Commons Sitting of 2 August 1907

Preamble
The House met at Twelve noon of the Clock.
NEW MEMBER SWORN.
John Muldoon, esquire, for the county of Wicklow (East Wicklow Division).

COMMISSION.
Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.
The House went; and, having returned,
Mr. SPEAKERreported the Royal Assent to a number of Bills. (See page 1373.)

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Collooney, Ballina, and Belmullet Railways and Piers Bill; Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Bill.— Lords' Amendments considered, and agreed to.
Aberdeen Corporation Electricity Bill [Lords]. — Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Midland Railway Bill [Lords] (King's consent signified). — Bill read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Portishead District Water Bill [Lords].—Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Birkenhead Corporation Water Bill [Lords]. — As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
Paisley Corporation Order Confirmation Bill. — Read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.

PETITIONS.
  CONGO FREE STATE.
  Petition from Stroud and Mid-Gloucester, for protection of the Native Races; to lie upon the Table.
LAND VALUES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Petition from Aberdeen, for alteration; to lie upon the Table.
SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY.
Petition from Reading, for prohibition; to lie upon the Table.
SMALL LANDHOLDERS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Petition from Kirkcudbright, for alteration; to lie upon the Table.
WEEKLY REST-DAY BILL.
Petition from Tooting Junction and other places, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.

  LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT, 1887 (EVICTION NOTICES).
  Copy presented, of Return of Eviction Notices filed during the quarter ended
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  30th June, 1907 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  POST OFFICE (FOREIGN AND COLONIAL PARCEL POST).
  Copy presented, of the Foreign and Colonial Parcel Post Amendment (No. 9) Warrant, dated 19th July, 1907 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  TUBERCULOSIS (HUMAN AND BOVINE) (ROYAL COMMISSION).
  Copy presented, of Appendix, Part II. (two volumes), to the Second Interim Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the relations of Human and Animal Tuberculosis [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  POLLING DISTRICTS (COUNTY OF STAFFORD).
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Council of the County of Stafford altering the Handsworth Sandwell (South) Polling District of the Handsworth Parliamentary Division of Staffordshire [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (SCOTLAND).
  Copy presented, of Memorandum on the Teaching of Drawing [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL).
  Copy presented, of Colonial Report No. 532 (Surveys of British Africa, Annual Report of the Colonial Survey Committee, Second Year, to July, 1907) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  PAPER LAID UPON THE TABLE BY THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE. —SUPREME COURT (RULES)
  Copy of Rules of the Supreme Court, dated 3rd August, 1907 [by Act].

  VALUATION OF LANDS (SCOTLAND) ACT.
  Copy ordered, "of the Valuation of Lands (Scotland) Act, 1854, and of amending Acts." —(Mr. Sinclair.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No 284.]

  LOCAL TAXATION ACCOUNT, 1906–7.
  Return ordered, "showing, in respect of the financial year ended the 31st day of March, 1907, the distribution of the

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  moneys paid into the Local Taxation Account in pursuance of the provisions of the Local Government Act, 1888, the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890, the Finance Act, 1894, and other Acts (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 351, of Session 1906)."— (Dr. Macnamara.)

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Plastering Contracts at New Post Office Buildings, Carter Lane.
  MR. HORNIMAN: To ask the Postmaster-General whether the plastering work at the new offices in Carter Lane has been sub-let by the contractor; if so, has this been done with his sanction; and for what reason and why was not the plastering, if necessarily executed by another contractor, separately tendered for, as was done for such work at the War Office, Home Office, and Victoria and Albert Museum.
  (Answered by Mr. Harcourt.) I am informed by the contractor that the plastering work has not been sub-let.

  Conveyance of Mails to the East
  MR. HAROLD COX: To ask the Postmaster-General, assuming the total charge for the conveyance of British mails to Shanghai to be 4s. 3d. per lb. by French packet and 4s. 10d. per lb. by German packet, what proportion of each charge is represented by the cost of conveyance from London to Brindisi; and whether he can assign any reason for the difference in the charges.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The mails in question are not conveyed by way of Brindisi. Those conveyed by French packet are embarked at Marseilles, and those conveyed by German packet are embarked at Naples. The cost of the conveyance through France to Marseilles is about 7d. per lb., and that of the conveyance through France and Italy to Naples is about 1s. 2d. per lb.
  MR. HAROLD COX: To ask the Postmaster-General whether any British mails are sent to London from Hong Kong via the Trans Siberian Railway; if so, what is the time taken in transmission; and, if not, what would be the time
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  on the assumption that the time taken from Shanghai to London is twenty days.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) No direct mails are sent to London from Hong Kong by the Trans-Siberian route, but correspondence from that Colony arrives in the mails from Shanghai. The usual time of transit from Hong Kong to Shanghai is about three days; and the transit from Hong Kong to London by way of Shanghai and the Trans-Siberian Railway would thus be about twenty-three days, if no break occurred in the connection.
  MR. HAROLD COX: To ask the Postmaster-General what is the packet company which is responsible for the conveyance of letters from this country to Shanghai via Vancouver; what is the total subsidy paid to this company, and what is the total number of pounds of letters carried per annum to all destinations comprised within the terms of the contract; and whether the company performs any other services in return for the subsidy paid to it.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The mail service from this country to Shanghai via Vancouver is performed by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The subsidy paid to the company is £60,000 per annum, which covers the conveyance of mails by rail across Canada as well as the conveyance by sea across the Atlantic and the Pacific. The weight of correspondence sent in mails made up in this country and conveyed to Japan and China during the year 1906 by this service was 187,100 pounds, as stated in the reply to the hon. Member's Question of 23rd March last. The weight of mails since the new subsidised boats began to run shows a very large and substantial increase. In addition the company conveyed (a) mails exchanged with Canada, (b) mails from Japan and China for the United Kingdom, and (c) certain mails from and for the Continent of Europe. The company also conveyed parcel mails. The weight of these mails is not recorded. In addition to the mail service the company undertakes the conveyance of Government passengers and stores and is under special obligations in regard to the sale or hire of ships of the Crown. The hon. Member will find the particulars of these responsibilities set out in

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  Clauses 34, 35, 36, and 37 of the contract.
  MR. HAROLD COX: To ask the Postmaster-General what is the packet company that conveys letters from this country to Hong Kong via Suez; what is the total subsidy paid to this company, and what is the total number of pounds of letters carried per annum to all destinations comprised within the terms of the contract; and whether the company performs any other services in return for the subsidy paid to it.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The hon. Member presumably refers to the British packet service, which is performed by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The total subsidy at present paid to the company is £340,000 per annum. Under the new contract which has just been signed this will be reduced to £305,000. The total weight of the correspondence contained in the letter mails conveyed by the company on behalf of the United Kingdom to all destinations, and on behalf of India and British Colonies to the United Kingdom, in 1906 was 6,865,000 pounds. The weight of foreign mails and of intermediate Colonial mails conveyed by the company at the present time cannot be stated, as the statistics on which payment

  Number sentenced to death.

  Number of eases in which application has been made to the Home Office.

  Number respited.

  England, 1906

  27

  23

  18

  England, 1907 †

  9

  8

  6

  Wales, 1906

  None

  None

  None

  Wales, 1907†

  Scotland, 1906

  None

  None

  None

  Scotland, 1907†

  1

  1

  1

  † To end of June, 1907.

  Holidays of Trinidad Labourers.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can now state what are the
  to this office for the conveyance of these mails is based are taken at long intervals only. The contract with the company provides not only for a mail service to Hong Kong with extension to Shanghai, but for services to India, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, and Australia. The company conveys parcel mails as well as letter mails, and is under certain obligations regarding the conveyance of Government passengers and stores and the sale of their ships to the Government.

  Sentences of Death.
  MR. RAWLINSON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the number of persons sentenced to death for murder in England, Wales, and Scotland, respectively, during the past eighteen months; in how many of such cases has application been subsequently made to the Home Office; and in how many of such cases has the death sentence been remitted.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The figures are given below. Those for 1907 include only persons sentenced up to 30th June. The Scottish figures were obtained from the Secretary for Scotland, who advises on the exercise of the prerogative in Scottish cases.
  legal holidays mentioned in the contract to which Trinidad labourers indentured on the Panama Canal are entitled; and what provision exists for ensuring that such holidays are duly granted.
  (Answered by Mr. Churchill.) At the present I can only refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to a similar Question on the 25th of July, as I am still unable to give the information asked for. † I understand, however, that my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is making inquiries on the subject of the holidays granted to the labourers.

  Female French Polishers in Dockyards.
  MR. O'GRADY: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether there are any females employed in the Government dockyards at the work of French polishing; if so, how many, and what are the wages, hours, and conditions of employment; whether female has displaced male labour at this work; and, if so, for what reason.
  (Answered by Mr. Edmund Robertson.) The experiment of employing women on this work was introduced at Devonport dockyard in the year 1904. Four women are employed at wages varying from 16s. to 17s. a week. I am informed that the experiment was made in imitation of the practice in the private trade.

  Scottish Land Valuation Laws.
  MR. YOUNGER: To ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he will issue to the members of the Scottish Grand Committee, before it meets to consider the Land Values (Scotland) Bill, a White Paper containing the Lands Valuation (Scotland) Act, 1854, with the amending Acts, showing their application to the Land Values (Scotland) Bill.
  (Answered by Mr. Sinclair.) It appears that the Valuation Act, 1854, is out of print. I am arranging for a reprint of that Act, and hope that this will meet the hon. Member's wishes.

  Scheme for Division of Castlecaldwell Lands, County Fermanagh.
  MR. FETHERSTONHAUGH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners have
  † See (4) Debates, clxxix., 129–130.
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  made any arrangements to divide the demesne lands of Castlecaldwell, on the Bloomfield estate, county Fermanagh amongst neighbouring tenants; whether any scheme for division has been put forward by the parish priest; and will due regard be paid to the needs of Protestant small tenants, or any provision be made for providing evicted tenants in the district with new holdings on the untenanted lands of this demesne.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Estates Commissioners' inspector has inspected a portion of the lands referred to with a view to their being allotted amongst evicted tenants and the occupiers of small holdings, in the event of a sale to the Commissioners. The Commissioners are not aware that any scheme of division has been put forward by the parish priest. If the Commissioners should acquire the property they will, in allotting the land, pay due regard to the wants and circumstances of the tenants of small holdings irrespective of their religious belief, as to which no inquiry is made.

  Junior Assistant Mistresses in Schools with Attendance below Fifty.
  MR. MURPHY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether in schools where junior assistant mistresses were appointed they will be retained if the average attendance for the calendar year ending 31st December, 1907, be over fifty.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Commissioners of National Education inform me that the answer is in the affirmative, but they add that in schools in which the average attendance is fifty or upwards it is desirable that a female assistant teacher, as distinct from a junior assistant mistress, should be employed.

  Untenanted Land at Drumraney.
  SIR WALTER NUGENT: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will call the attention of the Estates Commissioners for Ireland to the fact that there is a quantity of untenanted land in the vicinity of Drumraney, county Westmeath, which the owners are willing to sell and the neighbouring people most anxious to buy; and if he will advise the

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  Commissioners to have the said lands inspected with a view to purchase at the earliest possible date.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Estates Commissioners are not aware to what particular lands the Question refers. If the hon. Baronet will furnish the names of the owners, the Commissioners will consider the question of communicating with them with a view to purchase the lands, if this has not already been done.

  Female French Polishers at Ordnance Factories.
  MR. O'GRADY: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether there are any females employed at French polishing in any of the workshops or factories under his Department; if so, how many; what are the wages, hours, and conditions of employment; whether female has displaced male labour at this work; and, if so, for what reason.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) No females are employed at French polishing in the ordnance factories.

  ADJOURNMENT.
  Resolved, That this House do, at the rising of the House this day, adjourn till Monday next. —(Mr. Herbert Lewis.)

  SMALL HOLDINGS AND ALLOTMENTS BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee C.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 285.]
  Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 285.]
  Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 300.]

  SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).
  Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONreported from the Committee of Selection that they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee
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  on Scottish Bills (added in respect of the Land Values (Scotland) Bill): Sir Randal Cremer; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Land Values (Scotland) Bill): Mr. Nicholls.
  Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONfurther reported from the Committee that they had discharged the following Members from the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills (added in respect of the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Bill): Mr. Thomas Frederick Richards, Mr. Hugh Law, and Sir Randal Cremer; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Bill): Mr. Curran, Mr. John O'Connor, and Mr. Nicholls.
  Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONfurther reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee B (in respect of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill): Mr. Mond; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill): Mr. George White.
  Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONfurther reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee B (added in respect of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill): Mr. Agnew; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill): Mr. Alexander Harvey.
  Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONfurther reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee B (in respect of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill): Mr. Rainy; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill): Mr. Lupton.
  Sir WILLIAM BRAMPTON GURDONfurther reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Members from Standing Committee C: Mr. Cave, Mr. George Faber, and Mr. Gretton; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Long, Earl Percy, and Mr. Abel Smith.
  Reports to lie upon the Table.

  EVICTED TENANTS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
  VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGHsaid it might be considered that he ought to suffer a certain amount of compunction in venturing to suggest the rejection of a measure which had been brought into the House under the patronage of the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman had already brought in two measures, both of which had met with an ignominious result, while one had been summarily rejected by those whom it was intended to benefit. Perhaps he might be justified in directing attention to an anology between the death of the Irish Council Bill and the birth of the present Bill, when he read the resolution passed by the United Irish League a week before the measure was brought into the House of Commons. That resolution was as follows —
  "That, recognising the failure of the Land Act of 1903 to satisfactorily settle the question of evicted tenants, this meeting of the National Directory strongly impresses on the Government the desirability of pressing forward with the greatest possible despatch the Bill for the compulsory reinstatement of a class in Ireland which has suffered and lost so much in the effort to alter a system of land tenure in this country which has justly merited universal condemnation. We are strongly of opinion that any measure enacted for this desirable end should give full power to the Estates Commissioners to fix the price of land compulsorily acquired for that purpose."
  He thought they could draw a very decided analogy between the words of that resolution and the object of the Bill which he was endeavouring to induce hon. Members to assist him in rejecting. He took the novel and unusual course of moving the entire rejection of a measure with the object of which he was entirely in sympathy, because he maintained that in view of the manner in which the Bill was carried out and of the compulsory powers it contained, the Government were taking an entirely unjustifiable course. He did not propose to go into the details of the measure but to confine himself to the broad principles which he maintained were of such an injurious character that they should have been most carefully con-
  1386
  sidered. He sincerely hoped that even those hon. Gentlemen who had made up their minds on the question already would give him the indulgence of listening to the remark she put forward against the Bill. It might be said that the matter had already been discussed ad nauseam. He did not agree with that assertion. He did not think they had had an opportunity of adequately discussing the Bill, and even if they had had such opportunity they would be merely following the lead of the Nationalists, who, with one object in view, pursued it repeatedly, emphatically, and relentlessly. He proposed to do exactly the same in regard to this Bill. He thought it would be admitted that by reason of the closure which had been applied they had been unable to have that unfettered and free discussion of the Bill which was so essential for any measure and most essential for such a measure as this, which was professedly in the interests of all classes of the community at large. He maintained, however, that it was of such an unjustifiable character that they should have had an opportunity of discussing it at greater length. He did not propose to enter into the details of the Bill, nor should he be in order in speaking of the closure; but he ventured to say that this measure had been more deleteriously affected by the action of the closure than perhaps any other measure. This weapon of oppression in the hands of the Governments if continually made use of was bound sooner or later to vitiate and check if not entirely arrest the most useful work in which for centuries past the House had been engaged. He could not believe that anyone in the House could affirm that the course of the Bill had been of a peaceful character, and he did not know that anybody could claim that the Government entirely adopted that spirit of conciliation which was absolutely necessary for a peaceful settlement on the lines which they desired. He wished to say a few words in regard to his own attitude on this Bill. He said without hesitation that he was entirely in favour of reinstating the evicted tenants where possible, but he maintained that that should only be carried out in an amicable and peaceful manner, and care should be taken

  1387
  that the tenant who was replaced should be restored in such a position that he would always be able to make an economic success of his holding. He would say certainly let all evicted tenants be reinstated and let bygones be bygones. This should be brought about if it could be done in any measure at all without any injustice to any section of the community in Ireland. The action of the Bill would bring about injustice to a certain class of the community who were not, in the circumstances of the case, deserving of being oppressed. He had no bitter feeling whatever against the evicted tenants; on the contrary, he had a feeling of compassion for those who had been led away and wilfully deceived by hon. Gentlemen below the gangway or their predecessors into refusing to pay their rents to their lawful landlords, and to paying them instead into the coffers of the Plan of Campaign. It was necessary however, in this world that we should all pay more or less for the follies we committed; still he had compassion for those evicted tenants who had relinquished their holdings in the manner described. It was for this reason, where injustice could be avoided, that he was prepared to support the reinstatement of these tenants in their own holdings or any other holdings acquired for that purpose. But the views of those with whom he was associated, and of hon. Members below the gangway, as to the manner in which the reinstatement was to be effected, were, he believed, almost diametrically opposed. Hon. Gentlemen would credit him with a desire for a settlement of the question, but he protested against this Bill which had been forced through the House of Commons with the aid of an unwieldy majority, most of whom had a minimum of knowledge of Irish affairs, and whose desire for Home Rule emanated from a preference for the room of the hon. Gentlemen below the gangway to their company in the House of Commons, and who looked on the Committee and Report stages of the Bill with pleasure as a means of materially adding to the number of divisions they had attended; a valuable proof to their constituents of industry in the House of Commons. He thought the Bill was unnecessary, because the principle which it affected was being expeditiously carried
  1388
  out under the Land Act of 1903. The Report of the Estates Commissioners showed that in the three years which had elapsed since the Act was brought into force 1,000 evicted tenants had been reinstated in their holdings. In support of his contention that the Bill was unnecessary, he would refer to an authority that he knew would obtain weight in the House. He referred to the late Chief Secretary, Mr. Bryce, who said on 29th October last year —
  "He entirely denied that it could be fairly said that the Act had failed in dealing with the evicted tenants. He did not think that the progress made had been inconsiderable, considering the difficulties which surrounded the question."
  That was a very important statement and a most decided justification of the view he put forward, that the Bill was of an entirely unnecessary character. He was convinced that what might be gained in additional expedition in reinstating these evicted tenants would be lost in the postponement for a generation, if not for a longer period, of that amicable settlement of affairs in Ireland which they all desired. He now came to the main objection to the Bill, viz., the principle of compulsion, which was a direct departure from all preconceived ideas of justice and equity— of justice between man and man— and a direct infringement of the rights and liberties of] the people. The analogy of acquiring land compulsorily for railway purposes was often cited, but he did not agree with it at all. The two purposes for which the land was to be compulsorily acquired were entirely different. A railway benefited a large section of the community, but in this Bill it was proposed to take land from one man and give it to another; it was proposed to evict one man from his farm simply for the purpose of putting another in his place. He maintained that this system was fraught with great danger to the rights and liberties of the individual and would have a far-reaching effect which the Government did not at the present moment contemplate. He believed that once compulsory power was given it would be extended to various matters which were not in the minds of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. Compulsion was the backbone of the Bill, and that was the reason why he ventured

  1389
  to move its rejection. The evicted tenant had emerged from the debates, so far as hon. Gentlemen below the gangway were concerned, as a sort of hero. He had been put forward as a man not sinning but as one who had been grievously sinned against, a man who had been summarily evicted at the whim of a capricious landlord. But they knew that the evicted tenant had been deprived of his holding for very good reasons, either because he was unable to pay his rent or had wilfully refused to pay the rent he had undertaken to pay, thus breaking the obligations into which he had entered. Under the Bill the evicted tenants were placed in the position of a privileged class, and were under no circumstances to be considered responsible for their misdeeds. The evicted tenant was to be replaced, if possible, in his original holding, and, if he mistook not, his arrears of rent were entirely ignored, while his debts were to be borne by someone else. All this was to be accomplished by ignoring the tenant who was called a "planter," who had nothing whatsoever against him except that he might be unpopular with a certain section of the friends of the lawbreakers. The planter had emerged from the debates as a man for whom no punishment was too severe — a man who, for his own pleasure, had assumed possession of a farm rightfully belonging to someone else, and was content to remain in it for the express purpose of annoying the evicted tenant. What were the real facts? The planter might have been in possession of his holding for twenty-five years. He might be a tenant; he might be an owner; he might have bought the land, and the circumstances might be such as to make it very harsh and hard to take him away from it. It was proposed under the Bill to reinstate the evicted tenants. There was nothing against the planter except, perhaps, that he had refused to be terrorised by the friends of the evicted tenant. He had perhaps gone so far as to ignore boycotting and other reprehensible devices which were brought about at the instigation of the agitators who professed to rule Ireland. He was for this purpose to be dispossessed of his holding and transferred to another part of the country; in a word, he was told that he had to begin life over
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  again. That was the avowed object of the whole thing, and he asked hon. Gentlemen opposite did they, for one moment, believe that a system of that kind could possibly settle the condition of affairs in Ireland? What guarantee had they against further hostilities or that these unfortunate individuals who had been removed from their holdings would not again be required to move away? He maintained that this was no solution of the question, and that the Bill if put into force could under no circumstances bring about the object they all had in view. He went further, and maintained that it was absolutely beyond belief that a measure of this description could be tolerated by the House of Commons. He did not wish that the punishment of the evicted tenants should be eternal, that they should be punished for their follies for all time. He was willing to let by-gones be by-gones as he had said. The evicted tenant had deliberately dispossessed himself of the rights which were his, and he ought to be considered by hon. Members of that House as in a secondary position to the planter, to the man who had taken the farm, and probably had carried on a livelihood in a courageous and efficient manner. The attitude of the Irish Party always seemed to him to be a very curious one. He believed that their innate and hereditary animosity against the planter prompted them to extend unbounded and perfectly superfluous sympathy to the evicted tenant, at the risk of outraging all those preconceived ideas of liberty and fair play of which they were the professed champions. He did not desire to see a caretaker in the farm. He would like to see the evicted tenant back again so long as no injustice was done to anyone. The attitude of the Irish Party had undergone a certain amount of change in regard to these compulsory powers. The hon. and learned Member for Water-ford said in June, 1903, that there was no intention to put into the Land Act any provision by which pressure direct or indirect could be brought to bear on the existing tenants, and that he would be no party to compulsion of any kind. He would like to know what had been the cause of the change of attitude on the part of the hon. and learned Member.

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  With regard to the number of tenants that were to be reinstated, they pressed the Chief Secretary in Committee to give them a little more information with regard to the number which it was proposed to reinstate in their holdings. The right hon. Gentleman could not claim to have been very explicit in the matter, and the Attorney-General went so far as to envelope all his statements with an air of great mystery. He would like the right hon. Gentleman to say that this Bill would be in operation only for a period of two or three years. There were no less than 4,000 tenants whose applications had been refused by the Estates Commissioners. What was to happen to them? As far as he could see from the Nationalist newspapers the demand for a settlement in regard to those 4,000 tenants would be brought up ad infinitum, and he looked forward, if the present Government remained in office long — and he hoped they would not — to other demands for reinstatement, and other deserving farmers would be evicted to make room for them. In conferring these powers on the three Commissioners the Government were adopting a very dangerous principle, because they were constituting an all-powerful body whose decisions would be of a final character. It might be said that this would be done on the grounds of economy because they did not wish to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to advance any more money for dispensing justice. It was an unheard of thing to appoint the purchaser of property as the arbiter of the price, and the proposal was bound to set up a series of gross anomalies. It was placing the Commissioners in a very serious position, and he did not think it would be possible for them to carry out their duties efficiently. He did not propose to say a word against the Commissioners, because he looked upon them simply as the machine for carrying out the duties allocated to them by their masters in office, and if there was any blame he should attribute that blame to the masters, who he considered were responsible for the actions of their subordinates. The argument had been continually put forward that these Commissioners were appointed by the Unionist Party. That was perfectly true, but they were appointed in con-
  1392
  nection with the Land Act of 1903, and the duties they had to carry out devolved upon them under that Act. He did not see any justification for expecting the Opposition to support the allocation of entirely different duties to them. It was obvious that if this Bill ever became law the first work of the Estates Commissioners would be to deal with the evicted tenants, and obviously the remainder of their duties would be carried on with difficulty because of the amount of work they would be called upon to perform. The Secretary for India in 1894 gave as a reason for setting up a separate tribunal that the Land Commission had enough to do. For that reason he hoped the Chief Secretary would see his way to setup a separate tribunal and allow the Estates Commissioners to continue the work they had been doing in the past with so much benefit to the evicted tenants, 1,000 of whom had already been restored. If this course were adopted he was convinced that the slight additional cost would be justified by the knowledge that justice would be dispensed all round. He had endeavoured to show why the Bill was unnecessary, and he had shown that the Land Act was working as expeditiously as possible. He protested now, and he would always protest against the entirely unjustifiable attitude the Government had adopted in introducing into the measure compulsory powers, which were entirely opposed to all their previous ideas. He sincerely hoped that if the Bill was not rejected it would at least be amended to such an extent that it might be handed down to posterity as a measure which would dispense justice and equity to all concerned.
  MR. LONSDALEin seconding the Motion, said that the objections which he and his friends entertained to the Bill were not inspired by any disinclination to see the evicted tenants question finally disposed of. There was no truth in the suggestion made in the course of the debates that they desired to keep the question open. Such a statement was not only inaccurate and misleading, but obviously absurd. The Party which was responsible for the passing of the Land Act of 1903, which included provisions for the

  1393
  settlement of the evicted tenants question on fair and even generous terms, could not be justly accused of factious opposition to agrarian peace in Ireland. They opposed the Bill because they believed it had been formed in such a way as to inflict serious injustice upon a very large body of persons in Ireland. The Bill placed in the hands of the Estates Commissioners powers of coercion against landowners and a particular class of occupiers of agricultural land. It would enable the Commissioners to go to a landowner and say: "We want so many acres of your estate; we will pay so much for the land and no more. If you agree to those terms, well and good; if you do not agree, you are powerless to object. We mean to have the land, and we shall take it from you against your will." The Bill also empowered the Commissioners to go to a farmer who held a farm from which a tenant had been evicted and say to him: "You must clear out, we want your holding for another man. It does not matter to us how long you have been in occupation of the land, or what amount of labour you have put into the soil. It does not matter how much you may have spent in improvements, you must go. We will pay you a certain sum and give you a farm elsewhere, but in any case you must clear out." In addition it gave the Commissioners a tenure of office which placed them practically beyond the control of the executive and practically beyond the control of that House. A Bill which conferred upon three individuals such unprecedented powers of compulsion ought at least to have been closely examined in all its details before it was permitted to pass the House. It was introduced under the ten minutes rule, a rule which was intended to apply only to measures of an uncontentious character. The result was that of the fifteen clauses of which the Bill was composed only two, the first and third, had been discussed at all. Even those two clauses were only discussed in part, and the other thirteen clauses, which embodied most important principles, and set up the most drastic machinery of coercion, had been forced through the House literally without a moment's consideration so far as the details were concerned. That fact alone justified them in opposing the Third Reading of the Bill. In addition to that
  1394
  they contended that the case for compulsion in connection with the reinstatement of the evicted tenants had never been proved. He might go so far as to say that no real attempt had been made by the Government to justify the very drastic measures of compulsion which were introduced into the Bill. He did not object personally to the compulsory purchase of land. As a fact he voted for compulsion in the House years ago, when compulsion was thought to be the only means of settling the Irish land question, and he would be prepared to do so again if the necessity for compulsion was proved to exist. But he submitted that in order to justify the use of compulsion it must be shown conclusively that voluntary action had altogether failed, and that the question at issue could be finally disposed of only upon compulsory terms. On neither of these two points had the Government proved their case in connection with the Bill now before the House. As regarded the failure of voluntary action, the facts, so far as they had been ascertained, certainly did not support the view they were now considering. On the contrary, they established the contention that the reinstatement of the evicted tenants could be accomplished on voluntary lines, without any resort to the violent and oppressive methods which had found favour with the Government. There was the fact that over a thousand evicted tenants had already been restored to the land under the Act of 1903— by purely voluntary means, and with the assistance and good will of the landowners concerned. That was to say, a third of the whole number of persons who were entitled to be restored, according to the Report of the Estates Commissioners, had been placed in possession of holdings — without friction and without injustice to anyone. That had been accomplished in three and a half years, and there was every reason to believe that if the Government would devote their energies to expediting the working of the Land Purchase Act, the evicted tenants question would settle itself in a reasonable amount of time. But apart from that, the facts given in the Report of the Estates Commissioners showed that there was plenty of un-tenanted land which might be purchased at a fair price—sufficient, and more

  1395
  than sufficient, to place the selected 2,000 evicted tenants in possession of economic holdings. The land now in the hands of the Estates Commissioners was ample for that purpose. They said they wanted that land to satisfy the requirements of persons who wanted larger holdings. But that did not by any means represent the amount of land which they might acquire by voluntary sale. The Chief Secretary had admitted that in addition to the 80,000 acres now in the possession of the Estates Commissioners, they had received particulars of nearly 60,000 acres which the owners were willing to sell for the purpose of reinstating evicted tenants. Those 60,000 acres had been offered by 160 owners, and the fact showed that there was no disinclination on the part of landowners to sell all the land that could possibly be required— if they were offered the fair market price. The Government had failed altogether to show that compulsion was necessary. But in spite of that fact they had insisted upon giving these novel and dangerous powers to the Estates Commissioners, and had not accompanied them by any safeguards to prevent injustice being done to the persons against whom the powers were to be used. The refusal of the Government to afford any protection to landowners or tenants against the abuse of the powers given in the Bill constituted to his mind one of the main grounds for refusing to assent to the Third Reading. There was, however, one other objection to the Bill which he desired to submit to the consideration of the House. He objected to the Bill because it was intended to give preferential treatment to one class of tenant-purchasers, as compared with another and very much larger class of persons who, from every point of view, were in his opinion more deserving of consideration by the House. There were hundreds of farmers— in his own constitutency and in all parts of Ireland— who had been waiting for two or three years to obtain the advantages of the Land Act of 1903, and who would be kept out of the benefits of ownership for an indefinite period if the Bill passed in its present shape, and if it was worked as the Government evidently intended that it should be worked. He asked the House to consider for a moment the position of
  1396
  the class of farmers to whom he alluded. They had agreed with their landlords for the purchase of their holdings, but until the Estates Commissioners had investigated their cases, sanctioned the advances, and vested their holdings in them as purchasers, they had to pay interest on the amount of the purchase money. That interest represented a sum considerably larger than the amount of the annuity they would eventually pay to the State; and, in addition to that hardship, they were not advancing any nearer to the time when their farms would be absolutely their own property, without any charge upon it whatever. He submitted that the priority which the Bill would give to the evicted tenants was not in accordance with the terms of the arrangement embodied in the Act of 1903. He would like to call the attention of the House to Paragraph 15 of the Land Conference Report of 1902, which reads as follows—
  "That any project for the solution of the Irish land problem should be accompanied by a settlement of the evicted tenants question upon an equitable basis."
  That proposal clearly indicated that the solution of the land question and the settlement of the evicted tenants question were to proceed pari passu, and it could not be shown, either by reference to the debates on the Bill of 1903 or to that Act itself, that there was any intention that the evicted tenants question was to be given priority in point of settlement. The Chief Secretary, on the introduction of this Bill, asserted that "one of the terms of this concordat" (that was to say, the understanding upon which the Act of 1903 was based) "was the speedy restoration of the evicted tenants." As he had shown, however, the right hon. Gentleman overstated the case. What was contemplated was undoubtedly the speedy settlement of the whole land question; but there was never any intention of giving priority to the evicted tenants over the other farmers who desired to become owners of their holdings. The Chief Secretary now attempted to justify the priority which it was proposed to accord to the evicted tenants by the argument that it was necessary in order to promote peace in Ireland. But did the right hon. Gentleman really suppose that he was going to

  1397
  promote peace by a Bill which would not only inflict injustice upon landowners and the class of farmers who were known as "new tenants," but also increase the hardships which the delay of land purchase was causing to the large class of tenant-farmers who had agreed to purchase under the Act of 1903? He did not see how he could hope to advance the peaceful settlement of the Irish land question by such means. It was evident that for some time to come the Estates Commissioners would be wholly engrossed in the work of reinstating the evicted tenants, and all the funds available for land purchase would be used for the purposes of this Bill. They could form no estimate whatever of the period of time which the work would take; because, as had again and again been pointed out, there was absolutely no element of finality in the Bill. The Chief Secretary had steadfastly resisted every proposal which was intended to limit the extent of the problem. When the 2,000 —more or less— whom the Government said they contemplated restoring to their holdings, had been reinstated, there would still remain upwards of 5,000 disappointed applicants for holdings, in whose behalf a fresh agitation would certainly be started; and there was nothing in the Bill to prevent the Estates Commissioners reopening the cases of the 5,000, and making a further selection of persons to be reinstated. He asked whether it was reasonable or just that the ordinary farmer who had supported himself by his industry, paid his way, and kept free from lawless agitation, should be kept in suspense, while the class of persons for whose special benefit the Bill was being enacted were given preferential treatment, which nobody could with truth say they had deserved. He ventured to say that it was neither reasonable nor just that this discrimination should be made to the prejudice of a most deserving class of men; and it was on this ground, as well as because he thought the measure was essentially unjust and oppressive, that he should vote against the Third Reading of the Bill. He begged to second the Motion.
  Amendment proposed —
  "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day three months.'" —(Viscount Castlereagh.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. LARDNERsaid he desired to make some observations of a general character in support of the Bill. He came from a part of Ireland where the agrarian conditions had made him familiar with the question of the evicted tenants. Those who knew the facts would admit that there was urgent-need for such a Bill as this. His own opinion was that it did not go far enough, but he could only congratulate the Chief Secretary on having had the courage to bring forward the measure, It was a matter of history that in 1903 an agreement was arrived at that the evicted tenants were to be restored to their holdings. That was assented to by both landlords and tenants, and it was only when the process of restoration was tried that the difficulties were disclosed which had necessitated the giving of compulsory powers to the Estates Commissioners. Though four years had elapsed since the Act of 1903 was passed, there were still a large number of tenants on the roadside with no prospect of consideration save that which this Bill would give. In the cases where tenants had already been reinstated in their holdings through the landlords offering no objection to the making of voluntary arrangements it had not been stated either by the Estates Commissioners or by hon. Members from Ulster that these men had not succeeded in their holdings. These tenants had been restored on the sale of estates by landlords who, were it not for the Act of 1903, would have themselves gone to the wall. There was another class of landlords — wealthy men — who could afford it and were determined to hold out for a prohibitive price and to keep the flag of landlordism flying until the last ditch was reached. There could be no peace in Ireland so long as men who had been evicted from their farms found those farms occupied, and the

  1399
  fruits of the labour of themselves and their fathers enjoyed by tenants generally brought from other parts of the country. So long as that state of affairs remained there would be no peace in Ireland, and the only remedy for it was, as the Chief Secretary had said and proposed in this Bill, the application of compulsion for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants. Of course, there was a howl from the Ulster Members, as there always was when any measure was introduced for the amelioration of the condition of the Irish people. There were two classes of people in Ireland— the Irish people and the Ulster Unionists. Any argument had been good enough for the Ulster Members to use in opposition to this Bill. He thought that on examination it would be found that the arguments of the Ulster Members were very like the outrages they had discovered in different parts of Ireland— there was not much in them. The first thing they did was to impeach the fairness of the Estates Commissioners, whom they now most bitterly attacked, and who had been for years engaged in fixing fair rents without any objection being made to them. The Estates Commissioners had also been engaged in the valuation of farms for pre-emption by the landlords when the tenants wished to sell, and no objection had been then made to them. The capacity of the Estates Commissioners for that business was proved by their long experience in the value of land, and that was the case with Mr. Bailey, against whom no word had been heard when he was an assistant Commissioner hearing applications to fix the fair value of a tenant's holding. It was said that the landlords had no confidence in the Estates Commissioners. He quite agreed. The landlords had no confidence in anyone unless they had him under their thumb or he was a pliant tool. He was under the impression that the Estates Commissioners had been appointed by the late Tory Government, but it was of a piece with their usual practice to discredit their own officers. It was said that there was no necessity for compulsion. But what were the facts? For many years there had been operating in Ireland a
  1400
  Labourers Act in order to provide healthy homes for the labourers, but the majority of the landlords had refused to sell sites for cottages for the labourers, who were now living in the most squalid conditions, even when a good price was offered them for the sites. Here were people who surely owed a duty to those among whom they lived, and it might have been thought that they would have given sites for cottages and small gardens to the humble labourers who worked their land. There was no method of dealing with such men except by compulsion. The hon. Member for Maidstone had said that compulsion was unheard of in land legislation, and the only analogy he could give was railways. He would suggest a better analogy to the noble Lord. Under the Act of 1881 the landlord got a right of pre-emption when the tenant offered his farm for sale. What did that mean? The tenant for some reason being anxious to dispose of his farm, intimated the fact to the landlord, who immediately said: "I want to buy it." The tenant sent in an application to the Land Commissioners, two of whom were now Estates Commissioners, to fix the true value of the farm, goodwill, and tenant's improvements on the holding, whereupon the landlord could compulsorily acquire the tenant's interest in the holding at a price which generally was a third less than the tenant would have obtained in open market. He would suggest to the hon. Members for Ulster that if there could be any doubt as to what action they should take in regard to this Bill, they should consult their constituents, who, he could assure them, would tell them that the Bill was as badly needed in Ulster as in any other part of Ireland. As to the applications which had not been sent in to the Estates Commissioners before 1st May, 1907, he knew of cases where the tenants were evicted but taken on as caretakers. These unfortunate men were afraid to send in to the Estates Commissioners their notices for reinstatement because they were afraid that the landlord would turn them out on the road. The agreement made in the Act of 1903 should be acted up to and carried into effect both in the letter and the spirit in the fullest sense of the word. Anyone who knew

  1401
  the condition of the country recognised that the matter should be dealt with at once if there was to be peace and prosperity in Ireland. He would ask hon. Members above the gangway to rise to considerations above party or personal interest with the desire to do what was really best for their country and for the tenants who had been evicted from their homes.
  MR. MOOREcongratulated the hon. Member for Monaghan on the excellent and moderate speech he had delivered, and the Nationalist Party on the accession they had obtained in the hon. Member to their ranks. He differed, however, from the hon. Member in regard to the agreement of 1903. If he was a party to that agreement he would rather cut off his hands than draw back from it, but it was clear to him that under the Act of 1903 it was believed that voluntary methods were going to be adopted; therefore it was not fair that Unionist Members should be accused by the Nationalists of breaking the agreement when the Unionist objection was that compulsory methods were expressly excluded by it. He had opposed this Bill from the outset, not so much in the desire to protect the landlord interest, although he considered that interest deserved protection, but because those who were called new tenants were treated under it unjustly and inequitably. These tenants were people who came to a great extent from Ulster, and Ulster Members would therefore be failing in their duty if they did not attempt to secure for them the full protection of the law. In performing that duty they had been beaten as a minority in that House, but great and important principles underlay the whole question. It was undoubtedly a day of triumph for hon. Members below the gangway who were identified with the principles of Socialism. [Laughter.] Hon. Members might laugh, but what he said was true. The Bill proposed to supply holdings in Ireland at an estimated cost of something like £2,500,000 of public money, for the benefit of from between 2,500 to 4,000 tenants. That was essentially Socialism; but in another respect it was
  1402
  not. Let the House understand where they were. He did not think he was doing any injustice to hon. Members below the gangway when he said that the Socialism in the Bill began and ended with the provision that the taxpayers were to contribute the money to put it in operation. But he always understood that the principle of Socialism was that one man was as good as another. He did not understand that it was part of Socialism to turn one man out of a farm and put another in his place. The Nationalists might also claim a triumph because they could, while seeking to controvert the views of the Sin Fein party, point out that in consequence of the pressure they had put on the Government they had succeeded in passing this Bill. He wished them joy of it. But who were the people who were to pay for these Socialist and United Irish League triumphs? It would not be the minority who had been outvoted in the House of Commons; it would be the new tenants— those who took the farms twenty-five years ago under the security of the law— those who took the land from which tenants had been evicted for non-fulfilment of their legal obligation. They had been a credit to the neighbourhood in the great majority of cases; they had proved industrious, hard-working, and law-abiding men, and it had been their obedience to the law alone that had rendered them so unpopular with the agitators of the United Irish League. These were the people on whom the sting of this injustice would fall. They had heard much of the love of the Irish tenant for his holding; were these tenants' feelings to be ignored? They had made these farms their homes; they had embarked their all in them; but the only sympathy extended to them was to be found in the suggestion of the hon. Member for Louth, that they should be deported to Canada. It was regrettable that the hardship should in the first instance fall on this inoffensive, humble, industrious class. But, as the hon. Member for Mid Armagh had pointed out, another class of people would also have to pay for this Socialist and United Irish League triumph, and that was the tenants all over Ireland

  1403
  who were seeking to buy their holdings. In 1884 the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture said he would not sanction taking land for evicted tenants because land purchase was then struggling and it would mean building a barrier across its path. At that time as much money was available for land purchase as could possibly be required; there were millions at the Treasury which could be resorted to. But to-day, although there was £30,000,000 of land under contract to be bought for which the Treasury was unable to find the money, they were under this Bill going to ask for £2,500,000 more for the reinstatement of evicted tenants. The Bill, indeed, created another injustice: it put a premium on eviction, and it held up as a public martyr the evicted tenant. It put him in a better position; it not only gave him a farm of 40 acres, but it handed him £300 with which to stock it, and turned out the man against whom for twenty-five years he had been uttering vindictive threats. Thus a premium was put on the status of the evicted tenant, who was being made a most prosperous and successful martyr. As he had said, all these Socialist and Nationalist triumphs would have to be paid for, and most of all by the Liberal Party. In succumbing to such pressure that Party was sowing seed the harvest of which would have to be reaped in other fields. The principles of this Bill would have to be carried into other things. How could Liberal Members denounce Socialism when they set their hand and seal to such a Bill? They did not get rid of these deserving tenant-farmers whom they were sacrificing merely by calling them "planters" and "grabbers." These men had a right to protection and justice, and they were being abandoned by the Liberal Government just as Gordon was abandoned. It was a cruel and crying injustice that the Liberal Party should run away from the very men whom by all the laws of honour and conscience they were bound to protect. It was more than an injustice—it was a crime; and so long as he had
  1404
  power to voice his opinion in that House he would protest against it.
  Sir WALTER NUGENTsaid that the eighteen stalwarts above the gangway who had talked the House empty two or three times had proved that there was no opposition to this Bill in any quarter of the House except that which they occupied. Even their own Front Bench had not supported them. The Leader of the Opposition had contributed some very delightful speeches, but he had washed his hands of the hon. Members for Ulster, and had poked fun at them but refused to support them, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin had told the House that if he thought the Bill would end finally the evicted tenant trouble he would vote for it. It could not be said that the opposition to the measure was very virile. Hon. Members for Ulster wanted more time for the discussion of the Bill only to induce the House of Lords either to make the Bill worthless or to reject it altogether. But he could not believe that noble Lords were so simple as to fall into the clumsy trap of the hon. Member for North Antrim.
  MR. J. MACVEAGH: He is the evicted tenant of North Antrim.
  SIR WALTER NUGENT,continuing, said he meant, of course, the hon. Member for North Armagh. Let hon. Members be merciful as they were strong, and not drag down the noble Lords with themselves to that ignoble death, but let them end their days in a more glorious action than that of trying to deprive a handful of unfortunate Irish tenants of the promises made them by two consecutive Governments.
  MR. BUTCHERassured the Chief Secretary that Irishmen and Englishmen on that side felt as genuine a desire to solve this troublesome question as he did. But they offered the most uncompromising opposition to the Bill as it now stood. Personally he could never vote for such a Bill, but he desired

  1405
  to know whether any compromise was possible which they could accept. The Land Act of 1903 was intended to be the end of a long agrarian struggle, and the new era was inaugurated by a general amnesty. As the hon. Member for East Mayo said at the time, it was to close the chapter of war and open the chapter of peace. No doubt it was a serious thing for public money to be given for the reinstatement of tenants who had lost their holdings either through lawlessness, incompetence, or misfortune. But three considerations prevailed, and he thought rightly. First, that the paramount interest of Ireland was peace; secondly, that the problem as then presented was one of moderate compass, the hon. Member for East Mayo estimating the number of cases to be dealt with at 400; and thirdly, the most important point of all, that all the transactions under the Act of 1903 were to be purely voluntary. No compulsion was to be brought to bear on either landlords or new tenants. But, despite the fact that the concession was made to the evicted tenants as the price of peace, since 1903 there had been a renewal of agrarian war in Ireland. Moreover, the number of tenants to be dealt with had gradually mounted up, the 400 had become 2,000, even after all deductions had been made. Naturally this increased the difficulty of the solution, but in his opinion it need not be a fatal bar. The crucial point was that the voluntary basis had been abandoned, and the Legislature was asked to step in and bring about the reinstatement of these tenants by compulsory means. There they came to the heart of the difficulty. The new tenants under this Bill might be evicted against their consent. They on that side, however, held that the State was under an obligation of honour to the planter, as he was called. The word of the State had been pledged to him, but it was not merely a legal obligation. The planter, in many instances, had performed a real public service by displaying moral courage at a critical time when it was not easy to do so. Was his courage and honesty to be visited with penal consequences? No man of honour would be guilty of such desertion in private life; was it less dishonourable conduct in the State? The Chief Secre-
  1406
  tary had never fairly met that argument. He treated it as a flimsy thing of little substance. Anyhow that was not the view of his colleague and predecessor in office, the Secretary for India. When he was responsible for the government of Ireland and brought in an Evicted Tenants Bill, in 1894, the right hon. Gentleman recognised that this was the crux of the difficulty; and what was more, he saw that he had a debt of honour to the new tenants, and he stood by them loyally. These were his words —
  "I always said, in spite of the representations made to me, that these men shall not be put out against their will."
  The present Chief Secretary had, indeed, declared that bona fide farmers should not be dispossessed from their holdings. But there was nothing in his Bill to prevent this, and, indeed, many demanded their expulsion. Let him, therefore, give legislative force to his intention. Let him insert an express provision to the effect that no tenant, genuinely farming this land, should come within the scope of the evicting clauses of the Bill. For himself he was much against bringing compulsion to bear even on the so-called "bogus farmer" or caretaker. But his case was less strong; it might, to some extent, be met by money compensation or by the offer of a farm elsewhere. If only full safeguards were provided for the genuine farmer, the possibility would be afforded of a compromise in the interests of peace. He would earnestly submit this to the consideration of the Chief Secretary Next, as to compulsion on the landlord. Compulsory power for acquiring land for a public object was no new principle. Everyone was familiar with the ordinary procedure. But what was new and unheard of was the proposal to invest three, or rather two, men with a roving commission to go through Ireland, to descend on any land they chose, to take what they would, from whom they would, and at what price they would, and all without appeal. That was without parallel in the history of the legislation of this country. Was it not plainly equitable that the landlord should have an appeal against these decisions, and also that any planter whom it was proposed to oust should have a similar appeal? Probably no better tribunal could be suggested for this purpose than the Judge

  1407
  of Assize. The two matters he had insisted on— the protection of the planters and the right of appeal— were of primary moment. There was one other less vital perhaps, but of high importance, and that was that there should be some strict limitation of the number of tenants to be reinstated. Already the list of applicants had been sifted and sorted. The Commissioners had arrived at 2,000 as the probable number of claims which should be admitted. The Chief Secretary had refused to bind himself to the precise figure of 2,000 on the ground that he did not wish to close the door on a few outstanding cases, half a dozen more or less. Well then, let him allow a margin sufficient to cover all such contingencies; let the maximum number be fixed at 2,040 or 2,050. The precise figure mattered little, but a definite limit mattered much. Applicants who had been ruled out should remain out. If t he Bill gave power to reopen these cases the original 8,000 applicants would all press for their claims to be reconsidered. We would have before long two permanent Commissions sitting in Ireland, one to declare what was a fair rent and the other to reinstate those who had not paid it. What was now adopted as a political necessity would tend to become a principle of policy. Nor let it be forgotten in discussing this question of evictions that the State was already far the biggest landlord or rent collector in Ireland. Each year was adding to its financial responsibilities. Tenant-farmers were becoming proprietors of their holdings. The mere transfer of land from one set of owners to another would not get rid of poverty or distress. There were a large number of uneconomic holdings tenanted by uneconomic men. Some of these men would, he feared, become insolvent. The State was bound to look ahead. It would be a bad start to evict tenants who bad paid their rent in order to restore others who had not paid, some of whom would probably be again evicted five years hence. It might tide over a Party difficulty in the House of Commons, but it would add to the economic dangers of the situation and lay up a store of trouble for the future.
  MR. JOHN O'CONNORsaid the last speaker had expressed a hope
  1408
  that this Bill would come back from another place in an altered form. The Leader of the Party of which the hon. Gentleman was a Member expressed a like hope in respect of another Bill on another occasion, and the Members of the other place obeyed his invitation. Was the hon. and learned Member for Cambridge University about to usurp the leadership of the Party and address an invitation to the Members of the other House with the expectation that they would respond to it? The hon. Member had said that the Bill was opposed by all hon. Members on his own side of the House above the gangway. The fact was that whenever there was a measure before the House calculated to benefit the people of Ireland the hon. Member for Cambridge University was sure to be found opposing it At one time they hoped that Ireland had his sympathy— that was in the early days of his career in that House— when he made a certain speech in regard to education, but since then he had never failed to oppose every suggestion for the relief of his fellow countrymen, he never lost an opportunity of backing up the very worst statements regarding Ireland that were made by Members for Ulster, and he never failed to puncture the erudite collegiate lectures he addressed to the House with the abuse of his country, and his countrymen, such was his bad taste. [Cries of "Oh!"] Of course the term "bad taste" did not commend itself to some of the hon. Gentleman's friends. It was a bad thing for the hon. Members above the gangway who opposed the Bill that the evicted tenants who sought to be restored gave their Party the opportunity in 1903 of introducing the Bill which was probably the one Act in the last Parliament which entitled them to the gratitude of Ireland, and the one really good statesmanlike measure they passed into law. It was bad taste on their part to oppose the Bill that gave one of their most ornamental Members, the Member for Dover, the opportunity of establishing his character as a statesman, and it was also bad taste on their part to oppose a measure introduced to benefit the men who enabled their Party to pass a Bill to relieve their own class in Ireland— the landlords. It was the most exquisite bad taste on the part of the hon. Member for North

  1409
  Armagh to oppose the Bill for the reinstatement of men who enabled the House to pass a measure that made it possible for him to sell his land at probably ten years' purchase more than it was worth. He was informed that the hon. Member for North Armagh got thirty years' purchase for the land he held. They had had from the noble Lord the Member for Maidstone, who moved the rejection of the Bill, a lot of lip sympathy with the evicted tenants. He was burning with anxiety for their restoration. He hoped that they would be restored at some future time. He had no feeling of enmity against them whatever. How did it come to pass, then, that he and those who acted with him had opposed the Bill at every stage, and that the noble Lord had stated that he would oppose it to the very end? That was a very curious way of showing his sympathy with the evicted tenants. The noble Lord was not content with that statement, but he accused the Nationalists of the crime of turning the planters out on the roadside. The word "crime" came badly from the mouth of an Irish landlord. The noble Lord and his family had large estates in Ireland. Other hon. Gentlemen above the gangway and their friends had also large estates there, and they ought not to mention the word "crime," for their whole career as landlords in Ireland was one continued crime.
  MR. ASHLEY: Why?
  MR. JOHN O'CONNORsaid he would tell the hon. Gentleman, whose family also had large estates in Ireland. He was not old enough to remember the coffin ships which went away after the famine of 1846–7, which the landlords did nothing to prevent.
  MR. ASHLEYsaid that on the estate with which his father was connected very much money was spent in building roads and harbours during the famine.
  MR. JOHN O'CONNORsaid that this country and the whole civilised world had to come to the aid of the people of Ireland. The landlords exacted their rents in that period just the same. The word "crime" therefore did not fit in their mouths, for their system and the laws
  1410
  passed to maintain Irish landlordism in its oppressive and extortionate demands had reduced the population of Ireland from 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 as it was in 1846 to something like 4,500.000 now. Was not that a crime? Why the bed of the Atlantic from Ireland to America was whitened with the bones of the people who had been driven out of their homes by the criminal system of which hon. Members above the gangway were the representatives in that House. They were told by those representatives of Irish landlordism that they were guilty of the crime of turning the planters out of holdings where they had been for so many years. They were told by the noble Lord that they regarded the evicted tenants as heroes. Yes, they did. He said they were law-breakers. Were there no law-breakers in the history of countries other than the evicted tenants of Ireland? Were there not found in the history of the world law-breakers who were regarded as heroes by the people who read history? They regarded these men as heroes, because at the time of great stress and trouble they manfully went out of their own homes so that a change might be brought about in the law which would enable people to live and thrive on their own farms. It had been said by almost everyone who had spoken against the Bill that they objected to it because of the principle of compulsion in it. Was there not before the House a Bill called the Small Holdings (English) Bill in which there was to be found the principle of compulsion in a much greater degree than was proposed in the Bill they were discussing? It did not provide for the compensation of anybody who might be disturbed, whilst this Bill did provide for compensation for disturbance of the new tenants. The principle of compulsion had been always adopted by that House and by the country when it was for the public good. Those who took the opposite view said they knew of only one precedent, viz., that of taking land for the making of railways and for public purposes. But that was for the convenience of the people. It was admitted that there could be no peace in Ireland where evicted tenants were sitting down watching their holdings either derelict or in the possession of persons who were

  1411
  undoubtedly objectionable to them and to their neighbours, and he would say that the peace of Ireland or any important part of Ireland was of much higher consequence than the convenience of the people which was the basis for the compulsory acquisition of land under the Land Clauses Acts. It had been repeatedly stated that they who sat on those benches stated in 1903 during the passage of the Land Act that no pressure would be brought to bear upon the new tenants. Had any pressure been brought to bear upon them? Had hon. Members above the gangway been able to produce one instance where pressure had been brought to bear upon any one of the new tenants there would have been some reason in their statement. He had listened attentively to the debates, and he had never heard any statement contradictory of the promise made by the hon. And learned Member for Waterford that no pressure would be brought to bear upon the new tenants. Why, it would be asked, should compulsion be introduced and why did they say it was absolutely necessary? It was necessary because after four years trial without pressure being brought to bear upon the new tenants the evil still existed, and was likely to continue to exist unless pressure, not outside, but within the law, was Used for the purpose of removing men without injury to them and restoring the evicted tenants. He submitted that there was absolutely no force in the argument used against the compulsory clauses in the Bill. They were absolutely necessary. Four years experience had shown that the Act of 1903 was inadequate for the purpose. It had, therefore, become necessary to introduce this measure and to include in it such powers as would enable the Government to remove those who were an obstacle to the settlement of the question and in order to restore to their holdings men who, by their self-sacrifice, made possible the passing of the Act of 1903, which was such a credit to the Party who now opposed this Bill, which they all trusted would result in lasting benefit to the Irish people.
  MR. SLOANsaid he had listened to practically all the speeches delivered against the Bill, and he could
  1412
  not find out that any objection was taken to the principle of the reinstatement of evicted tenants. In fact the very moderate and eloquent speech of the noble Lord who moved the rejection of the measure, so far from persuading him to vote against it, rather confirmed his idea as to the necessity of the reinstatement of the evicted tenants. The noble Lord had made a statement which came to him like a bolt from the blue. He had told them that it was necessary to let bygones be bygones, and that in the interests of peace and for the cessation of agrarian trouble the evicted tenants should be reinstated. He had also pointed out how the Act of 1903 justified that contention, and that in three and a half years 1,000 of the evicted tenants had been reinstated. He could not reconcile the speech of the noble Lord with that of the hon. Member for North Armagh, who had pointed out that this was a dangerous business — that it had the -taint of Socialism, or in other words, the taint of the United Irish League. He did not mind whether it had the tanit of Socialism or of the United Irish League, provided the admitted grievance was removed. It was admitted by all parties that it was a desirable thing that these tenants should be reinstated. The only difference between them was that the Government and the Chief Secretary were anxious to effect the restoration as quickly as possible while the Opposition desired that it should be done under the Act of 1903 as in the past, viz., at the rate of 1,000 in three and a half years. He represented South Belfast, and he had never discovered that this question of the reinstatement of the evicted tenants had ever been discussed in that constituency. He did not think the attention of Belfast had been seriously called to the subject. The pledge given by that House, however, if it was to be worth anything at all, ought to be carried out. They were told that if the present possessors, the planters or new tenants, were disturbed, they would suffer grievous harm; they would be turned out of their holdings for the sake of the evicted tenants, and if he thought for a moment that they would be injured he would not vote for the Bill. And that was just the thing he wanted to know. If he thought that the Govern-

  1413
  ment, coming in with a measure for the purpose of reinstating the evicted tenants would do an injustice and inflict hardship and harm on the new tenants he would certainly vote against the measure. But these planters had the choice of other holdings. [Cries of "No."] Well, they had not got the choice; it was very little choice that tenants of Ireland ever got. The question of choice was a new theme to advocate on that side of the House. In any case, however, the tenants were to be compensated, or they were to be put into holdings which would enable them, if they were economical, to make as comfortable, decent and prosperous a living as where they were now. It was a very generous action that they should be enabled to remove themselves to other holdings. [Cries of "They are removed."] Well, they were removed by Act of Parliament, if they liked; but for what purpose? For the purpose of enabling those whose ancestors had been for generations in a holding to be sent back to that holding. If it was said that the present tenants, the planters, were to be evicted to attain that object, the reply was that they were only evicted as a means to the reinstatement of the originally evicted tenants. They were not to be turned out on to the roadside as were the unfortunate people previously evicted. They were to be put into possession of other holdings. All that was asked was that there should be peace in Ireland. Strife had been going on for too long among one section of the country only, and not among the democracy. They desired to put an end to that strife, which would be for the good of the country, whether they called it Socialism or not. In the North of Ireland they were sick and tired of being constantly warned about the Union being in danger, and of seeing the progress of the country blocked in the interests of a particular class. He did not object to hon. Members near him advocating landlordism; but if they did that, why not do it openly, and not under the guise of the Union? Every Member of the House who had an open mind and a desire to help his country must wish that religion and politics should not intervene where the object was to help a class who could not help themselves. No man could come to the House but was bound to regret the attitude of
  1414
  certain sections of it towards the efforts of a humble class to get back to the soil of their fathers. He had no fear about going back to his constituency to justify the votes he had given on this Bill. Only justice was demanded. He did not say that it was unitedly demanded, for he did not think they would ever be united in Ireland, though there were some questions on which they might be united. It was an unfortunate thing that they could not come and ask the House unitedly for the removal of a grievance in Ireland. The cause of progress in Ireland had been blocked by religious bickerings which ought never to enter into social reforms. It was with a view to trying to erase these insane obstacles, to remove, if possible, unnecessary arguments against progressive measures which benefited the whole country, irrespective of any class, that he most cordially supported the Third Reading of the Bill.
  MR. GORDONsaid he thought he could not do better than call the attention of the House to the most extraordinary misapprehension of the entire question shown by the hon. Member for South Belfast. So far as he understood, everyone on those benches had expressed his desire that the question of the evicted tenants should be settled, and no one had objected to the principle of compulsion being applied where it could be shown to be necessary. But the difference between them arose as to the method in which the reinstatement of the evicted tenants was to be effected, and on this issue there was fair ground of objection against the Bill. He thought one of the first duties of the House, once they were agreed that a certain thing should be done, was to do it in the way least injurious to others interested. What were the objections which had been raised? He did not propose to deal with the speech made by the hon. and learned Member below the gangway nor with the speech of another hon. Member according to whom there ought to be no Third Reading at all, and once the Government had a sufficient majority to express its will no one else should be allowed to open their lips. That was a position to which the House of Commons had not yet attained, and he trusted that some of those who

  1415
  at on the opposite benches agreed with him in hoping that it would never be attained. That Honse was a place where freedom of discussion ought to exist and be encouraged. What were the questions they had to deal with? First of all, this Bill had never been adequately considered by the House. It was brought in hastily. It was perfectly true that it was referred to in the King's Speech, but they could not shut their eyes to the fact that its introduction was due to the failure of a bigger measure which did not meet with the acceptance of the persons for whose benefit it was supposed to be introduced. The present Bill was brought in under the ten minutes rule, which shortened the time for discussion; in Committee the closure was applied, with the result that some of the clauses of greatest importance were not considered at all. A matter of vital importance was what was to happen to those tenants who were called planters? There was a very large number of tenants at the present moment in Ireland, representing holdings valued at about £20,000,000, who had agreed to purchase those holdings, and had entered into agreements, not with landlords who were impecunious and driven to sell, as had been suggested by the hon. and learned Member below the gangway, but with landlords who although perfectly willing and able to keep their lands, but come to terms with their tenants. Those tenants, many of them, were not one day nearer the time when they would become the owners, and they were accordingly still paying interest. Then the resources of the Irish Land Commission for completing those sales were to be reduced by £2,500,000. What had those tenants done that they should be set back — by the period represented by that sum? What sin had they committed that they should be treated in that way? In regard to those tenants who had been evicted, what was to happen? They took an estate, for example, which the tenants were anxious to purchase, but not one of them had yet purchased their holdings. They were fulfilling their engagements honestly; they were industrious and in every way deserving; and yet it was proposed to put beside them one or more of the evicted tenants.
  1416
  He was not going to attack the whole of the evicted tenants; but it might be that among them they would find men who had been neither industrious nor careful, and had brought themselves into a position which would not be occupied by anyone of ordinary prudence and industry. One of these men might be brought back and planted as a purchaser in the midst of honest tenants who were still ordinary tenants under judicial rents. Did they think that a fair and reasonable course to adopt? That was the position brought about by the Bill, and he thought the House ought to have seen that means were taken that no such position was made possible. They were told that the new tenants or planters had never been interfered with; but what was going to be done now? They were going to be removed whether they liked it or not. It was said they would be as well off and as comfortable as before; but if that was the intention of the Government, why did they not give the tenant the power to refuse or to consent? That would get rid of a good deal of the injustice of the Bill. Until something of that kind was done it was very little consolation to the man who had made a home that he should be turned out and put in another place whether he liked it or not. The Government said there had been no undue pressure, but the same thing might have been said before the Land Act of 1903 in reference to owners of large tracts of grazing land. When that Act was passed it led people to think that they ought to have such land for economic holdings, and the result had been cattle driving and outrages. It was compulsion exercised by people to drive the graziers from the land, and they had cattle driving as it existed in the West of Ireland. He had heard the excuse suggested that, the Legislature having provided certain things, the people thought they were working out too slowly, and that was the reason for their taking the law into their own hands. The same course would be adopted here. The people who wanted to get hold of the farms would exercise pressure on the same principle as it had been exercised in reference to grazing land. A man who went to the Commissioners and objected that he was not being

  1417
  fairly treated would be a marked man. Surely that could be guarded against in a measure of this kind. Surely these things ought not to be encouraged. It should not be beyond the power of the Chief Secretary and his advisers to suggest some safeguard, and he asked the House to say, at the last moment, that such a state of affairs ought in some way to be provided against, and that no inducement should be held out to the people to treat new tenants as they had treated the owners of the grazing farms. Then with regard to the fixing of prices, that was a matter that went to the root of the Bill, though the objection they urged against it was not one which they raised for the purpose of rejecting the Bill altogether. That had never been his attitude. His attitude was — let them have a Bill, but let it be on reasonable lines, so that the rights of the people affected by it were properly safeguarded. Then there would be very little opposition to it. There was no reason, justice, or necessity for making the Commissioners fix the price. It would be very easy to appoint a different tribunal. Another tribunal might give a less price, or it might give the same price, but at least it would give the person interested some idea that he was getting fair play. He denied that the purchaser of a property was the best tribunal in the eyes of the seller to determine what should be paid. No legislation had ever been enacted where a man who was to take land was to be the sole, ultimate, and absolute arbiter of the price to be paid. Why did not the Government offer an arbitrator to be appointed by the Local Government Board?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BIRRELL,): Would you have taken him?
  MR. GORDONdid not know. Would the right hon. Gentleman insert some such provision in his Bill? If not, why not?
  MR. BIRRELL: Because I think this is fairer to the landlord. [Opposition cries of "Oh"].
  MR. GORDONthought that was a novel remark to come from the right hon.
  1418
  Gentleman. He had not heard it before. Under this Bill they had to determine what was to be given to the new tenant on the principle of what was given by a landlord when he had taken on a holding under the Land Act. He had been accustomed to the argument that the Commission in such cases had not given nearly enough to the tenant, and that when the tenant had had to give up his holding to his landlord he had been deprived of several years purchase. He had never yet heard of a tenant who did not complain and justly complain that the price given to him was not sufficient. That was what they were going to give to the new tenant.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR (MR. CHERRY, Livrpool, Exchange): The hon. Member is confusing this question with the time value fixed under Section 1 of the Act, the principle of which is different from that applied in cases of resumption under Section 5. We are giving the fullest compensation ever given under an Act of Parliament to a tenant quitting his holding.
  MR. GORDONsaid he was surprised to hear that the principle was different. Yet that was how they were going to deal with the tenants under this Bill. They were going to be turned out prices which no ordinary farmer would agree to. He thought that these tenants ought to be fully compensated and indemnified if they were to be touched at all. No matter what Party was in power, when they were dealing with property compulsorily, it was the duty of everyone to see that ample, justice was done to the parties interfered with. He did not think the questions he was dealing with should affect the passing of some measure to settle within a reasonably short space of time the evicted tenants question. It was idle to go back to the question of how they came to be evicted to do anything which would cause any real or substantial delay if a speedy settlement could be brought about on reasonable terms. But it was equally important when they were doing it to take care they did it in such a way as would effect the least injustice

  1419
  and inspire the most confidence in the people affected. He had lived in Ireland longer than the Chief Secretary and he knew how these questions were discussed. People thought a question was settled and after a little while someone came and said "You have not gone half far enough, you ought to have dealt with so and so," and the agitation was resumed as strongly as ever. Here the Government had limited the matter to 2,000 tenants and must therefore rule out 4,000 or 5,000 claims. The right hon. Gentleman would have these people saying they had been badly treated and asking why they should not be included with the others. For his own protection he entreated the right hon. Gentleman to put into the Bill some limitation of numbers or of acreage or something which would in some way show that Parliament intended to deal finally with the evicted tenants question in this Bill.
  MR. POWERsaid that the difficulties to which reference had been made had arisen through the Government of the day ignoring the representations made by the representatives of Ireland. That applied not only to the present but also to the past, because the voice of the people constitutionally expressed had been ignored. He desired to allude to a matter of considerable importance. The Member for West Water-ford introduced a clause on the Report Stage which was debated and supported by the hon. Member for the City of Water-ford, and the Nationalist Party thought it was so important that they divided the House upon it. They fully recognised that the Chief Secretary had carried out the undertakings he gave at the commencement of the Session with regard to this Bill, and they were consequently very loth to divide the House upon any question which they did not think was of material importance. He failed to see why the Government had refused to adopt, at any rate, the principle of the clause moved by his hon. friend. It suggested the cheapest and the most expeditious method of acquiring land in Ireland for the purposes of restoration, and it was an absolutely safe process from the Treasury point of view. It simply suggested that where land was offered the
  1420
  Government should acquire it if, in the opinion of the Estates Commissioners, acting upon the report of their inspectors, it was considered to be good security for the money asked for it. No compulsory powers were asked for in such a case. In the past, although the Estates Commissioners had considered the figure at which land was offered them perfectly reasonable, they had not had power to act with the result that land which was suitable for restoring the evicted tenants had passed into the hands of large graziers who gave no employment what-so ever to the inhabitants. He hoped the Chief Secretary would be able to do something to meet their wishes in this direction.
  MR. WALTER LONGsaid that before the debate closed he was anxious to say a few words in regard to the position of the Opposition and also to repeat in a slightly varied form the objections he had to urge against the policy of His Majesty's Government. He did not as a rule complain of the criticism of his opponents, but he thought ho had every reason to complain of the violence and the taste of the attack made upon his colleagues and himself by the hon. Member for South Belfast. The violence of his language was certainly not equalled by anything which came from hon. Gentlemen below the gangway, and it would have been in better taste and more in conformity with the usual practice of those who generally acted together, if the hon. Member had contented himself with explaining his own position without thinking it necessary to ascribe to others motives for which there was not the smallest foundation. He had stated more than once that so far as the reinstatement of the evicted tenants went, they were anxious that it should be carried out, and when that declaration was followed by a criticism of the measure the Government had produced they were told the one indicated the insincerity of the other. He entirely denied that statement. It was absurd, it was almost immoral, to tell any body of men that in any great question they were to be governed by the doctrine, that the end justified the means. There was no other argument by which the charge against the Unionist Party could be established.

  1421
  To lay down as a proposition against which there was no answer that because they were in favour of the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, and had been since the Act of 1903, they were therefore to give their approval and support to any measure the Government saw fit to introduce to carry out that object, was to seek to establish a rule which would operate immediately against hon. Members opposite, and one which when in Opposition they had not endeavoured to apply to themselves. He recalled many measures produced by the late Government to attain objects which had many supporters on the other side, but which were opposed by hon. Members opposite with all the vehemence they could command because they disapproved of the method adopted. Nobody who had made the most elementary study of the agrarian question in Ireland, especially in its more recent developments since the passing of the Act of 1903, could be ignorant of the fact that the reinstatement of a certain number of the evicted tenants was a matter of the greatest importance. It was natural that men who were living within sight of their old homes, and who believed, and he thought justly in some cases, that they were evicted not for sins on their own part, but because they held a particular view and had accepted particular advice, should view with feelings of the profoundest dissatisfaction and dislike other people living in the homes that once were theirs. In these cases there could be no two opinions as to the desirability of reinstatement. He did not deny that there were many cases which, though they could not be described in similar language, were closely allied to these; and, therefore, as to a large number of the evicted tenants, there had never been any difference of opinion as to the desirbility of reinstatement. The present question, however, was not whether it was desirable or not to reinstate evicted tenants. It was only in a minor degree as to the method by which the evicted tenants were to be selected. It was a much larger question. It was the method and machinery by which the policy of reinstatement was to be carried out, and because the Unionist Party had criticised and opposed this Bill it was not either just or fair to say
  1422
  that they were in consequence to be held to be opposed to the reinstatement of these people. They had asked repeatedly what was the need of a Bill of this kind, and had never had any satisfactory reply from the Government. They had raised the case of the new tenants and had argued, he thought, with great force and justice, that the way in which they were to be treated was altogether indefensible. The answer of the Government had been that in the majority of cases the new tenants were not bound to their holdings by ties of affection: that they had not established for themselves a reputation as stable and successful tenant farmers; and that therefore they would be glad for themselves, and for certain social reasons to which the Attorney-General had referred, to be removed. Out of 3,000 men qualified to be reinstated, over 1,000 had been provided for under the existing law; and that number had been considerably increased under private arrangements, such as that on Lord Masserene's estate, where a settlement had been brought about by methods satisfactory to all concerned, and highly creditable to that noble Lord and to those who had assisted him. What proof was there that compulsion in any form was needed? He was not, however, an idealist; he was a practical politician— at least he hoped so— and he would be foolish indeed, and quite oblivious of all that was going on, if he expected his Majesty's present advisers to produce any measure dealing with land which did not contain compulsory powers to be used against the present owners. He quite realised it would be desiring the impossible to expect the present Government not to have included some measure of compulsion in their Bill. He went further and admitted that there were undoubtedly circumstances in which it might be necessary to introduce the element of compulsion to secure the end in view. In the general legislation of this country the element of compulsion had often been found necessary in order to provide for the requirements of the community. He was rot so unreasonable as to deny that compulsion should be established where necessary. Nor did the bulk of these with whom he

  1423
  generally acted object to the introduction of compulsory powers where necessary. This had been recognised in public health legislation and in railway Bills. But there was no case of that kind which could be compared with the compulsory powers now proposed. The Government had never established the necessity for, or justified the introduction of a form of compulsion more extreme and unjust than anything which the law at present knew. Under the form of compulsion proposed the authority charged with administering the Bill would exercise it in their own way, withdrawn from public criticism, and without any reasonable opportunity being given to those affected to present their case. He held that in this matter, as in others, where compulsory powers were exercised compulsion ought to be preceded by inquiry on the spot, open and public in its character, which could be attended by all the parties interested. The absence of such an inquiry was the greatest, but not the only, blot on the system of compulsion proposed by the Government. It was justly complained that the same tribunal was to be judge and jury, and to perform a variety of conflicting functions, while nothing was to be urged by those who suffered under the Bill. He did not know whether it was too late to plead again with the Chief Secretary for a revision of this part of the Bill. It was in the interests of the passage of the measure, in the interest of the Government themselves, and of those on whose heavily laden shoulders they were placing this burden, that they should still consider whether there might not be some appeal from the decision of the Estates Commissioners. It would lead to the more successful working of the measure if the Government would consider the separation of the functions of fixing the value and effecting the purchase. The Opposition had been accused of pressing the case of the new tenants too hard; but he thought that if the Government had made up their minds to get rid of the new tenants they would have been better advised to offer them a good sum of money than to deal with them by the provisions now existing in the Bill. It was proposed to find new farms for those
  1424
  who were to be dispossessed in order that the evicted tenants might be reinstated. This would create a social difficulty, not only as great as that which they were trying to remedy, but, he believed greater. There would be the greatest possible difficulty in finding a farm suitable for the new tenant who was to be removed from his holding. If it had been decided that the new tenants were only to be moved into holdings which they regarded as satisfactory he would not have had a word to say; but there was no condition of that kind attached. Here again everything rested entirely on the discretion of the Estates Commissioners, and he believed that, in its limited and partial form, it would add to rather than lessen the feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction which the Government said they were anxious to allay. He wanted to say a word on behalf of the occupying owner— the man who had been called upon to evict his tenant, not for the causes which led to the eviction of the Plan of Campaign tenants, but for other causes altogether, which appeared perfectly satisfactory to the owner. There were many cases where the owner, after losing the rents due to him, had decided to take the land into his own hands and had made a satisfactory and productive holding. What was the prospect of that man? He stood to be shot at like every other man who had done his duty by the land. He stood a chance under this Bill of having that land taken from him compulsorily, and of losing, not only the arrears of rent, but all the capital he had expended and the return he expected to get out of the land which he had put into good heart as the result of his own prudent and wise expenditure. These men, who had been a blessing to their neighbourhood, ought not, in the interests of fair play, to be interfered with as they would be under the provisions of the Bill [A NATIONALIST MEMBER, "How many are there?"] He entirely denied the opportuneness of that interruption. He was arguing a case of justice, and justice was not less important whether the cases were few or numerous. To argue that this claim was to be ignored because the number was few was preposterous. He did not know what the number was, but

  1425
  he believed it was greater than the hon. Gentleman appeared to think. In effecting this great land revolution and turning occupiers into owners, it was of primary importance that they should keep in the country a certain number of those who had the skill, the capital, and the social advantages which enabled them to set a good example, and to do the pioneer work so beneficial in every agricultural community if the standard of agriculture was to be kept at a high level. Therefore, he said these men had a claim on the attention of the House, not only because of the justice of their case, but also because they were playing an important part, and must play a more important part, in the agricultural history of Ireland. He hoped that even now the Government would consider whether they could not be specially safeguarded and saved from interference, because interference with them would injure the cause the Government had themselves at heart— namely, the advancement of the general agricultural prosperity of the country. There was a detail to which, he thought, the Government had not paid sufficient atention, and he hoped that even at the eleventh hour they might see their way to effect an alteration. He did not think the House had realised what the possible effect of the Rill might be to a landlord whoso land was taken, in regard to the cost of the operation. Admitting the simplicity— he thought even the barbarous simplicity — of the scheme of the Government, considerable cost must attach to carrying it out. He asked the Government to consider the position of the man whose land might be taken. Land might be taken from a man who had never had any difficulty with or evicted any of his tenants. Was it fair to take this man's land for a public purpose and against his will, and, because he happened to put on it a higher price than the authorised purchaser put on it, and resisted the methods of the Government, expose him to the risk of being called upon, not only to lose his land, but also to pay a heavy sum for the expenditure incurred in the operation? The Government ought to provide that whatever costs were incurred by the operation should be borne by the State. He wished to say one word as to Clause 12, under which the status of the Estates Com-
  1426
  missioners was to be altered. That Amendment was introduced under the closure, and by it the Government had made a very serious change, giving the Commissioners the status of County Court Judges. During Committee he received both from the Chief Secretary and the Attorney-General a definite assurance that it was not the intention of the Government to remove the Commissioners from the area of criticism by the House of Commons. Under Section 3 of the Act of 1903 power was given to the Lord-Lieutenant to issue regulations for the guidance of the Commissioners. Was there any precedent in history for giving men the status of judges and then saying they were to be guided by regulations made by the Executive Government? That was a startling change, and he could not help thinking that it had been done by mistake. He could not but think that the Government had not intended to keep in the hands of the Executive the right to guide these gentlemen in their work, and that their intention was to complete the change by repealing the sub-section of the Act of 1903. If that was the case, what became of the assurance that the Commissioners would be subject to the criticism of Parliament? If they were made judges they would be told that as judges they were removed from the criticism of the House of Commons. If that sub-section went, the Government would be exposed to the charge that the pledge given in Committee had not been carried out. He was not one of those who believed they could go on saying the same thing, that however good it might be, over and over again, but he must enter this caveat, that it must not be contended that, because they did not criticise at that stage all the parts of the Bill to which they objected, their objections had been in any way removed. The Bill was novel in its methods and machinery, and drastic in the way in which it was going to affect a great industry in Ireland, and it had been discussed in circumstances which he believed were abhorrent to the majority of Members of the House, for they had not been able to discuss many parts of the Bill at all. He regretted very much that it had not been found possible to provide a little more

  1427
  time which would have enabled the Government to carry the Bill without resorting to the drastic measures they had adopted, because the Bill would now go forth from the House only partially discussed in some parts and in others not at all. It was to be sent forth as a message of peace, to remove a great difficulty which stood in the way of progress and peace in Ireland. If he had thought the Bill was calculated to serve those ends he would have done anything he could, according to his conscience, to support it; but he did not believe that an end, however admirable, was to be attained by means in themselves improper. So far from believing that this measure was the right way to solve the difficulty with which they had to deal, he believed it was likely to complicate and add to it. He thought the Government had made a mistake in postponing the natural working of the Act of 1903, and he could only regard this as a measure which had been too hastily conceived, which introduced principles unjust and without precedent, and which in regard to its machinery was in some parts unworkable and in others workable only if the people concerned wore willing to sacrifice their interests to those of the community at large.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BIRRELL,)said the right hon. Gentleman, in his clear and straightforward and admirable speech, had, he thought, made it pretty plain— and, indeed, he thought it was the only thing that had been made plain during these prolonged discussions— that the difference between the Government and, he would not say the whole of hon. Gentlemen opposite, but the majority of them, was a difference, not of principle, but of machinery and detail. The right hon. Gentleman had always most candidly told the House that in his opinion the reinstatement of the evicted tenants was a question which might fairly engage and ought to engage the attention of everybody responsible for law and order in Ireland; in other words, that it was a real question and a question not dependent on Party interests or dependent altogether on the merits of the evicted tenants, or even on their character—a question arising out of a political issue,
  1428
  out of a social movement, and largely out of legislation which the House had approved. Therefore, all of them, and especially those who were charged with the conduct of affairs, were charged with the duty of dealing with some reasonable degree of speed with this question. The right hon. Gentleman went a little further than some of his followers, because he said that he was not averse to the application of the principle of compulsion in certain cases. Assuming that it was necessary that it should be applied, the right hon. Gentleman would not rigorously hold out against it, and he thought he was right in saying that, so far as the right hon. Gentleman was concerned, and certainly so far as these persons were concerned who were primarily responsible for and desired to see peace and prosperity in Ireland, they were agreed that something must be done. The objections to the Bill related rather to methods and machinery than to anything else. That being so, it did seem to him very unfortunate that in the disposition of the time devoted to this measure in Committee— three and a half days— they should not have been devoted— he was making no charge against hon. Gentlemen opposite; all Oppositions were alike— they should not have been devoted to methods and machinery and detail instead of to arguing over and over again what he conceived to be the general principle lying at the bottom of this measure. Now, there was the question of an appeal. They never got to that question at all.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That was because of the guillotine.
  MR. BIRRELLsaid that if there was any man who abhorred the guillotine it was he. It took out of a man all the fight and fettle and interest in his own measure. He did not care a bit about it. He came to the House bored to death. He knew the Opposition would take good care never to get to the most critical parts of the Bill, that he would never be called upon to do anything more than defend over and over again its general principles, which he had off by heart, which admitted of rotund sentences which flowed easily from the lips of most people, however small their natural

  1429
  capacity. There were, perhaps, parts of his measure which might be attacked by good arguments and could only be defended upon a balance of arguments. In such circumstances the Minister knew that his chance of achieving anything like a real success, not dependent on votes in the lobby, was to show fair-minded men that the balance of argument was in his favour. That was a task any man might be proud to undertake, and if he occasionally failed he would have the consolation of knowing that he had been engaged in a pursuit which was not unworthy of his past education. Upon that Bill, however, nothing had been done but to discuss over and over again Second Reading speeches and considerations. Now, on the Third Reading, hon. Members had brought forward those very questions which they most carefully avoided raising on the Committee stage. He could not reach the avenues of the minds of Gentlemen opposite for the purposes of debate in that House. They were blocked against him. But they must know perfectly well that, if they had not had some other object in their minds than useful criticism of the Bill, they would have been able in three days and a half, provided they had forborne from repeating Second Reading considerations, to discuss—[Cries of "No" from Mr. LONSDALE and Sir F. BANBURY.] Then he gave it up. There were some half-a-dozen Gentlemen opposite not personally interested in the discussion who had heard the greater part of the debate— a large number very wisely stayed away; he appealed to those half-dozen spectators without hesitation as to whether three days and a half in Committee was not ample time for a Bill of that sort. If it was not, it was hopeless ever to think of using the House of Commonse for the purposes of detailed criticism of a measure. He would have preferred that the Bill should have been properly discussed in detail, though it would have placed a far longer intellectual burden upon him than had been cast upon him by discussions which he would not characterise— he would not say anything rude. The measure was one in regard to which their differences were differences of machinery and method rather than of principle. The greater part of the time, however, had been spent
  1430
  in discussing the principle until now, rather late in the day, some valuable suggestions had been put forward. The Bill could not be worse in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman now than it was on its introduction. Though the alterations in it had not been very great, they had been in the direction of meeting the views of Gentlemen opposite. The right hon. Gentleman had made an impassioned speech, of a kind familiar to him as a lawyer, about costs. There was an eminent Judge who declared that first came costs, then law, and then merits. He had no great admiration for the Lands Clauses Act; it had proved a burden on the industries of the country. He, however, still agreed with the view of the Lands Clauses Act upon the question of costs. If a man's lands were taken from him compulsorily in the public interest we ought not to require him to put his hand into his pocket to pay any of the cost of appearing before the tribunal, whether his opposition was reasonable or unreasonable. If he chose to employ learned gentlemen he had a right to do so, though he could probably do the work much better himself. The matter involved no law, but had reference to the value of his land, the amenity of his estate, his own comfort, and other considerations which he was in a position to represent with greater force than any one else. Still he was entitled to have his costs, and a clause had been inserted in the Bill for that purpose, in which it was provided that the costs were to be taxed.
  MR. ASHLEY: Does that include proving the title?
  MR. BIRRELLsaid it included any costs that were necessarily and properly incurred. If the clause would pass muster among the celebrated and distinguished authorities in another place, the Government had no objection to words being inserted with a view to carrying out its intention. The right hon. Gentleman's other point was about the tenure of the Estates Commissioners under Section 12. The meaning of Section 12 was that they should hold office by the same tenure as County Court Judges, simply, that was to say, with regard to their removability. It was

  1431
  not intended that their salaries should be taken off the Votes or that they themselves should not be subject to the full criticism of that House. The tenure of a County Court Judge had the advantage of being a safer tenure, but he would never propose that the salaries of the Commissioners should be removed from the consideration of the House. Commissioner Wrench had a salary that was placed on the Consolidated Fund, and so, in order to subject him to criticism, he was paid £500 a year more. He agreed that it would be a very absurd and lamentable thing if the Estates Commissioners were to be invested with the particular character of Judges which would prevent their being fairly criticised in that House. He was there to defend them, which was not the case with the Judges. It was possible to communicate with them, to argue with them, to persuade them, and to exercise whatever reasonable pressure the head of a department could bring to bear. He still thought he could discover no better tribunal than the three Estates Commissioners for the purpose of carrying out this measure. It had been said that it would have been better to follow the precedent of the Labourers Act. Under that Act land was taken compulsorily for the purpose of building cottages, and the Local Government Board appointed a single arbitrator. Supposing it had been suggested that he should appoint a single arbitrator to fix the value of the land, he did not think hon. Gentlemen opposite would have accepted the proposal. He would not have cared to suggest it. These three gentlemen were much better fitted to fix the value of land for the limited purposes of this measure than a single arbitrator, sometimes one man, sometimes another. He would shrink from appointing a single arbitrator. He would know very little about him to start with; and after he had appointed him he would hear all sorts of stories about his past life. He would not undertake the responsibility of suggesting that in a case of this sort the House should follow the example of the Labourers Acts. He still thought that these three persons were for the purpose the best that could be named. As some reference had been made to the evidence that Mr. Finucane gave before Lord
  1432
  Dudley's Commission, he would like to point out what was said by this blameless Anglo-Indian who had been represented as a person who had introduced into Ireland the most extreme Oriental ideas, who had not been educated in the spirit of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, and who could do almost anything if the public service required it. He found that Mr. Finucane expressed this view before the Commission, that —
  "The owner was entitled to receive, and the State should give, a full and generous price which should yield the vendor the normal income he had received from the land during the preceding five or ten years."
  He did not think that a man possessing news of that sort could be accused of entertaining wild and rash ideas as to the sanctity of property. Not a single acre of the 81,000 which were supposed to be required under the Act would be paid for at anything less than its fair market value. He could not read in the Bill or see in its provisions the least desire to do that. His only fear— well, he would not say fear— but his belief was that they would probably get more from the Estate Commissioners than they would be able to get in the open market. He not ask the landlords to submit themselves to be robbed; nobody did. He did thought, however, having regard to all that had been done for them by this Parliament and by the Act of 1903, that they had done better than they expected. He did not quarrel with them for that, because a bargain was a bargain, and he would not go back upon it. He thought, having regard to the terms on which the Act of 1903 became law, and to the fact that it contained what was believed to be a generous provision for these very evicted tenants— of course voluntarily, because the whole scheme was voluntary— that they would not have got that measure had it not been believed, perhaps too readily and too sanguinely, that the question was going to be settled in a comparatively short time. Therefore he did not think it was too much to ask the Irish landlords that they should throw themselves into the matter and do their very best to fulfil all the promises and statements made by the noble Lord who had moved the rejection of the Bill in a singularly reasonable and

  1433
  admirable speech. He had not a word to say against that speech, and he would like due effect to be given to it. The British taxpayer had got to play his part; and they asked the landlords to play theirs. After all, the evicted tenants had not had such a good time of it during the last twenty-five years. Their case had been submitted to a pretty close examination and a considerable number had been eliminated from the list. The Estate Commissioners had rejected a considerable number, some on the ground of old age, some on the ground of poverty, some on account of their bad habits, and some because they would not be likely to thrive upon the land. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had drawn an awful picture as to the amount of pressure that would be exercised upon somebody or other. Well, a man in Ireland must resist pressure. That was all. He had to resist it. It was all very well for hon. Members to say they knew of a number of cases where he yielded. They did not know of the number of cases where he resisted. He dared say that if they were in his place, they would yield more than he did, though he did not say they would yield to the same people. Whatever Party in the State was in power, the person who occupied the position he occupied would at all events try and do his best in the matter, and when pressure was put upon him he must resist it if he thought honour demanded that he should. He was not going to admit that the hon. Member for the University of Cambridge was right in saying that almost every one of the people who had already been rejected would renew their claims and renew them in such a way as to make it almost impossible for the Estates Commissioners in the first instance or for the Chief Secretary or for the Government to resist their demands to be reinstated. He did not think that was so, and he regretted the somewhat scanning and nagging spirit in which a few Members, but by no means all, had received the measure. He thought the measure should have been treated as one which excluded a number of people, but excluded them for good reasons. He thought people should have said they would do their best, and that they would give the measure their support. It was an honest
  1434
  attempt to solve a difficult problem. He dared say that it would give rise to some dissatisfaction. Hon. Members opposite always assumed in one half of their speeches that the evicted tenants should be reinstated, but in the other half of their speeches they always wiped that assumption out. Assuming that the evicted tenants were to be reinstated, a measure of this kind could not be weighed nicely by the scale of gold. They had to take some rough-and-ready scheme. The tenants to be reinstated had to be those evicted before 1903, they had to give in their claim before May 18th, and their claims had to be investigated. A great number had been investigated. They had got to do their best, and it might require some courage to maintain their attitude. They had finally to limit the number to be reinstated, and there were very few cases outstanding. He did not wish to shut the gates of mercy on anybody, but at the same time they intended to limit the number, and they would have done so before the month was over. They had for the first time ascertained the dimensions of the problem, and it was larger than anybody thought. There was nothing unusual or unnatural in that. They now at all events knew the number and the acreage that would probably be required, and really the only question was whether they ought to apply the principle of compulsion at all. Everybody agreed that in certain cases—on the Clanricarde Estate, for instance—unless they had compulsion they would fail. He did not think they had enough untenanted land at their disposal to devote to this purpose, without injuring a cause which, apart from historical, political, and social reasons, was the more important of the two. He at all events could not be blamed for this circumstance, or have heaped upon his head the whole inherited history of Ireland. He did not wish in any way to take away land which was necessary to increase holdings so as to make them economic in order that people might live and thrive upon them. He really thought the time had come when it was necessary to have the compulsory powers this Bill offered. He felt certain that if they had not been in-

  1435
  cluded the measure would have hung fire for a great number of years and would have delayed the settlement of a question which everybody who knew anything about Ireland felt ought to be settled. They therefore felt it was necessary to take these compulsory powers. They took the Estates Commissioners, not because they considered them an ideal Court, but because they were a good Court for the limited purpose of the Bill, which was to fix the value of land. That was not a legal question and did not raise nice points and questions such as could be taken to the House of Commons. It was simply to say what was a fair price to pay a man for thirty or forty acres of land. Having the Estates Commissioners ready with all the accumulated knowledge they had acquired, they thought that on the whole they should give them the powers. The other courses which had been suggested were the setting up of an Arbitrator and; proceeding under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, which, in the last resort, meant handing the matter over to a jury. He therefore thought they were acting in the interests of the landlords themselves, and that they could not do better than appoint the Estates Commissioners as the tribunal. In an ideal state of society he did not think there would ever be an end to appeal. He could assure the House that lawyers who had pushed their case to appeal and lost in the House of Lords never went away convinced that that was an end of all things in the Court of Eternal Justice. They would be quite prepared, if there was another Court, to take it up to it. In considering the necessity for appeal they had to consider really what were the points at issue. The point might become of such importance that an appeal was necessary. He was quite content to say that in matters of the utmost importance affecting life and property in a real and material sense they might have one, two, or three appeals, but in a question of this sort, a question as to value, again and again fixed by a single arbitrator without appeal, he held it was unnecessary to insist upon appeal and to demand such appeal in the name of eternal justice as the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone did the other day. Indeed, the noble Lord appeared to think
  1436
  that eternal justice and the Lands Clauses Acts were one and the same thing. His answer to the noble Lord was that, considering the nature of the case to which the principles were to be applied, and it being a question whether they were to give £20 or £25 an acre for land, they really thought, assuming that they secured an honest tribunal and an impartial tribunal so far as anybody could be impartial, they were doing what was required. He had been an umpire himself, and he knew exactly how much importance to attach to expert evidence on one side or the other. Though not an expert on the value of land, he came to a conclusion, which never afterwards rested heavily upon his conscience, because he was certain that within a few pounds one way or the other he gave a very good sound judgment. He had no reason to suppose that the Estate; Commissioners would not be able to form a good, sound, sensible, business-like view as to the value of land in the various parts of Ireland. To evoke the principles of eternal justice and to speak in the impassioned language of some hon. Gentlemen opposite, as if Irish landlords were to be despoiled and ill-treated, was to apply to a matter of this sort, which ought to be a philanthropic business language of great exaggeration, and he was perfectly satisfied that this tribunal, even without a Court of Appeal, would do substantial justice in Ireland. One word about the new tenants or planters. There, he quite agreed, they must act cautiously and warily. He had said repeatedly that there were new tenants whom to turn out would be a gross injustice. He would not say he had any particular estate or planter in his mind at the moment, but imagination had played around him. The Leader of the Opposition had described him living on his farm, begetting his children on the place, with all his affections crowded round the spot, and popular with all around him. Well, he quite agreed that that man should not be turned out. But how did the hon. Gentleman wish to meet such a case? He could not put all these rhetorical phrases into the Bill, and he could not by the exercise of any language restrict the discretion of the Estates Commissioners even in favour of men

  1437
  of this description. Everybody recognised that there were a considerable number whom it would be improper to turn out, but everyone recognised that a great many would be glad to go. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University made a suggestion that there should be no alternative farms offered at all. That was a matter well worthy of consideration, but he thought in the case of persons who were really farmers they would prefer to get the alternative offer. They might say they had not been happy where they were, but that having been farmers all their lives they did not want to be turned off the soil by being paid a sum of money. They might say they would sooner be treated as farmers and get a place somewhere else. He thought a man should have a choice between a farm and a sum of money. If he preferred the farm he should have it, or if he preferred the money he could take that. He therefore thought there was no injustice in it unless they assumed that the Estates Commissioners were going round to turn out people irrespective of every other circumstance of the case. He declined to put in any words which would restrict their discretion in the matter, because there might be one or two cases where it would be desirable in the interests of law
  and order in a neighbourhood that a man should go. He did not know of any such case, but there might be one or two and they would have full and cautious consideration. He had introduced the Bill, not because of the rejection of the Irish Council Bill—they were always hearing that, and it was supposed to give him great pain, but he could assure hon. Gentleman opposite they might try to prick him with that barbed answer as long as they pleased and he would not claim the martyr's crown. This Bill had nothing whatever to do with the Irish Council Bill or its rejection by the Convention. It was brought in in consequence of a pledge given by him at the early part of the session. He had fulfilled that pledge to the best of his ability, and he thought that the measure, even if it passed into law without any further discussion, which, of course, it would not, because it would be considered in another place, would do good to Ireland, be an act of justice, and, if they liked, of generosity, and contribute to make the task of those who succeeded him easier.
  Question put.
  The House divided:— Ayes, 228; Noes, 49. (Division List, No. 371).

  AYES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.

  Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Ferens, T. R.

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Ffrench, Peter

  Alden, Percy

  Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Allen. A. Acland (Christchurch)

  Cleland. J. W.

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Ambrose, Robert

  Clough, William

  Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

  Armitage, R.

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Fowler, Rt. Hn. Sir Henry

  Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Fuller, John Michael F.

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Cooper, G. J.

  Fullerton, Hugh

  Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

  Corbett, C H. (Sussex, Grinst'd

  Gibb, James (Harrow)

  Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Gilhooly, James

  Barry. Redmond J.(Tyrone, N.

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John

  Bell, Richard

  Cowan, W. H.

  Glover, Thomas

  Bethell, Sir, J. H.(Essex, Romf'rd

  Crean, Eugene

  Goddard, Daniel Ford

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Crooks, William

  Grant, Corrie

  Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

  Cullinan, J.

  Grayson, Allbert Victor

  Boland, John

  Curran, Peter Francis

  Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Davies, Timothy (Fulham)

  Gulland, John W.

  Branch, James

  Delany, William

  Gurdon, Rt. Hn. Sir W. Brampton

  Brigg, John

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

  Gwynn, Stephen Lucius

  Brocklehurst, W. B.

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Halpin, J.

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

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness'

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis

  Brunner, Rt. Hn. Sir J. T. (Chesh.

  Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

  Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)

  Burke, E. Haviland-

  Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)

  Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

  Byles, William Pollard

  Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

  Elibank, Master of

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Hazel, Dr. A. E.

  Hazleton, Richard

  Maddison, Frederick

  Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Manfield, Harry (Northants)

  Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

  Henry, Charles S.

  Marnham, F. J.

  Roche, Augustine (Cork)

  Higham, John Sharp

  Massie, J.

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

  Hodge, John

  Meagher, Michael

  Rose, Charles Day

  Hogan, Michael

  Menzies, Walter

  Rowlands, J.

  Holden, E. Hopkinson

  Micklem, Nathaniel

  Runciman, Walter

  Horniman, Emslie John

  Molteno, Percy Alport

  Russell, T. W.

  Howard Hon. Geoffrey

  Montgomery, H. G.

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

  Hudson, Walter

  Mooney, J. J.

  Sears, J. E.

  Hyde, Clarendon

  Morrell, Philip

  Seddon, J.

  Idris, T. H. W.

  Morse, L. L.

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

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Sheehy, David

  Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

  Muldoon, John

  Sherwell, Arthur James

  Jacoby, Sir James Alfred

  Murnaghan, George

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Jardine, Sir J.

  Murphy, John (Kerry, East)

  Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Murphy, N. J. (Kilkenny, S.)

  Sloan, Thomas Henry

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Murray, James

  Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie

  Jones, William (Carnarvon)

  Myer, Horatio

  Spicer, Sir Albert

  Jordan, Jeremiah

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Jowett, F. W.

  Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

  Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

  Joyce, Michael

  Nicholls, George

  Sutherland, J. E.

  Kekewich, Sir George

  Nolan, Joseph

  Tomkinson, James

  Kilbride, Denis

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Torrance, Sir A. M.

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  Nugent, Sir Walter Richard

  Ure, Alexander

  Laidlaw, Robert

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Verney, F. W.

  Lambert, George

  O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

  Vivian, Henry

  Lamont, Norman

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Walters, John Tudor

  Lardner, James Carrige Rushe

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds. S.)

  Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)

  O'Grady, J.

  Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent

  Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E.

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

  Wardle, George J.

  Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington

  O'Malley, William

  Waring, Walter

  Lehmann, R. C.

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Partington, Oswald

  Watt, Henry A.

  Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Leek)

  White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)

  Lough, Thomas

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Lundon, W.

  Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)

  Whitehead, Rowland

  Lupton, Arnold

  Pullar, Sir Robert

  Whiteley, John Henry (Halifax

  Lynch, H. B.

  Radford, G. H.

  Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Rainy, A. Rolland

  Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarth'n

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Raphael, Herbert H.

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

  Macpherson, J. T.

  Rea, Russell (Gloucester)

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

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  M'Callum, John M.

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.

  M'Crae, George

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

  Whiteley and Mr. A. J.

  M'Kean, John

  Rickett, J. Compton

  Pease.

  M'Killop, W.

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  M'Micking, Major G.

  Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

  NOES.

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

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

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Anstruther-Gray, Major

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Moore, William

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

  Nicholson, W. G. (Petersfield)

  Ashley, W. W.

  Craig, Charles Curtis(Antrim, S.

  O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

  Balcarres, Lord

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

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

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

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Fell, Arthur

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey

  Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

  Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks

  Gardner, Ernest (Berks, East)

  Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Gordon, J.

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Bowles, G. Stewart

  Gretton, John

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Butcher, Samuel Henry

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Hills, J. W.

  Cavendish, Rt. Hn. Victor C. W.

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

  Viscount Valentia and Mr.

  Cecil, Lord E. (Marylebone, E.)

  Long, Rt. Hn. Walter(Dublin, S.

  Forster.

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

  Londsale, John Brownlee

  Question put, and agreed to.

  PUBLIC HEALTH (REGULATIONS AS TO FOOD) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  DR. COOPERsaid he desired to move that this Bill be read a second time that day three months. Everybody had at heart the object sought to be carried out by this Bill, but they objected to the way in which the President of the Local Government Board proposed to achieve that object. Those who read the Bill could not avoid seeing the drastic change that was contemplated by it. It proposed to take out of the hands of Parliament and give to the Local Government Board the whole control, and all foods except drugs and all drink except water were to be covered by regulations of the Local Government Board. There was no suggestion that those regulations should be laid before Parliament or laid upon the Table or inquired into by the various trades affected, and therefore he thought it was his duty to oppose the Bill. For years he had been interested in the administration of the public health, and he knew how seriously this Bill would affect it. It was the most anti-democratic measure that had been introduced into the House of Commons in modern times. It was such a Bill as one might have expected an administrative autocracy to bring in, but not a democratic Government. It took out of the hands of the people the control of all these large trades, and although the President of the Local Government Board might say he was responsible for everything that was done, the people's representatives in the House of Commons were deprived of any opportunity of discussing the action of the Local Government Board. A large number of Members would like to do so, and even if they had such an opportunity there would be very little chance of discussing the question. He regretted that the Government had not devoted the time that they had employed on the Army Bill to a Public Health Bill to preserve life instead of utilising the time to pass a Bill to destroy life. In such a Bill the whole of these subjects might be dealt
  1442
  with by Parliament and not by the Local Government Board. The work of this Bill might have been put into a Public Health Bill. Such a Bill had stood upon the Paper all through the session, and yet at the far end of the session this Bill was brought up. It was hardly the proper way of dealing with the question. The Bill dealt with a trade of £300,000,000 or £400,000,000. The meat trade alone came to £30,000,000 or £40,000,000 a month, and that meat was to be inspected directly it came into the country. The machinery necessary must be large and expensive, and he thought they ought to know something about that machinery before the Bill was passed. The same thing might be said of all other interests bound up in the Bill. The Bill not only made the regulations but gave power to the Local Government Board to modify Acts of Parliament already passed, which was a most extraordinary power to give to a Government Department. That alone ought to give rise to a very serious consideration of the Bill. It was for these reasons that he declined to give the powers proposed to the Local Government Board. He knew what the inspectors of meat in England were. Many of them were not properly trained and their work was done by rule of thumb. In Germany the inspector of meat had to be either a veterinary surgeon or a surgeon, and to have two years special training. On all these grounds and with the desire of giving the House some opportunity of discussing the Bill, which he did not desire should slip through without some debate, he begged to move the Motion standing in his name.
  MR. WATTsaid he seconded the Motion not so much upon the intrinsic demerits of the Bill as because of the want of conciliation on the part of the President of the Local Government Board who had brought it forward. He regarded the Bill as one of the most drastic of the session. Notwithstanding this fact, the President of the Local Government Board had placed every obstacle in the way of Motions being placed upon the Paper, asking that the regulations in the Bill might be laid before the House. The Bill was based on an Act which dealt with cholera and epidemics and which was only used on

  1443
  special occasions. Notice had to be given of the regulations under that Act before they came into force. In 1896 another Public Health Act was passed and the powers of the authorities were further extended and handed over to the Local Government Board. That Act dealt with the regulations of port authorities. It dealt with the case of disease on board vessels coming into ports. The powers which had been handed over to the Local Government Board required that in that case also consent had to be obtained and notice given to the public before the regulations became operative. Consent had to be obtained from the Customs authorities and from the Admiralty, and notice had to be given to the public of that consent. This Bill was an extension of both those Acts, but the extraordinary thing about it was that the Local Government Board had to give no notice to anyone as to the regulations they were to make. They were to deal with all the articles of food and drink of the people without giving any notice to the people or to the trades affected. He thought that such regulations should be laid before both Houses of Parliament for forty days before they came into effect.
  Amendment proposed —
  "To leave out the word 'now' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'this day three months.' "— (Dr. Cooper.)
  Question proposed, "That the word ' now ' stand part of the Question."
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. JOHN-BURNS,)said he asked the House to give a Second Reading to this simple, useful, necessary, and in his judgment too long delayed measure. At the outset he wished to state what were the deficiencies in the law as it now was, and the reason and justification for the Government asking that this Bill should be passed into law to make good those deficiencies. The Government asked that the Local Government Board should have power to extend the duties it now enjoyed under the Act of 1875, as set out in the Bill now under consideration. Perhaps in the light of what had recently been said, he might state what the law was with regard to the condition, the
  1444
  preparation, storage, and distribution of human food which was peculiarly liable to become unsound. The Public Health Act empowered the Medical Officer for Health or Inspector of Nuisances to examine meat or other articles of food if exposed for sale or deposited for the purposes of sale or in course of preparation for sale, if intended for the food of man. If it appeared to the Medical Officer or the Inspector of Nuisances that meat or any form of food was diseased, unsound, unwholesome, or unfit for food, he might seize, carry away, examine and bring the case before a magistrate. If the magistrate was satisfied, the food might be condemned and a penalty inflicted on the vendor or any person on whose premises the food so condemned was found. To many people who had not closely studied the question, the law was quite sufficient; but unfortunately it was not, because an Inspector was-unable to deal with any food so long as it was not, in the language of the Act, "exposed for sale for human consumption." The Public Health Acts gave no control over the arrangement or preparation of food or the cleanliness of the receptacles in which it was contained The House would perhaps permit him to-give an illustration. A certain firm whose name he would not mention exported a large quantity of tinned meat from England to South Africa. That meat was sound, clean, healthy and well packed. It went to South Africa and lay there for two or three years. It was moved from pillar to post, following the troops wherever they went. But a considerable proportion of it was not used, and at the end of the war it was sold. It had so bad a reputation in South Africa that no one would think of touching it. It was shipped to England and arrived at a certain port with a view to its being sold and circulated in this country. It was in a shocking condition, but it could not be touched at the port were it was landed because it was not exposed for sale. It was transported by rail to London, and it could not be touched in the goods yard for the same reason. To their credit, the firm who originally prepared and sold it, who of course were not responsible for the condition into which it had fallen, seeing [that if that food, bearing their name, packed in their tins and packages, was put upon the market

  1445
  and sold, their reputation would suffer enormously, informed the Local Government Board of the circumstance. The Local Government Board had no power to seize the food, but the result was that the Board with the co-operation of one or two people succeeded in persuading the person who bought this unsound food to sacrifice his prospective profit, and the stuff was condemned and destroyed. The Local Government Board ought not to be put in that position. When large quantities of condemned stores were known to be unsound and it was known by the port sanitary authority that an endeavour was being made to put them upon the market the Local Government Board ought to be in a position to stop them.
  MR. WATT: They were sold to this person.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: said they were sold as condemned stores, and the man knew perfectly well that he would not have got them at the price he did if they had not been unsound. The medical officer or port sanitary authority ought to have the power to seize and condemn such things. If that was not done, these bad stores were sold to retailers of food, who were in many cases persuaded that they were in good condition or were not so unsound as to be objectionable to the palates of their customers. But the chief evil was that an honest tradesman was induced to purchase them for a small price. He exposed them for sale, the sanitary officer came along and seized the goods, and this unfortunate man was taken before a magistrate and fined for selling things which he should have had no opportunity of selling. A fine or perhaps imprisonment was the result. That was bad enough, but worse still was the fact that this perfectly honest tradesman who had been trapped into this, had his reputation so affected that if he was able to pay the fine, he was not able to outlive the unsavoury reputation which he had acquired as a seller of bad food, and he was either absolutely ruined or had to remove to another place. To show the necessity for these powers he might say that in 1872 tinned meat to the extent of about 14 lbs. per head of the population was imported into this country, and that in 1902 the importation had grown to 56 lbs. per head. £40,000,000 worth of food
  1446
  was imported yearly into this country. Half that food came from the United States, and the great bulk of that half came from a particular city. The Local Government Board desired under this Bill to obtain powers to prevent danger arising to the public health from the importation of tinned foods. Tinned food made from unwholesome articles could, save in exceptional cases, now be detected, but only two port sanitary authorities had power to deal effectively with this food on landing. Those two were London and Manchester. This Bill proposed to put all port sanitary authorities in the same position as those of London and Manchester, of being able to take samples of such food and destroy it where necessary. The regulation would also require satisfactory evidence of the antecedents of the food such as were demanded by Germany, Denmark, and other continental countries. The authorities would insist upon knowing the conditions under which food was prepared, especially sausages, brawn, and other articles consumed mainly in the poorer districts. It would insist upon the provision of clean and decent places where food had to be stored. It would provide, for example, that ice cream under process of preservation should not be kept under or in a bed or near a lavatory. It would insist that in the process of distributing food the receptacles, wagons, and other means of transport should be kept cleaner than they now were. It would enable many of the abominations which prevailed in all parts of the country to be stopped, and indeed the conditions under which food was prepared and distributed would be so improved as to be an advantage to the food trade, while conferring a protection upon honest traders in the difficulties which now surrounded them. If the House would permit him he would give one or two reasons, quite apart from the desire of the Local Government Board, for this Bill. He had before him the report of a man who very properly enjoyed the respect and good opinion of all who knew him. He referred to the medical officer for Finsbury, Dr. Newman, who was the author of that excellent work entitled "Infant Mortality" and who had given many years study to dietetics. Dr. Newman stated —
  "Much imported meat is actually diseased, and especially does this apply to offal and veal,

  1447
  even when it is received from such countries as Holland, where more or less inspection takes place. For instance, from 1901–5 in Finsbury, in addition to a large quantity of damaged and decomposed veal and offal, we contiscated 213 carcases of veal, 150 carcases of pork, and 40,486 sheep's and pigs' plucks, all of which were diseased and none of which bore evidences of inspection."
  He wished to supplement that by saying that this was food the medical officer was able to condemn with his limited powers, and yet had it been placed in wagons and transported from Finsbury to Batter-sea it could not have been stopped, because in the words of the Act, "it was not exposed for sale for human consumption." The Report went on to say that two van loads of tinned so-called beef and sausage were found to be in a Very bad condition; some of the tins had been pricked to let the gas out, and then re-soldered. The contents when analysed were discovered to consist not of beef but of horse flesh from Hamburg. Now they could realise what became of the poor old horses shipped from England to Hamburg, and sold there for about £1 or 30s.; they came back after an interval to this country in the form of canned foods of every description. He was glad to think that the City Corporation and the local authorities were strongly in favour of this Bill. He had received no complaint against it; on the contrary, he had been strongly urged to press it forward. He would give another case. Dr. Collingridge, the medical officer for the City of London, said that in December, 1906, 11,000 tons of mixed food were seized. He tested seventy or eighty tins, the contents of which he found in every case to be unwholesome, some were putrid, eved rotten, and some were saturated with tin: it was solely in consequence of the liquid that came from the tins that they were examined. If the importers only knew how deficient were the powers of medical officers in this matter, he feared that much more of this stuff would get into circulation. He had a quotation from the Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Marylebone, dealing with the kind of thing this Bill was intended to prevent—
  "The chief fault lay in the American brawns; six samples of brawn derived from Chicago were filthy, containing dirt, bits of straw, woody fibre, hair, hogs' bristles, shreds of skin with the bristles attached, and other matters,
  1448
  giving one the impression that some portion of the contents was made by floor sweepings."
  Again, the Chairman of the Public Health Committee of the London County Oouncil said —
  "In Paddington there had been seized five tons of diseased meat, much of which consisted of liver filled with parasites and abcesses;
  while as to Finsbury they were told
  "that in the first five years since it became a borough, 376 tons of meat bad been seized and confiscated."
  One report spoke of a business in prepared food being carried on without the inspector knowing anything about it, the reason being that the law as it now stood did not empower the inspector to go where he could get information. He did not think it necessary to give further instances showing the enormous amount of diseased and unsound meat which got through. It would be sufficient to quote one authority, and that was the Lancet, which deserved great praise for the way in which it pressed the Government to do something in this matter. In a leading article in June last, it said —
  "The trade in diseased meat and putrid milk, to say nothing of adulterated foodstuffs, will never be put an end to until the offenders are treated as the poisoners which they really are."
  He could give instance after instance to prove the truth of that comment. He could cite many instances of meat being treated with boracic and salicylic acid, and of food being prepared in filthy, unsanitary places, and he asked the House to give the Local Government Board power, not only to deal with unsound meat, but also to deal with tinned meats, instead of leaving medical officers of health as at present to do their best to cope with these evils by mere persuasion and sometimes bluff. It would be well for the House to listen to some descriptions of the way in which the food of the poor in some parts of the country was stored. In Mansfield in 1896, as a result of the preparation and storage of potted meats under uncleanly conditions, 250 persons were affected, and no doubt other isolated cases of illness were not reported. The factory inspector for the East End of London reported—
  "The sausage and brawn factories are mostly owned by Germans, who have a retail shop on the premises, and employ one or two hands to make the goods in a room behind the

  1449
  shop or in a cellar underneath. These places are small, delapidated, badly-lit, and often infested with rats."
  In the case of another provincial corporation the Report stated that beef was received in a dirty passage, and was either hung on hooks against a filthy wall or laid on the floor. It was then taken into a filthy room and cut up. The boiling pans were situated in rooms, the walls and floors of which were bespattered and dirty to such an extent that the beef must have been contaminated. The walls of these rooms were covered with soot, and altogether the place was in a condition likely to give rise to danger. Surely here the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon had an opportunity of securing protection near home. He had even worse instances in the City of London which he could quote. Not only did these Reports deal with unsound meat; they also covered the case of liquids, and he would tell them of a case showing how sarsaparilla wine— which was no doubt intended to be sold in the parks on Bank Holiday— was treated. He would read the Report of the case of an old woman charged with neglecting her tour children. The sanitary inspector said that—
  "In July she found the four children locked in a back room, absolutely naked. The witness had found out for whom the woman prepared the sarsaparilla, and the work had been stopped. The Public Health Act enabled them to make the house clean, but they could not make the people clean."
  He ought not to be placed in the position of having to be written to to put a stop to insanitary conditions in places where sarsaparilla wine, tinned meats, brawn, pate de foie gras and other things were made and sold to the poor; and he appealed to the House to give him the power to look into these matters under the regulations which he asked them to pass. It might be said that this did not apply to food imported from Canada, America, and elsewhere. He believed in equal rights between all white men in the matter of tinned foods whether they came from Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, or Manchester or Liverpool. Whether they were sold in small towns or in the City of London, they would all have to toe the line in regard to medical and
  1450
  sanitary standards. It had been represented to him that the tinned foods from certain places were absolutely clean, that the places in which they were made were also absolutely clean, and that there was no danger in them at all. He must on this point read one or two extracts from Dr. Buchanan's Report, and he would leave out the names of the firms—
  "—'s Brawn: Many hog bristles and much skin and bone. Contents very dirty; —'s brawn: Many pig's bristles, woody fibre and dirt; —'s Brawn: The contents of this tin were filthy. Hogs's bristles, hair, probably human, bits of wood, cotton fibres, starch granules, and dirt generally; —'s Brawn: Filthy sample, much dirt, many hog's bristles; —'s Brawn: Contents mainly gristle and skin with hair attached, cotton fibres, dirt and human hair. Sample unfit, in my opinion, for use; —'s Brand, tongue: Contents very dirty."
  It might be said that since the recent exposures in this country and elsewhere things had been put right, and that there was no need for any panic. He could have got this Bill last year, at the time when the food panic was at its height, but — he hoped fairly and courteously —he had declined to pass a Food Regulations Bill in a period of panic; he had determined to allow that panic period to pass over, and, a year having elapsed, he could not now be accused of taking hasty or ill-considered action. However satisfied they might be with the conditions of life, sanitary, social, municipal or political, whether in America or here, or in any country however perfect things might be now, they could not allow them to continue with the law so defective as it was at present, because there was a strong probability that in the absence of proper regulations matters would relapse to their former condition. Well, he was not going to allow diseased horseflesh to be exported to Hamburg and transhipped to England in the shape of "Piccadilly brawn" that kind of thing had to be stopped; he did not see why we should take from other countries what Germany, Denmark, and other European nations refused to receive. If it were necessary, he could give further instances in support of the claim he was making upon the House; he could more than justify every statement he now made, and he asked the House to give the Local Government Board power to make these regulations, which would

  1451
  be communicated to every sanitary authority that wanted them. Places like Salford, Liverpool, Glasgow, London, and elsewhere could not act without these regulations; therefore he asked that his Department should be entrusted with such regulations, which they would administer with fairness to all concerned. He was prepared not to enforce them for twenty-eight days after they were issued, except in a case of emergency such as the South African case, so as to give all interests affected an opportunity of examining them and communicating with the Local Government Board in the event of their thinking that they were prejudiced in any way. He would lose no opportunity during that twenty-eight days of communicating with the trades. He had already received a deputation from them, and there was no substantial opposition to giving the Local Government Board power to make these regulations. The Department would neither harass nor inconvenience those who wanted to carry on a legitimate trade in either fresh or tinned foods decently and in order; but, compatibly with doing justice to the trade, and recognising all the interests affected, he appealed to the House on behalf of the food consumer to give the Local Government Board greater power over the £40,000,000 worth of tinned food that came into the country, so that they could save the very poor, who suffered most in this respect, from the danger of death and disease which resulted from foods being stored in filthy places, or from their being made in the insanitary conditions which he had described. If the House conferred on the Local Government Board power to make these regulations that Department would, to the best of their ability, do their utmost to carry them out. None but the dishonest trader in unsound food or the dirty manufacturer who prepared the food in places where they they would not stable a horse or litter a pig, would have reason to take exception to the regulations. He therefore, hoped that the House would confer on the Local Government Board the simple and effective powers for which he was now asking.
  SIR FRANCIS POWELLsaid he desired to support this Bill, and to offer a
  1452
  word of thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for his proposals. The Police and Sanitary Committee, on which he served, had been engaged time after time in discussing clauses relating to tinned meat. Great difficulty was associated with the subject, and it should not be left to chance local action. This measure should have a beneficial effect in dealing with children who were too often ill-fed, through the carelessness of their parents, who were frequently the victims also of fraud. The Bill would save children from being put into that unhappy position in which they were now liable to be given unwholesome food. The case made out by the right hon. Gentleman appeared to him to be absolutely complete, and he would feel grateful if there were not one dissentient voice raised against the measure. It was not often he could agree with His Majesty's Government, but on this occasion they had his most hearty support, and he hoped the Bill would soon become law.
  SIR WALTER FOSTERsaid he was sure that everyone in the House desired to assist the President of the Local Government Board in trying to put a stop to the abominations which he had so graphically described by means of the extracts which he had read. He thought that no law could be too strong to put down such cases, though he was disappointed with the machinery of the Bill, which did not appear to him to be adequate to deal with this great evil. There would have to be inspection throughout the length and breadth of the land of a thorough and efficient character, and hundreds of inspectors would be required who would have to be paid out of the rates or taxes for their work. If they were to have food adequately treated and inspected, they would have to have inspectors who would attend every market and prevent diseased cattle being sold. They could do that under the present law, but unfortunately the local authorities did not assist in the work, consequently they had every day in the markets of this country diseased cattle which were sold and slaughtered in the locality and sent to London or some of the chief towns of the country to be consumed by the poor. He had brought before the House instances of cattle

  1453
  suffering from that terrible disease anthrax, which had been sold in the Midland counties to be consumed by the people. If that was to be stopped it must be by adequate inspection all over the country, and in order to do that they must have a sufficient staff provided. One set of inspectors would act where animals were sold in the open market, another body of inspectors would stop diseased meat in shops and factories. The right hon. Gentleman also proposed to follow the food up to the stores, and they would have to deal with cold storage places where they took in food for human consumption, and where it was kept for a certain length of time and required inspection before it was distributed. But that was a gigantic task, so gigantic that it required a large amount of consideration and a very large staff. Every part of the country would have to be equipped with a proper staff. Was the machinery proposed adequate to deal with these great evils? The publication of rules and regulations would not suffice, there must be machinery to expose them. Food inspection to be carried out thoroughly and efficiently would necessitate hundreds of inspectors being employed and paid out of the rates. Under the existing law local authorities could have inspectors to attend markets and prevent diseased cattle from being sold and killed for food. Unfortunately local authorities would not always help in this way, and cattle suffering from diseasess were constantly sold for food. The President of the Local Government Board was undertaking a gigantic task. He thought that the regulations when framed should be laid on the table of the House for forty days. He did not think regulations of this magnitude ought to be enforced without the cognisance of the House. He therefore asked the right hon. Gentleman to agree to extend the period from twenty-eight to forty days, and he hoped that that concession would be made before they proceeded to a division.
  MR. CAVEsaid the right hon. Gentleman had made out a very strong case indeed for some Bill of this kind, but he thought the powers asked for were too wide. He assumed that the Bill would go upstairs.
  MR. JOHN BURNSdissented.
  MR. CAVEsaid under this Bill the powers of the Local Government Board would not be confined even to unsound and unfit food. Regulations might be made dealing with food of any kind which the President of the Local Government Board might consider injurious to health. He agreed with the suggestion that a longer period should be allowed before the regulations were put in force.
  MR. BOWLESsaid he should not have intervened but for the indication given by the right hon. Gentleman that it was not the intention of the Government that this Bill should be sent to a Committee upstairs. If that were so it would be an entirely new departure. Nobody could doubt that there was a crying need for further regulations to stop the abominations which the right hon. Gentleman had described. That, however, was a very different thing from giving the Local Government Board, as this Bill did, powers to apply not only to bad food but to any article of human consumption any regulation which might seem good to them, or which might already be in existence under the Public Health Act. That was an enormous power and was larger than was justified by anything which the right hon. Gentleman had said. It appeared to him to be one of those Bills which ought to be submitted to a Committee upstairs. Enormous, vague, indefinite powers of this kind affecting large interests and many persons ought not to be considered by the House during the small hours of the morning, and rushed through under circumstances with which they were all familiar, and which no hon. Member could contend were at all satisfactory.
  Lord BALCARRESheld that the powers asked for by the Local Government Board were too wide. They might, indeed, be applied to alcohol, which some people considered was injurious to health. The President of the Local Government Board would be empowered to make regulations preventing the importation of

  1455
  articles dangerous to the public health and by placing alcohol in that category he could prevent its importation.
  MR. HIGHAMsupported the suggestion that the regulations should be placed upon the Table of the House. Nobody had gone the length of explaining what could be done by this Bill, and no such wide powers as were proposed ought to be given to any Department. They would not always have the right hon. Member for Battersea at the head of this Department. It was the custom in every other Department that such regulations should lie upon the Table. That was the practice under the Factory and Workshops Act, and it had been carried out from time immemorial. He did not think that in asking that this old custom should be carried out in the case of this Bill they were asking for anything unreasonable. It was very seldom indeed that such regulations were criticised, and during the last two years there had not been a single instance. The right hon. Gentleman need have no fear that any reasonable regulations would be refused. He agreed that a measure of this kind was needed. He believed that the chemicals which were being used as preservatives were in many cases deleterious, and this was the only civilised country in the world which had not imposed regulations in regard to the use of preservatives. He held that this was a matter in which the health of the people should be protected.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid he was quite willing to concede the request of the hon. Member for the Ilkeston Division that the regulations should lie on the Table of the House for forty days. He hoped the proposal that the Bill should be sent to a Standing Committee would be withdrawn. This was a Bill of one clause, and there was no reason why it should not be considered by Committee of the Whole House.
  Dr. COOPERasked leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Monday next. — (Mr. John Burns.)

  BRITISH NORTH AMERICA BILL.
  Order for the Lords' Amendments to be considered, read.
  Lord R. CECILasked an explanation of the changes made by the Amendments.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL,)said the first, which was inserted at the desire of the Federal Government, was introduced in order to embody in the schedule the Address of the Colonial Premiers which led up to this Bill. As to the other Amendment, the Bill provided for the payment of grants to certain provinces of Canada according as their population increased. Prince Edward's Island was the only province with a decreasing population, but it was protected by an Order in Council against losing any grant through a decrease of population. Under this Amendment that province would retain that position, while benefiting from any increase of population.
  Lords' Amendments agreed to.

  MERCHANT SHIPPING (TONNAGE DEDUCTION FOR PROPELLING POWER) BILL.
  Bill, as amended, considered.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon)said he promised when the Bill was in Committee to make it perfectly clear that it would not interfere with the existing rights of certain docks and harbours. In order to carry out that promise he would move a new clause.
  MR. SPEAKER: You cannot do that without notice.
  MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Very well, I shall see that the clause is inserted in another place.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this Bill be now read a third time." — (Mr. Lloyd George).

  PRISONS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time." — (Mr. Redmond Barry).
  LORD R. CECILsaid the Second Reading had been moved without a word of explanation, although the House did not know anything about the Bill. He thought the Government was becoming very cavalier in its treatment of the House.
  THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. REDMOND BARRIE,)said the object of the Bill was to apply to Irish prisons a single section of the English Prisons Act giving certain powers as to the revision of sentences according to rules prescribed by the Prisons Board.

  SEA FISHERIES (SCOTLAND) (APPLICATION OF PENALTIES) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND(Mr. SINCLAIR,)in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, said it contained one clause and was of a Departmental character agreed upon between the two Departments concerned. It proposed that the penalties now recovered for offences against the police
  1458
  regulations as to trawling, which had hitherto gone into the Treasury, should now go into the Marine Fund under the control of the Scottish Fishery Board. The Bill had the support of both sides of the House.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Monday next. — (Mr. Sinclair.)

  WHALE FISHERIES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. SINCLAIR, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, said it was of a non-controversial character. About three years ago a whale fishery was established in the North and West of Scotland, and consequent upon the establishment of that fishery there was an inquiry into its effects. It happened that about that period there had been one or two rather bad seasons in these particular districts in connection with the herring fisheries, and some alarm was aroused lest there should be a direct connection between the establishment of the whale fishery and the depression in the herring fisheries. The Fisheries Board appointed a Commission to inquire, and a Bill based on the Report of the Commission was introduced to regulate the whale fishing industry. The Bill did not pass, and that was partly because the movement in support of the measure had greatly diminished owing to the return of prosperity in the herring fisheries. For a year or two there had been no great evidence of a desire that the Bill should pass. Last year, however, the herring fisheries again failed in those particular districts where the whale fishing industry was carried on, and, responding to a request, the Government undertook to consider whether it would not be well to introduce legislation founded upon the Commission's Report of 1904. This Bill was the redemption of that pledge. The Bill was drawn on lines similar to previous Bills. There was a strong feeling in many parts of Scotland that the question should be dealt with on the lines of

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  the present Bill, and he believed it was possible that it might be passed this session, with the general consent of both sides of the House. It did not prohibit the whale fishing industry, but sought to place it under regulations of licence. There were some critics who desired that the Government should prohibit the industry altogether. The Government did not take that view, and this step towards regulation and licence, he believed, would have the general assent of both Parties. The herring fishing industry in Scotland was so important that it behoved them to do what they could to protect its interests. Several points would no doubt arise in Committee, but they were capable of adjustment. He hoped the House would assist in passing the measure this session.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time — (Mr. Sinclair.)
  LORD R. CECILsaid that this was a Bill of very considerable length and its details were highly complicated. He had listened carefully to the speech of the Secretary for Scotland, but he could not understand what was the object of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the herring fishing had failed, but he understood that it was because it had something to do with the whale-catching industry. What bearing the whale-catching industry had upon the herring fishing industry he did not know. He did not pretend to be a fisherman himself. He would have thought that if the whales were bad for the herring, then the more whales caught the better. If the whales were good for the herring, then he did not see how regulations and licence were likely to attract the whales. He could see, however, that the Bill was a severe one. It proposed to subject an industry at present carried on free to a very heavy licensing duty. A licence for a steamer for example, would cost £100, and any one who contravened the provisions of the Bill would be liable to penalties amounting in some cases to as much as £500. There was a mysterious clause, entitled "saving for certain whales." He did not know what whales it was supposed to save— although in the clause bottle-nose and
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  caaing whales were mentioned. He desired some explanation why these whales should be slaughtered indiscriminately, when for the killing of sperm and other whales a licence was required.
  MR. GULLANDMarylebone whales.
  LORD R. CECIL: The hon. Gentleman clearly knows all about it. I do not see why these "bone" whales should be killed ruthlessly.
  MR. GULLAND: Merely bone whales.
  LORD R. CECIL: Oh, it is a joke. I beg pardon.
  MR. AKERS DOUGLAS: It is a Scottish joke.
  LORD R. CECIL: It is very creditable at any rate, I assure you. He desired to know what particular advantage was to be got out of the Bill; and he hoped the Secretary for Scotland would explain what he really wanted by the Bill.
  MR. SINCLAIRsaid there were many different kinds of whales. The bottle-nose and caaing whales were not injurious to the herring, and there was, therefore, a saving for those whales under the Bill. Under the Bill were several other kinds of whales, which were the subject of pursuit by whale fishers, such as blue whales, "finners," and sperm whales. With regard to the licences the establishments were to be licensed according to the number of steamers used in the fishing. A factory on shore was proportionate to the number of steamers employed. The injury attributed to the whaling industry was two-fold. In the first place, it was an injury to the locality in the sense that sanitary precautions were necessary to prevent offensive smells and the pollution of sea water near the factories. In certain establishments such sanitary precautions were already taken. Every portion of the whale was used, and when the factories were properly administered there was no nuisance, or it was reduced to a minimum, and certainly the local authorities would consider these facts. He had visited one of these establishments last year, and he found it

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  one of the best in the whole district. He was sorry that an hon. Member who sat opposite was not present because that establishment was on his property. The other injury was the danger to the herring fishing by the towing of carcases from where they were killed to the factories on shore. Scientifically that was a matter of dispute. It was certainly not proved that the presence of whales or the existence of a whale-fishing industry under proper regulations was necessarily injurious to the herring fishing.
  LORD R. CECIL: What is supposed to be the injury that the whales do to the herring, and how are you to stop it by licensing?
  MR. SINCLAIRsaid it was alleged by practical men that herrings had disappeared where whale fishing was carried on. Scientifically that was a matter in dispute. It was alleged that the Norwegian authorities prohibited in certain districts of that country the whale fishery because it did damage to the herring fishery; but he had ascertained that that was not the case. However, there was ground for alarm at the present time, and if they did not restrict the growth of the whaling industry it might attain dimensions which would double whatever evil existed. While they had no desire to destroy an industry in which British as well as foreign capital was employed, no steps should be omitted which could allay the existing alarm in the herring fishing industry while not damaging any other interest. As to the amount of the licence, no doubt they could come to agreement in Committee on that point, as well as to the number of steamers to be allowed to each of the factories. A case had been made out for the regulation of the industry. It was not intended to act in the least harshly towards the whaling industry which had grown up. They certainly ought carefully to watch the growth of the industry. They were placing it under the administration of the Fishery Board in Scotland, and it would be for them to keep their eye upon it and to watch its development. He would ask the House to allow the Bill to be read a second time. There was a great consensus of opinion among Scottish members
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  and those interested in fishing constituencies that it was exceedingly desirable both on the merits of the case and in view of the public opinion which existed on the question that the House should allow the Bill to pass, and, as he had said, there were points which could be adjusted in Committee.
  MAJOR ANSTRUTHER-GRAYsaid that representing as he did some thousands of fishermen on the coast of Fife he hoped he would be allowed to say a word or two in favour of the Bill. He did not think there was a single fisherman among his constituents who would not welcome the Bill with all his heart. It provided a close time for whales and prevented the murder of them when they were accompanied by their young. The fishermen liked the live whale and hated the dead whale. The dead whale fouled the water and drove the herring away. The live whale drove the herrings into shoals, and they thought they drove them towards the shore. Naturally they could catch the fish better near the shore than if they had to go hundreds of miles after them, as they now often had to do. He was sure there was nothing in the Bill that anybody could reasonably object to. Personally, he wished it had gone further and had abolished the whole of the whale-fishery in the interests of the fishermen of his constituency. So far as it went, he thought it was a reasonable Bill and one which would be heartily welcomed by all fishermen on the coast of Scotland.
  MR. CATHCART WASONsaid he desired to express his thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for having introduced the Bill and also his sincere hope that when they got into Committee he would carry it a great deal further than it went at the present time. It was practically impossible for him at this period of the session to represent the feeling of his constituents upon the measure. For five or six years the use of herring boats had been gradually diminishing till where formerly there were hundreds there were now practically none. He sincerely hoped the Bill would go through, and that his right hon. friend would take power, should he find it necessary in the interests of the herring

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  trade, to apply the drastic remedy of stopping the whale fishing altogether. It was not an industry at all. It was simply an operation of killing animals of whose habits of life we were absolutely ignorant. When they got them, they were comparatively useless, and it was a wicked and wrong thing to upset the herring fishing industry without reason. No one could imagine what a serious matter it was to the people living in Orkney and Shetland, and unless something was done in the north of Scotland to put the whaling stations under proper control and regulations, and unless the Secretary for Scotland took power to stop them, if necessary, they would have a similar state of things there to that which existed in Norway.
  LORD BALCARRESsaid he supported the Second Reading of the Bill, though he thought the hon. Member who had just spoken and who put down all the evils attendant upon the herring fishing industry to the whale fishery was rather too sanguine as to its result. Competition in the whale fishery had increased lately and had driven the fleet further and further to sea, and, when the right hon. Gentleman talked about the whales having been caught within a few miles of land he was in error. The whales were captured at great distance from the shore. He hoped the Secretary for Scotland was going to allow the Bill to stay in the House. The whales were not caught in Scottish waters, and the Bill therefore was not one which should be sent to the Scottish Grand Committee.
  MR. SINCLAIR: We do not propose to send it to that Committee.
  MR. MORTONsaid he had had a great many complaints on account of the nuisance caused by the killing of the whales, and, although it was late in the session he hoped the House would allow the Bill to be passed so that the whale fishing might be regulated and an end put to the nuisance which was dangerous to the public health and interfered with the trade of the fishermen.
  MR. BOWLESsaid he would not have intervened in the debate had he not been informed of a fact of which he was not previously aware, that a relative of his took an active part in destroying this Bill on some former occasion. He was bound to say it seemed to him that the hon. Member had very good ground for the action he took on that occasion, and for his part he should, if they went to a division, be forced to vote against the measure. His constituents had not the slightest interest in the whale fishery. The House therefore would realise that he was at any rate impartial, and, having listened to the debate, he did not even now understand the, grounds upon which the Bill was put forward. It was clear they had a considerable and growing industry in the whale fishery all round the coast of Scotland. Factories had been set up and a considerable amount of capital and labour was engaged. It was now proposed for the first time that a great and growing industry should be put in leading strings and under restriction. He respectfully submitted to a free trade House that prima facie that was a serious matter. It required great justification to restrict in any way by Government action an industry which was spontaneously growing up. The Secretary for Scotland had said there were two sorts of whales, one harmful and one harmless. He had further said that there were two kinds of whales harmless to the herring. But what was he doing? He was allowing these two kinds of whales quite harmless to the herring fishery to be killed with perfect freedom. He did not know whether the carcases of those whales would not be prejudicial to the herring fishery, but, whatever the effect might be in that regard, the fact remained that those harmless animals were to be destroyed by anybody, while with regard to the other kinds of whales which were harmful and which destroyed the herring fisheries their slaughter was to be restricted, because they were only to be destroyed by persons licensed to slaughter them. He objected entirely to putting any industry of this kind into leading strings unless good cause could be shown, and in this case he did not think good cause had been shown. The right hon. Gentleman had clearly demonstrated by his remarks that

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  his proposal, if carried into effect, would be of no use, and that a good deal more harm than good would be done.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House for Monday next. — (Mr. Sinclair.)

  EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN BILL [LORDS].
  Order for Second Reading read.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL,)in moving the Second Reading, said the title of the Bill was very wide, its scope exceedingly narrow. He explained that it was necessary in order to enable ratification to be given to the Convention with foreign powers for the prohibition of the industrial employment of women at night which had been entered into last year by all the countries of Western and Central Europe, with the exception of Norway. Our law went in most respects beyond the requirements of the Convention which had been signed by our representatives except in two small particulars. In certain flax scutch mills the hours of employment of women were by the Factory Act left entirely unregulated, and there was a provision in the Coal Mines Regulation Act enabling women to be employed on surface work at mines on Friday evenings at hours later than would be authorisen by the Convention. These two provisions of our iudustrial law were entirely obsolete. They must be repealed to enable ratification to be given to the Convention.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: said there could be no objection to the passing of this measure, which proposed only to repeal a clause of the Factory and Workshops Act,
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  1901, and a clause of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887, in order, as the hon. Gentleman have said, to enable this country to ratify a Convention that had been made with foreign powers. All he desired was to ask whether an article had been inserted in that Convention to compel the Governments of other countries to enforce control in this matter. That question had an effect so far as this Bill was concerned, because one would naturally suppose that if this country carried out to the letter these proposals other Governments would do the same and that our workpeople would not be put into a different position from that of the workpeople abroad. He also wished to know when the Convention came into force, because he did not understand clearly what was the effect of Article 7 of the Convention. That Article proposed that the Convention was to come into force two years after the date of ratification, but allowed, apparently, a time limit of ten years in respect to certain raw sugar and wool-combing operations. He wished to know when the Convention would come into force and whether the employment of women at night was to be forbidden in other countries as in this.
  MR. HERBERT SAMUELsaid with regard to the first question of the right hon. Gentleman he might say that the signatory Powers bound themselves by proper administrative measures to enforce the requirements of the Convention. The Convention came into force two years after the deposit of ratifications. That deposit must be made before the end of next year. A delay of ten years was allowed for certain exceptional cases, of which the most important was the wool combing and weaving industry. This delay had to be conceded in order to secure the signature of Belgium to the Convention.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Monday next.—(Mr. Herbert Samuel.)

  SALMON AND FRESHWATER FISHERIES BILL [LORDS].
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  [Mr. CALDWELL (Lanarkshire, Mid) in the Chair.]
  Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
  Clause 4:—
  MR. LLOYD MORGANsaid he desired to move an Amendment after line 14. This Bill did not deal with the general law of salmon fisheries, hut it enabled Provisional Orders to be made under conditions relating to salmon fishery districts. Clause 4 dealt with the machinery. Preliminary to the Provisional Order being made an inquiry had to be held, after which a draft Order was sent down to the district to which it related. This clause provided that the Board of Agriculture might hold an inquiry in regard to the proposed Order, and all that his Amendment provided was that it should not be a matter of discretion, but that a second inquiry should be held if the county council so directed.
  Amendment proposed —
  "In line 14, after the word ' expedient,' to insert the words ' and shall if any county council having authority within the area of the proposed order directs." — (Mr. Lloyd Morgan).
  Clause, as amended, agreed to.
  Amendment proposed —
  "In line 37, after the words,' Conservators,' to insert the words 'or county councils.' "— (Sir Edward Strachey.)
  Question proposed "That those words be there inserted."
  Lord R. CECILsaid that the Bill came down from the House of Lords, and it had these words put in in brackets and underlined. He wished to know whether this was one of the devices
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  by which the House of Lords avoided committing a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons, and, if so, on whose advice they acted.
  THE TREASURER OF THE HOUSEHOLD (Sir EDWARD STRACHEY,)said that these words were merely put in because they came down from another place. There was no object in it whatever. It was merely a formal matter.
  Question put, and agreed
  Amendment proposed —
  "In line 6, to insert the words" (b) and in the case of county councils out of the county funds.'"—(Sir Edward Strachey.)
  Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  MR. BOWLESsaid it appeared to him that this might impose a new charge on a great number of county councils, and the House ought to have some explanation or description of the kind of expense that was to be incurred. He did not know whether the hon. Gentleman had considered that in certain cases the expense might be very high.
  Sir EDWARD STRACHEYsaid he entirely sympathised with the desire of the hon. Gentleman to have some information on this point. No great charge would be thrown on the county councils under this Bill. But if a county council thought it right to promote a Bill one of the objects of this Bill would be to assist the county council.
  Clause, as amended, agreed to.
  Bill reported; as amended, to be considered upon Monday next.
  Whereupon Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 26th day of July last, adjourned the House without Question put.
  Adjourned at twelve minutes before Seven o'clock till Monday next