Commons Sitting of 12 April 1911

Preamble
The House met at Twelve of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Liverpool Overhead Railway Bill,
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
Luton Corporation Bill,
To be considered upon Thursday, 20th April.
Paignton Urban District Council Bill,
Widnes and Runcorn Bridge (Transfer) Bill,
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
Ashborne and District Gas Bill [Lords],
Read a second time, and committed.
London County Council (General Powers) Bill (by Order).
Consideration, as amended, deferred till Thursday, 20th April.
Rotherham, Maltby, and District Railless Traction Bill (by Order).
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway (Steam Vessels) Bill [Lords] (by Order).
Second Reading deferred till Thursday, 20th April, at a quarter-past Eight of the clock.
Local Government Provisional Order (No. 11) Bill (by Order),
Third Reading deferred till Wednesday next.

CIVIL SERVANTS (RETIREMENT AT THE AGE OF SIXTY-FIVE).
Copy ordered, "of Treasury Minute, dated the 8th day of April, 1911, stating the circumstances under which certain Civil Servants have been retained in the service after they have attained the age of sixty-five; and of the Return therein referred to."—[Mr. Hobhouse.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Naval Construction (Expenditure 1911–12).
  Mr. PIKE PEASEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty what is the proposed expenditure for 1911–12 for Great Britain, and Germany, Austria, and Italy, respectively, on new construction and armaments?
  The SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): The proposed expenditures asked for are as follows: Great Britain, £17,566,877; Germany, £11,715,752; Austria-Hungary, £3,125,000; Italy, £2,277,302. The amount given for Italy is liable to alteration, as the Estimates have not been finally passed.
  Mr. KELLAWAYasked what is the average cost per ton of "Dreadnoughts" built in British Government yards, and of similar ships built in British private yards?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: It is not clear from my hon. Friend's question whether he desires to institute a comparison between the cost per ton of the total displacement of dockyard built ships on the one hand and contract built ships on the other; or whether he seeks to confine his comparison to the cost of particular classes of tons in each case, namely, hull, engines, guns, gun-mountings, armament, etc. No doubt comparisons under each of these headings are possible, but their compilation would involve considerable labour, and in any case, any comparison would be only approximately accurate for the reason, amongst others, that we are not in a position to say whether the basis of indirect charge is the same in each case.
  Mr. PEEL: Will the hon. Member take steps to see that Great Britain gets terms at least as good as foreign Powers?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I should think there would be no doubt about that.
  Mr. KELLAWAYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if his attention has been called to a statement made by the Grand Vizier in the Turkish Parliament that Messrs. Sir G. W. Armstrong, Whitworth, and Co., Ltd., had tendered for the supply of the hull and engines of two "Dreadnoughts" for the Turkish Government at £51 per ton, as against £63 per ton paid by Great Britain; and if there is any reason why Great Britain should pay £12 per ton more to a British firm for her

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  "Dreadnoughts" than is paid by a foreign Government to the same firm?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I have no information enabling me to make a direct comparison between the cost of building Admiralty "Dreadnoughts" in this country and the cost referred to in the question for building two "Dreadnoughts" for the Turkish Government. I know no reason why the Admiralty should pay more per ton to a British firm for Admiralty "Dreadnoughts" than the firm would charge a foreign government for similar work. I may add that, taking the case of the latest Admiralty "Dreadnought" delivered from contractors, the total cost of hull, armour for hull, and machinery, works out at substantially less than £63 per ton of the total displacement of the ship.
  Mr. KELLAWAY: Does it work out at less than £51 a ton?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I cannot say it does.
  Mr. KELLAWAY: Will the hon. Gentleman make inquiries as to why Turkey is getting these two vessels at £51 a ton and we are asked to pay considerably more?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I do not know that the statement made in the question is correct.

  Wheat Supplies (United Kingdom).
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of recent developments in foreign fleets, his advisers at the Admiralty adhere to the statement to the Royal Commission of 1905 that, in the event of war with any two of the great maritime Powers, there would be no material diminution in the supplies of wheat and flour reaching the United Kingdom?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: The Admiralty adhere to the statement set forth in their letter of the 15th August, 1904, in reply to certain questions addressed to the Board by the Royal Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Material in time of war on the 5th August, 1904. The questions from the Royal Commission, and the reply of the Admiralty are set forth on page 110, Command Paper 2643.

  Canadian Cruisers.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked the names of the cruisers purchased by Canada for the Pacific and Atlantic stations; what was the date of their launching;
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  whether they will have their complement of torpedo destroyers and submarines; whether the salaries of the officers are to be paid by the Dominion Government; whether Canada will recruit her own men for this unit; and whether she will establish training schools for officers, and, if so, where and at what time?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: The names of the cruisers purchased by Canada are the "Rainbow" and "Niobe." The "Rainbow" was launched in 1891, and the "Niobe" in 1897. I might add here that these cruisers are manned mainly by officers and men lent from the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Reserve. As regards destroyers and submarines, the larger plan for a Canadian Fleet unit, suggested at the Imperial Conference of 1909, included the provision of six destroyers of the improved River class and three submarines. The salaries of officers are to be paid by the Dominion Government, and the Dominion will recruit her own men for her Fleet unit. With regard to the last part of the question, a college was opened at Halifax in January last.

  Royal Dockyards (Reopening).
  Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH - COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he will give the House the text of the order sent to the Royal dockyards authorising the reopening of the establishment?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: It would be unusual to quote official Admiralty letters in extenso in reply to a question. The orders merely put into official language the policy of the Government, which has already been communicated to the House.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Will the hon. Gentleman give us that part of the order which has reference to those men who have passed the age for establishment while suspended?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I cannot give that. It is the fact I may say generally that men who have reached the age of forty-five during the period of suspension will not, therefore, and on that account lose the chance of establishment. They will still be eligible, and will be taken into consideration.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: They are still eligible for vacancies which have occurred now or occur immediately after reopening.
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I should think that they would be eligible for vacancies occurring immediately afterwards. That is a matter for the yard officers. I do not suppose they would be eligible for vacancies occurring at some remote future.

  Naval Big-Gun Shooting.
  Mr. BIRDasked whether, bearing in mind the inexpediency of publishing the detailed accuracy of the big-gun shooting in the Navy, whereby the standard of efficiency attained by our gunners is made known to the whole world, the First Lord of the Admiralty will order that in future these results be no longer published?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: The publication of a certain amount of information as to the results obtained in gunnery practices is of great advantage in stimulating competition. The form in which the information is published does not appear to justify the adoption of the course suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

  Norwegian Fishery (Protection of British Boats).
  Sir ARCHIBALD WILLIAMSONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether a British boat may fish with impunity in the Westfjord; and, so long as she fishes beyond three miles from the shores, will the British Government protect her from molestation or demand compensation from the Norwegian Government in the event of her being interfered with?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. McKinnon Wood): With regard to the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on the 3rd instant. With regard to the second part of the question, I cannot accept the hypothesis that the Norwegian authorities might act in violation of a hitherto generally accepted principle of international law.
  Sir A. WILLIAMSON: Would the position in the Westfjord be considered different from that in the Moray Firth?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I explained that very fully in a long answer which I gave my hon. Friend on the 3rd inst. I do not wish to alter the language of that answer.
  Sir A. WILLIAMSON: Will the hon. Gentleman state the part of the answer where there is any reference to that at all?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Yes, in the early part of the answer.

  Fishery Limits (Denmark and Sweden).
  Sir ARCHIBALD WILLIAMSONasked what is the territorial limit for fishery purposes in force between Denmark and Sweden; whether along about one-third of the coasts of Europe the three-mile limit is not accepted by the bordering State; whether he will take into consideration the disadvantage of committing this country to strict adherence to a three-mile limit for fishery purposes; and whether, before taking further action, the hon. Gentleman will ascertain the views of the Scottish Fishery Board and the Department for Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland on the subject?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Denmark and Sweden have agreed between themselves to a four-mile limit for fisheries in the Cattegat, the Sound, the Baltic coast of Sweden from Falsterbo to Simbrishamn, and round the island of Bornholm and Christianso. His Majesty's Government have been committed to the three-mile limit for at least two generations. Any action involving proposals to other Powers for a departure from existing policy would be taken, if at all, by His Majesty's Government as a whole. The Foreign Office cannot act on the advice of one only of the Departments specially interested: its business in a matter of this kind is to carry out the policy of the Government.
  Sir A. WILLIAMSON: How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile that answer with his answer of last week as regards Denmark?

  Dutch Tariff Bill.
  Colonel GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENasked whether the Under-Secretary's attention has been called to the fact that a tariff Bill is now being considered by the Dutch Parliament by which a duty varying from 5 to 6 per cent. is to be placed on imported chains and anchors; whether he is aware that English chains and anchors hitherto have been admitted free into Holland; where they have entered into strenuous competition with the Dutch manufactured article; whether he has been informed of the effect of the new duty upon British trade, which is of considerable volume at the present time; and whether the Foreign Office will take steps to protect the interests of British manufacturers, and, if so, what steps he proposes to take?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Tennant): The articles mentioned are at present free of duty when entering the Netherlands. Under the proposed new tariff chains would be charged with a duty of 6 per cent. ad valorem, but it is not clear what duty is intended to be levied on anchors. Our exports of "anchors, grapnels, chains and cables" to the Netherlands during the last five years have averaged about £70,000 annually. A translation of the projected new tariff is being circulated to chambers of commerce, including Dudley, and their observations thereon are being invited. As soon as I have received those observations I shall consider carefully what action, if any, it may be desirable to take.
  Mr. W. PEEL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any method by which we can bring pressure to bear on such a power?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must give notice of his question.

  Kermanshah British Consulate.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked whether the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs has received official information of an attack upon the British Consulate at Kermanshah, a town of some 32,000 inhabitants on the west of Persia; whether the attack resulted in the death of one man and the theft of a sum of money; whether the man killed was a British subject or in British employment; and what steps he intends to take to safeguard British Consulates in Persia, seeing that the present protection is inadequate?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: His Majesty's Minister has reported that two attempts were made to break into the Consulate at Kermanshah on 25th March and 26th. On the first occasion two men were arrested, and on the second the sowars' quarters were entered, two uniforms and some goods were taken, and shots were exchanged with some thirty men, believed to be seeking revenge for the arrest of their two comrades the day before. The Consul took measures for defence, and notified the Governor. A warning reached the Consulate that the band concerned threatened to kill the Indian sowars, and on 28th March stones were thrown at the Consulate; but the brigands, finding it well garrisoned, made no further attempt,
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  but robbed the house of a notable in the town. The same night the brigands fired on the Consulate, but, finding the fire returned, departed. The local authorities appear to have placed troops at the Consulate for its protection, and Sir George Barclay has held the Persian. Government responsible for the safety of the Consulate and of British subjects, and has urged the punishment of the culprits. No information has so far been received to the effect that anybody was killed during the course of these events.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: May we take it that the Consulates are properly safeguarded?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Yes, I think so.

  Anglo-Japanese Treaty.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked whether negotiations concerning the Japanese treaty were carried on between the Japanese Ambassador in London and this Government; whether the British Ambassador to Japan was also occupied in negotiations with the Japanese Foreign Minister; and, if so, whether the same course was pursued in regard to the reciprocity arrangement between Canada and the United States; and if pourparlers on the matter occurred between the British Government and the American Ambassador in England?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative; to the second in the negative, though some communication passed between His Majesty's Ambassador and the Japanese Government. The answer to the rest of the question is in the negative.
  Sir G. PARKER: May I ask what reason there should be, where British interests are so vitally affected by the reciprocity negotiations between Canada and the United States, that no pourparlers should take place between America and this Government as in the case of France?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I do not quite appreciate the connection of the two things. This negotiation was carried on between the Japanese Ambassador and the Foreign Office and Board of Trade here. It is quite a different case from that which the hon. Gentleman suggests.

  Baghdad Railway.
  Colonel YATEasked whether, in view of the political and commercial interests possessed by India in regard to the Baghdad Railway, the Government of India is being fully consulted in the negotiations that are now going on with regard to the Baghdad Railway; and whether, in the event of any agreement being arrived at, the Government of India will be given an opportunity of expressing its views before the agreement is concluded?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I am in full consultation with the Secretary of State for India, with whom communication with the Government of India rests, and who, as I am aware, keeps himself well informed as to the views of the representatives of His Majesty's Government in India.

  Government Departments (Traders' Orders).
  Mr. GLYN-JONESasked the Secretary for the Colonies whether any facilities are afforded during office hours to any trader, or association of traders, to obtain orders from, and deliver goods to, members of the staff employed at the Colonial Office; and, if so, will he state the name of such trader or association, and the terms and conditions upon which such facilities are granted?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): A messenger of the Civil Service Supply Association calls periodically to receive orders and deliver the articles ordered by members of the staff who are members of that Association.
  Mr. GLYN-JONES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these associations are seeking to do a large business in competition with other traders?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must give notice of that question.
  Mr. GLYN-JONES: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of the question as to the terms and conditions on which such facilities are granted?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I am not aware that there are any terms, but I will make inquiry.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Are these articles delivered to members of the Civil Service while they are on duty?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I am not aware, but I will make inquiry if the hon. Member wishes.
  Mr. GLYN-JONESasked the President of the Board of Education whether any facilities are afforded during office hours to any trader, or association of traders, to obtain orders from, and deliver goods to, members of the staff employed at the Education Department; and, if so, will he state the name of such trader or association, and the terms and conditions upon which such facilities are granted?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Runciman): As a matter of convenience to the numerous members of the staff who are members of the Civil Service Supply Association, a messenger of that association calls daily to receive orders and deliver the articles ordered. A local milkman is also allowed to call for the purpose of supplying members of the staff with milk.
  Mr. GLYN-JONES: Will the Board of Education take any exception to the local education authorities allowing the same privileges to school teachers?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: That would be no affair of ours.
  Mr. KEIRHARDIE: May I ask whether co-operative societies will get the same facilities?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I must have notice of that question.
  Mr. GLYN-JONESasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether any facilities are afforded during office hours to any trader, or association of traders, to obtain orders from, and deliver goods to, members of the staff employed at the War Office; and, if so, will be stale the name of such trader or association, and the terms and conditions upon which such facilities are granted?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Colonel Seely): I presume my hon. Friend is alluding to the Civil Service Supply Association. Limited. This association has enjoyed certain facilities, I am informed, ever since it was founded, many years ago, by Civil servants.
  Mr. GLYN-JONESWill the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of leaving the matter open to tender?
  Colonel SEELY: I understand this matter affects a number of Government Departments, and perhaps I had better not reply for one.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: May I ask whether this is not a co-operative stores which is so favoured?
  Colonel SEELY: The same answer applies. I think the matter should be dealt with as a whole.
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman, who has always been a protagonist of Free Trade, could not commence with his own office first of all?

  Canadian Confederation (Bahamas).
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked whether he is aware of the movement towards the admission of the Bahamas to the Canadian Confederation; whether this has the approval of His Majesty's Government; and what change this entails in the staff and administration of those islands?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I am not at present in a position to add anything to the statement which I made on the 5th instant in reply to a question addressed to me by the hon. Member for North Islington.
  Mr. ESSEX: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiry into the facts?
  Mr. HARCOURT: All the facts shall be inquired into.

  Development Commission.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he can state when the representatives of the Development Commission propose to inspect the Fife ports, notably those of Anstruther, St. Andrews, Pittenweem, and Crail, with a view to investigating the need of further financial grants; and if adequate notice of the dates of the visit can be made in order that representations may be prepared to lay before the Commissioners?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hobhouse): No application for a grant in aid of the development of Fife ports has at present been received by the Commissioners.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked whether protests against the constitution of the advisory committee for fishery purposes, appointed by the Development Commissioners, have been received by the Treasury from representatives of the sea fisheries district committees, or any of them, namely, the Southern, the Eastern, the North-Eastern, the Northumberland, the Kent and Essex, the Cumberland, and from the Lancashire and Western Joint Committee, from the Yorkshire Fishery Board, from the Board of Conservators for
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  the Wear fishery district, from the Avon and Erme Fishery Board (Devon), or from the Howey Fishery District Committee; and, if so, whether any action has been taken upon them?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Copies of resolutions expressing dissatisfaction with the composition of the Advisory Committee on Fishery questions appointed by the Development Commissioners have been received from the following bodies:—

  1 Lancashire and Western Sea Fisheries Joint Committee.

  2 Eastern Sea Fishery Joint Committee.

  3 Devon Sea Fisheries Committee.

  The Treasury have received similar protests from:—

  1 The Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee.

  2 The Kent and Essex Sea Fisheries Committee.

  3 The Devon Sea Fisheries Committee.

  These have been acknowledged. No other action has been taken. The hon. Member was also good enough to send me resolutions on behalf of nine different bodies.

  Income Tax Collection.
  Mr. FELLasked if the right hon. Gentleman will state how much Income Tax was collected in the first eight days of the present financial year; and how much was collected in the same period in each of the last three years?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: If by the term "collected" the hon. Member means paid into the Exchequer, and by the term "first eight days" the first eight working days, then the figures, though not strictly comparable in all respects, are as follows:—

  1908.

  1909.

  1910.

  1911.

  £2,014,000

  £1,454,000

  £179,000

  £3,513,000

  In the first two of these years the tax was levied at the rate of 1s.; in the last Super-tax is also included.
  Mr. FELL: Would the extraordinary amount received last week have been received a week before if the collectors had not been restrained?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: That is rather a hypothetical question, of which I should like notice.
  Mr. FELL: Can no estimate be got out?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: If the hon. Member will give me notice, I will answer.
  Mr. EVELYN CECILasked whether the Secretary to the Treasury is aware that on or about 15th March a cheque for nearly £60,000, payable before the end of the last financial year by one of the twelve large railway companies, was held over until 10th April at the request of Mr. Grasemann, representing the Inland Revenue Commissioners; and what sum has approximately been lost to the Sinking Fund as a consequence of these visits of an Inland Revenue official to railway, banking, and other companies' offices?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am informed that an official of the Inland Revenue, misunderstanding, as I have already explained, his instructions from the chairman of the Board, did represent to certain railways that payment of Income Tax was not required until April. I am not aware of, or able to identify the particular case referred to. No such representations were made in the case of banking and other companies, so far as I am aware.
  Mr. NIELDasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state to which railway companies, and on what dates, it was suggested by the Inland Revenue Department that payment of Income Tax due last March might be postponed until the present financial year?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am afraid I have not got the information yet asked for in the question.
  Viscount CASTLEREAGHasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the amounts of the Income Tax and Super-tax, respectively, which were due, but not collected, on the 31st of last March.
  Viscount CASTLEREAGHalso asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the amounts of the Income Tax and Super-tax, respectively, paid into the Treasury on each of the last fourteen days in the financial year?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: As regards this and the next question, my right hon. Friend is not prepared at this stage to give further details of the yield of last year's taxes to those already published.

  Swansea School Case.
  Mr. W. PEELasked the President of the Board of Education what is the approximate total amount of the costs already paid, and which will have to be paid, by
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  the Treasury, in connection with the recently decided Swansea school case, setting out the costs of the hearing before the Divisional Court, the Court of Appeal, and the House of Lords respectively; and whether, in view of the fact that a large amount of public money has been thrown away, he will in future take precautions against allowing or directing appeals which have no result except the incurring of fresh costs?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am informed that the approximate total costs of the Treasury will probably amount to £2,740. Of this amount £544 represents the costs of the proceedings before the Divisional Court, £902 represents the costs of the proceedings before the Court of Appeal, and £970 the costs of the proceedings before the House of Lords. The residue of the estimated total is accounted for by petty disbursements, which cannot at short notice be allocated to the various hearings, and printing expenses. I cannot accept the assumption underlying the second part of the question.
  Mr. W. PEELasked the right hon. Gentleman whether the appeal to the House of Lords from the Court of Appeal in the recent Swansea school case was brought under his direction and by his authority; whether, before such appeal was brought, the opinion of the Law Officers was obtained as to the probability of such appeal succeeding; and, if not, by whose direction or advice such appeal was brought?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: The appeal from the Court of Appeal was brought under my direction and by my authority, and this step, like other steps in the course of the case, was taken after obtaining proper legal advice.
  Mr. PEEL: Would the right hon. Gentleman kindly answer the second part of the question, whether the opinion of the Law Officers was obtained on the probability of such an appeal succeeding?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I said, "after obtaining proper legal advice."
  Mr. PEEL: May I ask if the right hon. Gentleman would kindly answer my definite question. Whether the advice of the Law Officers was taken before he recommended an appeal?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I have given an answer to the question on the Paper, and

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  I do not feel called to give a definite answer to a supplementary question.
  Mr. PEEL: I give notice that, in consequence of the discourteous reply, I shall raise the question on the Motion for Adjournment.

  Board of Education (Memoranda).
  Mr. GOLDSTONEasked the President of the Board of Education what procedure is followed to differentiate the memoranda issued by the Board, which merely summarise confidential discussions among members of the staff of the Board, from those memoranda which convey expressions of the Board's policy?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: They are differentiated, not by procedure, but by the terms in which they are expressed. Instructions, advice, or other similar expressions of policy are given in unmistakable terms and are not left to be gathered by inference.

  Secondary Schools.
  Mr. GOLDSTONEasked how many secondary schools in receipt of the higher grant of the Board were allowed to offer less than the normal 25 per cent. of free places, subsequently offered the proportion of free places required by the regulations of the Board?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: A reduction of the normal free-place requirement of the Board is only allowed to a school on the request of the school authorities and in the light of representations adequately supporting the application. The term "free place" is loosely used to describe not only places filled by pupils for whom no fee is charged by the school and no fee paid, but also where the full fee is charged but is paid to the school by the local authority, or from some other source, and not by the parent. Adopting this wider sense of the phrase, I believe that, of the schools which had applied for and received a reduction of the normal requirement, twenty-four awarded or offered in the year 1910–11 25 per cent. or more of free place. If my hon. Friend means by free places places filled by pupils for whom no fee is charged to any one, I fear that I must ask him to repeat his question after Easter.
  Mr. GOLDSTONEasked whether the question of the proportion of teachers of elementary school origin on the staffs of secondary schools has been discussed by members of the staff of the Board; and,
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  if so, whether the summary of the discussion has been circulated by memorandum, or otherwise, among His Majesty's inspectors of schools?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am not sure what my hon. Friend means by the expression "teachers of elementary school origin." In its natural interpretation the expression would appear to apply to teachers who had received their preliminary education in public elementary schools. I have every reason to believe that no responsible member of the Board's staff would consider that the suitability of a teacher for employment on the staff of a secondary school could be affected—adversely at any rate—by the fact that he had received his preliminary education in a public elementary school. I think it is possible, however, that the question is intended to refer to teachers whose teaching experience has been acquired wholly or partly in public elementary schools. It is certainly the case that, in some of their reports on individual secondary schools, inspectors have had occasion to suggest the desirability of strengthening the staff by the addition of men with some teaching experience beyond that which can be gained in public elementary schools where few children remain beyond the age of fourteen, and the range of the curriculum is different from that of a secondary school. I have no reason to believe that it has ever been suggested on behalf of the Board that the mere fact that a teacher has served on the staff of a public elementary school should in any respect prejudice his chances of appointment to a post in a secondary school. Indeed, the inclusion of teachers with experience of this character is not infrequently recommended. Whatever may be the correct interpretation of the expression used by my hon. Friend, it is equally true that no discussion of the question in general terms has taken place, and that any memorandum which any officer of the Board may have been inspired to write has not yet, so far as the Board are aware, had an opportunity of affecting anybody's mind except his own.
  Mr. GOLDSTONE: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that, as a result of the recommendation of His Majesty's inspectors in various reports, teachers who have gained the bulk of their experience in elementary schools have been removed to the elementary schools from the secondary schools, as the result of action of the Board's staff?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: The answer I have given is a general answer to the question. If the hon. Member has any particular case he can bring to my notice I shall, of course, inquire into it.
  Mr. BYLESasked whether the reports of inspectors of secondary schools last year revealed the fact that in nearly fifty districts the scales of salaries were so low as to be detrimental to the efficiency of those schools; whether similar reports are made by the inspectors of elementary schools; whether in any and, if so, in how many of these schools the scales of salaries are also deficient; and whether, in such cases, the Board of Education will cause representations to that effect to be made to the local education authorities?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: In the year 1910 168 secondary schools received a full inspection; in forty-seven of them the inspectors called attention to the inadequacy of the salaries. In some of these cases the salaries were fixed by scale, in others they were not. The Board called attention to such deficiencies where they found them to exist, because the low scale of salaries tended to one or both of the following results: either the school failed to secure the services of adequately qualified teachers, or, having secured the services of such teachers, it failed to retain them. In elementary schools the qualifications of teachers are regulated by definite requirements of the Board under the code.

  Qualification of Women Bill.
  Mr. BYLESasked the President of the Board of Education whether an instruction was issued to women inspectors in 1907 forbidding them to sign any address with reference to the Qualification of Women Bill or anything of a similar character; whether the prohibition is still in force; whether it applies to women clerks or to women in other Government Departments; and whether it applies to women only or to Civil servants of both sexes?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: With regard to the first part of the question, instructions to the effect suggested were issued in December, 1907. The answer to the second part of the question is in the affirmative. With regard to the third part of the question, I must refer my hon. Friend to the political heads of the other Departments. With regard to the last part of the question, the regulation applies, so far as the Board of Education is concerned, to members of the staff of the Board of both sexes.
  Mr. BYLES: There is no differentiation between men and women?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: No, Sir; it applies to officers of both sexes.

  Companies Consolidation Act, 1908.
  Mr. HAMILTON BENNasked the President of the Board of Trade why, in the case of the registration of Form E, according to the Companies Consolidation Act, 1908, the officials at Somerset House have refused to accept a balance sheet in which the value of goodwill of licensed property was not shown separately from the other value of such property, although no such distinction was asked for in the case of property not being licensed property?
  Mr. BUXTON: As I informed the hon. Member on 30th March last, in reply to a question which he then asked me, the separation of goodwill free from other assets is asked for in all cases where goodwill is shown as an asset of the company, and no distinction whatever is made between licensed and unlicensed property in this respect.
  Mr. HAMILTON BENN: Would the right hon. Gentleman be convinced that his answer is incorrect if I were to produce to him the balance sheet and an affidavit of the secretary and the files of Somerset House?
  Mr. BUXTON: I am always open to be convinced if I am in the wrong.

  Imports of Jute.
  Mr. SPEARasked the value of the raw jute annually imported into Dundee and other British ports from India; and how much of this imported raw jute is re-exported to other countries?
  Mr. BUXTON: The average value of the raw jute imported into the United Kingdom during the three years 1908 to 1910, which was consigned from British India was £5,019,000 per annum, of which jute to the value of £3,064,000 was landed at the port of Dundee. The re-exports of jute from the United Kingdom in the same years have averaged £1,674,000 per annum.

  Tailoring and Paper Box Trades.
  Mr. WATTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has any statistics showing the comparative size in England and Scotland, respectively, of the

  469
  ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring trade and of the paper box trade, for which Trade Boards have been instituted?
  Mr. BUXTON: I am sending my hon. Friend references to tables issued under the Census of Production Act, which contain some information as to the size of the trades he mentions.

  American Mails.
  Captain DONELANasked the Postmaster-General whether the homeward-bound Cunard steamships "Campania" and "Lusitania" called at Queenstown on Tuesday the 4th instant and on 27th March, respectively, and landed the Irish mails only; if, owing to the state of the weather, those ships were unable to call at Fishguard; whether, as a result, the English, Scotch, and Continental mails had to be taken on to Liverpool, thereby causing a loss of practically an entire business day to London and the rest of England and Scotland in the delivery of the mails; whether, if the English, Scotch, and Continental mails had been landed at Queens-town and sent on by special service, considerable time would have been saved and correspondents in the United Kingdom would have been enabled to reply by the outgoing mail the following Wednesday evening; whether, in the case of the "Campania," the mails taken on to Liverpool lost the Wednesday's outward White Star mail and had to wait until the following Saturday's outgoing mail to reply; whether the homeward-bound Cunard mail steamers have been unable to call at Fishguard owing to bad weather on five occasions since the commencement of the present year, thereby causing delay in the delivery of the homeward American mails and inconvenience to correspondents; whether, if the mails had been landed at Queenstown on those occasions instead of being taken on to Liverpool, a considerable saving of time would have been effected in the delivery of the mails throughout the United Kingdom; and whether he will make representations to the United States Postmaster-General drawing his attention to the above facts, and urge upon him the advisability of the homeward American mails being landed at Queenstown as formerly?
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIEN: May I also ask if the "Mauretania," another of the Cunard liners, failed to land her mails and passengers at Fishguard on Monday last?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The "Lusitania" did not call at Queenstown on the 27th March on her eastward voyage from New York; the "Campania" called there on the 4th instant. Both Packets through stress of weather failed to call at Fishguard. The Irish Mails only were landed at Queens-town from the "Campania"; the remainder of the mails brought by the "Campania," and all the mails brought by the "Lusitania" were carried on to Liverpool. Under the arrangement which were in force when the homeward-bound Cunard Packets called only at Queens-town and Liverpool—arrangements which were, of course, designed to secure the earliest delivery of the correspondence possible under various conditions—all the mails, except those for Ireland, would have been carried on to Liverpool on both the occasions in question, that being the best port for them in the circumstances, and correspondence for Great Britain and the Continent would have derived no benefit by being landed at Queenstown. The correspondence conveyed by the "Lusitania" was delivered in London on the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, the 28th March, and at corresponding times throughout the country. A considerable quantity, probably the greater part, of the correspondence conveyed by the "Campania," including that for the Eastern Central District of London was delivered on Wednesday, the 5th instant, in time for replies to be sent by the outward-bound White Star Packet. The calls at Fishguard omitted during the present year are as stated by the hon. Member. As he is aware, all the Cunard Packets, except the "Lusitania" and "Mauretania," at present call at Queenstown on the eastward voyage. The facts now put forward would not justify me in urging the United States Postmaster-General to use his influence with the Cunard Company to secure a resumption of the call at Queenstown by these two Packets also. With regard to the further question of which I have received private notice, the hon. Member is right in saying that the "Mauretania" failed to land the mails at Fishguard on the evening of the 10th instant. In all cases the omission of the call at Fishguard was due to stress of weather.

  Post Office (Telephonists' Wages).
  Mr. LLOYDasked the Postmaster-General whether he was aware that there were certain telephonists in the Post

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  Office, over eighteen years of age, being away from home, who were only in receipt of wages amounting to 10s. per week, and that they were having to be assisted by their parents financially to enable them to live; and whether he would take immediate steps to increase their wages?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: For the first two years of their service, during which they are in a position of learners, telephonists are unestablished and receive wages of 10s. for the first year and 12s. for the second year. They are usually of the age of about seventeen, though some may be eighteen. The scale for established telephonists runs from 15s. or 16s. a week at nineteen years of age, to 22s., 24s., and 26s. at provincial offices.
  Mr. STAN1ER: Does not the right hon. Gentleman consider that the condition mentioned in the question is really a hardship?
  Mr. SAMUEL: No. These girls are learners; they are in the position of apprentices, and apprentices never receive fall wages. These are quite young girls.

  Towcester Poaching Case.
  Mr. KELLAWAYhad given notice of the following question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the case of George Townsend, who was charged at the Towcester divisional petty sessions with a breach of the Poaching Prevention Act, and with being in possession of a gun and live cartridges at Towcester on 14th March, for which alleged offence he was fined 30s. and his gun confiscated; if the evidence showed that Townsend was stopped by the police whilst cycling along the high road, on the ground that he had a gun on his cycle, had mud on his trousers, and was followed by a mongrel collie dog; if Townsend proved that he had a licence to carry a gun, and a witness for the defence declared that he had been with defendant the whole time, and they had not left the high road; and if, in view of these facts, he proposes to take any steps in the case?
  Mr. KELLAWAY: This question is postponed by request. If the right hon. Gentleman finds that the facts as stated are correct, will he call the attention of the Lord Chancellor to the composition of this bench?

  Motor Omnibuses and Taxi-Cabs (Speed Limit).
  Mr. CATHCART WASONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether, in view of the fact that motors were prohibited from a speed exceeding twelve miles an hour in the parks, and in consequence of the numerous accidents in the public streets, he would take into consideration the advisability of refusing licences to any motor omnibuses or taxi-cabs which were not geared down to a speed of twelve miles an hour.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for HOME AFFAIRS (Mr. Churchill): The Local Government Board regulation for heavy motor cars limit the speed of motor omnibuses to twelve miles an hour, and the police have endeavoured to make it a rule that motor omnibuses shall be so geared as not to exceed that limit, but it has not hitherto been found practicable to compel makers to conform to this requirement. As regards taxi-cabs, there would appear to be no power to fix by regulation a lower maximum speed than that fixed by Parliament, namely, twenty miles an hour.

  Dressmakers' Hours (Proposed Order).
  Mr. BOLANDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the widespread objection to the proposed Order extending the hours of dressmakers' employés during the months specified, he would maintain the existing regulations and not proceed further with the proposed Order 1
  Mr. EDMUND HARVEYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the widespread dissatisfaction which had been aroused by the proposed increase in the hours worked by dressmakers to be allowed in connection with the preparations for the Coronation, he would reconsider the issue of any Order approving such an increase?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: The Order referred to, which is in draft only, does not propose to increase the legal hours which can be worked by dressmakers' assistants. Representations have been received on the subject, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has arranged to see a deputation on the subject next week. All such representations will be carefully considered before any further action is taken.
  Mr. MALCOLM: Until what date is it proposed to postpone the signature?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: April 26th is the date for the draft order. It has to lie on the Table of the House for forty days, and may be discussed any night after eleven o'clock at the conclusion of business.

  Shops Bill (Deputations).
  Mr. GRETTONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the Papers would be laid which he promised during the Second Reading of the Shops Bill, in order to inform the House as to the representations made by various grades to the Home Office on the subject of the Bill?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I hope it will be possible to get the volume into the hands of Members at the beginning of the week after Easter week. Many of the deputations were confidential; therefore, we have to inquire whether they object to any publication; we have also to send them a proof of what we propose to publish, and get their permission.
  Mr. HAMILTON BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that Members have the Papers in their hands before the Committee stage of the Bill is taken?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I will do my best to expedite publication, but I cannot allow the progress of the Bill to be delayed. It is possible that the Committee will not meet until the week after Easter week; but I cannot promise that it shall not begin until after the publication of this Paper.

  Social Legislation (Special Census).
  Mr. CLAUDE LOWTHERasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the far-reaching schemes of social legislation now pending, His Majesty's Government would consider the advisability of immediately taking a special census of those likely to be affected, providing data as to sex, age, trade, wages, locality, periods of unemployment or invalidity, and membership of organised or unorganised trades; and whether such essential foundations for all social reforms would be made available prior to the ultimate consideration of the Unemployment and Invalidity Insurance Bill?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): A large amount of special statistical information has already been collected by the Treasury and the Board of Trade in connection with the proposals referred to in the question, and it is more than doubtful whether anything in the nature of a
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  "special census" would produce results of any real value with regard either to the incidence of sickness or the prevalence of unemployment amongst the working classes. As these are the main problems involved, and as a special census of the kind contemplated would involve great expense and considerable delay, I do not think that the advantages likely to be derived from it would justify the adoption of the hon. Member's suggestion.

  Food Supplies (Suggested Royal Commission).
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the increase of strength of foreign naval Powers and the fact that, according to the Declaration of London, foodstuffs might, without warning, become contraband of war if sent to the bases of supply of the armed forces of an enemy, and the fact that every British seaport supplying Territorial troops might thus be considered to come under that category by the commander of the enemy's commerce destroyer, who at the critical time would be the sole judge, he will consider the advisability of appointing a Royal Commission on the food supplies of this country?
  The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir; in view of the fact that the whole subject was carefully reviewed and reported upon by a recent Royal Commission, I do not consider that there are any grounds for the adoption of the hon. and gallant Member's suggestion.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Are we to understand that nothing further has been done since 1906? Is that the inquiry to which the right hon. Gentleman refers?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I forget the precise date—1906 or 1907.

  State Insurance Bill.
  Mr. BOOTHasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the slow progress made with the Parliament Bill, he would consider the advisability of postponing the introduction of the State Insurance Bill or any other legislation until the Parliament Bill had passed through all its stages; and whether he would consider the appointment in the meantime of a special committee or a commission to examine the German insurance scheme, and to obtain more information from existing agencies in this country to assist the

  475
  Government in preparing legislation on such a difficult proposal as a compulsory universal invalidity insurance Bill?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The answer is in the negative.

  North Sea Convention.
  Mr. MUNROasked the Prime Minister whether his attention had been called to resolutions recently passed at the Convention of Burghs held in Edinburgh, and also at a Fishery Conference held there, that steps should be taken for the revision of the North Sea Convention with a view of more effectively conserving the North Sea fisheries; and whether he proposed to take any action in the matter?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The resolutions referred to have been brought to my notice, and are receiving the consideration of the various Departments concerned, but for the reason given on Monday, in answer to an unstarred question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Montrose Burghs, a statement of policy would be at this stage premature.

  Imperial Naval Defence.
  Colonel YATEasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the increasing sea-borne trade of India and the Eastern Crown Colonies, His Majesty's Government would consider the advisability of appointing a special committee, composed of naval and military experts, and of representatives of the India and Colonial Offices, with recent personal administrative experience in India and the Crown Colonies in question, to determine the respective interests and fair share of these Imperial units in Imperial naval defence, and the best method by which their co-operation in the latter could be effected; and whether, in view of the fact that Imperial naval defence would be a matter of discussion at the coming Imperial Conference, he would appoint such a committee as soon as possible, so that the result it arrived at could be laid before the Imperial Conference by the Secretary of State for India, who was to represent India at that conference?
  The PRIME MINISTER: His Majesty's Government do not propose to appoint such a Committee at the present time. The Crown Colonies already make a considerable contribution towards the cost of the military garrisons maintained in them
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  calculated in proportion to their revenue. The question of Imperial Naval Defence will be discussed at the Imperial Conference in regard to the interests of the Self-governing Dominions, and the consideration of a contribution by India and the Crown Colonies to the Navy does not directly arise.
  Colonel YATE: I beg to give notice that I shall raise the question on the Motion for Adjournment.

  Unemployed Workmen Act.
  Mr. CLAUDE LOWTHERasked the Prime Minister if he would undertake to give a Return showing what burdens the local authorities now bear in respect to the Unemployed Workmen's Act and the relief works started to assist unemployment?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I have looked into this matter, and I find that there would be very considerable difficulties in obtaining the Return for which the hon. Member asks. I think he may take it from me that it is practically impossible to obtain a complete Return sufficiently accurate to be of value. I may, however, inform the hon. Member that the sum received from rates by the Central Body for London and by the Distress Committees throughout England and Wales in the year ending 31st March, 1910, was £68,069.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Is not the expenditure under the Unemployed Workmen Act limited to a halfpenny in the £?

  Released Convict David Davies.
  Mr. BYLESasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he could state approximately the total cost to the nation of keeping David Davies in prison for a period of thirty-eight years?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: The approximate net average cost of maintaining a convict is £18 3s. per annum, or about £690 for thirty-eight years. It is, of course, impossible to give exact figures for any individual convict.
  Mr. BYLES: Does the £18 cover everything—administrative charges; salaries of governor, medical officer, etc., interest on capital, and so forth?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I understand that it includes everything.
  Mr. BYLES: It is very cheap.

  Fisheries Legislation (Suggested Consolidation).
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Lord Advocate whether, in view of the numerous, and in some cases concurrent, Acts relating to sea fisheries in Scotland, and the necessity for legislation by reference in any attempt to amend the same, he would consider the advisability of introducing, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, a Bill to consolidate the Sea Fisheries (Scotland) Act, and at the same time to increase the penalties for offences against the bye-laws of the Fishery Board?
  Mr. GULLAND (Lord of the Treasury): The Government cannot at present con-template legislation in the sense suggested. I appreciate the hon. and gallant Member's desire to exterminate legislation by reference, but I am not so sanguine as he seems to be that consolidation would effect that object.

  Fisheries Conference (Edinburgh).
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Lord Advocate whether his attention had been called to the proceedings of the conference of the Moray Firth, Caithness, and East Coast Fisheries Association at Edinburgh on Friday, 7th April; and whether he would do all in his power to further the resolutions there arrived at?
  Mr. GULLAND: I have seen a report of the proceedings referred to. Any representations stating the views of the conference will receive the consideration of the Government.

  Land Banks.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether there were foreign land banks which advanced 100 per cent. of the purchase money to small holders; whether there were those which advanced from 90 to 100 per cent., and to what country did they belong; and whether there were Governments which advanced from 90 to 100 per cent. of the purchase money for small holdings direct, and, if so, what were these Governments?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir E. Strachey): There are land banks in Germany which advance 90 to 100 per cent. of the purchase money. The Government of Denmark advances 100 per cent. of the money direct.
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: Is it not a fact that in Denmark particularly the advance of
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  from 90 to 100 per cent. of the purchase money to small holders simply enables them to pay higher prices for the land than they would otherwise do, and thereby increases the profits of the landlords?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: I am not aware of that.

  Small Holdings.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked how many small holdings there existed in England and Wales in January, 1907, and how many were there in January, 1911?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The following statement shows the number of holdings between one and fifty acres in England and Wales, as returned in each of the last five years. The returns are collected in June in each year:—

  1906

  288,926

  1907

  289,093

  1908

  287,176

  1909

  288,011

  1910

  288,802

  Sir G. PARKER: May I ask the hon. Baronet if he will have his answer circulated with the Votes?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: It will be circulated in the usual way.
  Sir G. PARKERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he will grant a Return of the number of applications for small holdings applied for and the number of applications granted in each county of England and Wales since the passing of the Small Holdings Act of 1907–8, together with the average size of the small holdings in each county respectively, the amount of land compulsorily acquired in each county, and the average price paid for land acquired compulsorily or non-compulsorily in each county respectively?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: Practically all the information asked for by the hon. Member is contained in the Board's Annual Report for 1910, which has just been issued. This being the case, perhaps the hon. Member will not consider that any special Return is called for.
  Mr. ESSEXasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he can give an assurance that no further appointments of officers in connection with the working of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act will be made before the first week in May?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: Yes, Sir.

  Potato Disease.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture to what cause, apart from last week's frosts, he attributes the recent rapid increase in the price of potatoes; and whether, bearing in mind the losses suffered throughout the United Kingdom owing to the record crop of last year being attacked by potato disease, and the great distress caused to the poor by a shortage of potatoes, the Board will in good time this year take steps to impress upon potato growers the importance of spraying the crop with copper sulphate and lime as security against loss from the disease?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The satisfactory prices offered by continental buyers have led to a considerably increased exportation of potatoes during the present year, and owing to the existence of disease in 1910 the stocks in certain districts which generally supply markets at this late season of the year are much smaller than usual. The Board will be glad to adopt the suggestion made by the hon. Member in the latter part of the question.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Will the hon. Baronet consider the advisability of publishing some information in the local papers of the rural districts as to the advantages of spraying, so as to avoid the shortage next year which we are suffering from now?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: Yes, Sir.

  Bee Disease.
  Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether the Board share the publicly expressed opinion of Dr. H. B. Fantham, of Christ's College, Cambridge, that the now prevalent Isle of Wight bee disease is identical with the highly infectious parasitic disease known as nosema apis; and, if so, whether, as suggested by Dr. Fantham, the Board will insist upon the immediate destruction by fire of all infected bees and hives and the débris there-from, so as to prevent the multiplication of the spores and the further spread of infection?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The Board are not in possession of the evidence upon which Dr. Fantham has arrived at the conclusions to which the hon. Member refers, but they are making inquiries on the subject.

  Bread (Local Government Board Report).
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked the President of the Local Government Board whether, in the opinion of the medical advisers of the Board, after considering Dr. Hamill's report on the constitution of baking powders and self-raising flour, the prevalence of appendicitis and other intestinal disorders in this country is attributable, either wholly or in part, to the presence of calcium sulphate or plaster of paris in such preparations?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): Present knowledge does not, as I am advised, enable a statement to be made as to whether food containing insoluble mineral matters, such as calcium sulphate, may be responsible for the production of appendicitis or of other intestinal disorders.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many eminent doctors in London hold the view that appendicitis is due to that cause?
  Mr. BURNS: I believe some do, and that a good number do not.
  Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the President of the Local Government Board whether, in view of the report of the Board's inspectors on the sophistication, decolouration, and so-called improvement of flour, he will consider the advisability of prohibiting, either by legislative enactment or by administrative order the sale of any article as bread, without any qualifying prefix, which is made out of any substance or substances other than wheat flour, or which has been deprived of any of the contents of the wheat grain other than bran or fibre?
  Mr. BURNS: The question of taking action in the direction suggested, and other questions arising out of the Reports, are at present receiving my consideration.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that under the existing law anything can be sold as bread, whatever its constituents, whatever may have been withdrawn from the flour or added to it?
  Mr. BURNS: That is an interpretation given to the existing law by some people, but I do not share that view.

  Massy Estate (County Cork).
  Mr. SHEEHANhad the following question down: To ask the Chief Secretary for

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  Ireland whether he can state the area of the grazing and untenanted lands on the Massy estate, in the neighbourhood of Macroom, county Cork; whether any steps have been recently taken by the Estates Commissioners to acquire these for the purposes of distribution; is he aware that an arrangement was entered into between representatives of the tenants, including the hon. Member for Mid Cork, and legal agents acting for the owners, at a special sitting of the Estates Commissioners, held in their board room, Dublin, in November, 1906, that this untenanted land should be specially handed over to the Commissioners for distribution amongst the evicted tenants, labourers, and small holders; and that the workers in the town of Macroom were to be particularly provided for in this respect; was a shorthand note of the proceedings connected with this arrangement taken by an official of the Commissioners; does any minute of the arrangement referred to now exist; in what position do negotiations for the purchase of the Massy estate by the tenants at present stand; and when the untenanted and grazing lands come into the hands of the Commissioners will it be seen to that they are utilised in full accordance with the terms of the arrangement referred to?
  Mr. SHEEHAN: The Chief Secretary has informed me that he has not received the information, but he hopes to publish the answer in the Votes.
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): Yes, that is so.
  Mr. SHEEHAN: I see no reason why the Chief Secretary should not answer the question across the floor of the House now. I suppose this is another example of glaring injustice to a certain section of this House, of which we have had recent examples, and of which more will be heard!
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not asking a question; he is making a statement.

  Old Age Pensions.
  Mr. HACKETTasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the Local Government Board refused on appeal to sanction an old age pension to John Wallace, Clareen, Ardmayle, Cashel, on the grounds that he resided out of the country within the last ten years; whether he has resided in Ireland except for a period of seven months, when he went on a visit to
  482
  his three sons in America; and whether he will advise the Local Government Board to grant him a pension?
  Mr. BIRRELL: John Wallace's claim was disallowed by the local pension subcommittee in December, 1908, and the committee's decision was confirmed on appeal by the Local Government Board. Wallace was nine months out of the United Kingdom within the past twenty years and during this absence had, on his own admission, no home here. It is not open to the Board to reconsider their decision.
  Mr. DANIEL BOYLEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he will state the basis on which the means of James Kavanagh, of Knockaville, county Mayo, number in register 62 S. R., were calculated by the Local Government for Ireland in order to enable them to arrive at the decision that he was not entitled to a pension, his means exceeding the statutory limit; whether he is aware that the only means which James Kavanagh has is a right of maintenance, including board and lodging, reserved to him under an assignment in favour of his son, executed in March, 1909, on the occasion of the latter's marriage; whether he is aware that the local pension committee awarded a pension of 5s. per week, judged the annual value of a right of maintenance such as that reserved in this case; whether he will now state what annual value the Local Government Board have put in their right of maintenance; and whether they had the assistance of a report from one of their inspectors as to the means and circumstances of the applicant?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The local pension committee awarded a pension of 5s. a week to James Kavanagh as stated. The Local Government Board upheld the pension officer's appeal on the ground that the value of the maintenance and other privileges which Kavanagh derived from the farm he assigned to his son in the circumstances mentioned exceeded £31 10s. a year. The farm contained twenty-six acres of good land, and was well stocked, besides having nine acres under tillage. The answer to the last paragraph of the question is in the negative.

  Official Solicitor (Vincent versus Vatcher).
  Sir HENRY DALZIELasked the Attorney-General whether his attention has been called to a report of the judgment of Mr. Justice Eve in a case of Be Alfred Caton, deceased, Vincent v. Vatcher and

  483
  others, being an action instituted by the Official Solicitor in connection with the affairs of a lunatic, and which action was dismissed with costs, to be paid by the Official Solicitor; whether such costs are payable by the Official Solicitor personally or out of the public funds; whether the Official Solicitor is paid a salary, and in addition thereto is permitted to make whatever profits he can out of the business entrusted to him; whether, seeing that the affairs of infants, lunatics, and other persons under disabilities are entrusted to him, the Government will consider the desirability of remunerating him by a fixed salary, in lieu of the present mode of remuneration; and whether he will cause a verbatim report of the judgment of Mr. Justice Eve to be laid upon the Table?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Rufus Isaacs): I am indebted to my hon. Friend for having called my attention to the judgment referred to. In view of the fact that the question of an appeal is under consideration I cannot go into the question of the merits of the action. According to the form of the action the Official Solicitor sues as next friend of the lunatic, and by the rules of the court the next friend is personally liable to pay the costs of the action if unsuccessful. The Official Solicitor receives a fixed remuneration for his services, but where he acts by direction of the court for persons under disability the expenses are usually recovered from the estates of those for whom he acts, and these costs are accounted for by him to the Treasury and are not received by him for his own benefit. I am informed that during the sixteen years' term of office of the present Official Solicitor the question of the cost of an unsuccessful action has only once had to be considered. The proceedings in the present case having been instituted after directions of the judge the question of the ultimate incidence of the costs is a matter which will be dealt with between the Official Solicitor's Department and the Treasury upon due consideration of the circumstances of the case.

  Indian Raw Jute (Exports).
  Mr. SPEARasked the Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to the new Indian export duty to be levied on the exports of raw jute, if he will state the total value of the raw jute exported from India; and what is the total value of raw jute exported to British ports for consumption within the United Kingdom?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Montagu): According to the Indian trade returns the value of the raw jute exports from India to all countries averaged £11,151,000 a year for the three years 1908 to 1910. Of these exports, exports to the average annual value of £4,547,000 were declared for shipment to the United Kingdom. For the actual imports into the United Kingdom and the re-exports, I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend to the hon. Member to-day.

  Railway Accident, near Dinapur (India).
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked the Under-Secretary for India whether he has any information concerning the railway accident near Dinapur on 5th April; what was the cause of the accident; and whether it had any political significance?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The Secretary of State has seen the reports in the Press on the subject, but has no further information. He has asked the Government of India for a full report.

  Indian Press Law.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked the Under-Secretary for India whether he is aware that a Report sent out by Reuter's Agency on 6th April, and which appeared widely in the public Press, declaring that quantities of arms, picric acid, dynamite, and means for making bombs, had been discovered at the house of Anada Mohan Roy, a wealthy zemindar of Calcutta, and that the said Report has since been admitted to have been groundless; and whether, as this same agency makes it a practice to circulate misleading reports creating the impression that the people of India are given to lawlessness and political crime, and that these are a cause of irritation which may lead to disaffection with British rule, he will recommend the Government of India to apply the provisions of the Indian Press Law to this agency, or take other effective measures to put an end to the distribution of the continual misrepresentation of the people of India of which Reuter's Agency is guilty?
  Mr. MONTAGU: As regards the first-part of the question a Reuter's telegram of the 7th April corrected a statement reproduced by them on the 5th from the "Indian Daily News." The reply to the second part of the question is in the negative, but the culpability of circulating

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  alarmist news based on inaccurate information is evident.

  Lord Curzon's Police Commission (India).
  Mr. GEORGE ROBERTSasked the Under-Secretary for India whether the Secretary of State is aware that Lord Curzon's Police Commission reported in 1904 that the station-house police officer naturally concluded that his promotion depended upon his obtaining a high ratio of convictions and a low ratio of crime, and that he believed that much less attention was given to the methods of his work than to the results, and that but little inquiry would be made regarding the means provided the ends were satisfactory, and that in view of the evils flowing from the wide prevalence of these opinions among the subordinate police, it was a matter of imperative urgency that everything possible should be done to remove all justification for so damaging a belief; and whether he could state what steps had been taken by the Government of India or the Secretary of State to give effect to the above recommendation?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The Secretary of State is aware that the Commission reported in these terms. Their recommendations in the matter were: (1) that police work should be judged not by statistical results, but upon the facts elicited by inquiries based on statistics; (2) that inspections of police stations should be confined to criticism of the actual work done in relation to crime; (3) that in the reports of such inspections no statistics of crime should be given; (4) that a statement in use in one province, showing the percentage of convictions to persons arrested and prosecuted and a figure of merit, based on these percentages, for each district, should be abolished. In 1905 the Government of India accepted all of these recommendations, and my hon. Friend may take it that police work in India is no longer judged by statistical results.

  Police Prosecutions (Ireland).
  Mr. CREANasked the Chief Secretary whether he is aware that, before legal proceedings are instituted against persons in Ireland for breach of the peace or riot, the county inspector in charge calls for written reports from the police present on the occasion; whether all reports tending to extenuation of the offence or acquittal of the accused are carefully withheld from the court, and only such evidence as may lead to conviction used; whether he has
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  any official information showing that the adoption of these methods leads to the conviction of innocent men; and whether it is the duty of the Crown, in the interest of justice, to place all the facts before the court?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I am aware that before legal proceedings are instituted against persons in Ireland for breach of the peace or riot the county inspector, with a view to examining the evidence available, calls for reports as stated. It is the duty of the Crown in the interest of justice to place all the facts before the court, and there is no ground for the suggestion that evidence of any kind is withheld. All the evidence is truthfully and fairly given so far as the police are concerned.
  Mr. CREAN: Would the right hon. Gentleman confer with the Attorney-General for Ireland, who acted as Crown Prosecutor, as to whether evidence was suppressed? I can give him evidence of it myself.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. FLAVINasked the Chief Secretary whether he will ask the Congested Districts Board to communicate direct with Mr. Denny, of Tralee, who is the receiver over the unsold portion of the John Sands estate, in North Kerry, with a view to immediate purchase of the same?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Congested Districts Board will make further inquiries about the estate referred to.

  Labourers (Ireland) Act.
  Mr. FLAVINasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state if there is any provision in the Labourers (Ireland) Acts, or in the proposed Labourers Bill, which will permit agricultural labourers to acquire an additional acre of land, so as to supply milk for use of their family; and whether there is any provision which will give, through the rural district councils or otherwise, turbary as a fuel for the use of the labourers' cottages?
  Mr. BIRRELL: There are no such provisions in the Labourers (Ireland) Acts or in the proposed Labourers Bill. Under Section 18 of the Land Act of 1909 rural district councils may, subject to certain conditions, purchase lands for any of the purposes, including the provision of turbary, specified in Section 4 of the Land Act of 1903.
  Mr. FLAVIN: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is not a fact that the labourers who are tenants of the cottages have very great difficulty in acquiring turbary except at prices which makes it almost impossible for them to buy it?
  Mr. BIRRELL: There is great difficulty in getting it some times.

  Portadown District Council.
  Mr. LARDNERasked whether the urban district council of Portadown have been carrying out their banking business in accordance with the Public Bodies Order; will he state how many accounts this council has with its bankers; whether any report has been made in reference thereto by the Local Government Board auditor; and, if so, to what effect?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The banking business of the Portadown Urban District Council has been and is carried out in accordance with the Public Bodies Order. At the present time there is only one account with the Treasurer, and no necessity exists for a second, as there is no expenditure out of loans. The auditor called attention some time ago to the separation in a second account of a contribution from the Great Northern Railway Company towards the making of a new road, but there was nothing irregular in this, and the two accounts have since been amalgamated.

  Army and Navy Pensioners.
  Major WHITEasked whether, in view of the representations of the guardians of the Southwark, St. George's, Hanover Square, and other unions, and in view of the benefit that would accrue to the men concerned, he will take steps to enable Army and Navy pensioners to draw their pensions weekly, as is done in the case of old age pensioners?
  Colonel SEELY: So far as Army pensioners are concerned arrangements can be made for weekly payments in cases where circumstances render it desirable but it is doubtful whether a universal system of weekly payments would be in the best interests of the majority of those in receipt of pensions.
  Major WHITE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is considerable temptation to these men who are surrounded by touts and so-called friends when it is known they are going to draw their pensions?
  Colonel SEELY: There are disadvantages under both systems.

  Yeomanry Adjutants' Pay.
  Major GASTRELLasked why the pay of officers holding the appointment of Yeomanry adjutant has lately been reduced by the sum of 2s. 6d. per day; and, seeing that this will affect some officers who have already held these appointments for three years, and are now entering on the fourth and final year of their appointments, whether he will reconsider the matter in these cases and give them the same remuneration as previously?
  Colonel SEELY: All officers appointed Yeomanry adjutants before the date of the issue of the Royal Warrant in February last have been allowed to retain the old rate of 5s. per day. I do not, therefore, fully understand to what officers the hon. and gallant Member is alluding. Perhaps he will furnish me with further details.

  Boy Messengers at War Office.
  Colonel YATEasked whether, in view of the difficulty of securing permanent employment for boy messengers employed in the War Office on their attaining the age of eighteen, he will consider the question of only keeping on those boys as messengers who agree to enlist on attaining the age limit, on the understanding that, on the completion of their service with the colours, they will have a first claim to such vacancies as may occur in the appointments for men messengers in the War Office?
  Colonel SEELY: From inquiries I have made I fear that the hon. and gallant Gentleman's suggestion would not have the effect he desires; but the whole question is receiving consideration.

  Military Defences.
  Mr. HUNTasked whether, in view of the fact that the Territorial Army is short by over 40,000 men of the number laid down by the Government as necessary for safety, he will consider the necessity of requesting General Lord Kitchener to draw up a scheme for the military defence of the country, as already made out by him in the case of the Commonwealth of Australia?
  Colonel SEELY: No, Sir.
  Mr. HUNT: How much longer is the Government going to rely upon the Territorial Army?
  Colonel SEELY: We do not take the same gloomy view of the prospects of that force as the hon. Gentleman opposite.

  Forestry Departments.
  Mr. WILLIAM PEELasked the Prime Minister whether he proposes to form a Forestry Department for Great Britain, or separate departments for England, Scotland, and Wales; whether such department will be attached to the Board of Agriculture or be a separate and independent office?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I understand that the present position is as follows:—The Board of Agriculture employ an inspector for forestry purposes and have formulated proposals for the promotion of forestry in England and Wales, which are now being discussed with the Development Commissioners. The Scotch Education Department administer grants for instruction in forestry in connection with the Agricultural Colleges in Scotland and Edinburgh University, and as a preliminary towards making application to the Development Commissioners for a grant from the Development Fund for the acquisition of a demonstration forest area in Scotland, the Secretary for Scotland, with the concurrence of the Development Commissioners and the consent of the Treasury, is appointing a Committee for the consideration of the whole matter. These are preliminary measures which can be taken by the existing authorities, without prejudice to the consideration at a later stage, of the question asked by the hon. Member.

  Massacre of British Mission (Assam).
  Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONasked the Under - Secretary of State for India whether he has any further information regarding the massacre of the British mission on the Assam border; and what punitive measures are being undertaken?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The latest news I have received on this subject, based on reports from Nepalese coolies, leaves little doubt, I regret to say, that Mr. Williamson and a party of thirty coolies have been murdered by Abor tribes on the border of Eastern Bengal and Assam. Dr. Gregorson, who had stayed behind on the Dihong River with some sick coolies, has, I fear also been killed. It has not yet been decided what steps are required in view of the information received, but a force of 175
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  armed police has proceeded in the direction of the scene of the massacre.

CONTEMPT OF COURT.
Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the Home Secretary a question of which I have given a private notice, whether his attention has been called to the case of Henry Meagher, who, when fined 10s., was also fined 20s. or fourteen days' imprisonment because he uttered the phrase "God save Ireland" after the infliction of the first sentence, and whether the utterance of a pious and praiseworthy observation of that kind should be a cause for doubling a man's fine and sentence?
The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Churchill): I have seen a newspaper report of the facts of this case. I observe that the stipendiary (Mr. Stuart Deacon), who is a very able and competent officer of the law, said, "That was a very wrong expression to use in this place. I treated you with the utmost leniency, and you reply by using words which I considered to be contemptuous towards the court. Words which might properly be used in other places may not properly be used here; you will now have to pay 20s." I will write and ask Mr. Stuart Deacon to give me some further information about the case. It is quite clear he was dealing with a matter he considered a contempt of court, and was not in any way objecting to the merits of the expression, and, indeed, I think there can be no difference of opinion upon that point. I will write to him and make inquiries as to the facts, and I will be able to inform the hon. Member later.
Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he thinks a stipendiary magistrate would be entitled to double a man's sentence if he said, "God save England"?
Mr. CHURCHILL: That obviously is a very difficult matter to answer, but I do think it would have been disrespectful if he had said, for instance, "God save Liverpool."

EXETER ELECTION PETITION.
Mr. FRANCE: I beg to ask the Prime Minister a question of which I have given him private notice, whether his attention has been called to the remarks of Mr.

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Justice Channell with regard to the attitude of his learned brother in the case of the Exeter Election Petition—
Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order. I fail to see what jurisdiction the Prime Minister has over His Majesty's judges.
Mr. FRANCE: I was going to ask with all respect that steps should be taken—
Mr. SPEAKER: I am afraid I have been so occupied that I have not had time to look through the question which the hon. Member submitted to me. Perhaps he will let me see it before it is put. It seems to me to assume that the Prime Minister has certain duties with regard to His Majesty's judges which he certainly does not possess, for he has no control over them.

BLOCKING MOTIONS.
Sir GILBERT PARKER: May I ask the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the number of blocking Motions on the Order Paper, some of which prevent discussion on matters which are wholly uncontroversial; and whether he cannot yet see his way to a reform which will remove from the procedure of this House this most reprehensible practice?
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: Before my right hon. Friend replies, I would like to ask whether it is within his recollection that when the Government proposed to deal with this question it was opposed by Lord Robert Cecil from the other side of the House.
Mr. PEEL: May I call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that there are no less than twenty-five of these blocking Motions on the Paper which is an unprecedented number, and they cover almost every subject under heaven and earth.
Mr. ARNOLD WARD: May I ask the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the evils connected with blocking Motions and the gross abuse of this privilege by hon. Members who have blocked every subject which there was reason to expect would be raised by Members of the Opposition on the Motion for Adjournment to-day; and whether, in view of the fact that the subject of the Mormon propaganda in this country is one of the matters so blocked, and having regard to the widespread public interest and urgent
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importance of this question, he will undertake that the House shall have an early opportunity of discussing this subject after Easter.
Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that under the late Government blocking Motions were manufactured in the Whips' Rooms?
The PRIME MINISTER: This is a very old grievance. In the past the party in Opposition has complained, and complained sometimes with a good deal of reason, of private Members taking advantage of the privilege which they undoubtedly possess to prevent, on the Motion for Adjournment, the discussion of particular topics. In the last Parliament I went so far as to suggest that we might by agreement limit this procedure. I was quite prepared to do so, and although I tried very hard for two Sessions I could not get anything like a disposition to come to my assistance. This, like all other large changes in our procedure, I think ought only to be attempted with something like general consent. I was obliged to desist from the efforts I then made. If I can see in this Parliament any disposition to come to a general agreement I shall be only too pleased to deal with the matter. With regard to what my hon. Friend said just now, he is one of the victims of this operation, he and the Mormon propaganda. That is a very serious matter, but it may relieve the hon. Member a little if I tell him that the Home Secretary has made careful inquiries into this matter. Those inquiries are not yet complete, and until they are completed it is premature to say that this question is ripe for discussion in this House.
Mr. BALFOUR: May I ask the Prime Minister whether it is not a fact that the grievance of blocking Motions is especially onerous and oppressive at a time when all other private Members' opportunities of putting down or discussing Motions are taken away by the Government for reasons good or bad. It would be out of order now to discuss this point, but I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether this is not a peculiarly flagrant case of an abuse which the right hon. Gentleman has truly said has been a matter of complaint for many years. I would also ask whether it is not a fact that a suggestion was made by myself that, at all events, on Motions for the adjournment for the holidays, the operation of blocking Motions should be limited, whether it is not a fact that that is a very moderate and reasonable reform;

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and whether, if combined with a limitation of the sitting, so that instead of going on indefinitely to some unknown hour, to everybody's inconvenience, we might not by a Rule arrive at a compromise which would diminish the extreme gravity of the abuse as it now exists and as it is seen in the Notice Paper. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether that might not be a very reasonable method of dealing with this question.
Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the blocking Motions, so far as the Motion for the Adjournment is concerned, was started by hon. Members opposite blocking the question of unemployment and Post Office Boy Labour, and that the other Motions on the Order Paper are due to the policy commenced by hon. Members opposite?
Lord BALCARRES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the first blocking Motion dealt with the collection of Income Tax and the Holmes' circular, and another matter raising the Swansea School case; that of fifteen blocking notices placed on the Paper yesterday only one was placed there by an hon. Member on this side of the House—
Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: That answers my question.
Lord BALCARRES: And that no blocking notices dealing with the question of unemployment appeared on the Notice Paper except in the name of an hon. Member who supports the Government?
Mr. SPEAKER: Would it not be better to give the Prime Minister a chance of answering?
The PRIME MINISTER: I know nothing about what the Noble Lord has been saying. I saw the notices for the first time this morning, and until I saw them I did not know that they were on the Paper at all. With respect to what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I think he has made the suggestion before.
Mr. BALFOUR: Yes, but not about the limitation of hours.
The PRIME MINISTER: I think limitation of powers for blocking Motions on holiday adjournments, coupled with a limitation of hours, might be a desirable change in our procedure, but as I said before it should not be carried out unless there is something like general consent. I shall be very glad to inquire to see what can be done.
Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: In view of the fact that this matter has really come to a crisis now, and in view of the fact that what has occurred in this case has been in the nature of a raductio ad absurdum; and in view of the further fact that generally throughout the House and amongst all parties there is a feeling that this rule ought to be modified, I wish to ask the Prime Minister whether he will take advantage of the circumstances of the moment to endeavour immediately to gather opinion so that he can deal with this question?
Mr. PEEL: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether blocking Motion No. 26 is not an outrage heaped upon an outrage? May I call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the blocking Motion which stands in the name of the hon. Member for West Cavan (Mr. Kennedy), calling attention to the system of blocking Motions, so that not only are these Motions blocked, but you cannot even discuss whether Motions should be blocked.
The PRIME MINISTER: That only shows the refinement to which the practice has been brought.
Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: May I make an appeal to you, Sir, on a point of Order in reference to one of these blocking Motions, the circumstances of which are peculiar? A fortnight ago I gave notice that I intended on the Third Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill to draw attention to the circumstances under which seventeen young men of one particular political party were prosecuted for political rioting at Bantry and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, with hard labour, each. The Chief Secretary for Ireland pleaded that he was quite unacquainted with the facts, and would therefore not be in a position to take part in any Debate that night, and he himself suggested that this Motion for the Adjournment would give me the necessary opportunity for having the question fully and fairly discussed. At once, in deference to the right hon. Gentleman's position, I deferred any reference to the subject on the Consolidated Fund Debate. Yesterday I sent private notice to the right hon. Gentleman that, in conformity with his suggestion, I intended to take advantage of the opportunity on the Motion for Adjournment today to draw attention to the unfair action of the Irish Law Officers in reference to

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the political riots at Bantry and Crossmolina, respectively. This morning I find the subject is blocked by a Motion in the name of an hon. Member, a supporter of the Government, who, as far as I know, has never taken any part in the proceedings of this House before, and who, I venture to say, scarcely ever heard of the name of Bantry before yesterday. I charge nothing, because I know nothing as to how that Motion came upon the Paper. I do not for a moment identify a man of the stamp of the Chief Secretary himself with so shabby a transaction, but I ask you whether, even if such a mode of procedure is technically correct, it is in conformity with the spirit of fair play and with the freedom of speech which ought to prevail in the proceedings of this House. May I remind you that, although a third of the Session is now over, not a single day has been devoted to the discussion of any Irish question. It has been made impossible for us to discuss the vital question of the complete overthrow of the Land Purchase system in Ireland, and we have no opportunity of protesting against the future of Home Rule being handed over to a small Committee, only one member of which, out of seven, is an Irishman.
If this Motion should prevail, we are prevented equally from drawing attention to a matter of the most vital importance, if there is to be any respect left for the administration of the law in Ireland.
Mr. SPEAKER: I am sure I regret extremely what has occurred. Yesterday there were fourteen blocking Notices given. Thirteen emanated from the right-hand side of the House and one from the left-hand side. I regret extremely that should have occurred, but as long as the Rule subsists, I am bound to enforce it. I think it is a most unfortunate circumstance that hon. Members should be deprived of availing themselves of the only chance they get of raising their particular grievances by the action of other independent Members. It is a matter I regret extremely, but, as long as the Rule exists, I am powerless to over-ride these Motions, and I must enforce it.
Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I am extremely grateful for that expression of opinion from you, and I beg to give notice— [HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order."] I will take rulings of order from the Speaker and from nobody else. Gentlemen who were in a minority before
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may be in a minority again. I beg to give notice that at the first opportunity, if ever freedom of speech is recovered in this House, I shall draw attention to the system by which free speech is first prevented by brute force in Ireland, and then prevented in this House as well, in the interests of the section upon whom this Government are depending for their existence.
Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS: I would like to ask the Prime Minister if he is aware that representations were made on behalf of the Labour Party to hon. Gentlemen opposite who had put down Motions which blocked questions we were desirous of raising on the Motion for Adjournment, and that it was only when we failed to get them to enter into that honourable undertaking to which reference has been made that we retaliated. I frankly admit we organised this, because of our failure to get the withdrawal we sought.

APPOINTMENT OF COUNTY MAGISTRATES.
Mr. NEIL PRIMROSE: May I ask the Prime Minister a question of which I have given private notice, namely, whether, having regard to the fact that it will be impossible to raise to-day on the Motion for Adjournment the question of the appointment of justices of the peace, he will give the House an early opportunity of discussing the subject, especially in view of the widespread dissatisfaction expressed in many quarters.
The PRIME MINISTER: I had hoped the recent changes in the machinery for dealing with this matter had removed or, at any rate, mitigated the widespread dissatisfaction to which my hon. Friend refers. I cannot at this moment promise a day, but, if he will bring to my notice the cases he has in view, I will cause careful inquiry to be made.
Mr. NEIL PRIMROSE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, having regard to the fact that I have endeavoured to bring to the notice of the Lord Chancellor himself various grievances from which my Constituency suffers, and I have got no reply or acknowledgment, it will be possible to bring this matter forward in this House?
The PRIME MINISTER: If the hon. Member will communicate with me, I will look into the matter.

RAILWAY WORKERS AND COMPULSORY HOLIDAYS (IRELAND).
Mr. WILLIAM ABRAHAM (Dublin, Harbour): I desire to ask the President of the Board of Trade a question on which I have given private notice: Whether his attention has been called to the fact that at Easter time the labourers in the employment of the Railway Companies, having their principal termini in Dublin, will be locked out for four days and will consequently receive no wages for those days; whether when compulsory holidays occur, the same practice prevails in England and Scotland of depriving the workers of their wages; and whether he will at once communicate with the Irish Railway Compaines, having their principal termini in Dublin, with a view to securing for the workers in question payment of their wages for the days during which they are compelled to cease working?
Mr. J. H. THOMAS: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware the same difficulties and hardships experienced in Dublin by 1,400 railway men are experienced in England by thousands of railway men who are locked out for a week?
Mr. LANSBURY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the same condition prevails not merely for thousands of railway workmen, but for millions of workers throughout the country, and that this question of enforced holidays really means enforced semi-starvation for the women and children of millions of workers in the country, and that, while we shall be going away for a well-earned holiday and those on the Treasury Bench will not have their wages stopped, and I expect Members of the House will not have their wages stopped, the workers and the people who find the money for our holidays will receive no wages for these enforced holidays?
Mr. BUXTON: I have received private notice of this question from my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for North Dublin. The matter has not previously been brought to my attention and I am afraid therefore I am unable to answer the question, but in any case the matter does not seem to be one in which the Board of Trade have any power to intervene.

EXETER ELECTION PETITION.
Mr. FRANCEasked if and when the House would have an opportunity of discussing the Exeter Election Petition?
Mr. SPEAKER: I understand that the hon. Member has some grievance against the judges who tried that petition. If so there is a method of procedure which is open to this House. There is only one procedure, and the hon. Member must take that method and no other.
Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: May I ask the Prime Minister whether, having regard to the statement of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in June, 1906, that he had long regarded the present system of trying-election petitions by judges as unsatisfactory, he will consider the advisability of instituting by legislation some such alteration of the system as will command greater confidence?
The PRIME MINISTER: Obviously I cannot be expected to give any pledge on a subject of that kind, but the matter shall have consideration.

MILITARY MANŒUVRES ACT, 1897 (ORDERS IN COUNCIL).
The TREASURER of the HOUSEHOLD (Mr. Dudley Ward)reported His Majesty's Answer to the humble Address of the 6th day of this instant April, as followeth:—
I have received your Address praying that I will make Orders in Council under the Military Manœuvres Act, 1897, authorising the execution of military manœuvres in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, Huntingdon, Bedford, and Cambridge, and also in the county of Ayr, drafts of which were presented to your House as to the county of Ayr on the 7th day, and as to the other counties on the 8th day, of February last.
I will comply with your advice.

NOTICES OF MOTION.
Mr. LANSBURY: I beg to give notice that on this day four weeks I will call attention to the procedure of this House, and move a Resolution thereon.
Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: To call attention to the administration of the Provision of Meals Bill and the need for some amendment of the same, and to move a Resolution thereon.
Mr. PIKE PEASE: To call attention to the inactivity of the Government in regard to the question of vagrancy, and to move a Resolution thereon.
One other Member took and subscribed the Oath.

BILLS PRESENTED.
  RAILWAY COMPANIES (ACCOUNTS AND RETURNS) BILL.
  "To amend the Law with respect to the Accounts and Returns of Railway Companies," presented by Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON; supported by Mr. Tennant; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next.
  MERCHANT SHIPPING (STEVEDORES AND TRIMMERS) BILL.
  "To enlarge the remedies of persons having claims for work done in connection with the stowing of cargo or the trimming of coal on board ships," presented by Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON; supported by Mr. Tennant; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next.
EASTER ADJOURNMENT.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now Adjourn until Tuesday, the 18th April."
EASTER ADJOURNMENT.

  BOARD OF AGRICULTURE.
  Mr. STANIER: Through a curious number of coincidences there are very few subjects open to us to debate this afternoon. I am going to address myself, if I may, to the Treasury and also to the Board of Agriculture. I wish to ask for information which I have been unable to obtain by means of questions across the floor of the House put on many occasions during the present Session. The first point I want information about is the Road Board grant. This Road Board grant has a great history. We are told the Road Board made grants and the Treasury afterwards agreed or disagreed with them. We have been led to suppose that the grants have been regulated according to the population within the area of the authorities asking for the grant. In my own county, Shropshire, I find a grant has been made of £7,500 towards a total expenditure of £10,000. The population in that county is very different indeed to the population of a county like Gloucestershire. Yet in the latter county we find that grants to a similar amount have also been made by the Road Board. When one goes into the facts and figures to find out how everything has been worked in order to get these Road Board grants, it is discovered that at the beginning there is a request made by the county authority for a grant, and after that request a sum is proposed by the Road Board. Then a bargain is entered into. The Board makes an offer.
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  After the offer there are further representations from the county authority. Then comes another offer, and finally we find we get as far as an interview with the county authorities, as a result of which the grant is made. It is not made with any regard to proportion. It is not based on facts or figures, but the whole thing appears to be done by some individual associated with the Road Board acting apparently on some instructions from the Treasury. That is the case so far as we have been able to fathom it. That is one question that I should like to have just a little information about, because at the time that the Development Bill was brought before this House we were told that under that measure everything would be settled on that score by the Road Board. We are, however, totally unable to find out how they work out their ways and means of doing it. The next point in respect to which I should like to have a little information from the Board of Agriculture is in rather a different light and different strain, and it is upon a subject which I brought seriously before this House not long ago. That is the out-of-date method of bringing reports of the Board before this House. The other day we had a very interesting statement made that the reports were going to be brought up to date, and therefore when we noticed in the Votes and Proceedings that a report like that on the Diseases of Animals Act had been laid upon the Table of the House we who follow the growth or otherwise of those diseases immediately thought that we should be able to gather some information, but that is not so at all, because when you go to the Library and ask for that report you find that it is in dummy. Therefore, it is of no value and of no use. It is merely an outside cover, and there is nothing at all in it. I ask any fair-minded man whether that is, and I am sure you, sir, will agree with me that that is not a nice way of treating those who are interested in this question in the House of Commons. When I ask for the information I am told, through the courtesy of the hon. Gentleman who represents the Department, that I can have the information if I apply. But that is not the point. I want the information, and I have the right to expect it when a report is laid upon the Table of the House. I am informed, and I have even proof, that that report could have been issued in a typewritten form if it could not have been printed, in which case I am told there would have been a great deal

  501
  of delay. There are very important matters going on at the Board of Agriculture. There is the question of swine fever, and that connected with the administration in reference to foot-and-mouth disease in the locality affected. Then there is the great horse-breeding scheme, but I notice that all these three things do not prevent the report on small holdings, which is to the Government the clearly beloved portion of the work of the Board of Agriculture, from being printed and circulated to this House. I am rather amused at the fact that, although they are only too pleased to show from their own facts and figures that small holdings have decreased in an alarming manner in the last few years through the sloth of the urban authorities, they cannot allow a Member to have a typewritten report in regard to the Diseases of Animals Act, which is laid upon the Table in dummy, and supposed to be in the Library of this House.
  According to the way things are done now in due course of time—five or six months, or perhaps a little sooner if the Board of Agriculture thinks right—this Report will be laid before the House, and then we shall find that previously on the morning before it is available to Members of this House the whole information will have been distributed throughout the country to the newspapers of the land which have the full report in their columns even before Members of this House are able to gather that information. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell me that that is only done privately. I am aware of that, because being in the newspaper world I very often receive a report myself with the notice on the top of it that the information is not supposed to be divulged and made public, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that is not showing the due courtesy to this House which is expected, and that this information which is eagerly sought for by those who follow the history of these diseases when it is granted should not be such old information that really it will be of no avail and no use because at the time that it appears the whole thing is over, and we need hardly take the trouble of reading it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will say to me: "Why did not you come and ask me for the information when I offered to give it to you"; but information given verbally is not of such a nature as one can gather from a report of a public department like the Board of Agriculture. I also want to
  502
  I say that in that report something should be said of what will be the proposals of the future as to the manner in which they are going to attack this foot-and-mouth disease, which is a far more serious thing in this country than, I am afraid, the Board of Agriculture realise or even have any idea of. In my own county we have a large number of animals at this present moment of great value for breeding purposes being held up through this order being in force, and although I do not grumble for a minute about the order being in force, I should like to ask if we can be supplied across the Floor of the House with a little information, because we are not allowed to have it in reports. The first question of detail I am going to ask the representative of the Board of Agriculture is how many veterinary surgeons confirm this disease in Surrey as being foot-and-mouth disease? I ask that because I am very sorry to say that it is very largely thought throughout this country that this disease might not have been the disease that it is said to be. I myself do not agree with that, and I think there have been one or two very conclusive points which show that it is foot-and-mouth disease, but that might be thought if only one or two authorities go down and look at a disease which is very little known to the veterinary surgeons of the country, because the cases are very isolated, and when they do occur great care is taken that nobody goes near them. I should like, therefore, to know how many veterinary surgeons do go down, and if they are absolutely certain that it was a genuine case of foot-and-mouth disease. I also am going to ask a further question, and that: is if any control experiments were ever caried out, or have ever been attempted to be carried out, or if it has ever been thought fit to direct that control experiments should be made? Though there are several diseases which attack animals, and especially the bovine class, there are several of these diseases which do not go to pigs, and in this particular case the disease has gone from the bovine to the pigs, and that is sufficient proof. In Germany, where we are told there has been such a vast number of cases during the last year, I am told that on an isolated island they have control experiments, in order to verify before an area is scheduled as an infected area. This is perhaps in itself a dangerous ground to touch on, because in order to get material for these control experiments you would have to get material most infectious and

  503
  highly dangerous to the animal world. But, if it can be done in Germany, cannot we have it here? I ask for this because if there happened to be a case of some other mistaken identification of disease we should be branded as having the disease in this country, and perhaps the trade at a vital time of the year would be destroyed and the breeding stock of this country would be prevented from going to other countries, when perhaps it need not have been reported in the way it has been.
  Then again, after the disease has been identified, and after it has been cleared away, I should like to know whether notification is immediately sent out to all foreign countries which are interested that the country has been declared free. I am beginning to think that after some of these cases notification has not been sent out quickly enough, and therefore other countries have not taken off the restriction as quickly as they might have done if the notification had been made at the moment the country was declared free. With regard to the importation of milk into this country it is very difficult indeed for a layman to follow where the milk comes from, but I have every reason to believe that it is at the present moment coming in from countries which are infected by foot-and-mouth disease. If that is so there is very high probability that that may be one of the means of bringing contagion here. I daresay the answer will be that the milk which comes into this country is used chiefly for human consumption, but at these large depots there is very often milk which is not quite good enough for human consumption, and it is very often sold for another purpose, which may be bovine consumption. I should like to know if that is a question that is being followed up by the Board. Peat moss litter is another thing which is imported and may come from countries where foot-and-mouth disease exists very largely. I believe cases have been known of cattle which have died from foot-and-mouth disease being buried in the very soil that is now being imported into this country as peat moss litter, and when you come to think that in the towns and cities of this country, owing to the high price of straw, peat moss litter is being used for litter, I think you are absolutely bringing it in and throwing it at the very cattle in the great milk dairies near some of the large cities which supply us with milk. That is one of the greatest
  504
  dangers that I think is being totally overlooked by the Board of Agriculture.
  The last question I shall ask is whether the Board have ever thought of going into the question of the large number of calves which are imported into this country whole and in their skins and are hung up as you see them hung up in the shops of this very city. It is a curious thing, though it is not curious when you fathom it, that in many cases these calves have a coat on them which shows that they belong to a breed coming from a country where disease is known to exist, even by the Board of Agriculture. Therefore, you would think that these calves would come in with a little bit hidden so that even a layman like myself would not be able to identify them. But the only way in which they hide as much as they can is that they cut off the head and hoofs and take out the inners. When they do that they know that every part of the animal where identification can be cleared up satisfactorily to the Inspectors of the Government has been removed, and the Government Inspectors having passed the animal, the uninitiated buy and the carcase is eaten. But the skin is distributed throughout the country and might easily be a very serious contamination if it has been near or amongst animals which perhaps may have had the disease. Although money from the Development Grant is collected and distributed, I cannot find out that it is being given to study this disease which breaks out every now and then, for no reason that we can see, except the ignorance of those who go into the subject, and the Board of Agriculture, in particular, who cannot tell us what is the cause of the disease. Therefore I want to know how it is that the Board of Agriculture cannot get a grant for some of these points to which I have referred. I remember when the Development Bill was being argued in this House I brought forward an Amendment that would have absolutely touched these very-points. The Government through their shortsightedness would not accept it, and, being an early hour in the morning, or a late hour at night, whichever way we like to look at it, the Amendment was ruled out. We were told that there was plenty of scope in the Bill for this particular line of thought. If that is so, I appeal to the Board of Agriculture to use the power they have and to gather something that will save this country from perhaps one of the greatest scourges that may fall upon it on the agricultural side, and to do-something for those who are the mainten-

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  ance and the backbone of this country in the agricultural industry. I ask that very serious thought should be given to this, because I feel it is of far greater importance to this country, and to those who live in this country, than some of the lesser questions of small holdings which at the present time occupy all the thoughts and absorb all the money which the Board of Agriculture have granted to them.
  Mr. CAUTLEY: I wish to take this opportunity of asking the Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he has taken any steps with a view to making better provision for the housing of labouring men in the rural districts. Owing to the tax imposed on landed property the old landlords are selling their estates, and if none of these estates are sold amongst tenant farmers there will quickly arise a great dearth of labourers' houses. Whatever the faults of landlords may have been in the past, they did feel it to be their duly to provide on their estates the necessary housing accommodation for the men who work on them. Everybody knows that it is not an economic thing to build houses to be let at the small rent these people are able to pay. It cannot be done as a Commercial speculation. The old landlords, from old traditions or from the old sense of duty which existed amongst them, were prepared to spend money for a return of 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. They have, on the whole, done their work extremely well in providing houses for the people. New conditions are going to arise. Men are being driven out of their properties, and the new owners look upon the possession without any of those old traditions, and without having the same sense of obligation as to their duties. They look upon the possession of land as a mere investment and as a means of providing a return for the money which they embark. I look with dread—already I see signs of it—to the time when the agricultural labourer, who out of his small wages cannot afford to pay much rent, will have to pay more for his house accommodation.
  2.0. P.M.
  Although it may not come within the purview of the office of the Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, I think he should put some pressure on the Government to look ahead and devise some scheme for dealing with what otherwise is going to be a crisis. Not only will the owners of these estates not build houses, but you cannot get speculative builders and men of means to do it because they
  506
  could not make it pay. Living as I do in the country I think the parish councils ought to receive more encouragement than they do at present in connection with work of this kind. I wish that the Government would, through the Board of Agriculture, take some steps to give increased powers to the parish councils which would encourage them and make them feel that they are doing good municipal work amongst us. There is one small measure introduced in this House which I would urge the Secretary to the Board to use his influence with the Government to give facilities for being passed into law. It is really not a contentious measure. I refer to the Cottage Homes Bill. It is felt very keenly about in the villages and rural districts. We who live in the country districts do feel that it is wrong that a man who has lived an honest and straightforward life until he has reached old age should have no better resort than the workhouse. We think that the people who are best able to look after him are the people among whom he has lived. By the Cottage Homes Bill it is provided that homes should be built, tentatively at first and on a small scale, into which men of that class could go. The houses should belong to the parish council, and should be built by co-operation among the landowners and the working people in the district. They should be managed by the parish council, and they should be let to men who by their character amongst the people they have lived with are considered eligible to occupy these houses, paying quite a small or nominal rent of, say, 1s. per week. I would ask in all earnestness that the Secretary to the Board of Agriculture might induce the Government to give facilities for this Bill, to which there can be very little opposition, in fact, no opposition that I can see, so that it will have a chance of passing into law. Let us make a start in improving the housing accommodation among the poor in the rural districts.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley): I must remind the hon. Member that it is not in order to discuss legislation, only administration.
  Mr. CAUTLEY: Among farmers in this country there has grown up now what is known as the National Farmers' Union. It is a union composed entirely of tenant farmers. They have excluded landlords and agents, and they have formulated a number of items—about fifteen—which

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  they have determined are necessary for putting their industry on a proper footing. I should like to have said something about the question of small holdings, which is a matter upon which I feel very deeply, but as, under your ruling it is out of order I will not do so. But if the Board of Agriculture can spare a day for the consideration of the working of the Small Holdings Act I would suggest that they might with advantage to the tenant farmers consider very carefully this programme of the fifteen points, and see whether some of them that are not opposed to the views of the Government cannot be carried into operation. Take one. Why cannot the agriculturists in this country have a universal system of weights and measures for dealing in their products? Why cannot the Secretary to the Board of Agriculture devise some scheme to which there can be no opposition which would put all weights and measures upon the one footing, and do away with all the allowances that are made?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Baronet could not do that without legislation.
  Mr. CAUTLEY: I hope that the Secretary to the Board of Agriculture will take these matters into consideration.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURST: I desire to call attention to the Development and Road Improvement Acts, and the way in which the funds constituted under those Acts are being administered and allocated. Before doing so I think it is only due to the Board of Agriculture to acknowledge, as I most frankly do, the prompt, expeditious, and effective manner in which they have dealt with the two serious outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease—last year in Yorkshire and this year in Surrey. Had it not been for the prompt action of the Board of Trade, our export trade, not merely in cattle but in sheep and pigs, would have been very seriously affected, as we hope it will not be in consequence of that activity, in a year which promised very exceptional prices to the producers of the best stock of those descriptions. There is one feature of the recent outbreak to which I feel bound to call attention. That is that the Board, through their officials, do not seem to have taken sufficient trouble at the time to ascertain the cause of the last outbreak. It has been admitted by the Parliamentary Secretary to
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  the Board in reply to questions addressed to him in this House that there have been serious outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, not merely in France, but also in many parts of Russia, and that on the premises, if I understand him aright, where the last outbreak took place, there was being consumed by the stock a large quantity of Russian oats.
  I am not going to suggest that it is possible to restrict the importation of Russian oats in a general way in view of the enormous quantity of these oats which are being consumed by stock throughout this country, but I do consider that it is the duty of the Board to do what they can. Admitting the facts, as they do, that foot-and-mouth disease docs exist, and in a very aggravated condition, in Russia, and that oats coming from Russia are found on the premises, I do think it their duty to make some test with those oats to ascertain whether or not they are the source of this recent outbreak. It is public scientific knowledge that this foot-and-mouth disease is due to a bacillus which cannot be scientifically identified or separated. If that is so it is perfectly clear that the only way in which a test can be made is to give a port ion of these oats to a sound animal. I fail to understand why the Board of Agriculture have failed to make this necessary test in view of the fact that every scientific authority who is entitled to give an opinion on this subject has clearly pointed out that the only way in which a really reliable test can be made under the circumstances is by feeding suspected food to a sound animal and seeing what the effect will be.
  And now turn to the administration of the Development Fund, as administered under the first part of the Development Act, and the Road Improvement Fund, which is dealt with in the second part of that, Act. With reference to the question of Road Board Grants, on the face of the Act, there appears to be nothing to indicate that these grants for the improvement of main roads, largely in the interest of motor traffic, should be made subject to a grant from the county council having the control of the roads in its area. But under the system adopted by the Road Board, as I understand, all these grants to a road authority are made subject to a proportional expenditure by that authority out of its own funds upon the road sought to be improved. In my own county—Gloucestershire—I understand that 25 per cent. is required from the local authority as compared with 75 per cent. granted

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  out of the Road Improvement Fund. The result of this system is bound to be to give an advantage to the richer counties and to those who have a short mileage of main road and a high rateable value, and to put a disadvantage upon those counties whose conditions are the converse. Another condition which has been made by the Road Board in respect of these grants is that the county council or other road authority has to give credit for the value of the partly worn surface which is covered or destroyed by the authorised improvement. That provision could not possibly have been contemplated by the Road Improvement Act, or was ever suggested in the discussion that took place in this House when that Act was passing through it. The result of these conditions is not merely to throw an unexpected burden upon the road authorities for an improvement of roads which is admittedly not for local benefit, but for the benefit of through traffic, carried on over a wide area and from populous centres, which may be entirely outside the area which they control, but it also imposes upon them the additional obligations of sacrificing what, in their opinion, is a good and sufficient road surface, and substituting for it a surface which is considered by the Road Board to be necessary, but which, under ordinary conditions, is not required to meet all the purposes of local traffic. I suggest that it is unfair to local authorities, and does not bear out the expressed purposes of the Act, as explained, in the first instance, when the measure was being considered here. If the Road Board dictates to the local authorities what the nature of an improvement shall be, surely it is for the Road Board to provide the whole cost of such improvement, and not ask the local authorities to pay them in respect of material that has to be removed from a road in order to put so-called improved material upon it. In regard to the more important part of the Development Act, with which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture is equally concerned with the right non. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury, I should like to point out to this House that, whereas there are certain specified objects in Clause 1, towards which grants are evidently intended primarily to be made, not a single one of those objects, so far as I am aware, has received the benefit of a grant out of the Fund.
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  I hope the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hobhouse) and the hon. Baronet (Sir E. Strachey) will listen to me for a short time, undeserving of their consideration though my observations may be. I only ask for common politeness, which we do not always get from the Bench on which the right hon. Gentleman sits. What I want the right hon. Gentleman to note is this: He stated a few weeks ago, in connection with the Development Fund, that there was the large sum of £897,000 which has not yet been expended, and I understand that there will be an additional sum of half a million credited to this Fund, so that there will be as from the beginning of the current financial year something like £1,300,000 or £1,400,000 remaining to the credit of this account, which has been in no sense applied to the purpose for which it is intended. I think I am entitled to ask why this fund has been hung up in the way it has been, and why it is not being applied to the purposes for which it was specifically intended. May I draw the attention of the House to specific purposes for which these grants are intended by the Act to be applied? First of all, in the forefront, and very properly in the forefront, is the object of agricultural research. I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary what sum, if any, has been applied for by his Department in order to promote agricultural scientific research? The second specified object is instruction in science and practical agriculture. It is perfectly true that this is educational work which is shared by two Government Departments, only one of which is represented in this House at the present time. I wish to ask representatives of the Government whether there is any scheme being put forward in order to promote out of the Development Fund scientific or practical instruction in Agriculture, and, if not, whether a grant is likely to be forthcoming for this purpose? The most important subject of all, to any mind, and I look to have the sympathy of every section of the House in regard to it, is the promotion of co-operation in respect of agriculture. What is the Board doing in this matter? Representations have to my knowledge been brought to the Board by representatives of every section of this House. The Parliamentary Secretary will correct me if I am wrong when I say that the Board advocated that a certain portion of the fund should be paid to the county councils for them to administer for this purpose.

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  There is no body corresponding to the county council in any part of the Continent, where agricultural co-operation has been so highly successful which has the administration of Government funds for the purpose, yet in every one of those countries the respective Governments are making grants for the development of agricultural co-operation with enormous success, and the result is that small holdings are being promoted to a much greater and faster extent than in this country. It is impossible to imagine a less suitable body to be made the channel for the administration of such a fund as this and for such purposes than the county council. It is common knowledge that county councils are largely composed of men who have no sympathy with the development of agricultural co-operation or industrial co-operation, and I am quite certain that, if the grants for this purpose be put into the hands of county councils, it will set back the development of agricultural co-operation and the progress of small holdings to a very large extent; whereas, on the other hand, if those grants were made, as has been repeatedly suggested in this House, through the existing Agricultural Organisation Societies in England, Ireland, and Scotland—which, by the way, are already largely representative of the Government through officials of the Board acting on their executive committees—there would be absolute and effective control of any such Fund devoted to the purpose, and there can be no doubt whatever that the promotion of agricultural co-operation would be greatly accelerated. Fourthly, there comes the object of promoting the extension of small holdings. I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether a single penny has been devoted out of the Development Fund for the promotion of small holdings?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Edward Strachey): Which Fund?
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Possibly the Parliamentary Secretary is not aware of the fact that there is a specific provision under the Act for the allocation of a portion of the grant for this purpose, and I should like to know whether such an allocation has been made? Then comes the object of the development of forestry, to which reference already has been made in this House this afternoon; and, lastly, so far
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  as I am myself interested in the matter, the reclamation and drainage of land. As regards the reclamation and drainage of land, I would remind the hon. Baronet that at the present moment, so far from reclamation and drainage of land being encouraged, the Government are actually declining to admit expenditure upon such reclamation as a permissible deduction from the Site Value of land in order to ascertain what its taxable capacity should be for the purpose of the new Land Duty. Whatever we may understand by the Undeveloped Land Duty—as to which in my opinion a wholly false interpretation is given—at any rate no discouragement should be given to reclamation, drainage, or irrigation of land by the private individual, particularly bearing in mind that under the term "development," as used in the Act, it is one of the purposes towards which sums may be devoted out of the Development Fund.
  I belong to a very large number of agricultural organisations which have shown their entire confidence in the hon. Baronet, and the Department which he represents, by declining to put forward any detailed schemes for the purpose of obtaining grants out of this Fund. They have said, and I think properly, we prefer that the Board should make application for a block grant, the Board being entitled to judge what are the different objects which relatively deserve larger or smaller grants out of this Fund. In my humble opinion the Board have, to some extent, abused the confidence which we have reposed in them for apparently nothing serious is being done in the matter. We have indefinite statements made from time to time in this House that the Board has made application to the Development Commissioners for grants for various agricultural purposes, but we have no knowledge of what the form of that application is, and we have no reason to believe that at any early date grants will be made for any of those purposes with which the Board has expressed some degree of sympathy. Let me refer in some small detail to the question of research which the Board themselves have admitted is a most important subject towards which grants might be made out of the Development Fund. May I remind the House that during the last two years there has been issued a most important pamphlet upon this subject by the British Science Guild, which I understand is presided over by the Minister for

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  War whose scientific knowledge everyone in this House respects. They have reported to the effect that there was no country in the whole of Europe towards which so small a grant is devoted by Government for the purpose of research. Even the smaller European principalities and the smaller German States devote a larger sum to agricultural research than the sum of about £1,200, which, I believe, is all that is devoted in this country to this purpose.
  May I especially draw attention to two Departments which are doing, and have been doing for some time, most invaluable work not merely for the benefit of agriculture in this country, but for the benefit of agriculture throughout the civilised world, namely, Rothamsted Experimental Station, and the Agricultural Department of Cambridge University. The first is associated, as all hon. Members will know, with the name of Sir John Bennett Lawes, who devoted the greater part of a very useful life and an enormous sum of money towards the promotion of work which, in other countries, is generally carried on by government. In the latter case may I refer to the admirable work of Professor Bitten and his colleagues, who have for many years been employed upon the breeding of pedigree wheats. They have at last discovered, or apparently discovered, a wheat which can be grown in this country, which possesses all the cropping qualities of the best English wheats and all the baking qualities of the best Manitoban wheats, which is the sort of wheat which fetches a higher price than the English wheat has usually fetched in this country. It is a wheat which, in the interests of agricultural producers, and particularly small holders, we desire to see grown to a large extent in this country. So far as I am aware these researches, which have resulted in these discoveries have received a mere pittance of Government money. We say when there is this large sum of over £1,000,000 still in the Development Fund, that a substantial grant might be made for these useful purposes if only the Board of Agriculture would put sufficient pressure upon the Development Commissioners.
  To instance some small matters in which we are sadly lacking in knowledge at the present time, and which has from time to time been brought before this House, there is the question of what has been called the Isle of Wight bee disease, and
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  on which I should say there is no precise scientific knowledge in the hon. Baronet's Department at the present time. It is a disease which is spreading rapidly, not only in Hampshire, but in Scotland, in Kent, in Cornwall, and in fact in nearly every county it is now to be found, with the result that we may reasonably and naturally expect a serious shortage of honey, and a serious scarcity of bees, the cultivation of which is an important industry amongst small people in many rural districts. There is an entire absence, so far as I am aware, of precise scientific knowledge on the subject. Surely this a matter towards which a grant might reasonably be made out of the Development Fund. Recently there has been brought to the notice of the Board of Agriculture the very important work of Professor Priestley, of Bristol University, with regard to the electrification of crops. I do not want to refer now in detail to those discoveries as they are only partially finished, and will involve a considerable amount of further research before they can be rendered useful to the agricultural or horticultural industries. I think the hon. Baronet will admit that so far as those experiments and research have gone there are indications that this electrification of farm crops with positive electricity may be extremely useful to market gardeners and others if, on more precise investigation, the suggestions that are made by Professor Priestley are found to be justified. At the present moment a mere pittance of £50 a year is given towards the promotion of this work. I would ask the hon. Baronet to take the earliest opportunity of making a definite application to the Development Commissioners for sums, varying in amount according to the importance of the work, for such subjects as I have mentioned. About all others, I do ask him not to advocate any grant for the purpose of agricultural co-operation being put into the hands of the county councils, many of which are not likely to sympathise with the work, but, in my opinion, are likely to set back the progress of co-operation for many years to come.
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The hon. Member for Newport (Mr. Stanier) at the beginning referred to the question of the administration of the Road Board. I should tell him that has nothing to do with the Board of Agriculture at all. The hon. Gentleman also dealt with many other subjects with his usual ability and fullness. I only regret, as regards the details,

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  that it will be impossible or very nearly impossible for me to go into details in the same way, because the hon. Gentleman was not good enough to give me notice that he meant to go into those particular details, or else I would have taken the opportunity to have made myself acquainted with them. I think, however, I shall be able to answer some of the questions he has put to me from my own personal knowledge. As regards the question of the delay in the issuing of reports, I have been in this House a great many years now, and I think when the hon. Gentleman has been as long in the House he will know that that is a complaint which is being continually made, and he will recognise that there are enormous difficulties to be overcome. I can assure him I entirely sympathise with his desire that as soon as possible and as soon as practicable that reports not only should be laid in dummy, but circulated to Members of the House. The hon. Member suggested that if we could not circulate the Report immediately after it had been laid in dummy, a typewritten copy might be placed in the Library. That seemed to be a reasonable suggestion from one point of view, and I inquired into the matter, but I am told that further difficulties would be created and probably further delay caused in the circulation of the Report. Although a few Members would have the opportunity of studying the typewritten Report, the great majority of Members would not be able to do so, from the mere fact that they could not all at the same time read one copy or even half-a-dozen copies. Hence you would really be giving a preference to a few Members over the rest, and it might be urged that it was only right that all Members should have an equal opportunity and should all receive information at exactly the same time. I will certainly inquire into the hon. Member's complaint that these Reports are given to the Press before they are officially supplied to hon. Members. Speaking personally, I very much deprecate the Press being given information before Members of this House have the Reports in their hands, and as far as I can deal with the matter I will see that in future it does not occur. The hon. Member rather complained of my offering to give him certain information. I can only say that sometimes there has been certain detailed information that I was able to give him at once, but that other information which had to be in-
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  cluded in the Report was not yet ready, and consequently the information which I could give him had to be withheld until the other information appeared in the Report as a whole.
  The hon. Member referred to the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey and asked how many veterinary experts had been called in. If the hon. Member had given me notice of his intention to ask for that information I could have obtained it. On the other hand, I know that that outbreak was confirmed by our own veterinary inspectors, and I am certain that if the chief veterinary inspector confirms an outbreak it is quite unnecessary to call in any one else to confirm his opinion. Probably the hon. Member has not for a long while seen an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease; otherwise he would know that those who have expert knowledge of the matter have little difficulty in recognising the symptoms. Even as regards what might be called obscure cases, men with the knowledge, experience, and qualifications of the veterinary inspectors employed by the Board of Agriculture have no difficulty in detecting the disease. There is no doubt that in this matter we are very well served indeed. The hon. Member suggested what I think would be a very dangerous proceeding, namely, that we should have, as they have in Germany, some system of controlled experiments in foot-and-mouth disease. I suppose he means that we should have an island on which we should carry on experiments with foot-and-mouth disease, rinderpest and other diseases of animals. I think that would be highly dangerous, because foot-and-mouth disease can be carried by a man going into a herd where the disease exists, or into an experimental station, unless the greatest possible care is taken, and even then something might be done which would enable the disease to be carried outside the quarantine station. I would do nothing, even for the sake of making experiments, to keep foot-and-mouth disease alive in this country a single day after it was possible to exterminate it by the use of the pole-axe. The view I have held ever since I have been in the Board of Agriculture has been that directly an outbreak occurs you should not only isolate, but slaughter at the earliest possible moment. I do not think it is a very good suggestion that we should take a leaf out of the book of Germany in this matter. We on this side are always being told by hon. Members opposite that we should copy Germany in one

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  thing or another. Germany, however, is not free from foot-and-mouth disease, as we are, or have been for a large number of years except for isolated outbreaks. At any rate, Germany's controlled experiments have not had the effect of stamping out the disease to the extent that our system has done in this country.
  With regard to the notification of freedom from foot-and-mouth disease, the hon. Member seems to think that that notification is not sent out at the earliest possible moment. I think he is mistaken, but I will inquire into the matter. I quite recognise the importance of that information being given at once. The hon. Member dealt with the question of the importation of milk and of peat and moss litter from countries where foot-and-mouth disease exists. As regards milk, the hon. Member to a large extent answered himself by saying that he did not think there was much danger. In fact, the quantity of milk imported from foreign countries is so small as to be almost negligible. On the other hand, I am as anxious as the hon. Member that there should be no loophole for the introduction of the disease, and I will inquire of the experts of the Board whether they think there is any danger in this direction. As regards hay and straw, to which the hon. Member referred also, I would remind the hon. Member that under an Order of the Board of Agriculture hay and straw cannot be imported for fodder or bedding from practically any European country. As regards moss litter, I will inquire from our experts whether there is any risk from its being imported for bedding. As regards making application to the Development Commissioners for a grant towards experiments and research, I think the hon. Member is aware that we are making such an application, but I do not think it is desirable at the present moment to go into details. No one is more conscious than I am of the necessity and desirability of getting as large a grant as possible in order that full and extensive experiments and research may be made in the interests of agriculture.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: How large is the grant?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: I do not think it is desirable at the present moment to go into detail as regards the amount. I can assure the House and the hon. Gentlemen that the Board of Agriculture is fully alive to the necessity of getting the largest possible amount that we can get so as to make
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  up, as soon and as much as we can, for the neglect of the past. We want to get along as quickly as we can with research work and experimental agriculture, though until the annual grant made by the Parliament of 1906 the interests of agriculture had been ignored by Parliament. The question has been raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Wilts as to the channel by which it is proposed the money shall be applied that is to be devoted to the development of agriculture co-operation. The hon. Gentleman, so far as I can gather, advocates that it only should be given through the Agricultural Organisation Society. He very strongly condemns the idea that any of it should be given through the medium of county councils. I suppose the hon. Member is not a member of a county council, and therefore he has no knowledge of their work, and how they might possibly be very usefully employed as a medium. He strongly condemns that course.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: I am afraid I must interrupt the hon. Baronet. I have had the honour, for the last fifteen years, of serving upon the agricultural committee of my own county that deals with these matters, and I do not, therefore, think it is fair for him to allege or assume ignorance.
  Sir E. STRACHEY: I was only assuming that the hon. Gentleman, not being a member of his own county council, does not presumably appreciate the very good work the county council are doing in this matter. I am rather surprised at his confirmation of that view by his observations that county councils are entirely out of sympathy with movements of this kind for the advantage of small holders.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: I did not use that expression.
  Sir E. STRACHEY: I took the hon. Gentleman's words down; "there was no sympathy from county councils." But I will let that pass. I only thought it right as a very old member of a county council, knowing what good work they do in these directions, to take exception to the sweeping condemnation of county councils. Again, the hon. Gentleman asked me a series of questions in regard to whether we were making application to the Development Commissioners for the purposes of the reclamation and drainage of land, with regard to the Isle of Wight bee disease also for the electrification experiments that Bristol University had undertaken?

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  I can assure the hon. Member that the Board of Agriculture have all these matters in view. He may be perfectly certain that they will do their best to get the largest amount possible from the Development Commissioners in the interests of the various matters that come under their control, and which can be advanced by getting a grant from the Development Commissioners. There was one point that I did not quite fully deal with when I was referring to foot-and-mouth disease. Why, I was asked, had we not taken trouble to trace the outbreak of this foot-and-mouth disease. The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong in thinking that the Board of Agriculture has not taken any trouble to try and trace the origin of this disease. The Board has taken every possible means of trying to trace it. I regret to say that, notwithstanding all the labour and time spent in trying to trace where the outbreak came from, that up to the present time we have not been able to trace it. On the other hand, the hon. Member complains that we did not investigate the question as to whether the infection had been received from Russian oats supplied to the farm in question. Only a small proportion of that particular consignment of Russian oats was actually used in this particular farmstead. Some of the consignment was used on various other farms in that neighbourhood where this outbreak took place. I quite admit it only proves a negative when I say that in other places oats of a similar kind and of this same consignment were used by the farmers. We traced the matter as far as possible, and there was no other outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, although cattle fed off the same oats. I admit that is not a positive test, but, humanly speaking, I do not see that we could have done anything else. If there had been any infection in these oats, the probability is that there would have been another outbreak. I do not think the hon. Member has any right to complain that we did not do our best in the matter. I think his suggestion that in case of another outbreak, or in connection with the last, we might feed animals on the suspected oats in order to develop another case of foot-and-mouth disease, and so discover the origin, is not to the point. We do not desire to experiment to increase the number of outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in this country. On the other hand, directly the outbreak makes its appearance, we
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  want to immediately slaughter the animals concerned in order to prevent the infection being spread.
  Other remarks of the hon. Member should, I think, really be addressed to my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board. I can assure him that the Board of Agriculture has nothing whatever to do with the question he has raised as to the Housing Act. His complaints as to insufficiency of cottages certainly do not come into the purview of the Board of Agriculture or its administration. Then the hon. Member referred to the question of the sale of land by landlords. I think that matter has been very much exaggerated. I think it will be found that over a course of years that quite as much land on the average has been sold lately as has been sold in the past. Then the hon. Gentleman referred to the question of the National Farmers' Union. I know precisely the importance of that body and the very good work they have done for the agricultural interests. I can assure the hon. Member that I am in constant touch with the officers of the Union. They are good enough to come and consult me and my assistants in reference to the different matters in their programme. The points of their programme which the hon. Member brought before the House, I think, he will remember were questions of legislation and not of administration. I can only assure him that in approaching the Board of Agriculture in the future, the National Farmers' Union will always receive the fullest consideration and attention, as they are a body of enormous importance to the interest which they represent, and which I believe they very adequately represent.
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: I desire to call attention to some questions that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Gloucestershire has raised, though from a rather different point of view. The administration of the Development Grant is a matter of very serious importance. It is a question which we are unable to discuss except by means of questions in the House, and on the Motion for the adjournment of the House. Unfortunately, there is no Minister directly representing the Development Commissioners, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury already having many duties he can hardly be expected to look fully into some of these matters. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary, when we want to criticise the administration of this grant, that we should do so on the

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  Motion for the adjournment of the House. At the present time the Development Commissioners have taken a very important step, which I think this House should state their objections to at the earliest possible moment. They have definitely decided that the funds at their disposal are not to be used to encourage industrial development. They have laid it down that their funds are to be used for agricultural development, for fisheries, but not for industrial development. That is a subject which three-fourths of the Liberal party could not possibly tolerate; it is the re-enactment of the old Agricultural Rates Act; it is taxing the community as a whole, and particularly the urban constituencies for the benefit of the agricultural districts. Hon. Gentlemen opposite plead for assistance for agriculture from the Development Grant. It seems to me hon. Gentlemen opposite almost go beyond their book when they complain they are not getting enough. Surely if they are getting all the Development Fund they might be content with that and not ask more. Our constituencies are to pay in order that their constituencies may have light railways and hunters and nice motor-car roads and all kinds of agricultural development. Our constituencies are to pay in order that the country districts may benefit. This matter was brought to a head by a test case from my own Constituency.
  The town council of Stoke-on-Trent, a borough of 250,000, applied to the Development Commissioners for a small grant, I think £2,000, to assist in the scientific investigation of marls, clays, and glazes. That is a matter to which the Commissioners ought to give consideration, and if they were to deal with industrial development such a claim would receive unanimous approval. The local authority was not only prepared to contribute pound for pound, but far more than the Development Commissioners' grant. The local authority wished to inquire into these things in connection with the pottery industry, and it is of enormous importance to find out whether they could be used for refractory purposes. We import clays for refractory purposes for gas retorts and so on from foreign countries. There is no doubt there are clays in these districts admirably suited, but few people are prepared to put down the large sums of money necessary to have inquiries made. The gas engineers have recently sent out special circulars suggesting the establishment of a national laboratory for the purposes of experiments for the study of
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  refractory materials from the gas-maker's point of view. The whole of the pottery industry and the whole of the mining industry are anxious in the same way for experiments and for the development of this class of business, and from the mining point of view it is of enormous importance that we should do something to inquire into the manufacture and utilisation of these clays.
  3.0 P.M.
  Hon. Members in all parts of the House know that the suffering caused by the use of lead in certain industries. It is a question that has interested the House of Commons now for ten or fifteen years. We have made several important investigations. Still we have an enormous number of cases of serious injury resulting. It is impossible for any private manufacturer to take up this question and to establish a laboratory and to make experiments to discover the proper form of treatment. It is eminently a case for assistance from the Development Fund in order to develop the pottery industry and other works. Here you have a demand which is absolutely unanswerable, and which is for the development not only of one particular area but of the whole country. It has the support of the Commercial Department of the Board of Trade, but when the Development Commissioners were approached they replied that their reading of the Act was that it did not cover matters of industrial development at all and that it was intended simply and solely for the development of agriculture, fisheries, and the country districts. I shall read a portion of the Act to show how utterly unfounded this view is. The first Clause says:—
  "The Treasury may upon the recommendation of the Development Commissioners make advances to public authorities by way of grant for any of the following purposes."
  Then the several different purposes are set out, and the Section finishes with the following words:—
  "And for any other purposes calculated to promote the economic development of the United Kingdom."
  That seems to me to be perfectly plain and straightforward.
  Sir G. PARKER: Will the hon. Member read all the purposes?
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: No; it is a long Clause, and the only part in which I am interested is these concluding words.
  Lord BALCARRES: May we have the words of the reply of the Development Commissioners?
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: No; I have not got the words, but they refused because the application was for industrial development, and because they did not think the Commissioners could undertake such matters. Here we have a very definite position taken up by the Development Commissioners with regard to a fund voted by Parliament. That Act passed by this House is to be confined, according to the Development Commissioners, to agricultural development, to fisheries and harbours, and specific things, but it is not to include the industrial development of the country. Two-thirds of the people of this country are engaged in industries which will not benefit in any way by the Development Fund. That was never intended by this House, because it is notorious that the Development Fund was welcomed by a large number of Members on these benches because it was thought it would develop the industries of the country.
  I take this early opportunity of protesting against the action of the Development Commissioners. They have no right to put their own meaning upon an Act of Parliament, and I ask the Secretary to the Treasury to take the earliest possible opportunity of getting the Development Commissioners in the first place to reconsider their attitude towards the specific requirements, and in the second place to reconsider their attitude towards the Industrial Development generally. I should like the House to consider for a moment what it is that is to benefit according to the views of the Development Commissioners from the expenditure of this Development Fund. There are to be light railways, the breed of hunters is to be improved, harbours are to be made, land is to be purchased for afforestation. All this expenditure of money is to go in improving and increasing the value of agricultural land, and also for improving harbours and building light railways. Seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds of the taxpayers' money is to be spent annually for this Development Grant and is to go directly into the pockets of the landlords. My Constituents, who are not agricultural land owners, are being taxed upon their tea and sugar with their miserable wages of 24s. a week in order that the agricultural landlords of this country may get
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  more rent than they are getting at present. I say it is a perfect scandal that the Liberal Government should consent to allow the Development Commissioners to take such a course. I do not believe the Liberal Government will tolerate it and I do not believe they will allow the Development Commissioners to squander the money in the country districts while giving no assistance whatever to the industries of this country. I know the question is a very difficult one for the Secretary to the Treasury to answer. It was only yesterday that I found out the Commissioners had taken up this definite line. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to use his best endeavours to get this matter put right at the earliest possible moment. Those of us who sit on these Benches could make out as strong a case against the specific use of the Development Fund Grants in this case as was ever made out by those Ministers, who sometimes sit on the Front Bench, against the Agricultural Rating Act of 1896. Exactly the same arguments apply and will be brought against any partial usage of the Development Fund in the interests of the landlords of this country.
  Mr. BOLAND: Earlier in the afternoon I called the attention of the Home Secretary to a question which is arousing a considerable amount of interest. I am sorry the Home Secretary is not present, but I hope that he will most certainly reconsider his decision before carrying out the draft Order he has issued under which dressmakers in London during the Coronation month are going to have their hours extended. At present the employés in these establishments can be employed only between the hours of six to six, seven to seven, or eight to eight, but under this Order that time can be extended to nine o'clock. That means from nine o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night. In addition, these employés are allowed upon a certain number of days in the year to work overtime to the extent of two hours a day, and this means that this will be utilised probably for two hours each day during the whole thirty days of the Coronation month. Consequently the unfortunate employés starting work at nine o'clock in the morning will not finish until eleven o'clock at night. It seems to me to be a most unreasonable suggestion that at this time of the year such an extension should be made. A large number of these employs live in the suburbs, and it is no exaggeration to say

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  that many of these girls will not find their way home until a quarter to twelve or midnight. That will go on for twenty or thirty days during the months of May or June. I think the Home Secretary will be well advised not to proceed further with this Order, because not merely has the time been extended, but there is another consideration which I would like to bring to his notice. Owing to the low wages which these girls receive, a great many of them have to avail themselves of the early morning trains, under which they are able to obtain a reduction of fares. If this Order is carried out the result will be that these girls will have to start work in the West End at nine o'clock in the morning, and if they are to avail themselves of the workmen's trains they will have to wait for one hour or one and a-half hours before their employment begins.
  Seeing that over and over again the objection has been raised, not merely in the case of men, but also in the case of women, that this extension of time is bound to bring evils in its train, I sincerely hope that the Home Secretary will take steps to make inquiries, not merely from the employers, but from the girls who are going to be employed, and from those societies who look after the interests of the employés in those establishments before he goes on with this Order. It is quite true that when this Order is put upon the Table it has to lie there for forty days, and an opportunity may be taken to raise discussion upon it at eleven o'clock at night. I know it has happened in previous years that owing to the action of the Government in taking the time of the House we are often prevented from raising these questions after eleven o'clock at night. It is because this is the only opportunity of bringing to the attention of the Home Office the widespread dissatisfaction caused by the promulgation of this Order that I urge the right hon. Gentleman not to proceed further with the scheme, and let the existing hours stand. I think the Home Secretary may rest assured that, owing to the system of overtime, the employés will have, as a matter of fact, the extra two hours put upon their employment, and it would be a disastrous thing if in this year, with the extra pressure there will be put upon establishments of this kind, to give, not the good class of employers, but the worst class, an opportunity of working the girls in such a way that their health may be affected by it.
  Mr T. E. HARVEY: I wish to emphasise what the hon. Member for South
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  Kerry (Mr. Boland) has just said. I feel convinced that the Home Office in making this draft Order, after having listened to the representations made by certain employers, will do well to take an opportunity of hearing representatives on behalf of the employés. I think it is peculiarly unfortunate when the House is about to consider an important matter like the Shops Bill, that by an administrative Act a real hardship should be caused to a very large number of the poorest workers. This proposal will affect a very large number of working girls. I find from the last factory inspector's report that there are in the West End district over 2,400 dressmaking and millinery establishments. Putting it down that on an average each establishment may employ twenty hands, it will be seen that in the West End district this Order will affect over 40,000 working girls. In addition to that the Order will apply to workshops in the East End of London and other districts. Inquiries have been made by a number of workers in girls' clubs who are able to speak on behalf of these girls who cannot speak for themselves. Those inquiries have elicited the fact that many of them have to go to such places as Tottenham and Ealing and other outlying districts, and it will be impossible for them to get to their homes before midnight. There are a large number of girls living in North and South Lambeth, and they will have to go long distances on foot to their employments because many of them are too poor to avail themselves even of workmen's fares; they will have to make an hour's journey on foot at the beginning and the end of the day. It will be exceedingly hard for these girls if the hours are prolonged as suggested. I understand it is difficult to avoid overtime being worked, but I hope the Home Office will not allow the hours on Saturdays to be prolonged without a special notice in each case. In any case I hope the proposal to alter the hours from eight to eight, seven to seven, or six to six, to nine to nine with overtime will not be allowed. That would mean a great injustice and hardship. If it is necessary to have overtime I think it should be worked at the other end of the day by allowing the girls to start work earlier rather than to stay later. I understand that a number of the very best firms have already agreed that it is not necessary as far as they are concerned to have any alteration in the existing hours. Many of them do not ask for this alteration, and

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  even if the Home Office should confirm this particular Order those employers say they will not avail themselves of it. I ask the Home Office to support the best employers, and in the interests of the employés who cannot speak for themselves, I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to confirm the Draft Order which has unfortunately been issued.
  Mr. MALCOLM: May I associate myself with the spokesmen of the two other parties with regard to this very urgent matter? It has already been said that the Draft Order has only to lie upon the Table of the House for forty days and the Home Secretary will sign it; and, as he told me this morning, the very moment he signs it it will become operative. I associate myself with the hon. Member who has just spoken on behalf of these hard-worked and very worthy but unrepresented and quite inarticulate people in this House. I am very sorry we have not been able to see this Draft Order, but I agree with the hon. Member behind me in imagining, and we have considerable ground for imagining, that the Home Secretary was influenced not by the best model employers in the town but by very influential employers all the same. I have a certain knowledge of the Shop Girls' Clubs in the East End of London, and the House might as well know what it is these girl workers fear. I am quite sure we have in the Under-Secretary for the Home Office (Mr. Masterman) a very sympathetic listener on this case, and one who certainly would not dream of doing that which shop girl assistants may feel to be a real grievance, but they fear three things. The first thing they fear is that employers who at present open at seven or eight o'clock in the morning will take advantage of this Order and will appear to be working from nine in the morning and work on till nine at night. They will thus have fourteen hours' work, whereas they ought only to have twelve. The hon. Member opposite, I think, said there were some 2,000 of these shops in the West End employing 40,000 girls, and it will be impossible in the two months for the inspectors to find out whether they are really and truly working from seven o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock rather than as the Government suppose from nine o'clock in the morning till nine at night.
  The second thing they are afraid of, they tell me, is that if this Order is in operation for two months, it will be prolonged
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  and become perpetual. They think it would be a great grievance that such an Order should become perpetual and that the hours of from six to six or seven to seven, should finally become from nine to nine. Their third grievance is that whereas it is bad enough now on the grounds of economy they have to take the workmen's train, leaving, it may be Ilford or elsewhere, at five o'clock in the morning, and, to use a vulgar expression, kick their heels out three or four hours before their shops open, it would be infinitely worse that they should have to work overtime until eleven o'clock at night when possibly their last trains might have gone. I need not enter into the moral effect of that—these girls, after their trains hare gone, being let loose on the streets. The House will appreciate it. The necessity of their taking the workmen's train is, of course, equally understood. I know that coming from the Essex part of London the difference is 8d. in a ticket for the day. They pay 2d. for a return ticket coming in from Ilford, whereas, if they waited till eight o'clock, which would be in plenty of time for them to get to work, they would have to pay 10d. That is a thing they have to consider every day, and they would like to have that hardship diminished.
  I said there were only three points, but there are four. The fourth point is one they feel equally, not with employers, but with philanthropic people who look after their welfare and run Continuation Schools. These schools runs from 7.30 till 9.30 or ten at night, and they will consequently be absolutely broken up during May and June. Most of these girls, be it said to their credit and honour, do use these schools. These are four, and I think quite definite grounds of complaint which I am sure cannot have entered into the mind of the Home Secretary and still less into the mind of the Under-Secretary who is known to have such an interest in and a sympathy for this class of the community when this Order was first promulgated. It is on behalf of these struggling, very worthy, and, as I think, overworked people, that we stand here to make this sympathetic complaint and to ask the Home Secretary not to sign this Order until he has heard the representations which I know are going to be made to him and has listened to them with a sympathetic ear. He will, I am sure, feel there is a great deal to be said for the point we are now urging and for those who feel that their condition, which is already hard enough, will be very much

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  prejudiced if this Order is allowed even for temporary purposes to find its way into operation through the medium of the Home Office. I have, therefore, much pleasure in supporting the appeal of the hon. Member.
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Masterman): I am sure I have no complaint to make of either the discussion having been raised or of the very kind and generous way in which the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down and others who have raised it have spoken of the Department I have the honour to represent. I think it is above all things desirable that all these suggestions sometimes made in connection with the Factory Acts should be carefully scrutinised, and, as the hon. Member for Croydon (Mr. Malcolm) has said, that not only the immediate but even possible ultimate results should be examined. I very much regretted to hear him say he had been unable to obtain a copy of the Draft Order. It was issued in order that it might be obtained and objections lodged to it. We have done our best by sending it to the Press to obtain its publication, and at any moment I shall be happy to give the hon. Gentleman a copy or as many copies as he desires.
  Mr. T. E. HARVEY: Would it be supplied to the Library of the House?
  Mr. MASTERMAN: I should think that could be done quite easily though I do not know what the policy is with regard to Draft Orders. I think some of the effects of the Order have been slightly exaggerated by hon. Members who have not really fully appreciated its very limited range. There is not the slightest doubt there will have to be a very considerable amount of extra work done during the next two months in connection with the Coronation. Nothing the Home Office could do would prevent that extra work. All concerned with the administration of the Home Office regret these sudden rushes of trade, which often inflict a good deal of hardship upon individuals, but the trade has to be done, and somehow provision has to be made for it. Application came to us for the issue of an Order, which the Factory Acts permit in times of pressure, and which has often been issued, not to increase the number of hours which dressmakers' assistants can work, but to make a variation in the number of hours. Certainly. I should have required far more investigation than that which I was able
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  to give to this matter before I should have sanctioned a Draft Order increasing the number of hours. I think that is a very serious matter, but the application was mainly in the interests of certain dressmaking firms in the West End of London, which have been in the habit up till now of not taking full advantage of that to which they are legally entitled. Their habit has been to work from 9.0 a.m. till 8.0 p.m., unlike the firms in the East End of London, where the employés take advantage of the workmen's trains, and begin at 6.0 or 7.0 a.m. It was submitted to us that this would be for the convenience of the firms. We also obtained evidence that the girls prefer the hour in the evening rather than starting at 8.0 a.m., and we also obtained an assurance from the employers that extra money would be paid for this extra time. There seems to be an idea that the carrying out of this order sanctions work up to 11.0 p.m. That is not so. Section 49 of the Factories and Workshops Act is not altered by this; Order. It provides that no overtime shall be worked after ten o'clock, and no-woman can be employed on overtime under such conditions more than three days a week, while no girl can be employed on such overtime at all. Thus the picture drawn by some hon. Members is not likely to be realised. I believe the restriction as to girls applies to the age of eighteen.
  Mr. T. E. HARVEY: Is it not a fact that the girls of eighteen would be allowed to work up to ten o'clock?
  Mr. MASTERMAN: That is quite possible under the present law. There are certain days on which overtime to the extent of two hours is allowed, and what actually happens is that most firms will take advantage of that two hours' overtime in the months of June or July, and we have no power to stop that. The only other point I wish to make is that a legalised system is much better than an illegalised arrangement, and where there is great pressure, as in the case of King Edward's funeral last year, all our efforts cannot prevent a large amount of evasion of the law. These considerations led us to publish a draft Order. I must confess I think the point made by the hon. Member for Croydon (Mr. Malcolm) is worth consideration. There may be a danger of these Orders being used as a precedent, but at the same time they will not be accepted as a precedent. While we are at the Home Office we shall certainly not

  531
  sanction the general use of such an Order as this except under exceptional circumstances. If the Order were taken advantage of by East End establishments it would at once receive attention.
  Mr. MALCOLM: Have you inspectors enough to deal with the question of the evasion of hours?
  Mr. MASTERMAN: Some general evasion of the law under great pressure might be possible during certain months. I quite agree that the Draft Order in that case might be ineffective, but I have been in communication with some of the organisations which are representative of the workers, and I have agreed to receive a deputation next week—from those who represent the girls affected. I have given instructions for our inspectors to make investigations as to the opinions of the girls primarily concerned. If it is really the case that they would prefer to work an extra hour in the evening instead of in the morning, then I think there may be something to be said for such an Order.

  HOUSE OF COMMONS (FOREIGN TREATIES).
  Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: I wish to take this opportunity of directing the attention of the House to a very different matter. After nearly twenty-five years' experience in this House, I think it is a question which should receive attention. I challenge contradiction when I say it is the strangest thing possible when one hears, as I have done, vehement debates with a view to making the legislation of this House perfect and with a view to making the House the master of its own conditions, to making it the predominant partner—that, from generation to generation, you have allowed treaties involving the highest international obligations—involving questions of peace and war—to be taken absolutely out of the hands of the House. It is no exaggeration to say, so far as international policy is concerned, you have rendered the House as little effectively powerful as any man walking over Westminster Bridge. Over and over again treaties involving matters of life and death, involving questions of first-class importance, have been ratified behind the back of Parliament. It is very well to say, and it is true that the Ministers who do it are responsible to the House of Commons and through the House of Commons to the people at large. That is
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  true, but then before the House of Commons in the ordinary course gets to know the mischief has been done, and then, of course, party feeling, party pledges, and party lawyers will come in aid of Ministers, and whatever their fault or merit may be, by that time the mischief is done. What I say, and what I say especially, is that we are at long last having what I have wished to have, a real working representation by men who have felt themselves what the pinch is and who are touched with the infirmities of the people, and now that we have them I hope they will see that war is not the chance work of half a dozen individuals on one side or the other, but of the mass of the community. I ask them to see that we are well informed and instructed in reference to the foreign policy of this country, and to say that no treaty can be ratified unless the consent of this House has been given.
  This is not a new subject. In former days this matter used to be very well ventilated indeed, and I think it is of peculiar interest now that Mr. Bryce, the Ambassador at Washington, is in that high position for us to remember the very remarkable observations of that gentleman in his work on the American Commonwealth, which Mr. Speaker Peel, in one of his delightful out-of-door non-political speeches said was the most interesting book that he had ever read in his whole life. Mr. Bryce described—and this is very interesting having regard to this proposed Arbitration Treaty—how the founders and leaders of the American Colonies did their very best to improve their constitution on what they conceived to be the defects of our English Constitution, and that they made provision whereby treaties could not be the work of the mere President alone but had to receive the assent of two-thirds of the Senate who were present at the time that it was proposed to ratify a treaty. Then Mr. Bryce observed—and this is very interesting coming from an Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in this House—that in England there is an utter absence of control of all foreign policy—that there is all but an actual want of control over it. Then he proceeds to point out that the time may come when it may foe of great interest to English students and politicians to revise their system possibly even on the American model, so that the representatives of the people should at least have a voice in foreign affairs, which so much concern them. That is very interesting coming from him, and then he proceeds

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  to say that in 1886, and I find it was on the 19th of March in that year a Motion was moved to the effect that before treaties were ratified this House should be able to give assent or dissent. I think it was the House of Commons which was to assent or dissent. There was a great Debate upon that, and it was rejected only by four votes. And what I would point out is that we see the importance of that with reference to the great scheme of Imperial federation. We know the extreme sensitiveness of our Colonies in reference to the treaty-making Power, and we know that, as the law stands to-day, Great Britain can make any treaty with any Power, and by that every Dominion is bound.
  That cannot last long, and the people themselves must be allowed to know all about this diplomacy and what it is. And there should be no secrecy in regard to high diplomatic statecraft about it. The House of Commons is ample judge of what is discreet and what is indiscreet, and it is a complete absurdity for others to treat us as children or for us to allow ourselves to be so treated in matters of such high international importance as those involving questions of peace and war. We have heard again and again during the last few days that great expression, "The prerogatives of the Crown have become the rights of the people." The prerogative of the Crown in peace and war is not great, and it cannot become the right or prerogative of the people. It is at present the right or prerogative of the Cabinet. It may be, as it was in Lord Palmerston's time, the right or prerogative of an exceptionally able Foreign Secretary, a man of very strong character, who did not interfere or bother himself with the affairs of the Cabinet, but determined to have foreign control and foreign policy in his own hands. It was not the right of the people in his time. It was still less the right of the people in Lord Salisbury's time. I hope the time will never come again, as it can if this system of secrecy is observed, when a Gentleman can get up as Foreign Secretary and deny on Monday the existence of a treaty, every word of which he had to admit was in existence on Thursday. I hope that the secrecy of this foreign policy will never go to such an extent as this again, that when two Cabinet Ministers on the Conservative side, Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby, resigned because they could not agree to a secret treaty in reference to Cyprus, they were not permitted at the
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  time to make full explanation, and when, three months later, they were permitted to do so, Lord Salisbury eompared their revelations which they were entitled to make in the interests of the people to the piecemeal revelations of Titus Oates.
  The idea is to keep foreign policy outside Parliamentary influences to have a caste of foreign secretaries who are to be very wise people indeed, but who are not to be interfered with by the House of Commons at all. I have determined as well as I can to break down that system, although it is a very strong task. Let us see how the system works as we have seen it in history. I congratulate the present Foreign Secretary on having a longer tenure of office in the House of Commons than any other Foreign Minister. He was appointed in 1905, and can it be believed that between that date and 1853 only for four years was our Foreign Secretary in this House, when, from 1859 to 1861, Earl Russell was Foreign Secretary until he was moved to the House of Lords where, he continued in office. Then there was as Foreign Secretary for a short time Lord Derby, the son of the Prime Minister, who was also called to the House of Lords, and these are the only two. I hope he has very much revised his judgment since. I heard the right hon. Gentleman say in 1907 with regret that it was only possible to be a Foreign Secretary in this House if there was a generous allowance of all parties to him and an absence of criticism. Lord Salisbury developed that spirit to a high degree. He united in himself a thing that Mr. Gladstone spoke of with the severest strictures, the position of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and there was no one whatever to control him. The Prime Minister has some control over the Foreign Secretary. The Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister has sometimes no control over himself. What did he do in this House? Those who are acquainted with the blazing indiscretions of Lord Salisbury will remember Lord Salisbury took precious good care, so far as he could, to avoid interrogations in this House in reference to foreign policy. He put in this House as Under-Secretaries Mr. Brodrick, now Lord Midleton, a gentleman who we all know could never have occupied that position merely on his merits, and then after Mr. Brodrick he put in his own son, the present Lord Salisbury, and they were both given directions not to answer supplementary questions. A Motion for the Adjournment was

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  moved to direct the attention to the House and the public to that. I only mention these instances to show how thoroughly foreign policy can be kept out of the purview of this House.
  Take another instance. It is quite possible in a Cabinet to have a Prime Minister like Lord Beaconsfield who had a foreign policy of his own, and who always, to do him justice, long before he was in any political office, exalted the Prerogative of the Crown. He said so far back as in, 1854, and he reiterated it in 1864, and he was in Opposition on both occasions, that he would be the last person in the world to say that peace and war could depend upon the assent or consent of this House, and that that was a matter for the Crown alone. He and his Cabinet from 1874 to 1878, at the close of this transaction called the Berlin Conference, had a complete dominating power over foreign policy, and again and again matters were kept from the cognisance of the House of Commons and he overawed his Cabinet. There is another delicate matter which does not arise now. Hon Gentlemen who take the trouble to read a most instructive book, "The Life of the Prince Consort," by Sir Theodore Martin, will find out problems which they could never understand in the Crimean War. A Minister would make a statement one day and the next day he would make a completely contradictory statement. These things arose from matters which could not have had any existence if the House of Common were put in full possession of all the secrets. They arose largely from the personal predilections of Ministers of the Crown or people behind the Crown. All these things are essential to be considered now in this matter of Imperial Federation, and in reference to arbitration. A pretty position in reference to this Treaty of Arbitration with America—and it could have been done—if this country had ratified that Treaty without knowing anything about it, or having any voice in it, while no treaty of that kind can pass in the United States without the consent of two-thirds of the Senate! Why should we suffer ourselves to be blindfolded? It is said that an irresponsible man in this House of Commons can get up and complicate matters, and that there are international confidences between Powers in international transactions which should not be divulged, and that it is of the greatest benefit for the peace and amity of people entering into these negotiations that inner negotiations should be
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  confined to as small a company of statesmen as possible. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] My hon. Friend has been ten years in this House. If he goes back three weeks he will find that from his own benches more questions were asked in reference to Germany—irritating, hateful questions, calculated to throw discord between two people than anything which could come out of any international transaction whatever.
  These things are not mere matters of theory, they are matters of fact. Let me give an example. Parliament in 1905 was prorogued on 12th August never to meet again. The Japanese Treaty, the supreme work of Lord Lansdowne's genius, was signed on 22nd August. As I am impartial I do not want that any Government should have any advantage or disadvantage over another. The Foreign Secretary knows that that is an old practice of mine. Take that treaty between this country and Russia in reference to Persia. It was ratified three days after Parliament rose, so that there could be no effective discussion on it. The treaty may have been good or bad, but we are old enough to take our own responsibilities into our own hands and to see what is right and what is good for the people at large. I say, with some slight earnestness, that it is not right and not respectful to ourselves that we should delegate to any hands, however capable, the management of foreign matters, especially in cases of peace and war and high international politics. The whole thing cannot be better summarised than in two or three pages in the introduction to a little book frequently quoted in Debates here, "Bagehot's English Constitution." Bagehot was not talking of present matters, because he died so far back as 1877. I thank the House for allowing me to speak on a matter on which I am afraid I am in a minority of one. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] I am delighted to hear that. I feel very strongly on the matter, and I feel that it intimately affects great questions of peace and war. My idea is this, that English working men, who can, if they choose, return Members for every constituency in this kingdom, except the universities and the City of London, are not foes, but friends, of peace, and the working classes abroad have the same feeling. I believe we shall do better if, instead of spending enormous sums for "Dreadnoughts," we spent the same sums in making our homes more cheerful and cultivated and more happy and bright. It is because I think

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  this that I have spoken on a matter which is dear to my heart, and which I hope may be taken up some day or other by others.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): I have not heard that any other Foreign Office subject is to be raised except that which the hon. Member (Mr. Swift MacNeill) has raised, and perhaps it would be better to take the opportunity of replying at this stage of the Debate, and then the House can go on to other subjects. The hon. Member has spoken very courteously as regards myself. I would like to refer, first of all, to the reference which he made to a speech of mine in 1907. I do not think I have ever read that speech since I made it, but I have a recollection of making it. The hon. Member says that in that speech I said it would be impossible to combine the office of Foreign Secretary with a seat in this House if foreign policy was much criticised, or made a party question, or if too many questions were asked. My recollection of the speech is that I was not making any complaint at all at the time. "When I made that speech I was recalling the fact that when I was first appointed Foreign Secretary, with a seat in this House, it was generally regarded as an experiment, because it was so long since any Foreign Secretary had combined the work of the Foreign Office with a seat in this House, and I said I was conscious that in making that experiment it could only be carried out if the House was indulgent, and so far from complaining of anything which had happened I was taking the opportunity of thanking the House for having always shown to me that forbearance and indulgence which made the experiment possible and which enabled me to continue to hold the office. I should not like it to be supposed that I was making any complaint when I made that speech. I do not think I went so far as the hon. Gentleman said in deprecating questions and criticism.
  I remember what happened originally when I first became Foreign Secretary was, that it was stated to the House, quite openly, that some indulgence would have to be shown in some way to me as Foreign Secretary, for I could not undertake to be present here four days a week to answer questions, and that some latitude must be allowed. There was no suggestion made that any limit should be put to the number of questions asked, but the suggestion was that there should be a limit to the number of days I should be here to answer
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  questions, and with the general consent of the House in 1906 it was agreed that I should be here on two days a week—Tuesday and Thursday—to answer questions. The House accepted that. There was only one condition made. It was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain), whose continued absence we all regret so much. He stated with what I thought great force that if questions were only to be answered by me on two days a week they should be placed on the Paper in a position which would secure that they would be reached, and since that time they have always been placed first on the Paper. I have always endeavoured to be in my place so that any questions put down on these days should be answered personally. On the other days the questions are answered as fully as I could do by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. I still think that if the House was to be very exacting in the amount of personal attendance required of the Foreign Secretary at the Debates in the House and so forth, it would be impossible to combine a position in the House of Commons with the duties of the Foreign Office. I would like to say again what I said in 1907, that I am very conscious that the House has shown forbearance, and has always indicated that it is conscious that the work of the Foreign Secretary is particularly incompatible, at any rate on some days of the week, with attendance in the House of Commons. So far from making any complaint, I would express my sense that the House has always been ready to make the work of the Foreign Secretary as easy and practicable as is compatible with fair criticism and the proper discussion of foreign questions which I have never deprecated, and which I know must take place.
  4.0 P.M.
  The hon. Member for South Donegal says that the House has not sufficient opportunity for discussion of foreign affairs. He says that it rests with the Government to make peace or war. The question of peace or war always has been in the control of the House of Commons. The House of Commons controls that in the same way as it controls other things. Having the power of the purse, the Government cannot go to war without a vote of money by the House of Commons. It is in the power of the House of Commons, especially as regards question of peace or war, to exercise control. Before a war takes place the

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  Government asked a vote of money. I take a case which happened in the days when Mr. Gladstone's Government was in power. When war was supposed to be imminent Mr. Gladstone had to come to the House of Commons and ask a Vote of Credit before war took place, and happily no war ever took place at that time. It is absolutely impossible for any Government to contemplate war unless it feels certain that when the moment comes the House of Commons would be prepared to endorse the policy of the Government by voting the supplies which were necessary and without which it would be absolutely out of the power of the Government to go to war at all.
  Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: As I understand that what occurs is this. It is quite possible that a Government might launch into war without the consent of this House. If the Government did launch into war, the right hon. Gentleman knows very well that it is not likely that the House of Commons would refuse supplies for the war. There was a case in which a war occurred, and the Minister at the time said "I cannot refuse supplies much as I deprecate the war." That also occurred, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, in regard to certain British Members during the Boer war.
  Sir E. GREY: It is always in the power of the House to discuss the foreign policy of the Government. War may arise on some occasions quite suddenly and require supplies from the House of Commons, and it is unthinkable that the Government should lead up to a war which it thinks contrary to the policy which the House of Commons is prepared to endorse. Then the question of the ratification of treaties would not really affect the question of peace or war. War is not made by treaties. War arises out of circumstances. It may arise quite suddenly. The question of the ratification of treaties is an entirely different point, and it opens a very grave constitutional question—much too serious and grave a question to be dealt with this afternoon on an occasion of this kind—much too serious a question to be dealt with by anybody but the head of the Government. It means a great change in our Constitution to lay down definitely that no treaties were to be ratified until they have first been submitted to and sanctioned by the House of Commons. I do not propose to discuss the merits of that this after-
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  noon. I only say it is a great constitutional change. I would make two observations on it. In the first place, being a great constitutional change, I should think we have enough of constitutional change already before the House of Commons to deal with in the present Session of Parliament. In the next place I would make the observation which I am rather surprised did not come from the hon. Member for Donegal. He complains of the lack of control of the House of Commons over foreign policy, and says that hon. Members on both sides have complained of the paucity of occasions on which foreign policy is discussed in the House.
  That is not the fault of the Government. The Foreign Affairs Vote can be asked for in the usual way whenever it is the general sense of the House to have discussion on Foreign Affairs. The real reason for lack of control, whether with regard to foreign policy or general policy or any great Imperial matter, is the congestion of business in the House of Commons; and if changes are to be discussed by which the House of Commons is to get more control of Imperial affairs generally, I think the more practicable, the most effective, and the most suitable time to discuss changes of that sort would be when the House of Commons has, by constitutional reform, relieved itself of an enormous mass of the local business, both for the United Kingdom and Ireland which at present is in its hands. It would then find for itself much more time to devote to Imperial questions. It is probable that debates on foreign affairs, as well as other Imperial affairs, would be much more frequent, and I believe that the greatest difficulty with regard to controlling foreign policy is not in the Constitution of the country, as it exists at the time, but in the fact that as long as the House of Commons remain without-some great measure of devolution, its business will be so congested that, with the best will in the world, they would never be able to acquire that control of Imperial policy which it can only acquire by frequent debates on important subjects.
  With regard to secrecy, I can only say as the hon. Member for Donegal no doubt knows, that there is a great deal in foreign affairs which cannot be disclosed. Secrecy there must be up to a certain point, because in foreign affairs we are dealing with the relations with other countries, with secrets which do not belong to us specially, but which we are sharing with some one or more foreign Powers. Therefore we cannot, especially at the early stages of

  541
  negotiations, take the House of Commons publicly into our confidence, because we should be disclosing to the world matters which concern not only ourselves, but the other Powers with whom we are in negotiation; and very often at an early stage of negotiations to make a premature disclosure would result in the other Power desiring to break off the negotiations altogether. If you ask anybody who has had experience of business, or has had anything to do with negotiations between employers and trade unions, to consider how if from the very beginning all the suggestions put forward by one side or the other, and concerning which one side or the other might be willing to make concessions if they received certain concession from the other were conducted in public, they will tell you that it would prejudice the chance of any successful result being arrived at. So it is with nations. But I quite agree that when an important change or anything of very great importance is going to be done, or there is anything that is likely to be a matter of great controversy it is desirable as far as possible to take the House of Commons into confidence. It was for that reason the other day, while speaking on the subject of an Arbitration Treaty, it being a new departure, I suggested that that was something which the House of Commons should have before them before it was finally ratified and concluded. So with these other matters. Negotiations are now proceeding about the Baghdad Railway. They are in a stage which is entirely tentative at the present time, and they are exactly in that stage where to make premature disclosures—say, for instance, when proposals were made which were unacceptable would prejudice the success of the negotiations, and would not promote a favourable result. Always at the beginning of negotiations of this kind one side or the other makes proposals which are not acceptable, but these are not intended to be final proposals, but if they were immediately disclosed and discussed, and seemed to be unacceptable, then the result would be exceedingly discouraging, and they would begin to be afraid on one side or the other that the concessions which had been made on one side or the other were unreasonable, and at once a harsher atmosphere would be brought into the whole of the negotiations which is unfavourable to a successful result. I do not in the least complain of the hon. Member for Donegal having raised this question, which I know is a favourite one with him, but I think he must realise
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  that in his speech there are certain difficulties which I was bound to point out to the House. Without deprecating the question he has raised I would say that the question of the ratification of treaties is one of far too great importance to be discussed on an occasion of this kind, and I would ask the House to bear in mind that it is when the House of Commons is really free to devote itself to the discussion of Imperial affairs that then and then only will it get control.

  CORONATION HOLIDAYS.
  Mr. LANSBURY: I wish to call attention to the manner in which the Coronation festivities have been arranged for the county of London. I want at the outset that it should be quite understood I am not objecting to holidays as holidays. I think there are far too few holidays in London, and it would be a very excellent thing if there were many more. Neither must I be supposed on this occasion to be in any way attacking the fact that you are to have a Coronation, nor to be saying anything derogatory of the King or any one connected with the Court. But I understand that the arrangements with regard to Bank Holidays are made by the Gentlemen who sit on the Front Bench. It appeared to me that they made those arrangements in utter ignorance of the social and industrial conditions prevailing in this Metropolis, and without any regard to the convenience of the great masses of workpeople who will be concerned. When I first asked a question on the subject, the Prime Minister answered me by saying that the matter must be left to the generous consideration of the employers. I then put a question to the President of the Board of Trade on the subject of payment of workpeople for holidays, and he referred me to the Reports in the library on the subject of Work and Wages. I consulted those volumes, and I find that there is not a single trade union which reports that workmen are paid Bank Holidays, or any other holidays, but the invariable rule is that foremen and managers and people of that kind are paid for holidays, but the workmen are not. It may not so much matter in places like the cotton districts of Lancashire, where husbands, wives, and children go to work, and take into the home £2, £3 and £4 a week. Two days' rest does not affect workers in that position so much as it does people who are earning very much lower wages. I take it for granted that everyone in the House has read Mr. Rowntree's

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  book and Charles Booth's book on Life and Labour in East London. If they have read those books, of course, they will understand the subject which I am raising, but if they have not they will not realise the reasons that prompt me to bring this matter before the House. If they have read these books, they will know that there are multitudes of people who live just on the border line of destitution, and a very much larger number of people who live right underneath the border line. In our country to-day, the loss of a day's wages means a very considerable thing indeed. I would point out that it means a loss, not merely to the man, the head of a family, but it means a loss to the women and children—to the women at any rate who are not directly represented in this House at all. The mere loss of a day's wages means weeks and weeks of struggle and toil on the part of women to make ends meet. This arrangement by which the Coronation is to take place on one day and a drive through London on the next day, and the two days selected being Thursday and Friday, means—and I put it to any man who is in business where there are works dependent on steel and that kind of thing—that those factories will not be opened on Saturday for the half-day. It would not pay the majority of employers to start and light up merely for the few hours on the Saturday. Therefore, the people who arranged these holidays must have arranged them without any thought at all as to their effect on the industrial classes in the community. It means three days' enforced holidays. No workmen have been consulted as to whether they want those holidays or not. No representatives, so far as I know, of the working classes have been consulted on the matter, and, worst of all, this House has not been consulted on the matter. I quite agree with the hon. Member for South Donegal (Mr. MacNeill) that the matter he has raised is of the utmost importance, and that the House should have a voice in the settlement of treaties; but here is a domestic matter, concerning the well-being of multitudes of people in the country, settled over our heads, and we have no voice in the matter at all. I brought this matter before the House for two reasons: first, that I hope whoever speaks for the Government on the subject will make some kind of appeal that at any rate in London there should be general concord amongst at least the best kind of employers that the men shall either have
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  the opportunity given to them of making up the time in the preceding week or the following week, or that those employers who can afford it will show their loyalty by paying the men the wages for the time that will be lost. I quite understand that at present that is probably all that can be done, but I do ask that it should be done, and that it should be done as publicly as it is possible for such a thing to be done. I also desire to ask that in future when we are going in for celebrations of this kind that some regard shall be had for the industrial conditions of great masses of the people. I very much want to congratulate the President of the Local Government Board on the fact that the children in London are going to be fed during Coronation week.

  VACCINATION.
  Dr. HILLIER: I desire to take this opportunity, more particularly as the President of the Local Government Board is present, to invite the attention of the House to the public health administration of the Board over which the right hon. Gentleman so ably presides. I may say at the outset that I have every admiration for the public health administration of that Department as a whole, and I know that there is no branch of his work in which the right hon. Gentleman takes a keener interest than in that of public health. I regret, however, to feel it my duty to call attention to what I venture to regard as the very unfortunate prejudice which appears to influence a certain branch of his public health administration. The subject to which I refer is that of vaccination and to the fact that exemptions from vaccination are growing at an alarming rate throughout the country. I have during the past few weeks addressed several somewhat searching questions to the right hon. Gentleman, and I take this opportunity of thanking him for the courtesy and completeness with which he has replied to these questions on this subject. Among them I received a reply with regard to the present number of exemptions from vaccination in the country. He told us that during the first half of last year there were 456,533 births and of those 110,851 had received exemption certificates. That amounts to nearly 25 per cent. of the newly born. I am aware that there are still those who believe that the world is flat, and it is possible, such is the variety of views held by Members of this House, that there are Members who entertain the opinion that vaccination is of no value as

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  a preventative or protection against smallpox. Indications have been manifested during the last few weeks which lead me to the conclusion that there are certainly some Members who hold that view. I do not propose to take up the time of the House by labouring that point, but I should like to call attention briefly to the small epidemic we have recently had in London. According to a written reply given me on 14th March, published in the OFFICIAL REPORT of that date, there had then been fifty-four cases; forty-one were vaccinated, of whom two died, and thirteen unvaccinated, of whom six died. That is, there were nearly 50 per cent. of fatal cases among the unvaccinated. To show that that is not a singular occurrence or a mere accident, I will quote a few lines with regard to the 10,403 cases treated in the Metropolitan Asylums Board Hospital at Homerton from 1873 to 1884. The deaths among the vaccinated were 10.5 per cent., and among the unvaccinated 43.4 per cent. In the epidemics investigated by the Royal Commission on Vaccination in the three towns of Dewsbury, Leicester, and Gloucester, where vaccination had been neglected, we find that, under ten years of age, among seventy-two vaccinated children attacked two died, or 2.7 per cent., whereas among 061 unvaccinated children attacked, 350 died, or 37.3 per cent.
  When I remind hon. Members that during the eighteenth century it was estimated that in every twenty-five years there were 15,000,000 deaths from smallpox, and when I point out the tremendous difference in the mortality among vaccinated and unvaccinated cases respectively, I think the House will admit that the question is one of profound national importance. It has been my lot to see small-pox come upon an unvaccinated community. I spent many of the earlier years of my life in South Africa, and one of my first experiences was an epidemic of small-pox among the native races, before vaccination had been introduced. I have also seen yearly in that country hundreds of natives come down from the interior pitted with small-pox, disfigured until there was scarcely a spot the size of a thumb-nail on their face which was not marked by the ravages of this disease. I cannot help recalling what occurred with this epidemic of which I was a witness. We had every facility for isolation, and we adopted methods of isolation. No doubt that was instrumental to a very large extent in checking the
  546
  course of this disease. But the disease was never stopped or stamped out in any quarter until we had got the whole of the native population of that particular locality vaccinated. There was one particularly interesting case, and that was the case of the Mahomedan races dwelling on the Cape Peninsula. The small-pox epidemic spread amongst them, and they died in great numbers. On religious grounds—they were conscientious objectors—they were not vaccinated. They believed it was an insult to the Deity to resort to such very human and artificial a device as vaccination. On this ground they refused to be vaccinated. But before that epidemic had run its course, when they saw the protective value of vaccination amongst the natives who were vaccinated, and among the few Mahomedans who were gradually persuaded into being vaccinated, Mahomedans came to the public vaccinators and prayed that they also might be afforded this protection, and so were vaccinated.
  I will give now one more experience later when I was on a scientific errand to Berlin. I had one or two interviews with Count von Porsodowski, who was then Minister in the German Empire corresponding to the office of our Home Secretary. He was very interested in the public health legislation and practice of this country. He remarked to me: "You have very weak laws with regard to vaccination in your country." I replied: "Yes, I fear we have." He responded: "To us Germans it is a matter of great surprise that you gave the world vaccination and yet you keep small-pox." [An HON. MEMBER: "HOW much?"] How much? 2,500 deaths in 1902. But I will come to that presently. What are the German statutes and what has been the German practice in the matter of this disease? Germany has a law which enjoins vaccination and re-vaccination, and they have practically stamped out small-pox in their country. I should like, however, briefly to refer to figures taken over a period of ten years—and I might quite well extend the comparison further—as to the deaths from small-pox in the German Empire and in the United Kingdom. I have here the total deaths from small-pox in the German Empire for the years 1808–1908, inclusive; that is a period of ten years. The population of the German Empire in 1008 was over 62,000,000. During the whole of those ten years—and I might go back another five or ten years—deaths from small-pox out of that enormous

  547
  population never in any one of those years reached the number of 100. Actually the highest number was sixty-five in the year 1008. What was our experience during the same decade? We had during the same decade in different years 600, 700 and 800 deaths out of a population of 44,000,000. In 1902 there were 2,545 deaths from small-pox in this country. I confess that, until I came to study the figures I was not aware of our national disgrace in this matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "That was before the exemptions took place."] I am dealing with the broader question first of all, although, as a matter of fact, the hon. Member is not quite accurate, the exemptions began in 1898, under the Conscientious Objectors Act, so he is not quite accurate. I will give one more final piece of evidence with regard to the position of affairs in Germany, because it was obtained by the Local Government Board for their own information and by one of their own officials, Dr. Bruce Law. In his report he says in Germany practically no steps are taken for providing hospitals such as we have here for the accommodation of smallpox patients. In London there are hospitals with beds capable of containing 2,000 or 3,000 patients. In the whole of Berlin they rely upon a dozen beds in a pavilion off one of the general hospitals, because they rely with absolute confidence upon their measures of vaccination and re-vaccination.
  I do not think I need labour this point any further, the effect of vaccination and re-vaccination, as a prevention of smallpox is that it reduces small-pox almost to a negligible quantity. I think that is sufficiently demonstrated by what I have adduced to the satisfaction of any ordinary rational being. Why is it then that such a prejudice has arisen, as I admit has risen in this country against it? There was a period when arm-to-arm vaccination was in vogue, a certain number of cases of septic arms arose, which did cause disease and even a few deaths, and which in certain quarters gave rise to a certain amount of prejudice against the whole practice; but that period has gone by. We have learned our lesson in these things, and to-day the application of calf-lymph supplied by the Local Government Board is accompanied with a minimum of risk, which is infinitesimal when compared with the risk of small-pox which anunvaccinated person runs in this country, and still more if he goes abroad, along the Mediterranean
  548
  or to any places on the African coast. This is a national question in which we are all deeply interested, and I am not endeavouring to make any party capital out of it. It is a national question in which we are all interested, and I cannot help looking forward to the national welfare in this country with some anxiety. It may be argued that, with all our modern appliances for the isolation of infectious diseases, and all our public health and sanitary developments, we can afford to run the risk of allowing the population to go unvaccinated. I have thought about this question a great deal, and I have had much experience in vaccinated and un-vaccinated communities, and I recognise that this is a risk which we cannot afford to run. Even supposing we succeed for a time in practically having no small-pox at all, it is always liable to be imported. Cases may arise amongst adolescents or adults, and if you could ensure the cases being taken forthwith to some place and isolated then there would be a strong primâ facie case for the other view which is held upon this question. But you cannot rely on your present system. Mistakes in diagnosis have arisen, and they always will arise. I can assure hon. Members that it is not such a simple thing at the first blush to determine whether a case is small-pox or chicken-pox. In a great many cases of this disease amongst the native races it is almost impossible to diagnose them, although it is not so difficult amongst the white races. Many of our doctors have had very few opportunities of ever seeing small-pox, and, therefore, they are not too familiar with it. You cannot rely upon the fact that no mistakes will be made, and you cannot rely upon this disease being brought to the notice of the health authorities the moment it arises. The danger is very much increased in this way, because you now have 25 per cent. of your children unvaccinated, and that is an under-estimate rather than an over-estimate. You have an increasing number of unvaccinated children in this country. The time will come when these infants will become adolescents and adults, and the danger of an epidemic amongst the community will be greater in that case than when it occurs in the case of children taken ill at home. When an adolescent or an adult going to his daily work contracts this disease there is a good chance of his continuing at his work and infecting, perhaps, another twelve or twenty people before the disease is noticed.

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  What is the remedy which we can, as reasonable and moderate politicians and Members of this House, with some sense of public responsibility, urge upon the Local Government Board? I am not going to propose the re-enactment of compulsory vaccination. That may or may not be expedient, and the time may come when, through a national disaster, we may be compelled to resort to it again. I sincerely hope that time will not come. As a matter of practical politics I do not suggest the re-enactment of compulsory vaccination. What I ask is are we, under the existing conditions and under the existing law doing our best in the matter. Compulsory vaccination is practically gone, but it should be borne in mind that the State still interferes in this matter, and still keeps up a staff of vaccination officers and public vaccinators, supplies lymph, and sends certain forms notifying parents that their children if not vaccinated may be vaccinated. It amounts to little more than that, and that is the point on which I desire to criticise the administration of this portion of our Public Health administration at the present time. After the registration of a child, the parent is furnished with what is known as Certificate A, calling his attention to the fact that the child must either be vaccinated and a certificate furnished to that effect, or a certificate of conscientious objection furnished. It is with regard to these forms I desire to enter a respectful protest. Take the last form which is sent to the child's parent. It is not long, and I will read it:—
  "I hereby give you notice that on a certain day your child will be four months old, and that, unless within seven days from that date I shall have received from you or from the Public Vaccinator a certificate of the successful vaccination of the said child, or a statutory declaration made under Section I of the Vaccination Act, 1907, within four months of the birth of the child or some other legal excuse for the non-vaccination of the child, it will be my duty to notify the case to the Public Vaccinator, who will then in due course visit the child's home and offer to vaccinate the child."
  And so on. This is going a bit too far. We have had the conscientious objector going before a magistrate and explaining he has a conscientious objection to vaccination and with some difficulty obtaining a certificate of exemption, now exemption is made not only extremely simple, but is so brought before the notice of the average working-class householder as to lead him to suppose vaccination is really a perfectly superfluous operation, and that it is merely a choice between one bit of paper and another. What happens?
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  The mother of the child turns to her neighbour and says, "What did you do?" She says, "Oh, I got the other certificate, the certificate of exemption." "How is the baby?" "Going strong; he has not had small-pox." "Then I shall follow the same plan." I can quite understand that appealing to the lady householder with several children, but it does not meet the case. There is a danger which is concealed from these people. Hon. Members who are candid cannot deny that this danger still lurks and exists, and will become an increasing danger as you get an increasingly unvaccinatcd community, because it is the vaccinated community which confers a certain degree of protection on the unvaccinatcd community by making the spread of small-pox less liable to occur than it otherwise would be. It is the policy of the State to interfere in this matter. Let our interference be a rational and intelligent one, and to make it that I venture to think—and the opinion is held by a large number of Medical Officers of Health—we should, with the first certificate sent to the parents, also send a circular pointing out in moderate terms the value of vaccination as a means of protection against small-pox, and the fact that after many years of apparent quiesence small-pox has once more appeared in this country, and already cost several lives, advising parents to take advantage of the facilities offered them, and reassuring them further about the dangers with regard to lymph in so far as it is most carefully obtained and provided by the Local Government Board. Some circular in these terms would be converting an irrational into a rational procedure.
  Mr. GUINNESS: I should like to associate myself with the remarks of the last speaker. In my own Constituency, a few years ago, we had an experience not only of the danger to health from an outbreak of small-pox, but of the very great loss and inconvenience caused by the panic which resulted. I cannot help thinking that the Circular sent out by the President of the Local Government Board last January is likely to increase the danger. It is really astonishing that so many as 75 per cent. are still vaccinated. Under the Act of 1898 it was necessary to satisfy the magistrates that there was a really conscientious objection to vaccination, but the present Government, in their second year of office, passed a measure which substituted for that regulation a mere declaration, causing no trouble

  551
  at all, before the Commissioner of Oaths. The notice requiring vaccination not only suggests facilities for making this declaration, but it actually gives the declaration ready to be filled up. When that declaration is not filled up Form Q is served, and that ultimatum suggests the alternative of a statutory declaration or some other legal form of excuse. I do not know what that means? Yet when the ultimatum is not carried out you get the climax—the public vaccinator will come and offer to vaccinate the child. My own opinion is that an unvaccinated person is a danger not only to himself but to the whole community. We cannot go back on the policy pursued for many years past and abolish the compulsion of vaccination, but I do suggest that the Local Government Board should not encourage people to avoid vaccination. An ordinary parent a few years ago know that vaccination was compulsory: he now naturally thinks that it is no longer compulsory because those who are in a position to judge hold that it is either dangerous or inadvisable. Naturally, it follows, he will avoid the suffering of the child, or the trouble to the mother in looking after it. At the present time the parent has no means of forming a really sound opinion on the matter. The fact remains that the State approves of vaccination—even the two dissentient members of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, 1889, advocated that the State should pay for vaccination. I do not think it is realised at the present time that eleven out of thirteen members of the Royal Commission reported that in their opinion vaccination did diminish the liability to attacks of small-pox, and that while it might not ensure immunity from the disease it would only be contracted in a milder form. I know in my own Constituency certain people think that vaccination propagates certain diseases, but the Royal Commission reported that dangers of that kind were insignificant, and were decreasing. In those days, twenty years ago, calf lymph was not the invariable means of vaccination, and arm-to-arm treatment also took place; at the present time glycerinated calf lymph is the means of vaccination, and, of course, these diseases, not being found in calves, cannot be transferred to human beings by vaccination. I think that is a matter which ought to be put before parents by means of a circular sent out at the same time as the notice requiring vaccination. The same circular ought to contain a few well
  552
  authenticated brief statistics, such as those brought forward by the Royal Commission, that before vaccination one-twelfth of mankind owed their deaths to small-pox, and before the introduction of this preventive means only one man in fourteen in a large town in England had not had this complaint. It would also be very conclusive, I think, if they showed the experience of other countries, where vaccination has only been made compulsory comparatively recently, and where it is conclusively shown that the decrease of small-pox is not due to improved sanitary conditions. Take the vaccination figures in regard to Prussia, where nine years previous to the Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1874 the number of deaths per million of the population was 790 on an annual average, and in the following nine years the death rate dropped from 790 to only twenty-three, and the last nine years of which I have been able to get the figures it is down to a little over 1 per million. I think a few facts of that kind might easily be compiled by the Local Government Board and put before the people.
  Mr. CHANCELLOR: Has there been any improvement in sanitation?
  Mr. GUINNESS: There has been improvement in sanitation, but not in consequence of this Act of 1874 making vaccination compulsory.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Is it in order to discuss the general merits of compulsory vaccination on this Motion?
  Mr. SPEAKER: I do not see any objection to it.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Is not the matter a question of legislation?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member does not suggest that we should go back to it. He is only discussing the advantages of it.
  Mr. GUINNESS: I do not want to go into the question of compulsory vaccination, but I should like to go into the question of the hon. Member for Haggerston (Mr. Chancellor) in regard to the improved sanitation making smallpox less prevalent.
  Mr. CHANCELLOR: What was the drop?
  Mr. GUINNESS: The drop was from 790 per million in the first nine years to 23 in the second.
  Mr. CHANCELLOR: And in the following nine years?
  Mr. GUINNESS: In the following and last nine years it dropped to a little over 1 per cent. At present it is below 1 per cent. In England we have not the same conclusive evidence that they have in Germany, but we must also remember that there are other infectious diseases, such as measles and chicken-pox, chiefly found in children, which ought to have decreased in the same degree as small-pox if the improvement in the case of that disease is due to improved methods of sanitation, because the conditions of infection are entirely alike, and if you do not find a decrease in these other diseases propagated in the same way owing to improved methods of sanitation, you may be pretty well justified in arguing that it is not improved methods of sanitation which have decreased the incidence of small-pox. Medical inquiry has established cycles of small-pox, and I believe the cycle is something over thirty years, and, according to the figures which I have seen, the next epidemic is most likely to take place this ensuing autumn—about October. I think the Government has a great responsibility in this matter, and I would urge upon the right hon. Gentleman no longer to encourage people to avoid vaccination but to take some steps to educate parents before it is too late as to the real advantages of this preventive measure and to take steps to prevent what I think is otherwise an inevitable recurrence of the scourge which, fortunately for us, the present generation have almost forgotten.
  Mr. BURNS: The hon. Member (Dr. Hillier) paid the Local Government Board a well-deserved compliment for the administration of several branches of public health. I think he might have gone further and said that in no country in the world had there been such a reduction in the general death-rate, such a diminuation of infant mortality, and such an abatement of the scourge of tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, and many other diseases. I am very much obliged to a medical man paying a compliment to our Department which could be confirmed by facts and figures. But he descended from the general, which was complimentary, to the particular, which was not quite so complimentary. He tried to prove that the eulogy which was due to the Local Government Board in the combating of other diseases was not equally due in the combating of small-pox, but I failed to catch any statistical justification for the distinction between small-pox and the other
  554
  diseases to which he might properly have referred in his previous remarks. My hon. Friend, with the ingenuity of his distinguished profession, took us to India, South Africa, and the Malay Peninsula.
  Dr. HILLIER: I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. I was referring to native subjects in South Africa and not in India, and to the Malay population of the Cape Peninsula, who are Mahomedans.
  Mr. BURNS: The hon. Gentleman was giving English application to his observations. He was trying to make our flesh creep by illustrations and by facts and figures which did not and could not apply to the sanitary conditions and social circumstances that prevail in this country at present. I propose very briefly to inform the hon. Member and the House that I decline to allow my flesh to creep in presence of the statement made by the hon. Member. The epidemic which the hon. Gentleman referred to as justifying his criticism of the administration of the Vaccination Acts in this country is after all not the serious thing which one would judge from the general tone of his speech. The facts are these. We have had in the East End of London fifty-eight cases of small-pox. Of these forty-two were vaccinated and two died. There were sixteen unvaccinated and seven died. I decline to deduce anything either for or against vaccination from such figures relating to a small epidemic of this kind. I decline to deduce anything like the panic suggestion underlying but not brought to the surface of the hon. Member's speech to the extent which I would have expected.
  Mr. CHANCELLOR: How many were too young to be vaccinated?
  Mr. BURNS: I am going to leave the facts as I have stated them. Until we get complete and final figures in regard to ages, the incidence of the disease, re-vaccinations, and so forth, I think it would be premature and unfair to either side in this controversy to do other than state the simple facts. But if I were not a Minister I would retort on these simple facts that I doubt if we would have had a single death, vaccinated or un-vaccinated, had it not been that there was a mis-diagnosis of a case of small-pox as chicken pox. Those who run may read, and they may deduce from that whatever they like. I am not at all alarmed by the comparison made with Germany. My hon. Friend made a very fair point, if he will allow me to say so, when he referred

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  to the statement of the German who said to him: "Britain has given the world vaccination and kept smallpox." That is a statement of a broad and sweeping kind, hut it has got to be qualified by existing facts. What are the facts? The hon. Member must not go back into history and select the purple patches to support his line of argument. I entertain the respect for figures tempered by fact, which every responsible man ought: to have. Just as in recent years exemptions have gone up from four per cent. to thirty per cent. so deaths from smallpox have declined. I am not going to make the mistake which was made twenty years ago. Twenty years ago a gentleman in a public place pointed grandiloquently to a series of diagrams, which were all wrong, and said to me: "I ask the hon. Member to remember that figures never lie." My retort, and it was effective for the moment, was "No, but liars sometimes figure."
  Dr. HILLIER: I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman means that to apply to me?
  Mr. BURNS: No. There is no Member in this House to whom I would be less willing to apply such a remark than to the hon. Member. The occasion referred to was at a meeting of the Statistical Society, and the person in question was a Member of the other House, and my view of his remarks on that particular occasion would have been shared by the hon. Member had he been there. The facts are these. I am right in giving these figures with regard to London. During the time that I have had the honour of being at the Local Government Board the following have been the deaths from smallpox in a city of 4,500,000 inhabitants. 1906 no death. 1907 no death. 1908 no death. 1909 two deaths. 1910 no death. So that in five years there were only two deaths from small-pox in a city of 4,500,000 people. Not even Germany or Berlin can transcend those figures, due to the increasing cleanliness, increasing sobriety and greater attention paid both by the community and individuals to removing all causes of smallpox, and nearly every other disease.
  Dr. HILLIER: Measles?
  Mr. BURNS: The hon. Member is trying to get me off the rails of smallpox by talking about measles. Even there I decline to be moved, because in the last six months, when lots of people have been
  556
  panic-stricken about rat plague, Asiatic plague, small-pox and measles in London, we at the Local Government Board stuck to our job. We have hunted measles like sleuth-hounds. The result is a general decrease. My hon. Friends suggest that we should in some respects alter Form Q.
  Dr. HILLIER: Certificate A.
  Mr. BURNS: But my hon. Friend said he would not propose any re-enactment of compulsory vaccination. If he is consistent and logical he ought to do so. He said it would not be practical politics. Then he asked, were we doing our best under the existing law to combat smallpox? The figures I have adduced with regard to London—and similar figures can be adduced with regard to England and Wales—have proved that we are. The other suggestion is that we have given a definite indication to parents to exempt themselves by our circular of 28th January, 1910. I would like to meet my hon. Friend, the Member from one of the Suffolk divisions (Mr. Walter Guinness), during the Easter holidays and show him how far we have altered the Form.
  Mr. GUINNESS: I meant to make it clear that you have altered the form that was covered by the circular.
  Mr. BURNS: These things are never made clear when a Government Department is being attacked. The clearness comes from interpolation, but it does not improve matters so far as the actual facts are concerned. The only thing we have done is this: The form was altered because a certain misapprehension had to be removed, and the circular of 28th January, 1910, was simply to make it clear that the exemption declaration must, under the law as it now is, be made within four months of the birth of the child instead of within four months and seven days. That is the only thing the Government has done recently, and it is the only justification for the criticism to which we have been subjected. With the exception of this form, we have practically adhered to the prescribed forms that were left to us as a heritage of vaccination legislation by the protagonist of prophylactics, the right hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Henry Chaplin), who was my predecessor some years ago in this office. Beyond adopting the form, a simple change under the existing law, nothing has been done, and it is a fact that exemptions have not increased through an alteration of the law. Mortality has diminished.

  557
  I draw no inference from that fact; but for the first time in the four years since the Act was altered, and not until now, have we heard the policy of the Local Government Board adversely criticised in regard to the administration of this particular code of sanitary laws. After the simple explanation I have given as to the reason why the instruction was altered in January, 1910, and the new Form Q was adapted to the change of the law in 1907, it seems to me that I have nothing further to add except that I cannot accept the hon. Member's suggestion that we should supply on Form A or any other form a few simple and elementary statistics on the subject of vaccination. I have been twenty years a Member of this House, and if there is one subject on which I should be disinclined to quote statistics from any source or any section, it is on the thorny subject of vaccination. Instead of listening to the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman, it seems to me that what we have to do, as the Public Health Department, is to hunt disease of all kinds and descriptions, in every shape and form, and with all the means at our disposal. We have achieved such success as to warrant the compliment, generous and full, which my hon. Friend paid to me and my Department. Instead of diverting my energies in the direction that hon. Members have suggested, they will, perhaps, allow me to go on with the work, devoting to it my brains; and, if it be continued, I believe that it will well deserve at the end of two or three years hence even greater credit than has been given this afternoon. I believe that all this fear and panic, all this talk about plague and small-pox is due to misconception and misapprehension of social facts. These diseases are in a very different position from what they were ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, and it is a creditable and a happy circumstance that I, as Minister of Health for England and Wales, am enabled to state that in regard to the administration of public health no other country is comparable to ours, and I am pleased to have heard such hearty recognition of our efforts from the different speakers this afternoon.
  Mr. H. W. FORSTER: The right hon. Gentleman said this was the first time the administration of the Vaccination Acts had been criticised. If he never suffers from criticism more than he has to-day he has not much to complain of. The right
  558
  hon. Gentleman himself has acknowledged the fairness with which the subject was brought before the House. I am reluctant to point out that the right hon. Gentleman has not answered the simple question put to him by my two hon. Friends as to whether he would take steps, the very inoffensive steps that they urged upon him, with a view to influencing the opinion of parents as to the desirability of having their children vaccinated. The right hon. Gentleman commented on statements they had made and figures they had quoted, and referred to every portion of their speeches except that portion, which invited him to take some slight step in the direction suggested. I hope we may yet in this Debate have an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that he is going to carry out the wishes of my two hon. Friends. In criticising the speech of my hon. Friend who brought this matter forward the right hon. Gentleman says that he failed to produce any statistical evidence of failure, that is the failure of his administration. The right hon. Gentle-man and the House should bear in mind that the steps in the direction of making exemption orders have been taken so lately in the administration of the Local Government Board by the right hon. Gentleman himself that there has been no time to procure any statistical evidence. Therefore, I think the right hon. Gentleman cannot fairly blame my hon. Friend for not having supported his case by statistical evidence drawn from the last few years. My hon. Friend referred to the growth in exemption from vaccination which has taken place within the last few years. It is owing to that growth of exemption that the fears entertained by my hon. Friend are grounded, and, as I think, well grounded. Let me remind the right hon. Gentleman he did not remind the House of the great growth in exemption which has taken place within the last five years.
  Mr. BURNS: Oh, yes, I said that in the period of mortality from small-pox referred to that exemption had grown from four to thirty per cent.
  Mr. H. W. FORSTER: The right hon. Gentleman, only a few days ago, in the House, admitted that in some localities the exemptions exceeded fifty per cent. That is the danger with which we are confronted when we consider whether or not the administration of the right hon. Gentleman is everything that could be desired in the matter of vaccination. The

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  hon. Member for Haggerston (Mr. Chancellor) suggested that the great decrease in the number of deaths from small-pox was, at any rate, very largely due to improved sanitation. He asked my hon. Friend if he would take German figures for the year before 1874 and the year after 1874 so as to show if my hon. Friend's contention was well-founded—namely, that the great improvement in this matter was due to the vaccination law which the Prussian Government had passed. I happen to have figures which will, I hope, make the point clear to the hon. Gentleman who asked for them. They are the deaths from small-pox per million of the population before 1874 for nine years.
  Mr. CHANCELLOR: I want the year before.
  Mr. FORSTER: I will give several years. The year before 1874 there were 95 deaths per million; the year before that, 357; the year before that, 2,624; the year before that, 2,432; and so on. There were 95 deaths per million the year before, 36 the year after; 31 the year after that; then 3, 7, 13, 26, 36, 20, 14, 14, 5, 5, 3, 5, 1, 1, 3, 4, 3, 8. I think these figures bear not unfavourable comparison with the excellent figures which the right hon. Gentleman was able to quote in regard to London itself. The hon. Member will see that at any rate, so far as the figures go, they bear out the contention of my hon. Friend, that a vast improvement took place after the passage of the Prussian Law.
  Mr. CHANCELLOR: The hon. Member said nothing about the improvement from over 2,000 down to 95 which took place before.
  Mr. CHARLES DUNCAN: The hon. Member pointed out that the year before the Act was put into operation the figures had fallen from over 2,000 to 95. He has not accounted for that at all.
  Mr. FORSTER: That is a drop in one year. Even the most embittered partisan of anti-vaccination must admit that visitations of small-pox vary in their intensity. Undoubtedly, some are far more serious in their effects than others, and it is obviously impossible to judge merely from the figures alone as to the nature of a particular visitation. What I was offering to the hon. Gentleman was statistical proof, for which he asked, that my hon. Friend's contention was well founded.
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  My hon. Friend quoted some figures which went far to show the value of vaccination and re-vaccination in the case of a serious outbreak of small-pox. I wish to quote one other figure of great significance, which I think must convince anybody who approaches the consideration of this question with an impartial mind of the value of vaccination and re-vaccination. A special committee was appointed by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, who control the Small-pox Hospitals of London, to collect statistics relating to the great small-pox epidemic of 1870 and 1872. This is what they reported:—
  "The necessity of re-vaccination when the protective power of primary vaccination has to a large extent passed away, cannot be too strongly urged. No greater argument to prove the efficacy of this precantion could he adduced titan the fact that out of upwards of 14,800 cases received into the hospitals, only four well authenticated cases were treated in which re-vaccination had been properly performed, and those were light cases."
  Out of nearly 15,000 cases there were only four cases of people who had been properly re-vaccinated. I could quote other figures to bear out the contention, which can only be denied with difficulty, that re-vaccination is of the greatest possible value. In face of figures such as these, it is perfectly idle for any hon. Member to get up in this House and to say that there is no real value in vaccination and re-vaccination. The point which I wish to make becomes clear from the figures that the President of the Local Government Board gave to the House only a few months ago in connection with the recent epidemic in London, which I hope has now come to an end. The figures that the right hon. Gentleman gave—and I acknowledge the fairness with which he gave them—showed that in cases of smallpox where re-vaccination had taken place the deaths were roughly 1 in 20, and where no re-vaccination had taken place the deaths were nearly 1 in 2.
  These are very significant figures; they prove the danger of neglecting the great safeguard of vaccination. The right hon. Gentleman told us that there were 40 diagnoses. But 40 diagnoses might presage a most serious outbreak, instead of an epidemic of a moderate character. The risk is there all the time, and it is to obviate that risk that we invite the right hon. Gentleman to issue with Certificate A a notice to parents directing their attention to the true value of vaccination as a method of prevention of small-pox. Can we be accused of asking anything unreasonable when we invite the right hon. Gentleman to take that step? We are not asking him

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  to strain the law, or go back from the position which has been adopted by successive Presidents of the Local Government Board We are not asking him to do anything further than this: to give to poor and uneducated parents some meed of advice as to the safety to be found in vaccination. I remember perfectly well, just as many other Members of the House do, the beginning, or at any rate the comparatively early stages, of the movement against vaccination. I have myself seen some of the horrors of it. I regret most deeply, as all men who take the slightest interest in this question must, that the practice of arm-to-arm vaccination ever took place. It was owing to the practice of arm-to-arm vaccination that this prejudice was really created, and if pure calf-lymph was used from the beginning there would be no prejudice against vaccination at the present time. We recognise that we cannot go back at any rate, until some great calamity, which calamity, I hope, never will happen, upon the attitude a large body of our people have adopted towards vaccination, but what we can do is to give the people a chance of learning from the lips of the Local Government Board, and from the lips of their officers, that there is value in vaccination, and that is all we ask to have done at the present time. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman may before very long be able to give us assurances that such suggestions will be offered by him.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: I should like to congratulate the hon. Gentleman who introduced this question upon the wisdom, moderation, and scientific precision with which he analysed the facts. Small-pox is bound to die out. It may die by improved sanitation, which sweeps away germs on the one hand and strengthens the individual on the other, or it may die out by acquired immunity in the individual or by acquired immunity in the race. But there can be no doubt whatever of the efficacy of vaccination as a preventative. The facts are proved up to the hilt, and if there was a distribution of germs in this Chamber, or a prospect of such, there is not a Member who knew the facts but would hurry off to be vaccinated. There are some people who are foolhardy enough to run the risk, but it is impossible to go into the facts, which have been accumulated for generations, and to deny the efficiency of vaccination as a preventative against small-pox.
  The only question is: Have we arrived at such a degree of sanitation that we can
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  afford to dispense with that preventative? If it is possible to have your slums so clarified, and your drainage so well done, and the general well-being of your community so efficient as to provide a fighting force sufficient to enable you to run the risk of dispensing with an effective remedy such as vaccination, well and good. The problem to-day is not whether vaccination is effective. That matter is removed beyond the region of disputation, and those who examine the facts cannot possibly come to any other conclusion than that vaccination is so effective that it would be the moral duty of every father of a child to see it protected from the danger of small-pox, if that danger was in its vicinity, and that it would be the duty of the State to ignore the claim of the conscientious objector and to say it could not allow an individual to be a centre of infection and of danger of epidemic to the whole community. The facts are so conclusive that the only concession we can make is that if the sanitary conditions are such as to reduce the danger and to ensure the absence of germs, the time will come when we can dispense with vaccination altogether. The question is has that time now arrived? No one can go through the slums of this great city and conclude that that time has arrived. The danger exists to-day in great centres like London and Glasgow, and conditions prevail which would make an epidemic of small-pox an alarming affair. The right hon. Gentleman trusts to sanitary provisions to keep the germs of small-pox out. This is a very difficult task when we have such an enormous congestion of population in our slums, which must become infected centres if the germs of small-pox gain access. We are resting in a fool's paradise in this matter, because by isolation and other favourable conditions there has been no distribution of the germs. If infection started in London it would be the duty of the Local Government Board to insist upon vaccination as a preventive to small-pox. I am prepared for the time to arrive when vaccination can be dispensed with, but the time has not yet arrived when we can allow this important weapon in our attack upon zymotic diseases to be laid aside.

  ARMY ADMINISTRATION.
  Colonel YATE: I wish to draw attention to one or two matters connected with Army administration. Not long ago I brought to the notice of the War Office the question of the deduction of officers' pay in regard to regimental bands, and the reply I

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  received was that a band is maintained by the voluntary subscriptions of officers and by a contribution from public funds. I was told that the question of assisting the officers in the upkeep of the band by an increased grant had been fully considered, and that there is no intention of making any change. I will not now enter into the question of the voluntary subscriptions of the officers, although there are different opinions upon that point. When we are talking of assisting officers in the upkeep of a band I think we ought to ask, is not a band a regular part of the regiment? The members of the band are all enlisted men, and surely the upkeep of the band should be borne by the Government, and by the State alone. This question of bands applies to all the Regular regiments as well as the Territorial regiments, and I would invite the Under-Secretary for War to consider this important question. We have heard in various discussions of other matters in regard to which officers have been asked to bear charges which ought legitimately to be borne by the Government. Only the other day we had the question raised of providing range finders for the Territorial battalion, and we were told that one range finder is supplied per battalion, and that it was not known to what extent this was supplemented by private purchases. Why should this be supplemented by private purchases at all? I invite the War Office to give special consideration to these points. The spirit shown by officers throughout the Service in maintaining the efficiency of their regiments is to be praised in every possible way, but it should not be drawn upon too far, and I think all these charges should be borne by the State. There are many minor expenses to which officers are put. Soldiers have furniture provided for their barracks, but no furniture is provided for the officers' quarters. Married officers are put to a great deal of expense owing to no married quarters being provided in those places where regiments are stationed. They have to rent houses for their wives and families, sometimes having to take them on considerable leases. They are then moved on, and that house is left on their hands. I heard of a case the other day where an officer had three houses on his hands at the same time, owing to his constant removal. Then there is the question of sashes. I myself have had no less than three sashes. I commenced with a red sash round the shoulders, next I had to get a gold and red sash for the shoulders,
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  then a red sash for the waist, and I suppose if I had still been in the Service I should have had to have had the new sash recently ordered. All these things show a want of consideration which I trust will be altered in future. Take the case of a married subaltern on 6s. 6d. a day, which, after all, is the pay of a good old' busdriver. He is constantly ordered off to some new quarter, and he cannot afford to have all these various houses on his hands. What is the cause of the desire among officers to become Adjutants in the Territorial Force? Is it not that they may have a settled home for three or four years? I would beg the Government as far as possible before next year's Estimates are issued to see whether greater consideration cannot be given to officers in these small matters.
  Colonel SEELY: I will deal briefly with the points of which my hon. and gallant Friend kindly gave me notice, but I would point out that, in regard to some of them, it is too late now to provide out of public funds for services in the direction indicated. With regard to bands it is quite true that there is a special subscription in case of Reserve Officers. I fully admit the value of the band, but you cannot expect the State to keep it up at the very high standard which in some cases is deemed desirable. A lot of money is provided for the upkeep of bands, but it is thought that the officers should add to the fund in order to secure a better band. With regard to training grounds, I do not know of any case in which an officer has been called upon to find money out of his own pocket in order to provide such a ground. If there should be such a case I should be glad to have the particulars. I think it would be most improper for any such charge to be imposed upon any officer. As to range-finders it is true that in the Territorial Force there is only one to each batalion, but in the Regular Forces they are adopting a new one—the mekometer—and consequently there will be more range-finders available for distribution to the Territorial Forces, and I trust it will not be necessary in the future for officers to buy range-finders. It is clearly an unjustifiable expense to be put upon them.
  The question as to married quarters is more difficult. There are two classes of officers—those who are entitled to quarters and those who are not so entitled. The difficulty lie" with those who are not entitled, and it is no doubt a great hardship in a few cases, such as Salisbury Plain,

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  where there are no married quarters and no civilian houses available. But we cannot admit that it is our duty to provide quarters for all married officers. It is true that if an officer is quartered in a place far removed from civilian lodgings he is put to great expense. We are considering how far we can adopt a system by which houses may be built by contractors and leased to officers. But there is some difficulty in regard to that, because houses so built might be much more expensive than the houses available at a greater distance. The next point is as to the expense to which officers are put by transfers. It is quite true the inconvenience may be minimised by a careful arrangement which avoids unnecessary movements, and, indeed, there has been a great improvement in that respect during the past few years. I can promise my hon. and gallant Friend that every effort will be made to avoid inflicting expense upon officers by too frequent removals from one place to another. This is a question which I have discussed with the Secretary of State, who fully sympathises with the idea that an officer should not be debarred the Service simply because he has not considerable private means. It is clear we have not yet arrived at finality in this matter, and something should be done to make it easier for a poor man to be an officer in the Army. The Secretary of State has told me that he proposes to take the most expert advice on this point with a view to meeting admitted grievances and to make it more easy for officers to live upon their pay.
  Mr. ROWLAND HUNT: The President of the Local Government Board said it was the business of his Department to deal with disease wherever it could be found, and I wish to prevent the landing in this country of a disease of the eyes which is brought in by aliens. A very serious statement was made a few days ago by Dr. Eason, the senior ophthalmic surgeon of Guy's Hospital. He said that a great deal of the eye disease in this country was due to trachoma, and he also said that more than 50 per cent. of it last year was most distinctly preventible. He said that this disease of trachoma was brought in owing to alien immigration, and he further stated that once the men got into this country there were no means of getting them out, and they remained in the East End and spread the disease among our own people until our hospitals cured them sufficiently for them to go to the Western
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  hemisphere. He said that he was very sorry that the detections of cases of trachoma showed a decrease, and that in one year they were not more than a quarter of those in the preceding year. He could not think that that was due to the decrease in the number of aliens or the improvement of their health, but he was afraid it was attributable to some relaxation of the examination by officials in this country. I believe that this doctor is a great authority on the eye, and he thinks, and it certainly does appear, that the regulations in regard to aliens coming into this country have been relaxed, and, as a consequence, they have come in amongst our own people and spread this disease of trachoma, which is a very serious one.
  I think, therefore, that the Under-Secretary to the Home Office who has the management of the Aliens Act is really very much to blame in this matter. I might say that he is probably responsible for some people being afflicted with blindness here because of his relaxation of the restrictions imposed, or, at all events, which could be imposed under the Aliens Act if it was properly administered. I think it is very hard on the people of this country that they should have diseases imported, and that that is allowed to take place because the Aliens Act is not strictly enforced. It is a different question from small-pox, because there is no doubt that it is the alien who brings it to this country. We are very particular, we have heard, about introducing diseases of animals into this country, and it really means that we give more consideration to the health of animals than of our own people. Surely if there was a country where animals suffered from a known disease like foot-and-mouth, animals would be prevented altogether from being imported from that country. In the case of countries where it is known they suffer very severely from trachoma, you not only do not increase but you so relax the restrictions on their coming to this country that they get in here, and they give our people a terrible disease which in many cases causes total blindness. As the Department are great hunters of disease, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will, if he can, as soon as possible, turn his attention to this question. If my information is correct, it is a thing which wants doing very badly indeed, because I have heard for many years now that the aliens did bring a disease into this country which was hardly known here. I hope the right hon. Gentleman

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  will do his very best to keep aliens out of this country who are suffering from this very severe disease of the eye.

  POLICE ADMINISTRATION (IRELAND).
  Dr. ESMONDE: I wish to bring forward a question in connection with the Irish police. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction in Ireland at present with some Government Departments. I understand in my Constituency at present the police are being used not as police but as bailiffs, and are being put into houses to take charge until the rent is paid. This is a question which must raise some considerable trouble and difficulty if something is not done to stop the police in Ireland acting as bailiffs. The town tenants in Ireland have suffered a great many grievances in the past, and many of them are now coming to a head, and it is very likely indeed that there may be a considerable agitation and considerable excitement in connection with the town tenants' movement in Ireland. I think it is most unfair to the people concerned that officials of the Government, in this case the police, should be brought in and used for work which they were never intended for. I think the police are perhaps the last people who ought to be used as ordinary bailiffs, and I hope some steps will be taken by the Irish Government to see that they do not use the police for what is practically a civil purpose.
  Also there is considerable dissatisfaction about the Estates Commissioners. They do not seem to be making any effort to divide up estates. There are constituencies on which for four years the tenants have signed their agreements to take possession and there has been absolutely nothing done. I have been informed by the Government that nothing can be done until the beginning of the financial year, 1st April, 1912. I can assure the Attorney-General that there is a considerable amount of dissatisfaction. I speak for my own Constituency, and I believe in other parts of Ireland it is the same. This constant attempt to procrastinate and do nothing and to use soft words will, if continued, lead to considerable friction—friction which up to the present I have done my best to stop in the interests not only of the people, but of the Government. Really some attempt must be made to expedite matters and improve the machinery of the Estates Commissioners.
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Redmond Barry): I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is not here. If he had got notice that the last matter referred to by the hon. Member was to be raised, I am sure he would have been in his place at this moment to make a statement concerning it. No doubt the matter stated by the hon. Gentleman will be carefully taken into account. I am not in a position to say anything about it. With regard to the employment of the police in the execution of warrants for distress, the police do not act as bailiffs in the execution of High Court decrees which are usual in agrarian cases. It is their duty to protect those who execute these decrees, but as the hon. Member has pointed out it is no doubt the fact that as regards decrees of the summary courts the police have to act in execution of the warrants when they are addressed to them. It is absolutely within the discretion of the magistrates to address the warrants to them.
  Dr. ESMONDE: Cannot the Government employ civil people for the purpose?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: I think not. It is entirely within the right of the magistrates to decide who are the persons to execute the decrees.
  Dr. ESMONDE: I think the magistrates have not the sole right.
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: The complainant has the right to nominate a person and the magistrates can either accept that person or address the warrants to the police, and they usually take the latter course. The police are unwilling to undertake the duty, but they have no option in the matter. They have no discretion. They are obliged to execute the warrants if they are addressed to them by the local magistrates, whereas when issued to bailiffs they do execute the decrees.
  Mr. ANNAN BRYCE: I should like to call the attention of the Government to the strong feeling in Scotland that some attempt should be made to pass land legislation for the country.
  Mr. SPEAKER: You cannot discuss legislation on this Motion.
  Mr. BRYCE: Why should I not be in order, Sir?
  Question, "That this House do now adjourn until Tuesday, the 18th April," put, and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at Four minutes after Six o'clock.

PETITIONS PRESENTED DURING THE WEEK.
The following Petitions were presented during the week and ordered to lie upon the Table.
PETITIONS PRESENTED DURING THE WEEK.

  MONDAY.
  Asylum Officers (Employment, Pensions and Superannuation) Bill—Petition from Paisley, in favour.
  Poor Law Amendment (Scotland) Bill—Petition from Paisley, in favour.
  Women's Enfranchisement Bill—Petition from Llangollen, in favour.

  TUESDAY.
  Halifax Corporation Bill—Petition for additional Provision, referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
  Hours of Labour (Bakehouses) Bill—Petition from Edinburgh, against.
  Shops Bill—Petition from Wandsworth, against.
  Shops Bill—Petition from Glasgow, for alteration.

  WEDNESDAY.
  Merchandise Marks Bill—Petition from Edinburgh, in favour.
  Opium Traffic—Petition from Dumfries and Penpoint for suppression.
  Registration of Firms Bill—Petition from Edinburgh, in favour.