Commons Sitting of 24 May 1905

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

MR. SPEAKER'S ABSENCE.
The House being met, the Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, owing to continued indisposition.
Whereupon Mr. JAMES WILLIAM LOWTHER, the Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table, and, after Prayers, took the Chair as Deputy-Speaker, pursuant to the Standing Order.

NEW WRIT.
For the County of Sussex (South Western or Chichester Division), in the room of Edmund Bernard Talbot, commonly called Lord Edmund Talbot, Commissioner for executing the Office of Treasurer of the Exchequer of Great Britain and Lord High Treasurer of Ireland.—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway (No. 1) Bill (King's Consent signified). Bill read the third time, and passed.
Tralee Urban District Council Bill [Lords]. Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Central London Railway Bill (by Order). Second Reading deferred till Tuesday next.

RAILWAY BILLS (GROUP 4).
Mr. de TATTON EGERTONreported from the Committee on Group 4 of Railway Bills; That a communication had been received from Mr. Arkwright, one of the members of the said Committee, that he was unable, on account of domestic anxiety, to attend the Committee this day.
Report to lie upon the Table.
Great Central Railway Bill [Lords]. Report [23rd May] from the Select Committee on Standing Orders read.
Bill to be read a second time.

PETITIONS.
  EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Fearn, for alteration; to lie upon the Table.
  FALSE STATEMENTS (COMPANIES) BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LIQUOR TRAFFIC LOCAL VETO (SCOT- LAND) BILL.
  Petition from Cullicudden, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  PREVENTION OF CORRUPTION BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  REGISTRATION OF FIRMS BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF BUTTER BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS (SUN- DAY) BILL.
  Petition from Dundee, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SHESKH, SULTAN.
  Petition of Sultan Sheskh, for redress of grievances; to lie upon the Table.
  STREET BETTING BILL.
  Petition from Liverpool, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION ACT (1897) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Birmingham, against; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  PUBLIC RECORDS.
  Copy presented, of Sixty-sixth Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  POLLING DISTRICTS (COUNTY OF DURHAM).
  Copy presented, of Order made by the County Council of Durham, altering certain Polling Districts in the county [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  MILITIA (SERVICE OUTSIDE UNITED KINGDOM).
  Return presented, relative thereto [Address 19th May; Mr. Griffith Boscawen]; to lie upon the Table.

  PAPERS LAID UPON THE TABLE BY THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE.
  1. Arundel Port. Copy of Annual Report and General Account of the Commissioners of Arundel Port for period from 25th March, 1904, to 25th March 1905 [by Act].
  2. Temporary Laws. Register of Temporary Laws for the Sixth Session, Twenty-seventh Parliament, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, pursuant to Report of the Select Committee on Expiring Laws in Session 1866; to be printed. [No. 171.]

  CONSTABULARY FORCE FUND (IRELAND).
  Return ordered, "showing Amounts received into and paid out of the Constabulary Force Fund during the period from the 1st day of April, 1887, to the 31st day of March, 1905 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 286, of Session 1887)."—(Mr. Sloan.)
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Board of Education and the Registration of Teachers in Technical Institutes.
  MR. YOXALL: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education if the Board or the Consultative Committee is at present considering the question of registration of teachers in technical institutes; and, if so, will
  1228
  the Board, before coming to a decision on the matter, acquaint the association of such teachers of the proposals or the terms of the draft scheme.
  (Answered by Sir William Anson.) The matter is at present under the consideration of the Consultative Committee; until the Report of the Committee is before the Board it would not be possible for me to state what course the Board will follow as to communications to persons who may be interested in the subject of the Report.

  Publication of Report of Lord Mansfield's Commission.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord-Advocate if he will state when the Report of Lord Mansfield's Commission will be laid upon the Table of the House, and the cause of the delay.
  (Answered by Mr. Scott Dickson.) The Secretary for Scotland is informed that the Report will be sent to him on a very early day, and will, in due course, be laid upon the Table of the House.

  Post-Mortems in South West London and City of Westminster.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that the coroner for South West London and City of Westminster is in the habit of employing a pathologist to determine the cause of death, in preference to the medical practitioner last in attendance on the deceased; and will he state why the practice adopted by other coroners throughout the country is departed from by the coroner for this district.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I have had under my notice certain statements made with regard to the procedure at inquests held by the coroner in question, but I do not know how far these statements are accurate; and, in any case, I have no authority to interfere with the discretion of a coroner in the conduct of inquests.

  Number of Aliens Naturalised from 1890–1904.
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state

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  the number of aliens naturalised in each of the years 1890 to (and inclusive of) 1904.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) The number of persons whose oaths of allegiance, taken on the grant of Certificates of Naturalisation in the United Kingdom, have been registered from 1894 to 1904, are as follows:—

  Year.

  No. of Persons naturalised.

  1894

  910

  1895

  1896

  736

  1897

  606

  1898

  634

  1899

  608

  1900

  581

  1901

  542

  1902

  788

  1903

  890

  1904

  974

  The figures for previous years were not kept in a similar form, and are not readily available for purposes of comparison. They included the few cases in which persons have been naturalised by special Act of Parliament, but did not include

  Year

  Net Contributions as Shown in the Financial Relations Returns.

  England.

  Scotland.

  Ireland.

  £

  £

  £

  1895–6

  60,140,000

  7,292,000

  2,096,000

  1899–1900

  69,540,500

  8,660,000

  1,684,500

  1903–4

  82,808,500

  10,149,000

  2,200,500

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  those women and children who have become British subjects through the naturalisation of their husbands or parents.

  Aliens Entering the Port of London Suffering from Infectious or Con- tagious Diseases.
  MR. LEVY: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state how many of the alien immigrants who arrived in London during March and April were reported by the Medical Officer of Health for the Port of London to be suffering from infectious or contagious diseases; and what were the diseases of the immigrants so reported.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I am informed, on making inquiry of the authorities of the City of London, that the following cases of alien immigrants suffering from infectious or contagious diseases wore reported by the Medical Officer of Health of the Port of London during March and April:—

  March

  One case

  Erysipelas.

  April

  Five cases

  1 Chicken pox.

  1 Measles.

  3 Enteric fever.

  Relative Contributions to Imperial Ex- chequer of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
  MR. LAMBERT: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state the net contribution to Imperial Expenditure of England, Scotland, and Ireland, respectively, for the years 1895–6, 1899–1900, and 1903–4.
  (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.)

  Payments by the Treasury to the Local Taxation Accounts.
  MR. LAMBERT: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state the total amount paid by the Treasury each year to the local authorities under the Agricultural Rates (England) Act, the

  Year

  Payments to Local Taxation Accounts.

  Payments under Tithe Rent Charge (Rates) Act.

  England. (Agricultural Rates Acts.)

  Scotland. (Agricultural Rates Acts and Local Taxation Account Act, 1898.)

  Ireland. (Agricultural Grant under the Local Government Act.)

  £

  £

  £

  £

  1896–1897

  665,517

  91,509

  74,871

  —

  1897–1898

  1,333,682

  183,381

  150,040

  —

  1898–1899

  1,333,433

  231,902

  438,851

  —

  1899–1900

  1,330,621

  280,413

  727,655

  47,836

  1900–1901

  1,327,268

  280,126

  727,655

  105,687

  1901–1902

  1,328,910

  280,701

  727,655

  110,452

  1902–1903

  1,327,981

  280,413

  727,655

  119,290

  1903–1904

  1,328,172

  280,413

  727,655

  128,153

  1904–1905

  1,326,627

  280,413

  727,655

  135,716

  Other grants besides the agricultural grant are made to the Local Taxation (Ireland) Account under the Local Government Act. But I assume that the hon. Member's Question refers only to grants analogous to those under the Agricultural Rates Acts in Great Britain.

  Caution to Local Secretary of Postmen's Federation at Faversham.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that the local secretary of the Postmen's Federation at Faversham, Kent, has been cautioned because of his conduct in forwarding a petition regarding a matter in which he was not directly concerned; and
  Agricultural Rates (Scotland) Act, and the Tithe Rent Charge Act, and Local Government (Ireland) Act, respectively, for every year since the Acts were passed authorising such payment.
  (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.)
  whether such caution received his sanction, seeing that the application was forwarded in pursuance of his duty as representing his members, and by their instruction.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) Yes, the caution was given under my directions The postman in question, as a town postman, was not concerned in the matter which formed the subject of the petitions from individual rural postmen, who were perfectly at liberty to present their petitions themselves.

  Classification and Maximum of Provincial, Town, and Sub-Office Postmen.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he

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  is now in a position to announce his decision regarding the classification and maximum of provincial, town, and sub-office postmen.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) As the hon. Member is aware, the new scales of pay for provincial postmen were announced to the staff at the end of March last, and are already in force. I am daily receiving applications from the postmen at different offices for changes in the classification of their offices, and each case is being dealt with on its merits as quickly as possible.

  Prosecution of Mr. Moynihan, of Kanturk, for Non-Payment of Income-Tax.
  MR. FLYNN: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether Mr. Moynihan, veterinary surgeon, Kanturk, county Cork, is now threatened with arrest for non-payment of income-tax; and, if so, whether, in view of the fact that he is in receipt of only £50 a year from the county council and has no other professional income except from a few precarious cases, the income-tax authorities will abandon their intention of taking this course.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) If Mr. Moynihan will establish the fact that his total income does not exceed £160, the Crown's claim against him for income-tax will be discharged. But up to the present time, I understand, he has declined to offer any evidence on the point, and has ignored every communication made to him on the subject. As a consequence proceedings were entered upon for the recovery of the duty assessed upon him, and judgment has been obtained in the High Court for tax and costs. In these circumstances the Board of Inland Revenue cannot intervene on his behalf, unless he will place himself in communication with them, and put them in possession of the facts of his financial position.

  Readjustment of the Chicory Duty.
  MR. DUNCAN: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he proposes to readjust the existing Excise Duty on chicory, to place the home grower on the same footing as the foreign producer.
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  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) I propose to deal with this subject in the Revenue Bill which I hope to introduce shortly.

  Establishment of a College at Srinagar.
  MR. HERBERT ROBERTS: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Maharaja of Kashmire has made representations to the Government of India with reference to the establishment of a college at Srinagar; whether the British Resident has refused to sanction this proposal; and, if so, whether he will state the grounds upon which the objections of the Resident are based.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The Answer to the first two Questions is in the negative.

  Aden Frontier Expedition-Grant of a Medal.
  SIR CARNE RASCH: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether it is proposed to grant a medal to the Aden Frontier Force.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) As I informed my hon. and gallant friend on February 22nd† last, it is not proposed to grant a medal to the Aden Hinterland Delimitation Commission escort, as the military authorities, who have again been consulted, do not recommend it.

  British Indian trading in South Africa— Language Question.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether any protest has been received from or sent by the Government of India against the Bill now before the Cape Parliament which renders His Majesty's Indian subjects, resident in Cape Colony, liable to a trading disability which will not be inflicted upon Yiddish-speaking aliens; and whether the Government of India has protested against similar legislation in the Colony of Natal.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The Answer to the first paragraph of the Question is in the negative. The legislation of 1897 in Natal, which requires
  † See (4) Debates, exli, 893.

  1235
  traders to keep their account books in the English language, formed the subject of protest by my predecessor when the measure was under consideration. It does not appear, however, to have interfered with the expansion of trade by Indians in that Colony. The law does not require the books to be written up by the trader himself.

  Promotion of Constable Adams, of Bray.
  MR. COGAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether Constable Adams, now stationed at Bray, has been promoted to the rank of acting sergeant, and is about to be appointed to the charge of Newtownmount Kennedy Police Station; and will he say what is his length of service; how many unfavourable records he has, and was he ever cautioned because of infringement of the rules of the service, and informed that he would never get any advancement in the service because of the breach of such regulations; and were representations made to the commandant, and, if so, by whom, with a view to obtaining promotion for this man.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The reply to the first inquiry is in the affirmative. The constable has nineteen years service. He has never been informed that he would not receive advancement. The promotion was made by the Inspector-General, in the usual course, on the recommendation of the local officers.

  Reasons for Repatriation of 332 Chinese Labourers.
  MR. LEVY: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state what were the offences in respect of which 332 Chinese labourers were repatriated up to December 31st last; what penalties, in addition to repatriation, were inflicted; whether all or any portion of the wages earned by such labourers was withheld or deducted; and whether such repatriated labourers were merely returned to the port of shipment, or if any means were afforded them of returning to their own homes.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.) The great majority of labourers repatriated were probably returned as medically
  1236
  unfit, but I have no precise information beyond what has been published, and I will make inquiry. Meanwhile, reference may be made to the Ordinance (see pages 16 and 17 of Cd. 2026) and the Contract (see page 10 of Cd. 2183).

  Discharges from Woolwich Arsenal and Enfield Small Arms Factory.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: To ask the Secretary of State for War the total number of workmen discharged from Woolwich Arsenal and Enfield Small Arms Factory since June, 1903, for causes other than misconduct.
  Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The total number of workmen in the Ordnance Factories discharged on account of age, illness, or other causes except misconduct is as follows:—

  From June, 1903, to May 6th, 1905—

  Woolwich

  2,363

  Enfield

  1,019

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  Militia Subalterns.
  COLONEL WELBY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, when the proposed changes in the organisation of the Militia shall have come into operation, subaltern officers of that force will have the opportunity of qualifying for all new conditions of service, so as to be able to continue serving under the new system, if duly qualified.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): In the event mentioned the claims of any duly qualified Militia subaltern officers will receive full consideration, and every encouragement and opportunity will be given to officers to continue their services.

  Fatal Rifle Practice at Sheerness.
  MR. TUFF: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the recent accidental shooting of a fisherman (George Thomas Gilson) by the Royal

  1237
  Garrison Artillery off Sheerness; if so, what steps he proposes to take to prevent the possibility of such accidents in the future; and whether compensation will be made to the widow.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: A report of this case has been forwarded to the War Office by the General Officer Commanding concerned, who stated that he had issued orders to give a longer safety range during practice with one inch aiming rifles. The question of the length of safety range which should in future be fixed for such practice will receive careful consideration. As regards compensation, the question of an award as an act of grace is being considered.

  War Office and Rifle Clubs.
  MR. FREDERICK WILSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if rifle clubs are entered and numbered on the books of the War Office, and form an integral part of the scheme of national defence; and if, in view of the fact that the members pay for rifles, ammunition, watchers, and markers, it is intended during the coming season to charge them rent for the use of Government ranges.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Rifle clubs which are affiliated to the National Rifle Association are entered and numbered on the books of the War Office. They do not form an integral part of the scheme of national defence. A rent of 1s. a member per annum is charged in respect of the use of the ranges.
  MR. FREDERICK WILSON: Were rifle clubs regarded as part of the system of national defence when the right hon. Gentleman promised a grant, of £50,000 per annum in aid of them.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: They were not intended to form part of that organisation.

  Chinese Labour Disturbance in the Van Ryn Mine.
  MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state what were the circumstances
  1238
  which led to the outbreak of Chinese labourers at the Van Ryn Mine in the Transvaal on 14th May; what casualties resulted; and how many persons have been arrested in connection with this disturbance.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): I have no information regarding the outbreak referred to, the facts as to which will no doubt be reported in due course.

  The Afghan Treaty.
  MR. J. F. HOPE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India a Question of which I have given him private notice, viz., whether the text of the treaty with Afghanistan, published in The Times this morning, is accurate, and when the official copy will be distributed to Members.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. BRODRICK,): The text of the treaty, as published in The Times, is, as far as I know, substantially accurate. The distribution of copies will take place in the course of the next two or three hours. The Paper was laid on the Table last night, and was, therefore, accessible to Members in the Vote Office. But no copy was sent to any newspaper.

  Cotton as Contraband of War.
  COLONEL NOLAN: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been drawn to the decision of a Russian Naval Court in the case of the "Calchas," which appears to define cotton as being contraband of war; and whether, seeing that the proportion of cotton used for military purposes is quite insignificant and could be easily replaced for warlike purposes by some other vegetable fibre, and that cotton is largely used for clothing in this country and constitutes an important branch of manufacture, under these circumstances the "Calchas" decision will be allowed to pass without protest.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATF FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS: His Majesty's Government have as yet only received a brief telegraphic summary of the decision. When the full text of the judgment is received they will consider whether any further action is desirable. As the hon. Member is no doubt aware, His Majesty's Ambassador at St. Petersburg has already brought the question of the treatment of raw cotton to the notice of the Russian Government in his note of October 9th last.
  MR. FLAVIN: Is seaweed which is used for manuring purposes also contraband of war?
  [No Answer was returned.]

  The Aliens Bill.
  MR. JOHN CAMPBELL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the names of the ports to which he proposes to apply the provisions of the Aliens Bill.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS,): The present distribution of the wholesale immigrant traffic indicates that this machinery should in the first instance be set up at London, Grimsby, Hull. Newhaven, Southampton, the Tyne, Leith, and Harwich. In addition to these it will probably be required at Liverpool, and may perhaps be required at some other Western port, but as to this latter point I am not yet in a position to make any statement.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Are Dover and Folkestone to be excluded?
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: It is not proposed in the first instance to set up special machinery at Dover and Folkestone. The Board of Trade Returns do not show that it is necessary there.

  Adult Night Messengers in the Post Office.
  MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the fact that the Tweedmouth Committee recommended that full time
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  adult service in an unestablished capacity (other than that of learner) should be awarded good conduct stripes, he will consider the advisability of granting this privilege to adult night messengers on the same conditions as given to postmen.
  THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,): The hon. Member is under a misapprehension. No such recommendation was made by the Tweedmouth Committee. As I stated in answer to a Question in this House on the 27th of July † last, I am not prepared to grant the privilege of good conduct stripes to adult night telegraph messengers.
  MR. SLOAN: What is the object of refusing this small concession?
  LORD STANLEY: I am afraid I cannot deal with that by means of Question and Answer in this House.

  Government Departments and Free Postage.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that all communications in connection with rent-fixing are delivered post free to the Irish Land Commission, whilst similar communications addressed to the Country Court must be postage paid and stamp enclosed if reply is required; and whether equal postal facilities will be provided in the County Court.
  LORD STANLEY: The Irish Land Commission is a public office which is entitled by Treasury authority to send and receive letters on public business on which postage has not been prepaid. It would not be practicable to extend the same privilege to County Courts.

  Swine Fever.
  MR. FLAVIN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he can state, for the week ending May 13th, the number of cases of outbreak of swine fever in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland respectively.
  † See (4) Debate, cxxxviii., 133..
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. AILWYN FELLOWES,): During the week ended May 13th there were twenty-three outbreaks of swine fever in England, two in Scotland, two in Wales, and one in Ireland.
  MR. FLAVIN: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman see his way, now that swine fever has practically ceased to exist in Ireland, to withdraw the removal orders now in force?
  *MR. AILWYN FELLOWESwas understood to reply that if the local authorities took certain action he would be prepared to consider the matter.

  Sheep Scab in Scotland.
  MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he will postpone beyond 1st June the operation within the scheduled area in Scotland of the Sheep Scab (Regulation of Movement) Order until the local authorities within the area submit to him proposals which they believe will be effective for the prevention of the disease.
  *MR. AILWYN FELLOWES: As will be seen from a communication which I sent to the Press yesterday, I have agreed, in response to the request of a deputation of Scottish flockmasters which waited on me on Saturday last, to postpone the operation of the Order in question until after the 30th of June, in order to allow time for the elaboration of a scheme to secure the compulsory dipping of all sheep within the scheduled area under conditions such as would justify me in contemplating the removal of the restrictions on the movement of sheep which are imposed by the Order referred to in the hon. Member's Question.

  Voters' Disqualifications—Relief for Underfed School Children.
  MR. KEIR HARDIE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he has considered the decisions given in the cases reported in Knapp and Omblus election cases, pages 114 and 320, and O'Malley and Hardcastles reports of decisions in election petitions, page 161, in all of
  1242
  which it was held that money given as a loan by the Poor Law authorities on the understanding that it be repaid was held not to be relief which disqualified a I voter, and that in both cases the vote was allowed; and whether these decisions regulate the giving of relief to destitute school children when such relief is to be considered as a loan to the parent.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,):I am aware of the cases to which the hon. Member refers. They do not relate to the question of the disqualification for being registered as voters of persons who have received relief on loan under the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, and I am advised that they would not apply to any such disqualification in cases arising under the Relief (School Children) Order, 1905.

  The Unemployed.
  MR. KEIR HARDIE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he can state the number of county boroughs in England and Wales in which unemployed bodies would be compulsorily established (unless exempted by an Order of the Local
  Government Board) by the Unemployed Bill now before the House, and the circumstances under which an exemption order would be granted.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The number of county boroughs in England and Wales is seventy-one. A local body would be established under the Bill for each of them unless in any particular case the Local Government Board postponed its establishment until the town council resolved that circumstances rendered the establishment of a local body desirable. Postponement could only be effected on the application of the town council, who would no doubt state the circumstances on which the application was based. It cannot be stated beforehand what the circumstances I would be. They would presumably vary in different cases.

  Reckless Motor-Car Driving.
  MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask the Secretary of

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  State for the Home Department whether, in view of the recent and continued loss of life through the recklessness of motorcar drivers, he will consider the advisability of introducing legislation to place it within the discretion of magistrates to impose a term of imprisonment for a first offence.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: My right hon. friend has asked me to reply to this Question. The Motor-Car Act expires at the end of 1906, and I will take note of the suggestion of the hon. Member with a view to its consideration before that time.

  The Price of Sugar.
  MR. PLATT-HIGGINS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade to what extent has the price of sugar fallen during this year; what is the present price; what is the price now quoted for delivery during the last quarter of the present year; and what was the average price of sugar during the ten years prior to the signature of the Brussels Convention.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW,): The price of 88 per cent. beet sugar f.o.b. Hamburg at the beginning of January was 14s. 10d. per cwt., and this had increased by the middle of January to 16s. The price on the 18th May was 11s. 7½d. The price quoted on the 18th May for delivery in November—December was 9s. 11d. The average price of the same sugar in the ten years 1892—1901 was about 10s. 9d. per cwt.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that since the Sugar Convention the retail price of sugar has doubled, and that the same sugar that was sold at 1¼d. a pound before the Convention is now sold to the same people by the same tradesman at 2½d. a pound?
  MR. BONAR LAW: I am not aware of it, and I would like to know if it is so.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it is within
  1244
  my own knowledge that the fact is so at King's Lynn.

  Parliamentary Buildings—Clock Tower Light.
  COLONEL WELBY: I beg to ask the hon. Member for Chorley, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, whether he will consider the feasibility and cost of an apparatus to change the colour of the light on the Clock Tower as soon as a division is declared, the changed colour to remain until doors are unlocked, so as to inform Members approaching the House that a division is taking place.
  LORD BALCARRES: The appliances needed to carry out my hon. and gallant friend's suggestion would be either very costly or difficult of manipulation. It does not appear to the First Commissioner that he would be warranted in adopting the proposal.
  COLONEL WELBY: Will the noble Lord consider as to placing a gong or bell in Parliament Yard. We have great difficulty in hearing when a division is called.
  AN HON. MEMBER: Would it not be better to fire off a gun?
  [No Answer was returned.]

  Unemployed Difficulty in Scotland.
  MR. KEIR HARDIE: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate whether he is aware that the City of Glasgow expended £12,000 during the past winter in finding work for the unemployed of the city and whether, seeing that neither under the Poor Law of Scotland nor under the Municipal Acts has any public authority power to deal with or give relief to the able-bodied unemployed, and that the unemployed difficulty is becoming increasingly serious in Scotland, he proposes by the appointment of a special Committee or otherwise to inquire into the amendments required in the law to confer powers upon the local authorities for dealing with unemployment, as is proposed to be done

  1245
  for England and Wales in the Bill now before the House.
  THE LORD-ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON,): I am aware of the facts referred to by the hon. Member in the first part of the Question. The whole matter is having the attention of the Secretary for Scotland, but I cannot at present make any definite statement as to the course which is to be taken.

  Needlework in Irish Schools.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the statement on page 40 of Mr. Dale's Report, that the condition of the English Department of any grant being made to a school, that girls must be satisfactorily taught needlework, has not existed in Ireland, and that there are 780 schools, with a mixed attendance of boys and girls, under a master only, and that in these schools the infants are unsuitably taught, but the girls are necessarily deprived of all instruction in needlework or any other domestic subject; if so, can he say why the Commissioners, in their Annual Report which has recently been issued, offer no explanation in defence of the state of things which Mr. Dale's complaint exhibits as existing in these schools; whether they intend to permit the teaching by men only, not only of boys under eight years of age, but of infant girls and grown girls; and, if not, what steps they propose to take in the matter.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALTER LONG,): The Commissioners allude, in their last Annual Report, to their desire for the extended employment of manual instructresses, who have been introduced into many small mixed schools with beneficial results. These instructresses might be employed in all the schools referred to in the Question. The rules provide that, in a mixed school under a master, an assistant mistress should be employed when the attendance warrants it, and that a manual instructress may be employed when the attendance is insufficient for an assistant mistress.
  MR. DILLON: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the propriety of publishing the observations of the Commissioners on Mr. Dale's Report?
  MR. WALTER LONG: I will communicate the hon. Member's wish to the Commissioners.

  Irish School Management.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state what number of the 780 schools, referred to in paragraph 133, page 40, of Mr. Dale's Report, are under Catholic, Episcopalian Protestant, and Presbyterian management respectively.
  MR. WALTER LONG: Three hundred and sixty-seven under Catholic management; 251 under Irish Church management; and 140 under Presbyterian management.

  Land Purchase Agreements.
  MR. FLAVIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether Form P under The Land Purchase Act, 1903, is an agreement or undertaking between the tenant of a holding and the Estates Commissioners, and not an agreement between the tenant and his landlord; whether he is aware that landlords, agents, or their solicitors are using Form P and getting tenants to sign same and agree to purchase terms where the estate is to be sold to the Estates Commissioners, said agreement being signed by the tenant before the estate is offered for sale by the landlord to the Estates Commissioners; and whether he will take steps to secure that landlords, agents, or their solicitors shall not use Form P in such a way as to debar the tenants from any benefits which they otherwise might receive from a direct sale by the Estates Commissioners to the tenants.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (MR. ATKINSON,): My right hon. friend has asked me to reply to this Question. Form P is an undertaking by the tenant to the effect that, in the event of the sale of the

  1247
  estate to the Land Commission, he will purchase his holding from the Commissioners at the price named. This undertaking is entered into with a view to the sale of the estate to the Land Commission under Section 6, and is conditional on that sale being effected; and if the hon. Member will refer to Section 6 he will see that it would be almost impossible that the conditions in that section could be fulfilled unless some preliminary negotiations of this kind were entered into. I am not aware whether landlords or agents are acting in the manner mentioned, but as Form P is provided for a particular class of cases, the Estates Commissioners may be trusted not to permit it to be used in cases to which it is inapplicable, or to the prejudice of the rights of the tenants. It is not necessary to make any regulation dealing with the matter.
  MR. FLAVIN: Do not the landlords who use this form get the tenants, to agree to certain prices before the estate is offered to the Estates Commissioners?
  MR. ATKINSON: Some preliminary negotiations are, of course, necessary to enable the Commissioners to do the things specified in the section.
  MR. FLAVIN: But having got the tenant to sign the agreement, is it not the case that the landlord may proceed against him for the old rent?
  MR. ATKINSON: The whole thing is conditional.
  MR. FLAVIN: But the tenant has no protection against the landlord or his agent.

  Glen Breakwater and Slip, County Kerry.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the toe of the slip at Boatcove, Glen, county Kerry, is still unfinished, and whether steps will be taken by the Congested Districts Board to complete this work without delay; and will the Board supply the hon. Member for South Kerry with a detailed specification of the proposed breakwater at the Glen, together with their estimated cost of erection.
  MR. WALTER LONG: The Board have expended £361 on this boat slip, and they are doubtful whether the small advantage to be gained by lengthening it would justify any additional expenditure. They will, however, have a further inspection made when opportunity offers. It was never the Board's intention to construct a breakwater at this place.

  Illegal Trawling on the South-West Coast of Ireland.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord - Lieutenant of Ireland whether any, and if so, what vessel is watching the observance of the fishing laws on the south-west coast; whether he is aware that several steam trawlers were near Ballinskelligs, within the prohibited limits, between 7th and 14th May, and that the local fishermen had to haul up their nets fearing they should be damaged by the trawls; and whether, seeing that two steamers are required for the adequate protection of local interests during the next two months, he will take steps to secure their constant supervision of the south-west coast.
  MR. WALTER LONG: The Department's steam cruiser "Helga" patrolled the Kerry coast between the dates mentioned, but found no steam trawlers within prohibited limits. The supervision of the south-west coast will not be lost sight of, but for obvious reasons the position of the vessels engaged on the duty cannot be advertised beforehand.

  Carland National School, Tyrone.
  MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state on what grounds the National Commissioners have withdrawn the grant from Carland National School, county Tyrone; and whether, in view of the fact that there are eighty-six children on the roll and that there is no other school within two miles, the withdrawal of the grant from Carland School will be reconsidered.
  MR. WALTER LONG: The manager of Carland School resigned, and proposed to transfer the pupils, of whom there

  1249
  were sixty-five on the rolls, to a new school in the locality. The Commissioners, having inquired into and considered the case, withdrew grants from Carland School, and refused aid to the proposed new school upon the ground that there was ample accommodation for the pupils in other schools under Protestant management within a reasonable distance. The Commissioners do not propose to reconsider their decision.

  Mahon Ballydonlon Estate.
  MR. ROCHE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners received, on November 5th, 1904, a petition signed by several of the tenants on the Mahon Ballydonlon Estate requesting to be relieved of the untenanted land which they had got upon the estate; and whether it was replied to.
  MR. WALTER LONG: A petition was received on the 6th November, 1904, asking the Commissioners to fix an equitable price on the lands of Ballydonlon, or to refuse their sanction to the sale, but the petitioners were informed that the advances had been made in April, 1904, and that the proceedings were closed.
  MR. ROCHE: On whose authority did the right hon. Gentleman on a previous occasion say that no application had been received by the Commission?
  MR. WALTER LONG: I have not that Answer before me or in my mind.
  MR. ROCHE: I have it here.
  MR. MACVEAGH: Did the right hon. Gentleman receive these two absolutely contradictory Answers from the same source?
  MR. WALTER LONG: I should not like to say they are contradictory until I have had an opportunity of examining them. The Commissioners have an enormous number of cases to deal with, and I have naturally to refer to them for information.

  Street Betting Bill.
  MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he will give facilities for the passing of the Street Betting Bill this session.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): In answer to my hon. friend I have to say that I suppose his Question refers to the starring of private Members' Bills towards the end of the session. As the hon. Member knows, that is only done with Bills described as uncontroversial. I think it is too far from the end of the session to make any suggestion with regard to Bills which should or should not be starred, but from such information as I have received I think the Bill to which my hon. friend refers, and in which he is interested, is not likely to prove non-controversial.

  FINANCE BILL.
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  [Mr. JEFFREYS (Hampshire, N.) in the Chair].
  Clause 7:—
  *MR. MCCRAEsaid that it was not too much to say that this clause was the most important of the proposals which had been put before the House of Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed under this section—the omission of which he (the speaker) was advocating—that £10,000,000 of Exchequer bonds, maturing in December next, and created under the Supplementary War Loans Acts, 1900, should be paid off. In considering that, it was important to realise that this proposal dealt with the Unfunded Debt, and that it did not touch the Consol debt which they had under consideration the other day. The Unfunded Debt amounted on March 31st last to £71,600,000. Of that £20,500,000 consisted of Exchequer bonds, which was the nature of the debt they were now considering, and the balance of the

  1251
  total was made up of war stock to the extent of £30,000,000, and of Treasury short-dated Bills to the extent of £21,000,000. It was recognised, and, indeed, it had been so considered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that this large floating debt was a standing menace to our financial position. Under this head, of course, came the borrowing under the Naval and Military Works Acts, and he proposed in only one sentence to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that under that head, in 1898, the gross outstanding liabilities amounted to £3,700,000, whereas at the end of the present financial year the total would be £47,600,000. That was one reason why they should be exceedingly cautious in any powers they gave to the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the creation of new debt, which was, after all, what he was seeking to do under this clause.
  Another reason why they should consider this matter very carefully was to be found in the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not boldly faced the situation in regard to the national indebtedness, because last year, for the first time in our history, we increased our gross liabilities to the extent of about £2,250,000, instead of reducing them at the rate of some £7,000,000 a year. According to an Answer made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the preceding Monday the estimated reduction of the National Debt in the current year would only amount to a little over £3,000,000, so that it meant that for two years practically there would be no reduction whatever in the gross liabilities of the State. What did the Chancellor of the Exchequer propose to do under this Bill? He proposed to pay off £10,000,000 of Exchequer bonds. These bonds were created in 1900 by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and £14,000,000 would mature in December next. It was this £14,000,000 with which the right hon. Gentleman was going to deal. He was going to pay off £4,000,000 of that with money obtained from the Transvaal and from the Sinking Fund, and this particular section dealt with the remaining £10,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman,
  1252
  in his Budget speech, said that it was a limited funding transaction. It was a very limited funding transaction when they considered that the proposal was to pay off £10,000,000 of debt by creating £9,000,000 of new debt, for that would be the result at the end of the financial year. He did not think that that could be considered in any way a brilliant financial operation. The intention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol when he created these Exchequer bonds was that they were to be of a temporary nature, and he made a statement to that effect in his Budget speech of the following year, when he said—
  "I have so arranged the borrowings hitherto-sanctioned by Parliament that they will mature from time to time at such intervals that it will be easy for anyone having charge of the finances of this country, if the Transvaal is in a position to give good security for a loan, to enable it to pay a reasonable contribution towards the cost of the war, and to raise a loan to be devoted towards paying off such portions of our borrowings as may be possible."
  That was the intention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol, and he thought it was the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have dealt with the Transvaal contribution in that clause of the Finance Act. It was rather strange that while they forced the Chinese Labour Ordinance through the Legislative Council, they had delayed the Ordinance which was submitted to that Council for the purpose of raising this £30,000,000 loan, of which they were to obtain a contribution of £10,000,000 per annum for three years.
  He would also like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what had become of the Chinese War Indemnity. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon distinctly promised that the contribution which they were to get from China in respect to the Chinese War Indemnity—estimated to amount to £6,000,000—would be applied to the reduction of the war debt. He understood that that indemnity had been transformed into an annual payment in the form of an annuity to this country, and that up to last year the payment had been devoted towards meeting the claims

  1253
  of private British citizens. Now, however, they would have a clear contribution, and he wished to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he intended to apply that, as promised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon, to the reduction of the debt. If that were so they ought to have some provision made in that clause for giving effect to that payment.
  He did not hesitate to say that these proposals of the Government showed a great lack of courage on the part of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had had in the present year an unique opportunity for dealing with the national indebtedness. He could have dealt with the terminable annuities which matured next year, and he ought to have dealt with the contribution from the Transvaal. He would like to point out to the Committee what he did not think had been quite realised—namely, that the gross national liability amounted to close upon —800,000,000 sterling, exactly the amount at which our debt stood in 1867 after we had discharged the new debt created on account of the Crimean War. Yet to-day they had the Chancellor of the Exchequer under this section proposing to raise another £10,000,000 of debt. That was really what it came to, because these bonds were created only for a term of five years, and now, instead of renewing them for another term of five years, the right hon. Gentleman was proposing to renew them for a term of ten years, with an annual reduction of £1,000,000 sterling which would have equally applied had he added that as contribution to the Sinking Fund. In addition to that, he had led them into this peculiar position, that they were adopting a lottery system of annual drawings, which was entirely foreign to British finance. He did not think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer could say that this proposal had given him any advantage at all from a financial standpoint. He had had to borrow at a high rate of interest. It had not reduced the rate of interest; it had not really enticed the market to come forward to take up these bonds, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman
  1254
  could not fail to realise that it would have been better to have renewed these bonds, and to have applied a £1,000,000 increase to the Sinking Fund. For these reasons he begged to move that the subsection be omitted.
  Amendment proposed—
  "In page 3, line 19, to leave out Sub-section (1)."—(Mr. McCrae.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out, to the word 'ten,' in line 22, stand part of the clause."
  *COLONEL WILLIAMSsaid the hon. Member had crowded a good many curious theories into his speech, some of which he would find it hard to justify when he was sitting behind a Chancellor of the Exchequer of his own side. In his opinion the course adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to this £10,000,000 was a bold and not a craven course. If there had been an innovation it was one which he was rather glad to see, because the right hon. Gentleman had established a new form of Sinking Fund. It was not in any way a lottery as the hon. Member opposite chose to call it, but instead of burdening the Chancellor of the Exchequer in future years with the repayment of £10,000,000 at one time, the right hon. Gentleman had increased the service of the Debt from £27,000,000 to £28,000,000 permanently, and had allotted £1,000,000 of that to paying off one of the £10,000,000 every year, with the result that the Chancellor of the Exchequer who happened to be in office when the operation was completed would find himself with a fixed debt-charge of £28,000,000 instead of £27,000,000 to deal with, and the £1,000,000 allocated for a limited period would be freed for the reduction of the Funded Debt. The hon. Member had spoken as if the paying off of £1,000,000 a year would effectually bar the Chancellor of the Exchequer from using the Transvaal war contribution—whenever it was received—for the reduction of debt. There were more millions of Unfunded Debt to be dealt with, and many ways in which the Transvaal contribution could be applied to the reduction of debt. He was astonished

  1255
  to hear the hon. Member blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer for not dealing with the terminable annuities which fell in next year. Surely one of the things most to the credit of the right hon. Gentleman was that he had resisted the temptation to do so, and that he had realised that sound finance required the finance of the year to be dealt with by the resources of the year. Hs hoped the Committee would not be led away by the contradictory arguments of the hon. Member, and that they would reject his Motion by a considerable majority, thus showing that they were grateful to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for having had the boldness to initiate a new form of paying off the Debt.
  *MR. ASHTONwas sorry that the action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer had met with the approval of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, especially after the way in which this issue of Exchequer bonds had been received in the market. It had proved; costly experiment to the Exchequer. He agreed with his hon. friend that apart from, the war debt the floating debt of the country was far too large. It was perfectly true that £30,000,000 of it ought not to be considered as floating debt, seeing that it was a war loan, but the fact remained that the floating debt was something like £45,000,000, whereas a few years ago it was but a tenth of that amount. The fact was that Treasury bills, which used to be employed merely as a means of tiding over the lean periods of the year, were now being used in place of Funded Debt because of the difficulty of raising that debt. During the war they were obliged to raise a very large amount by Treasury bills, and that was a legitimate thing to do, but big houses still carried such a large amount of the Funded Debt that it was almost impossible now to market Consols in the City of London at anything like a reasonable price. But when the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them that by issuing this form of debt he was reducing the floating debt of the country he failed to see how he was doing it. On the contrary, it appeared to him that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this
  1256
  case was merely creating a new and very objectionable form of debt. It would have been far better to have added this £10,000,000 to some existing form of debt than to have created a new form which was less marketable in the City.
  The hon. and gallant Member opposite objected to the phrase lottery loan. That phrase was very rightly used of the transaction by the hon. Member for King's Lynn the other day. It was obviously nothing but a lottery loan, and it was not a very dignified position for the Chancellor of the Exchequer of this country to take up to issue a form of loan of the kind. It might be very well for a third-rate South American Republic, but it was certainly not the kind of debt which ought to be undertaken by a great country with a credit such as we possessed. A lottery loan was a very expensive article; it was not suitable for City purposes, neither was it suitable for the permanent investor, who wanted to know definitely what rate of interest he would receive and when he would be repaid. Then with regard to the City of London, bankers, insurance companies, bill brokers, and discounters were those who chiefly took up Exchequer bonds. Did the Chancellor of the Exchequer imagine for one moment that they liked this gambling transaction? No, they too preferred to know the exact rate of interest and the exact currency of the obligation. When they knew where they stood they were willing to pay the best market prices for an article when guaranteed by the Government, but when uncertainty prevailed as to the time of repayment they were not likely to run the risk for the same amount of money. The result had been that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had had to pay 3⅛per sent., whereas he might have got the money on Exchequer bonds at 2⅞per cent.—a very considerable difference indeed. That was not what he called wise finance, and he hoped that in case of future necessity the right hon. Gentleman would profit by the experience of the past and not seek to raise money in so expensive a way or in a manner incompatible with the dignity of a great country.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,)replying first to the Question of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh as to the Chinese war indemnity and the Transvaal war contribution, said that the earlier receipts in connection with the Chinese indemnity had been wholly devoted to the payment of private claims, delay in which might involve great hardship to individuals. He hoped a point had now been reached when some satisfaction would be received year by year on account of the Government claim. The exact amount of the claim was still the subject of diplomatic negotiation, and he did not think he could make definite proposals to the House until those negotiations had come to a conclusion. But he would say at once in the most positive form, in order to remove the anxiety of the hon. Member, that, in his opinion, whatever we might recover on that account ought undoubtedly to be devoted to the reduction of the Debt, and it was to that purpose that, so long as he was responsible, he would take care that it was applied. If anything was received on that account before he was able to explain the situation in full to the House and make definite proposals on the subject, the money would be held on suspense account until it could be applied to the reduction of the Debt. There need be no apprehension that he would be tempted to apply that money in relief of taxation or payment of the ordinary current expenses of the year. The money ought, undoubtedly, to be applied to the reduction of the Debt
  *MR. MCCRAE: Am I right in assuming that during the last two or three years we have received £300,000 a year, that that has been applied to the satisfaction of British claims, and that they have now all been met.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he was speaking from memory, but he thought that until very recently the whole of what we had received had been devoted to the satisfaction of private claims. He believed there was at this moment a sum of money in our hands which had not been required for the
  1258
  satisfaction of those private claims but he also believed that the whole of the private claims had not yet been satisfied. The claims of individuals had been satisfied, but there were railway claims outstanding to which the same conditions did not necessarily apply as applied to the individual claims. By the former he meant the cases in which hardship would be caused to individuals if they did not receive their money at once. Probably the railway need not receive the full satisfaction of their claims at once, but might share with the British Government in the payments that now became due. At any rate, whatever money now accrued to the British Government would go to the reduction of the, Debt.
  As regarded the Transvaal war contribution he had already explained in his Budget Speech the position of the Government, and he thought it would serve no useful purpose to go over the ground again. He agreed with the opinion to which expression had been given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol, that further discussion of the matter at the present stage was not likely to be conducive to the public advantage, or to facilitate the recovery of the contribution.
  The hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh had accused him of great lack of courage in dealing with the Debt, and of failing to take advantage of a great opportunity. A number of terminable annuities would fall in next year, and he understood that the contention of the hon. Gentleman was that he ought to have anticipated the falling-in of those annuities, and this year set up fresh annuities to cancel a further amount of debt. He was at a loss to conceive why the hon. Gentleman considered that that would have been a more courageous course than he had actually followed. If he had proposed to reduce the Sinking Fund or the amount of money available for the reduction of debt, he could have understood the charge of lack of courage, but he had taken exactly the opposite course. The operation which he was blamed for not undertaking was a purely paper transaction, which would not in fact reduce by one penny more than his own proposals the liabilities of this country

  1259
  or the amount of its debt. He had not thought it any part of his duty to anticipate what the Chancellor of the Exchequer might think fit to do next year. What he did think was a part of his duty—a duty which he had attempted to discharge—was to strengthen the provision made for the reduction of the Debt, but he did not think it would be wise to prejudge the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer next year as to whether the amount we had available for that purpose should be applied in one particular way rather than another. What it was expedient to do in a matter of this kind must depend on the circumstances existing at the time the operation had to be performed. He thought hon. Members were occasionally misled by the opinion that there was some peculiar sanctity about terminable annuities of this kind, and that a sinking fund wrapped up in terminable annuities was protected against interference or raiding by the House of Commons or the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a way that no other sinking fund was. They did not, in fact, afford any additional security. That view was confirmed by the fact that during the recent war in South Africa the House consented to suspend the whole of the Sinking Fund.
  *MR. McCRAEsaid it was only that part which was held by Government Departments.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he thought the hon. Gentleman was in some confusion of mind. Life annuities, granted to individuals, constituted a contract between the State and the individual which could not be interfered with. But those were not the annuities about which the hon. Gentleman was talking. They were not affected in any way by the proposals which the hon. Gentleman brought before the Committee; of course the free operation of the Sinking Fund was really their first reserve. As to the allegation that he was not reducing the Debt at all, but, on the contrary, increasing it, if he reborrowed the same amount of money to pay off an old loan he did not increase the Debt, though if that were the whole operation he would not diminish it. But that was not the whole operation, and he had taken steps to diminish the
  1260
  Debt. The hon. Gentleman did not approve of the steps he had taken, and said that it would have been much better if he had renewed the bonds for five years. He had power to do that under the Exchequer Act, which gave power to raise money by Exchequer bonds not merely for the purposes of the Act, but for paying off sums raised under that Act. But the War Stock bonds stood on a different footing to those Exchequer bonds, although these Exchequer bonds were raised for the purpose of the war. The phraseology was necessarily confusing, and it was difficult to make his point clear, especially when hon. Members seized that particular opportunity to raise points which really were not germane to the particular matter under consideration.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES(who had interjected the remark which elicited, these observations) said he thought that according to the letter of the Act the right hon. Gentleman was justified in the statement he had made, but he doubted whether that was the spirit of the Act.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid that as a general rule they had to interpret Acts of Parliament according to the letter. If they allowed themselves to interpret the spirit according to their own inclinations, probably the hon. Member and he would differ materially as to the spirit of some Acts of Parliament. The law gave the Treasury power to reborrow ad infinitum for the purpose of paying off debt. Having once raised money on Exchequer bonds, as soon as they fell due the Treasury could borrow the same amount again and could continue the operation to the end of time. It was indeed a complete circle which need never be broken. But it was quite clear it was not a desirable course, and it was not the intention of his right hon. friend when he passed that Act, for he hoped to be in a position by the time the bonds fell due to clear off the whole. He, however, was not in a position himself to do that, but he thought he ought to make provision to clear the bonds in a fixed and limited period and by a regular systematic process. That was

  1261
  really the main object which influenced him in pursuing the course he recommended to the House, and in making him select the form of security he did. There was obvious inconvenience in having so large a sum as £14,000,000 falling due on a single day unless he had reason to anticipate that about that time he would have a similar amount available for its extinction. To meet such a liability it would be necessary to accumulate money in advance, and while it was so accumulating the interest on it would be lost; or, having failed to accumulate the money in advance, it would be necessary on the day it fell due to go to the market and raise the whole sum. He need not remind hon. Members that the month of December was not usually a particularly favourable moment to go to the market for a loan. He had therefore to make arrangements in advance. As regarded £4,000,000 of the debt outstanding, he hoped to be in a position to extinguish that altogether, and as regarded the other £10,000,000 he was obliged to provide for its renewal, but he made that provision subject to the repayment of the debt by regular annual instalments within a period of ten years.
  The hon. Gentleman who spoke last, with great vehemence and almost passion, denounced the step he had taken as having some immoral taint about it, that it was a pure lottery unpopular with investors and with persons in the City of London, and quite unworthy of the British Government. He could only say that the British Government had not thought it unworthy of itself to issue loans with similar provisions, and the House of Commons had not thought it unworthy of the dignity of the country to sanction those loans, and had provided that in regard to municipal enterpris in certain cases exactly similar arrangements could be made.
  *MR. ASHTON: Were these other bonds issued at par? They are not lottery bonds if issued at par.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid they were not lottery bonds whatever price they were issued at. The Egyptian Loan was not issued at par. Surely it
  1262
  was a gross abuse of language to describe these bonds as lottery bonds, and to suggest that investment in them was only a gambling transaction. It was no more so than an investment in Consols. What was the alternative step? If he had made a fresh issue of Consols he would have had to issue them very much below par, and he would have further depressed Consols. Houses that tendered for these Exchequer bonds had to take account of the liability of the bonds to be drawn at the rate of one-tenth each year. They had to average their tender on the assumption that the average life of a bond would be five years. It was a very simple calculation, and was in no sense a gambling transaction; and it was absurd to suggest that there was anything likely to corrupt the morals of the City or the large financial houses in Paris which dealt with millions on the same principle, or that there was anything derogatory to the dignity of the country in issuing bonds of this nature. He had been told he was not reducing the Debt by this operation at all.
  *MR. ASHTON: The floating debt.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I am paying off £4,000,000, at any rate.
  *MR. ASHTON: I was only referring to the £10,000,000.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he was reducing the £10,000,000 by £1,000,000 a year instead of allowing it to go on for ever. The only question relevant to the present issue was whether he had or had not complied with statutory requirements. He was not concerned at that moment to defend the policy which Parliament had laid down in the Naval and Military Works Acts. The only question that could be relevant to the present issue was whether he had or had not complied with the statutory requirements of Parliament. His views on the matter were well known to the Committee, for he had explained them on more than one occasion. The whole matter had been carefully considered by the House on the Military and Naval Works Acts. It was obviously impossible, and he believed it would be

  1263
  out of order, to discuss the policy embodied in these Acts, or the actual expenditure provided in them on an occasion like the present. He thought he had said enough to meet the charges which the two hon. Gentlemen had levelled against him. The proposal he had made was one which met the necessities confronting them in such a way as to secure a considerable immediate reduction of the floating debt which had been inherited from the war. It secured, in addition, a regular diminution of the floating debt year by year until another £10,000,000 of it was extinguished. At the same time it did not draw on the resources which had hitherto been devoted to the payment of the Debt. The Sinking Fund had been specially increased in order to make provision for that debt. The proposal had met on the whole with favour in this Committee when he first expounded it, and he believed it had met with approval elsewhere. When it was realised that in taking this step the Government were recognising an obligation which was incumbent upon them, it would be felt that they had chosen the best means of providing for its fulfilment.
  MR. CAWLEYsaid he wished to say a word or two on the question of the South African contribution. It would have been unnecessary for him to make any remarks on the point at all had it not been for the circumstance that on his side of the House opinions had been expressed on the Transvaal loan which he utterly objected to.
  MR. DILLONrose to order, and asked whether it would be more for the convenience of the House that the question of the Transvaal contribution should be discussed on the clause.
  THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: It would be more convenient for the Committee that the discussion should take place on the clause.
  MR. CAWLEYsaid the Chancellor of the Exchequer had referred to the question.
  THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: That was a passing comment, and I did not wish to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman.
  MR. CAWLEYsaid he would refer to the question when the clause came before the Committee.
  MR. MCKENNAsaid he would state in a sentence why some hon. Members had called these lottery bonds. The essence of a lottery transaction was that those engaged in the transaction drew lots. What the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed was that the holders of these bonds should draw lots.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That is done in transactions in this House.
  MR. MCKENNAsaid that was so, but no pecuniary advantage was given in that way. The essence of this proposal was that pecuniary advantage was obtained by those who were lucky in the lottery.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That happens very often on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
  MR. MCKENNA: There is no pecuniary advantage. There is no law against lotteries where no prize is given.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEY: Is not a fiscal debate a prize?
  MR. MCKENNA: When the Prime Minister runs-away! What happened in regard to these bonds was that certain bonds on being drawn were redeemed at par. The person who was first successful in the lottery, and whose bonds were redeemed, got a greater financial advantage than the person who was unsuccessful in the drawing, and so on each year in turn until the last of the bonds were drawn. If that did not constitute what was ordinarily understood by the word lottery, he failed to understand what a lottery meant. The term lottery as applied to these bonds was strictly accurate in letter and spirit.
  SIR FREDERICK BANBURYsaid the hon. Gentleman was mistaken in saying that the holders of these bonds drew lots. The lots were drawn for them. The hon. Gentleman also said that there would be a gain to the holders by having the bonds drawn early. That would depend on the state of the market. If these bonds stood at 101 there would be a loss.
  MR. MCKENNA: It is equally a lottery.
  SIR FREDERICK BANBURYsaid the system of drawing bonds was extremely common. It was practised by every Government in Europe and in all parts of the world. The only Government which had not hitherto
  practised it on its own particular stock was the British Government. But they had practised it upon the guaranteed loans in the shape of the Egyptian Loan and the Greek Loan. The only objection to this loan which he could see was that we should not get such a good price in the market because these bonds were not so popular. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer wished to redeem this particular loan within ten years he would have been in an awkward position if he had adopted the other course, because he would have had to deal with it in a way which would have disturbed the money market.
  *MR. MCCRAEThe hon. Baronet entirely forgets that we have £21,000,000 of Treasury bills which the Chancellor of the Exchequer can redeem. That would not upset the money market.
  SIR FREDERICK BANBURYsaid that only made it worse, because the Government were continually borrowers or lenders in what was called the short-money market. The taking of £10,000,000 out was an advantage to the money market not only of London but of the world.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he took an entirely different view from the hon. Member as to the difficulties of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had £1,000,000 at his disposal. The hon. Member seemed to think that the difficulties
  1266
  were insuperable. He could always buy Exchequer bonds.
  SIR FREDERICK BANBURY: What I said was that if this particular £1,000,000 had to be ear-marked for a special purpose it would be difficult to know how to employ it to advantage, and that it would be better to use it in the way proposed.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid that supported his view. If the money was ear-marked it went to the purpose for which it was ear-marked. He believed he was the first to call these bonds lottery bonds. He did so for the simple reason that there was a direct element of chance in them. The objection to these lottery bonds was that they did not give the advantages of a lottery. The advantage of a lottery was that it appealed to everybody at large, to rich and poor, and especially the poor man in the street, but the appeal here was necessarily restricted, In the State lotteries abroad certain people who were successful at the drawings did get a great amount of profit out of the vicious propensities of their fellow-citizens. There was great need for meeting the Unfunded Debt, which was the worst form of debt we had at the present moment. He had worked it out and he found that the interest was about £3 5s. per cent. [An HON. MEMBER: £3 4s. 4d.] It was an onerous debt, and it must seriously affect the money market. He gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer considerable credit for the effort he had made to deal with it. Reference had been made to the powers conferred by the Act of 1900. The Exchequer bonds authorised by that Act were really war bonds. They would not have been issued but for the war. He had carefully studied the Act and he was bound to say that by the strict interpretation of the Act the right hon. Gentleman was not unjustified in saying that these bonds should be paid off in 1915 and not in 1910. The net result of that was that the repayment of the debt was really extended for five years. Now, as he made out, the man who held these bonds which were to be paid off the first year, would receive interest at the rate of rather over 4 per cent., while

  1267
  the man who held bonds to be paid off in ten years would receive interest at a considerably less rate. The average interest, he understood, would be 3¼ or 3⅛ per cent. Well, that was a very high rate of interest to pay, because we were a 2¾ per cent. country at this moment, as was shown by the price of Consols.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid that reference had been made as to whether these bonds were or were not lottery bonds. They might be classed as lottery bonds because one investor at one period got more interest than another investor at another period. The question whether they were issued at or below par made them more or less lottery bonds. He could say that as long as the present Government was in office the bonds would not go beyond par. The particular objection which he had to these bonds was, as the hon. Baronet the Member for Peckham, who was a recognised authority in regard to financial questions, had stated, that they were an unpopular form of investment. That was shown in a two-fold way. The application for them was very limited, and they were issued at a very heavy price to the Exchequer. As his hon. friend behind him had said, it could not be an advantage, having regard to the money market, to issue a new form or denomination of bonds. Already we had on the money market, in respect to the Unfunded Debt, far too many different denominations of stocks. Everybody knew that the larger the stock the easier it was to deal in it; and, therefore, the better the price obtained so far as the Government was concerned. Therefore, it could not be to the advantage of the Government, to the money market, or the credit of the country to issue a denomination of stock which was unpopular. There was another matter to which he attached considerable importance. He congratulated the Chancellor of the Exchequer on having added £1,000,000 to the fund for the extinction of the Debt. But, in his opinion, it would have been better if the right hon. Gentleman had not tied his hands in the manner he had done in applying
  1268
  that £1,000,000 to the Sinking Fund instead of to the floating debt.
  MR. COHENsaid that the hon. Member for King's Lynn was mistaken in believing that the interest on these bonds would amount to £3 5s. to £3 10s. per cent. It would not be more than £3 2s. Speaking as one who was very much in sympathy with all the observations which had been made as to the necessity for a speedy reduction of the Debt, he approved of the mode of repayment outlined in the Finance Bill because he believed it would secure the automatic action of the depletion of the Debt more than if the matter were in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer said that it was his wish to redeem the Debt as much as possible; but, for himself, he liked much better an arrangement which was concluded between the State and the bond-holder, and which removed the control from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the redemption of the Debt. His hon. friend spoke of the Debt being increased by this five years arrangement. Certainly it would be increased. Nobody believed that these bonds were going to be paid off by the year 1910. They had had already experience of the disappointment of expectations of the repayment of debt. His hon. friend said that if Exchequer bonds, instead of these bonds, had been issued, they could have been issued on much lower terms; and in proof of that he quoted the Stock Exchange List of the previous day. That reminded him of the old saying that "If only I knew to-day what you will know to-morrow, how much richer both of us would be." He thought the hon. Member must perceive that his argument was misleading. In his opinion the arrangement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was an excellent one; and he liked it all the better because it was novel and would popularise this form of the repayment of the Debt.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid that the question whether these bonds were lottery bonds was so obscure that it ought to be ignored. He himself would have preferred that these

  1269
  bonds should have been issued for £20,000,000, to be redeemed by £2,000,000 each year, instead of £10,000,000 to be redeemed by £1,000,000 each year. He agreed also that the number of the different issues and the complicated way in which the Debt redemption was arranged was a great misfortune. It required many Questions, and the issue of many Papers, to get out the fact that this year the Debt had only been reduced by £3,000,000. Any one looking at the ordinary Returns would have been led to suppose that the amount of the Debt paid off was £10,000,000. He thought it was not creditable to this country that we were only paying off debt to the extent of £3,000,000 a year. He thought that the £10,000,000 a year, which most people thought we should pay, was the sum which ought to be paid. Most people who read the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought
  we were doing much more than we were, and he strongly urged that the House should take this matter in hand. In the interest of the Army, the Navy, the defence of the country, and of every other interest, financial and political, we should really pay off a much larger sum than this pittance of £3,000,000. In bygone days, when the country was not so rich, those responsible for the finances of the country made much greater efforts and the country was now deriving the benefit of them. It would be a sign of the degeneration, physical, mental, and moral of the present generation if, in the repayment of debt, we could not do something far greater than at present.
  Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes, 205; Noes, 170. (Division List No. 177.)

  AYES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Gretton, John

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Greville, Hon. Ronald

  Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

  Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

  Gunter, Sir Robert

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Craig, Chas. Curtis (Antrim, S.

  Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nderry

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

  Hardy, L. (Kent, Ashford)

  Arnold-Forster, Rt Hn. Hugh O.

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Arrol, Sir William

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'th

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

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

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Dimsdale, Rt. Hn. Sir Joseph C.

  Helder, Augustus

  Baird, John George Alexander

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Balcarres, Lord

  Doughty, Sir George

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Hogg, Lindsay

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

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart

  Hoult, Joseph

  Balfour, Rt Hn. Gerald W (Leeds

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham

  Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Hozier, Hon. J. Henry Cecil

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Fellowes, Rt Hn Ailwyn Edward

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Fergusson, Rt. Hn. Sir J (Man'cr.

  Hunt, Rowland

  Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor)

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Hutton, John (Yorks. N. R.)

  Bartley, Sir George C. T.

  Finlay, Sir R B. (Inv'rn'ss B'ghs.

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claver house

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.

  Bingham, Lord

  FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T. (Denbigh

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Fitzroy, Hn. Edward Algernon

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

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  Kerr, John

  Boulnois, Edmund

  Forster, Henry William

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Bowles, T. Gibson (King's Lynn

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

  Knowles, Sir Lees

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Gardner, Ernest

  Lambton, Hn. Frederick Wm.

  Brown, Sir Alex. H. (Shropsh.)

  Godson, Sir Augustus Fredrk.

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Brymer, William Ernest

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

  Lawson, John Grant (Yorks. N R

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

  Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham

  Carson, Rt. Hn. Sir Edw. H.

  Gordon, Maj Evans (T'rH'mlets

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire)

  Gore, Hon. S, F. Ormsby

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.

  Chamberlain, Rt Hn J. A. (Worc.

  Gorst, Rt. Hn. Sir John Eldon

  Llewellyn, Evan Henry

  Chapman, Edward

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Graham, Henry Robert

  Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S

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

  Greene, Sir E W (B'ry S Edm'nds

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

  Maconochie, A. W.

  Purvis, Robert

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Pym, C. Guy

  Thornton, Percy M.

  M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W.

  Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne

  Tollemache, Henry James

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Marks, Harry Hananel

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Tritton, Charles Ernest

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

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Tuff, Charles

  Melville, Beresford Valentine

  Renwick, George

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

  Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

  Ridley, S. Forde

  Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson

  Walker, Col. William Hall

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

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

  Moore, William

  Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

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

  Morgan, David J(Walthamstow

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  Wharton, Rt. Hn. John Lloyd

  Morpeth, Viscount

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Whiteley, H. (Ashton und Lyne

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

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

  Murray, Chas. J (Coventry)

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Samuel, Sir Harry S. (Limehouse

  Wilson-Todd, Sir W. H. (Yorks

  Myers, William Henry

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R (Bath

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Sloan, Thomas Henry

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Parker, Sir Gilbert

  Smith, Rt Hn J. Parker (Lanarks

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Spear, John Ward

  Wylie, Alexander

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

  Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

  Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

  Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset)

  Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

  Percy, Earl

  Stanley, Rt. Hn. Lord (Lancs.)

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M 'Taggart

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir

  Plummer, Sir Walter R.

  Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

  Alexander Acland Hood

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Stock, James Henry

  and Viscount Valentia.

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Stroyan, John

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Dunn, Sir William

  Kilbride, Denis

  Allen, Charles P.

  Ellice, Capt. E C (S. Andrw's Bghs

  Kitson, Sir James

  Austin, Sir John

  Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

  Labouchere, Henry

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Emmott, Alfred

  Lambert, George

  Barran, Rowland Hirst

  Evans, Sir Francis H. (Maidstone

  Lamont, Norman

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Fenwick, Charles

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.

  Bell, Richard

  Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  Benn, John Williams

  Ffrench, Peter

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Blake, Edward

  Field, William

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)

  Boland, John

  Findlay, Alexander (Lanark, N E

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Brand, Hon. Arthur G.

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Leng, Sir John

  Brigg, John

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Levy, Maurice

  Bryce, Rt. Hn. James

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.

  Lloyd-George, David

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John

  Lundon, W.

  Burke, E. Haviland

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Burns, John

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

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Burt, Thomas

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  M'Fadden, Edward

  Caldwell, James

  Hammond, John

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Cameron, Robert

  Harcourt, Lewis

  M'Kenna, Reginald

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Hayden, John Patrick

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Cawley, Frederick

  Healy, Timothy Michael

  Mansfield, Horace Rendall

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Helme, Norval Watson

  Mooney, John J.

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Chas. H.

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen

  Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Moss, Samuel

  Crean, Eugene

  Higham, John Sharp

  Murphy, John

  Cremer, William Randal

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

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Crombie, John William

  Holland, Sir William Henry

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

  Dalziel, James Henry

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth South)

  Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan

  Hutchinson, Dr. Chas. Fredk.

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Delany, William

  Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

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

  Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

  Johnson, John

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Dilke, Rt. Hn. Sir Charles

  Joicey, Sir James

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

  Dillon, John

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

  Donelen, Captain A.

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Doogan, P. C.

  Joyce, Michael

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  O'Dowd, John

  Duncan, J. Hastings

  Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N

  1272

  1273

  O'Mara, James

  Russell, T. W.

  Thomas, J A (Glamorgan, Gower

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Samuel, Herb. L. (Cleveland)

  Toulmin, George

  Parrott, William

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Partington, Oswald

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

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Perks, Robert William

  Shackleton, David James

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  White, George (Norfolk)

  Price, Robert John

  Slack, John Bamford

  White, Luke (York, E. R.)

  Rea, Russell

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

  Reddy, M.

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford

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

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

  Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

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

  Richards, Thomas (W Monm'th

  Stevenson, Francis S.

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Young, Samuel

  Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

  Sullivan, Donal

  Yoxall, James Henry

  Robson, William Snowdon

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Roche, John

  Tennant, Harold John

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.

  Mr. M'Crae and Mr. Ashton.

  Runciman, Walter

  Thomas, David A. (Merthyr)

  *MR. MCKENNAsaid he desired to move the two Amendments he had put upon the Paper in the form of one Amendment. He did not wish, in moving this Amendment, to go over the ground already covered on the Second Reading of the Bill at any length, he would merely recapitulate briefly the arguments then stated. Two years ago the fixed debt-charge was established at £27,000,000. At that time they argued that it should be £28,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer might no doubt say that when he now proposed to put the fixed debt-charge at £28,000,000, hon. Members were not satisfied, but wanted it increased to £29,000,000, but the position had changed, and the £28,000,000 now were only as effective as the £27,000,000 two years ago. Every argument then used against the debt-charge being less than £28,000,000 was valid now against its being less than £29,000,000. Two years ago we thought to get £34,000,000 from the Transvaal, which was to be used in repayment of the Debt. £1,000,000 of that was to be obtained in the course of this year, and that was to be applied in reduction of the Debt. Of the remaining £33,000,000 we had received £3,000,000, which had not been used in reduction of debt, but to make up the deficiency of revenue in 1904. The remaining £30,000,000 we had not seen. Of the £34,000,000 anticipated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon in 1903, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was thus only able to use £1,000,000 this year for the purpose of the reduction of debt, and therefore we
  1274
  were £33,000,000 worse off than when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon fixed the debt-charge at £27,000,000. Had that £33,000,000 been received we should have been saved interest which we now had to pay to the extent of £920,000 a year, which was practically the equivalent of the £1,000,000 now proposed to be added by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so that in fact the right hon. Gentleman was only making up the excess which we now had to pay beyond the amount anticipated by the right hon. Member for Croydon in 1903. To-day we had the same Sinking Fund available out of a fixed debt-charge of £28,000,000 as was anticipated by the right hon. Member for Croydon in 1903 would be obtained for a fixed debt-charge of £27,000,000. whilst the total amount of the Debt stood at £33,000,000 more than it would have done had the right hon. Gentleman's anticipations been realised. It was not enough for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say the total provision was now larger than it had ever been, nor was it sufficient to say the percentage was larger in proportion to the total debt.
  There were other points to be taken into consideration, and those he wished shortly to bring before the Committee. First, there was the present price of Consols. Our credit stood too low. The high price of Consols was given in 1899 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that time as a reason for reducing the fixed debt-charge from £25,000,000 to £23,000,000. The reverse of the

  1275
  argument would apply to-day. With Consols standing at 90, it was our duty to make any reasonable sacrifice to raise the price to par. Power to borrow at a low rate was one of the best of national defences. For the purpose of renewing Treasury and Exchequer bonds the Chancellor of the Exchequer was every year the largest borrower in the market. In the course of the present year he would have to borrow at least £40,000,000, mainly for the purpose of renewing old debt. Last year the money was borrowed at an average rate of £3 4s. 4d. per cent., and the national credit standing at about the same level now as then, it was reasonable to assume that a similar rate of interest would obtain this year. Consols at their present price yielded to the investor £2 15s. 6d. per cent., but they were largely in the hands of holders who were not likely to come into the market; and consequently Consols were at a much higher level than would be indicated by the rate at which the Chancellor of the Exchequer could borrow on bills or bonds. What would be the effect if the right hon. Gentleman had to borrow a capital sum in Consols? At the very best he would have to borrow at the same rate as for bills or bonds, which would mean that the Consols would have to be raised not at 90, but at 80. That showed that by allowing the national credit to drop so low we were running a very grave risk in the event of war. Vast sums of money were spent every year during time of peace simply for the purpose of being ready for war. It was just as important for purposes of defence that the national credit should stand high, and he submitted that it would be well worth while to spend one or two millions more a year in buying Consols in the open market in order to force Consols at least up to par, so that the national credit might stand again on a 2½ per cent. basis. By paying £3 4s. 4d. instead of £2 10s. for interest there was a loss of 14s. per cent., representing £290,000 a year on the £40,000,000, which had to be borrowed, and this sum would be saved automatically if the necessary sacrifices were made to bring the Sinking Fund up to a proper level.
  1276
  His second point was that we were not in fact paying off debt at all at the present time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that during the current year debt would be paid off to the extent of £3,000,000. There was provided in the fixed debt-charge a sum of £8,400,000 for the purpose of the Sinking Fund, and £1,600,000 would be provided on the Votes, making £10,000,000, and the right hon. Gentleman had thrown in another £1,000,000 which was to be received from the Transvaal. Against this total of £11,000,000 there was new borrowing to the amount of £8,000,000, leaving a net reduction of debt of £3,000,000. But it was not paying oft debt in the ordinary sense if assets were used for the purpose. The real amount by which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to reduce debt this year was only £2,000,000 because the £1,000,000 from the Transvaal was an existing capital asset. So far from reducing debt since the war we had not been paying our way, with the result that three years after the war we should be actually £2,000,000 worse off than at the close of the war. That was not a satisfactory position for the country to be in. There were still over £14,000,000 to be borrowed on capital liabilities, so that for at least another two years the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go on borrowing, and it was not too much to say that at the close of 1908 debt would not have been reduced during the preceding five years by any appreciable sum at all. It had to be remembered that all the purposes for which money was now borrowed used to be satisfied out of revenue, and if the present system were continued it would ultimately mean that while an average amount of £7,000,000 a year was being borrowed, we should be repaying in interest and sinking fund on the total sum of such borrowings at least an equal amount. Thus the system would have to be brought to a close, but with what result to the taxpayer of the future? He would be saddled with interest and sinking fund on the borrowed money to the extent of not less than £3,000,000 a year, and he would have at the same time to meet out of revenue all those purposes for which money was now borrowed He submitted that that was a ground

  1277
  for a greater effort being made, so long as the borrowings in respect of capital liabilities continued, to increase the total amount of the Sinking Fund.
  His third point was the inadequacy of the present Sinking Fund. In 1875–76, when the Debt stood at about the same figure as now, but the revenue was only half as large, Sir Stafford Northcote put the fixed debt-charge at £28,000,000. In the present year we were making a sacrifice of £2,000,000 for the reduction of debt. In Sir Stafford Northcote's time, with half the revenue, the sacrifice was £3,500,000, so that even if the Sinking Fund were extended by £1,000,000, as he proposed, the level of sacrifice attained by the taxpayers of 1875–76 would not have been reached. It had to be remembered that future wars would be vastly more expensive than past wars had been, and consequently if new debt had to be incurred for war purposes it would be in far larger amounts than hitherto. That meant that a comparison of the provision made for Sinking Fund in former years and the provision made today was not a useful comparison. Our resources for the repayment of interest and debt were far greater to-day than thirty years ago, and we ought to be willing to make greater sacrifices. This was not at all a Party question. Economists on both sides agreed that sufficient sacrifices were not being made at present, but their criticisms, valuable though they were, would never be effective unless they were backed by votes. He believed that in the present condition of the House of Commons, if hon. Members opposite who had spoken strongly on this question merely threatened to support their speeches by their votes they would get their way in the matter. Savings could admittedly be made this year on Army expenditure, and by such savings the provision for the reduction of debt could easily be increased by £1,000,000. He appealed to economists on both sides to insist that the Government should not be satisfied with a fixed debt-charge of £28,000,000 as now proposed. He begged to move.
  Amendment proposed—
  "In page 4, line 2, to leave out the word twenty-eight' and insert the words 'twenty-nine
  1278
  million pounds,' where of one million pounds shall be paid by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue in such manner, by such payments, and under such regulations as the Treasury direct, to the Commissioners of the National Debt out of the proceeds of the estate duty."—(Mr. McKenna.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'twenty-eight' stand part of the clause."
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid that if he remembered rightly, at an earlier stage of the proceedings, the Opposition, led by right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench, instead of supporting the endeavour the Government were making to increase the Sinking Fund, went into the lobby against any increase of the fixed debt-charge. He need say very little about the Amendment itself, as probably the form in which it appeared on the Paper was dictated more by a desire to get round the rules of the House than by admiration of its exact wording. The two parts of the Amendment were inconsistent the one with the other. By Section 1 of the Sinking Fund Act, 1875, the permanent annual charge was directed to be charged to and issued out of the Consolidated Fund, and that would be inconsistent with the procedure commended in the second part of the Amendment, which also was open to the objection—and he was surprised that the hon. Member should be guilty of such fiscal heresy—that it attempted to intercept revenue before it reached the Exchequer. If the Amendment were put forward on its merits those observations would be sufficient, probably, in the estimation of the hon. Member himself, to dispose of it. The Amendment, however, was put forward not on its merits, but as a vehicle for the suggestion that the amount devoted to the reduction of debt in the present year was insufficient. The hon. Member had dealt once again with the Transvaal contribution, but he did not propose to follow him in that, and he regretted that there should be further discussion upon it at the present time, because it was understood that it should be dealt with on the Motion that the clause stand part of the Bill. ["No."] At any rate, at the present stage of the

  1279
  discussion he did not wish to add anything to what he had already said upon that subject.
  It was said that it was a most urgent thing that they should make a larger contribution to the reduction of the National Debt, and one hon. Member had suggested that he should have used the whole of his surplus for that purpose. He thought an increased contribution for this purpose was eminently desirable and indeed urgent, but if they pressed this argument for a high Sinking Fund too far they might defeat the object they had in view, because they found it difficult to maintain steadily even at a reasonable amount. At a time when taxation was already so high he could only repeat that in his opinion he thought he had held the scales fairly between conflicting interests by devoting an additional £1,000,000 to this purpose during the current year.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid he agreed with the hon. Member for Monmouth that the strength of a nation depended not so much upon its warlike forces as upon its financial resource. He considered, therefore, that the position of this country had been considerably weakened by its present financial position as compared with its position five years ago. Our Debt was not only much larger than it ought to be; but larger than it was a year ago. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer had adhered to all the taxation enforced a year ago he thought the Opposition would not have done unwisely if they had followed him into the lobby in support of retaining taxation in order that the Debt might have been by so much reduced. To show how important the financial resources of the nation were, he would instance the course of the war in the Far East, and the constant anxiety of the Japanese and Russian Governments, not so much to maintain the number and standard of their forces, but to borrow a sufficient amount of money at a low rate of interest. And it was the extraordinary and complete recovery of the financial position of France which enabled her to shake off the yoke imposed upon her by Germany and to resume her place
  1280
  among the foremost countries of the world. What had been instrumental in enabling us to take, a foremost place in the councils of the world had been rather our extraordinary and superior command of money and all that money carried with it than our Army and Navy. It was those potential resources that had enabled this country to scramble through contest after contest with other Powers, because it had been fully realised by other nations that we could carry on hostilities longer than they owing to out financial resources. It seemed to him that in spite of our unparalleled prosperity during the last ten years, we had wasted our resources on wrong objects, because we had had insufficient advice and because the control which the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to keep over other Departments of the State had been constantly relaxed. If this proposal were carried, and we devoted more money to paying off our liabilities than we had hitherto done, we should have what was much more valuable than a gold reserve, we should have our credit unimpaired, and, more than that, it would be vastly increased. It was in our credit that the strength of this country lay.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he thought he could show that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was under a misapprehension as to what was the Consolidated Fund. After the revolution of 1688, for 100 years every tax was allocated to a special purpose, and as a matter of fact there were in the Customs alone seventy-five taxes, each devoted to its own particular purpose. In 1787 they got rid of this system; the Consolidated Fund was instituted, and it was enacted that that should be the reservoir to which every public receipt should go and from which should flow every item of public expenditure. The Consolidated Fund had since then ceased to be entitled to be name through the practice of intercepting the moneys that belonged to it before they reached it. The hon. Member proposed to follow that example by his Amendment. What were the real merits of this matter? They had had the advantage of an object-lesson, showing the extreme facility with which, when once the matter was understood, any Member of the House could take

  1281
  hold of public money and apply it to any purpose he pleased. The hon. Member was the first who had done this. No Committee was required, no recommendation by a Minister of the Crown, and none of the ordinary financial securities which the House had placed around public money. Any Member at any moment might get up and move an intercepting Motion of this sort, applying the whole of the death duties to any purpose he chose in his wisdom to select. He would remind some of the hon. Gentlemen from Ireland who were occasionally inclined to apply public money to purposes which would benefit their country, that the hon. Member had taught a very great object-lesson. The hon. Member sought to intercept a million of money out of the estate duties and to add it to the permanent fixed charge for the National Debt.
  That our Sinking Fund was too low, and that it ought to be higher, was a belief which nobody had affirmed with greater industry than himself. It appeared to be perfectly wanton that we should go on with a fixed National Debt charge only £28,000,000, the sum which Sir Stafford Northcote applied to a really smaller Debt, because we had not then the vast Unfunded Debt we had now. The sacrifice made by the community to get rid of the great burden of debt was greater when the Debt was smaller, and, therefore, he was a strong advocate for increasing the Sinking Fund. He reminded the Committee that the financial enemy of the Sinking Fund was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There never was a Chancellor of the Exchequer who got into financial difficulty—and however short his tenure; of office might be it was always long enough to get into financial difficulty—but he attacked the Sinking Fund. A Chancellor of the Exchequer was a brigand by nature. When he met the Sinking Fund in the wood he robbed it; this had happened time after time. It was a simple method of getting rid of his obligations. There was one method by which a proper Sinking Fund could be maintained in such a way that no Chancellor of the Exchequer could touch it. That method was to attach one source of revenue to the National Debt, say the estate duties. If the estate duties were affected to the National
  1282
  Debt—he did not mean to affect them alone, but in addition say, to another £16,000,000—that part of the Sinking Fund would never be touched, because, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer would always feel the same temptation to rob it, he would be deterred from it by the insuperable dislike which the Chancellor of the Exchequer always felt to taking off existing taxation. If the House were to affect the estates duties to the Debt they might have confidence that that source of the Sinking Fund would not be tampered with.
  The reproach had been made that this Amendment was a wicked example of interception. Yes, but who snowed the example? It had not been the unofficial Members, but the Government themselves. He had always strongly protested against it as a most improper thing to do. It had led to the falsification of the public accounts and the depletion of the Consolidated Fund, which was every year £20,000,000 poorer than it should be on account of the violations and partial repeals of the Exchequer and Audit Act of 1866, which prescribed that all the money should go into the Consolidated Fund. The hon. Member's Amendment was not out of order, and, after the strong advice he had himself given that the fixed National Debt charge should be increased, he felt bound to vote for the Amendment.
  *MR. CAWLEYsaid the question whether we should get the £30,000,000 contribution from the Transvaal was important at the present time. Certain of his hon. friends had expressed the opinion that we should not get the money. An hon. friend wrote to a paper in which he said we had no right to claim the War contribution from the Transvaal, because we had conquered and annexed the country. It was, he said, the first time he had ever heard the South African War talked about as conquering and annexing. He always thought that we went there to relieve the so-called intolerable oppression from which our countrymen and others were suffering. We had relieved them from that oppression, we had given them cheap dynamite, cheaper railway fares, cheap and abundant labour, and he thought now was the

  1283
  time when they ought to perform their part of the bargain. Not only so, but we had in doing this reduced the cost of mining and extracting gold from the quartz lower than ever it was before, and thus greatly benefited the people of the Transvaal. For the gold mines were the Transvaal, and the Transvaal South Africa, therefore, in helping the mining industry we had helped everyone dependent upon it. For these reasons he thought the people of the Transvaal ought not and would not be guilty of the dishonourable evasion of a fair bargain and a just obligation. We had spent £230,000,000 on the war, and he thought it was the least they could do to make this small contribution to the heavily-burdened taxpayer of this country. Besides that, we had pledged our credit for the guaranteed loan of £35,000,000, which was at the time considered part and parcel of the bargain.
  He supposed that quite half the shares in Transvaal mines were held by foreigners, and he could quite understand foreign shareholders in Germany and France and other places thinking they would rather have the £30,000,000 in their pockets than employ it in giving relief to the British taxpayer. But it was said that those people who arranged to pay the money were not at all representative, that they were merely a few people met together with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. That was a mistake. Rightly or wrongly, they were the people who organised the agitation which led to the petition that ultimately led to the war. They were looked upon as leaders by the people of the Transvaal, and it was with the sanction of the people of the Transvaal that those great leaders of the mining industry made those representations to this country. Now those very same people had a perfect right to pledge the credit of the Transvaal in the way they had done. To say that there was no debt of honour was a great mistake. He could not think that our kith and kin across the seas would, for a moment, try to wriggle out of this honourable undertaking given by their leaders.
  The right hon. and learned Member for Dumfries, with whom on this question of the war he generally agreed, spoke of
  1284
  the enormous debt per head of the white population of the Transvaal. It was an enormous debt per head, but they had enormous resources. And at present kaffir and coolie labour was increasing in very much greater ratio than white labour. Therefore, the more kaffir and coolie labour increased, the richer would become the country, yet the debt per head would remain and possibly increase. There was nothing in the argument to take the debt per head, because they had to consider the enormous resources of the Transvaal. He did not believe the leaders in the Transvaal would try to get out of this debt, and therefore they ought to deprecate anything said in that House which would give them an excuse for thinking that they ought not to pay. If they thought that contribution too much, no doubt this country would be very glad to consider any reasons for reducing it. He would suggest, in order to make the burden as light as possible, that this country should guarantee a loan of £15,000,000. Of the ability of the Transvaal to pay there could be no doubt—in fact the profit accruing to the Government from the Premier Mine would be enough to pay the interest at 3 per cent. on a loan of £15,000,000. He said again that for the people of the Transvaal to attempt to wriggle out of their just obligation would be a dishonest and dishonourable course.
  SIR JOHN GORSTsaid he had listened a short time ago to the pessimistic statement made by the hon. Member for Monmouthshire as to the decline in British securities. He did not think there was any reason for despairing about British securities. It was quite true that when we were borrowing huge sums of money to carry on the South African War, naturally British securities fell in the market. After the war was over they all thought that the securities of the British Government would recover, but that expectation had been disappointed. The reason was obvious. It was because the world, instead of settling down to industry and commerce, saw the outbreak of another great war between Russia and Japan. These countries were, in order to carry on the war, borrowing funds from the Western markets. Until that war was

  1285
  over it was unreasonable to expect any cheapness of money. After all, a 2½ per cent. security at 90 was just the same thing as a 3 per cent. security at 108. He did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer could reasonably be called upon to increase the Sinking Fund more than he had done for the purpose of restoring British credit. British credit was very good at the present moment. Great Britain could borrow money as cheaply as any other country in the world. [An HON. MEMBER on the OPPOSITION Benches: The United States.] It was said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have raised the Sinkling Fund by more than £1,000,000, and that he ought to have put it in the Same condition it was under the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon. He remembered that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon would have raised the Sinking Fund to £28,000,000, but that he believed the Transvaal Government would repay very quickly the war contribution of £30,000,000. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer did not count on the repayment of that debt. He thought that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made a very reasonable provision for the repayment of the National Debt, and that there was no fear of any decline in the credit of this country.
  MR. DILLONsaid that the right hon. Gentleman opposite declared that the great fall in English securities was only the same as had occurred in regard to the securities of all other nations. That was not the case. While the credit of England had fallen, that of Italy had enormously increased, and the same was true of many other countries. There was no getting out of the fact that England had now to pay £3 2s. 6d. interest for a loan extending over ten years. He insisted that that was a tremendous fall in the credit of England. In spite of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other experts had said, English Consols had fallen to the very lowest point and showed no sign of recovery. That involved an enormous loss to this country and especially to Ireland. The sufficiency of the Sinking Fund was inextricably bound up with the question of the payment of the Transvaal in-
  1286
  demnity; and what he complained of was that in all these recent discussions the House of Commons had been treated most unfairly. They could never get at the real facts of the situation. They had been told by successive Chancellors of the Exchequer that the Sinking Fund was to be increased as soon as peace was restored. But not a penny additional had been paid off the Debt. In 1903 the Debt of the country was £798,349,000 and the assets were £5,283,000. Therefore the net debt was £793,066,000. In the present year the Debt was £796,736,000. The realisable assets of the country had declined by over £3,000,000; so that the net Debt had increased by about £1,500,000 as compared with two years ago.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESasked if the hon. Member included the Suez Canal shares in his estimate.
  MR. DILLONsaid he did not include the Suez Canal shares, because they were not to be sold. They were not in the sense liquid assets. The speeches of successive Chancellors of the Exchequer were most misleading in this respect. Last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer, being in a difficulty, annexed £1,000,000 of unclaimed dividends, of which there was no entry in the Return. That, in his opinion, vitiated the Return to that extent. The total net result was, although the figures were covered by complexity and confusion, that the country now owed £2,500,000 more than it did two years ago.
  The question of the Transvaal contribution was another illustration of the unfairness with which the House of Commons was being treated. Two years ago the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon delivered a most optimistic speech in introducing his Budget. He indicated that the Debt would vanish away like a morning's mist before the sun. The right hon. Gentleman then said that before deciding what the annual debt-charge should be, the Committee should consider the arrangement entered into by his right hon. friend the then Secretary for the Colonies, under which £4,000,000 was to be obtained from the Transvaal immediately, and, in the course of the

  1287
  succeeding three years, a sum of £30,000,000 towards the expenses of the war. The right hon. Gentleman accordingly fixed the annual debt-charge at £27,000,000. However, not a penny had been received from the Transvaal; and there was now a worse prospect of getting anything than there was three years ago.
  The whole financial structure of the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer was based on the assumption of the receipt of £30,000,000 from the Transvaal. He calculated that on March 31st, 1908, the Debt would be reduced to £694,000,000; and that the Sinking Fund would be £8,841,000, or 1·25 per cent of the Debt. Now they were half way to the stated time and instead of the Debt being reduced it had been increased by £2,500,000. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the whole of this gigantic Debt would be wiped out in fifty years. Yet the Debt was increasing at the rate of £1,000,000 a year. After the previous great war Sir Stafford Northcote fixed the annual debt-charge at £28,000,000, although the Debt was then £30,000,000 less than at present. That charge was maintained until the Debt was reduced by £100,000,000. During the recent war £159,000,000 had been added to the Debt, and the country did not make even the most ordinary effort to repay a war debt in time of peace. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol was Chancellor of the Exchequer he said he proposed to raise the war expenditure by means of bonds, not by an addition to the Debt. The latter, he added, would only be justified in the case of war with a first-class Power. That had reference to the character of the Power.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: And the cost of the war.
  MR. DILLONsaid that the condition was war with a first-class Power; and no one would contend that the Transvaal was that. The right hon. Gentleman further stated that he hoped the war debt would be paid off in two years or sooner. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman was then only contemplating an expenditure of £10,000,000. There was an obligation on the part of
  1288
  the country to discharge this war taxation. The House of Commons had not been treated fairly in the matter. Was it not better to face the matter and deal with it honestly instead of being led on like a pack of fools by Chancellor of the Exchequer after Chancellor of the Exchequer telling them that they were going to get the money shortly? They were not going to get the money, but they were going to give General Botha and the Responsible Government Association, largely composed of Englishmen, the most popular cry they could possibly have. They were going to lose this money, but not by generosity, not by doing frankly and handsomely what they would have to do in the end meanly and contemptibly, and they were going to set up an agitation in the Transvaal in which they would have every man in South Africa against them. The mineowners would not mind. They had got all they wanted—their £35,000,000, their cheap dynamite, and their Chinamen. They would take a back seat now. He protested against the House of Commons being "hung up" and deluded, It was a shame for responsible Ministers to delude the country by building up the financial system of the Budget on the assumption that they would ever get a shilling of the money.
  MR. RITCHIEsaid he was sorry to have to trouble the Committee again with a defence of his action, because he had already explained it more than once very fully. The remarks just made by the hon. Gentleman with regard to the payment of this contribution from the Transvaal were not at all likely to improve our prospects of obtaining that which was undoubtedly due. When he thought of the amount arranged as that contribution he regarded it as a tribute to the great moderation of this country. One would almost imagine that the hon. Member held a brief for repudiation. Not only the words he uttered, but the tone in which he uttered them, constituted a direct incitement to those who desired to repudiate obligations properly undertaken.
  MR. DILLONsaid he was only following the example of the Morning Post.
  MR. RITCHIEthought the hon. Member preceded the Morning Post. He remembered a speech made by the hon. Gentleman much on the same lines many weeks ago. Coming to the complaint made against him for his optimism in assuming, when framing his Budget, that this contribution would be received, what was the financial position at that time? The country had been groaning under extraordinarily heavy burdens of taxation for some years, and all classes of the community were suffering in consequence. Trade was depressed, and he was naturally anxious to moderate these burdens. When he had to decide what amount of Sinking Fund he was prepared to recommend to the House, was he, in his natural and proper survey of the money likely to come in not only in that year but in the succeeding year, to leave out of account the arrangement for the payment of £30,000,000 from the Transvaal? It must be remembered that he had before him not only the views which the Colonial Office held on the subject, but views which had been arrived at after careful consideration on the spot by the right hon. Gentleman the then Colonial Secretary, and all information which was in the possession of the Colonial Office. He had to take that into account. Not only that. It was his duty to study carefully for himself all the bases on which the right hon. Gentleman had rested the belief that this money would be received. Having done so, he came to the conclusion, independently of the right hon. Gentleman, that they had a perfect right to expect that the money would be received in due time. So far as the first payment was concerned, the subscription of the first £10,000,000 was practically guaranteed by those most able to give that guarantee in the Transvaal. He had every reason to expect from the financial statement of the resources of the Transvaal sent to him by Lord Milner that the revenue of the Transvaal would be such during the next three years as would amply provide for all the cost of administration in the Transvaal as well as for the interest of the debt which would be created for the contribution. But, of course, as every one knew, the view then taken, both by himself and others and all who had studied the matter, was too
  1290
  optimistic. He did not pretend to be a prophet at all. He judged from the material at his hand at the time; and he came to the conclusion that when he had to settle the burden to be pat on the taxpayers of this country he not only had the right, but it was his bounden duty, to consider that during the three years, including the one in which he was speaking, there was every reason to believe in the receipt of £10,000,000 a year from the Transvaal. He arranged his Budget accordingly, and everything quoted from his speech would have been fully justified had the contribution been paid. It would have been true that the amount of the Sinking Fund would have been greater than any percentage of previous times. It turned out that the rosy views of the prospects of the Transvaal, of its revenue and its progress, were not justified.
  Earlier in the afternoon it had been asked why payment of the first £10,000,000 was not insisted on. The reason was perfectly obvious. It was true that there was a guarantee from the mineowners, but what the Government had to consider was not the question of taking up the £10,000,000. About that there was no doubt at all. What they had to consider was the possibility of the Transvaal being in a position to find the interest on the debt. They had to consider whether they should exercise the power of compelling the Transvaal, whose conditions were, of course, extremely grave, to issue a loan when the finance of the country showed it was quite impossible that the interest on the loan could be paid along with the other charges necessary for carrying on the government. It would have been the height of folly to insist upon the loan being issued in these conditions merely because the floating of £10,000,000 had been guaranteed. He could conceive no greater disservice that could be done either to the Transvaal or this country than to have insisted on doing such a preposterous thing.
  *MR. McCRAEsaid the right hon. Gentleman forgot that the Transvaal was asked to raise a loan of £35,000,000.
  MR. RITCHIEsaid that was all the more reason for not putting the other burden upon the colony. The £35,000,000 loan was for purposes altogether different. It was mainly for the purposes of the development of the Transvaal itself, and for the payment in the Transvaal of money to those to whom it was owing. It was after considering that the interest on that loan would have to be debited to the revenue of the Transvaal that they found it impossible to insist upon £10,000,000 being raised at that time. He had greater hopes than the hon. Gentleman of the future of the Transvaal. He believed its future would be one of boundless prosperity. He based that opinion, not only on the produce of the mines, but on the agricultural future before the colony. He did not take the view that the new body which was created was likely to repudiate that which was undoubtedly properly and fairly due to us; only he did not think the best way of maintaining good relations with the Transvaal was to endeavour to incite the people there to repudiate the undertaking which those who were at the time responsible gave to us. His main object, however, was to show that from the information he then had in his possession, he was not only justified in so doing, but would have been deserving of condemnation if he had not taken into account that large sum of money which we had every reason to expect from the Transvaal and which, in the opinion of the Government, would in course of time come into the British Exchequer.
  MR. DILLONsaid he made no charge of want of good faith on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. What he complained of was that false information had been systematically sent from South Africa to delude this country.
  MR. RITCHIEsaid he was not attributing any charge to the hon. Member; he was simply defending his own action. No one regretted more than he did that the hopes of the Government had been disappointed; but, while he admitted he had been too optimistic, he repeated that, looking at the information
  1292
  he then had, be was justified in taking the course which he did.
  MR. EMMOTTsaid he had no desire to blame the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon for having been misled by the invincible optimism of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had misled the Member for Croydon, misled the Government, and misled the House of Commons. Where was he? How was it that whenever debates arose about this £30,000,000 loan the right hon. Gentleman was never in his place? This mania on the part of some Members on the other side for running away whenever an awkward question arose was really becoming a matter of considerable inconvenience to the House of Commons, and ought to be severely reprobated. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon had stated that the sum of £30,000,000 was undoubtedly and justly due. Could he give any instance in modern times in which one country which had been conquered by another had been made by that other country to pay part of the cost of the war? The right hon. Gentleman had also said that the amount of the claim—i.e., the £30,000,000—was a tribute to our moderation, that we might reasonably have asked for more, and he had also accused the hon. Member for East Mayo of inciting the inhabitants of the Transvaal to repudiate the loan. He ventured to say that there was something very much more important than the repudiation of the loan, viz., our future relations with the Transvaal and the great danger that the inhabitants might feel that we were pressing unduly for our pound of flesh.
  He wanted to ask the House to consider the actual facts of the case. In the first place there was no guarantee as to the £30,000,000. The guarantee was for the £10,000,000, and the guarantors were perfectly willing to carry that out. All he knew as to the £30,000,000 was that a resolution was passed by certain persons in Johannesburg approving the principle of the loan. That approval was subject to conditions; in the first place the financial position of the Transvaal was to

  1293
  allow of it; in the second place, no tax was to be placed on land; in the third place, only 10 per cent, was to be put on mining profits; and, in the fourth place, it was not to hinder the development of the Transvaal. He did not think anybody could call that a guarantee, neither could they call it a debt of honour on the part of the country. The people who passed the resolution were bound in honour to try to induce the country to pay the £30,000,000, but that was the only obligation of honour that pertained to the matter. It was true that other circumstances had arisen since. It was true that the £30,000,000 loan was made an excuse for inducing us to allow the introduction of Chinese labour. It was true that diamonds had been found in the Premier Mine. But it was rather a monstrous doctrine that we should seek to take advantage of the Premier Mine, except in so far as it relieved the financial situation there, in order to enforce the £30,000,000 or any part of it. If we did that we should be straying dangerously near to the principle of interfering with taxation—a principle that lost us our American Colonies 100 years ago.
  Would anybody venture to say that the conditions laid down for the issue of the £30,000,000 loan were likely soon to be found in the Transvaal? His hon. friends on the Opposition Benches, although they might not agree with the hon. Member for East Mayo or himself about the matter, practically all agreed that we were not going to get this money, but a great many of them said we ought to try to get it. On a previous occasion, when dealing with this matter, he made an appeal on "broad Imperial grounds," and the phrase was somewhat laughed at. Might he remind his hon. friends that the enthusiastic loyalty of our Colonies was due to the principles adopted and pushed by the Liberal Party, principles that gave them freedom to direct their action as they liked and principles that gave them absolute fiscal autonomy? He admitted that the Liberal Party stumbled upon those principles almost by chance. Some members of the Liberal Party desired to make it easy for the Colonies "to cut the painter," but they at any rate said, "We cannot keep them by force perma-
  1294
  nently; let us give them autonomy." And autonomy was given, with the result that our self-governing Colonies had become enthusiastically loyal. It was because he saw in the great eagerness of this House to enforce this £30,000,000 loan a danger of interfering with that fundamental principle of fiscal autonomy that he ventured to ask the House to pause.
  He knew that those who took the line he was taking would be taunted with inciting to repudiation. He was not inciting the people of the Transvaal to repudiation. We had a perfect right to the £350,000 which we had saved them by guaranteeing the £35,000,000 loan, and we were fully entitled to ask for the issue of the £10,000,000, because the interest would be paid by that £350,000. But if we sought to impose the further loan, he was convinced that the Het folk and the Responsible Government Association would inevitably use the refusal to find the money as one of the chief planks in the first contested election under the new Constitution. That would be a serious matter, because it would inevitably stir up bad blood between them and us. Even if he stood alone—but he was glad to know that he did not—he would beg the House seriously to consider this matter, and not in any way to seek to enforce the loan. If the people of the Transvaal chose to send us the money, well and good, but let there be no talk about a "debt of honour." There was no debt of honour, but there was an obligation of honour upon certain individuals who had no right to speak for anybody but themselves and the association they directly represented. They did not represent the Boers or a great portion of the whites. He appealed to the House to leave the matter to the people, and not to be disappointed if we did not get any of the money. Beyond the £10,000,000, he doubted whether we ought to claim the money; he did not think we ought, but he was certain we should not get it, and he wished the House would see the wisdom of giving up the claim.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he had been in the House a good many years, but he had never heard a more unprovoked, more ungenerous, and more

  1295
  unfair outburst than that with which the hon. Member for Oldham began his speech.
  MR. EMMOTT: Why is it unfair?
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he supposed the subject of the Transvaal Loan was sufficiently germane to the Finance Bill to admit of its being discussed in this clause, but there was nothing in the clause itself to suggest that such a discussion would arise, and there was nothing either in the Amendments on the Paper to suggest it. Yet the hon. Member, in the absence of the Member for West Birmingham, and without giving what was usual between private Members—notice to the Member whose conduct he proposed to challenge——
  *MR. EMMOTT: I think the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly fair in that. I ought not to have attacked the Member for West Birmingham for his absence this afternoon, and I withdraw that part of what I said entirely, but I cannot withdraw it entirely as regards previous occasions when he has not been here. I ought not to have said it in reference to this afternoon, and I am sorry.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he wished the hon. Member would withdraw the whole, but he should say no more about it. As to the debate, he could only beg the House to consider whether it did in fact advance any national interest by such a discussion. He needed scarcely to say that he did not in any way share in the criticism directed against his hon. friend the Member for Croydon for his Budget speech two years ago, or for the anticipations which he then made. Although the result of the past two years had been to slow that he had expected the prosperity of the Transvaal to come earlier than in fact it had done, he did not doubt to-day, any more than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon did, that there was a great and prosperous future before the Transvaal, and that it might be well within its power in the future to fulfil the obligation which they had anticipated might have been fulfilled in the course of the three years spoken of; but he did ask whether the national interest or the
  1296
  Imperial interest was served by a series of speeches in which our fellow-subjects in the Transvaal were alternately told that they were too mean to pay, that they ought not to be called upon to pay, that they were too poor to pay, and that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for not paying. He did not believe any of these lines was calculated to promote either good feeling or mutual respect, or to secure a settlement of this question as he hoped it would be settled, and as he was sure it ought to be settled, by the common support of both Parties acting in support of common Imperial interests and with a common regard to the honour and dignity of the British name. He appealed to the Committee to bring to a close a discussion which led to no useful result, in order that they might start clear on Monday with the first of the new clauses which raised the important question of the coal duty, and which he was as anxious as other hon. Members should begin at the most convenient time.
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid that if any hon. Members took the trouble to look through the accounts of bankers they would find an item "doubtful debts." Why was that put in? Everybody knew that doubtful debts meant bad debts. What they complained of was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer persisted in treating this very doubtful debt as a positive asset. He did so in his calculations, and they had not got a larger Sinking Fund because of this asset. He should like to know whether an actuary in the City would say that this debt was worth more than £1,000,000 sterling. Could the right hon. Gentleman induce any firm in the City to give him £1,000,000 sterling for this debt? It was all very well for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take a sanguine view of the Transvaal and say he was sure they would pay this debt. They might say that, of any kind of property. They might say it in regard to land, but if a mortgage was asked for upon land, it would only be advanced in proportion to the actual value and not according to the prospective chance value. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said they were doing a bad service to the cause of Imperialism when his hon. friend the Member for Oldham said he

  1297
  did not think the Transvaal ought to be called upon to pay this debt. They must deal with actual facts and not probabilities, and surely his hon. friend had a right to protest against the right hon. Gentleman taking this asset as being of any actual value.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham went to South Africa, and they were told that they would at least get £40,000,000, £50,000,000, or even £60,000,000 from the Transvaal. That was the prevalent idea at that time. The right hon. Gentleman's bargain was, "I will guarantee interest on £35,000,000, provided you will agree to raise a loan of £30,000,000 in consideration of what you owe for the war." The right hon. Gentleman's boast was that this was not as much as it ought to have been, but in his opinion "a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush." If the right hon. Gentleman had come home with this £30,000,000 instead of the benevolent guarantee that these millionaires would pay, or if he had come back with good bills saying that they would take the risk, then he should have said that he had made a good bargain. But he came home and said they were to have this £30,000,000 some time. They now knew that the Transvaal could not pay it, and all they had got was a promise to pay. They had derived no benefit whatever from the loan they had guaranteed. He was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was not present, because he should have liked an explanation from him as to why he made this extremely bad bargain. He did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to take it into his consideration
  at all, because if they got this money it would be simply wonderful. He would suggest that they should say to the gentlemen who guaranteed this money, "You pay the £10,000,000 down and agree to raise the interest on the balance as a specific debt to be charged upon your mines." That would be a good bargain for this country. He protested against the Chancellor of the Exchequer perpetually treating this debt as a good asset, because it was not a good asset. If he were one of the inhabitants of the Transvaal, and not connected with the mines, he should object to this debt. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, when he was in South Africa, called a meeting of some of the mineowners and they made this bargain with him. He wished to know what right they had to pledge the country. They were told that it was a matter of honour with the Transvaal to pay, but the people of the Transvaal had not pledged themselves to pay. The right hon. Gentleman said that the guaranteed loan was intended to develop the country, but who would benefit by that. Why, the mineowners. A large amount of the money had been spent upon railways, and the mineowners were the persons who mainly benefited by railways. They had largely benefited by the expenditure of the £35,000,000 loan, and therefore they ought to be ready themselves to pay the £30,000,000.
  Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes, 226; Noes, 181. (Division List No. 178.)

  AYES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

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

  Boulnois, Edmund

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

  Balfour, Rt Hn. Gerald W (Leeds

  Brotherton, Edward Allen

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.

  Brown, Sir Alex. H. (Shropsh.)

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Brymer, William Ernest

  Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. Hugh O

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Butcher, John George

  Arrol, Sir William

  Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor)

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

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Bartley, Sir George C. T.

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn Sir H.

  Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks

  Cautley, Henry Strother

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire)

  Bailey, James (Walworth)

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Cayzer, Sir Charles William

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Bigwood, James

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm.)

  Baird, John George Alexander

  Bingham, Lord

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

  Balcarres, Lord

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

  Chapman, Edward

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Heath, Sir James (Staffords. N W

  Plummer, Sir Walter R.

  Cochrane, Hon Thos. H. A. E.

  Helder, Augustus

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Coddington, Sir William

  Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Purvis, Robert

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Hope. J F (Sheffield, Brightside

  Randles, John S.

  Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

  Hoult, Joseph

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.

  Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Cripps, Charles Alfred

  Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

  Renwick, George

  Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Ridley, S. Forde

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Hunt, Rowland

  Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson.

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Hutton, John (Yorks. N. R.)

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Denny, Colonel

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Dewar, Sir T. R. (Tower H'm'ts

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

  Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T. (Denbigh)

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Dickson, Charles Scott

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

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

  Doughty, Sir George

  King, Sir Henry Seymour

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Knowles, Sir Lees

  Samuel, Sir H. S. (Limehouse)

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  Lambton, Hn. Frederick Wm.

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

  Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart

  Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Lawson, John Grant (Yorks. N. R

  Shaw-Stewart, Sir H. (Renfrew

  Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

  Lee, Arthur H (Hants., Fareham

  Sinclair, Louis Romford

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Sloan, Thomas Henry

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.

  Smith, Rt Hn J Parker (Lanarks

  Fellowes, Rt. Hn. Ailywn Edw.

  Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

  Spear, John Ward

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

  Long, Rt Hn. Walter (Bristol, S.

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

  Stanley, Rt Hn. Lord (Lancs.)

  Finlay, Sir R. B. (Inv'rn'ss B'ghs

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Stewart, Sir Mark J M'Taggart

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

  Stock, James Henry

  FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Stroyan, John

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  Forster, Henry William

  M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W

  Thornton, Percy M.

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

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Tomlinson. Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Galloway, William Johnson

  Malcolm, Ian

  Tritton, Charles Ernest

  Gardner, Ernest

  Manners, Lord Cecil

  Tuff, Charles

  Gibbs, Hon. A. G. H.

  Marks, Harry Hananel

  Tufnell, Lieut-Col. Edward

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

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

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

  Vincent, Col Sir C E H. (Sheffield

  Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

  Melville, Beresford Valentine

  Walrond, Rt Hn. Sir William H.

  Gordon, Maj Evans (T'rH'mlets

  Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

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

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Welby, Sir Charles G E. (Notts.)

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.)

  Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

  Graham, Henry Robert

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Moore, William

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury

  Morgan, David J. (Walthamst'w

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

  Morpeth, Viscount

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

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Morrell, George Herbert

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Gretton, John

  Morrison, James Archibald

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

  Greville, Hon. Ronald

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Gunter, Sir Robert

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart

  Hain, Edward

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Hamilton, Rt Hn Lord G (Midd'x

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Wylie, Alexander

  Hamilton, Marq. of (Lond'nd'ry

  Parker, Sir Gilbert

  Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

  Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'th

  Peel, Hn. Wm. R. Wellesley

  Alexander Acland-Hood and

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Percy, Earl

  Viscount Valentia.

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Bell, Richard

  Burns, John

  Allen, Charles P.

  Benn, John Williams

  Burt, Thomas

  Ambrose, Robert

  Blake, Edward

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Boland, John

  Caldwell, James

  Austin, Sir John

  Bolton, Thomas Dolling

  Cameron, Robert

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Bowles, T. Gibson (King'sLynn

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Brigg, John

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Cawley, Frederick

  1300

  1301

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W.

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark)

  Kilbride, Denis

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

  Crean, Eugene

  Kitson, Sir James

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th)

  Cremer, William Randal

  Labouchere, Henry

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Crombie, John William

  Lambert, George

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs)

  Crooks, William

  Lamont, Norman

  Robson, William Snowdon

  Delany, William

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  Roche, John

  Devlin, Charles Ramsay (Galway

  Leese, Sir Joseph F (Accrington

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Runciman, Walter

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Leng, Sir John

  Russell, T. W.

  Dillon, John

  Levy, Maurice

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Lloyd-George, David

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Doogan, P. C.

  Lundon, W.

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

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Shackleton, David James

  Duncan, J. Hastings

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Dunn, Sir William

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

  M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Emmott, Alfred

  M'Crae, George

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Eve, Harry Trelawney

  M'Fadden, Edward

  Slack, John Bamford

  Fenwick, Charles

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  Ffrench, Peter

  M'Kean, John

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Field, William

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Findlay, Alexander (Lanark, N E

  M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

  Spencer, Rt Hn. C. R. (Northants

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Mooney, John J.

  Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  Moss, Samuel

  Sullivan, Donal

  Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

  Moulton, John Fletcher

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Furness, Sir Christopher

  Murphy, John

  Thomas, A. (Carmarthen, E.)

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  Newnes, Sir George

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

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

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

  Thomas, J A (Glamorgan, Gower

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Tillett, Louis John

  Hammond, John

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Toulmin, George

  Harcourt, Lewis

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Wallace, Robert

  Harwood, George

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Hayden, John Patrick

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

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Healy, Timothy Michael

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

  Helme, Norval Watson

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  White, George (Norfolk)

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  O'Dowd, John

  Whiteley, George (York, W. R.)

  Higham, John Sharp

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

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

  O'Malley, William

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Holland, Sir William Henry

  O'Mara, James

  Wilson, Fred W (Norfolk, Mid.)

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

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

  Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk.

  Parrott, William

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

  Partington, Oswald

  Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  Pearson, Sir Weetman D.

  Young, Samuel

  Johnson, John

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Yoxall, James Henry

  Joicey, Sir James

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

  Price, Robert John

  M'Kenna and Mr. Dalziel.

  Joyce, Michael

  Rea, Russell

  Kearley, Hudson, E.

  Reddy, M.

  Question proposed, "That the clause stand part of the Bill."
  MR. DALZIELsaid that as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was now in his place, it was only right, in the interests of decency and fair play, that he should be apprised of what took place in his absence. Several hon. Members had complained that on every occasion when the Transvaal war loan contribution was discussed the right hon. Gentleman had never been present. He
  1302
  rather thought that on one occasion the right hon. Gentleman did make a speech on the subject, but at any rate complaint was made that he was not present that afternoon. That complaint was hardly justified, because the Amendment, as it stood on the Paper, gave no indication that the question would be raised. But as the right hon. Gentleman was now present, and as he was the person principally concerned in this matter, he would probably avail himself of the opportunity which he, with great modesty, offered him of making an explanation.

  1303
  The remarks he was making were not directed in any personal sense against the right hon. Gentleman, but he was the only person who was able to give the required information.
  The question was whether this guarantee received by the right hon. Gentleman during his visit to the Transvaal was something which could be regarded as a valuable asset or not. That was the whole point. Were we or were we not to receive a contribution from the Transvaal towards the expenses of the war? It was said that the gentlemen who gave the guarantee had no authority to speak for the people of the Transvaal, and he believed that that was to a large extent true. It was a personal guarantee. They had now got to a point when there ought to be no humbugging or finessing. For two years they had been told that the money market was unfavourable, but now it was very favourable, and still there was no attempt to issue this loan. He noticed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a consultation with the ex-Colonial Secretary. Had he still the same confidence that the pledge would be redeemed? His confidence was shaken. They could not blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was sitting there with a claim which he inherited. There was every indication that this claim would be repudiated by the Transvaal. It was on the threshold of representative government, and this matter would be made the subject of agitation and would be one of the governing issues in the colony unless the Imperial Government came to some definite opinion on the matter. Was this asset of any value, and did the Government attach any importance to it? Would the Government make any representation to the Transvaal that they must pay this contribution? There was a complaint that they were apt, in discussing this question, to interfere with the prospect of the contribution being paid. He admitted that might be so; but was the House to sit silent while no effort was being made by the Government. They had now arrived at a point when that policy had to cease. They had a right to ask if the Transvaal was going to pay. He did not suggest, for a moment, that any undue pressure should be brought to bear; but the Committee ought to know whether the
  1304
  Transvaal intended to repudiate responsibility in the matter. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had now an opportunity of explaining how the matter stood.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I am much obliged to the hon. Member opposite for his good intentions in affording me the opportunity of which he has spoken. So far as he wishes to have my opinion in the matter under discussion I am perfectly ready to give it to him, but he will understand that as I am no longer in the Government, I cannot speak for the Government; I can only speak of what happened while I was a member of the Government. Before, however, I come to that, let me say that if anyone in my absence has been complaining that I was not here to meet any charges that might be brought against me. I think that is extremely unreasonable. I had not the remotest idea that anything in connection with the Transvaal loan was coming on this afternoon, and by the merest chance I happened to enter the House, and that only after the division had been called.
  Speaking for myself and not for the Government, I do not think there is anything I have ever said on the subject of this loan which I wish now to withdraw or change in the slightest degree. It is quite likely that, speaking to this House, I expressed anticipations as to the way this loan would be raised and this contribution would be made which time has shown to be too sanguine, but beyond that I cannot call to mind anything on which I need express a change of opinion now. What were the circumstances? I think the majority of the people of this country—and none were more strenuous than hon. Gentlemen opposite—were of opinion that the British subjects of the Transvaal were under an honourable obligation to contribute towards the expense of the war in which they were so much interested, and in which they had entirely concurred. I share that opinion. The only question was, What would be a fair sum for them to pay, and under what conditions? I went to the Transvaal with the idea of ear-marking certain sources of revenue and continuing

  1305
  to set them to the credit of the Exchequer until a large fixed sum had been reached. But on the representations that were made when I went to South Africa I agreed that that was not a wise policy to adopt, that it was a kind of policy which most probably would result in friction and dissatisfaction, that it would be regarded as a tribute, and not only as a tribute, but it would have caused a constant and perpetual interference on the part of the Exchequer of this country in connection with the finances of the new colony, a state of things which would be intolerable in a self-governing colony; and, as my view was that we should treat the new colonies as far as possible as self-governing colonies, it was also, as I considered, intolerable in the preliminary stages. Therefore I had recourse to an attempt to agree upon a fixed sum which should be raised immediately, or as early as the market would allow, and which should be raised by way of loan, the transaction being thus concluded at the earliest possible moment and in the simplest possible way.
  Now, by whom was that view of the arrangement which was ultimately come to assented to? Of course the Boers did not assent to it. However fair it might be that they should pay some sort of indemnity for the war they commenced, you could not expect them to assent to the arrangements made willingly and voluntarily; but I must say that, at the time of which I am speaking, there did not seem to be any strong feeling—not a particle—and the reason was that they were more anxious for other things, and knew perfectly well that a very small proportion of this tax could under any circumstances fall upon them. They saw, as did everybody else, that it was really a question how much the gold industry, speaking widely and including every class engaged in it, from the millionaire to the smallest labourer, should pay. Of that interest the representatives that were got together were, I think, most satisfactory. There was not a branch of the industry, no important section of the industry, which was left out, and we specially took care to call upon the representatives of the working classes, who appeared at the final meeting. This meeting sent to me a resolution
  1306
  which was passed by the whole of those present with the exception of four, agreeing and pledging themselves to give their support in every way in their power. The four who did not sign that statement or requisition were the four working men. After this was known—I think within twenty-four hours, or, at all events, forty-eight hours—these four gentlemen came to me to say that they had been mistaken, that they had objected to some small question, but that they were entirely in favour of the contribution, and that they, the working men, were quite as ready to pay their share of the expense as anyone else. I may say that the broad and patriotic view taken by them was confirmed by some of the smaller trade unions of the country. That is the position, and I have no reason whatever to believe that any of these persons have changed their opinions, I am sure every one of them feels that he is bound in honour to do everything in his power to carry out that agreement.
  I confess I do not think it very encouraging to them, indeed I think it is, if not insulting, most offensive to assume, as hon. Members opposite have done, that they do not mean to observe their obligation. I think it is bad policy in the case of a debt of this kind to tell your debtor he is a fool if he pays. I do not believe that that sort of argument will have any effect upon the men with whom I dealt. If you express the belief that they will be false to their word it may be they will feel offended and not pay, and I certainly do not think that you are assisting, I will not say the Government, but the people of this country, in obtaining the relief to which I think they are honestly entitled. If you do not get the £30,000,000 I think you are largely responsible for their default, but that I do not anticipate. At that time everybody expected—that side of the House as well as this—there would be an immense development and increase in the prosperity of South Africa, and that that increase would take place immediately and continuously. [OPPOSITION cries of "No."] Of course, if you hold me literally I will not say every one did, but the majority did, and let me say also that those people whose business it is to govern their actions by their knowledge

  1307
  or financial probabilities had complete confidence in the future of the country. There was a beginning of the development, but it came to an end very soon. Instead of finding the gold industry recovering as quickly as we had anticipated it would, and that the development of other industries such as the copper and coal mines was making greater progress, we know for a time there was a very great depression. In consequence of that the conditions under which this contribution was promised did not arise, they were postponed. It was a condition that we should not place on the Transvaal additional taxation for the purpose of paying interest on this contribution. It was another condition that we should not introduce the loan or force the introduction of the loan at a time when the money market was unfavourable, and we undertook to consult financiers conversant with the matter before we put the loan upon the market. It is quite true that I thought the loan would be introduced, and that in less than three years the whole of the contribution would be paid. In that I have been disappointed, and I think everybody with me. The trade, prosperity, energy, and enterprise have not come as quickly as I expected. Now I believe most people think that things are improved. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite shakes his head.
  SIR ROBERT REID: No, I only hope it may be so.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I beg his pardon; I thought by that gesture the hon. and learned Gentleman was expressing dissent. All I can say is that all concerned in the Transvaal take a very hopeful view of the situation. It may have been impossible in the present year to furnish sufficient income to pay the interest on the first instalment of £10,000,000 in addition to what is required for the needs of the Transvaal itself, but there is no reason whatever to doubt that the money will be forthcoming next year, and, if so, next year is the time when we ought to ask those who gave the assurance to do all in their power to get the obligation acknowledged. If His Majesty's Government had not decided to give to the Trans-
  1308
  vaal a more liberal Constitution than it possessed before they could have gone to the Legislative Council—and there was not the least doubt as to what their decision would have been—or the Government could have done another thing, they could have gone back to the original idea of earmarking the sums to which they thought they were entitled as a charge on the revenue. But they thought they were justified in trusting to those with whom we had hitherto treated and who had given us the only undertaking that could have been given at that time, when there were no representative institutions in the Transvaal and when those gentlemen only represented themselves. The Government have explained their reasons for leaving it to the new representative authority to decide whether or not they will confirm the action of those with whom I had necessarily to negotiate.
  The hon. Gentleman opposite asked me what my opinion is, whether I think we have a valuable asset? Yes I do. I am quite certain of this, that in the new Assembly there will be some of these men. I should not wonder if it did not include a large proportion of those who are direct representatives of the Boer population, still I hope there will be a majority who will accept this obligation as an obligation of honour and will give it legal application. I can only give my own opinion, I can give no proof. It is open to hon. Gentlemen on the other side to think I am too sanguine, but I am sanguine because I believe absolutely in the honour of those with whom I have dealt. I may be disappointed, but that is a hypothesis that I refuse to consider. It is because I believe in the thoroughly honourable spirit of these men that I say it is a valuable asset, and that I see no reason whatever why in a comparatively short time we should not get the whole sum.
  SIR ROBERT REIDsaid he remembered very distinctly the speech in which the right hon. Gentleman first dealt with the subject of the Transvaal contribution towards the expenses of the war, and he never heard a rosier picture of the prospects of any country than the right hon. Gentleman

  1309
  then gave of the future of South Africa. The right hon. Gentleman then said nothing about the payment of the money being conditional, except that it was conditional upon the £35,000,000 loan being issued and the absolution of the mining industry from taxation in excess of 10 per cent. Both of those conditions were fulfilled, but nothing had been paid. More than that, the right hon. Gentleman stated that the first instalment was to be paid on January 1st of last year and the second instalment on January 1st of this year. Bearing these facts in mind, it was somewhat astonishing to hear the right hon. Gentleman now declare that he had nothing to withdraw from the statement which he originally made to the House. He had no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman in his visit to South Africa was actuated by the most patriotic motives. He was quite ready to credit the right hon. Gentleman with patriotic motives; he only wished the right hon. Gentleman would be as ready to give similar credit to those who opposed him. But the right hon. Gentleman went out in a spirit of impulse and in a spirit of credulity, ready to listen to all who sympathised or pretended they sympathised with his Imperialistic ideas. The right hon. Gentleman also believed implicitly the statements which had been sent home by Lord Milner. The most brilliant anticipations were indulged in by the right hon. Gentleman and by Lord Milner and they had all turned out to be appallingly wrong from beginning to end. All he could say in reference to that was that he thought the right hon. Gentleman did owe to the House something in the nature of a withdrawal or expression of regret that he had misled the House—not consciously, of course, because he believed the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly sincere; but by the erroneous judgment he formed on the materials laid before him.
  The right hon. Gentleman said it would be insulting to expect that the Boers should willingly pay any part of this contribution. He was astonished when he heard that. He did not wish to say, anything in the least suggestive of repudiation or anything affecting the honour of the persons who made the bargain, but he did say that, if they were
  1310
  to believe that to ask one-half of the population of that country willingly to contribute would be an insult, what conclusions were the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the House to draw as to the propriety of asking anything at all? Nothing could be more dangerous, as our experience in the United States showed, than for us to endeavour to exact from any people who were under our rule, and especially people of our own stock, money which they did not think they ought to pay. For himself, he was perfectly content with the position the Government had taken up. The people of the Transvaal should not be pressed either way; the matter should be left to their sense of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness; but he could not help feeling, when they were dealing with this whole transaction, that it was not quite right of the right hon. Gentleman, after this tremendous blunder in regard to finance had been made, to come to the House and say he had nothing whatever to withdraw from the statement he had made.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINappealed to the Committee to come to a decision on the clause in accordance with the arrangement that had been made.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he was sorry that he was not present when the arrangement alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman took place, but he understood from his hon. friends that there was nothing in the nature of a pledge given by hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House. If such a pledge had been given he certainly should not have broken it, but he was informed that it was not the case that any such pledge had been given. It was most important that they should have a full discussion upon this matter, especially after the very important speech of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The right hon. Gentleman held a peculiarly important position in regard to this transaction, which was negotiated and carried through by him. When the right hon. Gentleman said he had nothing to withdraw from the statement he made two or three years ago he could not possibly have looked up the speech he

  1311
  delivered on that occasion, otherwise he would never have made such an assertion. In the course of his speech on May 6th, 1903, the right hon. Gentleman said, speaking of this transaction—
  "In the first place it is a final arrangement. After three years we shall hear no more of the subject. The bill will have been paid; the claim will have been met."
  and he added—
  "This undertaking to pay the contribution was part of the bargain on the strength of which the Transvaal was to get a loan of £35,000,000."
  They had had their £35,000,000, but what had become of their part of the bargain?
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That is what we have got to see.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he supposed it was another case of next year. It was always "this year, next year, some time, never," with regard to South Africa. The right hon. Gentleman said he had the pledge of four working men, but how could he expect four working men in the Transvaal to keep their pledges if Prime Ministers at home broke theirs—and at the right hon. Gentleman's instigation? The right hon. Gentleman said they had got to trust these men. They had trusted too much and had got too little. They had spent all this money, and had got nothing but promises. He remembered that the prospectus was exceedingly glowing, but the only people who had had the dividends were the mine-owners. The right hon. Gentleman told them that these mine owners had actually promised to give them £10,000,000;
  in fact, they had signed such an undertaking, and said that he had got the signature of all these British patriots. Those were the people for whom this country spent £250,000,000. They signed this contract, and the right hon. Gentleman said, "They are men of honour; you must trust them, and they will pay." Was the right hon. Gentleman as sure now as he was three years ago that they would pay? These mineowners said, "Give us £35,000,000 down and we will pay you £10,000,000 some time or other." They had got the £35,000,000, but where was our £10,000,000? It was the confidence trick which had been played over and over again in South Africa. Last week two dividends, one of 137 per cent. and another of 112 percent., were declared by this industry which could not carry out a contract, and he thought the House were entitled to know when these people were going to pay this £10,000,000. It was time that they got to know once for all whether the Government really meant to press for this contribution. Every promise that had been made by the Government, every prospect that had been laid before them with regard to South Africa by the right hon. Gentleman and those who advised the House, had turned out in the past to be false, and this was only one out of the myriad of similar statements that had been made.
  Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes, 201; Noes, 162. (Division List No. 179.)

  AYES.

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor)

  Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton

  Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

  Hartley, Sir George C. T.

  Chapman, Edward

  Anson Sir William Reynell

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. Hugh O

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

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

  Arrol, Sir William

  Bigwood, James

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim S-

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Cripps, Charles Alfred

  Bailey, James (Walworth)

  Brotherton, Edward Allen

  Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Brymer, William Ernest

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Baird, John George Alexander

  Butcher, John George

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Balcarres, Lord

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

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Carson, Rt Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Denny, Colonel

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

  Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire

  Dickinson, Robert Edmond

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Cayzer, Sir Charles William

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W (Leeds

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred. Dixon

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. (Birm.

  Doughty, Sir George

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J A (Worc.

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Knowles, Sir Lees

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart

  Lambton, Hn. Frederick Wm.

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

  Round, Rt. Hn. James

  Fellowes, Rt. Hn. Ailwyn Edw.

  Lawson, John Grant (Yorks, N R

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Fergusson, Rt Hn Sir J (Manc'r

  Lee, Arthur H (Hants., Fareham

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Finlay, Sir R B (Inv'rn'ss B'ghs)

  Leveson-Gower, Freder'k N. S.

  Samuel, Sir Harry S. (Limehouse

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Llewellyn, Evan Henry

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

  FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Lockwood, Lieut-Col. A. R.

  Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

  Fitzroy, Hn. Edward Algernon

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

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Shaw-Stewart, Sir H (Renfrew)

  Forster, Henry William

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Foster, Philip S (Warwick, S. W.

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Smith, Rt. Hn J Parker (Lanarks

  Galloway, William Johnson

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Spear, John Ward

  Gardner Ernest

  M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W.)

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset

  Gibbs, Hon. A. G. H.

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Stanley, Rt. Hn. Lord (Lancs.)

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Marks, Harry Hananel

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

  Gordon, Hn. J E (Elgin & Nairn

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

  Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

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

  Stock, James Henry

  Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby

  Melville, Beresford Valentine

  Stroyan, John

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

  Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  Grenfell, William Henry

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Gretton, John

  Montagu, Hn. J. Scott (Hants.)

  Tollemache, Henry James

  Gunter, Sir Robert

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Hain, Edward

  Moore, William

  Tritton, Charles Ernest

  Hamilton, Rt Hn Lord G (Midd'x

  Morgan, David J (Walthamstow

  Tuff Charles

  Hamilton, Marq of(L'nd'nderry

  Morrell, George Herbert

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'th)

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Vincent, Col. Sir C. E H (Sheffield

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Mount, William Arthur

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

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

  Heath, Sir James (Staffords, N W.

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Welby, Sir Charles G. E. (Notts.

  Helder, Augustus

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Wharton, Rt. Hn. John Lloyd

  Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

  Parker, Sir Gilbert

  Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Whitmore, Charles Algernon

  Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

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

  Hoult, Joseph

  Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Percy, Earl

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

  Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham)

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Hozier, Hn. James Henry Cecil

  Plummer, Sir Walter R.

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

  Hudson, George Bickersteth

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Hunt, Rowland

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Wylie, Alexander

  Hutton, John (Yorks. N. R.)

  Purvis, Robert

  Yerburgh, Robert Armstron

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Randles, John S.

  Jessel, Capt. Herbert Merton

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Alexander Acland-Hood and

  Kenyon, Hn. Geo. T. (Denbigh)

  Renwick, George

  Viscount Valentia.

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

  Ridley, S. Forde

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson

  NOES

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Ellis, John Edward (Notts)

  Allen, Charles P.

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Emmott, Alfred

  Ambrose, Robert

  Cawley, Frederick

  Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Eve, Harry Trelawney

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark

  Fenwick, Charles

  Barlow, John Emmott

  Crean, Eugene

  Ferguson, R C. Munro (Leith)

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Cremer, William Randal

  Ffrench, Peter

  Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

  Crooks, William

  Field, William

  Bell, Richard

  Delany, William

  Findlay, Alexander (Lanark, N E

  Blake, Edward

  Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway)

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Boland, John

  Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Bolton, Thomas Dolling

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  Brigg, John

  Dillon, John

  Furness, Sir Christopher

  Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

  Dobbie, Joseph

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John

  Burt, Thomas

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  Buxton, Sydney Charles

  Doogan, P. C.

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

  Caldwell, James

  Duncan, J. Hastings

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  Cameron, Robert

  Ellice, Capt E C (S. Andrw'sBghs

  Hammond, John

  1314

  1315

  Harcourt, Lewis

  M'Kean, John

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Hardie, J Keir (Merthyr Tydvil

  M'Kenna, Reginald

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

  Harwood, George

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Shackleton, David James

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Healy, Timothy Michael

  Moss, Samuel

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Helme, Norval Watson

  Moulton, John Fletcher

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  Murphy, John

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Slack, John Bamford

  Higham, John Sharp

  Newnes, Sir George

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  Holland, Sir William Henry

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

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth South)

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Hutchinson, Dr. Chas. Fredk.

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

  Spencer, Rt. Hn. C R. (Northants

  Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Sullivan, Donal

  Johnson, John

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

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

  Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Thomas, Sir A (Glamorgan, E.

  Joyce, Michael

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr

  Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W

  O'Dowd, John

  Thomas, J A (Glamorgan, Gower

  Kilbride, Denis

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

  Tillett, Louis John

  Kitson, Sir James

  O'Malley, William

  Toulmin, George

  Lambert, George

  O'Mara, James

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Lamont, Norman

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Wallace, Robert

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal W.)

  Parrott, William

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  Partington, Oswald

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington

  Pearson, Sir Weetman D.

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan).

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney).

  Leng, Sir John

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  White, George (Norfolk)

  Levy, Maurice

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Whitley. J. H. (Halifax)

  Lloyd-George, David

  Reddy, M.

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Lundon, W.

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

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

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

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

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th)

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Young, Samuel

  M'Crae, George

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs)

  M'Fadden, Edward

  Roche, John

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Dalziel and Mr. Benn.

  And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again this evening.

EVENING SITTING.

  ARTERIAL DRAINAGE (IRELAND).
  MR. JAMES O'CONNORsaid the Motion on the Paper which he should move before he sat down charged the Government with indifference to the destruction of property in Ireland through the overflowing of certain rivers. It was no recent complaint that the Government had neglected to look after the arterial drainage of that country which they undertook to govern. During the early part of the last century both landlords and tenants repeatedly appealed to the Government to protect their lands from
  1316
  the damage caused by recurring inundations. For thirty years after the Union the Government did nothing, and the owners and occupiers of flooded lands in the North and East, as well as the South and West of Ireland appealed in vain to the Government to render them some assistance so that their land might not be injured and their property in some cases completely destroyed. At length the Government woke up to the necessity of doing something, and they did it in their characteristically generous fashion. In 1831 they passed an Act of Parliament which enabled the owners and occupiers of property liable to be flooded to form joint stock companies for the purposes of arterial drainage. The Act did not provide any money for the purpose, no money was provided for even the initial expense, it merely condescended to tell the proprietors that they might carry out arterial drainage with the aid of private funds without suggesting where those funds, were to come from. Did the Government suppose that the landed proprietors

  1317
  of any part of Ireland could float large joint stock companies on the swollen waters of the Shannon, the Bann, the Barrow, and the Suck? What could anyone expect would be the result of such an Act of Parliament as that. It could not possibly have been expected that the impoverished tenants of so poor a country should contribute such large sums of money as would be required for this purpose, and the landlords certainly were not likely to put their hands into their own pockets, though it was very doubtful whether they had anything in their pockets at that time. At any rate, the Act of 1831 appeared to be an absolute mockery. Many years passed and the tenants and the owners suffered from the damage to property and injury to health caused by the flooding of their dwellings, many inches of mud being frequently left on the floors of the cottages when the waters subsided, leaving the people in despair.
  Eleven years passed by, when the Government passed another Act which was even more generous than the former. The Act of 1842 enabled landlords to appeal to the Government to carry out drainage works, and the Government promised to undertake them under the superintendence of the Board of Works' engineers. This was the first time any mention was made of that Board though it was constituted in 1831, when the first Act was passed, but now the Board of Works came in and unfortunately they would find that all through the history of these attempts to drain the great rivers of Ireland the Board of Works had interfered, with almost disastrous effects, in nearly every case. Under the Act of 1842 the Government told the landlords and occupiers that the main source of the funds required for carrying out arterial drainage works should again be looked for from private means. That was another sham Act, but the Government certainly did add that they would contribute something to the improved value of the lands, which meant that after owners and occupiers had found thousands and thousands of pounds and carried out drainage works, and had improved and increased the value of the lands adjoining the rivers, the
  1318
  Government would come down and lend money on the improved value of those lands. In 1842 the terrible famine broke out in Ireland, and all the civilised world was horrified at the number of deaths which occurred from day to day from starvation, and the Government were shamed into doing something. They chose arterial drainage as a reproductive work and a number of schemes were started to give employment, and relief drainage works sprang up where required and people grew hopeful that they were going to have their land secured from almost annual floods. But in two years the Government discovered the famine was over and, immediately, they directed that all the works started by them to give employment to the people should be stopped. It was one of the most heartless things that any Government ever did; there was universal consternation in Ireland and there was a collapse of drainage work everywhere. Everything was thrown into the melting-pot and the people in their misery gave way to despair.
  The Government left things as they were and no money was given for the purposes of carrying on drainage works until 1863. In 1863 an Act of Parliament came into existence under which the local authorities were authorised to start drainage boards. Provisional Orders were obtained under that Act and thousands upon thousands were spent. But whatever might have been done, the Bann had not been drained although the efforts made had drained the pockets of the people North and South. Although for fifty years the people had been paying drainage rates their lands were still flooded, their property was still swept away, and their crops were left rotting on the sodden fields. The same tale had to be told in respect to the Barrow, in reference to which inquiries had been held since 1847, but nothing had been done. A Commission of inquiry recommended that the Barrow, being a most important river, should be made a matter of national concern, and the same Report was made in regard to the Shannon. Commissioners had made similar recommendations in regard to the Suck, but

  1319
  that river was yet undrained, and whenever there was a rainfall crops were swept away. The Act of 1862 had in fact proved of no avail owing to the ineptitude of the Anglo-Irish Board of Works in Dublin, and to the inadequate assistance given by this country to drainage works in Ireland. The Shannon also was suffering from incompleteness of treatment, and there was no doubt, as a Commission had declared in 1887, that defective plans and miscalculations on the part of the Board of Works' engineers had contributed to the failure of many schemes. That was the whole thing in a nutshell. The neglect of the Government had been criminal having regard to the fact that the country was mainly dependent upon agriculture. Engineers of the Board of Works overruled and condemned each other's plans, and meanwhile the unfortunate people suffered the loss of their property.
  One very important recommendation of the Commission of 1887 was that the rivers should be made national concerns and ought to be drained and made secure with public money. They also recommended that all arterial drainage should in future be taken out of the hands of the Board of Works and that a new department should be started to deal with the question of Irish arterial drainage as a whole. If that course were followed, probably a solution of the whole problem would be found, great as it was. It had been, said that £2,400,000 had been spent by this country in Ireland upon arterial drainage, but he failed to trace how the money had been spent. It was not spent on the Bann or the Barrow. Only £50,000 was given to the Suck, and there was not very much given to the Shannon in recent times. Where, then, did the £2,400,000 go? Much of the money had gone in the starting of drainage works which were afterwards abandoned. If £2,400,000 was spent during the famine, it could not be said that none of it was repaid, because special taxes were put on Ireland for the purpose of recovering the money advanced to the country during the famine year. He could not possibly see where the £2,400,000 went, but supposing it was spent on arterial drainage
  1320
  in a hundred years, how did that compare with what other countries had done? Belgium, which was little more than a quarter the size of Ireland, had spent £16,000,000 in the last twenty or twenty-five years. Belgium had been attending to her own affairs, collecting her own taxes, and spending them in the country for the benefit of the people and the improvement of the land. Belgium had her own army and navy and the busy port of Antwerp, because her money was not taken from Brussels to London and kept there. Her cash accounts were not kept by another Government where any amount of manipulation might be carried out. The Government of Holland, another small country, had spent £15,000,000 on drainage. Germany had spent £15,000,000, but being a large and rich country that, of course, was not much when compared with the sum spent by Belgium and Holland. France had spent £30,000,000 on arterial drainage. He doubted whether the drainage of any one of these countries was of quite as much importance as would be the drainage of the rivers in Ireland, which were in the habit of overflowing their banks and destroying a considerable amount of property. He hoped that hon. Members from Ulster would express their opinions with courage in regard to the condition of the Bann.
  What was the Government going to do? Were they going to allow this state of things to continue in Ireland? They knew very well that there was no possibility of the Irish people, tenants and owners, subscribing the money required for such a great work as arterial drainage. The tenants found that they had as much as they could do in making their rents. How would the landlords sell their land? Would they expect twenty-five years purchase for land which was covered with water every other year? If they did, he doubted very much whether they were likely to get it. He would ask the Chief Secretary to give some assurance to the people of Ireland that the Government meant to take this question seriously in hand and deal with it in a generous and effective manner. There was no use tinkering with the question any longer. It had been too long trifled with, and

  1321
  the time had come when the Government should decide on some course. It was the duty of the Government to protect the property of the people of the country which they undertook to govern agains the will of the people themselves. He did not believe it would take quite so much money as the late Chief Secretary said last year. The right hon. Gentleman said it would take £20,000,000 to carry out effectively the arterial drainage of Ireland. That was a great exaggeration. No doubt it would take a great deal of money, and if the Government said that they had no money he would ask them to take £1,000,000 a year out of the over-taxation account until this drainage work was finished. It was the business of the Government to find the money which was necessary to save the lives and property of the people of that country. It was possible they might be told that another inquiry would be necessary. There had been a good many of these inquiries in Ireland, and what had come out of the whole of them? Nothing whatever. The representatives of Ireland wanted the Government to take in hand some practical solution of the question, and if they did not do so he thought they should surrender the government of the country to the people themselves.
  *MR. JOHN O'CONNORseconded the Motion. He said that while differences of opinion existed on many matters connected with the government of Ireland, his hon. friend had to-night introduced a subject on which there was perfect agreement between all Parties in the House. In his investigation of the subject he found last year the lion of the Bann lying down with the lamb from the beautiful Barrow, and a little child of the lordly Shannon leading them on their peaceful watery way of a terial drainage. That, he considered, was a manifestation of unity which might be regarded as free from hostile and repellent elements. He found that last year hon. Members from the North of Ireland were prepared to disrupt and destroy their own Government in the interest of the Bann. While the representatives from the North and South of Ireland were agreed on this subject, he found
  1322
  also that the Government itself was in favour of the arterial drainage of Ireland. It was a Conservative Government which appointed the Commission in 1887 to report on the question of arterial drainage in Ireland. In 1888 the then Chief Secretary for Ireland, the present Prime Minister, introduced three Bills dealing with this important subject, not one of which was passed. It was the late Chief Secretary who appointed an eminent hydraulic engineer last year to inquire into the drainage of the Bann and to report, and he reported. It was the present Chief Secretary who had appointed an eminent hydraulic engineer this year to report on the drainage of the Bann, and he would report.
  Why was there such perfect agreement on this subject? It was because arterial drainage in Ireland, as elsewhere, was regarded as of national importance. Among the many reasons why it should be so regarded, there was one which stood out pre-eminently beyond the others, namely,
  the existence of clouds in Ireland. It was said by the late Lord Beaconsfield, when Mr. Disraeli, that all the evils of Ireland might be traced to the fact of its close proximity to the melancholy ocean. That statement was exploded by the Royal Commission, because they said that much of the evil of Ireland was due to the existence of clouds. Clouds might be beautiful from an æsthetic point of view, but they did not respect political principles. A Nationalist cloud springing up out of the Barrow might, with favouring winds from the South-West, sail north, and in summer flood time—in that period which embraced the 12th of July—might in its darkness and obliquity burst and damp the ardour of those celebrating the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of William III. Of course, an Orange cloud might return the compliment and deluge the banners of the Papists in their treasonable practices. Hence it was a national subject, and therefore he found that last year Orange and Green were blended in the lobby in hostility to the Government, who, with words of sympathy on their lips, had no promise of performance and no hope of remedy of an admitted evil. "Adversity makes strange bedfellows."

  1323
  In all civilised countries where the area of cultivable land was limited, the greatest attention had been paid to the subject of arterial drainage. He found from a report written by one of the commercial secretaries of the legation in Holland, and dated as far back as the sixties, that no less than £300,000,000 had been spent on the drainage of Holland. He had been at a loss to know what there was in the sand-hills, rabbit warrens, and swamps of Holland that entitled it to have spent upon it a sum equal to half the normal National Debt of Great Britain whilst a beggarly £1,500,000 was considered good enough to spend upon the most fertile soil of one of the fairest lands in the whole world. He could not understand it except for one reason, namely, that Holland was governed by the Dutch for Dutchmen, and Ireland was governed by the English for Englishmen. About three years ago the Associated Chambers of Commerce of this country applied to the Foreign Office to ask the Consular representatives abroad to inquire and report on the waterways of Europe. He would give a few quotations from their reports. The first and most interesting was that in regard to Austria-Hungary. After stating that in Austria alone £21,000,000 had been expended on river regulation, the report said—
  "The method 'had a twofold object, in view.' Firstly, the regulation works are carried out in the interests of navigation by deepening channels, and, secondly, in the interest of agriculture by preventing, as far as possible, the overflowing of river banks in time of high water or floods."
  "In Hungary, as in Austria, except at the Iron Gates, no navigation tolls are levied, and the capital expended in developing and improving the waterway is sunk for the common weal, and no direct interest on the invested capital is looked for."
  The same report said that in Hungary no less a sum than £22,000,000 was spent on the regulation of rivers and the construction of canals. The Hungarian Government paid in respect of one waterway alone, Iron Gates—sinking fund, £62,500; maintenance, £8,330; repairs, £11,040; in all £81,870. They received £72,000 in tolls. International treaties permitted and empowered Hungary to levy shipping taxes to the amount
  1324
  of the actual cost, but they did not do it.
  In Belgium the capital expended during the period between 1875–1900 on waterways—which included the upkeep of embankments and the regulating and adapting of river beds—with a view to uniformity was £16,000,000. The State administered the greater portion of the waterways. The report said—
  "It is impossible to estimate even approximately the extent to which the improvement of the waterways has contributed in the great development of traffic."
  In France, between 1871 and 1878, £9,640,000 was spent on waterways, and between 1879–1900 £18,000,000, making in all £27,640,000. The natural waterways had been radically transformed on the Rhone since 1860 by an expenditure o £3,240,000, or £15,360 per mile. On the Seine from Paris to Rouen there had been expended since 1878 £2,680,000, or £17,631 per mile. Just think of it. He asked Ulster Members to think how, if their ancestors had succeeded in separating Ireland from England, they would have fared if they had come within the sphere of influence of the French Republic, The banks of the Bann would have been to-day a blooming flower-garden, instead of a dismal swamp sending its mendicant Members to this House to beg a crumb of comfort from their master's table.
  "Practically the whole of the waterways system is the property of the State, which maintains it out of its public funds free of all tolls."
  In Germany it was thought that the great floods that took place in the eighties were due to the navigation works which had been carried out at great expense, and a Commission was appointed in 1892 to inquire into the statement which was made, rightly or wrongly, by the farmers whose lands had been affected. The Commission found that the statement of the farmers had no justification, but they recommended that certain work should be carried out to improve the flow in flood time. Unlike the Commissions that sat on the subject in Ireland, their recommendations were instantly carried out and over £1,000,000 was expended on five rivers for the purpose of saving the lands from being

  1325
  flooded. A regular system of giving information of floods was established and organised for all the rivers, and this had proved most effective. The report contained the following—
  "Notice of high or low water or the approach of ice is at once communicated by telegraph, telephone, postcard, or messenger to interested persons or districts. In some districts this is done through the Press."
  "In the Elbe and Vistula districts a special telegraph and telephone system was established in 1890 and 1894 at a cost of over £10,000. On the Rhine, Elbe, and Oder it is now possible to give due notice of floods, etc., based on a close Study of the upper reaches of the river."
  "Whenever danger is apprehended either through high water or ice a special service of men is employed for the particular stretch of river."
  He had read these quotations merely or the purpose of backing up the representation of his hon. friend who opened the discussion that this was a national question everywhere.
  Proceeding to deal with the case of Ireland, the hon. Member said he would take first the case of the Barrow, not because it happened to run through his own constituency and because many of his constituents were constantly suffering from this much neglected river, but he did so because it had been singled out by the Commission as an example of the neglect of arterial drainage in Ireland by England. It drained 408,000 acres, 45,000 of which were subject to floods three times a year. The Report of the 1887 Commission said that the Barrow district suffered more from floods than any other part of Ireland, and that altogether the condition of the district might be described as deplorable. In the year 1871 this deplorable condition of things was pointed out to the then Marquis of Hartington, the present Duke of Devonshire, who was acting as Chief Secretary for Ireland, by one whose words ought to have received attention—the Marquis of Drogheda—as representing himself and the other proprietors of land in the district. He described the condition of things which prevailed, and read the terms of the following resolution passed at a meeting attended by the whole of the owners of land by the Barrow—
  "That large tracts of land on the course of the River Barrow are frequently covered with flooded waters which, besides destroying or
  1326
  impairing vast quantities of crops, remain in a state of stagnation often for many weeks together, flooding numerous dwellings of the labouring classes. Often rendering the use of the public highways of the country impossible or dangerous, and rising into the streets, gardens, and houses of many of the towns in the district to the serious injury of the health of the population."
  What had been done since then? Had anything been done for the Barrow? Nothing! Yes, the Prime Minister introduced three Bills in the year 1888, and n doing so, said—
  "The Barrow remains the chief example of the evils incident to the want of arterial drainage in Ireland."
  That was the language used seventeen years after the resolution of the owners. It would be the same that evening, seventeen years after those Bills were introduced and withdrawn, and it would be the same seventeen years to come, when some future Irish Member drew attention to the scandalous neglect. What were those evils? It had been stated by the Commission of 1887 that the temperature in the middle part of Ireland, owing to these constant floods, was lower than in the North or South; that it was cold and unsuited to agriculture, that the sky was cloudy and prevented the ripening of grain; that the health of the people was prejudiced by damp; and that the towns suffered doubly, first from the want of drainage and then by the lack of locomotion when they were flooded. The health of the people was ruined; epidemics of fever followed the floods, and trade came to a standstill because the people could not get into the towns, which also suffered indirectly by the want of that progressive condition which followed from surrounding farms being in that prosperous state they would be in if free from periodical inundations. To remedy this state of things the Prime Minister, when Chief Secretary for Ireland, proposed certain works rather in excess of those recommended by the Commission of 1887. The Commission recommended an expenditure of £354,000, but the right hon. Gentleman said he was prepared to encourage an expenditure of £360,000, £125,000 of which was to be charged on the improvement area, £20,000 on the catchment area, and £215,000 to be a free grant. They were

  1327
  in fact, to have no more clouds in Ireland—no more rain but the golden rain of English beneficence! What had become of that scheme? It was dead and had gone to that place which was said to be paved with good intentions. What was the use of arguing to the farmers on the banks of the Barrow, "You ought to be industrious and drain your land." What was the use of the farmer draining his land unless there was some arterial scheme into which he could drain it? That was the work they claimed ought to be done by the Government; it was work which had been done in every other country in the world except Ireland—Ireland which was governed by England.
  He would give them another example of neglect. It was that of the Shannon. An old friend of his, now dead—once a respected Member of that House—said he knew of no fewer than seven Commissions that had sat on the Shannon. Lord Monck presided on a Commission which sat in Ireland, which reported in the year 1882, and which stated that a large extent of land along the whole course of the Shannon was subject to inundations at all times of the year. The spring and autumn floods often caused great damage, the former by spoiling the quality of the grass, the latter by damaging, and sometimes by altogether carrying off the hay. This Commission compared the interests of navigation with the interests of agriculture, and reported clearly in favour of the latter. Mr. Manning, the engineer employed at that time by the Public Works Board, said that no complete control of the Shannon existed, and he pointed out how control could be obtained. The Report recommended—
  "That it [the Shannon] remain in the care of the Commissioners of Public Works, who shall, while maintaining the navigation, regulate the depth of water so far as is in their power with a view primarily to the drainage of the country."
  The Allport Commission of 1887 confirmed that conclusion and added—
  "This river, draining as it does so large a portion of Ireland, and being the outlet of several other important rivers, occupies an exceptional position, and is of national importance."
  The Commission pointed out that the waters had overflowed the banks of the Shannon until they had covered nearly
  1328
  21,000 acres, and they said it was futile to expect that the cost should be laid on the riparian owners, having regard to the fact that the Shannon was the largest river in the three kingdoms, that it was 125 miles long, and that no fewer than twenty-three tributary rivers and streams discharged their waters into it. They pointed out that the end to be attained was not the relief of lands on its margin but a lowering of the levels of the floods which would render it much more easy to undertake the improvement of the various important tributary rivers and streams. His hon. friend had referred to the case of the Suck, and he would add nothing to what he had said as to that. It was proposed in 1888 that the sum of £165,000 should be spent on the Shannon, £35,000 to be charged on the improvement area and the balance to be equally raised by loans to the catchment area and to the Government works already established there. There was to be no free grant. The Commission of 1887 recommended that £180,000 should be the amount of the charge on the district and that £100,000 should be granted by the State, it being held that with these two sums—making £280,000 Mr. Bateman's complete scheme could be carried out. It was necessary the whole system should be grappled with, otherwise the plan would be entirely inadequate. Yet nothing had been done up to the present, and the Shannon remained as much a crying evil as the Barrow.
  Finally he came to the case of the Bann. He supposed he ought to apologise to hon. Members opposite for mentioning that case, but still it was an Irish river. The money already spent on the navigation of the Bann and the drainage of the country round about had been lost. Lord Monck's Commission said the works did not accomplish the drainage results which were expected of them, and there was no prospect of improvement. This scheme was now maintained at the expense of the cesspayers, many of whom strongly objected to supporting it and considered it was extremely mischievous. They recommended that the Navigation Board should be dissolved and that drainage trustees should be appointed

  1329
  to deal with the Bann solely in the interests of the drainage of the country. There was a complication arising from a weir at Toome which did not operate owing to the height of the water in the Lower Bann. It was clear that the whole trouble arose from the condition of the Lower Bann on account of a defect in the original design of the drainage works. An eminent hydraulic engineer appointed last year by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover estimated that it would take £150,000 to make effective the drainage of the Bann, whereas the then Chief Secretary in 1888 proposed an expenditure of £65,000 and the Commission of 1887 recommended an outlay of £75,000, £20,000 of which was to be a free grant. Nothing, however, had been done, and the story of the Bann was one of incompetence and neglect not confined to either Party in the State. It was due solely to the attempt of one country to deal with the affairs of another country. Last year the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Armagh was very indignant in dealing with the subject; he complained that they had got nothing but sympathy from the British Government and that their patience was exhausted. Was their patience still exhausted he wondered. Would they that night vote for the Government or against it? Would they withdraw their support from the Government because Sir Antony MacDonnell, who was willing to give them more than sympathy in this matter, still sat on his stool in Dublin Castle?
  What a commentary was the whole story on the incapacity of Parliament and of this country to deal successfully with the affairs of another nation. The present Prime Minister in 1888 introduced his three Bills with high-sounding phrases—"the era of neglect was to give place to a policy of kindness and conciliation." The contract of the Union was to be acted upon. Restitution was to be made. In 1886, after the Liberal Party had been defeated on the Home Rule question, Mr. Hanbury came to him and said—
  "I have been reading the history of your country, and I say England cannot tax itself sufficiently to make restitution to you for the destruction of your industries.
  1330
  Again, the Prime Minister said in 1888—
  "I am bound to say I think we owe something in the nature of an historic debt to Ireland. I think that of all the transactions of which Englishmen and Scotchmen—I do not know that I ought to say Scotchmen, because some of those transactions took place before the Union—have, to be ashamed of in their dealings with Ireland, the transactions by which the English Parliament made use of its superiority over Ireland to destroy her budding industries was the most shameful. Bad as the penal laws wore, they were the offspring of bigotry and political terror, and the motives that prompted them are elevating as compared with the mean and sordid action of the English Parliament in crushing the Irish industries."
  Those Bills of 1888 were then introduced in a spirit of restitution to Ireland. What had become of that policy? The Bann and the Barrow had overflowed their banks full forty times since then, spreading poverty and pestilence throughout the land. Hundreds and thousands of pounds had been dangled before the eyes of the Irish people, but they were
  "Like dead sea-fruits that tempt the eye
  But turn to ashes on the lips,"
  ashes of disappointment to the Irish people. Last year when this subject was discussed the then Chief Secretary said they had no money. Were they any better off to-day? When the Union was carried, they claimed to be able to deal with the grievances of Ireland. Had they shown their competence? Had they become bankrupt since 1888 when such large promises were held out to the Irish people? Up to the time the Irish Parliament was destroyed Ireland attended to these matters for herself, and in 1800 when that Government was destroyed she was actually considering this very question, If she had only been allowed to go on in the manner she was then proceeding, if she had only had the use of her own taxation, if she were free from the load of debt incurred for wars in which she had no interest, it was reasonable to suppose that this all-important question would long since have been attended to, and the utter failure of the English Parliament to appreciate the grievance and supply a remedy was its utter condemnation in the mind of every Irishman.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, in the opinion of this House,

  1331
  the indifference of the Government for more than a century to the state of the main Irish rivers having resulted in the frequent flooding of large tracts of country, followed by great destruction of property and serious injury to lands and dwellings and to the public health, it is the duty of the Government to devise and carry out a system of drainage which will afford adequate protection for the lives and property of the people."—(Mr. James O'Connor.)
  *MR. CHARLES CRAIGsaid that there was much in the speeches of both the mover and the seconder with which he could agree. He could not, however, pretend to say much about other parts of Ireland and would confine himself principally to the question of the drainage of the Lough Neagh and River Bann area. An attempt had been made in the past to deal with that question, but he was sorry to say that the state of affairs to-day was almost as bad as it was sixty years ago, before the works were started. Perhaps the House would excuse him if he went rather into detail upon this question. Lough Neagh was the largest lake in the three kingdoms. It was eighteen miles long, and twelve miles broad, and was practically as large as the Isle of Man. There were ten or twelve rivers of considerable size running into Lough Neagh as well as a vast number of smaller streams, and the whole of the water from an immense catchment area of over 1,400,000 acres had to be conveyed to the sea by one single river. The distance from Lough Neagh to the sea was about thirty miles, and the drop was only about forty feet. Consequently, hon. Members would see that the Lower Bann was a more or less slow-flowing river, and it was impossible for the enormous amount of extra water which collected in the Lough in flood time to get through quickly to the sea. This caused the level of the water in Lough Neagh to rise, with the result that the low-lying lands were often seriously flooded.
  The nuisance of the flooding and the serious injury it caused was of very old standing. It was not until 1840 that Irishmen interested in the welfare of the North of Ireland
  1332
  could get the Government to move in the matter. Soon after that an Act was passed to promote the drainage of lands and the improvement of navigation, and application was made to the Government by the landowners affected by the flooding of Lough Neagh and the Bann to remedy the evil, and the Commissioners of Public Works, who were also appointed Commissioners for the purpose of the Act, appointed Mr. MacMahon to inspect and report upon the question. He duly inspected and reported thereon and presented plans and specifications for the remedying of the flooding evil, and for the improvement of the navigation. The cost was to be £109,000 for the drainage, and another £74,000 for the navigation. The land owners interested, after mature consideration, decided that the work should be done and that they would bear the cost. But instead of costing £109,000 the total amount spent on the drainage works was £150,000, or £41,000 more than the unfortunate owners had agreed to pay. The works, moreover, took twelve years to complete instead of three. He did not know of any board which had brought down upon its own head more well—deserved abuse than the Board of Works. One of the reasons for the excessive cost—another testimony to the unbusinesslike methods of the Board of Works—was that, instead of giving the contract to a contractor—and large contractors at the time were very numerous—they decided to do the whole of the work themselves, sending down an engineer and numberless assistant engineers, paymasters, clerks, and workmen. Soon after the work was started the famine broke out, and it was thought by the Board of Works and the Government that this would be an excellent opportunity of employing many workmen throughout the country in need of work. A large number of men from various parts of Ireland were therefore collected together for this work. He did not complain of that, but he thought those sharing the cost of the work had reason to complain that on their shoulders should fall the extra cost of £41,000 incurred by employing relief hands and turning a purely business transaction into a philanthropic transaction. Because no contractor

  1333
  was employed, and because this undertaking was used as relief works by the Government, the cost came to £41,000 more than the estimate, and in the year 1880 no less a sum than £166,000 had been paid in principal and interest for these drainage works.
  For the first ten years after the works were completed they had more or less the desired effect. But in the subsequent ten years the floods got the upper hand again; and after twenty years and at the present time the state of affairs around the shores of Lough Neagh and on the banks of the Bann was almost as bad as it was fifty or sixty years ago. A large number of Commissions had sat on the subject, and there had been a large number of Reports. His complaint against the Government was that they had been promising and reporting, and holding Select Committees for the last twenty-eight years, and yet nothing had been done. The engineer who prepared the plans and supervised the work was a Government engineer and was not appointed by the owners affected; the work was carried out entirely by the Government, although the cost was borne by the people affected. That being the position, it was the duty of the Government to remedy the defects of their own servant fifty years ago. The original designs and plans made by Mr. MacMahon, the Government engineer, in 1842, when he was reporting, allowed for a discharge capacity of 400,000 cubic feet per minute, but investigations since made proved this was wrong, and that to accomplish the end in view a discharge capacity of 700,000 or 800,000 cubic feet per minute was needed, or double the discharging capacity allowed for in Mr. Mac Mahon's estimate. That was one of the matters upon which they hoped to get some light. He thought under the circumstances they had a good claim that the whole of these works should be put right at the expense of the Government.
  They had had many promises on this subject from the Government and from the late Chief Secretary, and in the year 1903, when he was seeking election, he was distinctly told that he might inform his intended constituents that the matter would be seriously dealt with during the
  1334
  ensuing session. He made free use of that promise, and no doubt many voted for him in the belief that an attempt would be made to relieve their condition. The late Chief Secretary put a thousand pounds on the Development Grant as an earnest of his intentions. But nothing came of that. In March of last year the secretary of the Bann Drainage Committee received a letter from the then Chief Secretary which illustrated exactly the view he, and indeed every Chief Secretary who had had to deal with it, took of this matter. In that letter he stated that the Board of Works had readily complied with Sir Antony MacDonnell's desire that the greatest expedition should be used, in spite of the many and serious claims upon the time of their engineer involved by works executed under the Marine Works Act and other duties of immediate urgency. He maintained that the drainage of the Bann was quite as urgent, and much more urgent, than any work under the Marine Act.
  Their complaint in the North of Ireland was that money was spent freely on works in other parts of Ireland which were no more necessary than the rectification of the drainage of the Bann, and that the only part of Ireland which was thoroughly loyal could not, after eighteen, years of waiting, get a remedy for an evil which everyone admitted, while hundreds of thousands of pounds were being poured into other parts of Ireland. Much of this money no doubt would be wasted. Ireland was dotted with monuments of the inefficiency of the Board of Works, and all round the coast were harbours on which immense sums had been spent which were practically useless. However, he hoped a better era was beginning to dawn under the reign of the present Chief Secretary. He hoped the Chief Secretary would act differently to his predecessors, who, while promising a great deal, had done nothing at all. The late Chief Secretary appointed Mr. Dick to make a further survey. He would not say anything about Mr. Dick's capacity as an engineer, but, knowing the estimation in which the Board of Works was held, he thought it was an act of folly to appoint this engineer. If his report was thoroughly favourable

  1335
  all, no doubt, would be well, but if it was unfavourable it was certain that the people interested would say, "Oh, this is only the report of the engineer of the Board of Works, and it is not worth the paper it is written on." Considering the amount of feeling that there was on this question, he thought the late Chief Secretary should have avoided sending down any man connected with the Board of Works to make this survey, it would have been far better to have employed an independent engineer, and the Chief Secretary should have taken care in regard to such an appointment that the person appointed was approved of by the people interested. With regard to the last appointment he had not heard that any persons in the locality concerned had been consulted. So far as he could ascertain the facts, Mr. Dick did not make a thorough survey, but he took up the plans of the preceding engineer. The conditions of eighteen years ago were not the conditions of to-day. Farms were now drained in a far superior manner, and the water ran off much quicker. A vast amount of sand and mud must have been deposited in the bed of the river in recent years, and this must have altered the depth of the river in many places. In regard to the appointment of Sir Alexander Binnie he hoped that the Chief Secretary would see that he made an absolutely independent survey.
  MR. MACVEAGH: He is not going to make a survey at all; he is only going to present a report.
  *MR. CHARLES CRAIGsaid he hoped Sir Alexander Binnie would be definitely instructed to make a thorough survey, and that he would take into consideration the opinions of those living in the locality. Under no circumstances had the Board of Works ever paid any attention to the advice and opinions of the people living on the spot. No matter how eminent an engineer Sir Alexander Binnie might be, he had probably never seen the Bann, and it seemed to him that the men who had suffered so long from this flooding ought to know something about the river. Many of them had their own theories about the cause of flooding, and it would do Sir
  1336
  Alexander Binnie no harm to hear those opinions. Last year the Ulster Unionists voted with Gentlemen opposite on this question, but as the present Chief Secretary had given an earnest of taking action, he and his hon. friends would not vote on the present occasion.
  MR. O'DOWDsaid the Resolution of his hon. friend the Member for Wicklow which they were engaged in discussing had his earnest and hearty support. Not alone had this Resolution the support of his hon. friends around him, but it had also, he ventured to think, the support and approval of every Irish Member, no matter to what school of political thought he might belong. And why? Because they recognised—and all Irish Members recognised—that the subject dealt with in the Resolution before the House was one of the gravest national importance. It was one of national importance, because the drainage of the rivers of Ireland would affect and beneficially affect numbers of people of all classes and creeds in the country.
  This question in its national aspect had been so ably and so exhaustively dealt with by his hon. friends who had preceded him that he would not weary the House with any stale platitudes of his own. He might, however, point out in passing that here was an admitted Irish grievance from which Unionists as well as Nationalists suffered, and which the Government, through the machinery of their numerous Irish boards and departments, could speedily redress. Would they prove themselves equal to the occasion? Would they even now make a beginning and tackle this question which had been so sadly neglected by successive Governments in the past? The Government professed an anxiety to develop Irish resources; they boasted that they were able and willing to do all for Ireland that a native Parliament could do. Let them prove the sincerity of their professions by adopting the Motion of his hon. friend and beginning at once with a scheme for the drainage of Irish rivers. But it was too much to expect that they would do so, not withstanding the undeniable fact that such a scheme, if adopted and carried out, would be the means of averting

  1337
  periodic famines in many districts, of converting hundreds of thousands of acres, now practically valueless owing to constant overfloodings, into good arable land, and of bringing happiness, if not prosperity, to the doors of thousands of small farmers scattered all over Ireland. There was no doubt but that it would enormously increase the wealth and prosperity of the country. It was a pity therefore, that a Government which could afford to spend millions on the prosecution of an unjust war in South Africa, and could find money to engage in fruitless expeditions against the Grand Lama and that Will-o'-the-Wisp of the desert, the Mad Mullah, could not furnish a trifle to aid in carrying out a project which would be attended with the happy results he had indicated. The question was one of supreme national moment, and as such should be dealt with in a broad, liberal, and statesmanlike spirit by any Government which wished to keep up the pretence that they were able and anxious to govern Ireland for the benefit of the people and with a view to the material advancement of the interests of the country.
  The drainage of the Bann, the Barrow, and the other great rivers in Ireland had been mentioned, and would again be mentioned before the debate closed, and with everything that had been said in regard to these rivers he was in thorough agreement. He hoped, however, that he might be pardoned if he mentioned the case of the negligence of the Government in regard to the drainage of the Owenmore in the county of Sligo. Attempts had been made from time to time, in one shape or other, to do something for the drainage of the other great rivers, but although the people of South Sligo in the poor province of Connaught had been agitating and asking some aid from the Government for the drainage of this river during the past sixty years, a deaf ear had always been turned to their demands for justice and fair play. The Owenmore was not a navigable river. It took its rise in a scheduled congested district, and flowed for a considerable distance through that district, continued its course through South Sligo, and owing to its crooked course and choked condition was liable to periodical flooding. This meant ruin
  1338
  to the hundreds of small farmers inhabiting the valley through which it flowed; last year the drainage caused by these floods was so great that a great public meeting was held in Ballymote in August last, presided over by the very rev. Canon Loftus, and attended by clergymen and magistrates of all denominations. Strong resolutions were adopted, but nothing had been done.
  In 1847, the year of the famine, an estimate was made for the drainage of this river by the then county surveyor. It was estimated that 8,000 acres could be reclaimed at an outlay of £7,000, but the Government of that day spent the money in relief works elsewhere and the work was abandoned. In 1879 another effort was made to institute a scheme for the drainage of this river, but the landlord's consent could not be obtained, and the scheme once more fell through. In 1895 the Liberal Government was approached, and they were inclined to give a grant, but they left office immediately after, and their benevolent intentions were not followed up by their successors. Again, in 1896, a great meeting of all creeds and classes was held in Ballymote. This meeting was presided over by Colonel Cooper, the lord-lieutenant of the county, a Unionist landlord, and a firm supporter of the Government of that day. A memorial was adopted praying for a grant-in-aid, but the usual stereotyped answer was returned, "No money available." There were in Ireland, the Congested Districts Board, the Department of Agriculture, and many other Departments too numerous to mention. This river flowed through three scheduled congested districts, and its drainage would mean the reclamation of 8,000 acres of land, now practically valueless, but what had the Congested Districts Board or the Department of Agriculture done in the matter? Nothing! Was it too much to expect that even now at the eleventh hour the Government would open its eyes and give financial aid and encouragement to a scheme which would be productive of so much good? There was a free grant given towards the drainage of the Suck some years ago. It was given, as was stated, under exceptional circumstances.

  1339
  There were exceptional circumstances here also, and he hoped the Chief Secretary would hearken to the appeal he made on behalf of the poor people of his constituency, and give a helping hand in the direction of having this river drained. By doing so he would be helping in a measure to repair the neglect of the past.
  MR. DELANYpointed out that this question had been considered by two Commissions—the Viceregal Commission of 1885, and the Royal Commission on Public Works in Ireland of 1887—both of which reported strongly in favour of a scheme of drainage for the Barrow. On the strength of those Reports the present Prime Minister, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduced a Bill in 1888. That measure was not proceeded with. In the following session he introduced a more comprehensive Bill, proposing to carry out works on the Barrow to the extent of £360,000, of which £215,000 was to be a free grant, and the remainder raised on the improved land within the riparian area. That Bill did not pass, and since then nothing whatever had been done. But the matter had not stood still; the evil had gone on increasing, and the need for action became more urgent every day. Several times in the year the people in the districts affected had to leave their homes in the poorer quarters, some having to be rescued by means of ambulances for which the guardians had to pay, some went to the workhouse and others to their friends, and then when the floods abated they returned to their miserable homes. It was impossible to understand how they existed. Disease was promoted, and epidemics might be expected at any time. He hoped the Chief Secretary would make some practical answer that night. Personally, he did not approve of the suggestion for
  1340
  the establishment of another department in Ireland; there were too many departments already. Nor did he approve of the work being given to the Board of Works; there were all over the country too many monuments of the stupidity and incapacity of that department. What he suggested was that committees of the county councils should be entrusted with the work. If money and machinery were put into their hands he believed that the confidence in their capacity would be amply and fully justified.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALTER LONG,)said that before dealing with the main question he might refer to a comparatively small matter which had been raised in the debate, viz., the circumstances under which Sir Alexander Binnie had been appointed to report on river drainage in Ireland. Hon. Members were under a misapprehension. The local drainage board was consulted in the appointment of Sir Alexander Binnie, and that gentleman had a perfectly free hand to make what surveys and examinations he thought necessary in order that he might furnish a report which, he hoped, might prove a valuable one. He understood, however, from the debate that what hon. Members opposite wanted was not further investigation, but immediate action. Probably the most practical speech in the debate was that made by the hon. Member who spoke last, and he had suggested that committees of the county councils should do the work. That was a practical suggestion with which he would deal later. The Motion was one in which fault was found with the Governments of the last 100 years for neglecting arterial drainage in Ireland, but the mover and seconder of the Motion had urged the necessity, not so much

  1341
  of dealing with arterial drainage, as of making these rivers into waterways.
  MR. KILBRIDE: You cannot make a waterway of the Upper Barrow.
  MR. WALTER LONGsaid the short but pertinent interruption of the hon. Member disposed of the greater portion of the speeches of the mover and seconder of the Motion. The £2,500,000 spent on arterial drainage in Ireland had been contrasted with the many millions spent in Holland. But the latter was a question not of arterial drainage but of waterways. Those two questions must be dealt with separately. What he understood was wanted was that the evils which arose from the overflowing of these rivers should be dealt with. That was a question solely of arterial drainage. So far as the Bann and the Barrow were concerned he was afraid that there could be no doubt that from time to time immense damage to property resulted from the present condition of these rivers. It was undoubtedly the case that if rivers overflowed in an agricultural district not only were fields and houses submerged, but there must be serious injury to the industry of the district. It had been said that everything that had been done hitherto had been wrongly done. While he did not wish to absolve the Irish Government and the Board of Works from all responsibility and all blame, he thought they were not as much to blame as hon. Gentlemen opposite seemed to think. They had consulted local opinion to a greater extent than they had been given credit for, and many of the evils of which complaint had been made were due to the fact that they
  1342
  had taken so much advice that they had in the long run taken a course which had resulted in the least benefit to the district which they desired to serve. Undoubtedly they had consulted local opinion, but it was the unanimous feeling that the guiding opinion had been a mistaken one. The result had been unsatisfactory.
  The boards under the existing Acts were obviously out of keeping with the present time. This was not a general debate on Irish government—the river boards dealing with these rivers were out of date, and owing to the changes in land tenure the formation of those boards became more difficult every year. A suggestion had been made to transfer the powers to a committee of county councils, and in England legislation had set up joint committees of contiguous counties to deal with pollution, of rivers, but the difficulty of dealing with flooding was quite different to that of dealing with pollution, and more information was required. ["No, no!"] There was necessity for reform; the present condition of things could not continue, but a procedure must be found to bring about a systematic and successful result.
  *MR. JOHN O'CONNORasked the Chief Secretary if he remembered an Answer which he gave to him, probably about a week ago, in reply to a Question on the Paper as to whether the Government was prepared to introduce a Bill extending the provisions of Section 20 so as to establish joint boards of county councils in respect of the rivers flowing through their respective districts. Was he now prepared to promise them a short Bill?
  MR. WALTER LONGsaid he was quite willing to consider such a suggestion, but he was afraid this would not be sufficient. More advice was required, and there must be co-operation in the dealing with the upper and lower parts of a river; the difficulties in the one and in the other part were different and required different remedies. More information was wanted as to the best way to deal with some of these difficulties, and he believed that the best course to adopt would be to have a short examination by three experts, one an engineer, and two experts connected with local government. He believed that after an examination of that kind they might get a reform of the Local Government Act of 1898, and with such additional powers they might be able to deal with the question satisfactorily. After that any additional money granted might be wisely spent. That was the conclusion he had arrived at, and if his suggestion was acceptable to both sides he would undertake the appointment of such a Committee without any delay, and he did not think it would take very long to make a practical Report upon the whole question.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid the speech they had just listened to was an exact counterpart of many speeches they had heard on Irish subjects from successive Irish Governments. Of course the right hon. Gentleman was able to plead that his knowledge of the question was small and that he had had very little time to look into it. He supposed, however, that he had consulted those who were conversant with it, and yet he had made no definite proposal whatever. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted
  1344
  a grievance which had been in existence for generations, and then he threw out vague suggestions as to the possibility of amending the Local Government Act.
  MR. WALTER LONG: What I said was that while I favoured the extension of Section 20 of the Act of 1898 I did not believe that it would cover the ground.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that what the right hon. Gentleman did was to throw out that suggestion, and then he added that he did not pin himself to it. The suggestion as to the appointment of a small Committee was a most extraordinary one, and he declined to take any share of the responsibility for it. He saw no reason for any further inquiry, and if the right hon. Gentleman had come to a settled conclusion on the subject he should act on his own opinion and appoint the inquiry. The constitution of the proposed Committee was absurd, and he wanted to know who the local government experts were to be. The right hon. Gentleman sugggested that this Committee should consist of an eminent engineer and two local government officials.
  MR. WALTER LONG: I never used the word "officials." I said experts.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid he should like to know what the right hon. Gentleman meant by experts.
  MR. WALTER LONGsaid that they would be men experienced in the affairs of local government, but not officers connected with the Government.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDinvited the right hon. Gentleman to come to some definite conclusion on the question, and asked whether these experts were to be selected by the county councils in Ireland or whether they were to be men sent over from England. Until the right hon. Gentleman gave some more definite statement he should take no responsibility whatever for the suggestion he had made. The right hon. Gentleman had not met their case, and in these circumstances he hoped his hon. friend would go to a division.
  MR. KILBRIDEpointed out that an extension of Section 20 would not deal with this difficulty, because what suited the upper reaches of the river would not suit the lower reaches. It might apply all right to the Shannon and the Bann, but it had no application to the Barrow. A conference of the county councils concerned was held a few months ago and they came to the conclusion that a joint board should be formed, consisting of the representatives of the county councils of the counties through which the river flowed, to deal with the whole question of the drainage of the Barrow. One would imagine from the speech made by the right hon. Gentleman that the Government had done something to improve the condition of the River Barrow, but
  as a matter of fact they had never spent one penny on the drainage of that river. The bed of the river had become silted up, and obstructions years ago had been allowed to be constructed across the river; and if the county councils were only given power to remove those obstructions by levying a very small rate on the areas affected they could relieve the flooding to a very large extent. Unless something was done the farmers and inhabitants of those areas would be very seriously affected. Frequently the houses were flooded, and the health of the people had suffered considerably. He hoped something would be done to deal with the upper reaches of the River Barrow, and if the Government would not do anything, at least they might give the localities power to do it themselves.
  MR. DILLONcalled attention to what he regarded as a serious omission in the Chief Secretary's statement, in that he had given no hint as to whether the Government contemplated providing any money for the operation. As no hope had been held out that any money would be provided for this purpose he hoped they would proceed to a division.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 79; Noes, 120. Division List No. 189.)

  AYES.

  Ambrose, Robert

  Cremer, William Randal

  Hammond, John

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Delany, William

  Hardie, J Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Devlin, Charles Ramsay (Galway

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Boland, John

  Dillon, John

  Healy, Timothy Michael

  Brigg, John

  Doogan, P. C.

  Helme, Norval Watson

  Bright, Allan Heywood

  Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  Caldwell, James

  Ffrench, Peter

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

  Field, William

  Higham, John Sharp

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Findlay, Alexander (Lanark, N E

  Johnson, John

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Crean, Eugene

  Gladstone, Rt Hn. Herbert John

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

  Joyce, Michael

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

  Kennedy, Vincent P.(Cavan, W

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

  Roche, John

  Kilbride, Denis

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Lamont, Norman

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.)

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

  Shackleton, David James

  Lawson, Sir Wilfred (Cornwall)

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W)

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Levy, Maurice

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Sullivan, Donal

  Lundon, W.

  O'Dowd, John

  Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N)

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  O'Malley, William

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

  M'Crae, George

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Young, Samuel

  M'Fadden, Edward

  Parrott, William

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  M'Kean, John

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Captain Donelan and Mr.

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Reddy, M.

  Patrick O'Brien.

  Murphy, John

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  NOES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

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

  Morgan, David J (Walthamstow

  Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

  Finch, Rt. Hn. George H.

  Morpeth, Viscount

  Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

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

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. Hugh O.

  Flannery, Sir Fortescue

  Mount, William Arthur

  Arrol, Sir William

  Forster, Henry William

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Foster, PhilipS. (Warwick, S.W.

  Percy, Earl

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

  Gardner, Ernest

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

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

  Plummer, Sir Walter R.

  Bailey, James (Walworth)

  Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Balcarres, Lord

  Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

  Purvis, Robert

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

  Gretton, John

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Hamilton, Marq. of (L'donderry

  Renwick, George

  Balfour, Rt. Hn. Gerald W. (Leeds

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool

  Brotherton, Edward Allen

  Hoult, Joseph

  Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

  Brymer, William Ernest

  Hunt, Rowland

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Bull, William James

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. T. Myles

  Butcher, John George

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

  Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

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

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

  Spear, John Ward

  Carlile, William Walter

  Keswick, William

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs.

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Cavendish, V.C.W.(Derbyshire)

  Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th)

  Tuff, Charles

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants., Fareham

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

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

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Walker, Col. William Hall

  Chapman, Edward

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N S.

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Long, Rt Hon. Walter (Bristol, S)

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

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

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Whiteley. H. (Ashton und. Lyne

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow

  Macdona, John Cumming

  Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W.

  Wylie, Alexander

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Majendie, James A. H.

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

  Doughty, Sir George

  Melville, Beresford Valentine

  Alexander Acland-Hood and

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Viscount Valentia.

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

  Fellowes, Rt Hn Ailwyn Edward

  Montagu, Hon. J. Scott(Hants.)

  PUBLIC HEALTH BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.

  FINANCE BILL
  Considered in Committee; Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.
  Adjourned at ten minutes after Twelve o'clock.