Commons Sitting of 14 May 1906

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock.

CONTROVERTED ELECTIONS:
MR. SPEAKER informed the House that he had received from the Judges appointed to try the several Election Petitions the following Certificate and Report relating to the Election for the. Borough of Great Yarmouth:—
In the High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division. The Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868, the Parliamentary Elections and Corrupt Practices Act, 1879, the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act, 1854, and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883.
Election of a Member of Parliament for the Borough of Great Yarmouth, holden on the 16th day of January, 1906.
To the right hon. the SPEAKER of the House of Commons.
We, Sir William Grantham, Knight, and Sir Arthur Mosely Channell, Knight, Judges of the High Court of Justice, and two of the Judges on the Rota for the time being for the Trial of Election Petitions in England and Wales, do hereby certify, in pursuance of the said Acts, that upon the 26th, 27th, 28th, and 30th days of April, and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days of May of this year, we duly held a Court at the Town Hall, Great Yarmouth, for the trial of and did

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try the Election Petition for the Borough of Great Yarmouth between James Martin White, Petitioner, and Arthur Fell, Respondent.
And in further pursuance of the said Acts we certify that at the conclusion of the said trial we differed as to whether the said Arthur Fell, being the Member whose Election and Return were complained of, was duly elected and returned, the difference being upon the question whether one John George Baker was or was not proved to have been an agent of the said Arthur Fell.
I, the said Sir William Grantham, determined that the said Arthur Fell was duly elected and returned, and I, the said Sir Arthur Mosely Channell, determined that the said Arthur Fell was not duly elected and returned, and that the Election was void on the ground of bribery by his agent, and we do hereby certify in writing such our determinations to you.
And whereas charges were made in the said Petition of Corrupt and Illegal Practices having been committed at the said Election, we, in further pursuance of the said Acts, report as follows:—

1. That no corrupt or illegal practice was proved to have been committed by or with the knowledge and consent of the said Arthur Fell.

2. That the persons whose names are set out in the Schedule hereto were proved to have been guilty of the corrupt practice of bribery.

3. That although it was proved that corrupt practices were committed at the said Election, it was not proved, nor have we reason to believe that corrupt or illegal practices extensively prevailed at the said Election.

4. We certify that we differed as to whether the said Arthur Fell was guilty by his agent of the corrupt practice of bribery, and report that saving this the said Arthur Fell was not guilty by his agents of any corrupt practice.

5. That the said Arthur Fell was not guilty by his agents of any illegal practice.

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6. That we have given Certificates of Indemnity to all the persons whose names are set out in the Schedule hereto, except John George Baker and William Morl.

Schedule.

John George Baker.

Edgar Samuel Balls.

William Morl.

JoshuaSamulBrown

Benjamin Lewis.

George Harris.

William Wolage.

William Samuel Palmer.

Abel Newson.

Arthur Stolworthy.

Samuel Hewitt.

William White.

James Fenn.

William Mallett.

Wm. GRANTHAM.

A. M. CHANNELL.

And the said Certificate and Report from Mr. Justice Grantham and Mr. Justice Channell were ordered to be entered in the Journals of this House.
Copy of Shorthand Writer's Notes laid upon the Table by Mr. Speaker.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILLsuggested that as this was a question of privilege, the judgment, along with the shorthand writer's notes, should be entered on the journals of the House.
MR. SPEAKERruled that it was not a question of privilege, and that the hon. Member could not raise the question at this stage, as he would thereby be impinging on Government time. If, however, a Motion were put from the Government bench, of course it could be put at once.
THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir W. ROBSON,)stated that the Government had no objection to such a Motion as the hon. Member had suggested, and he accordingly now moved it.
MR. SPEAKER: If a Member of the Government desires that those matters should be printed, it is not necessary to make a Motion. A simple instruction to the clerks at the Table will be sufficient. As to the entry of the judgement in the journals of the House, that is done by statute.
Ordered, That the Copy of the Shorthand Writer's Notes of the Judgment of

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Mr. Justice Grantham and Mr. Justice Channell on the Trial of the Election Petition for the Borough of Great Yarmouth, also the Minutes of Evidence taken at the Trial of the said Election Petition, be printed. [No. 169.]— (Mr. Solicitor-General.)

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING- ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY IN QUIRED 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.:—Wallasey Tramways and Improvements Bill [Lords]; Buenos Ayres Grand National Tramways Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERE TO 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, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill; Water Provisional Order Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.
  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY INQUIRED INTO NOT COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in
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  the case of the following Bill, originating-in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have not been complied with, viz.:—Penllwyn Railway and Road Bill Lords].
  Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.
  London County Buildings Bill; Peterborough Gas Bill. Read the third time, and passed.
  Sheffield Assay Office Bill [Lords]. Read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.
  Southampton Gas Bill. Read the third time, and passed.
  Corporation of London (Blackfriars and other Bridges) Bill. As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  National Assurance Company of Ireland and Yorkshire Fire and Life Insurance Company Bill [Lords]. To be read a second time to-morrow.
  Preston, Chorley, and Horwich Tramways Bill [Lords]; Sheffield District Railway Bill [Lords]; South Lancashire Tramways (Extension of Time) Bill [Lords], Read a second time, and committed.
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill. Read the third time, and passed.
  Local Government Provisional Order (No. 6) Bill. Read a second time, and committed.

PETITIONS.
  COAL MINES (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Brownhills and Cameron Pit; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petitions against; from Kennington and Walmer; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL (RELIGIOUS TEACHING).
  Petitions against alteration of law from Aldbury (two); Alkham (two); Bardon Hill (two); Barnsbury; Barwell; Bolton; Burnley (two); Capel le Ferne; Great Gaddesden; Horton cum Studley (two); Kersal (two); Lamorbey (two); Launton (two); Lostock Gralam; Macclesfield (two); North Rode; Seale (two); Stapleton; Steep (two); Taplow; and Westwell; to lie upon the Table.
  FACTORY AND WORKSHOP ACT (1901) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Wandsworth, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  POLLING ARRANGEMENT (PARLIA- MENTARY BOROUGHS) BILL.
  Petition from Wandsworth, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  POLLING DISTRICTS (COUNTY COUNCILS BILL).
  Petition from Wandsworth, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3583 and 3584 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  MTNES AND QUARRIES.
  Copy presented, of General Report and Statistics for the year 1905, Part I. (District Statistics), Statistics of the persons employed, Output, and Accidents at Mines and Quarries in the United Kingdom, arranged according to the Inspection districts [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EXPLOSIONS (9, DAWSON STREET, DUBLIN).
  Copy presented, of Report by Major A. Cooper-Key, His Majesty's Inspector of Explosives, to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the circumstances attending an explosion of gunpowder which occurred on the promises of Messrs. Trulock, Harriss, and Richardson, Limited, of 9, Dawson Street, Dublin, on March 22nd 1906 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EXPLOSIONS (STRATFORD-BY-BOW).
  Copy presented, of Report by Captain J. H. Thomson, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Explosives, to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the circumstances attending an explosion of nitro-glycerine in waste acid, which occurred at the chemical works of Messrs. F. W. Berk and Company, Limited, at Abbey Mills, Stratford-by-Bow, Essex, on the 15th January 1906 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  POLLING DISTRICTS (COUNTY OF LANCASTER).
  Copy presented, of Orders made by the County Council of Lancastor, re-dividing the Eccles and Ormskirk Parliamentary Divisions of the County into Polling Districts [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  SHOP HOURS ACT, 1904.
  Copies presented, of Orders made by the Councils of the Boroughs of Camber-well and Stockton-on-Tees, fixing the the Hours of Closing for certain Classes of Shops within the Boroughs [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  PATENTS, DESIGNS, AND TRADE MARKS.
  Copy presented, of Twenty-third Report of the Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks, with Appendices, for the year 1905 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 167.]
  LOCAL CONTRIBUTIONS (IRELAND).
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 3rd April; Mr. Ginnell]; to lie upon the Table.
  CONTRACTS WITH FOREIGNERS.
  Address for "Return of all Contracts made in the United Kingdom for manufactured articles by the several Government Departments in the year ending the 31st, day of March 1906,eitherwith contractors outside the United Kingdom or with contractors or agents who obtained the articles from abroad (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 315, of 1905)."—(Sir Howard Vincent.)

  PROBATION OF FIRST OFFENDERS.
  Address for "Return of the number of cases within the Metropolitan Police District, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Durham, in which persons convicted of first offences have, by reason of their youth, or the trivial nature of the offence, been released under recognisances or probation of good conduct in the years 1903, 1904, and 1905, under the Probation of First Offenders Act, 1887: "

  Name of Local Authority

  Borrowings

  Cost of each scheme

  Purchase or estimated value of each site

  Other expenses

  1. Number of each scheme.

  2. Date of Local Government Board sanction to loan for each scheme.

  3. Amount borrowed for each scheme.

  4. Period allowed for repayment of each loan.

  5. Rate of interest thereon.

  6. Other moneys applied in aid of each scheme.

  7. Acquired compulsorily.

  8. Acquired by agreement.

  9. Appropriated.

  10. Extent of land included in same.

  11. Cost of clearance, etc.

  12. Cost of new buildings, including approaches, drain, etc.

  13. Law costs, including cost of Act or Provisional Order.

  14. Architect's and engineers' fees.

  15. Other charges.

  16. Total cost of each scheme.

  "And of the number of cases in which such persons have been called upon to appear to receive judgment, or are known to have been subsequently convicted of a fresh offence (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 281, of Session 1903)."—(Sir Howard Vincent.)

  MAGISTRATES (ENGLAND AND WALES).
  Address for "Return of the number of Magistrates appointed in the different counties of England and Wales, with their names, description, and addresses, from the 1st day of January, 1900, to the 11th day of December, 1905."—(Mr. Bennett.)

  HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES ACTS.
  Return ordered, "showing Particulars as to the action of Local Authorities in Ireland under the Acts compiled to the 31st day of March, 1906:—

  Accommodation provided

  Income received in respect of year ended March 31st, 1906.

  Expenditure in respect of year ended March 31st, 1906.

  Differences.

  17. Number of houses completed.

  18. Number of houses in course of erection.

  19. Total number of houses erected and to be erected.

  20. Number of families provided for under Column 17.

  21. Number of families to be accommodated under Column 18.

  22. Total number of families provided for or to be accommodated.

  23. Rents from occupiers.

  24. Other sources, including portion of site temporarily let.

  25. Total.

  26. Interest.

  27. Sinking fund.

  28. Rent of site.

  29. Rates and taxes.

  30. Other charges, including repairs, collectors' fees, etc.

  31. Total.

  32. Surplus, being differences between Column 31 and 25.

  33. Loss, being difference between Columns 25 and 31.

  34. Observations.

  —(Mr. Dillon).

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Board of Trade Returns and Staff.
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether in view of the amplification of the monthly and annual Board of Trade Returns of Imports and Exports which are prepared in the Customs Statistical Department, he will give the number and cost of the staff of that office in the years 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1905.
  (Answered by Mr. McKenna.) The tabular statement hereunder furnishes the particulars requested:—

  Year.

  Number of Staff.

  Cost of Staff.

  £

  1880

  91

  22,312

  1890

  105

  25,906

  1900

  160

  23,452

  1905

  221

  30,917

  The cost per capita of staff in the years 1880 and 1890 was unduly high.

  Royal Irish Constabulary Inspectors.
  Mr. THOMAS O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will give the number of county and district inspectors of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Ireland, the total salary, allowances, cost of clerks, etc., of the county inspectors; the total salary, allowances, cost of clerks, etc., of the districts; the work which each county inspector has to perform, the number of stations in each county and district inspector's district; whether any steps have been or will be taken for the reduction of the number of those officers, the rearrangement of districts, the reduction of salaries and expenses.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) According to the estimates for the current year, the amount of salary and allowances of county inspectors is £23,261, and of their clerks £6,212, making a total of £29,473. The similar provision for district inspectors is £70,772, and for their clerks £1,461, making a total of £72,233. The duties of county inspectors are too numerous

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  to be stated in detail in reply to a question, but it may be said in general terms that each county inspector is responsible for the prevention of crime, the detection of criminals, and the general preservation of the peace, and for the discipline of the force in his county. The average number of stations in each county is thirty-eight, and the average number in each district inspector's district is seven. The existing statutory law requires that there should be a county inspector for each county. Some reduction has already been made in recent years in the number of district inspectors, and the necessity of further reductions is and will be considered upon each occasion on which opportunity arises.

  Reinstatement of Evicted Tenants in County Clare.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, how many evicted tenants in county Clare have applied for reinstatement in their holdings, and how many have been reinstated; and whether an inspector will be sent by the Estates Commissioners to inquire into their position.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that they have received applications for reinstatement from 215 persons claiming as evicted tenants in the county Clare. The Commissioners have information that ten of these have been reinstated. They intend to make inquiries into the cases of the other evicted tenants in the county as soon as possible, and I should hope that proceedings will be more rapid than heretofore now that inspectors have been appointed for the purpose.

  Holding for Pat Rodgers, of Kilkittane, County Clare.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners are taking any steps to procure a holding for an evicted tenant, named Pat Rodgers, of Kilkittane, Whitegate, county Clare, whose rent was £80, and valuation only £33 10s.; is he aware that his farm was, with the adjoining lands of Tintrim, sold for £2,900 in the year 1901 to a Welshman named Davies, whose only stock at the time of inspection consisted
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  of two cows and a donkey, and that he made an attempt at selling the evicted farm last month; and will the Land Commission be instructed to advance no more money to men of this kind.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed that the estate of Mr. Bernard Martin was sold in the Land Judge's Court to the occupying tenants in July, 1901. The lands of Tintrim and Kilkittane, part of this estate, were sold to Mr. Davies as tenant purchaser, and an advance of £2,960 was made to him under the Land Purchase Acts. I have no information as to his nationality, nor as to the amount of his stock. The half-yearly instalments of the annuity have since been punctually paid. The Estates Commissioners have received an application for reinstatement from Patrick Rodgers, and they will consider the application in connection with the sale of any untenanted land in the neighbourhood which they may acquire. I have no power to give the instructions suggested in the concluding part of the Question.

  Teaching of the Irish Language
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when were the programmes and rules, issued by the intermediate, Board, for the year 1907 laid upon the Table of the House; and whether, in view of the way in which the Board have treated the Irish language in their programme, he will give an opportunity of discussing it as soon as possible.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The rules and programme of the Intermediate Education Board for the year 1907 were laid upon; the Table on the 2nd instant. I am informed that the position of the Irish language in the programme does not differ in any way from that which it occupied in the previous year. I understand that the next meeting of the Board will take place on the 24th instant, and if the hon. Member has any representations to make as to the treatment of Irish I will communicate them to the Board for their consideration.

  Allocation of Money at the Fines and Penalties Office, Dublin.
  MR. MEEHAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what is the

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  amount of money standing to the credit of the Fines and Penalties Office, Dublin; does he propose any application of this money; will he favourably consider an application to allocate it to the county councils of Ireland in aid of the general rates, or to be applied in the maintenance of county and other court houses for which county councils are responsible.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The amount of stock standing to the credit of the Registrar of Petty Sessions Clerks' Department is £170,258. I am not at present prepared to make any statement as to the possible allocation of any part of this fund to other than its original purposes, but the matter is under consideration.

  Royal Irish Constabulary—Special Crimes Branch.
  MR. MEEHAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland how many constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary are engaged on a branch of the service known as the Special Crimes Branch; what is the nature of the work done by this branch, and what is the amount of special pay attached to it; is there any necessity for its continuance; and, if not, will it be discontinued.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Special Crimes Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary consists of a county inspector, a district inspector, a sergeant, and a constable at headquarters, and thirty-seven men outside headquarters. The work of the branch consists of criminal investigation. The county inspector and the district inspector receive an extra allowance of £250 and £150 per annum respectively. The men receive a daily allowance of 1s. 6d. each. It is deemed necessary to continue the branch.

  Debt Recovery in Ireland.
  MR. LONSDALH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant whether he is aware that a strong feeling exists among the mercantile and legal community in favour of a reform of the system of debt recovery in Ireland; and whether he will appoint a Commission to inquire into the subject and suggest measures for remedying defects of which the public complain.
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  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I have not been made aware that a strong feeling exists among the mercantile and legal community in favour of a reform of the system of debt recovery in Ireland, and, in the absence of any evidence to that effect, the Government are not prepared to consider the question of appointing a Commission to inquire into the subject.

  Irish Emigration Return.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if ho will have the Monthly Return of Emigration from Ireland issued and circulated as a Parliamentary Paper.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Annual Returns of Emigration from Ireland are already presented to Parliament, and the Monthly Returns are on sale through His Majesty's Stationery Office at the price of one penny. There would be no objection to present quarterly, or even monthly, Returns to Parliament, and if it should be found that there is any general desire to that effect, I will give the necessary directions in the matter.

  Distribution of the Brown Estate, County Galway.
  MR. JOHN ROCHE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the tenants on the Brown Estate, New Inn, county Galway, were informed at the time of purchase by the representative of the Estates Commissioners that the game and timber upon their farms would be theirs; whether the residence and a considerable portion of the lands are in the hands of the Commissioners; and, if so, whether it is their intention to accede to the request of those tenants who occupy uneconomic holdings to distribute the lands amongst them.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed by the Estates Commissioners that the tenants to whom holdings on this estate wore allotted were informed that the game was reserved to the vendor, and signed undertakings accordingly. They were, however, told that the timber on their holdings would belong to them. None of the lands are now in the Commissioners' hands.

  The Bann and Lough Neagh Drainage Scheme.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if and when does he intend to give effect to Sir Alexander Binnie's Report on the Bann and Lough Neagh Drainage Scheme.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Government have addressed a number of authorities and persons locally interested in the question of the Bann drainage, and invited their views on Sir Alexander Binnies' Report. Upon the receipt of the replies the Report will be further considered by the Government.

  Sale of the Hennessy Minors Estate, County Cork.
  MR. WILLIAM ABRAHAM: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state whether any negotiations for sale to the occupying; tenants of the Hennessy Minors estate, Ballymacmoy, county Cork, are in progress; and, if so, whether he will invite the Estates Commissioners to take into consideration the desirability and necessity of including the village of Killavullen in the sale of the estate, having regard to the fact that it is situated in the centre of the property and that the holdings are occupied by yearly tenants paying ground rents only.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that they are unable to trace any proceedings as having been instituted before them in respect of the sale of the estate in question.

  Mr. Conor O'Kelly and Boycotting-
  MR. LONSDALE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to a speech delivered by the hon. Member for North Mayo at a meeting of the United Irish League, held at Ardagh, county Mayo, on Sunday the 6th instant; whether the hon. Member had any authority for suggesting that the Government approved of boycotting; and what steps are being taken to protect bidders at the sale in question and prevent a breach of the peace.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Answer to the first part of the Question is in the
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  affirmative; to the second in the negative both as respects the alleged contents of the speech and as regards the view attributed to the Government. Adequate police arrangements were made for the protection of bidders at the auction, but six of the lots were disposed of before it took place, and it was announced that the seventh was to be disposed of by private contract.

  Improvement of Clifden Harbour.
  MR. O'MALLEY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state when the improvements of the Clifden Harbour, contemplated and provided for under the Marine Works Act are likely to commence.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I beg to refer to the reply which I gave on February 26th† to the hon. Member's previous Question on this subject. I can only repeat that I will take, as soon as I can, an opportunity of looking into the matter, if possible on the spot. I do not anticipate that a decision can be arrived at for some time to come. As the amount available under the Marine Works Act is limited, regard must always be had to the competing claims of various districts.
  † See (4) Debates, clii., 765.

  Congested Districts Board and Emigra tion.
  MR. CONOR O'KELLY (Mayo, N.): To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will say whether the Congested Districts Board have, during the past twelve months, assisted emigration to Canada or any other Colony from the county of Mayo; and, if so, will he state the number of persons whose passages were paid.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed that the Congested Districts Board have never assisted emigration from any part of the congested districts.

  Private Sales of Land in the West of Ireland.
  MR. CONOR O'KELLY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the attempts that are being made by landlords in the west of Ireland to auction their untenanted land,

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  and refusing to sell to the Congested Districts Board; and, if so, whether, in view of the fact that this land is urgently required for the purpose of remedying congestion, ho proposes to take any steps in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed that the Congested Districts Board have knowledge of only one such case as is referred to, namely, a case in which a landowner contemplated the sale in lots by auction of the occupation interest in a farm at Crannagh, county Mayo. Ultimately six out of the seven lots for sale were disposed of without an auction, and it was, when I last heard, intended to sell the seventh lot also. The Congested Districts Board were not approached by the landlord in this matter. The steps which I am taking are the suggesting to the Board that they should inquire if land coming into the market is suitable for their purposes; and, if so, whether the landlord would sell it to them.

  Report of the General Prisons Board (Ireland).
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will take steps to ensure that the Report of the General Prisons Board (Ireland) shall be presented to Parliament and published sooner than nine months after the period covered by the Report.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Annual Reports of the General Prisons Board are for the year ending March 31st. Certain of the statistics contained in the Reports are for the preceding calendar year, but the financial tables relate to the year ending March 31st. The Report for 1904–5 was presented four months after that date The Board inform me that the Report cannot sooner be prepared having regard to the complicated statistics to be compiled.
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will say why six prisoners, described in the Report of the General Prisons Board (Ireland) as sane, were transferred from Irish local prisons to Irish lunatic asylums.
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  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The hon. Member appears to refer to a paragraph on page 11 of the Report of the General Prisons Board (Ireland) for the year ending March 31st, 1905. The six persons referred to are not described as having been sane simply, but as having been sane on committal. They became insane while in prison, and were thereupon transferred to lunatic asylums.

  State Purchase of Irish Railways.
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he proposes to take any measures to bring about the State purchase of the Irish railways.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I have not yet had time to consider fully the interesting subject touched on in the Question.

  Death of Sapper Michael O'Connell.
  MR. WILLIAM ABRAHAM: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the circumstances attending the death of Sapper Michael O'Connell in the Military Hospital, Fermoy, from injuries caused by a fall from a window of the barrack room at Moor Park, Kilworth; is he aware that at the coroner's inquest a verdict of accidental death was returned, but no opportunity was afforded to the injury to view the scene of the accident or examine the construction and fastenings of the window through which Michael O'Connell was supposed to have forced himself while in a somnambulistic condition; if any inquiry into the circumstances has been held by the military authorities, and with what result; and whether, seeing that the relatives of Michael O'Connell were not professionally represented and no opportunity was given to sift and examine the evidence adduced, he will consider the necessity of directing a further inquiry to be held.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I have received from the police authorities a report in this matter, from which it appears that the fact is as stated in the first part of the Question. Full evidence in the case was given by the deceased's comrades and others. The jury ex- -pressed no desire to examine the scene of

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  the accident, but without hesitation found a verdict of accidental death. No evidence was given that the deceased was subject to somnambulism, and his father denied the suggestion. I am informed that a regimental court of inquiry was held, and that the finding of the court agreed with that of the coroner's jury. No further inquiry into the ease appears to be necessary.

  Teaching of Extra Subjects in Irish Schools.
  MR. LONSDALE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that in the north of Ireland there is a desire for the teaching of mathematics, French, and Latin as extra subjects in elementary schools; whether he has decided to restore the payment of fees for such extra subjects; and whether he will adopt the equitable method of paying the same fee for each extra.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am not aware that, outside teachers' associations, any such desire has hitherto found expression. The subjects in question can hardly be considered to be within the scope of Irish primary education, and, as I have already pointed out, when extra fees in these subjects were given, comparatively few schools took advantage of the privilege. It is not intended to restore the payment of extra fees for these subjects.

  Army Recruits.
  MR. HALPIN: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state the number of recruits who joined the Army in the year ending March 31st, 1906, from each of the four nations of the British Empire, viz., England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; the number from each of the four nations that were unable to serve in the Army on account of illness, for the three years ending March 31st, 1906; the number from each of the four nations that were discharged from the Army for misconduct in the year ending March 31st, 1906; and the number of officers from each of the four nations that were charged with tyrannical rowdyism for the year ending May 1st, 1906.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The Returns showing the recruits raised
  156
  in the four countries respectively are only made up annually to September 30th. No Returns show discharges as invalids or for misconduct by these countries. I am afraid, therefore, that I cannot supply the statistics which the hon. Member requires.

  Desertions from the Army in Scotland.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for War, having regard to the fact that during the years 1902, 1903, 1904, and 1905, there were 1,705 desertions from the various barracks in Scotland, will he state how many men were quartered each year at the respective barracks at the time the desertions from such barracks took place.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) My hon. friend is doubtless aware that the numbers quartered at the barracks concerned varied from time to time during the years in question. Accordingly the compilation of the figures necessary to give a satisfactory answer to the Question would involve considerable labour which there would not appear to be sufficiently strong grounds to justify.

  Smallpox in British Army.
  MR. LUPTON: To ask the Secretary of State for War if the average annual strength of the British Armies in Egypt and India during the twenty ycars1881 to 1900 was approximately 69,751, and if the total number of cases of smallpox amongst those men was 1,149, and the total number of deaths from smallpox 113; and if, seeing that during the same period the town of Leicester had an average annual population of 165,415, and that the total number of cases of smallpox in Leicester during that period was 447, and the total number of deaths from smallpox was thirty-one, that the soldiers were all vaccinated and the population of Leicester largely un-vaccinated, and that the death-rate from smallpox in the Army per 100,000 was eight times the death-rate in Leicester, he will consider the advisability of relaxing the regulation for compulsory vaccination in the Army.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) It is not clear what value can lie obtained

  157
  from a comparison between the statistics of Leicester and those of the British Army in India and Egypt, but if my hon. friend will consider the statistics for the years 1901 to 1904 ho will find that while the troops in India and Egypt had 163 admissions to hospital for smallpox, and twenty-one deaths, Leicester had 740 admissions to hospital for smallpox, and thirty deaths. There would not appear to be any sound grounds for relaxing the regulations for vaccination in the Army.

  Army Pensioners in Workhouses.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state how many Army pensioners are at present in the workhouses of the United Kingdom; how many have applied for an increase of pension to enable them to live outside these institutions; and what would be the probable cost to the State if such increases were granted.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary. Haldane.) The number of pensioners who became chargeable to the guardians during the year ending March 3lst, 1906, was about 1,500, The number at present in workhouses is not known at the War Office. No record is kept of the number of applications for increase of pension from pensioners in workhouses, nor is it possible to make any estimate, of the cost of awarding to such pensioners sufficient increase of pension to enable them to live outside.

  The St. Helena Garrison,
  SIR ROBERT HOBART: To ask the Secretary of State for War when the remainder of the garrison of the Island of St. Helena, consisting principally of Royal Artillery, will return home, and so complete the economy foreshadowed by his statement on Army Estimates.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The garrison at St. Helena will be withdrawn in the autumn.

  Manufacture of Bayonets
  MR. BRANCH: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the bayonet department, Enfield, has come to an
  158
  almost total standstill; if so, will he state the reasons, and when it may be anticipated that orders will be placed in this department; and what orders have been placed for bayonets to the trade and Government factories during the last seven years and the comparative cost.
  (answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) Work in the bayonet shops at Enfield is I necessarily suspended during consideration of the pattern of bayonet to be adopted for the short rifle. No discharges are being made in the bayonet s shop, as the men are being absorbed on rifle work. As regards the orders and the comparative cost my hon. friend will find the information for the years 1899 to 1904 in the Return presented in 1905 [Cd. 2431]. The figures for the period 1904 to 1906 are as follows:—

  Ordnance Factories.

  Trade.

  Orders

  65,974

  44,772

  Average Cost

  8s. l¾d.

  9s. 8d.

  The Colonies and British Military Policy.
  MR. BELLAIRS: To ask the Secretary of State for War, whether the views placed before the last Colonial Conference by the War Office are the only official intimation our Colonies have received of late years as to British military policy.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) No, Sir. The Colonies receive the recommendations of the Colonial Defence Committee, through the Colonial Office, which are previously approved by the Army Council. The Army Council is represented on the Colonial Defence Committee by three directors.

  Spanish Bull Fighting.
  DR. SHIPMAN: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether it is proposed to give the British Representative at the forthcoming marriage of the King of Spain instructions similar to those given to Lord Napier of Magdala at the marriage of King Alphonso XII. in 1879, not to attend any bull fights which may form part of the festivities.
  (Answered by Secretary Sir Edward Grey.) It does not appear from our records

  159
  that any instructions on this point were given to Lord Napier; and this occasion is not one on which instructions can be given by His Majesty's Government.

  Annual Report of Chief Inspector of Factories.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the the Secretary of State for the Home Department, at what date the annual Report of His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops will be issued.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) I am informed by the Chief Inspector that he hopes he may be able to have the whole Report, including the statistical tables, ready for issue in June, but, in view of the large amount of work to be done in connection with it, he is unable to fix any precise date at present.

  Education Finances Return.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when will the Report granted to the hon. Member for West Kerry on educational finances in England, Ireland, and Wales be ready; and whether he will see that it is completed as soon as possible.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The collection and tabulation of the required information is proceeding as rapidly as possible, and I hope that the Return will pe ready soon after the Whitsuntide Recess.

  Industrial Training in the Island of Lewis.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state how many boys and girls respectively resident in the island of Lewis the local authorities have recommended to the Scottish Education Department for participation in the industrial training provided for under Section 1 (d) of the minute of March 19th last.
  (Answered by Mr. Sinclair.) Communications have taken place, but no definite statement is possible at present.

  Discharge of Mr. Murray from Ordnance Survey Department.
  LIEUTENANT - COLONEL PHILIPPS: To ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether he is aware that notice of discharge on reduction of establishment has been given to Mr. George Murray, temporary civil assistant of the Ordnance Survey Department in the Derby division, who is fourty-eight years of age and has nearly thirty-one years' service in the Department; and whether, taking into consideration that in 1891, when on outdoor employment on examination duty, ho met with an accident which, though it interferes with his outdoor work, does not interfere with his employment in office work, that in 1899 Colonel Washington, then director of the Map and Survey Department, Land Registry Office, London, was-willing to find Mr. Murray employment as draughtsman in that department,. and that Mr. Murray was anxious to be transferred from the Ordnance Survey, but that the then Director General of the Ordnance Survey was unable to spare him from the Ordnance Survey, that Mr. Murray's character is excellent and his work very good, being described by his superior officer as a very good surveyor and examiner, and a good draughtsman and tracer, and as being absolutely sober, trustworthy, and honest, and that he has given the best part of his life to the Government service, and that his age now debars him from obtaining similar or other employment elsewhere, he will consider whether some suitable employment cannot still be found for him in the Ordnance Survey Department.
  (Answered by Sir Edward Strachey.) My noble friend much regrets that it has been necessary to give notice of discharge to such an old public servant as Mr. Murray, but after full inquiry he is satisfied that there is no suitable employment for him, unless some better man is discharged from some other office to make room for him. Mr. Murray's application for transfer to the Land Registry in 1899 was refused, in accordance with a general rule forbidding such transfers, and not on the ground that he could not be spared from the Ordnance Survey.

  Sand required for the Construction of Poulduff Pier.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: To ask the President of the Board of Trade, if the contractor for the construction of Poulduff Pier, county Wexford, will be allowed to take the small quantity of sand he requires for the work from the beach there, in view of the fact that no objection has ever been taken to the removal of either sand or shingle from the beach by the public, who have been in the habit of so doing from time immemorial, and in view of the fact that the removal of the small quantity of sand required by the cantractor can do no harm to anyone.
  (Answered by Mr. Lloyd-George.) The Board of Trade have intimated to the contractor that they are disposed to grant him permission to take a limited quantity of gravel from the beach on certain conditions, but it is necessary before corning to a decision for the Board to be furnished with an approximate estimate of the amount which he requires.

  Gas Meter Registers
  MR. ROWLANDS: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether ho will take steps, by legislation or otherwise, to get the gas companies to supply to the consumers using the penny-in-the-slot meters, a card to show the record of the index of the meter, as is supplied to consumers using the ordinary meters.
  (Answered by Mr. Lloyd-George.) There is no obligation upon gas companies, so far as I am aware, to supply such cards to consumers using the ordinary meters. The Board of Trade have no power to require gas companies to supply such cards without further legistion. I am not prepared at present to express an opinion on the subject, but the point will be noted for consideration in the event of any Bill being introduced to amend the Gas Acts.

  Postal Facilities at Newtownards.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is in a position to make any statement as to the requests made by the Newtownards Urban District Council with
  162
  reference to the postal facilities in the letter written by the town clerk on April 12th.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) I am glad to say I have been able to meet the wishes of the Newtownards Urban District Council, and I have given instructions (1) for the first delivery at that place to be accelerated by thirty minutes, (2) for an additional postman to be employed upon this delivery, with the view of reducing the loads of the men employed on the duty, and (3) for the mail arriving at Newtownards at 6.10 p.m. from the Ards district to be delivered the same evening.

  Post Office Male Sorters.
  DR. COOPER: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he will give the number of male sorters employed on April 1st, 1906; the number of sorters in receipt of pensions on the same date; and the total amount paid to these officers on superannuation.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The number of male sorters employed on April 1st, 1906, was 5,555. The number of sorters in receipt of pensions on the same date was 318, and the total amount paid to these officers on superannuation was £20,822 per annum, exclusive of pensions payable to officers of the supervising classes who had been promoted from the sorters' ranks.

  Closing of Schools—Repayment of Grants.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the President of the Board of Education whether, in the event of a voluntary school being closed, the Board of Education require from the trustees the repayment of the whole or part of any building grant made by the State in respect of such school or teachers' residence; and, if so, by what authority or instruction this demand is made.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The question of the repayment of building grant by the trustees of any elementary school is dealt with in The School Grants Act, 1855, which provides that where a building grant has been made, no sale, exchange, or mortgage of the premises shall be valid unless either the Secretary of State for the Home Department consents or the amount of the grant is repaid to

  163
  the Treasury. Each case is dealt with on its merits, and in the light of the particular trusts affecting the premises.

  Customs Officers' Grievance.
  MR. C. DUNCAN: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that the Board of Customs, in their Report to the Treasury in November, 1904, on the second class examining officers' memorial, stated that the figures and quotations in such memorial were inaccurate, and whether he can state what steps were taken by the Treasury officials to verify this statement by the Board of Customs; and whether he will cause the Report to be officially published.
  (Answered by Mr. McKenna.) I do not think it would be in the public interest either to discuss or to publish the confidential correspondence between departments on matters of this kind.
  MR. C. DUNCAN: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will submit a table showing the date of entrance to the Customs service, the initial salaries, and the salaries on March 31st each year from 1901 to 1906, inclusive, of the members of the service who have served in the Customs secretary's office within the above-mentioned period, and showing, in the ease of those now serving in other branches of the service, the date of their transfer from the secretary's office, the position to which they were appointed, and the post they hold at the present time.
  (Answered by Mr. McKenna.) I do not think that any useful object would be served by the publication of such a table. I shall be happy to communicate with the hon. Member if he wishes for information on any particular cases.

  Appointment of Mr. Mowatt as Assistant Metropolitan Poor Law Auditor.
  MR. BARNARD: To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will state the precise terms of the appointment of Mr. F. H. Mowatt, assistant auditor of the Metropolitan (Poor Law) Audit District, which comprises the district of the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum District.
  164
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) Mr. Mowatt is appointed to assist the district auditors for the time being for the London county audit district, the Metropolitan Boroughs Audit District, and the Metropolitan (Poor Law) Audit District, respectively, in the performance of their duties as such auditors, and ho is at present required to assist the auditor of the last-mentioned district. Under The District Auditors Act, 1879, an assistant auditor has, subject to any exceptions made by the terms of his appointment, the same powers and duties and is subject to the same obligations as the auditor whom he is appointed to assist. By the terms of his appointment, Mr. Mowatt has no power of making any disallowance or surcharge, and in the exercise of his powers and the performance of his duties is made subject to the directions of the district auditor whom ho is required for the time being to assist.

  Comptroller and Auditor-General and Public Expenditure.
  ME. PAUL: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will undertake that the discretion vested in the Treasury by the Act of 1866 shall not be used to prevent the Controller and Auditor-General from seeing any items of public expenditure which he may think it his duty, in the public interest, to examine.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith.) I am not aware of any case in which the Treasury has prevented the Comptroller and Auditor-General from seeing items of expenditure which ho thinks it his duty to examine. If such a case were to arise, I presume that the Comptroller and Auditor-General would report it to the Public Accounts Committee, who would deal with it on behalf of this House.

  Fair Rent Appeals in County Fermanagh.
  MR. FETHERSTONHAUGH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the application of Edward Rogers, tenant, against H. de F. Montgomery, landlord, to fix a fair rent was served so long ago as October, 1898, (County Fermanagh, No. 6,410), and is still, after over seven and a half years, undisposed of; and whether, in view of the loss to Rogers, he can arrange for an

  165
  early sitting of the Land Commission to dispose of that and other long-delayed cases from the county of Fermanagh.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed by the Land Commission that the originating notice was lodged by the tenant in this case on October 29th, 1898, but was dismissed by order of the Sub-commission, dated February 21st, 1900, on the grounds that the applicant was not the tenant of a present tenancy in the holding. The tenant having appealed against this order, the Appeal Court, on March 20th, 1903, discharged the order of the Sub-commission and remitted the case back to a Sub-commission to fix a fair rent. On April 21st, 1904, the Sub-commission fixed the fair rent at £38 5s., and against this decision both the tenant and landlord have appealed by notices lodged respectively on June 28th and 30th, 1904. The case will appear cm the next appeal list for the district, the elate for the hearing of which has not yet been fixed.

  Sale of the Marshall Estate, County Cork.
  MR. FLYNN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners have vet sanctioned the sale of the Marshall Estate, near Kanturk, county Cork; and, if so, has the transaction been yet completed; are the Commissioners aware that the tenants were led to believe that four per cent, interest on the purchase money was to be charged for the first half-year after signing the agreements, and 3½ per cent. subsequently until the completion of the transaction; and whether, in view of the delay caused by no default of the tenants, the latter can be held liable to pay more than the ordinary 33½ per cent. interest.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that the advances in this ease have been sanctioned but not yet made. The completion of the matter has been stayed pending a question which has arisen as to the redemption of a Board of Works loan. The rate of interest on the purchase money is set out in the agreements for sale signed by the tenants at four per cent, per annum from the date of the agreement up to the date of the advance.
  166
  The Commissioners have no knowledge of any arrangement as to subsequent reducduction, and must collect interest in lieu of rent at the rate agreed upon between the tenants and their landlord, as set out in the purchase agreements.

  Evicted Tenants in Queen's County.
  ME. DEEANY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he can state the number of evicted tenants in Queen's County who have been restored to their own or other holdings under the operation of the Act of 1903, and also how many remain unprovided for; and what steps are being taken by the Estate Commissioners to reinstate the latter or provide them with equivalent farms.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that they have received applications from 187 persons claiming to have been evicted from holdings in the Queen's County. Of these thirty-nine have been reinstated by the Commissioners, and they have information of four reinstated by landlords, leaving 144 such cases still outstanding. The Commissioners hope shortly to make inquiries as to these latter cases, and no pains will be spared to deal with the matter.

  Irish Land Purchase—Registration of Title.
  MR. DELANY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that subtenants who purchase under the Act of 1903 have to pay 9s. 6d. for registration of title, in addition to the charge of 10s. 6d. for copy of registration usually paid by ordinary tenant purchasers; and whether he can say if this penalty on sub-tenants is prescribed by the Act.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryes.) The Registrar of Titles informs me that no tenant purchaser under the Act of 1903 is charged any fee whatsoever for the registration of his title. If such tenant purchasers should demand a certificate of title they are charged a fee of 10s., but it is entirely optional with them to procure such certificate.

  Land Appeals in County Longford.
  MR. J. P. FARRELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state when the last sitting of the head Land Commission Court was held in Longford; whether he is aware that dissatisfaction exists amongst the tenants having appeals listed there as to the delay; and whether he will communicate with the Commission and ask them to arrange for a sitting at an early date in Longford.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed by the Land Commission that sittings were held at Longford, by both Judicial Commissioners sitting independently, on May 9th, 1905, and following days. The list contained all cases then pending in which the notices of appeal were lodged prior to April 1st, 1905. There are now pending only forty-four cases from county Longford in which appeals have been lodged on various dates since that date, and in twenty of those cases the notices of appeal were received since the commencement of the present year. A sitting will be arranged for the disposal of county Longford appeals for as early a date as possible, having regard to the claims of other districts.

  Patronage of the Irish Department of Agriculture.
  MR. O'SHEE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is competent for the Commission now sitting to investigate the manner in which the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction have exercised the patronage at their disposal, as well as the manner in which they have interfered with county committees with regard to appointments.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) If by the first part of the Question the hon. Member intends to refer to the relations between the Department and their staff, I may refer to the statement I have already made, namely, that it was never intended that the Committee should inquire into any alleged grievances of the staff. The question of the relations between the Department and county committees in regard to appointments is, I think, one with which the Committee might deal, but in saying so I must be understood to be expressing my own opinion, and not
  168
  to be interfering with the discretion of the Committee in the matter.

  Irish Horticultural Instructor— Appoint ment of Mr. Bryne.
  MR. O'SHEE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Waterford County Council has recently passed a resolution testifying to the manner in which Mr. M. J. Bryne carried on his work during the time that he acted as horticultural instructor for the county of Waterford; whether he is aware that other public bodies in the county of Waterford had previously passed similar resolutious; and whether, in view of these recommendations, the Department will, having regard to the previous experience and to the qualifications of Mr. Bryne, sanction his appointment as horticultural instructor at the request of any county committee which decides to appoint him.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction are not aware that the Waterford County Council has recently passed such a resolution. At their meeting held on November 27th, 1905, the Waterford County Committee of Agriculture passed a resolution to the effect that Mr. Bryne was energetic and attentive to his duties while employed by them as demonstrator in horticulture, but the committee refrained from expressing any opinion as to his fitness for such a position. The Department are not prepared to approve of Mr. Bryne's appointment by any county committee, as they do not regard him as well qualified for employment under the scheme of instruction in horticulture.

  Purchases of Irish Estates.
  DR. AMBROSE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland how many years' purchase were paid by the Congested Districts Board for the Jones estate, situate at Burrishoole, Newport, county Mayo; what price was paid by the Board for the Glendahurk Mountain, and what is its area; what price was paid for the 80 acres of land at Knocklegan; what was the total amount paid to Mr. Jones for his estate and farms; did this total include the price of the game and

  169
  fishing rights; how many farms in the Westport Union are at present used by the Congested Districts Board for grazing purposes; what are the names of those farms; and what is the total area of such farms.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Congested Districts Board have arranged to purchase the Jones estate at prices representing nineteen years purchase of first term rents, twenty-two years purchase of second term rents, and thirty years purchase of the yearly value of

  Number.

  Names of Farms.

  Area.

  a.

  r.

  p.

  1

  Kilmeena

  103

  3

  10

  2

  Clooneshill and Derrylahan

  649

  0

  0

  3

  Kilbride

  120

  2

  39

  4

  Roigh

  87

  1

  35

  5

  Rossyvera

  78

  3

  1

  6

  Glashpatrick

  391

  3

  0

  7

  Brockagh and Toorgave

  286

  0

  0

  8

  Aughagowla

  327

  3

  37

  9

  Cuiltrean

  250

  2

  9

  10

  Ballygolman

  157

  3

  17

  11

  Burrishoole

  3,168

  0

  0

  12

  Owenglass, Shaenmore, and Bunmore

  10,214

  0

  0

  13

  Murrevagh

  26

  1

  0

  14

  Vosey Stoney and Curran Estate Islands

  228

  0

  0

  Total

  16,090

  0

  28

  Religious Persuasion of Constabulary and Magistrates at Templemore.
  ME. KENDAL O'BRIEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieu tenant of Ireland whether the district inspector and head constable stationed at Templemore belong to the Protestant persuasion; are the clerks of
  170
  untenanted lands. The price paid for Glendahurk Mountain was £700. The price to be paid for the 83 acres at Knocklegan is £1,140. The total amount to be paid to Mr. Jones for his estate and farms is £10,300. The game and fishing rights are included in the sale, so far as the vondor is in a position to convey them. The following statement contains particulars of the farms in Westport Union at present used by the Board for grazing purposes. Of the total of 16,090 acres, 1,709 only have so far been vested in the Board.
  petty sessions and the resident magistrate of the same religion; and will he state how many members of the constabulary at Templemore belong to the Catholic religion.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Answer to the first part of the Question is in the

  171
  affirmative. The Answer to the second part is also in the affirmative as regards the resident magistrate. No records are kept of the religious persuasion of petty sessions clerks. Ten out of fifteen members of the Royal Irish Constabulary stationed at Templemore are registered as Roman Catholics.

  Reinstatement of Mrs. E Rourke.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mrs. Elizabeth Rourke has applied to the Estates Commissioners to be restored to the farm from which her uncle John Redmond, since deceased, and herself were evicted some sixteen years ago; whether the farm, which is part of the Hardy estate and situate in the town-land of Kilmacart, Hacketstown, is in the possession of any other tenant; and, if so, on what terms; and can he say what decision, if any, the Commissioners have come to in reference to Mrs. Rourke's case.
  (answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that an application for reinstatement as an evicted tenant was, on April 25th, 1906, lodged with them by Mrs. Elizabeth Rourke, who states that the holding in which she seeks to be reinstated is now in the occupation of Mrs. Neil. The Commissioners have not yet inquired into the case, but will do so in due course.

  Condition of Service of Army Quarter masters.
  COLONEL McCALMONT: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether it is proposed to take any steps to ameliorate the conditions under which Army quartermasters at present serve, more particularly with regard to the difference of treatment existing between the appointment, pay, promotion, and retiring allowances of quartermasters as compared with those of district officers of Royal Artillery.
  (answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) As regards the comparison drawn between district officers of the Royal Artillery and quartermasters, it would not appear that the differences in appointment, pay, and promotion are in excess of the difference of the duties or to be in
  172
  all respects to the disadvantage of the quartermasters. It is not, therefore, proposed to make any alterations in these respects. The question of retiring allowances is, however, at present receiving careful consideration.

  Discharges from Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Factory.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether in view of the fact that since January, 1906, fifty-six men have been discharged from the Royal Gunpowder Factory, at Waltham Abbey, making a total of 400 since April, 1905, he can see his way to stopping any further discharges and withdrawing the notice posted in the notice box since March 24th, 1905, entitled warning of expected discharges, which causes a feeling of unrest among the employees.
  (answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The orders for cordite for this financial year are not sufficient to keep the full number of men now at Waltham Abbey employed and some further discharges may be necessary. I can, however, assure the hon. and gallant Member that they will be as few as possible.

  Army Meat Contracts.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can explain why any change was allowed to be made in the tender forms for meat supply to the Army, by substituting the word home-killed instead of home-bred; whether he is aware that such change would enable the supply to be derived from imported cattle; and whether he will revert to the arrangement entered into some years since for the supply of a certain amount of native produce.
  (answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The troops in the United Kingdom get fresh beef five days a week, and the main reason for the alteration in the tender form was to widen the source of supply, and to obtain the best quality at the most reasonable price. The words in the tender form are general, and include beef from imported cattle killed at the port of entry. There is no intention of again substituting home-bred for home-killed in the tender forms.

  Discharge of Master-Gunner Metherell
  MR. W. F. D. SMITH: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can now give any further, information with reference to the circumstances under which Second Class Master-Gunner Metherell was requested to claim his discharge.
  (answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) On inquiry it appears that this man was granted an exemplary character on discharge in error. I regret, therefore, that, under the circumstances, he cannot be permitted to rejoin the Army.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Natal Civil Servants.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the Natal Government entered into contracts in writing in 1902, through the Agent-General in London, with Civil servants then holding appointments under the Imperial Government, guaranteeing certain initial salaries and fixed annual increments till a fixed maximum was reached; whether, at the beginning of last year, the Natal Government broke this contract by reducing salaries by one-eleventh; whether this year, in addition to reduction, the annual increment to which they were entitled by their agreement is withdrawn, and the maximum salary which they were led to expect under their contract in many cases reduced from £500 to £300; and whether any steps will be taken to compel the Natal Government to carry out the terms of their contract with those men.
    THE UNDER - SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL, Manchester, N.W.): The Colonial Office does not appear to have been cognisant of the contracts referred to, and the matter is one which falls entirely within the province of the responsible Government of Natal.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: Will the hon. Gentleman make further inquiries?
    MR. CHURCHILL: Yes, if the hon. Member desires it.

    White Miners in the Transvaal.
    MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State j for the Colonies whether, in the event of white miners being thrown out of employment in the Transvaal in consequence of State-aided repatriation of Chinese coolies, compensation will be given to such white men from Imperial funds, or means to enable them to return to their homes.
    MR. CHURCHILL: The hon. Member will recognise that it is impossible for the Government to state how it would deal with a purely hypothetical case.
    MR. LONSDALE: Will the same Consideration be extended to white miners as it is proposed to give to the coolies?
    MR. CHURCHILL: When the white miners are employed under the same conditions the matter will, no doubt, be pressed on the attention of the Governments.

    South Rose Deep Mine Fatality.
    MR. J. WARD: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to a report of the inquest hold upon the bodies of fifty-four men who lost their lives through the recent flooding of the shaft of the South Rose Deep mine; whether a verdict was returned that the mineowners' neglect to provide proper chain ladders, as provided by the mines regulations, was the direct cause of this serious loss of human life; and will ho say whether this omission was the result of the way in which the public mining inspectors perform their duty, and what action the Secretary of State for the Colonies proposes to take to enforce upon the mineowners the mining regulations of the Transvaal for the protection of the mine workers, pending the establishment of self-government.
    MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State has seen a newspaper report of the verdict of the coroner in which the coroner states his opinion that a number of natives might have escaped had chains or chain-ladders been provided as required by the

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    mining regulations. This appears to be a very grave case, and Lord Selbourne is being asked to report whether any action, and if so, what action, has been taken as the result of this verdict.

    Barbadoes and St Lucia.
    MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the economic loss that has accrued to the inhabitants of Barbadoes and St. Lucia as the result of the withdrawal of the garrison from these islands, His Majesty's Government propose to devote any sum of money to their relief in the form of a Grant-in-Aid.
    MR. CHURCHILL: There is no precedent for paying compensation to the inhabitants in a case of this kind. At present both Colonies are in a sound financial position. Barbadoes has a surplus, and St. Lucia has a reserve fund of, I think, over £20,000.
    MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: What circumstances differentiate the cases of Barbadoes and St. Lucia from St. Helena?
    MR. CHURCHILL: If the resources of a Colony are greatly impaired, then it becomes a matter for the consideration of the Government. Such circumstances may occur in St. Helena which, so far as we are aware, will not arise in the case of the other islands.

    Sleeping Sickness and Game Preserves in South Africa
    MR. REES: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the sleeping sickness is now reported to have reached Lake Mweru, in Northern Rhodesia; and whether, in view of this fact and of the facts that the mail carriers, between Chiromo and Blantyre, have been held up by lions, and that the construction of the Government ox-cait road from Katungas to Chiromo was abandoned on account of the presence of the tsetse fly, he will consider the advisability of calling, by telegraph, upon the Commissioner to report regarding the effect of the game preserve alongside the last-named township, and to consider whether it cannot be removed to some more suitable location.
    MR. CHURCHILL: I have heard of some of the reports to which my hon. friend refers, but I cannot tell from any information in the Colonial Office whether they may not have been exaggerated. That any connection exists between the-appearance of lions, of the tsetse fly and the sleeping sickness on the one hand and the maintenance of the game preserve on the other, is not at present established. But the Secretary of State is addressing, the Commissioner upon the subject, and if it can be shown that the removal or contraction of the preserve would increase the health and security of Chiromo and its environs, instructions will be given accordingly.
    MR. REESinquired if the information had been requested by telegraph.
    MR. CHURCHILL: No; by mail, I think.

    Natal Zulus, Rifles.
    MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I bog to ask the Under-Secretary of. State for the Colonies if the Zulus who are at present giving trouble in Natal are: armed with rifles, etc., supplied by Birmingham firms; and whether he can say if these firearms are the same that were supplied to them in connection with the South African War.
    MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State has received no information on the subject.

    Slave Selling in British Northern Columbia.
    MR. O'DOWD: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a system of slavery at present prevails amongst the Indians in British Northern Columbia; whether, under such system, girls, even white girls, are now being sold and have been sold for years in British Columbia to the highest bidders; and, if so, will he say what steps the Government intend to take in order to abolish slavery in this portion of His Majesty's dominions.
    MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State's attention has been drawn to Press reports as to the sale of Indian girls in British Columbia to which the hon. Member refers, and he is confident that

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    the Dominion Government will take any steps that are necessary in the matter.
    SIR GILBERT PARKERthought it should be made clear that the term "white girls" referred to in the Question meant Indians very white in colour.
    MR. J. WARD: What difference does that make?

    Partition of Bengal.
    SIR H. COTTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether, with reference to the excitement caused throughout India by the forcible dispersal of public meetings in the new Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and to the situation occasioned thereby, ho is in a position to give a general assurance of a sympathetic nature that such action is in contemplation as will tend to allay the public unrest and re-establish cordial and friendly relations between the Government and the people of the country.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. -JOHN MORLEY,): I hope the hon. Gentleman, as a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service, will believe that it is the wish and intention alike of the Local Government and of the Government of India to act in a sympathetic and considerate spirit, and to take such measures as may seem most likely to allay the excitement which has been caused by the recent administrative changes. I learn from the Governor-General that in view of the improved tone of local feeling the Lieutenant-Governor has considered himself justified in ordering the unconditional re-instatement of 300 schoolboys whoso names had been removed from the rolls, and in withdrawing the circulars previously in force prohibiting processions. I trust that in his efforts to maintain public order without recourse to extraordinary measures he will receive general support.

    Turkey and Egypt.
    MR. LUPTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how far is Tabah from the frontier claimed by Egypt; how far is Tabah from the Suez Canal; has the frontier claimed by Egypt
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    ever been definitely marked out on the ground; were the Turkish troops two months at Tabah before the Egyptian Government hoard of the circumstances; are the Egyptian troops now in occupation of an island near Tabah, which is claimed by the Turks as theirs; and, considering that Tabah is 130 miles from Suez, whether he will continue negotiations for the delimination of the frontier without insisting on the previous evacuation of Tabah.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir EDWARD-GREY, Northumberland, Berwick): Tabah is three or four miles from the line claimed by Egypt. Tabah to Suez is about 140 miles. I had prepared a detailed Answer to the rest of the Question of the hon. Member, but just before I came to the House I was informed that a satisfactory Note had been received from the Porte; and, if I may be allowed to do so, I should like, instead of answering the Question of the hon. Gentleman, to make a statement to the House. The Turkish Government have informed Sir Nicholas O'Conor that Tabah and the other places in the neighbourhood recently occupied by Turkish troops have been evacuated. Since that statement was made, a Note has been received stating that the Porte does not question the; telegram of April 8th, 1892; that a Joint Committee will be appointed to make a topographical survey and map with a view to fixing the boundaries so as to secure the continuance of the status quo on the basis of the telegram above mentioned; and that the boundaries will run from Rafah in a south-easterly direction and in approximately a straight line to a point not less than throe miles from Akaba. His Majesty's Government have accepted this Note as a reply to their Note of ten days ago, and I hope-there will now be no difficulty in settling the details of the arrangement satisfactorily.
    MR. DILLONasked whether the full Papers in connection with the dispute would be laid on the Table.
    SIR EDWARD GREY: I should like to consider that Question. I will do everything I can to meet the wishes of the House and the country. Perhaps

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    the hon. Gentleman would give me notice of the Question.

    Brandy Adulteration.
    MR. MACVEAGH (Down, S.): I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the final Court of Appeal under the Food and Drugs Act in this country has decided that brandy consists of grape wine distilled in a pot still; and whether he intends to take steps to prevent spirit made from decayed maize, sago, beet, potatoes, treacle, or rotten rice, in a patent still, being blended in Government warehouses with genuine brandy and described and sold as such.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. ASQUITH, Fifeshire, E.): I do not know to what Court or to what judgment the hon. Member refers. But in any case the suggested blending of brandy with patent still spirit cannot take place in bonded warehouses, as the regulations prohibit the blending in Government warehouses of British and foreign spirits for delivery for home consumption.

    Tobacco Duty.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has received a memorial in which his attention is drawn to a circular, dated May 3rd, 1906, issued by the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland, Limited, stating that the alteration in the duty on stripped leaf tobacco announced in the Budget is not of a nature to permit of a reduction in the price of tobacco; and what action he proposes to take.
    MR. ASQUITH: I have seen a copy of the circular. The alteration in the duties is a very small one—a reduction of 1d. a pound in the present effective rate upon one kind of raw material of which the possible supply for the next two years is of limited amount. I do not anticipate any appreciable loss of revenue from the change, the object of which is to remove an artificial barrier to the natural course of the industry. I have no doubt that the resulting economic advantage will sooner or later find its way to the consumer, but I have never anticipated that its effect would he an immediate reduction in prices.

    Tea Duty.
    MR. H. H. MARKS: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that at a meeting of members of the retail tea trade, held on May 7th at the London Chamber of Commerce, at which over 20,000 shops in various parts of the Kingdom were represented, it was resolved that, notwithstanding the proposals contained in the Budget, no reduction should be made in the price of tea; and whether, having regard to this action on the part of the leading firms in the trade, he intends to adhere to his proposals, or can he see his way to so revise them as to give consumers the benefit of the reduction in duty which the trade has resolved to withhold from them.
    MR. ASQUITH: I have received a communication from the chairman of the meeting referred to, stating that the decision arrived at was that the present retail prices of tea should be continued, and that the quality of the blends should be improved to the full extent of the reduction, thus placing the large and small purchasers in a position whereby they equally benefit. If this decision is acted upon, the consumer will in fact receive the full benefit of the reduction in duty. I was quite aware, when I proposed the reduction, that the benefit to the consumer might take the form of an improvement in quality instead of a reduction in price, and I said so in my Budget speech. I may add, however, that I am informed that an actual reduction in price has been made by many retailers in view of the reduction of duty—even in anticipation of its taking effect. It is not improbable that the force of competition may compel others to follow suit.

    Inland Revenue Officers' Grievances.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether any representation has been made to him by Inland Revenue officers as to the grievances from which they suffer in respect of their pay and conditions of service; and what steps he proposes to take to remove these grievances.
    MR. ASQUITH: I have received such representations from Inland Revenue officers in various parts of the United

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    Kingdom; but I find in such facts as have been laid before me no sufficient reason for instituting any general inquiry or for revising the settlement which was made in 1894. It is of course open to officers who may regard themselves as having a grievance to submit their case for consideration through the Board of Inland Revenue.

    Metropolitan Police Holidays
    MR. MYER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will take into his consideration the desirability of an extension of the annual holiday of the members of the Metropolitan Police force from the present system of allowing ten days to a holiday of fourteen days' duration.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GLADSTONE, Leeds, W.): I shall be glad to consider the matter, but I find that the suggestion could not be carried out without an augmentation of the force, which would cost £20,000 a year; and, as the Metropolitan Police Estimate for the current year shows a considerable deficit, due chiefly to the growth of the Pension Fund, I cannot lightly entertain a proposal which would involve so heavy an additional charge on the rates.

    Alien Immigration.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether an alien immigrant who, so far as the immigration authorities can ascertain, is a pauper, a diseased person, an idiot, or a criminal, is to be admitted to this country if he or she claims that exclusion from this country would subject the applicant to hardship, and that the applicant alleges that he or she comes from a disturbed country or a disturbed district of a foreign country.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I can add nothing to the Answer I gave to the almost identical Question put by the hon. Member on March 15th last.†
    † See (4) Debates, eliii., 1409–11.

    Foreign Anarchists in England.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Secretary of
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    State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the expulsion of foreign anarchists from France to England, and if, in spite of the provisions of the Aliens Act, such expelled persons are received in England; and in such cases, having regard to the manufacture and explosion of bombs brought to light in and near Paris to the common danger, what steps he is taking for the safety of the inhabitants of London and the prevention of conspiracy to murder.
    MR. GLADSTONE: It would be obviously contrary to the public interest to announce in Parliament any police measures it might be necessary to take for baffling a conspiracy to murder, but I may say that I have no reason to suppose that the public safety at the present time demands any exceptional measures for this purpose. If the hon. and gallant Member has any information at his disposal pointing to an opposite conclusion I should be grateful if he would communicate it to me privately.

    Norwich Corporation and the Employ ment of Children.
    MR. GEORGE ROBERTS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if ho will explain why the assent of his Department has been withheld from the by-laws drafted by the Norwich Corporation under the Employment of Children Act, 1903.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I regret the delay which has taken place with regard to these by-laws, but I must point out that it has been partly due to the inaction of the Norwich Corporation, in not sending to the Home Office certain information which their representatives, at an interview with a member of the Department which took place in February, 1905, arranged to furnish. The Corporation assure me, however, that the by-laws were drafted after full inquiry and mature consideration of the needs of the locality, and I propose, subject to one or two necessary alterations, to give them my provisional approval.

    Case of Madame D'Angely—Royal Commission on Police Methods.
    MR. J. WARD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been

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    called to the case tried before Mr. Denman on May 1st, and dismissed, wherein a lady, Madame D'Angely, was charged with behaving in a riotous and indecent manner in Regent Street on the evening of April 24th last, and to the fact that Police Constables Page, 429 C, and Lucas, 136 C, and Constable 440 C gave evidence on oath that the defendant had attended Regent Street persistently for three months previous for the purpose of committing the offence with which she was charged; and whether, seeing that these statements of the constables have been shown to be untrue and the charge unfounded, he will say what action, if any, he proposes to take in the matter.
    The following Questions on the same subject also appeared on the Paper.
    MR. H. H. MARKS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether in view of the statement made by the magistrate at the Marlborough Street Police Court, in the case of Madame D'Angely, as to the dangers of Regent Street at night, he will cause special measures to be taken to deal with the evil of which the learned magistrate complained.
    MR. ASHLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has 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 has received any Report from the magistrate on the police evidence; and, if so, what action he proposes to take on it.
    MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the proceedings against Madame Eva D'Angely at Marlborough Street Police Court, in which Constables Page, 429 C, Lucas, 136 C, and Constable 440 C, testified that the defendant, who was charged with behaving in a riotous and indecent manner in Regent Street on April 24th, had frequented the West End in this way for three months, and had actually accosted men on the night of her
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    arrest; and will he say what the decision of the Court was, and what steps the-authorities are taking to deal with these constables, who submitted this lady and her friends to suffering and indignity.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling Burghs): The Government are fully alive to the importance of this subject, which is referred to in several Questions to-day; and they find that there is a general desire, shared by the authorities of the police for a full inquiry. In our judgment that inquiry should be directed to the duties of the Metropolitan police in dealing with cases of drunkenness and solicitation in the streets and the manner in which these duties are discharged. For the conduct of such an inquiry we think a Select Committee an inconvenient instrument, and we purpose to appoint a Royal Commission and to bring in a short Bill in accordance with the precedent of last year to invest the Commission with the necessary powers for taking evidence on oath and compelling the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents.
    MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether Madame D'Angely will be given any recompense for the insult to which she has been subjected?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I have said we propose to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the manner in which the police do this delicate duty, and into the circumstances which have been so much referred to, that constitute an incident which will be very much in the eyes of the Royal Commission.
    LORD R, CECIL (Marylebone, E.): Will the House have any opportunity of considering the terms of the reference, because it will be desirable to include other small cases besides those of drunkenness and solicitation?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: This is not an inquiry into any individual case or into individual cases. It is a general inquiry into the manner in which the police discharge their duties and the nature of those duties, but it will, of course, include an inquiry into any cases

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    which the noble Lord may have in his mind.
    LORD R. CECIL: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman quite understood me. There are besides these questions of drunkenness and solicitation, other small cases of assault, and I should like to ask how far this inquiry is to go.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I think I have said what is the precise nature of the inquiry to be held.
    MR. H. BEAUMONT: I would like to ask whether those who are employed in Regent street and are far more interested in these matters than dilettante amateurs, have not repeatedly expressed their entire satisfaction with the way in which the police in Regent street discharge their duties.
    AN HON. MEMBER: What do you mean by dilettante amateurs?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The opinion of my hon. friend is of value, but the opinion of the Royal Commission will be of greater value.
    MR. H. H. MARKS: Will the consideration of the conduct of the police in the case of Madame D'Angely be deferred until the Report of the Royal Commission?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: It will be a matter which will be considered with other subjects of a like kind.
    MR. ASHLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will state the result of his inquiries with reference to the shadowing of Monsieur and Madame D'Angely.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I am now able to inform the hon. Member that the statements made to him, as to the correctness of which he asked me on Wednesday last, are almost entirely without foundation. It is not the case that Monsieur and Madame D'Angely have been constantly shadowed by the police; and it is not the case that there were six detectives outside their house on Friday, the 4th instant, four on Saturday, the 5th, and two
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    on Monday, the 7th, as their house has not been placed under observation by the police. Police officers understand that under no circumstances may annoyance be caused in any way to Monsieur and Madame D'Angely, and I have no reason to think this likely to occur.
    MR. ASHLEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I can produce two independent witnesses ["Oh ! oh !"] to corroborate the statement?
    MR. GLADSTONE: I am aware of nothing of the kind. Perhaps the hon. Member will lay his information before the Royal Commission.
    MR. SLOAN: Has the right hon. Gentleman any knowledge of the shadowing in this case?
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have been "shadowed" myself. I have made careful inquiries into the subject, and I have given the results of them.
    LORD R. CECIL: What is the meaning of the right hon. Gentleman's phrase "almost entirely without foundation"?
    MR. GLADSTONE: On one occasion there was shadowing. [Cries of "Why didn't you say so?"] But in answer to the specific allegations of the hon Member, I have told the House that they are not founded on fact.
    MR. SLOAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman state the particular case of "shadowing" of which he has knowledge?
    SIR H. VINCENT: Will the right hon. Gentleman state who is this Madame D'Angely?
    MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman give instructions that the practice shall now cease?
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have told the House that these officers understand that in no circumstances may annoyance be caused in any way to Madame D'Angely, and I have no reason to think that it is likely to occur.
    MR. H. H. MARKS: By whose instructions did the "shadowing" of Madame D'Angely take place on the occasion upon

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    which the right hon. Gentleman admits it occurred?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Convictions of Foreign Women in London.
    DR. COOPER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will give the number of the foreign women who have been convicted during the last year at the Marlborough Street Police Court for soliciting or loose and disorderly conduct; whether the magistrate, on conviction, can issue an order to repatriate these foreigners; and, if he can, the number of such orders made during the year.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I am informed that the number of foreign women convicted at the Marlborough Street police court during the year ended April 30th for solicitation or disorderly conduct was 765. The magistrate has only since January 1st, 1906, had power to recommend the making of expulsion orders, and he has done so in one case.

    German Uniforms and. Street Advertise ments.
    SIR HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is aware that sandwichmen are parading the streets of the West End dressed in uniforms of the Imperial German Army, and bearing advertisements of a novel referring to the German nation; and, having regard to the Uniforms Act, will he take stops to restrain an exhibition of this character, more especially during the approaching visit to London of certain German municipal authorities.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I beg also to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that men dressed in the uniform of the Imperial German Army are at present parading the streets of London for advertising purposes; whether he is aware that this abuse of the national uniform is likely to be resented by the officers and men of the German Army, as a similar use of the British uniform would be resented by our own Army; and whether, under these circumstances, he
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    will use any powers he may possess to put an end to this exhibition.
    MR. GLADSTONE: My attention has been called to this form of advertisement, which appears to me both foolish and offensive. The Uniforms Act of 1894 does not apply, but the Commissioner of Police is taking steps to deal with the matter under the Metropolitan Streets Act.

    Postal Circulation of Betting Circulars.
    MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General if he can say how many and in what countries are letters, suspected of containing lottery or betting house circulars, detained by the postal authorities.
    THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON, Tower Hamlets, Poplar): The information at present in my possession does not enable me to answer the hon. Member's Question.
    MR. HIGHAM: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that those foreign circulars are being posted in large quantities. Is there no means of detecting and stopping them?
    MR, SYDNEY BUXTON: We have no right to tamper with closed envelopes.
    MR. HIGHAM: Cannot inquiries be made as to the contents?
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: Of whom?
    MR, HIGHAM: Surely the person who brings large quantities of letters for franking can be asked.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: It is the custom in this country to treat sealed letters as sacred.
    In reply to Mr. SLOAN the right hon. Gentleman said he was making further inquiries into the matter.

    Betting Telegrams.
    MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General if he can say in what countries, if any, are betting telegrams refused transmission.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I am not aware that betting telegrams are refused transmission in any country.

    Welsh Coal Exports to Germany.
    MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the quantity of Welsh steam coal exported to Germany during the year 1905; and whether he can state the quantity of such coal consigned to agents of the German Government for use in the Navy.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD as TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon Boroughs): The total quantity of steam coal exported to Germany from Welsh ports in 1905 was 304,737 tons. I am unable to state the quantity consigned to agents of the German Government.

    Electricity Bills.
    SIR CHARLES McLAREN (Leicestershire, Bosworth): I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether it is proposed this session to reintroduce into either House the Supply of Electricity Bill which was printed in 1903, and passed through the House of Lords, with Amendments in Committee, in 1904, and which is supported by the general body of electrical engineers, or whether the Government propose to recommend any other legislative changes to facilitate private enterprise in electric undertakings.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I hope to introduce a Bill dealing with this important question shortly, but before doing so I should prefer to have before me the Report of the Committee of this House which is now considering the question of electric supply in London.

    Workmen's Trains.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether ho will state what measures he has taken to insure that districts within the twenty-one mile radius of London, not at present certified as urban districts under Section 2, Sub-section 3, of the Cheap Trains Act, should, where a railway company provides adequate workmen's service, be regarded as urban for the remission of duty.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Under the Section in question a certificate can be-granted only when the Board of Trade-are satisfied that two or more stations are within an area which has a continuous urban as distinguished from a rural or suburban character, and this provision, could be modified only by legislation. No application from a railway company for the extension of the London urban area is at present before the Board.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will state what stops he is taking to carry out the recommendations of the Select Committee on Workmen's Trains, to prevent overcrowding on workmen's trains.
    MR. LLOYD GEORGE: This Question, is covered by my reply to the hon. Member on April 26th.† Any representations made to the Board of Trade in accordance with the Select Committee's recommendation with regard to habitual overcrowding of workmen's trains on any particular line will of course receive careful consideration.
    † See (4) Debates, elvi., 27

    Bond Investment Companies.
    MR, WHITEHEAD (Essex, S.E.): I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether ho proposes to introduce a Bill to carry out the recommendations of the Departmental Committee on Bond Investment Companies.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I propose to introduce a Bill at an early date.

    The New Spanish Tariff.
    MR. R. DUNCAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs can he inform the House what is the general nature of the alterations in the Spanish Customs tariff intended to come into force on July 1st, 1906, as affecting the manufacturers of the United Kingdom, and more especially as affecting marine machinery, boilers,. and their adjuncts; and whether there is any reason to hope that these altered conditions may be modified in a direction more favourable to the British producer.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. KEARLEY, Devonport): The general

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    tendency of the proposed new Spanish Customs tariff is in the direction of increase in the rates of duty, and this applies to the articles mentioned by the hon. Member. It is understood that the tariff is still subject to some revision, but it is impossible at present to say to what extent or in what direction it will be modified. The whole matter is engaging the careful attention of the Commercial Intelligence Committee of the Board of Trade.
    MR. E. DUNCANwas understood to ask what provision had been made for the cases of contracts entered into early in the year and not completed when the new tariff comes into force.
    MR. KEARLEYasked for notice.

    The Unemployed.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will state when the Unemployed Bill promised in the King's Speech will be introduced in the House of Commons.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. JOHN BURNS, Battersea): I am not at present in a position to fix a date for the introduction of the Bill.
    MR. PICKERSGILL: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will state upon what date he asked for the Report from the London Central Unemployed Committee; what are the specific matters to be reported upon; when he expects that he will receive the Report; and whether he will lay upon the Table a copy of the correspondence which has up to the present passed between him and the London Central Unemployed Committee.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: Some time since, at an interview at which the Chairman and Secretary of the Central (Unemployed) Body for London were present, I stated that I should be glad to have from that body a preliminary Report on their work, and on Friday last I wrote stating that I was desirous of obtaining such a Report, made up to March 31st last or as near thereto as practicable, not later than three weeks from the date of the letter. A have intimated that the Report should
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    be as comprehensive as possible, and I am in. personal communication with the Chairman on the subject. The only correspondence relative to the Report is the letter to which I have referred. If my hon. friend desires it, I shall be happy to give him a a copy of it.

    West Riding of Yorkshire Educational Dispute.
    MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the Board of Education decided that it was illegal on the part of the West Riding County Council of Yorkshire to deduct one-tenth of the salary of the head-master in voluntary schools in respect of the time devoted to definite religious instruction; whether he is aware that a similar deduction is not made in the case of council schools; and can he say what steps the Board of Education intend to take as a result of the inquiry hold in last June.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Mr. BIRRELL, Bristol, N.): It is intended to proceed with the application for a mandamus. The proceedings have been somewhat delayed by the regrettable illness of my learned friend the Attorney-General, but I hope that they will come on shortly.

    Consolidation of the Education Acts.
    MR. RADFORD: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether, for the convenience of Members, he will issue forthwith the measure for the consolidation of the Education Acts.
    MR.: BIRRELL: I am proposing to present the Education (Consolidation) Bill at the commencement of Public Business this afternoon. The Bill will be in the hands of Members to-morrow.

    Ecclesiastical Commissioners' Estates.
    MR. HERBERT ROBERTS: I beg to ask the hon. Member for East Bristol, as Church Estates Commissioner, how many of the 336 public-houses which were in 1905 on the estates of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have been leased from the Commissioners since 1889, and in how many cases the lease will expire within the next five years.
    MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: Of the 336 public-houses on the Commissioners' Estates in 1905 the number hold on leases or tenancies for terms commencing since 31st December, 1889 was sixty-six, but in sixty-four of these cases the terms were renewals or extensions of terms created before that date. The two original leases for terms commencing within the time specified are both of premises in newly developed neighbourhoods, and in one case (a colliery district), the lease has been granted to a Trust Association on Earl Grey's trust principles. The number of yearly or short tenancies was twenty-eight and the number of leases for terms expiring on or before Christmas 1910 was twenty. Of these last twelve have been or will be suppressed on the expiration of the terms for which they are at present held as public-houses.

    School Water Supplies in Ross-shire and Lewis.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state the number of public schools on the mainland of Boss-shire and in the island of Lewis, respectively, for which the water supply is defective.
    THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. SINCLAIR,): On the mainland of Ross-shire there are sixteen and in the Lewis eighteen schools in which the water supply is reported to be defective.

    Lochs School Board—Register of Electors.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland, whether he is aware that, out of 561 persons on the valuation roll for the parish of Lochs, Island of Lewis, no less than 516 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 chairmanship of the proprietor's factor, who is chairman of three of the four school boards in the island, will he take such stops as may be necessary to extend the school board franchise to all persons entitled to vote at Parliamentary and county council elections.
    MR. SINCLAIR: Pending the issue of the Return referred to in my Answer to his Question of March 26th, I can
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    express no opinion as to the correctness of the figures quoted by the hon. Member. The question of the school board franchise is one to be dealt with in a general Education Bill for Scotland.
    MR. WEIR: When will such a Bill be brought in?
    MR. SINCLAIR: I cannot say.

    Scottish Congested Districts Board.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state the number of meetings which have been held by the Congested Districts Board within the last three years; and the names of the members present at each meeting.
    MR. SINCLAIR: Eleven meetings of the Board have been held during the last three years besides committee meetings. The maximum possible attendances would have been eighty-eight, while the number actually given was eighty-two.

    Scottish School Teachers and the Gaelic Language.
    MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether it is the intention of the Government to establish a Gaelic training college for school teachers in Scotland.
    MR. SINCLAIR: As at present advised, the Government has no intention of establishing a Gaelic Training college for teachers in Scotland.

    Lewis Landless Cottars.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state the number of black and white houses respectively in the island of Lewis in the occupation of landless cottars; and will he say how many of these are not rated.
    MR. SINCLAIR: I have made inquiries from the Local Government Board, and the Crofters Commission, and learn that the information desired by the hon. Member is not obtainable.

    Irish Land Purchase—King-Harman Hayes.
    MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland if he is aware that vendors of property under the Land Act of 1903

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    are now receiving public money by way of price and bonus, added to that price calculated on the entire value of property, part of which belongs, not to those vendors, but to the so-called purchasers, in accordance with the decision in the case of King-Harman and Hayes; will he advise the Treasury to appeal against that decision, on the ground that to the extent of the tenant's property there is no sale; and, if not, will he state his reasons.
    THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. CHERRY, Liverpool, Exchange): Sales under the Irish Land Act, 1903, are entirely voluntary, and I have no power, whatsoever, to interfere as between vendor and purchaser in the fixing of the price. The Treasury have not asked my advice as to appealing against the decision to which the hon. Member refers, and it would be contrary to the established practice that I should tender legal advice to any department of the Government unless it is asked for.

    Irish Land Annuities—Proceedings for Non-Payment.
    MR. EDWARD BARRY: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland if he will give, according to counties, the number of purchased tenants who have been proceeded against for non-payment of their annuities accruing due in May and November, 1905; how many civil bills, according to counties, at quarter sessions have been issued against tenants who purchased their farms, and in how many cases were decrees granted; whether any proceedings have been taken against purchasers for their instalments in the High Court of Justice in Ireland, and, if so, against how many, according to counties, and in how many cases have judgments been marked; whether the Crown Solicitors instructed to proceed against defaulting annuitants have been in the habit of charging the ordinary costs of a civil bill even in cases where settlements have been arrived at outside of court; and whether this is not contrary to the instructions issued to Crown Solicitors in such cases.
    MR. CHERRY: I am informed by the Land Commission that the preparation of the Returns asked for would occupy much time in the Collection Department of
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    the Land Commission and take the men from their ordinary duties of the collection, which at present arc very heavy, requiring overtime work. Many of the particulars for the Returns would have to be obtained from the county solicitor employed at quarter sessions. It may, however, be stated generally, that there are now on the Land Commission Books 92,728 payers of Land Purchase Annuities. Instructions were issued for proceedings in all the Civil Bill Courts in Ireland against 2,226 of the above number for the non-payment of the May 1905 instalment, and against 3,054 for that unpaid in the following November. For the instalments due at the same dates 94 and 90 writs respectively were issued in the High Court of Justice in Ireland. The total amount collectible to November and December, 1905, was £843,520. Of this amount all has been paid save £13,690. The costs recoverable by the solicitors employed by the Land Commission in the Civil Bill Courts are settled by the Statutory Rules and Schedules of Costs relating to proceedings in the Civil Bill Courts in Ireland. I have no information that any departure from these statutory charges has taken place.
    MR. FLAVINasked why the Land Commissioners refused to give hon. Members information when they asked for it, as he had done?
    MR. CHERRY: I do not know.
    MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if, in view of a reversal of the decision in King-Harman and Hayes, he will arrange that in every case of sale under the Land Act of 1903 sufficient information relating to the occupation, interest, and improvements of tenants will be available for the readjustment of the prices which such a reversal would render necessary; and that in even-case in which the entire cash has not yet been advanced a sufficient portion will be withheld provisionally to await the ultimate decision.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BRYCE, Aberdeen, S.): I cannot presume to forecast the results of a possible future decision declaring a different construction of the Land Act of

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    1903 from that delivered in the case referred to, but I apprehend that if such a decision were given the information possessed by the Estates Commissioners would be sufficient to enable them to deal with any cases that had not been already disposed of. In any event, however, I am advised that the Act leaves the disposition of the purchase money to the Land Commission, and that the Irish Government cannot control their action in the matter.

    Irish Land Administration Defects.
    MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Prime Minister if his attention has been called to the fact that the Treasury has intervened in a number of cases under the Irish Land Act of 1903 in the interest of the landlords and against the apparent interests of the tenants and of the public; that in several of these cases the contention of the Treasury has been overruled by the courts; that in the large number of cases now being ruled without trial, in accordance with the decision in King Harman and Hayes, the Treasury, though asked, refuses to intervene; if he will take steps to have effective intervention granted at the earliest possible date; and if, pending the result, the Treasury will withhold provisionally a portion of the purchase money and bonus in each case.
    The following Questions also appeared on the Paper:—
    MR. GINNELL: To ask the Prime Minister if he is aware that it has been judicially declared by the land judge in Ireland that embarrassed tenants are not free agents in purchase negotiations; that most Irish tenants are embarrassed; that by the combined effect of this embarrassment and the abolition of inspection by the Land Act of 1903 the gross price of holdings has been inflated by five years purchase more than under previous purchase Acts; and that the bonus of 12 per cent, is calculated upon and added to this gross price; and, if unprepared to introduce land legislation this session, will he have the power of the Treasury ascertained, and if necessary enlarged, to limit advances of public money to bona-fide transactions, and by that means restore value to its proper function as a measure of price.
    ME. GINNELL: To ask the Prime Minister whether there is any class of
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    transactions other than those under the Irish Land Act of 1903 which the Treasury recognise as sales though nothing passes in exchange for price in which the Treasury advances that price to the alleged seller and makes the alleged I buyer responsible for repayment of the amount with interest, though the corpus was all along the buyers' own property; and, if no other like transactions are similarly dealt with, will he have immediate attention given to the relations of the Treasury to those Irish transactions.
    MR. GINNELL: To ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware that in the transition from dual ownership now proceeding in Ireland landlords are receiving from public funds a price and a bonus calculated upon the entire value of holdings; and whether he will take steps to empower the Treasury to refuse any advance in respect of the tenant's part of the property on the ground that this part has not been sold.
    SIR. H CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The hon. Gentleman has put down a series of Questions on a highly technical and a highly important subject, and if he I will allow me I will endeavour to grapple with them in a single Answer. He complains, if I understand him aright, of three things. In the first place, he complains that the price paid to the landlord is too high, that it is in fact so excessive as to include in certain cases the value of the tenants' occupation interest as well as the landlord's proprietorial interest. In the second place, that in the cases described the bonus of 12 per cent, on the purchase-money is paid to the landlord in respect to the tenants' interest as well as his own. And in the third place, that the Treasury are not sufficiently vigilant in checking these proceedings. Well, Sir, nobody denies that the price agreed to—voluntarily agreed to—is sometimes a high price, but that is not the fault of the Government or the Estates Commissioners. I do not say that it is anybody's fault. It is the result of legislation passed in 1903, and if the system of voluntary purchase is to be altered nothing but legislation can alter it. If a case be made showing any collusion which is in the nature of a fraud on the Act that will be a matter for the Estates Commissioners to deal

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    with. But if it be a case of calculating the bonus on any price voluntarily settled between the parties, and sanctioned by the Land Commissioners, that is not a matter in which the Treasury can interfere. As to the censure on the Treasury implied in the Question, I believe it to be founded on a misconception of the powers of that Department. The Treasury do not make the advances. They are made by the Commissioners in pursuance of the statutory provision contained in the Act of 1903 as judicially interpreted. With respect to the hon. Member's inquiry as to recent judicial decisions, it is true that the Treasury have applied for judicial decision in several cases coming before the Estates Commissioners, but it is not to be assumed that their intervention was necessarily taken, in the cases to which the hon. Member probably refers, in the interests of the landlord, inasmuch as the interests of the taxpayer are involved in these matters. In some of these cases the Judicial Commissioners and the Court of Appeal (in one instance) have ruled that the interpretation of the law regarding which the Treasury raised a question was correct; in other cases the Treasury on fuller knowledge have withdrawn their objections. In one important case a decision became unnecessary, because a regulation made by the preceding Government was withdrawn by His Majesty's present Government. The case of "King Harman" Hayes" did not raise any point in which the Treasury was interested, and consequently the Treasury did not move in that case. If the tenants or other parties interested or the Estates Commissioners find it desirable to have the issue in that case more fully considered, Section 23 of the Act of 1903 provides a simple procedure whereby the matter may be judicially tested.
    MR. KILBRIDEasked whether the prices were not six or seven years purchase in excess of the prices paid under former purchase Acts.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: That I do not know. I am very sorry if they are.
    MR. GINNELLsaid that the right hon. Gentleman had missed the point,
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    which was that the Commissioners had not approved of the prices.
    MR. FLAVINasked whether the price under the former Acts was seventeen years purchase, and that under the last Act was twenty-four years purchase, with three years bonus added.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: So much the worse for the Act. It is not an administrative matter, and I must ask hon. Members to have a little mercy for one who is after all poaching on other people's ground, and has not all the facts before him.
    MR. SLOAN: Is it intended to amend the Act of 1903?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I did not say so.

    Court of Criminal Appeal.
    MR. BOTTOMLEY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the fact that during the year 1905 the prerogative of mercy was exercised in twenty-seven cases on grounds affecting conviction, such as doubt of the prisoners' guilt, and that during the year 1904 there were twenty-four similar cases, he can hold out the hope of the Criminal Appeal Bill being passed into law during the present session.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I understand that the Criminal Appeal Bill will be brought in shortly in another place. The figures given in the Question are correct, but they are liable to give a wrong impression, inasmuch as a majority of the cases in which the prerogative of mercy was exercised were summary convictions which would not come within the scope of the Criminal Appeal Bill.

    Scottish Supply.
    MR. CROMBIE: I beg to ask the Prime Minister whether he will set aside a day soon after Whitsuntide for Scottish Supply.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Yes, Sir.
    MR. PAUL: When will the Vote for the Secretary for War's salary be taken?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: That does not arise under the head of Scottish Supply.

    Crofters Act Amendment Bill.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Prime Minister, in view of the serious condition of affairs in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and the urgent need of land legislation, will he state whether he can undertake that the promised Crofters Acts Amendment Bill will be introduced at an early date.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: No time is being lost in the matter, but I cannot yet state the day on which the Bill will be introduced.

    Local Government and Board of Trade Staff.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he proposes to take any steps, not involving legislation, to assimilate the status and pay of the staffs of the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board to the status and pay of the Home Office and other Departments, in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee appointed by Treasury Minute, dated July 18th, 1903.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am not aware that the Committee to which the hon. Member refers made any such recommendations. It is quite true that they stated that it had been represented to them that the salaries of the clerical staff of the two Departments were fixed at a lower rate than in certain other Departments but they did not understand that the question of remuneration had been specifically referred to them and they confined themselves to pointing out that these inequalities had been brought to their notice. No doubt the alterations in the status and remuneration of the political and permanent heads of the Department which the Committee recommended would raise the question of some modification in the position of the staffs; but as I have already informed the hon. Member, His Majesty's Government are not in a
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    position to deal with this Question during the present session.

    Crimes by Chinese in South Africa.
    MR. MACKARNESS: I beg to ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware that the Governor of the Transvaal has recently announced his inability to protect His Majesty's subjects in that Colony from the crimes of Chinese deserters from the gold mines, except by arming with guns or rifles every white man living within ten miles of the mines; and whether His Majesty's Government will take steps, either by repatriation of the Chinese coolies or otherwise, to restore order and security for life and property in the Transvaal.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Yes, Sir, my attention has been called to the action taken by Lord Selborne in view of the deplorable state of things to which my hon. friend refers and I can assure him that the Government are fully alive to its gravity. Further measures, which I hope will be effectual, are being considered by Lord Selborne, and I hope that an announcement on the subject will shortly be made.

    Sir Horace Plunkett.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he was aware when he consented to retain the services of the right hon. Sir Horace Plunkett, a Member of the late Government, in the ministerial position of Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in Ireland, Sir Horace Plunkett was holding the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of John Bowes and Partners, Limited, a company formed in 1886 to acquire the property and collieries of the firm of the same name, and was also holding the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Pelton Steamship Company, Limited, a company registered on May 3rd, 1899; whether Sir Horace Plunkett became a director of these companies before or after his appointment in 1899 to the Vice-Presidency of the Agricultural and Technical Instruction Department; on what dates, respectively, was he appointed to the chairmanship of these companies; does he still hold the position of directors or of chairman in these companies or either of

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    them; and, if so, whether, having regard to the practice of the present Government, which precludes the union of the office of Minister of the Crown with that of company director, and the long established practice absolutely prohibiting members of the Civil Service from being directors of public companies, the retention by Sir Horace Plunkett of these directorships, or either of them, is compatible with his retention of the position of Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in Ireland.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Sir Horace Plunkett is not a Minister of the Crown or a member of the permanent Civil Service, and does not come within the rule referred to in the Question. The position he holds is temporary and therefore different considerations apply.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: When will this unique political freak be done away with?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: My hon. friend knows that the matter is being inquired into, and that it is not a matter to be settled in a day.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Why is Sir Horace Plunkett so specially favoured? Why is he allowed to retain his appointment and his directorships, having been appointed by one Government and retained by another?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: He may be very fortunate; but I have explained why Sir Horace Plunkett retains his directorships. It is because he comes in another category, to which this rule does not apply.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Under which category does he come?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Under the Plunkett category.
    MR. SLOAN: Are his services retained because he is specially qualified for the position?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: No, Sir. Not because he is specially qualified above all other possible people. But it is desirable that some more permanent and convenient arrangement
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    should be made with regard to the office, and in the meantime ho carries on the work.

    Irish Financial Relations.
    MR. JOHN REDMOND: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what proportions will be contributed to the estimated revenue of 1906–7 in Great Britain and in Ireland, respectively, by direct and indirect taxation; and what were the actual proportions so contributed by Great Britain and Ireland, respectively, in the years 1904–5 and 1905–6.
    MR. ASQUITH: It is estimated that the Tax Revenue to be contributed by Great Britain in 1906–7 (excluding Coal Duty, but including the Local Taxation Revenues) will consist of 52·3 per cent. direct taxes and 47·7 per cent, indirect taxes. For Ireland the estimated proportions are 28.8 per cent, direct and 71·2 per cent, indirect.
    The proportions of Direct and Indirect taxation in 1904–5 were:—

    For Great Britain.

    For Ireland.

    50·8 per cent. direct

    27·4 per cent. direct

    49·2 per cent, indirect,

    72·6 per cent, indirect,

    In 1905–6 the proportions were approximately:—

    For Great Britain.

    For Ireland.

    51·7 per cent. direct

    28·3 per cent. direct

    48·3 per cent. indirect.

    71·7 per cent. indirect.

    Irish Postmen's Uniform Contracts.
    MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General what is the amount annually expended on uniforms for postmen in Ireland; how much of this money is expended in Ireland and how much in England; whether the cloth used in such uniforms is of Irish manufacture; and, if not, will he explain why.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: The whole of the uniform for postmen and other officers in Ireland is manufactured in that country, under contracts, the actual value of which amounts to about £2,950 a year. The cloth and other materials used are obtained under contracts after competition by firms throughout the United

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    Kingdom, and I find that three contracts for linings are held by Irish firms.

    Irish Produce—Transit Delay.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the repeated delays in the transit of Irish produce by English railway companies; whether he will inquire into the delay in forwarding one 56–lb. box of unsalted creamery butter sent as a sample to Morford Stores, Beaconsfield, a station only a few miles from Slough, consigned at Limerick on April 20th and not delivered until April 25th, also another case in which it took eleven days from Limerick to St. Albans, via Holyhead, of a box fully labelled and the address written on the box besides.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Complaint has from time to time been made to the Board of Trade of delays to consignments of butter from Limerick to places in England, and the Board have obtained explanations in such cases from the railway companies concerned. No complaint has been previously received with respect to the two particular consignments to which the hon. Member now refers, but the Board of Trade have drawn the attention of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company to the matter, and I will cause the hon. Member to be informed of the result.

    Poor Law Drug Contracts—Irish Contractors.
    MK. CHARLES DEVLIN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that several English boards of guardians have refused to consider tenders of Irish chemical and drug companies for medicine supplies, and have informed such Irish companies that the contracts for such goods are invariably given to local firms; and whether, in view of the fact that the Local Government Board of Ireland insist that Irish boards of guardians must consider English as well as Irish tenders in such matters, he will take such steps as will place Irish firms on the same footing as English firms where tenders for medicine supplies are invited by English boards of guardians.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: I believe that some boards of guardians in England and
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    Wales only consider tenders from local firms, but I am not aware of any case in which a distinction has been made between tenders from Irish firms and tenders from other persons not belonging to the locality. It does not appear to me to be desirable that a board of guardians should only consider local tenders, but at present it does not seem to me to be necessary to alter the existing regulations on the subject.

    Taxation of Irish Motor Cars.
    MR. JOYCE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the fact that Irish motor car owners, when they bring their cars to England, have to pay a tax of £2 for the car although such car has been duly registered in Ireland; and whether, seeing that this course would lead to the registering of such cars in England, thus entailing a loss to Ireland of such registration fees, he will inquire into the matter with the view of putting an end to this alleged grievance.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: If a motor car registered in Ireland is brought to England it is not necessary that it should be registered afresh in England, and no fee in respect of registration in England is payable. The tax referred to in the Question is probably the carriage tax to which carriages in Great Britain are liable, but which is not chargeable in respect of carriages in Ireland. When a carriage (whether a motor car or not) is brought from Ireland to Great Britain the duty becomes payable in respect of it. The amount varies according to the nature of the carriage.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
MR. A. J. BALFOURasked as to the course of business for the week.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANreplied that to-morrow the Government proposed to take a number of minor Bills in the order in which they appeared in the Paper; that on Wednesday they would take the Finance Bill; and Thursday would be devoted to Supply.
LORD R, CECIL: When will Committee on the Education Bill be reached?
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: We have not settled that yet.

MEMBERS AND THEIR RESERVED SEATS.
MR. SOARESasked the Speaker whether his attention had been called to the fact that hon. Members had failed to comply with his request for the observance of the rules as to the retention of seats before prayers, and whether he proposed to take any steps with regard to the matter.
MR. SPEAKER: I am sorry to say that one or two hon. Members have called my attention to the fact that hon. Members come down in the morning and make use of the card that is intended only to be used whilst they are present in the precincts of the House, for the purpose of engaging a seat, and then go away. The matter has been brought to the attention of the House more than once. I can only once more direct the attention of hon. Members to the conditions under which the cards are issued, and say that the rule is left to the honour of Members to carry out—and that if again my attention is called to the fact that the rule is abused, it will be necessary to withdraw the cards and revert to the old system.

LAND TENURE BILL.
Reported from the Standing Committee on Trade, etc., with Amendments.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 168.]
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 168.]
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 207.]

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).
Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONreported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added the following Member to the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, in respect of the Workmen's Compensation Bill: Mr. Younger.
Report to lie upon the Table.

NEW BILLS.
  EDUCATION (CONSOLIDATION) BILL.
  "To consolidate the Education Acts," presented by Mr. Birrell; to be read a second time upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 206.]
  SUMMARY JURISDICTION (IRELAND) BILL.
  "To amend the Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Acts," presented by Mr. T. W. Russell; supported by Mr. Law, Mr. Sloan, Mr. Glendinning, Captain Donelan, and Mr. Jordan; to be read a second time upon Friday, and to be printed [Bill 208.]
  NAVAL LANDS (VOLUNTEERS) BILL.
  "To extend the Military Lands Acts to Naval and Marine Volunteers," presented by Mr. Edmund Robertson; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 209.]

  PLURAL VOTING BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed. "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. FORSTERSovenoaks): The terms of the Amendment I have placed on the Paper make clear the grounds on which we on the Opposition side of the House mean to do what we can to refuse a Second Reading to the Bill now before the House. We object to the Bill not so much on account of the merits or demerits which its provisions may contain. We object to it on higher grounds; on grounds of principle. We have heard much during the last few years, both inside and outside the House, of the imperfections and anomalies of our registration and electoral system. Some hon. Members lay stress on one point; others lay stress on another point; but there seems to be a general consensus of opinion that the time has almost, if not quite, arrived when we must submit the whole of our electoral system, if possible, to amendment. The question that arises on this occasion, it seems to me, is the question whether

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  or not we are to proceed with this matter piecemeal, or to deal with it by some wide and comprehensive measure. The Amendment which I now beg to move embodies the opinions which have been consistently held and consistently expressed by those who sit on these benches; viz., that the whole matter of our electoral system is so closely interwoven—one point is so closely connected with another—that it is impossible to take out one point and deal with it by itself. You must deal with the system as a whole. The Bill deals with one so-called anomaly; one flaw in the distribution of electoral power, but leaves out of account other flaws and other anomalies which are of equal importance, and some which are of far greater importance than the one selected. We oppose this Bill because it is founded on the assumption that undue weight is given to nonresident or property voters. The argument on which the Bill is founded seems to be that it is unfair that a voter who is qualified by the accident that he is the owner of property in more than one constituency should be allowed to exercise more than one vote. It is said that one individual should not have more electoral power than his neighbour owing to the accidental distribution of property. That argument implies an imperfect appreciation of the principle on which our electoral system is based. Hon. Members who use that argument treat the matter as one relating to the individual. I think it is generally recognised and known that the whole of our electoral system is based not so much on the representation of individuals as on the representation of localities. Individuals exercise the franchise, but they do not exercise the franchise because of their being individuals; they get and exercise the vote because they have a property qualification within a given locality. The qualification on which they have to give a vote is based in every case on property. A man does not give a vote because he is a man. If he did we should have the system which finds favour among hon. Members on the Ministerial and Labour Benches, viz., manhood suffrage. What are the qualifications of a voter? He is either an owner of freehold property of a minimum value; or he is a lease-holder; or he is an occupier. He does not get his vote
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  as an individual or because he is a man. The latter gets his vote in respect of the property he occupies. Property is, consequently, the essence of every vote given in this country. If, therefore, I am right, there is neither sense nor logic in the contention that a man should not vote in one constituency in which he is properly and duly qualified merely I because he can vote in another constituency in which he is also properly and duly qualified. If I vote in constituency A no injustice is caused to other voters in that constituency merely because I am also qualified to vote in constituency X. It seems to me that the electoral power in every constituency, taken by itself, is of equal value. If our system is, as I believe it to be, a system of representation of localities, there is no suspicion of injustice to the other voters if in each locality the voter qualified to vote exercises that vote. The position of the plural or outvoter, if I may use the general nomenclature, is no new and unwholesome growth upon our electoral system. It has been clearly recognised for many years past. I know that mention is made of certain constituencies where plural voters exist in very large numbers, and it is represented that a distinct hardship is suffered by the resident voters. Mention has been made of the constituency of Wimbledon, where there are 4,000 plural voters who, so it is said, swamped the opinion of the resident voters. But I would remind the House that that was done deliberately when the last Reform Bill was passed in 1884. It was recognised at that time that those plural voters had a distinct right to record their vote, to which they were entitled, and that it would be an intolerable hardship if they were prevented from so exercising their vote. The boundaries of the constituency were consequently so adjusted that those plural voters should exercise their votes without injustice to themselves or others. The purpose of this Bill is, however, entirely to alter the arrangement of the Bill of 1884. You intend to establish a mere numerical representation instead of a local representation as at present. If the view of the Government is to prevail, and if it is to be laid down that every voter should have the same fraction of electoral power, that opens a far larger question than that with which this Bill proposes to deal.

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  The First Commissioner of Works, in introducing the Bill, said that the Bill did not propose and made no effort to establish a system of one vote, one value; but that what it did establish was one man, one value. But if one man is as good as another, surely one vote should have the same value as another. If that contention is to prevail, surely we should have to alter the existing boundaries of the constituencies, and a large measure of redistribution would have to be brought in. There can be no real equality of voting power until that is done. I do not want to weary the House by giving illustrations of existing anomalies, but I shall give one or two instances of the unfair way in which electoral power is at present distributed. I take three of the largest constituencies in the country and compare them with the three smallest. Romford has 45,000 electors and Kilkenny 1,533; and I ask whether the electors of Kilkenny have not greater electoral power than the electors of Romford. Walthamstow has over 35,000 electors and Newry under 2,000. Wandsworth has upwards of 31,000 electors and Galway an electorate of just over 2,000. I do not think any hon. Member can seriously contend that in these instances there is an equal or equitable distribution of electoral power. As long as you have anomalies such as these you cannot have equal electoral power, and no tinkering Bill of this sort can give it. I understand that the voter will have to make a selection before the proper authorities as to the constituency in which he proposes to vote during the coming year. But supposing he does not do that? Supposing for some reason or other, from forgetfulness or from being abroad, he forgets to send this intimation to the authorities. Then I suppose he is to be disfranchised. Is that a fair way of dealing with the question? It is, moreover, made an offence if, after a voter has sent in his first notice to the effect that he proposes in the ensuing year to vote in a particular constituency, in a moment of forgetfulness four or five years later, he alters the constituency in which he means to vote, and while sending a notice to the new constituency he has selected, he omits to withdraw the notice of intention which he had previously given. Then, again, who is to know if lie has withdrawn his notice in regard to a particular constituency? Is
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  there any machinery provided in the Bill by which you can readily and easily ascertain where the voter is qualified to vote? Suppose a man is qualified to vote in Northumberland and also in Essex, and he notifies that he is going to vote in the latter county, have you any machinery for finding out whether he has withdrawn that notice. It seems to me that there is a loophole there which will give people who do not want to act in a boná fide manner an opportunity of exercising more than one vote. It appears to me that there will be great difficulty in finding out those voters who have two qualifications, especially if they live half of the year in one place and half of the year in another. If a man goes on the register as an occupier of a house in the locality in which he lives, you have no means of knowing whether or not that voter is qualified for one or two or even half a dozen constituencies in the country, and so far as I can ascertain the only means by which you can find out whether or not the voter is qualified in other constituencies is by means of the complicated and additional question which you purpose that the presiding officer should put to him in the polling booth. If that additional question is to be asked of every single voter on the occupation list I think the task will prove to be a very difficult one. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has been in a polling booth during the hour immediately preceding the closing of the poll. If he has and has seen the rush at the moment I wonder what value he thinks these additional questions will prove to be, and whether he realises how much longer it will take for each voter to record his vote if this long and complicated question is to be addressed to him. It seems to me that this Bill will bring into existence a large body of unstable voters who will be here to-day and gone to-morrow. An hon. Member said something about gerrymandering the constituencies, and, while I accept the hon. Gentleman's disclaimer as to his intention on that point, I must point out that under the provisions of this Bill you will do a great deal more to increase rather than to diminish the chances of gerrymandering. You will have voters being requested and urged, and, so far as the Party and political agents are concerned, almost compelled to register their votes in one constituency or another

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  according to the exigencies of the different Parties. You will have a possibility, at any rate, of voters taking a strong and active part in securing their votes at by-elections in one place, while at a general election they will vote elsewhere. It seems to me that it will be necessary for the political equipment of a Party agent that he should be also almost an expert in the business of life insurance. Hitherto Party agents have kept their finger upon the pulse of the constituency and their eye upon the Member, but in future they will have to keep their eye upon the constituency and their finger upon the pulse of their Member, and the moment they see any danger of that failing, and the possibility of an election in a year or two, they will have to induce every plural elector to get himself registered in the constituency in which the contest is expected. Moreover, my hon. friend the Patronage.Secretary will have a good deal of added power thrown upon his hands by this Bill. At certain times of the year certain lists of honours are published which cause both satisfaction and dissatisfaction to hon. Gentlemen who sit behind the Patronage Secretary. These are looked forward to with pleasurable anticipation. My hon. friend the Patronage Secretary has unexampled opportunities of acquiring an intimate knowledge of the many virtues and undoubted qualifications of those Gentlemen who sit behind him, because he is able to obtain his knowledge at first hand. With the knowledge which he possesses he would be more than human if he did not make use of the power which is given to him. He would be able to breathe a word of warning to the local agents in those constituencies which were likely to be affected, and the agents would be more than human if they did not take advantage of the warnings which they received. I believe that if this Bill is passed it will lead to ceaseless intrigue and great instability. My view is that the Bill which the Government whose boast it is that they were returned by the workers and not by owners of property, have introduced is in reality a Party measure which is designed to give them even greater influence than they possess at the present moment. My suspicion is confirmed by a speech which
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  was made some years ago by my hon. friend to whom I have just alluded, the Patronage Secretary. It was delivered in his unregenerate days in 1894, and, speaking of a Bill which would have had the effect of abolishing plural voting, he said it seemed to be not a Registration Bill but an attempt to dish the Unionist Party. It seemed to him that it was a cardinal principle of the Gladstonian Liberal Party that they and they alone were fit and proper occupants of the Treasury Bench, and that if the constituencies did not agree with them so much the worse for the constituencies, and they would have to be altered. Further, my hon. friend said that he believed that if the Gladstonian Party had not thought in their inmost hearts that the Bill if carried into law would be of service to them very little would be heard of one man one vote.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. GEORGE WHITELEY, Yorkshire, W.R., Pudsey): I will reply as the hon. Member for Manchester did. He stated that he did a great many silly things when he was a member of the Conservative Party, and that he left the Party in order that he might cease from doing them. That is my case.
  MR. FORSTER: My confidence in the hon. Gentleman is rudely shaken by the confession he has just made. I think all the arguments that may be adduced in support of this Bill might or might not be good if they were used in support of a proposal for manhood suffrage, but they are without force and without value when used in support of this paltry and Party coloured measure. In my opinion the Bill is illogical in its conception, fantastic in its methods and proposals, and unfair in its incidence. If you are going to deal with this matter at all you ought to deal with it in a wide and comprehensive manner, and if you insist that every man shall have but one vote you are bound in logic and in equity to see that every one shall have an equal value. I beg to move.
  Amendment proposed—
  "To leave out from the word 'That,' to the end of the Question, and add the words 'this

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  House declines to consider a change in the franchise unaccompanied by a scheme to remove the serious anomalies now existing in the distribution of electoral power.' "—(Mr. H. W. Forster.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: The hon. Member who has just moved the rejection of this Bill has divided his speech into two different parts, of which one alone is mentioned in his Amendment. The first half of the speech of the hon. Gentleman supported the Amendment; the second half dealt with the difficulties of the system which the Bill sets up. I am entirely opposed to the views expressed in the first half of his speech, and we shall have to deal with the second part in Committee, although I propose to-day to make some reference to the complexity of this subject. The first part of the hon. Gentleman's speech put forward the view of the Party to which he belongs. He dealt with this Bill as one which makes a change in the franchise. The whole complexity in this form of Bill, which differs entirely from the proposals on the subject of the previous Liberal Administration, is caused by the fact that it does not deprive any voter of the Parliamentary franchise. It is to that that the complexity of the Bill is due. The Bill, in the opinion of many of us, is far too tender to the Party opposite who support the present condition of things—but before I come to that I should like to deal with some of the general arguments adduced by the hon. Member for its rejection. At the end of the first part of his speech the hon. Member asked whether he had made the Conservative view of the question clear to the House. He said he hoped he had made it clear to the House. He put only too clearly to the House, with a clearness absolutely crude, the intense desire that actuates every person who has any sort of property qualification to vote for each such qualification. That is an argument in favour of plural voting on every qualification in any district. The hon. Member asked us whether we thought an undue weight was given to the owners, and when he repeated the statement
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  at a later stage he asked a slightly different question. He asked us whether we thought undue weight was given to property and he mentioned the great properties held by the great families of England. We do think an undue weight is given to the owner not only under the system which this Bill seeks to alter, but also in all the extraordinary advantages that are given to him in the registration system. But with regard to property, the class of person who comes within this Bill is not so much the great owner of property as the small city man; the man who has the ordinary city qualification of occupation and who at the same time enjoys the privilege of voting all over the country in respect of small investments in land, cottage property and the like. The hon. Gentleman says, and says rightly, that the whole of our electoral system rests on the basis of property, and that the franchise is regarded as a local rather than as a national right. When it suits hon. Gentlemen opposite they do not take that view. When the decision of the country upon a particular point is in question they instantly add up the figures and count every voter as if he were a different person. You never hear anything of the plural voter when it is a question of a South African War. Technically, as the hon. Gentleman says, the franchise in this country is local, and the fact of its being local has led to an enormous amount of plural voting. The changing of counties into single-Member districts has vastly added to plural voting in its most abusive form. In some of those counties where the division was made much smaller than before we have the greatest amount of plural voting. The division is entirely technical. The hon. Member speaks of it as a county vote, as if a Surrey man desired to have a Surrey vote. I can quite understand the hon. Gentleman's view because he is a cricketer, and the old counties exist only for cricket. For all other purposes except for cricket the old counties have disappeared. These divisions are absolutely technical. Take, for example, the illustration he gave of Wimbledon. He took Wimbledon as a strong case, but who are the ownership voters in Wimbledon? Who are these 5,000 who exercise this ownership qualification? The

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  fact is they are the whole of the 80-called Surrey voters who are within the county of London. They are not in the county of Surrey at all except for the Parliamentary vote. But these London freeholders are all put into the Wimbledon Division because they must be put somewhere. They have not even to go to Wimbledon to vote, and those of us who have London occupation—who live in London houses —and have London freeholds, however small they may be, are put artificially in Surrey or Middlesex or Kent and go to vote in the same parish in which we are living when we hold the vote for other property. What becomes of the beautiful local theory? The whole thing is technical, and if we left the system alone in the Bill of 1885 which was an agreed measure of the two Parties it was in the belief that it was impossible to treat, the matter in any other way under the circumstances of that moment. I proceed to deal with the definite allegations in this Motion. To the extent of the alleged change of the franchise I do not admit it; and whether it involves a redistribution of seats we shall see in the illustrations to which I shall allude. I agree that this Bill is somewhat complicated. It is a most ingenious Bill—as ingenious in its drawing as was the speech of my right hon. friend upon the First Reading, upon which I trust he will accept the belated compliment of one who has known him almost all his life. The admirable speech on the First Reading and the drawing of the Bill are complex because of the tenderness shown towards the existing system. The Bill does not change the franchise; it docs not take the vote from a single Parliamentary voter who now has a vote; and it does not give a vote to anyone who does not vote at the present time. It makes no change in the franchise. It prevents a person voting in more than one place and that is all. As to the words of the Resolution alleging a change in the franchise such as involves a redistribution of seats; if the effect of this Bill were to increase the disparity of which the hon. Member was speaking I should imagine that there was some strength in his contention, but the effect is the exact opposite. The effect of this Bill is largely to reduce those
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  disparities, and to take a step towards one vote, one value. The reason of that is obvious. These votes are most numerous in a suburban constituency into which they are put artificially, and in those cases, such as Wimbledon, Ealing, and Pudsey, the constituencies are much above the normal electorate of those adjoining them. The effect of taking off all these votes would be to bring those constituencies to a more reasonable value and more akin to those which they adjoin. The Bill also tends in the same direction in regard to England as compared with Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. There are far fewer of these votes in Scotland and Wales than in England, and there are virtually none at all in Ireland. Therefore the reduction is a reduction in the English numbers of the Parliamentary electorate, which are at the present moment unduly swollen by these plural votes. I do not know whether the House will think it necessary that I should prove what I said just now, that the Bill tends in the direction of one vote, one value. It is easily proved by figures, and I know that the House is easily bored by figures, but I can take two or three localities, where there are the largest number of such votes, which are personally known to myself. In Gloucestershire the effect of taking off this great number of votes from Gloucester and Cheltenham would be to reduce the Northern or Tewkesbury Division to the same level as the Stroud Division, the Cirencester Division, and the Forest of Dean Division, which adjoin it. Take the Stretford Division of Lancashire. If the ownership votes were taken out of the Stretford Division it would greatly improve the condition of South-East Lancashire as regards the distribution of seats. The Stretford Division has over 23,000 electors, the Heywood Division 10,000, and the others lie between those two. Take out the whole of those ownership votes, and the divisions in South East Lancashire would be more akin to each other than they are now. So with the county of Leicester, and so, without exception, the county of Lincoln. The same, too, is the case as regards Middlesex. It would bring Ealing to the same rank as the adjoining divisions of Brentford and Uxbridge. I have found only one slight exception going

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  through the whole of the counties, and that one so slight that it can be hardly said to break the rule. Therefore on the whole it cannot be said that this Bill either changes the franchise in the sense of giving it or taking it away, nor is it a Bill which touches the redistribution of seats except that it makes the anomalies less great than they have been up to the present. I think that that part of the case strikes at the root of the Resolution which the hon. Member for Sevenoaks has made. The terms of i the Resolution are incorrect because it makes the statement that there is a change in the franchise by this Bill, and that it necessitates a redistribution of seats. The hon. Gentleman attacked the machinery of the Bill. I admit to the full that the machinery of the Bill is complicated and that its working will be costly, but the whole of the complication and cost are caused by a tenderness for existing interests. If we adopted a single and simple franchise instead of the seventeen different franchises as at present, it would do away with all this complexity and reduce the cost. With regard to the machinery in this Bill, let me try to make my exact position clear. It is a very technical and difficult matter. There is a pernicious practice, of which I believe I was the unfortunate inventor, known as the practice of starring, the different systems of which finally became so complicated that a change was made by Order in Council. Now there are these extraordinary complications, and this Bill has to find its way through the mess and tangle because we will not disfranchise a single man. There are, of course, the most obvious difficulties in its course. Those difficulties caused the present Secretary of State for India and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in their Bills to take a much simpler course, but one open to objection on another ground. In this Bill the most scientific machinery has been set up for getting round those difficulties. There are the voters with unknown qualifications in other parts of the country. Many of those qualifications are illegal. I possessed a vote in a Metropolitan Division for a long time through a trusteeship, and I did not become aware of the fact until I received
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  a polling card in connection with a by-election. I was without knowing it a voter in South Hampshire up to 1885 in respect of a qualification I never owned, which my father never owned, but which I believe my great-grandfather owned. The whole position of the ownership voter is anomalous in the extreme. The ownership voter never dies. There is really no revision of this-list, even in the constituencies where the greatest trouble is taken to revise them. There are numerous people who remain on until the names become those of their sons. The father dies, the son succeeds, and the Christian name is altered to correspond with the facts. The revision of the ownership lists is scandalous, and no change of the system of revision will do, because the votes are not local votes. I have said that many of these votes are illegal. A late Member of this House had thirty-seven borough votes, although he was not, I believe, entitled to more than two. Admitting all this difficulty and that the whole of the difficulty is due to the absence of a single and simple franchise, is there any way that the difficulty can be met? I fear that if the House insists on not changing the franchise at all in this Bill it is most difficult to improve the machinery. If the House were prepared to go so far as to cause the voter to remain on the list, qualified for the place where he resides—that is to say not for his property but for the constituency in which he resides—the difficulties would be greatly lessened, the Bill would be much shortened, and the inquiries much less; but I admit there might be disfranchisement in that case. The Bill uses the words, "the constituency which he has selected." The House must make up its mind that there will be no real selection in the great majority of these cases. The selection will not be the voter's own, but it will be a selection made for him, and there is an enormous possibility that fraudulent selections will be made—such frauds, for instance, as accompany the making of lodger claims, and the declaration given by owners that they desire to vote at a particular polling station for which they nave no local qualification. If we take residence and say that the man should vote in the constituency where he resides we should considerably simplify

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  this Bill, but we should disfranchise a few people—the gentleman, for instance, who has a University vote and lives with his parents in London. A few people of the great landlord class also might be disfranchised, but are you going out of exceeding tenderness for these classes to continue to confine elections to rich men only, by reason of the enormous cost? Radicals must take the Bill as a text for the necessity of a simple and extended franchise. Because the House will not accept a national suffrage like that adopted in Australia we are driven to accept the complicated machinery of the present Bill. Personally, I cannot but urge on the Minister in charge of the Bill to take his courage in both hands, and try whether he cannot alter the Bill in Committee into a simpler measure.
  MR. LANE-FOX: I do not wish further to allude to the speech made by the hon. Member for Pudsey in his unregenerate days beyond stating that in the speech already quoted he said "that this was entirely a great disfranchising measure." He has told us that his reason is that he has joined another Party and he has ceased saying foolish things. I hope that will be the result in regard to many other hon. Members who have joined the Party opposite. There are numberless cases in Yorkshire where men have two distinct interests. There is the business man in the town, who lives in the country, and who takes a prominent part in the affairs of the country. Surely he is entitled, as belonging to some great business firm in the town, to have that business represented. He may be a very good man in his own place in the country, a good agriculturist, and a large employer of labour, and surely he is entitled to have a voice in the representation of the district in which he lives in the country. I do not contend that there are not anomalies that would be better done away with, but I say that this Bill only sweeps away the lesser anomalies and allows greater ones to stand. We have reason for believing that this is being proposed with a distinct Party object, and that an advantage is expected to accrue to the Party opposite from the passing of this Bill. We have been told that this is not a change of franchise. If this Bill does
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  not propose a change of franchise why is it brought in? Clearly its object is to effect a change in the franchise in the interests of the Party opposite. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean stated that the suburban districts contained the very worst cases of inequalities under the present system which ought to be dealt with. I can give a case of inequality which is not in a suburban district at all. As a case of anomaly I may mention that of my own constituency of Barkston Ash, where there are over 10,000 voters, while near it there are two small boroughs, with 3,000 voters, with the same electoral power. I think also there is a strong argument against the Bill in the tactics it will introduce into electioneering. Every Member knows how heavy a burden registration., work already is on those who attempt to obtain seats in this House, and I think it will be a great, mistake to do anything to make it more difficult for a poor man to enter Parliament. There is no doubt that the Bill will make the tactics of a clever election agent more effective and more valuable than at present. Under it constituencies may be carefully prepared, and one constituency placed at a disadvantage as compared with another, and one Party as compared with another. Hon. Members opposite are pledged in principle to Home Rule for Ireland, and Home Rule for Wales; may I put in a plea for Home Rule for Yorkshire, which is certainly as intelligent as Ireland or Wales? If this were carried out there might be a case for the Bill, but until this is done think there should be, as at present, full representation of localities. I hope, in the interests of his own Parliamentary career, the right hon. Gentleman will withrdaw the Bill and bring in a larger and more statesmanlike measure, which will not be open to the reproach of having been conceived in the interests of one Party.
  MR. MORRELL: May I, on this occasion, claim the indulgence of the House and the kindness which is always extended to a new Member? The Party opposite know that they have no case against this Bill. They do not say that plural voting is a good thing, or that the abolition of it is a bad thing; they only say that they

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  decline to consider this proposal unless it is accompanied by some other change, by which they mean an alteration in the system of the distribution of seats, which simply amounts to this: that the passion of the Opposition for reform is so great that they cannot take a simple reform by instalments. They ask for two loaves or no bread, for two reforms together or no reform at all. It might be interesting to know how far they are prepared to carry that argument. If this Bill is carried, and assuming that the Government next year introduced a large scheme of redistribution, would our hon. friends opposite then tell us that they would not support redistribution unless it was accompanied by a measure for manhood suffrage, and then if manhood suffrage was introduced, would they say that they were unable to consider that unless it was accompanied by a reform of the power of the House of Lords? What I want to know is whether there is any necessary connection between the question of redistribution and the question of the abolition of plural voting. At any rate I do not think that last July hon. Gentlemen opposite considered that there was any such necessary connection as they now claim. When we had those interesting exercises in political mathematics we did not hear much of the necessity of abolishing plural votes. Everybody knows that some men never see a key without thinking of a prison. There are some gentleman who cannot hear a bell without thinking of dinner. In the same way I think it may be said that hon. Gentlemen opposite, whenever they hear the very necessary cry "One man, one vote," respond to it by the cry "One vote, one value." They seem to think that there must be some connection in nature between these two reforms. I do not think we are going to be deceived by such a juggling with words. The fact that one locality is better represented than another is no reason why one man should have ten votes while another man has only one. Plural voting is a class privilege. That is the real reason why the Liberal Government object to it. It is enjoyed by the rich at the expense of the poor. No working man had ever more than one vote. He thinks himself fortunate if
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  he can be sure of one. Hon. Members opposite say that this is a Party measure, and that it is proposed for motives of Party advantage. If that is so, I suppose hon. Members opposite will agree with me that those who are opposing it may be subject to the same weakness. According to their doctrine if you oppose a necessary reform it is a virtuous and laudable action, but if you try to bring forward a reform which may he of some advantage to your Party, then it is a heinous sin. If a rich man wants to have his property represented, as he is perfectly entitled to do, he has the town council and the county council representation. If he has property in more than one area he has votes in the different areas. This House ought to be a national assembly. The nation consists of men and women; it does not consist of houses and landed estates. I admit that I am a gross offender in this matter. I think I am represented by something like five gentlemen on the other side of the House. The two right hon. Members for Oxford University, the noble Lord the Member for the city of Oxford, the hon. Member for Westminster, and the hon. Member for the Holborn division of London, are I believe, all my representatives in this House at the present time. It is a consolation to me, if I propose to sever ray connection with all these Gentlemen, that there will not be much love lost between us. I think I may say that they would as cheerfully disclaim me as a constituent as I am willing to renounce them as my representatives. I should like to state one more personal reason why I believe this measure to be necessary. In my own constituency of South Oxfordshire we have in all only 500 out-voters, or one in eighteen of the total electorate. Hon. Members are aware that that is a very small proportion as compared with what may be found in many constituencies. Although so small, I believe it is.perfectly true that on two occasions these 500 voters have been quite enough to turn the scale at elections. Except for this anomaly of plural voting, not only in 1895 but in 1900, the hon. Gentleman who is now Member for the Cleveland Division, and who holds the office of Under-Secretary

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  for the Home Department, would have been Member for South Oxfordshire. I am sure my constituents must sometimes feel in their hearts that they have been cheated of their Under-Secretary. He was their first love, and I am at the best a second attachment. I am aware that I cannot change places with the hon. Gentleman, but at any rate I can do my best, and I intend to do it by supporting this Bill, to see that no such calamity occurs again.
  MAJOR ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: I regard this Bill as an attempt to deprive certain citizens of this great nation of their just political rights. From time immemorial the Parliamentary franchise has been based on possession or occupancy. I cannot see the fairness of taking away votes from the landowner because he has land in two or more constituencies. If you take, for instance, the proprietor of a property in the north of Scotland who succeeds to property in the south of England, I cannot see why he should be deprived of a vote for one of these places. I quite agree that if there is any grave scandal arising out of men buying small holdings with the object of getting votes, that ought to be stopped by the introduction of a Bill to amend the law. It is not proposed to deprive individuals of their votes for parish councils, district councils, county councils, and school boards, and I cannot see why, unless for a small party advantage, it is considered necessary to deprive proprietors of their plural votes. I shall therefore oppose the Bill.
  MR. GULLAND: After listening to the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite, I am forced to ask why it is that when you try to do some good thing someone always asks why you do not do something else? This is a very good Bill to abolish plural voting, but right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite want to know why we do not go in for a scheme of redistribution and the extension of the franchise to women. Personally I should be in favour of a very much stronger franchise Bill than this. We should have a shorter period of qualification, the lodger franchise should be extended, and
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  other reforms should be introduced so that we might have not only one man one vote, but every man a vote. I am sure that our system will not be on proper lines until these reforms are brought about. The line on which this I Bill proceeds is already in force in some cases. For instance, I may take my own case. I happen to have in the city of Edinburgh a qualification in three different divisions, but I am not allowed to vote in each. I must make my choice of the one in which I will vote. In the division in which I vote I am misrepresented in the most graceful way by the hon. Member for West Edinburgh. On the other hand, I have a friend in Edinburgh who has qualifications in three parts of the municipal area of the city and he has three votes. He has one vote in Edinburgh, one in the Leith burghs, and one in Midlothian. There is a small anomaly near my own door which will be cured by this Bill. I will have one vote, and my friend will have one vote. The right hon. Gentleman kindly allows is to choose which vote we shall have. Personally I should have preferred that he had made the votes according to residence, but I know how difficult it is to put salt on the tail of voters who have several residences, and to say where the real residence is. The vote at present is given too much, as I think, on the ground of property. As a matter of fact, there is a tremendous difference between the franchise for local bodies, such as town councils, parish councils, or county councils and for Parliament. The local bodies impose rates on property, whereas the Imperial Parliament does not. The taxes imposed by the Imperial Parliament are for different matters altogether. That is a reason why something on this line should be carried out. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has proceeded in the way he has done. He has taken the line of least resistance. I do not mean resistance by hon. Gentlemen on the other side, because they would resist very strongly whatever line was taken. I mean the least resistance in regard to the existing law. He has adopted the system which will be most easily worked. There are one or two points in regard to Scotland which I should like to mention. There we have in every county

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  constituency a large number of out-voters. Some of them are, under the present system, quite justifiably entitled to vote in the particular constituency. We have what is called in Scotland faggot votes. That is a qualification manufactured for out-voters. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment said that the representation of this country was based in accordance with locality. That is exactly what it is not. According to the present system, what we object to is that these plural voters swamp the opinion of the locality. I remember a case which came before a registration court at which I was present. A young man claimed to be put on the list of voters, and he was asked on what qualification? He replied as a lodger; and produced a document signed by his mother to the effect, "Received from my son the sum of £10 for the purpose of giving him a Parliamentary vote." I could give the House other cases where votes have been deliberately manufactured for the purpose of swelling the chorus which drowns the voice of the local residents. Take Peebleshire: It is notorious that so unpopular has been this' faggot vote system that special police protection had to be provided to guard these undesirable aliens during their temporary residence in the county for the special purpose of voting. My hon. friend the present Member for Peebleshire has managed to overcome the thraldom of the non-resident faggot voters. The right hon. Gentleman, in his opening speech, said that the Scotch system of registration was better than that of England, inasmuch as the new register came into force on November 1st, as soon as it was ready, instead of being delayed till January 1st, as is the case in England. In regard to the special provisions for Scotland, I would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman might make a slight alteration in the clause by which an extra star has to be put between November 1st and January; 1st. I do not think that any hardship would be done if the right hon. Gentleman made the alteration that the; time for making the selection was during the currency of the register. Generally; speaking, I think the House may congratulate itself that it has got before it a valuable measure, though not compre-
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  hensive or covering all the injustices and iniquities. That will come all in good time. We all hope that the present Government will not go out of office until they have extended a larger measure of the franchise than that which we at present enjoy. But this Bill brings us a stage nearer a true representative system.
  MR. WALLACE: If at present the representation of this country were based on the number of electors in particular districts there would be great force in the Amendment, because if the number of electors in different districts was to be altered we should have to alter the boundaries of those electoral districts. But that is not the basis of representation in this country. We have never considered the number of electors to be found in a particular district. Population is the basis of representation. If this Amendment were approved of, a Commission would have to be appointed to revise our representation, and the effect on our boundaries would be absolutely nothing. Therefore I say frankly that this Amendment is purely dilatory, and not intended to create a change except by resistance to the measure itself. Some hon. Members seem to consider that representation is based on property, and that property is specially recognised in this respect. As a matter of fact, anyone acquainted with the present representation must be aware that those who own the most property have the least representation. A man may own half a county, and have property in different divisions of a county, but he gets only one vote. On the other hand, a man may own in each of thirty counties only a quarter of an acre, which has been acquired for the specific purpose of getting a vote in each of those counties. A man may be a land jobber, or a house broker, or a fag-goteer, and by that means may acquire thirty or forty votes in different constituencies, while a man who owns 100,000 acres in one county has but one vote. The opposition to this Bill is really not meant for the protection of property owners at all. Many years ago it was my lot to act as revising barrister in one of the divisions of Middlesex and in London, and I there saw the differences which

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  arise in connection with the claim for votes. In London there are a large number of shopkeepers who have a great variety of small shops throughout the Metropolis. If they own shops in the different London boroughs they get a vote in every one of those boroughs. I myself have put such men on the register, giving them ten, twelve, fifteen, or even twenty votes, not because they were great property owners, but because they occupied small shops in different constituencies. If a man owned a shop in each of the seven divisions of Tower Hamlets he would get only one vote, but if he owned a shop in Tower Hamlets, one in Hackney, and another one in Marylebone, he would get a vote in each of them. Where is there any proportion in regard to such representation as that? There are divisions in London divided by a road. An owner of shops on one side of the road might have only one vote, and if he owned shops on the other side of the road he might get fifty votes. The anomalies of the present system cannot be defended. It is not a question of property. I could understand it if our friends were prepared to stand boldly for the doctrine that the value of a vote depended on the monetary or land worth of the man. I can understand a system that if a man owns a large amount of property he should have votes according to the value of that property. That is an intelligent system, although nobody would suggest for a moment in these days that it should be adopted. Now, as all are agreed that we must have a measure of this kind—[OPPOSITION Cries of dissent]— Yes, I say that not a single Member of the House has addressed us to-day who has attempted to attack the general principle underlying this Bill. I can understand a man saying that property has its rights and privileges; but then this Bill does not affect these. It deals only with the ridiculous anomalies which are degrading our electoral system at the present time. I regret that my right hon. friend has not seen his way to go a little further. I realise one of the difficulties that will come up in regard to this measure. It must enormously increase the cost of preparing the electoral lists. It will undoubtedly
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  throw a very heavy additional burden upon hon. Members in connection with the revision of the lists. I believe that the ultimate end will be, which many of us will regret, that these votes will be claimed by the agents on behalf of particular electors rather than by the electors themselves. A man will not consider the variety of places in which he holds a qualification; but if he is a I strong Party man—I do not care whether he is a strong Conservative or Liberal— he will desire that his vote shall be so placed as to yield its greatest Party utility. That is Party loyalty; but the result will be that the political agents; throughout the country will have to meet and calculate how they will readjust these votes. There is no doubt that the cost will be very great, and that the work will be heavy and difficult. But I recognise that notwithstanding all that, it will be much better than the existing system. The true remedy is: let us not disqualify any individual, but let us insist that whatever qualification a man has, the place in which he shall exercise his; qualification shall be that in which he resides. I have heard in these debates about the feeling of locality; that a man should be allowed to vote in the district in which he is most interested. I consider that the district in which a man resides is that in which he has the strongest interest and that therefore he should be a voter there. I regret that I have taken up the time; of the House for so long, but this is a subject which I have studied and have a great deal of experience of, and I urge my right hon. friend to consider the questions which I have brought forward. I believe this Bill can be improved, but I would rather have it as it is than not at all.
  MR. ARNOLD FORSTER: I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just spoken that the result of this Bill, should it become law, will be enormously to increase the complications and expense of elections, and I entirely agree with him that our electoral law is entirely unsatisfactory and anomalous in many respects. I do not, however, draw the same conclusions from these premises as does the hon. Member. It is

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  a curious fact that the zeal of hon. Members opposite for the rectification and purification of our electoral law has been displayed in one direction and one direction alone. I wish to test this desire for electoral purity and electoral equality, and I want to ask whether the end in view will be attained by the course which is being taken. I must confess that this Bill seems to me to savour much more of what I may call a Tammany Hall device than of a measure calculated to redeem our present system from anomalies. What I mean by that is, that if it had been the desire of hon. Members opposite to promote a Bill which had for its object wholely and solely a Party advantage, then they would have drawn it almost line for line in the same way as the Bill which is now before the House. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] I think I can show that, but I would point out that in taking these steps hon. Members have not the merit of following even their own principles in dealing with this Bill. It may be that it would be a very logical thing to abolish these plural qualifications, but that is not the proposal which we are discussing. Hon. Gentlemen are not proposing to do anything of the kind. They are seeking to limit those qualifications by bestowing a right of choice upon those possessing them. But why should that right of choice be forced upon them? We are told that this is not a disfranchising Bill. But if a man has five shillings in his pocket and you take away four shillings, that, of course, may not be robbery but it certainly means that you deprive him of a certain amount of his property, and similarly if a man has five votes and you take away four, the measure which does that must be a disfranchising measure. I repeat that if hon. Members had desired to pass a Bill solely for the purpose of benefiting their own Party and their own interests they would have drawn this Bill in its present form. We are told that the Bill will be inoperative in Ireland and Scotland, and I do not think that it will be operative in Wales. It will therefore apply almost entirely to England, and to which parts of England will it apply? We have had three classes of constituencies mentioned. In the first place we have had the City of
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  London, which is represented by my right hon. friend who is sitting beside me, and who leads the Opposition in this House. Then we have had mentioned the Wimbledon Division, the Member for which belongs to this Party. Next the University constituencies will be affected, and those also, every one of them, are represented by Members of this Party. It is no doubt an accident, but it is a very remarkable accident that the direct effect of this Bill will be to remove an electoral anomaly which will touch England in the first place, the Unionist Party in the second place, and many of the most distinguished members of that Party in the third place. I think it was Dr. Johnson who said that a man might shoot at him and say that he intended to miss him, but the Judge would order him to be hanged all the same. Therefore when I see these tendencies I distrust this Bill. Can it really be merely an accident that the Party opposite are unable to do all they desire in the direction of reform at once? It is all very fine to say that we must take what we can get by instalments, but if an authority comes into a street and says "We are going in the interests of public improvement to pull down your house and that of your friend, but we are going to leave all the others untouched until we have completed our scheme," it may be a consolation to know that the action of the authority may ultimately result in the removal of the other houses, but it is no consolation at the time. It is rather an illustration of the old proverb that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." If the Government desire to relieve electoral inequalities why do they not deal not only with this question but with many other obvious cases? Hon Members cannot deny that the Bill is directed against this Party, and Members of this Party. It is perfectly true that one of the anomalies of our electoral system acts in favour of this Party. I think that is true of the City of London, where you have a large number of persons who live outside, an enormous majority of whom are adherents of this Party, but I do not accept the doctrine of the hon. Gentleman who spoke last that you can always judge where a man

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  ought to vote by assuming that his residence is his chief point of interest. In the case of the City of London there is a corporate body and large interests, and, as the votes of the workers in the city may be disseminated over half a dozen counties, if this Bill passes the corporate interests of the city may not be represented. Then as my hon. friend who initiated the opposition to this Bill said, having regard to our electoral system as a whole, it is not an intolerable outrage that the workers in the City of London should, in addition to voting in the City of London, also have some influence in the counties in which they live. If this is an anomaly is it not also an anomaly that whole communities should have their electoral strength multiplied by ten, twenty, or thirty as compared with other communities? Where is the justice of that? You are crying out for justice, but take the case of Newry. We have the borough of Newry, with 2,000 electors, while in the City of Belfast the smallest Division has from four to five times as many voters. Are you going to alter that? You say no. Why not? It may be an unfortunate accident, but it is the fact that you expect to get support from the borough of Newry, and you do not expect to get it from Belfast. We have small towns in England and we also have enormous constituencies, such as are to be found in the neighbourhood of London, all represented by one Member. Are you going to take no steps to remedy that inequality, and do you tell us that there is no analogy at all, and no connection at all between a man having greater electoral power than another, and a man having two votes instead of one? The two things are intimately bound up together, and if one man has thirty times the voting strength of the other it is not, I think, unreasonable to be cautious about rigorously enforcing the rule that no man shall be entitled to have more than one vote. We shall probably come to one man vote, but is it fair to get it by perpetuating the anomaly which is advantageous to one's own Party and removing the anomaly which may be of advantage to one's opponents? The whole thing seems to be part of a policy of which there has been a great deal this session—the policy of directing efforts
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  against one part only of the United Kingdom. There are proposals before the House for dealing with education in England in a way which no one would dare to attempt in the case of Scotland or Ireland. Examples have been cited of advantages given to Ireland in connection with taxation which are not given to England. Why does the Party opposite always direct their penal legislation against England? They allow gross anomalies to exist in Ireland, whilst they apply their virtuous sponge to wipe away anomalies in England. I trust that this Bill will not succeed, as it must be regarded as a Party and a partisan Bill. In its title it pretends to remove an inequality and an injustice, but its intention will, I think, be obvious to everyone. Injustice will not be removed but increased by the Bill.
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. HARCOURT, Lancashire, Rossendale): I am afraid that in introducing this Bill under the ten minutes rule I outraged what Milton would have called the "cloistered virtue "of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University, who complained of the course I took in introducing so important a measure under that rule. If so, I offer a humble apology to the right hon. Gentleman, and ask him to attribute the fault to the inadvertence of inexperience rather than to any inherent vice. The fault is mine alone. I thought that in a measure the principle of which is obvious and the machinery of which only is novel, hon. Gentlemen with accurate and academic minds would wish to master the text before they indicted their commentary. The simple and single principle of the Bill is that no plural voter shall exercise more than one of his votes in the same year, and that the place of voting shall be selected by him by notice given to the proper authorities before the completion of the register. That is a principle which I believe will commend itself to at least three-fourths of the present House of Commons. As to the dissent of the remaining one-fourth, it will probably be useless for me to attempt to overcome their objections by any arguments of my own, or to offer to them any of those reasons which make this measure appear to me to be a desirable, though

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  long-delayed, measure of equity and justice. I hope, however, there are few Members of this House beyond the right hon. Member for Croydon and the hon. Member for Uxbridge who will oppose this Bill upon the grounds set forth by the hon. Member for Uxbridge at the meeting of the National Union of Conservative Associations in November, 1898. The hon. Member then said "he supported plural voting as a most valuable thing; that there were several constituencies where, if the plural voter did not exist, the Conservative Party would have no existence in Parliament." I do not suppose there are many hon. Gentlemen opposite who base their defence of the present system on such grounds as this; nor has His Majesty's Government introduced this measure on any assumption that the facts are as stated by the hon. Member for Uxbridge. What does that argument amount to? It amounts to nothing but this, that certain constituencies are to be compelled by the operation of the existing law to return individuals to Parliament who do not represent the opinion of the majority of the residents, and that they shall be compelled to do so by the votes of non-residents possessing some property or other qualification but living outside the district. I will do hon. Gentlemen opposite the justice to believe that they possess some better motive and some more presentable argument than that for wishing to maintain the present anomalous state of affairs. They think that property has its votes as well as its rights, that in fact votes are its rights. I understand that argument, though it does not appeal to me personally, but if they believe it, surely they ought long ago during the long years they held plenary power in this and another House to have carried some scheme for the proportional representation of property—somo plan of now votes for old acres. They ought to have provided that a man with a 1,000 acres should have at least ten times as many votes as the miserable squatter with only 100 acres. I should like to ask them how it is that they limit their anxiety for the increased representation of wealth only to those who happen to hold land. Are not the large shareholders in great industrial companies, engineering works, and cotton mills just as much interested in the good government of the country
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  as the ground landlord? Are they not subject to local rules, and have they not equal interests therefore in what the hon. Member for the Oxford University calls "locality"? Are they not as much interested in the welfare and the employment of the inhabitants of the district as the more favoured class? But to them there has not been given and it was not proposed to give additional votes in proportion to their wealth. You say to a man of this class if he is the owner or part owner of the fabric, the structure of a private mill and that mill lies within a county division he shall have a vote for it, but if it lies within a borough constituency he shall not. If he lives in a house near his mill in the same constituency he shall have one vote only for both; if his house is a few miles away in a county constituency he may have a vote there where he is only a villa resident, but none for his freehold mill if it is in a Parliamentary borough where all his interests lie. If he turns his business into a limited liability company in which he holds shares only, then he has no vote at all. The absurdities of the existing system are beyond belief, almost beyond laughter. Why do hon. Gentlemen opposite talk of plural voters as if they are all property owners? That is very far from being the fact. There are thousands of duplicate votes all over the country which have no relation to property at all. Take the common case of a man who lives in the suburbs and has a vote for the county division in which he lives. He rents a business office in the town and then votes for the town, not on account of his wealth or his stake in the country, but on account of his technical occupation, an occupation which may at some time have to be established by the proof that he has a begus bedroom in the attic. We regard this Bill as an alleviation and an amendment of an anomaly. It is far more a question of geography than of property. The present anomalies are the result of the ancient confines of our counties, the mobility of our municipal boundaries, and the fanciful areas created by redistribution. Of course it would be impossible to keep allusions to Wimbledon out of this debate. It is not surprising that Wimbledon should always trip to everybody's tongue in discussing this question. I think the right hon. Baronet rather exaggerated the numbers of out-voters there; he took the figures no doubt from.

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  the old register and he is probably not aware of how active we have been in the home counties during the last year or two. In Wimbledon I believe it would be true to say there are now 3,350 non-resident property voters to whose intelligent activity we owe the charm of the continued presence of its hon. Member. I admit that to that extent we owe Wimbledon a debt of gratitude in that it has saved from the golf course one who was meant to adorn Parliament. But there is a far more remarkable fact about the Wimbledon voters. It is that of those 3,350 nonresident voters, 1,700—more than half of them—own no property in the division at all. They Note there on the strength of freeholds or long leaseholds in London— in Battersea, Croydon, Lambeth, and Wandsworth—and these voters are not even compelled to visit their constituency at an election, because polling booths are put up for them in London where they can register their votes in the place at which the property in respect of which they vote is situated. It will therefore, I think, not be surprising that there is a sense of grievance among the real residents of Wimbledon when they find their representation dominated by these "dumped" voters. Now I do not intend to use the figures I am about to give to the House as an argument, but as an illustration, though unlike some with which we are acquainted they might be used for both. The Tottenham Division is also afflicted like Wimbledon, with a similar class of voters—men who have no land in the division. The number there is 1,400. They have neither land nor residence in the Division, but are drawn from Bethnal Green, Hackney, Shoreditch and Tower Hamlets. The other case is Hornsey, with 2,500 non-resident property voters, 1,000 of whom have neither property nor residence there, and are allocated to that division from Islington and the City of London. I do not think anybody will deny that these facts establish a case which demands reform. It may be said that the Bill does not specifically deal with the particular abuse I have instanced. That is perfectly true, but I believe it will do so in effect. After all, it is permissible to read human nature into an Act of Parliament without putting it into the schedule. Voters are essentially human, and I believe that when they are compelled to select their place of voting they will in the majority of cases
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  select their home or the property on which they reside. Therefore I think we shall obtain from the Bill when it is passed an almost completely residential suffrage, but we shall obtain it without that legal compulsion which always leaves some bitterness of resentment behind. Some reference has been made in the Press and in the House to University representation and the effect the Bill will have upon it. The great Universities have been greatly favoured by Parliament in the past, and they will receive no exceptional disfavour under this Bill. We propose to treat them with what twenty years ago was the declared policy of the Tory Party—the policy of similarity and simultaneity. I am not personally a great admirer of University representation. I think they signally failed to rise to the height of their opportunities this year and justify their right to exceptional electoral existence. [OPPOSITION cheers.] Yes, but not upon the ground which hon. Members opposite appear to think, but because they afforded no refuge to a derelict Prime Minister or even to a stranded Viceroy. What is the argument that has always been used for the continuance of the University vote, and as a justification of their position in the past? We have always been told that it secured to the country the representation of bruins, and that it was greatly valued by the intellectuals who were privileged to exercise it. I accept that argument. But the Government are leaving in existence the right to vote for the University to every graduate who wishes to make the choice and who has paid the fees, which is the principal qualification. Are we to be told that the Universities are going to be bled white of voters by the disloyalty of their own alumni? Is it to be contended that the country clergy, who form the bulk of that electorate, are going to prefer the polling booth next to the rectory, where they are only temporary lodgers, to the glory and the sentiment associated with their alma matter? I cannot imagine it for a moment. I am sure the country curate will spend his last stamp on the proxy which will secure the present representative of Oxford University to the House of Commons as an ornament to its debates. But if unhappily, unthinkable, the contention is right that the graduates are going to be unfaithful to their intellectual trust, and ungrateful for their special

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  privilege, it may fall to the Party opposite on some future occasion to enforce against the depleted Universities their theory of one vote one value. Some fears have been expressed as to the effect of the Bill on the City of London. I do not think the Leader of the Opposition need have any fear for his newly-found constituency. I cannot imagine that the men of business in the city would count any sacrifice too great in order to retain the commercial experience and the fiscal detachment of their two present Members. The hon. Member for the Sevenoaks Division opposed the Bill by waving, timidly waving, the old way-worn flag of "one vote one value." It was not until last year that the country was privileged to know what exactly was the meaning attached to the phrase by the Party opposite, when they exposed, in all its nakedness, the skeleton of their redistribution scheme. Their plan was laughed out of court when it was discovered that their idea of one vote one value was the fixing of a limit of population which retained all the small English boroughs that were supposed to be then favourable to the Conservative Party, absolutely without regard to any quality of value. Redistribution is a measure which rightly and necessarily belongs to the end of a Parliament. The Government do not feel it to be their duty unnecessarily to cut short the life of this very young Parliament by the introduction of a such measure at this moment, nor do they think that this modest Bill should be postponed until the time is ripe for a larger measure. No one will deny that the electoral and registration systems want overhauling, and such overhauling I hope they will receive during the life of the present Parliament. The right hon. Baronet said that there was a danger of declarations being made for voters by other persons. I cannot believe that that will be the case. I believe every individual will make his declaration of selection for himself and is likely to adhere to that selection. I am altogether unable to agree with the suggestion that this is going to lead to enormous cost in registration. I shall be very happy, of course, to consider any suggestion of amendment of machinery at a later stage. It has been said that the Government would have done better by abolishing the property qualification altogether. I should not have hesitated myself to
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  take such a course. But even if we had done so, all the provisions of this Bill would still have been necessary in order to deal with the duplicate occupation vote, and we should have had to set up a complicated machinery to enable somebody to settle what was a man's real residence. The Bill leaves to the plural voter the right to select from among his qualifications the one which he desires to retain. It will enable the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham to select whether he will vote as a Liveryman of the Cordwainers' Company in the City of London for the Leader of the Opposition, or as a resident in East Worcestershire for his right hon. friend the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will exercise his choice for the good of the Empire, uninfluenced by any petty motive of personal preference. It has been said that provision ought to be made in the Bill for "starring" the voter in every constituency where, by his own selection, he is not to be allowed to vote. I think the labour and inconvenience such a course would entail outweigh its advantages. I myself have no fear that the law will be broken except in the very rarest instances. The class from which plural voters are mainly drawn is a class which desires, above all things, to keep within the bounds of the law, especially when it realises that to step beyond those bounds would entail the severest penalties. I shall, however, be ready to consider in Committee any Amendments to the machinery of the Bill. As for the principle of the Bill, I have no hesitation in recommending it to the House for acceptance. I confess that it was not without qualms of memory that ten days ago I saw the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham go into the lobby against the introduction of the Bill. I trust it was only a momentary aberration, to which even the youngest of us is liable. I beg the right hon. Gentleman to beware of the academic blandishments to which he finds himself sometimes exposed on the front Opposition bench. They are only intended to seduce him from the virtues of his salad days. I cannot bear to see the right hon. Gentleman joining the modern Mrs. Partingtons in an attempt to sweep back the Atlantic of progress with the mop of privilege. I had. looked with hope and confidence to the support of the right hon. Gentleman.

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  After all, convictions may survive the vicissitudes of Party. I learnt my Radicalism at the knees of the right hon. Gentleman twenty years ago, with the result that I "lisped in programmes, for the programmes came." At the general election of 1885, whilst he was adorning the platform, I laboured in the committee-rooms, and as I ticked off' the out-voters on polling days I said to my friends (they were our friends then), "Be of good cheer. Look to Birmingham. He will save us from these undesirable aliens." I am still too young to have forgotten the teaching of my master. Even now I sometimes revel in the recollection of his discarded truths. Lest admiration should have exaggerated memory, I have referred to the litera scripta which alone remain to us of the right hon. Gentleman's Radical Programme. I find in a speech made at Birmingham in January, 1885, the right hon. Gentleman used these words—
  "I am in favour of the principle of one man one vote. I object altogether to the plural representation of property. I will take my own case. I am a terrible example. I have three votes in as many borough constituencies. I use them all on the right side (that was our side then) but I know many of my friends who have ten or twelve, and I have heard of one reverend pluralist who has twenty-three. I consider that an anomaly altogether inconsistent with the principle in which we stood, the principle that every householder at all events has an equal stake in the good government of the country. His life, his happiness, his property, all depend upon the legislation which he is equally entitled like every one else to assist in framing. If we are to make that distinction I am not quite certain whether it is not the poor man who ought to have more votes than the rich man, for individually his interests are more direct than the rich man. If you have had legislation it may lessen the income of the one but it may destroy altogether the means of subsistence of the other."
  Since that time we have had bad legislation. Although it has not tended to lessen the income of the one, there have been grave attempts so destroy or make dearer the subsistence of the other. Looking at the right hon. Gentleman's record and recalling his opinion, I venture to say to him in the words used by Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Hartington —" Come over and help us."
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: You will be ruined if he does.
  MR. HARCOURT: I can promise the right hon. Gentleman that there will be no tests for a repentant teacher. Surely the husks of the out-voters cannot be a very satisfying diet. The fatted calf of the fully-qualified resident is awaiting the prodigal's return.
  MR. SALTER: After the speech to which we have just listened, if I venture to say a few unstudied words about the Bill, I do so because it appeal's to me that it is not only in itself a measure of considerable importance but also one which is concerned with principles of the utmost possible moment. I will not argue with the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean as to whether this Bill is a disfranchising measure or not. The Bill has been drawn with skill so as to make it possible to say that it is not a disfranchising measure, but in substance and in truth it is a disfranchising measure. Whilst reducing the number of electors in England, it is said that it would not reduce the number in Ireland. I am not aware of any way in which you can reduce the. number of electors in England unless you either kill them or disfranchise them, and as this Bill does not propose to kill them it appears to me that it proposes to disfranchise thorn. We have been taunted with not seeking to defend plural voting and confining ourselves to the retort that there are other anomalies which more urgently require the attention of Parliament. That is not the ground upon which I desire to oppose this Bill. I would like for a few moments to defend the position of the plural voter upon his own merits. I deny that the plural voter is an anomaly. If the principle of a property qualification be sound, if the principle of local representation be sound, and if the principle that taxation and representation should go together be sound, then the position of the plural voter is logical and unassailable. What I contend is that you cannot logically destroy the plural voter unless you destroy one, if not more, of the three principles which I have enumerated. Upon the last occasion when this principle was placed before the House the attack was based upon the principle of manhood suffrage, but the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill has not taken that

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  course. If he had done so he might have taken up a logical position, but if you take up the attitude the right hon. Gentleman has now adopted, he has no logical position at all. Our electoral system has always been based upon property. [An HON. MEMBER: It is time it was done away with.] I cannot understand the right hon. Gentleman, while retaining and leaving operative this main principle of our franchise, asking us at the same time to sweep away plural voting. If you do away with the plural voter you must also sweep away another important principle, and that is the representation of localities. After all, the property qualification is only a temporary expedient, and we all look forward to the day when no man will be excluded from the franchise. Some look forward to the time when no adult will be excluded, but I venture to say that deeper down than the principle of the property qualification you get the principle of the representation of localities under which the elector does not vote for a Parliament, or Party, or a programme, or a measure, but votes for a man. They unite to select a man who shall be the spokesman for the whole of that community. He is elected for reasons of which some hon. Members appear rather to lose sight. He is not elected to represent any particular trade or interest, but to represent all classes and all interests in a particular area, and it is his duty not merely to take part in the management of national affairs, but also to defend and protect the local interests of his constituency where they conflict with local interests of other constituencies. If you sweep away plural voting it may be true to say that you do not disfranchise a man in regard to his national interest, but you do disfranchise him in regard to his local interests which the law now secures to him. It appears to me that in order to show that the position of the plural voter is unjust, you must in logic sweep away not merely the property qualification, but also the fundamental idea of the representation of localities. The hon. Member for Perth spoke as if this were a question of a man who owned much land having one vote whilst a man with small holdings would have two or three votes. That argument is a curiously unconscious admission that electoral.qualification ought to depend on property, but it
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  is not in any way inconsistent with the principle which I have just described. A man who has property, be it much or little, in one constituency is taxed and rated there, and he ought to have a voice in the election of the man who represents that area. As regards movable property it counts for nothing with respect to the franchise. That which gives a man a right to vote is not his wealth or property; it is his local stake in a particular place, and if the principles to which I have referred are sound and just, you are bound to give him the protection of his interest wherever he has a local stake. If you truly desire equality of electoral power you should deal with the great and gross inequalities with which everyone is familiar. If this Bill becomes law it will be costly and intricate, and it will lead to gerrymandering and manœuvring. I venture to urge that this House will stultify itself if they sweep away plural voters while leaving unchallenged and in active operation those three principles upon which, if they are sound and just, the position of the plural voters is logically unassailable.
  Mr. W. JOHNSOX: May I suggest to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite that they are very ungrateful? I think they ought to be very thankful for what this Bill leaves them. They have complained that their lot is a very hard one. Many of us think that they should have been hit much harder many years ago. An hon. Gentleman on the other side said that hon. Gentlemen on this side who support this Bill are open to reproach. Do you think that hon. Gentlemen on this side could introduce a Bill free from reproach on the part of hon. Gentlemen on the other side? First of all the Bill will leave you your choice as to where you shall vote. That is a privilege which I do not possess under the Bill. I shall have no choice where to vote. Hon. Gentlemen who have at present more than one vote, though in future only able to use one vote, will be able to choose where they shall go and use that vote most effectively, and you may depend upon it they will use it in that way. They have also complained of the expense they will be put to. Surely that is not a great, matter to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite.

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  They have wealth and they will be able to spend in order to obtain the advantages of this Bill. We have been told by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon that this is a Tammany Hall Bill. If that is so, I say it is due to the introduction of the principle by the Party opposite, They were responsible for the Local Government Act of 1888, which destroyed the property Vote for County Councils, and gave the occupier only one Vote. I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon, was that an accident? Surely if the local interest that they contend for now is of so much value in Parliament, it is equally great in the counties. You introduced the principle you are now condemning. It is plain that the Party opposite are prejudiced in this matter. We have boon told that the Bill is aimed at the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London. If it hurts him in the City of London he must go back to Manchester. There is something dearer to many in this House, and to millions in the country, than the representation of property, and that is the vote of the man with a family. His interest is greater than that of the man who has property. I believe that opinion is shared by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, because with all their property and all their wealth, their wives and children are dearer to them than the property they possess. That is a principle in the human breast which you cannot get rid of. We want to base the representation of the people on the principle "one man one vote." We have been told on many occasions that the majority of the people have willed this or that. It is done by the majority which includes the men who have five, ten, and twenty votes. That is how right hon. Gentlemen have gained their power in past years. That principle is to be destroyed. I am very pleased that this Bill has been introduced to destroy that principle, I hope the Bill will pass into law, and the sooner the better, not only for the Party opposite, but for the whole country and the whole Empire.
  MR. CAVE: I wish to remind the House of what happened the last time a measure of this kind was
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  brought forward. In 1892 a Bill called the Plural Voting Abolition Bill was introduced by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre. At that time an Amendment was moved by the hon. Member for South Tyrone in these terms—
  "That it would not be just or expedient to carry out the principle of one man one vote 'involved in this Bill unless the number of representatives allotted to England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland respectively were previously settled in proportion to the population of each of these parts of the United Kingdom and the principle of equality thus secured."
  The hon. Member moved the Amendment in an eloquent and convincing speech. Among other things, he said—
  "All I contend for is this. If we are going to take the constitution to pieces in order to correct anomalies, let us correct some other anomalies which are equally patent and flagrant while we are at work.…On what principle is a Galway freeman to be counted as six times more influential than a Belfast artisan in this House? If that is not an anomaly greater than the dual vote, I do not know how to weigh the comparative merits of questions."
  I am quite sure that what the hon. Gentleman found it convenient to say when out of office he will find it equally convenient and reasonable to say when his Party is in office. And surely what the hon. Gentleman said in 1892 is a strong argument against tin's Bill. If you are going to do justice do justice all round. Do not correct an anomaly which operates in our favour without correcting far greater anomalies which operate in your own favour. Let me give an illustration of that. I have two occupation votes—one for my own division, where there are 17,000 electors, and another in a part of London where there are over 8,000 electors. Even with these two votes I do not count for so much as a Galway freeman who has a vote in a very small constituency. If you are going to deprive me of one vote, put me on an equality with the Galway freeman who has a much greater voting power.
  MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: We have not plural voting in Galway.
  MR. CAVE: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. You have not plural voting in Galway, but you have a much smaller constituency. The one vote of the Galway freeman has, therefore, a much greater value than the votes which I have in

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  this country. I wish to say a word or two on the merits of the Bill itself. The argument that the community should be represented has been already urged, and I will add one illustration. Is it right that the City of London, or the City of Liverpool, or any other great community should be represented simply by the votes of what is called its 'night population,' that is to say, the caretakers and others who dwell in the city by night, and not by the votes of those who do business in the city by day? No one would say that the city was properly represented in that way. Again, the right hon. Gentleman practically admitted that this Bill would seriously affect the University representation. I was glad to hear that admission, because when an attack is made I prefer that it should be an open attack. And let the House consider what would happen if this Bill became law. The greater part of the University voters would elect to vote where they reside, and there would be very few voters for the University other than those who reside there. That, of course, would lead to a demand from hon. Members opposite for the abolition of University representation. I do not think that hon. Members who attack University representation can have studied the history of their own Party. A great Liberal, John Stuart Mill, thought that the franchise ought to be based as far as possible on education. This University representation is the last vestige which we have of a franchise of that kind, and if hon. Gentlemen opposite seek to abolish it they are doing what they will regret in the future. Further, I do not see how any hon. Member sitting on the Ministerial benches to-day can form an unbiased opinion on this question. The whole of the University representation is on the Opposition side of the House, and knowing that to be so how can hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial benches be in a position to form a fair opinion on it? They run the risk of being charged with voting for their Party, and not on principle. I also take exception to the form of the Bill. The last Bill introduced into the House dealing with this question had a simple provision that no one should vote in more than one place at an election, so that if a man had two votes he might choose down to the very day of the election in which constituency he would vote This Bill is entirely different in that respect. It compels a man to say
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  before September 1st in which constituency he will vote during the following year. But on September 1st the revision is still going on; and it may well happen that after a voter who has, say, three votes has elected to vote in one of the three constituencies his name may be struck off the register in the constituency which he has selected or he may become disabled from voting in it, and the result would be that he would have no vote at all. Take another point, a man may not know that he has a double vote, and therefore may omit to make his selection in September, or while knowing of his double qualification he may forget to make his selection in time; and in either case the result will be that he will find himself in January nominally with two votes, but actually without a vote at all. I say that is not fair. This Bill is a measure of reform, but of partial and not real reform. If you want to abolish the ownership vote, you should do it directly in a Bill for the purpose, and not seek by a side wind to abolish not only the ownership vote, but also the double occupation vote, and the University vote. If the Government would bring in a fair, all-round measure of reform, we on the Opposition side of t he House would gladly support it.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I do not object to the hon. Gentleman referring to the Amendment which I moved to the Second Reading of the Bill introduced by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre in 1892. In some respects it is a disadvantage to have been twenty years in Parliament, for, during such a long period you are pretty sure to have been on both sides on more questions than one. I might plead that when I was a child I spake as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things. However, I do not take that attitude. I do not say that there is no connection between one man one vote and one man. one value. I say there is a connection, and I would like to see both questions dealt with in one Bill. But we live and learn, and one thing I have learned in the House of Commons is that we cannot get everything at once. We must be content to move slowly. The question of plural voting is not a burning one in the ordinary type of Irish constituency. In the south and west of Ireland there is very little chance of a man having the

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  privilege of exercising his vote at all. But the case is different in ten or twelve constituencies in Ulster. Three years ago I wont to conduct an election in South Antrim. It was a bitter contest, and we found there on the register 1,400 freeholders and leaseholders of the city of Belfast who voted in their different divisions in Belfast, and also in South Antrim, although they had no connection whatever with South Antrim. That was bad enough; but we found another thing which was worse—that the freeholder was immortal. We found that out of 1,400 names on the register, 600 had been dead, many of them for thirty years, and that, in other cases, the qualification had long since ceased to exist. In fact it was the interest of nobody to revise the register, and therefore it contained the names of 1,400 freeholders and leaseholders who were altogether unconnected with the constituency. We were beaten largely by these plural votes, and I say that that is an abominable state of things of which we have a right to complain. The same thing might be said in regard to North Derry and South Dublin where large numbers of people vote at an election who have had no property connection whatever with these constituencies. I tell the hon. Member for Surrey that I still retain the conviction I had in 1892. I think it would be fairer to deal with this question as a whole; to give one man one vote, and also get something like one man one value. But, if we do not get these reforms by degrees we will never get them at all. I consider that it is monstrous that men who are practically foreigners—I do not use the word in an invidious sense—should be allowed to come into a constituency and defeat the wishes and intentions of the resident voters. Although not an English Member, I have some title to speak in regard to this question as it affects English constituences. I have seen all the machinery at work. There was scarcely an election I did not attend in the old days between 1886 and 1895, and I feel bound to say that there was scarcely an election which was not largely influenced and controlled by out-voters coming from hundreds of miles away to defeat the intentions of the resident voters in the locality. Therefore, though I cannot get all I could
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  wish, that is no reason why I should not support the present Bill.
  LORD WILLOUGHBY DE ERESBY: I am one of those who hold the old-fashioned idea that if a man has a property in a division he ought to have a vote for it. These "aliens" are to be disfranchised because the greater number of them happen to hold Tory principles ! This Bill has been introduced in order that hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial side of the House may gain a Party advantage from it. I admit that there are glaring anomalies in the representation of this country which ought to be swept away. I had placed in my hands the other day a most excellent pamphlet; which I hope hon. Gentlemen on the Government Benches will study. I believe it is a pamphlet issued by the Proportional Representation Society. In that pamphlet I find that on the total vote in Warwickshire the Conservatives have a majority of something like 400, and yet the county is at the present time represented by three Liberals, and only one Conservative. In Salford there is a considerable minority of the electors who have no representation. Then, again, take the case of Wales. At the present moment there is not a single Conservative Member returned from the whole of Wales, while there are some 90,000 Conservative voters there. Surely, if we come to consider the question of rectifying what are called the anomalies of our electoral system on the other side all these anomalies should also be looked into as a matter of common justice. We hear a great deal about property and privilege, but I do not see how the privilege comes in if you have not a right to vote in regard to the principle upon which you are to be taxed. On what grounds of common sense is not the large owner or occupier of lands in a division of a county and who pays a large amount of wages there not to have a vote? It seems to me that if this Bill is agreed to we shall depart from the old sound principle of representation and taxation going together. This principle of plural voting is the last vestige of that great old principle and this Bill is not founded upon justice. It is brought in in order

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  to gain a little advantage, and until the whole question is dealt with a great injustice will be inflicted upon electors.
  MR. SAMUEL EVANS: The debate shows that hon. Members opposite are rather chary in dealing with the merits of this question, as the hon. Gentleman who first spoke moved an Amendment of a dilatory nature, but in the course of the evening the spirits of hon. Members have risen and the noble Lord and others have appealed to the principles which were relied upon by their predecessors in opposing the Reform Bill of 1832. The hon. Member for Basingstoke came out as the Champion of the plural voter. The hon. Member is a young Member of the House. He failed at the general election, and if there had not been a number of out voters in the Basingstoke Division he would not be here to-day. What does it matter whether or not we are going to deal with the whole question of electoral reform? It is no use bandying accusations across the floor of the House. The point to be considered is whether the proposal is right and the time opportune. Of course it is a Party measure. Nobody is frightened by saying that. All the great Reform Bills have been Party measures. Does anyone assert that it is right that one man shall have four, five, six, ten, or twenty votes? [OPPOSITION cries of "Yes."] Then you ought to give the votes to the property, proportionally, not to the population, but to the acreage. If we could base representation upon real intelligence, I should be prepared to do away with all reference to property in dealing with electoral matters. When I say intelligence, I do not mean, in the ordinary sense of the term, education. It is quite true there is a great deal of education in a university, but the intelligence of the universities is not on a par with the education. Most certainly the political intelligence of the universities is not to be measured by the degree of education in literature, mathematics, or classics, possessed by the graduates. There are nine seats in the House of Commons occupied by representatives of universities. If the same basis of representation were applied throughout our electoral system,
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  we should have had the people's food taxed, we should have had the Education Act of 1902 made more stringent, and we should have had all the things carried which the Liberal party have been opposing for fifteen years past. Why? Because every representative of the universities is a Conservative. We have, therefore, the solid representation of what is called intelligence and education opposed to what everybody will admit to be right. [OPPOSITION cries of "No."] Do hon. Members opposite think I am entitled to seven votes? [An HON. MEMBER: No.] As a matter of fact, I have them. I have a vote in the city, and I voted with a great deal of pleasure against the junior Member for that constituency. I have a vote in the Strand, where I am like a voice crying in the wilderness, and I also have votes for West Carmarthen, East Carmarthen, Gower, and Breconshire, and I am sometimes called upon when I have opposition in my own constituency to persuade myself that I am the proper person to vote for there. I think it is absolutely wrong that I should have seven votes, and I am quite willing to give them up, but not until they are given up all round. I regard myself as a political sinner whenever I exercise my seven votes, but it has to be done in order to balance what is done on the other side. It will not do to talk about redistribution. That is a matter not for a young Parliament in its early and vigorous days. That is a matter which the late Government left to its sixth session, and the House knows what kind of proposals were then made. I am glad the Government have produced this Bill so early in the session. It has been promised for many years, and the Government have shown in this as in other matters that, while their supporters give them the driving power, they are prepared to give effect to the promises made to the country.
  LORD HELMSLEY: The principle underlying this Plural Voting Bill seems to me to be somewhat misunderstood. The main thing which underlies our whole electoral system is a man's right to vote in different electoral localities in which he has an interest, so that his vote will be in

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  favour of the interest of the locality. If you take away the representation of different localities you will do them great injustice. Plural voting does not seem to me to be such an anomaly as has been described, and I think that a man should be considered as one individual in each place in which he has rights. The hon. Member for Mid. Glamorganshire does not pretend that his interests in the City of London are the same as they are in Breconshire. He may be a large landowner in Breconshire, but in London he may be interested in other matters, say manufactures, though I admit I am raising a very supposititious case. Why should he not have a voice in the representation of Brecknockshire, where he has many interests, as well as in the City of London, where his interests also are? With a Government like that with which we are at present favoured, which has so many schemes on hand of one kind or another affecting every kind of property, it seems to me to be very absurd for them to say that a man who may have two different kinds of interests in two entirely different localities should not have an opportunity of doing his best by his vote to defend his interests in both localities whenever they may be attacked. The right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works in his profound and literary speech delivered early this afternoon seemed to think it would be quite easy to provide that a man should vote only in the district in which he nominally resided. But what about a man who has two houses in each of which he lives for a certain portion of the year? Many men are fortunate enough to possess two houses, one perhaps in London during one half of the year when they are engaged in their business pursuits and another in the country in which they live when engaged in more pleasurable occupations. I think it would be grossly unfair if such men were not allowed to record their votes in the interest of both residences. I should like to say, as I hope in the future to be a M.A. myself, that I strongly resent the attack that has been made on both the education and the intelligence of the Universities. It seems to me that if there is one constituency that ought to be preserved among the other constituencies of the
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  country it is the University constituency. Because whatever the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works may say as to payment of fees, that constituency is based on the principle of education and intelligence, and no man can obtain that qualification simply by paying for it. It is what I may call a suggestio falsi to say it is based on payment of fees and not upon intelligence. I believe the idea of a local qualification coming from intelligence and not from property hails from China, but that is no necessary reason why the small amount of qualification in existence in this country upon that basis should be done away with, and that from those who have attained the degree of B.A., which contains that of M.A. to a limited extent, should be swept away all qualification for intelligence. I hope that the injustice of that proposal will be admitted by hon. Members opposite who admit that this is a Party measure. I do not know that it is necessarily safe to assume that all these outvoters, these plural voters, are Conservative, but I think it is quite safe to assume that they will be Conservative at the time of the next general election. I think, therefore, we should congratulate the Government on their foresight in bringing in a Bill which will be so much of an advantage to them at the next election.
  MR. REES: As the representative of the one constituency in Wales which the Conservatives hoped to retain, I was much affected by the remarks that fell from the noble Lord the Member for the Horncastle Division. I am, however, very glad I was sent here to vote for this Bill in spite of the fact that it robs me of a plural vote, which I never exercised. That, however, I must own, was not so much due to the fact that I abstained from voting on principle, but more for the reason that I was out of England. My point is this, that I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of this Bill to include another class of electors, I mean the freemen of ancient boroughs. In the ancient and distinguished borough of Montgomery there are "freemen" who exercise the franchise as such. In some cases they do not live there, and have no interests there, and they may not be plural voters, having a

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  vote elsewhere in all cases. They attain this franchise when they attain the age of twenty-one and come over at the time of an election, chiefly, I believe, to vote against the Liberal candidate. Montgomery is a small district which in the last election polled 90 per cent, of its votes. It is very evident that under such circumstances as these to bring over fifty, or sixty freemen to exercise this ancient, picturesque, but absolutely unjustifiable, franchise would be sufficient to elect a candidate for the district who may not represent the opinions of the majority of the electors. It is only natural that those who exercise their right to vote under some ancient privilege of this sort should support the Party in favour of such privileges, and I do think that upon the very first occasion that offers these freemen should be deprived of this vote for which, by common consent, there is not at the present time any justification whatever, no matter which side they may favour in the ballot box.
  MR. J. WARD: I should like to say a word or two in support of this Bill, particularly with regard to one thing that it does not deal with and in reference to which I should like, if I could, to persuade the right hon. Gentleman to make some change, namely, the law of registration. The qualifications and the registration laws generally, instead of being used to make a perfect register of qualified citizens, are used for the purpose of keeping off, rather than otherwise, those entitled to vote. I think three months residence is quite enough to qualify a man for a vote at a Parliamentary election. I know that it is said it would be almost impossible to make a correct register in three months. But I have made inquiries in districts where compounding of rates does not occur, so far as the question of paying the rates is concerned, and I have discovered that the rate collector at the end of the quarter does not miss any one who is entitled to pay. If there is such automatic certainty for finding men you want to get something out of, there ought to be equal automatic security for his being placed upon the Parliamentary register. One hon. Gentleman who spoke
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  from above the gangway suggested that it would be possible for the hon. and learned Member for Mid-Glamorgan to use his votes, if he transposed his identity in every place. In one he might vote as a householder, and in another as a mechanic, and in another as a lawyer, and in that way it would be perfectly legal and just and meet all difficulties. I do not think that argument deals with the objections in any way. I think we shall never get a proper permanent solution in this country until suffrage rights are based on the manhood and womanhood principle. I think that is the only qualification that will be recognised in the future, and I think this system of duplicate votes is not fair in any sense of the word. It has been suggested this afternoon that the reason plural votes are given is that a man possesses property, that property pays the taxes, and that taxation and representation go together; that it is only those who have property who have a stake in the country; and that the amount of a man's property decides the amount of the stake he has in the country. I deny any such proposition. When you take the facts which affect the welfare of the working population of this country; how violent-changes in the conditions of trade may affect the wealth and prosperity of this country and destroy the opportunity of the working people to get a living; when you consider the useful labour they perform and how much their interest is bound up in the continued prosperity of the country; is not their stake as considerable as that of any man with great possessions? I repudiate entirely the contrary suggestion. I think no man should be entitled to more than one vote under any circumstances. I do not admit the right of any man to give two votes as against his neighbour's one. It is suggested that property gives some special qualification, which really does not exist. It is absurd to calculate the right of a man to manage the country's affairs by his wealth and possessions, as is done at he present time. The hon. Member for South Tyrone said it took him twenty years to discover that if you wanted in this House to get everything you asked for, and accepted nothing until

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  you could get all, you got nothing at all. It has not taken me twenty weeks to make that discovery. And although I want adult suffrage, and, like the Pears' soap baby, shall not be happy till I get it, still I am content to accept this Bill as an instalment, if not of the abolition of the property qualification, at least of the abolition of the plural vote and as a step in the right direction. Therefore, I support this Bill.
  MR. STAVELEY HILL: It seems to me that hon. Gentlemen opposite and below the gangway argue this question entirely from a Party standpoint. They desire equality, and say that this measure is an equitable one, but I do not hear one word as to giving votes to Peers who are at present disfranchised, and surely if this is to secure equality, all should have votes. Is it not possible that there may be many of the electorate who are not so much concerned with a Party majority as with that which may be to their advantage in their own trade or profession? And is it not quite conceivable that someone, for instance, may have a large business concern in Manchester and an agricultural property somewhere in the Midlands, and, without any inclination to be in any way a politician, it may suit him to have a Liberal member to represent him in Manchester and a Conservative or Unionist to represent him in the agricultural constituency? It may be that he has divided opinions upon the question of fiscal reform, and are you, when he pays rates in both places, going to deprive him of votes in both places? This is an entirely revolutionary proposal, because it is the first time that a Bill dealing with the franchise has dealt with restriction and not with extension. The Government are doing more. They are for the first time putting a stop to existing legal rights. There have been alterations of qualifications, but the existing legal rights have always been maintained. Surely hon. Members opposite will respect the views of one who was the greatest Parliamentarian of his day—I allude to Mr. Gladstone—who, speaking upon the introduction of the Franchise Bill of 1884, said—
  " We do not interfere with rights already legally acquired."
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  It remains for the Government of 1906 to interfere for the first time with those rights. I should like to call the attention of the House to a speech delivered by the Parliamentary Secretary of the Treasury in 1894 in this House upon a Bill of a similar character introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the member for East Wolverhampton. The hon. Member then sat amongst another Party and was in a position perhaps of greater freedom and less responsibility than now. He then said it was an attempt to dish the Unionist Party, that the cardinal principle of the Gladstonian Liberal Party was that they were the only fit occupants of the Treasury Bench, and that if the constituents did not agree then they must be changed. This Bill is nothing more or less than a combination of terminological inexactitudes. What do you find in it? That the humblest person in the kingdom is not deprived of his vote as a householder, but a person who happens to have two votes has got to undergo what under no franchise has anyone had to undergo before. He has to make a selection, and if that selection it. not made, then because he happens to be a possessor of two votes he is disfranchised for a year. That is not fair, and it is not the policy in which we believe. We agree very much more with that which was advocated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, speaking in Scotland last year, said—
  "Common sense, common justice, the uniform practice of seventy years, require that suffrage and seats should be dealt with together, and form part and parcel of any scheme of constitutional reform."
  There I leave it with His Majesty's Government. If you are going to ask for some alteration of the franchise, have all your elections on one day, and see how that will work to correct inequality; but do not correct inequalities by creating unfairness and by uprooting those principles and privileges in which we have been brought up, and which we hope will for many years continue.
  MR. DOBSON: The Motion moved from the Front Opposition Bench asks the House to reject this Bill because it is unaccompanied by a scheme to remove the serious anomalies now existing in the distribution of electoral power,

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  and hon. Gentlemen, in speaking on behalf of this Amendment, have over and over again taken it for granted that we on this side are opposed to a redistribution Bill. I beg to disabuse their minds of that opinion. I think I may safely say that the majority of us, in addressing our constituents, declared ourselves not only in favour of the principle of one man one vote, but also in favour of a redistribution Bill. But we believe that this Bill, instead of being antagonistic to a redistribution Bill, is really a help to it. It is an undoubted fact that this Bill will reduce the number of electors in some constituencies. Take the City of London. I think I am right in saying that at least 18,000 or 19,000 of its 20,000 electors have also votes in the home counties. Is it not better that in that case and in numerous other cases in connection with our large towns we should first of all pass this Bill so that we can base a redistribution Bill upon some real and tangible figures? The only argument I have heard in favour of the retention of plural voting is that plural voters represent the rights of property, but few gentlemen, and certainly none on the Opposition Benches, have had a word to say in favour of the rights of manhood. It is contended that the property classes have larger interests at stake. To a certain extent, nominally, perhaps, that is correct, but, proportionately, I venture to say it is not so. I am one of those who contend that the small shopkeeper, the clerk, and the working-man have just as great proportionate interest in the welfare of the country as any millionaire or any of the propertied classes. A bad Government by its meddling and muddling policy—and we have heard of such Governments—can very considerably hurt the trade of the country, and although the propertied classes may suffer, what is that suffering compared to that which is inflicted on the working classes? But I contend that the present system of representation is both illogical and unfair. We hear a great deal about the rights of property to be represented, but if a man owns £1,000,000 in Consols, he does not thereby possess a property qualification, though surely he has as great a stake in the country as a man who invests £40
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  in a piece of land. A man may have vast property in one county, like the Duke of Westminster, who may be worth millions of pounds, but he can only have one vote upon it. I repeat that the position of property qualification is altogether illogical. Then consider what privileges are conferred on property for getting a vote. The unfortunate occupier has to wait two and a half years before he can be put upon the register. Do you treat the property owner in this fashion? No; a six months' qualification is considered good enough for him. But although it is difficult for the residential voter to get upon the register, it is easy enough for him to be taken off. Let him once remove from his house and his name is immediately struck off the rate book and the voters' list. How different it is with the property owner. He finds it very easy to get on the register, and it is very difficult for anybody to get him off. The right hon. baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean has referred to the difficulty of ascertaining the qualifications of freeholders, but I do not think it would be such a difficult task if you treated the owner of property in the same way as you treat the lodgers, and compelled him to come up every year and make a declaration. I think this provision ought to be applied to property owners as well as to lodgers. In 1879 I was the registration agent for the old division of East Surrey, and I was struck with the large number of property owners, many of whom appeared to have been on the list for thirty or forty years at least. It appeared to me that probably the vast majority of them had parted with their property qualification, and I sent out a circular to every one of those out-voters without making it known to what political Party or association I belonged. I pointed out to them that they were on the ownership list for certain property. The bait took, and I discovered that out of 700 or 800 out-voters nearly 100 replied that they were no longer qualified. In some cases they said they had parted with their property twelve or fifteen years ago. and one replied that the property in question was his father's and he had been dead for twenty-two years. I think it is fair to assume that for every

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  person who took the trouble to write and admit that he was no longer qualified there were four others who saw through the trick and took no notice. Upon that assumption there would be 450 persons on the list who were not entitled to be on it at all. I think this is a good Bill, and I hope and believe that it will pass. I am sure it is a measure acceptable to the country, and one which will promote the principle of political equality; therefore I shall give it my most strenuous support.
  MR. CARLILE: In the course of this debate we have been told that this Bill is a prelude to redistribution. I am sure we are very delighted to hear that the Government is at once tackling this subject with a view to introducing the whole question of redistribution, because it means that they mean to have an appeal to the country very shortly. That would be a delightful thing to see, and no doubt the Government have been induced to make this hasty preparation in view of the reception which their iniquitous Education Bill has met with at the hands of the people of the country within the past few weeks. If that is so, we shall rejoice on the Opposition Benches at the early prospects of meeting our constituents, and reversing the decision which was arrived at by false promises and misrepresentations in January last. It was quite a novelty to hear an hon. Member on the Ministerial Benches weeping on the neck of a poor millionaire, and it was delightful to hear his wail on behalf of a man who owned a million of Consols. I wish to remind that hon. Member that the man with a million pounds invested in Consols can realise them, move them about, and reinvest them, but the man who has £40 invested in freehold land can do nothing-of the kind, and if he tried to realise his property he would certainly have to do so at a considerable loss. We have heard a good deal lately about taxation and representation going together in connection with education, and the noble Lord who spoke a moment ago referred to the fact that this Bill was diametrically opposed to that principle. Where can the additional tax and rate-bearing qualification be said to be represented
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  in this Bill? The Under-Secretary for the Colonies said that he never heard a single argument against this principle on its merits. The hon. Member is usually very well read and of very excellent mental power, but has he forgotten that the great Leader of the Party to which for the present at any rate he owns allegiance—I refer to Mr. Gladstone —utterly objected to this principle in 1884 and 1885? I might strengthen even Mr. Gladstone's view by quoting others on the Liberal side. I suppose Liberals will be ready to accept Mr. Edmund Burke as an authority on great Liberal principles. In his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" he says—
  "Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a State that does not represent its ability as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish and inert and timid, it can never be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be out of all proportion predominant in the representation. It must be represented, too, in great masses of accumulation or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal.
  "The great masses therefore which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations.
  "The same quantity of property which is by the natural course of things divided among many, has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.
  "The plunder of the few would indeed give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution of the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation, and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution.
  "The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it as that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.
  "The possessors of family wealth and the distinction which attends hereditary possession are the natural securities in this transaction. With us the House of Peers is formed on this principle. The House of Commons, too, though not necessarily, yet in fact is always so composed—in the far greater part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, and they lave the chance of being among the best—

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  they are at the very worst the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth.
  "It is said that 24,000,000 ought to prevail over 200,000. True if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second; to men who may reason calmly it is ridiculous.
  "The will of the many and their interest must very often differ, and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice."
  And, it being a quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set 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 OEDER).
  Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow, at a quarter-past Eight of the Clock.
  [Mr. EMMOTT, Deputy-Speaker, in the Chair.]

  PLURAL VOTING BILL.
  Postponed Proceeding on Amendment to Question [14th May], "That the Bill be now read a second time," resumed.
  Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. CARLILE: I quote now Mr. Macaulay when speaking on the People's Charter on 2nd May, 1842—
  "My firm conviction is that in our country universal suffrage is incompatible, not with this or that form of government but with all forms of government, and with everything for the sake of which forms of government exist; that it is incompatible with property and that it is consequently incompatible with civilisation. It is not necessary for me in this place to go through the arguments which prove beyond dispute that on security of property civilisation depends; that when property is insecure, no climate, however delicious, no soil, however fertile, no conveniences for trade and navigation, no natural endowments of body or of mind can prevent a nation sinking into barbarism; that where on the other hand men are protected in their enjoyment of what has been created by their industry and laid up by their self-denial, society will advance in arts and in
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  wealth, notwithstanding the sterility of the earth and the inclemency of the air, notwithstanding heavy taxes and destructive wars. Those persons who say that England has been greatly misgoverned, that her legislation is defective, that her wealth has been squandered in unjust and impolitic contests with America and with France, do in fact bear the strongest testimony to the truth of my doctrine. For that our country has made and is making great progress in all that contributes to the material comfort of man is indisputable. If that progress cannot be ascribed to the wisdom of the Government, to what can we ascribe it but to the diligence, the energy, the thrift of individuals, and to what can be ascribed that diligence, that energy, that thrift, except to the security which property has during many generations enjoyed here? Such is the power of this great principle that even in the last war, the most costly war beyond all comparison, that ever was waged in this world, the Government could not lavish wealth so fast as the productive classes created it,"
  I venture to quote these two authorities, who certainly will appeal to the judgment of hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House. When we find the Undersecretary for the Colonies stating that on its merits he has never heard any argument against this Bill, he shows that he is not well posted up in the matter. At the present moment the House is on the point of considering, or is in some measure considering the advisability of instituting a graduated income-tax. It seems an extraordinary thing that, at such a moment, when the minds of hon. Members are concentrated upon such subjects, they should take this opportunity of removing some of the voting power which the payers; of taxes possess. It is unfortunate that they should take an opportunity to bring forward such a undertaking. Metaphorically, the Government apparently intend to tie the hands of the better situated voters behind their backs, as they did pictorially with the Chinamen at the time of the general election, for election purposes. The Free Churches cried aloud against the Education Bill of 1902; passive resistance became fashionable. Why? Not because they were taxed without representation, but because they had not equality, or majority in representation. The principles here are entirely inverted. It is all a matter of expediency. It is not on a matter of principle that the Government bring in this measure at the present time. They want to lower the capacity of the electorate. I think Liberals might well be

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  satisfied with the results of last election, but they want a still greater majority than they have now got. They have a majority which has only once been exceeded, but now they want to tie the hands of the voters in order to obtain a still more bloated majority. Why do they desire a larger majority? They know that another opportunity such as the last is not likely to come again. They succeeded in gulling the electorate in January last. No more will the cry of Chinese slavery, no more will "terminological inexactitudes" have the same effect as they had last January. The constituencies will have found out right lion, and hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House. Notwithstanding the fact that they said they had settled the franchise in 1884 for a generation, they now propose to tamper with it in this arbitrary and piecemeal fashion. We have had no assurance from the Government that they contemplate the introduction of a Redistribution Bill and that they are going to the country at a short interval from now. Notwithstanding that, they bring in this Bill dealing with one small subject in connection with the franchise, merely because they believe it will assist their Party interests. They propose, in anticipation of the future, to load the dice, because they realise that their chance of doing what they have done recently is not in the least likely to occur again. The great Liberal principles seem now to be forgotten. Many on the Government Benches are failing to illustrate these principles when they support such a measure as this. I will close with the following lines from Shakespeare—
  "Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail,
  And say there is no sin but to be rich;
  And being rich, my virtue then shall be
  To say there is no vice but beggary."
  MR. BILLSON: It would almost seem, from the speeches of some of the hon. Members opposite who have taken part in the debate, that they are under the impression that this is a Bill for the general redistribution of property. This is merely a measure to prevent a few plural voters from going about the country and voting in all sorts of places. I suppose the hon. Gentleman's quotation from
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  Burke refers to the state of England 150 years ago. We have made large progress since then. At that time it seemed reasonable to a great many people that property and not people should be represented. The hon. Member might have gone back a little further and given us the preamble to one of the statutes of Henry VI. Up to that time all voters in counties had been occupiers. The ancestors of the noble Lord opposite were no doubt afraid that their traditional rights would be interfered with and so they passed an Act of Parliament, the preamble of which ran as follows—
  "Elections have of late been made by very great, outrageous and excessive numbers of people who are for the most part people of small substance and no value, and every one of them pretended to have a voice equivalent to the most worthy knights and esquires dwelling in the same county."
  Whereupon it was enacted that this wretched business should not go on any longer and that only those should have votes who owned freeholds. One noble Lord talked a great deal about land as paying wages. He forgot that land was not the only kind of property which paid wages; there are large iron works, and other industrial undertakings, employing large numbers of workmen and paying large sums in wages, the owners of which have no vote, simply because they are in the hands of limited companies, although they may be the largest shareholders. It seems to me there is no real opposition to the merits of this Bill at all. Hon. Members opposite say the Government have brought it in for Party purposes. It is much more true to say it is being opposed for Party purposes. The hon. Member for the Horncastle Division secured; his seat by 150 votes. There were; a considerable number of freeholders in his division. It is not too much to say he is in the House, because the freeholders came in and voted for him, and not because he had the suffrages of a majority of the residents. The Member for Kingswinford is a still more glaring instance. I believe there are 3,000 or 4,000 freeholders who have votes in his constituency, and I feel sure the Member for Kingswinford would not have; been returned if those three or four

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  thousand people had not voted. I have the honour to represent a constituency myself in which there are 2,800 outside voters. I do not mean to say they all voted against me. On the contrary, I believe a large number voted for me; but it must come home to the minds of all who thought about the subject that the representation should be that of a district by means of the votes of the people residing in it. I would be glad to see the Bill improved. I would have no owners as such on the register at all. In my constituency, in addition to the 2,800 out-voters there are 1,500 who have votes as owners as well as occupiers, so that there are 4,300 names on the register which ought to be off altogether. That adds enormously to the expense of elections, and of keeping up the registers, as well as to the trouble of carrying on an election. I was agreeably surprised when I read the Bill, and saw the ingenious method which had been adopted of dealing with the matter. I thought it was very satisfactory that the analogy of the county council elections had been followed. Reference has been made to the increased work which will be put upon registration agents. It must be remembered, however, that the freehold owners do not come on the register automatically as occupiers do. Every freeholder has to send in a claim, and it will be no additional trouble to him to state on his claim whether he proposed to star himself for a particular constituency or not. I believe, therefore, the Bill is to be recommended on account of its simplicity, the certainty and ease of its action, and it will bring about a very great improvement. The fact that pluralists have to star themselves for one particular place will tend to make people less eager to obtain votes all over the country. My impression is that those votes will gradually die out, and when the Government bring in its comprehensive Bill, the present difficulty will be removed out of the path, and they will be able to devote themselves with less controversy to the other things which have to be done. As to the question of registration, I have long held that it is a reform which should be effected by common consent of both Parties, and, I believe, if we ever get a comprehensive registration Bill, it will
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  only be after an agreement similar to the compromise which was effected in 1884. I am satisfied with this Bill as far as it goes, and I hope it will be passed into law.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: The hon. Member for North-West Staffordshire in talking about electoral matters speaks as a past master on that particular question. He seems to think that it is almost a crime that property should be represented on the register, and he told us quite frankly that he thought the whole of the freeholders should be removed from the register, and that nobody but occupiers should be left upon it. Of course I take an entirely different view from the hon. Member's, and I certainly think that all classes and all varieties of interests should be represented on the register which is to elect Members to this House. The right hon. Gentleman who brought in this Bill, and all the supporters of it, have based their arguments on the ground that it is inconsistent with the principle of representative Government that one man should possess a greater statutory electoral power than another. I have always thought that the principle on which representative government was founded was that each class and interest should be represented rather than by securing an exact equality between man and man. I have always thought that the constitutional theory was that each locality should be represented in Parliament, and that therefore it was only right that each man who has an interest in that locality, with a proper qualification, should, independently of any interest elsewhere, be entitled to vote in the choice of the Member for that locality. If you take away his right to vote because he has a qualification elsewhere, you do not only an injustice to the individual, but to the locality in which he has a considerable interest, and in which he has a perfect right to express his preference for one candidate over another. In my opinion each separate constituency should stand by itself, and each person duly qualified in that constituency who pays his rates and taxes should be entitled to a voice in the choice of a representative in

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  Parliament for that constituency. I cannot see where the difficulty or friction is in the present system, nor can I see any real injustice in it. It is not as if a man had two or more votes in the same constituency; but I cannot see why a man who has his residence or place of business, say, in London, and happens to have either in Scotland or the north of England landed property and possibly a place of business elsewhere, should not be represented by his votes in his separate constituencies. [Ironical cheers.] I know perfectly well that hon. Members on the Ministerial Benches will not agree with me; but the arguments to which I have listened during the debate, have not convinced me otherwise. That will be because I hold high Tory views conscientiously. If my right hon. friend was really consistent in his passion for absolute equality, why should he not have gone further and made some provision for equality for each vote, and have seen that each vote had an equal value; or, at all events, for such a rectification of electoral areas as would remove the great anomalies in this respect which now exist? I will only remind the House that half of the 670 Members who have the honour of seats in this House represent 4,500,000 of electors, while the other half only represent 2,500,000, and I think that if we are going to have any great regard for equality, we ought to have regard to the value of the vote which is given, instead of contenting ourselves with saying that there shall be one vote for one man. Now, sir, I want to say one or two words with regard to the drafting of the Bill. I doubt very much whether, notwithstanding what has fallen from so great an authority as the hon. Member for North-West Staffordshire, when we examine it, this is really a workable Bill, and I am sure that the first clause will have even a more disfranchising effect than appears to be intended. Those who have had experience in registration matters, I think, will agree with me, that a very small percentage of the registered voters take the initiative in getting their name put upon the register, and I maintain that even fewer will take the trouble to see that their selection is communicated to the proper officials. The officials can only suspect duplicates where the place of
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  abode is given, and where it is different from the qualification. I do not see how otherwise the overseer or whoever the official may be, is to find out whether a man is likely to have another qualification than by seeing that the place of abode given is different from the place of qualification. Suppose he acts upon that, he can only deal with non-residents, who may or may not be registered elsewhere. [Cries of "No."] Then you say that they will allow the name to remain on.
  MR. HARCOURT: The registration official will only act upon an intimation from the voter himself, and in the absence of that he will allow the. name to remain on the register.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for that explanation, but I did think from the drafting of the Bill that the registration officials would have the power to interfere with the names in the case of duplicates, but the right hon. Gentleman, I think, means that it will not lie with them at all to discover duplicates, and therefore the point I am going to raise is not necessary, but I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for setting me right and am glad to be reassured in that respect. I will only say, however, that if the selection is left to the initiative of the voters, Clause 1 will probably be a dead letter. Clause 2 is even more arbitrary and unjust than the preceding clause. Any or every person applying for a ballot paper can be asked, not whether he has voted elsewhere, but whether he is registered elsewhere, and unless the reply is that he is not so registered, the ballot paper is to be refused. The Acts of Parliament dealing with the various franchises fill a text book, and probably political agents are the only persons in the kingdom who have an exact knowledge of those franchises. Many persons own property in many counties, or are interested in business premises, or have more than one place of residence. Persons are frequently met with who believe that their names are placed on the register for ownership qualifications without any action on their part and that they are registered in respect of trusteeships, or as shareholders in a joint stock company owning land or buildings. There

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  are thousands of persons who may or may not be registered on more than one register, but who believe they are entitled to such registration, and therefore would hesitate to reply in the negative if the question authorised by this clause was put to them, and so would unwittingly and unnecessarily disfranchise themselves. Will it not be sufficient to ask them if they have voted elsewhere?
  MR. HARCOURT: It would obviously not be a proper question to put to a voter whether he has exercised his vote elsewhere, because under the Bill he would only be entitled to exercise his vote once at the place where he is distinctly marked in the register. If he has exercised his vote elsewhere he will be committing a serious offence because ex hypothesi he has voted where he should not vote.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I quite agree, but I think a man might be asked whether he has voted, and the question should not be in such a form as to compel him to disfranchise himself. A man may not know whether he is on another register, but he will know whether he has voted. The putting of this additional question will also occupy much time, and during the final hour before the close of the poll many legitimate voters may be excluded from voting in consequence. If an effective measure was desired by the Government, a one clause Bill empowering the presiding officer to put the question to each voter "Have you voted at any other election in the United Kingdom during the present general election?" would have achieved their object. The question as it now stands losing with regard to registration only creates doubts, and may have the effect of preventing many persons recording even one vote. There is one other thing which I should like to point out with regard to this Bill, and that is that I think it is the first Government Bill dealing with electoral reform which has restricted the electoral franchise. All previous Government Bills dealing with electoral reform, although an existing franchise may have been restricted, have always had for the main object the extension of the franchise. This Bill is solely a disfranchising Bill, and has for
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  its avowed object the extinction of certain existing franchise rights. However desirable reform may have been, the rights of persons on the registers of voters have always been recognised and maintained. In the Reform Act of 1832, under Section 33, it was provided that every person then having a right to vote for any qualifications other than those enumerated in the Act. should retain such right 30 long as qualified under the old law. In the Act of 1867. under Section 56, existing rights are safeguarded by an enactment that the new franchises are in addition to, and not in substitution for, any existing franchises. In the Act of 1884, under Section 10, the rights of persons then registered are maintained, the effect being that although the Act prevented more faggot voters being registered, the existing faggot voters could continue to be registered from year to year, and many are still so registered. Under the old Acts, therefore, any person who had a right to vote when they were passed, retained his right until he ceased to be entitled under the old law, but by this Bill you take away an existing right and you refuse to allow an existing voter to continue his qualification during his lifetime. This is a very serious difference. I rose chiefly to ask the Questions which I have put to the right hon. Gentleman and I do not want to prolong the debate. I may say, however, that I differ from the hon. Member for North-West Staffordshire who said that he hoped that this Bill would be carried by a large majority. I cannot share those views, because I look upon this Bill as an attempt to gain a Party advantage. If you are anxious for electoral reform why do you not promote a genuine and comprehensive Bill redressing real grievances? That is the only way in which I think that this question should be dealt with. This, however, is really an attempt to gerrymander the constituencies, to suit the needs and necessities of your own Party. If that were not the object I maintain that a large and comprehensive measure would have been brought in dealing with many of the points of which we have heard to-night. Some hon. Members desire to see any alteration of the registration law; others desire to see amendment in regard to redistribution, and others desire other

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  changes in the existing electoral system, and I think that if the Government had really desired to deal with electoral reform in a genuine manner they would have brought forward a measure dealing with all the subjects that I have named.
  MR. STANLEY WILSON: I rise in order to associate, myself with the speeches which have been already delivered from these Benches. I wish to add my protest against the passing of this measure which will mean the disfranchisement of somewhere about 1,000,000 of the electors of this country. The First Commissioner of Works in his excellent speech early this evening which was only spoiled by one or two gibes in regard to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, which were not in very good taste, spoke of this as a very modest measure, but said he was very sorry that he introduced it under the ten minutes rule. To do so was certainly an insult to the electors whom the right hon. Gentleman desires to disqualify. I will be perfectly frank and will say that but for the freehold vote at the last election I should not have had the honour of sitting in this House. [An HON. MEMBER: How many of you would?] I quite agree I think there would have been practically no opposition in the House of Commons but for that vote. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that that would be an advantage to the country I cannot agree with him. I cannot see where the necessity is for the introduction of such a Bill as this. We have heard of innumerable instances in the course of the last few months of mandates given to right hon. Gentlemen opposite at the general election. Was this one of the mandates given on that occasion? Sir, I am sick of those mandates. This is a continuation of the policy that has animated right hon. Gentlemen opposite ever since they came into power—a policy of revenge. We have seen in the Education Bill an attempt to revenge themselves upon the Church of England, and now they are bringing in this Bill in order to i revenge themselves on a body of men who they think give their support to
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  the Unionist Party. I think the Government are insolent in their victory. I should like to ask whether they are going to press this measure through its second reading with the serious intention of passing it through the House of Commons this session. I say we have plenty of business before us; we have sufficient contentious measures to last us for a year. I should like to ask the Government if it is their intention to pass all these measures during the present session. [Hear, hear !] Hon: Gentlemen opposite cheer. If they do, I then I think we shall be probably sitting here this time next year. If hon. Members opposite look forward to that state of things with pleasurable anticipation I can only say I hope I may be allowed to wish for some holiday. Let me take the business before us. We have the Education Bill which is quite contentious enough for one session, but then beyond that we have the Workmen's Compensation Bill, a Bill upon which the Government have already sustained one or two defeats upstairs, and I suppose that when that measure comes down upon the Report Stage we shall have the opportunity of seeing whether the Government are cowardly in their defeat.
  MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order, order; the hon. Member must speak to the Motion.
  MR. STANLEY WILSON: I was trying, Sir, to show that the House had sufficient contentious business before it and that it was not necessary for the Government to introduce another measure of this contentious nature, but I bow to your ruling and will not refer to the Trades Disputes Bill and other great and contentious measures. This Bill is another blow to the landed proprietors of this country. I myself have always failed to understand why a Radical Government should always endeavour to do something to deprive the landowners of what ought to be, what are, their rights. If a man owns lands in the country and pays rates and taxes on those lands I fail to see why he should not have a right to vote in the district in which his land is situated. Such a man is probably extremely well-educated and better qualified to have a say in that

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  district as to what should be done by the Government than even the agricultural labourer intelligent though most of them are, but whose interests do not go beyond the bounds of the particular parish in which he lives. Why, then, should we deprive these men of their votes. For the simple reason that the Government think that they are so intelligent and so well educated that they generally record their votes for the Unionist Party. We all know the various anomalies that exist under our present system, and so much has been spoken upon the question of one vote one value that I do not intend to detain the House by addressing myself to that subject. The late Government intended to bring in a Redistribution Bill, which would have had the effect of removing those anomalies and making the votes throughout the whole country of far more equal value than will be done by the Bill at present before the House. The present Bill includes no scheme for redistribution, and instead of doing away with these anomalies will only make them more glaring than they are at the present time. I believe the scheme as it is laid down in the measure before the House is an unworkable and impossible one, and I think in his speech this afternoon the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean showed the Government that their scheme was unworkable. I have no intention of detaining the House at greater length, but I am told we are weak in numbers and these benches are thin at the present moment, but though we may be weak in numbers I do not think our weakness justified the Under-Secretary for the Colonies on Saturday last in describing us as a "weak and broken-spirited crew." I do not think the Members on these benches are broken-spirited, and I venture to assure the House that if the Government intend to proceed with this measure we intend to oppose it to the utmost extent of our ability and power, as we regard it as a measure for the disfranchisement of a great body of the electors of this country and a gross injustice.
  MR. SUMMERBELL: I may say that I support this Bill with the greatest possible pleasure as an in-
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  dication of adult suffrage in all elections. I am somewhat surprised at some of the remarks I have heard to-day on this-particular Bill. I thought many of the ideas contained in those arguments had died many years ago. There may be a good deal of truth in what has been said in this respect, that there is a keenness to get this Bill passed because there are several people who have several votes which they give to the other side; and also in the argument, that when in office themselves they are not prepared to tackle measures in the same way in which they say they are when out of office. But that has nothing to do with the question of the right or wrong of this particular Bill. Some hon. Members seem to argue that because a man is the owner of land or is-the possessor of wealth he is entitled to exercise a right to vote in various-parts of the country, but I would like to tell the House—and many a man who is an owner of land or a possessor of wealth does recognise—that there are many cases where, if it were not for the labour expended, they would not be in the possession of wealth, and that many of the poor of this country are poor because of the economic conditions of to-day. I say the poor man has an equal right to representation in this House with any owner of land or the possessor of wealth. ["Hear, hear."] Hon. Members say, "Hear, hear," but while they say "Hear, hear" they claim that one man may have twelve votes in different parts of the country. I say they have no right to exercise so many votes. I say we ought to have our votes to represent the population and not the wealth of the country, and my hon. friends may rest assured that if they think they are going to keep this system in existence many years longer they are very much mistaken. They may die hard, as the hon. Member for Holderness suggested, but they will die. A man who is an owner of land or a possessor of wealth is not going to have any greater right than any other man in this country-Other men may not have wealth, but they own brains, and why should they not exercise the same right as the possessor of wealth? Why should the members of a University of this country exercise the privilege of electing one Member here

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  in London and another Member at Oxford or Cambridge? It is certainly time that such University representation ceased. Some of our friends seem to regret it, but I hope that this Bill will be passed through, if not this session, next session. I am fully in agreement with those Members of the House who think there ought to be some alteration in the registration laws. There is great room for that. When a man desires to exercise a municipal vote to-day he has to say where he desires to exercise the vote, whether he desires to exercise it for his shop or his house, and I see no reason why a man who, simply because he is the son of his father and owns land, should be allowed to record so many votes. I am really surprised that hon. Members should get up and use arguments which might have had weight sixty years ago, during the passing of the great Reform Bill, but which have no relevance to the Bill now before the House. Every man has ability, and he ought to be allowed to exercise the ability he has, so far as the right of voting for this House is concerned.
  CAPTAIN CRAIG (Down, E.): With reference first of all to the remarks of the hon. Member for Sunderland, I wish to explain that he appears to labour under a slight misapprehension. I say that those around me who for a number of years past have been in power in this House and in the country have not shown, in my opinion, anything but respect for the vote of the working man. We have never shown any desire but to treat the working classes fairly and squarely. A great number of hon. Members who sit on this side were returned by the votes of the working classes, and we all endeavour to represent those who returned us. I would also point out to Labour Members generally that their conception of the policy of the Members who sit on these benches is equally wrong. Although a man may be wealthy he may wish to open up industries and provide better houses for the working classes. He may desire to assist in commercial enterprises without seeking on every possible occasion to do injury to the working classes because they are working classes. The objection
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  that I wish to urge against the Bill is that it is taking a step which it will be almost impossible, if not quite impossible, ever to reverse. All that Members on this side can do is to enter a protest and show to the country at large the arguments which we believe to be perfectly consistent and right as to the injury that will be done if the Bill passes into law. It is obvious that in many points a grievous injury will be done to certain classes. Take one instance, that of a wealthy capitalist who wants to open up a new industry in Ireland by putting in capital and employing the poor people of the neighbourhood. Supposing he does that in a part of the country where he does not reside, the very workmen that he employs would have votes, whereas the man who had created the industry by his brains, intelligence and money would be the one person not be allowed to vote. ["No."] The hon. Member for South Tyrone says "No." He would not have said that some years ago. The hon. Member has referred to those who were leaseholders and freeholders in a contest in which he took a prominent part in South Antrim some years ago. I am perfectly convinced that the only grievance the hon. Member had against the freeholders and leaseholders in that particular constituency was that they did not vote for his particular nominee. The hon. Member said that foreigners came into the constituencies of South Antrim and North Down and voted where they had no claims whatever. It was the men of Down and Antrim who built up the city of Belfast, and in cases of that sort surely they ought to have a special claim to the privilege of voting in the city they had created, as well as to vote in the respective counties to which they belong. With regard to what fell from the hon. Member for Mid. Glamorgan, that complaints from these benches warmed up as the debate progressed, I hope that the Party to which I belong, although small and insignificant in the eyes of hon. Members opposite, will never be found wanting in the strength of their convictions, or in the power to express them. The hon. Member said one of the arguments in favour of the Bill was that the hon. Member for the Basingstoke Division would never have been returned but for plural voting, and

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  that it showed the anomalies of the present system. I assert on the other hand that if it had not been for these plural voters the Basingstoke Division would not have been properly represented at the present time. The arguments we have adduced on this side are those of commonsense and honesty. There is one other important question which has not been sufficiently touched upon, and that is University representation. I am perfectly certain that since the franchise permitted the return of Members for the various Universities this House has never had men of such light and learning, whatever their political opinions might be. It is one of the gravest blots on the Bill that that system of representation may be interfered with. I desire to recognise genius on whichever side it is shown. It gives me more pleasure to listen to a good speech from the benches opposite when it is made, than to hear one from my own side of the House. This Bill appears to me to be introducing legislative changes of far-reaching effect without any reference to the importance of the questions which are being dealt with. I appeal to all sensible and sane men throughout the country to watch the process which is being gradually inculcated into this House of trying to push on to our shoulders the responsibility for initiating and carrying out and perpetuating legislation directed against hon. Members below the gangway. I have far too much respect for their ability to expect that anything I could say now would change their ideas. I can only hope that the policy adopted by the Government of bowing the knee and giving in upon every question to the Labour Party will increase their admiration of hon. Gentlemen in opposition, I and prophesy that our views of fiscal reform will unite them to us when the present Government are no more.
  MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: Some very serious defects in the machinery of this Bill have already been pointed out. I wish to say a few words with regard to the principles of the Bill. I consider that the Bill was first presented to the House in a somewhat improper way. I then asked myself not why it was introduced or what was its object, but what reason the Government were going to give to the House for
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  introducing it. As far as I can gather, the reason given is that it is designed to redress anomalies. I find that it is an exception to the rule which is recognised either in principle or in practice, that every vote should be of equal value. I know that all hon. Members on the Ministerial side do not say that, because a number of them stick at the half-way house, and say that equal voting power should exist for every man who has a vote at present. When you come to consider this principle on its merits, you have to go back to see what was the foundation of the franchise. I have heard various suggestions made upon this point, and I put it that that foundation is not property, but taxation. Taxation has been its foundation through all our constitutional history. "No taxation without representation" has been the cry through all the ages, and now observe that in this Bill you are proposing to institute a system which provides that in certain cases it shall be possible to have taxation without the corresponding opportunity of representation. That is a constitutional innovation which I commend to the attention of hon. Members on the Ministerial side. If they are at all interested in this matter I commend to them also the words of Mr. Gladstone in 1884, from which they will readily understand what are the objections to proposals of this character. When we venture to point out how this principle of equal voting power for all would work in practice we are met with the question which has constantly been raised in this debate, "Why do not right hon. and hon. Gentlemen take steps to redress the greatest anomaly of all and try to secure proportionate representation to the population in various areas." We have not had a satisfactory answer to that question yet. We have been told that it is not the practice of Governments to bring in a Redistribution Bill except on the eve of their death. I do not understand what arguments there are which would lead us to believe that redistribution should always be the swan song of a Government. I understand that this has always been a great Liberal principle, and, if I am right, why do the Government not set a good example and deal

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  with redistribution now? Why do they hesitate on the brink? Why do they make no attempt to remove these flagrant anomaliesሄanomalies so great that a working man in Romford has a power of voting which is one-seventeenth of the power of a large landowner in Wick Burghs, anomalies which permitted in 1895 all the three Divisions of Salford to return Conservative Members, in spite of the fact that in Salford there was a minority of Conservatives. Then there is the anomaly which permits those who sit on the Opposition Benches to each represent something like an average of 17,000 electors, whereas each hon. Member sitting on the Ministerial side only do duty for about 7,000 electors. These are all flagrant anomalies which the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean recognised as existing. The right hon. Baronet took Wimbledon as an illustration, and said, "Here you have Wimbledon with a large number of voters which is far too many for its proper proportion of representation. If you pass this Bill you will have a diminution of those voters, because a large number will elect not to vote in Wimbledon but somewhere else." Now what would happen supposing they did elect to vote in Wimbledon and similiarly in other divisions around London? The effect will be that the very evil which this Bill professes to remedy will be accentuated in a worse form. You will be turning the City of London into what has been described as "a howling wilderness."
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: But they come to Wimbledon mostly from the Metropolitan Surrey parishes, and those are already above the right figure.
  MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: At any rate my argument will apply in part to Wimbledon, and to all those surburban areas which draw City clerks and City merchants. I think the House will see that this is an argument which cuts both ways. The hon. Member for Dumfries Burghs pointed out some anomalies which exist in Edinburgh. That is a place with which I have had some personal acquaintance, and I may say that there are plenty of other anomalies in Scotland if you desire
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  to find them. There are anomalies connected with the burgh residents. When a man changes his residence in a burgh in Scotland he does not lose his vote, but if he changes his residence in a county he does lose his vote. There are at present many anomalies in connection with the franchise, but this Bill does not propose to deal with them. I may point out that a man who holds a lodger vote, or a service vote, may vote at a Parliamentary election, but not at a school board election. The anomalies to which I refer are serious anomalies which have just as great a claim for redress as any other anomalies presented to the House. These are anomalies admitted by all sections in the House, whereas the particular anomaly against which you seek to legislate is one which we do not admit in fact, or one which we hold to be more or less justified. I do put it to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite that they are dealing with a question which they ought to deal with wholesale and not in a piecemeal fashion. They ought to look at this question, not as partisans, but as citizens. I know the position. It is not a stimulating task for right hon. and hon. Gentlemen. It would be much more profitable for them in the long run to take the other course. I do look with some horror at the introduction into our electoral system of what I can only call the "spoils" system imported from America. I am afraid that the electors who subscribed to their prospectus feel, if I may say so, that there has been a certain amount of inaccuracy. I warn hon. Members that the electors will balk at this manner of going to allotment, and that they will consider this to be not a real reform to redress a genuine grievance, but an attempt to gerrymander the polls in the interests of one particular Party.
  MR. CROOKS: I wish to congratulate my hon. friend who has just resumed his seat. I think he has made the best of a very bad case. Some hon. Members argue as though they imagined that no one else had ever thought the question out. I wondered when the hon. Gentleman was speaking whether he thought he was addressing an agricultural audience. How the

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  agricultural labourer with his one vote would cheer the fact that the squire had a right to six votes, and that he was six times better than himself. My friend asked what an anomaly was. Another friend of mine suggested that it is a word you use when you want to swear. The sum and substance of the whole matter is this. It was said by the great leader of a party. "We are not going to be wiped out by this Bill." What about the past when so many had only 7,000 votes, and so many on the other side had 17,000? I venture to say that there have been cases in which 2,000 votes have been of as much electoral value as 17,000. Does that show a case for proportional representation? Surely "one man one vote," is a good thing, but you will say "one man one value." I can understand the difficulty hon. Members have if they remember the number of seats they would have lost but for the support of an enormous number of people who vote in a variety of places. I can imagine that the majority of the Leader of the Opposition would not have been 10,000, if the City of London electors had all voted in their proper constituencies. It is manifestly unfair that they should vote in several places. If they elect to vote in the City, let them use their vote there. Not under any circumstances is one man as good as two menሄor, he ought not to be. I have never seen a man who was as good as two. The Representation of the People Act requires amending, and this is an excellent way to begin. I do expect that hon. Members will agree to that, if they are not going to cut their own throats. The Unionists who oppose this Bill say, "We are in a minority; you want to make it less; it is not fair." It is fair, and if you were going to the poll to-morrow you would find it out. [Cries of "No."] Keep on saying "No," but you cannot get the people outside to believe you. I wonder that any man has really the courage to argue in this House
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  that he has a right to votes in proportion to his property. Take the case of two brothers. John has a house rented at £10. William has also a house at the same rent, and he has a donkey in addition to his house. Therefore the donkey is property. Does the donkey bring with it the property qualification? John says he is as good as his brother. William says, "Nothing of the kind. I have a donkey, and, therefore, I am entitled to two votes."
  COLONEL LEGGE: Is the donkey rated?
  MR. CROOKS: I think the hon. and gallant Member should have hesitated before he asked if the donkey is rated. No; but the donkey earns rates. It may be a house or land; it amounts to the same thing. It is a monstrous thing that a handful of men should be able to dictate the policy of this or any Government under any circumstances. [Cheers.] I understand these ironical cheers, but hon. Gentlemen have used the property qualification as a means of getting over-represented in this House, and no such charge can be levelled against the handful of Labour Members. After all, the sole object of the Bill is one which the nation has looked forward to for thirty years, and the Opposition know full well that, whatever their position in the days to come may be, it will be much worse than now.
  MR. FELL: The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean pointed out the difficulties that await us in carrying out this Bill. These difficulties arise from the way in which it is proposed to treat the plural voters. What are the facts? If a man has only one house, he will have no trouble in regard to his vote. If a man happens to have two houses, he will in future have only one vote and he will only have that vote by taking further steps to

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  protect his right to exercise it. That entails an obligation on the man with two houses which is not laid on the man with one house. That is an onus which we on this side do not think should be cast on the man who has two houses. The average voter does nothing whatever to secure his vote. The overseers prepare the lists, and it is more than probable that, if the ordinary householder had to take the initiative, a quarter or half of them would lose their votes. But the owner of two properties has, in the month of August, to declare in respect of which property he will claim his vote, and if, by any chance, he fails to do so, then he will lose his vote altogether. There is another difficulty. The bigger houses, say in Epsom, are occupied by men whose businesses are in London. These gentlemen have, at present, a vote both in London and in Epsom. But if this Bill becomes law they will have to relinquish one of these votes. If they decide to retain their vote for the City of London they will lose their vote for Epsom, and it would be a bad day for England if the principal residents took no further interest in the politics of the places they lived in because they had no votes. And equally in this case it would be a bad thing for the City of London if those who have their business there, and have done so much to build up its credit and its greatness, decided to retain their votes in respect of their houses at Epsom. The idea that the electors of London, of all places in the world, should be, not the representatives of those great firms which carry on their operations there, but the housekeepers, the attendants, and porters who sleep in the City, is one which ought not seriously to be entertained by that House. This is a grave difficulty which is certain to arise, and I hope some hon. Member opposite will advise what course he should take in the dilemma in which he will find himself under this Bill. Is he to give up his right to vote in the City of London in favour of voting in the place in which he lives, or is he to
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  give up the right to vote in the place where he has his house in favour of his vote in the City of London? I think the Government might, when they consider the difficulties I have mentioned, allow this matter to stand over until they find it convenient to bring forward a Redistribution Bill.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: My hon. friend who has just sat down put a problem to the House on which he asked for assistance to find a solution. His problem was thisሄIf a man who has a house at Epsom or in the neighbourhood of London from which he gets a vote, and if he has also a business in the City of London from which he gets a vote, which constituency should he select as his favourite in the improbable event of this Bill becoming law? I have no doubt myself as to the answer which ought to be given. It seems to me perfectly clear, and I wonder my hon. friend felt any doubt on the subject. The vote which he should retain is the vote for the City of London. I do not propose to discuss the City of London, having some personal interest in it myself, especially in connection with this Bill. The reasons on which I oppose this Billሄand I. am sure the reasons on which my hon. and learned colleague would oppose itሄare quite irrespective of the special claims of the City of London, and are based on broader issues which have their roots deep in the constitution of this country. But before I come to that consideration, may I say one word on a speech which has received no reply, and on which hardly any comments have been made? I mean the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean. The right hon. Gentleman, while strongly in favour of the principles of the Bill, as we should all anticipate, explained that in his opinion the Bill, as it was at present drafted, or indeed any Bill on the lines of this proposal, would prove unworkable and costly in practice. I do not

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  propose to resurvey or to restate the arguments to which no reply has even been attempted from the Benches opposite. I only remind the House that, while I should concur with the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill that these are matters to be dealt with in Committee, the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean speaks with peculiar authority on these questions of registration; and, while strongly advocating, and indeed supporting with passion, the general principle of the Bill and the object at which it aims, he thinks the Bill as drafted is not merely in its details, but in its very essence based on lines which make it unworkable in practice. That is a consideration Parliamentary time in an attempt to pass this measure into law. I do not propose to deal with the details to-night. I propose merely to touch on the broad principle which I conceive underlies the Measure as a whole, and which animated the Government in bringing it forward. The right hon. Gentleman who has made almost his maiden efforts in this House in bringing forward a Bill of first-class importance has convinced all his friendsሄamong whom I hope I may be counted as oneሄ that he is perfectly capable of undertaking this, or even a more onerous, task. If he will allow me one criticism of his method of treatment, I think that the very liveliness with which he presented his subject to the House has rather disguised, perhaps even from himself, certainly from his audience, the serious character of the proposals he has made and their wide-reaching effect. Supposing a Minister of the Crown had come forward and had suggested that university representation in England, Scotland, and Ireland should be put an end to. He would have, of course, received a great measure of support from hon. members opposite who have never liked that form of representation. But every one would
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  have admitted that it was an immense change in the whole view of our Parliamentary system, because University representation is of very old standing. Every one would have felt bound to consider what class of men it was, what element of electoral distinction Universities have added to this House, how far our debates have from time to time been raised by the representatives of the Universities, and what was the comparative loss or gain to the community by the destruction of our Universities as constituent bodies. That element would have been vehemently fought had it been brought forward by itself, to say nothing of a debate on the Second Reading of a measure where it is wrapped up, where it is lost, as it were, in the general provisions of the Bill, and has called forth hardly a transient reference. The right hon. Gentleman himself, I think, seemed to be under the impression, or, at all events, desired to convey to the House the impression, that University representation would not be touched by this measure. But that is not really the case. If you pass this Bill it is, of course, impossible to say how many Masters of Arts of Oxford and Cambridge, of Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Aberdeen would prefer their votes for the University to the vote for their places of residence. Though no one can make that forecast, which it is beyond the power of any prophet to state with any approach to accuracy, who can doubt that the character of the University seats would be entirely destroyed? They would be mere wrecks of their historic selves if the Bill now before us is passed. I do not attempt to argue University representation to-night; but may I say that those who vote for this Bill are consciously or unconsciously going to destroy, without discussion, without argument, without full public consideration, one of the most dignified and most interesting elements in our composite electoral system? That alone should cause the House to pause before it starts on this movement

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  for what, I suppose, the right hon. Gentleman would call reform. But I venture to suggest that it is worthy the subject and worthy the House, if University representation is to be abolished, that the proposition should come before us in its integrity, in a clear and specific form, and not wrapped up and beclouded in a Bill which simply deals with the question of one man one vote. I do not propose to say anything more on the question of the Universities. I will pass by a question that excites the interest of many members of this House who appear to think that this is a Bill to leave the agricultural labourer with one vote and to prevent the squires having more than one. As the right hon. baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean has adequately shown, this is not a question of the big landlord against the agricultural labourer, or of the big landlord against the small landlord. It really is in the main a question of the business men outside our great business centres, and in many cases working men. I do do not say in many constituencies, but I do say in many cases. I have been given authentic information by a friend of mine, who informs me that he himself has many votersሄhe is a country memberሄwho are working men who have bought freehold property in the town where they work. Is that an absurd proposition? Is that untrue, or, if true, laughable? I know it is true, and I do not think it is ludicrous. But the main question I quite admit is, after all, that of the business man who lives outside the place where his business is carried on. And I would venture respectfully to suggest to the House that it is folly, on the ground of a mere symmetrical improvement in your electoral system, to say that a man whose interests
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  are in Manchester, or Liverpool, or London, or any other great business centre you may choose to name, and whose residence is outside, should be compelled to choose between the two places in which his interests are so immediate and living. The real fact is, Sir, that we shall each of us vote on this question according to the point of view from which we approach it. I confess I approach it from the historic point of view. Our system of representation has grown up on lines well known to the Members of this House. It is essentially based upon local representation, which has for its essential and clear note that this House shall consist of men who represent localities and local groups. That is the foundation of the greatest and freest institution in the world. I think on this foundation we should continue to live; I do not think you can improve upon it. You may modify, and you ought to modify, from time to time the structure you build on this foundation, because as a great community like ours grows the actual demarcation of constituencies requires to be changed. You find the population in one place multiply exceedingly; you find the population in another place stationary or even diminishing. That will require, and must require, from time to time Redistribution Bills, such as have always accompanied Reform Bills in the past, and such as you would have to pass if manhood suffrage became the law of the land to-morrow. I say what we have to build upon, as regards the franchise part of our electoral system, is the historic basis on which every stateman so far has built, and which had no more passionate or consistent admirer than Mr. Gladstone, who himself, I suppose, had a hand in more Reform Bills, one way or the other,

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  than any statesman who ever lived, except, perhaps, Lord John Russell. If you reject this historic foundation, what are you going to put in its place? I heard a speech from an hon. Member below the gangway who spoke before dinner, and he seemed to think it was an obvious axiomatic principle of politics that every individual male over twenty-one in the community should have a vote, and that no man should have more than one vote. And, I presume, every man's vote should be of equal value. That is approaching the question, not from the historical side, which I confess commends itself to me as it has commended itself, I believe, to every eminent politician—I am not claiming eminence—who has had to produce a Reform Bill in this House; it is approaching it from the purely theoretical aspect. If you are to be theoretical, in Heaven's name let your theories be consistent, logical, and carried out to their extreme issue. Is this logical; is it carried out to its extreme issue? Even from the speculative point of view, which I repudiate, but which commends itself so greatly to the majority of the House, has it the semblance of merit? In the first place, why is this suffrage to be confined to males over twenty-one? Why not females? I speak, of course, only for myself; but I can assure the House that if we are going to deal with our suffrage system upon these theoretical lines I certainly should not so belie the obvious logic of the situation as to refuse my assent to female suffrage as well as to male suffrage. I perfectly understand those who say the British Constitution has grown up on this local representation and property representation with all its variety, which has been no unhealthy element in our public and
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  political life. But if that is to be swept away, if you are going to consider the rights of humanity in the abstract, then humanity includes females as well as males. It is perfect folly to ask this House to accept as a logical and symmetrical solution of this suffrage question a principle which is to exclude more than half the adult population of these islands. I do not know what are the views of the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill; I rather think he is a violent opponent of woman's suffrage. Then do not let him come to us and say, "In my opinion, every man, from the point of view of the suffrage, is equal because he is a man." "A man's a man for a' that." But a woman's a woman for a' that; and if you are going to force this House to treat the question of suffrage as it was the fashion to treat it in the early days of the French Revolution, then, I say, you must be a little more logical than our French friends, and let us in dealing with the rights of humanity not forget that more than half the British humanity consists of the sex which the right hon. Gentleman does not propose to enfranchise. Now, Sir, there is lastly the question of the equality in the value of votes. A great deal has been made to-night with regard to the redistribution proposals of the late Government. They were based on the view that the anomalies of our existing system had grown to a point at which they required correction; but that it was not either necessary or desirable to aim at the actual symmetry of electoral areas all over the country; and if it is any consolation to hon. Members from Ireland, I would remind them that there was no attempt whatever, and we were reproached for it by some, to reduce the Irish representation

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  to its proper numerical proportions. ["Oh, oh."] Well, that depends on the rules of simple arithmetic, which even Irish ingenuity cannot get over. I say there was no attempt to produce symmetry of electoral areas, but there was a sincere and genuine attempt to remove some of the greatest anomalies that now exist, and I say that is an effort which this House must make before it attempts to touch such questions as those raised by this Bill. At all events, the redistribution problem is consistent with the whole historical traditions of this country. Let us, therefore, deal with it before we alter our whole system, change its spirit, and introduce some speculative axioms with regard to the equality of men, or the equality of women, and the inherent rights of each individual. Let us, at all events, make the historical building conveniently habitable, and then only shall we be able to approach the more difficult problems which the right hon. Gentleman has attempted in a light and airy and graceful spirit to deal with, I think he will find they are far beyond his powers, or the powers of this House, to attempt to solve in isolation. You cannot bring in a Bill obviously animated by partisan spirit. You cannot choose out of all the innumerable difficulties and anomalies which undoubtedly our present system presents to the critical intellect a single anomaly which you think helps you electorally. The thing is too crude, it is too obviously self-seeking, it has behind it too little real feeling. It does away in, I think, the rashest spirit with a very wise provision of the present law which does not divorce the residence of the man of business from the place in which he does his business. The right hon. Gentleman has seized on one particular point, and has ignored other
  294
  questions which have much more to do with the supposed equality between man and man; and when we examine it we see that it has no historic root in the traditions either of the country or of the Party to which he belongs. What we do see, and the only thing we see, is that this Bill is designed without disguise and without doubt for no other purpose than to strengthen the electoral position of the Party to which he belongs. That is not the spirit in which a great change in the British Constitution should be approached. That is not the spirit which ought to animate a Government which might have been satisfied, I should have supposed, with its recent triumph. The best friend of the right hon. Gentleman, one of the most ardent supporters of the Government, tells the Prime Minister that the principle of the Bill is unworkable. I believe it is unworkable. But quite apart from its impracticability, I object, as we all on this side of the House object, to the spirit in which it is introduced, to the motives which evidently animate the Government, to the utter oblivion shown by the framers of the Bill not merely of the spirit of the Constitution they desire to amend, but even of those speculative principles to which they, in their speeches of to-night have paid so loud but so empty a homage.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN,): The right hon. Gentleman has argued against this Bill, but I observed that there were one or two arguments used by his followers which he did not adopt. It is in truth, a simple, although, I hope, a strong and efficacious, one, of which it may be said with greater truth than is can be said of most subjects discussed

  295
  in the House, that I do not think that any speech is likely to alter a single vote-Every man who is in favour of plural voting will vote against the Bill and every man who is against plural voting will vote for the Bill. There is, therefore, not much room for argument in the ordinary sense. The right hon. Gentleman said that this Bill is introduced from purely Party motives. Well, that is the easiest thing in the world to say, and the next easiest thing is to reply to it, for you have only to say that it is in a partisan spirit and from partisan motives you oppose the Bill. The one is certainly and actually as true as the other. The right hon. Gentleman says we should proceed by the historical method and have regard to the history of British Parliamentary representation, and up to a certain point I agree, although I am one of those who think, as Molière has expressed it when told of habits founded on those of other days—
  "People of other days were people of other days; we are people of to-day."
  It is quite possible that arrangements in our Constitution—if we can so speak of haphazard anomalies that have been introduced—suited the circumstances and conditions of previous days, and yet may not be applicable without gross injustice to our own day. It is said we leave untouched many glaring anomalies. Of course we do; we do not profess to go over the whole range of the electoral system of the country, curing all the defects that require treatment; but we say this of the Bill— that it does not aggravate any anomaly. While it takes away one great anomaly and removes one great grievance and does not aggravate any anomaly of which we can complain, it paves the way for that pet doctrine of one vote one value which
  296
  is the darling theory of hon. Gentlemen opposite. How can you ascertain the facts on which to frame any scheme of one vote one value when you have these accidental haphazard distributions of voting vower? Now what is the grievance created by this system of plural voting? I take it to be this. We have an elaborate system of registration, and we make it very difficult for a voter to get on the register. That is a remnant of old days when the vote was much more of a trust and less of a right than it is now; when voters were few, and exercised their privilege as trustees for the rest of the nation who had no votes. I do not say we have taken away that character altogether, but we have largely reduced it from what it once was. In those days it was right to see that no unqualified man got himself put upon the register; but now our object ought to be to see that no qualified man is kept off the register. It is for that purpose we go on amending our registration laws. Well, when a man does get the vote and the polling day comes round he goes to the poll, and what does he find? Not his friends and neighbours, not the people who, like himself, are interested in the locality about which they make much ado, but stranger from different parts of the county. What do you see at county elections at which, by some extroardinary arrangement I never could quite comprehend, freeholders in certain large towns dump —to use the elegant language of tariff reformers—themselves down, strangers not familiar with the locality and ignorant to a large extent of its needs and desires, and overbear the votes of those resident in the locality? I say that it is a great grievance, and that it really thwarts and vitiates the object

  297
  of our representative system. This is a simple Bill, and puts an end to the possibility of this misfortune happening, and it does it in the simplest way without taking any right from a qualified voter. It takes no right from a qualified voter, but it says he shall exercise his right upon one occasion. The right hon. Gentleman says this will be harmful to University representation; but what a poor opinion he must have of the gratitude and affection of the graduate to his University, if it comes to this, that, having to make a selection, he sacrifices his University vote. I have been restrained from speaking on this subject until this Parliament, for I had a near and dear relative in University representation; but as he is no longer here, I may say that, excellent as the representation may be, the representatives are returned by men who in former days received more or less education within the walls of the University. The whole thing is an anomaly, and this Bill strikes no blow at University representation, unless there is a feeling among graduates that their votes as such are the least valuable part of the voting power they possess. Then I would say a word or two upon the question of locality being the absolute foundation of our representative system. Is a man having property in a great many divisions to have a sacred inalienable right to vote in as many divisions as he has property in? Is this your Tory democracy? All I can say is I think it will be found that this is not the line of progress that will be followed by the great mass of the people of this country. Is it a sacred principle, this of property representation?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I did not say so;
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I do not say that the right hon Gentleman made this the staple of his argument; But what is this right of property if we deal with it historically? Locality is its essence. Now, the Party opposite introduced a great county government a measure some years ago. In the very forefront of that Act it is laid down that there is to be no plural voting, and that is for a county council which is to deal with purely local matters. But are the local matters at one end of a big county always identical with those of the other end of a big county? Supposing a man has property in two or three. parts of a big county. Why should not he, on the theory of hon. Gentlemen opposite, have a plural vote for each part? The locality was abandoned in that case. The other argument put forward besides the argument of locality was that put forward by the mover of the Amendment, who said a man did not vote as a man, but as a propertied man. I repudiate altogether that theory. If it is a theory which has tradition and historical weight behind it, then the sooner we pass this Bill and get free from that idea the better, because in the future, whatever it may have been in the past, the voting power of this country must be in the voter himself because he is a qualified voter, and not on account of his property. Complaint is made that we have not gone far enough, and fault is found that we ought to have introduced a much more comprehensive a much more logical, and a much more sweeping measure. It is said we do harm instead of good by dealing with one thing at a time. That is not our view of this question. Here is an undoubted grievance, it is an undoubted anomaly, and, I go further and say,

  299
  an undoubted absurdity, in our representative system. It can be dealt with by itself—totus, teres, atque rotundus. It is a thing by itself which can be dealt with separately, and by this Bill we propose to deal with it separately, so as to remove that anomaly and to

  AYES.

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

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Burnyeat, J. D. W.

  Edwards, Frank (Radnor)

  Adkins, W. Ryland

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Elibank, Master of

  Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C.

  Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Chas.

  Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

  Agnew, George William

  Byles, William Pollard

  Erskin, David C.

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Cairns, Thomas

  Esmonde, Sir Thomas

  Alden, Percy

  Caldwell, James

  Evans, Samuel T.

  Allen, A Acland (Christchurch)

  Cameron, Robert

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Armstrong, W. C. Heaton

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Faber, G. H. (Boston)

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard K.

  Fenwick, Charles

  Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert H.

  Cawley Frederick

  Ferens, T. R.

  Astbury, John Meir

  Chance, Frederick William

  Ferguson, R. C. Munro

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Channing, Francis Allston

  Findlay, Alexander

  Baker, Jir John (Portsmouth)

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

  Churchill, Winston Spencer

  Fuller, John Michael F.

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Fullerton, Hugh

  Barker, John

  Clarke, C. Goddard (Peckham)

  Gibb, James (Harrow)

  Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

  Cleland, J. W.

  Gill, A. H.

  Barnard, E. B.

  Clough, W.

  Ginnell, L.

  Barnes, G. N.

  Coats, Sir T. Glern (Renfrew, W

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbt. John

  Barran, Rowland Hirst

  Cobbold, Felix Thornley

  Glendinning, R. G.

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Glover, Thomas

  Beale, W. P.

  Collins, SirWm. J. (S.Pancras, W

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  Beauchamp, E.

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Gooch, George Peabody

  Beaumont, W. C. B. (Hexham)

  Cooper, G. J.

  Grant, Corrie

  Beck, A. Cecil

  Corbett, CH (Sussex, E. Grinst'd)

  Greenwood, G. (Peterborough

  Bell, Richard

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Greenwood, Hamar (York)

  Bellairs, Carlyon

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward

  Benn, John Williams (Devon'rt

  Cowan, W. H.

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  Benn, W. (T'wr Hamlets, S. Geo

  Cox, Harold

  Grove, Archibald

  Bennett, E. N.

  Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  Berridge, T. H. D.

  Crean, Eugene

  Gulland, John W.

  Bertram, Julius

  Cremer, William Randal

  Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

  Bethnell, J. H. (Essex, Romford

  Crombie, John William

  Hall, Frederick

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Crooks, William <ob/>

  Halpin, J.

  Billson, Alfred

  Crosfield, A. H.

  Hammond, John

  Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

  Cross, Alexander

  Hardcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis

  Black, A. W. (Bedfordshire)

  Crossley, William J.

  Hardie, J. Keir (MerthyrTydvil

  Boland, John

  Dalmeny, Lord

  Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)

  Bolton, T. D. (Derbyshire, N.E.

  Dalziel, James Henry

  Harmsworth, Cecil B.(Worc'r)

  Bottomley, Horatio

  Davies, Timothy (Fulham)

  Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithn'ss-sh

  Brace, William

  Devlin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway)

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Bramsdon, T. A.

  Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

  Harwood, George

  Branch, James

  Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.

  Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

  Brigg, John

  Dickinson, W.H. (St Pancras, N

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Brocklehurst, W. D.

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Brodie, H. C.

  Dillon, John

  Hazel, Dr. A. E.

  Brooke, Stopford

  Dobson, Thomas W.

  Hazleton, Richard

  Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs, Leigh)

  Dolan, Charles Joseph

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Brunner, Sir John T (Cheshire)

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Bryce, Rt. Hn. James (Aberden

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness

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

  Bryce, J. A. (Inverness Burghs)

  Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)

  Henry, Charles S.

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

  Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

  Buckmaster, Stanley O.

  Dunne, Major E. M.(Walsall)

  Higham, John Sharp

  Burke, E. Haviland-

  Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)

  Hobart, Sir Robert

  place this part of our electoral system upon a rational basis.
  Question put.
  The House divided —Ayes, 403; Noes, 95. (Division List No. 72.)

  Hobhouse, Charles E. H.

  Money, L. G. Chiozza

  Russell, T. W.

  Hodge, John

  Mooney, J. J.

  Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

  Holden, E. Hopkinson

  Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen

  Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

  Hope, W Bateman (Somerset, N

  Morley, Rt. Hon. John

  Scarisbrick, T. T. L.

  Horniman, Emslie John

  Morrell, Philip

  Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Morse, L. L.

  Schwann, Chas, E. (Manchester

  Hutton, Alfred Eddison

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne

  Hyde, Clarendon

  Murphy, John

  Seaverns, J. H.

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Murray, James

  Seddon, J.

  Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

  Myer, Horatio

  Seely, Major J. B.

  Jackson, R. S.

  Napier, T. B.

  Shackleton, David James

  Johnson, John (Gateshed)

  Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

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

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Nicholson, Chas. N. (Doncaster

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Jones, DavidBrynmor (Swansea

  Nolan, Joseph

  Sheehy, David

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Norman, Henry

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Silcock, Thomas Ball

  Jowett, F. W.

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Simon, John Allsebrook

  Joyce, Michael

  Nuttall, Harry

  Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid.)

  Solan, Thomas Henry

  Kekewich, Sir George

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie

  Kennedy, Vincent Paul

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W

  Smyth, Thomas (Leitrim, S.)

  Kilbride, Denis

  O'Connor, John (Kildare N.)

  Snowden, P.

  Kincaid-Smith, Captain

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Kitson, Sir James

  O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

  Spicer, Albert

  Laidlaw, Robert

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

  Stanger, H. Y.

  Lamb, Edmund G (Leominster

  O'Grady, J.

  Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph(Chesh.

  Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Steadman, W. C.

  Lambert, George

  O'Kelly, Jas. (Roscommon, N.)

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Lamont, Norman

  O'Malley, William

  Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)

  Law, Hugh Alexander

  O'Mara, James

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Leese, Sir J. F. (Accrington)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Straus, B. S. (Mile End)

  Lehmann, R, C.

  O'Shee, James John

  Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

  Lever, A. Levy (EssexHarwich

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Stuart, James (Sunderland)

  Lever,W.H.(Cheshire, Wirral)

  Paul, Herbert

  Sullivan, Donal

  Levy, Maurice

  Paulton, James Mellor

  Summerbell, T.

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Leek)

  Sutherland, J. E.

  Lloyd-George, Rt, Hon. David

  Pearce, William (Limehouse)

  Taylor, John W. (Durham)

  Lough, Thomas

  Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)

  Taylor, Theodore C.(Radcliffe)

  Lundon, W.

  Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton

  Tennant, E. P. (Salisbury)

  Lupton, Arnold

  Philipps, J. Wynford (Pembroke

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

  Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

  Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)

  Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.

  Lyell, Charles Henry

  Pickerskill, Edward Hare

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.

  Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Thomason, Franklin

  Macdonald, J. M.(Falkirk B'ghs

  Pollard, Dr.

  Thompson,J.W.H.(SomersetE.

  Mackarness, Frederic C.

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Thorne, William

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Price, Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Tomkinson, James

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

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

  Torrance, A. M.

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.

  Radford, G. H.

  Toulmin, George

  MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.

  Rainy, A. Rolland

  Trerelyan, Charles Philips

  M'Callum, John M.

  Raphael, Herbert H.

  Ure, Alexander

  M'Crae, George

  Rea, Russell (Gloucester)

  Verney, F. W.

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'

  Vivian, Henry

  M'Kenna, Reginald

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford

  Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

  M'Killop, W.

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  Wallace, Robert

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

  Rees, J. D.

  Walsh, Stephen

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

  Renton, Major Leslie

  Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent

  M'Micking, Major G.

  Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mp'n

  Ward, W.Dudley(Southampt'n

  Maddison, Frederick

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Wardle, George J.

  Mallet, Charles E.

  Ridsdale, E. A.

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln)

  Roberts, Chas. H. (Lincoln)

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan

  Marks, G.Croydon(Launceston)

  Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

  Wason, John Cathcart(Orkney)

  Marnham, F. J.

  Roberts, John H. (Denbighs)

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

  Robertson, Rt. Hn. E.(Dundee

  Wedgwood, Josiah C.

  Massie, J.

  Robertson, Sir GScott(Bradf'rd

  Whitbread, Howard

  Masterman, C. F. G.

  Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

  White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire

  Meagher, Michael

  Robinson, S.

  White, Luke (York, E.R.)

  Meehan, Patrick A.

  Robson, Sir Wm. Snowdon

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Menzies, Walter

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Whitehead, Rowland

  Micklem, Nathaniel

  Rose, Charles Day

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Molteno, Percy Alfred

  Rowlands, J.

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Mond, A.

  Runciman, Walter

  Wiles, Thomas

  302

  303

  Wilkie, Alexander

  Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)

  Young, Samuel

  Williams J. (Glamorgan)

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

  Yoxall, James Henry

  Willaims, Osmond (Merioneth)

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

  Williams, W. L. (Carmarthen)

  Winfrey, R.

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

  Williamson, A (Elgin and Nairn

  Wodehouse, Lord(Norfolk,Mid.

  Wills, Arthur Walters

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  Woodhouse,SirJ.T.(Huddersf'd

  NOES.

  Anson, Sir Wm. Reynell

  Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Anstruther-Gray, Major

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Fell, Arthur

  Pease, H. Pike (Darlington)

  Ashley, W. W.

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Percy, Earl

  Aubrey-Fletcher,Rt.Hon.SirH.

  Flethcer, J. S.

  Powell. Sir Francis Sharp

  Balcarres, Lord

  Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East

  Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne

  Balfour, Rt. Hn. A.J.(CityLond

  Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

  Rawlinson, John Frederick P.

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Roberts, S. (Sheffield,Eccleshall

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Hardy, L. (Kent, Ashford)

  Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

  Baring, Hn. Guy (Winchester)

  Harrison-Broadley, Col. H. B.

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Helmsley, Viscount

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos.Myles

  Bowles, G. Stewart

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

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Bridgeman, W. Clive

  Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury)

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Bull, Sir William James

  Hill, Henry Staveley (Staff'sh

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

  Butcher, Samuel Henry

  Hills, J. W.

  Stanley, Hon. A. (Ormskirk)

  Carlile, E. Hildred

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Starkey, John R.

  Cave, George

  Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.

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

  Cavendish, Rt. Hn. VictorC.W.

  Kenyon-Slaney,Rt.Hon.Col.W

  Thomson, W. Mitchell(Lanark)

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Keswick, William

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm

  King, Sir H. Seymour (Hull)

  Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard

  Clarke, Sir E. (City London)

  Lane-Fox, G. R.

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Coates, E. Feetham (Lewisham

  Lee, Arthur H (Hants,Fareham

  Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)

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

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

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

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Courthope, G. Loyd

  Lowe, Sir Francis William

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

  Craig, Chas. Curtis (Antrim, S

  M'Calmont, Colonel James

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Craig, Capt. James (Down, E.

  Magnus, Sir Philip

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B.Stuart-

  Dalrymple, Viscount

  Marks, H. H. (Kent)

  Younger, George

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Du Cros Harvey

  Morpeth, Viscount

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:—Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Mr. Forster.

  Duncan Robert (Lanark,Govan

  Muntz, Sir Philip A.

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield

  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday next.

  EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVE CHILDREN [SCOTLAND] BILL.
  Read the third time, and passed.

  SALE OF COKE BILL.
  Order for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [11th May] read, and discharged.
  Bill withdrawn.

  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) [EXPENSES].
  Committee to consider of authorising the payment, out of moneys provided b Parliament, of an additional Annual Grant to local education authorities, and of the remuneration and expenses of the Commissioners appointed in pursuance of any Act of the Present session to make further provision with respect to education in England and Wales (King's recommendation signified), tomorrow.—(Mr. Birrell.)
  Adjourned at twenty minutes after Eleven o'clock.