Commons Sitting of 18 October 1909

Preamble
Mr. SPEAKER took the chair at a Quarter before Three of the clock.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Colinton Tramways Order Confirmation Bill [Lords] (by Order),—read a second time; and ordered to be considered upon Wednesday.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Territorial Force (Establishment and Strength).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked the Secretary of State for War what was the establishment and strength of officers and also of non-commissioned officers and men of the Territorial Force on the 1st October last?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane): The numbers are as follows:—

  Establishment.

  Strength.

  Officers

  …

  11,267

  …

  9,650

  N.C.O.'s and men

  …

  302,047

  …

  260,404

  Total

  …

  313,314

  …

  270,054

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  The establishment is that given in the current year's Army Estimates, and the numbers are exclusive of the permanent staff.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Could the right hon. Gentleman say whether this deficit in officers and men is decreasing or increasing?
  Mr. HALDANE: I cannot tell the hon. Member that. The officers have increased since July by 124. There is a decrease in the men of 311.

  Special Reserve (Establishment and Strength).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked what was the establishment and strength of the officers, and also of the non-commissioned officers and men, of the Special Reserve on 1st October last?
  Mr. HALDANE: The figures, exclusive of men of Category (b), Militiamen and men of Reserve Division of Militia, are as follows:—

  Officers.

  Other Ranks.

  Total.

  Establishment

  …

  2,808

  76,166

  78,974

  Strength

  …

  1,924

  67,549

  69,473

  Mr. ASHLEY: What steps have been taken to make up the alarming deficiency in the lower commissioned ranks in the Special Reserve?
  Mr. HALDANE: If the hon. Member will put down a question I will answer it.

  Coventry Ordnance Works (Fair Wages Clause).
  Mr. T. F. RICHARDSasked the Secretary of State for War whether he was aware that at the Coventry Ordnance Works the Fair Wages Clause was not being observed in the polishing department, the rate of wages paid being 7d. per hour, whereas the district rate was 8d. per hour; and whether he would take steps to have the Clause complied with?
  Mr. HALDANE: My attention has already been drawn to this matter, and inquiries are being made.

  Military Manœuvres (Travelling Kitchen).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked whether, during the late manœuvres, a trial was made of a new type of travelling kitchen; and, if so, what was the substance of the report furnished to the War Office upon it?
  Mr. HALDANE: A trial was made, but the report has not yet been received by the War Office.

  9·2 Guns (Sheerness).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked how many times and on what dates the two 9.2-inch guns in the Ravelin Battery at Sheerness had been fired since they were handed over to the Royal Artillery on 11th February, 1908?
  Mr. HALDANE: These guns have not yet been fired, but they will be at no very distant date. The date of such practice rests with the local Artillery Commanding Officer.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Why, for two whole years, have these guns, which defend this important dockyard, not been fired?
  Mr. HALDANE: There were other important matters which had to be attended to.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that six months ago he informed us that everything was in a satisfactory state?
  Mr. HALDANE: The date of practice rests with the local Artillery Commanding Officer, and he has not thought fit to begin practice yet.

  Johore Railway.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he had seen the original report and estimate in which Mr. Slessor specially and repeatedly stipulated for rails, rolling-stock, and works, and the general calibre
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  and capacity of the Johore Railway, to be the same precisely as those of the railways of the Federated Malay States in connection with which it was to be worked, basing his estimate upon the specification of Sir Charles Hutton Gregory, consulting engineer to the Straits Government, and of Mr. Watkins, resident engineer of the Selangor Railways, the whole to cost £608,000; whether the offer of British contractors, acceptable to and desired by the Sultan, to construct and equip the line efficiently in that style for that sum was rejected at the instance of the Crown Agents; whether its less efficient construction by the Crown Agents had cost £1,400,000, to be paid, with interest, by the Johore people; and whether he would give his authority for the official statement that the Slessor estimate was for an inferior line?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Colonel Seely): I have not myself seen Mr. Slessor's report and estimate, but they have been seen by the Consulting Engineers from whom my information is derived. As I informed the hon. Gentleman on 20th July the Crown Agents were not concerned in the matter at all, and I am unable at present to state the total cost of the line.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state by whom and on whose recommendation consulting engineers for Colonial and Protectorate works are appointed; by whom and at what rate are they paid; whether they are themselves responsible to anyone for the subsequent cost of works recommended by them; whether he will lay upon the Table the correspondence whereby the Government of Johore was compelled to cancel its contract with a British firm for the construction and equipment of the Johore Railway and submit to its construction departmentally, under the control of the Crown Agents, at more than twice the amount of the contract; whether he is aware of the threat used to enforce cancellation, that if the contract was persisted in the amount of it would be made irrecoverable; if he will say what money passed in consideration of the cancellation, and whether this sum also has been added to the burden imposed upon Johore by the Crown Agents for their own benefit; whether the Colonial Office had any other object in supporting the Crown Agents in this transaction than that of imposing upon Johore a debt she

  5
  could scarcely repay, as a preliminary to annexation; and whether the Colonial Office recognised the promotion of this purpose, and the acceptance of fees from two rival parties to the same transaction, as within the legitimate work of a consulting engineer?
  Colonel SEELY: This question makes imputations of improper conduct, for which there is not a shadow of foundation, against honourable men, who feel deeply the slur publicly cast upon them. Beyond making this statement I, therefore, decline to make any reply.

  Hong Kong Harbour and Docks.
  Mr. GINNELLasked what is the estimated cost of the construction at Hong Kong of the harbour and docks without which the Canton-Kowloon Railway must remain without traffic; and from what source and by what means is it intended to raise that money?
  Colonel SEELY: It is not proposed to construct a harbour or docks in connection with the railway.

  Johore (Status).
  Mr. GINNELLasked what the status of Johore now is, whether a Free State, a Protectorate, or a British Crown Colony; and, if either of the two latter, whether debt was the principal means employed in depriving Johore of its independence?
  Colonel SEELY: The status of Johore is defined in the Agreement of the 11th of December, 1885, a copy of which was presented to Parliament in C. 4627 of 1886.

  Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Argentina).
  Mr. BOWERMANasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is now in a position to state the nature of the reply, if any, received to the communication recently addressed to the Argentine Government requesting detailed information as to the steps taken either by the federal or the provincial governments to deal with the suppression of foot-and-mouth disease?
  Captain NORTON (Lord of the Treasury): Perhaps my hon. Friend will allow me to answer this question. A communication was received from the Argentine Government on the 11th inst., which affords very valuable information as to some of the matters which the Board are required to take into account in deciding whether or not animals brought from Argentina can be allowed to be landed in
  6
  this country. But before any decision can be arrived at additional information is required, with regard to which a further communication will at once be addressed by the Board to the Foreign Office.

  Old Age Pensions (Ireland).
  Mr. ARTHUR LYNCHasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he accepts as correct the estimate of the pension officer of Kilrush who considers £52 per annum as fair value of the cost of maintenance, in a small farmer's home, of the father and mother of the farmer; and whether he is aware that authorities possessing local knowledge give the estimate at about £18 per annum?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hobhouse): The particulars given in the question do not enable me to identify the case or cases which the hon. Member has in mind, and I have therefore no means of forming an opinion on the estimate referred to, nor would any useful purpose be served by my doing so, as the determination of the means of a pensioner or claimant for a pension rests entirely with the local pension committee, or the Local Government Board on appeal.
  Mr. ARTHUR LYNCHasked whether instructions have been issued to Mr. Martyn, pension officer, of Kilrush, to disallow as many old age pensions as possible, even of those that had been already granted; and whether, in that case, Mr. Martyn will be directed to produce more substantial evidence as to age than his own personal opinion?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The answer to the first question is in the negative, and the second, therefore, does not arise.
  Mr. ARTHUR LYNCHasked what is the cause of the delay in dealing with the application by Mrs. O'Connor, of Knockerra, Killimer, county Clare, for a pension under the Old Age Pensions Act?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: No trace can be found of an application for an old age pension having been made by Mrs. O'Connor.

  Asiatic Fireman (Disappearance at Sea).
  Mr. BOWERMANasked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the disappearance at sea on 19th June, 1909, of an Asiatic fireman named Hong E. Choy, whilst serving on the steamer "Shimosa," of Liverpool; whether any inquiry had been held into the matter; whether the seaman was medically examined before joining;

  7
  how long he had served on the vessel; whether he had any previous sea service; whether he was on duty at the time; what was the temperature of the engine-room and stokehold; how many tons of coal the engine-room hands were required to work each 24 hours; and whether any previous cases of suicide, supposed suicide, or disappearance have occurred on this vessel?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Tennant): The Asiatic fireman referred to in the question disappeared from the "Shimosa" on the day after leaving Singapore for Aden. Inquiry was made into the occurrence by the shipping master at Aden. The man had been only four days on board the vessel; it is not known whether he had had previous sea service; he was on duty at the time of his disappearance. The temperature of the engine-room was 120 degrees and of the stokehold 113 degrees. The consumption of coal was 36 tons per day and the number of firemen and trimmers was 13. One case of suicide and one other case of supposed suicide have occurred in this vessel during the last three years. The "Shimosa" trades regularly between New York and Eastern ports and has not been in the United Kingdom since she was built.
  Mr. REES: Was any complaint made by or on behalf of the deceased Asiatic seaman or any other Asiatic seaman on this vessel against the management?
  Mr. TENNANT: None, so far as I am aware.

  Admiralty Contract, Greenock (Fair Wages Clause).
  Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON (on behalf of Mr. T. F. Richards)asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he can now state the result of the inquiry into the allegation concerning the violation of the fair wage clause by Messrs. Scott's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKenna): The Admiralty has investigated the matter, and has not found any evidence of violation of the clause.

  Contracts for Gun-Mountings.
  Mr. GRETTONasked at what date was the order given to the Coventry Ordnance Company for gun-mountings and when do the Government propose to submit a
  8
  Supplementary Estimate to meet the expenditure incurred by the firm during the current financial year.
  Mr. McKENNA: Pending the arrangement of certain detail, an order for gun-mountings was placed conditionally with the Coventry Ordnance Works on 20th August last. It cannot be stated at the present date whether any instalment under the scheme of payments will be earned this financial year, so that the consideration of a Supplementary Estimate in respect of this firm's orders is premature.
  Mr. ARTHUR LEE: Can the right hon. Gentleman state whether he anticipates that a Supplementary Estimate on account of these ships will be required?
  Mr. McKENNA: Yes, Sir. I think I have already stated that a Supplementary Estimate will be required on account of gun-mountings and other equipment.
  Mr. A. LEE: This Session?
  Mr. McKENNA: No, Sir, but this financial year.

  Armoured Cruisers (British and German).
  Mr. GRETTONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how many large armoured cruisers comparable to the British "Invincible" class have been launched in Germany, and how many are now laid down or building for the Germany Government; and if he has any information of any further large cruisers to be laid down in Germany at an early date?
  Mr. McKENNA: Of the "Invincible" type of cruiser building in Germany, one has been launched and two more have been laid down. There is no information at present concerning the laying down of further cruisers of this type.

  Armoured Cruisers (Delay in Construction).
  Mr. GRETTONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty when he will be able to state which of the four additional armoured ships to be laid down on 1st April will be large armoured cruisers; and whether the delay in determining the class and character of the four additional armoured ships is due to difficulties of design or to questions of policy?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have nothing to add to the answer given to the hon. Gentleman on 4th October last.
  Mr. GRETTON: May I ask whether the ships are to be laid down on 1st April or at some earlier date?
  Mr. McKENNA: There has been no change in the policy of the Admiralty, which has already been expressed. The ships will be completed by 31st March, 1912. They will not be laid down earlier than has already been stated.

  Jersey Education Bill.
  Mr. BOLANDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can now state when the Jersey Education Bill is listed for hearing by the Privy Council?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Masterman): As the hon. Member was informed on the 4th instant, the opposing petitions have been forwarded to the Jersey States for observations. Some time must elapse before the Committee of the Privy Council for the Affairs of Jersey and Guernsey is furnished with all the information necessary for their consideration of the matter, and for the present no decision can be reached as to the course which will be followed in the case.

  Grazing Eights on Morrich Moor.
  Mr. WEIRasked the Lord Advocate whether he is aware that the villagers of Inver, Ross-shire, from time immemorial have been in the habit of grazing their ponies on part of Morrich Moor, in the immediate vicinity, and also securing there from dried grass for thatching purposes, as well as turf for covering potato pits; will be explain under what circumstances these ancient rights have been divided between the Town Council of Tain and the Cadboll estate; and will he take such steps as may be necessary to secure to the people of Inver a restoration of their rights?
  The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Alexander Ure): My hon. Friend is already aware of the facts from the answers which he has received to his earlier questions upon this subject, to which I can add nothing. Any complaint which the people of Inver or my hon. Friend wish to make should be addressed to the Town Council of Tain, the Cadboll estate, and the other parties to the recent agreement. The Government have no right to intervene in the matter.

  Grazing Lands, Kintail (Ross-shire).
  Mr. WEIRasked the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that 3,000 acres of grazing lands in the parish of Kintail, Ross-shire, are about to be converted into deer forest, will he state whether he can take steps to
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  stay the continued conversion of grazing lands into the deer forest area in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland?
  Mr. URE: I have no information on the subject of the conversion of grazing land into deer forest referred to by my hon. Friend, and I am not in a position to deal with the matter by way of legislation, which is the only available method.

  Deer Forests, Scotland.
  Mr. WEIRasked whether the Lord Advocate, in view of the constantly increasing deer forest area in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, would grant the Deer Forest Return on to-day's Paper?
  Mr. URE: My hon. Friend appears to have forgotten Return No. 220 of 1908, which was moved for by himself and which gives precisely the particulars desired.
  Mr. WEIRasked the Lord Advocate whether the Secretary for Scotland is aware that crofters in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland suffer serious loss through deer from the adjoining deer forests straying on to their lands; and will he consider the expediency of taking such action as may be necessary to require deer forest owners to fence in their forests?
  Mr. URE: The only action possible would be by way of legislation, which is not at present a practicable course.
  Mr. REES: May I ask whether the fencing would keep out sheep as well as keep in deer?

  Small Holdings in Uig.
  Mr. WEIRasked the Lord Advocate whether the proprietor of the island of Lewis has yet definitely decided to break up the farm of Mangersta, in the parish of Uig; and, if so, will he state whether the Congested Districts Board will be prepared to co-operate with the proprietor in the creation of new holdings?
  Mr. URE: The proprietor is prepared to subdivide, and the Congested Districts Board are willing to co-operate; further details have still to be arranged.
  Mr. WEIR: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will ask the Secretary for Scotland to facilitate the matter? It has now been going on for several months.
  Mr. URE: The matter does not rest altogether with the Secretary for Scotland.

  Holdings for Crofters and Others (Equipment).
  Mr. WEIRasked the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill makes no provision for crofters, cottars, fishermen, and others who are without means with which to equip and stock a holding, will he state whether the Congested Districts Board would be prepared to render suitable tenants of this class assistance by way of loan or otherwise?
  Mr. URE: The Congested Districts Board have been in the habit of advancing money by way of loan to suitable men in order to erect buildings on small farms. But they have no power under the Act to giant loans in order to enable men to stock their holdings.

  Island of Lewis (Insanitary Townships).
  Mr. WEIRasked the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that the Secretary for Scotland has repeatedly stated that the congested and insanitary townships in the island of Lewis require special treatment, other than that provided in the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill, will he state when the Secretary for Scotland proposes to take action in the matter?
  Mr. URE: This is a matter primarily for the local authority, which is doing all it can to the full extent of its rating powers.
  Mr. WEIR: For the last four years the Secretary for Scotland has had this matter under his consideration, and nothing has been done. The local authority has no funds.

  Inland Revenue Department (Cost of Administration).
  Lord BALCARRES (on behalf of Mr. Bridgeman)asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the cause of the large increase of £114,879 in the cost of administration of the Inland Revenue Department in 1908–9, making the percentage of the cost of collection to the amount collected the highest in the last ten years; and if he can give any estimate of what the cost of the service will be in the current year?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The increase in 1908–9 was due to two principal causes, namely: (1) the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act, and (2) the enlargement of the tax surveying staff under the Finance Act of 1907. The former of these has, of course, no connection with the cost of collection of taxes. For 1909–10, as the hon.
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  Member will see from the current Estimates, the Inland Revenue total (including allied services) is £1,451,714.

  Entertainments, Unlicensed Premises (Ireland).
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIEN (on behalf of Mr. Nannetti)asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that balls, dances, dinners, etc., are held on unlicensed premises in Dublin; that the police do not interfere with the holding of such entertainments; and that intoxicating drink is consumed without restraint on such occasions; whether permission to sell liquor at these dances is granted by the police authorities; and whether he can see his way to have the same permission granted on special occasions to the holders of licences for their houses when applied for?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Cherry): I am informed by the police authorities that public balls and dinners are sometimes held on unlicensed premises in Dublin, but no intoxicating liquors are sold on such occasions except under the authority of an occasional licence, the conditions of which must be observed. The police do not interfere with such gatherings beyond enforcing the conditions of occasional licences when granted. Permission to sell liquor on such occasions is not granted by the police authorities, but by the Excise authorities on the certificate of a divisional justice. The Licensing Laws do not permit occasional licences to be granted for premises already licensed for the sale of liquor.
  Mr. MOONEY: Am I to understand that the right hon. Gentleman states that the licensing laws of Ireland do not allow of an extension of time for part of premises already licensed for the purpose of a public ball or a dinner?
  Mr. CHERRY: I do not think so. An occasional licence can only be granted outside of the licensed premises, and I do not think there is any power to extend the time during which intoxicating liquor may be sold on licensed premises. I am not perfectly sure about that.
  Mr. MOONEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that for a considerable number of years past it has been the practice in Dublin to grant these licences, and can he state on whose authority these licences have now been stopped? Can he state whether the authorities are acting on the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown,

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  and whether the practice which has been followed in previous years is illegal?
  Mr. CHERRY: The hon. Member is asking rather too much. I must ask him to put that question on the Paper.

  Reinstatement of Evicted Tenant, County Kerry.
  Mr. LONSDALEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that in county Kerry the Estates Commissioners have reinstated a man named Walsh in his former holding for having taken which in succession to Walsh a man named Foran was shot dead; whether anyone was made amenable for the murder of Foran; whether Walsh has received a free grant of £150 to buy cattle, etc.; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?
  Mr. BELLOC: Before the right hon. Gentleman replies, may I ask whether it is quite in order to insinuate a criminal charge against a private individual in a question?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member has taken me rather by surprise. Of course, speaking generally, it is a most improper thing for any Member to suggest in a question that an individual has been guilty of a criminal act, unless the Member putting the question has some very solid ground for doing so.
  Mr. CHERRY: The Estates Commissioners have reinstated Thomas Walsh in his former holding, which has been for the past 17 years in the landlord's hands, and have sanctioned a free grant of £120 for the purchase of live stock. The murder referred to took place 21 years ago. Several persons were arrested in connection with it, but were discharged for want of evidence. Walsh was not accused or suspected of the crime. My right hon. Friend does not propose to take any action in the matter.

  Old Age Pension, Kilmihil, County Clare.
  Mr. ARTHUR LYNCHasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that Mrs. Catherine Murphy, of Cahermurphy, Kilmihil, was granted a pension in November, 1908, on the basis of a favourable report as to age and means from the pension officer; that after she had been in receipt of this pension from 1st January to 1st May of this year a question was raised by the pension officer under Regulation 17 (2); that the sole question raised
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  was as to age, and that this question was submitted to the pension committee on 24th May last; that the pension committee decided in favour of the continuance of the pension on the ground of age; that the pension officer appealed against this decision; whether the Local Government Board was satisfied that Mrs. Murphy had attained the necessary age; whether the Board reduced her pension to 3s. weekly on the ground of means; and whether the Local Government Board is entitled to decide on these grounds a case submitted to their consideration for another reason?
  Mr. CHERRY: I understand that the facts are as stated in the question. The Local Government Board considered that the means of Mrs. Murphy, as calculated for the purposes of the Act, were about 10s. a week; and they accordingly determined that the amount of the pension she was entitled to receive was 3s. a week. The Board hold that when a claim comes before them on appeal they are bound to satisfy themselves that all the statutory conditions have been fulfilled and that they are not confined to the consideration of the particular point upon which the appeal was submitted. The question whether this view is correct is the subject of an appeal now pending in the Court of Appeal.

  Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (Subsidy).
  Mr. CONOR O'KELLYasked whether any proposal was made at the last meeting of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland to subsidise the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society to the extent of £1,000 per year, or any other sum; and, if so, with what result?
  Mr. CHERRY: I am informed by the Secretary of the Board that no such proposal was either made or discussed at the meeting of the Congested Districts Board referred to.
  Mr. CONOR O'KELLY: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether that proposal was on the agenda?
  Mr. CHERRY: I could not say. I have only the information which I have given.
  Mr. CONOR O'KELLY: I shall put down another question on the subject.
  Mr. CHERRY: If the Chief Secretary was here he could answer the question. He was present himself at the meeting.

  King's Scholars (Ireland).
  Mr. JEREMIAH MacVEAGH (for Mr. Thomas F. Smyth)asked the Chief Secretary

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  for Ireland if he can state how many pupils are in the different training colleges in Ireland at the present time, and how many are called to training annually; and whether those who take the King's Scholarship, first division, are always called for their course of training before those who only passed in the second division?
  Mr. CHERRY: There are at present 1,194 King's scholars in residence in the different training colleges in Ireland. The number of new students annually called to training in each of the colleges varies, as it is contingent upon the number of students who qualify to return for the second year of their training course. In no case may the total number of students exceed that for which the college is licensed. The total number of King's scholars who entered upon the training course which commenced last September was 619. The selection of King's scholars from among the qualified candidates rests with the authorities of the different colleges. In the case of the Marlborough-street Training College, which is under the direct management of the Commissioners, candidates who pass upon the King's scholarship programme are selected for the two years' course of training strictly in the order that their answering merits.

  Extra Police Tax (Leitrim).
  Mr. JEREMIAH MacVEAGH (for Mr. Thomas F. Smyth)asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he can state what is the amount of the extra police tax for the county Leitrim for the half-years ending March and September, 1909, respectively; and how much of those amounts was paid for the constables who were told off for special service in acting as an escort for men who are at present in occupation of evicted holdings?
  Mr. CHERRY: The charges against the county Leitrim for the services of extra police in the half-years ended 31st March and 30th September, 1909, are £292 10s. 6d. and £111 18s. 3d. respectively. These sums are in respect of the additional men, appointed under the Constabulary (Ireland) Act, 1836, who were withdrawn in May last. The charges are not made for the services of individual members of the force engaged on particular duties but for the extra establishment of police, which was considered to be necessary in the county.

  Heating of Schools (Ireland).
  Mr. JEREMIAH MacVEAGH (for Mr. Thomas F. Smyth)asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he can state when will the promised contributions from the Treasury towards the heating and upkeep of the national schools in Ireland be forthcoming, particularly as the Catholic clerical managers have agreed to pay half the cost of the same?
  Mr. CHERRY: The hon. Member is mistaken in supposing that any contribution from the Treasury has been promised. All that the Chief Secretary has said is that he is fully prepared to consider and to place before the Treasury for consideration any practical scheme for providing for the heating and cleansing of the schools which the managers and others interested may devise.
  Captain CRAIG: Under the circumstances will the Government take off the block of the Bill which I introduced earlier in the Session on this very subject, and assist it in getting through the House?
  Mr. CHERRY: I am not aware that there is such a block.
  Captain CRAIG: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will consult the whips on this side of the House.
  Mr. MOORE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself at a public deputation gave that undertaking so far back as the month of March?
  Mr. CHERRY: You had better have these questions addressed to the Prime Minister himself.

  Assurance Companies Bill.
  Mr. BRIDGEMANasked the Prime Minister whether it is intended to proceed with the Assurance Companies Bill during this Session?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Joseph Pease): If this Bill is regarded, as I hope it is, as a non-controversial measure, and is generally acceptable, we shall proceed with it, and take the second reading at the earliest opportunity convenient to the House. The usual steps are being taken to ascertain the attitude of Members towards the Bill.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: Will the hon. Gentleman say whether the Bill will be sent upstairs or retained here?
  Mr. JOSEPH PEASE: I think that this will require consideration, in view of the attitude which hon. Members may take towards the Bill.

  Steamship "Baron Fairlie" (Asiatic Fireman).
  Mr. STEADMANasked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the disappearance at sea on 7th May, 1909, of an Asiatic fireman named Abdool Rajack whilst serving on the steamer "Baron Fairlie," of Ardrossan; whether any inquiry has been held into the matter; whether the seaman was medically examined before joining; how long he had served on the vessel; whether he had any previous sea service; whether he was on duty at the time; what was the temperature of the engine-room and stokehold; how many tons of coal the engine-room hands were required to work each 24 hours; and whether any previous cases of suicide, supposed suicide, or disappearance have occurred on this vessel?
  Mr. TENNANT: The Asiatic fireman referred to in the question disappeared at sea on the voyage from Pamban to Saigon. Inquiry was held by the Vice-Consul at Saigon. It is understood that the whole crew were medically examined before joining. The man had been 24 days on board the "Baron Fairlie," and had had previous sea service. He was on duty at the time of his disappearance. The temperature of the engine-room was 106 degrees, and of the stokehold 108 degrees. The coal consumption was 22 tons per day, and the number of firemen and trimmers was 14. One other case of disappearance has occurred in this vessel during the last three years. The "Baron Fairlie" is now in the East.
  Mr. J. D. REES: Are these inquiries always held as a matter of course by the Board of Trade in cases such as these, and is the information on which the questions are based obtained from the return published by the Board of Trade?
  Mr. TENNANT: These inquiries are made by different authorities in different parts of the world; they are communicated to us.
  Mr. REES: On these returns being communicated to you was any complaint made by or on behalf of these Asiatic seamen, or of any other Asiatic seamen on our ships, of the conduct of the owners or the management of the vessel?
  Mr. TENNANT: There was no complaint.

  Execution of Senor Ferrer.
  Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: I wish to ask the following question, of which I have given private notice to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Sir E. Grey), whether he can say what action, if any, was taken on behalf of His Majesty's Government to prevent the shooting of Senor Ferrer by the Spanish Government without trial in a civil court?
  Mr. H. BELLOC: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers that question I wish to ask whether there is any precedent for such a question as that?
  Mr. SPEAKER: I think that the hon. Member had better wait until he sees whether there is any answer to the question.
  Mr. HALDANE: Owing to the insufficiency of the notice this question cannot be answered to-day. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs has only received notice about ten minutes ago. If the hon. Member repeats it to-morrow the question will be answered.
  Mr. A. HENDERSON: I will repeat it to morrow.

  LONDON ELECTIONS BILL.
  Order read that the Bill (not amended in the Standing Committee) be considered.
  Mr. J. F. REMNANT: I rise to move the recommittal of this Bill for reasons of the sufficiency of which I hope to convince the House. In the Committee upstairs to which this Bill was sent we did not do more than protest against the Bill being taken in Committee in view of the pledge to which I will refer in a few minutes. This recommittal which is now sought for is consistent with the course taken in the Committee upstairs. There must be a large number of hon. Members in the House now who were present in April, 1907, when the new Procedure Rules were under discussion. On that occasion my hon. Friend the Member for the Ashford Division of Kent (Mr. Laurence Hardy) moved an Amendment which would have had the effect of removing any Bills relating to Parliamentary reform or franchise from the possibility of being sent upstairs. The then Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, in the course of his remarks, made on that occasion, said that he was perfectly willing to admit and to accept the spirit of the Amendment, but he was afraid to accept it in view of others coming afterwards,

  19
  because he held it might be considered as fettering the discretion of this House; and he went further, and said that no Government would think of sending a Franchise Bill such as was sought to be included in the Amendment upstairs, because it would be such a violent reversal of the old practice, and they might trust any Government to abstain from such a course. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on that occasion, in criticising the course taken by the Government, said he thought every hon. Member would agree with him that it often was found impossible to resist pressure from various sections of the House to act contrary to the intentions expressed on different occasions—intentions no doubt well meant enough, but which, under pressure, were very likely to be departed from in the future. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition on that occasion also called attention to the fact of the short memory of this House; but surely the memory of right hon. Gentlemen opposite must be extremely short if they forget what took place when the Procedure Rules were under discussion. It was distinctly promised by the then Prime Minister that no measure which could be called a reform or franchise Bill should be sent upstairs to Committee, but that it should be dealt with by Committee of the whole House. The present Bill, which deals with the constitution of the House, is undoubtedly one which, according to that statement, ought to be discussed in Committee of the whole House instead of in Committee upstairs. I am prevented by the Rules of the House from going into its merits, and I therefore confine myself to pointing out to the Government that the circumstances in connection with this measure are precisely those to which the late Prime Minister referred, and the Government cannot complain if they are accused of a breach of faith in regard to the pledge which was given to this House on the occasion to which I have referred. I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman who is in charge of the Bill must admit that there is good ground for recommitting it to the whole House. He may have forgotten what took place; if he has, I appeal to him to carry out the intentions expressed on that occasion, by allowing this Bill to be recommitted to Committee of the whole House.
  Sir HENRY KIMBER: I propose to second the Motion, not only on the ground
  20
  of the very serious pledge which has been alluded to by the hon. Member who moved it, but also on the ground of the peculiar nature of this Bill, and the conduct of the Government in the management of it so far as it has gone. What is the nature of this Bill? It is a measure which the right hon. Gentleman, when he introduced it into this House, himself stated it did not on the face of it show its object. It is quite true it did not. First of all, I should remind the House, it was introduced under the ten minutes' Rule, and the right hon. Gentleman said he thought ten minutes was quite sufficient to secure the general acceptance of the Bill, because it was so simple and so useful in its nature. He stated no grounds for introducing it. The Bill contains practically only one clause, a clause for converting the county of London into a single borough. The right hon. Gentleman stated in his opening speech that it would have four results. One was that successive occupation would be ensured between all parts of Greater London; secondly, there would be simultaniety of polling all over Greater London; thirdly, the area of residential occupation would be enlarged; and last, not least—and this is what is really the main or sole object of the Bill—it would abolish the dual vote. He did not use those words, but I use them because, in plain vernacular, they describe what is intended. The right hon. Gentleman, in mentioning the four points, used the expression, "in London as in Birmingham," and said when the Bill was printed and put before Members they would see very plainly what was the nature of it. The House naturally when it gives a Minister leave to introduce a Bill expects some explanatory memorandums, especially when the Minister himself admits that it does not disclose the object on the face of it. It is a Bill of which it might be said that it disclosed no virtues and no vices. All its virtues were to be found out, and all its vices were to be exposed under discussion. When the Bill came on for second reading the right hon. Gentleman did not condescend to give the House any further speech in explanation of it, although I shall show that it is very different to me from the grounds on which he defended it. He said on each of the four points that it was a Bill "to make London as in Birmingham." He rather prided himself on that expression, but I think I shall be able to show that the Bill will not make "London as in Birmingham."
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member's opportunity for doing that has passed. His opportunity for showing that it does not do so was on the second reading. The proposition now is that the Bill be recommitted, and the hon. Gentleman must bring some arguments forward in support of the recommittal of the Bill.
  Sir H. KIMBER: I will avoid the merits of the Bill, but on the occasion of the third reading I propose to move its rejection, and I may then be permitted to go into these matters. I am content to say on this point that the Bill is eminently one which ought to have been explained either by a memorandum or by a speech on the second reading, or the right hon. Gentleman, by some means or other—by a Paper placed before the House, in black and white—should have informed the House and the country what was intended to be done with the 59 constituencies with which the Bill deals. I merely say this: That the expression "in London as in Birmingham" is not correct, and that the true contrast would have been—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order."]
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is resuming his speech at the point at which I said he was not entitled to go into the matter, yet he still persists in going into it. I must ask him to confine himself to putting forward arguments to show why the Bill should be recommitted to the House.
  Sir H. KIMBER: I shall endeavour strictly to obey your ruling, Sir. I was only going to make one single observation, but I will not make it now. I take up at the point at which I was called to order. As to the Bill, therefore neither before this House nor before the country has there been any statement in black and white from the Government of what it proposed to do. The right hon. Gentleman in his speech on the second reading, admitted, as he was bound to admit, that the Bill did abolish dual voting in London.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member will persist in discussing the merits of the Bill, and I must ask him to discontinue his speech. Will any hon. Member second?
  Sir FREDERICK BANBURYseconded the Motion.
  The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Mr. Harcourt): I am really at a loss to know exactly the ground I have to meet in the suggestion that this Bill should be recommitted to the whole House. The only argument, so far as I have been able
  22
  to discover, put forward is that the Bill as I produced it was naked in form and yet disclosed nothing. It is certainly the most remarkable Bill in that respect that has ever been produced in Parliament. The hon. Member for Holborn (Mr. Remnant), who ably led his party upstairs during our short proceedings in Grand Committee, must have forgotten the speech with which he opened the proceedings there. He made no protest whatever against this Bill having been committed to a Grand Committee, and not one word of protest of any sort or kind as to the procedure.
  Mr. REMNANT: The first thing I said was that I objected to the whole proceeding.
  Mr. HARCOURT: I am within the recollection of any Member who was present, and I have an especial reason for remembering it, because I was expecting that protest from the hon. Member, and was surprised that he did not make it, and I was rather sorry for him, because I felt afterwards that he had forgotten to make it. The words which the hon. Member used were that he disapproved of the whole principle of the Bill, and that he and the party for whom he spoke proposed to move no Amendments, because they regarded the Bill as unamendable.
  Mr. REMNANT: I am sorry to keep on interrupting, but I had no authority to speak for my party. I could only speak for myself. I certainly was under the impression that I commenced by saying that I objected to the whole procedure.
  Mr. HARCOURT: I have no right to attribute authority to the hon. Member, but he used the regal and editorial "we" with great effect, and was uncontradicted by any of those who crowded round to his support. I am not able to admit that this Bill comes into the category of a franchise Bill at all. It only relates to some inequalities which London suffers, and which no other great town in the country suffers. I should absolutely repudiate any idea of a breach of faith in sending such a Bill as this to Grand Committee, where it might very suitably be discussed, and where I was prepared and anxious to discuss it, and to spend many happy days with the hon. Member even without authority to represent his party. A question was put to the Prime Minister before the second reading of this Bill, reminding him of the words of the late Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The Prime Minister, after careful consideration, told

  23
  the House he was quite clear that this Bill did not come within the category or sort of measure which was in the mind of the late Prime Minister or of the Government when he made that promise. I cannot see, when they have missed their opportunity of amending this Bill in Committee, and when they have now mended their hand and occupied the Notice Paper of the House, why we should recommit the Bill. We have plenty of time, and we can have ample discussion of all the points they wish to raise, and to meet them in the most conciliatory spirit, and I hope we may now proceed with the Report stage.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: The right hon. Gentleman confined himself, as he usually does, to jests. He says he is at a loss to know why this Motion is made. He bases that absence of knowledge on the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn (Mr. Remnant) did not advance a specific point at proceedings in Grand Committee, and pretends that he did not know what the real ground of objection before the Standing Committee was. It may have been that my hon. Friend did not state in absolutely specific terms what was not only in his own mind but in everybody's mind. There are some things which often get forgotten because they are so well known to everybody that people are apt not to make specific mention of them. The right hon. Gentleman says that he did not know what was the real motive of the Motion made in Standing Committee, and that it is quite inconceivable to him that the procedure was even objected to, and that the contention was that the Bill was not a fit or proper Bill to send to Standing Committee. All I can tell him is that if he did not know, it was perfectly well known to everybody else in this House, not only then but before then and now. That is shown by the fact that this question was put to the Prime Minister.
  Mr. HARCOURT: All I said was that that objection to the procedure was not made in Grand Committee, nor was it given as the reason for putting down no Amendments. The reason given was that from the point of view of the hon. Member for Holborn and his Friends the Bill was unamendable.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: To every hon. Member it was perfectly well known that the ground of the Opposition in Standing Committee was that the Bill was
  24
  improperly sent to the Committee at all. It was on that ground, a perfectly good ground, they chose to abstain and refrain from taking any part in the proceedings of that Committee. Under those circumstances I confess it seems to me to amount to the highest Parliamentary effrontery for the right hon. Gentlemen to constitute themselves the judges of the strict and accurate literal meaning of the pledges that were given to this House, and on the faith of which the Standing Orders of this House were altered. The right hon. Gentleman thinks this is not a franchise Bill, and that he is justified in placing that interpretation on the pledges given by his late Leader. All I can say is, that if he imagines that because it only concerns the representation of 60 seats in this House, that that does not appear to him to be a matter of great importance, it is not very difficult to conceive circumstances, possibly not very distant in date, when the decision of the representation of 60 seats in this House might very easily decide the fate of the Ministry. Upon that ground-alone, if not on the many others that must necessarily suggest themselves, we say, and we shall maintain, that this Bill came well within the measures mentioned by the late Prime Minister, that it is a franchise Bill, and is a question not to be settled in Standing Committee, and we shall remain totally discontented with the procedure taken in respect to this Bill. I hope my hon. Friend will persist in his Motion.
  Mr. W. C. STEADMAN: I did not take up the time of the House on the second reading of this Bill, although I probably know as much as most Members about London elections, having taken an active part in them ever since 1868. I was anxious to see the Bill go through. I am not able to discuss its merits at the present stage, but I may say that the Bill does not go far enough for me, as a London Member.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member ought to have raised that point in the Standing Committee. It does not arise now.
  Mr. STEADMAN: Honestly speaking, I regret the quarter from which this Motion for recommital has been made. It is true that the hon. Member for Holborn (Mr. Remnant) and I were not in the same school, but we were neighbours; I have worked with him in other places for a good many years, and I am not ashamed to say that as an English gentleman I respect him. Therefore I would rather the opposition had come from another quarter. I

  25
  can quite understand the opposition of the hon. Member for Wandsworth (Sir H. Kimber). He has a grievance, not only against his own Government when they were in power, but against the present Government. I have said on more than one occasion that I am not a Conservative.
  Mr SPEAKER: These questions, interesting as they may be, do not arise on this Motion. The only question before the House is whether the Bill shall be recommitted
  to a Committee of the whole House. The hon. Member must confine himself to that question.
  Mr. STEADMAN: I will not take up any more of the time of the House. I hope a Division will be taken.
  Question put, "That the Bill be recommitted to a Committee of the whole House."
  The House divided: Ayes, 64; Noes, 115.

  Division No. 798.]

  AYES.

  [3.45 p.m.

  Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

  Craik, Sir Henry

  MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott

  Magnus, Sir Philip

  Ashley, W. W.

  Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan)

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Balcarres, Lord

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Moore, William

  Baldwin, Stanley

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

  Oddy, John James

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Fell, Arthur

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Banner, John S. Harmood-

  Fletcher, J. S.

  Pretyman, E. G.

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Gardner, Ernest

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

  Bowles, G. Stewart

  Gretton, John

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Bull, Sir William James

  Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Carille, E. Hlldred

  Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

  Stanier, Beville

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

  Starkey, John R.

  Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

  Helmsley, Viscount

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

  Valentia, Viscount

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Hill, Sir Clement

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Clark, George Smith

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

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

  Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)

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

  Courthope, G. Loyd

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

  Younger, George

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

  Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Remnant and Sir H. Kimber.

  Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  NOES.

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

  Ginnell, L.

  Nolan, Joseph

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Alden, Percy

  Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

  O'Grady, J.

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Gulland, John W.

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Radford, G. H.

  Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

  Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

  Rees, J. D.

  Bothell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

  Bothell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Robertson, Sir G Scott (Bradford)

  Bottomley, Horatio

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Robson, Sir William Snowdon

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Brooke, Stopforu

  Higham, John Sharp

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

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

  Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

  Rose, Sir Charles Day

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

  Horniman, Emslle John

  Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

  Byles, William Pollard

  Idris, T. H. W.

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Cameron, Robert

  Jardine, Sir J.

  Seely, Colonel

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

  Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

  Stanger, H. Y.

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Keating, M.

  Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

  Clough, William

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  Steadman, W. C.

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Laidlaw, Robert

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

  Leese, Sir Joseph (Accrington)

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

  Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Verney, F. W.

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Lynch, A. (Clare, W.)

  Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

  Crossley, William J.

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Curran, Peter Francis

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Watt, Henry A.

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

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)

  Weir, James Galloway

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  McKenna, Rt. Hon Reginald

  White, Sir George (Norfolk)

  Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

  Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

  White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Masterman, C. F. G.

  White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

  Evans, Sir S. T.

  Menzies, Sir Walter

  Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Micklem, Nathaniel

  Wiles, Thomas

  Ferens, T. R.

  Montagu, Hon. E. S.

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

  Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

  Murray, James (Aberdeen, E)

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  Fuller, John Michael F.

  Nicholls, George

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

  Gibb, James (Harrow)

  Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

  Bill, not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The Clause of the Noble Lord the hon. Member for Marylebone (Lord Robert Cecil), and the Clause of the hon. Member for the University of London (Sir Philip Magnus), will come as Amendments to Clause 4.
  Mr. REMNANTmoved to insert the following new Clause:—
  Duty of Person Registered in More than One Constituency.
  "If any person becomes aware that he is registered in more than one Constituency, and one of such entries is in respect of his place of abode, for the first time on the day of the poll he may make before the presiding officer of the polling station to which he is allotted in the Constituency which he desires to select, a statutory declaration of selection in the form prescribed by Order in Council under this Act.
  "A statutory declaration so made shall have the same effect as if the elector had given notice of his selection of the Constituency in the manner required by this Act, and the presiding officer shall allow the elector to vote accordingly, and shall transmit any statutory declaration so made before him to the returning officer."
  My Amendment is one which I hope will commend itself to the right hon. Gentleman. Its adoption will be doing an Act of common fairness to the electors.
  Mr. A. FELL: I second the Amendment.
  Mr. HARCOURT: The new Clause proposed by the hon. Member would give an elector whose name has accidentally or actually been entered on more than one register the right to select on which he will vote. The hon. Member says it will be an act of common fairness to the electorate. But it is an act which is not allowed in any other divided borough in the United Kingdom. I am extremely anxious to meet the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite that there should be no exceptional treatment for London. I am anxious to treat London only as other large boroughs. But the operation of the ordinary law in any other borough, say Manchester, where a man accidentally appears on more than one register for the divisions is that he is then entitled to vote for his residence, and for his residence only. That has proved, I think, satisfactory to the rest of the country, and should prove satisfactory for London. It
  28
  is a small, subsidiary point, but I do not feel quite certain that the words of the hon. Member would be sufficient to give the presiding officer the power to take the statutory declaration, unless he happened to be a person already empowered by law to take a statutory declaration. It is possible he might have to be given some statutory powers for this purpose. I cannot accept an Amendment to make the law in London different to any other place.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: Surely the right hon. Gentleman must recognise that the conditions in London under this Bill, if it becomes law, will be very different to any other place. The conditions he proposes to establish in London only exists where there is real unity and common life in the area so treated. That is not the least true in London. A man may have a qualification at one end of London and live at another, and, unless he is a lawyer, be absolutely ignorant of the fact that he has to take certain steps in order to secure his vote in the place where he desires to vote. Under the circumstances it does appear to me that the Amendment of my hon. Friend is required and desirable to meet the special circumstances it is proposed to establish.
  Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: I think the proposed Clause is a very fair one. I do not think that the analogy of Manchester, quoted by the right hon. Gentleman, is applicable. In Manchester we have a number of divisions. It is quite true, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that if you have not formally signed a paper and made an absolute choice, you have simply to vote in the division in which you reside. But this new Clause is rather directed against a different state of affairs. It is possible for the electors in London to suddenly find out, much to their surprise, that they are also registered in some other division of London. This very thing happened to myself. I was entirely unaware last year, until a municipal election came in the City of Westminster, that I was registered as a voter in Westminster. Under circumstances such as these, I think a man should have some reasonable facilities for making a selection. I take it that is the intention of the new Clause, and for that reason I think it ought to be adopted.
  Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time."
  The House divided: Ayes, 62; Noes, 122.

  Division No. 799.]

  AYES.

  [4.0 p.m.

  Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex, F.

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)

  Ashley, W. W.

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

  Oddy, John James

  Balcarres, Lord

  Foil, Arthur

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Fletcher, J. S.

  Pretyman, E. G.

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Gardner, Ernest

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

  Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

  Bowles, G. Stewart

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Carlile, E. Hildred

  Gretton, John

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

  Stanier, Seville

  Cecil, Lord John P. Jolcey-

  Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

  Starkey, John R.

  Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

  Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Heimsley, Viscount

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Clark, George Smith

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

  Valentia, Viscount

  Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

  Hill, Sir Clement

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Courthope, G. Loyd

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)

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

  Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

  Younger, George

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

  Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Remnant and Sir W. Bull.

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Magnus, Sir Philip

  Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan)

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  NOES.

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

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  O'Grady, J.

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Gulland, John W.

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Alden, Percy

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

  Pearce, William (Limehouse)

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.

  Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

  Radford, G. H.

  Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Rees, J. D.

  Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

  Bottomley, Horatio

  Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

  Robson, Sir William Snowdon

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Higham, John Sharp

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Brooke, Stopford

  Hobart, Sir Robert

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

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

  Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

  Rose, Sir Charles Day

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

  Hodgo, John

  Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

  Byles, William Pollard

  Horniman, Emslie John

  Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

  Cameron, Robert

  Idris, T. H. W.

  Seely, Colonel

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Jardine, Sir J.

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Stanger, H. Y.

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

  Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

  Clough, William

  Keating, M.

  Steadman, W. C.

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

  Latdlaw, Robert

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

  Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Verney, F. W.

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Waldron, Laurence Ambrose

  Crossley, William J.

  Lynch, A. (Clare, W.)

  Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

  Curran, Peter Francis

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

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

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)

  Watt, Henry A.

  Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

  Massle, J.

  Weir, James Galloway

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Masterman, C. F. G.

  White, Sir George (Norfolk)

  Evans, Sir S. T.

  Menzies, Sir Walter

  White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

  Ferens, T. R.

  Micklem, Nathaniel

  White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

  Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

  Montagu, Hon. E. S.

  Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

  Fuller, John Michael F.

  Mooney, J. J.

  Wiles, Thomas

  Gibb, James (Harrow)

  Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

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

  Ginnell, L.

  Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Nicholls, George

  Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

  Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

  Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

  Nolan, Joseph

  Greenwood, Hamar (York)

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Lord ROBERT CECILmoved to insert the following Clause:—
  Provision in Respect of s. 64 of The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883.
  "Notwithstanding anything in Section sixty-four of The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883, contained, a person registered as a Parliamentary
  30
  elector in any constituency, but debarred by the provision of this Act from voting in that constituency in any election, shall not be held to be an elector in that election and constituency within the meaning of that Act."
  This is a small matter, and I do not know whether the Government will not meet me about it. Under Section 64 of the Corrupt

  31
  and Illegal Practices Prevention Act I find: "The expression 'elector' means any person whose name is for the time being on the register roll or book containing the names of the persons entitled to vote at the election with reference to which the expression is used." It is quite plain that under this Bill a large number of people will be on the roll who will not in fact be entitled to vote, and it would seem very anomalous if this Section of the Corrupt Practices Act should apply to them. If the corrupt man cannot vote no offence is committed, and unless something is done to meet the case to which I direct attention everyone whose name appears upon the roll, whether he is entitled to vote or not, will be an elector, and will come within the provision which I have read. I suggest that some such Amendment as I have put upon the Paper is necessary to prevent an unnecessarily severe proceeding against such people. I do not desire to say any more until I hear what the Government has to say in regard to this matter.
  Mr. E. H. CARLILE: I beg to second the Motion.
  Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."
  Mr. HARCOURT: The Noble Lord will find that the situation which he presupposes in his new Clause cannot arise, because under the existing law as applied now what happens in the case of a duplicate Parliamentary vote of which a possessor is to be dispossessed in a particular constituency is this: He is not left on Division 1 for his Parliamentary vote, but he is transferred to Division 3, which is the parochial register. He keeps his municipal and parochial vote there, but he loses his Parliamentary vote. He, therefore, ceases to be on the Parliamentary register, which is the register the particulars of which have to be taken into consideration in fixing the maximum of the returning officer's costs or the scale of expenses allowed to a candidate. Therefore the Noble Lord will see that the transfer to Division 3, which will occur in the ordinary course, relieves the elector from all the dangers contemplated.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: If the right hon. Gentleman says so, I am sure he is right, as he knows the provisions of his Bill, and I admit I have not been able to give the matter as much time as I should have liked to, but can the right hon. Gentleman point
  32
  out to me the exact provision in his Bill which does not leave a man on the register merely starred, but which transfers him to the other division?
  Mr. HARCOURT: It is not a provision under this Bill, but a provision of the existing law, which comes into operation the moment London becomes a municipal borough. It is precisely what occurs, say, for instance, in the borough of Marylebone. A person, say, has two qualifications, one for East and one for West Marylebone, and is not entitled to exercise the two votes. He selects to vote for East Marylebone, and, therefore, in West Marylebone he is put upon Division 3, where he may keep his parochial vote.
  Sir WILLIAM BULL: As he is described as a Parliamentary elector there is something in the Noble Lord's contention. I think the Clause in the Bill would want some Amendment.
  Mr. HARCOURT: No; he ceases to be a Parliamentary elector. The parochial list, Division 3, does not contain Parliamentary electors. It contains the names of other electors, including women.
  Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. STEWART BOWLESmoved to insert the following new Clause:—
  Provision for Fresh Selection.
  "Where a person has selected a constituency, and the name of such person is struck off the list of voters on revision for the qualification so selected, such person shall be at liberty to make a fresh selection which shall be transmitted to the special revising barrister."
  The object of the Clause is quite plain, and the point it raises must, I think, occur to the Government, but I see no provision in the Bill for dealing with it. The proposal in the new Clause is a reasonable one. At any rate, I think it is quite clear that something ought to be done in the Bill to meet the case which it raises. It cannot be the object of the Bill to disfranchise persons altogether who may have a double or a treble claim under the existing law, merely because that person, having made a selection, is afterwards disqualified on the revision. I moved this Clause in order to give the Government an opportunity of considering the point raised, as it is a serious one and a practical one, and one which, if not, met, will certainly involve great hardship in London. I think the Government

  33
  ought to meet the point either by accepting this Clause or in some other way.
  Sir W. BULL: I beg to second the Motion.
  Mr. HARCOURT: Again I can relieve hon. Members' minds. This result will not happen under the Bill. The law will be in London precisely as it is in other parts of the country, where, if a man makes a selection, and, in doing so, selects a qualification which subsequently turns out to be invalid, the barrister who is revising the list will have marked his vote for the residence. The loss of one or many qualifications by an individual must occur in the ordinary Revising Barristers' Court, and all these courts will have concluded before the special revising barrister provided for under this Bill sets to work. If Jones has selected a business qualification, and now fails to justify that qualification before the revising barrister, there is no reason why he should have another shot at the selection. He is not going to be disfranchised. He will be registered for his residence and perhaps for other business qualifications. The revving barrister, under the existing law, which applies to other parts of the country, will allot him the vote for his residence. The only hardship will be that he has taken the sporting chance of selecting an obviously doubtful qualification, and, having failed to make it good, he will be compelled, for one year only, to vote for his residence.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: Surely that is not a very complete answer. It is recognised that it is a desirable thing to give a man the right to select which qualification he will vote out of. It turns out that the qualification which he has selected is not a good one. Why should he not be allowed, then, to make another selection? I do not understand the objection raised by the Government to this point. They say that, at any rate, the man will be allowed to vote for the place where he lives, and that that ought to be sufficient. I am not quite so sure about that. Supposing the man has more than two qualifications, and does not reside at either of them? Would he be entitled to vote for any of his other qualifications? I do not know how the law stands if the man lives outside London. Suppose he has more than two qualifications inside London and selects one, and it turns out that he is not entitled to vote for that particular qualification—will he be entitled to vote for any of those other qualifications? Under these circumstances,
  34
  I do not think he would be able to vote in London at all. It does appear to me that the Government has not given any reason whatever why a man should not be allowed to make a fresh selection. The Government utterly refuse to recognise that by extending this provision to London they are creating a very different state of things, and it is not the state of things in any degree which prevails in the borough of Marylebone. A man may have two qualifications, one in East and one in West Marylebone, and he knows all about it. To him it is exceedingly easy to see that he gets the vote he is entitled to, but you may have cases divided by great stretches of country and a greater division of actual interest, and yet you are lumping them together as one Parliamentary entity, and you are introducing a state of things which does not exist in any other part of the country. The right hon. Gentleman has given no kind of answer to this Amendment.
  Mr. HARCOURT: In the case of a voter resident outside London having several business qualifications in London, one of which he has selected and failed to prove, he will be able to vote. That case is provided for under the ordinary law, under which he can make a second selection. The revising barrister in that case is bound to allot him a vote, but if he has not made a selection or made it ineffectively, the revising barrister must settle which other qualification he has to exercise for that year by allotment. Under the present law a revising barrister in Manchester, under similar circumstances, has to allot the voter who has gone through that procedure to the list which he first revises. In this respect, under this Bill, we are following the general law in every particular.
  Mr. CARLILE: The reply which the right hon. Gentleman has given is extremely unsatisfactory. We have been referred to the various lists from which a selection can be made, and a sort of parallel has been drawn between that and the position of the individual voter in the existing county of London. What is there in common between the two cases? The revising barrister has to select from a certain number of lists, and he must proceed to select under some principle. When it is a case of an individual voter who has a number of qualifications, why should he not have the right to decide where he shall exercise the franchise? If a man has two or three residences in this great new

  35
  county borough of London, which is to be constitute under this Bill, why should the revising barrister have to decide for which of those residences he has to vote? Surely if a man is struck off the list for one qualification on some technicality it is an unreasonable thing to say that the revising barrister should arbitrarily decide in what portion of this great area he is to exercise the franchise.
  Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: The right hon. Gentleman seems persistently to ignore the fact that other boroughs where the ordinary law applies are altogether on a different basis. I do not suppose that there are more than a dozen people in Liverpool who have got two residences, and I do not think there are a dozen of these cases in Manchester; but it is a common thing in London. [HON. MEMBERS "Oh, oh!"] There are hon. Members of this House who have got two residences in London. There are a number of people who reside in the outlying portions of London, and who for convenience occupy flats in the neighbourhood of this House. The right hon. Gentleman has entirely ignored the distinctly different state of affairs which are peculiarly applicable to London. One is the case where a voter votes for a place outside London, where he lives, and has two business qualifications in London. That case is not provided for by the ordinary law. The other case is where a man has a business qualification, or, perhaps, two business qualifications, and also happens to have two residences, both in London. In both those cases the ordinary law gives no substantial relief, and the new Clause proposed by my hon. Friend is intended to meet that difficulty by giving a further selection to the man who has been so unfortunate as to be struck off the list for the particular division he has selected. It is not merely a case of taking a sporting chance. There are cases happening every day where a man's property changes hands. A man might turn his business concern into a limited company and lose his vote, and it might not occur to him that by so doing he would lose his qualification. Nevertheless the right hon. Gentleman treats this as a matter of no importance. I invite the hon. Gentleman to seriously look at the difficulties and hardships which this Bill is going to inflict, and I hope he will listen to the suggestion which has been made in good faith to give those men who will be subjected to these hardships a renewed right of selection.
  36
  Upon those grounds I think the Government ought to give a little more consideration to an important Amendment of this kind.
  Mr. A HENDERSON: Much of the discussion so far has pre-supposed that the voter whose name has already appeared on the list, and who has made a selection, has not a second right of selection. As one who has had a good deal of experience in connection with revision courts, I would like to remind the House that the persons whose names have been entered upon the list cannot be removed without an objection. The list is published on 1st August, and the objection must be posted by 20th August. The revision courts do not sit until September, and some of them sit as late as October. Immediately the individual objected to finds that the qualification he has selected is doubtful, as a wise man he would immediately inform his agent that he has been objected to, and unless he was quite convinced that the objection was altogether groundless, he could then put in another selection which the revising barrister has full power to allot. This process obtains to-day all over the country under the existing law. I should have the greatest sympathy with this Amendment if there had not been provision already made whereby the individual objected to can make a second selection and have it considered by the ordinary revising barrister. The point is not a new one, and I venture to say that the agents of all parties are so alert on this point that there is very little danger of any gentleman with more than one qualification losing his vote because a proper selection has not been made.
  Mr. STEWART BOWLES: I am not satisfied with the answer made by the Government, and I have not been relieved by the speech of the hon. Member for Barnard Castle. The hon. Member says there is really no hardship in this case, because a man who, having made his selection and afterwards finds that objection is taken, has ample time between 20th August and September or October to amend his claim and make another selection. That would afford a very easy method of wiping out or frightening off a great number of voters. All you would have to do, according to the hon. Gentleman, would be to find a number of persons who have more than one qualification, and enter formal objection to their selection to vote in your area, thereby putting them or their agent to the necessity of selecting another

  37
  place. That would be an undesirable thing. It would tend to create great uncertainty and difficulty. After ah, this is a matter of principle. The principle of the Bill is quite simple. It is that a man, however many qualifications he may have for votes in different parts of London, so long as they are all in London, can only exercise one vote, and he is to be allowed a free choice among his qualifications as to where he shall vote. That, I understand, is the plain and simple principle underlying the Bill. That is quite clearly destroyed by the machinery proposed by the Government, and we have had no answer given to the Amendment, except that it is the existing machinery in other parts of the country. London, however, is a very different place from Liverpool or Manchester. All the right hon. Gentleman says is that he does not see why this unhappy man who has, upon the invitation and under the scheme of the Bill, made a selection to vote, say, in Marylebone, should, if he is disqualified, have a second shot. If that is the attitude, why should he have a first shot? Why should he have a shot at all? If your principle is that a man is to be allowed to choose among his various qualifications, why should you limit him to one shot, supposing that shot has been made bonâ fide? If he is not to be allowed a second shot, the whole principle of freedom of choice entirely disappears, and you have a perfectly arbitrary and unreasoning method, automatically applied without appeal. If he has a residence in London, you force him, whether he likes it or not—and he may dislike it bitterly, and although he may already have expressed a desire to go somewhere else—to vote for his residence, and, if he has not a residence, then you are to decide where he is to vote, not by his desire, but by tossing up a halfpenny and by drawing lots. That is a machinery which I cannot think wise in itself, and it will clearly invite in many cases very great abuses in the practical administration of the law of electoral qualification. It certainly entirely defeats what I understand to be the whole principle of the Bill, which is that, while a man is only to have one vote in London, he is at any rate to be left the small liberty of choosing in respect of which of his various qualifications he will vote. I do not think the answer of the right hon. Gentleman can satisfy any impartial observer of the Debate, and I shall be inclined to press the matter to a Division.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I was rather astonished to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. A. Henderson). I understood the point of his speech was that, if a person was struck off the register and disqualified for the constituency for which he had selected to vote, then all he would have to do would be to be in the court—
  Mr. A. HENDERSON: I must correct the hon. Member. I did not say "if he was struck off." I said, "If he received an objection," which is entirely a different thing.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I do not see that it makes any difference at all. I will take a concrete instance. I happen to have a vote in the City of London and also in St. George's, Hanover Square. I select the City of London, and I have to look out for an objection. Having got one, I have to decide whether it is going to be made good. If I think it is, then I am to take off my selection from that particular place and put it on to some other place. I always thought that hon. Members below the Gangway held that the franchise should be conferred upon everybody with as little trouble and difficulty as possible. The whole of their speeches with regard to the franchise have always been that every man should be qualified, and that there should be no difficulty put in the way, but here is an hon. Member desirous of putting difficulties in everybody's way and of making the obtaining of a vote as difficult as possible. Then, he says, it is done in other parts of the country. I should have thought he would have endeavoured to alter the law in other parts of the country, so as to bring it into conformity with the law in London instead of altering the law in London, so as to bring it into conformity with the law in other parts of the country. I presume he alludes to Liverpool, Manchester, and places of that sort. They are quite different from London. Their population, I suppose, is between five and six hundred thousand, or probably seven hundred thousand London has a population of five millions. What is the good of talking of other parts of the country when there is not a single city comparable with London? The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Works is in charge of this Bill. What has the Franchise to do with the Office of Works? It is a marvel to me, and I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman would have been inclined to take advice from London

  39
  Members sitting on this side of the House, and would at any rate have allowed the enlightened voter of London the opportunity of choosing where he might vote. This is a striking commentary upon the desire of hon. Gentlemen opposite to confer the
  vote upon the free and independent elector. They only want to confer it when he is a Radical.
  Question put: "That the Clause be read a second time."
  The House divided: Ayes, 74; Noes, 140.

  Division No. 800.]

  AYES.

  [4.40 p.m.

  Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

  Forster, Henry William

  Oddy, John James

  Ashley, W. W.

  Gardner, Ernest

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Balcarres, Lord

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Gretton, John

  Percy, Earl

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

  Pretyman, E. G.

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmonds)

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Burdett-Coutts, W.

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

  Carlile, E. Mildred

  Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Castlareagh, Viscount

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

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

  Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Stanier, Beville

  Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

  Helmsley, Viscount

  Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

  Starkey, John R.

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Hill, Sir Clement

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Clark, George Smith

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

  Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Courthope, G. Loyd

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

  Valentia, Viscount

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

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

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  M'Arthur, Charles

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

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Magnus, Sir Philip

  Younger, George

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

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Fell, Arthur

  Moore, William

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Stewart Bowles and Sir W. Bull.

  Fletcher, J. S.

  Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)

  NOES.

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

  Evans, Sir S. T.

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

  Ferens, T. R.

  Mallet, Charles E.

  Alden, Percy

  Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

  Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

  Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

  Freeman-Thomas, Freeman

  Massie, J.

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Fuller, John Michael F

  Masterman, C. F. G.

  Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

  Ginnell, L.

  Menzies, Sir Walter

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Micklem, Nathaniel

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

  Montagu, Hon. E. S.

  Beauchamp, E.

  Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

  Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

  Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.

  Gulland, John W.

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

  Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

  Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Nicholls, George

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

  Boulton, A. C. F.

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Nolan, Joseph

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Branch, James

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  O'Grady, J.

  Brooke, Stopford

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Parker, James (Halifax)

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

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Pearce, William (Limehouse)

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Henry, Charles S.

  Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

  Higham, John Sharp

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Byles, William Pollard

  Hobart, Sir Robert

  Radford, G. H.

  Cameron, Robert

  Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

  Raphael, Herbert H.

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Hodge, John

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

  Horniman, Emslie John

  Rees, J. D.

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Idris, T. H. W.

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

  Clough, William

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

  Cobbold, Felix Thornley

  Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

  Robson, Sir William Snowdon

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Keating, M.

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Collins, Sir Win. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

  Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

  Laidlaw, Robert

  Rose, Sir Charles Day

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Lambert, George

  Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Crosfield, A. H.

  Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

  Sears, J. E.

  Crossley, William J.

  Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

  Seely, Colonel

  Curran, Peter Francis

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Sherwell, Arthur James

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

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Lynch, A. (Clare, W.)

  Stanger, H. Y.

  Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Wiles, Thomas

  Steadman, W. C.

  Watt, Henry A.

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

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Weir, James Galloway

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

  White, Sir George (Norfolk)

  Yoxall, Sir James Henry

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

  Waldron, Laurence Ambrose

  White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

  Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

  Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

  Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

  Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

  Mr. REMNANTmoved to insert the following Clause:—
  Town Clerks to Warn Voters.
  "The town clerk or other responsible officer shall annually in the month of July give, public notice, in a form to be prescribed by Order in Council, warning voters of the provisions of this Act, and such notice shall be published in accordance with the provisions of the Registration Act, 1843, Sections twenty-three and twenty-four, and the Registration Act, 1878, Section nine."
  This Clause speaks for itself. It merely provides that in July of each year power shall be taken for the town clerk to issue notice to the voters to warn them of the provisions of this Act. No Amendment proposed from this side of the House is likely to be accepted by the right hon. Gentleman. We know he told us upstairs that the Bill was so beautifully drawn that it was not possible to add to it in any shape or form. The right hon. Gentleman talks of crowds of hon. Members having
  been present upstairs. As usual he very much exaggerated the facts. Although he tells us the Bill is so perfect, I venture to move this new Clause, but not with much hope that it will be accepted.
  Mr. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to second.
  Mr. HARCOURT: The effect of this new Clause would only be to have notices affixed to the doors of the Town Hall and Post Office, and indeed it does not go so far as another Clause on the Paper which has yet to be moved. It would, however, place London in a different position to the rest of the country. No notice of this kind is exhibited in any town, and I am quite sure that those who have the conduct of electoral affairs will in the interests of their own parties take much more effective steps to secure the end aimed at than would follow from the mere posting of notices, as suggested. I, therefore, cannot accept the Clause.
  Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time."
  The House divided: Ayes, 76; Noes, 145.

  Division No. 801.]

  AYES.

  [4.55 p.m.

  Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. P.

  Forster, Henry William

  Oddy, John James

  Ashley, W. W.

  Gardner, Ernest

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Balcarres, Lord

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Gretton, John

  Percy, Earl

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

  Pretyman, E. G.

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Bowles, G. Stewart

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

  Bull, Sir William James

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Burdett-Coutts, W.

  Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

  Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

  Carlile, E. Hildred

  Heaton, John Henniker

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

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Helmsley, Viscount

  Stanier, Beville

  Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

  Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r)

  Hill, Sir Clement

  Starkey, John R.

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Clark, George Smith

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

  Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Courthope, G. Loyd

  Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)

  Valentia, Viscount

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

  Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

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

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott

  MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh

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

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  M'Arthur, Charles

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Magnus, Sir Philip

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

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

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Younger, George

  Fell, Arthur

  Moore, William

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Remnant and Mr. Claude Hay.

  Fletcher, J. S.

  Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

  NOES.

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

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Beck, A. Cecil

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

  Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.

  Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

  Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

  Alden, Percy

  Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

  Bonn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

  Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

  Beauchamp, E.

  Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Boulton, A. C. F.

  Henry, Charles S.

  Radford, G. H.

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

  Raphael, Herbert H

  Branch, James

  Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Brooke, Stopford

  Higham, John Sharp

  Rees, J. D.

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

  Hobart, Sir Robert

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

  Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Hodge, John

  Robson, Sir Wm. Snowdon

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

  Horniman, Emslie John

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Byles, William Pollard

  Idris, T. H. W.

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

  Cameron, Robert

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Rose, Sir Charles Day

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

  Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

  Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

  Keating, M.

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Kekewich, Sir George

  Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)

  Clough, William

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  Sears, J. E.

  Cobbold, Felix Thornley

  Laidlaw, Robert

  Seely, Colonel

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Lambert, George

  Sherwell, Arthur James

  Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

  Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

  Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

  Stanger, H. Y.

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

  Crosfield, A. H.

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Steadman, W. C.

  Crossley, William J.

  Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Curran, Peter Francis

  Lynch, A. (Clare, W.)

  Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)

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

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Taylor, John W. (Durham)

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

  Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

  Mallet, Charles E.

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

  Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

  Evans, Sir S. T.

  Massie, J.

  Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Masterman, C. F. G.

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Ferens, T. R.

  Menzies, Sir Walter

  Watt, Henry A.

  Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

  Micklem, Nathaniel

  Weir, James Galloway

  Freeman-Thomas, Freeman

  Montagu, Hon. E. S.

  White, Sir George (Norfolk)

  Fuller, John Michael F.

  Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

  White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

  Ginnell, L.

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

  Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

  Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

  Nicholls, George

  Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

  Gulland, John W.

  Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

  Wiles, Thomas

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

  Nolan, Joseph

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

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Yoxall, Sir James Henry

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Pearce, William (Limehouse)

  Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

  Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Lord ROBERT CECILmoved to insert the following Clause:—
  Relief in Cases of Personation.
  "A court before whom a person is convicted in consequence of the provisions of this Act of the offence of personation or of an illegal practice may, if they think it just under the circumstances of the case, mitigate or entirely remit any incapacities imposed by Section six or Section ten of The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883, and if on application made it is shown to the High Court that any person has so acted without any intention of evading the provisions of this Act, the court shall have a similar power to grant relief as is contained in Section twenty-three of the said Act."
  This Clause does not raise a question perhaps of very enormous importance, but at any rate with respect to personation it is of some importance. I do not press it as far as the illegal practices are concerned, because that is a very much smaller matter. I prefer to take it on the question of personation, and I do
  44
  think something should be done with reference to that. As I understand the law—I do not know whether I am right—the Solicitor-General will correct me if I am wrong—but as I understand the law, if a man has a duplicate qualification under this Bill, and votes for a place for which under it he is not entitled to vote, he is guilty of the offence of personation. That has always appeared to me to be a pretty severe penalty in an ordinary election. Personation properly explained is an offence into which fraud enters. The true idea of personation is, where a man knowing quite well that he is John Jones goes and votes as John Smith. That is a typical case of personation and involves deliberate deception, and cannot be done by any possibility unwittingly, or without a man knowing that he is committing a very serious offence. But there is the crime of constructive personation. A man having two places of business, one down in the south-east of London, say at Lewisham, and the other up in the extreme west, say at Hammersmith, there being no connection whatever between the

  45
  two places, which may not be even used for the same kind of business, votes in the place he is not entitled to. The qualification may be an entirely distinct one; he is in fact qualified by law at present to vote for both those boroughs, and under this Act, by lot, very likely without his being consulted and knowing nothing about it, he becomes entitled to vote for Hammersmith and is forbidden to vote for Lewisham. It may be that he has always voted for Lewisham, but if he records his vote in that borough he thereupon by that act, without any knowledge on his part at all, becomes guilty of the offence of personation, and is subject to very considerable penalties which are not dealt with under this Act. He is also disabled from exercising any public function and from voting at any election anywhere in the country for seven years, and no court can mitigate that punishment in the slightest degree. It may be that it is the merest breach of technicality that he is guilty of, and no one in the House will blame him in the least. Yet by the condition of the law as it is proposed to be enacted by this Bill he would be disabled from voting for seven years not only for Parliamentary purposes, but in an election for any public office within the meaning of the Act, and there is no possibility of getting him any relief by any means.
  So far as the illegal practice is concerned, it is a more complicated matter, and the penalty is much less severe, and all I ask in this Clause is that the court should be entitled to mitigate that penalty if it thought fit, and if it turned out that the offence was entirely unwitting and in no sense criminal in the popular sense of that word, and that the man should be allowed to make an application under Section 23 of the Act of 1883, which is the relief Clause upon which this question turns. It is a pretty stiff Section which prevails even in regard to the minor offences under that Act, and it provides that if a man shows that an act or an omission should not be subjected to any of the consequences of the statute the court may make an order allowing such Act or omission to be an exception of the Act, which would otherwise be an illegal practice. That is to say if you can—and the hon. and learned Solicitor-General knows you have to make a pretty clear case under that Section—if you can come and show to the satisfaction of the court that the offence was as a matter of fact trivial and was committed by inadvertence, then you can get free from the penalty, and I do
  46
  submit to the Government that this is a case in which they really might meet the Opposition and accept some such Amendment as this. Of course, if the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Harcourt) were here he would make the same reply as he has to all these matters. He would say this is the law already in regard to Manchester, Birmingham, and other provincial cities, and, therefore, it ought to be the law in regard to London; but really I think the House will see that that is pressing logic to an absurdity.
  London is not the same as Manchester, and it really is grotesque and ridiculous to contend that for all these purposes you can use the example of Manchester and Birmingham and other places in comparison with London. In those cases the cities have grown because one centre of population has gradually expanded, but in London it is exactly the reverse, and you may have a dozen or more centres of population which have joined together. That makes a great distinction, not only in the quality, but in the life of the place, and it is perverse fatuity to pretend that there is any community of life between Hammersmith and Lewisham except for the coincidence that representatives of Lewisham and Hammersmith both sit upon the county council. There is no community of life, and the places are absolutely distinct in all their interests and in regard to all their funds. That does make a very real distinction in this case. The man who lives at Birmingham may well realise that he cannot vote for two divisions of Birmingham, and is, therefore, less liable to bring himself under this extreme penalty which is imposed for personation. Even, however, if there were any similarity between the cases of Birmingham and London, even if the analogy were true, I should still press the Amendment on the Government, because I do think the law is ridiculous as regards Birmingham or Manchester, or any of these other places. To say that a man is guilty under the circumstances I have mentioned seems to me to be absolute absurdity, and to debar him from exercising some of his civic rights for seven years for an offence of this kind is ludicrously in excess of the necessities of the case. It ought to be the general law that the court should have a general power to mitigate the severity of the penalty, and if it ought to be the general law a fortiori it ought to be the law in London, and for these reasons I move the Amendment.
  Mr. ROBERT DUNCAN: I beg to second the proposed new Clause. The argument we have heard has been based chiefly upon the complexity of life in London, and I think hon. Members opposite must recognise what a strong argument that is. Even in the newspapers we see that the London Scottish are trying to defeat the London Welsh, sometimes with success, and sometimes the London Irish are taking their part. Altogether, the life of a great Imperial city is necessarily a very complex one and represents very varied interests. These people have very different parts in their life. Scotchmen may have a factory in Bermondsey—Scotchmen have set up factories in Bermondsey—and they may have their interest there, and they may think that they ought to vote for Bermondsey as well as for Peebles. I think the Noble Lord has made out a good case, and I trust he will be successful.
  The SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir Samuel Evans): I think the Noble Lord did well to give up, as in effect he did, the second part of the new Clause, for, as I dare say he knows, in the case of the illegal practices which would be covered by the second part of the new Clause, the element of knowledge comes in under the Act of Parliament. In regard to the part of the new Clause dealing with personation, no one will deny that if personation is proved it is a very serious offence. An ordinary personation is, as the Noble Lord stated, a person whose name is Jones voting in the name of Smith, who may be alive or dead. A person who does that knowingly is guilty of a very serious criminal offence. There is, of course, the other case which the Noble Lord referred to of a man voting twice when he has perhaps no knowledge that he is committing an offence in law at all, but as to that portion of the new Clause it is quite unnecessary, as the Act of Parliament deals with imprisonment not exceeding a certain term and a penalty not exceeding a certain amount, so that there will be full power in the tribunal to deal with the matter.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: The new Clause I propose only deals with the incapacities. It says nothing about the penalties of imprisonment or fine at all.
  Sir SAMUEL EVANS: The Section of the Act of 1883, which deals with this question, makes it possible for the court to impose a penalty or a penalty and imprisonment, or either.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: But this Clause only deals with the incapacities.
  Sir SAMUEL EVANS: With regard to the question of incapacity I am rather afraid to use the argument as to Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool after what the Noble Lord has said. Still, this is a general provision of the law, and I want to call the attention of the Noble Lord to the difficulty of making a mistake in this case after a selection has been made. After the selection has taken place a man's name will not appear in the list of Parliamentary electors for the other place for which he is qualified at all. His name only appears in Division No. 3, and as he must say when he comes to vote that he is a Parliamentary elector, it is almost impossible to have a bonâ fide mistake under the circumstances, and it only turns upon the question whether there is a bonâ fide mistake. There is a decision—I will not say whether it is good law or not—there is a decision which stands, and which says that if a mistake is committed bonâ fide the offence of personation is not committed. I will read to the Noble Lord the decision I refer to:—
  "A voter being on the register in two divisions for the same borough voted in both divisions. On a scrutiny of the votes the court found us a fact that the voter had acted bonâ fide and held that the offence of personation had not been committed and hold that the first vote should stand, but intimated that the second vote was lost."
  I have not been able to refer to the case, but I should rather assume that the decision was upon the general grounds that you must have mens rea before you can be guilty of an offence of this kind. But there is another answer which still holds good, that where you have an offence against the electoral law it ought to be exactly on the same footing if it was committed in London as if it was committed in Manchester or Liverpool.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: There is a very good reason why it ought not to be the same in London as in the provinces. You are here in London taking away a right which has existed from immemorial time, and to the exercise of which the people have got accustomed by long practice. In other boroughs this opportunity of voting in different divisions never was more than an opportunity and has never been a right, and so far as it is merely an opportunity it is the creation solely of an entirely recent Statute. That is a profound difference between the two cases, which makes infinitely greater the proba-

  49
  bility of a mistake being made, and abundantly justifies my Noble Friend in moving the Clause.
  Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time."
  The House divided: Ayes, 75; Noes, 160.

  LONDON ELECTIONS BILL.

    CLAUSE 1.—(Constitution of London as a Single Parliamentary Borough.)
    (1) The area formed by the existing Parliamentary boroughs in London specified in the first column of the First Schedule to this Act, and in this Act referred to as existing Parliamentary boroughs, shall be a, single Parliamentary borough to be called the Parliamentary borough of London.
    (2) Each of the existing Parliamentary boroughs or, where such a borough is divided into divisions, each of those divisions shall be a division of the Parliamentary borough of London, returning in the case of the city of London two members and in all other cases one member, and called by the name specified in the second column of the First Schedule to this Act.
    Sir F. BANBURYmoved to omit the Clause.
    This Clause is really the Bill. The remaining clauses are only machinery clauses which are necessary in the event of Clause 1 passing. Clause 1 provides that the existing Parliamentary boroughs of London shall be a single Parliamentary borough, to be called the Parliamentary Borough of London, and it goes on to say that the existing Parliamentary boroughs, except in the case of the City of London, which shall return two Members, shall be called by the name specified in the second column of the First Schedule to this Act. This Clause deals with 59 constituencies—as a matter of fact they return 62 Members—and it is a disfranchising clause. It is brought forward, as far as I can see, for no reason whatever except that London as a rule returns Unionists to Parliament. The Plural Voting Bill stipulated that plural voting should not exist over England. That I think was a wrong Bill, but, whether right or wrong, it dealt with the whole country. But this Bill disfranchises one part of the country only, namely, London. The only argument which has been brought forward in favour of this Clause has been that the same method pertains in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and other places. I beg to differ from that statement. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman why his own
    52
    party, which passed the Redistribution Act in 1885, expressly provided that London should consist of a certain number of boroughs? If they had not put that Clause into the Act London would have fallen under the Bill, and would have been in the same position as the right hon. Gentleman now desires that it shall be in. There must have been a reason at that time for making the provisions which were then made, and which constituted London 59 or 60 different Parliamentary boroughs. The reason is because London is not one borough as a whole but is made up of a large agglomeration of different cities which from time to time have grown together. Take the Royal Borough of Kensington. How on earth can the right hon. Gentleman say that it has anything whatever to do with Hoxton or Mile End, or ever had? The history of London is that Chelsea, the City of Westminster, Kensington and the other various boroughs were in the old days villages, and have gradually grown up until they have all consolidated round one central spot and have for certain purposes become one city. But all the social life and the business of London are very nearly as distinct to-day as they were when those different villages had no cohesion between them. Take the case of Lewisham. What interest is there between the man in Lewisham and the man in Mile End? And there are many other instances which might be multiplied to show that there is a very great difference between these numbers of interests joined together and the one borough of Manchester or Liverpool or Birmingham.
    Even if the example given by the right hon. Gentleman was a good one it has not been carried out either in Liverpool or in Manchester. Take Salford. It is just as much a part of Manchester as Chelsea is a part of London, and yet the people in Salford are allowed to vote without any regard to what qualification they may have in Manchester. Take Bootle. That is just as much a part of Liverpool as Peck-ham or Camberwell is part of London, and yet Bootle and Liverpool are two different constituencies as far as regards the Parliamentary vote. There are many other

    53
    cases. We might take the case of West Ham, East Ham, and Croydon. Does the right hon. Gentleman intend later on to scoop into his net East Ham, West Ham, and Croydon? Where is he going to draw the line? It is a purely arbitrary line which the right hon. Gentleman has drawn, founded upon the Bill of 1885, which stipulated that London should be divided into these different Parliamentary boroughs. In the case of Liverpool I am informed there are nine divisions. A great deal of confusion arises there owing to the difficulty of finding out whether a man is entitled to vote in one division or another. I am informed that it very often happens that a man residing in one part of Liverpool and having a qualification in another selects the district for exercising his right to vote where no contest takes place when an election occurs, and, therefore, he is disqualified.
    In London, where you have 60 divisions with a population of live millions, the difficulty of finding out who is and who is not qualified, will be practically insuperable. How is anybody to know that John Jones who happens to carry on business in Mile End is the same John Jones who happens to live in Paddington? There may be two John Jones, or there may be two Samuel Evans. [An Hon. MEMBER: "No."] Well, one real one. Now, how are you to know whether it is the real one or the imitation one. It is quite impossible to find out, and consequently enormous confusion must result. Then the difficulty that is put upon the elector will be very great. Hitherto being enfranchised by Act of Parliament, he has been allowed to exercise his vote, provided that he pays rates and taxes, and has resided for a certain time in a particular borough in which his qualification is situated. Now all this is to be changed. First of all, how is he to know that there will be a contest in the division which he selects? A man may have a qualification to vote in the City of London and also in South Kensington. How is he to know which division he ought to choose? He will very likely choose the wrong one, and if he chooses a division where there is no election he is disfranchised. Why should a man who has a business qualification in the City of London and a house in Croydon be able to vote in both places, whereas a man who has a business qualification in the City of London and a house in South Kensington can only vote in one place? There is no logic of any sort or kind in such a system. If the right hon. Gentle-
    54
    man says that is what happens in Liverpool I would say that Liverpool is a far less important place than London. It has only nine divisions as against 60 in London. It would be very much simpler for the right hon. Gentleman, if he is actuated by great zeal for reformation, to alter the system in Liverpool, and make it correspond to the system in London rather than to make London correspond with Liverpool.
    The real object of the Bill is very plain. Having failed with this Plural Voting Bill, the right hon. Gentleman has turned his attention to London. I do not know whether he was so foolish as to think that hon. Members would not see through this first Clause. It is evident that the only reason why this Clause has been brought in is the fear of London Radical Members that they are not going to be returned again. They know perfectly well that unless some gerrymandering is done they will not get in again. They have been weighed and found wanting. I fancy I can see them on bended knees imploring the First Commissioner of Works to bring in something to give them security, and this is the result of that representation. I hope the country will see that, instead of being desirous of giving every man in London an opportunity of recording his vote, the one thing which the Government are desirous of doing is to prevent the London voter from recording his vote. They are limiting the number of voters, and putting as many difficulties as possible in the way of the voter who has more than one qualification in making a selection, and then they hope that the citizens will again pursue the suicidal policy of returning Radical Members to this House. I hope this manœuvre will fail. Manœuvres of this kind do not answer, and I do not believe that this manœuvre is going to answer, and for that reason I have great pleasure in moving the omission of the Clause.
    Sir HENRY KIMBER: The hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) has said that Clause 1 is really the Bill, and the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. L. Harcourt) said that the Clause contains the governing provision of the Bill. All the changes to be effected by the Bill are consequent upon Clause 1. I had hoped at an earlier stage to be able to state what I am now going to say. If I had been allowed to state my objections to the Bill on the Motion to recommit it, I believe I might have been able to convince the right

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    hon. Gentleman that the arguments he has used in support of the measure are not well founded. In that case it might not have been necessary to summarily ask the House to reject the Bill, as I intend to do on the Motion for the third reading. The Rules of the House did not permit me to deal with the merits of the Bill then, and I quite recognise the justice of your ruling when you stopped me.
    I venture to think that the right hon. Gentleman in comparing London with the great provincial cities has made the mistake into which he has been lead by the name "London." The right hon. Gentleman has said that the sole object of Clause 1 is the removal of the exceptional anomalies which exist in London alone of all the great cities. That would have been true if in speaking of London he had been speaking of one of the boroughs of London. Compared with Birmingham one of the boroughs of London is in about the same position. Tower Hamlets has seven sub-divisions and a population of about; 500,000; Birmingham has nine sub-divisions and a population of slightly over 500,000. If the right hon. Gentleman had compared these two he would have been accurate. Successive occupation applies already in Tower Hamlets as in Birmingham. There are 16 boroughs in London which are subdivided, and these already have successive occupation as between the different subdivisions. The proposal to convert London County into one borough is a proposal which does not admit of comparison with the state of affairs in Birmingham or any other provincial city. The right hon. Gentleman made another mistake on a former stage of the Bill. He spoke of the arbitrary and unreasonable division of the Metropolis for electoral purposes into separate boroughs. The Metropolis has never been divided in the sense in which Birmingham is divided. Birmingham grew from one centre. London has not grown into the Metropolis. Greater London has been properly denominated by Act of Parliament a county. It contains 118 square miles. Birmingham has not one-tenth either the area or the population. London contains about 5,000,000 people and 700,000 electors. It the right hon. Gentleman had wished to make a real comparison between the Metropolis and the provincial towns, he would have considered like conditions, if he had considered the history of the growth of London and of the provincial cities, he would have seen that the
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    process was different. Birmingham has half a dozen separate towns surrounding it. It is the centre of these large separate entities. The boroughs outside of London were separate entities before the Act of 1885. There were 10 independent boroughs when that Act was passed. There are now 28 boroughs, including the 10 I have mentioned. Sixteen of them are so large that they have had to be subdivided, and so it comes to pass that greater London; has 59 different Parliamentary entities. To compare that state of things with the conditions in Birmingham, unless you take in the outside towns which have grown up around Birmingham, is not to make a true-comparison. In order to make a true comparison you must include in the case of Birmingham Aston Manor, Walsall, Wednesbury, Dudley, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton. In the case of Manchester, in the same way, you would have to include seven other boroughs, namely, Bury, Stockport, Salford, Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Stalybridge, In Leeds, in the same way, you would have to include Wakefield, Bradford, and Halifax, which are all separate entities, but have not sprung out of Leeds any more than the ten boroughs which existed before 1864 have sprung out of London. If London is to take in suburbs, then all the boroughs which are south of the Tyne should be included in one borough with all the boroughs north of the Tyne; and Tynemouth. South Shields, Gateshead, and Sunderland should be incorporated into one borough with Newcastle on Tyne. Other cases which may be referred to are Liverpool and Birkenhead; Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse; Bristol and Bath; Chatham and Rochester; and Dover and Deal.
    These examples cannot be compared with the enormous area and the electorates of London. Even when you bring them all in, they do not compare with that which you are converting into one borough. You are converting a county into a borough. Why not convert all the other counties into boroughs? Yorkshire has 38 divisions, county and borough. Why should not all these be made into one borough? The idea comes irresistibly to the mind that the purpose of all this is to destroy the dual vote. The merits or demerits of dual votes have never been threshed out in this House at all. I do not recollect in my career in Parliament ever having had the dual vote in London threshed out. How do you get one vote one value? Take the case of the employer who has a factory

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    in two different parts of London, perhaps 16 miles across, and whose funds provide not only a large amount of taxation in both places, but also employment for thousands of men. How is his one single vote to represent any value unless he can have a vote in the various places in which he is so large an employer? How is he to be represented? Or is taxation to be divorced entirely from representation? Already in municipal governments in London property owners have no votes, and this state of affairs the late Lord Goschen admitted more than 20 years ago to be an injustice which should be remedied. It is said that the Bill gives the same successive occupation in London as exists elsewhere. It does nothing of the kind. It is successive occupation for a county. Why not, then, for other counties? The hon. Gentleman pointed out the absurdity of a man who moved from one side of the street to the other losing his vote. But this absurdity remains along the periphery of a circle 50 miles in diameter around London, and any man going outside that boundary loses his votes.
    The right hon. Gentleman on the first reading said that one of the consequences of this Clause making London county a borough was that the radius of residential qualification is enlarged. But the fact is that, although the man can vote at present if he reside within seven miles of one of these 27 boroughs, yet under this Bill he is compelled to live 16 miles out to retain his vote, and he cannot have his residential vote if he lives inside. He will have to remove his residence from seven miles to 16 out. You give him permission to vote as a resident within the 25 miles, but he must not vote if he is within the boundary of the administrative county. He must go outside that. I challenged the right hon. Gentleman to show that I am wrong in pointing out this disqualification. I put that down as the reason for the difference between the speech of the right hon. Gentleman on the first occasion when asking leave to bring in the Bill and the speech on the second reading. He had spoken of four changes when introducing the Bill, but referred to three on the second reading. It does effect the four changes no doubt, but he did not on the second occasion claim it as an advantage. I was not surprised at that, because there is a great disadvantage in making every man who lives within seven miles of business now live 16 miles away.
    That is one of the minor results of this; but I now come to the main and the serious
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    thing. The real object is to disfranchise the whole of the people of London who happen to have more votes than one. In Birmingham a man can live in Aston Manor and vote there and he can vote in Birmingham as well, and if you wanted to deprive the man in London of his vote, why not deprive a man in Aston Manor? I do not know by what process of arrangement of political matters it has happened that while one party are always proclaiming one man one vote as the principle of representation, and the other side—our side—one vote one value, we have never got to close quarters to discuss the merits of either one or the other. One man one vote no doubt would give to the majority of noes, as the late Lord Salisbury said, the absolute power in the country. We have an aphorism in the English language that wisdom is supposed to reside in the minority, but the power is not in the same hands apparently, and before we come to abolish plural voting it ought to be discussed in solemn form, and, if we could get such a thing in this House, in a non-party spirit. I have always contended that the suffrage and the representation of the people ought to be the equally anxious care of all sides in this House, and divested of all party designs and party desires, to obtain an advantage of any one party over another.
    May we not claim for the dual vote, at all events, that it has existed for all time? In spite of the series of Reform Bills—1868, 1884, and so on—which have always gone in the direction of extending the suffrage and lowering the qualification, they have all preserved, among others, the university vote and other forms of dual votes, and there has never been a frontal attack on that system. But under this law all these classes are disfranchised. It has been said let the existing franchise be given as wide enfranchisement as you can, but do not take away from anybody. I submit that this is eminently a Bill which disfranchises 59 out of the 600 constituencies in the United Kingdom, and does it in such a way as to alter the relative proportion between that area and that number of constituencies and all the rest of the United Kingdom. If it were the whole of the United Kingdom that you were dealing with and there were nothing outside it you would disturb the arrangement as between themselves. But here you alter the relative voting power as between the County of London and the other counties and boroughs of the kingdom. I

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    intend voting for the rejection of the Bill on this ground, amongst others, that the effect of Clause 1, which is the Bill, is to leave unremedied a large number of very much grosser anomalies than those with which it purports to deal. Some of the anomalies which exist might have been dealt with in such a Bill. My Constituency is the largest in London. It has the largest area. It is as large as Birmingham and contains a population of a quarter of a million of people. It has 38,000 electors. There are no fewer than eight constituencies inside of London which, taken together, have no more electors than Wandsworth has. So, at all events, there might have been a little redistribution or an alteration of boundaries. The maximum is Wandsworth, with 38,000 electors; the minimum is St. George's-in-the-East, with 3,400 electors, or less than one to ten as compared with Wandsworth. The reason the right hon. Gentleman gave for not dealing with the alteration of boundaries inside was this. He said:—
    "If I made a rectification of boundaries they would at this point say that I was attempting to gerrymander a few constituencies for the advantage of my own party."
    6.0 P.M.
    May I ask whether he could possibly have been open to the aspersion or insinuation if he had attempted to right wrongs such as those in the case of Wandsworth, and in the case of the eight boroughs which between them have got only as many electors as Wandsworth has altogether? It could hardly have been for that reason. Possibly it was that Wandsworth, large as it is supposed to be, is at present a Unionist constituency, while the smaller boroughs, most of them, belong to the party which the right hon. Gentleman represents. He could hardly have been accused of gerrymandering for the benefit of his own party if he had attempted to rectify the tremendous injustices which have grown up for the last 20 years—injustices which the father of the right hon. Gentleman-honour be to his name—admitted in this House, I think it was in the year 1892. I then pointed out the discrepancies which existed in London—and they were then not nearly so great as they are to-day, because they have been increasing from year to year—and urged that they ought to be remedied. The right hon. Gentleman himself, in his speech on the second reading, admitted that it was an evil which ought to be remedied. I ask him to apply
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    a remedy. He is dealing with London in what he calls a small measure, and yet it takes away the political rights of a large portion of five millions of people, and does not condescend to remedy other injustices such as I have described. I could multiply instances, but I think I have said enough to show that this Clause ought to be rejected, and, indeed, that the whole Bill ought to be rejected, on the grounds I have stated. I hope, despairingly may I say, that we may some day have a full and square discussion on the merits, or demerits if you like, of what is called the plural vote, which, I contend, provides the only way by which you can have one vote one value. It is the only way that you can have taxation with representation at all. It is the only way in which you can give the taxpayers a voice in the expenditure of the money which they contribute. If you take the borough, for instance, as a microcosm of the whole State, or if you take the still smaller microcosm, a household consisting of the master and three men servants, what do you find? There you have three votes to one—that of the master who supports the men, and probably their families also. If the State is built on a suffrage of that kind, one man one vote, and not value, what is to prevent the three men servants from passing a law that the master shall become the man and that they shall become the masters. We must go to root principles in considering whether you will destroy, as surely you will destroy under this Bill, the dual vote in Metropolitan London. There are other points I should like to have mentioned, but I shall reserve them for another opportunity, when I move the rejection of the Bill on the third reading.
    Mr. WALTER LONG: I desire to support the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for the City of London, which was seconded by my hon. Friend who has just spoken, and whose knowledge and authority on this subject is probably unequalled by that of any other Member of the House. There are one or two reasons to which I desire to refer, and which I do not think have been given in the course of the Debate. I believe there is absolutely no precedent for a Bill of this character. Not only that, but the Government in adopting this policy in regard to London are following a course exactly the reverse of what has been hitherto taken in all these matters. I am not going back to the ancient boroughs, to the distant times when many of these boroughs were

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    abolished in 1832, and some subsequently in 1867, but certainly in modern times the practice which has been followed by Parliament has been exactly the reverse of that which the Government are now pursuing, and the precedent they are setting is a very bad one. What has been the practice hitherto in creating a Parliamentary borough? Where, by industry and intelligence of its people, a town has grown to a certain size, it is made a municipal borough, and after the charter has been bestowed upon it, and after it has managed its own affairs for some time, then Parliament, probably a long time afterwards, recognises that it ought to be given Parliamentary representation. That was the case with regard to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, and other big towns. This Clause which we are discussing is one of the most astounding proposals which this House has ever had placed before it. What has been the previous experience in dealing with the Government of London? We had the great Local Government Act of 1888 passed, and what was the policy adopted at that time? It was commonly admitted in all quarters of the House, and out of it, that it was impossible to apply to London principles which were applicable to Birmingham and other industrial centres. What does this Clause do? It asks Parliament to declare that the County of London shall be made one borough for Parliamentary purposes. As my hon. Friend has shown, it is exactly the reverse of a borough; it is the creation of a state of things which was begun in many other parts of the country. The Government would never dream of bringing in a Bill of one clause saying that Manchester and Salford should be one Parliamentary borough. Having made London a single borough for all municipal purposes, are you going to abolish the local government of London, its municipal life, and merge it all into one, because, if not, you have no right whatever to ask Parliament to say in this extraordinary Bill that London is to be a single borough?
    Objection has been taken by the Minister in charge of the Bill to the statement that the real object of this Bill is to gerrymander the London constituency in order to suit the Government's own views. I have no desire to say anything offensive, but if one examines the Bill one is driven hard to find what other object there is. To say that this is a moderate and modest measure of electoral reform is to talk so much nonsense. How can it be
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    a measure of electoral reform which does not deal with some of the greatest drawbacks to our electoral system? The Government might have renected on the fact that out of some 7,000,000 electors in the country, a majority of 500,000 electors gave them their majority in this House. That I should say is a much greater anomaly than the amount of dual voting you have got in London. You are not dealing with infinitely greater anomalies than those with which you propose to deal as a result of passing this Bill. On what ground is it necessary to get rid of this system of dual voting? We have had grave statements about the unsatisfactory results of the exercise of more than one vote by a single individual. It has never been shown that any great evil has ever arisen from it, and we have never had an answer from the other side to the argument that up to the present time a great many people in this country have held that taxation and representation ought to go together. You are making an experiment, and the existence of dual voting is to be abolished; yet you ask us to dismiss from our minds the theory that this Bill is brought in for a political purpose. If it is not, why are you selecting London? Why should you suddenly say that London shall be turned into a single borough? The arguments of my hon. Friend and the illustration which he has given on this point have not been met. Anybody who knows London is aware that one of the great difficulties connected with its administration is that there is not that civic life in its different parts which is to be found in great cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, and other places. You will never get that feeling in London. The different parts of the Metropolis are remote and distant from each other, and that fact is realised by the central authority, the London County Council, of which some hon. Members of this House have been chairman. They know as well as I do that one of the difficulties in London is the fact that, owing to the distance between the various parts, and the difference between the conditions of the people inhabiting them, the same feeling of interest in local government as obtains in our large towns cannot be aroused. Are you to ignore that London is a collection of a series of towns? How are you going to merge Fulham into Westminster, any more than you can merge two boroughs in Lancashire into one? It would be impossible to do so. If Parliament is to be asked to pass this Bill, we are entitled to know what is the

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    purpose for which you propose to make this extraordinary change? I do not believe that any justification can be given for it, except one or two. You can revert to the argument used when you brought in the Plural Voting Bill, and say that you are determined that if you cannot do it in one way you are determined, in another way, to destroy the dual vote. If you are going to do that you have no right to begin in regard to London, and to select London, the centre of our country and the capital of our country, and by a most extraordinary and roundabout way apply a principle there which you are not applying in the rest of the country. If that is your argument, then you ought to Lave brought in a Bill dealing with the whole country, the same as you brought in before. At all events, do not single out London to make an experiment there which you are unwilling or unable to make elsewhere. If it is not on that ground you go, then I say there is no other left except the one to which we take so much exception, and except that you are desirous of appealing to a new London, not being satisfied with the present London. I can only say I have done my best by careful study of the Bill and with some little knowledge of the local government and electoral conditions of London to discover any other justification for the introduction of the Bill than the one I have just named, and I believe firmly that the sole object of bringing in this Bill is to effect a change in London which, whether rightly or wrongly, you believe will be favourable to yourselves. I venture to say again that the whole question of this dual vote has never yet been thoroughly debated or examined in this House. I am not at all sure that the assumption which hon. Gentlemen have so often made in regard to the effect of this vote is fully justified. At all events I take my stand on this; I say there is no precedent of any kind for legislation of this kind; that it is going directly in the face of all previous legislation dealing either with electoral reform or local government. I say there is no justification whatever for its introduction now except the one desire on the part of His Majesty's Ministers to make a change in London that they think will be favourable to themselves. Therefore, certainly I hope that we shall show by our vote recorded to-night that we object as strongly as we possibly can to this Bill, and believe not only that it ought not to
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    pass, but that its introduction is a sheer waste of Parliamentary time.
    Mr. HARCOURT: This third reading Debate has been interesting in some of the admissions which have been made in the course of it. The hon. Member for Wandsworth (Sir H. Kimber) has given us a definition of one vote one value. One imagined from the many speeches we have heard from him on the subject that one vote one value had some relation to redistribution, but apparently from the illustrations he gave us to-night one vote one value is to be based on the value of a man's property, and on the amount of employment he affords. That is a new definition of one vote one value, and it is an admission which will be useful for us to remember in the future.
    Sir H. KIMBER: I did not say so. The right hon. Gentleman puts what he thinks I am suggesting into his own words. I did not say at all anything like that which he has said.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I hope he will forgive my illustration, but he referred to a man who owned two factories, distant 16 miles apart—
    Sir H. KIMBER: I did for the purpose of showing that he had no voice at all, but I did not say it was the foundation. I said that one vote one value would be one compensation for them. I did not say that was to be the only object for his having the dual vote.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I did not suggest it was to be the only one, but apparently the possession of factories, and, above all, the amount of employment which he afforded was to be the ground for the plurality of his votes. He objects altogether, as I understand it, to successive qualifications as between the various parts of London.—[Sir H. KIMBER dissented.]—He said so in his speech. If that is so then he is the great disfranchiser, because there is nothing in our present London system which affects such hardship as the want of successive qualification. The hon. Baronet went into an elaborate calculation which I am bound to say, although I greatly desire to understand, I was wholly unable to comprehend. He has somehow arrived at a figure of 16 miles away from London as the average distance a man has got to live in order to secure a vote in London, and that unless he lives more than 16 miles out of London he is not to have a vote. I absolutely confess it is impossible to understand what the hon. Baronet means,

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    although I am quite sure he made that statement with a profound belief in its truth.
    Sir H. KIMBER: May I explain? At present a man who lives seven miles from the borough in which he has a vote can vote in respect of that borough and in respect of his residence as well. By making the whole of London into one borough he must go outside the outer circumference of the whole county in order to retain his residential vote. That might easily be 16 miles, for the reason that London is 16 miles across.
    Mr. HARCOURT: The enlargement of the seven miles limit will add an enormous number of votes to London. It is on that very account I should say that this was an enfranchising rather than a disfranchising Bill. At present, as the hon. Baronet knows, it is necessary to live within seven miles of the boundary of the particular borough in order to obtain your vote if you are not resident. Now it will only be necessary to live within seven miles of the outer boundary of the whole of London in order to secure a vote. Therefore an enormous number of people who have business within London, but who are now disqualified from having a business qualification, will obtain votes under the alteration of this Bill. It is unnecessary to point out to the hon. Baronet the Member for the City (Sir F. Banbury) that there is a special Clause preserving the 25 miles limit for the City of London.
    Sir H. KIMBER: It is quite true that it will only be necessary to live within seven miles of the outer boundary, but if he still lives within seven miles and inside the outer boundary he will not get the second vote.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I am very sorry, but the hon. Baronet is still unable to convey to me exactly what he means. I have stated the effect of the Bill, and I really believe there is no such figure as 16 miles which could under any circumstances occur under it, and which does not occur under the existing law. The hon. Baronet went on to say that there were many anomalies in London which are unremedied. I have always admitted that, and I wish to see many more of them remedied, though I did not feel I was justified in putting them into this small and simple Bill. Redistribution is, of course, to the hon. Baronet what King Charles's head was to Mr. Dick, and he was perfectly justified in giving his hobby a canter on this occasion.
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    But what would have been said to me if in this Bill I had proceeded to the redistribution of London with all the anomalies of the country outside, which country Members care for, though the hon. Baronet does not because he does not live in the country. I should have been denounced as a worse gerrymanderer even than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin (Mr. Walter Long) or the hon. Baronet the Member for the City thought it necessary to call me to-day. The hon. Baronet said that I might have righted the wrongs of Wandsworth. I could not right the wrongs of Wandsworth, whatever they are, without dealing with the whole of London, and then I should have been blamed, as I was, for not dealing with the country outside. The hon. Baronet said, incidentally—I do not know whether this is one of the things he means—that I was taking away the votes of the larger part of 5,000,000 of people in London.
    Sir H. KIMBER: A large number.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I think the words were "a large part," but, of course, I accept "a large number." I have never been able to make an estimate of what the plural voters amount to in London, but when the hon. Baronet talks about my taking away votes I leave any man with a vote who already has one, but I impose some limitations upon their exercise by a large number of voters. As an illustration of how enfranchisement should be managed, I was interested to hear the illustration of the man with the three men servants who were to outvote him. The hon. Baronet never uses illustrations without some meaning and some intent. May I ask him what he meant by that illustration? Does he mean that the three men servants are to be disfranchised, or does he mean the master is to have three votes because he has got three servants? He must mean one of the two things. Again, we have a curious and interesting illustration of the sort of enfranchising Bill we may expect when the hon. Baronet is, as he no doubt shortly will be, on this Bench.
    Sir H. KIMBER: I did not intend one or the other.
    Mr. HARCOURT: The hon. Baronet the Member for the City said, as usual, that I must have been actuated by the advantages to my own friends in introducing this Bill. I suppose it is hopeless to give him a further assurance that such was not the case, and therefore we must leave it at

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    that. But I was interested to hear his admission on the subject, the admission that the only certainty for the Tory party in London is that of the plural vote, and, above all, all those long periods of disqualification of the voter, which arise by transfer from one division to another. If that is really all the hon. Baronet and his Friends depend on, I do not think I can promise them an early return to political power in London. The hon. Baronet said quite truly in moving the omission of Clause 1 that this was really the Bill. It is. It is moving the rejection of the Bill. I do not want to trespass on the time of the House, but perhaps I may just restate very shortly what the objects of this Bill are, as they are constantly being distorted, quite unintentionally of course, in the Debate. The object, of course, is to make all London one borough, and it contains these four points: First, all the elections on the same date. I really beg hon. Members not to think that that is a political dodge. If I were to try to estimate in my own mind the effect which it would have on the two parties, I should imagine that the party which obviously has the greatest number of motors and carriages would be better off if all the elections were taken on one day. I do not want to enter into those things, but my argument in favour of the elections on the same date is the great advantage to the trade and commerce of London as against the great inconvenience of having them spread over a number of days, as has been the case in the past, and which, if allowed to continue, would very seriously interfere with trade. Then, as to successive occupation. The fact that in London a man may be deprived of his vote for very nearly 2½ years by only crossing the street is surely an injustice and an absurdity which no hon. Member opposite would get up and defend.
    Sir F. BANBURY: It is the same thing in all the counties.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I should like to see it remedied everywhere. I have only put London on the basis of other large towns where this disqualification on removing from one division to another does not exist. The third result is the limitation of the dual vote. That, of course, will be exactly as in every large borough. The party opposite treated London as an entity for county council purposes, and prohibited dual voting in any part of London.
    Mr. WALTER LONG: Not London alone.
    Mr. HARCOURT: But London was treated as an entity, and the dual vote was abolished for these purposes. I wish to treat London as an entity for Parliamentary purposes. No man is to be deprived of his only vote, though he may be deprived of some redundant votes. With the question of the enlargement of the area I think I have dealt sufficiently, though I was not able to convince the hon. Member opposite. These are the four results of the Bill.
    Sir WILLIAM BULL: What is the fourth?
    Mr. HARCOURT: The enlargement of the area. The seven miles will be measured from the outer limit of London, and not from the outer limit of the separate boroughs. Believing that these results will be valuable to London, and contribute to a more accurate representation of the people of London, I hope the House will proceed to carry Clause 1.
    Mr. REMNANT: The right hon. Gentleman seems to think that there is a great demand for London to be specially treated. Where does that demand come from? Surely from the many London Members on the opposite side of the House some voices might be heard urging this great measure. Why has the right hon. Gentleman, who says he is so anxious to do justice all round, selected this moment to introduce a Bill specially affecting London when London does not want it? We have had within quite recent times a declaration from the Prime Minister that it is the intention of the Government to introduce a great electoral reform Bill. Surely the time to deal with the greatest city in the country would be when that great electoral reform Bill is introduced? But we have had no reference to that. Is that measure to be treated like the Welsh Disestablishment Bill? Is it to be brought out for the purpose of gaining votes, and then to be dropped as the time draws near for redeeming the promise? As regards the desire of London for this change, where has there been any outcry? I have always understood the Government to claim that the people of London are behind them. Certainly a large proportion of London Members sit on the other side of the House, and I should have thought that the Government would have been content with a system which returned them such a

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    large majority in London. But, not so. They know that not only is London not behind them, but that the country is not behind them, and that unless they take some drastic step such as is here proposed, by which they hope to disfranchise something like one-third of the electors of London, they are not likely to retain the seats they hold. London does not require this measure. To pretend that this special treatment is asked for by London, to remedy only a part of the grievances under which London is said to labour, is really to beg the question altogether, and to make out that things are not as we know them to be. There is no haste about this measure. It has been produced to satisfy and keep quiet a small section of the party opposite. The Government know perfectly well that unless they satisfy that section for the time being, when it comes to voting on the Budget and other questions they may find the loss of their votes most inconvenient. We know perfectly well why the right hon. Gentleman attacks London. He was beaten in regard to the Plural Voting Bill, by which, I believe, the Government said they would stand or fall. They certainly did not stand by it very long. They remained in office, quietly taking the rejection of their measures, which rejection has been approved of by the whole of the country outside. The right hon. Gentleman has made no secret of his desires. He is in favour of manhood suffrage, and this Bill is one step towards it. He hopes by this means to knock out a large number of duplicate votes—votes which have been gained by the payment of taxation. Up to the present it has always been held that taxation and representation should go together, and that votes in this country at all events should have something behind them. As a London Member I strongly protest against the Bill. I honestly believe that London does not require it. The people are satisfied with the present system, and if London generally is satisfied surely the Government ought to be, seeing that so many of their supporters have been returned by it. London is an exceptional place, and, as the present system works to the satisfaction of London, I hope the Government will not urge this measure forward. I do not believe they wish to see it pass. It is only brought forward as a stop-gap measure to satisfy a section of their party.
    Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: Were we to accept the arguments which have been put forward in support of the rejection of
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    Clause 1, we should be forced to the conclusion that the only merit of this Bill is that it will result in the disfranchisement of a number of London citizens. If I believed that that would be the result, I should give the Bill my strongest opposition, but not believing it I cordially support the retention of Clause 1, which, as we have been reminded, is the crux of the whole measure. To those of us who have carefully studied the franchise laws of this country, coupled with our registration system, two facts come out very prominently. First, that it is made very easy for property to secure enfranchisement; and, secondly, that it is made almost as difficult as it can be for the enfranchised working man to keep his vote. But whilst that position is bad all over the country, it is, in my opinion, worse in London. I believe I am not far from the mark when I say that the present system results in the disfranchisement of thousands of working people in London every year. I should like to give a concrete illustration which I hope will convince even some of my hon. Friends above the Gangway. Until six months ago I lived just inside the boundary of the Brixton constituency. I then moved to just inside the boundary of the Clapham constituency. By removing that short distance I lost my vote. The rate collector collects more rates from me, and I am assessed to a, larger amount for Inhabited House Duty, so that neither the rate collector nor the tax collector gives me any compensation for the loss of my vote. Year after year tens of thousands of working people and business people in the county of London have a similar experience to that. If I had lived in Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, or any of our great divided boroughs, and had moved in exactly the same way, under the law of succession I should have carried my vote with me from one constituency to the other, and I should not have been disfranchised as I shall be if some of the friends of hon. Members above the Gangway force us to an election next year. If I had moved two months later, I should have been without my vote for the whole of 1910 and 1911. I moved in May, but had I moved on 16th July I should have been disqualified for a period of two years. I thought hon. Members above the Gangway were exceedingly anxious for the London working-class electorate, but in the speeches to which we have listened their-concern has been not for those who lose their one vote, but for those who will lose their many votes, though they will always

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    retain their one vote, in the event of this Bill passing into law. An hon. Gentleman above the Gangway says that my remarks are rubbish.
    Mr. REMNANT: I apologise; but what the hon. Member has just said is beside the question altogether.
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not entitled to interpolate an argument.
    Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: I do not wish to say anything offensive to the hon. Member. I merely quoted what I overheard. But I think the arguments I have advanced, and especially the concrete illustration I have given, are very à propos to the discussion of Clause 1. I do not propose to go into the other excellent points that the Bill contains, for I believe that, properly speaking, I should be out of order in discussing them on Clause 1. It does seem to me that we want this reform as a beginning. If I thought that this measure was final, and that we were not going to deal with the serious anomalies which exist in the country, I should not be so ready to give my support to this Bill. But I believe for the time being it is a step in the right direction, and it is a step which will be most heartily welcomed by the great mass of working-class electors in this important city.
    Mr. BURDETT COUTTS: As this is the only opportunity, probably, on which the principle of the Bill will be raised, I should like to say a word or two as an old London Member. I have listened to the speeches of this afternoon, and I paid particular attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill, and I am bound to say that after paying close attention to that speech I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman advanced any reason against our idea and our belief that this Bill has been brought forward with a party motive. I do not myself think that any Bill dealing with such an important factor in our public life as the representative principle—assuming to deal with the mechanism of that principle—has ever disclosed to such a barefaced extent the motive which I have mentioned, and which has been attributed on this side of the House to the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman gave us four reasons for bringing forward this Bill—four results which he thought would be obtained by it. I particularly marked the order in which he placed those results. It is not the order
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    of their importance, I believe, in his own mind. The first was that all elections would be held on one day. He gave us to understand that a general election being held on more than one day in London is a very great disturbance to trade. I have heard many reasons assigned for what is called the lessening importance of London from a trade and manufacturing point of view, as a port, and so on, but I am bound to say that I have never before heard it advanced as a reason for any diminution in the trade of London that the General Election, when it came, was held, as it always has been held, on various days.
    With regard to this second reason, the disfranchisement of the voter who passes from one street to another or from one constituency to another, I observed that my hon. Friend who spoke last confined his speech absolutely to that point of the Bill. I am not myself, and I do not believe that any Members on this side of the House are in favour of any such disfranchisement of those who perhaps move their residences more often than another class do. But I put it to the House that if this is the main object to be obtained, if this is the most important result of the Bill in the mind of the hon. Member, that result in the first place might have been attained in another way, and by an altogether different Bill, and in a way which would obviate such disfranchisement in other parts of the country, which now in spite of what he says occurs in many parts. It would not have singled out London for what I am bound to admit would be an improvement, and the improvement which might easily have been effected without its being tacked on to what is the real crux of this Bill—a great disfranchising measure! Then the right hon. Gentleman came to his further reason, the abolition of the dual vote. That is the real reason of this Bill. It is because he knows, and the Government know, that in disfranchising the people who have more than one vote in London, they are disfranchising a very large class of people who, they assume, are opposed to them politically, that this Bill has been brought forward. I join in the protest that has been made on this side of the House against introducing an attack on plural voting, against so great a change in our law of voting, by a sort of side-wind like this. I think it would have been much fairer and much more statesmanlike if the Government had deliberately faced the issue of plural voting. If they pin their faith to the abolition of that time-
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    honoured custom in this country, they should at least have given the whole of the country the benefit of the change. One of my great objections to this Bill—and one which, so far as I have noticed, has not been dealt with this afternoon—is that the Government lose sight of the relation of the voter to the constituency in which he lives, to the property he may hold in it, to the qualification he gains from it, to the constituency's peculiarities, conditions, and needs. A man who has a vote in more than one borough in London may perfectly well be well acquainted with the varying needs of those two boroughs. He is qualified to judge which candidate before each borough will represent that borough best. That to my mind is the old principle of representation. That principle in this Bill is sacrificed. Everything is thrown into purely party lines. By depriving the voter of his vote in virtue of the position he holds, or the property he holds, or the qualification he has in a particular constituency, you do in a measure deprive the dwellers in that constituency of the right to select a candidate whom they think will best suit the constituency; and you assume a candidate to be not a man who has to represent the constituency in Parliament, but a man solely who has to represent a political party in that constituency. That to my mind is altogether a wrong theory of representation. I am perfectly well aware that the time has gone by when any effective protest can be made against the system of party government, but when I see a Bill like this, which deliberately deprives any one who has an interest in a particular part of London of the right to select the man whom he considers—whether he belongs to one party or another—the best representative of the constituency, why then, I say, yon are striking a blow at the old principle of Parliamentary representation. You are plunging into a party vortex, and you are making it impossible for constituencies to look at a candidate from any other point of view than a party point of view. I think that in London, with all its complex conditions, where there is absolutely no solidarity of civic life, no cohesion of interest or of occupation, to deprive any section or portion of the population of the right to choose their candidate in virtue of what they know of the needs of a particular constituency is a retrograde measure, and one which is not really in harmony with the necessities and conditions of London life.
    Mr. HART-DAVIES: The hon. Gentleman the Member for Holborn (Mr. Remnant) said that he did not believe there was any very strong feeling in favour of this Bill among the people of London. All I can say is that my experience has been altogether different from that. I have met a great many electors who feel it a very serious grievance that they should lose their votes, sometimes for two years, merely because they have moved from one part of London to another. I am quite sure that this Bill is a popular Bill. I believe there are 50,000 voters who every year lose their votes owing to having moved to a different part of London. There was a reason given on the opposite side of the House against this Bill which is a true reason to a certain extent. Hon. Members say, and with some truth, that there is no kind of common civic feeling among the different parts of London. It is true that London in a way is a collection of villages that have had different histories, associations, and traditions. There is not at present any very large amount of what we may call common citizen-feeling. That is exactly what we want to get hold of. I think a certain amount of civic life and sentiment has arisen in London owing to the existence of the London County Council. I believe this Bill will have a civic influence in this way—in the way of creating that spirit of common civic feeling which exists in our largo towns. Then the government of London is a matter of the most profound complexity. I suppose this sort of problem has never confronted any nation before in the history of the world—that is, the government of a city of 7,000,000 inhabitants. It is a new problem, and an exceedingly complex one; very difficult to deal with. It will become still more difficult without that union of feeling amongst the inhabitants which makes them look upon themselves as citizens of no mean city. I support this Bill, then, because I think it will do something in the way of educating the people of London to a common life. For that reason I hope rather than expect that this Bill will pass, though what its future will be in another place is, I admit, a problem somewhat dark and for the future.
    7.0 P.M.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: The hon. Member who has just sat down has made a guarded reference to what may take place in another Assembly. I confess I think we had much better concern ourselves with what is taking place here. It is argued that there

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    is a strong popular feeling in favour of this Bill in London. All I can say is, no symptom of it has reached me as a Member for one of the divisions of London. It may exist, but if it does it has been kept very carefully from my notice. The right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works summarised his four reasons for the Bill, and two of them, I think, we may really dismiss as almost trivial. He said it was a great advantage to get elections in London on one day; but that really, if he will forgive me for saying so, is the greatest possible nonsense. The advantages to London of having elections on one day is absolutely trivial. Indeed, I doubt very much if there is any advantage. I do not see that it is any particular harm to Marylebone that there should be an election in Paddington. For instance, I am told at the present time that there is an election going on in Bermondsey, and I am sure that is not disturbing the trade in Marylebone in the slightest degree, and for the right hon. Gentleman to say that it is going to be a great advantage to have elections in London on one day is, I think, trifling with the House of Commons. I need not deal with the question of the extension of area, which I do not think he put forward as more than a very slight and insignificant reason in favour of the Bill. His two great reasons were successive occupation and the abolition of plural voting.
    No one has ever attempted to reply to the crushing observation, "Why do that in London and not elsewhere?" There are many cities that would give excellent illustrations of what I mean. Take Liverpool and Bootle, for one instance. You cannot tell, if you live in Liverpool, when you leave Liverpool and come to Bootle, or, if you live in Bootle, when you leave Bootle and come to Liverpool. Yet you treat them as separate entities. You do not propose to abolish the difficulties of successive occupation and plural voting there. The same is true of Manchester and Salford, and there are numbers of others all over the country. Nor need we go as far as the provinces. West Ham and London are as much one city as Paddington and Marylebone, as far as physical conditions are concerned. You cannot tell when you leave West Ham and get into London; it is impossible; the streets are continuous, the light is continuous. If the hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. Henderson) lived in West Ham and moved
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    into London, he would have the same disadvantages to complain of as if he moved from Brixton to Clapham. You have all these instances, yet you do not propose to deal with the anomalies which they present in the same way as you propose to deal with London. The reason is because you do not regard West Ham and London as part of the same local community, but you regard them as two different centres. You choose to regard the various boroughs of London as part of the same city, but you have no more justification, and, indeed, far less, for regarding Hampstead and Bermondsey as part of the same city than you would have for regarding West Ham and Whitechapel as one and the same city. There is much more distinction historically, as well as from local interest and commercial interest, and from the character of the inhabitants, between the various boroughs of London than there is between some of those boroughs and the cities upon the borders of the county boroughs. Therefore this theory that London is an entity which can be treated for electoral purposes, and ought to be treated, because of some principle that lurks in Radical consciences, but finds no expression anywhere else, as one borough is an argument so fallacious that it is impossible to entertain it.
    I notice another thing. We are only dealing with a certain number of the anomalies that exist in London. Why are they selected? We are dealing with the difficulties about successive occupation and the difficulties of plural voting. I do not believe anyone sitting upon this side of the House doubts that there are anomalies which ought to be dealt with by a comprehensive measure. But why select these particular anomalies now, when there are much greater anomalies left untouched? There is the question of the female worker. Hon. Members smile; but why? Because they know that numbers of them are pledged to this, and they have done nothing whatever to redeem their pledges. Personally I am in favour of woman suffrage, and I always have been. But, for the moment, let me put myself in the position of a Radical Member. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It is not a position I at all desire. But I cannot conceive, and never have been able to conceive, how a Radical can possibly resist such a claim. Every argument the First Commissioner put forward in favour of his Bill applies equally to the enfranchisement of women, even the fact that they vote for county councils, yet there is no provision at all for

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    redressing that particular anomaly. The First Commissioner of Works has the audacity to rise in his place and smile with all that natural dignity of which he has such great command, and to tell us solemnly that this Bill has no reference to party politics. I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman believes what he says, but I venture to say his observations came with supreme surprise upon everyone else in the House. Everyone knows that the right hon. Gentleman is the only person arguing this measure for reasons having nothing to do with party politics. Everyone knows this Bill is put forward simply and solely to try and secure the position of the Radical party in London. It is the merest piece of jerrymandering, and the Leader of the Labour party would have done better to have said boldly, "We have a majority in this House; we propose to make a change in the law that would suit our electoral book, and that is the reason why we have brought in this Bill." It is the merest rubbish for any man to talk about the eternal principle that requires that a man who lives in London shall not have two votes, whereas if he lived in London and West Ham he may have two votes, and to ask us to believe in the difficulties of successive occupation in London which do not apply at all in Manchester and Liverpool. That is part of the jerrymandering scheme to improve the condition of the Radical party in London, and therefore I shall vote for this Amendment.
    The PAYMASTER-GENERAL(Mr. R. K. Causton): After the speech which has just been delivered by the Noble Lord the Member for Marylebone, I feel I must say a few words. After all, it must be remembered that this is not a disfranchising Bill; it is an enfranchising Bill, and it is not a new proposal, for I myself more than 20 years ago introduced a Bill into this House to get rid of this objectionable state of affairs with regard to successive occupation. The Noble Lord talked about nothing else but of men losing votes. This is a Bill to enable men who have votes to continue to retain them. Taking the constituencies of London as a whole, you will find that in every London constituency, with perhaps one exception, there is a change in the register every year of something like 30 per cent. of the voters. The voter who goes from one constituency to another loses his vote for one or two years. This Bill, if it becomes an Act, will enable a man if he moves from one constituency to another, which may happen, very often, if he moves from one side of the road to
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    another, to continue to have his vote, whereas as the law stands such a man is disfranchised.
    All my right hon. Friend the Commissioner asks in this Bill is that London shall be placed in the same position as other great cities in England, Ireland, and Scotland. I should be very glad to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for the Toxteth Division of Liverpool (Mr. Austin Taylor) the conditions that prevail in that great city. Liverpool is one city and one borough, and a man does not lose his vote because he changes from one part of it to another. The same thing applies in Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, and other great cities. All we ask is that London shall be placed in the same position as these. We know that was the policy adopted by the late Government when they passed the County Councils Act, and all we now ask is for a continuation and an extension of that policy. From the speeches delivered from the hon. Members opposite one would imagine I myself would be a sufferer. I have more than one vote for London, and I am quite prepared to give up these votes. So long as this unsatisfactory state of things is allowed to continue there wilt always be dissatisfaction, and I only hope the House will not be led away by what I may call the discussions raised outside the boundary of this Bill. I agree with the Noble Lord when he asks why should a man on the borders of the borough of Liverpool be deprived of his vote when he moves into the city. I say he ought not to be deprived of it, and when we have succeeded in placing London in the same position as ether great cities in the country, let us then have another Bill for successive occupation throughout the different parts of the country.
    Sir W. BULL: I do not think the last speaker realises the difficulties in the way of carrying out a Bill of this description. I listened with considerable interest to what the hon. Member for Barnard Castle said with reference to the successive vote. There are a great many ways of giving the successive occupation vote in the country without an elaborate Bill like this. It can be secured by Section 10, 48 and 49 Vic, c. 23; by the Representation of the People Act, 1832; Section 28 of the Representation of the People Act, 1867, and the Registration Act of 1875, all of which could have been embodied in a much shorter Act, which would have done far more justice than a Bill of this kind. It is quite true that practically this Bill has been introduced for the purpose of doing away

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    with plural voting, but I object to this measure because there ought to be no taxation without representation. A man who has property in various parts of the country has to pay rates and taxes in those localities, and therefore he should have a vote in each of those places. I object to the way in which the various boroughs are going to be placed in this Bill under the heel of the London County Council. The clerk to the London County Council is going to be made the returning officer for the whole of London, and he will control the election of 59 Members of Parliament polling nearly 750,000 electors. I think the other municipal boroughs in the Metropolis will be jealous if such a power is placed in the hands of one man. I want to know how the expenses of registration are going to be dealt with? Why should the municipal boroughs collect the money for this registration and then hand it over to the London County Council? Upon the second reading of this Bill I pointed out some of the registration difficulties, the delays that would occur, the immense amount of applications which will have to be made owing to the starring principle and the principle of selection, and I showed how practically there would have to be two registration courts sitting all the time. I showed that not only would there have to be a registration court for every constituency in London, but that there would also have to be a revising court, where the clerk to the London County Council would sit in supreme judgment over the other courts. That is something entirely new in our registration law, and it is an anomaly and innovation which we have not met before. I should like to point out that hard cases are bound to occur wherever there is a boundary line drawn. When such a line is drawn there must always be someone near that line who will suffer from the fact that he happens to be near that line, whether it happens to be electoral affairs or taxation above or below a certain standard. That does not seem to ma a valid argument why the whole of the constituencies of London should be massed into one Parliamentary borough. The suggestion of deciding by lot will work a great deal of hardship in the case of a man—
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must reserve those remarks until we reach the Amendment dealing with that point.
    Sir W. BULL: I was under the impression, Mr. Speaker, you were allowing us a little licence in dealing with generalities.
    Mr. SPEAKER: Yes, licence in generalities, but not in particulars.
    Sir W BULL: I will reserve the other remarks I was going to make.
    Mr. AUSTIN TAYLOR: The hon. Baronet the Member for Wandsworth has put in a plea in favour of the discussion of this subject on non-party grounds. That is an aspiration which will find an echo in all our hearts. I notice whenever a Bill of this kind is introduced in this House which cuts against the party interests of any particular set of Gentlemen, there are always some hon. Members who call upon the House to rise superior to party. A careful study of the career of those Members of this House, both to-day and in previous years, who have endeavoured to rise superior to party is not encouraging. Even the Noble Lord the Member for Marylebone has certainly been conspicuously successful amongst those who allow themselves to bathe in party waters on the strict condition that their skin is never wet, but I should like to go a little further into futurity before asserting that he will furnish an exception to the almost universal law in this respect. The speeches which have been made by hon. Gentlemen opposite are conclusive that party considerations are dominant, and will be dominant, in the discussion of this question. I only rise to speak upon this complicated question because the city of which I have the honour to be one of the representatives has been invoked more than once during this Debate. The hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London referred to Liverpool, and remarked that no Member for Liverpool was present to hear his speech. I was present, and I can assure him, on behalf of the other representatives of the city of Liverpool, that the reason for their absence is in no sense personal, and they are all aware that if they miss one speech made by the hon. Baronet, at no very distant date they will be consoled by the opportunity of hearing another from him. Liverpool has been pointed out as an anomaly in the sense that it has Bootle inside it, but that is surely no argument against the Bill which is now before the House. It is quite true that this Bill only endeavours to get rid of an anomaly in London, but what a curious frame of mind that is which says that unless we can remedy all anomalies at once throughout the country we will not remedy any. Surely it does not lie in the mouths of those who in their secret heart are little disposed to move in

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    the direction of redressing anomalies at all to make that observation. The hon. Baronet said that Liverpool is inferior to London and a much less important place, and, therefore, he argues that what prevails in Liverpool is no guide as to what ought to prevail in London. I thought that was a very remarkable observation. It is not entirely true, because in the matter of exports, which under our Free Trade system has some importance, Liverpool exceeds London. Be that as it may, Liverpool has what London has not, namely, homogeneity. With regard to Bootle, let me inform the hon. Baronet that nobody in Liverpool views with favour Bootle as a separate Parliamentary borough, and very strong efforts have been made to absorb Bootle and do away with this anomaly. The only regret in Liverpool is that those efforts have been attended with so little success. Another point made by the hon. Baronet is the necessity which arises of voters having to elect in which part of the city they will vote, but I can assure the hon. Baronet that in Liverpool that problem presents no difficulty. We have in Liverpool gentlemen charged with party interests known as election agents and agents of the great political parties, and it is the function of those gentlemen in Liverpool, whatever it may be in London, to follow up the individual voter and see that he has a vote, that his name is put on the register, and that he has an opportunity of recalling it either at a general or a by-election. In Liverpool there never is any difficulty about finding the voters who have dual votes.
    Sir F. BANBURY: Because it is such a little place.
    Mr. AUSTIN TAYLOR: The fact of the matter is that, having began well in Liverpool, that is an argument not for doing nothing in London but for doing the same thing in London. If Liverpool, being "a little place," has got a system which works with perfect ease, surely there is no reason why the same principle would not be appropriate and possible in London. In Liverpool at any rate we have got homogeneity.
    Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: What about Birkenhead?
    Mr. AUSTIN TAYLOR: I am surprised the hon. Member for West Derby instances Birkenhead. Does he really suggest that there is any comparison between the position of Liverpool and Birkenhead, which are separated by the Mersey? There
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    are bridges over the Thames, but there are no bridges over the Mersey. Anyone who knows Liverpool knows very well that as between Birkenhead and Liverpool there is no comparison whatever to be made with the municipalities of London. I do feel that this Bill, brought forward as it is entirely free from party considerations, is a move in the right direction, and will give to London that homogeneity which it ought to have. I know very little about the political machinery of London, and I will leave those conversant with that system to speak upon it, but I do know that the system in Liverpool works well, and I do feel that that is an argument not against, but in favour of this Bill.
    Mr. HAY: The hon. Gentleman who has just resumed his seat tried to draw a comparison between London and Liverpool. I venture to point out that that is a proof of his ignorance of London conditions. There is one great fact which must be borne in mind. The population of Liverpool is something like 700,000, whereas the population of London is about 7,000,000. What is possible in connection with the arrangements for voting in a population of 700,000 is obviously not so easy or even likely to be done with any facility, especially with the elections on the same day, in a population of 7,000,000. The circumstances in different parts of London vary to such an enormous extent, and the character of the population is so different in different parts of the Metropolis, that it is idle to suggest this Bill is the simplest piece of business to which man has ever set his hand. My hon. Friend the Member for North Hackney (Mr. Hart-Davies) said that in going about his constituency he found there was a considerable wish on the part of his electors that the Bill should pass. I have been at some pains to ascertain the views of my constituents of all political opinions on this matter. I found considerable difficulty in doing so, because the vast bulk of the electorate know very little of the Bill, and do not care twopence about it. I have not received a single resolution from any body of workmen, or from any Liberal or Radical, or even Socialist Association in the borough of Shoreditch asking me to be present and support this Bill, but I have received many personal representations from workmen, some of whom are well known to me as Radicals, that, owing to the development of the tubes and trams in the Metropolis, they find that this

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    Bill will to all intents and purposes disfranchise them. So far as I am personally concerned, I do not believe the Bill from a party point of view will make much difference in Shoreditch, but I am perfectly satisfied, and I think the electors of Shoreditch are certainly satisfied, that the Government have no honest intention of purity in this Bill; it is purely a gerrymandering Bill by which they are trying to preserve a position of control over the London electorate. There is another point which seems to me to be of importance. When the right hon. Gentleman proposes, as he does in this Clause, to turn London into one great constituency with 59 Members, he gives the go-by to all the traditions of London, and to that which practice has shown to be the very best way of governing the Metropolis. It is alleged by him that one very sound reason for converting London into one great constituency is that the London County Council practically represents one constituency. The analogy, however, will not hold water, because the members of the London County Council are not returned to represent London, but the various boroughs which elect them to that council. It is, therefore, idle to suggest that you can draw any sound analogy between the conditions of London County Council elections and Parliamentary elections.
    A workman in East London, speaking to me the other day, put the matter very pithily. He said: "Is it not an old principle of the Liberal party, and one of which they are very proud, that you should trust the people? Why, then, if the Radical party in London trusts the people, are they so afraid of men having a dual qualification, or having a chance of voting twice in favour of the Liberal party?" When it is suggested that dual votes are possessed and exercised only by the wealthier classes, I would remind hon. Members that there are thousands of workmen who have a small qualification in the borough where they work and have their business, and who use the trams and tubes and live in another borough and are entitled to a vote there. Hon. Members may laugh, but when they laugh they show their ignorance of the circumstances. I am only stating what is a common fact, and well known to Members of this House. The real fact is that, whilst the Government desire by this Clause to disfranchise the well-to-do and the wealthier classes, in practice, so far as a great many of the London constituencies,
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    east and north, are concerned, they will disfranchise a great number of the lower middle and working classes. I can prove that from my own knowledge of the register of my division. The right hon. Gentleman said that if they had included redistribution in the Bill they would have been accused of gerrymandering. How on earth anyone could accuse them of gerrymandering if they had introduced redistribution in the Bill I cannot conceive. No one can say you are gerrymandering the constituencies of London by making the vote of a man in Wandsworth equal to the vote of a man in St. George's-in-the-East. At present the vote of a man in St. George's-in-the-East counts 12 times as much as the vote of a man in the constituency of Wandsworth. There could not, therefore, possibly be any question of gerrymandering if the Government carried out the constitutional practice of redistribution wherever there is a rearrangement of the franchise, so that we should have not only one man one vote, but one vote one value. The Government, in my humble judgment, are making a great mistake if they think they are going to win any support by this Bill. The vast bulk of the London electors do not care a brass farthing for this Bill. What they want is that London should not fare worse than the rest of the country, and should not be degraded, as the Government are endeavouring to degrade it, into the position of a small city.
    Mr. G. N. BARNES: I had no intention of taking part in this Debate, but, as a London workman, I think it is incumbent upon me, after the extraordinary statement we have just listened to, that I should say a few words. We have been told this is a gerrymandering Bill. I cannot help thinking that those who indulge in remarks of that character might possibly pass gerrymandering Bills themselves if they had the chance. I may say, as one who represents in a special sense London workmen, and as one who has lived in London, east, north, south, and west, for the last 30 years, that I have not come across these extraordinary workmen who are said to be plural voters by the thousands. I have during the past 30 years come in close contact with London workmen of all sorts in pretty well all occupations, having myself worked in at least a dozen workshops on the banks of the Thames, from Woolwich right up to Chiswick, and I have never come across a single workman, let alone thousands, who

    85
    is a plural voter. I want to offer myself as a concrete example of the need for this Bill. I removed from Peckham on 12th September last year to Streatham, and I am not only disfranchised now, but, in consequence of having removed just after the register was made up last year, I am actually disfranchised till the beginning of 1911. That is a strong fact, which it will take a great many of these imaginary cases to get over, and for my part I hope and trust this Bill will pass. It will remove what I know to be a long-felt injustice and anomaly in London. I should like to say a concluding word as to the desirability of London being considered as one unit, even perhaps more than other towns. London is the centre of the Empire. We always hear about the great need for what might be called some local patriotism in London; but, so long as London is split up as it is at present, and so long as a man loses his vote for a year and sometimes for two years when he removes from one part of London to another part, you are not likely to have that unity of purpose and feeling which some of us desire to see. Therefore, for that reason, as well as for the reason that this Bill will do away with a simple, crying injustice, I shall give it my hearty support.
    Mr. RUPERT GUINNESS: I should like to say that, so far as my experience goes—it is true it is only the experience of Haggerston—I can quote 50 or 60 cases of workmen who have two qualifications, and in several instances they are at present disqualified by residing in my hon. Friend's constituency, Hoxton, because we share one borough (Shoreditch). I know a good many other cases of workmen who have workshops for which they have votes and who no doubt reside in other constituencies. I admit there is a great grievance in workmen losing their votes, but I do not see why it should be cured by creating a new grievance in another way. It should surely be cured by allowing the voters to take their qualification, so long as it is a similar qualification, from one place to another. That would be much simpler, and you might thus deal with the whole country from one end to the other. The case of a removal from Bow to West Ham would be dealt with, and you would not create the disqualification of which at any rate in Shoreditch I can give a good many examples.
    Mr. W. PEEL: I would like to call attention to one matter which is involved in the first Clause, and I wish to do so
    86
    on behalf of the long-suffering London ratepayer. As one of the consequences of this Clause you are going to put a large, new charge on the London ratepayer, and, in this House, where hon. Members are so much occupied with the question of taxes, they appear to think nothing of the rates; as a consequence no provision whatever is made for relieving the ratepayers of London from the charges which are to be put on them not for any purposes connected with local administration, but solely in order that some changes may be effected in the conduct of Parliamentary elections. I have listened with a good deal of amusement to two speeches which have recently been delivered, and to the very pious hopes which have been expressed in them that in consequence of a Bill like this, which declares that London is to be, for certain purposes, one borough, there is to grow up in London a new civic spirit. Those of us who have had a good deal to do with the administrative side of London government may be inclined to think that some of our efforts in that respect may have more power and influence on London citizens than a little Bill of this kind. One of my objections is that this Bill does not state frankly and squarely what it means to do. We have heard a good deal in this House in the form of complaint with regard to legislation by reference. That is an objection with which I strongly sympathise, but I believe it applies with still stronger force in a case like this in which an unintelligible measure is flung upon a democratic country which nobody but an extra super-expert could possibly understand. This is not a case of legislation by reference, it is rather one of legislation by inference. It is said that it is a disenfranchising Bill. On the other hand, it is claimed to be an enfranchising Bill. But whether it is the one or the other, everybody must know that there is no precedent for a proposal of this nature. It is not usual to alter an electorate—to-add to it or to take away from it—except immediately before a General Election. It may be that this Bill will be carried immediately previous to a General Election, but then we cannot have a special election affecting London only. You are therefore promoting a Bill which entirely departs from all precedents connected with changes in our Electoral Laws. An hon. Member opposite told us that we ought certainly to agree with this particular object of the Government, because it was introduced into the Bill which estab-

    87
    lished the London County Council in the year 1889. But has that Bill been very fortunate in its results? Let me take two points. It is only during the last two years that London has really been properly governed. Under this system, out of 45 millions of rateable property you have only 30 millions represented by votes, and you have consequently the extraordinary result that persons possessing one-third of the rateable property of London are not represented at all on the electoral register. If you are going to base your action on this precedent, I venture to suggest that it is an extraordinarily bad one, in view of what has happened in the case of the London County Council. I wish to protest, as a member of the London County Council, against the absurdity of saying that while London is one administrative county, with 30 boroughs, it is only one borough. It is an anomaly to introduce that into an Act of Parliament, and it becomes the more absurd when hon. Members consider, if they will do so, the importance of some of these London boroughs. I know it is part of the general Liberal programme for London—and this is only a shred of it—to depress the status of the London boroughs, but when we consider that some of these London boroughs are, in point of rateable value, greater than any of the cities of the United Kingdom, not excepting Glasgow or Manchester, and that in point of population they are far more populous than five-sixths of the county boroughs in Great Britain, to suggest that you are to call London, with its 30 boroughs, one borough is really to put into an Act of Parliament a thing which does not exist, and to write down that which is entirely contrary to facts. This Bill is founded on a complete misconception of history. I do not propose to go into the history of London, but when you say you want to introduce into London the system which obtains at Birmingham or Bristol, I would ask you to remember that those great boroughs used only to be represented by one Member of Parliament, and then at a certain stage—
    Mr. SPEAKER: Before the hon. Gentleman came into the House the whole of that argument was fully covered, and he is not entitled to speak on at now.
    Mr. PEEL: I am sorry. I had no opportunity of hearing the first portion of this Debate, and I certainly will not deal with that part of my argument, although I
    88
    should have liked to compare London in this way with other boroughs.
    Mr. SPEAKER: That was very fully done two hours ago.
    Mr. PEEL: I have not the slightest intention of doing it now. I was only referring to what I would have liked to have dealt with. The last point I wish to make is this—that it is a great mistake in these days, when you are piling a large and increasing part of your taxation upon a very small number of individuals, and when property is really so little represented in the electorate, it is, I repeat, a mistake to choose an occasion like this further to diminish any power that property may have through the electorate, and it is certainly a mistake to select a particular city like London as the ground for carrying out the principle of "one man one vote."
    Mr. ROBERT DUNCAN: I would like to deal with some aspects of the principle involved in this Bill as they strike Members of the Conservative party. It may be that the present electoral laws are not satisfactory, and that Amendments are required in the direction of registration. No doubt there are grievances which need to be remedied, but I dispute the suggestion which has been made that this is not a party measure. In my opinion it is a party measure, and it deals very partially with existing grievances. I am a Conservative by principle, and I believe that you will not prosper by gerrymandering, or by depriving people of the vote which they at present possess. The right hon. Gentleman professes to aim at establishing the principle of one man one vote, and he suggests that that would involve absolute equality for all. We, as Conservatives, do not believe in that, and we hope that we may gather courage and confidence for our party from the expressions we have heard that a man should carry on his qualification, and not be deprived of his vote because of a change of residence from one part of the United Kingdom to another. We believe that the people of this country are Conservatives by reason and by instinct, and we believe further that by appealing to that reason and to that instinct we shall secure the predominance of Conservative principles.
    Question put, "That the words the area formed by existing Parliamentary boroughs' stand part of the Clause."
    The House divided: Ayes, 169; Noes, 55.

    Division No. 802.]

    AYES.

    [5.17 p.m.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Gardner, Ernest

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

    Percy, Earl

    Ashley, W. W.

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Balcarres, Lord

    Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Beckett, Hon. Gervase

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

    Bignold, Sir Arthur

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

    Bowles, G. Stewart

    Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

    Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

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

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Heaton, John Henniker

    Stanier, Beville

    Cave, George

    Helmsley, Viscount

    Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Starkey, John R.

    Clark, George Smith

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

    Kimber, Sir Henry

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

    Thornton, Percy M.

    Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

    Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)

    Valentia, Viscount

    Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Craik, Sir Henry

    Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

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

    Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott

    Lonsdale, John Brownlee

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh

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

    Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan)

    M'Arthur, Charles

    Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Magnus, Sir Philip

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

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

    Mason, James F. (Windsor)

    Younger, George

    Fell, Arthur

    Moore, William

    Fletcher, J. S.

    Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Lord Robert Cecil and Sir W. Bull.

    Forster, Henry William

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    NOES.

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

    Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

    Lynch, A. (Clare, W.)

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Esslemont, George Birnie

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Alden, Percy

    Everett, R. Lacey

    Mallet, Charles E.

    Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

    Ferens, T. R.

    Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)

    Atherley-Jones, L.

    Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

    Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

    Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

    Freeman-Thomas, Freeman

    Massie, J.

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Masterman, C. F. G.

    Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

    Ginnell, L.

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Barnard, E. B.

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Micklem, Nathaniel

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Beauchamp, E.

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Gulland, John W.

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Myer, Horatio

    Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devenport)

    Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

    Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

    Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

    Hart-Davies, T.

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

    Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Boulton, A. C. F.

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Brace, William

    Hazleton, Richard

    Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)

    Branch, James

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Brooke, Stopford

    Henry, Charles S.

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

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

    Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

    Radford, G. H.

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Higham, John Sharp

    Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Hobart, Sir Robert

    Rees, J. D.

    Byles, William Pollard

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    Cameron, Robert

    Hodge, John

    Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Horniman, Emslie John

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

    Roch, Waller F. (Pembroke)

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Jardine, Sir J.

    Rogers, F. E. Newman

    Clough, William

    Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

    Rose, Sir Charles Day

    Cobbold, Felix Thornley

    Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

    Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

    Keating, M.

    Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

    Sears, J. E.

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Seely, Colonel

    Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

    Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

    Sherwell, Arthur James

    Crosfield, A. H.

    Lambert, George

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Crossley, William J.

    Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Curran, Peter Francis

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

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

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Steadman, W. C.

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

    Dobson, Thomas W.

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)

    Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

    Watt, Henry A.

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Taylor, John W.

    Weir, J. Galloway

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

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    White, Sir George (Norfolk)

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Wood, T. McKinnon

    Thorne, William (West Ham)

    White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Tomkinson, James

    Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

    Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

    Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Wiles, Thomas

    Water low, D. S.

    Division No. 803.]

    AYES.

    [7.58 p.m.

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

    Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

    Nuttall, Harry

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Alden, Percy

    Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

    O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

    Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

    Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    Astbury, John Meir

    Hart-Davies, T.

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

    Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)

    Barnes, G. N.

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

    Beale, W. P.

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

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

    Bell, Richard

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

    Radford, G. H.

    Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

    Henry, Charles S.

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

    Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

    Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Rendall, Athelstan

    Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

    Higham, John Sharp

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    Boulton, A. C. F.

    Hobart, Sir Robert

    Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Hodge, John

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Brace, William

    Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Brooke, Stopford

    Hornlman, Emslle John

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

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

    Hyde, Clarendon G.

    Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Idris, T. H. W.

    Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)

    Buckmaster, Stanley O.

    Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

    Sears, J. E.

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Jackson, R. S.

    Seely, Colonel

    Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Johnson, John (Gateshead)

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    Byles, William Pollard

    Keating, M

    Steadman, W. C.

    Cameron, Robert

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

    Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Laldlaw, Robert

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Clough, William

    Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)

    Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

    Cobbold, Felix Thornley

    Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Lambert, George

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E.)

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Tomkinson, James

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

    Verney, F. W.

    Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

    Crosfield, A. H.

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Crossley, William J.

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Wardle, George J.

    Curran, Peter Francis

    Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

    Waterlow, D. S.

    Daiziel, Sir James Henry

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Watt, Henry A.

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Weir, James Galloway

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

    McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

    White, Sir George (Norfolk)

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Mallet, Charles E.

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

    Essex, R. W.

    Massie, J.

    Whitehead, Rowland

    Esslemont, George Birnie

    Masterman, C. F. G.

    Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

    Everett, R. Lacey

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Wiles, Thomas

    Fenwick, Charles

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Ferens, T. R.

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

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

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Morse, L. L.

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Myer, Horatio

    Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

    Napier, T. B.

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Nolan, Joseph

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Gulland, John W.

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Nussey, Sir Willans

    NOES.

    Balcarres, Lord

    Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

    Peel, Hon. W. R. W.

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Haddock, George B.

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Renton, Leslie

    Bignold, Sir Arthur

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Bowles, G. Stewart

    Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

    Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

    Bull, Sir William James

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Heaton, John Henniker

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

    Cave, George

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

    Stanier, Beville

    Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Starkey, John R.

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    Hills, J. W.

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Thornton, Percy M.

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Kimber, Sir Henry

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

    Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Craik, Sir Henry

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh

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

    Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan)

    Newdegate, F. A.

    Fell, Arthur

    Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir A. Acland-Hood and Mr. H. W. Forster.

    Foster, P. S.

    Oddy, John James

    Gardner, Ernest

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Mr. HARMOOD-BANNERmoved, after the word "boroughs" ["The area formed by the existing Parliamentary boroughs in London"], to insert the words "except the City of London."
    I think we must all agree that the City of London under this Clause deserves different treatment from the other boroughs, because nearly all the voters in the City of London are non-resident, and most of them will have places of abode in some one or ether of the 59 constituencies which surround the City of London. Therefore their place of abode will be other than the place in which they work and live, and they will be disfranchised as far as regards the City of London is concerned, and all the immense representation of banking, trading, and commercial interests of the City of London will be absolutely disfranchised unless this Amendment is carried. One need not refer to the very excellent Members of Parliament that we have representing the City of London, but undoubtedly it will most seriously affect their position, because the interest which now brings them into this House will not be available. The only voters who will be left, and who will be available for the City of London, will be the office-keepers and ether people who reside in the City, and who are rateable there, unless a selection has been made qualifying the others for voting. That is a considerable hardship to those who, having business in the City, happen to live at Brighton or in the outskirts of London. I think it is an injustice to the immense financial and other interests of those who do work in the City of London that they should only vote outside it, and therefore I trust the Government will accept the Amendment.
    Sir W. BULLseconded the proposed Amendment.
    Mr. HARCOURT: The Amendment moved by the hon. Member would constitute the City of London as a separate borough in the centre of the whole borough of London which the proposal sets up, and that, of course, would strike at the whole policy of the Bill. Therefore the hon. Member will not be surprised that I cannot accept it. In this Bill he will find that there is special provision for the treatment of the City of London, which special treatment is made necessary owing to the circumstance that the freemen of the City of London are not freemen of the whole borough of London as would be the case, say, in Liverpool, and by this Bill they are
    92
    all allotted to the City of London and not distributed in the various divisions of the borough of London as they are in the ordinarily divided borough in other places of the Kingdom. Of course a freeman can select the vote elsewhere than in the City of London. He can sacrifice that qualification and vote in any other division where he possesses a vote, but in the absence of any selection the operation of the ordinary law will be to leave the freeman the qualification in the City. If he does not desire to go elsewhere he will only be put on the City of London list. Therefore I think every step has been taken to preserve not only the traditions but the vast and exceptional advantages which the City of London has. These advantages are very remarkable, because it is the only borough in the country where you can add indefinitely to the number of freemen by the purchase of livery, which is purely an accidental result of a blunder in the Reform Act of 1832.
    Amendment negatived.

    CLAUSE 4.—(Provision for Dealing with Double Entries.)
    (1) The powers and duties of the revising barrister with respect to the determination, in the case of duplicate entries, of the entry to be retained for voting as a Parliamentary elector under Sub-section (14) of Section twenty-eight of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878, as amended by Section five of the Registration Act, 1885, and Section forty-four of the Local Government Act, 1894, shall be exercised and performed as respects the whole of the Parliamentary borough of London by some one revising barrister (in this Act referred to as the special revising barrister) selected for the purpose by the Lord Chief Justice of England; and the barrister so selected shall, after the lists of Parliamentary electors for the whole of the Parliamentary borough of London have been revised, hold a revision court for the purpose of the exercise of those powers and the performance of those duties.
    (2) The time within which any court for the performance of the said duties and the exercise of the said powers may be held shall not be limited by the provisions limiting the period for the revision of lists of electors, but no such court shall be held later than the twelfth day of November, and the powers and duties of the special revising barrister at the court shall be limited to those for which provision is made by this Section.
    (3) In cases where under paragraph (c) of Sub-section (1) of Section live of the Registration Act, 1885, it would be necessary for the revising barrister to retain the entry in the lists first revised, the special revising barrister shall determine the entry to be retained by lot.
    (4) Every town clerk shall, as soon as the revised lists of the Parliamentary electors are received by him from the revising barrister, send a copy of the lists so revised to the clerk of the London County Council, together with notice of any entries contained in those lists which he has reason to believe to be duplicate entries, and it shall be the duty of the clerk of the London County Council to examine all the lists sent to him as a whole, with a view to Ascertaining any entries in those lists which are duplicate entries, and to cause any such duplicate entries to be brought to the notice of the special revising barrister when holding his revision court.
    (5) Any notice of selection of an entry to be retained for voting under Sub-section (14) of Section twenty-eight of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878, sent to a revising barrister in pursuance of that Sub-section, shall be forwarded by him to the clerk of the London County Council, who shall deliver all such notices received by him to the special revising barrister.
    Mr. HARMOOD-BANNERmoved to omit Sub-section (3).
    This Sub-section certainly does seem to carry this principle of a single vote to an absurdity, and they are to gamble in votes where the voter has not selected. I think this principle of the lot is quite new. I do not think we have it in our Parliamentary franchise at all, and it is an extension of the law. I presume, however, if it is accepted in this Bill it will be carried further, and applied to Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and other places. It does seem to me extraordinary that a man is to have his place of voting decided by this particular system of lot. Of course those of us who know the great difficulty of getting voters to select a place where they will vote are aware that it is only through the active intervention of the agent and the liberal use of circulars and great pressure that a voter is induced to come up and select his place of voting. Of course there may be something in it, inasmuch as it may settle the one place in which he is to vote as the place of his abode, but that where there are two places a revising barrister is to set to work by a
    94
    lottery, and determine where a voter has to vote is, I think, the height of absurdity and ought to be excised from the Bill.
    Sir W. BULL: I beg to second the proposed Amendment, and I also object to the system of deciding the place where a man is to vote by lot. A duplicate entry can far more reasonably be arranged, and I do not see why a man who has four or five votes should not have the exercise of them one after another. That is, if he did not vote in one place, why he should not vote in the next one, and the matter could be so arranged that the qualifications could be set down in order of value, taking the higher value first, and then going down the scale. How is it to be decided? By lot? Is it to be done by dice, or to be drawn by a slip of paper, or is it by trial, by fire, or by water? What is the exact principle on which a revising barrister must act? Is it to be done in public? Does he put down three cards and choose the ace? I am strongly against gambling in all forms.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I am indeed surprised that an hon. Member belonging to the learned profession which is graced by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, with some acquaintance of Electoral Law, should be unaware that this has been for a period of about 25 years the law of the land in registration matters.
    Sir W. BULL: I am shocked.
    Mr. HARCOURT: The shock, I hope, will be tempered by the age of the crime. What happens in a case where no selection is made by the voter is that the barrister is directed by statute what he is to do. He is first told that if there is a freeman's qualification he must take that first. If there is not a freeman's qualification but there is a residential qualification, he shall take that first. Failing either of these two, the barrister is to allot the voter to vote in that division of which he first revises the list. How is the barrister instructed which list he shall first revise? By the Redistribution Act of 1885, Section 14, Sub-section 2a These are the instructions:—
    "At the first revision after the passing of this Act the revising barrister shall first settle by lot the order of the divisions of the borough for the purposes of the allotment."
    He settles by lot which register he will revise first, and he is told he must allot the voter to the register which he revises first. You are doing at one remove what the law cumbrously does in two, and you are carrying out the intentions and

    95
    practice of the law for 25 years of settling this not very important matter by lot.
    Amendment negatived.
    Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
    Sir H. KIMBER: There are one or two points upon which I should not like to be misunderstood. I am in favour of successive occupation between all continuous boroughs, not only in London, but elsewhere in the United Kingdom, but this Bill was not necessary for the carrying of that reform. The evil of the disfranchisement, it is said, of 50,000 people every year owing to their not having successive occupation is altogether over-rated. In the case where a man has to move from one borough to another his name remains on the register for a very considerable time, and he can, and does, vote in respect of it. There are some hard cases, no doubt, when a man leaves just about the time that the register expires. Then he loses the one and does not gain it in the other. I have always been in favour of lessening that difficulty by giving successive occupation between consecutive boroughs, but it should be done not in London only, but between all parts of the Kingdom. There are many London boroughs which have more than one Member. In one case there are seven—as many as Birmingham—and in three or four they have four Members each, and in no fewer than about a dozen others they have two or three. In all there are 16 cases, and in all of them successive occupation in London still exists. I have no objection in the world to its being extended to the whole of the County of London, but if it is extended to the County of London why should it not be given to every other county in the Kingdom? There seems to be no reason to compare one area with another. We should press it as far as the analogy will go. It is the same as regards simultaneous polls. If you want to make London like Birmingham, they already exist as regards the large boroughs, but if you want to compare the two areas together you should give Birmingham an area which will include all the other towns, such as Aston Manor, Walsall, and the others. I have yet to be convinced that simultaneous polls are a good thing for any district. Now we come to the principal object of the Bill—the abolition of the dual vote—and I propose the rejection of the Bill in these terms, "That this House declines to pass a Bill
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    which proposes to amalgamate into one borough a whole county, containing 59 out of 670 constituencies in the United Kingdom, and thereby first depriving large numbers of electors of their existing voting power, and, secondly, while professing to have for its sole object the removal of anomalies, leaves greater anomalies existing and unremedied, creates further anomalies, and seriously affects the representation of the people."
    Mr. HARMOOD-BANNER: I beg to second the Amendment.
    The UNDER-SECRETARY for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. McKinnon Wood): This reasoned Amendment for the rejection of the Bill on the third reading purports to be a representation of what is contained in the Bill, but I think it will be possible in a very few minutes to show that, instead of being a representation of what is contained in the Bill, it is positively a grotesque caricature of what is proposed. Take the first statement in the Amendment, that the Bill proposes to amalgamate into one borough a whole county containing 59 out of the 670 constituencies in the United Kingdom. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand ordinary men would suppose from these words that the Bill proposes to abolish 58 of the boroughs in London and leave London but one Parliamentary division. Of course, the hon. Baronet knows that the Bill does not mean that, but that is what appears from the Amendment to be the tremendous proposal made in the Bill. As a matter of fact, this phraseology absolutely means nothing at all. Not a single division disappears or is altered in any respect whatever. They all remain as at present. The second proposition in the Amendment is that the Bill deprives large numbers of electors of their existing voting power. That is one of those half-truths which are the most deceiving things in the world. Tens of thousands of people by this Bill will preserve their voting power, which they now lose by mere accident, and which, if they lived in any other town, they would not lose. As a matter of fact, instead of there being fewer electors taking part in London elections there will be tens of thousands more electors. Certain electors will lose a superfluity of votes. They will only be able to vote once instead of twice or half a dozen times, but not a single elector will be disfranchised. The third proposition in the Amendment is that the Bill, while professing to have for its sole object the

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    removal of anomalies, leaves greater anomalies existing and unremedied. That is true of every Reform Bill that ever existed. Every Reform Bill leads to other anomalies. The hon. Baronet has not justified, or attempted to justify, the existing anomalies. There is one point on which I agree with the hon. Baronet. In the concluding words of the Amendment he says that the Bill seriously affects the representation of the people. Of course, that is the object of the Bill. It does affect the representation of the people. It does mean that a great many people who now lose their votes will in future possess and make use of them. I was very much struck with a remark made by the Noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord R. Cecil). He said he never heard anyone object to the present arrangement. It is curious that one of the constituents of the Noble Lord told me that he moved only 30
    yards and lost his vote for more than 12 months. I think there is no need for a public complaint after we have heard the statement made by the hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. A. Henderson) as to his own personal experience. There is no use of a public complaint after that to induce Parliament to remedy a grievous injustice and anomaly. Hon. Members opposite confess that they cannot defend the loss of the right of successive occupation in London. Some of them say they cannot defend plural voting in London. These are the two things dealt with in the Bill, and I do not think more words are required to induce the House to consent to the third reading.
    Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    The House divided: Ayes, 161; Noes, 29.

    Division No. 804.]

    AYES.

    [8.30 p.m.

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

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Alden, Percy

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

    Gulland, John W.

    Morse, L. L.

    Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

    Myer, Horatio

    Barnes, G. N.

    Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)

    Napier, T. B.

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Beale, W. P.

    Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)

    Nussey, Sir Willans

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Hart-Davies, T.

    Nuttall, Harry

    Bell, Richard

    Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    O'Grady, J.

    Bonn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Boulton, A. C. F.

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)

    Bowerman, C. W.

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

    Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)

    Brace, William

    Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Brooke, Stopford

    Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

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

    Higham, John Sharp

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

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Hobart, Sir Robert

    Radford, G. H.

    Buckmaster, Stanley O

    Hodge, John

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

    Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

    Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Horniman, Emslie John

    Rendall, Athelstan

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Hyde, Clarendon G.

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    Bytes, William Pollard

    Idris, T. H. W.

    Ridsdale, E. A.

    Cameron, Robert

    Jackson, R. S.

    Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Johnson, John (Gateshead)

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Cawley, Sir Frederick

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Keating, M.

    Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

    Clough, William

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

    Sears, J. E.

    Corbett A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Seely, Colonel

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

    Lambert, George

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    Crosfield, A. H.

    Lea, Hugh Cecil (St. Pancras, E.)

    Steadman, W. C.

    Crossley, William J.

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)

    Curran, Peter Francis

    Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Daiziel, Sir James Henry

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

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

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Essex, R. W.

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Tomkinson James

    Esslemont, George Birnie

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Verney, F. W.

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)

    Walker, H. de R. (Leicester)

    Everett, R. Lacey

    Mallet, Charles E.

    Walters, John Tudor

    Fenwick, Charles

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Massie, J.

    Waterlow, D. S.

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Weir, James Galloway

    White, Sir George (Norfolk)

    Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Wiles, Thomas

    White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Whitehead, Rowland

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

    Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    NOES.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Forster, Henry William

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Balcarres, Lord

    Gardner, Ernest

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

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Haddock, George B.

    Stanier, Beville

    Bull, Sir William James

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Thornton, Percy M.

    Cave, George

    Heaton, John Henniker

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

    Hills, J. W.

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir H. Kimber and Mr. Harmood-Banner.

    Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan)

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Fell, Arthur

    Renton, Leslie

    Main Question put, and agreed to. Bill read the third time, and passed.
    Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Joseph Pease]
    House adjourned at Twenty minutes before Nine o'clock.