Commons Sitting of 11 May 1910

Preamble
The House being met, the Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker from this day's sitting:
Whereupon Mr. EMMOTT, the Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table, and after Prayers, took the Chair as Deputy-Speaker, pursuant to the Standing Order.

DEATH OF KING EDWARD VII.

  ADDRESS FROM RUSSIAN DOUMA.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I have to inform the House that the following message of condolence has been received from the Russian Douma.
  "St. Petersburg,
  "9th May.
  "To the Speaker, Parliament, House of Commons, London.
  "The Douma of the Empire at its sitting of the 26th April (9th May) has charged me with the duty of interpreting to you the sentiments of profound condolence and of sorrowful sympathy which it experiences on the occasion of the decease of His Majesty King Edward VII. The mourning of your country has found a unanimous echo in the representatives of the Russian nation, which loses in the person of the late King a near relative of the Imperial family of Russia, a sure friend and constant well-wisher, a monarch devoted to the maintenance of universal peace. Please convey to the House of Commons the expression of the Sentiments which animate the Douma of the Empire, as well as the profound assurance which it feels that the bonds of friendship between our two countries, which received so powerful an impulse from the great Sovereign who has passed away, will not cease to be developed and strengthened for the greatest good of both nations.
  "ALEXANDER GOUTCHKOFF,
  "President of the Douma of the Empire."
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I am sure it is the desire of the House that a suitable reply be sent.

HARTLEPOOL ELECTION PETITION.
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I have also to inform the House that the following certificate of the High Court of Justice King's Bench Division has been forwarded to Mr. Speaker:—
"In the High Court of Justice,
"King's Bench Division.
"Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868, and the Corrupt and the Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883.
"Election for the Borough of the Hartlepools, holden on the 15th January, 1910, between Joseph Forster Wilson and John Roger Butterwick, petitioners, and Sir Christopher Furness, respondent.
"To the Right Hon. the Speaker of the House of Commons.
"We, Sir Walter George Frank Phillimore, Bart., and Sir William Pickford, Kt., Judges of the High Court of Justice and two of the Judges on the Rota for the time being for the trial of election petitions, in England and Wales, do hereby certify, in pursuance of the said Acts, that upon the 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th days of April, 1910, and the 2nd and 3rd of May, 1910, we duly held a court at the Justice Room, Borough Buildings, Hartlepool, for the trial of, and did try, the election petition for the borough of Hartlepool, in the county of Durham, between Joseph Forster Wilson and John Roger Butterwick, petitioners, and Sir Christopher Furness, respondent, and in further pursuance of the said Acts we certify that at the conclusion of the said trial we determined that the said Sir Christopher Furness, being the Member whose election and return were complained of in the said petition, was not duly elected and returned, and we do hereby certify in writing such our determination to you. And whereas as charges were made in the said petition of corrupt and illegal practices having been committed at the said election, we, in further pursuance of the said Acts, report as follows:—

"(1) That no corrupt or illegal practices were proved to have been committed by or with the knowledge or consent of any candidate at the said election.

"(2) That George Bernard Butler was proved to have been guilty of the illegal practice of having as election agent not transmitted to the Returning Officer a

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true return respecting his expenses at the said election, and that William Wallace was proved to have been guilty of the illegal practice of having before, during and after the said election made payments in respect of the conduct and management of the said election otherwise than by or through the election agent of the candidate.

"(3) That there is no reason to believe that corrupt or illegal practices have extensively prevailed at the said election.

"(4) That the said Sir Christopher Furness was guilty by his agents of the illegal practices mentioned in paragraph 2 of this Report.

"(5) That no certificates of indemnity have been furnished to the persons found guilty of the illegal practices mentioned in paragraph 2 of this report.

"A copy of the evidence and of our judgment taken down and written out at length by the deputies of the shorthand writer of the House of Commons accompanies this our certificate.
"Dated this 9th day of May, 1910.
"WALTER G. F. PHILLIMOHE.
"W. PICKFORD.".

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I think it would be for the convenience of the House, at this stage, if I were to ask the Prime Minister whether he can make any statement in regard to the course of business in the future, or, at all events, whether he will make such statement as is now within his power to make?
The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): We propose that after the sitting to-day the House should not meet until Tuesday next, and that after Tuesday the House should adjourn until Wednesday, 8th June.
On that day we shall take Navy Votes, the Report of which will be taken on Thursday, 9th June. On these days we shall also take Ways and Means Resolutions.
Friday, 10th June, will be Private Member's day.
During the following week we shall endeavour to pass the Consolidated Fund
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Bill, and ask the House to appoint a Committee to consider questions with regard to the Civil List. Some Bills will also be proceeded with.
Mr. BALFOUR: I suppose notice will be given of the hour at which the House will be called upon to meet on Tuesday next.
The PRIME MINISTER: We do not yet know. As soon as we do, we will give notice.

SITTINGS OF COMMITTEES.
MASTER of ELIBANK: I beg to move "That all Committees have leave to sit, notwithstanding any adjournment of the House to the 8th of June."
Sir FREDERICK BANBURY: We ought to have some explanation of this motion. Does it mean that all Committees are to come up when the House is not sitting, and are to sit in order to do their work when everybody else is away?
MASTER of ELIBANK: No. It means if any Committees desire to sit, Members can attend for the purpose of those Committees. It is purely voluntary.
Sir F. BANBURY: Supposing some Members do not desire to attend, will other Members have power to pass clauses and Bills?
MASTER of ELIBANK: No. That is a matter of arrangement between the Chairman of the Committee and the Members.
Mr. GIBSON BOWLES: May I ask to what Committees this applies? Does it apply to Standing Committees, Select Committees, and all Committees whatever?
MASTER of ELIBANK: Private Bill Committees.
Question put, and agreed to.

NEW MEMBERS SWORN.
William Hunter, esquire, K.C., for the Govan Division of Lanarkshire, upon acceptance of the Office of His Majesty's Solicitor-General for Scotland.
Charles Henry Lyell, esquire, for the South Division of Edinburgh, upon the elevation of Arthur Dewar, esquire, K.C., appointed a Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland.
Walter Stowe Bright MacLaren, esquire, for the Crewe Division of Cheshire, in the room of the Right Hon. James Tomkinson, deceased.

DEATH OF KING EDWARD VII.

  MESSAGE FROM KING GEORGE V.
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith),at the Bar, acquainted the House that he had a message from His Majesty the King to this House, sent by His Majesty's own hand, and presented the same to the House, and it was read out by the Deputy-Speaker as followeth, all the Members of the House being uncovered:—
  "GEORGE R.I.
  "The King knows that the House of Commons shares in the profound and sudden sorrow which has fallen upon His Majesty by the death of His Majesty's father, the late King, and that the House entertains a true sense of the loss which His Majesty and the nation have sustained from this mournful event. King Edward's care for the welfare of his country and his people, his skilled and prudent guidance of affairs, his unwearying devotion to public duty during his illustrious reign, his simple courage in pain and danger, will long be held in honour by his subjects at home and beyond the seas."
  The PRIME MINISTER: I find it my duty to make two Motions to the House. Though in point of form they will no doubt be put separately from the Chair, I think it right to read them both at once, and I shall confine what I have to say in support of both, in accordance with precedent, within the compass of a single speech. The first Motion is as follows:—
  "That a humble Address be presented to His Majesty to assure His Majesty of the heartfelt sympathy of this House in the grievous affliction and loss by the death of the late King, His Majesty's father, of blessed and glorious memory.
  "That we shall ever remember with grateful affection the zeal and success with which our late Sovereign laboured to consolidate the peace and concord of the world, to aid every merciful endeavour for the alleviation of human suffering and to unite in justice and freedom all races and classes of his subjects with his Imperial Throne.
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  "To offer His Majesty our loyal congratulations upon his auspicious accession.
  "To assure His Majesty of our devotion to his Royal person, and of our sure conviction that his reign will, under the favour of Divine Providence, be distinguished by unswerving efforts to promote the virtue, prosperity, and contentment of the realm, and to guard the rights and liberties of His Majesty's faithful people."
  The second Motion will be to the following effect:—
  "That a message of condolence be sent to Her Majesty the Queen-Mother to assure Her Majesty of the deep and warm sympathy which this House feels for Her Majesty in this melancholy time of sorrow and irreparable loss; and that this House and the nation will ever preserve towards Her Majesty the sentiments of unalterable reverence and affection."
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the late King, who has been suddenly taken from us, had at the time of his death not yet completed the tenth year of his reign. Those years were crowded with moving and stirring events, both abroad, in the Empire, and here at home. In our relations with foreign countries they have been years of growing friendships, of new understandings, of stronger and surer safeguards for the peace of mankind. Within the Empire during the same time the sense of interdependence, the consciousness of common interests, and common risks, the ever-tightening bonds of corporate unity have been developed and vivified as they had never been before. Here at home, as though it were by way of contrast, controversial issues of the gravest kind—economical, social, constitutional—have ripened into a rapid maturity. In all these multiform manifestations of our national and Imperial life, history will assign a part of singular dignity and authority to the great Ruler whom we have lost. In external affairs his powerful personal influence was steadily and zealously directed to

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  the avoidance not only of war, but of the causes and pretexts of war, and he well earned the title by which he will always be remembered, "the Peacemaker of the World."
  Within the boundaries of his own Empire, by his intimate knowledge of its component parts, by his broad and elastic sympathy, not only with the ambition and the aspirations, but with the sufferings and the hardships of his people, by his ready response to any and every appeal, whether to the sense of justice or to the spirit of compassion, he won a degree of loyalty, affection, and confidence which few Sovereigns have ever enjoyed. At home we all recognise that above the din and the dust of our hard-fought controversies, detached from party, attached only to the common interests, we had in him an arbiter, ripe in experience, judicial in temper, at once a reverent worshipper of our traditions and a watchful guardian of our constitutional liberties.
  One is tempted, indeed constrained, on such an occasion as this to ask what were the qualities which enabled a man called comparatively late in life to new duties of unexampled complexity—what were the qualities which in practice proved him so admirably fitted to the task, and have given him an enduring and illustrious record among the rulers and governors of the nations? I should be disposed to assign the first place to what sounds a commonplace—but in its persistent and unfailing exercise is one of the rarest of virtues—his strong, abiding, dominating sense of public duty. King Edward, be it remembered, was a man of many and varied interests. He was a sportsman in the best sense, an ardent and discriminating patron of the Arts. He was as well equipped as any man of his time for the give-and-take of social intercourse; wholly free from the prejudices and narrowing rules of caste; at home in all companies; an enfranchised citizen of the world. To such a man, endowed as he was by nature, placed where he was by fortune and by circumstance, there was open, if he had chosen to enter
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  it, an unlimited field for self-indulgence. But, Sir, as everyone will acknowledge who was brought into daily contact with him in the sphere of affairs, his duty to the State always came first. In this great business community there was no better man of business, no man by whom the humdrum obligations—punctuality, method, preciseness, and economy of time and speech—were more keenly recognised or more severely practised.
  I speak with the privilege of close experience when I say that wherever he was, whatever may have been his apparent preoccupations, in the transaction of the business of the State there were never any arrears, there was never any trace of confusion, there was never any moment of avoidable delay. Next to these, Sir—I am still in the domain of practice and administration—I should put a singular, perhaps an unrivalled, tact in the management of men, and a judgment of intuitive shrewdness as to the best outlet from perplexed and often baffling situations. He had in its highest and best development the genius of common-sense. These rare gifts of practical efficiency were, during the whole of his Kingship, yoked to the service of a great ideal. He was animated every day of his Sovereignty by the thought that he was at once the head and the chief servant of that vast and complex organism which we call the British Empire. He recognised in the fullest degree both the powers and the limitations of a Constitutional Monarch. Here, at home, he was, though no politician—as everyone knows—a keen Social Reformer. Already, as Prince of Wales, he had entered with zeal into the work of two Royal Commissions—one on the Housing of the Working Classes, and the other on the problems connected with the Aged Poor. His magnificent service to our hospitals, both before and after his accession, will never be forgotten. He loved his people at home and over the seas. Their interests were his interests, and their fame was his fame. He had no self apart from them.

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  I will not touch for more than a moment on more delicate and sacred ground—on his personal charm, the warmth and wealth of his humanity; his unfailing considerateness for all who in any capacity were permitted to work for him. I will only say in this connection that no man in our time has been more justly beloved by his family and his friends, and no Ruler in our or in any time has been more sincerely true, more unswervingly loyal, more uniformly kind to his advisers and his servants. By the unsearchable councils of the Disposer of Events, he has been called, suddenly and without warning, to his account. We are still dazed under the blow which has befallen us. It is too soon, as yet, even to attempt to realise its full meaning, but this, at least, we may say at once, and with full assurance, that he has left to his people a memory and an example which they will never forget, a memory of great opportunities greatly employed, and an example which the humblest of his subjects may treasure and strive to follow, of simplicity, courage, self-denial, tenacious, devotion up to the last moment of conscious life to work, to duty, and to service.
  I ask the House to join in the condolences which we offer to our new Sovereign, the expression of our deepest sympathies with her who for nearly fifty years has shared the joys and sorrows, the cares and responsibilities of the King whom we have lost. Here words fail me. The Queen-Mother, to call her by her new title, is already enthroned in the love of the British people. There is not a heart in the Empire which does not beat with sympathy for her to-day in her suffering and sorrow.
  To these, our heartfelt condolences, I ask the House to add its congratulations to His Majesty King George V. on his accession to the Throne of his ancestors. Our new Sovereign has served a long apprenticeship to his task. He has personally visited almost every part of his world-wide Dominions, and none of us can forget the
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  weighty and impressive summary of our Imperial problems which he delivered on his return from Australia. He has the aid and support of a gracious consort, born and bred among us. He takes upon his shoulders, at a wholly unexpected call, and at a time of stress and difficulty, as heavy a burden as could fall to the lot of man. Let us, the Commons of this United Kingdom, assure him that it is not only the solemn prayer and the eager hope, but that it is the confident belief of his people that he will show himself a worthy son and successor of the great King whom we mourn to-day.
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Twice in ten years we have been assembled on the saddest and most moving occasion which can call the representatives of the Commons of England together. I do not think anything which any of us can remember can exceed in its pathos the sudden grief which has befallen the whole of the community within these islands and the whole of the Empire of which these islands are the centre, and which has found an echo in every civilised nation in the world. I do not think that the deep feelings which move us all are accounted for merely by our sense of the great public loss which this nation has sustained, nor of the tragic circumstances by which that great loss has been accompanied. There are far deeper feelings moved in us all than any based merely upon the careful weighing of public gains and public losses, for all of us feel that we have lost one who loved us, and who desired to serve the people whom we represent, and we have all lost one with regard to whom we separately and individually feel a personal affection, in addition to our respectful loyalty. I have often wondered at the depth of the personal feeling of affection and devotion which it is possible for a Sovereign, circumstanced as our Sovereigns are, to excite among those over whom they reign.
  It is easy for those who, like the Prime Minister and myself and many others, have been brought into personal contact with the late King, to appreciate his kindliness, his readiness to understand the difficulties

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  of those who were endeavouring to serve him, the unfailing tact and all the admirable qualities which the Prime Minister has so eloquently described. But, Sir, when I ask myself how the great community over which King Edward ruled could feel as those felt who were brought into immediate contact with him, then. I say it is due, and can only be due, to some incommunicable and unanalysable power of genius which enabled the King, by the perfect simplicity of his personality, to make all men love him and understand him.
  Sir, genius keeps its own counsels, and I think no mere attempt at analysing character, no weighing of merits, no attempt to catalogue great gifts really touches the root of that great secret which made King Edward one of the most beloved monarchs that ever ruled over this great Empire. This power of communicating with all mankind, this power of bringing them into sympathy is surely the most king-like of all qualities, the one most valuable in a Sovereign. The duties of kingship are not becoming easier as time goes on, while, as I think, they are becoming too, under the conditions of modern Empire, even more necessary to the health and even to existence of the State. The King has few or none of the powers of explaining and communicating himself by ordinary channels to those over whom he rules. In these democratic days we all of us spend our lives in explaining. The King cannot; he has no opportunity such as we possess of laying his views before the judgment seat of public opinion. And, Sir, while those are difficulties which nobody who thinks over them will be inclined to undervalue, I think it is becoming more and more apparent to everybody who considers the circumstances of this great Empire, that our Sovereign, the monarch of this country, is one of its most valued possessions. For what are we in these islands?
  We are part of an Empire which in one Continent is the heir of great Oriental monarchies, in other Continents is one of a brotherhood of democracies, and of this strangely-compacted whole the Sovereign,
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  the hereditary Sovereign of Great Britain is the embodiment, and the only embodiment of Imperial unity. He it is to whom all eyes from across the ocean look as the embodiment of their Imperial ideal, while we, the politicians of the hour, are but dim and shadowy figures to our fellow subjects in other lands. While they but half understand our controversies, and but imperfectly appreciate or realise our characteristics, the monarch, the Constitutional Monarch, of this great Empire is the sign and symbol that we are all united together as one Empire to carry out great and common interests. The burden, therefore, which is thrown upon the Sovereign, could never have been foreseen by our forefathers before this Empire came into being, and I think that even we ourselves, at this very moment, and at this late stage of Imperial development, are only half beginning to understand its vital importance. Sir, if I am right in what I have said, and I think I am, these marvellous gifts which King Edward possessed, are, as I have said, the great kingly qualities which we most desire to see in our monarch, and he used them to the utmost and to the full, as the Prime Minister has told us, and they had their effect not merely among his subjects wherever they might dwell, but also among people belonging to other nations, our neighbours, happily our friends, in other countries.
  Sir, there have been, I think, strange misunderstandings with regard to the relation of the great King who has just departed with the administration of our foreign affairs. There are people who suppose he took upon himself duties commonly left to his servants, and that when the secrets of diplomacy are revealed to the historian it will be found that he took a part not known, but half-suspected, in the transactions of his reign. Sir, that is to belittle the King; it is not to pay him the tribute which in this connection he so greatly and so justly deserves. We must not think of him as a dextrous diplomatist—he was a great monarch, and it was because he was able naturally, simply through the incommunicable gift of personality, to make all feel, to embody

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  for all men the friendly policy of this country, that he was able to do a work in the bringing together of nations which has fallen to the lot of few men, be they kings or be they subjects, to accomplish. He did what no Minister, no Cabinet, no Ambassadors, neither treaties nor protocols, nor understandings, no debates, no banquets, and no speeches were able to perform. He, by his personality, and by his personality alone, brought home to the minds of millions on the Continent, as nothing we could have done would have brought home to them, the friendly feeling of the country over which King Edward ruled. He has gone. He has gone in the plenitude of his powers, in the noontide of his popularity, in the ripeness of his experience. He has gone, but he will never be absent either from the memory or the affections of those who were his subjects. He has gone, but the Empire remains; and the burden which he so nobly bore now falls to another to sustain.
  It is right that we at the beginning of the reign, conscious of what the labours, difficulties, and responsibilities of a Constitutional Monarch are, it, is right we should go forward, and in words such as those which have been read from the Chair assure King George of that loyal support and affection which we and the nation whom we represent unvaryingly gave to his father, and which will still most assuredly not be withheld from him. He brings to the great task which has thus been unexpectedly thrust upon him the greatest of all qualities—the qualities of deep-rooted patriotism and love for that Empire of which he is called upon to be the head, and the earnest desire he has constantly shown to do his duty. These are virtues which neither the country nor the House will be slow to appreciate. We may look forward in his person to finding again that great exemplar of constitutional monarchy of which his two great predecessors have given such illustrious examples.
  The Prime Minister has referred to another Resolution which you, Sir, have
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  not yet put, and which touches on a matter almost too sacred for public speech, but our hearts are so full of deep sympathy for the bereaved lady, the Queen-Mother, that we cannot withhold some public form of expression of it on an occasion like the present. The Queen-Mother has been adored by the people of this country ever since she came amongst us. She was adored by them in the heyday of youth and prosperity, and she may be well assured that in these days of adversity the affection and respect of the people of this country will gain rather than diminish in strength. We are surely right in laying before her a tribute of our deep sympathy. We know, or we can guess, how much she has felt. We know how irremediable is her grief, and in that grief she will ever have the warmest sympathy and affection both of this House and of those whom this House represents. I beg to second the Resolution.
  Mr. ENOCH EDWARDS: I desire to offer a few observations, necessarily brief, on the part of my colleagues around me. In the first place, we desire to associate ourselves with the Resolution moved by the Prime Minister and with the observations the right hon. Gentleman has made to the House, supplemented, as they were, by the Leader of the Opposition. I do not know it is necessary that anyone should arise from these benches to assure this House and the country of the sympathy—the earnest and sincere sympathy—of the great masses of the working classes of this country in the loss which the nation has sustained. I do so, however, with a very intimate knowledge of large sections of the industrial community. I assure this House that no loss has been more felt and will affect so much the lives of the great masses of the people as that which we have sustained during the last few days. The king, by his noble life and by his heroic services, has brought the great masses of working men to realise that, after all, those in high places have used their enormous powers to make their lot in this life happier and brighter. Of no one it may be so truly said as of the late King

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  Edward that he worked and toiled for the good of his people, and while his immediate associations were with those whose lot was better in this world, the great mass of the people at the base of society had a warm and sincere friend in him. I am satisfied that throughout the length and breadth of this land to-day there will be one feeling, and one only, that they have lost one of their warmest friends, one of their best friends, and that their prayers and sympathies will go out to those who are left to mourn, that they may be comforted and sustained in their great trial.
  I myself feel that the great masses of the people of this country during the reign of the last two monarchs have had their lot very considerably improved, and when I realise the enormous effort the late King made to make those in these islands and those in the whole Empire happier and better, I quite see that the greatest eulogium that could be paid to anyone will be that which will come from the lowest strata of society—the great and enormous masses of men, women, and children who have learned to love and respect King Edward, and I can quite conceive that in the cottage homes of this dearly loved island, and in the cottage homes over the seas, nowhere will the sorrow be truer and more sincere or deeper than it will be found to be among the humblest of our poor, and in thousands of cottage homes will go up in their rare sincerity the honest prayer of honest men and women that the Queen may be sustained in her sad and serious loss. I respectfully add my tribute to-day. The temptation is somewhat strong to say more, but I will refrain. I feel that this House, having listened to me, will not for a moment consider that I am out of place in contributing my small mite on behalf of my Friends. Though in this House, divided as we are on many questions, we wish it to be understood that there is no division on this subject, and we are anxious to excel in the admiration and respect that is due to a great King who succeeded to a great Queen, and our earnest prayer is that the present King—King George—will live up to the example of his Father, and will thus
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  redound to the everlasting happiness of this country.
  Question put, and agreed to nemine contradicente.
  The PRIME MINISTER: I beg to move, "That, in consideration of the recent loss sustained by His Majesty, the said Address be presented to His Majesty by such Members of this House as are of His Majesty's most honourable Privy Council and of His Majesty's Household."
  Mr. BALFOUR: I beg to second the Motion.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  The PRIME MINISTER: I beg to move, "That a message of condolence be sent to Her Majesty the Queen-Mother to assure Her Majesty of the deep and warm sympathy which this House feels for Her Majesty in this melancholy time of sorrow and of irreparable loss; and that this House and the Nation will ever preserve towards Her Majesty sentiments of unalterable reverence and affection."
  Mr. BALFOUR: I beg to second that Motion.
  Question put, and agreed to nemine contradicente.
  The PRIME MINISTER: I beg to move, "That Mr. Burt, Sir John Dewar, Mr. Lonsdale, Mr. Mildmay, Sir Mark Stewart, and Sir Alfred Thomas do wait upon Her Majesty with the said message."
  Question put, and agreed to.
  The PRIME MINISTER: I beg to move, "That this House will attend the funeral ceremonies of His late Majesty King Edward VII. in Westminster Hall, on Tuesday, the 17th of this instant May."
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn till Wednesday, 8th June."—[The Prime Minister.]
  Adjourned accordingly at Twenty minutes after Four o'clock, till Wednesday, 8th June, 1910, at a Quarter before Three of the clock.