straightforwardness on the part of the Government? What right had he, or the Party to which he belonged, to expect greater straightforwardness from this Ministry than the free-trade Unionists? It was a most unreasonable demand. But it might be asked why the hon. and learned Gentleman complained of this subterranean policy on the part of the Government. It made, undoubtedly, for the doctrines which Liberals preached. Liberals did not complain of those arrangements and agreements which they had seen with regard to Sir Antony MacDonnell. So far from complaining, they said they were good, statesmanlike, and sensible; but they wanted to know why they were done by stealth. Why should this policy of sensible, statesmanlike, and practical government be carried on in secret while the Prime Minister openly and avowedly professed that his policy

  1403
  was one of coercion, because, at the time the Government were doing these things through Sir Antony MacDonnell, they were throwing dust in the eyes of the English people? By far the most useful moral they could draw from this debate was that the Prime Minister knew perfectly well that there was a strong Unionist and anti-Irish feeling in England, and, while he deplored its existence, he felt that he could not afford to part with it in the management of the Unionist Party. Let that be remembered by the English people. It might discount some of the platform rhetoric which would be heard from Members on the other side of the House as to Liberals being the allies of Irishmen. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim had complained that his Party had been betrayed. Let him look out, for they were going to be betrayed again. If the Unionists were returned to power they would have to take up again the policy of administrative con ciliation; and it could only be taken up by giving Ireland a greater measure of self-government. If the time had come when the reform of Irish government must be considered in principle and detail, do not let it be done by secret arrangements. Let the House of Commons and the country know it, and let the nation take its part in the discussion of the subject. He thought they might trust something to the wisdom and generosity of the people.
  MR. CHARLES CRAIGsaid that a most unfortunate expression had fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down. It was a mistake that Members who came from the North of Ireland were desirous to see coercive methods necessary for Ireland. But with the law disregarded in districts as it was at the present day, a Government which claimed for itself the name of Government should see that the law of the country was carried out. That was a very different matter from saying that the Members from the North-East of Ireland were pleased to see coercion in force. If the hon. Member knew any thing of the state of things which existed in the West of Ireland at the time the right hon. Member for Dover went over to Galway and the rest of the West of
  1404
  Ireland, and examined the present state of things, he would come back with very different ideas of coercion. Hon. Gentlemen talked indiscriminately about Ireland, and not one. in ten of them knew what they were talking about. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: What about bad whiskey?] He thought that this debate had been remarkable for the fact that very few speakers had dealt with the subject which was before the House, viz., the position of Sir Antony MacDonnell. It was on that point he desired to speak in defence of the position they had taken up in Ulster.
  In the month of February, when the revelations of the attitude of the various Unionists towards Sir Antony MacDonnell became public, the whole aspect of the case was altered. Sir Antony MacDonnell was Under-Secretary for Ireland on the same terms and conditions as any other Under-Secretary—as they understood. It had been attempted to be shown that day that an Under-Secretary for Ireland was not an ordinary Under-Secretary; that no Under-Secretary who had ever preceded him had had anything like the powers given to Sir Antony MacDonnell. He maintained that the powers given to Sir Antony MacDonnell were absolutely unconstitutional, and more than were given to any previous Under-Secretary—even to Thomas Drummond. What he complained of was that these powers should have been given to any man, and that the fact that they had been given to him should have been kept secret not only from them in the North of Ireland, but from every Unionist Member in the House. He agreed with the hon. Member opposite that that was the gravamen of the whole business. Where the Government had erred was in that first of all they gave these powers. He submitted that they erred quite as much in that they allowed them for nearly three years to believe that this official was an ordinary official, whereas in reality he was an official with equal powers to the Chief Secretary.
  He could understand the hon. Member attacking the Members for Ulster for the position they had taken up; but the hon. Gentleman must remember that he and his friends were

  1405
  Home Rulers and that they were Unionists, and the most determined Unionists in the House. The whole question of the Union was centred in the constituencies which they represented; and it was useless for hon. Gentlemen opposite to say that they were Unionists to-day. They were Unionists who would remain so, and while they were Unionists they would object most strongly to be called "bigots." There was nothing bigoted about their attitude. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition made use of the old term "the Ascendancy Party." Would anybody explain to him what particular ascendancy they had ever had. In this House they were a small Party, and were made the constant butt for attacks for the amusement of the House by hon. Members on the Nationalist Benches, and of a fair share of amusement on the part of hon. Members sitting on the Liberal Benches opposite. He submitted that in this Sir Antony MacDonnell affair the course taken by the Ulster Members had been the only straightforward and consistent procedure of any section of the House. The proof that their action had been right was that hon. Members on the Nationalist Benches had in the last year ranged themselves on the side of the Government solidly; and if further proof were needed that Sir Antony MacDonnell was a partisan it was that from the first day the name of Sir Antony MacDonnell was mentioned in the House Gentlemen of Home-Rule proclivities defended him. All that was self-evident from the original letter which, after considerable difficulty, had been extracted from the right hon. Member for Dover, which had been written to him by Sir Antony MacDonnell. It was a very frank and straightforward letter. If that letter had been communicated to the Ulster Members three years ago it would have prevented much being said in the House that had been said. In that letter Sir Antony MacDonnell wrote as follows—
  "I have been anxiously thinking over the difficulty. I am an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a Liberal in politics. I have strong Irish sympathies. I do not see eye to eye with you in all matters, but from the exposition you were good enough to give me of your views, and from the estimate I formed
  1406
  of your aims and objects, I find that there is a substantial measure of agreement between us."
  [NATIONALIST cries of "Go on."] No more quotation was necessary for his purpose. He wanted to prove that Sir Antony MacDonnell was of the same opinion as hon. Members opposite. The whole point of this whole business was, "Had the Government any right to appoint any such official when they knew his political opinions?" The proof of that being the fundamental point was that when the Government appointed Sir Antony MacDonnell they knew his political opinions, and were careful to hide from the Ulster Unionists, from the House, and the country the fact of the special powers that they had given him. Sir Antony MacDonnell had been perfectly frank and straightforward, and from a personal point of view they had no objection to him; but they objected to him because of the fact that he had a different way of thinking from them. [NATIONALIST cries of "He is a Catholic."] Well, of course, that added considerably to their objection to him. Sir Antony MacDonnell's opinions were diametrically opposite to their own, and he had been allowed to use them, and they had a right to fight against him. If it was originally indefensible on the part of the Government to appoint Sir Antony MacDonnell, it was surely equally in defensible to keep him in his position when one-third of the people of Ireland looked upon him with extreme distrust. Furthermore, it must be perfectly clear to the Government that a country could not be ruled properly when a third of the population, and that not the least important third, were thoroughly disrustful in this matter. Therefore, if he could put more pressure on the Government to transfer Sir Antony MacDonnell to some other position, where his abilities could be used for the good of the country, he would willingly do so.
  He hoped at that moment it would be seen that the only members of the Government on the Front Bench—the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General for England—had done more to bring this matter to a head than any Member for Ulster; and the right hon. Gentleman lately appointed

  1407
  Chief Secretary whose recent action in Ireland they had applauded in everyway. They saw in him a Chief Secretary of the type they wanted in Ireland. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench would convey to the Prime Minister the strong feeling that existed among Ulster Unionists in the House and also in the North of Ireland, for in this matter—although they had been taunted with being a small body—they had behind them one and a quarter million people in the North of Ireland. They felt as strongly as they did a year ago that the retention of Sir Antony MacDonnell in Ireland would only be productive of mischief, and if the Government wished to restore true Unionist opinion in the North of Ireland, confidence in the Prime Minister and in the Government, they could help to bring about that result by sending Sir Antony MacDonnell to some other post.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLINsaid the last speaker had advanced the opinion that Sir Antony MacDonnell should be expelled from his present position because the majority of Irish Members had supported him and the minority were against him. In his speech the Member for South Shields failed to grasp one important point. He said that hon. Gentlemen opposite were guided entirely in their conduct in that House and in their discussion of Irish questions outside by one desire, and that was to secure coercion for their countrymen in Ireland. That was only half the truth. There was another reason which inspired hon. Gentlemen opposite. He thought it was stated fairly well by the hon. Member for North Antrim when he said this was a Government pre-eminently of promises. It should have been a Government of places as well as of promises, because everyone knew that in the whole record of the conduct of Irish administration for twenty-five years there never was a Member of the loyal minority in this House who could not be bought by a place, with the exception of the hon. Member for South Belfast, and that he had no doubt would be considered in due course when he was brought into the loyal conventicle in the North of Ireland from which he had been expelled.
  1408
  The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down invited the Member for South Shields to go to Gal way and witness the lawlessness there. Had the hon. Gentleman never heard of lawlessness in Belfast? Only the other day at Portadown there was a magnificent example of law and order, undefended Catholics having been attacked and one assassinated by one of the constituents of the supporters of the glorious cause of law and order. Then they came to this House and for the edification of British journals they held up Ireland as a law less country, when as a matter of fact there was not in all the world now a more crimeless land than Ireland. Was it a fact that one of the colleagues of the hon. Gentleman opposite had been expelled from one of the legitimate Orange organisations and had had to found a new one?
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: Whoever states that is telling an absolute lie.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: "An absolute lie" is not a very polite expression.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: Of course I did not understand that the hon. Gentle man made the statement himself, but that he was basing his remark upon something he had heard.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: All I care- is that the Conservative Association of Belfast—
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: I am not a member of it.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: The Conservative Association which the hon. Gentleman reprobates—
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: I do not reprobate it. I am not a member of the Belfast Conservative Association. I have nothing to connect me with Belfast. If I lived there I should have but the hon. Gentleman has no right to say I either approbate or reprobate it.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLINsaid he did not suppose that the Conservative Association was anything like the House of

  1409
  Commons. Its approbation or reprobation did not count for very much, but his point was that the Conservative Association—and surely it was a central organisation which the hon. Gentleman opposite ought to be a member of if he was to guide the fortunes of a little minority in this House—was at the present time engaged in opposition to the Member for South Belfast. Why did not the Government now settle the Irish question? Nothing was left in the way now but two candidates for knighthoods and three candidates for County Court Judgeships. Give them the knighthoods and County Court Judgeships and they would get rid of the Irish ques tion. In view of what had been paid for power and peace in other parts of the world, it was extraordinary that the Government should not create that unity in the Ulster Tory Party of which so much had been heard. The hon. Member for North Antrim did not attack Sir Antony MacDonnell nor the Chief Secretary for two years. Why was that? The thing was simple enough; he did not attack the Chief Secretary because the right hon. Gentleman gave him a job, that of unpaid secretary for two years, and he did not attack Sir Antony MacDonnell because Sir Antony MacDonnell was responsible for the zones in the Land Act which enabled him to ask thirty-one years purchase for his land.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: May I say that the hon. Gentleman has made so many absolute misstatements that I would suggest he should leave me alone.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLINsaid the statement put forward by hon. Gentlemen opposite was that they represented Ulster. He desired to contradict that statement point-blank. He denied the statement that they represented Protestant Ulster. What about the Members for South Tyrone, Fermanagh, and North Down? He took it that the Member for South Tyrone was as legitimate a Protestant, and represented as legitimate Protestant opinion as the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken, and what right had hon. Gentlemen opposite to come to that House in order to
  1410
  arouse the religious animosity of those opposed to Irish Catholics, and to claim that they represented 1,250,000 of Protestants which they did not? It had been said that the Nationalist Party were unreasonable in their demands-Here was a sample of the type of men who were governing Ireland, at the present time. They had driven the Chief Secretary from office, the man who steered the Land Act through the House of Commons, which gave thirty-one years purchase to one of his followers. One of the most brilliant men in the Ulster Tory Party had been driven out of it because the loyal minority were determined to rule and retain in their own hands the power which they had for so long used against the public weal of Ireland. There would be no conciliation in Ireland while these Gentle men were masters of the situation. When they could drive out the Member for Dover, and pursue with all the ruthlessness of bloodhounds an eminent Civil servant of the high qualities and great Imperial services of Sir Antony MacDonnell, who could rule 40,000,000 of Indian natives, but who they alleged was not competent to discharge the functions of the Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the whole matter resolved itself into one thing. The hon. Members opposite had had the power for years; they had used their power badly, and at the present moment the people of Ulster were sick to death of them.
  With regard to the Anderson case, they had challenged hon. Gentlemen from Ulster repeatedly to join them in an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman for a full and impartial inquiry into this matter, and now repeated that challenge. Why did not the hon. Gentlemen join them in such an appeal? This man was dismissed by a tribunal of policemen and rein stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover. That, was the first mistake of the right hon. Gentleman, who thought that by capitulating to the Ulster Unionist Party the case of Anderson would be ended. But the Ulster Members were not thinking of the policeman at all. They knew that the shibboleths of the Party, the old cries of the Party, had disappeared, and that a better feeling was rising in Ireland. They

  1411
  found Anderson in their time of difficulty, and having compelled the right hon. Gentleman to capitulate, they went hack to Ireland and made the case of Anderson their war cry. He hoped the Chief Secretary would speak in this debate, and that they would hear from him whether it was proposed to discuss the case of Anderson again. There seemed to be nothing that would satiate hon. Members opposite in their desire to wreak vengeance on everyone who would not submit to their sweet will in the Government of Ireland. He asked the Chief Secretary would he stand up and vindicate the action of Sir Antony MacDonnell and Father O'Hara of the Congested Districts Board in this Anderson case, or would the right hon. Gentleman, if he did not do that, give the country an opportunity of finding out the true genesis of this case for themselves and, enable them to form a judgment of whether there was any justice in the charge of the hon. Member.
  The right hon. Gentleman was now starting on a short period of office in Ireland, and he had now a chance of doing something for that Union of which he was such a stout champion. The right hon Gentleman had been told that there were but two policies for Ireland, the policy of the Government of the majority for the minority, and the policy of the Lord-Lieutenant, which was government by the people for the people. Which would the right hon. Gentleman choose? Nothing would satiate the greed of hon. Members for Ulster for office. The right hon. Member for Dover had given in to them on every conceivable occasion; he gave the landlords £12,000,000, and they were not satisfied yet; he had trusted to the mercy of the Ascendancy Party. What did the Ascendancy Party mean for Ireland? It meant the government of Ireland by Irish men who had no Irish sympathies; who did not feel the beating pulse of Ireland; who did not understand the wrongs of their own country, and who remained there not as the English garrison, but as an Irish garrison to use the British power behind them for their own selfish interests. By the fortune of the ballot, hon. Members
  1412
  opposite representing Ulster recently secured a private Members night. What did they do? Did they discuss the Bann drainage, the financial condition under which the Queen's Colleges suffered, or the conditions under which the Irish labourer had to exist in Ireland? No, they took the question of institutions and convents. These were the statesmen in whose hands was the custody of Irish affairs. They had never a thought for the welfare or advancement of the country of which in this House they claimed to be so proud. Why did they not use their power for the good of Ireland? The Unionist cause would have been stronger if they had done so, but because of their conbination of stupidity and venality their case had gone, while Nationalists had established their case for national self-government.
  MR. SLOANsaid he would not attempt to follow the hon. Member who had just sat down, but he could not help thinking while he was addressing the House of a remark in the very eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Cork, who said he regretted the possibility of the Motion on the Paper degenerating into a Party controversy and the real subject-matter of the Motion not receiving the careful consideration of the House. With the Motion he entirely agreed. It was very simple. It desired that further correspondence in connection with the wonderful arrangement made for the Government with regard to the position of the Permanent Under-Secretary by the Member for Dover should be placed on the Table, in order that the House and the country might be the better able to judge of the situation. The hon. and learned Member for South Shields had given the House a very earnest aid faithful speech—a speech which he had no doubt would please the majority of his constituents; and for that reason he did not take any particular exception to it. But inasmuch as it contained an incrimination of Members on the Ministerial side of the House, who as honestly and sincerely as he himself endeavoured to represent those that sent them to Parliament he thought it was certainly not creditable coming from a Member of the House.

  1413
  To say that any hon. Member—no matter what his politics might be—would associate himself with the coercion of his I fellow-countrymen was unworthy of an English gentleman, and more especially of a Member of the British House of Commons. The Leader of the Opposition had given a few descriptions of Ulster representatives in that House. He could not call the names bitter—they were rather amusing, and especially when, as he under stood, the Leader of the Opposition had never put himself to the trouble of finding out what the real situation in Ulster was and what Ulster politics were. Unless the right hon. Gentleman wanted them to come to the House and do exactly what their constituents did not want them to do there could be no application in the names which had been applied to them.
  Passing from that it was a regrettable thing that the shadow of the whole business had had to pass across the political platform while the substance of all that debate, contention, and misunderstanding, and all the difficulties that the present Government were in still remained. When the correspondence that passed between the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover and Sir Antony MacDonnell was read, he was he believed the first to say that he unreservedly with drew any suggestion or statement he had made against Sir Antony MacDonnell in view of that correspondence. In his opinion the only man in the whole transaction who had had clean hands had been Sir Antony MacDonnell. But with a Unionist Administration that certainly was not and could not—if they were to continue to represent the people who sent them to Parliament—be accept able to the Ulster Members. Of course, if they were to ignore their constituents and to tell them that their opinions in the House of Commons were not to be considered, then he could assure them that another body of Gentlemen would be sent there in their places, and rightly so, just as certainly as the Nationalist Members if they went down into the South and West and preached Protestantism would be removed and another body of Gentlemen substituted for them. It was not a question of bowing down to the minority in Ireland at all. It was a question of public opinion in England.
  1414
  The Ulster Members as a minority would be altogether unsuccessful in their efforts to retard the wishes and claims of Nationalists if it were not for the fact that England and Scotland sent a majority to that House with equally strong views on this question of the legislative Union. And therefore hon. Members opposite, in stead of saying that the Ulster Members were desirous of keeping a majority in Ireland under the heel of, or governed by "ascendancy," would be better occupied in educating the peope of England and Scotland, and assuring them that the only remedy was to send a majority of Members to the House of Commons in favour of giving Ireland self-government. But if they tried their hands at that the Ulster Members would give the other side of the question, and doubtless with as good results as in the past. But he considered that the Ulster Members could not dissociate themselves from the pro tests which the Opposition had made. He quite agreed that it did seem a little inconsistent to agree with a Motion, but not to vote for it. He did not object to hon. Members opposite holding the views they did on Home Rule. What he did object to was that they did not preach them in their constituencies. The Member recently returned for Brighton did not preach Home Rule. He would not have been returned if he had. And the Member for Dorset recently got up and admitted that he was sent there to Parliament to oppose Home Rule.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKERasked the hon. Member to adhere more strictly to the terms of the Resolution.
  MR. SLOANsaid he would adhere strictly to the Motion, but it would be understood by hon. Gentlemen opposite that if there was no reply made it was not because one could not be given. He thought it was a regrettable thing that a Civil servant should be attacked who was not in a position to defend himself because of the office he held. He said during the last debate on the subject that it would be a blessing for the House and the country if the Permanent Under-Secretary was unmuzzled

  1415
  and he believed honestly that if the Permanent Under-Secretary was unmuzzled, and allowed to defend himself, the revelations would be given which this Motion demanded. He was not satisfied that there were not other matters which that House and the country ought to know. No man who had followed the course of proceedings since the two letters were read could have any other conviction. He could not understand why the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had had to retire because of Sir Antony MacDonnell's indefensible conduct while Sir Antony MacDonnell remained where he was. Why was Lord Dudley still at Dublin Castle?
  A NATIONALIST MEMBER: Why is the Prime Minister in office?
  MR. SLOAN: As he said in the North of Ireland, the Prime Minister had as much reason to resign as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover. Hon. Gentlemen opposite might think they had made a point, but it was his honest belief that the Prime Minister who acquiesced in the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell and who understood the whole arrangement—and Lord Dudley, who was quite competent to judge whether Sir Antony MacDonnell had violated one of the principles under which he took the appointment—that the three men should go or the three should remain. There was no other conclusion that could honestly be come to, and he was not going to allow his conscience to be stifled in the matter. He thought an injustice had been done to the Member for Dover, and if in the interests of his Party he had sacrificed his position and endangered his political reputation he was more to be pitied than laughed at, and that House was perfectly right in receiving him with sympathetic cheers. But the late Chief Secretary was not in his place. He would like to reply to him with regard to the criticisms made about Constable Anderson, but all that had been ruled out of order, and the Deputy-Speaker had told him that he must adhere strictly to the Motion.
  MR. DILLON: That case has been gone into at considerable length and there was no call to order.
  MR. SLOAN: The Deputy-Speaker had distinctly told him that he was to adhere strictly to the Motion. If he adhered strictly to the Motion he could not discuss the Answer. And he wanted to know when he right hon. Member got that information from the Deputy-Speaker.
  MR. DILLON: I got the information by sitting here and listening to the whole debate. It is part of the information which the Motion demands.
  MR. DEPUTY- SPEAKER: The Motion relates to the policy and proceedings of the Irish Government, and that is one of the proceedings.
  MR. SLOAN,continuing, said the hon. Member for East Mayo demanded in the Home an inquiry into the whole of the Anderson case. The hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh was in the House at the time, and both he and the hon. and gallant Member said they did not object to an inquiry. He, personally, was as anxious for an inquiry into that case as in the other matter. The first information that there was a charge against Anderson was given to Sir Antony MacDonnell by Father Denis O'Hara at the Congested Districts Board's meeting. That was admitted in debate, and to say that the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh he'd a pistol at his head was inaccurate.
  MR. JOSEPH DEVLIN: As a matter of fact, the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh made that statement in the House.
  MR. SLOANsaid in that case he would apologise. With regard to the letter which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover wrote, in which he said he would see Lord George Hamilton and see that the Press took special notice of the great administrative powers of Sir Antony MacDonnell, he wished to know what control any Government had over the Press. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is an.

  1417
  absurd question."] What this practically amounted to was that there was a secret conspiracy going on in the Government in regard to the appointment of the Under-Secretary, and in order that the country should not be made aware of the attitude of the Government, the Press, and particularly the Unionist Press, was to take up the cause of the Permanent Under-Secretary. His constituents had great distrust of the Government in regard to the appointment of the present Permanent Under-Secretary and the scheme of devolution. He assured the House that it was his strong desire to see this Motion carried, for nothing would give him greater pleasure than to see the blame put upon the right shoulders. If Sir Antony MacDonnell had been made the victim in this matter, then it was the duty of this or any other Government to take the responsibility and not to stand upon an indefensible platform. They ought to place before the House and the country the whole transaction in order that they might honestly be able to judge and inform their constituents in regard to the misstatements which had been made, and made on account of the insufficiency of the information placed at their disposal. He was not so sure that the Chief Secretary would comply with the demand which had been made, but he trusted that they would have a distinct statement from the Prime Minister that if there was any further correspondence upon this question it should be laid on the Table; and if there was not any other correspondence then the right hon. Gentleman ought to point out where the action of Sir Antony MacDonnell had been indefensible, because he really could not see how a man fulfilling his own terms could have his policy described as indefensible. That being so, he associated himself entirely with the Motion before the House, which he trusted would have the desired effect.
  MR. LOUGHthought the attack which had been made upon a most distinguished Civil servant was a most serious matter. He had listened to the long speeches which had been made upon this subject, and he could not discover that the slightest case had been made out against Sir Antony MacDonnell. Why should Sir Antony's name be dragged
  1418
  into their quarrels in the House of Commons? The rule in such matters was to attack the Government through the Chief Secretary or the Attorney-General for Ireland, but in this case a mean attempt had been made to stab in the back a man whose great services to the Empire ought to have been sufficient to protect him from the attack which had been made upon him. When he studied this vote of censure he found that it contained no expression of regret. It was simply a request for information as to the proceedings of the Irish Government and the circumstances antecedent and subsequent to the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell. Information was badly wanted on those points. It was wanted because of the misrepresentation which the Prime Minister and some of his supporters had been carrying on in the country in regard to the attitude of Parties on this question. According to those misrepresentations the Conservative Party had got a most anxious feeling as to the policy the Liberals would introduce in regard to Ireland if they came into office. According to their story, the Liberals would introduce a policy of violence and disruption which would re-act injuriously on the Empire, and, on the other hand, it was suggested that the Conservative Party were the safe Party who had done nothing, who had allowed Ireland to stew in its own juice, and who, if they continued in office, would protect the great interest: entrusted to their charge. That was one of the most extraordinary misrepresentations ever thrust on the country.
  There was misrepresentation in regard to Sir Antony MacDonnell himself. One would think that Sir Antony MacDonnell had been discovered three months ago, that he came into Ireland last February, and that the Attorney-General for Ireland and the Solicitor-General for England at once began to attack him. It was not until to-day that the country had been sufficiently reminded that Sir Antony had been three years in Ireland. There was nothing new in the policy he had introduced. He did not think it was fair or true to charge Sir Antony MacDonnell with being the father of the policy which had been attributed to him; he did not introduce any policy in Ireland. The

  1419
  policy to which hon. Gentlemen opposite objected carried them further back than three years ago. Perhaps the House would like to know the actual source of this policy in Ireland. He had an extra ordinary document there which would enable him to recall it to the attention of the House. It was a Whip issued about eight years ago in the following terms—
  "House of Commons. Irish Agricultural Rating. Very Important! It has been arranged that Ways and Means shall be the first order on Monday, May 6th, 1897, and that Mr. Knox shall move his Resolution demanding for Irish agricultural ratepayers the same measure of relief given to English ratepayers. We believe that in this matter Irishmen of all sections are unanimous, whatever may be their views on wider questions connected with financial relations."
  Amongst those who signed that Whip was the present Attorney-General for England, and he regarded it as one of the most creditable things the hon. and learned Gentleman had ever done. The Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day refused to have anything to do with the request made by hon. Members from Ireland, and the hon. and learned Gentleman got up and fired into the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Almost every speaker on the opposite side of the House supported the hon. and learned Gentleman, and there was not a single speaker to say a word on behalf of the position the Government had taken up. At half - past ten the Government saw they must surrender and they sent out Mr. Goschen with a flag of peace. A promise was given that something would be done in the direction the hon. and learned Gentleman desired.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is referring to a debate which has no reference to this Motion.
  MR. LOUGHsaid he had finished with that. He mentioned it only for the purpose of showing the origin of the policy which had been carried on by the Government ever since in Ireland. The concession then wrung from the Government had led to a series of reforms of greater magnitude than any that House had ever passed on behalf of the country. These reforms were carried on for four or five years until it became necessary to
  1420
  get some one to help the Government to carry them through. The Government looked about for the best administrator, and it was owing to the necessity of getting a strong man that Sir Antony MacDonnell was introduced. The Government policy included first of all the question of Irish land. There were Irish Land Bills in 1901 and 1902, but they both failed. It was not till Sir Antony MacDonnell came along with his practical suggestions that the Government were enabled to carry through the Bill of 1903. That measure was working successfully Sir Antony Macdonnell was supposed to be responsible for the introduction of financial reforms in Ireland. It was not so. The House and the Government were responsible, and principles had been admitted by the Government with regard to finance, no doubt with Sir Antony's full approval, which carried them a long way in the reform of Irish government. Three Chancellors of the Exchequer during the past few years had sanctioned the principle that all economies that could be effected in Irish finance would accrue to the benefit of the Irish people. The principle had also been accepted for ten years by both sides of the House that if any money was conceded to Great Britain a grant should be made to Ireland in the same proportion, although not used for the same purpose there. These were great reforms, but it was necessary when large sums were taken from the control of the House to have some other control in Ireland, and progress had been made in that direction. An Agricultural Board had been set up in Ireland and it largely controlled finance of which that House had no control whatever. The Development Grant had been carried, and the object was to take, away from the Treasury at Whitehall control of this Irish finance. These were principles on which they were proceeding at the present time in Ireland, and Sir Antony MacDonnell was not responsible for them at all. He thought it was most ungrateful that a most capable public servant who was introduced to help the Government in their policy, should be subjected to unworthy attacks in that House.
  Another proceeding in Ireland was the reduction of the police force. That was by far the most striking and dramatic

  1421
  thing which had been done in Ireland, perhaps, for fifty years. If the present system of reducing the police force continued for a few years, the Royal Irish Constabulary would have disappeared altogether. Sir Antony MacDonnell was not responsible for this. It was the Irish Government that was doing it, and in this whole field of reform it was the Government who were responsible and not the Under-Secretary, on whom the Prime Minister had meanly tried to place the responsibility for the policy which he himself ought properly to regard as his own.
  He did not believe anybody knew what a tremendous sheaf of legislation for Ire land this Government had put through. Sixty-two Acts had been passed since 1896, among the most important carried since the Act of Union, touching every sphere of Irish government, and if any one asked him to say what was the principle underlying those Acts, he should say, although the form was different the principle was the same as that which animated the late Mr. Gladstone with regard to his policy towards Ireland—first to buy out the landlords and then to extend self-government. The present Government had done much towards that. Summed up in a single sentence, this Government had been trying to do in fifteen years what Mr. Gladstone tried to effect in fifteen months. They had been ten years carrying out these gigantic reforms in Ireland. The Government had carried out their policy both of administration and legislation in Ireland very skilfully, but the Opposition had also done their part. Never until the last few years had the Irish question not been treated as a Party question. The Liberals had supported the Government all through in these great measures. He had supported the present Prime Minister as loyally, with regard to Ire land, for the last ten years as he supported Mr. Gladstone in trying to carry out his reforms in the previous Parliament, and although he was known as an opponent of the present Government, he had assisted them in their Irish policy in every way. That was why Liberals felt the extraordinary situation raised by the Government now of trying to repudiate their past and trying to appeal again to that bad feeling of hatred to the Irish,
  1422
  which no doubt was strongly rooted in this country.
  The attack upon Liberals in connection with this matter had been most undeserved. For ten years, at any rate, their conduct had been everything that anyone could desire it should be. They had not put any obstacle in the way of the Government. Many of the great measures could have been completely wrecked if the Leader of the Opposition or any important body on the Opposition side had desired to do so, but there was no such desire. It was therefore very ungrateful of the right hon. Gentleman that he should attack Liberals on what he supposed to be their unconstitutional attitude with regard to Ireland. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were also acting in an ungrateful spirit in saying that immediately the Liberals came into office it would be necessary to make the Irish question a Party question once more.
  An appeal was lately made from a quarter which they all expected for the Liberal leaders to say what they would not do if they came into power with regard to Ireland. He would strongly advise any right hon. friend of his not to do so. They could never be sure what they would do with regard to Ireland. The whole path of Trish legislation was strewn with the broken promises of great men. He would remind the House of pledges given even by Mr. Gladstone in 1881 and 1882. Mr. Gladstone spoke of "wading through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire," and shortly afterwards he proposed Home Rule. The late Lord Salisbury said county government was a. worse thing than Home Rule. Nevertheless in the present Parliament the late Lord Salisbury was responsible for giving county government in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said land purchase was more dangerous than Home Rule, and that the rents would have to be collected at the points of English bayonets. Yet the right hon. Gentleman had supported the Irish Land Purchase Act, and the rents had never been collected at the bayonet point. Every pledge given with regard to Ireland had been broken, and the safe thing for any

  1423
  Government to do was to go on quietly as the present Prime Minister had gone on. The Prime Minister had suggested reforms, and when they had secured the approval of the Irish Party he had put them through as quietly as he could.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover said one reason why he abandoned the policy of devolution was that it had not been supported by hon. Gentlemen below the gangway on this side and because it did not command the support of any large section in Ireland. That was hardly a fair thing to say. The thing was not brought forward seriously; it was never embodied in a Bill. He thought the repudiation of devolution or forward progress with regard to Irish policy was not due to any defects in the policy itself but to the exigencies in which the Government was placed with regard to British matters, and if the Prime Minister could see his way to five years more office he would see his way to other reforms in Ireland which would go far to satisfy the aspirations of the Irish people. He desired to thank the Government for the great work which had been done on behalf of Ireland during the last ten years. It was the greatest pity that this turn should be given to the question at this time, but, after all, the progress of matters in Ireland rested not with the Conservatives or Liberals but with Members below the gangway, and so long as they continued to protest against, the injustice with which Ireland had been treated and to express the determination to win complete control over their own affairs, there would be no course open to either Party in this House except progress along the road that would satisfy those demands.
  MR. T. L. CORBETTsaid the debate would give very little satisfaction to any one except those who were the enemies of the Union. The Member for Dover fell into the grip of a strong man, and it would always be a mystery to many of them how he was allowed to come under the influence of Sir Antony MacDonnell, and how Sir Antony, able and honest though he undoubtedly was, but opposed to every principle which lay at the foundation of the
  1424
  Unionist Party, was ever allowed to occupy the office he did.
  And, it being half past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's sitting.

EVENING SITTING.

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND.
  Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Question [9th May], "That, in view of recent events in Ireland, and the revelations which caused the resignation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, it is in the highest degree desirable, in the public interest, that the correspondence and other information necessary to enable the House of Commons and the country to form a judgment on the policy and proceedings of the Irish Government, connected with and subsequent to the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell, be communicated to Parliament."—(Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman.)
  Question again proposed.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT, continuing his speech, said this debate could give no true satisfaction to any believer in the Unionist cause. The only satisfaction it could give was to the Members of the Nationalist Party and to that section of the Liberal Party that still believed in Home Rule. He hoped there was reason to believe that that section of the Liberal Party which still believed in Home Rule was lessening in numbers. A large section of that Party was now shaking itself free from Home Rule, but the Leader of the Opposition still clung to separation in its boldest form. When they were asked why the Ulster Members were not going to vote for this Motion, their answer was that it was because they had no faith in the Leader of the Opposition and that section of the Party opposite to which he belonged. Although they had been accused by the Nationalist Party of being a foolish Party, at all events they were not foolish enough to jump from the frying-pan into the fire. So long as the nominal Leader of the Opposition persisted in believing

  1425
  in the old shibboleth of Home Rule, so long could they give him no definite support.
  They were all only too familiar with the sad history that had led up to this debate. The right hon. Member for Dover, than whom few Members of the House had more brilliant gifts, had been led astray by the brilliancy of those gifts until he dreamed of an ideal for Ireland that never could be realised. He allowed sentimentality to govern his rule in Ireland, especially during the later months of his career in Ireland, rather than common-sense. In order to conciliate the Nationalist Party he adopted as a colleague an avowed and open Nationalist. Sir Antony MacDonnell, they all admitted, was a strong man and was, they all believed, an honest man. He had done great service to the Empire in India, and none were more ready to concede that than the Ulster Members. But his views were absolutely opposed to every principle that lay at the very foundation of the Irish Unionist Party. That, it seemed to him, justified the action of the Ulster Members in abstaining from voting in the debate. It would ever be a mystery why Sir Antony MacDonnell was appointed by a Unionist Government, holding, as he did, views diametrically opposed to all the principles of the Unionist Party. It was a mystery to him why Sir Antony MacDonnell was allowed to go on as Under-Secretary under the new Chief Secretary. He believed that every Member of the Irish Unionist Party believed thoroughly in the new Chief Secretary. They believed he had both courage and sympathy and was free from sentiment and sentimentality. But he could have no lasting success—and this was the meaning of their protest, to-day and of their continued protest until the reason for it was removed—unless he was served by loyal servants. Dublin was 500 miles from London, and, in the words of the hon. Member for Cork, the real power lay with the Under-Secretary in Ireland. It was because of their experience of the Government of Ireland during the last two years that they would be compelled, although loyal supporters of the Government for the last thirty years, to abstain from voting in the division on this debate.
  MR. DILLONsaid that on the 20th February last the House of Commons was told by the hon. Member for Greenwich that the whole of the facts connected with this monstrous case were before the House and the country, and that they had nothing to do but to form their judgment. The First Lord of the Treasury stated that he saw no reason why the correspondence which had taken place between Sir Antony MacDonnell and the Member for Dover should be published, and he thought the whole incident might be now consigaed to oblivion. On the 22nd of February the hon. and learned Member for Waterford moved the adjournment of the House upon the subject and the House then had communicated to them the most remarkable correspondence which had ever taken place in connection with the government of Ireland for the last quarter of a century, but even after that correspondence was published the whole matter was left in a condition of mystery and the House had been driven painfully and laboriously to grope its way towards the facts. Confusion was rendered worse confounded by the fact that on the 6th of March the resignation of the right hon. Member for Dover was communicated to the House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had on the previous 21st and 22nd of February, with his usual eloquence and superb command of language, addressed the House in justification of his action, and had proved, at any rate to the satisfaction of his own Party, that his hands were clean so far as that unclean thing devolution was concerned. The right hon. Gentleman in two long speeches informed the House that he had had nothing to say to such proposals, that tie moment he became aware that such proposals were contemplated by Lord Dunraven, and before he knew that the Under-Secretary had anything to do with them he took a step which was exceedingly unusual on the part of a Cabinet Minister. He wrote to The Times and repudiated those proposals for devolution. Those were the main particulars connected with this transaction, and the next they heard of it was the resignation of the right hon. Member for Dover. The House had listened that afternoon to the explanation

  1427
  of the right hon. Member for Dover, who they were all glad to see restored to health, with great sympathy and eager curiosity. Their curiosity was not satisfied, for the reason that the right hon. Gentleman made in no sense any explanation as to why he resigned, and the House of Commons with regard to that matter was as much in the dark as ever it had been. Why, if the right hon. Gentleman resigned after he had proved that he had nothing to do with the scheme of devolution, did his two colleagues, who had never denied their part of the transaction, remain in the Irish Government. The Lord-Lieutenant had stated that he was with Lord Dunraven and Sir Antony MacDonnell in this matter, and that the programme of Lord Dunraven was drawn up with his approval. Why, then, did the Lord-Lieutenant and Sir Antony MacDonnell remain in the Government of Ireland when the Chief Secretary had resigned?
  When they came to the details of this extraordinary and monstrous transaction there were many Questions that had not yet been answered, but to which the House of Commons was entitled to an Answer. In the first place, in a letter addressed to Sir Antony MacDonnell on December 26th, 1902, the then Irish Secretary the right hon. Member for Dover said—
  "I ciphered the purport of your letter to the Prime Minister and received his concurrence by telegram and by letter this morning."
  They all remembered the purport of that letter. That was the letter by Sir Antony MacDonnell in which he set forth the conditions on which he would accept office. The Chief Secretary for Ireland and Lord Lansdowne sought him out, and, despite his own misgivings, persuaded Sir Antony MacDonnell to accept the Under-Secretaryship, and the right hon. Member for Dover said he was deeply grateful to Sir Antony MacDonnell for coming to his rescue. Sir Antony MacDonnell accepted the office forced upon him upon certain conditions—one was the settling of the question of University education in Ireland on lines acceptable to the majority of the Irish people, and I another was that he was to set to work to arrange for the co-ordination and
  1428
  control of all the Departments of Irish Government. The letter containing those conditions was ciphered to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister concurred with them. There could be no doubt of that, because the letter of the Chief Secretary was written on the morning after he had received the letter from the Prime Minister confirming the appointment. The House ought to see the letter and the telegram from the Prime Minister, because, according to that letter, the Prime Minister was a party to the whole policy, and there was no conceivable reason why the Member for Dover should be driven from office and the Prime Minister should remain. The Prime Minister's letter, which formed an integral part of the correspondence, should be produced. It could only be withheld for the purpose of sheltering the Prime Minister.
  Sir Antony MacDonnell was sent to Ireland for many purposes: he was sent to end the policy of coercion and to administer a policy of conciliation; he was sent to Ireland to settle the land question; and to settle the question of higher University education on lines acceptable to the majority of the Irish people. He set to work on the matter as soon as the Land Act was passed, and entered into negotiations with people in Belfast, and offered Trinity College a further endowment of £10,000 if they would consent to a settlement of the University question on those lines. Then in January, 1904, Lord Dunraven's letter appeared, sketching out a plan for the settlement of the University question, and when it was remembered that Sir Antony MacDonnell, with the authority of the Prime Minister, had been going round making terms and offering vast sums of money for the settlement of the University question on certain lines laid down in Lord Dunraven's letter, it was absurd to contend that the Irish people were not justified in believing that Lord Dunraven's letter embodied the Government proposals. What was their amazement, then, to hear the Prime Minister declare that he knew nothing of the negotiations which had been proceeding on this subject. That declaration made a very large demand on their credulity

  1429
  and he, for one, declined to accept it. The University question sharply divided public opinion in Ireland, just as much as the question of devolution. Why, then, were the negotiations with regard to the foremost question allowed to pass unchallenged by the Cabinet while the action of the Under-Secretary in reference to devolution was condemned. It was admitted that the Prime Minister was a party to the sending of Sir Antony MacDonnell to Ireland with special powers to settle and reorganise a system of Irish government, and yet they were asked to believe that for two years during which the subject was continually discussed with Lord Dunraven, neither the Member for Dover nor the Prime Minister took the trouble to ascertain what were the lines on which Sir Antony MacDonnell was proceeding in pursuance of that object. They were asked to believe that having sent a special agent to Ireland to carry out the work of reorganisation, and the subject having been continually discussed between the right hon. Member for Dover, Lord Dunraven, and Sir Antony Mac Donnell neither the Member for Dover nor the Prime Minister even took the trouble to ascertain what plan was pro posed. It was still more extraordinary to have it suggested that they had not made up their minds as to the line on which the reorganisation should proceed. It was incredible that the House should be told that Sir Antony MacDonnell was sent to Ireland two and a half years ago on a special mission to reorganise the whole system of government in Ireland and up to this hour the Government were unable to say upon what lines the re organisation was intended to be carried out. They were asked to believe that this great wise Imperial Ministry—the only Ministry, as they declared, fit to govern this great Empire—had, in dealing with a country so difficult to deal with as Ireland, sent a special mission to reorganise its government without having made up their own minds.what changes they intended to introduce. It was incredible.
  Now lie came to another question. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover in his short statement threw
  1430
  little light on the subject of the missing letter written to him by Sir Antony MacDonnell between the issue of the first and second manifestoes of the Reform Association. The first manifesto was issued on the 30th August, 1904, and shortly after that Sir Antony MacDonnell wrote a letter to the right hon. Gentleman stating that he was engaged with Lord Durnaven in drawing up a scheme of this character. Now that letter was vitally important. The right hon. Member for Dover, in a previous debate, admitted that he received the letter, but he said he had lost it, and could not recall its terms. Yet the right hon. Member had added—
  "If that letter could be recovered the last cloud of suspicion would be dissipated."
  How could he say that when he could not remember the letter or anything in it? The letter was indeed a link in the chain which was of most vital importance, and it acquired additional importance in connection with the proposed formation of a new political Party. It would be remembered that when the right hon. Gentleman landed in England after having been abroad he suddenly took up The Times and discovered in it the second manifesto, in which the new financial board and the new statutory body for purposes of legislation were set forth, and that he instantly felt impelled to write to that newspaper condemning the proposals and dissociating himself from them. But why should the right hon. Gentle man repudiate the manifesto if, as he had said, he had then not the faintest idea that the Under-Secretary had anything to do with the drafting of it The right hon. Gentleman's story did not hang well together. It all showed the immense importance of the missing letter. If the right hon. Gentleman did not know that Sir Antony MacDonnell was mixed up in the scheme, what object had he in writing to The Times. Who made him Lord Dunraven's keeper? What right had he to say to Lord Dunraven, "You shall not propose devolution "? The matter was still full of mystery and required further explanation. He had been groping about for some key to the business and he thought he had found it in the proposal made in the autumn of 1903

  1431
  to form a new political Party in Ireland. He held that they were entitled to the details of that proposal, and what were the relations of the Chief Secretary and his Under-Secretary to the project. He would like to recall to the memory of the House a statement made by Lord Dunraven on the subject. He said—
  "As is very natural, I had many long conversations with Mr. George Wyndham and with Sir Antony MacDonnell on all kinds of subjects and topics connected with Ireland—not conversations with the Chief Secretary or Under-Secretary, but perfectly informal conversations and talks with Mr. Wyndham and Sir Antony MacDonnell. Among other subjects we have often discussed…and the possibility in fact of creating anything like a Moderate Central Party…I thought it perfectly useless to start or to help to create a Moderate Party on a purely academic basis. I thought it absolutely essential to have a positive, constructive, democratic policy—the policy which has been wrought out in our proposals for devolution. On those ideas, broadly speaking, I have talked over and over again both with Mr. Wyndham and Sir Antony MacDonnell.…My impression also was that Mr. Wyndham saw no particular objection to a general scheme of administrative reform proposed by perfectly independent and private individuals being put forward for public criticism and discussion. I remember very well having conversations with Mr. Wyndham and Sir Antony MacDonnell, not on any particular scheme or idea, but on the subject of a Moderate Party generally, and it was suggested—I do not remember by whom—that Sir Antony MacDonnell should invite some gentlemen to meet me who might be useful to me informing the nucleus of such a Party. That idea was abandoned. I have a. letter from Sir Antony MacDonnell dated October, 1903, in which he says: 'I have been thinking over our conversation of the other day.' He abandoned the idea of asking the gentlemen to meet me, because, as he writes: 'the business would speedily become known, and it would be said that Lord Dunraven was forming a new Irish Party.' To that Sir Antony MacDonnell did not see any particular objection; but he went on to say, 'if the first meeting were held in my house or at my invitation everyone would say that Mr. Wyndham was a prime mover in the business. Any help I can give I shall be happy to give by supplying you with facts and information, but I think, and in this Mr. Wyndham, to whom I have spoken, agrees with me, it is better I should not appear prominently or even to the extent of inviting men to meet you.'"
  In other words, the Chief Secretary agreed that the Under-Secretary should give the Irish Reform Association all the assistance in his power provided he was not found out. But the Chief Secretary and the Under-Secretary were found out, owing to the loyal co-opera-
  1432
  tion of their colleagues the Attorney-General for Ireland and the Solicitor-General.
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE.Hear, hear! They were perfectly loyal.
  MR. DILLONsaid that might be the hon. Gentleman's idea of loyalty, but it was not his idea of loyalty that one member of a Government or Party should spy upon a colleague.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,).If the hon. Gentleman refers to me as having spied on the proceedings of a colleague, I utterly repudiate the transaction. I had no idea who was at the bottom of this devolution scheme. I denounced that scheme, and I have nothing whatever to retract from my criticism.
  THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. JAMES CAMPBELL,): I say that the suggestion that either my right hon. friend or I have spied on the right hon. Member for Dover is unworthy, and one for which there is not the shadow of a foundation. Until the disclosures in the House I had no knowledge that my right hon. friend the Member for Dover had anything to do with the devolution scheme.
  MR. DILLONsaid he had not referred to the Solicitor-General for Ireland, but to the much more distinguished person—the Solicitor-General for England. He repeated that the Attorney-General for Ireland and the English Solicitor-General did spy upon their colleague.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The right hon. Gentleman has repudiated the suggestion, and I think the hon. Member should withdraw it.
  MR. DILLON: I will withdraw the word "spying" if the Attorney-General takes exception to it, but if he had no suspicion, why did he go to the North of Ireland and raise an outcry for a revelation as to who was at the bottom of the scheme? But what about the

  1433
  Solicitor-General for England who, throwing aside all the ties that bind gentlemen in a Government together, went to a meeting in order to denounce a Civil servant? Where did he get the knowledge from which enabled him to do that?
  MR. WILLIAM MOOKE.Everybody knew it in Ireland.
  MR. DILLON: Everybody knew it except the two innocent law officers of the Crown! Why, they had not even a suspicion! They in the Castle did not know what all Ireland knew. That was rather an unfortunate interruption, and he repeated that the Solicitor-General for England was guilty of a most scandalous breach of traditions of honour in his treatment of his colleague. If such action were persisted in no Government could hold long together. As it was, he had succeeded in driving out of political life for the time being the Member for Dover against whom he declared war, and in doing so he had set an example which few Ministers in this country would care to follow.
  He would recur to the question of the formation of the new Party. Where was the need for secrecy? All the proceedings in connection with the Land Conference were carried out in the light of day, but the fact that in his letter Lord Dunraven laid stress on the fact that the hon. Member for Dover felt it necessary to maintain secrecy showed that the whole of this transaction was of a nature of a political intrigue. The object was to break up Parties in Ireland and to start a new Party. Here was the hon. Member for Dover's account of it—
  "Not this year—but in the year 1903, just after the Land Act had been passed—at a time when Lord Dunraven received the compliments he had earned from all sections of opinion. … It was at that time that Lord Dunraven came to me and discussed the chances and prospects of a Moderate Party in Ireland. … And still I am in favour, if it were possible … of Lord Dunraven or any one else forming a Moderate Party in the centre or South of Ireland."
  And then, alluding to a published article of Lord Dunraven's which was the result of these conferences, the hon. Member for Dover says—
  "He" (Lord Dunraven) "speaks of land purchase, of education, of the condition of the people, of the labourers, of fiscal reform."
  1434
  And after that he asks, in heavily leaded type—
  "How is further co-operation practicable?"
  And the article goes on to say—
  "The questions enumerated sufficiently prove the existence of a vast field on which the efforts of all men of all creeds, classes, and politics can be profitably employed."
  The hon. Member for Dover adds—
  "I agree with every word of that."
  All this had reference, not to the co-operation of individuals or Parties, but to the formation of a new Party. Now what he would like to know; was, what was to be the programme of that new Party, and out of what elements was it proposed to construct it.
  There was another question which required explanation. Why was Sir Antony MacDonnell censured by the Cabinet? What had he done to justify that censure? Was he warned before hand that his conduct was going to be considered and did he submit any defence, and, if so, would that defence be produced? Again, what was Sir Antony's present position? Had the attacks on him ceased? He had been made the subject of one of the most cruel and scandalous libels ever made upon a public servant. Had that been dropped? The Orange Party had sworn by all their gods—if they recognised any gods—that they would not abate one jot or one tittle of their hosbility to the present Government until Sir Antony's scalp had been handed over to them! The old disgraceful weapon had been brought out again that night. They had again heard of Constable Anderson. Hon. Members opposite never tried to help the Nationalists in getting a full public investigation into that case. They only said they had no objection. Never against a servant of the Crown had so brutal and calumnious a charge been brought as that in connection with Constable Anderson. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover defended Sir Antony MacDonnell in that case, but it was a very lame defence indeed, and if only the Government would give them a full investigation he would undertake to prove that Anderson was properly and justly removed from the police force, and that he was not fit to serve in the police force of

  1435
  any civilised country. His record was scandalous. He again challenged the Government to produce their records.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT: Will the hon. Gentleman repeat his statement outside the House of Commons?
  MR. DILLON: I shall repeat it if the Government will give me the files.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT: Let the hon. Gentleman have the courage of his opinions and repeat his statement out of the House.
  MR. DILLONsaid that was a perfectly fair challenge. He fully recognised it—he made no quarrel at all—that to attack the character of any individual in that House under the privileges of the House was an extreme proceeding, though he was not prepared to admit it was always cowardly. In this matter they had acted in a most cruel and brutal manner. The charge was that Father Denis O'Hara, out of mere vengeance, because this Protestant constable wanted to marry a Catholic girl, went to Sir Antony MacDonnell and that they both entered into a conspiracy to ruin this man, without any justification. Was that a cowardly charge?
  MR. WILLIAM MOORE: It is true.
  MR. DILLONsaid it was as false a charge as had ever been made. It was a foul and false charge for which there was not a shred of justification. That was the ground on which he justified himself in taking the extreme course he had taken.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: But the hon. Member should not attribute a falsehood to another hon. Member.
  MR. DILLON: Pardon me, but his statement is false. I wish to be quite clear on this matter. If an hon. Member of this House in his place makes a charge against a personal friend of mine, which charge I know of my own knowledge to be false, am I not entitled to say here that it is false?
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I think the hon. Member under those circumstances would be entitled to say that the hon. Member opposite was repeating a charge which was not true, but it is quite out of order to accuse an hon. Member of telling a deliberate falsehood.
  MR. DILLONsaid he did not attribute to the hon. Member a deliberate false hood, but what he said was that it was a false charge. He had only made that charge because the hon. Member opposite had accused him of making a cowardly use of his privileges in this House. He fully recognised that he was taking an extreme course, but he did so on behalf of two men who could not speak for themselves, and who had been made the victims of this most scandalous charge without a shred of justification. He would not pursue that point any further, because anybody who knew the facts knew how monstrous the charge was. Take the case of Sir Antony MacDonnell. He had no responsibility whatever for the dismissal of Constable Anderson, and he had no responsibility for the refusal to reinstate him. He asked the Chief Secretary to promise them a full inquiry into the matter. One of the scandals in the Constable Anderson case, however, was the reinstatement of the man, carried out against the protest of the Constabulary authorities in Ireland as the result of political pressure in the House. When the hon. Member for South Belfast found fault with the statement of the hon. Member for North Kilkenny they were able to point out that the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh boasted in the House, and also in a speech which he made at Portadown, that he and the Ulster Members had put a pistol to the head of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, and had compelled him to reinstate Constable Anderson by threatening opposition in the House of Commons. As regarded Constable Anderson's case, it was disgraceful, but the disgraceful part about it was the reinstatement of a policeman who was unfit to serve in the police force as a concession to political pressure in the House. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh, oh! "] The attack upon Sir Antony MacDonnell was in full swing. The Ulster Unionists, both inside and outside

  1437
  the House of Commons, had announced their intention that they would not cease their agitation until Sir Antony MacDonnell was removed. On April 28tb, upon an Ulster platform, the hon. Member for South Antrim said—
  "When these excellent statesmen had once started on this game of giving each other away.there was no holding them in."
  The hon. Member went on to say—
  "Lord Lansdowne next came to the front and informed us that it was largely owing to him that they had had the inestimable blessing of having Sir Antony MacDonnell as Under-Secretary. Here is one of the leading members of the Cabinet in whose Unionist principles we have up to this date had absolute confidence, and now we find him a secret and a dangerous enemy. If there are any more Lansdownes or Wyndhams whose names would be dragged into the light by these revelations then most emphatically I say let us learn the worst. At the present moment the idea has got abroad that the famous letters read to the House of Commons are by no means the only compromising documents. If there are any more then let us have them no matter whom they may implicate."
  Commenting upon this speech the Belfast News Letter said—
  "The Foreign Secretary is an important member of the Cabinet, and has done good work, but he is not indispensable, and if he be playing the part attributed to him in Mr. Craig's speech, lie ought not to remain where he is."
  Apparently Lord Lansdowne was the next member of the Government who would have to go. This gave one an Idea of the policy adopted by the men who were really governing Ireland. They had now a Chief Secretary who imagined that because he had taken a motor-car ride to Belmullet he under stood the Irish question. Nobody who knew anything about the affairs of Ire land imagined for a moment that the present Chief Secretary would have any voice in the government of Ireland during his short tenure of office. The men who really governed Ireland were the Solicitor-General for England, the Attorney-General for Ireland, and Lord Londonderry. Those were the men who governed Ireland, and the present Chief Secretary would be allowed to keep his position so long as he obeyed those gentlemen and no longer.
  What was the policy in Ireland with which they were face to face? They had in vain asked the Government to give them the details of
  1438
  the policy which they had sent Sir Antony MacDonnell to carry out. What was the policy with which the country was confronted? There was a deliberate campaign to organise bogus outrages. The police had instructions to be active in this matter. These outrages were being manufactured by the police, under the orders of Dublin Castle.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALTER LONG,): Does the hon. Member suggest that that policy has been begun within the last week or two?
  MR. DILLONsaid that he certainly suggested that the system was new within the last four or five weeks, and that it was being actively worked up by the police. He had no doubt that before long the police would be committing the outrages themselves. When the Castle wanted outrages they would get them. While the Land Act was being strangled deliberately by the Government, while all the promises which had been held out were being falsified, and while the Irish people were being driven to exasperation and madness, the Government were deliberately laying the foundation for an attempt to capture the constituencies in England for a policy of coercion.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It appears to me that the latter part of the hon. Member's speech travelled a good deal beyond the Amendment before the House. It deals not with the administration of the present Chief Secretary, but exclusively with the period in which the right hon. Member for Dover was Chief Secretary. Nevertheless, I do not know that the latter part of the hon. Gentle man's speech was wholly wasted, or that I regret its being delivered. It throws a certain light on the allegation made throughout these debates with amazing assurance that it is not the Chief Secretary when he is in the Cabinet, but the Under-Secretary, who directs the policy of the Government in Ireland. If that proposition be true, it is the Under-Secretary who is now manufacturing crime in Ireland; it is the Under-Secretary who is producing bogus outrages; it is the Under-Secretary who is preparing this

  1439
  nefarious scheme to capture the constituencies of England. Well, this charge, as I need hardly say, this allegation against the Under-Secretary is absolutely preposterous. Other charges against him, I think, have been made totally without foundation, and perhaps those who made the other charges of which I speak will take consolation from the charges now made, and think that charges should not be made against the Under-Secretary, but against the Chief Secretary for the time being or against the Government of which that Chief Secretary is a member.
  I thought that by far the most relevant part of the speech of the hon. Member was the earlier portion, in which he made a violent but not at all an improper attack on myself, and, following the example of, I think, almost all the speakers in this debate—certainly following the example of the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Resolution—stated that it was not the Under-Secretary at all, that it was not so much my right hon. friend the Member for Dover who was implicated or attacked by this Resolution, but that it was myself in the character of Prime Minister. Well, I think that is quite, right. I think the attacks should be made on the Prime Minister, and not upon a late member of the Government or upon a permanent official; and I shall certainly have no hesitation in taking upon my shoulders the burden, if burden it be, of the sort of attack which has been made on that side of the House, and which, I am sorry to say, in some particulars has found an echo even on this side of the House.
  Now, what is the charge? The charge, broadly speaking, is this—that when I my right hon. friend the Member for Dover became, on taking his seat in the Cabinet, the dominant partner in Irish administration, the Minister really responsible to the Cabinet in the first place, and to the House in the second place, for Irish administration, a new policy was initiated, a policy which, I understand, is sometimes described as a policy of conciliation, and sometimes as a policy of devolution, and that my right hon. friend started this new policy with the full consent and full knowledge,
  1440
  presumably, of my colleagues, but certainly of myself. Now, let us consider-that point. In the first place, on what evidence is this charge, for what it may be worth, based? It is based, according to the right hon. Gentleman opposite, primarily upon a speech of Lord Dudley's. It appears—a fact that I did not know before—that Lord Dudley, on going ever to Ireland, made a speech in which he said that Ireland should be governed according to Irish ideas.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: It has been quoted half a dozen times.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: You do not read the newspapers. [Laughter and cries of "Order."]
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Well, I hope that in my quotation I have not done him an injustice. It appears that Lord Dudley went over and made this speech, from which it was interpreted that as the phrase "govern Ireland according to Irish ideas" can only mean that Ireland is to be governed according to the ideas the Irish have of the proper relations between Irish administration and the Imperial Parliament, this was practically a statement by Lord Dudley that he was in favour of some form of Home Rule. I need hardly say that the interpretation is wholly incorrect [Cries of "Oh"], and the last charge that can justly be made against Lord Dudley is that he has any leanings towards a Home-Rule policy. That is the first evidence which seemed greatly to impress the right hon. Gentleman, so that it figured during a full third of" his speech as giving the keynote of his whole argument.
  Well, what are the next arguments brought forward? The next arguments deal with the two letters, which were read in the House at an earlier period this session, and in which the Under-Secretary and my right hon. friend exchanged their views, ex changed ideas as to the terms of the policy which was to be pursued, and on which the Under-Secretary was prepared to take office. It is gathered, I understand, partly from the terms of those letters, partly from the views which Sir

  1441
  Antony MacDonnell holds, or is sup posed to hold, with regard to the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite, that the mere fact of his appointment, an the mere fact that in appointing him my right hon. friend clearly thought that he was having an Under-Secretary with whom he could work in the full consciousness that they were dealing with a policy which the Under-Secretary was ready heartily to support—that appears to be regarded as an adequate reason for sup posing that there was what is called a new departure in Irish policy initiated at the time my right hon. friend became a member of the Cabinet. In regard to the original appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell, the House will remember that Sir Antony MacDonnell's friends had put before him the difficulties which anybody might expect on taking the office of Under-Secretary, Ireland being what it is and he holding the opinions which he did hold. Well, it must be remembered that my right hon. friend the late Chief Secretary had also present in his mind that in this temporary appointment he also might be brought into difficulty, and that the mere fact that the Under-Secretary was supposed not to share to the full extent the views about Irish government held by my right hon. friend might hamper him in dealing with matters such as the Land Bill, about which there might be perfect agreement between them; and those difficulties undoubtedly existed. They were undoubtedly foreseen; but I think it probable that if both parties had fully foreseen all the difficulties the appointment might never have been made. I doubt whether Sir Antony MacDonnell would have rejected the advice of his friends, and it is possible that my right hon. friend might have taken a different view. But do not let the House suppose that the appointment was made by my right hon. friend without carefully thinking the whole matter over, or taking advice from those whom he thought best qualified to inform him of Sir Antony MacDonnell's administrative career, his capacity, and character, and power of doing good work for Ireland. He did make full inquiries in that respect; and I do not think even my hon. friends from Ulster, among whom are to be found the severest critics, both of Sir
  1442
  Antony MacDonnell, my right hon. friend, and myself, will refuse to admit that, at all events during the early part of the administrative work of Sir Antony MacDonnell, even they had little cause to complain of the action of the Government of which Sir Antony MacDonnell was a servant.
  What were the objects which my right hon. friend the Member for Dover had discussed with Sir Antony MacDonnell as being objects that might well occupy in the immediate future the attention of any persons responsible for Irish administration? They were, in he first place, the maintenance of law and order, and the maintenance of law and order in Ireland, as everybody is aware, occasionally involves what is known in the phraseology of controversial politics as coercion. The first point upon which they were agreed was the necessity of maintaining law and order.
  MR. DILLON: Not by coercion.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUE: At the cost, if need be, of coercion.
  MR. DILLON: No, no!
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I say yes.
  MR. SWIFT MALCNEIL: Quote the letter.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It will not be denied that the maintenance of law and order appeared in the letter. It will not be denied that immediately after taking office Sir Antony MacDonnell found him self administering parts of Ireland under the Coercion Act, and the inference I should think would hardly be refused that Sir Antony MacDonnell, at all events, conceived himself in carrying out this policy of so-called coercion to be carrying out the policy of law and order which was the first item mentioned in the letter to which reference has been made.
  What was the second item? The second item was land purchase. On land purchase the House were agreed while the Bill was passing through the various stages in this House and in the other, and I hope that the

  1443
  agreement still subsists; but, at all events, it lasted long enough to justify my right hon. friend in the choice which he had made in carrying out the work which he had set himself to accomplish, and I presume no charge will be levelled against Sir Antony or my right hon. friend or myself in connection with the scheme of land purchase.
  The next point, if I remember rightly, was co-ordination. With regard to co-ordination, I have to remind the House that earlier in the debate the Member for South Shields appeared, with a—fortunately for him—felicitous ignorance of Irish administration, to suppose that coordination involved some form of what is known as devolution, or was connected in some way with devolution. No man who has the smallest knowledge of the matter could ever entertain such an idea. It is totally inconsistent with the facts of this particular case and with the facts which preceded it in the history of previous Administrations. Let me inform the learned Gentleman the Member for South Shields, who based, I think, a large part of his speech upon this blunder of his own—
  MR. ROBSON: I simply quoted the words of the letter; I did not identify co-ordination and devolution. I quoted the words of the letter co-ordination I involving the direction and control of the administrative machinery of Irish government.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR.If the hon. Gentleman is prepared to stultify his whole speech and say that in using that phrase he made no reference to devolution, or other forms of alteration of constitutional forms in the direction of Home Rule I, of course, accept his explanation. If, on the other hand, he did commit the blunder, which I certainly thought he did commit, of confounding this coordination with the scheme of devolution I ought to inform him and the House that, while devolution is of the essence of a process of decentralisation, the matter dealt with in the letter is in the nature of centralisation. It is not devolution, but exactly the opposite process; it is a process which many Under-Secretaries before the present distin-
  1444
  guished holder of the place have desired to carry out, and on which, indeed, I think, one distinguished gentleman who served under me wrote lately to the papers and said he put it before me as a scheme which he, in his term of office, had desired to see carried out. This process of centralisation may be good or bad, but what it aims at is to take the various independent boards of Ireland—I mean boards independent of every official under the Chief Secretary—and place them under the control of the Permanent Secretary as well. That is the object which these schemes have in view. It may be good or it may be bad, it may be right or it may be wrong, that the Local Government Board in Ireland, for instance, should report to the Chief Secretary through the Under-Secretary, instead of reporting, as it does at present, directly to the Chief Secretary; but, whether it be good or bad, it has nothing whatever to do either with Home Rule, or with devolution, or with a new policy for Ireland, or with so-called conciliation, or with anything else that has come into controversy this evening. So much for that.
  Now I come to the last object, as far as I remember, mentioned in the letter, and that last object is University education. In the letter Sir Antony MacDonnell expresses his desire to see a settlement of that question on the general lines proposed by me. The general lines proposed by me are well known to all who are students of the question and care to see what is to be said about it, and if they will look at the document in which those ideas appear in their most authoritative form they will see that in that public pamphlet or letter I distinctly laid down that this question, important, as I always believed it and still believe it to be, is one that cannot be settled on ordinary Party lines or by the ordinary Party machine, and that was obviously known to the Under-Secretary when he made the offer, as it is known to everybody who has studied the question. What happened I think this is the only part of the case which really re quires any explanation or defence from those who have studied this controversy in a fair spirit. It is said by the right hon. Gentleman that the Chief

  1445
  Secretary had no right to endeavour, or travelled beyond his duty in endeavouring, in any way to see whether the various educational authorities in Ireland, the various schools of thought by whose co-operation alone, believe, any solution of this question could be attained, were near agreement or could be made to come nearer to an agreement.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Who said that?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I thought the right hon. Gentleman had said that he made that charge against my right hon. friend. I now learn he does not make that charge, and I must say that, though I was not myself cognisant of the attempt, I see nothing to complain of in it. It was always understood by every member of the Government of which I am the head that this was not a question on which the Cabinet were agreed and that it could not be made until they were agreed, if ever, a Cabinet question. But the Cabinet never, as a whole, denied its extreme importance, and they appointed a Commission before I was Prime Minister, and a very strong Commission it was, to investigate the question. That Commission reported, I believe, not many months after my right hon. friend the Member for Dover became a member of the Cabinet. Would he have been justified in leaving the question there? [An HON. MEMBER: Yes.] I think not. I think he was bound to see where public opinion was upon this question. What he would not have been justified in doing was going to this and that body and promising, in the name of the Government, that this or that should be done. He never did do that. It is surely absurd to say that a man holding the strong views my right hon. friend does on this question—which he has never concealed from the House, from hon. Gentlemen below the gangway, or anybody—and finding himself responsible for the Irish Government at the very moment that the Commission reported, should not do what he did to investigate for himself how far some scheme could be devised which would bring together the warring educational elements of the time. He failed, I know, and there may
  1446
  be many failures yet before this question is settled. I think, owing to circumstances not worth going into now, he was foredoomed to failure. I believe public opinion in this House and the country has gone back, according to my view of what is good and bad, upon this question, and that the House is more reluctant to deal with it now than it would have been four or five years ago.
  I do not think it is worth while at this point taking up a charge levelled against me by the mover of the Resolution, who said that my treatment of the Irish University question was weak and cynical. The cynical I do not understand. Weak it might possibly be. What is his method of dealing with it? His method is to wrap up what, I am afraid, the majority of the House would regard as an evil measure, and a great many other things which I think evil measures, under the general name of Home Rule, and throw the responsibility upon hon. Gentlemen below the gangway. That is his plan. I do not know whether it is strong. I know it is cynical, and those who come forward and with a virtuous air say, "We will not do a single thing which can strengthen the Pope, the bishops, or the priests; we are resolutely determined to prevent a single shilling of public money being given to anything which can in the remotest degree have a flavour of anything of the kind about it," have nothing to say about Home Rule. "If the Home Rulers choose to do these things, and to do them without the restrictions this House would put upon them, well, that is their affair. What have we to do with that?" I am not a great master of epithet, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will permit me to borrow from his more ample vocabulary, and describe that procedure as both weak and cynical.
  The hon. Member for Mayo talked a great deal about the middle Party. He asked what it was, and said it must be a Party to which Members are drawn both from the extreme left and extreme right hand.
  MR. DILLON: I said a middle Party in Ireland must be drawn necessarily from opposing Parties already in existence.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No doubt the hon. Member put the matter much better than I hope to put it, but he seems to me to be saying much the same thing.
  MR. DILLON: Pardon me. The right hon. Gentleman said from the extreme left and right hand. What I meant was from the moderate men of each conflicting Party.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: We need not dispute over words, but with regard to this so-called middle Party, I do not understand it bears any resemblance to the fancy portrait the right hon. Gentleman has just drawn. If I rightly understand the views of my right hon. friend the Member for Dover, he felt, as everybody must, that whilst there is a strong body of organised opinion in the North of Ireland belonging to the loyalist section of the community, there is scattered over the rest of Ireland a great unorganised body of loyalist opinion, which might, if organised, do great service to the State. I think that is true. I quite agree that if the organisation is to terminate in the eccentricities of devolution, the less we have of it the better. I trust that will be but a passing phase amongst those leaders of the so-called Reform Party, and if they are to hope, as they may well hope, to take a useful and vigorous part in the public life of Ireland, I am quite certain it is only on condition that The absolutely abstain from meddling with those constitutional issues. I believe, and I have always believed, that to be the view of my right hon. friend the Member for Dover.
  Now I have gone over the premises upon which the initial accusation was based, the accusation—namely, that with the advent of my right hon. friend to Cabinet office the new policy of conciliation and devolution was established. We are told that we had secretly—I forget which of our numerous accusers made the statement—that while publicly expressing the Unionist reed, while running Unionism for all it was worth as an electoral cry in England, we had secretly and tacitly abandoned that creed in Ireland, and were encouraging other
  1448
  persons to adopt doctrine3 and to further a policy which was totally remote from that policy to which we had given such vain and empty lip service on this side of St. George's Channel. I venture to say a more outrageous accusation, based. on more flimsy evidence, never was laid before the House of Commons. I am not aware of the slightest foundation in any utterances made either by my right hon. friend or by myself—I need not say anything about the rest of the Cabinet because the whole object of every speaker to-night has been to isolate my right hon. friend and myself from the rest of the Cabinet, and to explain that we were running a policy of our own. If, therefore, I defend, myself and my right hon. friend, that is, perhaps, enough for the House and enough for my accusers.
  What possible justification is there for this accusation? The only justification beyond the utterly irrelevant charges, which I hope I have disposed of in what I have already said, is that the Under-Secretary did sincerely but most erroneously believe that the Chief Secretary knew what he was doing when the Under-Secretary aided Lord Dunraven in the preparation of his scheme, and I suppose the inference is that the Under-Secretary sincerely be lieved that if the Chief Secretary knew therefore I knew. That is the argument. Well, my right hon. friend did not know, and, if anybody requires conclusive proof, he gave conclusive proof that he did not know by saying, the moment that these statements of devolution appeared, what he had constantly said before, that with these devolution schemes he had no agreement, that with them he would have neither art nor part. He said it then; he said it this evening, in language which I think still lingers in the memory of every man who heard it, but he did not begin to say it on those two occasions. I do not know that the case can be put more vigorously than he put it himself, while Chief Secretary, two or three years ago, in a speech in the country, when he said, speaking of the Irish Members—
  "They desire at least a Parliament for Ireland, with as high a status as our Parliament,

  1449
  for Great Britain, but to the best of my knowledge and belief there is not one man, woman, or child in Ireland who desires the creation of that ambiguous monstrosity which Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and others describe as a greater measure of devolution."
  And if anybody will look at the speech my right hon. friend made in this House on the Address last year—I was not present on account of illness—they will see that the same fundamental thought underlies that speech as is in the extract I have just read, a thought with which I am in entire agreement. It is this, that Home Rule is as bad as anything can be, except, perhaps, devolution; Home Rule, at all events, is a logical and consistent system, which, however destructive of the United Kingdom, does at all events leave a machinery which may conceivably work in some fashion or another, while the scheme of devolution neither satisfies Irish aspirations nor British views of administration. It is a scheme intrinsically bad, and not only that, but a scheme which has no merits of any kind whatever; it does not satisfy what are called Nationalist aspirations, it certainly gives no satisfaction to my friends from Ulster below the gangway, and certainly no man sitting on this bench and responsible for the Government of Ireland would tolerate such a system for twenty-four hours.
  I would venture to say to my hon. I friends from Ulster who have spoken to-night that they hardly play, I think, a wholly worthy part in showing this extreme readiness of suspicion in dealing with those whose public career is before them, who belong to the same Party as themselves, who hold the same general views about the Constitution of the United Kingdom. Suspicion is the great weakener of causes, and if I were to base prophecies upon the lessons of history I should be almost disposed to remind my hon. friends that a cause in which suspicion is thus easily produced out of nothing is one predestined by its own act to failure. I hope for better things, and I believe letter things, because I hope and believe that this unworthy cloud of suspicion is but a passing and unhappy phase, and that a confidence which has most assuredly been deserved on one side will
  1450
  not be withheld on the other. Certainly I, who have taken part now for twenty years in heated and stormy debates in this House over the Irish question, never suspected that I should live, never thought that I should live, to be told that unless I could prove myself innocent of Home Rule I must be adjudged to be guilty. If no length of service, if no whole-hearted devotion, if no strenuous endeavour under difficult circumstances is to free a public man in this country from this unworthy suspicion of those who call themselves his followers, then, indeed, Sir, I think the strength of public life is sapped.
  I do not wish to dwell upon this personal aspect. I am, indeed, almost sorry that I have been betrayed into the few words I have uttered upon it. I will conclude by touching upon the only remaining part of the subject which, I think, deserves treatment, namely, the reality of the charge that we have initiated a new policy, and with a consideration of what the true policy is which the Unionist Party should pursue to wards Ireland. I have been closely concerned with the government of Ire land, in one capacity or another, for almost twenty years; and during those twenty years I can truly say that I have had but one conception of what that treatment should be, and I have endeavoured, whether as directly responsible for the government of Ireland, or as a member of the Cabinet collectively responsible, or as a member of the Opposition who had such power as the Opposition may possess of guiding the legislation of his country, that ideal of mine has never changed. I will not say it was begun, but it was carried on by me during my tenure of the Chief Secretary ship. It was carried on by my right hon. friend the present President of the Local Government Board, and it has been carried on in direct succession by my right hon. friend the Member for Dover. We have been accused, and quite rightly accused, all of us, of being coercionists, if by coercionists is meant administrators who think that the first duty of a Government is to see that the law is obeyed and that private rights are respected. That is the basis of the

  1451
  whole. That is the fundamental principle upon which everything else must be built, and, if it is allowed to crumble, the towering structure, however ambitious, however beautiful in its; imaginative outlines, will certainly fall into ruin also. We are coercionists in that sense, in the first place. We are, in the second place, Unionists, because we believe that not merely is the continuance of a united kingdom necessary for Imperial purposes, though that consideration by itself is sufficient to make us what we are, but because we believe that Ireland, without the powerful support of England and Scotland, is financially and industrially incapable of a healthy or successful national life. [An hon. Member on the IRISH Benches: Give it a chance.] And, in the third place, we believe most firmly that a united Parliament, which is the basis of the Union, is not incapable of carrying out great reforms, greater reforms, indeed, than could be carried out by an Irish Parliament [Cries of "Oh" from the IRISH Benches], because it has behind it a greater power, a greater machinery, for aiding their execution. And we have shown that this is no vain and empty theory of ours, but it has found expression in actual practice.
  I am not going through a list of all the measures that have been passed during the three Chief Secretaryships which I have mentioned, but I would remind the House of the Congested Districts Board, which was established in 1887. I would remind the House of the great Local Government Bill of my right hon. friend sitting on this bench, passed in 1898, and I would remind them of the Land Bill recently passed by my right hon. friend the Member for Dover. However these measures may be undervalued now, they were great efforts of constructive legislation, involving infinite labour both in this House and out of this House, and I doubt whether any period of Irish history will show such a constructive record as I have ventured to describe. That is the Unionist policy as I conceive it, and that policy suffered no change, no variation, in this mystic year of 1902, or with the advent of a new Under-Secretary for Ireland. It does not depend upon Under-Secretaries. It depends upon Cabinets,
  1452
  it depends upon Parties, it depends upon the great Unionist organisation without which this and every other Unionist Government is absolutely powerless. But do not let us, in a moment of insane suspicion—a suspicion which gives no pleasure to any Gentleman except to the few laughers on that side of the House—do anything to weaken or diminish the lustre of the achievements which I think will long live in the history of the relations between England and Ireland, and which form a brilliant contrast to even the best meaning legislation which has preceded them. I am far from desiring to take the glory of them as the particular Minister who was responsible for carrying them into effect, but I may claim that from those achievements the whole Unionist Party—my hon. friends from Ulster as well as the great body of Unionists in this country on whom they depend, may derive legitimate satisfaction. At all events, of this I am sure: that if from a combination of groundless suspicion and unfortunate ill-health my right hon. friend the Member for Dover could not carry on the work which he had taken in hand, his name will at all events remain as the author and begetter of the Land Bill, as the man who got it through this House and passed it into law; and that memory will far outlive those suspicions, cruel and unjust at the moment, but as passing as the storm cloud vanishing before the sunshine. I hope this House will not assent to the Motion, which, though indeed it be directed to the production of the documents, was avowedly intended as an attack upon my right hon. friend and upon myself—an attack which I believe to be absolutely unjustifiable and absolutely without foundation.
  MR. ASQUITH: It is no part of my business to enter into the domestic affairs of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and I am not in the least disposed to quarrel with the faithful and candid diagnosis by the Prime Minister of the morbid symptoms which he discerns in the Party of which he is the distinguished head. He tells us that at this moment it is honeycombed with insane suspicion. Not a very happy state of things for a Party which is approaching a general election long

  1453
  delayed, and seeking to defer that event. But, as my right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition said when he brought forward his Motion, his immediate object is not so much to pronounce censure as to obtain illumination. After listening carefully to the speech of the Prime Minister, I think the great bulk of the House will agree with me that not one single ray of light has been furnished on the only points to which this Motion is directed. Amid the fog of obscurity in which we still move, let me remind the Prime Minister and the House that there stand out clearly three plain, patent, and indisputable facts. What are they? First, that the late Chief Secretary has resigned. Next, that the Prime Minister has not resigned. Third, that Sir Antony MacDonnell retains his place in Dublin Castle. These are facts which are be yond the region of controversy; and yet they are as difficult, as impossible, I should say, now, as they were at the beginning of this debate, to reconcile as co-existing facts in our political system.
  In this search after truth, what discoveries have we made in the course of the debate? Let me take the first question of all—a question to which neither the right hon. Member for Dover nor the Prime Minister has given any intelligible answer. Why did the right hon. Gentleman resign, and why did the Prime Minister accept his resignation? I have not the faintest idea. What cause was there for him to resign which did not logically and ethically—let me put the question in the most specific form—involve in a similar necessity the Prime Minister and all his colleagues in the Cabinet? What had the right hon. Member for Dover done of which they disapproved? Nothing. What had he left undone which they thought he ought not to have omitted? Nothing. What new fact had been disclosed which was not perfectly well known to them before? Nothing. It is idle to contend, as the Prime Minister contended, that he and his colleagues were not perfectly aware that for two and a-half years prior to the resignation of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the Irish administration, largely through the agency of the masterful personality
  1454
  of Sir Antony MacDonnell, but mainly, I agree, through the efforts of the right hon. Member for Dover himself, had been conducted on lines which constituted an entirely new departure. The right hon. Gentleman asks, what is the evidence of that? He brushes aside the speech of Lord Dudley on entering office, when he spoke with all the authority of a man placed by the Prime Minister in a most important and responsible post, and speaking, as my right hon. friend reminds me, not only in his own name, but in the name of the Government, he declared, borrowing a phrase which used to be common on these benches, and in the truth and reality of which I believe, that in local affairs the policy of government should be in accordance with Irish ideas. Was that a new departure or not? The right hon. Gentleman brushes aside all this as if a declaration by the Viceroy in the name of the Government might be neglected as a thing to which nobody need pay any attention.
  And then we come to the correspondence between Sir Antony MacDonnell and the right hon. Member for Dover. Was there ever such a correspondence between a Minister of the Crown and a subordinate entering the service of the State? We know that the whole of the proceedings were initiated by Lord Lansdowne; we have his own statement made in another place. He suggested to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover—I think I am representing him correctly—he suggested the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell to the post of Under-Secretary, at the same time pointing out that a man who had had a large and varied experience in great posts of administration could not be expected to take an office such as that, subject to the ordinary terms of appointment. From the first the basis of the arrangement between the Government and this distinugished servant of the Crown was understood; but the right hon. Gentleman has endeavoured to minimise the importance of the stipulations suggested by Sir Antony MacDonnell and cordially accepted, and much to his honour, by the right hon. Member for Dover; he left out one or two important facts. The maintenance

  1455
  of law and order, said the right hon. Gentleman, involves coercion, but he omitted to observe that Sir Antony MacDonnell had expressly refused to be a party to such a scheme of coercion as had been outlined by The Times news paper, and the reference to "administrative conciliation" further negatives the idea that he ever had in contemplation coercion as one of the ordinary instruments of administration. The right hon. Gentleman twits the hon. Member for Shields upon not understanding what is meant by co-ordination; I am not sure that anybody does really understand it. But at least co-ordination does not mean to most people increased centralisation of the Irish bureaucracy. I think that both the right hon. Member for Dover and Sir Antony MacDonnell were rightly advised in the endeavour to do everything in their power to secure the assent of all sections to a University scheme that would command general approval of the people of Ireland. Yet the right hon. Gentleman tells us there was no new departure.
  His Government has for two and a-half years enjoyed the full benefit of what I may call the Wyndham-MacDonnell règime, a most substantial asset in the meagre, dwindling figures in the credit column of the balance-sheet of their reputation. I am not aware how far it helped their progress at a very critical stage of the fortunes of the English Education Bill in the months of September and October, 1902. At any rate, by universal consent it was the conferences between Sir Antony MacDonnell, Lord Dunraven, and the leaders of the Nationalist Party that, if they did not open the way for the Land Act of 1903, at least smoothed its passage and secured its successful operation. We may say that on the whole law and order has been maintained in Ireland under a policy of conciliation with a degree of success rarely paralleled in the past. There were charges of laxity of administration made by Ulster representatives, but they were refuted successfully time after time by the late Chief Secretary, to the satisfaction of the House and of his colleagues. All
  1456
  these results were largely due to the presence of a new spirit, the adoption of new methods at Dublin Castle, where there was an Under-Secretary accessible to every one, and a frequent visitor to remote parts of the country, where he was not afraid to interchange views with all sorts and conditions of Irishmen—with Unionist landlords, with Lord Dunraven, with parish priests, and even with local agents of the League. This was a new thing in Unionist ad ministration, and though it may have been very shocking to some Unionist consciences on the other side of the House it is, after all, the only way in which the work of administration can be carried out in a free country. The Government have had the full benefit of all that. And there is something more than that; for from those beginnings something in the nature of cooperation for public purposes between Irishmen of different camps and different schools, and, more extraordinary still, between governors and governed, was gradually emerging—the promise of that new era foreshadowed by Lord Dudley, in which the purely local affairs of Ireland would be largely governed by Irish ideas. It is the height of historical inaccuracy and of personal ingratitude for the right hon. Gentleman now to repudiate this new departure.
  What brought about the crash? The Dunraven scheme of devolution was only, after all, the latest product of the series of conferences and exchanges of views so wisely initiated by Sir Antony MacDonnell between the various Parties in Ireland; but it gave the Ascendancy Party who had long been uneasy, and alarmed, and had felt that in this new departure the ground was slipping from under their feet, the pretext they wanted. Here, at last, they could discern, and persuade other people to discern, the cloven foot of Home Rule; and so throughout Ulster, as we saw last autumn, the tocsin was sounded. Cabinet Ministers and English lawyers lustily pulled the ropes with as much energy as the most fanatical Orangemen of Ulster. Simultaneously a campaign of panic and exaggeration was organised in the Press of this country. Then came what I suggest was the real

  1457
  explanation of these events. It was a simple case of intimidation. The Government took fright, and they ran away. They chose the cheapest and easiest, if not the most glorious, way out of the difficulty. While the Prime Minister and the Cabinet maintained their own seats on the sledge they threw the Chief Secretary to the wolves. So much is, I think, pretty clear. But when we try to find out what is the nature and the extent of the change in their policy we re lapse into the region of darkness; for here comes in the third of the three facts I have mentioned—the retention of Sir Antony MacDonnell at Dublin Castle. There is one point on which all persons in Ireland, to whatever Party they belong, are agreed. Not a man in Ireland does not think that the person who comes out of these transactions with most credit is Sir Antony MacDonnell, who is censured, and not any member of the Government who has censured him. That public reprimand of Sir Antony MacDonnell on the floor of this House for what was described as an indefensible error will, I venture to think, take high rank even among the achievements of this Government, as an act which was at the same time morally unjust and politically fatuous. It was morally unjust; for to attach a different meaning to the word co-ordination than that which it conveyed to the Chief Secretary and to the Prime Minister was Sir Antony MacDonnell's only offence; and it was politically fatuous because publicly to rebuke a high official and yet to retain him in a post of responsibility and of difficulty is to do all you can to undermine his authority and influence.
  I must add that it is impossible, for me at any rate, not to feel in this case a certain amount of sympathy with the hon. Gentlemen from Ulster below the gangway. It is the one bitter drop in what otherwise would be an unmixed cup of triumph. They have got, or they think they have got, a Chief Secretary after their own heart in the person of the right hon. Gentleman whom I see opposite—a man who, they fondly think, will listen only to the right sort of people and will not stand any nonsense. But for all that, the new Chief Secretary, as they know, if Sir Antony MacDonnell is to be re-
  1458
  rained, is going to be subjected to a severe and most unnecessary test. Dublin Castle, so long as the present Under-Secretary is there, is an infected area; and they cannot, I gather from their speeches, dismiss from their bosoms a lurking fear that even this blameless English Tory—an English Tory, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so without offence, of a singularly primitive and uncomplicated type—a man whose demeanour, whose vocabulary goes straight to the heart of every loyalist in Ireland—they are not without their fears of what may happen if even this welcome, long-waited-for, and most promising figure has got to be exposed day by day to the dangerous contiguity of Sir Antony MacDonnell. Corruptio optimi pessima. I sympathise with hon. Gentlemen opposite; but looking at it from a totally different point of view, we on this side of the House feel that so long as Sir Antony MacDonnell is at Dublin Castle there is a substantial safe guard that the Irish Government will not, at any rate, be driven back into the more extreme forms of coercion and reaction.
  The Prime Minister his not told us—he has left a good many things untold—which of the points set out in the correspondence between the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover and Sir Antony MacDonnell, assented to when the right hon. Member for Dover was Chief Secretary, and approved, as we know, at the time by Lord Lansdowne and the Prime Minister—which of these points are to be abandoned and which are to be retained. I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman the new Chief Secretary is only going to take his place in that long procession of, to use Lord Beaconsfield's phrase, "transient and embarrassed phantoms" who have tried to govern Ireland without any reliance upon or any contact with Irish opinion and Irish sentiment. The right hon. Gentleman told us in his peroration of the great constructive work that the Unionist Party had accomplished in Ireland, in the Congested Districts Board, the Local Government Bill, and the Land Bill. I will not speak of the Congested Districts Board; but the last two measures are the embodiment of principles violently and vehemently attacked

  1459
  by the Unionist Party at its very beginning. Who can forget Lord Salisbury's Newport speech, in which he declared that the very thing done under the auspices of a Tory Government, the creation of local authorities in Ireland, was infinitely more dangerous for the unity of the Empire than even the establishment of a central Parliament in Ireland? Who can forget the political capital made against the Home Rule Bill out of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill of 1886? These great achievements of Unionist policy, after all, are borrowed from other quarters. I think it is a tribute which all on this side owe to say that the rule of the late Chief Secretary, with Sir Antony MacDonnell as his subordinate, will be a landmark in Irish administration. You may, I hope you. will not, refurbish the old
  weapon of coercion; you may perorate about law and order—I see that the right hon. Gentleman has already begun to perorate—but history will recall that during the last three years Ireland has, under your auspices—under your unwilling guidance, perhaps, and, as I believe, under your unconscious guidance, but through the instrumentality of the late Chief Secretary and Sir Antony MacDonnell—Ireland has taken steps which can never be retraced on the road, and the only road, which leads to contentment and to loyalty.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 252; Noes, 315. (Division List No. 152.)

  AYES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.)

  Crooks, William

  Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Cullinan, J.

  Hammond, John

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Dalziel, James Henry

  Harcourt, Lewis

  Allen, Charles P.

  Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan

  Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Ambrose, Robert

  Delany, William

  Harmsworth, R. Leicester

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Devlin, Charles R. (Galway

  Harrington, Timothy

  Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.

  Devlin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

  Harwood, George

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Dillon, John

  Helme, Norval Watson

  Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

  Dobbie, Joseph

  Hemph, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  Benn, John Williams

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Black, Alexander William

  Doogan, P. C.

  Higham, John Sharp

  Blake, Edward

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

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

  Boland, John

  Duffy, William J.

  Holland, Sir William Henry

  Bolton, Thomas Dolling

  Duncan, J. Hastings

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  Brand, Hon. Arthur G.

  Edwards, Frank

  Horniman, Frederick John

  Brigg, John

  Elibank, Master of

  Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk.

  Bright, Allan Heywood

  Ellice, Capt EC (S. Andrw's Bghs

  Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

  Broadhurst, Henry

  Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

  Isaacs; Rufus Daniel

  Brown, George M. (Edinburgh)

  Emmott. Alfred

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

  Esmonde, Sir Thomas

  Johnson, John

  Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

  Evans. Sir Francis H. (Maidstone

  Joicey, Sir James

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Eve, Harry Trelawney

  Jones, D. B. (Swansea)

  Burke, E. Haviland

  Farrell, James Patrick

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Burns, John

  Fenwick, Charles

  Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire

  Burt, Thomas

  Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

  Jordan, Jeremiah

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Ffrench, Peter

  Joyce, Michael

  Caldwell, James

  Field, William

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  Cameron, Robert

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

  Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan. W)

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

  Kilbride, Denis

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Kitson, Sir James

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Labouchere, Henry

  Cawley, Frederick

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  Lambert, George

  Channing, Francis Allston

  Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

  Lamont, Norman

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Freeman-Thomas, Captain F.

  Langley, Batty

  Churchill, Winston Spencer

  Fuller, J. M. F.

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal. W.)

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Furness, Sir Christopher

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  Cogan, Denis J.

  Gilhooly, James

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Grant, Corrie

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington

  Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark)

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

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Crean, Eugene

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  Levy, Maurice

  Cremer, William Randal

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Crombie, John William

  Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

  Lloyd-George, David

  Lough, Thomas

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Stevenson, Francis S.

  Lundon, W.

  O'Shee, James John

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Lyell, Charles Henry

  Parrott, William

  Sullivan, Donal

  Maenamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Partington, Oswald

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radclilfe)

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Paulton, James Mellor

  Tennant, Harold John

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

  M'Crae, George

  Perks, Robert William

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

  M'Fadden, Edward

  Philipps, John Wynford

  Thomas, JA (Glamorgan, Gower

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Pirie, Duncan V.

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

  M'Kean, John

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Tillett, Louis John

  M'Kenna, Reginald

  Price, Robert John

  Tomkinson, James

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Priestley, Arthur

  Toulmin, George

  M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

  Reckitt, Harold James

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Mansfield, Horace Rendall

  Reddy, M.

  Tully, Jasper

  Mitchell, Edw. (Ferinanagh.N.)

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  Ure, Alexander

  Mooney, John J.

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

  Villiers, Ernest Amherst

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Richards, Thomas (Y V. Monm'th)

  Wallace, Robert

  Morley, Rt. Hn. Jolin (.Montrose

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Moss, Samuel

  Roberts, John Bryn (Eilion)

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay 'I'.

  Moulton, John Fletcher

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

  Wason, John Catheart (Orkney)

  Murnaghan, George

  Robsou, William Snowdon

  White, George (Norfolk)

  Murphy, John

  Roche, John

  White, Luke (York, E. R.)

  Nannctti, Joseph P.

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Newnes, Sir George

  Rose, Charles Day

  Whiteley, George (York. W. K.)

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Runciman, Walter

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Norman, Henry

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Samuel, S. M. (White chapel)

  Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Wills, Arthur Walters (N. Dorset

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

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

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

  0'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Shaekleton, David James

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

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

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

  Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

  Wilson, John (Falkirk)

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

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

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Sheehy, David

  Woodhouse, Sir J T. (Huddersf'd

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Young, Samuel

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Yoxall, James Henry

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

  Slack, John Bamford

  O'Dowd, John

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Herbert Gladstone and Mr. William M'Arthur.

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

  Soares, Ernest J.

  O'Malley, William

  Spencer, Rt. Hn. C.R. (Northants

  O'Mara, James

  Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

  NOES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

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

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Bigwood, James

  Coddington, Sir William,..

  Allhusen. Augustus Henry Eden

  Bill, Charles

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Bingham, Lord

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

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Bond, Edward

  Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Bousfield, William Robert

  Compton, Lord Alwyne

  Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. Hugh O.

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

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Arrol. Sir William

  Brassey, Albert

  Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon.. John

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Cripps, Charles Alfred

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

  Brotherton, Edward Allen

  Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

  Brown, Sir Alex. H. (Shropsl).)

  Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

  Bailey, James (Walworth)

  Brymer, William Ernest

  Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Bull, William James

  Cubitt, Hon. Henry

  Baud, John George Alexander

  Butcher, John George

  Cust, Henry John C.

  Balcarres, Lord

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

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Carlile, William Walter

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

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

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Cautley, Henry Strother

  Davies, Sir H. D. (Chatham)

  Balfour, Rt Hn. Gerald W. (Leeds

  Cavendish, V. C. W.(Derbyshire

  Denny, Colonel

  Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.

  Cayzer, Sir Charles William

  Dewar, Sir T. R. (Tower Hamlets

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. (Birm.

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor

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

  Dimsdale, Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph C.

  Bartley, Sir George C. T.

  Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

  Beach. Rt Hon. Sir Michael Hicks

  Chapman, Edward

  Doughty, Sir George

  Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Coates, Edward Feetham

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  1462

  1463

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Pilkiiigton, Colonel Richard

  Dyke, Rt. Hon.Sir William Hart

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.

  Plummer, Sir Walter E.

  Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

  Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T. (Denbigh)

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.)

  Kerr, John

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Keswick, William

  Purvis, Robert

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Kiraber, Sir Henry

  Pym, C. Guy

  Fellowes, Rt Hn. Allwyn Edward

  King, Sir Henry Seymour

  Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

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

  Knowles, Sir Lees

  Randies, John S.

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Win.

  Rankin, Sir James

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Laurie, Lieut.-General

  Raseh, Sir Frederick Carne

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

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Ratcliffe, R. F.

  Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

  Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th)

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Lawson, Hn. HL. W. (MileEnd)

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Fison, Frederick William

  Lawson, John Grant (Yorks. N. R

  Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

  Fitz Gerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants., Fareham

  Renwick, George

  Fitzroy. Hn. Edward Algernon

  Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

  Ridley, S. Forde

  Flannery, Sir Fortescue

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N.S.

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Forster, Henry William

  Llewellyn, Evan Henry

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

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

  Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

  Robinson, Brooke

  Galloway, William Johnson

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Gardner, Ernest

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

  Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

  Garfit, William

  Lowe, Francis William

  Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter

  Gibbs, Hon. A. G. H.

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale.)

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

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

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Gordon, Maj Evans-(T'rH'mlets

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

  Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby-

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Samuel, Sir Harry S. (Limehouse

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  MacIver, David (Liverpool)

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Maconochie, A. W.

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Graham, Henry Robert

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh, W)

  Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln)

  Green, Walford D. (Wednesbury

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Seton-Karr. Sir Henry

  Grcene, Sir E W (B'rySEdm'nds

  Malcolm, Ian

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

  Marks, Harry Hananel

  Shaw-Stewart, Sir H. (Redfrew)

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

  Gretton, John

  Massey-Main Waring, Hn, W. F.

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Groves, James Grimble

  Maxwell, Rt Hn Sir HE (Wigt'n

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

  Guthrie, Walter Murray

  Maxwell, W. J. H. (Dumfriessh're

  Smith, H. C (North'mb. Tyneside

  Hain, Edward

  Melville, Beresford Valentine

  Smith, Rt Hn J. Parker (Lanarks.

  Hall, Edward Marshall

  Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

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

  Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

  Middlemore. John Thorgmorton

  Spear, John Ward

  Hambro, Charles Eric

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk

  Hamilton, Rt Hn Lord G. (Midd'x:

  Milner, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederiek G.

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset)

  Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nderry

  Milvain, Thomas

  Stanley, Rt Hon. Lord (Lancs.)

  Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford

  Mitchell, William (Burnley)

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Molesworth, Sir Lewis

  Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'th)

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Stock, James Henry

  Harris, Dr. Fredk. R. (Dulwich)

  Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.)

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Stroyan, John

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Morgan, David J. (Walthamstow

  Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

  Heath, Arthur H. (Hanley)

  Morpeth, Viscount

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Heath, Sir James (Staffords. NW.

  Morrell, George Herbert

  Talbot, Rt Hn. J. G (OxfdUniv.

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  Holder, Augustus

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

  Mount, William Arthur

  Tollemache, Henry James

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

  Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Muntz, Sir Philip A.

  Tritton, Charles Ernest

  Hobhouse, Rt Hn H. (Somers't, E

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Tuff, Charles

  Hogg, Lindsay

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

  Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

  Myers. William Henry

  Vincent, Col. Sir C. E H (Sheffield

  Hornby, Sir William Henry

  Nicholson, William Graham

  Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

  Horner, Frederick William

  Palmer, Sir Walter (Salisbury)

  Walker, Col. William Hall

  Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

  Parker, Sir Gilbert

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

  Hoult, Joseph

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Wanklyn, James Leslie

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

  Warde, Colonel C. E.

  Howard, J. (Kent, Faversham)

  Peel, Hn. Wm. R. Wellesley

  Webb, Colonel William George

  Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

  Pemberton, John S. G.

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

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Percy, Earl

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

  Hunt, Rowland

  Pierpoint, Robert

  Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

  1464

  1465

  Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne

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

  Yerburgh, Hubert Armstrong

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Worsley-Taylor, Henry Wilson

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

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

  Willoughby de Bresby, Lord

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

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

  Wylie, Alexander

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

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

  Wyndham-Quin, Col. W. H.

  Question put, and agreed to.

POST OFFICE (TELEPHONE AGREEMENT).
THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,)said he was not going to raise the subject that night. Opposition was raised on the last occasion, and he had met the objections by putting in the names asked for They would appear in the amended Paper to-morrow, when he hoped the Motion would be passed.
MR. KEIR HARDIEsaid his opposition and that of his associates had been withdrawn, and they would be very pleased to see the Motion passed as early as possible.

CHARTERED SOCIETIES BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  SIR JOHN ROLLESTONsaid the Bill only contained one clause, and was designed to protect societies who had the right to use distinctive initials conferred upon them by Royal Charter from the fraudulent use of those characters by those not entitled to use them, and by means of which the public might be deceived. This Bill was pro moted at the desire of various chartered societies in England and Scotland com prising some 20,000 members, and the collective opinion of those societies was that it was as much in the interests of the public as their own. He was aware that the Bill was opposed by societies incorporated but not chartered, who thought that it would confer a monopoly. He assured the House that was not the case, and if the Bill were passed and re ferred to a Standing Committee the interests of the incorporated societies could be there considered and possibly an
  1466
  arrangement made. He hoped the House would pass the Bill.
  MR. HARWOODopposed the Second Reading because it was apparently a Bill simply to give a patent right to a term to those accountants who belonged to the Society of Chartered Accountants, but all knew that the term "chartered accountant" had come to have a special meaning, and implied that the holder had certain qualifications. As a matter of fact there was another society of accountants with about 2,000 members who could not use the term if the Bill passed, and to whom this Bill would prove an injustice. Before any such change was made some term ought to be found to cover all accountants valued by the public. Let the Society of Chartered Accountants come to a reasonable arrangement. Instead of that they were trying to get for them selves a patent right to a particular term, although they knew it carried with it a signification much larger than was really involved in the word.
  And, it being Midnight, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed upon Wednesday, 7th June.

ADJOURNMENT.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)
MR. DALZIELsaid he understood the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury was rather annoyed the previous evening because he was asked an important Question without proper notice. He therefore desired to repeat the Question he put on that occasion, as he understood the right hon. Gentleman was in a position to give the information, namely, whether there was not at the

1467
present moment a vacancy in the post of Junior Lord of the Treasury, and whether he would give the House any explanation as to the extraordinary delay that had taken place in filling the vacancy.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Sir A ACLAND-HOOD,)said he understood there was a vacancy and he could assure the hoi. Gentleman that steps would be taken to fill it.
MR. McKENNAsuggested that the right Answer to the Question was that the post would not be filled until the Government decided whether or not they could avoid a dissolution. By June 2nd the Government had strong hopes that the opposition raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham would come to a head or would be withdrawn: Not until they were satisfied that they could carry on the Government after that date would they attempt to fill the vacant post of Junior Lord of the Treasury. It was hardly reasonable to expect the Government to fill the post now, because they would have to call upon one of their hon. friends to spend £1,000 or £1,500 to contest a by-election with every probability of losing the seat.
MR. LABOUCHEREsaid there was another point in the matter. They had been without a Junior Lord of the Treasury for two months, but they had managed to get on with out him, and the country had heen saving all that time at the rate of £1,000 per annum. Was there any use in continuing the appointment? He was informed that when a gentleman was
1468
appointed Junior Lord of the Treasury he appeared once at the Treasury; he went there at the commencement and an official went in and said, "Will your Lordship allow your secretary to enter your room?" This done, the official said, 'Will your Lordship allow your secretary to take a seat? "The secre tary then took a seat at the table, and cleared out the Junior Lord, and he never went there again. This seemed to him to be a waste of £1,000 a year. Nd doubt the right hon. Gentleman thought the result of the Brighton election was an evil, but still good would come out of evil if this Ministry, which had wasted so much money, were to make a death-bed repentance and do away with the office of Junior Lord of the Treasury.

NEW BILL.
  METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCILS ASSOCIATION.
  Bill to remove doubts as to the legality of the payment of certain expenses by Councils of Metropolitan Boroughs, ordered to be brought in by Captain Jessel, Sir Albert Rollit, Mr. W. F. D. Smith, Mr. Hayes Fisher, Dr. Macnamaru, Mr. Buxton, Mr. Remnant, and Mr. Crooks.

  METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCILS ASSOCIATION BILL.
  "To remove doubts as to the legality of the payment of certain expenses by Councils of Metropolitan Boroughs," presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 208.]
  Adjourned at nine minutes after Twelve o'clock.