SPIRITS IMPORTED.

HC Deb 24 May 1909 vol 5 cc848-911

That, in addition to the duties of Customs now payable on spirits imported into Great Britain or Ireland, there shall, on and after the thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, be charged the following duties (that is to say):—

	s.	d.
For every gallon computed at proof of spirits of any description except perfumed spirits	3	9
For every gallon of perfumed spirits	6	0
For every gallon of liqueurs, cordials, mixtures, and other preparations entered in such a manner as to indicate that the strength is not to be tested	5	5

and the duties of Customs on the articles hereafter mentioned, being articles in which spirit is contained, or in the manufacture of which spirit is used, shall be proportionately increased and shall be as follows:—

		£	s.	d.
Chloral hydrate	the 1b.	0	1	9
Chloroform	the 1b.	0	4	4
Collodion	the gallon	1	14	11
Ether acetic	the 1b.	0	2	7
Ether butyric	the gallon	1	1	10
Ether sulphuric	the gallon	1	16	6
Ethyl, iodide of	the gallon	0	19	0
Ethyl bromide	the 1b	0	1	5
Ethyl chloride	the gallon	1	1	10
—[Mr. Lloyd-George.]

Resolution read a second time.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

I understand that it is the Motion to recommit the Resolution in respect of liquor supplied in clubs that is now before the House, and not the Amendment dealing with spirits distilled in the Colonies?

Mr. SPEAKER

Does the hon. Member wish to move the Amendment?

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

Yes, Sir.

Mr. SPEAKER

That is why I called on the hon. Member.

Mr. YOUNGER

Would not the Motion to recommit the Resolution take precedence?

Mr. SPEAKER

If the hon. Member will kindly look at the Order Paper, he will see that everything is perfectly in order. I called on the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool (Mr. W. W. Rutherford) because he proposes to move an Amendment to the Resolution which has just been read.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

That is what I thought. It was in consequence of a suggestion of my hon. Friend that I was out of order that I asked the question.

Sir FREDERICK BANBURY

If my hon. Friend moves his Amendment, will it not afterwards be too late to move the re-committal of the Resolution?

Mr. SPEAKER

The Motion for re-committal refers to another Resolution altogether, as the hon. Member will see if he kindly looks at the Order Paper.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

moved to add, after the figures "5.5," the words:" Provided that, asp respects spirits distilled in the Colonies and British dominions, the duties of Customs for each gallon computed at proof shall not exceed the duty of Excise payable on spirits distilled in the United Kingdom."

I wish to place before the House the point of view of the Colonies with regard to this Resolution. Probably very few Members are aware that at present the Colonies which produce spirits in large quantities are handicapped to the extent of 4d. per proof gallon. The present duty is 11s. per proof gallon of spirits distilled in the United Kingdom, whereas the Customs duty on Colonial spirits is 11s. 4d. If the proposed 3s. 9d. is added to both the result will be that Colonial spirits will have to pay 15s. 1d., whereas homemade spirits will pay only 14s. 9d., and the British Colonies consider this 4d. a very serious handicap. The difference has been in existence for about 40 years, the main ground on which the 4d. was proposed and fixed being to compensate for the grain duty. The grain duty was undoubtedly a tax upon all those who made spirits in the United Kingdom; but the grain duty having been abolished—and I suppose the Chancellor of the Exchequer would say that from his point of view it has been abolished for ever—it certainly seems unfair to maintain as against our Colonies this handicap of 4d. upon what they produce.

This 4d., although it is only 4d. out of 15s. 1d., is, when you come to look at the interest and value of the article, which varies from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. a gallon intrinsically before the duty is paid, will be seen by the House to be a very large tax indeed, and a very substantial handicap. The whole of our West Indian Colonies, almost without exception, have been protesting for the last 30 years against this unfair handicap of 4d. a gallon.

1 may mention to the House that the subject was carefully inquired into by a Commission in 1898-9. The right hon. Gentleman the present Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was one of the three Members of that important Commission. The Members went out to the West Inches and took evidence. In addition to that they carefully examined into the affair in England with the Customs authorities. The Commission was unanimously of opinion that the 4d. a gallon should be taken off. I venture to put this to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is no doubt it might have been a difficult matter to bring forth a substantive Bill for the purpose of taking off this 4d., but when an all-round increase is being raised of 3s. 9d. on English spirits and a corresponding sum on Colonial spirits, it does seem to be a favourable opportunity for abolishing this, which is unfair protection. I am quite sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be one of the first Members of this House to say, "Let us do away with Protection, especially when this protection is an unfair one." Especially when it is against our own Colonies, our own kith and kin, and especially when it was put on for a reason which has disappeared—viz., grain duty. Add to all that that it has been reported upon by one of the ablest Commissions that ever carefully inquired into any Colonial matter, and who unanimously advised that it should be abolished. Of course, I know that it is the wish of the majority of the Members of this House to proceed to the Debate on the general subject. After all, this is to some extent a side issue, though a very important side issue for the Colonies. I can assure the House there is no Colony to-day—on this Empire Day—that is not looking to see what we are going to do with regard to this matter. I do appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tell me—although I know that this point has perhaps been sprung upon him—whether he will take it into consideration, and give me some hope that it will be looked into, and especially that he will look into the Report of the Commission. If he will give me the answer I seek, I will be content to ask leave not to proceed with this Amendment further, so as not to delay discussion on the general topic. The effect of the Amendment will be simply that when increasing these duties, British and Colonial spirits should be put absolutely on a par without fear, favour, or preference.

Sir WILLIAM BULL

I second the Amendment.

Question proposed: "That the following words be added at the end of the Resolution: Provided that, as respects spirits distilled in the Colonies and British dominions, the duties of Customs for each gallon computed at proof shall not exceed the duty of Excise payable on spirits distilled in the United Kingdom'."

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

This matter was looked into very carefully by the late Government. They had a correspondence extending over a considerable period of time with the Colonial Governments in respect to it. It is perfectly true that the Commission appointed to inquire into the position of the West Indies did say something that rather supports the view taken by the hon. Member (Mr. W. W. Rutherford). But they did not. include it in their Report.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

Oh, yes.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Not quite. I have now in front of me the letter written by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. There had been a correspondence conducted between the Treasury, Lord St. Aldwyn, and the Colonial Government, and there was a very careful inquiry into the matter by the late Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was then Colonial Secretary, and he wrote a letter to the West Indian Colonies. I do not think I could do better than quote it. That letter deals very precisely and very effectively with the 'whole point. He says:—

In 1897 the question was brought into prominence owing to the appearance of the Report of the West India Royal Commission, in which the surtax was adversely criticised. In their Report the Commissioners summed up their conclusions on the subject as follows: 4'IAre do not wish to attach very much importance to this question of the extra duty on ruin in connection with the present inquiry. The removal of it will not save the sugar industry. nor even materially improve its condition; but it is felt as a hardship. and its levy seems to us to he unsound in principle.' Then the right hon. Gentleman goes on: They, did not, however, treat the matter as urgent, as they did not refer to it in their formal recommendations; and their arrangements did not appear to His Majesty's Government to he conclusive. His Majesty's Government therefore decided not to include in the measures of relief which they had settled to propose, in consequence of the Report of the Commissioners, any attempt to deal directly with the surtax. That is the view taken by the right hon.. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham.

They. however, took note of the fact that the Commission corroborated tile view that the surtax might, in sonic measure. operate to the disadvantage of the West. Indian Colonies; and they therefore agreed— This point is somewhat important:— that the assistance to be given to the West Indies as a whole should be on a more liberal settle than that recommended by the Commission, in the hope that the various Colonies might, if they so wished, be enabled to deal with the difficulty themselves. The view of the imperial Government was that these Colonies would, if placed on a sounder financial basis, be in a position to tree their exports from tiny fiscal burdens, and, if they chose, to make allowances on the export, of nun, similar to those which are made in the United Kingdome on the export of British spirits. So the hon. Member will see that the position is this: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham did not come to the conclusion that the case had been made out for taking away the surtax. On the contrary, he said that the Government of which he was a Member had decided against it. But he thought that it might be an element in the consideration of the financial assistance which was given the Colonies, and, therefore, he recommended the late Government to increase their subsidy to the West Indies in order to enable the West Indies to make financial arrangements that would get rid of the disadvantage of this extra surtax. Having done so, he went beyond that. He gave the impression that the West Indies. themselves were partly responsible for the difficulties of the situation.

The letter dealt very fully with the instructions given to Mr. Steele (who was sent over) to enable the West Indians to. rearrange their fiscal system in such a way as to make this surtax less of a burden than it was. Mr. Steele came back and presented his report; the late Government decided that the grievances alleged by the West Indian Committee were not such as to call for any remedies beyond the general improvement in the Excise system of the island, and that they were not such as needed any grant from the Imperial funds. That was the report. We have simply accepted the decision which they came to. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. W. Rutherford) will agree that the case. had careful and sympathetic investigation and treatment by the then Colonial Secretary. He came to the conclusion that nothing could be done. For that reason I think it is quite impossible to depart from the decision of my predecessors.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

In withdrawing the Amendment I would just like to say that this suggestion that the Colonies should get an export bounty of 4d. was about the best thing the present Chancellor of the Exchequer could have approved of.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

moved to insert at the end of the Resolution the words: "Provided always that, there being no duty of Excise on spirits distilled and methylated in the United Kingdom, spirits distilled in the Colonies, whether methylated in the Colonies or in the United Kingdom, after importation, shall be similarly free from duty of Customs."

Mr. SPEAKER

The hon. Member will not be in order in moving his Amendment as it stands. He must take out the word "always" and the words from "that "to" spirits," and also the word "similarly." The Amendment will then read: "Provided that spirits distilled in the Colonies, whether methylated in the Colonies or in the United Kingdom, after importation, shall be free from duty of Customs."

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

I beg to move the Amendment as you have altered it, Sir. I simply desire to say this: That it would probably conic upon this House, and upon the various Members of it, with a great deal of surprise to find that when spirits are manufactured in the United Kingdom and methylated, so as to be used for business purposes, and not to be consumed, there is no duty upon them whatever. Supposing, however, these spirits come from the West Indies or from our other Colonies, if it is intended to methylate them in the United Kingdom there is a duty of 5d. per gallon, and the result of that handicap is that the Colonies, our kith and kin, have very great difficulties in conducting their business in the West Indies. Having regard to these other conditions they find that they are entirely cut out of the market for the purpose of distilling spirits to he used for trade purposes. They have got a climate and they have got the means of growing articles that will produce spirits that can be methylated, and which can be of the greatest possible me for all sorts of trade purposes. These spirits have to come to this country to be dealt with as a matter of business. There is an actual duty of 5c1. per gallon charged against these spirits which come in to be methylated. The position is even worse if the Colonies methylate their own spirit. They have to pay 11 s. 4d. per proof gallon, and if this Resolution is carried they will actually be paying duty to the extent of 15s. 1d. I do suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that when he is making a sweeping change of this kind, such as involved in this Resolution, of putting 3s. 9d. extra on, it is an opportunity for putting right one or two of these very serious anomalies that do so seriously affect our West Indian Colonies. I should have thought it was almost unnecessary to do more than to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the facts which I have fairly stated in order that some reasonable amount of. justice might be given to our Colonial brethren. I beg to move.

Sir WILLIAM BULL

I beg to second. the Amendment.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The Amendment which the hon. Member has moved is an Amendment intended to give preference to Colonial spirits over foreign spirits. The Government cannot accept an Amendment which would clearly give a preference to Colonial spirits which they have, not at present, and which, we think, ought. not to occur in the future.

Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD

May I be allowed, in withdrawing this Amendment, to say I did expect that the Government would entertain more favourably the suggestion made of doing away with this case of gross injustice. However, I will endeavour to put down this Amendment on Committee. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question put, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."

Sir HENRY CRAIK

As this general Resolution is one which was the least cussed on the night when the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced his financial statement, and as such discussion as there was was confined to a few Members from Ireland below the Gangway, whose patriotism enabled them on the spur of the moment to devise a means of raising discussion, I desire now to say a few. words. Scotland is considerably harder hit than that part of the United Kingdom which is represented by hon. Members, from Ireland, and therefore, as no statement practically has been made, except the very abundant protests which have been addressed to hon. Members from Scotland, as to Scotland's attitude on this tax it is necessary that her position should be made clear. It will probably be necessary for me for the last time to trouble the House upon this question, because I have no doubt I shall arouse a protest in the large ranks of the Government's supporters who come from Scotland, and whose absence from the Benches opposite this afternoon when this question which is one of the very first importance for their constituencies is under discussion I ask the House to mark, will no doubt in the future take part in this Debate. Many of those hon. Members have an intimate and a personal acquaintance with the intricacies of the trade which I cannot for the moment attempt to have. They unite that intimate acquaintance and personal interest with this trade with an openness of mind for all the views of the extreme teetotal party, including local option, which proves them to be possessed of at least a very comprehensive toleration. There are some of them who would not for a moment think of helping the trade. They would have no more to do with it than, shall I say, a Member of the present Cabinet would have to do with the National flag if he saw it floating in his neighbourhood on Empire Day. But this is not a question of temperance. I do not think there is any Member in any part of this House who would not support some great movement calculated to make for the promotion of temperance in the country. At the same time if this tax, which has been imposed in the Budget, was intended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a temperance move I am sure that I should not support it. I do not believe that you will ever make a nation sober or temperate in the right sense of the word by Act of Parliament. I am still more convinced that you will never make people sober or temperate by a Budget. It is false economy, it is false finance, and it is following a false course of social legislation. This must be dealt with purely and simply as a matter of business, and as a matter of business I intend to deal with it as it affects Scotland. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the last of all men who can pretend to turn an indifferent ear to the cries of this trade. Least of all men can he denounce it as an accursed trade with which he will have nothing to do, because of all partners in that trade the right hon. Gentleman is the predominant partner. That is a consideration that hardly occurs I think with sufficient force in this country to those who do not carefully examine this tax. Other taxes represent to a very small extent the value of the ordinary purchase. The Chancellor of the Exchequer puts a tax upon them, puts on taxes which are small in amount after all only a trifle as compared with the cost. At this moment the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a sharer in the whisky trade to more than two-thirds of its actual value. Less than one-third of the whole of the product goes to recoup the capitalist for his outlay and loss of interest, the workman for his work, the farmer for his grain, the lessor for his rent, the middleman for dispensing the article throughout the world. All that must come out of the one miserable sum of one-third, while the exaggerated sum of two-thirds goes, without any reduction from it, into the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Under the present proposal the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a partner in this iniquitous trade, ought, first and foremost, to be abolished in this country. He is a partner to the extent of five-sixths and more of the value of the article. It is useless to talk of this tax as a matter of temperance; it is a matter of business, and as such the Chancellor of the Exchequer represents the largest interest in that particular trade. Now I ask, as a matter of business, is this proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer financially sound? Can it be financially sound to impose any tax the result of which, according to the right hon. Gentleman's own suggestion, instead of raising six millions or seven millions, which it ought to raise if the trade is to stand in its present financial annual value, is only calculated, according to the Chancellor, to raise £1,600,000? Is that sound finance? Is it not doing away with the very source of the revenue itself?

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

It could not raise seven millions this year on the present basis, even if there was no decrease as the result of the tax. The hon. Member has forgotten that there are only 11 months in the financial year, and, in addition, he has forgotten all the forestalments.

Sir HENRY CRAIK

I quite understand the point the right hon. Gentleman has made. I was not speaking only of this year. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned a full year when he gave the figure of £1,600,000. I do not think he gave us the figure for the full year, but I do not think it would reach anything like the figure which it would if the present output of the trade was preserved. I understand that in his general estimate the right hon. Gentleman allows 10 or 11 per cent. reduction. That is not the estimate I know which is placed upon it outside as the permanent reduction. What are the real facts in Scotland? I am taking now the answer which the right hon. Gentleman gave to a question put upon the Paper by an hon. Member from Ireland. From that answer it appears that in Scotland there are 163 distilleries, in Ireland 30, and in England nine. Roughly, without going into details, Scotland produces about 24 million gallons per yeas on the average of the last three years, England about 13 million gallons, and Ireland about 12—not very far off half is produced in Ireland as compared with Scotland. The total taxation upon that at the rate of 3s. 9d. per gallon would be— I am again taking the right hon. Gentleman's figures—£9,200,000, and as Scotland would pay about half, £4,550,000 is a fair distribution between the other two countries. I tried to raise the other day with the right hon. Gentleman another aspect of the case. I pointed out to him the heavy burden which would fall upon Scotland. He denied that, of course, and he declared the effects of the tax would fall over the whole of the consumers as if the fact that Scotland paid far more as compared with Ireland the whisky sold over the whole world was to be taken as a reason for supposing that the consumers over the whole world would bear the burden of this form of taxation. The right hon. Gentleman told me that I was ignorant of the fact that this tax would fall upon the consumer. I have not the least objection to the right hon. Gentleman ascribing to ignorance what is a well-known difference of opinion between those who hold certain views on this side of the House and those on the other side, and is almost as old as the discussion on primitive man in Debates on fiscal questions. I do not object to the use of the rhetorical figure ascribing ignorance. It does no harm, and it leaves us with our own opinions still. The right hon. Gentleman cannot escape from the fact that the main burden of this tax must fall upon the producing industry, and that it is the country that produces the most of this article, which has the most financial interests connected with the trade. and owes its economic prosperity to the trade, which is chiefly affected by an abnormally heavy tax like this. The consumer will suffer also, but I will challenge any Scottish Member—if he has studied the representations made to him from his Constituency—to deny the fact that this enormous and disproportionate tax, laid upon an industry that is almost the exclusive property of one portion of the kingdom, will fall not upon the consumer but upon those connected with the production of whisky.

Let the House consider how the manufacture of whisky has become so closely connected with Scotland, and what this connection really means. I am not going to refer at any length to the statistics of old times, but it is not uninteresting to examine how whisky production has arisen in Scotland. Some 150 years ago there was. no very large production of whisky in Scotland at all. About the year 1740 a monopoly was granted to a Mr. Forbes, of Cu1loden, to manufacture whisky free of duty for all time, but he surrendered that right for a sum of £30,000. The fact is that whisky at that time was a drink produced in the extreme Highlands of Scotland, beyond the net of the tax-gatherer, and its consumption did not extend into the Lowlands to any great extent, because they had a very much better drink in pure French brandy—how it got to Scotland we need not ask too many questions about. Anyone who looks at the history of Scotland will find that the chief consumption of spirit was pure French brandy—an article which is now only within the reach of millionaires, and perhaps their consumption of it will have to be reduced under the super-tax proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. There was really no export trade in whisky 100 years ago. In the year 1770 or 1774 Dr. Johnson speaks of seeing whisky as a curiosity for the first time which he dare not drink, but which he thought was suitable for the savages he met in the Highlands. Whisky was little known in the Lowlands of Scotland 120 years ago. What led to the great rise in whisky production in Scotland? Forty or fifty years ago what was the ordinary drink in London? The ordinary drink then was a brandy and soda, and it became a sort of phrase which lived in literature, and the curious inquirer wondered how it arose. At the present time in London you scarcely ever hear anyone call for a brandy and soda,. and it is nearly always a whisky and soda, and what has caused this change? Simply the fact that you had to get rid of the vile concoction which was sold under the name of brandy, which was the vilest poison that could pass the lips of man What was wanted was a really pure, unadulterated, simple spirit, and that was found in whisky. It was that fact that gave the go to whisky 40 or 50 years ago, and now it is constantly seen on every table and at every bar in every restaurant.

This brings me to the consumer, because he has an interest in this question as well. Surely the veriest vanity for total abstinence will not contend that I am exaggerating when I say that 90 per cent. of the inhabitants of this country do partake of alcohol in some form or other, and out of that 90 per cent. surely not 1 per cent. are habitual drunkards. If this heavy burden is not being imposed on account of the consumption of whisky by habitual drunkards, what is the conclusion to which we are driven? It is because the vast mass of this product, which has done so much to enrich my own country, has become a valuable product, recognised as valuable by those living south of the Tweed, recognised as a fairly wholesome spirit ordered in thousands of cases by doctors, and consumed by hundreds of thousands and millions of people just as respectable and just as little habitual drunkards as hon. Members I see sitting around me. I assert, without fear of contradiction, that the vast mass of the consumption of whisky is by people who wish to take alcohol in the form of a little whisky and water, which is the most moderate, digestible and wholesome form of taking alcohol. There are thousands of people who cannot afford your cheap claret, and they take whisky and water as their habitual drink, and they get a cheap and fairly wholesome and unadulterated spirit. This spirit is the product which the right hon. Gentleman is taxing to a degree which, I believe, is absolutely unparalleled in the history of taxation. The ordinary price of the cheaper quality of whisky is about 6s. a gallon, and 4s. 9d. of that is going to be taken in duty, which will leave 1s. 3d. per gallon to the manufacturer to pay interest on his capital and to pay his workmen, and buy the barley and also pay the profit which must be absorbed by the middleman. In any case nobody will be able to point to a tax bearing such an enormously exaggerated proportion to the value of the product on which the tax is laid.

It is only some 50 years since the tax was assimilated in Ireland, Scotland, and England. Before 1860 there was a differential tax in each country, and the tax in Ireland and Scotland was less than it is in England. In 50 years you have raised this tax to 3s. 9d. per gallon, and you have absolutely trebled the tax on this product in Scotland. During that 50 years the production of whisky has become an important industry in Scotland, and I want to point out to the House what this means to Scotland. There are 7,000,000 gallons of pure Highland malt whisky produced every year in Scotland, in addition to 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 gallons of other sorts. I am row speaking chiefly of the pure malt whisky, the production of which is connected chiefly with the north of Scotland and is an indigenous manufacture there. It is the finest quality of whisky, and it is known as such all over the world. In order to produce that 7,000,000 gallons of whisky 3,200,000 bushels of barley are annually bought from producers distributed over two or three of the northern counties at a cost of about £500,000. Over and over again the farmers who produce this barley have told me that they dread this tax. It is a well-known fact that the November rent of these farmers is paid out of the cheque they receive for barley from the brewers. In Scotland there is 100,000 acres of land annually under barley-for this object alone. Upon a trade such as this, producing work where employment is hard to find, and giving help to the agricultural industry, for which hon. Members opposite profess themselves anxious to do so much—upon a trade which turns out such a valuable by-product for the feeding of cows, the value of which is acknowledged by every farmer in Scotland—it is upon this industry, in a poor struggling country, that the right hon. Gentleman places a tax which is abnormal in proportion to the value of the product. I ask the House to discredit a tax which I consider to be financially wrong, posing though it does under the guise of temperance legislation. It is also, I believe. financially unsound, and I do not think that it will yield the amount of money which the Chancellor of the Exchequer anticipates, while it will be disastrous to a Scotch manufacture. It is also most unjust, and I believe that one half of the whole incidence will fall on the smallest, the poorest, and the least populated part of Scotland.

Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR

I agree to a large extent with the views which have been expressed by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I cannot, however, agree with him when lie represents that part of Scotland to which he referred as the poorest and least populous part of the United Kingdom. I think that I must make a tragic exception in the case of Ireland, the population of which has decreased by one-half during the last fifty years.

Sir H. CRAIK

I was speaking solely with reference to Scotland.

Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR

Then I must modify my statement, but I may say that the party to which I have the honour to belong will oppose the tax. I remember a startling incident in this House which occurred in June, 1885. There was then a combination between the Members above the Gangway on this side of the House, and what was then called the Parnellite party against the proposal of the Liberal Government, of which Mr. Childers was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to increase the duty on whisky. That combination succeeded in putting the Liberal Government in a minority, but the difference between that historical event and the present is that the whisky tax which we succeeded in preventing being imposed, and by preventing it we succeeded in destroying the Government of the day, was that the increase was Is., whereas the present tax is 3s. 9d. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that this tax is not only financially unfair, but that it will never succeed in the promotion of temperance. In fact, in my opinion, it will rather promote intemperance. On the question of its financial unsoundness our position is this. We regard the production of whisky in Ireland as a manufacture. I am quite prepared to admit that the difference between whisky drinking and tea drinking is in favour of tea drinking, that is so far as my personal taste is concerned. Our position is this,. that whisky drinking is one of the few Irish manufactures left. Take away shipbuilding, which is confined to Belfast. Take away the manufacture of linen, take away sporadic weaving and we have only one industry left, and that is the manufacture of whisky. Everybody knows that you see a drinking man reformed if at a London dinner he consumes whisky, and that if he consumes champagne he is an unrepentant sinner. This, I believe, is a matter of fact. The medical faculty is of opinion that if a roan takes Scotch whisky, or, much better, Irish whisky, it is far better for him than to drink those gaseous Continental wines, which always leave a certain amount of harm behind them. Nakedly, and without any shame, I defend the manufacture of whisky. 1 should like to tell the Government that two-thirds of the Irish whisky manufactured in Ireland are not drunk in Ireland, but are exported, and that, therefore, the proposals of the Government will inflict upon Ireland, upon one of its chief manufactures, an enormous injury, "tat merely as a home trade, but as an export trade. What will be the effect of this upon whisky as a beverage and whisky as an exported manufacture? I am strongly of opinion that a great deal of the worst evils of intemperance are created not so much from the drinking of real alcohol, but from the drinking of bad and poisonous stuff. I have always been astonished and shocked when in Ireland to see the number of people who when going home after a market day were reeling with drink, although they had probably consumed only a small amount of alcohol. What will happen? The publicans in Ireland have met the situation in the way they might have expected. They have increased the price of whisky. I think that three consequences will arise from the present proposals. In the first place, I believe that the proposal will be prejudicial to the prospects of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He anticipated a considerable increase in the demand for liquor, but my information is that there will be a decrease. There is no doubt that the reduction will be far beyond his anticipation and that the consumption of whisky will be a great deal smaller. That does not mean that less alcohol will be drunk, but that a different form of alcohol will be consumed. It means that the publicans, in order to meet the diminution of the demand for good whisky, will give their customers bad whisky— some poisonous stuff, which, although it may bear the name of whisky, will not be whisky at all. In the cause of temperance, it is better to drink good whisky than bad whisky. The second point to which I should like to draw the attention of the Government is that there is a new fact in Irish life. It is a fact that Ireland is becoming a beer-drinking more than a whisky-drinking country. Whisky drinking has enormously diminished within our lifetime. Far he it from me to say anything about Guinness's stout. I believe that if taken in moderation it is nutritious. It is recommended in medical books for men and women in a convalescent stage.

Guinness's stout is largely drunk by the poor, while whisky is the drink of the well-to-do. The third point is this. The people who do drink whisky will be taxed enormously beyond anything that they have ever been taxed before. I belong to an association which is in favour of the reform of the scheme of taxation, and I believe that direct taxes should be largely in advance of indirect taxes. My chief reason is that a tax of 2d. or 3d. or 4d. per pound on tea or tobacco, or this extra tax on whisky, will increase enormously the taxation of the poorest of the poor. A man comparatively well-to-do will pay an extra tax of 6d. or ls. or 2s. 6d. on his brand of champagne. That is nothing to him, but it is a matter of enormous importance that a man should be compelled to pay 1d. more on tea, whisky, or tobacco. I regard this tax as unfair and unjust, and I believe that it will bear heavily on the poor all over Ireland. When that memorable scene took place in this House some years ago to which I have referred, we divided on the proposal of Mr. Childers to add 1s. to the whisky duty. [An HON. MEMBER: "It was 2s."] The proposal was 2s., and it was subsequently reduced to ls. I do not regard this Question from the point of view of temperance, but from the point of view of an Irish manufacture and from the point of view of the financial relations between the two countries. I do not think I ever read anything more striking than an article on this subject written by Lord Milner in the "Edinburgh Review."

That Report, as I am reminded by my hon. Friend, was drawn up by men the majority of whom were Englishmen, only a small minority being Irishmen. It stated that Ireland was taxed about £3,000,000 more annually than she should be. This proposition Lord Milner's article entirely dissented from. But at the same time I would remind the House that it dealt with a period when the taxation on whisky was first increased. What was that period? It was the period immediately preceding the famine years of 1840-1847, when Ireland, through starvation, lost nearly 1,000,000 of her people, and when she had begun to lose 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 up to the 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 who have since left her shores. This Report declared it was something like a shameful page in England's treatment of Ireland that this enormous addition should be made in the taxation on an article manufactured in Ireland at a moment when she was thus suffering.

I think it would not be a breach of confidence if I repeated the conversation which I had with the Vice-President in regard to. what passed between himself and Mr. Goschen. The hon. Gentleman had been explaining to Mr. Goschen the nature of this increase, and he told me that Mr. Goschen shook his head, and said, with something like a shudder, that this increase of taxation in Ireland immediately after a famine was one of the strangest and most tragic things known in the financial relations between the two countries.

Therefore our position on this question is very plain. In reference to this tax we are occupying an old, historic position, and that position is strengthened in view of the fact that the tax is taking a larger and a more offensive and disastrous form than ever it did before. Why do I say this? What is the condition of whisky manufacture in Ireland? It is a trade which has gone through worse times than almost any trade in the three kingdoms. My hon. Friend who preceded me spoke about the poorer parts of Scotland where the industry flourishes. I accept his description, but lie knows as well as I do the reason the industry in Scotland has gone ahead within the last 30 or 40 years by leaps and bounds. The fault to be found with the whisky industry in Scotland has been that it has gone ahead with such rapidity that it has lead to some disastrous failures. What is the history of the trade in Ireland? One of my earliest recollections of the town of Galway is the black ruin of what was once a most flourishing distillery there belonging to an Irish county family named Burke. I believe there was another distillery in the same state of ruin. I left Galway 40 years ago, and there was then one of the most flourishing distilleries in the three kingdoms there, in the shape of the Persse Distillery, and that was flourishing until two or three years ago. It gave employment to 200 or 300 people in the town of Galway, and its product was supplied not only to Ireland but throughout the greater part of the world, and was a product which was as good as any whisky that was ever sent out. I happened to be an intimate friend of the late Mr. Henry Persse, the owner of the distillery, as stout and staunch a Galway landlord and Tory as ever lived. He, being a man of enterprise, came over here to England and put himself into communication with a late Member of this House (Colonel Webb), one of the best growers of barley in this country, and from him he got some of the best kinds of barley, with which he started a new barley industry on the West Coast of Clare for the purpose of supplying his distillery. But the Persse Distillery has gone the way of the other distilleries, and has ceased to exist.

I now come to the point why I say that Irish whisky is better than Scotch whisky. Scotland has. been selling all the whisky it can produce as fast as it could be produced, and therefore a great deal of the whisky is new, whereas in Ireland our whisky has been lying idle for from 25 to 30 years. It has been lying idle in the cellars and bond-houses, and the result is that whenever we do sell any Irish whisky (which, unfortunately, we do in a very small proportion as compared with Scotland) we sell a healthy and fully-matured liquor which compares most favourably with that turned out at lightning speed in Scotland and put upon the market. Unfortunately, the industry in Ireland has gone on decreasing, and consequently our whisky manufacturers are justified in saying that this is a heavy blow dealt at their trade, and dealt at it at a time that it is a decaying trade. I have myself seen an enormous change in the whisky trade in my lifetime. I remember the time when one asked for whisky in any hotel or public-house in London, and was served, as a matter of course, with Irish whisky. As a matter of fact Scotch whisky in those days was comparatively unknown, and the only time I remember in those days taking Scotch whisky was when I went into an hotel with a Scotch friend and asked for Scotch whisky, whereas he asked for Irish. I asked for Scotch because I believed it would be the nearest approach to Irish, and he asked for Irish because he believed it would be the nearest approach to Scotch. But that is all changed now. When you ask for whisky you rarely get Irish served. It is nearly always Scotch. I remember a point in a speech made in the very Debate on the historical occasion to which I have already alluded. Sir Michael Hicks Beach was, I believe, succeeded by Mr. Childers as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He said the Government had selected for increased taxation two important British and Irish industries already heavily taxed, and by no means so prosperous as they were formerly. "What I fear is," he was talking about the increase of 1 s. on the gallon, "that the consumer will feel this new taxation not so much in the increased price of the article, but in the deterioration of its wholesomeness." A Member of the Irish party at that time, Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, suggested that if this tax were put on it should be accompanied by a proviso that the taxation should he increased on new whisky as against whisky which had been a long time in bond.

The question of barley growing in Ireland is a very important one. I have had some figures supplied to me by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cork (Mr. Flynn) with regard to the growth of barley; I regret to say that that excellent crop has been steadily diminishing. In 1880 there were 213,000 acres under barley; in 1908 there were 154,950, a decrease of about 50,000 acres. Let me give the reasons why I think it is very undesirable that the Government should have put this enormous increase on the taxation of spirits in Ireland. It is undesirable in the interests of temperance, it is undesirable in the interests of the poorest taxpayers in Ireland, it is undesirable in regard to the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland, and it is undesirable as hitting hard a poor and struggling and dependent industry. It is also hitting at an article which Ireland exports and will have to export at an enormous disadvantage, owing to increased taxation, and owing to the competition with German and other manufacturers of the worst kinds of alcohol.

Sir JOHN DEWAR

In offering a few observations on this subject I want to approach the Budget in no unfriendly spirit. I recognise the situation in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself in having to deal with a deficit of £15,000,000 sterling, and I admit that he has produced a courageous Budget. Anything, therefore, I may happen to say with regard to this fact will be said with a view to drawing the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what I believe to be a legitimate grievance both in Scotland and Ireland. I quite agree that the liquor trade ought to be asked to pay its fair share of any increased expenditure necessary in this country. I think it is proper that the luxuries of the table should be taxed if anything is to be taxed. but the question whether 33 per cent. is a fair share of the increased expenditure which the liquor trade should bear, as it. is called to bear under the present proposals of the Government, is another point. I think the taxation should be as nearly as possible equal for all parts of the community. This indirect taxation aggravates the situation. There are a certain number of people who do not drink alcohol at all, and they, of course, escape the burden. On the other hand, all classes of users of alcohol should, as far as possible, be taxed equally, and in that point is to be found our grievance. There never was such a large increase of taxation on spirits as 3s. 9d. per gallon, and the effect that that may have on the demand even the Chancellor of the Exchequer him cannot very accurately estimate. Why should not the tax have been shared by other forms of alcohol? Why should not been have been asked to pay a fair share? Why should it not have been placed on foreign wine? We know that in wines that come from Hamburg there is a large per centage of alcohol which escapes with a tax of 4s. per proof gallon, as against 14s. 9d. imposed on spirits. We also know that a large demand has sprung up for this class of stimulant amongst certain people, and we say there is no reason why it should not have been called upon to pay its fair share of the tax instead of putting so large an increased burden upon spirits, the demand for which is steadily diminishing from year to year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to put this tax, a very heavy and unprecedently heavy increase, upon an industry in an article for which the demand is decreasing As has been said by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), this penalises a Scotch say, and an Irish industry, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer expects a reduction of something like 11 per cent. in the demand. That means 11 per cent. less will be sold from the Scotch distilleries. That is a very serious thing to many districts in Scotland. and I think particularly the districts of Morayshire, Nairnshire and Banffshire. Campbeltown, and those other districts where there are only two industries— distilling and agriculture— and one hangs very much upon the other. I do not want to enter into a controversy with the hon. Member for the Scotland Division as to whether the scotch is flourishing more than the Irish, but I may say that the industry in Banffshire is very far from flourishing, and has not flourished of years, and this tax will put the finishing touch to a great many distilleries there. It will also necessarily affect the agricultural industry, because you cannot affect the demand for whisky without affecting the demand for barley. A farmer told me the other day that every acre of barley bore from £50 to £60 taxation before it reached the consumer. Now you propose to add to that nearly £20, so that every acre of barley before the product reaches the consumer, will bear some £70, and this tax cannot be put on without affecting that particular industry Of course I know that many people support this tax and I think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated that it was one of the reasons why he proposed it, because it would promote temperance; but will it promote temperance? I do not think that an increased price of a ½d or a 1d a glass will prevent the immoderate drinker from going on drinking No consideration of the effect either upon himself or upon those belonging to him will prevent him from gratifying his appetite.

It may divert a certain amount of trade from spirits to beer. I do not know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer looks upon beer and wine as temperance drinks If he does it is very bad business for the Exchequer, because the alcoholic spirit in whisky is taxed seven times more than it is in wine. And I may ask: Are spirit drinking countries always intellectually, morally or physically inferior to beer drinking countries? I do not think so I was surprised to hear that Ireland was largely a beer drinking country but Scotland is still a spirit drinking one and I do not think that anyone can say, that it is intellectually morally, or physically worse than a beer drinking country Of course the intemperate drinker, of either spirits or beer is always a very deplorable citizen, but I have always understood that the popularity of Scotch whisky was largely due to the fact that doctors recommended it as the best stimulant and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the face of all these facts, thinks that by turning the drinkers of spirits into the drinkers of other forms of alcohol, he is going to promote temperance, I am afraid I cannot agree with him One effect of this tax will be that it will penalise the Scotch taxpayer I am not able to give the Irish figures, but the taxpayer in Scotland out of the £1,600,000 which is taken for this year from the users of spirits pays £160,000 more than his fair share and £160,000 is taken from Scotland more than from the other portions of the United Kingdom. Next year Scotland will pay £650,000 more than its fair share to the Exchequer. At present England uses 30 per cent. more alcohol than Scotland, and pays 40 per cent. less than Scotland. England at present pays 16s. 10d. per head for taxation on alcohol, and Scotland 22s., and the proposed increase of taxation of spirits will make matters infinitely worse, and this £650,000 is to be deliberately taken out of Scotch pockets. I suppose the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks that anything he can take out of Scotch pockets he is entitled to, but I hope Scotch Members will see that it is not taken without aquid pro quo. I should like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look at this question from a Scotch point of view, and endeavour to meet us by reducing the amount. I think that he has grossly under-estimated the result of this tax, and that 1s. 6d. will give him all he wants, so far as one can make out from the figures in the last report. One and sixpence will give him more than his £1,600,000. But whether he is able to reduce it or not, and if he is not able to reduce it and make it a smaller tax, to meet the circumstances of the case as I have pointed out, that we are suffering unfairly in Scotland, I should suggest that he should consider the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman, that he might graduate the tax according to the age of the spirit. This, I think, would be a far more effective temperance measure than turning the consumers on to beer, and I am of opinion that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by reducing the tax on spirits over two years old, would do more to promote temperance than by deliberately endeavouring to turn the consumers of whisky on to beer and wine. I have made these observations in no unfriendly spirit, and I am sorry the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not here, but I hope he will be able to meet us in the same spirit in which I have ventured to address the Committee.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

I am afraid the Government have very little idea of what effect their proposal is having on the mind of the Irish people. I desire to look on the matter, not solely from the narrow point of view of treating whisky as an article of trade, but I wish to treat it from the point of view of a breach of faith of which the Government have been guilty. It is an extraordinary fact that as long as the Tories, who are the maintainers of the Act of Union, are in office they endeavour by their Budgets to respect the terms of the Act of Union as a bargain between two Parliaments and two nations, but when the Liberals get into office, while affecting to wish to repeal the terms of the Act of Union, they invariably grossly ignore it. We were promised when the Act of Union was consummated that in your dealings with us we should have certain exemptions and abatements. I ask, where are they? There are none, and if this Budget passes you have placed us as a poor community in exactly the same position as that of a rich community. Take any test you like to apply. The receipts of the London General Omnibus Company are as great as the receipts of our largest railway in Ireland, the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. You are dealing with a poor and a small country, and I wish to put it to this House, in the first place, why do not you tax the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands? From the fact that you do not tax the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, you must admit that, at all events, there are some communities at least in this group of British communities—there are some countries which are not worth taxing or upon which a tax would be a special grievance.

Mr. BYLES

Have not they both got Home Rule?

Mr. T. M. HEALY

That may be another reason, but there is an Isle of Man Taxation Bill passes this House every year, Take this case of the whisky tax. You tell us that you have given us old age pensions and that the two millions which you are extracting from us under this Budget is well met by the two millions, roughly speaking, which you are giving us for old age pensions. But, if that is so, we have nothing to thank you for for old age pensions. If you are taking the old age pensions out of the pocket of the Irish taxpayer he has nothing to thank you for, and let me say this: I never remember a measure which produced so good an effect in Ireland as that Old Age Pension Bill. For the first time there was a feeling of gratitude to England. For the first time in the history of the country you heard people all round saying, "Well, at last the Englishmen have given us something practical." But what is the effect of this Budget? Why, from end to end of the country you have provoked absolute, universal detestation and discontent. It is not from the Conservative; it is not from the Nationalist; it is not from the Catholic; it is not from the Protestant, but from the entire body of the people, there is nothing but seething and angry discontent, and that discontent will have its fruits in directions which you little calcu late upon, because you have not left, as far as I can gauge the country, one loyal citizen in it.

In England I can well understand the Liberal party or Englishmen generally supporting this Budget and saying it is a splendid Budget. Why? Because England can get some value out of it. Whenever you raise taxation in this country there is always something for it. Take those buildings which you have put up opposite. I never pass them without envy. You have spent, it may be, some twelve millions of money on Whitehall, and that is not merely an expenditure of twelve millions of money. It does not mean that you have employed your architects and stonemasons and builders, and that they have spent this twelve millions, but it means that for all time there will be clerks, caretakers, and officials there, upon whom money will be spent, and if it is only tile price of the cat's meat supplied there will be something paid in London. Take, again, the case of the naval dockyards. Wherever you go you have money being spent there. You have a hail of hammers employed by means of this taxation, but not one single 6d. or is. goes to Ireland. I would ask why, if I drink a glass of whisky, and pay 4½ d for it, I only get for the 4½ d. a ½ d worth of value, and 4d. goes to the Government, but if I drink 4½d. worth of beer I get four pennyworth, and ½ d only goes to the Government? I want to know how that is? Can anyone justify a system of taxation under which an Englishman can satisfy his alcoholic thirst, and out of nine halfpenny worths that he consumes, only one goes to the Government, while the Irish drinker, spending the same sum, and out of it eight halfpennies go into the pockets of the Government and only a halfpenny into the pockets of the manufacturer. How can you defend that? The Chancellor of the Exchequer said: "I have to get 16 millions; I want 16 millions; I must get it somehow." Is it immaterial to him how he gets it, if so, why does not he renew the tax on coals?

You tell us it is the consumer who pays everything. These coals which went abroad brought in two millions of money, and it was the foreigner who paid it. Why do not you put a tax upon champagne? Is It that the entente cordial would not admit of it? Why is the rich man who consumes his claret, his port, his sherry and his champagne exempted from all taxation under this Budget? And why is it that some miserable Irishmen in Connaught have to pay all these extra taxes?

Since we started this great co-partner-ship, which was to bring us in so much prosperity, the only trade which has increased is the coffin-making trade. Our taxation was not 3s. on alcohol, and now, if this Budget passes, I understand it is to be 14s. What happened when Mr. Gladstone put on an equalisation tax in the fifties? According to General Dunne's Committee 23 distilleries in Ireland were wiped out. What will happen if this tax is carried? I can only tell the story I hear in my Constituency. A Conservative gentleman in my Constituency has carried on for over 10 years a distillery at a loss. He has kept his men about him, he has paid them their wages, and he has for over 10 years been struggling with adversity. Pass this Budget and he closes up; and who will get the trade? What satisfaction is it to him to know that the people are returning to beer. Why should not a whisky drinker, if he chooses to indulge in this form of beverage, be able to get alcoholic stimulant at the same level of price as the man who is drinking beer? As regards the alcohol section of the Budget, this is a capitalistic Budget. What is happening? Guinness's alone of all the distillers in Ireland have announced that they will not raise their price. Their shares have gone up in value. They know the Tories will come into office at the next General Election. and if these big men can only hold out and last for two or three years more all the smaller breweries and distilleries will disappear, and then you will have one gigantic concern, which will rule the price all over Ireland for barley, for hops, for materials of every kind, and is that what you want to produce by your Budget?

The truth is you never think of Ireland when you are dealing with taxation. you think because the Irish Party more or less are committed to Liberal principles because of Home Rule—I really do not know of any other principle on which we agree with them—that practically you are. safe to bring in any kind of tax that you like. When this Government goes out of office we shall not have had Home Rule, and we shall have had two millions of extra taxation. Look at the way in which you deal with Ireland in every other respect. With enormous difficulty last year, though I freely acknowledge that the Government certainly were very wholehearted in the matter, and did their best to help us, they passed a University Bill for Ireland, to which the Catholics on the one hand and the Presbyterians on the other could resort, but whenever we made a demand for proper teaching facilities, even for money for a college, or for any of the things which have made the English Universities famous, the cry was "Oh, the Treasury will not allow us," and the only thing that you are to be generous to us in is in this question of taxation. You are putting fresh arguments into the minds and hearts of people who do not readily forget. I do not believe if this Budget passes there will be a voice raised in any part of the country for the maintenance of law and order in future, and certainly as far as my voice is concerned I will not raise mine, because I believe you have absolutely and shamefully broken faith with our country. If you had said all round "we must find taxes somehow, and we will put them equally on beer and whisky," we might have grumbled, but, at any rate, we should have had to acknowledge that it was fair play. When we find you exempting the English working man and taxing the Irish working man, instead of giving us abatements and exemptions we say you have given us imposts and exactions.

Why not tax the Englishman's cheese? We do not eat cheese in Ireland. It is perfectly fair. We do not produce iron enough. It is perfectly fair to tax iron. Why not tax iron? Why do not they tax paper? Need anyone mind the football specials, the sensational collapse of Middlesex, and all this yellow journalism that we see all over the country every morning? Is there anyone who could not afford when he is buying a halfpenny paper to pay something to the State out of it? It is a tax on knowledge it is said. As a rule it is a tax on imbecility for the general run of stuff that we see produced in newspapers, but that is nothing to us. Ireland has done nothing to provoke this enormous increase in the taxation of the country. We have not called out for "Dreadnoughts," we have not called out for increased armaments, we have not called out for increased soldiers, for Volunteers or Yeomanry. We have asked for nothing, and although the Island has remained absolutely pacific and absolutely quiet, with this unexampled Liberal majority the only result will be this extra two millions of taxation. I solemnly protest against this Budget. I believe, to a very large extent, lock, stock and barrel, it is wrong, but as regards English affairs I have nothing to do with it. It does not affect us to the great extent that it affects Englishmen, but I believe in many instances its principles are unsound.

Mr. A. WILLIAMSON

As representing a constituency which is very largely interested in the proposals in regard to the increased tax on spirits, I should like to bring before the house some of the points which have been forced on me by letters and representations from my Constituency. The last speaker has referred to the difference which is being meted out in different parts of the United Kingdom, and that is very much felt in the north of Scotland, where it is felt generally that an unfair amount of taxation on the drink consumed by the people is falling on them. There are in my Constituency approaching 20 distilleries, and these distilleries and agriculture are the chief industries of the locality; indeed, the one to a large extent depends upon the other. These distilleries are not, as raw grain distilleries are, situated in large centres of population. There are some of them situated in more or less remote country districts, and the whole neighbourhood is more or less dependent on the sale of the barley which they grow to this distillery which is situated in their midst. Indeed, the farmers sell little else but barley or cattle or sheep. These are the two things which they sell off their farm, and they feel that if this heavy duty is put upon whisky there will be a certain number of distilleries closed down, or those which remain working will produce a smaller quantity of whisky, and there will be less demand for barley. They furthermore feel that if these distilleries are closed they will be deprived of the supply of draught which they now use for the food of their milk cows. They also feel that if the distillery is closed—the distilleries pay at present. the larger portion of the local rates of the parish—the rates which the farmers and others in the district have to pay will necessarily go up. Consequently they are hit all round, or they believe they will be, by this proposed increase of duty. Furthermore, I have received representations not only from distillers, who, after all, are a comparatively small number of people, and farmers, but I receive numerous representations from labourers who fear they will be. thrown out of employment, and that the amount of employment, available, at any rate in the locality, will be reduced owing to the closing of the distilleries. I further receive representations from the shopkeepers in the neighbourhood who be lieve that if the distilleries are closed there will be less money in circulation and less will be spent in the local shops. Therefore, this is a matter which concerns not some 20 distilleries and their immediate shareholders, but concerns the whole population who reside in the two counties which I represent.

It is not a question with me of arguing for or against temperance at the present time, but we feel that the tax which is now proposed to be put upon whisky is an unfair tax as compared with that of other parts of the country. It is unduly heavy, and will result in considerable loss to the Constituents whom I represent. There are two classes of whisky distilleries in Scotland. There is, first of all, what might be called the native product—that is whisky distilled from barley malt, and the number of distilleries which produce that class of whisky is very much greater than the number which produces the raw grain whisky. The barley malt distilleries are scattered throughout Scotland, largely in the Highland districts, and great parts of the Highlands are dependent more or less on them. At the back of these whisky distilleries come the farming class and the local population, who are deeply interested one way or the other. Raw grain distilleries, although large in their output, are much fewer in number, something like 10 or a dozen, as compared with 140 malt grain distilleries. These raw grain distilleries have no farmers at their back. They have no native industry compared with the other. They distil the alcohol which they produce largely from foreign maize, and are therefore situated at ports such as Leith, Glasgow, Alloa and elsewhere. There has been for some time a grievance in Scotland as to the sale under the name of Scotch whisky of a blended article—blended, I am sorry to say, in some cases to such an extent with this alcohol that the percentage of real Scotch whisky has become comparatively small. What we fear in Scotland is this—at least, in my locality —that if the price of whisky is raised by the extra duty of 3s. 9d. per gallon the tendency will be not only that whisky as a whole will be reduced in consumption—about which there may, I admit, be two opinions—but, and this is the important point, there will be less consumption of malt whisky, which is dearer to produce, and a tendency to consume more of the raw grain whisky, which is cheaper to produce. Well, is that good for the people? The statement has often been made—I am not an expert myself on the subject, and I would not venture to give my own opinion —but the statement has often been made that if a man gets drunk on good, sound, old malt whisky he may get pleasantly drunk, but if he gets drunk on raw grain, fiery alcohol he gets mad drunk. Whether that be so or not there is certainly a widespread opinion that it would be better for the people of this country if they could be induced to use good whisky, if they use it at all. The tendency of this tax will have exactly the contrary effect. I would suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he might get out of what I think is the mistaken policy of putting so high a tax on whisky and switch the tax to something would would really be good policy for the country, and that is to graduate the tax according to the age of the whisky. Let him put a severe increase of taxation upon the new fiery and harmful mixture, and let him reduce the duty according to the age of, say, whisky of five or more years old. The tendency would then be that more of the malt whisky would enter into the blends. Malt whisky would be bought by the blenders and others in a larger percentage than at present, because it has to be kept in any case, and practically the effect of such graduation would be that the right hon. Gentleman would satisfy, so far at least the larger number of distillers in Scotland, that he would satisfy the farmers of Scotland, and that he would, I think, go a long way at the same time to satisfy the general consumers.

Mr. C. SCOTT-DICKSON

We are aware that a very large preponderance of the Scottish representation sit on the other side of the House. It is curious that the only two Members from Scotland who have spoken on the other side have both condemned this increase in the tax. So far as my knowledge goes from the vast amount of correspondence that I have had on the subject that is the very common feeling in Scotland, and I think it contributed not a little to the return, without opposition, of my hon. and learned Friend for West Edinburgh. A great deal has been said to-day about the question whether this is a temperance proposal or not. I confess for myself that I do not know what that has to do with a Budget Resolution. We are dealing with finance, and there are some temperance proposals which might be very had finance. Before we are done with this Debate I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to satisfy us that that is not markedly so on the present occasion. The tax proposed to be put on whisky is, as one hon. Member stated this afternoon, an unparalleled increase. No such increase has ever been proposed before, and everybody recognises, I think, that this tax already is beyond what is fair. What is the justification of putting on an unparalleled increase on a product already over-taxed, and at a time not only when the country is suffering from general depression of trade, but when everybody recognises that the whisky trade in particular is suffering? It has been a declining trade for the last 10 years. Trade generally is bad, and that is the time which the Chancellor of Exchequer selects to put this unparalleled increase on a product already over-taxed.

To my mind the Chancellor of the Exchequer has entirely failed to appreciate what a very important part in our manufacturing and commercial life whisky distilling plays. It is a very large business in Scotland. The amount of capital involved is great, and the labour employed, directly or indirectly, is very great. The hon. Member opposite voiced what is the very common feeling in Scotland when he said that if this tax passes, instead of doing anything to mitigate the evil of unemployment we are now suffering from, it will do a great deal to aggravate it. It is not only the manufacture itself which will suffer from the imposition of the tax, but the farmers and shop keepers all over the country will suffer. The feeling is universal that the result of this will be to minimise, if not to kill, the trade. I believe that the figures given by the hon. Member for Inverness were correct. There is no doubt that in Scotland the individual is over-taxed at this moment, and we recognise, just as hon. Members from Ireland do, that in this tax the injustice so far as Irish and Scotch taxation is concerned, is going to be aggravated still more without any justification at all. It will affect particularly that whisky in the shape of good, sound, malt whisky, in the manufacture and distribution of which, as the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn (Mr. Williamson) has pointed out, the distillers, the farmers, shop-keepers, and country labourers have their friend. The increase of the duty is going to put beer in keener and stronger competition with whisky. I have letters from those engaged in the trade saying that even now the competition with beer is coming to tell very severely on whisky. They state that the sale of whisky is going down, while the sale of beer is going up, and what is probably still worse is, that you will put sound malt whisky into competition with the newer and worse kinds of whisky, and you will bring about, in my judgment, and in the judgment of many who are well-qualified to deal with this question, a state of intemperance worse than that from which we are now suffering.

I have submitted to the House that this is not a temperance measure that we are dealing with. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says, rightly, that he has got to get the money, but I say that in getting the money he should get it with discretion. cannot pretend to have the same lengthened experience of some Members of this House; but, personally, I do not remember ally occasion when the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not say: "The receipts from Customs and Excise are not so large as they should be; that may be a good thing for the country as a whole, but it is a bad thing for the Chancellor of the Exchequer." He tells us he hopes for only £1,600,000 from this increase in the duty. How does he make out his figures? I have figures furnished to me from the distilleries North of Perth— those distilleries to which the hon. Member for Inverness and the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn referred to. They produce seven million gallons, which, at 3s. 9d. per gallon would give a revenue of £1,312,000. If you take the whole of the production of the distilleries of last year, you would get not £1,600,000, but about £9,000,000 or £10,000,000. What is the Chancellor of the Exchequer's answer to that? He interrupted the hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities, and said there were only 11 months in this year, and that there has been an anticipation of whisky taken out of bond before the Budget was produced. I would like very much to see how that estimate of £1,600,000 is to be justified. It cannot be done, even according to temperance anticipations. If it can be done, it is the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to show how it is done. I submit that the figures cannot possibly bring out the results which the right hon. Gentleman has stated as the product of this increase in the tax. Is it that the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants to kill the trade? That cannot be his object. Is it that he wants to promote temperance That is not legitimate finance, and it is no part of the Budget. I do submit that the Chancellor of the Exchequer requires to state more definitely and clearly what is his justification for this estimate. The correspondence which I have received from those who are acquainted with the trade shows that there has been a monstrous misrepresentation of the amount this tax will yield. Observe if that is so, there can only be one of two results. Either you are going to kill the trade, which some men of experience say you are, or you are going to tax whisky far beyond what is necessary to give you the money you require. You have budgeted for £1,600,000, but you are going to get £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 more. There is no justification at all for that. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not entitled to put on burdens which the requirements of the country do not need. There have lately been talks about scares. Some Ministers have produced scares already. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has produced his scare, but it has not been a popular scare, so far as we can judge from electoral results. There have been two or three elections since the Budget has been introduced, and we are well content with them on this side of the House. I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be well advised if he reconsiders the Budget and tries to make it not only democratic but fair, and in that way more popular. If he does not I am sure the country will be more dissatisfied than they are now with Radical finance. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will give some indication of how the product of this tax has been calculated as amounting to £1,600,000.

The SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hobhouse)

The hon. Member for the Central Division of Glasgow has proceeded on rather wider lines than those on which the whole discussion has taken place this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman who spoke below the Gangway opposite and some of my hon. Friends behind me confined the discussion to the prospective effect in Ireland and Scotland of the tax which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has proposed, but the hon. Member for Glasgow has dealt more with the tax as it affects the trade and the country as a whole, and, therefore, perhaps it may not be out of place if, before I reply to the more individual criticisms addressed to the House this afternoon, I deal with the subject for a moment from that aspect. The hon. Gentleman asked us why we particularly chose to place a heavy tax upon a declining industry.

I think the answer which my right hon. Friend, if he were standing here, would give, and which I give on his behalf, is that, after all, if you are to reach a large part of the population which do not contribute otherwise directly to the taxation and to the expenses of the country, you get at them most easily and best, by laying some impost upon articles which they themselves consume; and, if you have to lay a tax in that way, it is better, I think, to lay an impost upon some object which is not absolutely a necessity of life, however agreeable it may be to the person who consumes it. Then the hon. Member went on to question not merely the laying of the tax upon the particular thing, but the necessity of fixing the tax at so high a rate as 3s. 9d. I think it was the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool who alluded two or three times in the course of the speech to the fact that he and those who acquiesced with him had put out Mr. Gladstone in 1885 upon the proposal of a 1s. extra duty on the whisky. I think from his point of view the success which attended his efforts then was bad. Having succeeded in defeating the tax of 1s in 1885, what was the result? In 1890 a Conservative Government which they had done so much to place in power, imposed a tax of 6d. a gallon on whisky. In 1894 a Liberal Government which succeeded them added another 6d. on whisky, and in 1900 a Conservative Government imposed another 6d. per gallon on whisky, and the result has been that whisky is now taxed an additional Is. 6d., very largely, I think, in consequence of the successful efforts of the Irish party on that occasion in resisting the 1s. duty, which they threw out.

Sir JOHN DEWAR

The tax is only 11s. now, and it was 10s. then.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

Those three imposts have been made as I have described. A remarkable effect of laying 6d a gallon on whisky has been discovered by all Chancellors of the Exchequer. There were two effects in fixing taxation at that figure. The first was, your revenue did not go up correspondingly with the amount of the tax imposed. And the next was that the consumer got less in quality and less in quantity. Thus he benefited in no way. On the contrary, he was worsened, and the revenue was worsened by the tax so imposed. There clearly, therefore, was no inducement for a Government in search of revenue to limit the tax upon whisky to the sum of 6d. or ls. If spirits were to be selected at all you had therefore to calculate at what rate you would impose your tax so that the producer of the article taxed would be able to recoup himself. We all agree he should be entitled to recoup himself from the persons who consume the article manufactured. There are three conditions to be remembered in making your calculation. You are sure to get a reduction of consumption by the imposition of such a tax due to three associated causes. One is that bad trade and temperance quite apart from anything else have combined to reduce the consumption of spirits in this country, and I think you can put that down as something like two per cent. of the amount consumed. The next is that an increased cost, and consequently a diminishing purchasing power of the habitual consumer also tend to reduce the consumption, and the next and by no means the least, and in some ways at all events from the consumer's point of view the worst of the causes which lead to diminished consumption is the dilution of spirits by the retailer. All those factors therefore have to be taken into account in calculating the amount of tax which is producible from an increased impost placed upon the commodity. The figure therefore of 3s 9d which has been suggested by my right bon Friend, and is proposed to the House has at all events this advantage, that it provides in the first place a substantially increased revenue which is necessary for finance. It is not at all from the temperance but purely from the financial point of view. And I think it prevents avoidance in any way by the producer, the wholesale producer and the retail consumer, and also does enable the trade to do what I think it is legitimately entitled to do—that is, to pass on a very considerable proportion if not quite all—indeed, I may even go further and say more than the whole of the charge imposed upon the persons who consume.

I venture to say it is just as well that this House should understand quite clearly the position of the retailer and manufacturer in this matter. A great number of Gentlemen in this House have an intimate acquaintance with the production of spirits. I venture to say that a great number are not so familiar with the process of distributing spirit from the producer and manufacturer to the actual consumer. If I take up a few moments of the time of the House in making the position quite clear from the Custom and Revenue point of view it may not be, I hope, altogether wasted. It has to be remembered in this connection that things like whisky, brandy, or gin are articles of manufacture which in the technical sense of the word are unknown to the Customs. All they recognise is what is termed plain spirit. Upon the other hand, the trade refuse, to recognise the Customs appellation, and they know nothing of plain spirit, and deal only, as it were, in whisky, gin, and brandy. That leads to some confusion—at least, I found it so in my own case—a confusion of understanding as to what happened in the distribution of spirits from the wholesale manufacturer to the retailer, and it is not unimportant to recollect this distinction in dealing with the incidence of this tax. In the case of gin the distiller makes what is called plain spirit, and he sells it, or disposes of it rather, wholesale to the manufacturer, who makes the plain spirit into gin. But in the case of whisky the process is different. The whisky manufacturer makes his own spirits, which is whisky, and he passes it on, whether it is raw grained whisky, which the hon. Gentleman opposite the Member for Aberdeen University has referred to, or whether it is malt spirit, to the blender, who puts the two together, and produces a mixture which he considers palatable to the consumer.

Mr. FLYNN

That is not the case in Ireland.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I am dealing with it as a whole. The person who pays duty in these cases is not the distiller, as I am informed. I do not speak, of course, for every possible individual case. It is either the manufacturer in the case of gin or it is the blender in the case of whisky. For the purpose of a discussion of this kind we can leave the case of gin out of account, and deal entirely with the case of whisky, which has been presented to us this afternoon. In this case the person, who blends two kinds of whisky as a rule, though not always, breaks the whisky down to 20 per cent. below proof, and distributes it in that state to the retailer. I understand that in London that is not the case, but that in the case of London and some other large cities the publican breaks the whisky down himself. The retailer then buys the proof gallon at 16s. and retails it at 21s. He generally sells at 20 degrees under proof, but he can sell, if he chooses to ignore the Food and Drugs Act, at 25 per cent. under proof.

Sir EDWARD CARSON

How long has that to be kept?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that you can sell raw grained spirit front which the fusel oil has been entirely excluded by the process of manufacture within a few days of manufacture in a perfectly wholesome state.

Sir EDWARD CARSON

I would not like to drink it.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

In the case of malted spirit it may be several years before it can be distributed, and the difference between the age at which you can sell the two kinds of spirit is illustrated by the argument used by my hon. Friend behind me, which I hope to deal with in the course of a few moments. The question of the distribution of the increased charge of 3s 9d. and the possibility of making the consumer r ay the whole of it without receiving a diminution either of quality or of quantity is the crux of the whole question which we are discussing this afternoon. The increased charge of 3s 9d. a gallon is, as I understand at the present moment, distributed—I only deal with the increase to the consumer—over the glass of whisky by the increased charge of a penny a glass. That leaves the retail profit which is distributed over the trade, allowing even for the waste which occurs in distribution and the proportionately higher rate of duty, a profit of about 2s. 10d. This is not an unsubstantial profit after he has paid all the increased charges which are laid upon him by this proposal. It must be remembered—and I have had many careful enquiries made on this point—that there is no general standard of quantity or quality demanded by a consumer or of profit which is made by the retailer. You may have in different streets and in different houses in the same street a different measure given for the same price and you may have on the other hand different charges made for the same quality. There seems to be no fixed standard. The person who purchases spirit in a retail way has no fixed standard either in what he pays or what quantity he expects to receive for his money. The result of all this is that the taxation which is imposed by my right hon. Friend, this new increase, while it is undoubtedly heavy, while it is undoubtedly laid on a trade which to a certain extent is declining—not altogether from the causes suggested by my hon. Friends on this side of the House—can be laid by the producer and by the retailer upon the public at large, and then there will be left a very considerable margin of profit which can be spread over the whole trade to recoup it either for the increased amount of capital employed in the larger payment of duty or any other charges which may incidentally fall upon it in the process of distribution. I hope I have said enough from the general point of view, and I will now endeavour to deal with the case put by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen University (Sir H. Craik) my hon. Friend behind me, the Member for Elgin and Nairn (Mr. A. Williamson), and by the Member for Perth. The whole controversy which has arisen this afternoon is really a controversy, not as to the increase of duty which is proposed by this tax, not as to whether it is paid by the consumer or the producer, but it is an internecine point between two schools of thought in the production of whisky, and two systems of manufacture. one of which is modern, and the other of which is antiquated. I venture to say that the more you look at this question of the production of whisky—I am not dealing with Irish whisky at all—the more difficult it is to believe the affecting tales of the destruction of Scottish industry, of the disappearance of the growth of barley, of the non-employment of labour, of the bankruptcy of farmers, and all the rest of the woes which have been related to the Committee by my hon. Friends this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Elgin and Nairn stated very clearly to the House the different ways of manufacturing raw-grain whisky and malt whisky, and he put the case so clearly to the House that I do not think I need go into the details of the actual process of manufacture. I think it was he who made one point which I really think is not substantial. I think it was he who spoke about the malt whisky being the finest possible whisky that it was possible to put upon the marker. That is the whale contention which is at present before the Royal Commission on Whisky—Is whisky a better material made entirely of malt in the pot still, or is whisky a better material as made from raw grain manufactured by the patent still? The Commission which is inquiring into that question has not definitely reported, or has not finally reported, but it has made an interim report, in which it states that it was impossible to say which of these methods is best, which of them represents purity and which adulteration, and which is most profitable from the point of view of public health. If the Royal Commission, with all the experts who have made inquiry cannot lay down a very clear judgment as to that, I do not think it must be accepted from hon. Gentlemen this afternoon that taxation, if it be taxation, which I do not admit, which drives out one form of whisky and gives preference to another kind of whisky, is really doing any harm from the point of view of health, at all events, to the whisky-consuming public. The whole question is this, is it only taxation that is affecting malt whisky? It is not that at all. The hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn said it, was now the habit of Scotland to use more raw grain whisky and less malt whisky than formerly.

Mr. A WILLIAMSON

It must be under the increased tax.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

As a matter of fact, the whole public taste during the last eight or 10 years, at all events I am so informed by some who have the largest interests in the trade, is in favour of malt whisky, which is more or less driving raw grain whisky out of fashion, and, therefore, so far as the public taste goes, there is no likelihood of the disappearance of barley-growing wing and of the other agricultural evils spoken of at the beginning of this afternoon's Debate. On the contrary, given the fact that the tax can be thrown on the consumer, there seems to be no earthly reason why, under these proposals, the malt whisky of the North of Scotland should in any way be ousted by the raw grain whisky produced elsewhere. Another thing in this connection is that raw grain whisky is not composed entirely, as the hon. Gentleman opposite said, of foreign maize. It is composed of about 25 per cent. of home-grown barley and 75 per cent. of maize. In Ireland, understand, the same spirit is made without any maize at all, the proportions being about -25 per cent. home-grown barley and the rest raw grain, either oats or barley. Even if the result were to displace the malt spirit in favour of raw grain spirit there would still be all the opportunities which at present exist for the cultivation of home-grown barley. There is another fact which must not be forgotten in this controversy, and it is this: Whatever may be the relative price of home and foreign barley in the South of England and the North of Scotland, I am informed on indisputable evidence that home barley is used in spite of its dearness because of the better quality of whisky which it produces Home-grown barley is actually used, in spite of its higher price, in preference to the foreign barley, because you can make a better spirit and get more results from the article. I hope I have not detained the House at too great length in endeavouring to explain that these evils which are anticipated will not arise from what undoubtedly is a heavy tax, a tax which is only laid with reluctance on this particular industry, though, after all, the revenue must be taken. I hope I have shown that it will not extinguish the trade, or extinguish that part of home industry which depends upon the production and consumption of whisky, and that whatever the re luctance of the general consumer may be to contribute to the expenses of the country, he is only mulcted in a manner which is just and equitable.

Sir E. CARSON

Will the right hon. Gentleman say how he arrives at the amount to he realised from the tax?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I understand my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is attending a Cabinet meeting, will deal with that aspect of the case. I have dealt more particularly with the processes of manufacture.

Mr. FLYNN

I cannot compliment the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down on the most extraordinary speech he has made. He has endeavoured with somewhat clumsy ingenuity to turn this Debate from the question of the duty to an inquiry into processes of manufacture—a sort of Islington Police Court inquiry into what is whisky. That is not the point of debate at all. I cannot congratulate the right hon. Gentleman either on his facts or his figures. He reminded the House that in 1885 the Irish party helped to displace the then Liberal Government because they proposed to tax whisky at is. a gallon. The hon. Gentleman told us that since then three sixpences had been added to the whisky duty. We opposed the proposal to increase the duty by is. over 20 years ago, and it was not imposed, and since then there have been only two increases of 6d. each, and not three as the hon. Gentleman stated, so that at any rate it has taken nearly 20 years to obtain an increase of is., the amount which we resisted in 1885. If we opposed a tax of is. at that time surely we are bound to revolt now when it is proposed to increase the tax by nearly four times ls. I should like to call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what this tax means. How much does he anticipate to get out of it? We have had various sets of figures put before us since this discussion began in regard to what would be the yield of the spirit duty proposed to be imposed, and from the tobacco duty, and we are no nearer yet to even an approximation of what will be the result. The Chancellor of the Exchequer a short time ago was asked to give the figures for 1906, 1907, and 1908. I have the Irish figures, which show that the quantity of spirits consumed in Ireland in 1906 was something like 4,190,000 gallons and that at 11s. per gallon produced £2,304,500. Then the figures for Scotland given to a Scottish Member totalled £2,453,000. In the name of Providence, where does the Chancellor get this figure of £1,600,000 of increased duty? I have puzzled my brain and I have gone over those figures, and I cannot understand, and none of us can understand how or on what basis he arrives at that estimate. We believe it will be three or four or five times that amount. Take the Irish figures alone. The figures given for the last five years are:—For England, £12,289,000 odd; Scotland, £3,791,000; Ireland, £2,043,000. Those are the latest figures. In Ireland alone the extra duty of 3s 9d per gallon, based on the present consumption, would amount in round numbers to £670,000. Making an allowance for a decreased consumption of 20 per cent., which is rather more than that mentioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose figure was, I think, 11 per cent., and allowing that by a large margin of 20 per cent., the increase in Ireland alone, based upon the figures of the past five years, would amount to £545,000, and if you add to that increase in Ireland on the spirit duty the addition of £213,000 on Tobacco Duty, then in addition to being overtaxed, as we claim to be, you will be putting on us additional taxation to the amount of over three-quarters of a million, or £758,000.

I do hope when we come to discuss these things in Committee that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and those responsible for these figures will look sharp into the matter and give us those figures, without which we are more or less groping in the dark, and without which it is impossible to discuss these very great financial proposals with anything approaching to accuracy or clear-sightedness. Nothing surprises me more since this Budget came up for discussion than the air of mystery in which those figures are wrapped. Every year about July we get a Return of Revenue income and expenditure applied to the three countries, and under different headings. This Return is stated to be Customs and Excise, stamps, tobacco, spirits, and so on. We get this Return down into hundreds of pounds, stated, apparently, with accuracy, and so arranged as to bring out the contribution to Imperial expenditure by England, Scotland, and Ireland. With a Budget of this kind, with enormously increased duties on two or three articles of consumption, we cannot get the figures at all. If that be so, and if the Chancellor and his experts cannot give us the figures in connection with the Budget, how do they arrive at those figures of July every year? I must say it is most embarrassing and most difficult to carry on a Debate under such circumstances as these, but I think we are entitled to have those figures with regard to tobacco, with regard to spirits, and with regard to liquor licence duty when we come to discuss the Budget. So much has been said by hon. Friends from Scotland that it is not necessary to labour the points at any greater length, as far as concerns Ireland.

I think we are entitled to ask the question: Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in bringing forward his proposals with regard to the increased duty on spirits, come as a Finance Minister or as a social reformer? If he comes as a social reformer, then I can quite understand his avowedly putting on this enormous increase of 3s. 9d. on 11s.—one-third. on a duty already almost unbearable. If he does that as a temperance reformer, anxious and desirous to crush out the consumption of whisky and spirits, I can then understand him. But that is not the duty of a Finance Minister. If he comes forward as a Finance Minister, has he calculated the possibility that this enormous increase of duty will lead to such a very large reduction in the consumption that he will get very little from it, or he may be impaled on the other horn of a dilemma, namely, that the decrease in the consumption of the superior and better class whisky, as hon. Members for Scotland have pointed out, may lead to a large increase in the inferior class of spirits, and thus cause ruin and destruction to thousands of people. I regret that the hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury has made no attempt whatever to answer the case made from these Benches or from the Benches opposite. I rather thought he was trifling with the House, and that when we are discussing very important proposals dealing with large finance to treat us to a sort of semi-chemical lecture as to the difference between raw-grained whisky and malt whisky was an attempt to befog us and unworthy of his reputation and unworthy of the great issues raised. This is our preliminary canter with regard to this and the tobacco duty. I would not say with the hon. Member for Louth that we are opposed to this Budget lock, stock, and barrel. There are other proposals in this Budget I strongly and heartily approve of as a step forward in the direction of great economic reform and the uplifting of the social condition of the people; but with regard to the present taxes we resist them to-day, we shall resist them on second reading, and at every stage as unfair, unjust, and inequitable.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

I regret that the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, while protesting against the Chancellor of the Exchequer having imposed any taxes affecting tea and tobacco, does not object to his taxing other objects, which he says he will discuss at a later stage. As far as I am concerned, my attitude to all these Resolutions must necessarily have relation to my attitude to the Budget as a whole. We are obliged to consider the proposals of the Budget individually; but I, at any rate, have never forgotten that they are part of a great whole, and that we should try and judge them as a whole. I think them bad, and, therefore, as taking that view, I shall vote against them. The summary which the Financial Secretary will supply to the Chancellor of what took place here this afternoon will show him that if he supposes that the reason some of these Resolutions were adopted without discussion on the first night was because they raised no opposition he would be entirely mistaken in that supposition. We have had from every quarter of the House vehement criticism directed against the proposal of the Chancellor which is now before the House. We have had a very interesting speech from the Financial Secretary in reply, but I think the speech had been prepared in view of a different Debate, and that the course the Debate took rather took the hon. Gentleman by surprise. Hon. Members from Ireland have contended in the first place that if you are to take indirect taxes and tax articles of consumption you have chosen one which presses with undue severity upon Ireland, both upon her industry and upon her consumers. Hon. Members from Scotland sitting upon the Government side of the House, as well as hon. Friends of mine, have taken up exactly the same attitude in regard to this tax in its application to Scotland, and they have told us that it presses most harshly upon the poorer parts of Scotland, just as hon. Members from Ireland complain that it presses very harshly on Ireland, which, taken as a whole, is a poor country. With those arguments, not unfamiliar to me in the days when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when they were put forward with less provocation, the Financial Secretary has not attempted to deal— he passed them by in silence. It is not that the hon. Gentleman's speech was inadequate, but he deliberately refrained from attempting to make any answer at all.

It remains for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give us his justification for the tax as against those criticisms upon it. There were other criticisms made which the Financial Secretary passed by with equal silence, and it is to them that I want to direct the attention of the Chancellor now. We have said to him at intervals during this discussion that we could not understand his estimate. I do not know that the House is not always right to be suspicious of the estimates of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to, at any rate, examine them critically, but when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has an obvious object in desiring a large and apparently unexpected surplus, and when the Estimates appear to be drawn with a looseness to which we are wholly unaccustomed, and when we are unable to find in the only facts available any sound basis for the conclusions arrived at, then our critical faculties are sharpened and our suspicions very much increased. We want the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before we leave this Resolution to-day, to give us a detailed and reasoned explanation of his estimate of the yield of the tax. It is very important financially, it is very important for the industry concerned, because if it he true, as all the representatives of the industry think, that a smaller tax would bring in a larger sum than the Chancellor expects to get, then it is obviously a gross injustice to put a burden on any trade which is not required by the financial necessities of the case; or if it be the decision that under any circumstances this burden is to be put on this trade, then we should have money available to reduce the burden put on people in other taxes. Whether you choose to keep this tax at its level or not we ought to know what the produce of the tax will be, and we ought not to raise a great deal more money than we require. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us that he expects to get in the present year from this tax £1,600,000. That is the figure of which we have had no explanation beyond this contained in these two statements. In the first place, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have but 11 months of the financial year in which to collect the tax, because the duty only came into force a month after the year began; and, in the second place, that in anticipation of the Chancellor's selecting alcohol as one of the things on which to levy new taxation, great withdrawals took place. Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer tell us what amount was withdrawn? Obviously that information is in his possession. He may not have it with him now, but it is readily accessible. If it is on that information that he has made the estimate, he can let us know what excess of whisky was taken out of bond in immediate anticipation of the Budget compared with what is commonly taken out at similar times in recent years. These are the only two explanations which he has given for putting the yield of his duty so low as £1,600,000. The figure seems to be ridiculous. My hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Scott-Dickson) said he was informed that the distilleries north of Perth produced last year seven million gallons, and that the additional duty on that alone would work out at over £1,300,000. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Flynn) made an estimate as to what the yield of the additional duty would be on Irish whisky. He allowed for as much as 20 per cent. decrease in the consumption, and yet he produced a figure which is wholly irreconcilable with the figures of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

That is a problem which confronts us, which we are unable to solve, and which we ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to deal with in the present Debate, giving us the detailed calculations by which he has arrived at an estimate which, on the face of it, appears to be ridiculous, and which appears to us to be adopted by the Government only for the purpose of calculating the yield of their revenue, but never for the purpose of considering what the effects of their tax is going to be on any of the parties concerned. The Financial Secretary, for instance, entered into a very interesting account of the way in which whisky went from its birth till it finally found a haven of rest in the consumer, of the different people's hands it passed through, of the different processes which each applied to it, at what point the whisky paid duty and how the retailer was to get the duty back from the consumer. The hon. Gentleman stated that the retailer would get back not merely the duty, but a considerable addition. I always understood from the party opposite that there was no more fatal flaw in the duties suggested by Tariff Reformers than the fact that they would raise more from the consumer than went into the Exchequer. But now we have the Financial Secretary to the Treasury telling us that it is the great merit of this tax that for every 3s. 9d. the Exchequer gets the retailer and the trade will take another 1s. 3d. from the consumer. That, of course, is to comfort the retailer and the trade, and to explain to them that, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer has fixed upon an undoubtedly declining trade on which to impose additional taxation to an amount never heretofore dreamt of, they will be just as well off in the end as they were in the beginning, and, indeed, rather better off, because they will be able to get so much more out of the consumer. Did the Financial Secretary allow for the injury which is going to be done to the retailer, to the distiller, and to everyone concerned, by the decrease of the trade which they will be able to do? In order to justify the estimate of —1,600,000, after allowing for the month of the year which slipped by, and for the forestalments, whatever they are, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be counting on a tremendous reduction in the amount of whisky consumed. Of course, it is a difficulty that in trying to get 3s. 9d, more out of whisky he loses 11s. on every gallon that does not pass into consumption. Therefore he has got to make out of the whisky which is still drunk, not merely the amount of new revenue, but the tremendous loss of revenue on all the whisky that he prevents being sold. Is that the explanation why he bases his estimate of revenue so low? If it is, what becomes of all the assurances of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hobhouse) that the trade itself, the retailer, the wholesaler, the manufacturer, and the various industries dependent upon them, are going to he unhurt? If you decrease the turnover of the distillery, you increase the fixed cost relative to the turnover on which the profit has to be made, and you reduce the profit, other things being equal, not merely by the amount of the tax, but in proportion to the decrease which you make in the business right through the whole of the turnover.

And you will do something more. To justify the Chancellor of the Exchequer's anticipation of so small a revenue, you must be doing what hon. Members for Scotland and Ireland have said you are doing. You must be so treating the trade that you will kill a number of distilleries, actually destroy industries now existing, and greviously affect all those who directly or indirectly are dependent upon them. And this is the Budget of which it is the proud boast of the President of the Board of Trade that it at least injures no industry and affects no trade. It is going to take particular traders and extinguish them; it is going to make their business impossible of carrying on. That is not a thing which taxation ought to do. If you want to put down spirit-drinking as a social evil, approach it as such, strike at it as such, forbid it by law; but you have no right to raise taxation to a point at which it makes it impossible for a man to carry on a business which, in every other aspect of your law, you regard as a proper business for him to carry on. In this case it is a business which affects a great number of other industries, and it is a great misfortune that the industry which it affects the most is another suffering industry, namely, agriculture. The Financial Secretary told us that this, after all, was a dispute between pot still and patent still—between two different sections of the trade. I know that pot still versus patent still is a very burning question, and that Ministers, when touching upon it, need to walk warily and be careful how they offend either of these great industries. But if it be, as it is alleged by all those who are interested in the pot-still section, that their whisky can less bear the heavy increase in taxation than the patent still. then you are striking hardest that production which is the most valuable to agriculture, and it is poor consolation to tell the agriculturists who are largely dependent for such prosperity as they enjoy on the production and sale of barley that they need not give up hope, because even where whisky is brewed 75 per cent. from maize a percentage of barley still comes into it. I think it is an unfortunate thing that. restricted as I think by wholly false ideas on the subject of taxation, the Government, when feeling bound, and rightly feeling bound, to raise a part of their new revenue by indirect taxation, should have thought it possible only to deal with these particular taxes. It was not worth while giving up the sugar duty last year in order to put a tobacco duty on this year. But I must not go into that; I was branching off to a Resolution to which we are not yet come. If the Government were not restricted by phrases which are largely meaningless, they could have found means by which to raise their revenue without anything like the sense of injustice to two portions of the United Kingdom which these particular taxes impose, without anything like the injury to agriculture and manufactures which they will inflict, and without burdening one particular article with such tremendous duties as those which they now propose.

I know the answer which right hon. Gentlemen habitually make. They say: "Oh, you would tax the necessaries of the life of the people." I wish they would get behind the phrase and get to the facts. An hon. Member from Ireland the other night asked whether they called meat a necessary of life, because there are thousands of poor cottagers in Ireland who never see meat from year's end to year's end, and where tobacco and tea are the two comforts which they have. Tobacco and tea are consumed every day by them. Is it not a mockery to satisfy yourself with a phrase which has no meaning in the real life of these people to refrain from taxing what they do not eat because you say it is necessary to them, although they cannot afford it, and to tax the things which they do eat and consume? The Prime Minister the other day begged his friends to remember that such proposals as we Tariff Reformers put forward meant taxing bread and cheese. I wish he had been in the House when the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. T. Healy) asked just now, "Why do you not tax cheese? There is no cheese eaten by the poor in Ireland." It is another of those happy phrases which have so little meaning in fact, but are so useful on the platform.

Mr. JOHN WARD

made an observation which was inaudible in the Press Gallery.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Yes, including some of those articles to which hon. Members have desired to induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer to turn his attention, but which he has eschewed because they are contrary to his theories of sound finance — theories which, as is illustrated by every discussion, are breaking down in practice.

They no longer correspond to the real facts of, our life or the needs of our people. I, for my part, think that the time we have spent over these Resolutions, though to the Chancellor of the Exchequer they may seem long, is not ill-spent, because these discussions are having a wonderfully educative effect in the country.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. A. Chamberlain) in the latter part of his speech, entered into a very wide field of discussion indeed, into which I cannot follow him without transgressing some of the rules of Debate. He invited me to follow him into the discussion of the Fiscal question. Well, one thing I am inclined to say, I do not quite appreciate his point when he talks about bread and cheese as being a sort of a mere phrase, something shadowy, with no substance at all about it. "Bread and cheese!" He poured scorn on the idea of bread and cheese being necessaries of life. His idea of the necessaries of life is whisky and tobacco. Bread and cheese, it is quite an irrelevant consideration. The real sorrows of the poor in Ireland, said the right hon. Gentleman, is that you are depriving them of their whisky. Really, I do not think that even the most industrious advocate of whisky as a beverage ever has regarded it as one of the necessities of life, while as regards tobacco we are completely out of order in discussing it.

I will come to other parts of his speech. After all, the right hon. Gentleman for the last fortnight or three weeks has been denouncing us because we have been taxing the rich. We have raised all our taxes out of the rich! Now this is a part of the Budget where we are seeking to get a contribution from all parties, and in order to do that we have to tax one or more commodities; we have to take tea, tobacco, beer, or spirits. Wine would produce nothing adequate for the purpose, or wine would have been a fair competitor for this purpose. We wanted to raise three and a-half millions out of indirect taxation, therefore you have to elect between the articles I have named. [An HON. MEMBER: "Sugar."] I beg pardon, I had forgotten sugar. That is the fifth article. It has been asked why do you not put the tax on sugar? The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. A. Chamberlain) would have preferred it to be put on sugar rather than whisky. These were the two rival claims. When you come to con sider the two rival claims, whether you take Ireland or elsewhere, the majority of the people would infinitely have preferred to have the tax put on whisky to sugar. I shall never forget the speeches from the Irish benches when the tax was put on sugar. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Louth (Mr. T. Healy)—

Mr. T. HEALY

Why do not you put it on beer?

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

I will come to beer by-and-by, but I was going to give what is quite a relevant illustration. Let us take sugar. I shall never forget the strong denunciations from those benches, in which I joined, because they said what an important element in food sugar was, and the poorer the people of Ireland the greater the amount of sugar they consumed. Between the two I do not think anyone who knows the life of the poor would for one moment say that whisky is not a subject for taxation rather than sugar. The right hon. Gentleman places the two in contrast. I am perfectly willing to join issue upon that.

Mr. A. CHAMBERLAIN

I did not put them in contrast.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Well, someone did, and I thought it was the right hon. Gentleman. I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman does not take that view. To come again to the poor. My hon. and learned friend the Member for Louth says why not tax beer? Take beer, first of all from the point of the Exchequer. You want to put a tax on which, if placed on the consumer, will represent something like the amount you want. One halfpenny on a pint of beer will very nearly represent an income of £20,000,000. When you come to consider that a good deal of beer is sold in glasses it will produce a good deal more than would otherwise be the case. I do not want £20,000,000. by indirect taxation. It would throw £20,000,000 upon the worker, and the whole, therefore, of these taxes of the burdens of "Dreadnoughts," old age pensions, and everything else, if put on beer, will be passed on to the worker.

Mr. T. HEALY

The English worker.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Not merely the English worker, but the Irish as well. I think the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) pointed out in the Debate that there is an increased consumption in Ireland of beer, and that the manufacture of beer is an increasing industry in Ireland. A tax would be passed on, therefore, not merely to the English and Scottish workmen, but in an increasing proportion to the Irish workmen. May I point out to my hon. Friend that if you take spirits the contribution of the Irish workman will get smaller year by year, whereas if I put it on beer the contribution of the Irish workmen would grow year by year. [Cries of dissent.] Well, that is what I am informed. There is an increasing consumption in Ireland of beer. They are passing from whisky to beer—

Mr. T. W. RUSSELL

Stout.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Well, stout. I am including all—black beer and ale. Therefore I cannot possibly put it on beer because I only want a small revenue from indirect taxation, and no part of the House would sanction, I do not think the right hon. Gentleman himself would support me, if I said I will raise £14,000,000 of what I need by putting a tax on the beer of the workmen. Then come to tea. It is drunk by not merely the poor, but by the very poor. The worst of it is this, that the poorer the quality of tea drunk the higher the percentage of tax it pays. When you come to the quality of tea drunk by the very poor people, whether in Ireland or this country, and compare what is represented by duty you find it is 100 per cent. [An HON. MEMBER: 80 per cent.] It is a very high percentage.

Mr. THOMAS LOUGH

The poor in Ireland drink much better tea than the rich in England.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Well, I know that the Irish are very good judges of tea. At any rate, when you come to the very poor qualities of tea, I think I will be borne out in saying that the percentage of duty is extraordinary high, that it is something like 100 per cent. When you come to the better classes of tea drunk by Irish, English and Scotch, you find the percentage is very much lower. This, therefore, would be a tax on the very very poor. The reports in connection with the old age pensions in Ireland shows me that tea was the sole beverage of many of the aged poor. A tax on tea would have been a very cruel tax. That disposes of sugar, beer, and tea.

Now let us take the things we have retained—the tobacco and the whisky. After all they are luxuries. Being luxuries I think it is perfectly fair that a contribution should be raised rather out of the spare money that is spent upon luxuries, rather than out of the essentials of life. That is why we have chosen these. I have been challenged a good deal with regard to the estimates. The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that it is very difficult to forecast what you are going to get out of your taxes. He knows it is an operation that takes some time to discover—sometimes a good deal. In nothing is this more true than in spirits. Several Chancellors of Exchequer have tried to raise a revenue out of spirits. Substantially they have failed. Sir Wm. Harcourt tried it. He did not get the money. Lord St. Aldwyn tried it. He did not get the money.

Mr. A. CHAMBERLAIN

Except in the first year.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Well, I am in the first year; my estimate is for the first year. I think the revenue rights itself eventually, but the difficulty is the first year. It is always somewhat of a gamble the first year. What are the elements—to speak quite frankly to the House—when you come to estimate your revenue to be derived out of spirits. First of all, there is forestalment before the end of the financial year. There was still more considerable forestalment during the month of April—very considerable forestalment: so that probably for the next few weeks the spirit trade, speaking as a whole, need not draw anything out of bond.

Mr. A. CHAMBERLAIN

Can you tell us what proportion was withdrawn?

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

I can later on. These are elements which no Chancellor of the Exchequer would care to talk very much about, because it looks like sanctioning these things. There are ways of evading the revenue. Lord St. Aldwyn did not get his money, but the trade did. I do not want to indicate these ways, because it looks as if I were speaking of them as if the Exhequer would sanction them; they were referred to in Parliament as the "pump." There are other ways by which the trade at any rate in the first year should be able to reduce their contribution of the revenue. Eventually, I have no doubt it will come right, because the customers will not have it. That is why dining the first year the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not get the full benefit of the txation upon spirits. It is much easier to evade a tax on spirits than it is on beer, because beer does not offer the same opportuntities to the publican. What happens? The customer orders his whisky, but he orders it for the purpose of diluting it. Very often the publican says, very well, I might as well begin that process for him, and so he continues until he finds out when he has got to the right pitch of dilution. The tax is on crude spirit. There is a certain amount of dilution allowed by law, and in many cases the publicans put up a notice saying that they are not responsible, and do not guarantee the quality of the whisky. In that case you cannot prosecute them. These are elements of uncertainty in the tax in the first year of its operation. There are other elements. There is just the chance that the publicans may keep their stock down, and a week or a fortnight's stock in hand will make a very considerable difference to the revenue for the first year. If they reduce their stock 10 days or a fortnight it makes an enormous difference to the revenue. You lose not only the extra 3s. 9d. per gallon, but you loose the 11s. as well. These are elements of uncertainty which have to be reckoned with for the first year, and in addition to them we have to consider other things as well. There is the diminuation of consumption. There is a steady diminution in consumption of spirit in this country. We have to reckon that in connection with the diminution in consumption we lose again not only the 3s. 9d. but the 11s. ordinary duty, 15s. per gallon in all. There is an enormous and continuous diminution in consumption. I have no doubt that the increase will have the effect of very considerably diminishing the consumption further. I think it may have that effect in more ways than one. One way is possibility by dilution, and another way is by giving smaller revenues.

There is no standard measure in the ordinary case. [An HON. MEMBER: There is the half-pint."] Yes, the ordinary half-pint. That is a standard measure, but in whisky you say a "small" or a "large" Scotch, or perhaps you order what—in my part of the world they have a very good name for it—is called a "cropper." These are not standard measures, and I was informed by a gentleman who knows these things very well that they are reducing their measures in some restaurants and public-houses by 20 per cent. If they are going to reduce them by 20 per cent. I will not get my £1,600,000 at all, and I do not think any man can forecast with anything like certainty what the yield of taxation of this kind will be during the first year. I must ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester would he be prepared to farm out this revenue? The right hon. Gentleman who leads the Opposition is prepared to make a deal. I think it is a very risky speculation. He might make a lot of money out of it, but he might drop a lot. It is a very risky calculation, and I do not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer after all these elements of uncertainty to deal with would be justified in the first year in giving anything but an exceedingly cautious estimate. I agree, before the Debates on the Budget close, I should be in a better position to give a more reliable estimate, but a good deal depends upon what happens. We will know pretty well whether the extra ½d. or 1d. is going to produce diminished consumption. We will know whether the publican is going to take it out in increased dilution or decreased measure. Before these Debates are over we will know fairly well what the income of the tax is going to be, and I am quite prepared to let the House know the facts with very great care, and to tell them what is going on. We shall watch from day to day, and whatever information I get I will put at the disposal of the House. I agree that the House of Commons is entitled to all information we have got at our disposal for the purpose of making an estimate. We have no right to raise more money by taxation than is demanded by the requirements of the State, and if there is any prospect, owing to the working of the tax, of the return being more favourable to the revenue than was anticipated, then the House of Commons is entitled to know not merely what the facts are, but to dispose of whatever surplus the tax will yield in the way which suits it best according to the Committee of Ways and Means.

At the present moment I am justified, and I certainly think if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) were in my place he would take the same view, that I would not be justified but in giving a very cautious and a very moderate estimate of what the tax is likely to yield, and for that reason I am quite prepared to justify the line which the Government has taken. There is a possibility that we might not get the £1,600,000. Every Chancellor up to the present has been disappointed in his estimate of the whisky tax. This is an experiment which enables the retailer to take it off the consumer. I have done that deliberately, because I have not thought it fair in cases of this kind to put on the tax in a way that would embarrass trade and make it very difficult for them to pass it on to the consumer. Here they are able to do it. It is fairer to them, and it not only enables them to pass it on to the consumer, but it enables the retailer to charge practically his increased licence duty upon the whisky in most cases, and he is doing it. I could point out to the right hon. Gentleman, and I could give him figures to show, that by the increased charge which the publicans are making in respect to whisky they are making a profit of —4,000,000 a year, even making a considerable allowance for diminution of consumption.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

That illustrates the point to which I wish the right hon. Gentleman to address himself. He says that 1s. 3d. a gallon to the publican is a profit of £4,000,000, though 3s. 9d. a gallon to the Exchequer is only £1,600,000.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The figure I gave was 2s. 7d. per gallon to the publican.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Surely the hon. Gentleman said the retailer would charge 5s. on account of the 3s. 9d. put on by the Budget?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

No, 6s. 8d.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

I think lie said 5s. That is how I got my 1s. 3d. for the trade; but suppose the hon. Gentleman said 2s. 3d., how does 2s. 3d. provide £4,000.000 to the trade while 3s. 9d. produced only £1,500,000 to the Exchequer?

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

I was not here when my hon. Friend spoke. As I understand it, his figures were these: He took 80 glasses to the gallon, and he estimates a penny per glass, which would be 6s. 8d., and deducting 3s. 9d. the right hon. Gentleman will see that the difference could not possibly be 1s. 3d., but is 2s. 11d.; but my hon. Friend made certain reductions for wastage, and from that basis a profit is provided of £4,048,000.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Then the lesser sum for the retailer produces a larger return than the larger sum does for the Exchequer?

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

I made a very considerable allowance for diminished consumption before estimating it at any figure. Every man in the trade knows perfectly well that the trade is making a considerable margin of profit, and that they are paying with it not merely the 3s. 9d., but in addition to that most of them are making something towards their licence duty as well. That is the process which is going on at the present moment. I may point out, in addition to that, they are charging the full penny in respect to whisky on which they had not paid a single additional penny. Take the millions of gallons which they withdrew from bond and on which they did not pay the 3s. 9d. They are charging the extra penny for that, and they will probably make out of that something like a million. Apart from that charge, they are making in respect of tobacco upon which they never paid the extra duty, so that the trade up to the present have not much to complain of. I think now I have dealt with most of the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman and with the points raised by the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. BALFOUR

I do not propose to detain the House at any length, but I think the House will agree with me that if anything required further to be said aganst this tax than has been said by hon. Gentlemen from Ireland and Scotland that an additional criticism has been passed upon it by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I really am absolutely astounded by the statement which the right hon. Gentleman has given us. What does it amount to? I think it amounts to an important endowment of the trade. I heard nothing else but endowment of the trade passed on a certain Bill four years ago, but whoever heard of endowing a trade upon the scale which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has endowed it? He tells us in the course of his speech, in regard to beer, that he would not put a tax upon beer because the smallest addition to the charge by the retailer would give £20,000,000. In his speech—I am only going to say this in passing, in answer to the right hon. Gentleman—in the speech which he delivered, and in the speech which the Prime Minister delivered on the Committee stage, they told us Licence Duties were going to be thrown upon the public. That was their defence. The only way to throw it upon the public would be that there should be some additional charge, and the smallest additional charge would give £20,000,000 according to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. That is not going into the Exchequer, but to the brewers, and it is not a bad endowment to the brewers. Now I come to what is more strictly germane, namely, the distillers. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is going to get by this tax £1,600,000 for the Treasury and £4,000,000 for the distillers. Did any human being ever hear a tax defended on those principles? Who are the Gentlemen making this extraordinary profit? As my right hon. Friend (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) pointed out, hon. Gentlemen opposite are always occupying themselves in explaining that any system of taxation proposed from this side of the House has the merit of putting money in the hands of the traders, and not into the Exchequer. I may say that no tax ever proposed from this side of the House put £4,000,000 into the hands of a particular class of traders and £1,500,000 into the Exchequer. [An OPPOSITION Member: "That is democratic finance."] That is one of the strange inconsistencies of the Government, but here is another. Here are hon. Gentlemen opposite who occupied the whole of last autumn endeavouring to impose what they admitted, and what we urged, was an unfair burden upon the trade, coming forward now with proposals which, in the mouth of one of the Members of the Cabinet who spoke no later than Saturday last, are a particular form of taxation which is the second best method of dealing with the trade as compared with what was proposed last year. Last year, by universal admission, they endeavoured to deprive the trade of what the trade thought, at any rate, was their property, and the Government now come forward with what they call the second best method, by which it turns out they are giving the distillers alone £4,000,000 a year. I do not know which is the most astounding, the fiscal inconsistencies or the legislative inconsistencies of the Government.

There is only one other point I will allude to, because we want to conclude the Debate, but it is a very important one, and I will trouble the House with it for only a moment. What is the broad justification given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for this tax? The right hon. Gentleman says with great truth: "If you are going to proceed on the general lines we have been going on it would be most unfair to put new and very heavy taxation upon the more wealthy classes of the community and ask the less wealthy classes of the community to contribute nothing substantial to the great deficit which we have to meet." That is a good, broad, general principle with which I entirely agree; but let us examine for a moment the right hon. Gentleman's method of carrying out this policy. He says you will have to throw this burden upon the working classes of the community, and who does it turn out the working classes are? Why, the people who drink whisky in Scotland, Ireland, and England. In Scotland they drink hardly any beer. I believe that the proportion of beer consumed is larger in Ireland than has been stated, but they drink a larger amount relatively of spirits. May I ask how the right hon. Gentleman makes this a fair balance between the different classes when you are turning round to find a poor man's tax, to find that poor man only in Scotland and Ireland? How can you justify that? The right hon. Gentleman says you ought to do your best to bring in all classes of the community, but when you say that in part of your Budget you are throwing a burden on the millionaire, upon the miner, the landowner, and adding to the Death Duties and Income Tax, let us turn round and see in the case of the non-Income Tax paying class, the non-Death Duty paying class, and the non-landowners, how are you going to deal with them? The right hon. Gentleman locks round amongst the 43,000,000 inhabitants of these islands and fixes his eye upon the people who live north of the Tweed and west of St. George's Channel. "There," he says, "is the poor man I need." Is that the proper way to raise this tax, and is that the true method of balancing your Budget? I do not think that will hold water, and I do not think it will be successful. Observe, as if the international unfairness is not enough as between population and population, there is another absurdity. What does the Chancellor the Exchequer say about his Estimate? He says. "I cannot really estimate for a consumption of more than 1,600,000 because there is this and that way of evading the tax." That is quite true, but it should not be forgotten that you will be making too much money next year. Does the right hon. Gentleman see the extraordinary absurdity of putting on a gigantic tax this year because it will not be paid, and then keeping it on next year when it will not be wanted? And as if that absurdity were not enough, the right hon. Gentleman openly says that he means to drive or induce the population of these islands who still drink whisky to drink beer.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

I did not say anything of the kind. I never said a word about it. [An OPPOSITION MEMBER: "Yes you did, in your Budget speech."]

Mr. BALFOUR

I think the right hon. Gentleman in his Budget speech made that statement.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

Oh! In my Budget speech?

Mr. BALFOUR

Yes.

Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE

What I did say in my Budget speech was that I had based my estimate upon the probability of an increased consumption of beer; but I never said I had put on the tax to drive people to drinking beer. I had nothing to do with that statement.

Mr. BALFOUR

But the people who make spirits have a great deal to do with it. It now turns out that the Chancellor of the Exchequer distinctly contemplates a thing which is put before us for purely fiscal reasons—although that is an. extremely absurd one—is really going to divert an industry from one channel to another. I think that is a rather rash admission for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make. If you take all these considerations together, in the first place that you are going to endow the trade; in the second place that you are going to tax, in the name of taxation, the poor, and you are going to tax the poor who happen to live in not the richest part of these islands; in the third place you are going to put on a tax which will not be effective this year, and will not be wanted next year; and in the fourth place you are putting on a tax fully conscious that it will divert this industry from one channel to another—considering all these arguments together, I think the right hon. Gentleman will see that the duty of defending his Budget has only just begun.

Mr. STEPHEN GWYNN

I wish to find out whether this enormous tax, so revolutionary in its character, is one which can be justified as being necessary. I confess, after listening to what has been said from the Treasury Bench in reply to our speeches, I cannot admit that it has been paved that this tax is either justifiable or necessary. No attempt has been made by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to prove that, as between Ireland and Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, this tax is fair and equitable. It cannot be contended that any tax is justifiable that has a tendency to ruin an existing industry. It is, of course, possible that this rise of 15 or 20 per cent. on the price of whisky may not greatly affect the course of trade, but it certainly seems to me not only possible but very likely that it will divert this industry, and we shall have, as the result, less distillers and more brewers. That is unfair as between Ireland and Scotland on the one side, and England on the other, because you are likely to ruin an industry which exists practically only in Ireland and Scotland. This is only one of two or three industries in Ireland which has survived. I want to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to prove that this tax is necessary.

The right hon. Gentleman has put a tax on Ireland and upon Scotland which has not been proved to be necessary from a temperance point of view. I do not consider that he has proved the case that the yield which he anticipates will be forthcoming. Again the defence which he has made for putting on this extraordinary tax is not defensible from the point of view of machinery. The official defence is that you cannot put a small tax upon anything and collect it from the consumer. Surely the Financial Secretary of the Treasury is aware that you cannot tax beer in this way so as to make it produce 20 millions of money. The tax which is supposed to be imposed is neither justifiable nor necessary. I hold that the tax is unfair in its incidence, and excessive in its magnitude. What I ask myself is: How is the tax going to affect Ireland? In my own Constituency we had a most important distillery some three years ago when it was closed. For those number of years it has thrown out of work some 80 to 100 men. There was some attempt to reopen it, but how can this distillery be reopened with this proposed tax of 3s. 9d. a gallon? Before I sit down there is one other point I should like to allude to. It is a point which ought to be considered. That is the enormous encouragement which the increased tax will give to illicit distillation in Ireland. I was brought up in a place where there was illicit distillation, and I know very well the demoralisation which took place from it. It was in the County of Donegal. It is true that the illicit trade was suppressed, but it was not suppressed by the police. Of course it is a risky trade, but now that you are going to increase the tax from between 3s. and 4s. a gallon there will be a great increase in illicit distillation all along the West Coast of Ireland. It is for that reason alone that I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be well advised to reconsider his proposals if that be possible.

Mr. WILLIAM REDMOND

I shall stand between the House and the Division only for a few moments. I wish to explain why I must join with my colleagues in making a protest against the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I ask him whether his attention has been called to the fact that in regard to these proposals, with the exception of the hon. Member for Tyrone and, perhaps, the gentleman who is connected with the Irish Government, every single Irish Member—representatives of all sections of the Irish people—will unite on this question against the Government in the Division Lobby. This question is regarded in Ireland from an Irish point of view. I would like to point out that nothing is to be gained for temperance by the support of this proposal by those who are in favour of temperance legislation. The Irish Members are in favour of temperance reform, and they have shown over and over again that they will support any Bill which has for its object the promotion of temperance in Ireland, but every one of the Irish Members who is in favour of temperance reform will, as far as I know, vote against the proposed increase. Not because it is an impost on the taxation of whisky, but because it is an increase on an Irish manufacture. I am not one of those who take up the position that the proposed tax ought to be supported from a temperance point of view, but this proposal is opposed unanimously over Ireland. The Irish people feel that the country is already overtaxed, and that it is unjust to put further taxation upon them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we in Ireland should accept this proposed tax because there was no increase in the taxation on tea. Our position is not that you tax our tea or our whisky, or any particular commodity, but we object to it because our country has reached its limit in regard to taxation, and that you have no right to put increased taxation of any kind whatever on it. If this money is to be raised, it ought not to be raised at the expense of the Irish people. The Chancellor said that if the tax was put upon beer it would hit the Irish people. That is not the way to look at the matter. Whisky is one of the few remaining industries left in Ireland, and it is unfair that you should select that industry for fresh taxation and leave the beer in Ireland free from any fresh taxation. I think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done an unfair thing, and an unwise thing. He wants to get £16,000,000. Well, he will get opposition to his Budget far out of proportion to that amount. I strongly recommend him to reconsider this matter before he produces his Financial Bill. He must be prepared for the strongest opposition from all sections of the Irish people in this matter, and I assure him, as one who has worked on these benches with him for many years, that the greatest disappointment is felt in Ireland because of the proposal which he has made. When he used to sit there on these benches I never thought that he would come to the House of Commons as Chancellor of the Exchequer and propose a Budget which would be distinctly unfair to the Irish people. I appeal to him to reconsider this matter and I wish to make it clear to him that the protest from the Irish Members will be unanimous. Hon. Members who never before went into the same Lobby will be united against the Government, not because we look at this matter from a temperance point of view, but simply because we consider the proposal of the Government from a national and an industrial point of view. What do you want this money for? The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister say they want it to pay for the increased naval expenditure, and to build more "Dreadnoughts." I say let those who want the "Dreadnoughts" pay for them. We in Ireland do not want them. We in Ireland derive absolutely no benefit, good, bad, or indifferent, from the enormous increase in the naval expenditure of this country. It is monstrous, it is most unjust and unfair, that this Government or any Government should come to the people of Ireland—the poorest portion of the United Kingdom—and ask them to pay for naval expenditure which they do not approve of. We are told, though, on the other hand, that because the Irish people have joined—and joined only in a fair proportion, according to the circumstances of the country—in the old age pensions they should be compelled to pay for them. I say with perfect deliberation that if the old age pension scheme in Ireland is to mean that for every million that goes to the people in old age pensions a fresh additional million burden of taxation is to be put on Ireland then old age pensions will not have been any advantage whatever to the vast majority of the Irish people. The fact of the matter is we are only at the commencement of this struggle. Some people seem to imagine that when the Budget Resolutions are before the House of Commons the whole question is settled. I say that the struggle does not commence until the Finance Bill is in the hands of Members, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that no consideration for the happy days when both he and I here used

to fight the present Opposition—when we were both equally ready to call them Chinamen, and when we helped to put them out of office by calling them Chinamen and denouncing them as Confuscians —no consideration for those days—and I admit they were extremely happy and pleasant days—will prevent me from offering the strongest possible resistance in my power to the present proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I frankly and honestly regard as most wantonly unjust to the Irish people and to the poorest part of the United Kingdom.

Motion made and Question proposed: "That the House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."

The House divided: Ayes, 243; Noes, 126.

Division No. 127].	AYES.	[8.5 p.m.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Illingworth, Percy H.
Agnew, George William	Crooks, William	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Alden, Percy	Dalziel, Sir James Henry	Jardine, Sir J.
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)	Jenkins, J.
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Jowett, F. W.
Astbury, John Meir	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Kekewick, Sir George
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Barker, Sir John	Dobson, Thomas W.	Laidlaw, Robert
Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)	Duncan, C. (Barrow-In-Furness)	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Barnes, G. N.	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)	Lambert, George
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Erskine, David C.	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)
Beale, W. P.	Essex, R. W.	Lehmann, R. C.
Beauchamp, E.	Esslemont, George Blrnle	Levy, Sir Maurice
Beaumont, Hon. Hubert	Everett, R. Lacey	Lewis, John Herbert
Beck, A. Cecil	Faber, G. H. (Boston)	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Bell, Richard	Falconer, J.	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)	Fenwick, Charles	Lyell, Charles Henry
Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)	Ferens, T. R.	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Bennett, E. N.	Findlay, Alexander	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Berridge, T. H. D.	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Mackarness, Frederic C.
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Rumford)	Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John	Maclean, Donald
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Malden)	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Black, Arthur W.	Glover, Thomas	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Bramsdon, T. A.	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)
Branch, James	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Maddison, Frederick
Brodie, H. C.	Greenwood, G (Peterborough)	Mallet, Charles E.
Brooke, Stopford	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)	Maiks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Marnham, F. J.
Brunner, Rt. Hon. Sir J. T. (Cheshire)	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)	Massie, J.
Bryce, J. Annan	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Masterman, C. F. G.
Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)	Menzies, Walter
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Micklem, Nathaniel
Byles, William Pollard	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Molteno, Percy Alport
Cameron, Robert	Haworth, Arthur A.	Mond, A.
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Hedges, A. Paget	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)
Chance, Frederick William	Henry, Charles S.	Morse, L. L.
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)
Cheetham, John Frederick	Higham, John Sharp	Myer, Horatio
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Hobart, Sir Robert	Napier, T. B.
Cleland, J. W.	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)
Clough, William	Hodge John	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Holt, Richard Durning	Norman, Sir Henry
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)	Norton, Captain Cecil William
Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)	Horniman, Emslie John	Nussey, Thomas Williams
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Nuttall, Harry
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)
Cowan, W. H.	Hudson, Walter	Parker, James (Halifax)
Cox, Harold	Hyde, Clarendon G.	Partington, Oswald
Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Sears, J. E.	Walton, Joseph
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Seaverns, J. H.	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Pointer, J.	Seddon, J.	Wardle, George J.
Pollard, Dr. G. H.	Shackleton, David James	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford)	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Sherwell, Arthur James	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Shipman, Dr. John G.	Waterlow, D. S.
Radford, G. H.	Simon, John Allsebrook	Watt, Henry A.
Raphael, Herbert H.	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Snowden; P.	White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Soares, Ernest J.	White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)
Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)	Stanger, H. Y.	Whitehead, Rowland
Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)	Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Ridsdale, E. A.	Steadman, W. C.	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	Wiles, Thomas
Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Strachey, Sir Edward	Wilkie, Alexander
Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)	Summerbell, T.	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.)
Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Robinson, S.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)	Winfrey, R.
Rogers, F. E. (Newman)	Thomasson, Franklin	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Rose, Charles Day	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Rowlands, J.	Tomkinson, James
Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.	Trevelyan, Charles Philips	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.
Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander	Joseph Pease and the Master of
Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	Villiers, Ernest Amherst	Elibank.
Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Vivian, Henry
NOES.
Abraham, W. (Cork, N.E.)	Gretton, John	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Arkwright, John Stanhope	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Ashley, W. W.	Haddock, George B.	O'Connor. T. P. (Liverpol)
Balcarres, Lord	Hamilton, Marquis of	Oddy, John James
Baldwin, Stanley	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)	Hay, Hon. Claude George	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Hayden, John Patrick	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Baring, Captain Hon. G. (Winchester)	Hazleton, Richard	Peel, Hon. W. R. W.
Beckett, Hon Gervase	Healy, Timothy Michael	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Helmsley, Viscount	Pretyman, E. G.
Boland, John	Hill, Sir Clement	Randles, Sir John Scurrah
Bowles, G. Stewart	Hogan, Michael	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Bull, Sir William James	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Redmond, William (Clare)
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Houston, Robert Paterson	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecciesall)
Burke E. Haviland-	Hunt, Rowland	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Joyce, Michael	Ropner. Colonel Sir Robert
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Joynson-Hicks, William	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Carlile, E. Hildred	Kavanagh, Walter M.	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Sandys, Col. Thos. Myles
Cave, George	Kerry, Earl of	Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Lardner, James Carrige Rushe	Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Starkey, John R.
Clyde, J. A.	Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)	Staveley-Hill. Henry (Staffordshire)
Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Lonsdale, John Brownlee	Thornton, Percy M.
Craik, Sir Henry	MacNeill, John Gordon Swift	Tuke. Sir John Batty
Dairymple, Viscount	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-	MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	M'Arthur, Charles	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Du Cros, Arthur	M'Calmont, Col. James	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Faber, George Denison (York)	Magnus, Sir Philip	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Fell, Arthur	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Ffrench, Peter	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Wyndham Rt. Hon. George
Fletcher, J. S.	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Younger, George
Forster, Henry William	Morpeth, Viscount
Foster, P. S.	Morrison-Bell, Captain
Gardner, Ernest	Muldoon, John	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir
Ginnell, L.	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)	A. Acland-Hood and Viscount
Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Valentia.
Goulding, Edward Alfred	Newdegate, F. A.

Resolution reported.