Commons Sitting of 24 June 1907

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

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY INQUIRED INTO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.: —North British Railway Bill [Lords]; Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, and Thornaby Tramways Bill [Lords]; Merthyr Tydfil Stipendiary Justice Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS [LORDS] (NO STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE).
  Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, viz.: —Education Board Provisional Orders Confirmation (Surrey, etc) Bill [Lords]; Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill [Lords]; Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 2) Bill [Lords]; Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 4) Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.
  Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railway (General Powers) Bill. —Read the third time, and passed.
  Harrison's Patent Bill [Lords]; Murphy Grimshaw's Divorce (Validation) Bill [Lords]. —Read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.
  Aberdeen Corporation Electricity Bill [Lords]. —Read a second time, and committed.
  Coventry Corporation Bill (Lords]; Glasgow Corporation Bill [Lords]. —Read a second time, and committed.
  National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty Bill [Lords]; Oxford and District Tramways Bill [Lords]; Sheffield Corporation Bill [Lords]. —Read a second time, and committed.
  St. Neot's Urban District Council Bill [Lords] (by Order). —Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
  Tynemouth Corporation (Water) Bill [Lords] (by Order). —Read a second time, and committed.
  Ladybank Sewerage Drainage and Water Provisional Order Bill. —Considered; to be read the third time upon Thursday.
  Caledonian Railway Order Confirmation Bill (by Order). —Read a second time; and ordered to be considered upon Thursday.
  Lower Thames Tunnel Railways Bill. — Order [13th June] that the Lower Thames Tunnel Railways Bill be committed, read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn. — (Mr. Caldwell)

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to: —Grays and Tilbury Gas Bill, without Amendment.
Taff Vale Railway Bill; Great Yarmouth Port and Haven Bill, with Amendments.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act for further promoting the revision of the Statute Law by repealing enactments which have ceased to be in force or have become unnecessary."[Statute Law Revision Bill [Lords.]
Also a Bill intituled, "An Act to enable the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and

851
Citizens of the city of York to acquire the rights of the freemen and others in or in respect of certain lands or strays known as the Micklegate Strays, and to make provision for the management thereof; and for other purposes." [York (Micklegate Strays) Bill [Lords.]
And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to declare legitimate certain children of Thomas Hamilton Sabine Pasley." [Pasley Children Legitimisation Bill [Lords.]
York (Micklegate) Strays Bill [Lords]; Pasley Children Legitimisation Bill [Lords.] —Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

PETITION.
  CONGO FREE STATE
  Petition from Fulham, for protection of the Native Races; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  BOARD OF EDUCATION.
  Paper [presented 21st June] to be printed. [No. 213.]
  ROYAL PATRIOTIC FUND CORPORATION.
  Copy presented, of Third Report of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation for the year 1906 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TUBERCULOSIS (HUMAN AND BOVINE) (ROYAL COMMISSION).
  Copy presented, of Second Interim Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the relations of Human and Animal Tuberculosis. Appendix, Vol. I. [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos.
  852
  3836 to 3838 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  TRADE REPORTS (MISCELLANEOUS SERIES).
  Copy presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Report, Miscellaneous Series, No. 661 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  ARMY.
  Copy presented, of Declaration by the Secretary of State for War as to classes of Persons not to be transferred to Detention Barracks in the United Kingdom [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS.
  Accounts presented, of all Deposits received and paid during the year ended 31st December, 1906, together with a Statement showing the aggregate amount of the liabilities of the Government to Depositors in the Post Office Savings Banks on the 31st December, 1906, and the nature and amount of the Securities held by the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt to meet those Liabilities at that date [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 214.]
  HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE AND COURT OF APPEAL, ETC.
  Copy presented, of Account showing the Receipts and Expenditure in respect of the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal during the year ended 31st March, 1907 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 215.]
  COUNTY COURTS (ENGLAND) (FEES).
  Copy presented, of Treasury Order, dated 30th May, 1907, regulating Fees in County Courts [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL TAXATION ACCOUNT (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1898.
  Copy presented, of Return showing the Total Payments into and out of the Local Taxation (Scotland) Account for the financial year 1906–7 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Maximum Wage of Adult Messengers at General Post Office, London.
  MR. SUMMERBELL: To ask the Postmaster-General if he can state whether the maximum wage of the adult messengers in the General Post Office, London, have remained stationary for the past forty-six years; and whether the wages of porters and other classes have not been increased during the past twenty years.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The maximum of the salary of the adult messengers attached to the head-quarters offices of the Post Office is now 40s. a week, as it was in 1862, but the minimum has been raised from 21s. to 24s. The scale of pay of porters rises now to 30s. as it did in 1887, but the minimum has been raised from 18s. to 24s.

  The O'Donel Estate, County Mayo.
  DR. AMBROSE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the O'Donel estate at Newport, county Mayo, has yet come before the Judge of the Landed Estates Court for sale; and, if so, why was it not sold.
  (Answered by Mr. Birr ell) I beg to refer the hon. Member to my Answer to his Question on this subject on 1st March, when I indicated that the Congested Districts Board were prepared to make an offer to purchase the estate as soon as it should be ready for sale. The solicitor in charge of the proceedings for sale has since been in communication with the Board on the subject, but the matter has not yet reached a stage at which the Board can make a formal offer for purchase. The Land Judge has directed that the matter shall be expedited as much as possible.

  Irish Evicted Tenants—Case of Thomas Bridgeman.
  MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Patrick Noonan, evicted tenant, of Cunigar, Askeaton, in the county of Limerick, was allotted some
  854
  of the untenanted land on the Mountshannon estate in lieu of his evicted holding; that, subsequent to the allotment being made to him he died, leaving it to his nephew, Thomas Bridgeman, of Cunigar; whether he is aware that this allotment has been given to another evicted tenant, thereby depriving Bridgeman of it; and whether, under all the circumstances of the case, he will ask the Estates Commissioners to reconsider Bridgeman's case and give him some of the untenanted lands that will be next available in the county.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) Patrick Noonan was one of a number of evicted tenants who, about two years ago, applied to the Estates Commissioners for holdings on the Mountshannon estate. He was not given a holding, as the Commissioners did not then acquire the property. They subsequently purchased it, and the untenanted land was distributed last month. Noonan had died some months before, and therefore his name was not included.

  The Southern Motor Club's Hill Climbing Competitions
  MR. C. H. CORBETT: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that the Southern Motor Club will hold a hill-climbing competition on Captain Kydd's Hill in Sussex on Saturday next; whether any steps are being taken to prohibit such competitions on a public thoroughfare or to lay down special conditions under which they may be held; and, if no such steps are being taken, whether he will consider the desirability of introducing legislation to prevent competitions between motors on the public roads.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The Chief Constable of East Sussex has been in correspondence with the Southern Motor Club respecting this competition, and has warned them that if there is any obstruction on the highway, or if the speed limit is in any case exceeded, proceedings will be taken against the offenders. Assurances have been given that there shall be no breach of the law

  Cause of Delay in Construction of Armoured Cruiser "Defence"
  Mr. NIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty to what cause must be attributed the delay in the construction of the armoured cruiser "Defence," which, although laid down within a month of the "Minotaur" and "Shannon" of the same class will not be ready for sea until nine months later than those vessels.
  (Answered by Mr. Edmund Robertson.) The time for the completion of the "Defence" was extended to avoid undue fluctuation in the supply of work to the yard.

  Post Office Servants—Seniority of Transferred Officers.
  MR. RICHARDSON: To ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the dissatisfaction and friction existing among the staff by allowing some transferred officers to retain their seniority and thus supplant the local staffs, he will take steps to meet such cases by monetary payments and disallow seniority.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) This matter was raised before the Select Committee on Post Office Servants; and until the Committee have made their Report and I have had time to consider it, I cannot entertain any change in the present practice.

  Registered Clubs.
  Mr. CREMER: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the number of clubs of all classes registered, on the 1st January, 1903, and the number so registered 1st January, 1907; how many full and how many off-licences were extinguished during those five years; how many new full and off-licences were issued in the four years ending 31st December, 1906; and how many clubs have been removed from the register by legal process under the Act of 1902, giving the number struck off the register for each year.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone) All the information available in answer to this Question, is to be found in the volume of Licensing Statistics for 1906.
  856
  6,371 clubs were registered in the year 1903, and on the 1st January, 1907, there were probably about 6,680 registered clubs in existence. This latter figure is arrived at by deducting from the number existing on the 1st January, 1906, the number struck off during the year. The expression "full licence" means, strictly speaking, public-house licences as distinguished from beer-houses and other on-licences, but if my hon. friend desires the figures for on-licences generally, as against off-licences, I may say that on the 1st January, 1903, there were 100,766 on-licences, and on the 1st January, 1907, four years later, there were probably, as I informed the hon. Member for Lincoln on the 27th May, about 97,700. There are no figures of off-licences available for the 1st January, 1903, but for the 1st January, 1905, the number was 25,405, while for the 1st January, 1907, it is estimated at 25,100. New on-licences have been granted as follows: —In 1903, 240 (approximately); in 1904, 121 (approximately); in 1905, 53; and in 1906, 56. 192 new off-licences were granted in 1905, and 211 in 1906. Figures for earlier years are not available. The number of clubs struck off the register is as follows: In 1903, 67; in 1904, 73; in 1905, 62; and in 1906, 41.

  Grant to Central Unemployed Body for Women's Workrooms.
  MR. T. F. RICHARDS: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether the Central Unemployed Body asked for a grant of £2,500 last March to carry on the women's workrooms; if so, what amount was granted them; and what information, if any, was contained in the Local Government Board's letter of 28th March.
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns) The Answer to the first part of the Question is in the affirmative. The £2,500 asked for was in addition to a sum of £2,000 which had already been granted for the purpose referred to. I stated in the letter of 28th March that I was not prepared to direct a grant to be paid in aid of the cost of carrying on the workrooms throughout the summer, and that the grant on this head would accordingly be limited to a sum of £500. This was, done.

  New Post Office Site at Ilfracombe.
  MR. WALROND: To ask the Postmaster-General what is the present rental of houses recently purchased for a new post office building at Ilfracombe; and what price was paid for the site and buildings.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The purchase is not yet completed, and it is not customary, nor do I think it would be advisable, to publish information such as that desired by the hon. Member.

  Irrigated Lands in the Madras Presidency.
  MR. REES: To ask the Secretary of State for India what proportion of the land sold during the last year for which Returns have been received, for arrears of revenue in the Madras presidency, is irrigated and what proportion unirrigated, and what is the average assessment of the holdings in question; whether he has any official Reports showing that such holdings are taken up as a speculation and practically abandoned whenever rains fail, and that the subsequent sale of such holdings in order to the correct maintenance of Government records in this behalf is an advantage to the registered proprietors, who thereby escape liability for the assessment.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morley) The figures for 1905–6 are: —Dry land sold, 19,906 acres; average assessment, nine-tenths of a rupee; irrigated land sold, 6,463 acres; average assessment, 45⅗ rupees. With reference to the last part of the Question I would refer the hon. Member to the Report for Madras forming one of the Papers appended to Lord Curzon's Land Revenue Resolution of 16th January, 1902. The practice mentioned by my hon. friend is there stated to be one of the causes of sales of poor and valueless land for arrears of revenue.

  Evicted Tenants in County Cavan.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will now state how many evicted tenants have made application for reinstatement in county Cavan; how many of these
  858
  claims have been investigated, and with what result; and in how many cases have the landlords where the evicted farms are on their hands refused to entertain the intervention of the Estates Commissioners or their inspectors.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell) The information asked for in the Question is contained in the Appendix to the Special Report of the Estates Commissioners on Evicted Tenants which has been laid upon the Table, and will, I understand, shortly be circulated.

  Ireland's Share of Customs and Revenue Duties.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the fact that the Inland Revenue and Customs duty on intoxicating liquors and licences in Ireland for the year 1905 yielded the sum of £5,878,392, and that of this amount only £110,788 was allocated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Ireland under The Local Taxation Act, 1890; will he say how much of the latter sum mentioned was applied to educational purposes; and whether he can see his way to securing a large portion of this refund for inebriate reformatories, and a further grant in the next financial year to provide for the reformation of habitual drunkards in the country.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell) The share of Ireland in the Customs and Excise duties for 1905–6 amounted to £126,133 15s. 3d.; namely, Customs, £15,345 19s. 7d., and Inland Revenue, £110,787 15s. 8d. The sum of £78,000 was paid to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and the balance, £48,133, to the Board of Intermediate Education. Ireland's share of these duties and the application thereof are governed by statute, and no change in either respect could be made without legislation.

  Irish Evicted Tenants—Case of John M'Manus.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if the Estates Commissioners have received an application

  859
  for reinstatement from John D. M'Manue, only son of John M'Manus who was evicted from his farm on the Bracken-bridge estate, Florencecourt, county Fermanagh, in 1892, and who died in Glasgow in 1897; will he say who is in possession of this farm, and what fine was paid; and what prospect there is of this young man getting back to his dead father's home.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell) The Estates Commissioners have received the application referred to, and have had the case investigated. The holding in which reinstatement is sought is at present in the occupation of another person, who is unwilling to surrender it. The Commissioners have placed the name of the applicant's mother on the list of persons suitable to receive an allotment of land if such should be obtained. The applicant himself is only fifteen years of age.

  The Irish Education Act, 1892, in County Cavan.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the urban district council of Cavan and their predecessors have continuously enforced the Irish Education Act of 1892 since 1894; is he aware that this Act has cost the council and commissioners a rate of about 1d. in the pound annually, but that the fines and costs of proceedings have been paid to the credit of the local rates, to the smooth working of the Act and general satisfaction of the local bodies; and whether, in view of the fact that an order has been issued that only one-third of the fines under the Act in the future are to be lodged to the credit of the local rate, and in view of the effect upon the Education Act of this order, he will say what steps he proposes to take in the interest of education.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell) I would refer to my Answer to the hon. Member for North Londonderry on 17th instant, †My right hon. friend the Attorney-General for Ireland is instituting proceedings in the High Court with the object of obtaining an authoritative decision upon the construction of the
  ߤ See(4) debates,elxxvi,124.
  860
  statutes regulating the application of the fines in question.

  Completion of Sale of Estate of Mr. J. Singleton.
  MR. NOLAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether notices for the sale of the estate of Mr. John Singleton, at Mell, Drogheda, have been filed for the past two years; and, if so, whether he can say when the necessary steps for completing the same will be taken; and whether, in effecting the sale, care will be taken to give the sub-tenants on the estate the full benefit of Section 15 of the Land Act.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell) The Estates Commissioners inform me that their surveyor is at present engaged on the estate referred to, and it will shortly be visited by an inspector. When all the facts are before the Commissioners they will consider the case of the subtenants in accordance with the provisions of Section 15 of the Act of 1903.

  Repairs of Barrack Bedding at Dublin.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he will explain why the order made in 1896 that all the repairs to barrack bedding at Dublin should be undertaken by the Army Ordnance Department is now upset and a new staff of women taken on at the Royal Infirmary Laundry; what is the pay and what are the emoluments of the superintendent of the laundry; and how many members of his family has this superintendent employed in the public service immediately under his own control, and what are the wages of each from public funds.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane) It was decided in 1906, in order to save time, labour, and transport, that a portion of the barrack bedding and linen up to that time washed by contract and repaired by the Army Ordnance Department should be washed and repaired at the military laundry, provided that no increase in the staff of that institution was involved. This procedure has been followed with most satisfactory results. The pay and emoluments of the superintendent for work connected with the

  861
  laundry are 3s. 6d. a day with free quarters. One of his daughters is employed in the laundry as a calender hand at 9s. per week.

  Army Pensions—Case of Hugh Craig.
  MR. W. BENN (Tower Hamlets, St. George's): To ask the Secretary of State for War whether Hugh Craig has now sent a medical certificate stating that he is unfit to undergo an anæsthetic; and whether, in view of these circumstances, Craig can be granted a renewal of his pension.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) This case has been very carefully considered. It is too complicated to be dealt with adequately in reply to a Question, and I will communicate with my hon. friend about it by letter.

  Expenditure on Production of Vaccine for the Army.
  MR. LUPTON: To ask the Secretary of State for War what is the amount of the expenditure on the production of vaccine matter for the Army; and under what heading of the Estimates is the expenditure included.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane) The estimated yearly expenditure from Army Votes for the production of vaccine matter amounts to £410, towards which the Admiralty make a contribution of £250 for the vaccine supplied to the Navy. The expenditure is shown under Vote 1 Q (Pay, etc. of the Army Veterinary Service), p. 38.

  Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine— Government Grants.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies what amount is contributed by the Imperial Government towards the maintenance of the Tropical School of Medicine at Liverpool; what is the total cost of maintenance of that hospital, and what amount is contributed by the Government of the Congo; and what sum, if any, is contributed by the Government to similar hospitals in London.
  (Answered by Mr. Churchill) A sum of £500 a year is contributed by the
  862
  Imperial Government to the Tropical Diseases Research Fund, administered by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and an annual grant is made from this fund to the Tropical School of Medicine at Liverpool. The amount of the grant for the present financial year is £500. The school is not a Government institution, and I am unable to say what is the total cost of its maintenance and what amount is contributed by the Government of the Congo. An annual grant is also made from the fund to the School of Tropical Medicine in London. The amount of the grant to that school for the present financial year is £1,000, with an additional grant of £1,000 to be spread over three years, for the purpose of creating the appointment of a pathological entomologist at the school.

  Exchequer and Audit Department Luncheon Room.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Exchequer and Audit Department is the only Government Department which prohibits the staff from lunching outside the building; if so, will he explain why; whether he will state the amount of the Treasury allowance towards the up-keep of the luncheon-room in this Department, exclusive of free housing accommodation, fire, and light; whether the managers of this luncheon-room have now nearly £300 profit to their credit in the bank; if so, will he explain why this profit has not been paid into the Exchequer; and, seeing that this profit has been made because of the prohibition to lunch outside the building, will he consider the advisability of bringing this Government Department into line with other Government Departments by allowing the members the option of lunching where they please.
  (Answered by Mr. Runciman) The amount of the allowance is, as shown in the Estimates—

  £

  Servants

  50

  Maintenance of Plant

  26

  Total

  £76

  I am informed that the balance of about £300 on the "31st March, 1907, was

  863
  produced by exceptional causes and is now in process of reduction. It is not payable to the Exchequer, because it is the property of the members of the Department. Such matters as arrangements as to lunch are within the discretion of the heads of Departments.

  Reorganisation of Exchequer and Audit Department—Treatment of Officials.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will grant a Return showing the age and length of service of each of the men belonging to the old examiner class in the Ex-

  Age on 1/11/05.

  Length of Service.

  Remarks.

  1

  59

  36 ½ years

  Since retired.

  2

  57 ½

  38 ½ „

  Since retired.

  3

  59

  41½ „

  Since retired.

  4

  57½

  39 ½ „

  5

  51

  31„

  6

  52 ½

  30½ „

  Since promoted.

  7

  50½

  30½ „

  8

  50 ½

  30½ „

  9

  48 ½

  30½ „

  10

  50

  30½ „

  Since retired.

  11

  49

  30 „

  12

  47

  30 „

  13

  49

  30 „

  Since retired.

  The course referred to in the Question was adopted in the interests of the officers themselves and of the Department, but of course the claims to promotion of all who elected to remain are considered with those of the rest of the establishment.

  Exchequer and Audit Department — Allowance and Pension of Private Secretary to the Comptroller
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether allowance as
  864
  chequer and Audit Department who, on the recent reorganisation of that Department, were informed that they could hope to derive no benefit under the new scheme and would be given facilities for retiring on pension; whether he will explain why such treatment was meted out to capable and experienced officials; whether one of these officials was subsequently promoted; and whether due consideration will now be given to the claims of the remainder of these officials.
  (Answered by Mr. Runciman) The information asked for is as follows —
  private secretary to the Comptroller and Auditor-General is allowed under the Superannuation Acts and regulations bearing thereon to count towards pension; whether £50 of this allowance has now been merged, or is about to be merged, in the salary of the present holder of this position; if so, under what authority; whether this £50 will be included in calculating his pension on retirement; and, if so, seeing that the salary of this official is now nearly

  865
  £700 per annum and that there are so many subordinates in the Department with small salaries, will he explain the reasons for this procedure.
  (Answered by Mr. Runciman) The Answer to the first part of the Question is in the negative. On the abolition of the post of chief clerk the officer referred to was required to perform part of the duties, and a pensionable allowance of £50 a year was accordingly added to his salary under Treasury authority, his secretarial allowance being reduced by a corresponding amount.

  Saturday Half-Holiday in Government departments.
  MR. DELANY: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether a weekly Saturday half-holiday is granted in any Government Department; if so, will he state the Departments in which this concession is made; and by what authority, and under what conditions.
  (Answered by Mr. Runciman.) I have nothing to add to numerous Answers which I have already given on this subject during the present session.

  Marking of Imports of Foreign Yeast.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that, owing to yeast being one of the exempted articles under the Merchandise Marks Act, Foreign yeast imported into Ireland and England is not marked as such, and that it is being sold as of home manufacture, thus injuring the producers of yeast in Ireland and Scotland, and whether he can arrange that measures shall be taken to identify imported yeast.
  (Answered by Mr. Lloyd-George) The hon. Member is mistaken in supposing that yeast is exempted from the operation of the Merchandise Marks Act. I am informed by the Commissioners of Customs that, so far as they are aware, no yeast is imported bearing marks which contravene that Act, which, as the hon. Member is doubtless aware, does not require all imported goods, whether marked or not, to bear an indication of their origin. The sale of foreign yeast as yeast of home manufacture would be an
  866
  offence against the Act, and if any specific cases of such sales are brought to my notice under the Board of Trade Regulations, I will have them carefully considered with a view to prosecution, should the circumstances justify such a step.

  Road Signs in England and Wales.
  MR. MARNHAM: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he can state the number of signposts denoting dangerous corners, cross roads, and precipitous places, set up by each of the county councils in England and Wales, under Section 10 (2) of The Motor Car Act, 1903.
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns) The numbers are shown in the following table. The total of them is 9,025 —

  County Council.

  Number of Signposts.

  England:

  Bedfordshire

  222

  Berkshire

  490

  Buckinghamshire

  60

  Cambridgeshire

  68

  Isle of Ely

  17

  Cheshire

  425

  Cornwall

  None

  Cumberland

  53 *

  Derbyshire

  None†

  Devonshire

  None

  Dorsetshire

  None

  Durham

  217

  Essex

  510

  Gloucestershire

  1 ‡

  Herefordshire

  80

  Hertfordshire

  218

  Huntingdonshire

  12

  Isle of Wight

  18 §

  Kent

  675

  Lancashire

  420

  Leicestershire

  61

  Lincolnshire Holland)

  None

  Lincolnshire (Kesteven)

  143

  Lincolnshire (Lindsay)

  92

  London

  3

  Middlesex

  985

  *The number is increasing every month.
  † The county council have taken over many cyclist notices.
  ‡ lamp on Chepstow Bridge.
  §The county council have also taken over the signposts belonging to the Cyclists Tourning club and the national Cyclists Union.
  ║Thirty-three will shortly be erected.

  County Council.

  Number of Signposts.

  England —continued:

  Monmouthshire

  None

  Norfolk

  None

  Northamptonshire

  104

  Northumberland

  355

  Nottinghamshire

  23

  Oxfordshire

  48

  Peterborough (Soke of)

  27

  Eutlandshire

  8

  Salop

  165

  Somersetshire

  None§

  Southampton

  29

  Staffordshire

  None

  Suffolk (East)

  48

  Suffolk (West)

  None

  Surrey

  420

  Sussex (East)

  198

  Sussex (West)

  145

  Warwickshire

  50

  Westmorland

  308

  Wiltshire

  None¶

  Worcestershire

  102

  Yorkshire (East Riding)

  142

  Yorkshire (North Riding)

  314

  Yorkshire (West Riding)

  630**

  Wales:

  Anglesey

  9

  Breconshire

  6

  Cardiganshire

  20

  Carmarthenshire

  None

  Carnarvonshire

  52

  Denbighshire

  122

  Flintshire

  80††

  Glamorganshire

  595

  Merionethshire

  116

  Montgomeryshire

  19‡‡

  Pembrokeshire

  None §§

  Radnorshire -

  120

  Poor Law—Maintenance of Relatives.
  MR. REES: To ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether he proposes to amend the Law relating to the maintenance of relatives, by giving
  §The county council have also taken over the signposts belonging to the Cyclists Touring Club and the National Cyclists Union.
  ¶The county council have taken over signposts belonging to the Cyclists Touring Club.
  **Including some in course of erection.
  † †Exclusive of seventy notices "Drive slowly through the village."
  ‡ ‡Nine more are in course of erecction.
  § § The county council have £40 for the purpose of erecting signposts.
  868
  magistrates power to award imprisonment with hard labour to persons who fail to comply with a magisterial order to contribute towards a relative's support.
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns) As I stated in reply to a previous Question, the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws have before them the subject of the contributions which should be made by persons for the support of their relatives, and I do not think that legislation should be proposed with regard to the matter pending their Report. I have brought under their notice the representations which I have received on the subject.

  Ex-telegraph Messengers at Dundee— Appointments as Postmen.
  MR. WILKIE: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that there are a number of ex-telegraph messengers at Dundee with long service as assistant postmen who are not yet appointed as postmen; and whether steps will be taken to give these men full-time appointments at an early date.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) There are nine ex-telegraph messengers at Dundee who have been employed as assistant postmen for over three years. I hope shortly to be in a position to give seven of them established appointments, and I hope that it may be possible to provide the remaining two with similar appointments at no very distant date. All of them were warned when they were nominated as assistant postmen that they would probably have to wait four years for established posts.

  Irish Department of Agriculture—Appointment and Duties of Veterinary Inspectors.
  MR. DELANY: To ask the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) whether temporary veterinary inspectors are about to be appointed by the Department; and, if so, can he state the number and what special duties they are appointed to discharge.
  (Answered by Mr. T. W. Russell) Three temporary veterinary inspectors are about to be appointed. Advertisements have been issued inviting applications from qualified veterinary surgeons. The duties to be discharged are those of a

  869
  professional nature which arise in connection with the carrying out of the provisions of the Diseases of Animals Acts and the Orders there under relating to swine fever and other diseases of animals.
  MR. DELANY: To ask the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) whether a vacancy exists in the permanent veterinary staff of the Department; and whether it is proposed to import a man to fill the position.
  (Answered by Mr. T. W. Russell.) There is no vacancy at present on the permanent veterinary staff of the Department.

  Ships Undergoing "Extensive Refit."
  MR. NIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he will state the names of the ships of the Channel, Atlantic, and Mediterranean Fleets which, since effect was given to the redistribution scheme, have been placed in dockyard hands for repair or refits, and the names of the ships by which they have been temporarily replaced in their respective squadrons; whether all such ships have been replaced; and, if not, what are the reasons for departing from the rule laid down.
  (Answered by Mr. Lambert) The rule laid down is that ships undergoing "extensive refit" will be replaced in their respective fleets. The ships which have undergone such refit since the last redistribution of the fleet are—
  Channel Fleet—
  "Commonwealth" replaced by "Mars."
  "Dominion" replaced by "Hannibal."
  "Juno" replaced by "Gladiator." Atlantic Fleet —
  "Exmouth" replaced by "Caesar."
  Ordinary repairs have been proceeding as usual in all fleets, but these do not entail the replacement of the ship concerned.

  Ammunition Allowance to the Fleets.
  MR. NIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether the annual allowance of ammunition for ships of
  870
  the Channel, Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Home fleets is the same for each fleet; whether the three divisions of the Home fleet are each allowed the same quantity; and whether the regulations framed for governing the target practice of the Home fleet are identical with those for the other fleets; and, if not, in what respect they differ.
  (Answered by Mr. Lambert) The allowance of ammunition and the regulations governing the target practice are the same for all fully-manned ships in the fleets. For the ships not fully manned the time of firing is adjusted to meet the slight reduction in the allowance of ammunition.

  Sentence on Henry Byne.
  MR. ALDEN: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can see his way to recommend the reduction of the sentence on Henry Byne, a first offender, eighteen years of age, who on 9th March was sentenced by Sir Ralph Littler to twenty-one months' hard labour, and is now in Borstal prison.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The circumstances of this case have already been under my consideration. The prisoner was convicted of two serious offences of house-breaking, committed on different dates, and the case appears to me to be a proper one for the special treatment which the prisoner is receiving at Borstal. The Commissioners of Prisons have repeatedly called attention in their Annual Reports to the uselessness of short sentences in the case of prisoners for whom the Borstal treatment is considered desirable, and I regret that I do not feel myself justified in advising any reduction of the sentence in this case.

  Result of Experiments with Natural and Synthetic Indigos.
  MR. REES: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether he can give the House any information regarding the results attained by the experiments made at Cawnpore as to the relative merits of natural and synthetic indigos, the publication of which might be of advantage to the native industry and the natural dye.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morlcy) A full account of the experiments is given by Mr. C. Bergtheil, of the Bengal Agricultural Department, in the "Indian Trade Journal," of the 11th April, 1907. He reports that the experiments, so far as they went, were favourable to the natural indigo as a dye for woollen piece-goods, but that they required to be repeated and supplemented by other experiments before a definite judgment could be formed. It is understood that experiments will be carried out by the Agricultural Department of Bengal.

  Education of Children on Indian Tea Plantations.
  MR. HICKS BEACH: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether Reports have yet been received from the officers appointed in Bengal and in Eastern Bengal and Assam to inquire into the subject of the education of children on tea gardens; and what steps have been taken in regard to this matter in Madras and the Central Provinces.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Morley.) As regards Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam, the Reports are being considered by the Government of India in consultation with the local governments. There are no tea estates in the Central Provinces. In Madras the area under tea is less than 8,000 acres, and I am not aware that any special measures are necessary to secure the education of children. Of course the ordinary primary schools of the country are open.

  QUESTION'S IN THE HOUSE.

    Saltburn Gun Practice Accident.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will ascertain why the commander of H.M.S. "Cæsar" failed to reply to a letter, dated the 6th February last, from the clerk to the Roskeen Parish Council, representing that a young girl residing at Saltburn, Ross-shire, had been seriously injured by gunners from H.M.S. "Cæsar" during gun-practice last summer; and will he state why the letter was not submitted to the Board of Admiralty with a Report thereon.
    THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. LAMBERT, Devonshire, South Molton): No letter dated 6th February last from the clerk of the Roskeen Parish Council can be traced as having been received by H.M.S. "Cæsar."
    MR. WEIR: I will forward the hon. Gentleman a copy of the letter.

    Home Fleet's Target Practice Ammunition.
    MR. ARTHUR LEE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if there has been any change of policy with regard to the amount of ammunition for practice purposes allowed to the Home Fleet since it was announced by the First Lord of the Admiralty, on 1st May, that the amount of ammunition allowed per annum to this Fleet, including the Nore Division, was only thirteen-sixteenths of that allowed to other Fleets; and if it is now the case that the Nore Division of the Home Fleet is allowed the same amount of ammunition for practice purposes as the Channel, Atlantic, and Mediterranean Fleets, will he state on what date the now order came into force.
    MR. LAMBERT: The Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet having represented the desirability of the three-sixteenths increase, it was sanctioned on 17th May last; and the reply to the second part of the Question is in the affirmative.

    Chatham Dockyard.
    MR. FELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if, in addition to the work in progress at the dockyard at Chatham and the ordinary current repairs, it is proposed to lay down there any new battleships or cruisers during the current year.
    MR. LAMBERT: No, Sir.

    Chatham Dockyard Channel.
    MR. FELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if the channel to the Chatham dockyard is to be deepened so as to allow of the passage of the "Dreadnought and other battleships of great draught of water.
    MR. LAMBERT: The Answer is in the negative. I may add that the

    873
    Sheerness Bar is to be dredged to allow deep draught ships to pass over it fit half-tide.
    MR. FELL: What about the "Dreadnought?"
    MR. LAMBERT: The "Dreadnought" can get up to Chatham at certain states of the tide.
    MR. ARTHUR LEE: Can she enter Chatham dockyard at any state of the tide?
    Mr. LAMBERT: I said she could get up at certain states of the tide.

    Ships' Magazines—Refrigerating Machinery.
    MR. ARTHUR LEE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can give an approximate estimate of the sum that will be expended during the current financial year on refrigerating machinery for magazines in His Majesty's ships.
    MR. LAMBERT: The approximate estimate is a sum not exceeding £200,000.
    MR. ARTHUR LEE: And is that sum to be provided out of the Shipbuilding Vote as it stands, or is there to be a supplementary Estimate?
    MR. LAMBERT: My right hon. friend will make a statement on that on the Shipbuilding Vote.

    The Channel Fleet.
    MR. BELL AIRS: I bog to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, besides the four armoured cruisers absent in America, the Channel Fleet has been short of four battleships since 26th May, and from 5th May to 19th May the Channel Fleet has been three battleships short, so that its fighting strength has for a long interval boon reduced from fourteen to ten or eleven battleships.
    MR. LAMBERT: My information does not coincide with that in the hon. Member's Question. The Channel Fleet was four battleships short only for five days from 10th Juno. This can hardly be termed a long interval. In any case, the circumstances were exceptional, and
    874
    the Admiralty must be permitted to exercise their discretion as to these matters.
    MR. BELLAIRS: I adhere to my information, and I should like to ask the hon. Member if he still adheres to his Answer on 17th June, when he said that since February, 1907, only three battleships had been absent. He never said anything about a fourth.
    [No Answer was returned].
    MR. GEORGE FABER: How many are absent now?
    MR. LAMBERT: None, Sir.
    MR. GEORGE FABER: Is the "Scout" which on paper is attached to the Fleet with it at present?
    MR. LAMBERT: If the hon. Gentleman will put down a Question, I will get him full information.

    H.M.S. "Triumph."
    MR. BELLAIRS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, in view of the official announcement that H.M.S. "Triumph" will be a period of seven weeks absent from the Channel Fleet, whether he will state why this ship has not been replaced in accordance with the Board's Memorandum of 23rd October, 1906, to the effect that any vessel in the Channel, Atlantic, and Mediterranean Fleets requiring an extensive refit will be replaced temporarily by a ship of the Home Fleet.
    MR. LAMBERT: As stated by my right hon. friend the Secretary to the Admiralty last Thursday, the "Triumph" is undergoing her usual annual refit, and this does not come under the category of extensive refits contemplated in the Admiralty Memorandum referred to.
    MR. BELLAIRS: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Channel Fleet used to consist of seventeen battleships, and that when the number was reduced to fourteen it was provided in the Memorandum that any vessel away for refit should be substituted by another one? Is not that to be done when a ship is away six or seven weeks?
    MR. LAMBERT: The Admiralty Memorandum is very clear. It provides that when a ship has to undergo an extensive refit another shall be substituted. In this case the "Triumph" was only undergoing her usual annual refit.
    VISCOUNT TURNOUR: Is not a seven weeks refit an extensive refit?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Rates on Ordnance Factories.
    MR. BELLAIRS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the fact that, whereas the War Office in the charges for the ordnance factories include proportionate charges for the payments in respect of contributions to local authorities in lieu of rates, the Admiralty, in the work of building and repairing ships at the Royal dockyards, do not allow for these payments; and whether the Treasury will take steps to request the Admiralty to conform to the business methods of the War Office, in view of the fact that the payments for local rates are in both cases borne by Civil Service Estimates, and there exists no valid reason why the same methods should not be pursued.
    MR. LAMBERT: Contributions in aid of local rates in respect of the ordnance factories are not borne by Civil Service Votes. The amount is repaid as an appropriation in aid. No such repayment is made in respect of the dockyards.

    Dockyard Rates.
    MR. BELLAIRS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury the total sum paid in lieu of rates for one year in respect of the five dockyards of Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth, Devonport, including extensions, and Pembroke.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. RUNCIMAN, Dewsbury): The total amount of the contributions in lieu of rates in respect of the five dockyards during the year ended 31st March last was £58,028. This sum does not include any payment on account of the new extension at Devonport, as the valuation basis was not agreed upon with the local authorities until after the dose of the year.

    Abel Heat Test.
    LORD R. CECIL: I beg to ask the Secretary for War whether the Abel heat test, either in its ordinary or any modified form, can be usefully applied to cordite containing mercuric chloride; and, if so, what are the changes in the test necessary to make it effective.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. HALDANE, Haddington): I have been informed that the Abel heat test can be applied successfully provided that the proper modifications are made—but the matter is of such importance that further experiments of a searching character are being carried out, and in a short time I hope to be able to give the noble Lord further information.
    LORD R. CECIL: When will it be convenient to have the Question put again?
    MR. HALDANE: It will take some little time to carry out the experiments. I will communicate with the noble Lord.

    General Officers and Staff Salaries.
    VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if any alteration has been made during the present financial year in the salaries and emoluments of general officers and members of their staff.
    MR. HALDANE: There have been practically no changes in the salaries of general officers and their staff since 1905. A few minor alterations have been made this year in the pay of the staff of educational establishments.

    Lyddite Shells.
    MAJOR ANSTRUTHER-GRAY (St. Andrews Burghs): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether ho can give any information as to the report of defects recently discovered in the steel supplied to the War Department for the manufacture of lyddite shells for His Majesty's service, which involve the danger of a shell-burst in the gun; how many such shells are in store; and what steps are being taken regarding them.
    MR. HALDANE: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the replies

    877
    I gave on this subject to my hon. friend the Member for King's Lynn on the 13th ultimo and 19th instant, † to which I have nothing to add.
    MAJOR ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the bursting of a shell in the howitzer battery at Lydd on Saturday? Was that due to defective steel?
    MR. HALDANE: I have no reason to believe it had anything to do with it.

    Piershill Barracks.
    MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what sum is to be spent during the present financial year upon the barracks at Piershill.
    MR. HALDANE:£2,250 will be spent on these barracks during the present financial year. The bulk of this expenditure is in connection with their re-appropriation for artillery.
    MR. GEORGE FABER: Is that a sufficient sum for the proper and complete repair of the barracks?
    MR. HALDANE: Yes, I think so.
    MR. GEORGE FABER: Will the barracks be put in proper sanitary condition?
    MR. HALDANE: Yes. The great difficulty is the situation and the antiquity of the buildings, which makes the barracks unsuitable for a whole cavalry regiment.

    Reserve Rifle Ammunition.
    MR. CROOKS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War how many rounds of small arm ammunition per rifle we have in reserve.
    MR. HALDANE: It would not be in the interests of the public service to give the figures asked for by the hon. Member, but I can assure him that the requirements of the troops have been fully provided for.
    MR. BELLAIRS: Is the reserve calculated for a full Expeditionary Force of 167,000 men?
    † See (4) Debates, clxxiv., 608, clxxvi., 449.
    MR. HALDANE: I should think so, but would prefer to have notice of the Question.

    New War Office Flag-staff.
    VISCOUNT TURNOUR: On behalf of the hon. Member for East Down, I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state for what reason a flag pole was erected on the new War Office building.
    MR. HALDANE: For the purpose of flying a flag.
    VISCOUNT TURNOUR: On what occasions is it proposed to fly the flag?
    MR. HALDANE: On the appointed days.
    VISCOUNT TURNOUR: Will it be flown on the anniversary of Waterloo?
    MR. HALDANE: Oh no.
    VISCOUNT TURNOUR: What are the appointed days?
    MR. WARD: The 1st April.

    The Aldershot Review.
    MR. PAULTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can say what arrangements are proposed to be made for affording to hon. Members an opportunity of visiting Aldershot on the 4th July.
    MR. HALDANE: I have been in communication with Sir John French on the subject, and he has most kindly undertaken to arrange as interesting a programme as possible calculated to show hon. Members the nature of the training received by the troops, and the condition of life in barracks. If enough hon. Members signify their intention of going a special train will be engaged. Sir John French has promised to see to transport arrangements at Aldershot during the visit, and luncheon will be provided.

    Woolwich Arsenal Discharges.
    MR. FELL: I beg to ask the Secretary f State for War how many men were

    879
    discharged from Woolwich Arsenal during the week ending 22nd June; and how many received notices to take effect at the end of the following two weeks.
    MR. HALDANE: Fifty-six men were discharged during the week ending 22nd instant, fifty-six men have received notice to take effect on the 29th instant, and up to the present eleven men to take effect on the 6th proximo.
    MAJOR ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the discharges will terminate?
    MR. HALDANE: I cannot give the exact time, but it is not very far off now.
    MR. FELL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if, in the discharges taking place at Woolwich, consideration is given to the cases of those who would shortly be entitled to receive bonuses on leaving; and whether any inquiries or representations on this head have been received.
    MR. HALDANE: Representations on this head have been received and each case receives individual consideration.
    MR. FELL: Do the authorities give consideration to the cases of men who are on the point of becoming entitled to their bonus—I think it is after six or seven years service?
    MR. HALDANE: In such cases we do all in our power to keep them on.
    MR. FELL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if the workmen discharged at Woolwich each receive a card giving advice as to emigrating; and if, in doing this, the authorities have considered the fact that every skilled artisan is estimated to be worth at least £300 to the country which may secure him as a citizen.
    MR. HALDANE: I explained on the 13th ultimo, in answer to a similar Question from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, that workmen discharged at Woolwich receive cards informing them that, should they wish to emigrate, the Emigrants' Information Office will supply them with the most reliable information. This action is taken in the
    880
    interests of the men, and to prevent their being misled by bogus agencies.

    Orange Colony Upper House.
    MR. ALDEN: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will consider the advisability of postponing the actual appointment of Members of the Upper House in the Orange River Colony until the country as a whole has elected its representatives, in view of the importance of ensuring the harmonious working of the two Houses.
    THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL, Manchester, N.W.): No, Sir. As I informed the hon. Member on June 17th, the Transvaal precedent will be followed in all respects.

    Repatriation of Chinese Coolies.
    MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, if Chinese coolies are repatriated in opposition to their desire to renew their contracts for a further term, who will pay the cost of returning them to China.
    MR. CHURCHILL: The employer will be called upon to pay in accordance with the bond entered into by him.
    MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg to ask the Undersecretary of State for the Colonies if the Home Government has any financial liability during the present year for the repatriation of the Chinese coolies from the Transvaal; and, if so, if any sum has been provided in the Estimates.
    MR. CHURCHILL: Any expenditure incurred under the repatriation notices posted last year will be borne by His Majesty's Government, but I cannot say whether any expenditure will actually be incurred. No other liability exists.
    LORD BALCARRES: Has any provision been made for this service in this year's Estimates?
    MR. CHURCHILL: It is not possible to make provision to defray the cost of any particular service until there are some data available for knowing what the I cost of that service is to be.
    SIR GILBERT PARKER: Has the right hon. Gentleman any knowledge as to the number of coolies who asked for repatriation?
    MR. CHURCHILL: No, Sir. I do not know that any new information has come to hand. No doubt applications are made from time to time. If the hon. Member will put down a Question I will make inquiries.
    MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether Sir Richard Solomon, the Transvaal Agent-General in London, telegraphed to the Transvaal Government that the Imperial Government would veto any retention of the Chinese after March, 1908; if so, whether such a telegram was sent with the cognisance or under the authority of His Majesty's Government; and whether His Majesty's Government have intimated or caused intimation to be made at any time, through any channel, that it is their view that a time limit should be set for the presence of the Chinese.
    MR. CHURCHILL: The Secretary of State for the Colonies has no control over or responsibility for any correspondence which may pass between an Agent-General and the Colony which he serves. Such correspondence, whatever its nature, is private correspondence; and even were I fully informed upon it, I could give no information to the House. All official communications are transmitted from the Colonial Office to the Transvaal Government through His Majesty's High Commissioner Lord Selborne. The policy of His Majesty's Government upon the subject of Chinese labour has for many months past been before Parliament in its entirety.
    MR. MITCHELL-THOMSONasked for a specific answer to the last part of his question, whether at any time, through any channel, the Government had expressed the wish or the hope that a time limit should be set or the presence of the Chinese.
    MR. CHURCHILL: I have answered fully the last part of the Question when I say that the policy of His Majesty's government on the subject of Chinese
    882
    labour has for many months been before Parliament in its entirety.
    SIR GILBERT PARKERwas understood to ask if duplicate copies of the correspondence sent to the Transvaal Government were placed in the hands of the Agent-General for the Colony in London.
    MR. CHURCHILLsaid be had frequently talked to the Agent-General on matters of public interest, but he was not aware how a question of this character, affecting confidential communications passing between the Agent-General and his Government, could be answered in that House. As a matter of fact no suggestion of a time limit for the repatriation of the Chinese had ever come from the Government. He would like to draw attention to the very singular manner in which the affairs of that Colony were dealt with in the House as compared with the affairs of other Colonies in the British Empire.

    Opium.
    MR. HART-DAVIES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to a notification recently published in the province of Chihli, telling the poppy farmers to go on with their cultivation of poppy and pointing out that the suppression of opium would cause great loss of revenue, and whether he has any official information that the Chinese Government will take any really effective steps to put down opium smoking if the Government of India restrict their export of the drug.
    MR. RUNCIMAN (for Sir EDWARD GREY): My right hon. friend's attention has been called to the notification issued by the Opium Tax Bureau of Chihli, which is doubtless that referred to by the hon. Member. Although it urges the farmers not prematurely to stop the cultivation of opium, it states that a time limit of ten years exists, within which opium cultivation must cease, so that it is not actually in disagreement with the terms of the Imperial Decree. With regard to the second part of my hon. Member's Question, my right hon. friend is unable at present to offer an opinion as to whether the regulations

    883
    which have been issued will prove successful or not.

    Taxation of Unworked Mining Bights.
    MR. WEDGWOOD: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been drawn to the formation in the Transvaal of a league for the taxation of unworked mining rights; and whether the Government will consider the advantage of similar taxation or rating in this country with a view to increasing the supply, and reducing the price, of coal.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. ASQUITH, Fifeshire, E.): I am aware that the suggestion is one which has been canvassed in the Transvaal; but I do not think that the political and economic conditions of the two industries are sufficiently similar to make the analogy drawn by my hon. friend a very close one. His suggestion shall, however, receive due consideration in common with other proposals for improving the incidence of taxation.

    The Transvaal Loan.
    MR. ASTBURY: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can say at what date the £5,000,000 guaranteed loan to the Transvaal will be required; and what form the issue will take.
    MR. ASQUITH: I understand from the Transvaal Government that the sum required by them for the purpose to which the loan is to be applied during the next twelve months is not likely to exceed £1,000,000. In these circumstances, I do not contemplate an issue of Transvaal stock in the current financial year. But it is proposed that the Transvaal Government should, in the Act which authorises the raising of the loan of £5,000,000, take powers to borrow temporarily, in anticipation of the issue of the permanent loan, by means of some form of short-dated security to be guaranteed by His Majesty's Government, and to be repaid out of the proceeds of the permanent loan when it is issued. I may add that arrangements are being made by which any fresh public issue, either of local loans stock or of guaranteed 2¾ per cent stock for Irish land purchase, before 31st
    884
    December next will be avoided. The raising of £1,000,000 for the Transvaal, either in one sum or by two installments, by securities of not more than one year's currency, thus represents the maximum demand which is likely to be made upon the money market, in respect of now loans for which His Majesty's Government is either directly or indirectly responsible for some time to come.
    MR. A. J. BALFOURasked when the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to introduce the Transvaal Loan Bill.
    MR. ASQUITH: In the first place, the Bill cannot be introduced until there has been a Resolution in Committee and it has been reported; and that Resolution cannot be moved in Committee until the Transvaal Legislature has passed its own Act.

    Finance Accounts.
    MR. BOWLES: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can inform the House when the Finance Accounts and the Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for the year 1906–7 will be distributed to Members.
    MR. ASQUITH: The Finance Accounts will be distributed in about a fortnight's time, but I am informed that the Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue will not be ready before August.

    Workmen's Compensation Act—Female Medical Referees.
    MR. FERENS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in considering arrangements for the appointment of medical referees, under the new Work men's Compensation Act, he will consider the propriety of appointing competent lady practitioners, having regard to the large number of females who now come under the Act as domestic servants and otherwise.
    MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: At the same time may I ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, having regard to the increased number of female workers affected by the new Workmen's Compensation Act, it is proposed that at

    885
    least one medical referee in each district should be a woman doctor?
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GLADSTONE, Leeds, W.): The question of appointing women medical referees for the purposes of the new Workmen's Compensation Act is under my consideration.
    MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: When is the right hon. Gentleman likely to be in a position to make a statement on the subject?
    MR. GLADSTONE: Probably on the Home Office Vote.

    Case of John Commerford of Gateshead.
    MR. J. JOHNSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the case of John Commerford, a miner, who, at Gateshead on 10th June, was charged with being drunk and disorderly, but against whom the case was dismissed; whether Commerford was taken from his own house through the streets only partly clothed; and whether he will inquire if any compensation has been offered to the man for the treatment he received and the expense he incurred.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have made inquiry into this case, and I find that the man was arrested in the street near his own house, not fully dressed, on a charge of being drunk and disorderly, and was taken to the station 250 yards off. He had been previously warned to go into the house and keep quiet, but had refused to do so. The charge was dismissed. I am not aware that any compensation has been offered to the man, and in view of the facts of the case and of his record I certainly think he deserves none.
    MR. J. JOHNSON: Then on what ground did the magistrates dismiss the case?
    MR. GLADSTONE: I suppose they exercised their discretion on the facts.

    Edalji Case.
    MR. F. E. SMITH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on what
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    grounds he has decided to withhold from the House of Commons Papers which have been before the Edalji Committee and which will be referred to on the Home Office Vote.
    MR. GLADSTONE: The reason for my decision is that all documents and communications, which are received by the Home Office in relation to the exercise of the prerogative of mercy, are strictly confidential; and that it would be contrary to the public interest if they were not so treated.
    LORD R. CECIL: May I ask if the documents submitted to the Edalji Committee are in the same position as Home Office documents relative to the prerogative of mercy?
    MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, Sir. All the documents at the Home Office were submitted to the Committee.
    SIR GILBERT PARKER: Will the Papers be referred to on the Home Office Vote?
    MR. GLADSTONE: I cannot say at present.

    Registered Clubs.
    MR. CREMER: I desire to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the number of clubs of all classes registered on the 1st January, 1903, and the number so registered 1st January, 1907; how many full and how many off-licences were extinguished during those five years; how many new full and off-licences were issued in the four years ending 31st December, 1906; and how many clubs have been removed from the register by legal process under the Act of 1902, giving the number struck off the register for each year.
    MR. GLADSTONE: As I have intimated to my hon. friend, the Answer to this Question is long and contains a good many figures, and I will, with his permission, hand it in to-day for circulation with the Votes. †
    MR. CREMER: I shall be very pleased.
    † See pages 835–6.

    Immigration Boards.
    MR. CREMER: I desire to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what salaries or fees are paid to the members of the immigrant boards in the different ports of the United Kingdom; if his attention has been called to a promise made by the right hon. Member for St. Augustine's, when the Pauper Immigrants' Bill was being discussed in the last Parliament, that the names of workmen should be placed upon the panel from which the members of the immigrant boards were to be selected; if any such names were so placed, whether any of them have been appointed upon the boards, or if their names still remain upon the panel; and whether, seeing that so many of the immigrants belong to the destitute class, he will appoint upon each immigrant board some workman who has a practical acquaintance with the poor.
    MR. GLADSTONE: A payment of one guinea is made to members of immigration boards for each meeting attended, to cover any expenses to which they may be put. I am aware of the promise referred to, and I know, as I stated in answer to the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets in March of last year, that it was kept in view in making the appointments which were practically all settled when I took office. No names have been removed from the panels. As to the actual service upon Boards of individual members, I have to say that this must depend on circumstances. Members are summoned, so far as possible, in rotation, but Boards have often to be convened in great haste, and members may have to serve who are immediately available. For this reason I cannot undertake that a workman shall appear on every Board; but I shall be ready to consider any suggestions for increasing the number of workmen, or representatives of their class, on the panels in any case where good cause is shown and suitable persons are suggested.
    MR. CREMER: Why not place them on the Board? Have any workmen been selected to serve?
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have dealt with that in my Answer.
    MR. CROOKS: Is there anyone on any of these Boards with practical experience?
    MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, Sir.

    Living Statuary.
    SIR F. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether ho has obtained, or proposes to obtain, from the metropolitan police authorities, or from any other sources, reports as to the character of the living statuary performances now being carried out in the metropolis: whether any such reports or inquiries show that those performances are such as to bring them within the existing law; and what stops he will take, either by prosecution or by strengthening the law, to prevent or restrict such performances whore found to be objectionable.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have made inquiry of the kind suggested by my hon. friend, but the performances referred to do not appear to me to justify interference by the police under the existing law. The London County Council exercises control as the licensing authority of the places where the performances take place. I understand that the question has boon under consideration by a committee of that body, who are keeping those exhibitions under strict observation.

    German State Insurance.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the successful working of the State insurance system of Germany and of the character of the Report on the subject presented to Parliament by a Departmental Committee, he will appoint a Select Committee of this House to consider and report upon the matter.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I beg to answer this Question on behalf of my right hon. friend. I remain of the opinion I expressed on the 4th April last year in the course of the debate on the Amendment moved by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, to the Motion for the Second Reading of the Workmen's Compensation Bill, namely, that further inquiry was needed before any scheme of compulsory or national insurance could be adopted, and that there should be no unnecessary delay in

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    commencing a practical inquiry directed to that end. I cannot state at this moment the precise form the inquiry will take, but it should be conducted by a body whose status and composition are commensurate with the great importance of the subject.

    Treatment of Juvenile Offenders.
    MR. LLOYD MORGAN: I beg to ask the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the conviction of four boys, aged nine, twelve, twelve, and thirteen, by the Dudley magistrates for the offence of bathing in the canal, within 200 yards of the street, without wearing bathing drawers; whether, through not being able to pay the fines imposed, the boys were sent to prison for seven days; whether the boys wore of good character; and whether, having regard to their age and character and the trifling nature of their offence, the right hon. Gentleman would order their discharge forthwith.
    MR. GLADSTONE: Three only of the boys were sent to prison, the fourth having had his fine paid. As soon as I heard of the matter on Thursday last I sent a telegram of inquiry, and in consequence of what I was informed I sent a telegram the following day ordering the immediate release of the boys.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEYasked whether there was any method of dealing with these Justices.
    MR. GLADSTONE: Will my hon. friend defer his Question? I am making inquiries into the whole case.
    MR. LEA (St. Pancras, E.): Will the right hon. Gentleman represent these cases to the Lord Chancellor with a view to having these Justices kicked out?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Railway Nationalisation.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the success of the policy of railway nationalisation in foreign countries and British Possessions, he can see his way to the appointment of a Royal Commission or Select Committee of this House to report upon the advisability of nationalising the railways of the United Kingdom.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (MR. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon Boroughs): I understand that the Question referred to is within the scope of the Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways, so far as those railways are concerned. I think my hon. friend had better await the Report of that Commission before pressing for another.
    SIR GILBERT PARKER: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the statement in the Question that the nationalisation of railways has been a comparative success?
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Yes, I certainly think so.

    Increased Coal Freights.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if his attention has boon directed to the fact that the railway companies are increasing their charges for the carriage of coal; and whether, in view of the fact that cheap coal is the foundation of British prosperity, ho contemplates taking any action in the matter, whether by way of seeking further powers for the control of railway rates or otherwise.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Notice of the intention of the railway companies of Great Britain to alter the method of calculating the weight of coal carried by them has boon given to the Board of Trade. This alteration will be equivalent to an increase in the rates for conveyance, and it will therefore, under the Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1894, lie upon the companies to prove, if complaint is made, that the increase is reasonable. If any complaints are received in the Board of Trade from traders, my hon. friend may depend upon it that they will be fully investigated. The matter is one with which the Railway and Canal Commissioners have full power to deal.

    German National Railway Systems.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in connection with the forthcoming Report on German commercial conditions, special attention will be given to the German national railway systems; and whether ho will cause to be prepared a section comparing the respective fares,

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    freight-charges, facilities, wages, casualties, direct and indirect profits, amps;c, of the British and Prussian railways.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Information is being collected with respect to economic conditions in Germany, and also with regard to German railways. I trust that the results of the inquiry will throw light on several of the questions in which my hon. friend is interested.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that the Report deals with the policy of the German Federal State and municipal governments in regard to the ownership of public utilities?
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I do not think the Special Investigator can go into a policy of that kind.
    MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: Will ample facts be collected on the subject?
    MR. LLOYD GEORGE: Certainly.
    MR. HAROLD COX: Will the right hon. Gentleman ascertain if the nationalisation of the German telegraphs has proved as complete a failure as it has been in this country?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Underground Railways—The Model workmen's Train Clause
    MR. CROOKS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, seeing that the Joint Select Committee on London underground railways which sat in 1901 recommended that the model workmen's train clause drawn up by the London County Council should be inserted in all Private Bills authorising the construction of electric railways in London, he will say if such model clause has been inserted in all such Private Bills from 1901 down to and including the present session.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The Committee referred to recommended that clauses based on certain provisions of the Central London Railway Act, 1900, should be inserted in all Bills authorising the construction of underground railways, and such clauses have been included in all the Acts passed since 1901 authorising such lines in London. In the case of the
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    London and North-Western Railway Bill of this session, authorising the construction of new lines to Watford, of which only the first three miles are underground, the Committee on the Bill have not, I believe, thought it necessary to insert provisions in this form, but have added a clause to the effect that workmen's fares on the new lines are not to exceed those now in operation on the existing lines.

    Manning of the Mercantile Marine s.s. "Maritta"
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state if the Board of Trade surveyor who recently investigated the manning of the steamer "Maritta" at Cardiff was an engineer surveyor or a shipwright surveyor; what practical sea experience the surveyor in question had; whether he reported to the Board of Trade that the six unqualified men engaged were not British seamen but Chinamen; if he is aware that by the usual practice where Chinamen or lascars are employed as seamen double the number of men are engaged; what evidence was submitted to the surveyor to prove that these Chinamen had three years sea service; whether, in giving the orders to test the efficiency of these men, such orders were given in the Chinese language; and whether the President of the Board of Trade is aware that the Chinamen wore unable to speak English.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The surveyor who investigated the manning of the "Maritta" was a ship surveyor with over twenty-one years service from apprentice to master, of which period about three years were in command. He reported to the Board that the six seamen were Chinamen. No evidence was required as to their having had three years sea service as they were not shipped as "A. B's" but as "seamen." The surveyor states that he gave them several orders in English which they clearly understood, and that although they could not speak English fluently they evidently knew sufficient to make themselves understood. I have no precise information as to the general practice with regard to the proportion of Chinamen and lascars to Europeans when shipped as seamen, but I am advised that in most cases the

    893
    same number of Chinamon are carried as European seamen.
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: Arising out of that Answer, may I ask if the right hon. Gentleman's attention has been called to the Manning Committee's Report, in which they say, in the 99th paragraph, "After full consideration of the evidence laid before us, and after regarding that subject from various points of view, we have come to the conclusion that no British steamer of or above 700 tons gross measurement ought to be allowed to proceed to sea from a British port without at least six deck hands—that is, six in addition to the master, and at least two mates—and of those six deck hands at least four should be able seamen." I would like to ask whether the attention of the right hon. Gentleman has been called to that paragraph, and whether, seeing the whole of these Chinamen were ordinary seamen, he thinks this vessel was properly manned under the circumstances.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Of course the Board of Trade considered all that when they decided whether the vessel was properly manned or not. I cannot go beyond the powers with which I am equipped by the Act of 1897. As far as that Act is concerned this ship was undoubtedly properly manned within the provisions of the Act of Parliament.
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that at the Colonial Conference ho said the Board of Trade had power to detain such ships as were not efficiently manned?
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Certainly. I adhere to that opinion, but I cannot go beyond the powers which I have got under this Act of Parliament. I adhere to what I said, but under these powers this ship was properly manned.
    MR. LEA: May I ask whether in view of the agitation which the Liberal Party has conducted against the employment of Chinese in South Africa, and in order to maintain consistency, the right hon. Gentleman will do all in his power to prohibit the employment of Chinese on ships, especially in view of the fact that many of the ships on which Chinese are employed are owned
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    by Members of this House. [Cries of "Radicals,"] And Tories too.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The hon. Member knows perfectly well I have no power to prohibit the employment of any alien sailors. Last year certain provisions were incorporated in the Bill which I piloted through the House, which imposed very considerable restrictions upon the employment of aliens, and I am enforcing those restrictions now.
    MR. LUPTON: May I ask whether it is not a fact that no Party in this House has ever expressed any opinion against the Chinese or against Chinese slavery?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    s.s. "Siberian."
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the British steamer "Siberian," of 3,446 gross tonnage and 372 feet in length, engaged a crew at the port of Glasgow on the 10th instant; whether he is aware that only seven qualified able seamen were engaged, whereas on the previous voyage the same vessel carried sixteen able seamen; whether the "Siberian" is licensed to carry passengers, and how many passengers she carried when leaving Glasgow on the 10th instant; whether the owners complied with the regulations for emigrant ships which provide that a fixed number of qualified able seamen shall be carried on emigrant ships; and if he has received any report with regard to the manning of the "Siberian."
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The "Siberian" is a steamer of 3,846 tons gross and 372 feet long. She is licensed to carry passengers. She left Glasgow on the 12th inst. for Halifax via Liverpool. She had twelve A.B's with proven service. She also had six seamen who the emigration officer (who is a surveyor) was satisfied were bona fide A.Bs, but they could not prove the required service. One of them was a qualified seaman in the Naval Reserve and another was A.B. on a previous voyage. The vessel signed sixteen A.B's on her previous voyage, but eleven of those could not prove A.B's. service. She carried no passengers from Glasgow but embarked 653 at Liverpool,

    895
    The regulations as to the manning of emigrant ships were complied with and no special report was required or made in the case.
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: Arising out of that Answer, may I ask whether according to the regulations this vessel should have carried twenty-eight deck hands, of course including the officers, and whether, as it only carried twenty-two deck hands, the right hon. Gentleman can explain why the emigration officer allowed the ship to proceed shorthanded?
    Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I have really nothing to add to the Answer I have given, which was I think a very detailed one.
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: I will call attention to this matter on the Estimates.

    s.s. "Astoria."
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the British steamer "Astoria" engaged a crew at the port of Glasgow on the 7th June, 1907, and that of the men engaged as deck hands only four were qualified able seamen; whether he is aware that on her previous voyage the same vessel carried fifteen able seamen, and that the "Astoria" is a vessel of 5,086 gross tonnage and is 437 feet in length and is licensed to carry passengers; whether he can state how many passengers were being carried when the vessel left Glasgow on the 7th instant; and whether the owners have complied with the regulations for emigrant ships which provide that a definite number of able seamen shall be carried on all emigrant and passenger ships; and has any official report been received with regard to the manning of the "Astoria."
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The "Astoria" is a steamship of the gross tonnage and length stated in the Question and is licensed to carry passengers. She cleared from Glasgow on the 7th instant, with 744 passengers. She had nine A.B's. with proven services, and thirteen seamen with services not proven. The emigration officer was satisfied that these thirteen seamen were all bona fide A.B's., as far as their efficiency went. One of them
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    was known to the officer as having been a long time in the same service, and was promoted to be boatswain, and another was signed A.B. on her previous voyage. The emigration officer (who is a surveyor) was satisfied that at the time of clearance the regulations regarding manning were complied with, and no special report was required or made in the case. The vessel on her previous voyage shipped eleven seamen with proved service as A.B's. and eleven seamen not so proven.
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that this vessel, according to the emigrant regulations, ought to carry thirty-five men on deck, including officers, and whether as a matter of fact it only carried twenty-seven, and whether that was reported to the Board of Trade, and whether the ship went away short-handed?
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: That is not in accordance with my information.
    MR. HAVELOCK WILSON: I shall call attention to this also on the Estimates.

    Inquiry into the Economic Condition of Germany.
    MR. PIKE PEASE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether it is intended to publish the results of the inquiries which he stated at the Imperial Conference he had instituted into economic conditions in Germany; and, if so, when.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: The results will be published as soon as they are ready, but I cannot name a date. The inquiries are still proceeding, and will not be complete for some time.

    German Trade Statistics—Mark Value.
    MR. BELLAIRS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the figures of German trade in the accounts relating to the trade of foreign countries are calculated on the basis of twenty marks being equal to one sovereign, the result being to exaggerate the combined imports and exports of Germany for 1906 by a value of nearly 14,000,000 sterling; and whether he proposes to alter the mode of calculating the figures in the future.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I am aware that the rate of twenty marks to the pound which has for many years been adopted in official publications in this country for convenience of calculation does not correspond accurately with the average rate of exchange, and that the effect is to exaggerate the totals of German trade to about the extent stated by my hon. friend, viz., £14,000,000. I will consider how far it is advisable to make a change, having regard to the desirability of preserving continuity in the statistics, but the difficulty of making a change is very great owing to the fluctuations of exchange. I may point out that the value of German trade in marks is also given in the accounts to which the Question relates.

    Colwyn Bay Sewerage.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that the promenade at Colwyn Bay is constructed for upwards of two miles over the top of the main sewer which carries the sewage into the sea at Rhos-on-Sea; and, seeing that the sewer is ventilated by means of ventilating shafts on the parade, will he ascertain whether any loss offensive means of ventilating the sewer can be adopted; and, in view of the sewage stench at Rhos-on-Sea, will he suggest to the local authorities the expediency of carrying the sewage further out to sea.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. JOHN BURNS, Battersea): I understand that the promenade at Colwyn Bay is not constructed over the outfall sewer, but over the main intercepting sewer. The latter sewer is ventilated by ventilating shafts, some of which are on the promenade, but they are of a considerable height, and I am informed that they are no nuisance, and that there have been no complaints with respect to them. I understand that there is now no outfall sewer at Rhos-on-Sea, that outfall having been disconnected and the whole of the sewage connected into the new sewerage scheme, which discharges some 1,530 feet below low-water mark at a point near the Little Orme.
    MR. HERBERT ROBERTS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Colwyn Bay Council have
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    constructed the works in accordance with the best engineering advice and that no complaint of any kind has been made?
    MR. JOHN BURNS: Yes, that is so.
    MR. WEIR: Was not a complaint made ten months ago?
    MR. JOHN BURNS: I am aware an unjustifiable complaint was made by the hon. Member himself, and I think it ought not to be repeated on the floor of the House of Commons to the detriment of the local authority which ought not to be pilloried in this fashion. I have given a great deal of time and attention to the matter of the unauthorised and unfounded complaint made ten months ago. I think there is no justification for complaint against the local authority; on the contrary, it has done all that can reasonably be asked of it.

    Education Act—Wear and-Tear Clause.
    MR. MASSIE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that the Wiltshire education authority has performed all its duties under the wear-and-tear clause of the Education Act, 1902, at an average cost of about 1½d. per scholar, whilst the Dorset authority is commuting the cost by payments to the denominational school managers, amounting in some cases, to 2s. per scholar, and averaging nearly Is. per scholar over the whole county; and what steps he proposes to take to put an end to this appropriation of public money, which the Local Government Board have declared to be illegal.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: I have seen a statement to the effect mentioned in the Question. As I stated in reply to my hon. friend's previous Question, if it is considered that any expenditure incurred by a local education authority in relation to wear and tear in non-provided schools is illegal, the matter should be brought before the auditor at the audit. I have no jurisdiction with regard to it, except on an appeal from his decision.
    MR. MASSIE: Does not the auditor report such illegalities?
    MR. JOHN BURNS: Yes, when his audit is completed.

    Labour Registries.
    MR. ALDEN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, in conjunction with the President of the Board of Trade, he will circulate amongst the municipalities of Great Britain, which at the present moment have labour registries, information regarding the organisation of the labour bureaux in leading Continental cities; and whether, at the same time, he will make it a condition of any future grants from an unemployed fund that the organisation of these labour registries should be adequate for the purpose they have in view.
    I beg also to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, through the Labour Department, he will cause inquiry to be made as to the working of the labour bureaux in such Continental towns as Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, Strasburg, Frankfurt, and Copenhagen; whether such information could be given to Members of the House; and whether, in conjunction with the President of the Local Government Board, he will circulate this information as to the organisation and conduct of these labour bureaux amongst all the municipalities in Great Britain which, at the present time, have labour registries.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: Perhaps in answering this Question I may be allowed to answer also No. 64 which is addressed to the President of the Board of Trade. Information with regard to the organisation of the labour bureaux at Berlin and Munich, and figures as to the working of the bureaux at Leipsic and Frankfort, and a large number of other German towns, was published in 1904 in a volume entitled "Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed in certain Foreign Countries," which was presented to Parliament and circulated by the Board of Trade to labour bureaux, town clerks, boards of guardians, distress committees, and others. A copy of this volume is being sent to my hon. friend, who will perhaps consider that what has been already done will meet the object he has in view. I cannot make any promise as to the conditions to be attached to any future grants which may be made for the purposes of the Unemployed Workmen Act.
    MR. ALDEN: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that the methods of organising are also circulated? They are not shown in the Report.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: I will confer with my hon. friend.

    Public Health Acts.
    SIR F. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether he will introduce, either in the present or the next session of Parliament, a Bill consolidating and bringing up to date the Public Health Acts and the provisions of amending Acts.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: It would not be practicable to introduce a Bill to consolidate the Acts referred to during the present session. I do not think that, at the present time, I could give any pledge as to legislation for this purpose next year.

    Compulsory Notification of Phthisis
    SIR F. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he has now obtained a Report from the Scottish Local Government Board as to the working of compulsory notification of phthisis in certain towns in Scotland; and, if not, whether he will obtain such detailed Report and lay it before Parliament.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: I am not aware that the Scottish Local Government Board have made any Report on the working of the compulsory notification of phthisis in certain towns in Scotland. The question whether any such Report should be made and laid before Parliament is hardly a matter for me. It appears to be one for my right hon. friend the Secretary for Scotland.
    SIR F. CHANNING: Having regard to my right hon. friend's replies to previous Questions, will he obtain the opinion of the Scottish Local Government Board?
    MR. JOHN BURNS: Certainly.

    Phthisis—Dr. Bulstrode's Report.
    SIR F. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether the Report of Dr. Bulstrode

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    as to the sanatoria for phthisis in England and Wales, and as to voluntary and compulsory notification of phthisis, which was stated on 10th April to be in the Press, will be issued before the Vote for the Local Government Board is taken.
    MR. JOHN BURNS: Dr. Bulstrode is engaged in revising the proofs of his Report, but there is a considerable amount of work to be done upon it, and I cannot undertake that it will be issued before the Vote for the Local Government Board is taken.

    Telephone Service—Trunk Call Fee.
    SIR GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether a charge is made for a trunk call on the telephone system if there is no response to the call; and how much that charge is.
    THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON, Tower Hamlets, Poplar): A reduced charge, which is approximately one quarter of the ordinary fee, is made for a trunk call to which there is no response; but this charge is waived if it appears subsequently that the failure to respond was due to circumstances outside the control of the called subscriber. The charge varies from 1d. to 6d., according to the amount of the full charge for three minutes conversation.

    Great Royal Saxon Lottery.
    MR. WATT: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that a circular advertising the Great Royal Saxon Lottery was posted in great number on 19th June in London, franked London, paid; that lotteries have been declared by two members of the Government to be illegal; and whether he will see that his Department will take steps to stop foreign lotteries having advantages which are denied to home lotteries.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: My attention has been called to the circular referred to, and I am in communication with the police on the subject. I am, of course, aware of the illegality of lotteries and fully recognise the importance of preventing as far as possible the use of the post for the distribution of circulars relating to them. It is not the case that postal ad- vantages of any kind are given to foreign
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    lotteries which are denied to home lotteries. Whatever the nature of the contents there are obvious difficulties in the way of stopping circulars if they are posted in closed covers which I am not entitled to open.

    Meals for Indigent Children.
    MR. BROOKE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education how many of the local authorities in England and Wales have thus far availed themselves of the Provisions of Meals for Indigent Children Act passed last session; and what are the names of those authorities.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (MR. MCKENNA, Monmouthshire, N.): Except in cases where it is desired to spend money from the rates upon the purchase of food, local authorities are not required by the Act to inform the Board of Education of their proceedings under it; and I have, therefore, no complete information as to the authorities who have in one way or an; other taken advantage of its provisions. The following seven authorities have been authorised by the Board under Section 3 of the Act to expend moneys out of the rates upon the purchase of food: Aston Manor, Barry, Birmingham, Crewe, Huddersfield, Manchester, and Nottingham. Similar applications from Bradford and Cannock have been received.

    Flintshire Education Committee.
    MR. D. A. THOMAS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been called to the proceedings at the last monthly meeting of the Flintshire Education Committee, during which it was authoritatively stated that, of the increase in the education rate for the current year, a large proportion, amounting to over £3,000, was due to the cost of maintenance of voluntary or non-provided schools; and if he will inquire into the cause of the increased expenditure.
    MR. McKENNA: The Answer to the first paragraph is in the negative. In reply to the second paragraph, any inquiry into the legality of expenditure by a local education authority is a matter for the district auditor.

    Carnarvonshire Non-provided Schools.
    MR. D. A. THOMAS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the expenditure by the county council on the maintenance of non-provided schools in Carnarvonshire exceeded the Government grants received in respect of such schools by over £4,000 in the year ended 31st March, 1905, and by over £2,000 in the year ended 31st March, 1906; whether these deficits were provided for out of the rates; and, if not, how were they met.
    MR. McKENNA: The Answer to the first paragraph is in the negative. With regard to the second and third paragraphs, I have no information.

    Adulteration of Feeding Stuffs.
    MR. C. E. PRICE: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether the county clerk of Berwickshire reported to the Highland Agricultural Society that, of eleven samples of feeding stuffs analysed, six were reported as faulty; and, as the presence of anthrax bacilli in feeding stuffs was also declared to be accountable for the spread of that disease in the Lothians, resulting in the death of several animals, what steps he will take in these districts to check the manufacture and sale of defective feeding stuffs under the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act of 1906.
    THE TREASURES OF THE HOUSEHOLD (Sir EDWARD STRACHEY, Somersetshire, S.): My right hon. friend has asked me to answer this Question. We have seen a copy of the Report to which my hon. friend refers, and we have been in communication with the local authority respecting it. It appears that the samples were taken before the Act of last session came into operation, and that the local authority were not aware of the result of the analyses until it was too late to take proceedings against any of the vendors. It is clearly necessary, in the interest of agriculturists, that the law, as it now stands, should be vigorously enforced in the county, and one of our inspectors will be instructed to confer with the local authority as to the steps to be taken for this purpose.

    Newspaper Competitions.
    MR. ALDEN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General whether his attention has been called to competitions which are at present taking place in several weekly papers, the prizes for which are based on the sweepstake principle; and, if so, whether, in view of- the law against lotteries, he proposes to take any action in the matter.
    THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir JOHN WALTON, Leeds, S.): I cannot express any opinion upon the materials before me, but if my hon. friend will bring the subject before the Director of Public Prosecutions it will receive attention.

    Duncanstown Eviction.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that during the absence of Mr. W. J. Cameron from his holding at Duncanstown, Ferintosh, Ross-shire, a lawyer and sheriff's officer, with the local policeman, visited his house, and that the sheriff's officer, after plucking from Mrs. Cameron's arms an infant of three years of age, forcibly ejected the mother, exposing both mother and infant to the cold and rain; and will he state whether he can take any steps to stay the eviction of crofter leaseholders, pending the consideration of the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill.
    THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (MR. SINCLAIR, Forfarshire): The facts, I am informed, are as follows:—Cameron being in arrears of rent was ejected by decree of the Court on 19th April, and the house was securely locked by the sheriffs officer. Cameron having returned and forcibly re-entered the premises, decree of re-ejectment was granted and carried out on 5th June, by a sheriff's officer and concurrents. Cameron was not present, and Mrs Cameron having refused to leave when asked was carried out with her child. The constable was in attendance, but took no part whatever in the proceedings. With regard to the last part of my hon. friend's Question, I am unable to add to the Answer given to him on 27th May. No such steps as are suggested are within my power.
    † See (4) Debates, clxxiv., 133.

    Ardarroch Pier.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether the Fishery Board for Scotland can see their way to comply with the request of the Ross-shire County Council for a grant in aid of the construction of a pier at Ardarroch, Loch Kishorn, Ross-shire.
    MR. SINCLAIR: The Fishery Board are in correspondence with the county council and await further details before they can give a final decision on this matter.

    Mellon Udrigle Boatslip.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether the Congested Districts Board have now received an application for a grant in aid of the establishment of a boatslip at Mellon Udrigle, at the entrance of Gruniard Bay, Ross-shire; and, if so, will he state whether it is proposed to accede to the request.
    MR. SINCLAIR: The fishermen referred to by my hon. friend have been informed by the Board that no application can be considered unless it is received through the county council. The matter rests at this point.

    Island of Lewis Schools.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that it often happens, more especially in the public schools in the Island of Lewis, that for lack of cloak pegs the children's cloaks are piled in a heap, with the result that the cloaks are frequently quite damp when required by the children on leaving school; and will he consider the expediency of giving instructions for all public schools to be provided with cloak pegs.
    MR. SINCLAIR: Proper cloak-room accommodation is a general requirement for schools receiving grants under the Code. I am not aware that the supply of cloak pegs is often defective, but if the hon. Member will name specific instances in which this is supposed to be the case, inquiry will be made with a view to improvement being effected.

    Shader Landing Place.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether the plans for the proposed works at the landing place
    906
    at Shader, Island of Lewis, which were forwarded to him by the Ross-shire County Council in February last, have yet been approved by the Board of Trade.
    MR. SINCLAIR: I am still in correspondence with the Board of Trade on this matter.

    Skigersta Pier.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state on what ground the Congested Districts Board have declined to accede to a request by the Ross-shire County Council for a grant of £12 towards the construction of a protecting parapet wall at Skigersta pier, Island of Lewis.
    MR. SINCLAIR: The Congested Districts Board have already made a grant of £323 towards the erection of a protecting parapet wall for the Skigersta pier upon a deliberately considered plan which has been duly carried out. If the promoters at this stage desire additions it would appear to be a matter for them-selves to carry out.

    Dumbarton Sewerage.
    MR. R. DUNCAN: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he is aware that the sewer pipes of the burgh of Dumbarton are being extended towards the centre of the River Leven; whether this action has the concurrence and sanction of the Local Government Board; and, if not, whether steps will be taken by the Board to compel the burgh to adopt a satisfactory system of sewage purification.
    MR. SINCLAIR: I have no further information since my reply to the hon. Member's former Questions. The sanction of the Local Government Board to the extension of the sewer outlets is not required, nor have they any power to compel the local authority to adopt a system of sewage purification unless it can be shown that such is essential in order to remove a public health nuisance. Arrangements have, however, been made for a joint inquiry by the inspector under the Rivers Pollution Act, and the Medical Inspector of the Board.

    Reporting Grand Committees.
    MR. MENZIES: I beg to ask the Prime Minister whether

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    each Member of this House receives a Minute of the Proceedings of the Grand Scottish Committee on the second morning following the sitting; whether that information is supplemented by ample reports in northern newspapers; whether the estimated expense of reporting debates in this House for this year is £4,500 higher than last year; what estimated increase of expenditure would be necessary to give reports of speeches delivered in each of the four Grand Committees, equal to Hansard reports of speeches delivered in this House; and whether any public object would be gained if they were published.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling Burghs): The facts are, I believe, as stated, but I am unable to give my hon. friend an estimate of the probable cost of reporting and printing the proceedings of the Standing Committees. The final part of the Question deals with a matter of opinion.
    MR. LAURENCE HARDY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that very important rulings upon questions of procedure and closure are daily being made in the Scottish Grand Committee, and would it not be desirable, in view of a similar procedure being adopted in all the Committees, to secure an official report of these proceedings?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: My experience has been that these rulings, if important, are reported.
    MR. LAURENCE HARDY: Where?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: In the public prints.
    MR. LAURENCE HARDY: In what official document? May I ask whether there are any means open to any hon. Member of this House of discovering in the library of the House what these rulings are?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN:I do not know that there are any official reports, but there are other reports.
    VISCOUNT TURNOUR: Will the right hon, Gentleman say what other reports?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: There are ample reports in the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.
    MR. LAURENCE HARDY: Does the right hon. Gentleman, then, intend that English Members must read the Scottish papers in order to get the information?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I think it would be much to their advantage if they did so.

    House of Lords Resolution.
    MR. PIKE PEASE: I beg to ask the Prime Minister if it is proposed that the Resolution dealing with the House of Lords shall be moved in another place after the discussion in the House of Commons is completed.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: No, Sir.

  MR. SPEAKER AND OXFORD UNIVERSITY.
  MR. SPEAKER: I have to inform the House that I have been honoured by the proposal of the University of Oxford to confer upon me the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. If accepted, this would necessitate my absence from this House and my attendance at Oxford on Wednesday next, and I have to ask the indulgence and leave of the House so to absent myself. [Cheers.] I have to thank the House for the indication of permission so kindly given.
NEW BILLS.
  SALE OF FOOD AND DRUGS AMENDMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  "To amend the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, 1875 to 1899," presented by Mr. Mitchell-Thomson; to be read a second time upon Wednesday, 3rd July, and to be printed. [Bill 252.]
  ISLE OF MAN (CUSTOMS) BILL.
  "To amend the Law with respect to Customs Duties in the Isle of Man, presented by Mr. Runciman; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 253.]

  MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from Standing Committee A.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 216.]
  Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 216.]
  Bill [not amended] to be taken into consideration To-morrow.

HOUSE OF LORDS.
THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling Burghs): I rise to move, "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail." In moving this Resolution we are following the notable precedent of the. famous Resolutions of 1678 and 1860; and I hope our method of procedure will commend itself to the House. The other day I spoke of this Resolution, in some conversation of a casual kind across the Table of this House, as a preface to something that was to come later. The passing of a Resolution by this House, even if it be tacitly accepted by the other House, does not have the effect of law, and it is laid down in this Motion that its objects are to be secured "by law." Other Resolutions have, as we are aware, been accepted in the sense that they have been acted upon. But in the present instance, whatever the disposition elsewhere may be, the objects which His Majesty's Government have in view appear to us, as at present advised, to call for statutory definition. Before I sit down I shall submit to the House the broad lines of the plan which at a later period will, according to our intention, have statutory form given to it; and the Government will exercise their own discretion as to when that Bill will be introduced. In the meantime we desire to test the opinion of the House, and to make sure before any further step is taken that we have the House of
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Commons behind us. In that case, holding as we do that this House, and this: House alone, is qualified authoritatively I to express the sentiments of the country, we shall be enabled to go forward with that confidence of the country as well as of the House of Commons. We are not at this moment, happily, in the throes of an active actual conflict with the other House, and it may perhaps be contended—I have seen it contended—that this is not, therefore, the proper time for bringing forward such a Resolution as this. I think entirely otherwise. I think it is an advantage that we should approach this great constitutional question without passion, and that we should discuss it in an atmosphere in which we can deal with it on its own merits. There is one other preliminary word perhaps which I may say before I proceed to the main question in reply to criticisms directed against us on account of our supposed dilatoriness in this matter. I do not think any harm has been done to either House. No practical inconvenience, and certainly no disrespect or lack of consideration, has been either intended or conveyed towards the other House; and let me point out that the little delay which has taken place has been in accordance with the advice kindly tendered to us on the first day of the session by the Leader of the Opposition, when he said we should reflect at our leisure on this great constitutional issue; and it is also in consonance with an Amendment formally moved and debated and voted upon from the front bench opposite, in which we were warned against setting aside the work of social legislation in order to take up the question of our relations with the other House. I, therefore, do not think that I need make any apology for the time or occasion on which the Motion is' being brought forward.
My Motion affirms the predominance of the House of Commons as the representative House of Parliament, and I submit that in spirit and in fact that is a strictly true constitutional proposition. I may claim for it, up to a point, the adhesion of the Party opposite and of the House of Lords itself. The supremacy of the people is admitted in theory even by the House of Lords. It is admitted that the will of the people— that will upon which the poet tells us our Constitution is broad-based;—is in

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the long run entitled to prevail. It is admitted even by those whose natural leanings and proclivities would lead them to a very restricted order of representative institutions. To that extent, therefore, we are seemingly at one. How, then, is that will of the people to be got at and ascertained unless you take the view of the elective House as expressing it? The supremacy of the people in legislation implies, in this country at any rate, the authority of the Commons. The party for which I speak has never swerved from that position, and unless you are going to fall back upon some foreign method, such as the referendum or the mandate or the plebiscite, or some other way of getting behind the backs of the elected to the electors themselves, such as was advised by both the first and third Napoleon—unless that is the example you are going to follow, then there is no course open but to recognise ungrudgingly the authority which resides in this House, and to accept the views of the nation as represented in its great interests within these walls. The Resolution embodies, therefore, a principle the logic of which at any rate is accepted by both Parties and both Houses—the principle of the predominance of the House of Commons.
But let us be quite clear as to what we mean by predominance, and especially what we mean by the ultimate prevalence of the House of Commons. We do not on this side of the House mean an abstract, a deferred supremacy; that is not what we mean by the supremacy of the House of Commons. We do not mean a supremacy that comes into play after one or two or more appeals to the country, before which a determined resistance of the other House will give way. That is not what we mean by the supremacy of the House of Commons. That arrangement does not in the least fulfil the requirements of the Constitution. Where we differ, therefore, is as to the point at which the authority of this House becomes effective. But, at any rate, let us be quite clear about this, that the House of Commons is acknowledged on all hands, with certain reservations in the House of Lords, but without reservation at all, so far as I am aware, in the writings of any high constitutional authority, as the final court in which the will of the nation is declared. I do not base my argument upon the ad-
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missions or statements of those writers to whom I have referred, or on any authorities whatsoever. We do not require to do so. The principle which forms the core of our Resolution is implied and expressed in the very existence of this House of Commons. It works in every fibre of our political being, and if the authority to speak for the nation is not to reside within these walls, if that authority is to be usurped by the non-elective House, it follows that our representative institutions must take a secondary place, and we shall have to abate our claim to be the foremost among free and representative communities.
Now I have to ask the House to consider how this great principle is applied in practice. What meaning does the supremacy of the House of Commons convey to the minds of the House of Lords? In first place, it is matter of common knowledge that its working varies according to circumstances. When their own Party are in power— that is the Party to which the vast majority of the Members of the House of Lords belong—they recognise without reservation, they even make what I would almost call indecent haste, to recognise this supremacy. There is never a suggestion that the checks and balances of the Constitution are to be brought into play; there is never a hint that this House is anything but a clear and faithful mirror of the settled opinions and desires of the country, or that the arm of the executive falls short of being the instrument of the national will. No, Sir; the other House, in these circumstances, may be said to adopt and act upon the view of the inherent authority of this House, which was expressed by Edmund Burke in these words —
"The virtue, spirit, and essence of the House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the nation."
I know of no instance under a congenial régime, that is to say, not in recent times, when the House of Lords seriously challenged the decisions of this House, except—it is rather comical—in the solitary case of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill; on two separate occasions this House has passed this Bill when the Conservatives were in power—a private Bill it was—and on both occasions the other House rejected it. It is almost refreshing to come upon this marked

913
action in the revising House. But certainly the supposed characteristic of a single chamber system of Government which prevails in Unionist times has never been broken by any hint or suggestion that the Government and the House of Commons should go to the country and ascertain what the people were thinking. That is a novel innovation. I will deal with that. It now seems to be in everybody's mouth. If we look upon this controversy as a warfare, I should say that this is the last ditch in which the final struggle is expected to take place. But the relations such as I have spoken to, the accounts such as I have given of the state of things that goes on when a congenial Government is in power, cannot be contradicted. These are the plain and acknowledged characteristics and facts of the state of things which prevails. Of course, we know the explanation given by hon. Members opposite. It is a little difficult because I do not know what to call the Party opposite. I am always anxious to call people by the name they prefer. If we call them Unionists—in the first place, we do not allow the truth of the name, but putting that aside and out of courtesy giving them their own title— if we call them Unionists, the title is, after all, a mere fugitive and evanescent battle-cry, and we want something more descriptive of the abiding Party in this country which asks, in matters of legislation, for pause and deliberation. "Unionist" does not express that; and "Conservative" is equally inappropriate, because we should be prepared to say that we are conservative in this matter. Then "Tory" will not do, because they do not like to be called "Tory" ["No, no."] Some do not, and some do; but I am certain of this, that the old Tory Party would be astonished if they found what successors they have got. Then "Protectionist" will not do, because they are not ripe for that. So, I must be excused for not knowing what to call them. But many of them are ready with an explanation; and I have no doubt it is hovering on the lips of many hon. Members opposite. "Why should the Lords interfere, "they will say, "when there is no mischief afoot, when the innovator and the conspirator are keeping quiet; why should they interfere when the Commons are only turning out year after year, in very small quantities, safe, well-sounding,
914
harmless, inoperative Bills? Why should they assert themselves, when the great institutions of the country are in no danger, and when the special interests of the class from whom the Lords are mostly derived are being well guarded?" This is the explanation, a charming explanation, only it is a pure figment of their imagination, because the most dangerous times politically have generally been those in which this state of things has existed. My own recollection of the last Government, as we saw it some, of us in the last House of Commons, was not at all of this honest and sober-going character. I should have said, although I may not be absolutely impartial, that so far from not requiring the attention of the Chamber which claims to check hasty and ill-considered action, the late Government stood in great need of some such service. The whole course of their conduct, the character of their legislation, their extraordinary fiscal antics towards the end, called for the utmost degree of watchfulness that the Constitution can provide. Startling and unannounced innovations in a reactionary direction in respect of licensing, of education, and of fiscal policy, need surely to be watched quite as closely as innovations, or, as we should think, "reforms," in the other direction. Yet all these adventurous and reckless undertakings passed unchallenged, and the House of Lords contented themselves in the dog days each year with registering the decrees of the Government of the day. I call upon the House to witness the transition that takes place the moment a Liberal House of Commons comes into being. A complete change comes over this constitutional doctrine of the supremacy of this Chamber. They rested and reposed on its supremacy during the period I have been dealing with. Now they challenge it; and it becomes a deferred supremacy—a supremacy which is to arrive, it may be, at the next election, or the election after that, or may be never at all. Suppose a difference to arise between the two Houses, not the existing House of Commons but some future one is to prevail. What is the good of electing us to the House of Commons? [Ironical Opposition Cheers.] What is the good of electing Members of either side to the House of Commons, if the opinion of the House of Commons is to be of no account? If the House of Lords knows better than

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the House of Commons, what is the good of the House of Commons? I do not know, I never have known, and I have never been able to discover, by what process the House of Lords professes to ascertain whether or not our decisions correspond with the sentiments of the electors; but what I do know is that this House has to submit to carry on its existence in a state of suspense, knowing that our measures are liable to be amended, altered, rejected, and delayed in accordance with the mysterious intuition, almost divination which enables the Lords to keep immediate touch with the electors during a Liberal administration. It is a singular thing, when you come to reflect upon it, that the representative system should only hold good when one Party is in office, and should break down to such an extent as that the non-elective House must be called in to express the mind of the country whenever the country lapses into Liberalism.
Then there is another matter closely connected with this upon which I must say a word, and it will be a frank word. The situation, as the House knows, has been aggravated by the part taken by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. He speaks for a comparatively small minority here, and he has affected to dispose of the other House for the purpose of dominating us in a manner that I venture to say is without precedent.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Would the right hon. Gentleman quote any statement of mine which bears out in any degree that statement?
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: We have only to go back to the month of December last year. I cannot conceive of Sir Robert Peel or Mr. Disraeli treating the House of Commons as the right hon. Gentleman has treated it. Nor do I think there is any instance in which, as leaders of the Opposition, they committed what I can only call the treachery of openly calling in the other House to override this House. [Cheers; cries of "Withdraw."] These great statesmen were House of Commons men. I venture to say that if Bills were mutilated and rejected elsewhere when Sir Robert Peel sat upon that bench, it was not done at his instance. The right
916
hon. Gentleman's course has, however, had one indisputable effect. It has left no room for doubt, if it had ever existed before, that the second Chamber was being utilised as a mere annexe of the Unionist Party. The right hon. Gentleman seems to call for some instance. The whole of his proceedings at that time were an instance. We saw him, who was in somewhat depressed and reduced circumstances, blossom out into extraordinary life and vigour when he realised the power which his peculiar intercameral powers have given him. One begins to doubt, in fact—I certainly doubt— whether he or his Party have ever fully accepted representative institutions. If they ever did bring themselves to conceive of this House as representing the opinions of the people, they belied it by the qualification that such opinions are not settled opinions. It comes to this—that no Liberal Government ever could represent the settled opinions of the electors because, apparently, if their minds were not unsettled, they would never dream of sending a Liberal Government to power. Therefore it comes to this—that a non-elective House is called into action and a barrier is set up across our path, and this theoretical predominance of the House of Commons becomes the practical predominance of the House of Lords. The Leader of the Opposition very clearly expressed in a few words not very long ago his view of the change which supervened with a change of administration, and I will quote his words in order that he may have them before his mind. Speaking at the beginning of November of last year, he said that the House of Lords was regarded by every man of sober thought, irrespective of Party, as the one barrier that exists between the-folly of our present governors and the great interests which in an unhappy moment have been entrusted to their charge. That is the transformation which the doctrine of the ultimate supremacy of this House undergoes when in an "unhappy moment"—what is that?— a general election which sent him and his supporters flying—that is the transformation which the doctrine undergoes. It becomes the doctrine of the fortunate barrier. Nothing about supremacy. It is a barrier. We may be very foolish persons, as he says—[An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear"]—there is one of his. acutest followers who agrees with him—

917
but we have not got to such a depth of folly as to adopt his theory of the relation between the two Houses. One thing stands out from this review which I think is entirely necessary, although it occupies a good deal of the time of the House, in order that we may appreciate the position. The House will agree with me that one of the most striking characteristics of the attitude of the other House towards the House of Commons is its variableness. The right hon. Gentleman, as I have said, encouraged us to reflect on the issue which has been forced upon us. Has he reflected upon this particular element in it? Nothing in the relations of the two Houses is more deserving of his reflection —for, after all, a bicameral system which only acts periodically is an institution which appears to me to stand in sad need of justification.
Now I come to another question which we have to ask ourselves, and that is: What is the nature of the authority under which the other House, during its intermittent period of activity, claims to override and suspend the decisions of this House and to afford it a merely nominal and deferred predominance? What are the grounds on which the Lords intervene? There is no occasion to go back very far. Before the Reform Act there was really no question of this kind before the country, for this reason: Both Houses were in the habit of working together in the interests of the existing state of society, which was very far from being a democratic state, and any tendency to independence on the part of the House of Commons was held in check by the fact that there were some 300 votes in this House under control of the Members of the other House. There was, therefore, in these circumstances, no particular occasion for a veto. Nor do I propose to go over subsequent history—a dismal history in this respect, in which beneficent measures were flouted or rejected or mutilated and violent hands laid upon them by the other House. Their actions are all of a piece, and I think we may be quite content to take the most recent instances as a pattern and example of what has been happening ever since the Reform Bill was passed. We take them because we have them fresh in our minds. They happened under our eyes in the present Parliament, which has not had a long life yet. These events, marking as they do, in my opinion, the
918
climax of this long series of rebuffs put upon this House, and through this House upon the electors, embody in themselves in a sufficiently striking manner the claims that are really put forward to stultify the action of the Commons. When you find a general election like the last treated as mere irrelevance, and a House of Commons which returned with an unexampled majority regarded elsewhere as a body devoid of real vitality and vital authority, I say we then have to look upon its claims with a stronger feeling, because they are put forward with a degree of violent aggressiveness which compels us to challenge them. If we are concerned at all with the authority of the House of Commons—and I trust that everyone within these walls is concerned—it is impossible for us to let this pass. I therefore take the actual cases within our own immediate experience as the touchstone of the claims of the other House. The first thing I would point out is that the merits and demerits of the Bills that we deal with are not in question at all. The Education Bill and the Plural Voting Bill may be-thoroughly bad Bills in the estimation of hon. Members opposite and of the right hon. Gentleman at the winding of whose horn the portcullis over the way comes rattling down. If the country shares the view of the right hon. Gentleman, it is not there (the Front Opposition Bench) he would be, but here. But let hon. Gentleman observe that the other House, when it proceeded, within twelve months of the election, summarily to dispose of these measures of ours, did so, according to its own account, not on their merits, but because it claimed to know the mind of the country. That was the plea that was urged. "Your Education Bill," they said, "does not square with the professions of the people or the desires of the people, and as for your Electoral Reform Bill, it ought to be part of a larger scheme of reform such as the country desires." Of course, they dwelt on the vicious qualities of our poor Bills. So they did in the case of the Trades Disputes Bill, which was an even blacker and more iniquitous Bill than they were. But they passed this Bill, and they rejected the less infamous Bill; and they were strictly logical in so doing. By that I mean that the reason they gave was an intelligible reason. They professed to be satisfied that a powerful section of opinion demanded the one Bill, and they pro-

919
fessed to be unsatisfied that the others were so demanded. They acted on their own judgment. Their whole case rests upon that. And I may add as a subsidiary reason that in the case of the infamous and iniquitous Bill it was considered desirable to exercise some circumspection. We all remember the words of Lord Lansdowne that they were passing through a period when it was necessary for the House of Lords to move with great caution. Conflicts and controversies might be inevitable. Let their Lordships, as far as they were able, be sure that if they were to join issue they did so on ground which was as favourable as possible to themselves— not to the country—in the interests of good and sound legislation. In this case he believed the ground would be unfavourable to the House. So they passed that most iniquitous and dangerous and disastrous Bill. They made friends with the mammon of unrighteousness with a view to maintaining themselves in their own habitation. Therefore, in addition to this intermittent action we have to take note of this further singular fact that the powers of that House are avowedly exercised without reference to the merits of what is sent up to it, and on the ground that we, who are the representatives of the people as the result of all our elaborate electoral machinery, are incapable of speaking and acting on their behalf. Such a claim will not stand a moment's investigation. The Constitution knows nothing of this doctrine of the special mandate, nothing whatever. It is an invention apparently of the Lords, designed to afford them some kind of shelter behind which they may get rid of the Bills they dislike. Now, I am anxious to make this matter clear, because it is important to my proposition—namely, that the relations of the Houses call for definition and if the action of the House of Lords is based on assumptions which are fatal to a true representative system, then the question of how far they are entitled to push such action surely requires serious consideration. If this House was elected on a mandate for this or a mandate for that, or a mandate for the other, I could understand, even if I did not approve of, the process of sifting and trying our decisions in order to see whether they corresponded with what passed at the elections. In its absence
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such a claim becomes grotesque. Yet how seriously is it urged. We are invited to go to the country ad hoc to test whether the other House or this House is right whenever we come to a deadlock. We have not been elected on any such system as that. We were elected to carry out certain broad principles, and yet, forsooth, we are to go back, and be re-elected on Bills and on sections of Bills and subsections of Bills if we are to convince the other House. I shall have a word to say directly on this demand for a dissolution, but I want first to say how glad I am to be able to claim the right hon. Gentleman opposite as a sworn foe of the doctrine of the mandate. He has described it as fundamentally essentially a vicious theory. "You could not work Parliamentary institutions," he says, "on that principle at all." [Opposition Cheers.] Yes, but it is on that very principle that the House of Lords arc working. Why has the right hon. Gentleman not warned the House of Lords that they are pursuing a course under which, as he says, Parliamentary institutions cannot be worked at all, and that they are seeking to inveigle us into an unconstitutional and vicious system? It is strange that when they challenge us because we have not got a mandate for this, or that we have misread a mandate for that, or that we must go to the country for a mandate for the other thing, the right hon. Gentleman sits quietly and allows them to flounder into the morass.
The next question I have to ask is, by what title does the other House claim to refer the House of Commons to the country? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell us that. I have never myself seen any explanation, or understood how a doctrine so fantastic could gain even a momentary currency. The Liberal Party has never for a moment accepted the view that the non-elected, unchanged, in dissolvable, irresponsible House is entitled to suspend a threat of dissolution over our heads; nor have they regarded the pretension so advanced as affording any sort of ground for the action taken under cover of it. Let the House consider what weight can attach to a theory which has never been put into operation, which has never been recognised by one

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Party in the State, and which has never been held over the heads of the other Party in the State. And then I must say that this assumption of the right to force a dissolution is a usurpation of the Royal prerogative. It is a device for turning the House of Commons into a subordinate House, because the Lords are well aware that, in declining to accept their bidding, we have no remedy against any changes, delays, or rejections that they may inflict upon our measures. Well, holding us in this vice, and taunting us with the cry: "You have the country; why do you not go to it?" they have a free hand as against this House. Well, what is the use of our going to the country? If the Lords will not believe the elections of 1906, neither will they be persuaded though the wishes of the people are expressed in ten elections in a year. And then, I will ask, is this House satisfied, is any one satisfied with it? Is it fair—I will not say fair to the Liberal Party, because I think there is a great tendency, which, I think, is not quite dignified in the House of Commons, to treat politics as a game—but is this playing the game fairly? Putting the Liberal Party aside, is it fair to the House, is it fair to the electors? [An HON. MEMBER: No.] Is it right that the Constitution should be strained in this way in order to suit the convenience or exigencies of a particular Party? If hon. Gentlemen were in our place, and if there was as overwhelming a Liberal majority in the other House as there is an overwhelming Unionist majority, would they sit down quietly under the mutilation and rejection of their measures? No; I give them credit for something more spirited. And is there to be found a single observer or student, be he ever so convinced of the necessity of a bi-cameral system, who will maintain that this state of things, persisting as it has done all these years, is satisfactory? Our proposal is to define the relations between the two Houses in such a way as to provide that within the limits of a single Parliament a measure supported by a majority in this House shall prevail.
Now I come to the outline of the plan which the Government propose. It is proposed that, if a Bill is sent up to the other House, and in the result the two
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Houses find agreement impossible, a Conference shall be held between Members appointed in equal numbers by the two Houses. The conference will be of small dimensions. Its proceedings will be private, and its object will be to enable each Party to negotiate and to seek for a common measure of agreement which the Government might find itself able to adopt. There is nothing novel in this proposal, because the two Houses formerly did meet in conference; but there were certain inconveniences in the procedure, and, whether it was due to the fact that the Commons were expected to go into the other House bareheaded, and to remain standing, or whether it was due. to the obvious practical difficulties of arriving at any decision at a joint meeting carried on by a large number of persons in this singular manner, no Conference has been held since 1836. Informal conferences between members of the Government and Opposition in the two Houses have, of course, not infrequently been held since that date, and sometimes good results have followed. But what the Government proposes is that statutory provision should be made for such meetings in the event of disagreement, and that the Conference should occupy a, definite place in the transactions between the two Houses. Supposing, then, the Conference to be unproductive. The Bill—either the same Bill, with or without modifications, or a similar Bill with the same object—might at the discretion of the Government be reintroduced after a substantial interval; and by a substantial interval I have in my mind a minimum of perhaps, six months, unless in cases of great urgency. This Bill would be passed through its various stages in the House of Commons under limitations of time—limitations of time adapted to the requirements of the case—discussion being restricted, so far as possible, to the new matter, if any, introduced. The Bill would then be sent up again, so that the other House would have a second and ample opportunity of considering it. If there was still a difference between the two Houses, a Conference might again be summoned. Supposing this time an arrangement again failed, this second Bill would be re-introduced and passed swiftly through all its stages in this House in the form last agreed to,

923
and sent to the other House with an intimation that unless passed in that form it would be passed over their heads. Yet again there would be a Conference, and a further effort to agree. Now the House will see that the plan which I have sketched gives ample—some will think too ample—opportunities for discussion and reflection, and that it provides full room in the intervals for consideration by the country. And we are convinced that it leaves no opening for hasty or arbitrary action. It seems to me that it provides what we regard as indispensable if the Legislature of this country is to be maintained in a condition of effective equilibrium—the power, namely in the last resort to make the decision of this House prevail. Opinions may differ as to whether this is the best method, but His Majesty's Government believe it to be practical, just, convenient, and effectual. I hope, therefore, that it will not be said that under our plan the other House will be debarred from exercising its due share in our Parliamentary deliberations. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh!"] That is the last accusation that can in justice be alleged of a scheme under which there will arise three opportunities for debating a Bill, in addition to the Conferences to which His Majesty's Government attach the greatest importance. Certainly the members of the late. Government and their friends are the last people in the world to bring any such accusation. I have looked into the return of Bills sent up to the other House under their Government, and I find that four days were given by the Lords to the Irish Local Government Bill—or rather I should have said four days were given to the Lords for the Irish Local Government Bill; one day for passing through all its stages the Factory Act, 1901, a measure of more than 100 clauses; eight days to the Education Bill, 1902; six days in August, to the Irish Land Bill; and five days in August to the Licensing Bill. It has been the invariable practice with the late Government to send up a heavy batch of Bills at the very last moment to be dealt with in the course of a day or two immediately before the rising of Parliament. The truth is that for many years past they have made no pretence of paying much respect to the other House.
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Here is a most important point. It may be said that it. will be in the power of an effete Government in the last years of an effete Parliament, when the sentiment of the country may have become cold, or, at least, uncertain, to carry things with a high hand, and in such circumstances any amount of deliberation and consultation would fail to prevent rash and arbitrary measures being taken. It is quite true, Sir. that we have known cases where an effete Government, trading on the initial strength it had lost, has dragged out an undesirable existence amid the flickering activity which we associate with the exhausted candle. But no one can say that that is a favourable moment for legislation. Therefore, I have to state that we are strongly of opinion that the way to guard against such an evil is the Very simple way of shortening the duration of Parliament. This reform can be justified on other and broader grounds. But I am here speaking of it only in face of this particular matter with which my Resolution deals; and we consider that the undoubted danger that the House of Commons, with the increased power which we claim for it. might for some years of its life have its genuine representative character impaired, can be best guarded against by a more frequent reference to the electorate. This is, as is known, no new proposal. Most of us on this Bench have voted for quinquennial Parliaments, and we believe that the reduction of the period of Parliamentary existence to five years will add vigour, freshness, and life to our Parliamentary system. There are, indeed, very vague, and, I think, not very well-informed proposals for a foreign institution, called a referendum, whereby a particular Bill can be submitted to a special vote on the part of the electors of the country. I see the strongest objections to any such proposal. The necessary isolation of the subject from the whole range of political feeling is wellnigh impossible; it is inconsistent with, and, in my opinion, destructive of, Parliamentary government as we understand it; and it has the peculiarity that you would be introducing a new element into our Constitution which would never come into play while one order of things was represented in the

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Government, but when Liberals were in a majority would be employed for the purpose of flouting and defeating the Government of the day, the majority in the House of Commons, and the electorate itself.
Let me point out that the plan which I have sketched to the House does not in the least preclude or prejudice any proposals which may be made for the reform of the House of Lords itself. The constitution and composition of the House of Lords is a question entirely independent of my subject. My Resolution has nothing to do with the relations of the two Houses to the Crown, but only with the relations of the two Houses one to the other. At present we are face to face, as I have shown, with the ultimate supremacy of the House of Lords. I see that this is the theory almost nakedly put forward by some of those gentlemen in the Press who are good enough to tell us what we ought to think and what we ought to do. They evidently have in their minds as a model some of those Continental States whose system is essentially and fundamentally autocratic, but in which the autocracy ornaments and supplements itself with a representative body, useful for occupying public attention and for hammering out the details of legislation, but bearing much the relation that the kitchenmaid does to the cook. The House of Lords, according to this theory, is to be the cook. Sir, the House of Commons is spoken of by these instructors of the public in language of formal, guarded, traditional respect, but is treated as a wayward, impulsive body allowed to do useful work and on occasion to have its fling, but to be pulled up by the House of Lords as soon as it ventures inroads upon the pet prejudices and interests of that which used to be the ruling class in this kingdom. Sir, we have not so learned our existing Constitution. We have perfect confidence in the good feeling, the good sense, the wisdom, the righteousness, and the patriotism of our country. We need no shelter against them; we have no fears of them; and, therefore, we would invert the rôles thus assigned to the two Houses. Let the country have the fullest use in all matters of the experience, wisdom, and patriotic industry of the
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House of Lords in revising and amending and securing full consideration for legislative measures; but, and these words sum up our whole policy, the Commons shall prevail.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail."—(Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.)
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The very last words that fell from the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman indicate sufficiently the difference which lies between us. His contention, expressed with considerable reiteration in the course of his speech, is that any House of Commons, elected at any particular date, is competent within the term of its own existence to deal with the whole interests of the State and modify them completely, without further reference to the people who gave it birth. He lays it down categorically in the last sentence he uttered that it is the House of Commons alone whose rights and privileges we have to consider. I venture to consider that we might occasionally think of the people. The real and only problem which ought to be before the minds of those who are engaged in dealing with the Constitution of a free country is how the continuous will of the people—the interests of the existing generation and the interests of generations to come—can be best considered. And it is to that problem alone that I shall endeavour to direct the attention of the House to-day in the few observations I have to make upon the right hon. Gentleman's proposals. The right hon. Gentleman interpolated into his attack upon the House of Lords a personal attack upon myself, and he went the length, I think, of accusing me of treachery. He certainly used a very strong adjective in dealing with what he supposed to be my conduct in November and December last year. I am not going to delay the House with a personal

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defence—I do not think any defence is required. All that I did is before the public; the course which the House of Lords took is before the public; and, unless all the information which I have obtained—and I have taken considerable trouble to obtain information with regard to the action of the House of Lords on the Education Bill—is wholly erroneous, the country, so far from agreeing with the violent epithets used by the right hon. Gentleman, seems to think that the Amendments which the House of Lords put into the Education Bill greatly improved that measure. It was, I know, the right hon. Gentleman's fond belief that if the House of Lords amended the Education Bill the whole country would be in flames. Every indication we have, not merely from the character of public meetings, but from the character of county council elections, even in Wales, proves conclusively that, so far from the country being in flames, the heated words of the right hon. Gentleman could not even raise the damp tinder into the slightest smoke. In fact, when he was attacking the House of Lords on a recent occasion I could not make out whether he was more angry with the Lords for having modified the Education Bill or for having passed the Trade Disputes Bill. His indignation at that Assembly for having consented to pass into law a measure which they did not like really betrayed him into vehemence of expression which even their modifications of the Education Bill did not provoke. But I do not want to delay the House with any defence of the action of the House of Lords in the last Parliament, still less with any defence of myself. The right hon. Gentleman has an extraordinary gift for using language the violence of which is in strange disproportion to the effect it produces.
But, coming to the large question raised by the right hon. Gentleman's speech, what was his central contention? I put aside the athletic argument—the contention that it is not in the rules of the game that the House of Lords should favour one Party more than another—for I think that, although the right hon. Gentleman has often used that argument, he himself is rather ashamed of it. He does not think it is of much value for his purpose. He complains, as
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the captain of a football team might complain, that on changing at half-time he always found the wind had changed with him. After all, we have not got to look at politics merely as a game, and there are very much more serious issues at stake than those suggested by this particular part of the argumentation of the right hon. Gentleman. His main contention was that the House of Commons by the Constitution has a predominant position, and that, having a predominant position, it follows as a logical consequence that any Bill which it desires to pass it has the right to make law in the course of a single Parliament, whatever the other House may do. Let us examine this contention. I do not at all deny that this House is the predominant partner. By the practice of the Constitution it undoubtedly is so. But just see how great are the powers that this House possesses which the other House neither possesses nor makes any claim to. We must always remember that the most important decision the country makes at the election is who shall control the administrative machinery and the general policy of the country. That decision the House of Lords neither claims to touch, nor can touch. The Government of the clay, the House of Commons of the day, would treat with derision any vote passed by the House of Lords condemning a particular Ministry or a particular member of a Ministry. They would not suggest for a moment that such a vote carried with it either the resignation of the Government or the Minister, or a dissolution or any consequence whatever except a mere statement of opinion on the part of then-Lordships that they disapproved of a Ministry to whom this House gave its confidence. That after all. is the greatest of the powers which this House possesses. We can put an end to a Government; we can bring a Government into being; we can destroy the career of a Minister; and we can pass a vote of censure which carries with it an immediate resignation. We have our hand upon the administrative machine to this extent at all events—that we cannot prevent a Government doing that of which we disapprove; we can afterwards punish it for having done so. It is true that the Administration is in many particulars far out of the reach of the House of Commons and ought to be.

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The House of Commons cannot make a treaty; it cannot prevent the Government making a treaty; if it could would the New Hebrides Convention ever have been made? It cannot prevent the Government making war; it cannot prevent the Government making peace or exercising any one of these great administrative responsibilities. All it can do is afterwards to pass some condemnation upon the Government. In passing that condemnation it takes into account not merely the particular executive transaction, but whether upon the whole it desires to see the Government retained in office or not; and the House of Commons will constantly condone actions of which it disapproves simply because it does not wish to dispossess the Government of office. In that sense the Government always possesses the confidence of the House of Commons. It is true confidence is used in a highly technical sense. It is the sort of confidence which a man in the street engaged in a street row has in an old umbrella, not because it is a good weapon, but because it is the only weapon available—the only instrument he can use. In that sense the Government always has the confidence of the House of Commons. But it does not matter in the least whether it has, or has not, the confidence of the House of Lords. The Government being de-pendent upon the House of Commons and having control of what legislation shall be initiated, this House of Commons practically entirely controls the sort of legislation which the Government of the day shall bring in. There again the House of Lords neither has nor claims to have any influence. The House of Lords can bring in Bills and pass them through all their stages in their own House, but if they do not happen to meet the favour of this House those Bills go no further, and there can be no intererfence with, after all, what is the greatest prerogative of the Government and the majority in this House—namely, deciding what subjects shall be touched and what not touched. We all know that the power of the House of Lords, thus limited, and rightly limited as I think, in the sphere of legislation and administration, is still further limited by the fact that it cannot touch those money Bills, which if it could deal with,
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no doubt it could bring the whole executive machinery of the country to a standstill. The conclusion which I want to press upon the House, and which is all-important in this matter, is that under our existing system you have two Chambers which are not of equal power, which are not of equal authority, which cannot come into serious conflict in the whole field of administration, in the whole field of the initiation of legislation, or in the whole field of that legislation which deals with finance. Of course, these things being true, it is true that the House of Lords is a subordinate partner to the House of Commons.
We all being agreed that the House of Lords under our existing system occupies a very subordinate position, the question is whether that position, subordinate as it is now, shall be made yet more subordinate by the House of Lords being deprived altogether of the power of preventing a particular House of Commons, elected at some particular conjuncture, from doing everything it wishes, not merely in the sphere of administration, where you must leave it to the Government of the day for good or for ill, but doing whatever it likes in the sphere of legislation, where you may in one day, or at all events in a few weeks, upset institutions which have taken centuries to rear and which once destroyed can never be replaced. That is really the problem before us. Nobody can put the House of Lords on an equality with the House of Commons. Some of us think—all of us, I believe, on this side—that you must have, within the limits of the Constitution some authority which shall be able, not to resist the will of the people, but to See that the will of the people is obeyed what I may call the consistent and persistent will of the people, not the will of the people as exhibited at a particular moment and in a particular place, because we are all agreed that the people make mistakes. [Interruption.] Are we not all agreed about that? We on this side thought the people made a great mistake in January, 1906. ["Oh."] Yes; but then hon. Gentlemen opposite thought they made another great mistake in 1900— they have always said so. Not only that, but they have also said that in 1900

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the people made a decision which their more sober reflections have induced them to abandon. I have heard hon. Gentlemen below the gangway urge that contention; they hold that in 1900 the people of this country by an immense majority declared a war to be just and necessary, and that the present majority of this House thinks it both unjust and unnecessary. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] Very well, then, we, are all agreed. There cannot be a more important issue. [A LABOUR MEMBER: We were jockeyed into it.] Is there never to be any jockeying in the future? Let it be called jockeying if you please; it is no difference to the argument. If jockeying was possible in 1900, it may be possible two or three years hence. The truth is, we always think when we are in a minority that the other side have been jockeyed into their place, and when we are in a majority they always think that we have been jockeyed into it. We are all agreed about the fact of the people making mistakes, usually at every alternate election. The question is, and really the only question, whether we should or should not follow the universal example of every civilised country, and take care that there are some great constitutional interests which are put above these alternating fluxes and refluxes of public opinion, and in regard to which change, when it takes place—and changes are necessary—shall really be of that kind from which there is not likely to be a repentance. Of course, too, it would be very desirable if you could have that in the region of administrative action; but that is not possible; and it is far better that the Government should have the power to make mistakes than that it should have no power at all in the region of administration. I have no admiration or liking for those institutions—and there are many—in which there are so many checks and counter-checks contrived for the executive authority that really rapid and efficient executive action is impossible. When you come to matters of legislation time ceases to be of the essence of the question in most cases. In matters of administration time is of the essence of the question—in matters of legislation it is not. It is important
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that a community whose history has gone back through many centuries, and is, I hope, going forward many centuries, should pause and delay before taking some great decision by which its whole future will be imperilled. I gather from the right hon. Gentleman that he thinks this is a very undemocratic way of looking at the matter. What is a democratic way of looking at it? I understand the democratic theory of government to be that those who are concerned with the decision should be the people who make it; and as far as that can be attained I, at all events, desire to see it attained. But who is concerned with the decision which we make when a great constitutional issue is involved? Is it the particular Parliament? Are the particular male adults in a given year who have got the given qualifications the only people whose interests are concerned? Those adult males are, in the first place, the heirs, and, in the second place, the trustees of many centuries; and it is preposterous to say that we should so frame our Constitution that the holders of power for the moment should be regarded as in every respect the irresponsible managers, not only of their own affairs for the moment, but of the affairs of their country for all time. Because, remember, there are many things which can be done which are irreversible when you are dealing with great growths in the region of politics; just as when you are dealing with them in the region of nature you cannot replace that which you destroy. You may pull down a building and erect another exactly like it; you cannot cut down a tree and say, "To-morrow I will have another tree in its place." So it is with an institution. You are absolutely bound to see that no hasty decision shall upset in one reckless hour interests which have been slowly and painfully built up by our predecessors, and which our successors never can replace. Therefore, I say, you must in this country do what every other country has done, what some other countries have done with over-caution and over-care, see that there is some permanence and continuity in your institutions. I am no favourer of perpetual entails, I do not

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wish to see the institutions of this country in any particular stereotyped and perpetuated for all time, made absolutely petrified and immovable, as, for instance, the institutions of the American Commonwealth are, or almost are, under the peculiar regulations of their Constitution. But while I do not wish to imitate the immovable conservatism of the Republican institutions of America, I think we should be perfectly insane—setting aside not only the lessons of our own history, but of every other history— if we did not so arrange our Constitution that when the people decide upon a change it shall be after the most mature consideration, after the thing has been weighed and looked at from all sides, and after it has been considered in isolation from all those perturbing considerations which operate at a moment. It is folly to call that antidemocratic; on the contrary, it is democracy properly understood. It s government of the people by the people—[An HON. MEMBER: For the people?]—and for the people. Not by the people for the people living under one Parliament, be it of seven or five years duration, but by the people for the people for generations. If the interests we had to deal with were the interests of a particular set of electors at a particular time, let them manage or mismanage their own affairs as they please; but let us take care that as interests far beyond their own immediate and personal interests are confided to them, they should exercise the great duties thrown on them with full responsibility and full knowledge after mature reflection. Let us not hand over, as the right hon. Gentleman propose.? to hand over, to a House of Commons elected, it may be in some moment of passion, like 1900—[MINISTERIAL cheers]—like 1906, the eternal and perpetual interests of the country.
The right hon. Gentleman has laid down a principle that as this House represents the people, and as the Government represents this House, so we are to regard everything that the Government of the day does as in itself impeccable, as if it had the inherent right of uncontrolled management of the national destinies. All that is really not relevant to the actual facts of popular government as
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we know them. It is only in a technical sense that the House represents the people, if you mean by the people the settled views of the people over, let us say, thirty years. It is only in a technical sense that the Government represents the House. When, you get a technical representation by two removes everybody knows, and nobody better than the present Government, that it takes much less than five years possibly for a Government to get out of touch with those who put it in office. If it be true, and I am sure it is true, that you must find some machinery, I may call it an averaging machinery, for seeing that on matters of permanent interest it is not a particular Parliament which decides, can you have a better machinery than that which is provided by the Constitution in the shape of this subordinate Assembly of the House of Lords? I say subordinate because I am certain that, even if you abolished the House of Lords, the country would insist on finding a substitute; and I do not believe any substitute you could find would fulfil the qualification which the Lords possess. What is that qualification? It is that it has no temptation and no desire to contest the primacy with this House. But if you chose to abolish the House of Lords, and if you chose to find other machinery for ensuring some form of stability for our social and constitutional structure, you would have to find it in an elected body of some kind or another. There are many analogies to be found in the constitutional experiments of Europe, and I understand that some theorists in this House, who believe in what they call the electoral principle, think that it would effect great improvement in the House of Lords. I think it would be a great deterioration of that Assembly wish its particular purpose to fulfil in the Constitution. I think the House of Lords, or the Second Chamber, let us say, if it really had an elective basis, would inevitably find itself in conflict with this House, not merely with regard to legislation, which is relatively a secondary matter, but in connection with those administrative responsibilities. In regard to these, at present there can be no conflict, because the House of Lords does not pretend to have its hand upon the throttle of the administrative machine

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and never attempts to do what we have a right to do in this House, to criticise efficiently the Administration of the day. But would the state of things last, even for a quinquennial period, if you had an elected Second Chamber? An elected Second Chamber would, of course, at once say, "We derive our authority, like the House of Commons, from the community, of which we are, therefore, immediate trustees. Just as much as the House of Commons has, we have a right to determine whether the Ministry has or has not our confidence, or the confidence of Parliament," and there would at once be introduced a collision of interests which might bring all your machinery, administrative and legislative, to a deadlock. That, of course, is more or less prevented in America by the election of a Government which is not dependent for its existence on either House, but lasts its term of four years. But in this country, accustomed as we are to see the daily dependence of the Government of the day upon deliberative Assemblies, a Second Chamber which could claim to derive authority from the people, as this House claims to derive authority from the people, would contend with us for some control over the constitution of the Ministry and some control over the uses to which the Ministry to which they gave their confidence put its powers. I think that would be a very great deterioration in our present system. The immense merit of our present system is that parties change, Governments change, policies change, but there never can be a deadlock in our administrative machine. Money can always be voted, the Government can always remain in office as long as this House gives them continuity of power, no matter what the House of Lords may do; and I should never be a party to a change which would make the House of Lords a partner on equal terms with ourselves and which would enable it to do that which I think only one Assembly can do with advantage, which would introduce friction into the great work of Government, and which would be a great loss to the flexibility, the adaptability, and the rapidity of the working of our institutions.
Now, when all is said and done, what is the motive of the right hon. Gen-
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tleman? HE has been good enough to attribute all sorts of dark motives to me. He will, therefore, not complain if I try to examine his motives. It is no light thing for the responsible Prime Minister of the day to attempt to make a fundamental and vital alteration in the Constitution. He must have, or he ought to have, profound reasons of State for doing it. He must find the machine unworkable as it is. He must be able to look back upon the past and say such and such disastrous consequences have followed from the present state of affairs. I wish the right hon. Gentleman had given us more details in regard to the disasters which have followed from the present state of things. He skipped lightly from the beginning of time to the first Reform Bill, and still more lightly from the first Reform Bill to last year; but in this agile procedure he never made any reference to the greatest attempt at constitutional change which has been made in our time. That, of course, was Mr. Gladstone's attempts to establish Home Rule in 1886 and 1893. Home Rule may be right or wrong. I am not going to argue that question. But it would be a very great constitutional change. It would fundamentally alter the relations between Great Britain and Ireland; and even those who believe in it most firmly, and who look forward to it with the most sanguine confidence, must admit that it would carry in its train a whole series of consequences, which it is quite impossible for any prophet, however endowed, adequately to foresee. Caution, therefore, is eminently required in making such a change as this. Our existing institutions have not prevented Home Rule. Home Rule may come. But they have ensured that Home Rule shall not, at all events, be carried in the way in which the right hon. Gentleman wants to carry everything in future. If ever there was a decision of the country upon Home Rule, surely that decision was taken, first in 1886, and secondly in 1895. The decision may have been wrong, but that decision in 1895 absolutely reversed the decision which the House of Commons had come to in 1886 and 1893 respectively.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE, Carnarvon Boroughs): The Home Rule Bill of 1886 did not pass the Commons.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It was adopted by the Government of the day dependent upon the House of Commons. That is quite as good for the purpose of my argument. But if you quarrel with the Instance of 1886, let us confine our attention to 1893. The election which followed in 1895 showed that the people, perhaps mistakenly—I am not arguing that— were not in favour of Home Rule. Now, let us examine how Home Rule would have worked under the right hon. Gentleman's plan. He says he is going to introduce quinquennial Parliaments, and thinks by that means the House of Commons will never be out of touch with the people. But the House of Commons which was dissolved in 1895 only lasted for three years. It therefore fell far short of the quinquennial term, upon which the right hon. Gentleman relies for this perpetual co-ordination between the views of the House of Commons and the views of the people. And yet the people stated as decisively as they could that the House of Lords had properly exercised in the greatest of all cases the functions entrusted to it by the Constitution. Had the right hon. Gentleman's so-called reform been in existence in 1893, Home Rule, I presume, would now be law— perhaps to the benefit of the community, but certainly against the will of the people. Is it possible, with that instance fresh in our memories, to say that this change, whatever its other merits may be, is intended, in the words of the Resolution, to "give effect to the will of the people"? If those who framed this Resolution had in their minds recent history in which they themselves were personally engaged, this Resolution is hypocritical on the face of it. It is intended not to carry out the will of the people, but the will of the House of Commons of the moment. Am I not, then, justified in repeating the words with which I began my speech, that the right hon. Gentleman when he talks about the people is thinking rather of the House of Commons, and that it is our business to think rather of the people than of the House of Commons?
But this does not exhaust my criticism of the right hon. Gentleman's
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motives. He has no claim, or even the pretence of a claim, to be carrying out the will of the people by this Resolution. It is his own will that he wants to carry out. I think the facts go further than that. The right hon. Gentleman belongs to the school of Radicalism, which holds as inveterate superstition and prejudice that the one object you should always be driving at is not to bring in good legislation, but to alter the legislative machinery. Social legislation appears in their speeches, but it never appears anywhere else. Go back over the history of the Radical Party, and you will find a very ancient superstition and a very venerable one—you will find that whenever they come into power, whatever be the plea upon which they have come into power, they immediately set to work upon some manipulation of the legislative machinery of the country; and when they are asked to bring in some Bills which are to change the lot of the people of this country they will hesitate. ["The Scottish Land Bill."] Exactly. They bring in measures such as the Scottish Land Bill, a measure to which, in their collective capacity, they have never given a moment's thought, and which is already a by-word and a derision among the nation. But I will explain to hon. Gentlemen opposite interested in the Scottish Land Bill how it comes about. The right hon. Gentleman talks as if a quarrel with the House of Lords is forced upon him by something which the House of Lords have recently been doing. Any attentive student of the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman or of those of his colleagues, or of the election addresses of some of them—for instance, that of the President of the Local Government Board, whom I do not see in his place—must be perfectly well aware that there was a set determination to pick a quarrel with the House of Lords long before the House of Lords did anything. The policy of filling up the cup has been in the mouths of all hon. Gentlemen opposite. What has been the result? They have not brought in measures to be passed; they have brought in measures to be rejected. They have not desired to bring in Bills which were so good that nobody could quarrel with them, but Bills so bad that no Assembly left to free discussion could

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reconcile itself to passing them un-amended. That makes legislation extremely easy; and it makes quarrelling with the House of Lords still more easy. But easy as that policy seems, much as it saves any undue waste of brain tissue on the part of Ministers, I see no signs that it is carrying great favour in the country. I think the people see through this transparency. Many of them, I dare say, voted for right hon. Gentlemen opposite in the mistaken view that it was in the power of this Government or, indeed, of any Government, to carry certain schemes, or at all events to attain to certain objects which they had much at heart. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite gave them to understand that they had panaceas for all those evils if they came to office; but when they had to turn those panaceas from perorations into Bills they found it extremely difficult, if not in some cases impossible. Under these circumstances, it was far easier for the Government to try to quarrel with the House of Lords, to say to the people, "Oh, if you only knew what wonderful schemes we have in our heads, what admirable measures we have in our pigeon-holes! But there is the House of Lords, which will certainly reject them if we send them up." Great is their disappointment, almost unaffected, when the House of Lords passes a measure—not, indeed, the result of the brains of the Government, but the result of the Labour representatives—when the House of Lords, instead of doing what they were intended to do, does the opposite, then the right hon. Gentleman cannot control himself. Their flagitious, unscrupulous opportunism moves his wrath and arouses his indignation, and for the simple reason that the right hon. Gentleman's Bills, as I have said, were never brought in to pass, but to be rejected. ["Oh, oh."] And I think they were so drafted that there was great difficulty in some cases in not rejecting the Bills. I venture to suggest to the House that that is not the way to prepare a road for a great constitutional change. You ought not, if you find yourself impotent in constructive legislation, to turn round and try to curry favour with what you call the democracy by pulling down a portion of the Constitution. No; that portion of the Constitution, by
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those insensible change; which have nude the British Constitution the most flexible and adaptable of all Constitutions ever tried, now fulfils functions which I believe must be fulfilled by some body in the State, and which I believe, for the reasons I have given, are fulfilled much better by an Assembly not elected, but which has, for historical reasons, a deserved prestige in the country —better fulfilled by such an Assembly than they could be by any cut and dried contrivance you might make on the model of Continental, American, or other Second Chambers. The House of Lords has grown up and modified its functions to suit modern needs. There was a time when it claimed, and really possessed, power equal to, perhaps in some cases almost greater than, this House. Those times have long gone by. By that insensible adaptation of means to end there is no claim of that kind put forward by the Second Chamber. We are left supreme in everything except in that one thing necessary in order that the people's will may be carried out to see that no rash changes are made which no future energy, patriotism, or industry can reverse, but which carry with them consequences of possibly the most deleterious character, and which would poison the future political life of the country to all time. Sir, it is not with such an institution we should hastily meddle. I do not admire the procedure of the right hon. Gentleman, that of bringing in an obscurely worded Resolution, and promising at some future period unspecified a Bill to carry it out. I think this Bill dealing with the House of Lords has not even precedence over the Education Bill, or the Licensing Bill, or any other of their measures. If you believe in these measures and think the House of Lords is going to reject them, deal with the House of Lords first. Why are we wasting a week of Parliamentary time over an abstract Resolution when the Government could have brought in a Bill or could have prepared a Bill to bring in early next year, and could have allowed us to proceed with their legislative programme contrived for this year? Sir, the whole thing is insincere from beginning to end. The right hon. Gentleman is treating the Constitution

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of which he ought to be the guardian as a plaything of the moment, as a mere political expedient, as a means for electrifying and revivifying, if he can, the waning popularity of himself and his colleagues. It will serve no useful end; and even that relatively contemptible object which the right hon. Gentleman has in view will not, in my judgment, be fulfilled, as time will show when next he goes to that people in whose name he affects to speak in this Resolution, and whose confidence, if not already lost, he is losing every day.
MR. SHACKLETON: I desire to offer a few remarks upon the subject of this debate. The right hon. Gentleman who has just resumed his seat has made one or two remarks to which I should like to reply. First of all, I should like to deal with what he said concerning panic elections. I think if ever there was a panic election it was in 1900, and the strange part of it is that every legislative proposal brought forward by the Party returned in that year was quietly acquiesced in by the House of Lords. Now we have a Parliament elected less than two years ago, which was looked forward to for two years previous to that, and still we arc to be asked to regard the decision of the people given in 1906 as being something which is not deserving of the consideration of the House of Lords. No statement could be further from the true facts of the case. The right hon. Gentleman said that the last election was a panic election and that it was necessary to have a House of Lords to protect us from the results of that election. Surely if the House of Lords was doing what is alleged to be its duty it would have resisted the legislation which followed the panic election of 1900. We have been told that we are wasting our time to-day. Some of us on these benches have thought that for a long time. We feel that so far as the country is concerned the sooner it does devote a little time to attempting to remove this terrible obstacle to all improvement in the condition of the people the better. It may have the effect of putting off other legislation for the time being, but it may make legislation quicker in the future. We are not now considering the question
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of a Single Chamber as against two Chambers, but whether we are to go on for ever with an hereditary Chamber. Even the Leader of the Opposition has not attempted to defend the hereditary principle. I listened most carefully to all his references to the House of Lords, and he did not utter one single sentence in favour of that principle. The question is whether an hereditary and non-representative House shall be perpetual in this country. That is the situation we have got to face. I take no other text for my remarks than the words of the Leader of the Opposition, who said on 28th November—
"I do not for one moment believe that the Lords, in the exercise of the high functions entrusted to them by the Constitution, will waver in their duty. Their duty is not to thwart the will of the nation, but to see that its will is really and truly carried out."
The House of Lords has no right to decide what is the will of the people. Can it be said that a non-representative body, composed entirely of gentlemen drawn from one class, is a proper body to decide what is the will of the people of this country? What are we here for? If we do not represent the will of the people it is time we came to some understanding as to what we do represent. But a mere assertion of that kind is not sufficient. That argument has gone for ever and a determined House and a determined people will refuse to allow a non-representative body drawn entirely from one class to decide what is the will of the people. In the early days there were struggles between this House and the other; I read the other day that in 1648 a debate took place as to whether Black Rod should be the supreme person. Black Rod had ordered certain people to be arrested, and in the end King Charles dissolved Parliament and took away from the House of Commons the right to have anybody put into prison. And what did the House of Commons decide? That "The House of Peers is useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished." That is the view today of the hon. Members who are sitting beside mo, and they believe that the Government would have done better if they had proceeded on those lines. During the last hundred years the pages of our history are full of their actions against the people. In 1807 they started by throwing out a Bill appointing a

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Committee of Council for Education. During the last century Bills for the benefit of the people were stopped and delayed. Question after question, such as Parliamentary reform, land reform, the Roman Catholic position, religious equality, municipal and educational reform, and legal, social and industrial measures might be quoted in which the House of Lords prevented the will of the people being carried into effect. Surely it is time that those who represent the people should challenge the right of the House of Lords to force the people to the verge of a revolution before giving way. The late Lord Salisbury in 1884 said—
"No great or even violent public pressure has been brought to bear upon us."
Have we to wait until that violent pressure is brought to bear? It needs no revolution, and it ought not to need one. I trust that the discussion of to-day will set forth that the country intends that the decision of the representatives in this House from time to time shall be taken as the decision of the country. Hasty legislation has been referred to. Is there ever any hasty legislation of a progressive character? There may be some of a retrograde character. What reform have we to day that has not been talked about for years and generations before it has been embodied in an Act of Parliament? There is no chance in this country of hasty legislation, for all proposed reforms are subjected to long discussion in public before we hear of them in the shape of legislative measures. Illustrations could be given of cases in which the other House has delayed the changes in the law which the people desired. No bettor illustration could be given than that which took place between 1833 and 1857 in regard to Jewish emancipation. Majorities in this House on seven occasions were in favour of that reform, but the House of Lords refused to pass it. In the end, in 1858, the other House passed the Bill which conferred political freedom and equality on that class of our countrymen. The right hon. Gentleman the Loader of the Opposition said that the Government in introducing this motion was doing it for the purpose of hoodwinking the people, and that they did not mean to go on with legislation on the subject. I think the opposite is really the fact. We can only judge of the views
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of Ministers by what they have publicly stated. It has been publicly stated that not only the present Cabinet, but previous Cabinets, and especially those of Liberal Governments, have had to redraft Bills and pare them down with the object of putting them in a form to pass in another place. I read the other day the following statement, made by the late Mr. John Bright on 10th July, 1884—
"There is no man who has been a member of the Government of this country who has not felt, in discussing the measures of the Cabinet, that there was always in front a net with very small meshes indeed, and that after a measure was produced which the Cabinet thought necessary for the time and the purpose, it was pared down and again pared down, in the hope, often the futile hope, of securing the assent of the Lords."
It is because we believe to-day that the Cabinet is paring down measures which we want that we are so determined to help the Government to deal with this question. There is no doubt that the country is losing through Bills being introduced in this House in a less advanced state than the needs of the people require, and in a less advanced state than they would be but for the fear entertained that they would not pass the House of Lords. The hereditary principle is indefensible from every point of view of public policy. The fact that it is not defended is its best and greatest condemnation. If it is good, why not apply it to other governing bodies and the various forms of business? Why should Parliament be the only place where the hereditary principle is applied? How often have we hoard business men whom we have known refer in sorrow to the inclinations of their sons? The big businesses set up by the fathers have been lost under the management of the sons. Is that not so in regard to Parliamentary affairs as well as anything else? Surely the time has come when the right to govern by birth should be abolished in this country. A caustic writer puts it in this way—
"We allow babies to be earmarked in their cradles us future law-makers, utterly regardless as to whether they turn out to be statesmen, or fools, or rogues."'
That is exactly the situation put in blunt language. No one in this House will attempt to defend the hereditary principle. The action of the House of Lords last session has been referred to.

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The Leader of the Opposition made special reference to the course taken by the Lords in regard to the Trade Disputes Bill. I do not think it rests with the representatives of the Tory Party in this House to claim very much credit for the action of the House of Lords on that measure. If they had had their way in this House, the House of Lords would not have had the chance of acting as they did. I would rather attribute the action of the House of Lords on that occasion to the ordinary human feeling of fear. The Leader of the Tory Party in the House of Lords stated that the Bill was "calamitous, unjust, and tyrannical." When I heard that statement all the credit I was pro-pared to give to the Tory Party in regard to the passing of the measure disappeared. I should prefer that those who use language like that in regard to the work of this House should them-selves be compelled to appeal to the people. The Education Bill has been referred to. I will not go into that subject, but I should like to refer to one little Bill in which my friends and I took an interest, namely, the Education (Provision of Meals) Bill. I remember that an hon. Member above the gangway moved the omission of Scotland from the operation of the Bill. The Amendment scarcely got a seconder and it was defeated almost unanimously. There was no argument why Scotland should be excepted. There was no reason why the children of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen should not have the privilege of meals as in the case of English towns. The House of Lords took upon themselves to say that Scotland should not be included in the Bill. Then there was the Aliens Bill, a small measure which was passed by this House without opposition, but which was rejected by the other place. That was a measure which would have put into operation the principle advocated by right hon. Gentlemen above the gangway in regard to the protection of our workmen against the competition of aliens. The House of Lords came to a decision which made it impossible to go further with that Bill. Another Bill which more than anything else raised the issue between this House and the House of Lords was the Plural Voting Bill. That was a Bill which, in my opinion, ought never to have been touched
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at all by the House of Lords. It simply dealt with the method of electing this House. It did not interfere with the constitution of the House of Lords. If they claim the right to reject a measure which applies solely to this House surely we have a right to say "If you interfere with us, we have as great, or a greater right, to interfere in the constitution of your place." I am old enough to remember that on a previous occasion I had the honour, along with my hon. friend the Member for Sowerby Bridge, to carry a banner in 1884 in a campaign against the House of Lords. We wore in earnest then, and we are doubly in earnest now, and I trust that whatever else may be said the taunt of the right hon. Gentleman will not hold true that His Majesty's present advisers are simply using this as a rod herring. I trust that they mean serious business. The recollections of 1884 are not very pleasant to some of us. There was a great opportunity then, and the country was ripe for legislation in regard to the House of Lords. I believe that in 1893 the mistake that was' made was that there was too much made of "mending" and too little about "ending" the House of Lords. I know the opinion of working men fairly well, and I am confident that they are not in favour of any truckling or mending. What they are in favour of is an ending process, judging from the expressions of opinion given at conferences and other congregations of men. They are not in favour of any mending because they believe that would mean that the Lords would have greater power to interefere with measures sent to them from this House. If there is to be a revising Chamber, let it be on different principles altogether from the present House of Lords. I hope, therefore, we in this House shall determine to put our shoulders to the wheel in this matter. On behalf of my friends and myself I have put down an Amendment. I hope the House will pass that Amendment. We shall do our best to persuade the House to do so. If defeated we shall still support the Government because we acknowledge the principle which is included in their Resolution. But in regard to the propositions which have been put before the House by the Prime Minister, let mo say this, I think them far too generous. It appears to me that once a measure is

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rejected, if it goes a second time that ought to be sufficient. Why take up the time of the House in sending it back to the Lords a third time when you have the people behind you, and when you are certain that your decisions are those of the country? That is the only criticism I make at the present time. I think if the House of Lords gets two opportunities of considering a Bill that should be enough.
MR. RIDSDALE: I rise to address the House on this occasion from a rather different standpoint from that of the last two speakers, and even different from the standpoint of the Leader of my own Party. In my opinion it is extremely dangerous that this House should have what I am afraid I must still look upon, even after the explanation of the Prime Minister, as really uncontrolled powers of legislation. If I may be allowed to say so, what I think is really at the root of the whole difficulty in this matter is its Party character. There is not a single individual sitting on these Benches who has not felt, and who does not still feel keenly, the circumstances in which this House was placed by the rejection of the Education Bill and the Plural Voting Bill. Some of us think that proper use was not made by the other House of its revisionary powers — that they were exercised not in an impartial, but in a Party spirit. It is that Party spirit we are trying to get at the root of, and I ask the House on so important a matter as the British Constitution to raise itself above more Party issues and Party recriminations. The Prime Minister's Resolution is based on the assumption that the will of the House of Commons represents the will of the people. We all, I think, agree that the will of the people should be paramount; but it is essential that we should be quite certain that we know what the will of the people really is. We know how elections are conducted throughout the country. It does not by any means follow that a candidate who is returned at the head of the poll is elected by a majority of the people. If you have three or four candidates, as you have at the present moment at Jarrow, is anybody going to say that the Member who is returned at the top of the poll represents the voice of the constituency? He may not have polled more than one-third of the votes, and yet
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he will come to this House and exercise his vote and use his voice as expressing the will of his constituents. You cannot say that any hon. Member here represents the views of oven the majority of his constituency. You may have men representing not a constituency, but some particular organisation. They will be the paid representatives of that organisation, although they are elected by the constituency, and they will vote as the delegates of the organisation. I cast no reflections on any body of men in saying this. But it is obvious that nobody can say, when you have a body of Members who are to a certain extent under the control of outside organisations, alien to the constituency, that when they vote in the House of Commons it is by any means certain that they voice the will of the constituency or that of the people. In all probability—as shown in the division list—it is the voice of the outside organisations that is being carried out. Again, in cases such as those, where you have a body of hon. Members subsidised by organisations which exist for the purpose of giving force to their own views, these Members will use more than ordinary diligence in enforcing on the Government the particular views of the organisations of which they are delegates. That is my experience in the short time I have been in the House of Commons. Then if this House is to represent the will of the people, surely the first step that should be taken is to have a redistribution scheme and equal electoral units, otherwise it would not be very difficult to construct a division list which would show an absolute majority in the House which represented an absolute minority in the constituencies. Could a division in such a case be said to represent the will of the people? Then, unfortunately, though we live under a system of Party Government, the number of Parties in the House is not limited to two. We have a large, well-organised— at least until recently it was so—third Party; and I am not sure that there is not a fourth Party. And where you have a political system with two large Parties in the House each of which is occupied in finding occasion to thwart the operations of the other, the course of either will be mainly determined by the smaller bodies. The larger body may be forced into adopting a course in regard to certain measures and politics in order

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to secure the support of the third Party which they would not have adopted of their own free will. In that case the legislation will not be the legislation of the largest Party, but the legislation dictated by the small Party. We saw that in the case of Home Rule. When Party Government can be reduced to such a state it cannot be said that the legislation passed by this House necessarily reflects the will of the people. As to the scheme of the Prime Minister, so far as I can understand it, we are first of all to pass a measure through this House; it is then to go to the House of Lords, and if the Upper House rejects it there is to be a Conference. It is then to be sent up a second time, and if an agreement cannot be come to with the Lords there is to be another Conference. If the second Conference is futile, then it is to be sent up a third time and if again rejected after conference with the Lords, the Bill is to be passed by the Commons over the heads of the Lords. All that will load to a terrible waste of time, oven with the application of the closure. Again, what is to be the limit of time for the Conferences and what power is there to be in Conference to check obstruction? It seems to me that we have not got at the root of the question by the Prime Minister's scheme; and that we should be forced in the long run to go to the country to get an emphatic decision on any important measure from the people of the country. Another point which I wish to make is that the time chosen to bring forward this Resolution is inopportune. If it was to be passed it should have been hot-foot on the rejection of the Education Bill and the Plural Voting Bill when there was a good deal of simmer in the country against the action of the Lords. There might then have been some chance of getting a public backing for the Prime Minister's proposal. But we have spent six months on legislation of a totally different character, and it is absurd to say that we are going to tackle this huge question of the alteration of the Constitution of the country by the more excitement caused by a three days sitting of the House of Commons and by various strong speeches by Ministers and others. I deny that it is possible for any Minister to make speeches, however eloquent, which will stir up the feeling of the country against the House of Lords and in favour of the Premier's Resolution.
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Then by what means is it that the will of the people is to be expressed when this House, after certain procedure, sends up to the other House some measure to be finally passed over the heads of the House of Lords? Is it to be by a majority of two-thirds of this House or by a majority of a single vote that this House is to overcome the Lords I Again, there is very grave doubt whether the schemes of the Government will not put the Crown into an invidious position in regard to the legislation passed by this House. If the Upper Chamber is not to have the power of expressing a veto you will have intrigues—you will have the Party which has been disfranchised by your Bill using all its influence to obtain the assent of the Crown to a veto on a measure introduced into this House. I venture to think such a position would be an extremely grave one. It would be a fundamental alteration of all our present ideas of the position of the Crown and the uses and functions of this Chamber. But I would also point out that if you are going to throw an added responsibility like this upon the Crown, it follows of necessity that there must come added power; and this Motion, if given effect to, means, of a natural consequence, strengthening the powers of the Crown. I would now point out again that this does not go to the root of the evil or remove, in any way, what is the whole origin of the difficulty in view, and I would ask those of His Majesty's Ministers I see on the Front Bench if they could not turn their attention to some scheme for doing away with that hereditary principle—which I detest—banishing the Spiritual Lords from their places in the Upper House, and having some representation in their stead of life Peers, elected, it may be, by the various learned bodies of the Kingdom, Chambers of Commerce, and, last but not least, by the various self-governing Colonies. But one of the main reasons for which I object to this scheme of the Prime Minister is that it offers no power of amalgamation in the future by which representatives of the Colonies may be brought in to our deliberations. It is quite certain that so long as this House has entire control of the finances of the nation no representatives of the Colonies can sit in this House, because you would then

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get representation without taxation, and you would have two sets of representatives sitting side by side, and voting, one of which would not suffer from any taxation that might be imposed. I for one did hope that the Upper Chamber might serve as a nucleus of a scheme by which our Greater Britain might be represented in the Parliament of the Empire. I did hope we might Psee life eers elected by our great dependencies, and then we should not have the anomaly, which at present exists, of so large a portion of the Empire having responsibility without representation. It is a most dangerous condition, and one which I hope, ere long, to see removed. In conclusion, I would appeal to the House. We sit here, the heirs of great traditions, built up under the shadow of the British Constitution. I would ask the House, not lightly or without due consideration, to make a change in that glorious structure, under which the wide Empire and the great liberties of our British subjects have been brought to their present state.
MR. REMNANT: The hon. Member who has just sat down would find many on his own side of the House to agree with him in what he has said. The Resolution as moved by the Prime Minister seems to me impossible from the constitutional point of view. There can be no doubt that, constitutionally, the House of Commons has no more right to limit the legislative power of the House of Lords than the House of Lords has to limit the legislative power of the House of Commons. A Resolution proposing to limit the power of the other House will thus be merely a piece of waste-paper. The late Mr. Gladstone, in his last speech as Premier in the House of Commons, on 1st March, 1894, said—
"It is not with the House of Commons to pronounce a judgment on this subject. The House of Commons is itself a party in the case.…The House of Commons could not be a final judge in its own case. It is the authority of the nation which must in the last resort decide."
The substantial question raised by the Government is whether or not a temporary majority of the House of Commons arc to be made absolute masters of our
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legislation. It is ridiculous to suggest that any effective check on the Commons could be maintained if the right of appealing from the House of Commons to the country were superseded by a right of appealing from the House of Commons to the House of Commons itself. The late Lord Salisbury wrote in the National Review, December, 1894—
"Such an arrangement—the childish proposal that the 'veto' of the House of Lords shall be taken away, while it is still to remain a legislative assembly—would be as much government by a Single Chamber as if the Second Chamber were abolished."
Our institutions—principally because we have no written Constitution—provide singularly few safeguards against the dangers of political instability, and by concentrating the whole power of Parliament, as the present Government desire, in a single Chamber we should give up our only means of securing revision of hasty and ill-considered legislation. It is quite possible for a Bill to pass through all its stages in the House of Commons by the votes of a majority who have been returned by a minority of the electors, an event which is pretty certain to happen frequently in the present Parliament. We have no system of proportional representation, and the present distribution of seats is notoriously unfair. So, again, a Prime Minister may obtain a majority in the constituencies on one issue or set of issues, and use the majority so obtained to carry measures which have not been before the country at all. The history of the Home Rule question affords a conclusive argument for the maintenance of the effective legislative power of the Second Chamber. In 1886, Mr. Gladstone nearly succeeded in carrying the Home Rule Bill, which had not been before the country at all at the general election of the previous year. In 1893, the Home Rule Bill was actually passed by the House of Commons, rejected by the House of Lords, and at the following general election in 1895 rejected by an overwhelming majority of the electors. This year we were threatened with a Home Rule Bill, or at least a measure intended to pave the way for a complete Home Rule Bill, although leading Members of the present Government repudiated Home Rule in their speeches to their constituents. When

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considering proposals for organic changes in a Constitution that has endured for many centuries, and should endure for many centuries to coma, we must look not merely to the events of yesterday, but to the general course of history. English history speaks eloquently in favour of the House of Lords. The abolition of the House of Lords was the cause of the hydra-headed tyranny of Barebones' Parliament, and of the Rump. In the reign of James II., the House of Lords took a larger part than the House of Commons in resisting the Royal tyranny. In the early part of the eighteenth century, the House of Lords again and again took the Liberal side against the bigotry of the House of Commons in the debates on the Occasional Conformity Bill. Towards the close of the same century, in 1783, the House of Lords threw out—to the delight of the country, as shown in the ensuing general election—that monumental piece of Whig jobbery, Fox's East India Bill. Let not hon. Members flatter themselves that the dangers of bygone years are no longer to be dreaded because there is no longer a Whig oligarchy to be resisted. It is easy to imagine circumstances under which the Radical plutocrats who finance the present Liberal Party might become a similar danger. The experience of England, the birthplace of constitutional liberty, is confirmed by the maintenance of strong Second Chambers in our own Colonies, in the United States of America, and in nearly all foreign countries, including France, the home of constitutional experiments, and Japan, the most progressive of nations, which has deliberately adopted in its present Constitution an Upper House containing a majority of members sitting by hereditary titles. It is not true that the House of Lords always takes the side of the Conservative against the Liberal Party. In the middle of the last century Parties in the House of Lords were very sharply divided, and on some very critical occasions Lord Palmerston commanded a majority over the late Lord Derby. No doubt it is true that in more recent years the Lords have come more frequently into collision with Liberal than with Conservative Governments (which is inevitable in a period of great political changes), but instances can be cited in
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which, in recent years, the Lords have dealt severely enough with the Bills of Conservative Governments. Thus, in 1877, the Lords carried by a majority of sixteen, as an Amendment to the Burials Acts Consolidation Bill of Lord Beaconafield's Government, the principle afterwards adopted in the Burials Bill, although the House of Commons had rejected Mr. Osborne Morgan's resolution to the same effect by a majority of thirty-one in the previous year. And in 1889 the Lords made such Amendments in the Land Transfer Bill of Lord Salisbury's Government as caused the withdrawal of the Bill. The cases which figure so largely in Radical Party literature in which the Lords are said to have rejected useful measures fall mainly under two heads. Either they are instances drawn from the period following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, when the House of Lords, in showing a strongly Conservative spirit, only echoed the views of men like the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, and indeed of an overwhelming preponderance of educated and thoughtful men in this country; or they are instances in which the Lords have merely delayed Bills that had previously been rejected again and again by the Commons. Take the case of the Ballot Bill which, as we are so often reminded, was passed in 1871 by the Commons and rejected by the Lords. The Commons had been debating this Bill off and on for forty years and had rejected it twenty-eight times. The House of Lords rejected it only once, in 1871, when it was sent up to them at the end of the session, and passed it in the following year. A Second Chamber, after all, ought to be a delaying power, and the Lords can hardly be criticised for taking two years to pass a Bill which the Commons had taken forty years to pass. Present circumstances call for measures not to weaken the power of the House of Lords, but to strengthen its composition. On the Conservative side, measures of the latter kind will be welcome. In this, as in many other matters, the Conservative Party are the champions of reform because they are the enemies of revolution.
*MR. BELLOC: If there is one phrase that has been used more frequently than another in the course of this debate it is a phrase that questions whether the Prime Minister's Resolution

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is or is not representative of the will of the people. It is taken for granted that in this as in other matters the Government are no longer representative. Well, it is usual on the part of the Opposition to say after a certain interval that the Government in power has lost prestige. I am old enough to remember at least eight occasions upon which that has been said, if not with respect to eight Governments, at least with regard to eight policies, and I think I may say not only in regard to my constituency, but certainly in connection with constituencies of the most varied character in which I worked pretty heavily during the two years which preceded the election, that although this was not the one issue, there was not any issue upon which the people were more determined than that there should be a change in, and a change in the direction of weakening the power of, the House of Lords. There is certainly not a Member representing South Lancashire who could go back to his constituency had he in this respect failed in his duty. I do not desire to put the thing as strongly as it might be put, but rather to consider it carefully in its historical aspect, and to see what are the arguments—and they are apparently strong arguments—of the other side. In the first place, we need not consider the argument that has been adduced against the unicameral system. We are not deciding for or against the bi-cameral or the unicameral system. We are deciding in this Resolution what our opinion is— we need not yet consider the Bill that may follow—we are deciding what our opinion is on a crisis in practical legislation that is already considerable, and we are deciding it on the only lines on which it can be decided at all. And I think we ought clearly to understand that if the Liberal Government had not undertaken to ask for some change in the constitution of the House of Lords, most undoubtedly another Government —a Conservative Government — would have had to undertake this reform. It is pressing, it is being cried for, and it is a necessity. To turn to the historic argument, which is the first one with which I wish to deal. It has already been used to a slight extent, and will be used to a greater extent as the debate proceeds. It has been pointed out that our Constitution is of great antiquity, and that it is also very elastic and adaptable to
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changed needs, and it will be pointed out that the House of Lords in the past has exercised in more than one period a very useful function. When that is pointed out it is truly pointed out. It is perfectly true that throughout the English oligarchy of the eighteenth century, right up to 1832, the greater landlords in the Upper House considered more what were the needs of the people than the lesser landlords in the Lower. But those who use the historical argument hardly understand how the position of the House of Lords has changed during the last thirty years. Lot me turn to a very typical division which I have analysed. It has been alluded to already in this debate, and will be alluded to again before the debate closes. I mean the division on the Plural Voting Bill. Before you can discover by the present system of a single vote and a bare majority the will of the people, you must at least have one man one vote, or one family one vote. The Plural Voting Bill was intended to be a remedy for an evil which had so increased as to become an abuse. It was in the power of the House of Lords to amend that Bill, and I notice on reading the debate which took place in that House that the arguments brought against that Bill were mainly arguments for amendment, and not arguments for what followed, which was a complete rejection of the Bill. Who rejected it? 180 Englishmen—it would be outside the forms of order of this House to point out that several were not strictly of English blood—186 Englishmen decided between them that plural voting should continue, so that a largo number of constituencies should be represented, not by the will of those living in them, but by the will of others. We have many such extra-urban constituencies in South Lancashire. It was decided by 143 to 43 that plural voting should continue, by a majority of 100. It was a majority of the kind that we usually see in the House of Lords. There were ton dukes! May the day be far distant when any Duke should fail to do his duty in a matter of that sort. Everything in this world has its place and its nature, and I hope I shall never see a Duke voting for ending any political abuse whatever. Besides the Dukes there were 133 others who voted against the motion. I can perfectly well understand a Conservative of education,

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intelligence, and patriotism saying to himself, "These 133 men form a sort of grand jury of the education and intelligence of the country." Certainly there are men worthy so to rank, and I may quote one name from among them, that of Lord Kelvin; but when you come to analyse the 133, you notice certain flaws in this "Grand Jury." In the first place, they are nearly unanimously of one religion. We are not a people of one religion. In the House of Lords the Anglican Church—I do not know what its numerical strength is in the nation, perhaps half—is represented in unanimity, save for the presence of a few Roman Catholic Peers. That is a first anomaly. A second anomaly is this, that side by side with the names of those who take part in the national life are the names of other Peers, names which, I confess, I could not place, and which I had looked up in books of reference, with the result that they still mean very little to me. Is it men of this kind that properly form a "Grand Jury of the nation"? The Solicitor-General has been blamed for saying that there are in the House of Lords nobodies who represent no one but themselves; of how many was not this a strictly accurate description? For what services had those Peers achieved their rank? Let me close what seems to me the worst and the heaviest point in this matter, and the point which now stands most clearly before the populace. The House of Lords is now largely recruited by purchase; so long as public honours are bought and sold I will say nothing. That public honours should be bought and sold is repugnant to a political idealist, but it has so many advantages, it has been pursued in many States with success, the system is now so rooted, and is so much a part of the whole social system, that, however it may provoke us, it may be actually beneficial that mere names should be bought and sold so long as the money is ear-marked for good public uses, but it is intolerable that the purchase money should carry with it the power of legislation. As everybody knows, it is difficult to eliminate the power of money from even a representative system. The hon. Member who last spoke directly alluded to the fact that under a representative system there must follow great power wherever money is concentrated. But that is a long way from the direct purchase
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of legislative power. It would be out of order wore special names to be mentioned, still every man in this House knows what those names are; there is no doubt that this political truth is now the common property of the people of England; and, under these circumstances, it is impossible to defend the present right of veto of the Upper Chamber.
MR. BUTCHER: The contrast is striking between the form of this Resolution and its substance. In form it merely provides a machinery for adjusting the relations between the two Houses. In substance it means nothing less than the abolition of the Lords as an effective part of the Constitution; for such an abridgment of the veto is in effect its abolition; and, as everybody knows, it is the power of the veto which constitutes the power of the House of Lords. Now, the Prime Minister dares not, apparently, say openly, "I am in favour of a single Chamber." I listened with expectant interest to his speech to find out whether he would so declare himself, and, if not, what kind of Second Chamber he favoured. His indictment, indeed, against the Peers pointed to the need of a reformed or reconstructed Chamber, but ho explicitly disavowed any such intention. Reform might hereafter come, but his modest proposal stopped short of that point. Yet he does not shrink from so curtailing the powers of the Upper House as to bring about its virtual extinction. "Mend the Lords afterwards if you please, but lot me end thorn first"—that is the gist of what he says. In passing I may note that when the right hon. Gentleman was pleading for the unlimited supremacy of the House of Commons, and prefaced his constitutional discourse by invoking the name of Burke, I said to myself, "The Secretary of State for India must wonder whether his ears are playing him false." Anyone who has ever read the works of Burke would have thought that ho was the one statesman whoso name should have been kept out of this debate by the Government. One remembers how Burke spoke of the checks and balances of our unwritten constitution, and of the delicate mechanism which can only be worked by a people with political tact and political sense, that has got behind it the traditions of centuries; one recalls

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how he denounced all abstract formulae and the application of the rules of simple arithmetic to politics; and then, when we come to the proposal of the Prime Minister, and find that, in the name of Burke, he proceeds to submit a mechanical rule under which the House of Lords may veto a Bill twice, and have the privilege of sitting three times in conference, with a warning, before the last conference is held, to the effect, "If you do not pass this Bill it will be passed over your heads"—then one wonders how the name of Burke could with decency be invoked. If I remember aright, the phrase which the Prime Minister quoted from Burke was that "the virtue of the House of Commons lies in being the express image of the nation." That, no doubt, is the ideal of the House of Commons which is in the minds of all of us. The House of Commons ought as far as possible to be the direct reflection of the national will. But when Burke used these words, he surely would have been astonished if he had been told that on the strength of them a future Prime Minister of England would argue in favour of the abolition—for it is nothing short of it—of one part of the Legislature, and of the entire overthrow of the constitution. The Prime Minister did not tell us in so many words that he desired to have only a single Chamber, but the ten our and drift of his argument made it very plain that the Second Chamber was in his eyes unnecessary and unmeaning, and that he would gladly see it die of atrophy.
There is a famous saying, familiar to many in this House, which will illustrate the Prime Minister's attitude towards the House of Lords. At the time of the burning of the Alexandrian Library, the Caliph Omar, who ordered the burning, is recorded to have said, "If the books contained in the library differ from the book of the Prophet, they are impious; if they are the same, they are superfluous." And the saying took shape again at the time of the French Revolution, and was applied to this question of a Second Chamber. "If the Second Chamber dissents from the First, it is mischievous; if it agrees, it is useless." That, in brief, is the substance of the Prime Minister's speech when you look below the evasive and uncandid Resolution. Underlying the words which I have quoted, and underlying the speech of the Prime Minister,
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is the assumption that a particular utterance is infallible. The utterance of the House of Commons is infallibly true on all occasions and on every question. Now even if we admit that Vox Populi is Fox Dei, it by no means follows that the House of Commons at a particular moment has rightly caught the people's voice. That voice at a general election is sometimes enigmatic. It is not one voice but many voices, a hubbub of voices. Like other oracles, the utterance of the people admits of various interpretations. But the contention of the Prime Minister is this, that the voice of the House of Commons is always the voice of the people, and that, under all conditions, the House of Commons is the sole index of the people's mind, the sole exponent of the people's will. Yet there is nothing more certain than that the House may misread, and has already more than once misread, the will of the nation. The function, therefore, of the Second Chamber is, in case of doubt, to go back to the supreme tribunal; and the real problem is not how to bring the House of Lords into harmony with the House of Commons, but how to secure that the voice of Parliament shall be the voice of the nation, and that the action of the legal sovereign, that is of Parliament, shall be in accord with the will of the political sovereign, namely, the nation.
Hitherto, I imagine, no responsible statesman in England has openly declared himself in favour of a single Chamber. Look at the example of other European countries. I think I am right in saying that there are only three which have not some Second Chamber, and all of these not so long ago formed part of the Turkish Empire:— they were not brought up under happy political auspices, and they here fell into a natural, if excessive, reaction against the undemocratic traditions of their past. It is notable, however, that all the great democracies of history have been aware of certain defects to which they are liable—the ancient democracy of Athens no less than the modern democracy of the United States; and consequently they hedged round their constitutions with elaborate safeguards, some of them perhaps cumbrous and superfluous, against rash innovations. In no country in the world is a Second Chamber more urgently needed than in England.

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Every other country has safeguarded the fundamental law of its constitution by various devices; some require a special procedure, others an exceptional majority to carry a constitutional amendment. But any transient majority of the House of Commons might, if this Resolution becomes law, enact changes which would subvert the whole constitution. Further, there are in England at this moment many wild schemes which, as yet, exist only in the form of pious sentiment, but which impatient reformers are eager to place upon the Statute-book. Nor can it be denied that in an ever-increasing degree candidates at general elections make promises in a light-hearted way, hoping and believing that they may never have to record their votes upon these questions in the House of Commons, or that if the questions corns up, they will be talked out as was the debate on Female Suffrage last session. Still such pledges are given, and it may rest with the House of Lords to undo the evil.
What then is the object of a Second Chamber? It is not that it may say "ditto" to the First. If so, it would be unnecessary. Its object is that it may sometimes dissent from the first—that there may be not invariable agreement, but occasional disagreement, and that through the discussion of these differences the permanent mind of the nation may be discovered. It is true, the Lords make mistakes—I do not see why the Commons should have a monopoly of error. But the result of these mistakes is at the worst delay, friction, some collision, a short postponement, nothing more; never a permanent thwarting of the settled will of the nation. But mistakes made by the Commons, if the Resolution is carried, may be mistakes that will do irrevocable and irreversible harm. Let me take two critical instances of the action of the Lords in our own time, cardinal examples of what the Lords have accepted and what they have rejected. The first is the case of the Irish Church Bill in 1869. They felt strongly against that Bill, but the principle had been submitted beforehand to the country, the verdict of the country was in its favour, and the Lords accepted it. The second instance has been more than once alluded to this afternoon—I mean the Home
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Rule Bill of 1893. The Lords rejected that Bill because it had never been before the country. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh, oh!"] No, never. And when the country was asked to give its verdict, its verdict was adverse. This generation owes a debt of lasting gratitude to the House of Lords for saving us from that supreme disaster. Let me direct the attention of the House to another point. In the historical retrospect to which we have just listened it seems to be overlooked, that in the last thirty or forty years silent changes have come about in the Lords' own view of their functions and rights. These have been modified, not by direct enactments, but by tacit rules, by unwritten understandings, and by responsible utterances of great statesmen, such as Lord Salisbury, in their own Chamber. Never was there less danger than at the present moment of the Lords thwarting the settled will of the people. The Lords, after all, are not fools. They are not pedants who cling to outworn traditions. They are not impervious to the signs of the times. They are not unversed in affairs. Many of them mix in public life, and are in close touch with public bodies. Indeed, though the House of Lords is not an elective, it is in a high degree a representative Chamber. The Lords recognise that there is a point at which they must give way to the House of Commons. At what point? When it is clearly shown that the House of Commons represents the deliberate judgment of the nation. How do we know when this point has been reached? What is the test? The Government prescribe an unbending rule. The Lords must not resist beyond the limits of a single Parliament. But no mechanical test is adequate. You must look at all the circumstances of the case. The fact that the House of Commons has passed a measure once or twice is one circumstance. If it is passed by a large majority, it is a weighty circumstance, not lightly to be set aside. It is a prima facie indication of the people's will. But it is only one circumstance, it is not a final and decisive fact. There are occasions on which the House of Lords ought to pass a measure even of far-reaching change which has been sent up to them only once, when the judgment

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of the country is mature and the way has been prepared for it; and there are other occasions when the Lords ought to reject a Bill which has been twice passed, a private Member's Bill, for instance, which has been hastily snatched up by the Government and forced through the House of Commons without due deliberation. The Prime Minister has taunted the Lords with passing Bills which they regarded as bad and rejecting others which they thought less bad; but in doing so they were only acting on the sound principle which I have indicated. In short, any rigid formula is wholly affected to define the relations between the two Houses. Perhaps the nearest approach to a rule is this—that the vote of the House of Commons must on no account override the veto of the Lords until the issue has been submitted to the country either by a general election or by the introduction of the Referendum.
It is quite true that if the Lords strained their powers to the uttermost there would be a deadlock from which there would be no constitutional escape. Bagehot once wrote, "If ever the House of Peers goes it will go in a storm"; but it will not be a storm in a teacup such as sprang up last session, such, too, as the Prime Minister is seeking to revive this afternoon. So long, however, as the Lords hold fast to the great principle that their true function is to be the guardians of the nation's rights, they stand in no peril. For myself, I desire to see the House of Lords reformed by the introduction into it of fresh elements of national life. I wish it were more representative than it is, more efficient, and more impartial. But even an un-reformed Second Chamber is a far less evil than an autocratic First Chamber: and thus much is certain, that the country will never consent to the Lords being deposed in order to set up the uncontrolled supremacy of the Commons.
MR. DUNCAN SCHWANN: Anyone who rises to address the House on the Resolution now before it must do so with a deep sense of responsibility at the issues involved. If he be a new Member, and, as in my own case, one who has not addressed this Assembly before, he will be overwhelmed
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with diffidence, diffidence due to that modesty which distinguishes all young politicians, and with a reluctance at intruding in a debate concerning the future of a body of which he has been only a short time a unit. Many of these who have already spoken have sat for a long time in this Assembly. They have become as much a part of it as the mace. They are steeped in the traditions of the spot where they have passed so many years, and the language they have used, whether it has been that of criticism or praise, has been language animated by affectionate knowledge of the subject of their speeches. If they have championed the cause of this House, they have championed what is a part of themselves. It has been as if a man were to sit in judgment on the doings of his own right hand. As a consequence a certain lack of perspective has been involved, from which all hon. and right hon. Members in some degree must suffer. Even the newest and youngest of us are inevitable sufferers. We are too much actors in the drama to be impartial spectators of the events crowding the stage. We are self-centred and absorbed in these social problems for which we seek a remedy. Especially do we, on this side, suffer from this lack of perspective, because our whole interest centres in this Chamber. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, like a ventriloquist, can speak in both Chambers with one voice. He shouts in the other place what he can only whisper here. But to the supporters of the Government utterance is denied elsewhere than here. Absolute here, we are impotent where the right hon. Gentleman is all-powerful. While the existence of another place is a reality always before his thoughts and those of his followers, we, on this side, only learn of its existence in the last weeks of the session. We regard it as the peasants of Styria regard the vampire, stealing from its grave to feed on the life blood of Liberal Bills for a short space, and then to return from its unhallowed feast to its unknown resting place. We feel that we are grappling with a phantom, unreal, unsubstantial, unsatiable. This feeling of unreality is confirmed by a visit to the debates of their Lordships' House. To cross the Strangers Lobby is to go into another world, divorced from contact with the realities of existence that preside over this busy,

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bustling place. I remember one beautiful April day I went out from Rome to visit the tombs of the Christians. The Campagna was overflowing with the gaiety of spring. The joy of life was everywhere apparent. But when I descended into the vaults of the catacombs I went from life to death, from light to darkness. The lively folk on the great highway were gone, and in their place graves yawned; I was surrounded by dissolution and decay. The sensations that filled me when I experienced that sharp contrast are exactly those that assail all who cross the lobby into the other place. Instead of a Chamber animated, alive, filled with men who speak with all the authority of their fellow-countrymen who elected them, one is confronted by long rows of benches on which scarcely a score of noble legislators slumber. The speaker of the moment appears like the ghost of the dead past—returned to lament over the progress of the present. There are no constituents behind him to give weight to his words. He represents acres, not men. In the atmosphere of that Chamber one feels irresistibly that medievalism is the prevailing note; that there all enthusiasms must perish, that all causes end at last in disaster, and that disillusionment is the lot of man. Standing before the bar of the other place, I have felt like Kip Van Winkle in the Catskill Mountains. I have left the ordinary world of endeavour and achievement to find myself in the company of those dwelling for ever in the twilight of an earlier age, ignorant of the aims and ideals which animate their visitor. I am confident that many here have felt the same. What, Mr. Speaker, is the constitutional theory of the relations between the two Houses? Briefly it is this. This House exists to ascertain roughly, what public opinion decrees should be the legislative task of Parliament—roughly, because the Party spirit which is the determining factor in our political strife acts as a film to distort and cloud the reflection of that public opinion. On the other hand, the House of Lords exists to maintain the balance of the constitution, to check any proposal which might upset the nice adjustment of the whole, and introduce unstable elements. It has a duty to hold the scales of justice even for every class, and to temper the wind of
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Party passion to the shorn lamb. Such is the relation occupied by the two Houses in the theory of the Constitution. What about the reality? No one, not even hon. Members opposite, can say that the practice of the other place is in accordance with that theory. We have heard much to-day, we shall hear more, of that practice. I will not enlarge on that line of argument except to tell the House an experience that befell me. When in the autumn of last year the Education Bill had gone up from this House to the other place, and a large number of Peers hurried to take part in the proceedings there, I happened to be watching their arrival. The door-keeper, whose task it was to keep watch and ward over the entrance to the Chamber, was so obviously unacquainted with a large number of the noble legislators that I inquired the reason of his embarrassment. "Many of their Lord-ships, "he replied," have not attended here since there was last a Liberal Government in power." During the eleven years of Tory rule during which these noble Gentlemen had not thought it necessary to attend he had forgotten their faces. I want to know this. Why have they hurried down to resume the performance of duties neglected for eleven long years? What inducement can there be for them to assume again the robes of statesmen? What new interests have arisen to claim their attention that did not of old need their protection? Have problems appeared on the political horizon which only they can solve? Has the nation so imperatively summoned them to the judgment seat that they have thin cast aside seclusion and ease to obey it-s call? Everyone knows that they have come to defend one interest, and one interest alone, that of the class to which they belong. How is it that in the present position of the House of Lords constitutional theory and practice are in such sharp antagonism? How is it that the relations between the representative and the unrepresentative Chambers are so strained? I believe it to be largely due to the complete change in the composition of this House, owing to the successive extensions of the franchise since 1832; the entrance into this place of the working classes; and the consequent dissolution of the alliance that of old existed between the two

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Houses, an alliance that was natural when both Houses were practically representative of one class, and one class only. I hope the House will pardon a very brief historical retrospect, in order that I may establish this point. During the eighteenth century the Members of both Houses were drawn from a few great families. The only political struggle that went on was whether the Whig families or the Tory families should have the larger share of the spoils. But though Whigs and Tories might quarrel about office amongst themselves, both Parties and both Houses were united in defence of the same interests, and in preserving for one privileged and exclusive class, the landed class, the monopoly of power it had held for centuries. The Industrial Revolution, however, ushered in by the inventions in close succession of the spinning-jenny, the "water frame," and the steam-engine, poured money into the pockets of the commercial classes, and thus undermined the hitherto undisputed prestige and influence of the landed classes. They demanded a share of power, and they obtained it by the first Reform Bill. With the middle-class House of Commons thus created the House of Lords proceeded to ally itself, some hundred fresh Peers being created from the ranks of the commercial magnates, a process thus leavening the other place into sympathy with the middle-class aims of the House of Commons. The landowners endeavoured, and endeavoured successfully, to find a common ground on which conflict between property in land and property in commerce might take place as seldom as possible. But the working classes were not disposed to regard this bargain as the last word in electoral justice. They were sharing in the growing wealth of the country, and they demanded a share in the making of laws. By the Reform Bill of 1884 they obtained that share, and the last election saw their representatives invade in large numbers the House of Commons. But no influx of working-class representatives into the House of Lords has taken place, as happened in the case of the middle classes, or can take place under our present system. Confronted with new rivals in the person of the artisan and the agricultural labourer, the Peers have met their demands for an equal share of legislative power with a blank refusal. The working classes are resolved
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to secure that share, unfettered by any restrictions imposed by a Chamber to which they are denied access by social traditions and distinctions. This Resolution is framed with the object of seeing that they shall obtain it. They have entered the House of Commons by peaceful means, the polling-booth and the ballot-box. They will enter the other place by the methods outlined by the Prime Minister. The House of Commons has been successively the stronghold of the aristocracy and of the middle classes. It has now capitulated to the democracy. But the way of entry was open. A class only require the key of the franchise to obtain admittance. There is no such entrance into the House of Lords. The House of Lords must of its own will recognise the changed conditions outside its walls. It must see itself that there are other rights to defend than those of property, other interests with which to concern itself than those of land. As the giant Anttæus drew renewed vitality in his struggle with Hercules each time a fall brought him into contact with the Earth, his Mother, so the House of Commons gains strength and vigour from each appeal to the electorate, and revives its power as a representative body. The House of Lords is denied such independent increase of power. It can only gain prestige by the representative force of its actions. It must comply with the expressed will of the nation, not thwart it. The majority in this House is the embodied will of the nation. By this Resolution we are determined to bend the stubborn resistance of the other place to the will of the majority here, bond it once and for all.
MR. EVELYN CECIL: What we complain of is that the present Liberal majority in the House of Commons does not represent the will of the people. We, on this side of the House, deny that the Liberal Party at present is an embodiment of the national will. We believe that there is a much wider national will which cannot be represented by a temporary majority here. That is the real distinction between the views of the Prime Minister and those on this side of the House. I gather that the object of this Motion is to wreak the vengeance of the Government on the House of Lords for throwing out their Education

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Bill and the Plural Voting Bill. I think the Government might as well wreak their vengeance on the Irish National Convention for rejecting their Irish Council Bill. I maintain that this is a mere sterile Resolution, simply meant to waste time, and to lay the blame on the House of Lords for the failure of the Government in other directions. In considering this Resolution there are two alternatives, either that the Government intend to mend the House of Lords or to end it. I listened carefully to the Prime Minister to try to discover which of these alternatives the right hon. Gentleman really desires, but he was studiously ambiguous as to his intentions in the future. I am, however, disposed to believe that the right hon. Gentleman much prefers ending to mending, and, for this reason, that the Government are afraid that the mending policy will add to the strength of the House of Lords and to the diminution of the strength of the House of Commons. On the other hand, the policy of ending would be to make this House almost omnipotent. Members of the Conservative and Unionist Party are perfectly willing to adopt some measure to improve the constitution of the other House. It would have been far more practical if the House had had from the Prime Minister what is his view, for instance, of the appointment of more life Peers, which many of us think would be a valuable change and would increase the practical efficiency of the Upper House. Neither have we heard a single word about creating eminent Colonial statesmen to be life Peers, and men who have gained distinction in the different professions All we are favoured with is this vague and blustering Resolution which the Prime Minister has brought forward. The House would have been willing to discuss some of the points raised by the Amendments on the Paper from both sides of the House. Amendments are given notice of to make the House of Lords more elective. It is only proper to remind hon. Members that to make the House of Lords elective, or partly elective, involves admitting that Chamber to a much stronger claim in the appointment of Ministers than at present, and to control over Money Bills. It would have a right to infringe on what we now consider the privileges of this House in many directions; and I rather think that
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any elective basis would strengthen the Upper House in a conservative direction and would tend to clog and delay legislation rather than to push forward the drastic measures which are desired by hon. Members opposite and below the gangway. The Prime Minister only touched very lightly on the question of the referendum in order to discountenance it. I am not altogether surprised at that. I can quite understand that the right hon. Gentleman is not much enamoured of that policy. It has been tried in Switzerland. Radical statesmen in that country thought if they could send their measures to a referendum of the whole electorate they would be passed with flying colours, but when it was put in operation, ever after the measures had been passed by the Federal or Cantonal legislatures, the nation did not give effect to them, with the result that the referendum can only be considered completely successful by those who wish for as little legislation as possible, and that it is a bitter disappointment to its authors. If the Prime Minister's speech means anything, he aims at the total abolition of the House of Lords, and constituting this House as a single Chamber. But experience of other countries shows that a single Chamber is not at all a desirable system. The only country in Europe which has a single Chamber is Greece; and I do not suppose that, however friendly we may wish to be with Greece, we should in the least desire to imitate that system of Government so far as we have been able to see it in operation. I know that some of the States in America adopted the single Chamber system— Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont. It was tried for varying periods—the longest for fifty years—but in the end they relapsed into a bi-cameral system. Mr. Bryce, in his history of the American Commonwealth, said that in the American States the division of the Parliamentary Government into two co-ordinate bodies had been found to be absolutely necessary. That is a very valuable opinion coming from so eminent an authority, and one who commands the respect of hon. Gentlemen opposite. Again, if we had here a single Chamber we should have no such checks upon it as they have in the United States by means of the Supreme Court. It is said that this House always represents the will of the people; but

971
instances have been given when a temporary majority of this House has proved to be entirely at variance with the views of the country. Suppose this House had an autocratic power when the two great Parties in the State were nearly balanced, hon. Gentlemen below the gangway from Ireland would hold the balance and might insist upon supporting a Government which was clinging to office by the skin of its teeth so as to secure the passing of such measures as a Home Rule Bill. The Prime Minister's scheme would become ridiculous. What is the use of three successive conferences between the two Houses simply to threaten the Lords? And if the representatives of the Commons gave way in any material particular, a Radical majority in the Commons would cry out that the will of the people had been betrayed. How would that advance matter? Yet presumably the Prime Minister contemplates such a state of things occurring in the future with equanimity, and if he does not do so with his eyes open, I can only say this Resolution was very ill thought out. Then there is another reason against making this Chamber as all-powerful as hon. Members opposite desire to see it. This House is becoming less and less competent to discuss first class measures. We have over and over again of late seen the closure applied oftener than ever before, and when it is borne in mind that this year the introduction of the closure by compartments upon an important measure of the Government came as early as the 6th of May, I am astonished that this session should have been chosen to put forward a Resolution to curtail discussion in the Upper House. There is no doubt that this House, by a system of closure preventing debate on first class measures, and discussion on what I might call first class Amendments, is destroying its own power. It is not right that important Amendments such as were brought forward on the Education Bill last year and the Territorial Forces Bill this year should go to the Upper House practically undiscussed or summarily rejected. Yet that is what has been constantly occurring, and if that system is to continue surely it is the more necessary that there should
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be a full control or power in the Upper House to alter or discuss such Amendments or such Bills. One of the misfortunes, an inherent imperfection, of the system of this House is that its policy is not consistent and steady. The inherent nature of this House is that its power should swing like a pendulum from one side to the other. If you want to regulate that power and keep a steady and consistent policy for the country as a whole, separate and apart from party politics, it is absolutely essential that you should have another Chamber that should be able to regulate and restrain the swing of the pendulum, and even delay legislation, in order that the people should be able to decide upon it. It is complained that the second Chamber delays legislation, but as my hon. friend the Member for Cambridge University has said, if the second Chamber does not exist for the purpose of delaying legislation I do not know what it exists for. It is intended to be a check to enable the whole machinery of the State to work quietly and smoothly,—not by violent swings of the pendulum, but by the steady and gradual movement of national progress. The Prime Minister says the House of Lords is dangerous because it desires to force a dissolution which it has no right to claim. My reply to that is that it never has claimed that right, and that it does not now claim it. I was astonished to hear the right hon. Gentleman maintain that the House of Lords could force a dissolution. We have not maintained such a thing on this side of the House, and I think if the right hon. Gentleman had studied the speeches of Leaders in the House of Lords for years past, he would find that the Upper House had steadily disclaimed that they had that power. That is a futile reason for bringing in this Resolution to-night. The House of Lords does not profess either to have the power to force a dissolution or to pronounce upon any measure an irrevocable decision. All its past history has shown that if it believes the nation really desires a particular measure, it never interposes an irrevocable decision. I do not think any Member on the other side of the House can point to a case where the House of Lords has permanently

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declined to pass a Bill where it has been clearly proved that it was desired by the people. The Prime Minister is now on the horns of a dilemma. He does not know whether to be angry because the Upper House does not pass his Bills, or because they pass them too soon. He was very angry because they threw out the Education and Plural Voting Bills; he is apparently equally angry because they passed the Trade Disputes Bill, for he had hoped that they would reject it, and that that would give him another handle against them. But because the House of Lords thought there was a mandate given for the Trade Disputes Bill at the general election they on the contrary passed it, and the right hon. Gentleman is angry because they did so. I very much doubt whether, if a much more drastic reformer than the right hon. Gentleman was to come to deal with this question, he would not be more likely to turn his attention to this House than to the other. The more this House renders itself practically incapable of doing its business the more obvious it becomes that it is here that we require an alteration of the Constitution rather than in the other House. And I cannot but regret that the Government should have thought it necessary at this period of the session to bring forward such a Resolution as this when so many other pressing political matters need to be considered by the country: and there is a financial crisis going on to which I should have thought the whole attention of the Government might well be directed. It is an astonishing thing that the Prime Minister should choose this moment to come forward and waste the time of the House with a Resolution of this character which can but be futile, feeble, and fatuous, and which will only lead to a useless academic discussion.
MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: The hon. Member who has just sat down has expressed the readiness with which he would have entered into the consideration of any proposal for the improvement of the Second Chamber. I can only express my astonishment that during the last twenty years in which his Party were in power they neglected so thoroughly the opportunity they enjoyed to reconstitute the Second Chamber
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with which they themselves arc in sympathy. Anybody, like myself, who believes in a representative Second Chamber, will never cease to think that one of the greatest lapses of duty of hon. Gentlemen opposite when they were in power was that they never made the slightest attempt to deal with this matter, and only threw cold water on any suggestion that was made. One of the reasons of the constitutional difficulty in which we find ourselves is that hon. Gentlemen neglected to remodel the Second Chamber with which they themselves agree. With respect to the Resolution with which we are now dealing, its terms are that the power of the Second Chamber must be diminished and that within a couple of sessions this House should have power to pass legislation over their heads. That is virtually single Chamber Government. For myself I think there is a great deal to be said in favour of single Chamber Government, and I prefer the Amendment of the hon. Member for Clitheroe to the Government Resolution. But I think a Chamber like our own, possessing virtually single Chamber powers and confronted by a sham Second Chamber, is much more likely to abuse its responsibilities than is a Single Chamber. So far I am with my hon. friend opposite. I think the result of leaving the Second Chamber in the position suggested by this Resolution would be that it would be very likely to excite the resentment, and be more inefficient to act as a revising authority of the work, of this House. Not only do I prefer the Amendment of the hon. Member for Clitheroe, but I am afraid I prefer all the Amendments on the Paper, except that of the hon. Member for Sheffield, to the Resolution. The real question after all is not merely what is the relation between the two Houses? It is a question of effective machinery for legislation. The aid of the Lords, which is still to be invoked, is of little use without the reconstruction of the Second Chamber. The House of Lords practically ceased to exist during the time the late Government was in power. They could pass Licensing Bills, Chinese Ordinances, and Education Bills, all of which were the worst measures which had ever been passed by a Government of this country—they could pass those measures without the slightest opposition from

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the House of Lords. And what happened then will happen again, and the House of Lords as it will remain under this Resolution will be perfectly useless and powerless to protect us from the evils of Conservative legislation. My idea is a reconstituted Second Chamber which, should be as representative of trade unions as of property and as representative of our local authority as of our dominions beyond the sea.
And, it being a quarter past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further proceeding was postponed without Question put.
NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE RAILWAY BILL (BY ORDER) (KING'S CONSENT SIGNIFIED).
Bill read the third time, and passed.
CENTRAL LONDON RAILWAY BILL (BY ORDER).
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.

HOUSE OF LORDS.
Postponed Proceeding on Question, "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament, the final decision of the Commons shall prevail," resumed.
MR. MUNRO FERGUSON (continuing)said: If the country and the Colonies were able to send representatives to the Upper House we should have a more representative Second Chamber. Its members should not be selected by the caucus which has come to have such disproportionate authority to public opinion. The power of the caucus is a thing of which I have had some experience both in organisation and in finance, and I say that the power of the caucus is increasing. The caucus has eliminated the free trader from one side of the
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House as it may eliminate equally valuable elements from the other. A Second Chamber really representative of the nation and the Empire instead of one interest would have time to discuss legislation. We have an admirable system of Grand Committees, and we have the necessary institution of the closure. But it is essential in some form or other that the people should know how legislation is dealt with, and no vital principle should be left un-cussed: that is an ideal not arrived at at the present time in the working of our Grand Committees. This House has unrivalled prestige and force, but we should lose that if we submitted to the weaknesses which unlimited power brings with it, and which would certainly follow in the train of unlimited authority. That is a danger which I urge because of the unparalleled interests at stake in the British Commonwealth. The Resolution affords no solution to the Parliamentary difficulty of a House of Commons with absolute power and an illusory Second Chamber, and I feel that the real business before Parliament is to disencumber the Constitution of the wreckage of an hereditary Chamber and to secure an alternative in its place.
MR. SAMUEL ROBERTS: As I understand from the right hon. Gentleman, the object of the Government in introducing this Resolution is to ascertain the opinion of this House. I confess I was rather surprised to hear that, because we all know what the result of this debate will be. The Government are able to carry this or any other Resolution they choose to put. But what it is important to know, in our opinion, is what is the opinion of the country. This question has been put to the country on the platforms at the by-elections, and the Government have found that it has not created the effect that was expected. There is no doubt as to what the effect of this Resolution, if carried into effect, will be. It means the abolition of the House of Lords, of the Second Chamber, because the Prime Minister has told us that though there are to be two conferences between this House and the House of Lords, yet in the end, if the House of Lords does not agree with the decision of

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this House, then this House will pass legislation over the head of the other House, and take the Bill up for Royal Assent. Therefore, it means the abolition of the Second Chamber. But is it not impossible to conceive the House of Lord condescending to occupy a position of this character? I cannot conceive that they would out of self-respect consent to occupy such a position. The right hon. Gentleman, I was pleased to hear when he introduced this Resolution, said he had no complaint against the House of Lords. previous to the year 1832. I think he was right in not trying to take his complaint further, because the House of Lords existed long before this House. For 200 years after the Conquest, they occupied this position, and when the representatives of the people took their seats, they took them by the side of the Lords, and the result was, as Lord Chatham once said, that we were indebted to the English Barons from Magna Charta downwards for our laws and our Constitution. I have in my hands a little book published by the Eighty Club called the "House of Lords and the Unjust Veto." It is an interesting little work, and I have taken the trouble to go through the chapter entitled" Bills mutilated and rejected. "But before I deal with that, as the Prime Minister makes no complaint of the House of Lords before 1832, I would ask the House to allow me for a few moments to deal with the details. Since that period in what proportion have Peers been created by the two Parties in the State? The hon. Member for Salford told us just now that Peers have been created by purchase. I do not suggest in what manner they have been created, but I find that since 1830, 238 peerages have been created by Liberal Ministries, whilst the Conservatives have only created 181. So that, although they now say the House of Lords is bad, and ought to be abolished, during the last seventy or eighty years they have been responsible for the majority of the creations in that House. There has been a great deal of talk against the House because in 1831 it rejected the Reform Bill by a majority of thirty-one. But that Bill was only delayed for a year. The Municipal Corporations Bill of 1835 the House I of Lords amended.
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They introduced the element of aldermen. [AN HON. MEMBER: And they have been a nuisance ever since.] That may be so, but modern Parliaments have kept the principle ever since, and they have grafted it on to the local authorities because it insures a continuity of policy. The Bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was passed by the House of Lords the first time it was sent up. Then in 1860 this House was in favour of taking off the paper duty, and the House of Lords in the following year recoganised the rights of the House to do so, and the result was that the abolition of the duty was only postponed for a year. The Ballot Act of 1870 was only postponed for a year, because it was sent up at the end of the session, too late for the Lords to consider it. The Burials Act of 1880 was passed by the Lords on its first being sent up. The Irish Land Bill in 1881 was passed with some Amendments. The Irish Arrears of Rent Bill of 1882 was passed, the Franchise Bill of 1884 passed its Second Reading in the House of Lords with the condition that it should be accompanied with a Redistribution Bill. The. result of that was that a conference took place between the two Houses, and a most satisfactory scheme was drawn up by which 171 constituencies were disfranchised, and the seats were allotted so that the populous and increasing places in the country could have popular representation in this House. Was not that a proper thing for the House to do? The next Bill I come to is the Home Rule Bill of 1893. That was rejected by the House of Lords, and the country endorsed their rejection at the election of 1895. The country was with them, as it is with them to-day. The Parish Councils Bill in 1894, after considerable discussion, was a measure upon which the House of Lords gave way, and the Bill passed substantially as it went up. There, were two Bills last year which the House of Lords rejected, and which I believe are the main causes of this Resolution—the Education Bill land the Plural Voting Bill. We contend on this side of the House that in amending and rejecting those two Bills, the House of Lords acted in accordance with the will of the people, and the Government dare not consult the people upon one of them. ["No."] We have put it to them over

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and over again—"Go to the country on the question."
MR. J. WARD: We have just come back.
MR. SAMUEL ROBERTS: You have been back long enough to have lost the confidence of the country, as has been shown by recent by elections ["oh,"] and as was shown by the London County Council elections. On the question of religious education, I believe the House of Lords were carrying out the will of the people that in every publicly conducted school some part of the curriculum of the day should be set apart for religious teaching. As to the Plural Voting Bill, the House of Lords only did with it what they did with the Franchise Bill of 1884, when they said: "No, if the House of Commons wishes to make an alteration in the principle of the franchise it must be accompanied also by a system of redistribution of seats." That is all the House of Lords did in 1884. And in reference to the Plural Voting Bill they did not say: "We will not listen to the principle of the measure, but we say that it must be accompanied by a proper system of redistribution. Redistribution is a very important question. Take five small Irish boroughs which have 13,576 voters; there you have one Member representing 2,700 voters, while Romford, in Essex, has one Member representing 47,641 voters, so that a voter in one of these five Irish boroughs has eighteen times the voting power of a voter in Romford. That is a thing which needs to be remedied. ["Why did not you remedy it?"] We introduced a Redistribution. Bill, but it was crowded out by the action of the Opposition; we intended to introduce a Bill last Parliament; but the present Government will not tackle the question, though they have the power to carry it out. I will not weary the House by asking them to listen to a long list of Bills which the House of Lords has passed. Mention has been made more than once this afternoon of the Trade Disputes Bill. Is not that evidence that though the House of Lords disliked the Bill very much indeed in principle, yet they were satisfied on the whole that the workpeople were in favour of it, and, therefore, they passed
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it? Although this Resolution may and possibly will be carried by a large majority, yet I hope that on this occasion some scheme of reform of the House of Lords will be projected. A Committee has been appointed and I see by the papers that Lord Rosebery has been appointed Chairman of that Committee. We on this side are not opposed to reform of the House of Lords, and we will consider a scheme either by the way of the introduction of more life peers or otherwise. I think myself that it would strengthen that body. It would not be an unpopular measure with the Lords themselves, and we think that it might be a proper way to meet any objection that might be raised. But we say that on this occasion there is no real evidence or case that the House of Lords have resisted the will of the people. There were only two Bills that were dealt with or rejected last session, and we say that in those two cases the House of Lords were carrying out the wishes of the people. There is no case to go to the jury, but if there were we know what the verdict of the jury would be.
MR. HERBERT ROBERTS: This question is perhaps one of the most important that has arisen for many years, and everybody is alive to the important issues which may flow from it. I have listened with attention to the arguments of hon. Members on the other side, and I regret to find that it has been said more than once that the Government desire to waste the time of the House. I take it that when we are discussing a great constitutional question of this character we ought to be prepared on each side to allow that there is a definite purpose. We cannot, of course, agree as to the right method to adopt in order to solve this difficulty, but we ought to agree to approach it in a spirit which would make it impossible to attribute to one another motives of this character. One point has been made clear in the debate to-night, namely, that there is a spirit of agreement on the point that some alteration is necessary in the present conditions of the governing relations of the two Houses. Hon. Members on the other side have clearly indicated their opinion on this question. Everybody recognises that some change must take place in our

981
electoral machinery for legislation in this country if you are to proceed on right and reasonable lines. Another point which has been made by more than one speaker opposite against the Resolution, is that it means the abolition of a second Chamber. I am certain that the Government do not mean that. The Resolution seems to me to point the other way. Their desire is as far as possible to preserve existing conditions. It is not to make but to avoid conflict; and that, in my judgment, is the purpose of the Prime Minister. I am not going to criticise the details of the plan which has been so clearly laid before the House by the Prime Minister. I will only say that, in my opinion, perhaps the most useful provision in that plan will be found to be the arrangement with regard to the conferences between the two Houses. I know of nothing more likely to avoid conflict and to tone down bitterness of feeling than to bring representatives of both Houses together. I might express my own opinion that an arrangement might be made by which an equal number of Members representative of both Houses should constitute this conference, because it seems to me that you will be asked that there should be some relation between the political complexion of this House and the position of that body which forms the conference. But this proposal for a conference is evidence to my mind of the desire of the Government, as far as possible, to deal with this matter, not in a partisan manner, but with a most sincere desire to bring about such conditions as will avoid conflict and ensure the progress of legislation. But my main purpose in rising is to say how important this Resolution is to Wales, with whose opinion I am particularly acquainted. Perhaps the House will allow me to point out one or two distinctions between the conditions in Wales and the political conditions in England and other portions of the United Kingdom. I will only go back to the year 1868. The fact is that Wales from the year 1868, in the nine general elections which have taken place, has not altered her political attitude. While in the rest of the country there has been an alteration of the majority of the two Parties, the Liberal Party winning the election on one occasion and the
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Conservative Party on the other, Wales, on the other hand, in each general election, has returned an overwhelming majority of Liberal representatives. Wales has, therefore, undoubtedly a grievance against the present condition of things in regard to the House of Lords. The House of Lords is always against one Party in this House and in favour of the other, but it becomes very much more serious when, as is the case with reference to Wales, the House of Lords is always against the opinion of the great majority of the Welsh representatives. I will only mention three great questions upon which the mind of Wales has been made up for the last forty years, namely, the necessity for legislation on the land question, on the temperance question, and on the question of disestablishment. Although at every election there has been an overwhelming majority of Welsh Members returned here to support reform on these questions, and to press their views on the mind of the Government, yet the people of Wales recognise that so long as the present condition of things exists with reference to the House of Lords, there is very little substantial hope of real progress being made Therefore the decision of the Government to proceed with this great constitutional question will be received with great satisfaction by the majority of the electors of Wales. In conclusion, I should like to emphasise that we cannot go on as we are. It is impossible for any man who considers this question reasonably to come to any other decision. There are on the horizon of the political firmament great questions arising having a vital connection with the social life of the country which must sooner or later be solved by this House of Commons. If anything can be done to bring about peace between this Assembly and another place, and to enable them to go on hand in hand with the work of reform, then the Government by taking this step will have earned the gratitude of generations to come.
SIR HOWARD VINCENT: The hollow character of this debate is well shown by the fact that during the speech of the hon. Member opposite there has not been more than thirty Members present. If the character of the Upper House is such as has been

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described by the Prime Minister, how comes it that so large a proportion of the Members of the Upper House have been nominated since the Reform Bill by Radical Prime Ministers? I think that is eloquent testimony to the constitution of the Upper House of Parliament. Nobody who examines that constitution will deny for a single moment that, if you take 100 Members of the House of Lords, it would be difficult to match them for experience, intellect, knowledge of affairs, and power of government by 100 Members of this House. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] This Parliament consists of an enormous proportion of new Members who have only been in Parliament eighteen months, and the majority of them have had no experience of public affairs in any shape or form. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Does the Prime Minister aim at the creation of a Senate like that of the United States, or that existing in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or any other of our Colonies? Does he aim at an elected Upper Chamber like that existing in France, Italy, or Spain? If we were to have an elected Upper Chamber it would certainly be stronger and more powerful than the Lower House. The Senate of the American Constitution has almost the free control, during the session, of the acts of the President, of Treaties with foreign Powers, and matters affecting the Army and Navy, with which the House of Representatives has no direct concern. In Australia we find exactly the same condition of affairs. Many hon. Members will no doubt recollect the services to Australia which were rendered by the Hon. James Service, who wrote an important essay upon the difference between an elected and a nominated chamber. He said—
"This apparently democratic provision proves in practice a source of endless trouble and conflict. The nominated council, liable to be modified like the House of Lords by new nominations, never proved long intractable to the ascertained wishes of the community. The elected council, on the contrary, assumes that it is the equal of the assembly, deriving its authority also from the ascertained wishes of the electors, and insists that to give way in a conflict with the other chamber is to betray its special constituents."
That was the experience of a statesman who has had experience of both kinds of chambers, and an opinion like that from one of our own countrymen is a very valuable contribution upon this question.
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There is no hon. Member here who can say that the last general election turned upon one matter. I have heard this question discussed repeatedly by Liberal Members among themselves, and they have never agreed upon any one single factor as having determined the result. It would not be right of the Upper House to endorse without discussion or examination a measure passed by this House, unless they felt sure that it represented the opinions of the community at large. It is absolutely essential that the freedom of discussing and examining any proposition sent to it by this House should be retained by the Upper Chamber. It may be that some reform is advisable. The debate on Lord Newton's Motion and the Committee now sitting may bring about a more satisfactory position of affairs, but there can be no doubt that the House of Lords is extremely popular among the great masses of the people. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Let hon. Members speak for their own constituencies and I will do the same. I think I have a right to give expression to what I believe to be the feeling of the majority of the electors in my own constituency. During the twenty-three years I have been a Member of this House I have never been subjected to any questions about the action of the House of Lords, which I am sure is an extremely popular body and has the full confidence of the people. If anyone is wanted to speak at a large popular gathering, do they write to Members of this House? No, they prefer a Member of the Upper House, I suppose for his personality, intelligence, and knowledge of affairs. There is one reform to which I would never consent, and that is that Peers should be entitled to sit in the House of Commons. If that were allowed we should be nowhere, and hon. Members opposite are well aware of that fact. Surely the Upper House is entitled to consider the way in which this House is formed? The great majority of hon. Members opposite represent almost an equal number of votes of both Parties, but I would remind the House that there were forty-seven seats won at the last election by only 1,800 votes. If there were only some system of proportional representation the number of. Members sitting upon these Benches would be very different from what it is in this Parliament. I only

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desire to give expression to the general sense of the views which prompted my Amendment, and I will conclude by saying that I desire to support in the most earnest way the views which have been so ably and eloquently enunciated by the Leader of the Opposition, which I believe represent the feelings of the great majority of the people of this country.
MR. TREVELYAN: I am bound to say that to a certain extent I agree with part of the last speaker's remarks. I think that in this country there are a large number of people who do not want to lose the Peers in their present social position. There are a great many who would like to retain them for the purpose of heading subscription lists, popularising prospectuses, and crowding bazaars. That is not the aspect of the question which we are discussing to-night. We are debating the political power of the other Chamber, and although there are many of us in this House who dislike almost equally the social position which title gives to the House of Peers, we are not at this moment discussing their social position. We are discussing exclusively their political predominance. I should like to say first, in regard to the conclusion of the Leader of the Opposition that the Prime Minister is not in earnest about social reform, that, although I do not profess to probe the motives which actuate the Government, I am perfectly certain about the motives of many of those who sit on this side of the House. I am certain that we do not hanker after this contest with the House of Lords. It was forced upon us. We hoped for an era of non-interference from the other House—hoped, I admit, against hope. We have not been as social reformers dissatisfied with the action of the Government. They have passed many social reform measures, such as the Trade Disputes Bill. They are passing land reform measures. The greatest of these social reform measures last year was the Education Bill—for education is a social reform—and it was instantly made impossible to pass the measure by the action of the House of Lords. From that moment most of us here felt that it was necessary that the Government should immediately tackle this question. We turn without regret to this constitutional
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contest, because after the speech of the Prime Minister it is clear that it is to be a final fight, but we shall not think the time wasted if the result of the contest is to break the power for good and all of the House of Lords, so that reformers may not be diverted again from the congenial task of dealing with the social changes to which we want to devote ourselves. I think we turn to the contest, not only without regret, but without misgiving, because I cannot imagine one which is more politically hopeful for ourselves, I cannot imagine anything more strategically satisfactory than an assault on an indefensible and undefended position. The House of Lords is practically undefended. It is no defence of that House to make excuses for particular actions on their part. It is not a defence of a particular Chamber to say you must have a Second Chamber. You do not defend the institution unless you say that if you started afresh you would create something like that institution under the new circumstances. I do not think that there are any Gentlemen in this House who would venture to say that if we had to start afresh in this country we would start with anything like the hereditary chamber by which our action is now controlled. The truth is that the House of Lords is not defended, though it is accepted by the Conservative Party as a reliable piece of their Party machinery. The great Conservative leader, Mr. Disraeli, wrote "Coningsby" when he was a young man, and he put into the mouth of Mr. Millbank a statement of the position, part of which I will quote—
"Nobody wants a second chamber, except a few disreputable individuals. It is a valuable institution for any member of it who has no distinction, neither character, talents, nor estate. But a Peer who possesses all or any of these great qualifications, would find himself an immeasurably more important personage in what, by way of jest, they call the Lower House."
"Is not the revising wisdom of a senate a salutary check on the precipitation of a popular assembly?" said Coningsby.
"Why," said Mr. Millbank, "should a popular assembly, elected by the flower of a nation, be precipitate? If precipitate, what senate could stay an assembly so chosen? No, no, no! The thing has been tried over and over again; the idea of restraining the powerful by the weak is an absurdity. The question is settled."
The arguments with which Mr. Coningsby answered Mr. Millbank are so weak and

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perfunctory that it is evident that the writer considered Mr. Millbank was putting the right point of view. To us it seems that the time for change has come, because of the increasing divergence between the two Houses. It has now reached such a point that the recovery of even a partial understanding has become impossible. Every generation the two Houses have necessarily been drifting apart. At the time of the Reform Bill, and even after, the two Houses of Parliament, though chosen in different ways, consisted very largely of people of the same class and the same interests. The Members of the House of Commons were almost all wealthy men belonging to Whig or Tory families. What is the position now? The House of Lords remains practically the same as at the time of the Reform Bill, but the House of Commons has altered fundamentally in its constitution. To-day there are plenty of wealthy men in the House of Commons, but they are not the predominant people in this House. The predominant Members are mainly self-made men drawn from the commercial classes, and we see to-day a large number of men belonging to the labouring classes. The House of Lords is hopelessly different from the House of Commons, and it has become impossible for them in any way to coalesce. Therefore, we feel that the time has come to support the Government in the simple and effective plan by which they propose to establish the supremacy of the House of Commons during the Parliament for which it is elected. We are asked whether we will leave the House of Commons entirely unchecked by any Second Chamber. Does our Constitution at present show any inordinate dread of an absolute House of Commons? The very reverse is the case. The Leader of the Opposition himself, when speaking to-day, pointed out very justly that in all matters of administration the Government are free from criticism except the criticism of this House. He might have elaborated that argument, and pointed out that in all matters affecting the Army and Navy, education, and the whole finance of the country, the House of Commons is practically uncontrolled. The right hon. Gentleman might have gone on to say how foreign affairs are entirely controlled by the House of Commons. War, the
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greatest and most irrevocable act of a Government, can only be challenged by the House of Commons, though, I admit more or less ineffectively. But no Government would dare to have a war unless it supposed that it had the House of Commons behind it, and no Government would care for the opinion of the House of Lords in such a matter. Again, in Colonial matters who would care for what the House of Lords thought? Even if they were all at this moment Milnerites, would that have led the Government to hesitate in granting the Transvaal Constitution? Colonial affairs are almost entirely in the hands of the House of Commons. Surely it is stretching things too far to say that in matters of legislation control of their action is absolutely necessary. The real truth is that the country is not frightened at allowing this House to carry on Imperial and Colonial affairs; and why? Because there is the most efficacious check they could possibly have in existence already—the appeal to the people at a general election. Take the story of the last five years. For three years there was a decadent and unpopular Government which passed unpopular acts and committed administrative enormities, and then came the general election, and the people at once administered the most summary check on political record. If the country chose to elect a Conservative Government in 1900, for my part, I cannot see the hardship of its having to put up with the typically Conservative performance of Chinese Labour. But now the check is operating in that matter, and the Chinese are all being repatriated and the Conservative policy reversed. In legislation, however, the check fails at present, because by the operation of the Constitution the people are denied the right to reverse in any way Conservative legislation, however, detestable it may be. The Education Bill of 1902 was detested, and the Parliament chosen at the general election last year would have set that right but for the intervention of the House of Lords. The House of Lords in legislation prevent the true play of the Constitution. They destroy, they do not keep the balance. They render inoperative the only true check which can teach Ministries and Parliaments who are their masters. To make that check a real one, we welcome the abolition of the veto of the Peers.
MR. C. DUNCAN: I desire to take some small share in the debate, because it seems to me that we are coming to grips on a question which is of vital importance, not only to the political life of the nation, but also to the life of the toilers of this country. After listening to the debate, I venture to say that the only conclusion we can come to is that the House of Lords is indefensible. In no single speech has the House of Lords been defended as a House. All kinds of suggestions have been put forward in regard to its improvement. Many proposals have been made that new blood should be put into that Chamber, but in no single instance has any Member defended the House of Lords as an institution. We are developing on this question. As elections come and go the people who come to this House are gradually changing. At one time the great bulk of the Members came from one particular class, but slowly and surely Members are being returned to the House from a lower strata of life, the strata from which I myself come. They are coming in in increasing numbers, and I say that if this Government will not tackle this question there is an element outside the House which means business, and is determined that the voice of the people shall prevail, and that the Bills which the people desire shall be placed on the Statute Book. What the people of the country require in the Legislature is intelligence, and those of us who have been in the House of Lords, and listened to their debates, can say that there is no monopoly of intelligence in the Upper House. I venture to say that the level of debate in this House is higher and more incisive, that the points are more ably canvassed than in the House of Lords. The business ability of the House of Commons is infinitely superior to that of the House of Lords, with all their advantages of learning and in other respects. Hon. Gentlemen opposite talk about the great danger of rushing legislation through this House, but I think that that is a danger which is least likely to be experienced here. Many hon. Members came to the House with considerable experience of administrative government acquired in municipal life, and that, in my opinion, is one of the best signs that a new life has arisen to-day in this House. It is one of the
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strongest reasons why the House desires to move with the times and to see measures of progress and reform passed. The men who sit on the Labour side of the House are men in touch with the people outside, and they know that the people desire the changes which have been brought forward in the House of Commons during the last eighteen months. I rejoice that I have lived to see this day, when the House of Commons has come into grips with those who have so long monopolised the power and authority of the country to the detriment of all thinking people who desire to see this country make the progress which other nations are making. Would anyone suggest for a moment that if the last general election had brought in the Tariff Reform Party that would not have been taken as the voice of the people? I say that it would. But it is only when you have a popular Government in this House that it is questioned whether it represents the voice of the people in the slightest degree. When you have a Conservative Government in power, however, all its legislation, whether it is liked or disliked by the people, is placed on the Statute-book. The Leader of the Opposition alluded to the recent South African war, and he seemed to think that that war was exceedingly popular in the country. Well, I for one do not agree with that opinion. I deny the right of the Leader of the Tory Party, or of the Liberal Party either, to pledge this nation to war without taking the opinion of the people upon it. It is mere claptrap to say that, after the country had been plunged into war, the people wished to see our troops successful. Why should they not, when their husbands, sons, and brothers were engaged in it? The Trade Union Congress on several occasions gave no uncertain sound against war with the Transvaal before it was declared, and that congress can speak with some authority, because it represents 1,500,000 of the cream of the working class population of the country. We are told that it was a miners' war. Well, we have seen how the mining magnates who brought about the war have been squeezing the miners out of the Transvaal! It is said, how is the will of the people to be ascertained? In my opinion only at the polls. When Liberal Bills are destroyed by the House of Lords, then we are

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told that it is only the Lords who know what the will of the people is; but we never can ascertain how the Lords get to learn what is the will of the people. We working men through our organisations and by coming into close contact with the people can claim in an honest way to voice the opinion of the people. There was never a more bombastic claim in history than that of the Members of the other House that they in the slightest degree represent the opinion of the common people of this country. Supposing this House were to become an autocratic Chamber, many of the checks at present prevailing would still be in existence. Even in the case of the Education Bill there was a check in the action of the passive resisters who pursued a policy which was used many hundreds of years ago when people refused to pay their taxes. That is a check which we may have exercised again. Then there is the chock of a general election. Take the last general election with its clean sweep in regard to the Conservative Party. To say that, after all these men have with great toil and turmoil been brought to this House, the House of Lords of its own free will is to mangle and throw out the principal Bills of the session, brings the political life of the nation to a perfect deadlock. If we claim to be a democratic Assembly we should reflect the aims and wishes of the people, and I hope the time has gone by when the House of Lords is able to say to this House, "Thus far shalt thou go and no further." The only fault I find with the Party opposite is that they propose that whenever any legislation is passed in this House they should give the House of Lords three separate opportunities of discussing and rejecting their Bill. Having had some experience in this House of Commons, I know something of the ability of hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway to carry on obstruction, and I venture to say that if this Resolution is passed and the Government passes such a law as will make it operative, the House of Lords will then have the power to retard legislation in a greater degree than they have to day. Therefore I am prepared to go "the whole hog" like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham is in regard to tariff reform. I believe in the "ending" and not in the "mending" of the House
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of Lords. Obviously it has no good qualities which one can detect; nothing but excuses and apologies have been given to us in regard to it, and all its apologists have been bound to admit that the House of Lords to-day does not represent the people of the country. All sorts of remedies have been suggested. It has been suggested that we should have men nominated for the House of Lords by this House, but I hope it may never be my fortune to be in their place. I think our experience of the Upper House has been that, instead of being a friend of the people and standing against hasty legislation, it has always stood against the people and defended its own particular interest.
MR. HEMMERDE: The hon. Member for Cambridge University quoted Bagehot as saying that when the House of Lords ended it would end in a storm. He might have quoted Bagehot further, and told the House how that eminent writer pointed out that the House of Lords had resisted every effort for reform of its constitution. We, however, as well as Bagehot, know that they have resisted every effort for reform and now when they are threatened with something in regard to which we may use a stronger word than reform we hear for the first time the suggestion on the other side that the House of Lords should be reformed. I think we may agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge University when he told the House that this was a serious Motion. He said in substance that it meant nothing less than the abolition of the House of Lords, but I do not think it means that, but that the House of Lords should be merely a revising Chamber. It means that if the House of Lords wants to be what history gives it no claim to be, the predominant partner in our Legislature, then there shall be an abolition of those claims for which there is no warrant. It has been pointed out how the House of Lords has changed in the last century. We have heard how a century ago the position of the House of Lords was not pre-eminently Conservative, but times have changed, and now that the forces of democracy are beating at the door and claiming that they should come into their own the Lords adopt a different

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attitude. My colleague in the representations of Denbighshire said that Wales had demanded three great reforms, in regard to land, temperance, and disestablishment, and we find to-day that those are the three reforms against which the House of Lords most clearly sets its face, and in (setting its face against those reforms it is not defending the constitutional position. What it is really doing is defending vested interests, and it is defending vested interests which no assembly representative of the nation would defend. They are not defending vested interests in the land in the name of the farmers who get their living out of it, but they stand up against democracy to protect those persons who draw wealth from the land which they have never earned. One of the great things which this Government is pledged to deal with is land reform, and the Leader of the Opposition has threatened us with what will happen if they attempt to deal with the subject. The right hon. Gentleman knows that ho has told us again and again what we may expect in another place if this House attempts to deal with the subject of land reform. We also know what we may expect on the question of temperance reform. We shall be dealt with in the same way as in the case of land, although the wealth which a state-created monopoly gives to the drink traffic has boon taken from the nation. To talk about predatory instincts is absurd when we are only trying to prevent these interests from preying upon us, and putting into their pockets wealth which they have never earned. We find the same thing when we try to deal with the great drink interest as we find in the case of the land. Then we come to the great question of the Church, and there again we find ourselves up against another vested interest. There is really no ground for the suggestion that the House of Lords are defending the real rights of the people of the country. What has really changed is that The people are divided into two classes, one putting property before persons, and the other persons before property, and the party which juts property before persons is well represented in the House of Lords. What have they done to advance the well-being of the people of the country at all? What are the needs which the
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country mainly wants supplied and which it showed at the last general election it wished for? It wants housing reform, but you will not got any Bill passed through the House of Lords in that direction. It wants temperance reform, land reform, small holdings, and old age pensions. These are the things which the country wants, and they are matters in which the House of Lords has never taken the smallest interest. We came into power with an overwhelming majority, and the first thing we hoar is that we as a Party are not really representing the people. How can you test the fooling of the people except by an election such as we had in 1906? Yet after winning that great victory, and only these who know the forces which the Liberal Party has to contend against in the country know what a tremendous victory it was, we find the very men here whom we met in the constituencies and dofoated—because before the writs issue the Members of the House of Lords take a conspicuous part in the elections—we find these very men set up as a barrier against our aspirations for the benefit of the country. I say that that is a most arrogant claim. We are told that other countries have worse Second Chambors than we have. It may be so, but no. country has a Second Chambor more unblushingly partisan. From the very moment of our victory we have heard what the House of Lords is going to do. Then the Government comes forward with this Resolution, and I think it goes as far as it can go and claims the right of this House to deal with the great conglomeration of vested interests in the House of Lords. The hon. Member for Clitheroe said it would take quite a long time to get a measure through if the House of Lords were given three occasions for repentance. I do not think it will take so very long. It will not take very much more than a year when all the proceedings contemplated by this Bill are carried through, and I shall not be very much concerned if it does take more than that, if we can secure the passing of our measures before each Parliament dissolves. One Member, I think the hon. Member for Sheffield, said that ho had never boon able to find out from any Member of the Liberal Party exactly on what particular question the Liberal Party was returned

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at the last election. I do not think it would be very easy to say exactly upon what question they were returned, but I am certain that if there was one question more present in the minds of the electors than any other it was the utter incapacity of the late Administration to conduct the affairs of the country with sagacity or prudence, with dignity or oven honour, and yet we find these very people setting themselves up as judges of the popular will. Take the education question. Hon. Gentlemen opposite admit that two points were before the country, popular control and the abolition of tests for teachers. Can they suggest any more moderate Bill than that which was brought forward which will carry out these objects? Take plural voting, we hear to-day that the abolition of plural voting and the redistribution of seats must go together. When the late Government introduced their. Redistribution Bill they had not discovered the necessary interconnection between these reforms. The mandate theory sometimes secures lip-service from the House of Lords whether it is in regard to education or in regard to electoral reform, but the governing idea of the Upper Chamber is to protect the interests of the Tory Party. I came across an extract from an American writer which expresses this. The writer said—
"Speaking in general terms, there is no bribery in England. Up to very recently there could not very well be any, because the exploiting, wealth-holding interests not merely owned the Government but also were the Government. The only people, generally speaking, who wanted governmental favours and could not get them gratis wore the poor who had no money to bribe anybody with. This simple tact explains the. superior purity of English polities—which has caused so many American blushes. English landlords own half the Government as an hereditary right. The people may vole until they are black in the face without making the slightest impression upon the great land interest. It is quite as though Mr. Rogers and his heirs forever had a veto power over any legislation affecting oil, and Mr. Harriman enjoyed a like privilege concerning railroad laws. Had such an arrangement obtained during the last fifty years our politics would have been much purer in a certain technical sense; but, on the whole, the people would hardly have been as well off. Our railroads have spent money for corrupt political purposes. Possibly their capitalisation is to some small degree affected by such expenditures, which we call graft. The capitalisation of the English roads contains immense sums of which they were mulcted by the governing owners of the land. They do not call that graft in England; but it
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comes to exactly the same thing for the people who pay the freight. The House of Lords is graft constitutionally established, robed and canonised."
All this pretence about representing the people they know very well to be a pretence, because they realise they do not represent them any more than the Leader of the Opposition does. The Loader of the Opposition led a great party into battle and suffered the greatest defeat over known in a century and a half of English politics, but after having gone into the battle and sustained such a defeat as that he says we do not represent the people and sometimes he says we have no mandates. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR was understood to dissent.] Well, if he has not said it, Lord Lansdowne has said it, and many others of his followers. I say it is perfectly impossible to obtain a popular vote except by a general election. Hon. Members suggest to us, however, that we ought to take a general election every time we differ from them. They know that is perfectly impossible. They know that the question of expense makes a general election impossible just as much as it makes a referendum impossible. You cannot force a Party of poor people to go to the country or to have a referendum every time they come up against a vested interest. You cannot force this Party which is becoming increasingly a Party of poor men to take the opinion of the country again and again. We took the opinion of the country in 1900 and we were beaten, and then we took it in 190G and we were successful. Why should we not be allowed, therefore, to deal with the questions which we find facing us on every side, simply because this body, the House of Lords, forbids us to deal with them, or to deal with the questions of principle which are raised? It is because this Government has put its hand to the plough that I strongly support them to-day. I do not believe in the contention that the House of Commons wants checks on every privilege it possesses. I believe, as his been shown by experience in regard to other bodies, that the greater the responsibility entrusted to them, the better they will use their powers. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University talks about great changes being made which are irretrievable. They are not irretrievable. Surely there is "a certainty that if they are carried out by

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Parliament and public opinion is against them the people will resent and even reverse any violent changes. I do not believe the House of Lords think that they know the will of the people. Their action is not dictated by such knowledge or by any political principle. All they know is that they have a grip on the Liberal Party, and that the one thing to unhorse the Liberal Party is to prevent it from doing democratic work. We cannot get along with this democratic work unless the power of the House of Lords is reduced. I know, as a result of travelling on political errands from one end of the country to the other, that the people demand these social reforms. I believe the Government are sincere in this matter, and I congratulate them on attempting to put their forces into battle array against an autocratic Chamber which claims, without warrant or honest belief, to have the support of the people whose claims and aspirations it is consistently thwarting.
SIR WILLIAM ANSON: The last three speeches have boon occupied with disparaging remarks about the House of Lords and the Unionist Party, but perhaps the House will permit me to come back to the dry constitutional aspect of the situation as it is proposed to be dealt with by the Prime Minister. The real interest in the debate is not so much in the Resolution before the House as in the Bill which has boon sketched out by the right hon. Gentleman as embodying his views of the purport of the Resolution. The Resolution of the House of Commons I do not think will do anybody any harm and may be taken merely as representing the salvage of the wreck of the Government programme this Session. The Bill which has been suggested is one of the series of drastic measures promised in the future; it gives a prospect of what we may have to be occupied in discussing during a number of months in the session of 1908, and it does something more than carry out the policy of the Government as suggested by the Prime Minister at the commencement of this session, when ho said he contemplated some readjustment of the relations between the two Houses which he expected would be carried out with reasonable harmony. The Bill suggested to us is not an improvement of
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machinery. It is not a readjustment of the relations of the two Houses. It is simply and plainly a supersession of the House of Lords as a legislative Assembly. If the House of Lords do not carry out our will they are to be indulged with a Conference with Members of this House. If after this the Lords reject the Bill again it is to go back to them, and then there is to be another Conference. When the Bill comes back again to this House it is apparently to be discussed under the guillotine, because the Prime Minister told us that only the new matter would be allowed to be discussed and that it would be discussed as promptly as possible. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] I quite recognise the desire of hon. Members for short discussion when they happen to be in power. There are two things which suggest themselves incidentally. If you take away from the 600 or so Members of the House of Lords all that makes that House interesting as a legislative Assembly you will make it almost impossible to resist their claim to become candidates for scats in this House, and I am not sun; they may not prove formidable opponents at a general election to Members on the other side of the House. And again it is all very well to pass a quinquennial Act, but if this power is given to the House of Commons to carry its measures over the head of the House of Lords, what is the good of trying to set such limits on its power? When the period of five years is drawing to a close, and when the House is becoming less popular, what is to prevent its passing a Resolution to continue to sit or from passing a septennial or decennial Act?
MR. ARTHUR LEE (Hampshire, Fareham): Or a centennial Act?
SIR WILLIAM ANSON: My hon. friend suggests centennial. Now there is the simple issue. You are practically proposing to make this a single Chamber Constitution. Are we in accord with the general experience in accepting a Constitution of that kind? I will venture to say that there is no civilised government which has not secured itself in some way or other from rash or hasty legislation by the popular Assembly, either by a written Constitution, or by a referendum, or by a Second Chamber—by one of those three methods which are

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universally employed for protection against this undoubted risk. The object of a Second Chamber, as stated by an eminent Colonial authority is, to delay great changes until the will of the people has been permanently and conclusively ascertained We are not singular in retaining this precaution; we are rather singular in having so little precaution against violent and revolutionary changes. May I refer to other democracies and republics? Turn to the United States, and note the precaution taken against legislation which runs counter to the will of the people. The Federal Government is based on a written constitution and on two legislative Chambers, whose powers of law-making are defined and expressly limited by the constitution, and a change in the constitution can only be effected by something in the nature of a referendum. Not only that, but every State has a written constitution, and although the legislative powers of those States are unlimited, except in so far as the federal constitution prescribes, I may say that the tendency of the constitution is to add to the number of subjects which are excluded from the general legislative powers of the State, and in which the constitution requires that there should be a referendum to the people of the country. And not only that, but every State has two Chambers. Mr. Bryce, one of the chief authorities on this subject, says—
"The need of two Chambers has become an axiom of political science, based on the belief that the innate tendency of an Assembly to become hasty, tyrannical, or corrupt, can only be checked by the co-existence of another House of equal authority."
He further states—
"That the only States that have ever tried to do with one House are Pennsylvania, (Georgia, and Vermont, each of which gave up the system, one after four years, the other after twelve years, and the third after fifty years."
Turn to the constitution of the French Republic. There you have a Senate and a Chamber of Representatives co-ordinate in respect of legislative power, except that the Senate has no initiative in matters of finance. The power of demanding a dissolution of the Chamber does not rest with the Prime Minister, but with the President acting with the consent of the Senate. And the Senate, according to a recent authority, does very
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valuable work in correcting the over-hasty legislation of the Chamber, and, in case of disagreement, often has its own way, or effects a compromise. Lastly, I take the Australian Commonwealth. I think that the democratic character of the Australian Colonies can hardly be called in question. But there is a difference in the two Chambers of the Australian Commonwealth. The procedure is as follows:—The House of Representatives passes a proposed law, and if the Senate rejects or amends it in any way to which the House of Representatives cannot agree, the Bill drops for the time. It comes up again after three months, and if the Senate still disagrees the Governor may dissolve both Houses. If afterwards the same difference arises, and the disagreement still goes on, then the two Houses sit together and the opinion of the majority of the whole number prevails. There you have three great modern democracies, each of which guards itself against such legislation as might well be effected by this House of Commons, if it received the unlimited powers which are proposed to be given to it by the Primo Minister. I venture to think that there is nothing pedantic in looking at the actions, the law, and the practice of other constitutions as democratic as our own. If these safeguards are necessary for them, they are necessary for us. If they cannot trust a single Chamber, we may learn from them how to guard against the possibilities of a House of Commons whose powers wore limitless. But setting aside those examples, if we look simply at the proposals of the Prime Minister, these two questions arise. What are the faults of the House of Lords that they should be superseded and set aside in this way, and what is the claim of the House of Commons to arrogate to itself this unbounded legislative power? Now, I am perfectly ready to admit that the House of Lords has its faults as a Second Chamber; but it was never constructed to discharge the purposes of a Second Chamber in the modern sense; it is, historically, the estate of the baronage, a co-ordinate estate of the realm with the House of Commons. It has become a Second Chamber, I admit, and to my mind discharges extremely well many of the duties of a Second Chamber. I admit that it is too large, that it contains too many men who take no active part in polities, and that,

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like every Second Chamber that can be devised, it is conservative in its tendencies, because the very object of the existence of a Second Chamber is to preserve the nation from the over-hasty legislation of the other House. But I will undertake to say that the House of Lords has never crossed the will of the people where that will has been clearly expressed. Take any instance, since the Reform Act of 1832, which you may say is the beginning of our modern constitution. Take cases in which it was extremely possible that a majority of the House of Lords were not wholly in accord with the legislation that was passed. Take the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the Irish land legislation of Mr. Gladstone, the changes in the franchise of 1884–1885, or the Trades Disputes Bill of last year. On every one of these measures the country had clearly expressed its opinion. The Aliens Bill of last year, alluded "to by the hon. Member for Clitheroe, was not rejected by the House of Lords, it was not proceeded with because it was not taken up by the Government, or it might have been passed. Where there might have been irritation and delay before Bills had been passed, the ultimate result has been valuable, because the settled and permanent will of the nation has been ascertained, and a measures when it became law has been accepted as a final settlement by all parties. If there were no such certainty one House of Commons would undo the work of another, and there would be a legislative see-saw and lack of continuty which would be disastrous. There is to be borne in mind the monumental case in which the House of Lords understood the will of the nation better than the House of Commons. In 1893 it was the will of the House of Commons to pass a Home Rule Bill, and it would have gone on passing it under the scheme of the Prime Minister as long as that Parliament endured, But in 1895 it was plain that the will of the House of Commons was not the will of the nation. Which do you wish to see carried into effect? If you wish to see the will of the nation carried into effect, what steps will you take to see that that will is properly expressed? You claim that the majority of the House of Commons is finally representative during the duration of a Parliament of the will of the nation. So long as there are single-Member consti-
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tuencies, and until all elections take place on the same day, the House of Commons will not represent the country for more than a few weeks after a general election. Although a mandate is claimed by hon. Members opposite to deal with subjects mentioned by them on political platforms, what really determines at a general election apart from their promises as to the future and the misrepresentations of their followers as to the past, is that at a general election where there is a great turnover of parties, many people think that one party has had a long spell of power and that the other side should have a chance; and then you say that every measure you bring in and introduce into this House is expressing the will of the people. Why do you not take the measures which are open to you to ascertain the will of the people? The Under-Secretary for the Colonies wrote an article in the Nation in which he expressed his view as to the constitution of a second Chamber, and his view is not the view of the Prime Minister. The Under-Secretary thinks that the Ministry should constitute a second Chamber to suit their own purposes at the commencement of every Parliament, for he wrote:—
"Since the political supremacy of the House of Commons must be the vital characteristic of any Liberal scheme, we must reject with regret, but with decision, all proposals for enabling the House of Lords to force every Liberal measure to the test of a referendum. Such a provision would be contrary to the whole spirit of the British Constitution."
The Under-Secretary for the Colonies maintains that the referendum is contrary to the spirit of the British Constitution. There is a curiously undemocratic ring about that. I thought the Party opposite were going to breathe a new spirit into the Constitution, but it seems that while we may abolish the House of Lords without a reference to the people, yet that to consult the people on any great legislative measure on which their opinion is not ascertained is contrary to the spirit of the Constitution. I urge hon. Members opposite not to disguise the full effect of what is being proposed. The proposition is this—that when the House of Commons is once elected it shall do as it likes and that the people shall be powerless. You say to the people, "When you have once elected us the virtue is gone out of you; for five years we are your masters; at the end of that

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time you may enjoy a brief opportunity of expressing a will of your own." I doubt whether the country desires this great change, and I feel sure that when the matter is clearly placed before them they will express a very decided opinion upon it. If the Lords have traversed the will of the people, and resisted reasonable suggestions for a reform of that Chamber, then you may appeal to the country on those grounds. But what you are asking us to do is to forego the safeguards which all the democracies in the world have found to be necessary; and to leave nothing between the will of the House of Commons and the veto of the Crown. Put this question plainly to the country; you will get a clear answer and I have no doubt as to what the answer will be.
*THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL, Yorkshire, Cleveland): Twenty years ago the Liberal Unionist party was formed, of which the hon. Baronet opposite was a leading Member. We were told in these days that, although the Members of that Party were obliged by their Unionism to ally themselves with the Conservative forces, they would not lose one jot of their Liberalism. We, who have listened to the hon. Baronet to night, find that not one jot or scintilla of his Liberalism remains. We find even the strange doctrine that the House of Commons is unrepresentative of the people, except for a few weeks after an election. It is true that we have had from the hon. Member, as well as from other speakers, including the Leader of the Opposition, much lip service to the doctrine of the will of the people, and, perhaps, the most interesting feature of the debate to-day has been the clear light in which this changed attitude of the Conservative forces of this country has displayed itself. There was a time when the Conservative theory was that democracy was unfitted
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to rule, that the masses of the people were uneducated, and that they were wholly unsuited to decide great questions of policy. Their opinion was that if the people had their way, property would be harassed, and that law and order could not be maintained. Now, as in 1832 and 1884, they hold these doctrines, but in these days of a widely extended franchise it is perhaps inconvenient to advance the min so crude a form. It would be awkward if hon. Members opposite were to go to their constituents and say, "You are merely an ignorant proletariat, and you are quite unfit to control the destinies of a great Empire. If you had your way uncontrolled by the aristocracy, property would be harassed at every turn and the country would be committed to the grossest injustices." Instead of that, whatever may be the feeling in their hearts, on their lips are expressions of abounding faith in the full principle of popular self-government. The democratic theory is admitted by the Opposition. They agree that the people are fitted to rule and ought to be supreme; but the loader of the Opposition holds that the truest instrument of democracy is a hereditary peerage. This is one of these hollow paradoxes which seem to be so dear to the heart of the right hon. Gentleman. In 1902 the right hon. Gentleman passed the Education Act which put sectarianism on the rates, protesting that it was a long step on the road to religious equality. In 1904, the Licensing Act, which restricted the control of the magistrates over the liquor trade, was claimed by him in this House and on the platform as a great and valuable temperance reform. The great protectionist campaign in which the right hon. Gentleman is now engaged is to promote the true interests of free trade, and now he is defending the House of Lords in order to secure government of the people, by the people for the people. But is it true that, according to the declaration of the right hon. Gentleman, the House of Lords is

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the true interpreter of the will of the people? Did the House of Lords consider in 1902 whether the Education Act was desired by the nation or not, or whether Chinese labour in the Transvaal was opposed or approved by the people? When the Irish Local Government Act was introduced, that, of course, was in accordance with the will of the people for it was proposed by a Conservative Government. Had it been submitted by a Liberal Government, can anyone doubt that the House of Lords would have declared it to be contrary to the wishes of the nation? Would the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897, if it had been introduced by the Liberals, have reached the Statute-book? Lord Londonderry said at that time that he agreed with Mr. Asquith that, if the Party to which ho belonged had introduced the Bill, it would not have received forty-eight hours consideration by their Lordships. When the Conservative Party are again returned to power at some future, and I trust distant, date, and introduce a Bill for the establishment of compulsory military service, as they very likely will, does anyone imagine that the House of Lords will give, two minutes' thought to the question whether or not the measure is required by the nation? For over thirty years not a single measure, large or small, proposed by a Conservative Government has been either rejected or mutilated by the House of Lords. What a strange coincidence to find the Conservative Governments reading with such accuracy the mind of the people! No thought reader has ever been so marvellous in his achievements as the Conservative Party and the House of Lords have been according to the doctrine we are now discussing. By what telepathy are the House of Lords able to gauge the mind of the nation? As every one knows, there is no one so completely out of touch with the currents of thought moving in the nation as the average Member of the House of Lords. [OPPOSITION cries of
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"Oh, oh."] All this talk about interpreting the will of the people is a mere hollow pretence. It is not the real doctrine held by the Conservative Party. In 1846 the Duke of Wellington wrote to Lord Derby—
"For many years I have endeavoured to manage the House of Lords upon the principle on which I believe the institution exists in the Constitution of this country, that of Conservatism.
As it was in the time of the Duke of Wellington, so it is to-day, the House of Lords always submits with the utmost docility to be managed by the Conservative leaders of the day. It is active or quiescent, it vetoes measures or accepts them at their bidding and to suit their convenience. The question which we are debating to-day is not whether the House of Lords or the House of Commons knows better the mind of the people. We are fighting the old battle that the Liberals of an earlier generation fought—the battle of democracy against privilege, of the nation as a whole against a ruling caste. The Leader of the Opposition said that, after all, the House of Commons was in reality the predominant partner, because it was able to control undisturbed all matters of finance and administration. For my own part I have been unable to see on what logical ground the Loader of the Opposition and his Party are prepared to say that it was right that the House of Commons should have uncontrolled command of finance and administration, and wrong that it should have the supreme voice in matters of legislation. Are we not fully convinced—the right hon. Gentleman himself admits it—that the country would suffer serious detriment if the House of Commons had not uncontrolled power over finance and administration? But in our Resolution we do not go so far in respect of legislation as the Constitution has already gone in regard to those two provinces of Government. We propose that the will of the House of Commons shall prevail, but only after a sufficient interval during which the opinion of the country can be shown. There are to be two or

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three opportunities for negotiation, for consideration, for delay, during which, if the country is opposed to the House of Commons, it can easily find the means to make that opposition felt. The hon. Member for Clitheroe is uneasy that the House of Commons might be compelled to waste undue time on these conferences. Three Parliamentary sessions, he feared, might be dissipated in this manner. It is true that from first to last they may cover a considerable period but when the details of the Government scheme are known, I do not think that the actual time which the House of Commons will be required to devote will be regarded in any way as excessive. Nor is there, after all, any satisfactory alternative to the scheme which the Government are placing before Parliament and the nation. The Order Paper contains a long series of Amendments suggesting all kinds of alternatives. Some are for the reform of the constitution of the House of Lords in order to make it more or less democratic. A reform of the House of Lords has always had great attractions for political theorists; it has had very few attractions for practical politicians. A reformed House of Lords would mean a weakened. House of Commons. It ought not even to be contemplated by Liberal politicians, so long as the veto of that Chamber remains. Only in one case should we be prepared to surrender the right of veto, to a reformed Second Chamber, and that would be if its constitution was so altered, its mode of; election made so wide as to render it as democratic and as representative of the people as the House of Commons now is. But such a Second Chamber would be identical with the First, and would therefore be superfluous. The hon. and learned Baronet appeared to me to throw out some hints that he would be prepared to regard with favour some adaptation of the principle of the referendum.
SIR WILLIAM ANSONwas understood to dissent.
MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I understood the hon. and learned Baronet to look without disfavour on some foreign constitutions which contained the referendum principle. The noble Lord the Member for Marylebone has on the Order Paper a suggestion that the referendum is the right method of dealing with disputes between the two Houses of Parliament, and of settling their differences. And I am well aware that the referendum has received some support from several Members of the In-dependent Labour Party We regard the referendum as a wholly impracticable measure. You cannot in point of practice lay before the electorate all the points of difference which may arise between the two Houses. Suppose last year we had been pledged to take a referendum on the differences between ourselves and the other House, we should have had an appeal to the country not only on the Education Bill and the Plural Voting Bill, but on the question whether Scotland should be included in the Provision of Meals Bill, the Amendments made by the House of Lords in the Irish Town Tenants Bill, and a series of minute points of difference on the Agricultural Holdings Bill—half a dozen different questions with which the electorate would have found itself very puzzled to deal. It is not, Liberals believe, the function of the electorate itself to carry on the Government and to decide the details of Bills. It is the function of the electorate to decide the broad issues placed before it—the broad issues of general policy in question between parties. In Switzerland the referendum has been carried to such an extreme that the working of democracy is almost choked. A Bill of thirty clauses, perhaps, is sent to the cottage of every peasant, and the bewildered electors have to vote upon it as best they may. It is as absurd to lay Bills such as these before the people as to put technical points of law to a jury. I would point out also to Members on the Labour Benches and on the Liberal

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Benches, if there are any who feel some inclination to adopt the principle of the referendum, that it will practically mean all the machinery and expense of a general election every year, the result of which will be to give a still further advantage in politics to the forces of wealth and still further authority to those who control the Press, not always in the interest of the nation at large. The first to suffer will be the poorer Parties, such as the Labour Party, who already find it hard enough to raise the necessary funds to carry on their political propaganda. They will find it impossible from year to year to fight for their principles under a system of referendum. When we find men like the late Lord Salisbury, a resolute opponent of all self-government, a man of great political acumen in adapting means to ends, advocating the referendum as a means of settling disputes between the two Houses; when we find the noble Lord the hon. Member for Marylebone putting down an Amendment in that sense, and when we find men like Professor Lecky, a strenuous opponent of democracy, defending the referendum, I think that the friends of self-government may look upon it with suspicion. Then we are told that the right issue of a difference between the two Houses is a dissolution of Parliament, and an Amendment in that sense is standing in the name of an hon. Member. If the House of Lords were, as it is represented to be, wholly impartial, wise, and cautious, merely referring to the electorate great constitutional changes in order that they should not be adopted by an unrepresentative House of Commons, then we should not be able to offer any objection to this solution; but when the House of Lords is saturated through and through, as we all know it to be, with Party spirit, what does this scheme of a dissolution, whenever the two Houses disagree, mean? Put in its crudest form it means that when a Liberal Government is in office the Conservatives are to have the opportunity of turning them out once a year, but when
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a Conservative Government is in power the Liberal Government is to have the opportunity of turning them out only once in six years. As to the total abolition of the House of Lords, I know such a proposal will receive a sympathetic hearing from Members on this side of the House. But the Government is of opinion that that is too great a departure from the existing state of things for them to expect public opinion to support it. The only remaining possible alternative to the Government's plan is that things should remain as they are. After all, it is said the people always get their way if they are in earnest. It was so in 1832 and again in 1884. True, agitation, if sufficiently violent, will carry a Bill through the House of Lords. And that is what is meant by obedience to the will of the people—that if popular resentment is so strong as to endanger the existence of the House of Lords itself they are prepared to yield. And the procedure of forcing reforms through the House of Lords by moans of agitation cannot be adopted indefinitely. The people cannot be expected every few months to hold great demonstrations, and cry, "Down with the House of Lords." That, we are told, is the right method of governing the country. If it were carried into force, and year by year we did have such agitation when popular Liberal Bills were rejected, what a clumsy and barbarous method it would be after all to carry on the business of a great country. Instead of a smooth working legislative machinery we should have intermittently, spasmodically, bursts of tumult, agitation and violence as a normal feature of the Constitution. In any case, it is impossible the methods of agitation should over be effective for the carrying of minor measures into law. Suppose, for the sake of argument, the Irish Town Tenants' Bill in its original form was a good and useful measure, would it have been possible to raise any strong feeling in Scotland and England against the House of Lords because they mutilated the Bill? Then there is the Scottish

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Small Holdings Bill: would it be possible in England and Ireland to raise any strong feeling on that if it were rejected? After all, the bulk of our legislation consists of measures of secondary importance, and it is essential that there should be some method in the Constitution of carrying through the second House of Parliament these measures that do not rouse the passionate interest of the nation. We cannot remain as we are. It is not only the past, it is not only the present that are in question. All the future is at stake. All the Liberal Parliaments that are to come depend upon the issue of this struggle. Liberal Governments cannot for ever undertake the Sisyphus labour of rolling measures up the Parliamentary Bill for the House of Lords to roll them down again. We will not submit our legislation year after year to a body constituted as the House of Lords—a body of landlords set to judge of the issues between landlord and tenant, a body of Churchmen sitting as arbiters between Church and Nonconformity, a body of capitalists set to decide the issues between capital and labour. The present situation is intolerable and must cease, and the powerful speech of the Prime Minister to-day shows that the Government are determined it shall cease.
Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. Arthur Lee,)— put, and agreed to.
Debate to be resumed to morrow.

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA BILL.
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
Clause 1:—
Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
SIR F. BANBURY: opposed the clause because he thought the House ought to have some further information from the Under-Secretary for the Colonies with regard to the additional grant that was to be made to British Columbia for ten years. He would like to know why the right hon. Gentleman had put in the limit of ten.
And it being Eleven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL, Manchester, N.W.): The most disgraceful and flagrant act of obstruction I have ever seen.
Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

SMALL HOLDINGS AND ALLOTMENTS [EXPENSES].
Resolution reported; "That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of money provided by Parliament, of the salaries, remuneration, and expenses of the Small Holdings Commissioners and other officers appointed under any Act of the present Session to amend the Law with respect to Small Holdings and Allotments; and to authorise the payment to the Small Holdings Account of the costs and expenses of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries incurred in pursuance of such Act."
Resolution agreed to.
Adjourned at live minutes after Eleven o'clock.