Commons Sitting of 7 May 1906

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before Three of the Clock.
PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSY INQUIRED INTO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.:—;Preston, Chorley, and Horwich Tramways Bill [Lords]; Sheffield District Railway Bill [Lords]; South Lancashire Tramways (Extension of Time) Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (NO STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, viz.:—;Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bills be road a second time To-morrow.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERETO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—;Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time To-morrow
  H. R. Baines and Company Bill [Lords]; Vauclain's Patent Bill [Lords]. Read the
  944
  third time, and passed, without Amendment.
  London County Council (Money) Bill. Read a second time, and committed.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (NO. 2) BILL.
  "To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to Birr, Dungarvan, Londonderry, Trim, and Tuam (Rural)," presented by Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland; supported by Mr. Bryce; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 193.]
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (NO. 3) BILL.
  "To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to Dublin and Armagh," presented by Mr. Attorney General for Ireland; supported by Mr. Bryce; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 194.]
  SHREWSBURY CORPORATION WATER BILL.
  Ordered [April 10th], that the Shrewsbury Corporation Water Bill be committed, read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.—; (Mr. Caldwell.)
  Ordered [March 21st], that the Heacham Water Bill be committed, read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.—;(Mr. Caldwell.)
  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to incorporate the Penllwyn Railway Company; and for other purposes." [Penllwyn Railway and Road Bill [Lords.]
  PENLLWYN RAILWAY AND ROAD BILL [LORDS].
  Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
PETITIONS.

  COAL MINES (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; From Altofts (Nos. 1 and 2); Elsecar; Haigh; Manvers

  945
  Main; Newland Normanton; Wharncliffe Silkstone; and, Woodthorpo Collieries; to lie upon the Table.

  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions from Sarum St. Edmund, against; to lie upon the Table.

  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL (RELIGIOUS TEACHING.)
  Petitions against alteration of Law; From Alcester, Alderminster; Alfrick; Allesley; Alnmouth; Areley Kings; Aston Cantlow; Aston Magna; Atherstone; Aylesford (two); Barston; Barton on the Heath; Bedworth; Beltingham with Henshaw; Benwell; Berkswell; Bidford; Bilton; Binley; Birling (two); Birmingham; Bishampton; Bishop's Tachbrook; Blackheath; Blyth and Horton; Bolton; Brabourne; Brandsby cum Stearsby; Bredbury (two); Brinklow; Burmington; Butters Marston; Bywell; Cambois; Chadkirk (two); Charing; Charlecote; Chelsea; Chequerbent; Churchill; Church Hulme; Church Lawford with King's Newnham; Claines; Cotheridge; Cramlington Cubbington; Doptford; Dodderhill; Dunchurch; Eckington; Ellesmore Port; Evesham; Eckenham; Finstall; Fiddington; Foleshill; Folkestone; Frimley (two); Gabalfa (two); Great Comberton; Halesowen; Halford; Hammersmith; Harley Wood (two); Harrietsham; Hatton; Heddon on the Wall; Herne; Herne Bay; Hindlip; Hulton; Husthwaite; Idlicote; Kenilworth; Kidderminster; Kilvey (two); Kineton; Kington and Dormston; Kirk Whelpington; Knightwick and Doddenham; Little Chart; Little Lever (two); Llandaff (two); Long Itchington; Lucker, Bradford, and Adderstone; Lulsley; Malvern (three); Malvern Link; Mart on Mawgan (two); Meriden; Midsomer Norton (two); Meluron; Moor Monkton (two); Myddle; Newbold on Stour; Newbold Pacey and Asherne; Newborn; Netherton; Newcastle-on-tyne (fifteen); Nine-banks; Normanton (two); North Grosforth; North Shields (two); Oldberrow cum Norton Bagot and Spernall; Old Milverton and Guys Cliffe; Overbury; Pedmore; Preston Bagot; Rainbow Hill; Rashcliffe; Ratley; Redditch; Romsley; Rowington; Rusholme; St. Ives (two); St. Paul in the Blockhouse; Salwarpe; Shelsley Beauchamp; Shelsley Walsh;
  946
  Shilton and Anstey; Sibertswold (two); Sissinghurst; Slaley; Snodland (two); Staunton; Stepney; Stoke Prior; Stour-bridge; Suckloy; Tardebigge; Teston (two); Tynemouth; Upper Arley; Upton Snodsbury; Wallsend (four); Walton Dale; Wappenbury with Eathorpe; Warmington; Warwick; Wealdstone; Welland; Wing (two); Witney; Wolford; Wollaston; Wolston; Wolvey; Woolston, Brandon, and Bretford; and Worcester; to lie upon the Table.

  EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVE CHILDREN (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Old Monkland, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SUNDAY TRADING (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from the Royal Burghs of Scotland, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  VACCINATION ACTS.
  Petition from Sandwich, for repeal; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Annual Report of the Commissioners of Education in Ireland for the year 1905 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  ROYAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE (DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
  Copy presented, of Final Report of the Departmental Committee on the Royal College of Science (including the Royal School of Mines), Vol. II., Minutes of Evidence, Appendices II. to XIII., and Index [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  MILITARY PRISONS.
  Copy presented, of Report on the Discipline and Management of Military Prisons in 1905 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  Copy presented, of Correspondence relating to the Native Disturbances in Natal [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3573 to 3578 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) (GENERAL REPORTS).
  Copy presented, of General Report by the Chief Inspector of the Northern Division of Scotland for the year 1905 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1889 (ORDINANCE).
  Copy presented, of University Court Ordinance No. XIV. (Edinburgh, No. 4) (Institution of Degrees in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery and relative Regulations) [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 158.]
  INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE.
  Copy presented, of Correspondence relative to the establishment of an International Agricultural Institute, with the Report of the British Delegates, and the Minutes of Proceedings at the International Conference on Agriculture at Rome [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
  Copy presented, of Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries to inquire into and Report whether Preferential Treatment is given by the Railway Companies in Great Britain to Foreign and Colonial as compared with Home, farm, dairy, and market garden produce, with Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, and Index [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  SUPERANNUATION ACTS, 1858 AND 1876.
  Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated May 1st, 1906, declaring British Central Africa, the East Africa Protectorate, Northern Nigeria, the Somaliland Protectorate, Southern Nigeria, and Uganda to be unhealthy places within the meaning of The Superannuation Act, 1876 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  SUPERANNUATION ACT, 1887.
  Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated May 1st, 1906, granting to Mr. William Pearson, Staff Clerk, War Office, a Retired Allowance under the Act [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING STATISTICS, 1905.
  Copy presented, of Statistics as to the operation and administration of the Laws relating to the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors for the year 1905 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  PUBLIC RECORDS.
  Copy presented, of Sixty-seventh 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 Chester-le-Street Parliamentary division of the county [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  Paper laid upon the Table by the Clerk of the House:—;

  LUNACY.
  Copy of Report to The Lord Chancellor of the number of visits made, the number of Patients seen, and the number of miles travelled by the Visitors of Lunatics between October, 1st, 1905, and March 31st, 1906 [by Act].
  EAST INDIA (FINANCIAL STATEMENT).
  Address for "Return of the Indian Financial Statement for 1906–7, and of the Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Governor-General thereon."—;(Sir Henry Fowler.)
  IRISH LAND ACT, 1903 (INVESTMENT OF FUNDS).
  Copy ordered, "of Statement issued by a special Committee of the Dublin Stock Exchange with reference to the Investment of Funds under the control of the Supreme Court."—;(Sir William Bull.)

  ULTIMUS HÆRES (SCOTLAND) (ACCOUNT AND LIST OF ESTATES).
  Return ordered, "of Abstract Account of the receipts and payments of the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer in Scotland, in the year ended

  949
  December 31st, 1905, in the Administration of Estates and Treasure Trove on behalf of the Crown."
  "And, of Alphabetical List of Estates which fell to the Crown as Ultimus Hæres in Scotland, administered by the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, in the same year."—;(Mr. McKenna.)

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Armament of the "County Class" Cruisers.
  MR. NIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, in view of the superior armament of contemporary cruisers of other Powers, and of the failure of six-inch gun fire to effect any material damage in the battle of the Sea of Japan, it is intended to strengthen the armament of the ten cruisers of the county class.
  (Answered by Mr. Edmund Robertson.) In view of the cost involved it is not proposed to make any change at the present time.

  Farriers and the Workmen's Compensation Act.
  MR. STUART-WORTLEY: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it has been brought to his notice that the limit requiring five persons to be employed in order to obtain the benefits of the Workmen's Compensation Bill will have the effect of excluding large numbers of persons following the occupation of farriers; and whether he proposes to modify the Bill for the purpose of meeting this particular case.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) Yes, Sir; I have received communications to this effect. It appears to me that farriers would, save in very exceptional cases, be included in the Bill as drawn; but the point is now under my consideration.

  Speeches of the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Secretary of State for the Colonies has
  950
  officially cabled to South Africa a report or summary of a speech delivered in the House of Commons by the Under-Secretary of State; if so, to what Colonies or persons the message has been sent, and with what instructions as to publication or otherwise; whether he will lay upon the Table such report or summary, with a copy of any despatch accompanying the same; and also whether there is any, and, if so, what precedent for any official communication at the public expense of any similar report or summary.
  (Answered by Mr. Churchill.) Full summaries of the speeches delivered by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in the House of Commons on April 2nd and 5th were cabled to the Governor of Natal and the High Commissioner, respectively, with instructions to make them public through the South African newspapers or other channels. I do not think it necessary to lay the summaries upon the Table of the House; but I shall be glad to forward the right hon. Gentleman copies if he desires them. The most exact precedent for making such communication of speeches at the public expense occurred on June 27th, 1899, when a summary with long extracts of a speech delivered at Birmingham by the then Secretary of State for the Colonies was telegraphed to the Governor of the Cape on the ground that a verbatim report was not likely to reach Lord Milner, and a direction was added that publication of the summary was left to his discretion. The summary was communicated by Lord Milner to the leading Capetown papers.

  The Pending Imperial Colonial Conference.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will lay upon the Table the Correspondence that has taken place with the Colonial Governments with regard to the meeting of the next Imperial Conference in 1907, including the replies of the Colonial Government to the invitation addressed to them by His Majesty's Government.
  (Answered by Mr. Chucrhill.) I shall be glad to lay the correspondence upon the Table at the request of the right hon. Gentleman.

  Enteric Fever at Darenth Asylum, Kent.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the successive outbreaks of enteric fever during the past two years at the Metropolitan Imbecile Asylum at Darenth, Kent, traceable to broken drains and to the fact that the drains of this asylum are used to irrigate portions of the enclosure, and that the contents finally disappear into the chalk upon which the asylum stands; and, seeing that this enclosure is within five furlongs from the Darenth pumpingstation of the Metropolitan Water Board, and at a higher level, will he state what steps he proposes to take.
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) I am aware that there have been occurrences of enteric fever at the asylum during the past two years, and that the first of them was supposed to be due to a defect in the drainage. It is the case that the drainage of the asylum is disposed of by irrigation on the asylum farm, but I understand that the land is at a considerable distance from the Darenth well, and that the local conditions are such that there would appear to be no risk of the well becoming polluted from anything that may happen at the asylum. I will, however, communicate further with the Metropolitan Water Board on the subject.

  Illiterate Voters.
  MR. CROOKS: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he proposes to publish the number of illiterate persons who voted at the last General Election.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) I beg to reply to this Question on behalf of my right hon. friend. If the hon. Member will move for a Return similar to that given in 1896 there will be no objection to granting it.

  Vaccination Exemption Certificate at Oxford.
  MR. SUMMERBELL: To ask the President of the Local Government Board as to whether his attention has been called to the difficulty of obtaining certificates of exemption from vaccination in the Oxford City Court; and, if so, whether he intends to
  952
  issue an instruction in regard to the same.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) I beg to reply to this Question on behalf of my right hon. friend. My attention has not been called to any such cases at Oxford, and I have no authority to give instructions to the justices. A circular is, however, about to be issued setting out what, I am advised, is the intention of the law respecting the grant of certificates of exemption.

  Education—;Distinction between Pauper and Non-pauper Children.
  MR. SUMMERBELL: To ask the President of the Board of Education whether he contemplates taking any steps for abolishing the distinction which is now made between pauper and non-pauper children in the matter of the payment of fees or other expenses at public elementary schools or at certified special schools.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) I am not aware that the distinctions referred to, which are in effect nothing more than an adjustment of payments between Poor Law authorities and education authorities, effect in any way the children concerned. And I therefore, as at present advised, see no reason for interfering with existing practice in this regard.

  Education Bill and Residentiary Training Colleges.
  MR. MOND: To ask the President of the Board of Education whether he can state if Part II. of the new Education Bill (Educational Endowments) includes amongst such educational endowments the residentiary training colleges of England.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The definitions applicable to Part II. of the Education Bill would certainly include any training college, which in its legal aspect is an educational endowment.

  Educational Expenditure.
  SIR GEORGE DOUGHTY: To ask the President of the Board of Education what was the total cost of education in England and Wales in 1901–2 under the school board; what proportion was borne by the Imperial Exchequer and what proportion by the ratepayers; what was the total cost in

  953
  1903–4, 1904–5, and 1905–6; what proportion came from the Imperial Exchequer and what proportion from the ratepayers; what was the total on capital account for school buildings and loans; and what was paid for interest and sinking find, or redemption of loans, in each of those years.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) It is extremely difficult at present to arrive at figures which are even approximately accurate, in regard to the later years, named in the hon. Member's Question, but I am having calculations made, and if he will put down his Question again for Wednesday next I shall hope by then to have approximate estimates, which may serve his purpose, based upon various figures supplied by local authorities.

  Petitions to Privy Council and the Endowed Schools Act.
  MR. HERBERT: To ask the President of the Board of Education how many petitions have been presented to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council against schemes under the Endowed Schools Acts framed by the Endowed Schools Commissioners, or the Charity Commissioners, or the Board of Education, as their successors: and in how many cases such petitions succeeded in obtaining an alteration of such schemes.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The number of petitions is thirty, of which one was not in order and two were withdrawn. In the remaining twenty-seven cases twenty-one schemes were allowed to proceed and six were remitted. The last petition presented and not withdrawn was dealt with in April, 1894. The last case in which the scheme was remitted was in February, 1890. No scheme framed by the Board of Education in the exercise of their powers under the Endowed Schools Acts, has been the subject of an appeal to the Judicial Committee.

  Production of Coal in the United Kingdom.
  MR. HICKS BEACH: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the total quantity of coal produced in the United Kingdom in the year 1905, and what percentage the amount exported bore to the total produced.
  954
  (Answered by Mr. Lloyd-George.) The total quantity of coal produced in the United Kingdom in 1905 was 236,128,936 tons. The total quantity exported, including the estimated coal equivalent of the exports of coke and patent fuel was 49,764,500 tons, or, if coal used for bunkering steamers engaged in the Foreign trade be included,67,160,646 tons. The proportion of exports to production accordingly amounted to per cent., or 28·4 per cent., according as bunker coal is excluded or included.

  Gloucestershire Sewer Commissioners.
  MR. RENDALL: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that on April 19th, 1858, Her late Majesty issued a Commission of Sewers for the lower level of the county of Gloucester, and thereby appointed 150 Commissioners; that these Commissioners are appointed by the Crown Office of the House of Lords, under a writ of dedimus potestatem, pursuant to 23 Henry VIII, cap. 5; that these Commissioners have power to levy rates in regard to the River Severn, etc., without the permission or control of the ratepayers effected, although such ratepayers are required to pay such rates which such Commissioners may levy; that such Commissioners do not and are not required by law to publish any balance-sheet of moneys received and expended; and whether he will take steps to get rid of this unrepresentative authority, and to place the control of these matters under the county, district or parish council concerned.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The Commission of Sewers for the lower level of the county of Gloucester was issued and the Commissioners are appointed as stated in the Question. They have power to levy rates on the lands benefited by their works, without the consent of the persons effected, but right of appeal to quarter sessions against the rate is given by Section 47 of The Land Drainage Act, 1861, and in certain cases it is provided, by Sections 29–31 of the same Act, that the proprietors of one-half of the area of the land within which it is proposed to levy a rate can veto the expenditure which the rate is intended to meet. Returns of their receipts and expenditure are made under the Local Taxations Returns Act, and

  955
  abstracts of them are annually presented to Parliament, but their accounts are not otherwise published. The powers of such commissions can be transferred to county councils by Provisional Orders made under Section 10 of The Local Government Act, 1888, or an elective drainage board can be created, under Part II. of The Land Drainage Act, 1861, to take over the drainage of the whole or any part of their district; but the consent of the Commissioners themselves appears to be required before either course can be adopted. I am consulting the Board of Agriculture and the Local Government Board as to whether it is desirable to make any alteration in the powers and duties of these bodies.

  Direct and Indirect Taxation.
  MR. HICKS BEACH: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what proportions will be contributed to the estimated revenue of 1906–7 by direct and indirect taxation respectively, as compared with the actual proportions contributed in the years 1904–5 and 1905–6.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith): The proportions of tax revenue (excluding coal export duty, but including local taxation revenue) derived from direct and indirect taxes respectively, are as follows:—;

  Year.

  Direct.

  Indirect.

  1904–5

  49·5

  50·5

  1905–6 (approximate)

  50·4

  49·6

  1906–7 (estimated)

  51·0

  49·0

  Receipts from the Coal Duty.
  MR. HICKS BEACH: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what were the net receipts from the Coal Duty in the year 1905–6.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith.): The net receipts from the duty on the export of coal, coke, and patent fuel in the financial year 1905–6 were £2,183,973.

  Railway and Harbour Construction at Vizagapatam.
  MR. REES: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether the recent sanction accorded for the construction of the Raipur-Vizaga-patam Railway is to be accompanied by the construction of a harbour at the port of Vizagapatam.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morley.): The scheme recently sanctioned for the construction of a railway from Raipur to Vizianagram on the East Coast Railway is independent of the question of constructing a harbour at the port of Vizagapatam.

  Indian Army Organisation—;Opinions of Lords Cromer, Elgin, Sir David Barbour and Sir Henry Brackenbury.
  MR. REES: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether the opinions of Lord Cromer, Lord Elgin, Sir David Barbour, and Sir Henry Brackenbury were laid before the Committee on Indian Army Organisation appointed by his predecessor in office.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morley.): No record was kept of the proceedings of the Committee to which this Question refers; but I understand that Sir David Barbour attended one of its meetings, and that other gentlemen, including Lord Cromer, Lord Elgin, and Sir Henry Brackenbury wrote letters or sent memoranda to the Secretary of State, which, with the exception of one or two which arrived too late, were communicated by him to the members of the Committee.

  Reorganisation of Indian Police.
  SIR SEYMOUR KING: To ask the Secretary of State for India when the reorganisation scheme recommended by the Police Commission, so far as relates to the European administrative officers, will be put into force.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morley.) I hope that it may be possible to bring the new scheme into force with effect from April 1st, 1906.

  Revenue Derived from Import Duty in India.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the Secretary of State for India what is the amount of revenue derived from the

  957
  general tariff on imports between 1900–5; and will he say whether these duties were imposed for protective purposes.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morley.) In the five years ending March 31st, 1905, the total amount of revenue yielded by the general tariff on imports was £10,050,425. The Answer to the second part of the Question is in the negative,

  Compensation to Evicted Tenants on the Lamphiere Estate.
  MR KENDAL O'BRIEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the amount of monetary compensation alleged to be paid to James Feehan and Patrick Cormack who claim to be evicted tenants on the Lamphiere Estate; is he aware that the solicitors for the vendors admitted that both these men were evicted tenants whose claims would be considered on the termination of the grazing tenancy; is he aware that the evicted tenants deny entirely that they at any time made objection to the proposal of the vendor that they be placed back in their respective farms provided that advances yielding annuities of £5 and £15 were made by the Estates Commissioners; have they called for a public investigation into the whole circumstances of this affair, and is it proposed to accede to this request; what is proposed to be done with the £700 retained out of the purchase money; was James Cormack, the person to whom the sale of the plots claimed by the evicted tenants was made, a tenant within the meaning of the Land Act of 1903 at the time of sale, or a grazier holding under the eleven months system; is he aware that the peace of the locality has been disturbed owing to the sale to this man; and will he say if the landlady, Temperance Ann Lamphiere, and James Cormack and his brother-in-law, Martin Cormack, are receiving police protection because of their action in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The subject of this Question has already been dealt with in my reply to the hon. Member's Question of April 10th,† to which I beg to refer. The Estates Commissioners inform me that, according to their information, Denis Feehan, as whose representative James Feehan now claims, voluntarily
  † See (4) Debates, clv., 1145.
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  surrendered his farm of ten acres in 1876, having been compensated to his satisfaction, but the amount of compensation given is not known to the Commissioners. James Feehan was then put into possession of 3 acres of the farm, but surrendered the same in 1879 owing two years' rent and receiving £12 compensation. Mrs. Elizabeth Cormack, as whose representative Patrick Cormack claims, received £10 compensation in cash, and was forgiven arrears of rent amounting to £50. As already stated, the sale to James Cormack has been completed, and the holding legally vested in him, and the Estates Commissioners do not intend to re-open the case. The disposal of the £700, portion of the purchase money which has been withheld, is a matter for the decision, under statute, of the Judicial Commissioner. James Cormack purchased as a tenant within the meaning of the Act of 1903. I am informed that it is the fact that the peace of the locality has been disturbed by persons who are in sympathy with the applicants, and proceedings at the suit of the police have been instituted with the object of having three of the offenders bound to keep the peace. James and Martin Cormack are receiving police protection.

  The Crete Campaign.
  MR. CROOKS: To ask the Secretary of State for War, whether the conduct of the British forces under trying circumstances during the troubles in Crete in 1898 has been brought under his notice; and whether he will consider whether a medal cannot be given or some recognition made of the services rendered by the men of the Highland Light Infantry and other regiments at that time.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) I am aware of the excellent conduct of the British forces in Crete during the troubles in 1898. The question of the grant of a medal was raised in 1899, but it was decided after full consideration that it could not be granted. I am afraid that I cannot undertake to reopen the question.

  Cost of a Soldier.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the Secretary of State for War, what is the estimated cost of a soldier in England

  959
  and India, respectively, belonging to the Calvary, Engineers, Artillery, and Infantry.

  —;

  At Home.

  In India.

  £

  s.

  d.

  £

  s.

  d.

  Cavalry

  62

  11

  4

  82

  5

  5

  Engineers

  77

  2

  7

  —;

  Artillery:

  Horse

  64

  7

  4

  86

  14

  0

  Field

  61

  18

  3

  84

  2

  6

  Garrison

  59

  13

  2

  80

  17

  9

  Infantry of the Line

  57

  8

  9

  75

  5

  9

  The figures of the soldiers at Home include charges for barracks, arms, and ammunition, &c. The figures for India include as well, charges for the capitation rate, for passage, &c.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  Explosives Committee.
  Mr. WEIE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, in view of the fact that Lord Rayleigh, one of the three members of the Explosives Committee, resigned his position as president at the commencement of the present financial year, will he state whether the vacancy has yet been filled, and, if so, by whom.
  THE SECEETAEY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. HALDANE,): The Explosives Committee has been reconstituted as the Board of Ordnance Research. The Board will consist of Major-General O'Callaghan as president, with Rear - Admiral Foote, Sir W. Crookes, Sir A. Noble, Mr. Ewing, and two members of the Ordnance Committee as members.

  Soldiers' Kits.
  MR. ARTHUR LEE: I beg to ask the Secretary of
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The average annual cost of a trained private soldier, is as follows:—;
  State for War whether he will consider the possibility of providing sleeping suits as parts of the soldier's kit, or make such other arrangements as will relieve soldiers of the necessity of sleeping in their underclothing, as is the practice at present.
  MR. HALDANE: The soldier is at present granted three shirts on enlistment and receives an allowance for maintenance of kit; he accordingly has a shirt to sleep in other than the one he has worn during the day. I am afraid that, owing to the large expense involved, I cannot hold out any hopes of making the provision suggested by the hon. Member.

  Vaccination of Soldiers.
  MR. T. F. RICHARDS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether soldiers having a conscientious objection to vaccination may be permitted to make such objection, and thereby claim exemption equal with the civilian.
  MR. HALDANE: All soldiers on attestation sign a declaration to the effect that they are willing to be vaccinated or revaccinated. Under these circumstances, and in view of the special conditions of military life, no exemption can be permitted.
  MR. LUPTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the death rate among revaccinated soldiers is higher than that among the unvaccinated population.
  MR. HALDANE: I am not aware of that.
  MR. LUPTON: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire?
  MR. HALDANE: If the hon. Member will put a Question down I will see if a Return can be granted.
  MR. CROOKS: Is it legal to allow a soldier to contract out?
  MR. HALDANE: He does not.

  Fort George, Inverness-shire.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the officers' quarters at Fort George, Inverness-shire, are not watertight, and that the casemates in which the Ross-shire Militia and other men are quartered are damp and otherwise unsatisfactory; and will he call for a Report on the subject.
  MR. HALDANE: The General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Scottish Command reports that he personally inspected Fort George a week ago and that no complaints were made in regard to the officers' quarters. As regards the casemates he considers them, qua casemates, extremely good and certainly not damp.
  MR. WEIRasked the right hon. Gentleman to inquire further.
  MR. HALDANE: I have called for a Report. If the hon. Member desires further information I will try and get it.

  South African Mines—;Threatened Closing.
  MR. LEVY: I beg to ask the Undersecretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any official information showing that, as a result of State-aided repatriation of Chinese coolies, the West Rand and West Rand Consolidated Mines are to be closed; and whether, in drafting the new Constitutions for the
  962
  Transvaal and Orange River Colony, he will consider the desirability of empowering the Governments of the Colonies to become possessed of these and other mines.
  THE UNDER - SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL,): (1) I have no official information. The Transvaal Legislature will be quite competent to deal with any question of the State ownership and administration of gold mines which may arise after the grant of responsible Government. (2) I should add that it is not usually the practice of persons possessing gold mines to cease to work them while there is any profit to be made out of them. It is not proposed to introduce any special provision in the Constitution with this object.

  Orange River Colony.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies has the Government received any information from the Orange River Colony which would indicate that a majority of the population would prefer a form of government which would not involve the operation of the full party system.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State will be in a better position to judge as to the views of the majority of the population upon this matter after the South African Committee have visited the Colony and have reported. I see no public advantage to be gained by premature and fragmentary announcements of the constitutional methods to be adopted in either Colony.

  South African Civil Service.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies will the Government consider the wisdom and fairness of either securing in their position the present efficient members of the Orange River Colony and Transvaal Civil Service, or of giving compensation to those who, through the development of constitutional government, are relieved of their positions after arduous labours in the service.
  MR. CHURCHILL: His Majesty's Government will carefully consider the

  963
  claims of Civil servants, hut I am not at present prepared to say to what extent or by what method safeguards can be provided.

  South African Land Settlement Advance.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies will the Government consider the advisability of keeping the £3,000,000 set apart for land settlement after the war, or such portion of it as may be available through yearly instalments, for reinvestment in perpetuity in land for British settlement; and will he consider favourably the establishment of a permanent Commission or Board to administer under such an arrangement.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The matter will not escape the consideration of the Secretary of State.

  British Settlers in Orange River Colony.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Government has received any communication from representatives of the Orangia Union and the Dutch residents of the Orange River Colony concerning the future of British settlers in the Colony; and what was the nature of that communication.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State does not appear to have had such a communication addressed to him.

  Johannesburg and Pretoria Protests.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the attention of the Secretary of State for the Colonies has been drawn to the terms of a resolution passed on the 2nd instant, at a meeting of the commercial community at Johannesburg, protesting against the repatriation of Chinese, on the ground that it would throw out of employment a largo number of skilled whites, dislocate business, and lead to the ruin of large numbers of traders; and whether, in view of this expression of opinion by the people of the Transvaal, the Government intend to proceed with repatriation before the creation of responsible government.
  MR. CHURCHILL: Lord Selborne informs me that he is forwarding by
  964
  mail protests of the Johannesburg Chamber of Trade. In the meantime the protest of the Pretoria Chamber of Commerce has been received by telegraph, and is in the following terms:—;"That this chamber views with serious apprehension the announcement that His Majesty's Government are about to offer financial assistance to indentured Chinese labourers who desire to return to China, and this chamber therefore earnestly appeals to His Majesty's Government to reconsider its decision and to defer any action in connection with the Labour Importation Ordinance pending grant of responsible government to the Transvaal." His Majesty's Government propose to adhere to the policy already declared to Parliament.

  Repatriation Proclamation.
  MR. BOTTOMLEY: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will lay upon the Table a copy of the Chinese translation of the repatriation notice now being issued to the coolies working in the Transvaal mines. Will the hon. Gentleman also lay on the Table a copy of the Chinese translation, so that we may have an opportunity of examining it and seeing if thore are any terminological inexactitudes?
  MR. CHURCHILL: If the hon. Member wishes to impart an element of humour to our proceedings, he should select a somewhat more original point. The Secretary of State will ask that a copy of the notice in the Chinese language should be sent by mail from South Africa, in order that the hon. Member may have an opportunity of comparing it with the English version, and of forming an opinion for himself upon the style and accuracy of the translation.

  Papers on Repatriation.
  MR. LEHMANN: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, and if so, when, the correspondence between the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Government of the Transvaal, with reference to the repatriation of the Chinese coolies on the Rand and the issue of the proclamation, will be laid before the House.
  MR. CHURCHILL: I am not yet in a position to name a date. The Secretary of State will consider how soon publication may conveniently take place.

  Government "Act of Benevolence."
  MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, with reference to the notification addressed to Chinese Indentured labourers on the Witwatersrand gold mines, if he will state upon what grounds the means provided by the Government for repatriation are described in the notification as an exceptional act of benevolence which ought to command gratitude.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The object of this and similar language in the proclamation is to assure the Chinese coolies that the Imperial Government, while willing to provide relief in exceptional cases, has no desire to incite them to leave their work, and will bear no malice against those who do not avail themselves of the facilities offered. In view of the fact that it is the British taxpayer who will bear any charges which may be involved, the word "benevolence" does not seem to me to be ill chosen; nor would gratitude be wholly ill-placed on the part of Chinese thus enabled by the intervention of a distant community to return unexpectedly to their native land.

  The Flogging of Coolies.
  MR. MACKARNESS: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Secretary of State is aware that in the recent proceedings for a habeas corpus taken by Li Kui Yu, in the Supreme Court of the Transvaal, on March 30th, against Mr. Jameson, the superintendent of foreign labour, Mr. Jameson deposed on oath that he had reported to Lord Selborne that Robert Herman Witthauer, the compound manager in the Consolidated Langlaagte Mine, had admitted to him, in the presence of witnesses, that he had himself flogged coolies, and that Li Kui Yu was not to blame; and whether he can say why, in the face of this admission of guilt by Witthauer in the presence of witnesses, the law officers of the Crown in the Transvaal have so far failed to institute criminal proceedings against him.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State has seen Mr. Jameson's statement. The Secretary of State is informed that the law officers of the Transvaal Government doubt whether the evidence as yet obtained is sufficient for ensuring a successful prosecution, but he has telegraphed urging Lord Selborne to cause every effort to be made to prosecute.

  Repatriation of Chinese Coolies.
  MR. DALZIEL: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, under the proclamation that has been issued in respect to Chinese labour, the final decision in individual cases rests with the Superintendent of Foreign Labour; and is it still possible for the Chinese who so desire to be repatriated free of expense to themselves.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The responsibility for deciding upon individual cases is placed upon the Superintendent of Foreign Labour, subject to any instructions he may receive from the Lieutenant-Governor. The policy of His Majesty's Government is, and has always been, that no Chinaman who wishes to purchase his discharge under Clause 14 of the Labour Importation Ordinance should be prevented merely through want of funds. Under the notice which has been read to the House the Chinese labourers will be expected to make a contribution in addition to their savings towards the expense as a proof of the genuineness of their desire to return. But my hon. friend may rest assured that these provisions will not be allowed to defeat the main intentions of His Majesty's Government.
  MR. DALZIEL: Then may I take it that the reply is in the affirmative to the Question that the policy of the Government is that a Chinaman who wishes to to return, even without any contribution whatever, can return?
  MR. CHURCHILL: Yes, Sir. I did not desire to imply that a contribution of any kind would be necessary in all cases, provided that the bona fide desire of the Chinaman to return was very plainly made manifest.
  MR. LEHMANN: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies

  967
  what laws of the Transvaal are referred to in the recent proclamation to the Chinese coolies in the mines as punishing any attempt to deceive the Superintendent of Foreign Labour by misrepresentation; and whether His Majesty's Government will consider the advisability of issuing to the Chinese coolies on the Rand a further proclamation, to be signed by the High Commissioner himself, in order to explain that the repatriation proclamation is in no sense intended to intimidate them or to doter them from applying for repatriation.
  MR. CHURCHILL: I presume the reference is to the ordinary law. The Secretary of State proposes to await the results of the present proclamation which he believes will give full effect to the intentions of His Majesty's Government.
  MR. LEHMANN: Are we to take it that these representations are to be made on oath?
  MR. CHURCHILL: I do not think so, but that is merely my personal opinion.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any official information showing that the West Rand Mines and the West Rand Consolidated Mines have been ordered to be closed in consequence of the determination of the Government to proceed with the repatriation of Chinese coolies; and whether he can state the number of skilled whites who will be thrown out of employment from this cause.
  MR. CHURCHILL: I have no official information on this point; but the closing down of mines, as my hon. friend will perceive, cannot well be a consequence of a policy of repatriation which has not yet become operative.
  MR. LONSDALE: Then when will it become operative?
  MR. CHURCHILL: The notice is to he posted to-morrow morning, and it will therefore be operative in a few days.
  MR. BELLOCasked whether the Crown had power, as Mr. Kruger certainly had, to prevent the
  968
  shutting down of the mines by force, and to keep them open if such a threat was made.
  MR. CHURCHILL: I should hesitate to reply to a Question involving such, grave and complex legal points as to whether the Crown has or has not power, in a great public emergency such as occurred in the South African Republic on the outbreak of war, to make considerable inroads on the ordinary rights of private property. But I should have thought it was undesirable that the Government should undertake the management of derelict gold mines which would not be placed at their disposal unless it had been found that every other method of making them profitable had failed.

  Illiterate Chinese and the Proclamation.
  Mr. MACKARNESS: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that many of the Chinese working in the Transvaal mines are illiterate persons, and what steps will be taken in their cases to enable them to understand the repatriation proclamation and to prepare the petition for repatriation required by the proclamation; through what channels in each mine these petitions from the Chinese coolies are to reach the Superintendent of Foreign Labour; and what security has been taken to see that the coolies are not intimidated into not sending petitions.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The conduct of the whole matter will be entrusted to Mr. Jamieson and his officers, who, the Secretary of State is convinced, may be trusted to see that the coolies receive fair opportunities of understanding and accepting the offers of the proclamation. I may add that the work of Mr. Jamieson will be carried on under the supervision of Lord Selborne, and we have every confidence that full and bona fide effect will be given to the policy the Government have laid down.

  Mail Communication with the West Indies.
  MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the lack of facilities for mail communication between Great Britain and the northern islands of the West Indies; and whether,

  969
  seeing that at present mail opportunities only occur for these islands once a month, he will lay papers relating to the negotiations which resulted in the abandonment of the previous mail contract.
  MR. CHURCHILL: It is not strictly correct to say that mail opportunities for the northern islands of the West Indies occur only once a month at present, but His Majesty's Government have the question of the West Indian mail arrangements now under their consideration. The circumstances which led to the decision not to continue a West Indian mail contract are fully explained in the despatch to the Governors of the West Indian Colonies which was laid before Parliament in May last.

  Colonial Conference.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can state the date that has been fixed for the assembly of the Colonial Conference next year; and whether the subject of preferential fiscal relations between all parts of the Empire will be one of the questions for consideration at the Conference.
  MR. CHURCHILL: It is proposed that the next Colonial Conference will meet on April 15th, 1907. It will be open to the Conference to discuss any matter of Imperial interest.

  South African War Contribution.
  MR. T. F. RICHARDS: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can give the names of the person or persons who were responsible for the arrangement that the South African mine owners would contribute £30,000,000 towards the cost of the South African war; and, further, if he has any information bearing upon this subject to lay before the House.
  MR. CHURCHILL: I must refer the hon. Member to my Answers of March 13th and March 21st to similar Questions.† For his convenience I have given instructions that copies of these replies should be sent to him from the Colonial Office.

  Education in Ceylon.
  Mr. C. E. SCHWANN: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of
  † See (4) Debates cliii., 1093–4; cliv., 367.
  970
  State for the Colonies if he will state from what date it is intended to institute the furnishing of quarterly Returns by superintendents regarding the attendance at school of estate children in Ceylon; whether instructions have yet been issued for the inspection of estate schools by Government officers, as recommended by the Elementary Education Commission; and whether the legislative provisions referred to in the 55th paragraph of the Commissioners' Report will be included in the proposed measure dealing with country districts, and when such measure is likely to be introduced.
  MR. CHURCHILL: I would refer the hon. Member to the Secretary of State's despatch of March 1st which has been published in Cd. 2873. I do not think that I can add anything to the position as there stated, except that the introduction of educational changes in a Colony like Ceylon must necessarily take some time.

  Irrigation Expenditure in India.
  MR. T. HART-DAVIES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the fact that only a little more than eighty-one lacs were spent on irrigation during 1905–6, though the Budget allotment for that purpose was 125 lacs; and whether, considering the importance of irrigation in India, he will take measures to secure the full Budget allotment being spent this year.
  THE UNDER - SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. JOHN ELLIS,): My attention has been drawn to the lapse in the grant to which the hon. Member refers. I do not think it implies any relaxation in the efforts which the Government of India are making to carry out their programme of irrigation works. But in the construction of large and costly works, changes in the design or general arrangements involving postponement of expenditure, are occasionally found necessary, and it is then difficult to avoid failure to spend the whole grant allotted. I will call the attention of the Government of India to the subject.

  Cemeteries in India—;Consecration Fees.
  SIR J. JARDINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for

  971
  India whether, on the consecration of buildings or cemeteries on behalf of the Church of England or the Church of Rome, any fee to bishop or registrar or other expenditure is paid out of the revenue of India.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I cannot answer certainly, but will make inquiry.

  English Churches in India.
  SIR J. JARDINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether, on account of religious objections made to the Government of India about members of the Church of England, and members of the Church of Scotland using the same building as a place of worship, the Government of India has been put to the expense of erecting any now churches; if so, what is the capital expense; and whether any increase of annual charge on the revenues of India has been so caused.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: For the reasons explained in the Papers presented to Parliament in 1900 as Command Paper, No. 129, new churches for the use of Presbyterian troops have been sanctioned at eight stations in India, to be built at Government expense. I am not aware of the exact amount spent upon them. The annual charge for the repair and maintenance of these churches, which are Government buildings, will fall on public funds, but I am unable to state what its amount will be.

  Army Distribution in India.
  MR. T. HART-DAVIES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if he can present a Return giving a list of the cantonments, barracks, or military posts which are to be established under the Army redistribution scheme of the Commander-in-Chief in India; and whether a map, showing the proposed changes, could be placed on the Table for the information of the House.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I am unable to present the Return and map asked for, as details of cantonments, barracks and military posts to be established under the Army redistribution scheme are not yet settled.

  State of Bengal.
  MR. C. J. O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Prime
  972
  Minister a Question of which I have given private notice. Is it possible for the right hon. Gentleman to give the House an early opportunity to consider the present disturbed condition of a great Indian population of 50,000,000 in Bengal, and the acute discontent in that province caused by numerous illegalities and violences to a people peacefully protesting against an arbitrary partition of their country; whether a great meeting of the National Convention, numbering thousands of delegates was not broken up by the police?
  MR. SPEAKER: This is not an opportunity for the hon. Member to give information, only to seek it.
  MR. C. J. O'DONNELL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the meeting was being held on private ground, and that a number of persons were brutally assaulted by the police with batons in the presence of two members of the Legislative Council of Bengal?
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I think my hon. friend will see that notice ought to be given of a specific Question of that kind, especially when it is not addressed to the Minister who is most particularly conversant with the affairs of India. But, in answer to the Question of which my hon. friend has given notice, I have to say that I do not understand that the present condition of Bengal answers to the description given in the Question. My hon. friend may rest assured that the Secretary of State is giving close attention to the proceedings in the province, and there seems to be no such emergency as would justify the interruption of public business for discussing it at the present moment.
  MR. REES: May I ask whether it is not the fact that the advices from India are by no means of one tenor, and that the state of Bengal has been grossly exaggerated.
  [No Answer was given.]

  Turkey and Egypt.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I wish to ask the Secretary for Foreign Affairs a Question with regard to the Egyptian frontier. We have been scrupulously careful not to embarrass the

  973
  Government by asking Questions on the subject, and if the right hon. Gentleman, consistent with the public service, can give the House and the country some information on the point, I am sure that there will be very general satisfaction.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir EDWARD GREY,): I quite agree that, from all that has appeared in the Press, and in view of the fact that a similar Question is to be put in another place to-day, some information on the subject should be given to the House.
  The British Ambassador on Thursday presented a Note at Constantinople requesting the Porte to agree to the demarkation by Great Britain and Turkey of the line from El Rafah to the head of the Gulf of Akabah on the basis of the telegram from the Grand Vizier to the Khedive of April 8th, 1892, and pending a settlement to withdraw his troops from Tabah. We have asked for a favourable reply in ten days' time.
  To explain this Note it will perhaps be convenient that I should give a short summary of the negotiations which have preceded it. Early in the year Egyptian troops were sent to occupy certain posts in the interior of the Sinai peninsula, including Tabah on the western coast of the Gulf of Akabah. On arrival at the latter post it was found that 150 Turkish troops were already in occupation. His Majesty's Government protested against the occupation by the Turks of Tabah, a place unquestionably within the Sinai peninsula, and pointed out to the Porte that if any doubt existed as to the frontier line a joint Delimitation Commission was the best solution of the question. On February 13th, Lord Cromer reported that the Turkish commandant at Akabah was demanding the withdrawal of the Egyptian troops from the Faroun Island, an island in the northern part of the Gulf of Akabah. His Majesty's ship Diana was instructed to proceed to Faroun to protect the Egyptain post there. After further representations the Sultan decided to send two officers from Constantinople to inquire into the matter, and they left for Egypt on February 20th. It was hoped the Turkish Commissioners would discuss the matter, or form part of a joint Com-
  974
  mission of delimitation. The Turkish Commissioners, however, left Cairo and proceeded to Beirut without having, communicated with the Egyptian Government, the Khedive, or Lord Cromer. On March 21st the Turkish Ambassador made a communication to the effect that as Tabah was a dependency of Akabah no objection could naturally be made to the presence there of Turkish troops, and that it was considered unnecessary to send officers there from Egypt to institute an inquiry into the question. The Sultan then authorised Mukhtar Pasha to negotiate with the Government of Egypt, and at his own request the negotiations were transferred to Cairo. Mukhtar Pasha had an interview with the Khedive, and demanded on behalf of his Government that the boundary of the Sinai peninsula should run from El Rafah to Suez and from Suez to Akabah. The Khedive in reply to these representations suggested that the telegram of April 8th, 1892, should betaken as the basis of a settlement, that the line should run from El Rafah to Akabah, joining the coast three miles west of Fort Akabah, and that the remainder of the line of frontier should be demarcated by competent surveyors. The Grand Vizer's reply to the Khedive was to the effect that the Gulf of Akabah and the Sinai peninsula were outside the territory defined in the Imperial Firman, that the telegram of April 8th, 1892, only referred to the western side of the Sinai peninsula, that the interpretation of that telegram was a matter which only concerned the Imperial Ottoman Government, that Akabah had been adopted as the headquarters of the district of Akabah, and the hope was expressed that no occasion will be afforded for interference.
  I think I need only add that the delay, the extent of the demands which have been put forward by the Porte, and the tone and character of the Turkish communications to the Khedive have made it impossible to defer a settlement indefinitely, and that is why we are now pressing our original demand for a joint delimitation. I think I may claim on behalf of his Majesty's Government that they have shown great patience and moderation; but the latest developments of the Turkish demands, if admitted, will place Turkey in a position which will be a real danger not only to

  975
  the freedom of the Suez Canal, but also to the liberties of Egypt and of the Khedivial dynasty. His Majesty's Government cannot be indifferent to such issues, and the importance of them makes it necessary that we should press for a settlement on the lines of the frontier of Egypt as it has existed undisputed and undisturbed from a period many years previous to the British occupation.
  MR. LUPTON: Is not the matter one eminently suitable for reference to The Hague Tribunal.
  [No reply was given].

  Bunder Abbas—;Cable Communication.
  MR. T. HART-DAVIES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that difficulties have arisen with regard to the establishment of a telegraph station at Bunder Abbas; and what steps it is proposed to take to settle the matter and secure the linking-up of Bunder Abbas by cable.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RUNCIMAN,for Sir EDWARD GREY): Yes, Sir. From the latest information at our disposal it appears that His Majesty's resident at Bushire is hopeful of obtaining a satisfactory settlement.

  Germany and the Sinai Peninsula.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the German Government has given an assurance that it would not be able to support the Porte on the question at issue respecting the Sinai Peninsula.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: We are informed by the German Government that there is no foundation for the statements which have appeared in the Press that the action of the Porte respecting the Egyptian frontier has received any encouragement.

  The Tea Duty.
  MR. DALZIEL: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been drawn to the difficulties which have arisen in consequence of the alterations made in the
  976
  date fixed on which the reduction of the tea duty would become effective; and whether he will give such instructions as will prevent any hardship or loss to these engaged in the trade.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. ASQUITH,): Yes; and I have, in consultation with the Customs, made arrangements which are, I understand, regarded by the trade generally as satisfactory.

  Income Tax Inquiry.
  MR. LAIDLAWI beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider the advisability of enabling the Select Committee on Income Tax Graduation to make inquiry regarding the number of persons in this country who have to pay a second tax on incomes earned in distant parts of the British Empire, and as to the number of persons who are deterred from taking up residences in this country by the imposition of this second tax; also to inquire into the number of limited liability companies trading with India and the Colonies who do not establish head offices in this country for the same reason; and to report whether a substantial rebate should be given on all incomes which have already paid income-tax within the Empire.
  MR. ASQUITH: I think that the House generally will be anxious that the Committee should carry out their inquiry and report with as little delay as possible, and for this reason it does not seem to me desirable to burden the terms of reference with directions to investigate the matters referred to in the Question, which have not an immediate bearing on the subject of graduation and differentiation.

  Flogging in Prisons.
  MR. RICHARD HAZLETON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that in local prisons in Ireland and Scotland flogging as a method of punishment for certain breaches of prison discipline is not permitted under any circumstances and whether he will consider the advisability of having this prohibition extended to local prisons in England.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GLADTONE,): Yes, Sir. The facts as to the Scotch and Irish prisons were fully considered when the present arrangement was settled by Parliament in 1898; but it was felt that, in view of the much larger size of the English prisons and the different character of the prison population, it was necessary to maintain the power to inflict corporal punishment in a restricted class of cases. Corporal punishment can only be inflicted for mutiny or for gross personal violence to prison officers, only after inquiry on oath by the visiting committee, and only when the sentence has been confirmed by the Secretary of State. The general opinion of persons who have a good knowledge of the character of the English prison population—;and in this opinion I concur—;is that this restricted power used only in extreme cases is necessary to protect from danger to life and limb the officers who are exposed to savage attack.

  Employment of Women—;Factory Order.
  MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department upon what representations he has made the Draft Order (Factory and Workshops Act, 1901) re-employment between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. for women and young persons in factories in the county of London in which bookbinding is carried on, workrooms in which millinery work and dressmaking is carried on in connection with drapers' retail establishments within the city of Manchester and the borough of Salford, and factories and workshops in which the manufacture of straw hats and bonnets is carried on; whether the workpeople affected by the Order have been consulted; and, further, why the two first sections of the Order are only of local application.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have issued the draft Order in consequence of a Report submitted by the Chief Inspector of Factories embodying the results of a careful inquiry that had been made into the cases in which the 9 to 9 period of employment is being worked under existing Orders and suggesting for consideration whether it was necessary to keep these Orders alive any longer. The draft Order, which would repeal one of the
  978
  existing Orders at once and the remainder after a year's grace, has been specially sent to the manufacturers affected and trade associations, including workers' associations, so that any objections to the proposed repeal may be fully stated and considered. The first two paragraphs of the Schedule are only of local application because the existing Orders are so limited.
  MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: Will the right hon. Gentleman give a list of the workers' associations to which the Order has been sent?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, Sir.
  In reply to Mr. BYLES, MR. GLADSTONE added that it would be open to the workers to make any representations they wished.

  Regent Street Arrests.
  MR. ASHLEYhad given notice to ask the Home Secretary whether his attention had been drawn to the fact that in the case of Mrs. Eva D'Angely, as in that of Messrs. Gerothwohl and Lavalette, the presiding magistrate at Marlborough Street, while acquitting the accused, did not in any way censure the police for the arrest; whether he had received any report from the magistrate on the police evidence, and if so, what action he proposed to take on it. The hon. Member said that, at the request of the right hon. Gentleman, he desired to postpone this Question. However, he wished to ask whether the constable who arrested this lady was still on duty in Regent Street, and whether the right hon. Gentleman had given instructions that he should no longer be employed on that beat pending investigation.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have made and am making very careful inquiry into the subject, and I have received a full report from the magistrate who heard the case. I would suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he should defer this Question until I am able to answer the case fully. Meanwhile, I must tell him frankly that I am unable to issue the order he suggests.
  LORD R. CECIL: It is a most important Question, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not overlook it.

  Prison Officials' Pay.
  Mr. SUMMERBELL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the difference of pay existing between the subordinate ranks of the convict and local prisons; and whether it is his intention to go into the matter with a view to some improvement taking place in the remuneration of those employed in local prisons.
  MR. GLADSTONE: A large number of petitions on this subject have been received from the warders of local prisons, and are now under consideration. They raise questions of importance and difficulty which cannot be hastily settled; and I can only say that they will receive the most careful consideration from the Prison Commissioners and from myself.

  Treatment of Child Offenders.
  MR. H. J. TENNANT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has now received replies from the magistrates and police which will enable him to state what steps he is prepared to take, by legislation or otherwise, to secure the provision of separate courts for children, their separate detention in places other than the police court before trial, and the appointment of probation officers.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have received a large number of replies to my circular, most of them of a satisfactory character; and I hope shortly to be able to state what further stops I propose to take, particularly in the important matter of probation officers.

  Metropolitan Police.
  MR. SEAVERNS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that the members of the Metropolitan Police Force are the only body of public servants in London who do not receive the privilege of one day's rest in seven, and will he consider the propriety of granting this privilege to the members of this force; and whether it would be possible, by a rearrangement of duties, to provide the additional holidays without increased expense, or, failing this, what would be the increased annual cost necessitated by the change.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have already stated, in reply to Questions in this House that I am sorry not to be able to grant additional leave as suggested. There is no possible re-arrangement of duties by which the privilege could be given without increased expense, the amount of which, as already stated, would be about £150,000 a year.
  MR. MYER: Is it possible to give the police a fortnight instead of ten days' annual holiday?
  [No Answer was returned.]

  Return of Imports and Exports at Prices of 1900.
  MR. BECKETT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he has any information in his possession which supports the statement in the recent Return of Imports and Exports at prices of 1900 [Code 2894], that the price of machinery has varied in the same way and to the same degree as that of iron and steel; and, if so, will he give particulars.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon Boroughs): The Return contains no statement of the kind referred to. The hon. Member appears to have misapprehended the paragraph which explains the assumptions made for the purpose of reducing the margin of error that would have boon caused by assuming that the course of price of articles whose average values are not ascertainable, has corresponded exactly to that of the whole group of articles whose average values have been ascertained. If the hon. Member desires further explanation perhaps he will call at the Board of Trade.

  One Man Companies.
  MR. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the results in connection with what are known as one man companies, he will take into consideration the advisability of introducing legislation at an early date, in order to stop or mitigate this abuse of the law relating to limited companies.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I am expecting to receive very shortly the Report of the Departmental Committee appointed

  981
  to enquire what amendments are required in the Companies Acts. When I have received the Report the subject of the amendment of the Company Laws generally will have my consideration, including, of course, the point referred to in the Question.

  Coal Exports to Germany.
  Mr. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is able to state the quantity of coal produced in Great Britain which is purchased annually by the German Government for naval purposes; and whether he has made any calculation of the saving to the German Government that will result from the remission of the export duty on coal.
  MR. LLOYD-GEOEGE: The information desired is not in the possession of the Board of Trade, and the data are not available for the suggested calculation. I am not prepared to admit the implication in the Question as to the incidence of the export duty on coal.
  MR. LONSDALE: Is it not possible to say what quantity of coal is purchased in this country by the German Navy?
  MR. LLOYD-GEOEGE: That is not the Question on the Paper. I can give the hon. Member the quantity of coal exported by this country to Germany, but I cannot from the data in our possession show the quantity intended for naval purposes.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTEE: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman give the amount of Welsh steam coal, which is the same thing?
  MR. LLOYD-GEOEGE: That is quite a different matter. If the right hon. Gentleman wants that information I will try and get it.

  Death Certificates issued to Friendly Collecting Societies.
  MR. SUMMERBELL: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he can give the number of death certificates issued to relatives of deceased members of friendly collecting societies during the period 1st January to 31st March, 1906; the
  982
  number of death certificates issued to relatives of deceased members of trade unions during the period 1st January to 31st March, 1906; the number of death certificates issued to relatives of deceased assurants in the assurance companies during the period 1st January to 31st March, 1906; and whether he will state as to why a uniform charge of 1s. or 1s. 3d. per certificate of death should not apply equally in respect to claims on assurance companies as to claims on friendly collecting societies.
  THE PEESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, (Mr. JOHN BURNS,): I am informed by the Registrar-General that the certificates referred to are issued by local registrars only, and that no returns of the numbers of such certificates are or over have been received at the Central Office. He further states that if Returns were required they would have to be specially collected from more than 2,000 registrars in England and Wales alone, and, when obtained, the certificates could not be classified according to the descriptions in the Question. He adds that the value of such a Return would not be commensurate with the trouble and expense of its preparation. As regards the last part of the Question, I may point out that the charges referred to are fixed by statutory provisions which do not apply to assurance companies.

  Registrars of Deaths and the Press.
  MR. CHARLES ROBEETS: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether any Order was issued in 1904 prohibiting the registrars of births, deaths, and marriages from communicating particulars of the deaths occurring in their districts for publication in the local Press; and whether, if such an Order is now in force, there would be any objection to rescinding it.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: There was no new Order on this subject in 1904, but in that year the Registrar-General issued a Circular with a view to the stricter observance of a regulation which had long been in force, and which forbids a registrar of births and deaths to publish any statement of facts respecting the registration of births or deaths

  983
  without the permission of the Registrar-General. I am not prepared to interfere with the discretion of the Registrar-General in the matter.

  Grove Park Workhouse—;Engineers' Salaries.
  MR. BARKER: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he has decided upon what action he will take in insisting on the Greenwich Board of Guardians carrying out the decision of the Local Government Board with reference to the increase in the salaries of the engineers at the Grove Park Workhouse; and if he is aware that the Report sent with reference to the irregular disposition of stores at this workhouse is not the Report of the original Committee that dealt with this Question.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: No sanction on the part of the Local Government Board was necessary to enable the guardians to pay the increased salaries to these officers out of their own funds. The object in applying for the Board's sanction was to enable the guardians to obtain repayment of the amount from the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, but, as sanction was not given, no such repayment will be made. I am aware that two Committees reported to the guardians with reference to the irregular disposal of stores at the workhouse. The officers in question appear to have improperly received meals from the stores, and I have expressed regret that their salaries should have been increased a few months after this was discovered. I have added that I think the guardians should consider whether the additional payments should not be discontinued.
  MR. CROOKS: In the event of the money being voted out of the local rates the Local Government Board will have power to surcharge it?
  MR. JOHN BURNS: Not necessarily.

  Teachers and Vaccination.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether unvaccinated persons are allowed to act as teachers in public elementary schools in any European country save the United Kingdom; and, if so, which are the countries
  984
  in which the employment of such persons is permitted?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Mr. BIRRELL,): I do not possess the requisite information for replying to the Question; but as the matter is one of general public interest and importance I will ask my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will be so good as to obtain as full information as possible upon the point—;including also the question of re-vaccination.

  Secondary Schools—;Denominational Disqualifications.
  MR. LEHMANN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education what restrictions, if any, with regard to the religious denomination of pupils or teachers and public control over the management at present exist in the secondary schools recognised as eligible for grants by the Board; whether a local authority is allowed in the allocation of its grants of aid to distinguish between such schools on the ground of religion; and whether the Government contemplates, by legislation or otherwise, to secure that after a certain date grants shall be given only to schools in which there is no denominational disqualification of teachers or pupils, and which are subject to popular control.
  MR. BIRRELL: With the hon. Member's permission, I will answer this Question as a written one.

  King's Scholarship Examination.
  MR. BRIDGEMAN: I beg to ask the President of; the Board of Education whether he is aware that the last King's Scholarship Examination was held early in December last, and that the result has not yet been published; whether, in view of the fact that successful candidates have to go into college in September next, of the difficulty of finding places in college, and of the anxiety caused by the delay, he will take steps to expedite the publication of the result; and will he say whether there is any reason for the delay.
  MR. BIRRELL: I must refer the hon. Member to a reply I gave to a similar Question on March 13th last.† I may,
  † See (4) Debates, cliii., 1106.

  985
  however, add that I hope that it may be possible to publish the results of the examinations held in December last and at Easter somewhat earlier than I then anticipated.

  Education Bill Finance.
  MR. ASHLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether, in arriving at the sum of £1,000,000 provided in the Education Bill, he based his estimate on the prospective increase of local burdens consequent upon the Bill, or on the existing amount of the education rate; and on what principle of calculation he has specified the sum mentioned which apparently provides only a sum of £70 for each voluntary school in England and Wales.
  MR. BIRRELL: I must refer the hon. Member to my Answer to a similar Question which he asked me on April 26th.† I have nothing to add to that Answer. I do not think it in the public interest to enter upon any argumentative defence or explanation of provisions in the Education Bill by means of Question and Answer, which can better be dealt with in Committee of the House upon the Bill.
  LORD BALCAREES: When can we have the basis of these figures? Will it be so that we can make inquiries before the Committee stage is reached?
  MR. BIRRELL: I will communicate with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject.

  Hull Education Committee—;Offer of Scholarships.
  SIR SEYMOUR KING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the Hull Education Committee offered free scholarships by an entrance examination for boys and girls who wished to enter upon an engagement as pupil teachers in any public elementary school in the city in the years 1905, 1906, and 1907, tenable for two years at a secondary school to the successful candidates at such examination, and subsequently voted bursaries to successful candidates of the value of ten pounds each for the like period, such bursaries to be paid to the parents
  † See col. 28.
  986
  or guardians towards their maintenance; that twelve Roman Catholic girls, children of ratepayers, who were successful candidates and intending to become pupil teachers in Roman Catholic schools, desired to receive their education as stated in their application at the recognised Roman Catholic pupil teachers' centre (an institution which has been erected and equipped by the Roman Catholic body out of their own funds at a cost of £8,000), and were deprived of their bursaries by the action of the Non-comformist majority of the Hull City Council on the ground that they must attend a council secondary school; and will he say whether the Hull Roman Catholic secondary school is recognised by the Board of Education as a secondary school without any limitation; whether the Board of Education has only temporarily recognised the council schools as secondary schools, and affixed as a condition of such recognition that they be brought up to standard by next year; and what steps he proposes to take to ensure that due consideration shall be given to denominations who are doing the work of secondary education so as to comply with the Education Act, 1902.
  MR. BIRKELL: I have no official information as to the particulars mentioned by the hon. Member in the first part of his Question. The Hull Roman Catholic secondary school has been recognised by the Board for the school year 1905–1906. In regard to the continued recognition of three council schools in Hull as secondary schools, the Board have communicated certain conditions as to necessary improvements in the teaching staff and other matters, on the fulfilment of which that recognition must depend. The concluding paragraph raises a somewhat difficult point as to the limitations upon local authorities' powers in regard to the point at issue, under existing legislation.
  SIR SEYMOUR KING: Does the right hon. Gentleman approve of Roman Catholics being deprived altogether of education in the secondary schools.
  MR. BIRRELL: Certainly not, Sir.

  Provided Schools without Religious Teaching.
  MR. SOARES: I beg to ask the President of

  987
  the Board of Education whether he can state the number of provided schools in England in which there is no religious teaching; and whether he can state the usual characteristics of the religious teaching which is given in provided schools.
  MR. BIRRELL: I have no information on the subject. But a Return has been moved for in another place which, so soon as it is completed, will provide a considerable amount of information upon the subject.
  LORD R. CECIL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the Return will be completed?
  MR. BIRRELL: I am as anxious as the noble Lord that it should be completed as soon as possible. But I have not the least control over the matter.

  Zoological Gardens.
  Mr. MYER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Government, taking into consideration the crowded state of the Zoological Gardens at holiday time, and the danger of panic arising, will make it one of the conditions of their tenancy that the Zoological Society shall in the interest of public safety construct an additional subway connecting the northern portion of the gardens with the southern.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. MCKENNA,): I do not think the facts of the case would justify the course proposed by my hon. friend, but I understand that the society have in contemplation the provision of an additional subway.

  Irish Land Act—;Treasury Interventions.
  MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury to state by whom the Treasury is moved to intervene in cases under the Irish Land Act of 1903; can it intervene motu proprio; will it immediately test the validity of the decision in King-Harman and Hayes, or any of the numerous cases now ruled by that decision, in which money was paid as price and bonus on house property to a person to whom that property did not belong, by a fictitious sale to a person to whom the house
  988
  property already belonged; how does the Treasury insure that every transaction represents a real sale; is money advanced by the Treasury in Great Britain to finance transactions of this character; and will he name any statutory authority for the Treasury making itself a party to, and the State responsible for such transactions in Ireland.
  MR. MCKENNA: The Treasury intervene in cases under the Land Purchase Act of 1903, of which they get notice from (1) the Judicial Commissioner (2) the Estates Commissioners or (3) the Land Judge, and in which public funds are or may be affected. They were not parties to the case of King-Harman and Hayes, and I gave in my Answer on Wednesday last† the reason why the Treasury do not consider that there is any ground on which they could intervene. I do not feel able to add anything, to that Answer.
  MR. GINNELL: But how do they distinguish between these transactions and other cases of swindling?
  MR. MCKENNA: The Treasury has to see whether any liability is likely to accrue to public funds, and in the King-Harman case they were informed that the security was adequate.

  Island of Lewis—;Shader Landing Place.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state the cause of the delay in proceeding with the construction of a landing place at Shader Point, Island of Lewis, for which the Congested Districts Board made a grant some time since.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. SINCLAIR,): On the 5th January, 190G, the county council made certain proposals for carrying out this work with the aid of a grant offered by the Congested Districts Board on 4th June, 1901, and on 18th January the Board consented. The matter therefore lies with the county and parish councils who have not made any statement as to their action.

  Lochs School Board.
  Mr. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware
  † See cols. 577–8.

  989
  that the election of a school board for the parish of Lochs, Island of Lewis, was recently rendered void through some of the nomination papers not reaching the returning officer by the date specified; and, seeing that this was due to the notice of the election not being posted on the school door sufficiently early, will the returning officer be asked to arrange for the election notices to be posted on the school door in future, early enough to admit of nomination papers sent by post from the Park District reaching Stornoway in time to be valid, especially having regard to the fact that a delay of some days occurs before letters posted in some parts of the Park District reach Stornoway.
  MR. SINCLAIR: The Department is not aware that the recent election failed through any irregularity on the part of the returning officer. A copy of the hon. Member's Question has, however, been sent to the Clerk of the School Board, who is to act again as returning officer at the new election which has been ordered, and the attention of the latter has been specially called to the provisions of the Departmental General Order which relate to the nomination of candidates.

  Uig Valuation Roll.
  MR.WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland, whether he is aware that out of 670 persons on the valuation roll for the parish of Uig, Island of Lewis, no less than 546 have no vote for school board elections, by reason of their rentals being less than £4; and, seeing that this results in schools being placed under the control of the factor and chiefly large farmers, Mr. Orrock, the proprietor's factor, being chairman of three of the four school boards in the island, will he take such steps as may be necessary to extend the school board franchise to all persons entitled to vote at Parliamentary and county council elections.
  MR. SINCLAIR: I have to refer the hon. Member to my Answer to his Question of 26th March. Pending the issue of the Return, I can express no opinion as to the correctness of the figures quoted by the hon. Member. The composition of the board is as follows:—;
  † See (4) Debates, cliv., 834.
  990
  one farmer, two United Free Church ministers, one crofter, one merchant, one factor, one hotel keeper and small farmer. It is therefore not the case that the schools are placed under "the control of the factor and chiefly largo farmers."

  Hamana Croft Dispute.
  MR. JOHN DEWAE: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he is aware that the Congested Districts Board in May last year, by their factor, let a croft at Hamana, Glendale, to John Campbell, Glasphein, Glendale; that John Campbell has taken possession of this croft, and that the Congested Districts Board have applied for interdict against him; and having regard to the difficulty a crofter has in opposing the Congested Districts Board in a court of law, will he have inquiries made into the case, and in the meantime ask for proceedings to be delayed.
  MR. SINCLAIR: Inquiries are being made.

  Fees on Appointment as Magistrates.
  SIR J. JARDINE: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland what fees are made by persons appointed to be justices of the peace, to whom paid, and for what services; and whether any distinction is made between nominated justices and justices ex officio.
  MR. SINCLAIR: For services in connection with intimation of appointment and attendance at administration of oaths a 5s. fee on qualifying is payable to the clerk of the peace by every justice of the peace.

  Report of the Crofters' Commission.
  MR. MORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will explain why the Report of the Crofters' Commission for 1905, which was laid upon the Table of the House on April 11th, has not yet been circulated or even supplied to the Library.
  MR. SINCLAIR: The printing of the Report has just been completed, and copies of the Report will be circulated this week.

  Scottish Local Government and Fishery Board Reports.
  MR. MORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will say

  991
  when the Annual Reports of the Local Government Board and the Fishery Board (Scotland) will be in the hands of Members.
  MR. SINCLAIR: The Report of the Fishery Board is in the printers' hands and will be published without delay; that of the Local Government Board is on the point of being finally adjusted and will probably be available to hon. Members about a month hence.

  Roxboro Boad School, Limerick.
  MR JOYCE: I beg to ask the Attorney-General for Ireland whether he can say who is now the tenant of the Roxboro Road School, Limerick; how long is the present tenant in occupation; are these premises held under any trust, or does the tenant occupy any official or public position or office.
  THE ATTORNEY - GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. CHERRY,): I have referred the hon. Members' Question to the Commissioners of Education in Ireland, and am informed by the secretary to that body that the next meeting of the Standing Committee will be held on the 10th inst., after which a Report will be forwarded to me. I shall communicate the substance of the Report to the hon. Member as soon as I receive it.
  MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland whether, during the progress of the recent general election, he wrote to the town clerk of Limerick to the effect that as soon as the elections were over he would take the case of the Roxboro Road School in hand; and, if so, what steps he has taken since

  County.

  Not physically evicted by Sheriff, but created Future Tenants by—;

  Physically evicted by sheriff.

  Totals.

  Land Law Act, 1881.

  Land Law Act, 1887 Section 7.

  Acceptance of court lease orargeement.

  Other means.

  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BRYCE,): The
  that time in fulfilment of that undertaking.
  MR. CHERRY: I have made full inquiries as to this matter, and find that the school referred to was originally built in 1837 at a cost of £1,672, of which sum the greater part was presented by the grand juries of the county and county of the city of Limerick. The school was discontinued in the year 1872, and the school buildings fell into dilapidation. Possession of these buildings was afterwards acquired by the incumbent of Trinity Church, Limerick, in consideration of a sum of £20 from a Mrs. Hall, who claimed ownership of same. Her title appears to have been doubtful, and ultimately the clergyman referred to agreed to pay an annual rent of £20 to the Commissioners of Education for same. The annual cost of repairs of the premises, however, exceeds this sum, so that the property is practically valueless; and the only endowment attached to the school consists of a sum of £63 1s. 6d. Consols and £64 3s. 7. cash. The cost of any legal proceedings by way of information or otherwise to settle a scheme for this school would most probably far exceed the total value of the property involved, and I have consequently decided not to institute any such proceedings.

  Future Tenants in Ireland.
  Mr. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will grant the following Return on the Paper in the name of the hon. Member for North Westmeath.
  Future Tenants (Ireland) —; Return showing, by counties, in the subjoined form, the number of persons now in Ireland excluded from the land courts as future tenants:—;
  Land Commission inform me that they have no materials from which they could

  993
  supply the information asked for, and I am therefore unable to grant the Return. It is obvious that the information could only be obtained, if at all. by exhaustive local inquiries extending over the whole of Ireland.

  Irish Teachers' Salaries.
  MR. MURPHY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the salaries of teachers of Irish primary schools are only two-thirds of English and four-sevenths of those of Scotch teachers; whether having regard to the difficulty of finding a sufficient supply of properly qualified teachers in some districts, he will take any steps to remedy this difference; and if so, at what time and in what manner he proposes to do so.
  MR. BRYCE: The Commissioners of National Education have furnished me with figures which show that the fact is substantially as stated in the first part of the Question so far as regards the masters, but that in the case of the mistresses the difference between Irish salaries and those in Great Britain is less marked. In the opinion of the Commissioners, these differences are largely due to the greater amount of local aid given in Great Britain, and to the fact that schools in Ireland are relatively far more numerous and consequently far smaller than in Great Britain. I have already stated that the whole question of National School teacher's salaries is to receive consideration, but I can make no further statement on the subject at present.

  Irish Representative Church Body's Estates.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what is the number, Poor Law valuation, and present rental of the landed estates held in Ireland, either as owners in fee or mortgagees, by the Irish Representative Church Body, the counties in which they are respectively situated, the amount of the mortgage on each estate, the number of such estates sold under the Land Purchase Acts, 1885, 1891, 1896, and 1903 respectively, with the average price paid in each case.
  MR. BRYCE: I am informed by the Land Commission that the only information asked for in this Question which they are in a position to give, is that relating to sales under the Land Purchase Acts by the Representative Church Body. Under the Ace of 1885, one holding in county Cork was sold in 1887, for £1,000, which amounted to twenty years purchase of the rent; and one holding in county Leitrim was sold in 1894 for £750, being seventeen years purchase. Under the Act of 1896, one holding in county Clare was sold in 1900 for £2,100, being twenty years purchase. Under the Act of 1903, one holding in county Kilkenny was sold in 1905 for £460, being twenty-three years purchase.

  Kerry Evicted Tenants.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland how many evicted tenants have been reinstated in county Kerry under the operation of the Land Act 1903; what estates are these situated on; how many other evicted tenants have sent in applications for reinstatement; and whether, seeing the disappointment and suffering caused to these people by the delay in having them reinstated, stops will be taken to give such further powers to the Estates Commissioners as they may need to reinstate every evicted tenant in his former holding in the shortest possible time.
  MR. BRYCE: The Estates Commissioners have received information of restoration, up to 30th April, of thirty-five evicted tenants in county Kerry, namely, twenty-five on the Warden Estate, two on the Listowel Estate, and one each on the Murphy, Harley, McCartie, Coltsman, Mahony, Day, Fitzgerald, and Sandes Estates. The Commissioners have received applications for reinstatement from 430 other evicted tenants in the same county. As I have already announced, an additional staff of inspectors to inquire into the claims of evicted tenants has now been appointed, and these will enter upon their work without delay, as I stated last Thursday.
  MR. FLAVIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman make representations to the Estates Commissioners not to sanction sales of estates unless the

  995
  untenanted lands on the estates are sold with them.
  MR. BRYCE: I will convey to the Commissioners any information the hon. Member may have, but I cannot interfere with their discretion.

  Rae Estate, Keel, County Kerry.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Congested Districts Board have inspected and offered a price for the Rae Estate, Keel, county Kerry, at present held by the Irish Church Body; whether that price has been several times refused by them; and whether, if tenants in congested districts who are willing to pay the price fixed by a Government valuer are thus prevented from getting the benefits of the Land Purchase Act by syndicates of this class, steps will be taken to have the law so amended as to give compulsory powers to the Congested Districts Board to deal with all such cases.
  MR. BRYCE: I am afraid that I am not in a position to add anything to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member's similar Question on 5th March.†

  Flogging in Irish Convict Prisons.
  MR. HAZLETON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that certain breaches of prison discipline in convict prisons in Ireland are punishable by flogging, whilst for exactly similar breaches of discipline in local prisons in England flogging is, under no circumstances, permitted; and whether, in view of this difference, he will consider the advisability of abolishing flogging altogether as a method of punishment for breaches of discipline in convict prisons.
  MR. BRYCE: I am informed that in both convict and local prisons in England flogging is legal and permitted for the offences of mutiny, incitement to mutiny, and gross personal violence to an officer or servant of the prison. In Ireland, flogging in local prisons is not legal in any circumstances; and flogging in convict prisons is in fact permitted for the same offences as in England, although
  † See (4) Debates, cliii., 56, 57.
  996
  its infliction is not confined by law to these particular cases. So far, therefore, as there is a difference, the use of this punishment is more restricted in Irish prisons than in English. As I informed the hon. Member recently, flogging is rarely resorted to in Ireland, one case, only having occurred in 1905.
  MR. HAZLETON: How many representations have been received from the Transvaal Government with regard to the flogging of British subjects in Irish prisons?
  MR. BRYCE: I have no knowledge of that.

  Lord De Vesci and Evicted Tenants.
  MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will instruct the Estates Commissioners to approach Lord De Vesci, Abbeyleix, who has recently succeeded to the property, with a view to the restoration of his evicted tenants, eleven in number, there being 400 acres of untenanted land on the estate.
  MR. BRYCE: The Estates Commissioners inform me that it is their intention to approach the owner in this case, in accordance with the regulations of 13th February last.

  Mrs. Adair's Mountmellick Estate.
  MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether agreements for purchase have reached the Estates Commissioners in connection with eight holdings on the estate of Mrs. Adair, near Mountmellick, Queen's County; and whether he is aware that one of those is in the occupation of a planter who came into possession since January, 1901; and can he say what course the Estates Commissioners propose taking in this case, in view of the fact that the evicted tenant is in the locality and claims his farm.
  MR. BRYCE: The Estates Commissioners inform me that agreements for purchase on this estate have recently been lodged with them. The tenancy in one of the cases is described as a "future tenancy" created in December, 1902. The course adopted by the Commissioners in the

  997
  case of recently created tenancies is indicated in my reply to the Question of the hon. Member for North Westmeath on Wednesday last. The Commissioners are unable to say what decision they may arrive at in this particular case until an inspector has visited the estate and reported on the case.

  Mullaghduff Evicted Tenant.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners have received an application for reinstatement and a resolution from the Derrylin Branch of the United Irish League on behalf of Patrick M'Avinne, an evicted tenant who was evicted from his farm in Mullaghduff, now held by Timothy Murphy at a rent of £20, Patrick M'Avinne's rent having been £33 11s. 5d.; and, if so, whether, in view of the fact that this man was evicted for non-payment of one year of heavy rack rent, and the sufferings of himself and his family, especial attention will be given to his case.
  MR. BRYCE: The Estates Commissioners inform me that they have received the application and resolution referred to, and will duly inquire into and consider the application.

  Irish County Court Criers.
  CAPTAIN CRAIG: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the criers of certain county courts in Ireland are in the habit of levying fees from suitors in respect of the grant and transfers of licences, decrees in equity cases, remitted and jury cases, and other proceedings; will he say whether the salary of county court criers is so small as barely to defray their travelling expenses; whether he will take any steps with a view to putting an immediate stop to the exactions above referred to; and whether he will consider the advisability of providing more adequate salaries for the criers.
  MR. BRYCE: I have no information to the effect stated in the first part of the Question. If any illegal exactions are made, as alleged, the matter would appear to be one for the county court judge to deal with. The salaries of the
  998
  criers, which are fixed by statute, are intended to remunerate them for their services and expenses. It is the duty of county councils to pay these salaries, but beyond this, neither the council nor the Local Government Board have any jurisdiction in the matter. I am not aware that the salaries are inadequate.

  Morrogh Bernard Estate, Kerry.
  MR. MURPHY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Morrogh Bernard estate, county Kerry, has yet come before the Estates Commissioners in connection with proceedings for sale; whether he is aware that no settlement has been carried out for the reinstatement of some evicted tenants whose farms are still vacant; and whether he will take steps to prevent any sale being sanctioned on this estate until all the evicted tenants are satisfactorily dealt with.
  MR. BRYCE: The Estates Commissioners inform me that an originating application in respect of the sale of this estate was lodged with them on January 2nd, 1906. The Commissioners I have been in communication with the vendor upon the subject of the restoration of the evicted tenants, and the applications of these persons have been referred to an inspector for inquiry and report. The inspector's report has not yet been considered by the Commissioners, and in the meantime they are unable to say what action they will take in the matter.

  Irish Land Commission Staff.
  MR. HAZLETON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that since 1903 a number of appointments under the Irish Land Commission have been given to persons having no previous connection with that office over the heads of others who have been continuously employed in it for periods up to sixteen years; and, if so, whether this practice is to be continued.
  MR. BRYCE: I am not aware to what particular appointments the hon. Member refers. A skilled accountant was recently appointed assistant to the head of a department in the Land Commission, under circumstances which I explained on Thursday last in Answer to a Question by

  999
  the hon. Member for the Leix Division,† and several clerks with legal qualifications have also been appointed from time to time. The work of the Land Commission has greatly expanded since the passing of the Act of 1903, and the appointments mentioned have been necessary. The claims of the existing staff to promotion are recognised in all fit cases.

  Irish Agricultural Inquiry Committee.
  MR. HAMMOND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the resolution recently adopted by the County Carlow Joint Technical Instruction Committee to the effect that, in view of the Government's pledge to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, the Committee desired to express its dissatisfaction with the constitution of the Lord-Lieutenant's Committee appointed to inquire into the working of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Ireland, and suggesting that Irish educational interests should be represented on the Committee; and if he will recommend the adoption of this suggestion.
  MR. BRYCE: I have received the resolution referred to. If effect were to be given to all the suggestions that have been made for the enlargement of the Committee, it would reach unmanageable dimensions. Ample opportunity will be given for bringing before the Committee such educational matters as fall within its scope, and it already contains members well qualified to deal with those matters.

  Clare Slob Lands.
  MR. HALPIN: To ask the President of the Board, of Trade whether he is aware that tenants holding small farms on the River Fergus, County Clare, the valuation being from £50 to £60, are obliged to keep up the banks, in some cases half a mile in length, that protect slob lands valued at £3,500, and that, if the bank is broken by the tide in stormy weather damage may be done to the tenants on the slob lands of the large valuation; and will he take steps to secure that the tenants or tenant on the small holding shall not be responsible for such damage.
  † See Column 701–2.
  MR. BRYCE: The question is being investigated by a Royal Commission, and any facts of this nature might be laid before the Commission by the hon. Member.

  Infant Mortality.
  MR. GODFREY BARING: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether his attention has boon called to that passage in the Report of the Registrar-General dealing with the high death rate amongst infants; and whether he has considered the desirability of appointing a Royal Commission to inquire into infantile mortality and its causes.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN,): My attention has been called to the part of the Report referred to. The subject of infant mortality and its causes is receiving the careful consideration of the Government, but we do not see our way at present to the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into this most important subject.

  Fair Wage Clause in Government Contracts.
  MR. O'GRADY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether, in view of the fact that the fair wage clause in Government contracts does not preclude unfair or sweating firms from tendering for, and obtaining such contracts, he will consider the advisability of appointing a small Committee of the House to revise and bring up to date such fair wage clause in order to meet the practical purpose to which the principle of fair wage was intended to apply.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: No, Sir, it is not thought necessary to appoint such a Committee as the hon. Member suggests. There may no doubt be isolated instances in which the evils which the fair wages clause was designed to prevent still arise in connection with Government contracts, but there is every reason to believe that the clause is a very effective instrument against sweating, and that cases of evasion rarely pass undetected. From inquiries I have made I think the hon. Member may rest assured that the various Departments concerned have taken the necessary steps to secure the equitable operation of this clause.
  MR. O'GRADY: Will the right hon. Gentleman give instructions to the various Government Departments defining the real meaning of the clause.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: I will inquire whether such instructions are necessary.

  Plural Voting Bill.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Prime Minister whether it is intended to pass the Plural Voting Bill during the present session; and whether it is his purpose to follow the constitutional practice and recommend His Majesty to dissolve Parliament immediately following the passage of a measure which would effect a fundamental change in the system of electoral representation.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am sorry to say anything which would disappoint the hon. Member of the fulfilment of his obvious desire that after the passing of this Bill there should be the earliest possible appeal to the country. But I can really see no reason for adopting the course that he suggests. No doubt in the case of the passage of large Reform Bills it has been the practice to dissolve Parliament purely as a matter of Parliamentary convenience. Important though it is, the Plural Voting Bill it hardly a Reform Bill of the first magnitude, and even if it were I am not aware of any constitutional understanding or usage tending to prevent Parliament from continuing its labours after the Bill had passed. From the point of view of Parliamentary convenience I cannot help thinking that the dissolution which the hon. Member so ardently desires would be generally regarded as undesirable.
  MR. CROOKS: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the importance of getting the Bill through the House before the Dulwich election? It would be very helpful.
  [No Answer was returned.]

  CROWN LANDS BILL.
  Reported from the Select Committee, without Amendment.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 159.]
  Bill re-committed to a Committee of the whole House for Monday next.

  DEAN FOREST BILL.
  Reported from the Select Committee, without Amendment.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 160.]
  Bill re-committed to a Committee of the whole House for Monday next.

NEW BILLS.
  EDUCATION OF THE BLIND BILL.
  "To provide for the Technical Education, Employment, and Maintenance of the Blind," presented by Mr. Stead-man; supported by Mr. Summerbell, Mr. Crooks, and Mr. Clynes; to be read a second time upon Tuesday, June 19th, and to be printed. [Bill 195.]
  GROCERS' LICENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  "To abolish Dealers' or Grocers' Licences in Scotland," presented by Mr. Rainy; supported by Mr. Crombie, Mr. Dalziel, Mr. Lamont, Mr. Findlay, and Mr. Cameron Corbett; to be read a second time upon Monday, May 28th, and to be printed. [Bill 196.]

HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
Motion made and Question proposed, "That Sir John Dickson-Poynder be a Member of the Select Committee on the Housing of the Working Classes Acts Amendment Bill."—;(Mr. Whiteley.)
MR. KEIR HARDIEexpressed a hope that this Motion would not be pressed at the moment. The Bill was intended to recast the law with regard to housing, giving railway and tramway companies certain powers that they did not possess in the matter, while also conferring a power to amend the by laws framed to secure adequate housing

1003
accommodation for labourers in rural districts. He complained that no Member of the Labour Party occupied a place on the Committee which was to deal with a question with which the working classes were ultimately concerned. If the Motion were pressed they might have to press the opposition to the fullest extent the forms of the House would permit.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. GEORGE WHITELEY,)said that he was sorry he could not accept the view of the hon. Member. He denied the statement that there was no Member of the Labour Party on the Committee. It was not the turn of the Labour Party for which the hon. Member spoke to have a representative on this Committee; it was the turn of the Labour Party sitting on the Government side of the House. The Labour Party as a whole had the right to one representative on the Committee, but the Labour Party was divided and sat on both sides of the House. He had tried to observe a scrupulous attitude of fairness and justice throughout the session in the appointment of Members to these Committees, and he maintained that the Labour Party sitting on the Opposition Benches had received more favourable treatment from the Government than ever before. For example, last week the Local Taxation Committee was appointed, and on that Committee there was a representative of the Independent Labour Party. For the Income Tax Committee, selected two or three days later, he had purposely left out from the names of the Committee a representative of the Labour Party on the other side and had included a member of the Party from the Government side of the House. The hon. Member for Barnard Castle and the hon. Member for Leicester came to him and represented that, as this Income Tax Committee was one directly affecting the labour interest, it was not fair to leave out of that Committee a representative of the Independent Labour Party. He thought the argument was a good one, and after consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer he included the hon. Member for Merthyr on that Committee. He had to ask the assent of the Irish Party and of the Opposition to the enlargement of that Committee, and there was some little difficulty, and
1004
he had further to enlarge it in order to preserve the balance. Of the two Committees—;the Income Tax Committee and the Housing of the Working Classes Committee —; hon. Members below the gangway said they would prefer the nomination of a member of the Independent Labour Party on the former. ["No, no."] The hon. Member for Barnard Castle if he were present would bear him out on that.
MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALDsaid that both the hon. Member for Barnard Castle and himself said that the Housing of the Working Classes Committee was a matter which would have to be discussed when it came before the House.
MR. GEORGE WHITELEYsaid the hon. Member was quite right. The hon. Member said they would not pledge themselves in any way, and he replied:—; "No. I am telling you what I intend to do. When we nominate the Housing of the Working Classes Committee we shall nominate a Labour Member from this side and not from that." The hon. Member for Merthyr claimed for the Labour Party double the amount of representation that they were entitled to. If they got that representation who was to suffer? Was the Irish Party, the Opposition, or the Liberal Party to suffer? The Liberal Party nominated only eight members instead of nine and then there was the Labour Party sitting on the Liberal side of the House, whose interest and welfare he declined to sacrifice to the hon. Members below the opposite gangway.
MR. CROOKSrose to continue the discussion.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, order. There can only be one speech on each side.
MR. CROOKS: Then may I move the substitution of another name for that of Sir John Dickson-Poynder?
MR. SPEAKER: No; the Question having been put must now be decided.
Question put.
The House divided:—;Ayes, 335; Noes, 85. (Division List No. 69.)

AYES.

Acland, Francis Dyke

Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

Helmsley, Viscount

Acland-Hood, RtHn.SirAlexF.

Collins, SirW.J.(S.Pancras,W.)

Henderson,J.M. (Aberdeen,W.)

Adkins, W. Ryland

Corbett,C H(Sussex, E Grinst'd

Herbert, Colonel Ivor (Mon., S.)

Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C.

Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

Agnew, George William

Cory, Clifford John

Hervey, F.W.F.(BuryS.Edm'd

Ainsworth, John Stirling

Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

Higham, John Sharp

Alden, Percy

Courthope, G. Loyd

Hill, Sir Clement(Shrewsbury)

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Cox, Harold

Hobart, Sir Robert

Armitage, R.

Craig, C. Curtis (Antrim, S.)

Hobhouse, Charles E. H.

Armstrong, W. C. Heaton

Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)

Holland, Sir William Henry

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Craik, Sir Henry

Hope, W.Bateman(Somerset,N

Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.

Cremer, William Randal

Horniman, Emslie John

Astbury, John Meir

Crombie, John William

Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt.Hon.SirH

Crossley, William J.

Hunt, Rowland

Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

Dalziel, James Henry

Hutton, Alfred Eddison

Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury,E.)

Davies, Timothy (Fulham)

Hyde, Clarendon

Balcarres, Lord

Davies, W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

Illingworth, Percy H.

Balfour, RtHn.A.J.(CityLond.)

Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh,S.)

Jackson, R. S.

Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

Jacoby, James Alfred

Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

Dickinson, W.H.(St.Pancras,N

Jardine, Sir J.

Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

Dobson, Thomas W.

Jones, D. Brynmor (Swansea)

Baring, Hon. Guy(Winchester)

Doughty, Sir George

Kearley, Hudson E.

Barker, John

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Kekewich, Sir George

Barlow, J. Emmott(Somerset)

Duckworth, James

Kennaway,Rt.Hon.SirJohn H.

Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

Du Cros, Harvey

Kenyon-Slaney,Rt.Hon.Col. W

Barran, Rowland Hirst

Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)

Keswick, William

Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry,N.

Dunoon,Roberts(Lan'rk,Govan

King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

Beach,Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks

Dunne, Major E. M. (Walsall)

Kitson, Sir James

Beale, W. P.

Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)

Laidlaw, Robert

Beauchamp, E.

Edwards, Frank (Radnor)

Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster

Beaumont, W. C. B. (Hexham

Elibank, Master of

Lambert, George

Beckett, Hon. Gervase

Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

Lambton, Hon.FrederickWm.

Bellairs, Carlyon

Erskine, David C.

Lamont, Norman

Benn, W.(T'w'rHamlets,S.Geo.

Essex, R. W.

Lane-Fox, G. R.

Bertram, Julius

Everett, R. Lacey

Lea, Hugh Cecil(St.Pancras,E.

Billson, Alfred

Faber, George Denison (York)

Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington

Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

Fell, Arthur

Lehmann, R. C.

Black, Arthur W.(Bedfordshire

Fenwick, Charles

Lever, W. H. (Cheshire,Wirral)

Boulton, A. C. F. (Ramsey)

Ferens, T. R.

Lewis, John Herbert

Bowles, G. Stewart

Ferguson, R. C. Munro

Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David

Brace, William

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Lockwood,Rt.Hn. Lt.-Col.A.R.

Branch, James

Fuller, John Michael F.

Long, Col.CharlesW.(Evesham

Bridgeman, W. Clive

Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East)

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Bryce,Rt.Hn.James (Aberdeen

Gibb, James (Harrow)

Lough, Thomas

Bryce, J. A. (Inverness Burghs)

Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

Lowe, Sir Francis William

Buckmaster, Stanley O.

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert J.

Lupton, Arnold

Burns, Rt. Hon. John

Glendinning, R. G.

Lynch, H. B.

Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

Gooch, George Peabody

Macdonald, J. M. (FalkirkB'ghs

Butcher, Samuel Henry

Grant, Corrie

Mackarness, Frederic C.

Buxton,Rt.Hn. Sydney Charles

Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

Maclean, Donald

Cairns, Thomas

Greenwood, Hamar (York)

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Cameron, Robert

Griffith, Ellis J.

M'Callum, John M.

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Gulland, John W.

M'Kenna, Reginald

Carlile, E. Hildred

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)

Carr-Gomm, H. W.

Haddock, George R.

M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

Castlereagh, Viscount

Hall, Frederick

Maddison, Frederick

Causton,Rt. Hn. RichardKnight

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis

Magnus, Sir Philip

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Harrison-Broadley, Col. H. B.

Mallet, Charles E.

Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-

Hart-Davies, T.

Manfield, Harry (Northants)

Chance, Frederick William

Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

Markham, Arthur Basil

Channing, Francis Allston

Harwood, George

Marks,G.Croydon(Launceston)

Cheetham, John Frederick

Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

Marks, H. H. (Kent)

Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

Marnham, F. J.

Clarke, C. Goddard (Peckham)

Haworth, Arthur A.

Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

Clough, W.

Hazel, Dr. A. E.

Mason, James F. (Windsor)

Coates, E.Feetham(Lewisham)

Hedges, A. Paget

Massie, J.

Coats, Sir T. Glen(Renfrew,W.)

Helme, Norval Watson

Menzies, Walter

Meysey-Thompson, E. C.

Richards, Thomas (W.Monm'h

Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

Middlemore, John Throgmorton

Ridsdale, E. A.

Thomson, W.Mitchell-(Lanark)

Molteno, Percy Alfred

Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

Thornton, Percy M.

Montagu, E. S.

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Torrance, A. M.

Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

Roberts, S. (Sheffield,Ecclesall)

Toulmin, George

Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

Robertson, Sir G Scott(Bradf'rd

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Morpeth, Viscount

Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

Valentia, Viscount

Morrell, Philip

Robson, Sir William Snowdon

Verney, F. W.

Morse, L. L.

Rogers, F. E. Newman

Villiers, Ernest Amherst

Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

Rose, Charles Day

Vivian, Henry

Murray, James

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter

Wadsworth, J.

Myer, Horatio

Rowlands, J.

Wallace, Robert

Napier, T. B.

Runciman, Walter

Walrond, Hon. Lionel

Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

Russell, T. W.

Ward, W. Dudley (Southamp'n

Nicholls, George

Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

Wason, Eugene(Clackmannan)

Nicholson, C. N. (Doncaster

Samuel, Herbert L.(Cleveland)

Wason, JohnCathcart(Orkney)

Nicholson, W. G. (Petersfield)

Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel

Wedgwood, Josiah C.

Norton, Capt. Cecil William

Sandys, Lieut. -Col. Thos. Myles

Weir, James Galloway

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Scarisbrick, T. T. L.

Whitbread, Howard

Nuttall, Harry

Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

White, George (Norfolk)

O'Brien, William (Cork)

Schwann, Chas. E.(Manchester)

White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)

O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

Seaverns, J. H.

White, Luke (York, E.R.)

O'Shee, James John

Seely, Major J. B.

Whitehead, Rowland

Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Paul, Herbert

Silcock, Thomas Ball

Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

Paulton, James Mellor

Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Leek)

Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie

Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

Pearce, William (Limehouse)

Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

Williams, W. L. (Carmarthen)

Pease, H. Pike (Darlington)

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Williamson, A. (ElginandNairn

Perks, Robert William

Soares, Ernest J.

Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

Pickersgill, Edward Hare

Spicer, Albert

Wills, Arthur Walters

Pollard, Dr.

Stanley, Hon. A. (Ormskirk)

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

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Stanley, Hn A. Lyulph (Chesh.)

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

Price, R. John (Norfolk, E.)

Starkey, John R.

Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.

Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)

Steadman, W. C.

Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)

Priestley, W. E. B.(Bradford, E.

Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

Winfrey, R.

Radford, G. H.

Strachey, Sir Edward

Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

Rainy, A. Rolland

Straus, B. S. (Mile End)

Wood, T. M'Kinnon

Raphael, Herbert H.

Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

Woodhouse,Sir J.T(Huddersf'd

Rawlinson, John Frederick P.

Stuart, James (Sunderland)

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Rea, Russell (Gloucester)

Sutherland, J. E.

Younger, George

Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'

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

Yoxall, James Henry

Rees, J. D.

Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

Remnant, James Farquharson

Tennant, E. P. (Salisbury)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—;Mr. Whiteley and Mr. J. A. Pease.

Rendall, Athelstan

Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

Renton, Major Leslie

Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

NOES.

Abraham, Wm. (Cork, N.E.)

Fardell, Sir T. George

M'Killop, W.

Baldwin, Alfred

Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

Masterman, C. F. G.

Barnard, E. B.

Flavin, Michael Joseph

Meagher, Michael

Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

Fletcher, J. S.

Meehan, Patrick A.

Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.

Flynn, James Christopher

Mooney, J. J.

Bennett, E. N.

Ginnell, L.

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Blake, Edward

Halpin, J.

Murnaghan, George

Bottomley, Horatio

Hammond, John

Hurphy, John

Bull, Sir William James

Hardie, J. Keir (MerthyrTydvil)

Nolan, Joseph

Burke, E. Haviland-

Hayden, John Patrick

O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid.

Byles, William Pollard

Hazleton, Richard

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Cogan, Denis J.

Hodge, John

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Hudson, Walter

O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

Crean, Eugene

Jordan, Jeremiah

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Crooks, William

Jowett, F. W.

O'Doherty, Philip

Delany, William

Joyce, Michael

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

Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway

Kennedy, Vincent Paul

O'Grady, J.

Dillon, John

Law, Hugh Alexander

O'Hare, Patrick

Dixon-Hartland, Sir F. Dixon

Lundon, W.

O'Kelly, Jas. (Roscommon, N.

Dolan, Charles Joseph

Macpherson, J. T.

O'Malley, William

Donelan, Captain A.

MacVeagh, Jeremiah(Down, S.)

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Duffy, William J.

MacVeigh, Chas. (Donegal, E.)

Parker, James (Halifax)

Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

M'Calmont, Colonel James

Reddy, M.

Esmonde, Sir Thomas

M'Kean, John

Redmond, John E. (Waterford

1008

1009

Redmond, William (Clare)

Sullivan, Donal

Young, Samuel

Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'm't'n

Summerbell, T.

Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

Wardle, George J.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—;Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. Barnes.

Seddon, J.

Watt, H. Anderson

Sloan, Thomas Henry

Wilkie, Alexander

Snowden, P.

Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

Motion made, and Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Major Dunne be one other member of the Select Committee on the Housing of the Working Classes Amendment Bill."—;(Mr. Whitely.)
MR. CROOKSsaid he rose to move the adjournment of the debate. The hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary of the Treasury did not understand the difference between their argument as to their right occasionally—;not on every Committee—;to representation, and the argument the hon. Gentleman himself had used, because it was not fair to say that in the House there were two Labour Parties. There was only one Labour Party in the House. The representatives whom the hon. Gentleman claimed as a Labour Party were elected to support the Liberal Party, pure and simple, and it was therefore a little invidious for the hon. Gentleman to choose from that Party certain Members, and declare that they represented the Labour Party. They might just as well appoint a Liberal Member in the place of a Nationalist to serve on a Committee on the ground that he was a sympathiser with the cause of Home Rule. He objected to their taking a section of the Liberal Party and declaring that it represented the Labour Party. The housing question was one of the questions which the Labour Party could seriously claim to know something about, and they contended that they were entitled to a representative on the Committee who really understood the lodger—;the one-room man—;side of the question. He hoped the hon. Gentlemon would allow the debate to be adjourned, so that they could have a quiet talk over the matter. They did not want to enforce anything; they rather wanted to encourage the hon. Gentleman to do the right thing. He begged to move.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the debate be now adjourned." —; (Mr. Crooks.)
MR. GEORGE WHITELEYsaid the matter would have to be decided by the House as to whether these Committees should be actually representative of the House or not. The question to be decided was whether a Party which had only a right to one-twenty-third representation could legitimately claim one-eleventh. He said they could not, and the hon. Gentleman's argument that his Party was the only Labour Party in the House was, he ventured to say, a mistake altogether. Was not the hon. Member for Birkenhead a representative of Labour? Was he not a greater expert in regard to this matter than any hon. Member below the gangway on the Opposition side? He would agree to the adjournment of the debate on the understanding that the appointment of the Committee was put down as the second order tomorrow and the 11 o'clock rule suspended, so that the question could be settled after that hour.
Debate to be resumed to-morrow.

EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Mr. BIRRELL,)I move.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
MR. WYNDHAM: I have to thank the Minister for Education for having informed me by a note which I received some three hours ago that he intended to take the course which he has in fact pursued. It is the usual course, but some doubts had been aroused in my mind this morning when I read, in several important journals, a confident expectation not only that the Minister for

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Education would speak first in support of the Bill for which he is responsible, but also, so it was stated, that he was in a position to announce two or three important concessions which might go far to mitigate the wrath that has been excited by the Bill before the House. Had he taken that course the Government would have invited us to a discussion. As he has not, the Government challenge us to a conflict; and we accept the challenge. We have not to deal to-day with some imaginary Bill, amended in this or that particular, full of sweetness and light. We have to deal with this Bill, and to it we offer a most uncompromising opposition. With its five parts and its forty clauses, it opens up a field of acute controversy so vast that it would be impossible to survey it, and still less to traverse it, within the limits of any speech which I should dream of inflicting upon the House But that does not make my task any the harder. I do not feel under an obligation at this stage of our proceedings to deal in any detail with many of the subsequent parts of the Bill, not because we do not entertain very grave objections to Parts II, III, and IV, but because the objections which lie against those parts on the merits are in every case enhanced by the nature and character of Part I. I think I can make that plain without making any undue draft upon the patience of the House. Part II seems to us to call for very active opposition. It may be that the Minister in charge of the Bill will be able to allay some of our apprehensions. For my part I feel that no doubt, owing to the exigencies of time, he did not handle this part of the Bill in the First Heading debate so fully and so explicitly as the occasion seemed to demand. If I understand Part II aright, under contingencies which are not remote and which may be brought very near when Part I is in full operation, the training colleges of all denominations will be brought within the scope of Part II. I shall be glad if that is not the case. It may be said that much of the language employed in Part II is copied from other enactments—;the Charitable Trusts Acts and the Endowed Schools Act. I think that is true; but that does not mitigate our opposition to Part II of the Bill. Under the Charitable Trusts Acts the powers to make schemes were very limited. In every case of an endowment of a value greater than £50 a year
1012
action could only be taken with the consent of the governing bodies. In other cases, action could only be taken on application; and in all those cases there was an appeal. Under the Endowed Schools Act the powers were greater, but the objects for which those powers could be used were far more limited. Those Acts were of a temporary character. They did not apply to any endowment in the future, in practice, at any rate, after the year 1869. They did not apply to any endowment oven after the year 1819 except with consent. All this legislation, which did, I admit, place from time to time considerable powers in the hands of the Charity Commissioners or of the Board of Education, was of a limited and temporary character, and, in practice, was only brought info play in order to abate something which could be regarded, if not as a scandal, at any rate as an inevitable diversion of a trust from its original purpose But this legislation in Part II is not of a temporary character, and its purpose is not to better the application of funds in the direction of the intention of those who subscribed them. The whole intention of Part II is that the Board of Education—;that is to say, the Government and the Minister of the day—;should have power to operate on any endowment in order, not to abate a scandal, not to improve the application in accordance with the wishes of the original donors, but in order to render educational endowments—;mark the words—;"as serviceable as possible for educational purposes of the time." It sounds a laudable object; but who is the judge of what educational purposes are? [An HON. MEMBER: The House of Commons.] The Board of Education; under Clause 33, subsection 2, it is the Board of Education, and only the Board of Education, which is to deem what an educational purpose is; because the power given to the Charity Commissioners under another section is only to state the fact that an endowment is connected with education, and not to define what an educational purpose is. Under Clause 16 of Part II, if I road it aright, this Board of Education, or any subsequent Board of Education, is bound to distinguish between what it deems to be an educational purpose and any denominational purpose, and is bound in every case, no matter what the trust deeds may say, or what

1013
the intention of the funds may have been, to subordinate the denominational purpose to what they deem to be an educational purpose. Part II. legislates to this effect—;that any denominational endowment is not an educational purpose, but that it is another purpose, which, within narrow limits and by the good will and indulgence of a single Minister and his colleagues, may not be diverted entirely from the purpose for which the money was originally bestowed. Under Part II. all the limitations and all the restrictions as to the scope and object of the Charitable Trusts Acts and the Endowed Schools Act are swept away. All these powers, so enlarged, are concentrated in the hands of a single Minister, and that Minister is absolved from doing what the Courts, whoso direction is now withdrawn, have always done in the past —;from giving his jurisdiction in accordance with the wishes of those who originally subscribed these sums. I will not elaborate that because I have already Spoken at greater length than I intended upon this point; but I may add that, if Part I. achieves the results which its authors seem to contemplate, if it destroys denominational teaching throughout all the elementary schools of the country, then the importance of other institutions to support the same object becomes loss. It is diminished, and we come back to Part I. of the Bill.
The same is the case if I touch on Part III. I believe that under Part III. "Miscellaneous Provisions," heavy burdens, becoming increasingly onerous, will be placed upon the rates of the rural districts of England. It may be that in Clause IV. the Government have attempted to lighten the impact of that heavy weight. They say that for certain purposes only one quarter of the cost is to fall upon the parish. Yes, but they have omitted, and the omission is significant, the word "improvement." One quarter of the cost of providing schools is to fall on the parish; but in how many cases is a completely new school going to be built, and in how many cases are the existing schools going to be enlarged? And for that there is no remedy in the only clause which attempts to mitigate the burden to fall on the rates. I admit that the Government extend the period for the repayment of sums that have been
1014
borrowed; but is that a blessing to the rural districts of England? We have heard hon. Gentlemen now sitting on the other side decry from those benches again and again the practice of saddling posterity with the debts of the present. If that be unwise in the case of an Empire with a yearly income of from£150,000,000 to £170,000,000, is it not folly, is it not madness, when you are dealing with a poor rural parish to say that debts may be incurred for purposes which few desire, and that the burden may be spread over nearly two generations? There is also to be a grant-in-aid of £1,000,000. That will not go very far if Part I. is carried as it stands, and if it carries out the intentions of the authors of the Bill. And, on the other side of the account, so far as higher education is concerned, by withdrawing all the boroughs and all the urban districts with a population of 50,000, you have taken what I may call the rateable plum out of the country, and you leave only the poorest and most backward districts to boar the burden, it may be of fantastic experiments, in the direction of higher education. And for those experiments, conducted by an educational authority which for the purposes of quiet villagers is as remote as Whitehall, which does not know what their lives are, that authority is allowed, nay encouraged, to spend any amount of money, and to raise any rate it chooses. The 2d. limit is withdrawn. All this may be very well from the point of view of education. I say it is intolerable when you increase the cost of education, not for an educational object, but for an object which has nothing to do with education. It might be right, though I think in that direction we ought to march prudently, to rate the rural districts up to any figure you please for the sake of higher education; but it cannot be right to do that when, at the same time, you are saddling them with the rent and with the cost of repairs of schools with which in the main they are very well satisfied. You are adding that charge to the cost of education, and, therefore, the objections which lie against Parts II. and III. on the merits are enhanced because of the nature of Part I. of the Bill.
I am not going to be led away into discussing Part IV. of the Bill. On the face of it it seems to me to be flagrantly

1015
unjust to England, because Members who sit for Welsh seats are going to speak and to vote during the whole of the debates on Part I. of the Bill, which applies to England, but they will go off with separate benefits. They will be made the absolute arbiters of the fate of every man who differs from them in religion from one end of Wales to the other. There is not in the House of Commons a single Unionist Member from Wales. There is not a single Welsh county council upon which Churchmen have a majority or even an effective voice, and yet all these enormous powers conferred upon the Board of Education by Part II. of the Bill are going to be transferred to a body composed of delegates from the Welsh county councils —; every power except any which may be excepted by Order in Council. This House has little or no control over Orders in Council, and therefore the fortunes, the possessions, and the religious liberty of the minorities in Wales are being handed over to a delegation from the county councils, who differ from them profoundly on all those questions and have shown an almost implacable spirit in the course of this controversy, and at the same time the protection of effective debate in this House is to be denied to these minorities. That is a position which is flagrantly unjust. But its injustice again, as in the case of Part II., is increased when we consider the nature and the character of Part I. of this Bill, for under Part I. all those fabrics towards which the minorities in Wales have contributed, of which they are proud, and to which they look for the protection of the religious views which they are entitled as free citizens to hold, will, with possibly exceptions which need hardly be considered, be transferred from them to those against whom they have been in sharp controversy during the last ten or even thirty years. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] That is applauded on the other side.
Let me refer to Part I. of the Bill. In Part I. of the Bill there is a violation of the principle of religious equality. That in itself is unjust; that in itself calls for our strenuous and uncompromising opposition, unless and until you so amend the Bill as to make it consistent with the principle of religious equality, and it bears other evils in its train. We hold that the two things for which we
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care depend upon the preservation of the principle of religious equality. We may be right or wrong, but in the integrity of our hearts we believe that the continuous maintenance of any form of religious instruction in our schools depends largely upon the preservation of the principle of religious equality. We believe, in the second place, that the degree—;I shall develop this later—;to which it is possible to uphold and give effect to the right of the parents depends largely upon preserving the principle of religious equality. You concede that right in theory in certain clauses in this Bill. We claim that the right of the parent is to have his child brought up in the religion which the parent prefers, and to have his child taught by those who believe in the religious instruction. You concede that in theory. [Cries of "No."] Well, that is denied. I should have thought that it was conceded by Clauses 3 and 4. Otherwise, why were these clauses introduced into the Bill at all? But I admit that the concession is of very little value, because when dealing with this right of the parent you limit the operation to non-provided schools. Why? The parent has the right; it exists independent of the accident which has given this or that character to the school, but you fetter the exercise of this right, you imperil its continuance, and you make no reasonable provision for the future. If parents now have a right, which ought to be accorded in so far as that is possible, to choose the kind of religious instruction which their children shall have, why is that right to be denied practically in the future, when by the automatic increase of the population there will be many more parents with similar desires? The whole of this is illogical. That is not a very grave charge to bring against a Bill if it departs from logic in order to meet the exigencies of the people for whom it is brought in. If it does not, if that Bill goes out in this or that direction apparently only to inflict injury upon some classes of the population, then, I think, the charge that it is illogical and irrational is one which will have to be met. We hold that so far as the State is concerned it ought to be neutral. I commend that to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, who seems to challenge my zeal in upholding the rights of parents. I assert that in the past the State has been neutral. ["Oh."] When

1017
I made that assertion during the First Reading debate it was greeted, as it has been greeted this afternoon, with tones of dissent and almost derision, but that is not enough to controvert a statement which is made in all earnestness and seriousness by a Member of this House. More is wanted. It is necessary, not that I should be interrupted in the course of my speech, but that in the course of the debate someone should got up in his place to say that in such a year by such an Act the State abandoned its attitude of neutrality, and I defy anyone to do it.
DR. MACNAMARA: 1902.
MR. WYNDHAM: No. Hon. Members will have to make that good. They will have to show that the Act of 1902 gave facilities to some persons which it denied to others, and inflicted disabilities on some. I have quoted before—;why should I quote again?—;the opinion of Mr. Sidney Webb. If we have to defend the Act of 1902 again we shall be perfectly ready to do it. Until it is proved by argument that the State did depart from that attitude I shall declare that it did not. Until the Minister of Education brought in this Bill, for which he is responsible, the State, in my judgment, had preserved a neutral attitude towards those who, on the one hand, prefer, and we think they have a right to prefer, that religious instruction should be of a definite character, and that it should be given by competent persons in school hours, and, on the other hand, those of our fellow citizens who prefer, as they have a perfect right to do, that religions instruction should be of an undenominational character, that if they are satisfied with the Bill denominational instruction should be given only by the good nature of any one who cares to give it, and that it should be given out of school hours. I hold that the State should hold the balance equally between those two great sections. But taking the facts as they are, the schools in this country in which religious education of the first kind is given number something over 14,200. They are two-thirds of the schools of this country, and more than half the children of the country are being educated in them. Under Clause 1 of the Bill, with an exception which I promise to deal with as fairly as I can, the rule is that all those
1018
schools are to be transferred or converted from the kind of school which many prefer into the kind of school which others prefer. The rule is, with certain exceptions, that from all these schools the religious teaching to which millions of our countrymen attach immense importance is to be abandoned, that the teachers belonging to the various denominations who have perhaps joined the teaching profession because they cared more about these matters than about the mere curriculum of secular education are silenced. They are not to be allowed to teach. That is a great interference with the liberty of the subject, and it is resented by a great body of the teachers. Move-over, owing to the operation of the third part of the Bill, some of these teachers may find that their occupation is gone. They may lose their posts. You may say that you contemplated that contingency, and that you made provision for it. Yes, the Government made provision for that in Clause 7, Sub-section 4. I have received a letter from a teacher directing my attention to this sub-section, which says —;
"Any teacher employed at the time of the passing of this Act in an existing voluntary school who loses his employment by reason of the school ceasing to be a public elementary school in consequence of this Act, shall be entitled, in accordance with regulations made for the purpose by the Treasury and the Board of Education, notwithstanding anything in the Elementary School Teachers' Superannuation Act, 1898, or the rules made under that Act, to pay contributions to the deferred annuity fund under that Act during any time (not exceeding one year after the date at which he so loses his employment) in which he is not employed in recorded service, and to reckon the time in respect of which contributions are so made as if it were recorded service."
He suggested that the Minister for Education might borrow something from the proclamation recently issued to Chinese labourers on the Rand and insert at the end "An exceptional act of benevolence of this kind ought to excite your gratitude." We do not attach great importance to the amount of more money involved in this huge transfer of property from one purpose to another, but it has a bearing on the argument. It does, at any rate, attest the earnestness and the zeal of those who contributed such sums to purposes which this Bill will go far to destroy. There has been a controversy as to the amount of the property involved. When

1019
my right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition introduced the Act of 1902 he put the value of the schools at £26,000,000. That figure was criticised on the basis of a Blue-book which was published dealing with the amounts of building grants towards the cost of the erection of these fabrics. But that Blue-book states that it is incomplete. It took no account of any sums which had been contributed before 1839 and after 1875, and only in certain cases was it able to be apprised of the sums contributed between 1839 and 1851. But in the diocese of Wakefield—;not a selected diocese—;it is possible to say how much has been actually spent on its ninety-six schools, as all the accounts have been kept. The Blue-book figures given for these schools are £112,000. The actual money spent on these schools between 1830 and 1902, as revealed by the accounts, was £350,000. That shows the measure of the error, not of the Blue-book, which states that it is incomplete, but of those who take the figures of the Blue-book as if they were complete. Therefore, the amount of voluntary contributions towards these schools was not £14,000,000, minus £1,500,000, as some people said, but no less a sum than £32,000,000. It is true that some of that money was given for purposes other than that to which we attach the greatest importance, viz., religious education. Yes; but is it denied seriously that the great bulk of the money was paid by people who earnestly desired that religious instruction should be given in the schools? That was also the laudable and legitimate desire of the Wesleyans and Roman Catholics in building their schools. But it has been said, "Yes, a great deal of money has been spent on these schools, but they were not properly maintained." It is said that originally those who desired a religious education paid a large proportion of the cost of maintenance, but as time went on they paid a smaller proportion. That is true, and yet it is a fallacious argument. The total cost had so much increased that though relatively they contributed a smaller proportion of the cost, absolutely they gave more year after year. In the case of the Church schools the private contributions towards maintenance amounted to £386,000 in 1871; but in 1902 they amounted to £791,000. It is, therefore, true to say that there was no
1020
relaxation of effort on the part of private subscribers, or diminution of the sacrifices they were ready to incur. I have also heard it said that once the Act of 1902 was passed and rate-aid was obtainable the contributions ceased. That is not the case. In the three years that have passed since 1902 the voluntary contributions have increased, and have maintained an average of £1,000,000 sterling per annum in each one of these years. That mere statement of the amount of property involved shows the importance which voluntary subscribers attached to the particular kind of religious instruction they desired to be given to their children.
But the money value of the thing is as dust in the balance by comparison with their right to have the thing if they choose to have it—;their right that the State should regard their preference with as favourable an eye as the preference of others of their fellow-subjects who take a different view of the matter. I know that the Government repudiates the idea that in passing this Bill they are seeking to deliver a blow at denominational schools. It is always unnecessary to impute motives. Hero we have to deal with facts. If your passion for uniformity, and that alone, carries you to this extreme length, we ask you to curb your passion for uniformity. There was a time when the leaders of Liberal opinion thought that uniformity was not a good but a bad thing. John Stuart Mill was against uniformity in secular education. He said that diversity in education was necessary in order to get the best that could be got out of individual character. He also hold that education established and controlled by the State should only be by way of experiment, as an example and stimulus to keep others up to a certain standard of excellence. If hon. Gentlemen opposite will apply these words to religious education they will understand our attitude towards the dual system which has hitherto existed. We did not attack the undenominational schools; but we did believe, and we do believe, that the existence side by side with undenominational religious instruction of definite religious instruction was a stimulus which kept up the standard of religious instructions in board schools, which are now the provided schools. We believe that if you crush out definite religious instruction you imperil the maintenance of any

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form of religious instruction as part and parcel of the education of the English child. The State was neutral in this matter. The State never put a disability on those who preferred undenominational education. The State, in fact, gave encouragement to them to spend these large sums of money, as under the Sites Act of 1841. It gave grants to meet equivalent grants of private generosity. It instigated those who cared for denominational education to subscribe more and more money, and money was forthcoming in the proportion of three and a half to one. The State, in fact, promoted this form of education at the cost of private persons of religious instincts, in order to relieve the general public and those who were satisfied with undenominational education of charges which otherwise they must have borne. In face of the fact, is it proper to transfer the whole of these schools, and to divert them from the purposes that those who spent those large sums of money intended them to subserve?
Let me now turn to the method of transfer. By Clause 2 the transfer is to be carried out by arrangement (which is a new word in legislation) between the owners or trustees of the schools and the local bodies in cases where the local body desires to do so, and in cases where it does not desire to do so these schools may cease to be public elementary schools, and the local body may rate all those who have subscribed these large sums of money in order to build two or three schools to compete with the original schools, withdrawing from them all rate-aid and aid from the Exchequer. That is a monstrous proposition. You invite two persons to make a bargain, and you give to one of the parties to the arrangement the power of ruining the other unless he accepts the terms. The local authority says to the trustees of the unprovided schools, "If you do not accept my terms I shall withdraw all public aid from your schools and build two others and rate you for them. Now, what will you take? But if even with this wonderful lever which the Government has placed in the hands of the local authority, they do not succeed in making an arrangement; then this anonymous, this novel body, is brought into being; this Commission of three, with powers utterly
1022
unknown, is placed above all law. And what a long time the Government is going to give owners and trustees to make this arrangement! If the Bill passes the Commission comes into being on the first of next January. I do not know when the Bill is going to pass. Say it is the end of October or November. In that case they would have to spend their Christmas holiday in making terms with the local authority. This Commission is brought into the machinery for compelling people to surrender their property and to give up their religious convictions in a harsh and unjust manner. But will it work? The only gleam of satisfaction which I have derived from reading this Bill is the belief that it will not work at all. I do not suppose that any of those who agree with us in politics are going to imitate proceedings which we thought foolish and a dereliction of civic duty —; I mean passive resistance; but I do believe that trustees will feel themselves bound as honourable men to defend the suits which are going to be brought against them throughout the length and breadth of the land. It is scarcely left to them as matter of choice. Very little choice is left to anybody under this Bill, unless he be a teacher. Other people have to take what the Government give them; the teacher alone is left to pick and choose. You compel owners and trustees to defend the suits. There are 14,200 voluntary schools, nearly all of them under trusts. Do you suppose, in default of arrangement before January 1st, 1907, that in twenty or thirty years your Commission, unless you give them all the powers of Oliver Cromwell's military generals, will be able to extract that property from people whom you compel to defend it?
I come to the first exemption from the iron rule—;Clause 3, the ordinary facilities. If the local authority allows it, if the Commission awards it, only in the non-provided schools religious education may be given upon two mornings in the week. The teachers are prohibited by the State from giving it, and the pupils are told by statute that they need not attend. Why, it is a mockery. I will not waste time upon that. Coming to Clause 4, the extraordinary facilities, which are confined to urban districts and to boroughs, there, if the local authority allows it, and the inquiry demonstrates

1023
that four-fifths of the parents wish it, the school is to remain more or less a denominational school. I say there is no liberty in any of these exemptions. They do not seriously modify the main rule, which is an iron rule, an unjust and harsh rule. We know pretty well what the effect of the latter exemption may be. Under it, according to a Return, which has been given by my lion, friend, 100 per cent, of the schools of the Jews may be saved, 77 per cent, of the Roman Catholic schools, more than half of the Wesleyan schools, but in the case of the Church of England only one quarter of her schools will be saved. In this matter we are not fighting the battle of any one denomination, and I say that for all denominations the provision is precarious and inadequate. Hon. Members devote a great deal of attention to what they call the attacks on this Bill by Churchmen. I wonder if they read what is sometimes said by those for whose sake this Bill is brought in. I wonder if the Minister for Education read an interesting speech made only a week ago at Torquay by the Rev. F. E. Anthony. Up to 1902 the Rev. F. E. Anthony was chairman of the School Board in Plymouth. Since that time he has been chairman of the Education Committee. On the council there is a Radical majority, and their idea of fair play is to appoint twenty-one Nonconformists and six Conservative Churchmen on the education authority. That is the authority at Plymouth on which all these facilities and exemptions depend; and we know what they moan to do, because Mr. Anthony has told us. He is very dissatisfied with Clauses 3 and 4 of this Bill, but he says fortunately the Government have made both these clauses permissive, and he adds that it will be the duty of the local authority "to use the remedy which the Bill provides.'
Coming to Clause 5, will any sane man believe that people will build schools out of their own money and maintain them on the off-chance that local authorities will at some future day, under no compulsion, take them over and give them the facilities of Clause 4? It is absurd. It is a mockery to put in Clause 5. These exemptions are worthless. The rule remains—;unjust in principle and harsh in application to all denominations. There is an added wrong done to the
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Church, not by the Bill, and not by the Government, but by many ardent supporters of the Bill outside this House and in the Press, who, because we, in common with those who belong to other denominations, state that we attach importance to distinctive religious education being given according to the creed and catechism of our Church, taunt us with attacking the Bible. That is hitting below the belt. I think hon. Members who belong to the Liberal Party have forgotten what liberty of conscience means. It is an infringement of any man's liberty of conscience to ask him to justify to those who differ from him the reasons for any religious faith which he may hold. I am not going to be drawn into expressions of any religious or theological opinion, but I say that in this Bill the teacher, and the teacher alone, is allowed to have full liberty of conscience in matters of religious belief.
In venturing to move the complete rejection of this Bill, I deny that we are showing callousness to the prospect that the Bible might be eliminated altogether from our schools. Who are those champions of simple Bible teaching? They are the supporters of a Bill which provides in respect of simple Bible teaching that the local authority need not sanction it, the teacher need not give it, and that the pupil need not attend to receive it.
DR. MACNAMARA: What about the Act of 1870?
MR. WYNDHAM: I will take up that interruption. Hon. Members opposite think that they controvert our argument when they point to the Act of 1870 and the subsequent by-laws instituting the Cowper-Temple clause. On that very ground we have always claimed, and we claim now, that you ought not to destroy the denominational school, because the existence of the denominational school not only gives some measure of justice to those who prefer denominational instruction, but also, in our opinion, gives a stimulus and sets a standard to local authorities who, but for that stimulus and standard, might not, for all we know, give religious teaching in the school. We may be wrong, but that is our view. We stand by the argument

1025
that the State has been neutral to each of these two classes, and we say that it ought to continue to be neutral. We say that this miserable provision even for teaching the Bible does imperil the continuous existence of any religious teaching in our schools, and we think that a national danger. We say that the first part of your Bill crushes out denominational teaching, and we think that a social injustice; and when you welcome this or that argument as a system of compromise, when you declare that we are entering into a battle in order that some political profit may be got out of it, I assure you that you are wrong. Let us deal seriously with what is a serious problem. We feel that you have not reached a solution of the religious difficulty in this Bill; we think, indeed, that you have increased it. You are forcing the country into a period of religious war, and we think that no solution can be arrived at which does not recognise the right of the parent to choose the religious education which is to be given to the child. If you do not do that you at once set up an unfair distinction between the opportunities of the rich and the opportunities of the poor in this country. The rich man sends his son to Eton, and his child hears the services of the Church of England, to which he may be attached by many associations, every day of his life. Why, if a poor man wishes that, is he not to have it? In Clause 9 of the Act of 1902 the right of the parent was fully recognised in respect of the future. In respect of the future, schools were to be provided, denominational or undenominational in character, by any who so wished it, subject only to the efficiency of the education and some regard for the economy of the rates. This was a model. If we had proceeded on these lines we might have found that it was possible to make existing institutions give a greater recognition to the right of the parent. But that is not what you are proposing to do. You are telling us that there are practical difficulties in the way of recognising the right of the parent, that the right of entry upsets the reverence of the pupils for the teacher, and that you cannot build new denominational schools. How do you think that Clause 3 is going to work? Throughout 14,000 schools in this country you are going to have the right of entry which
1026
you say introduces such difficulties into the maintenance of the school.
MR. BIRRELL: The right which is specifically defined in Clause 3 is that of leaving the teaching of the trust school which is transferred to the local authority.
MR. WYNDHAM: But does the right hon. Gentleman think that in providing this right he is thinking of the right of the parent? He is only thinking of the trust. If that be so, then the battle is more fiercely joined than I thought. Until you have regard for the right of the parent you will never arrive at any peace in the religious strife which you have opened up. If I am told that it is impossible or objectionable to have schools of a particular denominational character, I say that it is the case in Germany in respect of religion. They are supposed to be up-to-date in regard to education. Why then does not the Government imitate them? In respect of language the Austro-Hungarian Empire have provided three schools in every village. The thing is not impracticable if you wish to recognise the right of the parent. But if you say that it is not enough that the State should be neutral, then let the State help by rights of entry everywhere, by building schools in accordance with the wishes of the parent everywhere. We shall not hinder you; we shall help you; but do not for the first time during many decades offer special advantages to those who prefer one kind of religious instruction and inflict special disabilities on those who prefer another kind of religious education. I gather from the interruption of the right hon. Gentleman that he attaches very little importance to the right of the parent. He was thinking more of the kind of vested interest in the school.
MR. BIRRELL: The trust.
MR. WYNDHAM: I believe that there is a division of opinion in the Government on this question of the right of the parent. I know that the Chancellor of the Exchequer once derided it. The right hon. Gentleman said—;
"A claim is being put forward (never advanced in 1870) which, as far as I know, is as novel as it is startling in its character.

1027
Lord Salisbury and Cardinal Vaughan have discovered that every English parent has the inalienable right to have his children brought up and taught in the religious faith which the parent himself professes."
Perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer has swayed the councils of the Cabinet, but I will quote another remark as to the right of the parent and the attitude of prelates towards that right which is of greater importance than the opinion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"Happily we have it now settled under the hands of the prelates, both of the Roman and Anglican Churches, that it is the natural and inalienable right of every parent to teach his child his own religious opinions, and that it is the duty of the State to allow all children attending elementary schools to be instructed on the school premises in their father's religion irrespective of the question whether such religion is generally believed to be true or false."
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman recognises the authorship of that quotation. It is initialled "A.B." in a book entitled Boswell's "Life of Johnson,' edited by Augustine Birrell. I believe that it has been republished this year as a companion volume to the Bill for which he has made himself responsible to the House. I used to think that he differed from Dr. Johnson's views on these matters, but I now infer that he agrees with him. Dr. Johnson was talking of the magistrate's rule when he said—;
"Sir, the only method by which religious truth can be established is by martyrdom. The magistrate has a right to enforce what he thinks; and he who is conscious of the truth has a right to suffer. I am afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the truth but by persecution on the one hand and enduring it on the other."
This Bill is persecution. We may have to endure the persecution of this Bill, but we will battle against it at every stage, and if the Bill is passed, then throughout this Parliament and in every succeeding Parliament, until some recognition is given of "the natural and inalienable right" of every parent to see that his child receives from the State the religious teaching which his parents claim for it. I do not admit for a moment that the Act of 1902 involved any departure from neutrality as far as the State is concerned. But supposing it did. Is that a reason for going further in the wrong direction? Is that a reason for piling up religious disabilities on men whose
1028
religious views are as sacred as those of their fellow -subjects? If you do that, you prefer a Parliamentary conflict which will not be confined to the walls of Parliament; and I can state what will happen in the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Queen's Hall in 1896—;
"It advantage is going to be taken of a special and possibly a transient Parliamentary situation to readjust the arrangement in favour of a particular class of schools (without any compensating equivalent in favour of the public), then I warn those who are responsible that they will have challenged, and that as time goes on they will suffer, reprisals."
I would that the necessity for such a conflict might even now be averted; but if you force it upon us we shall face it without fear in the assured hope of ultimate victory. I beg to move.
Amendment proposed—;
"To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day six months.'"—;(Mr. Wyndham)
Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (Sir HENRY FOWLER,): In the long, able, and eloquent speech to which we have listened, the right hon. Gentleman has announced in almost every variety of phrase his determination and the determination of those who sit on the opposite Benches to fight this Bill to the end, and to adopt all measures to defeat it. But the right hon. Gentleman has not touched the facts of the case, and he has completely ignored the history of the position in which the House and the country are now placed. He has given us his own views with reference to education and the construction of this Bill, and he has made prophecies as to what the result will be; but we dispute the facts of the case as he has stated them, and from most of his construction of the Bill we most strongly dissent. I was glad that the right hon. Gentleman did not "hit below the belt"; but I think that he has rather done so in some of his previous utterances. I should like to enter a protest against the language which the right hon. Gentleman has used elsewhere, and also against the language which the late Prime Minister has used

1029
with reference to this Bill, with reference to its authors, and with reference to their intentions. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down told us a few days ago that this was a tyrannical and iniquitous measure. He described it as one of incredible meanness and as a violation of the canons of eternal justice. Then, passing from prose to poetry—;and no one can do it more effectively than the right hon. Gentleman—;he said—;
"If this Bill passes, rural England will become a howling wilderness,"
peopled, I suppose, by howling Nonconformists—;
"and the solitudes will re-echo nothing but the determined tramp of the rate collector and the harsh commands of the bureaucrat underling."
We can afford to smile at that, and we know from his speech this afternoon that the right hon. Gentleman's bark is a great deal worse than his bite. But I protest against a statesman of the experience, the high character, and the position of the Leader of the Opposition saying what he has said in the last forty-eight hours with reference to the conduct of the Government—;
"Can you conceive any outrage more atrocious? The Government have the deliberate intention of crushing the Church of England."
I once heard Mr. Disraeli in this House say of a statement made by one of the most eminent statesmen of the day that it was "an impudent fabrication." The Speaker of that day allowed that phrase to pass, but I am not going to repeat it now. I should be the last to use such an offensive word as "Impudent."
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Do repeat it.
SIR HENEY FOWLER: No; I have too much respect for the right hon. Gentleman and too much respect for myself to apply such a word to him; but I say his statement was a fabrication, and one without the slightest foundation. The right hon. Gentleman was attacking the personal character and intentions of His Majesty's Government. The right hon. Gentleman used stronger words still. He said of the
"provisions of the Bill which provide for the clergyman in a rural parish giving religious education on two days in the week, and the provisions which relieve the teacher from giving religious teaching to which he objects—; that it was a great atrocity."
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Then the right hon. Gentleman went on—;
"It is not uncharitable"—;
I should like to hear the right hon. Gentleman's definition of charity—;
"to say that it is not the interests of religion which the Government have at heart, but the desire to crush as far as they can a great Church to which they do not belong."
Hon. Members are quite at liberty to impute to the members of His Majesty's Government ["The Bill"]—;No; the right hon. Gentleman was speaking of what the intentions of the Government were, and he had no right to say that the nineteen Gentlemen responsible for the government of this country were animated by motives so dishonourable and discreditable. [Cries of "No."]
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman has attributed to me the intention of calumniating the persons composing the Government, because I said that they had the intention of crushing the Church of England. The crushing of the Church of England is a policy I should reprobate in the strongest language; but it does not convey personal discredit. The Liberation Society are not scoundrels, and they exist in order to destroy the Church of England. I attributed to the Government a policy which I thought and still think is embodied in the Bill. If they tell me that they repudiate the intention, as they tell me they do, I will no more attribute it to them. I will only say that their Bill does not carry out what they now say is their intention, and that it does carry out what to all appearances it was aimed at carrying out. The right hon. Gentleman thinks I violated the canons of public controversy by what I said. There is not a man on that side who, in the heat of the general election, has not used far more violent language.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: we will pass away from this personal question. An event has taken place which both the right hon. Gentlemen have completely ignored. There has been an appeal to the country on this question. The two questions which were before the country at the last election with reference to education were public control of public money and the abolition of religious tests, which we have heard described this afternoon as partly an insane proposal

1031
and partly an unjust one. Will any one say that those questions were not before the electorate—;that there was an election from John o' Groats to the Land's End where they were not raised?
SIR PHILIP MUNTZ: In my constituency the question was never raised in any form or shape.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: There is no rule without an exception. But there was no man on this side of the House who was not pledged on these questions; and I say that in the heat of that election there were a large number of candidates on the other side of the House, some of whom are here and a great many of whom are not, who again and again intimated that they were dissatisfied with the legislation of 1902 and were in favour of the principle of public control of public money, and opposed to the imposition of tests. I will give one or two authorities as to this point. From a number of organs of public opinion on the Unionist side I will take two. The Times of April 10th said—;
"The last shreds of denominational or clerical management are thus swept away, and a great step is taken towards the establishment of one uniform national system. With this it is useless to quarrel. It was probably inevitable, and Mr. Birrell was perhaps right in intimating that as long as the dual system remained we could have neither peace nor progress."
Then the Standard of April 9th said—;
"Unionists must reconcile themselves to two very important and very unfortunate reversals of the existing law. In every school that receives assistance from local taxation it is certain, in the first place, that complete popular control will be established—;the foundation managers of the voluntary schools will be swept away. Secondly, we may be sure that what are called religious tests for teachers will be abolished It would be useless in the present state of parties at Westminister to argue that question. Of nine-tenths of the Liberal majority it is said that if their minds were open to conviction on this point they would have no right to be sitting in the House of Commons."
The hon. Member has said that in his constitutency they were ignorant of the education question.
SIR PHILIP MUNTZ: I had Nonconformists on my platform who expressed their strong approval of the late Government's Education Bill.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: The hon. Member will admit that the Birmingham Post is an authority.
SIR PHILIP MUNTZ: I am not responsible for it.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: It is the great organ of public opinion in Warwickshire, and it said—;
"The Government could not by any possibility avoid giving complete public control to all rate-aided elementary schools and throwing the teaching profession open to all, irrespective of religious belief. Their pledges to the electors and, we think, the verdict given at the polls demanded this as the minimum. No one, therefore, can be in the least surprised that the Government has so far modified the Act of 1902 as to bring all non-provided schools under the control of popularly elected bodies and abolished religious tests for teachers employed in those schools. Nor would it be anything but futile to attempt to upset these provisions of the Bill.
Now, I think upon that I am justified in asserting that it was the opinion of the Press. But I have another and a higher authority—;Lord St. Aldwyn, so well known in this House as Sir Michael Hicks Beach. He is reported to have said—;
"He had always felt that the maintenance of denominational schools depended largely upon voluntary subscriptions, and that rate aid would kill such subscriptions, as it had done; and that the question would arise whether it was possible to maintain those schools under their separate voluntary management. Rate aid having killed voluntary subscriptions, he was not going to argue that the result of the late general election had not given the present Government fair ground to say that there must be public control over all schools which received rate aid."
That is the real situation in which the Government were placed; and they would have flinched from their duty if they had not proposed to enact the two fundamental principles against which we are asked by the Amendment to vote, and every man who votes for the Amendment will vote against the two fundamental principles of public control over public money and the abolition of religious tests. Now, what is the position? Up to 1870 almost all the education in this country had been the result of voluntary effort inspired by Christian motives. I am not going to undervalue in any degree what the Church of England and other denominations have done for education; it would be unfair and unjust to do

1033
so; but we have to keep facts in mind. In 1895 the then Prime Minister avowed the intention of his Government to relieve the intolerable strain of finding the money to keep these voluntary schools afloat. Efforts have been made to prevent the creation of school boards in a large number of parishes. I know that in my own districts Voluntary Schools were supported from the desire to keep out school boards. In fact, it was stated that if you could only give so much money it would avoid a rate. I admit there have been erected since 1870 6,765 voluntary schools, and, so far as I can make out, taking the figures from the Education Department, £4,865,000 has been raised by voluntary subscriptions, and when it is said that it is unfair for one of two parties to an agreement to attempt to destroy the other, let us see what was the agreement of 1870. The position then taken up was this. At that time, when the Bill was brought in, the cost of education in the country was roughly estimated by Mr. Gladstone at 30s. a head, and he said a third was contributed by public grants, a third by parents in fees, and a third was provided by voluntary subscriptions. Mr. Gladstone then made the proposal which formed part of the Government scheme for building grants to encourage the erection of additional voluntary schools, that the third from public money should be made a half, and that the other parties should find the other half. Now, what has happened since then? I have mentioned the intolerable strain, and the right hon. Gentleman has said that subscriptions rose to £600,000 or £700,000; but we are dealing with larger figures. In 1870 the entire cost was only £500,000, and the attendance at the schools was, practically, 1,000,000, and the local rates provided £300,000; but in 1902 the expenditure of public money for elementary education was something like £12,000,000, of which £8,250,000 was in grants and £3,250,000 from rates. I will go somewhat higher than the right hon. Gentleman in regard to voluntary subscriptions. I think they were nearly £900,000, but what of that when there is a grant of £12,000,000 from the public funds? The cost, no doubt, has gone up, and is now, I suppose, £3 a head, and in voluntary schools £2 6s. 8d., but no doubt the hon. Member for North Camberwell will deal with this part of
1034
the subject more accurately than I can. And now, what is proposed? We are told it is robbery and confiscation—;that is, I believe, the Bishop of Manchester's phrase, and I think it has boon adopted this afternoon—;and the right hon. Gentleman says we are going to take these schools from them, that we are going to appropriate the money spent in the erection and other objects, and are sinking a blow at legal rights consecrated by legislation and administration for 1,000 years. Now, I say at once the proposal is not to take the property; it will remain in the existing ownership. At present the control is, under the Act of 1902, under private management, and we say now that, being publicly supported, the management must be under representative public control. We ask for the user of the schools for five days in the week and for a certain number of hours each day. We do not interfere with them in the evening, and we do not interfere with them on two days one of which is most important day of all. What about the Sunday schools? Have the Sunday schools no power in the Church of England? There is not a bishop on the Bench or a clergyman doing his duty who will not admit that his Sunday school is conferring the highest benefit upon his parishioners. Do we stop there? No. We say you have provided these schools, and we will pay rent for the five days' user. And that is confiscation—; that is, robbery! In addition, we say we will relieve you from the cost of repairs. You may say the terms are not so liberal as they should be, and there are others who say we are too generous, but it is nonsense to call this confiscation; it is a misuse of the English language; you might as well call it murder or burglary.
That is so far as pounds, shillings, and pence are concerned; and then the right hon. Gentleman attaches supreme importance, and rightly so, to the higher issues—;religious education. On two days of the week the education authority is obliged to hand over to the denomination the religious teaching in the schools. That is what the Bill proposes; there are two days upon which the Church or denomination for whom the school was erected are entitled to carry on its religious teaching. It is not optional; it is not subject to the local authority; they will be entitled, if the Act passes, if a parent wishes his

1035
child to be so taught, to give religious teaching.
MR. WYNDHAMasked where in the Bill he found they were entitled.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: I am not dealing with theoretic possibilities, but with actual every-day possibilities; it is in Clause 2. You can then have special denominational teaching, with the catechisms and Church formularies, and you will have the right to discontinue the attendance of the children during the other days of the week when another class of instruction is given to which objection is taken. I will give the House a practical illustration. Ono of the most distinguished clergymen in London wrote to The Times this week stating that as a rule the clergy only gave religious instruction on two days in the week. I met, the other day, a friend of mine, the clergyman of a parish where there is only a voluntary school, and I said to him, "What do you do?" He said, "I give my catechism instruction on two days a week." Of course during the rest of the week the teacher gives the religious instruction. But that instruction is not confined to specific formularies; it is general Biblical instruction.
COLONEL WILLIAMS: It is given by Church teachers.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: Is there any proposal that there should be a discontinuance of Church teachers? [Cries of "Yes."] Nothing of the sort. In every school taken over the right of the voluntary teacher is preserved; his continuance in office is maintained. The words of the clause are—;
"Where a local education authority continue an existing voluntary school under this Act as a school provided by them, any teachers in the school at the time of the transfer shall continue to hold office under the local education authority by the same tenure and on the same terms and conditions so far as they are consistent with the provisions of this Act as before the transfer."
SIR HENRY CRAIK: What when they die?
SIR HENRY FOWLER: The difficulty which the right hon. Gentleman dwelt upon was with reference to the insuffi-
1036
cient, inadequate, and unnecessary religion which is taught at the present time in the ordinary board schools. I think he forgot that 1,000,000 children belonging to Church of England parents are at this moment, and have been for many years, trained in the school board schools. Is it to be said that they have had no religious instruction? What is the testimony of the archbishops, bishops, and clergy of the Church of England as-to the character and nature of the religious teaching of the board schools? I must in justice make one or two quotations, in order to show that the religious instruction of the board schools is not entitled to be treated with the contempt with which it has been the fashion in the last few days to treat it. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Durham—;I could go through the whole list of bishops and quote the manner in which they have spoken of the efficiency, of the value, and of the high character of the religious teaching in board schools. The Archbishop of Canterbury says—;
"It is almost inconceivable how any Christian man who knows the facts can speak of the religions teaching at present given under the London School Board as 'worthless.' Have all those who speak with ready assurance, on the subject really examined the religions syllabus of the London School Board. To declare it to be impossible profitably to convey to the mind of a little child the sacred lessons which Holy Scripture gives in story and precept and psalm and parable, and, above all, in the life and works of our Blessed Lord, unaccompanied for the moment by Church doctrines of a distinctive sort—;to declare this is, it seems to me, to contradict the simple experience of a thousand Christian homes. It is to me almost inconceivable how any Christian man who knows the facts can speak of the religious teaching at present given under the London Board as 'worthless,' because it is—;to use a sorely battered term—; undenominational. … It is simply trifling with this grave subject to ignore that such instruction lays the foundation upon which the ampler teaching of the Christian faith can be securely built."
I am not going to undervalue the question of the right of the parent with reference to the education of his children. We propose to have on two days of the week distinctive teaching, and on the other three days to have this education of which the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks so highly; and I think that that is as complete and satisfactory a system of religious education as at all events in the Reform Churches can be required.

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The right hon. Member for West Birmingham has made statements on this subject within the last two or three days in letters and in speeches—;it appears to have rather a fascination for him—;with reference to what are the central proposals, as he regards them, of the Government. He says we are proposing to endow a new religion with a million of money. I think it would be impossible to put in any one sentence consisting of that number of words two more transparent and almost, so far as he is concerned, impossible facts. "A new religion! "We heard what the Archbishop of Canterbury has said. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has ever read the syllabus of the Birmingham School Board—
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: Yes.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: And whether he remembers the Birmingham School Board controversy in 1903, when the present Bishop of Manchester, who took an active, and I believe a very valuable, part, in reference to this syllabus, said—;
"He confessed that the cry of the impossibility of undenominational teaching amazed him. … There was no book in the world which was so true to the point of the heart's compass as the Bible. Men who read that book differently, but read it sincerely, still found that was the effect it produced upon them, and that was the effect they desired to see produced on the children, and whatever a teacher could do to enhance that effect without sectarian bias they would give him liberty to do."
Yet that same bishop said within the last few days of this mode of undenominational education that "It would imperil the Christian faith." I have great faith in popularly elected and popularly controlled authorities. I do not find the majority of Englishmen are in the habit of doing an unfair or unjust thing, and I do not believe they will do it. I do not believe the majority of English parents or the majority of English voters are going to exclude religious teaching from English schools. I know that a proposition was made to do it in this House in 1870, and I know that the division which took place in this House then was 420 against purely secular education and sixty for. But when it came to deal with it in the concrete form of the Cowper - Temple clause, Mr. Disraeli
1038
made a very ingenious and a very powerful speech against it, and he predicted in almost the same language as the right hon. Gentleman to-day the calamities which would follow from this non-denominational teaching. He predicted sectarian controversy if this question was left open. There has been no controversy from that day to this. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh!"] No; not with reference to the religious teaching in board schools. I repeat that the board school system has met with the approval of the bulk of the people of this country. It was, I think, Archbishop Tait who said at Croydon that the school board system had solved the religious difficulty. Of course, you can get up controversy by machinery with which we are all familiar; but what I would ask is, how many board schools have discontinued this system? Ten years ago a Return was granted in the House of Lords with reference to the extent to which this school board system, this "new religion," had been adopted in the schools of England by the popularly elected authorities, and there were at that time only seven school boards that did not have religious teaching. These seven school boards were of a very limited character, for the entire number of children under them was something like 8,200 out of a total of 2,250,000.
MR. CARLILE: I am sorry to intervene for a moment. I know of one School Board with over 8,000 children where no religious instruction is given.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: I daresay. I said there were seven.
MR. CARLILE: But I know of one which alone has 8,000 children. [AN HON. MEMBER: What is the name of it?] The borough of Huddersfield.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: I am only quoting the official Return of ten years ago. But supposing the statement of the hon. Gentleman to be true, what is that out of 2,250,000 millions of children? The right hon. Gentleman attached great importance to the endowed schools. That is a question for the Committee stage of the Bill. My belief—;it may be ill-grounded—;is that there is a large amount

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of money applied, and applied unsatisfactorily, to endowed schools which ought to be applied to elementary education. I understand that that opinion has a considerable amount of support from educational authorities. But nothing is intended of an unjust or unfair character with reference to endowed schools. This is an attempt, it may be a bad attempt, to take an opportunity of carrying out more fully what was the intention of the machinery of the Endowed Schools Act, and I am not now going to say one word more about it one way or the other.
But with reference to the Commission, which the right hon. Gentleman described as an anonymous triumvirate placed above the law, who, if a trustee would not betray his trust, might seize the property and divert it in a way which the trust was drawn up to prevent: has the right hon. Gentleman read that clause?
MR. WYNDHAMwas understood to say the names were not in the clause.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: Yes, but my right hon. friend said the names would be put in before the Bill passed, and that a Judge would be one of the three; and the right hon. Gentleman opposite did not tell the House that they would be bound to administer the trusts according to the law of the land and the decisions of the Courts of Chancery. This Commission is intended to facilitate and to cheapen the expense of settlements. This imputation to them of the wicked offence of departing from the ordinary courts of justice to expedite matters was advanced by one who was a distinguished member of a Conservative Government which passed the Scottish Church Bill two years ago, when issues affecting millions of property held on religious trusts were referred to the final decision of a Commission presided over by the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and Scotland approved of what was done, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London defended it in the House and used arguments in its favour in which the then Opposition concurred. Is that to be denounced as dishonourable and unjust in one case which is allowed in another? I have no doubt there are many points in this Bill which will be the subject of great controversy in Committee. That I am quite prepared for; and I have no doubt that
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there will be a very frank use of all the forms of the House with reference to it. I am quite aware that in a controversy of this sort neither side can have all their own way. I think the great blunder the Leader of the Opposition made in 1902 was that he would not listen to compromise. It should be within the right hon. Gentleman's memory that shortly before we adjourned for the autumn recess I besought him not to press that clause which involved giving a majority to the managers of the denomination to which the schools belonged. I told him—;and I did not speak without some knowledge of the case—;that thoughtful, reasonable men on both sides were endeavouring to arrive at a solution. I said if he would give us the six weeks' holiday something might be agreed upon which would avoid what has arisen since. He said "No." He was determined to go on; and I ventured to say that was a declaration of war against Nonconformists. There has been a war. I do not want to have a repetition of that. [Ironical OPPOSITION cheers and counter MINISTERIAL cheers.] An hon. Member says we will have it. Well, if you mean war à outrance you can have it. If it requires two to make peace, two are also involved in a war if a war is declared. I think it would be a pitiable thing if the statesmanship of this House came to this subject without something of a different temper than we have seen up to the present time. I have said before, and I say it still, that the majority of the people of this country are just and fair. I deny in the strongest language that my colleagues are animated by any personal motive hostile to the Church of England. Why, the majority of the Cabinet are members of the Church of England. If only men apply their common sense to this matter, they will see that what you impute to us is not only that we are rogues, but that we are fools, and that is a combination which no man likes to have imputed to him.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: A respectable man may desire to destroy the Church of England. He may be very foolish and yet respectable.
SIR HENRY FOWLER: The charge is, and I do not think it is a just one, that we are producing this legislation, not in the interests of religion, not

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in the interests of education, but with no other but the base, mean motive of destroying the Church of England. That I repudiate in the strongest language I can command. I am willing to forget these personal attacks, for this is not a pleasant controversy for either Churchmen or Nonconformists. It is not a pleasant struggle for public men to be engaged in. It is a controversy in which we ought to be influenced by higher motives than Party triumph. As you know, as you have admitted, as your leaders have declared, including the noble Lord who will have some influence in another place when that question comes up there, the people of this country have decided this matter. They have decided in favour of two fundamental principles. From these two fundamental principles they will not depart; and I think if these are carried —;and I believe the Second Heading of this Bill will be carried, even in the teeth of this uncompromising opposition, with these two great principles—;I do not believe the resources of British statesmanship or the charity of British Christianity is so far exhausted that we cannot arrive at something fair and just to all sections of the House, whether they sit on this side or on that. I hope and I believe that this will be the distinguishing characteristic of our legislation on this question.
MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I recognise the excellence of the concluding remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, and I join with him sincerely in the wish that by the wise direction of the Government on this question this controversy may end satisfactorily. I know that there is something of a difficulty and responsibility which has fallen upon me in the discharge of the duty which I have undertaken, and therefore, I hope to receive the indulgence of the House. This is a measure which, especially for the people on whose behalf I speak, deals with their most profound convictions, their very fervent and sometimes with more than their fervent emotions. I wish to address the House in no spirit of partisanship as between the two great Parties into which this House is divided; and I hope in the observations which I have to make I shall state clearly the case of those in whose
1042
behalf I have to speak. At the same time I wish to avoid using any word which will hurt the legitimate susceptibilities of hon. Gentlemen on either side of the House or below the gangways. In fact I cannot do better in my observations than follow the example of the Archbishop of Westminster in the speech which he made in the very remarkable gathering in this City on Saturday last—;
"The object of this gathering,"
said the Archbishop,
"is not to attack, still less to denounce those who wittingly or unwittingly are the cause of the present great anxiety.… Our concern on this occasion, I wish it to be well understood, is solely for the safety of our Catholic Schools. And it is in behalf of these Catholic Schools, and in their behalf only, that I speak here this afternoon."
Now, I hope that the Minister of Education, and the House generally, will realise the amount of attention, excitement, and profound apprehension which this measure has excited in the minds of the Catholic people of this country. I have had a long and intimate association with my fellow countrymen in England; and I venture to say that never, in the course of the twenty-six years during which I have been associated with them familiarly, have I known their feelings to be so deeply stirred as they are at the present moment in reference to this Bill. Now, why are the Catholic-people of this country so deeply disturbed? The Archbishop of Westminster very properly indicates that it is not for him to say whether the injury or the peril which this Bill involves to the schools of the Catholic children is wittingly or unwittingly inflicted. Nor am I entitled to deal with the speeches by which this Bill has been defended, notably by the speeches of the Minister of Education. What I have to deal with is the Bill itself as it stands. The feeling of the Catholic people of this country is that the Bill threatens to extinguish the Catholic character of their schools. It is no answer to these apprehensions to say that even if the Catholic character of the schools were destroyed, the children would get a good secular education. The Catholic people of this country and all over the world would not be parties to sacrificing the religious character of the teaching in their schools. Still less is it an answer to them to say that if their schools were deprived of the Catholic

1043
character which they at present enjoy, its place would be taken by simple Bible teaching or by teaching of an undenominational character. I listened with attention and considerable assent to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton in reference to the character and amount of the religious education given in the former school board schools. I can confirm one of his statements. He challenged the right hon. Member for West Birmingham as to whether he had read the religious syllabus of the Birmingham education authority. I have read the syllabus of the education authority of the city a Division of which I have the honour to represent. That syllabus covers twenty-two pages and I am quite willing to accept the criticism which the right hon. Gentleman would pass upon such a syllabus. It would not be too much to say that a large amount of religious instruction would be given under such a syllabus. But with regard to this denominational system our position is entirely different from that of hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial side of the House and from that of hon. Gentlemen above the gangway on this side of the House. On the Ministerial side of the House hon. Gentlemen say that denominational teaching is adequate and on the Opposition side it is contended that it is inadequate. Our contention is that it is hostile to us, and the more admirable it is the more hostile it is; and, therefore, every argument advanced in favour of it is one against it. I cannot better give our contention as to that part of the case than in the words of a Memorial I received from a very ancient and representative Catholic body in the town of Preston. Preston has a considerable Catholic population, and it has built many schools and has spent £17,000 or £18,000 upon one school alone. This body which was the first charitable Catholic society founded in Preston in 1701 sent me this Memorial, and it runs—;
"We cannot accept what is quite simple Bible teaching; not merely is this instruction imperfect in the sense in which it is offered to us, but it is often actively and fundamentally hostile to the Catholic ideal. It embodies the principle of the right of private judgment by each individual to Interpret the Bible for himself, and it makes the Bible the supreme and sole source of religious authority. To attempt to enforce this upon Catholic children would be nothing short of religious persecution."
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There is another body in this country to which our case has an extraordinary analogy, and that is the Jews. The other day a deputation was received by the Minister of Education from an influential body of Jewish gentlemen. The Memorial presented to the Minister for Education contained these words—;
"They pointed out that it was extremely difficult to provide undenominational religious teaching which could be taught to Jews and non-Jews alike, and it would be impossible for the Jews to accept any syllabus which incorporated Christian teaching of any kind."
That represents another position than that of the Jews. Any syllabus of the kind mentioned which you may fashion is hostile to us. The Memorial also sets out that—;
"We are of opinion that, inasmuch as the Jewish schools were founded for the purpose of imparting Jewish instruction to Jewish children, they should be maintained for that purpose, and that Hebrew and Yiddish teaching should be given by Jewish teachers, and that a portion of the managers should be of the Jewish faith."
It is a fact that in the East End of London and in other parts of the country under the existing law Jewish teachers and Jewish teaching and an entirely Jewish atmosphere have been given to schools both voluntary and, what was more remarkable, provided schools. I happen to have read some of the comments which the speech of the Minister for Education elicited. I did not read the hon. Gentleman's speech, but I understand that some people are under the impression that if a Jewish teacher be given to a Jewish school, or a Catholic teacher is given to a Catholic school, something novel and revolutionary is going to be introduced into our legislation. As a matter of fact, however, for years in the provided schools of the Jews in the East End of London there has been Jewish teaching, there has been a Jewish teacher, and instruction is given in Yiddish and Hebrew. The fact remains that in the Jewish schools in the East End of London there is provided by the authorities Jewish teachers and teaching. That is right and I approve of it. I think any other way of dealing with the Jewish schools would be intolerant and intolerable, and am I not entitled to say that a great Christian religion like the Catholic religion ought to be given the same rights which are justly and generously accorded to the children of the Jewish community? In other respects I

1045
claim a close analogy between the Jewish and the Catholic schools. We represent a minority as they do, and we represent a poor minority; but the fact upon which I will lay stress is that our schools are homogeneous in that the majority of the children are of one creed. Moreover our schools are not, any more than their schools are, the schools of proselytism, persecution, or ascendancy. I therefore claim for our schools the same rights as theirs.
In the first place I deal with this clause for the limitation to 5,000 people. I think I am right in saying that the right hon. Gentleman calculated that that clause would exclude about 100 Catholic schools, but as a matter of fact 243 schools are in rural districts. I understand, of course, that there is a distinction made between the rural schools and the urban schools. In some respects it is right and necessary that that should be so. In the town people have so many schools, but in many parts of the country there is only one school, where the religion of one creed is taught. But let me point out some hardships which this limitation would involve. I heard the other day of a school in which there were 340 children. This is one that would come into the case of the 5,000 limit. Of that number 300 were Catholics and forty were Protestants. It would be a monstrous thing that the minority of forty should have the right to deprive the 300 of the right to special religious teaching.
But there are other points in Clause 4, the main clause as it affects us, to which I must call attention. It is known to everybody that the Catholic schools of this country have Protestant children amongst their pupils. I do not say this is a reason of complaint. We are bound by law, and bound by good feeling, to open our schools to these children; but we do not invite them; we do not entice them, and when they get there we do not proselytise them. I say our generosity and tolerance in this respect should not be used against us to take away the rights of the majority of Catholic children in favour of the rights of a minority of Protestant children. Another objection I have to the Bill is this—;I am not going very closely into a criticism of this Bill, but there is one danger which anybody who knows the
1046
character of our population in this country will readily appreciate. Our population to a large extent is a shifting population. That is one of the marks and tokens of its position as a poor population. It is shifting because it has to follow its work. We have seen how in sonic cases many houses have had to be demolished because our people have had to go to Bootle or somewhere else to follow their work, and also because of their insanitary condition. It is evident that this four-fifths proportion may sometimes be destroyed by a fact which is not to the discredit of the Irish population. It is possible that these schools may be invaded, and that in a moment of extreme religious excitement advantage may be taken of a sudden invasion of the school by children of another faith to destroy its Catholic character. My main objection to the proposal of the Government is that what we regard as the fundamental right, the liberty of conscience, is placed at the mercy of the local authorities of the country. If, as I hold, that is a fundamental liberty, it ought to be bestowed by no smaller power than this Imperial Parliament, and it ought to be guarded by no less firm security than the statute law. I have the obiter dictum of the right hon. Gentleman—;perhaps I could quote two obiter dicta. In his opening speech he spoke of the generosity, equitableness, and broad-mindedness of the local authorities of this country. I accept the general statement, and I accept it particularly with regard to my own constituency of Liverpool. There was another obiter dictum in which he said that under Clause 4 there was a loophole for pig-headed obstinacy, denominational bigotry and jealousy. That is our case Will anybody deny that if we liked we could give cases in the last few years of this pig-headed obstinacy, denominational bigotry, and jealousy on the part of the local authorities of this country? I am not going into that question, I am not going to open the door for a controversial discussion which I am most anxious as far as possible to avoid. I hope that the House will take it from me that in the Committee stage, if our views are contested, I will be able to prove that many local authorities have treated Catholic schools in a far from liberal or generous or friendly spirit, and I hold that it is unwise on the part of the right hon. Gentleman

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to ask us, in the face of that experience, or even without that, to place the Catholic character of our schools at the mercy of the local authorities of this country unguaranteed by anything less than by statute.
Furthermore I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, Is his method the best for carrying out his own policy? I take the concluding words of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who has just ingeminated peace. He ingeminated peace as the only way to secure religious equality. I ingeminate peace. I want this controversy to end, and to end in securing religious liberty. But will contested local elections, with the education question as the supreme issue, secure this end? Why, during the last four or five years there has not been a single election in this country in which the people were aroused in which education was not the first and supreme issue upon which they gave their votes. In every municipal election in this country that has been the issue upon which our people have acted, and I want to put it to the House whether it makes for religious liberty that at every municipal election in the country you should have religious parties voting on religious questions instead of devoting themselves to the health of the people, which ought to lie the main issue. The House should realise what this question moans to the Catholics of this country. The Catholics of this country are English Catholics as well as Irish Catholics, and we mean to make our fight together, both English and Irish. But it is no secret to the House—;I am making no extravagant claim when I ask the House to agree that the vast majority of the Catholics of this country are Irish—;that this is largely an Irish question, which must be felt and realised from the Irish historical standpoint. I do not mean to go into the past history of Ireland; I will describe the Irish historical position as being this, that the Irish people, and the charity of the Catholic people of Ireland at least, have, over and over again, sacrificed their material interest in the interests of their religious convictions. They are intelligent and quick; in many countries outside this they are the leaders of political life; in this and other countries they are the ornaments
1048
of the learned professions, and yet, for years, on account of religion, they were excluded from sharing in professional life. The Irish land question has passed into a problem. There is not a sod of the millions of Irish acres the ownership of which has not been three times surrendered by the Irish people because of their religious convictions. The Irish schools in this country date from the year 1845. That was the year in which our people migrated to this country. Our people came here flying from starvation and pestilence. Those who came to this country did not come from choice. I do not wish to say anything that might be used to cause ill-feeling, but I must say that they came to this country because they could not go to the United States, and they could not go to the United States because they had not the three or four pounds that would take thorn in the hold of a sailing vessel. But they had the three or four shillings that enabled thorn to conic amongst the cattle on the decks of the boats to this country. In my own constituency of Liverpool the Irish people gathered in the largest numbers in that disastrous time; 26,000 of them landed in the February of 1847, and soon afterwards 13,000 odd of them were in the receipt of relief; they brought no money with them, no education in their heads, no training even of their hands. Some of them brought not only hunger but fever, and I could quote a notable passage from Carlyle on the subject which is well known to many. These were the circumstances under which the great migration into this country took place; and what did this poor people do? They gave out of their poverty the money by which were built side by side the chapel and the Catholic schools, and I tell the Ministry this. They do not realise at all the feeling upon this question if they do not realise the fact that to the Irish Catholic his school is as dear to him as his chapel. Those are the men and women who built the Catholic schools of this country. Am I not entitled to ask, therefore, that these schools shall be spared and reserved? Is it not a claim that I can make to this assembly with confidence? It is a claim of a minority, in face of a vast and overwhelming majority of people of other creeds; it is the claim of a people who, while guarding their own liberties, never violated the liberties of others; it is a

1049
claim inspired by genuine faith, sanctified by sacrifice unprofane by ascendancy, and I confidently leave it before the conscience and judgment of this House.
MR. PERKS: I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool into the interesting sketch which he has given of the Irish historic position. It is sometimes thought, and perhaps more frequently said, that the English Nonconformists have a standing feud with the Catholic Party. I do not know whether the hon. Member believes me or not when I say that so far as I am personally concerned I have never entertained the slightest animosity to my Roman Catholic fellow-citizens. I do not believe in their creed, and they do not accept mine. But I never forget that in many, and some perhaps of the most important principles of the Christian faith, the Catholics and the Methodists are absolutely one. I hope, I do not know whether rightly or wrongly, the day may possibly come when under happier auspices these religious differences may to some extent have been set aside, and we may even see the accomplished Leader of the Irish Party in this House, the hon. Member for Waterford, rising to thank the English Nonconformists as Mr. O'Connell did in 1829. In 1829 Mr. O'Connell appeared on the platform of the Protestant Society in London and thanked the English Nonconformists. I will quote his words, as they have been sometimes challenged—;
"I have come here as the representative, not of the intellect, of that I am incapable, but of the warm-hearted feeling of the people of Ireland. I stand here to-day with my country to express our gratitude in feeble but sincere language, for the exertions made on our behalf by our Protestant dissenting brethren."
I do not know whether that happy day may ever come again when Nonconformists and Catholics may stand upon the same platform and describe one another as brethren; but I would venture to say that the Catholic case as presented by the hon. Member a moment ago seemed to me somewhat more moderate than that presented by the acknowledged and authorised organ of that great religious community in this country, because I observe that the Tablet on Saturday said—;
"The Government knows by this time that the irreconcilable minimum of our demands
1050
is that there shall be Catholic teachers all the time, with liberty to give Catholic instruction under Catholic control, to the children of Catholic parents."
They do not go on to say what I presume is inferred, that that education is to be given at the public cost. Till that is conceded, they say—;
"They may cry "peace, peace,' and there shall be no peace."
And they preface that remark by saying that the resolutions of the Catholic bishops, supplementing those of the Education Council, have fairly committed the Catholics of the United Kingdom to a trial of strength with the Liberal Government. Already Clause 4, to which I will refer in a few moments, granting special facilities for religious education, seems to me to have gone beyond the length of justice and of reason. And if this demand really represents the minimum of the requirements of the Catholic Church, I hardly see myself how it is possible to meet that claim.
May I say, passing from the Roman Catholic claims to which I make no further reference, that I am one of the last persons to entertain against the Church of England any animosity or hatred. I think that is the phrase used by the Leader of the Opposition on more than one occasion when he has referred to the views of the persons whom he describes as the political dissenter. I was myself trained in an Anglican atmosphere. At the college where I was no less than five Anglican Churchmen were responsible for my education. One was a dean, two were canons, and the others were clergymen of some distinction in the Anglican Church. Not a single layman assisted in such education as I obtained. Every morning for throe years I was compelled to listen to the Anglican Liturgy. I was one of two or three Dissenters, and I received a large number of ponderous and elegantly bound volumes for winning the college Divinity prize. I passed through that ordeal without, I think, the smell of fire upon me. I am sure that my Noncomformist opinions were never in the slightest degree jeopardised by that strange association which for three years I had; and I may venture to urge the Irish Party not to be afraid of associating with those who have different ideals of Christianity, and belong to different sections of the Church of Christ. I hope that the time will come

1051
when that enlightened policy which has been pursued in connection with the English universities by the Catholic authorities will be extended by the responsible authorities of their Church right down to the elementary schools in this country. I may remind the Irish Members in this House that one of their most eloquent, and one of their most accomplished colleagues, not now a Member of this House—;I refer to Mr. Michael Davitt—;was educated in a Wesley an day school in Lancashire, and so far as I know, he did not suffer in the slightest degree from it. The Leader of the Opposition has spoken in a very derogatory way of what he calls the political Nonconformists, and has said that he always draws in his own mind a sharp distinction between them and the spiritual or religious Nonconformists. I am not going into that nice distinction. I believe it to be wholly visionary and more suitable for the island of Laputa to which he referred on Saturday, than for the common-sense regions in which we dwell. But the Bill is from our point of view a necessary Bill, and a moderate and reasonable Bill. It is not like the Government Bill of 1902. At the general election of 1900 who imagined for a moment that the men sent to Parliament were going to vote for the destruction of the School Board system? Here there has been no such ambiguity. The Leader of the Opposition said that children liked things clearly and precisely stated. So do grown-up people, and no issue has ever been put before the country with greater clearness and with greater precision than has the claim made by a vast section of the English people for public control, and for the abolition of the sectarian tests imposed upon teachers. This polity was foreshadowed and suggested by nearly every great religious organisation in this country other than that of the Anglican Church —;by nearly every important educational organisation, and in its main issue by the leading Labour organisations. We are told that the Free Chinches of this country are not entitled to claim the right of guiding public opinion. Why are they denied this right? They are in close touch with the working-classes of this country, they are popularly elected organisations capable of feeling the pulse of the country, and they have never put their power into the scale
1052
against popular liberty. These are some of the claims which the Free Churches put forward when they urge the Government to amend the unjust, unworkable, and costly legislation of 1902. In what way does the present Bill carry out our plans and our suggestions? It was a very favorite assertion of the Loader of the Opposition—;an assertion never proved—;that his Bill had improved the position of Nonconformists. I have no doubt he thought so, but I have never met a Nonconformist who was of his opinion, and we claim the right to exercise our own judgment in that respect. All though the great county and diocese of Lincoln there is hardly a single case where one Nonconformist since the passing of the Act of 1902 has been appointed on the management of a voluntary school. The diocesan syllabus of High Church instruction is given in all the non-provided schools, large and small, although there is a large proportion of Nonconformists attending them. It is not right to expect that the Nonconformists of that great county should sit down quietly and accept the Act of 1902 as a solution of the difficulty. Indeed the diocesan inspector of that county has candidly admitted that they took advantage of the presence of Methodist children in those schools for the purpose of embracing them in the folds of the Anglican Church. Canon Pennington, writing in 1897, said—;
"Our syllabus is always arranged so as to give distinctive denominational instruction. I always saw it was given when I was diocesan inspector, and always asked the children, chiefly the children of Nonconformist parents, questions bearing upon it. This is the case throughout Lincolnshire. Thus, in fact, we are training the children of Nonconformists to be children of the Church."
Nonconformists were determined to put an end at the earliest possible moment to the using of these Anglican schools for the purpose of alienating the children of Nonconformists from the faith of their fathers. But we sometimes argue upon this question as though nothing had taken place in the march of educational reform and progress during the last generation or two. There was a time when perhaps the parson might have been accepted as a satisfactory teacher even for secular education. That day has completely gone. The parson in the old days might have been able to teach reading, writing, and

1053
arithmetic, and the elements of knowledge, but he is totally unfitted to perform the duties of a secular teacher to-day. That is the whole trend of educational experience in every country in the world.
There is another thing which makes us most suspicious—;antagonistic if you like—;to the religious instruction given in these Church of England schools. The Church of England herself has completely altered. The Church of England is rapidly approximating in doctrine, creed, and ritual to the principles of the Roman Catholic Church. That is one strong reason why Nonconformists fought the last election with an intensity and earnestness never before exhibited in this country—;to secure a Government that would make one of its first objects the reversal of the unfortunate legislation of 1902. I admit perfectly that the political dissenter—;if you choose so to describe him—;took the field. There are many men sitting on the Ministerial side of this House who would not have left their occupations, their municipal work, and their various social engagements, to seek a place in Parliament had it not been for the very distinct and special object of carrying this Bill upon which we are now engaged.
Has this Bill met our reasonable demands? We asked for one type of schools under absolute popular control. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has pointed out how futile and absurd was the opinion that in those little village boards of management with a majority of four to two there was any effective popular control, and even now under the distant county council there cannot be in my judgment a rational popular control. We desire education authorities in smaller areas where a knowledge of the local interests and of the locality, and the assistance of women on boards of school management in the work of elementary education, can be enlisted. It is impossible in a county like Lincoln for multitudes of people, otherwise fit, to spend a whole day for the purpose of sitting on the county council as the education authority, and while a very important step has been taken by the unification of of the schools and placing them under popular control, in my judgment that control will not be effective until greater use is made of those smaller school areas.
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I observe that the power of appointing teachers is reserved for the central authority. I am not sure that that might not be modified by conferring such a power upon these local and smaller school areas. With regard to the teachers, I have the figures of a very large number of schools within twenty miles of the central town of my division, and I cannot find a single case where a Nonconformist teacher has been appointed under the Act of 1902, even in the lower grades of these various schools. It is only bare justice to the teachers in our schools that they should be exempted from those most humiliating extraneous duties which were often indirectly forced upon them, and they should be recognised as Civil Servants of the State. Reference has been made to the training colleges. I trust that stops may be taken to place all denominational training colleges in receipt of State aid under some sort of public control, and that the tests imposed upon students at our training colleges may be removed. In reply to those who are so afraid of the influence of the teachers I may remind the House that 70 per cent. of the teachers in the School Board schools have been educated in the strict preserves of the training colleges of the Anglican Church. If hon. Members will read a number of letters which have appeared in that well known Church of England newspaper, the Layman, they will find in letters from twelve or fourteen experienced teachers in school board schools most valuable evidence of the religious influence exerted in those schools by teachers who have been trained in the training colleges of the Anglican Church. So far as popular control and the abolition of ecclesiastical tests are concerned, everybody until quite recently appeared to be agreed. My right hon. friend the Member for Wolverhampton has quoted The Times newspaper and the Standard newspaper, and what they state is only typical of every journal which has dealt with this subject. I know there was a little quarrel between the Birmingham Post and the Yorkshire Post as to whether the former journal had quite accurately stated the cause of the defeat of the Unionist Party at the last election. The former paper said it was the Education Act of 1902, the latter said it was tariff reform. Now the religious difficulty comes upon the field, and it is the most troublesome and

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contentious subject with which we have to deal. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham in one of his letters says that there are only two alternatives, the first being a secular system, a purely secular system, with outside facilities—
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: The hon. Member has not quoted me verbatim. I never called the system secular, but what I suggested does involve an entire separation between religious and secular instruction. That can hardly be called a secular system.
MR. PERKS: I understand that the right hon. Gentleman suggests only two plans, but I am going to suggest a third, and I think it is the best of the three—;at any rate it is the one which the Government has accepted. I will take the first. Supposing we say that the school in regular hours is to deal with only secular subjects. I imagine that excludes Bible reading, and consequently Bible exposition. The right hon. Gentleman suggests that facilities should be given outside school hours, but upon the school premises, for the various religious denominations if they want to give their special doctrinal instruction. That is a perfectly intelligible and clear plan, which is supported by a very considerable amount of opinion in this country, but it has to contend with this great and insuperable difficulty, namely, that it turns the Bible out of the elementary schools of England. That is against English sentiment and opposed to the wishes of a huge and preponderating section of British opinion. Therefore, I think that may be brushed aside as not being a practical policy. Now what is the policy which is proposed as an alternative? It is this. Let every religious denomination come into the school for the purpose of explaining and impressing upon the children the various religious views which they hold. That theory has been smashed into atoms from a practical standpoint by one of the most accomplished educationalists that was ever at the Education Department, namely, Sir J. Fitch. It involves an inquiry into the religious opinions of the children in the schools. Someone would have to go round to take a sort of religious census in order to ascertain the opinions of the parents of some 500 or 1,000 children
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attending a school. That would have been the first difficulty confronting the managers. Having ascertained the religious opinions of the parents they were to be divided into about ten, twelve, or even twenty sects. They would have to be penned off in different little rooms at times suitable for their instruction; and that is the second difficulty. The third difficulty is who is to teach them? It is impossible to impose this duty upon the headmaster or the headmistress who may not be acquainted with the views of the parents or the requirements of the children. I think upon one occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham spoke of the Wesleyan religion. I may point out that there is no such thing as the Wesleyan religion.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I have not made any speech on this subject lately. I know I referred incidentally to it in a speech the other day.
MR. PERKS: I know that the right hon. Gentleman has been recently engaged in dealing with more important subjects, but I remember the right hon. Gentleman using in 1902 the expression which seemed to me to be a very extraordinary one, and one, which at all events, shows great ignorance of the Wesleyan Church, its creeds and its practices. If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham with his great experience of Nonconformity is in such a state of blissful ignorance, what must be the state of the average village teacher upon this subject? The first objection is that the scheme necessitates an inquiry into the opinions of the parent, the second that it pens off the children into a number of little ecclesiastical folds, and the third that it requires an inquiry into the theological opinions of the staff and involves the admission of various clergy. It increases what I think every citizen and every patriot and every Christian man must desire to decrease—;it increases, instead of removes, strife of areligious nature amongst the children of our homos and of our people. That is the second suggestion in the right hon. Gentleman's letter. But the Government has adopted another plan. The Government has fallen back upon the well-tried experience of the various school boards of this country, and it has adopted a scheme in this Bill, which I believe is reasonable, workable and practical, and also

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a popular one based upon the experience, of our great school boards and upon the popular judgment of the electors of this country. The Bill provides for simple Bible teaching. [OPPOSITION cries of "No."] The Government unquestionably gives authority to the local education authority to continue what has been done by all the great school boards with hardly a single exception. The school board system is a simple Bible system. As the President of the Board of Education has said, the Bible stands at the very base of school board instruction in this country. I very well remember one of the Articles of the Anglican Church, which I have not looked at for more than thirty years—;I believe it is Article 6—;and it lays down the doctrine that the holy Scriptures are at the basis of the Religious Faith of the Church of England. What has been the reception of Clause 3, and what is that clause? It is anathematised by almost everybody. The Bishop of London goes so far as to say—;
"Religious instruction under this provision will be given of the kind which the board schools were built to avoid."
That is certainly a most extraordinary statement for any bishop of the Anglican Church to make. We are told that there cannot be such a thing as fundamental religious instruction. A late Member of this House, Lord Hugh Cecil, said—;
"It imposes a system of education which at the best tends to undermine Christianity."
That is a position which it is almost impossible for any Nonconformist to assent to. Then there is the contrary opinion held by Canon Henson. Preaching at Westminster on April 9th, Canon Henson said—;
"Schools erected before the Education Act were mostly erected on the broad understanding that the principles of the established Church were those of all Protestants. The schools erected since the passing of the Education Act were erected under legal compulsion and were, in point of fact, a cheap alternative for rate-built and rate-supported schools."
The same authority says—;
"The Church of England ought to constitute itself the champion and the exponent of that fundamental Christianity which was common to Protestants, and alone commended itself to the general acceptance of the English nation."
What does Clause 3 do for denomi-nationalism—;for the Church of England, the Wesleyans, the Roman Catholics, and other denominations who own sectarian schools? I have known many a time,
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in the course of my business experience, propositions put before great commercial undertakings for grants in towns like Crewe, Rugby, York, and many other places. I could name applications which have been made by Church of England school managers for grants for schools for the purpose of avoiding school board rates on railways and other commercial institutions. It is a fallacy to suppose that the money given to all these schools has been given for the purpose of advancing the religious tenets of the communities to which they belong. The clause puts the whole cost of maintaining those schools on the local authority. The ratepayer or taxpayer thereby makes a considerable grant to the denomination. In the next place it gives them the use of these schools on week evenings and, as my right hon. friend has said, on Saturday and Sunday. There are 7,000,000 children in the Sunday schools of England; their instruction will go on, on Sunday, in these buildings, which in the case of the Church of England will be paid for by the State. It gives them also rent. Now what is the rent going to be? From figures which I have roughly taken out it would appear that the Church of England will receive in the shape of rent, if her schools are transferred to the public authorities, upwards of £500,000 per annum, the Wesleyan Church upwards of £20,000, the Roman Catholic Church upwards of £40,000, and the other denominations and the British schools upwards of £20,000. Those are all endowments for the benefit of these religious communities for handing over their buildings on several days of the week for the purpose of secular instruction. Furthermore, it affords the opportunity for religious instruction to be given. On two days of the week special religious instruction can be given. That clause will probably not be availed of by some of the great Nonconformist churches in the country. They are content with the Bible instruction given by the teacher. There are hon Gentleman opposite who think that is not enough. They want the child trained in abstruse or fine theological problems and theories. They therefore wish to superadd something to the common Biblical instruction given by the great school boards of the country, and it is provided in the Bill that on two mornings of the week a teacher of religion —;either the curate of the parish, or, in the case of Catholics, if they accept this

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clause, the priest—;would come in and give the instruction which he thought necessary. We are told that this is the endowment of Nonconformity, that it is establishing a now religion, or a Nonconformist religion. Who has ever heard before that the Bible is a Nonconformist book and that instruction given out of the Bible is Nonconformist religion? It is a new religion, according to the view of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham.
I want to say one or two words on Clause 4. I am bound to say that when we come to the extended facilities proposed to be given by that clause we are entering upon somewhat debatable ground, and so far as I am concerned I do not at all like the extended facilities proposed to be given. This clause has, I understand, been rejected by the Roman Catholic Church and by the Anglican Church. The Bishop of London says that the facilities are so grudging and so hedged round by conditions as to be practically useless. What are the main objections to this clause from the standpoint of English Nonconformists whose views I specially hold? In the first place, it appears to me that they render Clause 3 nugatory, or largely nugatory. It is proposed that in all urban districts with a population of 5,000—;that means in areas represented by 24,000,000 people out of 32,000,000—; sectarian denominational schools should be perpetuated. The Bill provides for an option being given to the local authorities to give sectarian teaching, which would be followed manifestly by religious tests in schools, in places where there is a population of over 5,000, and where the right is claimed by the parents. That would have the effect of plunging almost every local community into a struggle on religious issues at their various local elections. The effect on the teaching staff, in my judgment, would be most pernicious. It would involve the entry into these schools of religious teachers, and I greatly fear that it would perpetuate passive resistance by many English Nonconformists, which has been such an unfortunate result of the legislation of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. I know that it was an amusing thing to the late Minister of Education to find ministers of religion flung into gaol under
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the provisions of the Act of 1902, and to find a number of persons haled before the magistrates for non-payment of rates. The hon. Gentleman treated this as a most amusing incident of his tenure of office. I trust that he may never have another opportunity of seeing such an exhibition of public antipathy to any Bill.
I would only venture in conclusion to express in regard to this particular clause the hope that the Government will keep an open mind. It is rejected by the Anglican Church, it does not meet the wishes of the Catholic Church, and it is adverse to the strong convictions of a very large percentage of the Nonconformists. If that be the case, why retain it in the Bill? The Bill is a perfectly workable and practical measure without it. There is no compulsion at all upon sectarian school managers. If they choose to close the doors of their schools they can do so, and if they desire to keep the doors open they can do so. In bygone days those great religious communities made great sacrifices in the interest of education. If a religious community feels strongly on this subject, what is its paramount duty? It will keep these schools open; it will not transfer them to the local authority. What the local authorities would have to do would be to build a new commodious up-to-date school in place of what is often at the present moment an old-fashioned, broken-down, insanitary building. I would recall to the mind of the Government a letter that was written in 1870 by Lord Ripon to Mr. Forster when he was getting the Bill of that year through the House of Commons. Lord Ripon was the Minister in attendance on the Crown at Balmoral, and he wrote to Mr. Forster as follows—;
"Your business and mine is simply to try and get the Bill through without alterations to which we object. If Gladstone prefers to carry it by the aid of the Tories rather than by consolidating the bulk of the Liberals that is his affair, not ours, and we must let him do what he likes on that point."
That was an unfortunate piece of advice, and it led to a condition of discontent for many years between Nonconformists and a section of the Liberal Party and Mr. Gladstone's Government. I recall that passage in the progress of the Bill of 1870 for the purpose of suggesting to the Government that if Clause 4 is universally reprobated by the various sections of the community for whom it

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is intended it would be futile to pursue what it proposes in the face of that opposition.
SIR HENRY CRAIK: I think if the House wished to learn something of the spirit which animates this Bill it could not have done better than to listen to the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. The hon. Gentleman has endeavoured by every means in his power to raise the strongest feelings of religious bitterness and has imported into the debate his own particular religious opinions. In his eloquent and impressive speech the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool began by stating that he spoke entirely for the Catholic Church. I think as he went on, when he spoke words which touched the hearts of all of us, we felt that he had unduly narrowed the scope of his own sympathies. I think also he unduly doubted the sympathy he might obtain from his Anglican fellow subjects. Before I touch on the Bill I should like to touch on one or two points brought forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He began by the somewhat unusual process of answering speeches which were delivered elsewhere than in this House, and he quoted as unquestionable authority various newspapers, as if we were bound to accept their statements as the expression of our own views. Some of those views I cannot accept. I do not think they have been expessed within the limits of the discussion in this House. The right hon. Gentleman went on further to speak as to the mandate given at the last election in regard to this question of education. He referred to one or two of the provisions of the Bill, but I think he gave more attention to the opinions expressed on the public platform and in the newspaper articles than to the clauses of the Bill. He refused to accept the criticism as to the guarantee of the facilities in every case, and stated semewhat hotly in reply to such objections that these facilities would be a necessary consequence of the Bill. But he forgot that the trustees might find themselves under the tender mercies of the triumvirate, and might have to accept the position forced upon them. The right hon. Gentleman said that it was necessary that in the four-fifth clause the local authority could
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not say, "You must teach the faith of the children in your school." It is true that, so far as Section 7 is concerned, it preserves the teachers in their office so long as they live; but the right hon. Member forgot that in case of a vacancy there was no power on the part of the local authority to appoint a teacher to teach the denominational religion. Unlike the hon. Member for Scotland Division, I do not approach the discussion of this Bill as a representative of any particular communion, a position which I am not entitled to assume. It is true that my objections to the Bill are based mainly, although not solely, upon the treatment of the voluntary schools, and upon the attempted solution, which I think no solution at all, of the religious question in education. But I propose to discuss the Bill, not from the standpoint of any particular section, but as inflicting an injury upon constitutional and individual liberty, because it interferes with the rights of the family and the home, and will, I believe, adversely influence educational progress in general, a work in which my whole life has been spent, and the progress of which I believe to be one of the supreme interests of the nation. There are two features which reappear in all these educational discussions. The first is that whenever an English Minister of Education rises to propose a new Bill, he invariably laments the dire necessity laid upon him to address an audience chiefly interested in disputed questions of religious belief, and he then proceeds to occupy the greater part of his speech with little else. Both these features have bean repeated by the President of the Board of Education in introducing this Bill. He described the crowded audience which gathered to hear him as attracted not by his eloquence and wit, nor by any interest in education, but only by the prospect of an acrimonious discussion of these questions. He then proceeded to satisfy these tastes by devoting more than nine-tenths of his speech solely to religious disputes, and giving us a modicum of educational bread to an ocean of the sack of sectarian discussion. I venture to claim for my own country that when Education Bills dealing with Scotland have been discussed in this House, the religious question, if not entirely absent, at least occupied very much less prominence in the discussion. I do not been due to any lack

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of tenacious hold on their religious creeds on the part of my countrymen, nor to the absence of denominational teaching from our educational system, which on the contrary, frankly, avowedly, and as I conceive logically, gives full freedom to all denominations. But in this reiterated complaint of the intrusion of religious feeling into educational questions, is there not something of conscious or unconscious cant? What wonder that the problems concerning men so deeply, and affecting them so vitally as the position of religion in the eternal economy of our schools should arouse strong feeling? While human nature remains what it is, it will continue to be stirred by what lies at the foundation of our children's education, and it is folly to expect that the enthusiastic defence of religious belief will retire from the field until you effect a reasonable settlement. After all, there are only three possible attitudes towards any religious dogma. We may be for the dogma, against the dogma, or we may care nothing either way. Whatever the attitude we assume we are the adherents of a particular sect or form of opinion, to one or other of which every human being must belong, and no one of us has a right to stigmatise his fellow-citizens as narrow-minded or sectarian because he holds a particular view. Which is the best of these views must remain a matter of eternal dispute, and for the settlement of that dispute I think most hon. Members will agree there can be no worse arena that the House of Commons. But although Parliament cannot safely interfere to pronounce on any particular religious dogma, Parliament has a function of supreme importance of which it cannot divest itself, that of laying down the conditions under which diverse religious convictions shall operate. What is to be the rule in the application of these conditions? Can there be any other than to leave the most absolute freedom to all? I would venture to repeat some weighty words of Dr. Chalmers, whose authority Nonconformists will at least not question, which were quoted by the late Lord Playfair in this House in 1871—;
"If there were not,"
said Chalmers,
"as there certainly was not, a theological Parliament versed in dogma, the next best thing is that in any public measure for the education of the people, Government should abstain from introducing the element of religion
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at all into their part of the scheme, leaving, this matter entirely to the parties who had to do with the erection and management of the schools, which the Government hail been called on to assist."
These words I hold express the charter under which all religious communities are entitled to work, and all the difficulties and perplexities which have arisen are due only to your having deserted that principle.
What, briefly, has been the history of State action in regard to education? Will the House allow me to recall it in two or three sentences for the light it throws upon the present position? These Parliamentary grants for the maintenance of the schools are less than seventy years old. At first, and although hon. Members may have forgotten it, for nearly one half of that period the rule was that no school was eligible for grant which was not connected with some recognised religious community. That rule ended only in 1870. I do not assert that it was an expedient rule, or that it should be continued. I only adduce it as showing the attitude assumed by the State and the responsibility which that attitude involved. It was only with the Act of 1870, when a new class of rate supported schools was established, that a novel restriction was imposed, and that last refuge of logical imbecility and of moral cowardice—;the Cowper-Temple clause—; was invented. Many of us will be ready to admit that illogical as that scheme was it might in practice work fairly enough when the restrictions which it imposed, were partial only, and when the voluntary schools still supplied an outlet for freedom. It was introduced into the Bill by Mr. Gladstone as an afterthought and, as we all know, with a scarcely suppressed feeling of dislike. Under no circumstance could he, as he fully admitted, have altered his Bill to introduce this clause unless it had been supplemented by definite denominational teaching in the voluntary schools. Let me quote two or three sentences of Mr. Gladstone's utterances in 1870. On the 10th of June he said—;
"We know perfectly well that practical judgment and the spirit of Christianity combined with commonsense may succeed, and does succeed in a vast number of cases, in avoiding the thorny path of controversy in the work of communicating religious instruction to children, but the whole essence of that process lies in its voluntary character."
On the 30th of June he used the following words, which seem almost

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prophetic of the situation which has now arisen—;
"We do not admit that the simple and devout character of teaching can be secured by an attempt to exclude all reference to tenets and doctrines. That is an exclusion that cannot be effected, and if it could be, ought not to be. It is an invasion of the freedom of religious teaching such as ought not to be tolerated in this country. And those who attempt to sustain it in argument, whether as between party and party in this House, or as between one branch of the legislature and another, will find themselves shattered and discomfited the moment they attempt to bring to the tribunal of reason a proposal to establish by law a system so forced and so unnatural."
And, it being a quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business sot down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

MERSEY RAILWAY BILL [LORDS] (BY ORDER.)
  WIRRAL RAILWAY (EXTENSION OF TIME) BILL [LORDS] (BY ORDER.)
  Second Heading deferred till Monday next at a quarter-past Eight of the clock.

EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
Order read, for Adjourned Debate on to Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
Which Amendment was,
"To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day six months.'"—;(Mr. Wyndham.)
Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question.
SIR HENRY CEAIK,resuming his speech, said:—;Under the new regulation the voluntary schools were the safety valve in regard to the religious teaching which was denied to the children in public schools. That compromise then was made possible only by the fact that voluntary schools retained their freedom. For more than thirty years they continued educating three-fifths of the children, and with voluntary contributions
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amounting to 7s. a head against 35s. from the public grant. That is to say, voluntary subscriptions met one-fifth of the cost and left the State without any burden for the religious education given in the schools. But what wonder that under the new conditions the difficulties of voluntary schools increased? The subscribers had to bear their share of rates for schools from which they and their children derived no benefit. The standard of school-building and school equipment rose, the standard of education got higher and higher, and their resources were necessarily crippled. At the same time, the local authorities questioned the efficiency of these schools and claimed a share of authority in their management, a claim which the State had never made. The Act of 1902 gave that share of management and rightly added to it the duty of contributing to the maintenance to help the necessities of these schools. The Act gave them the power of regulating the whole of the secular instruction, fixing the salaries of the teachers, and regulating their appointment and dismissal save and except in regard to religious instruction. I am ready to admit that it was a hazardous experiment and I hope hon. Members opposite will credit me with an honest desire to understand their point of view. The experiment was hazardous, but it was not unjust that in return for having a share in the management the local authorities should be compelled to bear a share in the burden of maintaining them. I am quite willing to admit that there were under the Act of 1902 certain inequalities, I will not say certain injustices. There were one or two provisions in that Act which I would gladly see altered. The voluntary subcribers had still to bear the cost of premises, which more than covered the cost of religious education. I should have preferred that instead of taking that form, the contribution should have been ear-marked for religious education. I should have preferred also that the voluntary schools had had the option of remaining outside the scope of the local authority and receiving grants as before. I should have preferred also that the rights of minorities should have been better secured by Sections 8 and 9 of the Act of 1902, and that even in single-school areas, schools should have been deemed necessary when, in the words of the Scottish Act, they were

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"required, regard being had to the religious belief of the parents for whose children they were intended." This might have been costly, but it would not at least have cost that £1,000,000 a year, which the right hon. Gentleman lightly proposes to throw into his Bill without one jot tittle or iota of educational benefit.
And now what is to be done under this new Bill? It begins with a measure which, in spite of the denunciations of the Chancellor of the Duchy, I must still call, as I believe it to be, a sweeping scheme of confiscation, in which trusts are treated with callous indifference. If no arrangement is made under Clause 2 they are left under Clause 8 to an unequal contest before the triumvirate of Commissioners, with all the chances against them. There are aggravations of this star-chamber process which I leave other Members to expose, as I wish to confine myself to the educational effects of the Bill. As a meagre sop we are allowed a string of facilities, differing in degree, according to the accident of a local contest or the nice balance of a fraction. I attach very little value to any of these facilities, and I am not prepared to waste any words in discussing the precise scope which they would cover. We are to have ordinary facilities, special facilities, extended facilities, depending upon the balance of a popular election, and the variation of a fraction. To all these I can only say that the man who has most practical experience of a school will attach least importance to them. It is at the door of a school or in the choice of a teacher that the parent can alone exercise his right of selection. I know of no case in any country where these facilities have served as a solution for any length of time or upon any large scale. I wish to point out only one very practical difficulty. Suppose you have a school of 700, you will require the services of some twenty teachers. Are these to be duplicated for a single hour or portion of hour in a day? How is it possible that you are to provide for this purpose twenty or twenty-five men to come in during an hour or a part of it who are not to be permitted to take part in the rest of the teaching of the school? What is this scheme to carry out? We are told it is to carry out what is the
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object of this legislation: uniformity of public control. Those words were often used without qualification, but I observed that the Chancellor of the Duchy was careful to qualify the phrase by saying uniformity of public control over expenditure. By what mandate? I am prepared to admit that the nation desired, and rightly desired, public control commensurate with public assistance, but not further. What is this great idea of uniformity which is sought here? Monotony of type is not an object in itself. It is contrary to all our national instincts, it checks wholesome rivalry and wholesome variety. Do you desire to introduce some foreign model like that of Germany, where the children are turned out on a uniform type and where the work of the schools is under a single official? Such a system is not in accordance with the genius of our race to foster and preserve and not to check the variety in type of our schools. It is no educational advantage. It tends to produce dull and mechanical routine, intellectually and morally pernicious. Try such a system in Scotland or in Ireland, and you will find such a response as will make any Government think twice before it continues the experiment.
Is justice different when it passes between or crosses the Irish Channel? [An HON. MEMBER: Yes] The hon. Member has a more territorial idea of justice than I can subscribe to. What is to be the type of this uniformity you are going to establish? You are to exact a religious uniformity, I care not whether you call it a new or an old uniformity, to be prescribed by the State or by the local authority. It is to be a uniformity apparently in which all subjects as to which different opinions may prevail are to be tabooed. Religion is not the only subject. History, literature, political economy, even the physical sciences are involved. There is to be one type of religion with the teacher for high-priest, yet free to refuse the function and in any case without credentials of his fitness to perform it.
It is said that there is another mandate: that there shall be no tests for teachers. But there is none such now, under any Education Act, except such test as must last, as long as you leave freedom to any body of managers. As to this the right hon.

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Gentleman is in a dilemma. Either his concession to the four-fifths schools is a worthless sham, or the local authority must take the creed of a teacher into consideration, and thereby establish a test just as it exists now. And who is to define this uniform religion? We are told by Dr. Clifford, I think, that it is a religion which has no adherents and which no one professes. And in no part of his speech was the right hon. Gentleman so violent as when he repudiated any idea that such a religion expressed the views of the Nonconformists. If the right hon. Gentleman was looking for a short title to his Bill I would suggest to him one of two. The short title of the Bill might be "An Act to require that the religion of nobody shall be taught by anybody," or else "An Act to provide that nobody shall teach anybody's religion. "Is this uniform religion to be defined by an annual code, and year by year shorn of some of its essentials? What is a formulary distinctive of any sect? Is it distinctive of one sect? There is no such formulary. Or is it one not received by all sects? Then any new schism may to-morrow whittle away one of the branches of your fundamental Christianity.
But this scheme is not only fundamentally wrong in principle: it is educationally pernicious. In all subjects we have of late insisted that the teacher shall adduce proof of his fitness to teach them with that knowledge and conviction which beget energy and enthusiasm. Is religion to be the one exception? We have widened the conception of education and treated it not merely as the acquiring of a few intellectual aptitudes, and some facility in reading, writing and arithmetic, but as the building up of the character. Is the supreme sanction of moral conduct to be attained by eliminating from the training that which most of us believe to be the strongest element of education? Where, after all, does the parent come in? The right hon. Gentleman told us the other night that he hated the phrase "children of the State" and forced his repudiation by a simile in which he did not spare the blushes of the mace on the table, but is he not here assuming for the State what is the parent's most solemn function? Even to the parent of the child sent as a punitive measure to the industrial school, you give a freedom of choice in the
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selection of a denominational school, which you deny to thrifty responsible and industrious parents. What has such a schema led to elsewhere? In America all tradition has contracted religious teaching and with what result? It has been gradually lessened till in some States even the reading of the Bible is prohibited, vast numbers are educated in private schools, and 1,500,000 children are educated in the parochial schools without grant and without supervision. The question is giving serious consideration to those best fitted to judge the position of American education. President Murray Butler of Columbia University tells us that one side of education, its religious side, is neglected, and that they are face to face with the alternative of giving grants to parochial or voluntary schools, or of checking the sphere of the public schools, and instituting a new organisation for religious teaching. Do you wish to allow a whole mass of education to pass out of public supervision? Is such a scheme in accordance with our past history, full as it is with great names of the heroes of Church and of Dissent, of Catholics and of Protestant? Is our literature the product of one religious spirit only? I would appeal to the different sections of the House, whether this meagre fare is that upon which their great traditions have been nurtured. No, Sir, the Bill is wrong educationally, wrong in its scornful treatment of conscientious belief, wrong most of all in its cramping uniformity, and in its restriction or constitutional and parental freedom. The right hon. Gentleman quoted from that prolific fountain head of quotation "The Book of Proverbs," those mystic words: "Where there is no vision the people perish." Those familiar words haunt our thoughts as the expression of the great truth that to religion we owe that stirring of the imagination, that quickening of intellectual life which is one of its inestimable benefits. But for millions of our fellowmen pressed by the ills of life, burdened by physical and moral pain, saddened by misfortune and bereavement for whom life has little to offer, it holds out a greater gain in a definite creed, opening wider hopes and showing a sunshine behind the dark clouds of life. Do not, I beseech you, banish these hopes by restricting the freedom of their creed. This scheme may give to

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you the freedom you desire, but do not seek to remind us that there may be times
"When a factions bund agree
To call it freedom when themselves are free."
Leave the school free as a nurturing place of character, as an influence of the widest intellectual scope, inculcating the best sanction to moral conduct, free to steer its course
"True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."
You are now in the heyday of your power, the masters of many legions which may enable you for the moment to overcome our opposition. But time and the spirit of the nation are with us, and far beyond these walls in many a humble home, in many a lonely village, in the great centres of population gathering in their vast assemblies, opinion is crystalising against you. These forces will have their reprisals, and they will come in other sort and with greater dignity than are seen in the petty vindictiveness of this cramping, this ungenerous, this illiberal Bill.
MR. BELLOC: I only address the House because, after the speech of the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool, I desire to express the view held by the English liberal Catholic body. No one will deny the importance of that view. The House must remember that we are a very large body numerically. We are as large numerically as Liverpool and Manchester combined, and larger than Birmingham and its surrounding group of lesser towns. Though it is true that probably the main part of that body is Irish in origin, and therefore to some extent attached to the Irish Party for its defence, yet it must also be remembered that it exists in England, and that it returns to Parliament Members, nearly always Liberal, who are pledged usually to the Irish voters, and always to the Catholic voters of their Division to retain if possible the present privileges of the Catholic schools. The hon. Member for Louth made use of the word "moderate," and I have also heard the word "compromise" mentioned as regards the Catholic schools. I cannot too emphatically point out that those two words are absolutely meaningless when the House of Commons is dealing with Catholic faith. The House may tyranni-
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cally insist on their having less, but English Catholics cannot be content with less for their Catholic children than Catholic schools with Catholic teachers teaching the Catholic religion, and impressing the children all the time. Though I cannot go into the whole "why" of that demand, I can give you a glimpse of it. I desire the House to remember the history of the religious body to which I belong. There is no machinery for teaching history properly in the Universities, and still less in the great public schools of this country which are attended by the wealthy; if there were, no educated Englishman would be ignorant of the fact that in the history of religious persecution since Diocletian nothing can compare with the persecution of the Catholic people of this country by the wealthy and official classes. It has not been a popular persecution, but a cold, deliberate, and bloody persecution on the part of the men who got hold of the land of the country after the dissolution of the monasteries. Can you wonder if, after two centuries of such suffering, we emerged a wholly distinct and highly homogeneous body? Right or wrong, all the rest of the country stands as a body of English Protestants unless I except the small body of the Jews. The hon. Member for Louth asked why, if we allow our members to go to the Universities, we will not allow thorn to go to public schools which are Protestant in purpose. I can answer him, for I have been to one of these Universities. I love my college, though I know it to be thoroughly Protestant. I can toll the hon. Member why I can so accept it. It is because the effect of University teaching is vastly different from the effect of school teaching. The former is critical and falls upon a mature mind; the latter is formative and moulds a mind yet plastic. I never knew any Catholic who went to Oxford and was in any way influenced by the dominant doctrine of the place. But a little child must accept what it is told, and that which it is told finds a permanent hold. If the Catholics are making what seems to be a violent claim, it appears to me we may yet find a way by which without a breach of any Liberal principle, Catholic schools may yet be saved. It is true, not only of myself, but of every Catholic in England, that the preservation of the Catholic schools is far and away the first

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of the political controversies in which he may be concerned. I should not hesitate for a moment if I found it impossible satisfactorily to represent my constituency and yet to stand as I do for my religion, as to what course I should take. A political career is nothing to us compared with our religion; nor is wealth. It would be an easy matter, as a mere mechanical contrivance, to make the Catholic body a separate body with a particular privilege; but that solution as an English Liberal I reject. Catholics must have their rights on some general principle, and that principle is the right of the parent to have his child instructed, immersed in the religion for the glory and defence of which he brought that child into the world. The Catholics feel that they are in a sense exiles in this country, misunderstood both in regard to their vices and their virtues; and so long as they retain that feeling they demand the right of maintaining the things for which they have struggled so long and so bitterly. The right of the parent in these conditions is inherent. I agree, however, with the view that for the vast majority of Protestant parents in this country the Bill is sufficient, and provides that children shall be brought up in the religion to which their parents are attached. On that account I accept the Bill, and will vote for the Second Reading. There are I know strong arguments against our claim. There is the argument that if you feel this desire for an abnormal system, then you must pay for it. That argument would be sound if you were not asking us to pay for your system. If you could devise a purely neutral and secular system, then you could logically say, "We do not ask you to pay for our morals or our philosophy, neither should we pay for yours;" but when you ask us to endow the opinions of the vast majority of the people of this country, so long as we are a minority we can stand up and say, "as we pay, so we must receive." There is a last and a powerful argument against us which is this. If all sects demanded such rights those rights could not be given, because the complexity would be too great and the whole thing would be impossible. But this argument ignores the practical conditions of the problem. There is no great multiplicity of religions: there are not twenty or thirty different kinds of Englishmen. Upon this question there is a vast mass of solid
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opinion, and even the man in the street will readily describe to you his views, which will be found to be the same as the principles which have been embodied in this Bill. There are amongst you, in fact, only two sects who really differ from you, namely, the Jews and the Catholics, and practically these are the only two you have to consider. I do not want to wound the susceptibilities of any one. I know that here and there are groups of Protestant parents who demand a highly definite dogmatic teaching. What about such parents? I say if you can find them and get them together; if you can get four-fifths of such parents to demand and urge the teaching of a particular creed, to say what that creed is, and what kind of teacher they want, then there will be no difficulty about the matter. I will give an example Perhaps the Greek Church in Salford or Manchester might desire a particular teaching, and they might choose a particular teacher. But, for the rest, I do not think, with the exceptions I have indicated, that any sect will refuse to accept the simple Bible teaching. Now what is the practical suggestion which I have to make? I am speaking, not only of the Catholic body, but also for the great bulk of those who voted at the last election, when I say that a single school area should, in the future, be neutral even if the school has been Catholic. You have no right to teach even a small minority something which they do not believe in. I agree that wherever you have four fifths, by whatever machinery you give, demanding a particular definite teaching there they should have it. It is also equally important that the teacher should be nominated or suggested by the body which represents the views of the parents, but it is essential that the public authority should have the right to say, "We will not have this or that teacher and you must suggest another," until a suitable person is selected, always, of course, with an appeal to the Education Board. I believe that the English people in local administration are as just as and perhaps more just than the people of any other country, but there are necessarily a few exceptions, and they are quite enough to light a flame which is sure to be felt throughout the whole of our corporate body. Therefore we must have an appeal to the

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Education Department which is something central and far removed, and which we can trust better than the momentary fads and bigotry of a local body. Finally there is our claim to have now schools recognised. It is intended by Clause 5 to give minorities this right. The simplest way would be to establish proof that the school is required by educating the minimum number of children and then the public will take over the responsibility. One thing is certain. We have determined that we are not going back to the government of the stockjobbing or the form of government which has mis-governed Ireland. I appeal to the Government to permit us to contiuue along the lines I have indicated by some such concessions as I have outlined. I will conclude by saying that for the general purposes of education and its general principles I doubt whether any man who knows the English people and the characteristics of the poor artisan who sends his child to school can sincerely declare that this Bill does not meet the wishes and general opinions of the vast majority of Englishmen.
MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I hope the House will allow me to examine the Bill from a somewhat different point of view from the speakers who have preceded me. I speak for no religious sect nor for any anti-religious sect. I have not even the advantage of speaking for a particular Party, because in my quarter of the House, keenly interested as we are in all educational problems, we are bound to consider the Bill as being, to a very small extent, an Education Bill, and, to a very large extent, a sectarian Bill. That being the case the Labour Party is not unanimous about it, although a decided majority of the Party view with sympathy the observations and the criticisms I am about to make on the measure. I regret that no provision has been made for a national system of training colleges for teachers. I regret that no attempt, or at least a very ineffective attempt, has been made to restore democratic control over education. There are two pre-eminent points which characterise this Bill. The first is that it contains a genuine attempt to bring the fabric of the schools under popular control. The second point is that it makes an effort to abolish tests for
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teachers. Upon these grounds and these alone we are prepared to say that the Bill ought to go to Committee. We are not prepared to say that the provisions under either or both of these heads are sufficient for our purpose, or that they are sufficiently clearly stated, but they will enable very drastic Amendments to be made in Committee, and consequently we propose to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill. The position from which I venture to criticise the Bill is that of secular education. As certain protests have been made in the House to-day against what has been called hitting below the belt, may I also enter my protest against various processes of hitting below the belt. Since the First Reading of the Bill those who are in favour of the teaching of secular subjects have been characterised as secularists. Certain bishops have been telling us that those who are in favour of secular education alone in the public schools are in favour of secularism, that is, the system of philosophy known as secularism. I deny that secular education and secularism are one and the same thing. I deny that secularists only stand up in this House and outside the House in favour of secular instruction. As a matter of fact I shall offer some observations to show that those who are supporting the Bill are much more, in practice at any rate, although not in theory, in favour of secularism than we who are in favour of the teaching of secular subjects only. It is a curious fact, of which both sides of the Houss well know the significance, that every Labour movement, from the north pole to the south, and from the rising to the setting sun, is in favour of a secular system of public schools. In no country in the world, whether Catholic or Protestant, and under no form of government whatever, do we find an organised Labour Party in favour of denominational or undenominational education. Why? I venture to say that the chief reason is that those who belong to the Labour Party send their children to these schools. I am amazed at certain right hon. and hon. Gentlemen rising here and taking such a keen interest in the religious education of the children. What proportion of the bishops, and what proportion of the Members of this

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House who have been taking part in the debate, are going to send their children to the schools we are discussing? If they would allow us to settle the education that is to be presented to our own children, and for which we are going to make ourselves responsible, there would be less of the sectarian spirit which unfortunately is going to mark the discussion of this Bill. Moreover, the position which we take now, and which we will take throughout the discussion of this Bill, is the position always taken by the leading Nonconformists, who have been the most eloquent, the most earnest, and the most reputable champions of the policy of confining public education to secular subjects. Men whose names are held in reverence m every community holding Nonconformist creeds saw, every time that an educational crisis such as this occurred, that the one security of educational peace, and that the one hope of uniting the country, was to say that, so far as the public schools of the State are concerned, religious instrucsion so-called ought to be kept out, because, except on that basis, there could be no peace, no settlement, and no finality whatever. Unfortunately, from the very beginning of the organised system of elementary education for the children of the working classes we have had this sectarian strife. The State has from time to time honestly and conscientiously done its best to bring peace between the warring sects in this matter. Any one acquainted with the history of elementary education in this country during the last hundred years is aware that it has been one long, bitter, heartrending series of attempts to advance the frontier of education in opposition to warring sectarianism, and unfortunately the attempts have been too often defeated by that warring. Reference has been made to the debates of 1870, when Mr. Richard, the predecessor of my hon. friend for Merthyr Tydvil, moved an Amendment to the Bill of that year to the effect that only secular education should be provided in the schools to be established by the Bill. I regret to say that of the sixty men who went into the Lobby that night in support of Mr. Richard, so far as I can make out—;and I have refreshed my memory as recently
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as to-day—;only two survive as Members of this House. Fortunately, and may I hope significantly, the present Prime Minister was one of those who voted for secular education in 1870. May I remind those who have still the idea lurking in their minds that secular education is merely secularism of some words used by Mr. Gladstone when dealing with, the same arguments—;I can hardly call them arguments, but with the same stick as has been used to-day to beat those who are in favour of secular education? Mr. Gladstone said he was satisfied that support of the Amendment was compatible with zeal and respect for religion. That is the position of a very considerable number of us on the present occasion.
What is the position to-day? The source of this Bill was the controversy of recent years. We had in 1902 a Bill introduced by the late Government. It was a Bill which undoubtedly effected some excellent reforms, and in many respects it did work which ought to have been done years before. But part of the Bill gave rise to religious controversy, and we have had the old story, the old trouble, the old difficulty. Part of the Bill placed the Church of England in relation to other denominations on an unfair footing. The result was the passive resistance movement. The Government propose to put it right by simple Bible teaching. What is this House asked to do? I hope that the House will ask itself honestly in the light of experience of the last century—;is this Bill going to establish peace? The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy finished his speech by appealing for peace. Appeals for peace are excellent, and I must remark that in the present state of the controversy they do indicate a certain measure of Christianity, but appeals for peace are not enough, for, after all, you have to state the conditions of peace. Unless you state the conditions and unless your appeals for peace are based upon careful inquiry into all the conditions which are honestly possible your appeals will have no influence on the controversy before us. I feel perfectly certain, and especially after the impressive speech of my hon. friend the Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool, that there can be no compromise. You cannot compromise with

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those speeches. There is no use in asking the hon. Gentleman to sit down at a table with the hon. Member for Louth and his friends, and to lay their heads together with those holding other views, in order to discover some common ground which would satisfy them both in regard to the establishment of a public system of religious instruction in this country. I say that the very idea is futile, and it can be disposed of right away. My hon. friend the Member for South Salford stated categorically, and it struck me as being as impressive as the statement of the hon. Member for the Scotland Division, that there can be no compromse between the representatives of the various religious organisations. These declarations have been made even at this early period in the discussion of the Bill before the House Now then, what are we going to do? There are two points that we e to be settled by the recent election. We are told that the electors of the country have given tot the Government a mandate to establish public control, and to abolish sectarian tests for teachers. The first question is how far this Bill carries out that mandate given by the country. It proposes to establish undenominational Bible teaching. Is that carrying out the mandate? It is all very well for certain Members of the House who hold my own religious opinions to come and make speeches on the ground that we are right, and that every other body is wrong. They say that Bible reading is not sectarian. I agree with them. This House is in the position of a Court of Justice. We are not elected as a General Assembly of Divines, or as a Convocation, or as a Committee for the revision of Articles of Union, or to discuss certain common grounds for such a revision. We are here for a purpose of taking an objective view of the religious views of the electors. We are here for the purpose of considering what is the mind of the people as a whole, and then of drafting a Bill which will bring us educational peace, so far as sectarian rivalry is concerned. It has been said honestly and truly by two hon. Members in debate, and with more bitterness by speakers outside, not only of the Roman Catholic religion, but of the English Catholic religion, that simple reading of the Bible without comment is denominational
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teaching. It is not for us to argue or to dispute that point, but to inquire into the facts of the case, and decide as to the effects of public control. But accepting the statement, the question is, how will the Bill bring peace? It simply gives ground for a more aggravated form of passive resistance than the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition by his Bill of 1902 gave to Nonconformists. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No, no."] How does public control come in, in accordance with Clause 4? Clause 4 is either a real thing, with substance in it, or it is not. If it is put in merely to draw in those who disagree with the Bill in order to induce them to trust to the tender mercies of the local authority, then Clause 4 would be better out of the Bill. If Clause 4 is a genuine attempt to meet the opposition of Roman Catholics and English Catholics, then you are going to supply school room with public money to be used for denominational teaching, and you must appoint masters and teachers to give that teaching with the atmosphere of their creed. And whether you like it or not, and whether the local authorities like it or not, you are bound to appoint to these schools managers as well as teachers who will reflect that atmosphere. No sooner will Clause 4 begin to be operative than you will discover that you are bound to sacrifice some of the pledges of public control which were made at the general election and repeated in this House.
Moreover, we are told that there are to be no tests imposed on teachers. But again assume that Clause 4 is genuine, does any hon. Member who has had experience of these schools, as I have had, really believe in his heart of hearts that these schools are to be accepted by Roman Catholics, or English Catholics, or by Jews unless the headmaster is in sympathy with the atmosphere of the schools? You are bound to create under Clause 4 the system of denominational education in all its fulness which we have experienced during the last four years, subsidised and financed by public authorities out of public funds, and controlled by the body of managers such as those which exist at the present moment in non-provided schools. It is all very well

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for the right hon. Gentleman to say that he is not going to compel teachers to teach the Bible. You may put that down on paper, but in practice it will not work out Those who have had a large acquaintance with the management of schools know that although very many people might refuse to give Bible teaching, they cannot possibly afford to do it. Their heart is not in it, and they regard it as a mere mechanical operation. If the teaching of the Bible in the schools is to be a guarantee of religious instruction inside or outside the schools, you are bound to face the conclusion that a man or woman ought to believe that which he or she teaches, if it is to have any regenerating effect on the children. You must remember that the general effect of teaching the Bible is to make it a purely formal matter, and I can say that, having had the benefit of a Scotch education. We were told all about the Kings of Israel and the succession of the prophets, and when we studied the life of Paul we were told only of the number of places he visited, and the number of churches he had founded. I think that the Bible teaching was dealt with in a much better way than that in the board schools in this country. I have been, however, much struck with the fact that, though I have consulted several most competent and experienced teachers whose advice I value very highly, no one has been in favour of retaining the Bible as a text book in the school he controlled. ["Oh, oh."]
What is going to happen as the result of this Bill? The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has told us that there has been no strife; but as a matter of fact in the old school board days the majority of the elections were always fought between Churchmen, Nonconformists, and Secularists. Even in the election of Education Committees since 1902, as was predicted, there has been a great amount of religious strife, and I believe that under this Bill there will be a violent eruption of religious strife. You cannot possibly get out of that. You are now to have the local municipal authorities charged
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with the power of discriminating between sect and sect; and they are, therefore to be brought into closer touch with warring sectarian organisations. I feel perfectly certain that before twelve months are over in a great many places in this country one of the chief questions before the electors will be questions which divide Church and Chapel. Moreover, denominational education is going to be continued under this Bill, retaining its foothold as in the past, and yet it is to be, to a certain extent, punished for remaining denominational education. The Government, and the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Education will not always be in power; the time will come when the present majority in the House will be upset; and in the meantime the denominationalists are pledged to go on with their agitation. The result will be that when the majority of the House is changed once more there will be re-created a complete denominational system, and there will be a rekindling of passive resistance. But there is an important educational side to all this. The real question at the present time at issue in regard to moral instruction is whether the present form or practice of religious instruction is a fruitful form of instruction. If hon. Members who are in favour of this Bill can prove that it is, then so far as we are concerned any opposition we have to offer to the Bill will be withdrawn. But is it so? I venture to say that if you examine the moral results of the teaching in those schools where the Bible is used as a text book, and the results in these where it is not so used, you will find it very difficult to draw any line of distinction between denominational schools on the one hand as forming a public moral factor and provided schools on the other, and, where schools do not use the Bible as a text book, you will find it difficult to draw a line between them and those districts where the schools do use the Bible with or without comment. Will the Government give us the facts of the case? Will they tell us the value of the simple reading of the Bible in our public schools? What is the atmosphere which it creates in our public schools as part and parcel of their curriculum? Will they tell us upon what they base the statement that it is of character-making advantage?

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The hon. Member who has just sat down quoted to us a statement by Professor Butler who, sharing the view of every educationalist in this country deplored the fact that the American schools, in the same way as the English schools, have somehow failed in character building. The hon. Member has suggested that if you place the Bible in the schools it will solve the problem, but will it? In a report which has just been placed in the hands of the House by one of His Majesty's inspectors for the West Division of Scotland it is stated—;
"If the all-important end of education is a moral one, I am decidedly of opinion that some direct and definite moral instruction should be introduced at the supplementary course stage, and that this instruction should be given by the headmaster and the headmistress of the school. Many pupils come into collision with the criminal law after they leave school through sheer ignorance of the dangers that beset their path and the temptations that lie in their way. I believe that the formation of right ideas and the rational appreciation of them are highly important, also more especially just before a pupil is launched on the world to tight and fend for himself."
There is the comment made by one of the most competent inspectors of the Scottish schools where the Bible is taught, and precisely the same language, or at any rate the same idea, is expressed by Dr. Butler with regard to the American schools. What happens in schools where the Bible is used? At 9 o'clock the school assembles, the teacher opens a book which happens to be the Bible. He reads in a great many cases verses out of it. He then asks his pupils to sing a hymn. The book is then closed. He opens a geography or history book and the lessons go on in the ordinary way. ["Oh!"] I am talking about the condition of things prevailing in Scotland, where we have been told by an hon. Member of this side of the House, who ought to know, considering his intimate connection with the Education question in Scotland the best conditions in regard to Bible reading prevail. All I can say is, that I have been a teacher in Scotland, and I know what happened in the schools with which I was connected, and what I say is perfectly true of non-provided schools also. I assert that that accurately describes the process of Bible instruction in our public schools as a matter of fact. How can we expect
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anything else, or wonder at the failure of Bible teaching to produce character, used as it is as an arithmetic book or book of geography. The English schools, as far as I can gather, are pretty much in: the same position. The Bible is used as a text book for the purpose of telling some story or other to children in precisely the same way that the geography or arithmetic book is used, and the result is shown in the extract which I have read to the House from one of the ablest Scottish inspectors. The Secretary of State for India, in a book which is one of the few religious books which the nineteenth century produced, has laid his finger upon the real source of the difficulty. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose wrote in that book "On Compromise" the following sentences—;
"Let a youth be trained in simple and straight-forward recognition of the truth that we can know, and can conjecture nothing with any assurance as to the ultimate mysteries of things. Let his imagination and his sense of awe be fed from those springs, which are none the less bounteous because they flow in natural rather than supernatural channels. Let him be taught the historic place and source of the religions which he is not bound to accept unless the evidence for their authority by-and-by brings him to another mind. A boy or girl trained in this way has an infinitely better chance of growing up with the true spirit and leanings of religion implanted in the character than it they had been educated in formulae which they could not understand, by people who do not believe them."
I hope we may use these words with reverence and without altogether committing ourselves to the general position which the right hon. Gentleman took up in that book. The effect of all this has been that we have succeeded wonderfully well in secularising the Bible without moralising education, and it is because I am opposed to that system being carried out upon moral and ethical grounds I take up the position I do. My final point is that we have heard a great deal about the rights of parents. I deny that those rights exist. [Cries of "Oh."] Let us see what hon. Members who expressed their dissent mean. They do not merely mean that a parent has a right to teach his child his religion; if they meant that it might be an arguable proposition. But that is not what they mean. They mean that a parent has a right to demand that the State shall

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educate his children in his religion. That is a totally different proposal. Theoretically a parent has no right to say the State shall educate his child or children in his religious belief, because the moment he establishes or tries to establish that right, he comes counter to the rights of other citizens who refuse to pay rates or taxes for the propagation of creeds which they do not hold or approve of. The right of the citizen, therefore, comes into opposition at once with the assumed right of the parent and it is impossible to enforce the assumed right. Moreover, the child has a right against its parent. The child has a perfect right to go to its parent or to get some one else to go to the parent and say that the State is in certain respects its guardian. [Cries of "Oh."] If that is not so, why have we got our child labour laws? The child has a right to go to the State and ask the State to protect its mind so that its mind will be prepared and nurtured in the best possible way to meet honestly and without fear those great problems which we all have to attempt to solve. That right, I imagine, is as inviolable, from the point of view of the child, as the assumed right of the parent to bring up the child in those assumed religious dogmas which he has chosen as satisfactory. I know that that doctrine is extremely unpopular and will give rise to great prejudice. I know there is no doctrine which is surrounded with more prejudice than that, or which can be approached with more unreasoning doubt, but notwithstanding, I say, by your industrial legislation, you are beginning to recognise the fact, and sooner or later in your religious and moral education also you will have to recognise it.
There are, then, two objections to this Bill, first, that it is a measure which is not going to bring peace. It is going to hand over to the next generation every problem in denominational education which the last generation handed over to us. The second objection is that you are not going to advance the quality of our moral instruction or make any contribution to the problem of the building up of character which is the great practical problem of our schools. If, however, you make up your minds that the education given in our schools from public money during school hours and
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by Civil Servants must be in secular subjects only, you will be laying the foundation of peace, and your appeal to peace will be a real appeal, backed by a Bill which lays the foundation of that peace. Members of this House, when another Education Bill is before it, will go back to the debates of 1906 as we have been going back to the debates of 1870. They will read the speeches delivered on this Bill for the purpose of trying to find out what our minds were, and they will discover that the problem they have to face then is the problem we have to face now, and they will deplore the fact that the legislature of to-day threw the difficulty upon them, and left the solution of this question to another generation. They will take up our speeches where we leave off, and the divisions which are going to take place upon this measure will surely be repeated thirty years hence. The State is a secular organisation, and it ought to say to the Church and the family:—;"It is your responsibility to teach religion to the children—;to teach that which is of no value unless it touches the heart with a strange regenerative influence." For this reason I deplore the weakness of the Bill, though for the reasons I have stated I propose to vote for the Second Reading.
DR. MACNAMARA: I cannot take up the speech of my hon. friend where he leaves off, because I have first to reply to the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, who moved the rejection of the Bill to-day. But I do venture to say that his view of how the Bible is taught in the provided schools of this country is entirely distorted. The right hon. Gentleman for Dover, in moving the rejection of this Bill, said that the State had never departed from its policy of neutrality in educational matters. I interrupted and said it had in 1902. The right hon. Gentleman challenged me to prove it, and I venture therefore, to give three small points in proof of my contention, and in justification of my interruption. The first of these points is that the Act of 1902 —;the Act of the Leader of the Opposition —;put the denominational schools upon the rates of the locality, of which I do

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not complain, and which I think was a right thing to do, and which I think was a great reform, but it avoided the direct consequence of popular control, which is that the moment you place public education on public funds, you must follow that up by giving full public control. The right hon. Gentleman's Act got over that difficulty in this way. It gave a non-provided school six managers, of whom the public had two and the trustees four.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No.
DR. MACNAMARA: Really the right hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten his Act very soon; under the Act of 1902, the trustees; have four managers, and the public two. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover has a very fantastic view of what the neutrality of the State is. Again, at the present moment there are over 30,000 head teacherships in this country which are salaried out of public funds. As to 18,000 of those head teacherships, no Nonconformist can, under any circumstances, apply for the post of head teacher, and in 16,220 nobody can get the position who is not a member of the Church of England. That again, I think, is a fantastic notion of neutrality. In the third place, to go no further, although I could multiply these illustrations, there are 7,087 places open to King's scholars in the residential training colleges, but in 4,309 of those places, no matter how successful the King's scholar had been, he would not be admitted unless he changed his religion and became a member of the Church of England. Take my own case, not that I want to put it forward in any way, but it happens to be a case in point. In the year 1879 I obtained a King's Scholarship entitling me to a place in one of these residential colleges. There was one next door to me in Exeter, and I should have been very high indeed in the Exeter list, but I did not care to become a member of the Church of England; so I had to come to London and bear the expense, while others far below me on the Government Ist went into that institution. That is a strange and fantastic notion of
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neutrality. The right hon. Gentleman ought to know that the electors sent us here to redress the departure from neutrality set up by the Act of 1902.
MR. WYNDHAM: I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he seems to be courting interruption from me. I merely wish to say that I cannot reply to him now, but I reserve my opinion and will deal with this at a later stage of the Bill.
DR. MACNAMARA: The electors sent us here to redress the departure from neutrality set up by the Act of 1902, and if the right hon. Gentleman does not know that, the electoral field is strewn with the stricken forms of his ex-colleagues who do know it. A conspicuous fact has come to light since this Bill was read a first time. It is now unanimously conceded that public control must follow the placing of the schools upon the rates. My view is that this general admission is a very great step along the road of educational reform. It is less than four years ago that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition reserved four seats out of six on the Board of Management to the trustees and gave two to the public. When the Bill was in Committee the hon. Member for East Mayo asked for a slight modification of that.
MR DILLON: And I was denounced on all sides for so doing.
DR. MACNAMARA: The hon. Member for East Mayo said—;"Do not give four seats to the trustees, give two to the denominationalists, two to the parents and two to the local authority." He was, as he truly says, denounced for that and now the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover gets up full of zeal for the parents.
But leaving that, Sir, the discussions upon this question during the past month show that the opposition to this Bill falls into two lines. First, it takes the line that the transfer of the denominational schools to the authority is confiscation. [Cries of "Hear, hear.] Hon. Members assent to that. That is not said by the

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right hon. Member for Dover, but he gave us some very florid paraphrases upon it. I should like to examine at close quarters this argument. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover has said that the denominational buildings which, it is alleged, are to be confiscated under the Bill, are worth £32,000,000 and that the money has been subscribed because of religious zeal.
MR. WYNDHAM: The hon. Gentleman must do justice to my fairness. I said it was not all so subscribed, and that it was idle to argue that some of this sum was not subscribed for other reasons.
DR. MACNAMARA: It is of course notorious that much of this money has been contributed for other reasons—;to keep out the higher charge of a School Board. I do not think the directors of the London and North-Western Railway Company contribute to the schools at Crewe for love of the Church Catechism. I do not think the directors of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company contribute to the voluntary schools at Dover because they want specific Church teaching. No, they want the thing on the cheap—;and many a good Nonconformist has joined them in it.
Many a staunch Nonconformist has swallowed any amount of Church Catechism to be let off lightly in the local charge. But supposing the money was all subscribed for reasons of religious zeal. The Primate said, in a letter to Churchmen on December 12th, 1903, that the value of the buildings, which the right hon. Gentleman opposite has put at £32,000,000, was £22,000,000. The discrepancy shows the inflamed state of mind of reckless opponents of the Bill. Dr. Moorhouse, the late Bishop of Manchester, stated in the House of Lords on December 10th, 1902, that the rental of the denominational buildings was worth £715,000 a year. The Government sets aside £1,000,000, and yet hon. Gentlemen opposite talk of confiscation! There is not a Bishop on the Episcopal Bench who would not be ready to be confiscated as often as you like at the same price. But that is not all. The public authority
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already bears the charge for wear and tear in the non-provided schools. Under the Bill they are to bear the structural alterations of the fabric. Dr. Moorhouse told the House of Lords, on the same occasion, that structural alterations in their buildings cost the Church of England £700,000 a year. The Government are handing over £1,000,000 yearly for what is estimated at an annual value of £715,000, and, over and above that, they are taking over the structural alterations of the fabric. No wonder the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover calls this a precious Bill. Let me just quote what I understand to be the real facts of the case. The Bishop of Hereford has said—;
"As regards the Church schools in our own diocese, we should, under this Bill, be better off financially than ever before, if we agreed to let them to the local authority on a repairing lease. We should be freed from all worry or anxiety about improvements or extensions, or any of the recurring requirements of the Board of Education, whilst our clergy would be able to give or to secure for the children systematic instruction in Prayer-book and Catechism as regularly and as fully as they have ever yet done in times past."
I think that is a fair estimate of the case. Let me, with great respect, offer a word of warning to the extreme denominationalists who talk about confiscation. I would recommend them to agree with their adversary quickly while he is in the way with them. I certainly think the local authority, if there is much haggling, will say, "Go away. We decline to treat with you. We will build our own schools. We will spread the cost over sixty years. The financial burden will be immediately less, and, in the long run, we will have a building of our own, and, all the time, we shall have complete control of it."
The other main attack on the Bill rages around the eternal religious question. It seems to me there are three courses open to the Government in dealing with this question. They might have said they would dispense denominational teaching all round as part of a State system. I think that is hopelessly impracticable. There are too many denominations, unfortunately. Take a particular instance—;a school at Drury Lane. Under the Industrial Schools Act, which provides

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that religious instruction is to be on the basis of denominational teaching all round, everything went on at that school very happily for many years. Half the children, roughly, were Roman Catholics. All of a sudden there appeared a Presbyterian child. To my mind the needs of a single Presbyterian have as much claim upon the public as sixty Catholics or forty Protestants. I cannot see how we could meet the opinions of that particular Presbyterian by appointing a permanent teacher solely for him. Therefore, I dismiss that as entirely impracticable, and if it were not impracticable, which it is, it would bitterly accentuate sectarian differences during childhood which might very well be left to a more advanced age. I remember that the Leader of the Opposition once said that he was opposed to segregation in these matters. For these reasons, therefore, I dismiss the first of these three alternatives. The second proposal is that of the hon. Member for Leicester. You might say, "Very well, we cannot dispense purely denominational teaching all round, and we will confine the instruction to purely secular teaching." I admit that that is absolutely logical and fair to the body at large, but it is hopelessly out of touch with the national sentiment. Has the hon. Member for Leicester considered this point? It will commit tens of thousands of the children of our cities to a youth untouched by Christian truths. The Secular Party may emerge well from this controversy because it is already a powerful Party, and very likely will be reinforced by the man in the street who, sick and tired of theological bickering, will adopt it as a policy of despair. It is always the theologian who blocks the way to educational progress, and therefore the man in the street may very well be induced to associate himself with the advanced advocate of secular schools and go in for the abolition of the Bible altogether in the schools. Personally, however, I should oppose that proposal. Then, having dismissed denominationalism as impracticable, having dismissed a system of secular schools as being out of touch with national sentiment, there remains only the system of the State's giving simple Biblical teaching, leaving to outside teachers the task of adding
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a denominational superstructure. That is the scheme of this Bill. Religious teaching need not be given unless the local authority desire it. It is not a very new feature, for it is the fundamental provision of the Cowper-Temple system as laid down in 1870. Then there is a clause under which no child need attend religious instruction unless its parents desire. That is the by-law of the late Government issued through the Board of Education, and if that makes for secular schools it must not be placed at our door but at the door of the late Board of Education over which the hon. Baronet the Member for Oxford University presided.
SIR WILLIAMANSON: I must enter a caveat here. The hon. Member is wholly mistaken in his construction of that by-law.
DR. MACNAMARA: At any rate I know what the practice has been under it. Under that by-law an answer was given the other day showing that a considerable number of local authorities have allowed parents to absent their children during the time of religious instruction. I do not make any complaint of that, but it should not be used as an argument against us for setting up a secular system. For the first time in the history of this country, under this Bill no teacher will be compelled to give religious instruction unless he likes, and that will take away many of those unfortunate aspects of the religious controversy which have been referred to. Clause 7, Sub-section 2, is a real charter of liberty to the teacher, and in my opinion, will do much to improve religious instruction in the schools. In addition to all that, there are wide facilities for specific denominational teaching.
Let me deal for a moment with the opposition to this scheme. This scheme is opposed by the advocates of secular teaching and also by the High Churchmen. The latter contend that simple Bible teaching under State auspices amounts practically to an endowment of Nonconformity. That is a most amazing proposition. It rests upon the curious fallacy that the Bible is exclusively the property of Nonconformists. Although I am only a

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layman, I confess that I really thought up to the 9th of April and the discussion which ensued that the Bible was the common joint possession of all members of the Christian community. Do Gentlemen opposite realise the effect on the country of this opposition to Bible teaching? The common person is amazed, the unsophisticated layman is disgusted. When I hear great prelates denouncing simple Bible teaching as undermining the Christian faith, I do not know whether he is more amazed at the sublimity of their arrogance or the depth of their profanity. They resist preference being given to the Bible, and they do this conscientiously in the name of Christianity! I will pass no further comment upon this attitude beyond saying that I do not understand their position at all or their point of view. I do not deny that, from a logical point of view, a case may be made out against the preferential treatment of the Bible, which is hopelessly indefensible from the point of view of dry logic and doctrinaire, but it is a system which has got behind it thirty-five years of admirable work. Mr. Forster, in presenting his Bill in 1870, said—;
"I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining of the Bible, what the children will be taught will be the great truths of Christian life and conduct, which all of us desire they should know, and no effort will be made to cram into their poor little minds theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them understanding."
For thirty-five years ministers of all denominations, bishops of the Established Church, even Dr. Knox, and others have sat down together and prepared syllabuses of instruction for the giving of Bible teaching under this system, and that instruction has been given with remarkable devotion and discretion by the teachers. This simple Bible teaching has been taught with the approval of the parents and it has been wholesome to the children. Cardinal Manning once said—;
"If the Bible is read in the school, and if prayers are read and Christian hymns are sung, I could not honestly or fairly say that that is not a Christian school."
Dr. Ryle, when Bishop of Liverpool, said—;
"I thank God for the Board schools of Liverpool."
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I said on the First Reading that this Bill is an honest and painstaking effort to solve an almost insoluble problem. I say so now after a careful consideration of the provisions of the measure. I do not think the Bill is perfect, and I recommend to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Education an extremely valuable letter in The Times of last Monday from the Bishop of Ripon, and the reasonable propositions of the Convocations of Canterbury and York. I think it is possible to make modifications in it—;always subject to these vital principles, which cannot be tampered with—;full popular control and no test for teachers—;modifications which might make the future administration of the Bill when it becomes law more acceptable to certain sections. I suggest that Clause 4 should be mandatory on the local authority, and I see no reason for discrimination between Clauses 3 and 4 in this respect. In the second place, I should be inclined to widen the application of Clause 4 to other than urban areas if I were assured that there would be school accommodation within easy reach of every child. Thirdly, it might be worth while to see whether it would be well to associate with the management, say, three representative parents on the occasion of the final selection of teachers. I would call the attention of the President of the Board of Education to Clause 26, which provides for the devolution on the authorities for smaller areas within a county, down to the parish council, of certain functions to be carried out under the Bill. I am aware that questions in relation to the appointment, dismissal, and the salaries of teachers are withheld from the smaller areas. They are still to remain in the hands of the county authority. I think this devolution will have to be watched with extreme care. I cannot contemplate with equanimity such a proposal in connection with the question of the exemption of children from attendance for labour. Apart from these reasons there is the difficulty of rating in a parish on which these functions would devolve. Upon some places you would have to lay three rates—;one for capital in respect of buildings, one in respect of the whole county education rate, and one for the duty devolved on them under Clause 26. My last point

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is in regard to Clause 7. There I do think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover was not quite fair, if I may say so. He called attention to Sub-section 4. I admit at once that if a non-provided school is closed what the Bill does under that sub-section is to give the teacher the privilege of contributing for one year to the Government superannuation fund at a time when he has not money to do so. Sub-section 3 does provide that in the case of a transferred school—;and there will be many transferred—;that a teacher must go with his school to the local authority. I hope my right hon. friend will be able to do something more than what is now provided in Section 7, Sub-section 4, for the teacher whose school may be closed. I make these suggestions in no spirit of opposition to the Bill, but because I am impatient of the clogging of the wheels of education in this country. I want to get on. What I desire is that the youth of this country may be so trained that they shall be adequate stewards of the great heritage which will fall into their hands.
LORD CASTLEREAGH: I would venture to say a few words with regard to this most important, in fact this vital, question of education, and in intruding myself on the attention of hon. Members, I make no apology because I consider that it is incumbent upon anyone who can claim to belong to a section of the Christian Faith to do his utmost to resist a Bill of which the redeeming points are so hard to discover. It must be apparent to all that the Bill introduced by the Minister of Education has not been received with the general satisfaction which the enigmatical utterances of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite at the General Election led us to believe. The storm of indignation and protest which the speech of the right hon. Gentleman has excited in all parts of the country makes it obvious that there must be something radically wrong with the measure as proposed, and that to make it acceptable to the majority of the people, the right
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hon. Gentleman and his colleagues must have regard to those religious instincts which mean so much to the character of a nation, and which it is obvious must be endangered if ever this Bill in its present form should become the law of the land. I approach this subject in no hostile spirit, and in fact, in no Party spirit. I approach it as one who is proud to belong to a denomination, and I ask no more for one denomination than for another: but I do ask that freedom should be accorded to all denominations, and that every child should have the opportunity of acquiring definite religious instruction as a part of its daily education. What is proposed by the Bill we are now discussing? It is proposed to invent, if I may use the expression, a new religion which for its sheer inadequacy will satisfy all sections of the Christian Faith; any further denominational instruction is to be treated as an extra, and so-called facilities are to be given in that respect. If all schools were the property of the State it might be said that this colour-less religious instruction would be the only solution of the problem, as I for one maintain that anything would be preferable to entirely secular education. But it must be borne in mind that the majority of the schools have been built by Church people with the object of imparting definite religious instruction to the children of this country. That education should be a national concern, I feel no one will attempt to deny, and I maintain the Education Act of 1902 undertook this responsibility, and at the same time extended a helping hand to those religious bodies to whom we owe so much for present day education. It is impossible to claim perfection for any new measure, and the Act of 1902 was no exception to the rule. But I maintain that if all sections of the community had combined in the patriotic desire to correct the few minor defects in that Act as regards the necessity for which we are all agreed, that measure would have been handed down to future generations as a measure supplying the educational and religious wants of all

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sections of the community. I do not wish to convey any impression that I am opposed to Nonconformity. I maintain that the same privileges should be extended to all denominations alike, and it is for this reason that I most strongly oppose a scheme which obviously favours one denomination. It is unfortunate that there are not enough schools in the country to satisfy the needs of all religious sections; but because one denomination is unfortunate in this respect it is a gross injustice that all other denominational schools should be forced to renounce their denominational character. I say "unfortunate" advisedly, because it was equally open to Nonconformists to build schools, but prior to the Act of 1870 they were content to take the advantages which were extended to all alike, and only assorted themselves when called upon to join in contributing to education as a national concern. As regards the views held by the President of the Board of Education, I find that in an article which the right hon. Gentleman published some two years ago in the Independent Review, he declared that there must be a compromise between the Anglicans and the Nonconformists, and he suggested the abolition of the Cowper-Temple Clause, which, he added, was all the Nonconformists had to give. But I have no wish to rake up the prehistoric utterances of the right hon. Gentleman, as I have every reason to believe that those ideas have undergone a very material change. But I would like to show that the right hon. Gentleman held the same views in January last when Minister of Education as he held two years ago, when he was a free and irresponsible Member of the Opposition. Speaking at Bristol on January 12th, the right hon. Gentleman said he was not only desirous that there should be Christian and Bible education in all schools, but he also wished that in all schools there should be facilities given, if they could be arranged on proper terms, whereby denominations should be free to
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instruct children in those schools in what they believed to be the true religion. I would like to know now what are actually the views of the right hon. Gentleman. He now appears to believe, if one can summarise his views, that the voluntary schools should be handed over without compromise to Dr. Clifford, and I think it can be said with truth that of all the extravagances of the present Government by far the most outrageous is the placing of Dr. Clifford by the present Bill on the rates. I can only imagine that this policy has been urged by the President of the Board of Trade and Dr. Clifford, and adopted as part of their policy by the Government at the demand of their followers. To my mind one of the most dangerous provisions of the Bill is the so-called abolition of tests for teachers, because in the future teachers need not profess any religion whatever; in fact, they may even be atheists if they choose. In every other branch of education no teacher would be allowed to instruct unless he were duly qualified to do so. Religious instruction is the most important part of a child's training, and yet there is to be allowed no safeguard that it is believed in by the teachers who impart it. It will be within the jurisdiction of the local authority to appoint a teacher who very likely has no belief in the religion he is called upon to impart. Moreover, the teacher may even refuse to give any religious instruction whatsoever, and the local authority will have no power to force him to do so, nor can they provide a qualified substitute. Amongst the many extraordinary provisions contained in the Bill the idea of giving Home Rule in Education to Wales must rank as one of the most extraordinary. Anyone who has watched the persecution of Anglican schools in Wales for the last three years—;a persecution never denounced by the President of the Board of Trade—;will realise what is likely to be their future. Let me give one instance. On July 1st and October 1st, 1905, 205 teachers in voluntary schools in Montgomeryshire were without

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salary. They would not have got it at all, nor would the voluntary school have been provided with coal or light, but for the operation of the Default Act, and the President of the Board of Trade will not deny that that is the case in other counties in Wales.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon): I deny it, and I ask the noble Lord to name a single other county.
VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH: I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman can deny it; I spoke of Montgomeryshire because I know the facts I mentioned to be correct. I am one of those who maintain that denominational religious education is absolutely essential to the moral well-being of the individual. The fact that an individual belongs to a community professing one particular form of religion is to my mind a moral assistance, which must have an elevating effect, and I look with the gravest apprehension on a measure which is calculated to undermine this moral influence by the withdrawal of that definite religious form of instruction which has meant so much in the past and which is responsible for our present national integrity. It is asserted that the Church people have no cause to complain, that they will receive a fair rent, and that they may look upon these efforts as a commercial success, for they will receive a good return for their money. Whilst strongly deprecating any infringement of the rights of property, I would venture to point out to those who assert that Church people will be well paid for the sacrifices they have made and the money they have spent in the earnest endeavour to promote that definite religious instruction which they themselves believe to be essential to the well-being of the children of the country, that no remuneration whatever can be adequate when the obvious prospect is that the future generation will grow up with a merely defined sense of the difference
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between right and wrong, but with no such definite form of religious faith as has always been in the past, and will ever be in the future, the mainstay of every right-thinking individual.
Debate to be resumed to-morrow.

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE (No. 2) BILL.
Order for Third Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid that he did not think that after a Minister of the Crown had moved the adjournment of the House on a Bill of the kind they had been discussing the Government ought to take any further opposed business. His hon. friends who were Members of the last Parliament would remember that the practice was, that when the main debate of the evening stood adjourned under such circumstances, no further contentious business was proceeded with. Of course they should not desire that a right hon. Gentleman of the importance of the President of the Board of Trade should divide his speech, but he thought that it was a corollary to their consenting to the adjournment of the debate that no important business should be taken.
Debate to be resumed to-morrow.
Adjourned at five minutes before Eleven o'clock.