Commons Sitting of 18 February 1914

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Chesterfield Corporation Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Wednesday next.
Isle of Thanet Gas Bill (by Order),
Kidsgrove Gas Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till To-morrow.
London County Council (General Powers) Bill (by Order),
Market Rasen Water Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Wednesday next.
Lurgan Gas and Electricity Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till To-morrow.
Metropolitan and Great Northern Railway Companies Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Wednesday next.
Middlesbrough Corporation Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Monday next.
Middlesex County Council (Western Road and Improvements and Finance) Bill (by Order),
Northwich Urban District Council Bill (by Order),
Ossett Corporation Bill (by Order),
Preston Corporation Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till To-morrow.
Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Wednesday next.
Southend Gas Bill (by Order),
Wadhurst and District Gas Bill (by Order),
Walsall Corporation Bill (by Order),
Weymouth and Melcombe Regis Corporation Bill (by Order),
York Corporation Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till To-morrow.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 21) Bill,
Third Reading deferred till Wednesday next.

STANDING ORDERS.
Mr. Vaughan - Davies, Sir Thomas Esmonde, Mr. George Faber, Lord Claud Hamilton, Mr. Mildmay, Sir Charles Nicholson, Mr. Parker, Mr. William Redmond, Mr. Samuel Roberts, Mr. Eugene Wason, and Mr. John William Wilson were nominated Members of the Select Committee on Standing Orders.—[Mr. Vaughan Davies.]
LIGHT RAILWAYS ACTS, 1896 AND 1912.
Copy presented of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and confirmed by the Board of Trade, entitled The County of Hertford Light Railways (Watford and Bushey Abandonment) Order, 1914 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
TREATY SERIES (No. 2, 1914.)
Copy presented of Parcel Post Agreement between the United Kingdom and France. Signed at Paris, 22nd November, 1913 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.
Copy presented of Order made by the Irish Insurance Commissioners, dated 14th February, 1914, entitled the National Health Insurance (Preliminary Expenses) (Ireland) Order, 1914 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
Copy presented of Special Order, dated 18th February, 1914, made by the National Health Insurance Joint Committee, entitled the National Health Insurance (Married Women Outworkers) Order, 1912 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 108.]

CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1913–1914).
Estimate presented of a further Sum required to be voted for the service of the year ending 31st March, 1914 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 107.]
ALDERNEY.
Copy presented of Treasury Minute, dated 11th February, 1914, directing that the Public Accounts of the Island of Alderney shall be examined and audited by the Comptroller and Auditor-General [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1899.
Copy presented of Report by the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords and the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons, under Section 2 of The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, that they are of opinion (1) that the provisions of Clauses 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 of the Glasgow Corporation Order are of such a character and raise such questions of policy and principle that they ought to be dealt with by Private Bill and not by Provisional Order; (2) that the provisions of the Glasgow Corporation {Water, Tramways, etc.) Order are of such a character and magnitude and raise such questions of policy and principle that they ought to be dealt with by Private Bill and not by Provisional Order; (3) that, save as aforesaid, the Provisional Orders be allowed to proceed subject to such recommendations as they may hereafter make with respect to the several Orders [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUENCIES (ELECTORS, ETC.) FOR JANUARY, 1914.
Return presented, relative thereto [Address, 12th February; Major Morrison-Bell]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 109.]
ARMY (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1913–14).
Estimate presented of the further amount that will be required during the year ending 31st March, 1914, to meet Expenditure not provided for in the original Army Estimates of the year for Aviation and for the additional Indian Troops temporarily employed in China [by Command]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 110.]

IRISH LAND COMMISSION.
Copy presented of Return of Proceedings of the Irish Land Commission during the month of December, 1913 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
Copy presented of Return of Advances made under the Irish Land Purchase Acts during the month of December, 1913 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

LOCAL TAXATION (IRELAND) RETURNS.
Copy presented of Returns of Local Taxation in Ireland for the year 1912–13 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
BRIDLINGTON PIERS AND HARBOUR.
Paper laid upon the Table by the Clerk of the House:—Copy of Abstract of the General Annual Account for the year ending 26th July, 1913 [by Act].
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  ROYAL NAVY.

    OIL FUEL.
    Lord CHARLES BERESFORDasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how many ships of all classes, built and building for the Navy, are fitted or to be fitted for burning oil fuel only; how many ships are fitted or are to be fitted for burning oil and coal; what are the names of the vessels under each specification; and what is the maximum oil capacity for each ship?
    The FIRST LORD Of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Churchill): Figures relating to the oil capacity of His Majesty's ships of war are confidential, and could not be disclosed without injury to naval interests. I will circulate the lists of ships asked for with the Votes. [See Written Answers this date.]
    Lord C. BERESFORDasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, if he can inform the House as to the price of oil fuel for the Navy in 1910 and at the present time, and the additional payment for freight in each year?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: As I informed the Noble Lord on the 10th February last year, it would not be in the interests of the public service or in accordance with

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    Admiralty practice to give details of contracts or charges; but I may say that, taking price and freight charges together, the cost of oil fuel is now approximately double what it was in 1910.
    Mr. EDGAR JONESasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he has caused any experiments to be conducted for the extraction of oil fuel from coal or shale, or caused any inquiries to be made as to the comparative cost of oil extraction by any of the processes now being adopted by commercial concerns?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The Admiralty have made some experimental extractions on a small scale of oil from certain shales in the United Kingdom, and the various commercial processes for extracting oil from coal and shale are being watched with the keenest interest. It is not practicable to give any comparative details, as much experimental work is still being done.
    Mr. EDGAR JONESasked what sums have been spent by the Admiralty in providing oil depots and other works for the use of oil in the fleet; how many vessels have been fitted for burning oil fuel exclusively, or for burning either oil or coal; and what is the annual consumption and value of oil fuel already reached?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The list of vessels fitted for burning oil fuel exclusively or for burning oil and coal, will be circulated with the Votes in reply to the Question No. 1 asked to-day by the Noble Lord the Member for Portsmouth. I propose to deal fully with the question of oil fuel when I make my statement on introducing the Navy Estimates; but I am advised that it would not be consistent with the public interest to give the details asked for in my hon. Friend's question.
    Sir J. D. REES: Did I rightly understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that the extraction of oil from shale is still in the experimental stage?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I think that that supplementary question should have been put after a preceding question.

    SHIPBUILDING PROGRAMMES.
    Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether there have been any developments abroad in the last six months leading the Board to alter its view that after the beginning of 1916 the Empire will be three battleships short of its absolutely required strength owing to
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    the rejection of the Canadian Naval Aid Bill; and, if not, what ships are proposed to meet the shortage which will exist from that time onward?
    Mr. FREDERICK HALL (Dulwich)asked what was the date by which it was originally anticipated that the ships to be contributed by Canada for the Navy would be available for service; what would have been the total number of battleships and cruisers at that time if the Canadian Parliament had agreed to the proposed arrangements; what will be the probable number of such ships available at the date in question; and if, in view of his statements as to the importance of these vessels for Imperial purposes, he will state what steps will be taken to remedy the shortage or the reasons which now make it unnecessary to replace the Canadian ships?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I do not propose to anticipate the full statement which it will be my duty to make to the House when the Estimates are presented.
    Mr. MIDDLEMORE: Has the right hon. Gentleman altered his view that without the three Canadian ships we shall have three ships short in 1916 with the acceleration in other programmes?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I do not propose to anticipate the full statement which it will be my duty to make to the House when the Estimates are presented.
    Mr. F. HALL: May I ask whether the House is to attribute the vagueness of the right hon. Gentleman's reply to the statement made recently by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to newspaper reporters?
    Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked whether the shipbuilding programmes outlined in the House in 1912 and 1913 specifically excluded such ships as it might be necessary to build in consequence of new developments in the Mediterranean; whether both Italy and Austria have decided to begin work this year upon new programmes involving in each case the construction of four additional battleships; and what action it is proposed to take to meet these new developments?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I cannot anticipate the statement which it will be my duty to make to the House when the Estimates are presented.
    Mr. MIDDLEMORE: May I again supplement my question by asking the right

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    hon. Gentleman if he still recognises the necessity of meeting the increased programme of Italy and Austria by increasing our own programme?
    Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether Germany will possess twenty-eight completed "Dreadnoughts" in 1917; whether, in that case, forty-two British vessels of that type will be required to give us the minimum superiority of three to two in Home waters which he has stated to be necessary; and what is the total number of British "Dreadnoughts" built, building, and provided for, available for service both in Home waters and the Mediterranean?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative; the second part would appear to be a simple arithmetical calculation; and the third part cannot be answered until the number of ships in the British 1914–15 programme has been announced to Parliament.
    Mr. MIDDLEMORE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if, after the Spring of 1917, we shall only have three "Dreadnoughts" in the Mediterranean to meet the ten of Austria and Italy?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It really would not be, I think, for the convenience of the House nor for the advantage of this subject generally, which has to be very fully discussed, if we were to deal with these matters by question and answer across the House at Question time, nor do I propose to do so unless the House should intimate so to me in some very decisive manner.
    Mr. LEE: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to try and expedite the laying of the Dickinson lleturn in order that when this matter is discussed we may have before us the official and up-to-date information with regard to the strength of the different Fleets, which at the present we have not?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The Dickinson Return was only asked for yesterday and it is in an advanced state of preparation, if not, indeed, completed, and it will be laid as soon as we possibly can.
    Mr. LEE: May I press the matter? In past years we have not had it before the Estimates are produced, and would the right hon. Gentleman endeavour this year to allow us to have it before the Navy Estimates of the year are produced?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I hope it will be laid very soon indeed.
    Mr. MIDDLEMORE: May I ask when he proposes to make his Navy Statement?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The question in regard to business must be addressed to the Leader of the House.

    PENSION SCALE.
    Lord C. BERESFORDasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether pensions for relatives of those who are employed in the submarine and air services are on the same scale as those employed in the ordinary work of the Fleet; and, if so, whether, looking to the greater risks involved by officers and men on duty in these arms of the Service, he will consider whether the time has arrived when increased pensions should be granted to the widows and dependants of those who unfortunately lose their lives in carrying out these duties?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): In the case of the widows and orphans of men, until 1903, there were two scales of pension and allowance, the lower being applicable to cases of death caused in the discharge of ordinary duty and the higher to cases of death in action. In that year, however, following upon a discussion in this House, it was decided that all pensions and allowances awarded to widows and children of men should be assessed on the higher scale applicable to death in action. As regards officers, the pensions and compassionate allowances awarded to widows and relatives are on the scale applicable to deaths in action only in the case of officers killed on flying duty. As regards the last part of the question, I can only refer the Noble Lord to what I said in reply to the hon. Member for Devonport on 19th March last, namely, that in view of the far-reaching effect of any change, it is not considered possible at present to revise the scale.
    Mr. FALLE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the pension to widows is five shillings per week and one shilling and sixpence for each child, and does he consider that adequate?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The pension for widows of able seamen and men of that rating is five shillings and one shilling and sixpence for each child; and for widows of second-class petty officers and

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    of corresponding rating, six shillings and one shilling and sixpence for each child; and for widows of first-class petty officers and corresponding rating, seven shillings and sixpence and two shillings for each child, and for widows of chief petty officers and corresponding rating, nine shillings and two shillings for each child.

    DOCK CONSTRUCTION (WAGES OF NAVVIES).
    Mr. F. HALLasked the rate of pay for navvies stipulated in contracts for dock construction work for the Admiralty and the rate paid to navvies, if any, employed direct; if Messrs. S. Pearson and Sons, who recently had a dispute with their men as to the rate, 6d. an hour, paid to navvies engaged in the construction of the new dock at Silvertown for the Port of London Authority, are at present carrying out any such work for the Admiralty; and what, at the time of the Silvertown dispute, was the rate for this class of labour recognised by the London County Council for the London area?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: No definite rate of pay for navvies is stipulated for dock construction work for the Admiralty under contract. In such contracts the usual Fair-Wages Clause, as specified in the Resolution passed by this House on 10th March, 1909, is always inserted. The rate of wages paid to navvies in direct employment by the Admiralty in the home yards and establishments is from 24s. to 26s. per week of forty-eight working hours. We have no navvies directly employed by us in the London district. Messrs. S. Pearson and Son are not at present carrying out any contracts for the Admiralty.
    Mr. F. HALL: May I ask if it is true that this firm had been in the habit of underpaying their navvies, and if so, will they be placed on the list of firms with which the Admiralty are not prepared to deal?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: They are not doing any work for us at present and therefore I cannot deal with their action except in a contract for us.
    Mr. F. HALL: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been drawn to the question to which I have referred of this firm paying 6d. instead of 7½d. to their navvies?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: My attention has been drawn to this question and I have tried to answer it.

    REDUCTION OF NAVIES.
    Mr. F. HALLasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if his attention has been called to the statement by the Secretary of State for the Navy in the Budget Committee of the German Reichstag, on the 4th February, to the effect that no positive proposals had yet been made to Germany by Great Britain for a reduction in naval construction, but that if such proposals were made they would assuredly be examined in a spirit of goodwill; and if he will state what was the nature of the suggestions made to Germany in this matter, in what form they were conveyed, and when?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: This subject is not suited for discussion by question and answer. It will be dealt with either by me or by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as fully as the public interest allows during the Debates on Naval Estimates.
    Mr. LEE: Will the right hon. Gentleman then be in position to give us an accurate report of what did actually take place in the Reichstag, or could he tell us where an accurate report can be found, as there has been a difference of opinion about it?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put a question on the Paper about that. I would rather not give an answer on the spur of the moment.

    Hague Conference.
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALDasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has been in communication with the United States Government with regard to the date of the third Hague Conference; if so, has the year 1917 been suggested; and whether there is any reason for postponing the Conference beyond the year 1915?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Acland): The answer to the first part of this question is in the negative. As regards the second part, it will not be possible for the Conference to meet in 1915 because, according to one of the resolutions passed by the last Conference, an International Committee is to be set up two years in advance of the third Conference for the purpose of preparing the programme of work. This Committee has not yet been formed.
    Sir W. BYLES: Whose business is it to initiate the Committee? Cannot the British Government take the initiative?
    Mr. ACLAND: It is difficult for the British Government to take the initiative, as they are not yet in a position to ratify what was done at the last Conference.
    Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if it was agreed at the last Hague Conference between the Powers that some two years before the International Committee of preparation for the next Conference was appointed each Power should appoint a National Committee to prepare suggestions for the International Committee; and, seeing that, in pursuance of this agreement, a National Committee has been appointed by France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other Powers, will he say why Great Britain has not yet taken steps to appoint a Committee?
    Mr. ACLAND: No such agreement as the hon. Member suggests was come to at the second Peace Conference. What the Conference recommended was the appointment of a preparatory International Committee. It was, however, found impossible at the time to arrive at an agreement as to how and by whom the Committee should be appointed. The difficulty still remains unsolved. When proposals for setting up the Committee reach His Majesty's Government they will receive every consideration. I have no official information as to the appointment of Government Committees in other countries. It is necessarily a matter for each Government to choose whatever method it may consider appropriate for settling and formulating its own views on any subject that could come up at the next Peace Conference.
    Mr. BARNES: Has any step been taken by our own Government to appoint this National Committee? Further, does the hon. Gentleman suggest that the information about the other Powers is not obtainable?
    Mr. ACLAND: I have already told the hon. Gentleman what we know about other Powers, which is nothing. In regard to what we are doing, I think the position is still somewhat the same as was stated in answer to the hon. Gentleman on the 6th August last, namely, that we would be able to give our attention to the matter when affairs in the Near East had settled down.
    Mr. BARNES: Has nothing been done since August last, especially having regard to the fact that affairs in the Near East have long since settled down?
    Mr. ACLAND: I do not think that the Office has been able to take steps yet. As a matter of fact, the consideration of matters for a new Conference requires a great deal of work, and we have not yet been able to give that attention to it.
    Sir W. BYLES: Are the House and the country informed that the British Government have taken no steps whatever towards initiating an International Conference?
    Mr. ACLAND: We do find it difficult to initiate proceedings for the next Conference, considering that this country, owing to the failure to pass the Naval Prize Bill, has not been able to ratify what was decided at the last Conference.
    Mr. BARNES: Has the Government not taken any steps to appoint our own National Committee, which must be done irrespective of what other people are doing?
    Mr. ACLAND: No. We promised last year that as soon as the questions concerning the Near East were cleared up we would give our attention to the matter.

  BRITISH ARMY.

    AIRSHIPS.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Secretary of State for War how many of the monoplanes which were on the list of efficient machines in July last are now included in the War Office lists as efficient, and when were the others removed from such list?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Colonel Seely): Twenty-eight have been struck off at various dates since the 1st July. One remains on the list as efficient.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked when the decision was arrived at to transfer the airships from the Army to the Navy; and whether such transfer met with the approval of the Army Council and the officers of the Flying Corps?
    Colonel SEELY: The decision of the Army Council referred to was taken in November last and all the considerations involved were, of course, reviewed before the orders were given.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked what arrangements have been made regarding the future of those Army officers who were engaged in the airship squadron of the Royal Flying Corps?
    Colonel SEELY: All the officers referred to except one have agreed to be transferred to the Naval Wing. The exact conditions of their employment are still under consideration, but the hon. Member may rest assured that they will not lose either in seniority, rank or grading.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Is there any chance of a Supplementary Estimate being put down in order that we may discuss, the policy of this important change?
    Colonel SEELY: I think there will be an early opportunity of discussing the whole matter.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Secretary of State for War, whether he still adheres to his oft-expressed view that the Royal Aircraft Factory is to be used for experimental purposes only; and how many aeroplanes are now being manufactured there?
    Colonel SEELY: The Royal Aircraft Factory is now making 24 aeroplanes of a special type.

    OFFICERS' FURNITURE.
    Mr. JOYNSON - HICKSasked the Secretary of State for War (1) what is the average total amount deducted per annum from the officers of the Army in respect of furniture up-keep; and what is the average annual cost of such up-keep; and (2) what was the amount expended on the purchase of officers' furniture at the inception of the present system; what is the total sum since received from officers; and what has been since expended on renewals?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Harold Baker): The average annual amount paid by officers for furniture hire is about £22,000. Statistics are not available to show the other figures asked for in detail; but the hon. Member will find full information as to the basis of these charges in Command Paper No. 1421, Session 1903.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: In view of the fact that the capital value of this furniture in almost every barracks in the Kingdom has been paid off, is it not about time that the premium asked from the officers was reduced?
    Mr. BAKER: I will consider that. These charges were fixed exactly according to the recommendations of that Committee, and there is no evidence that the position has changed since that time.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: May I give the hon. Gentleman figures in regard to one or two barracks?
    Mr. BAKER: I should be glad to receive them.
    Colonel YATE: Will the hon. Gentleman consider the question of abolishing these charges altogether?
    Mr. BAKER: I will see first the further information which the Noble Lord has promised to send me.

    NEW RIFLE.
    Sir RANDOLF BAKERasked whether the new rifle which was under trial last year has now been definitely abandoned; and what is now being done to provide a suitable weapon for the Army?
    Colonel SEELY: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. With regard to the second part I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement I made in this House on the 30th July last.
    Sir R. BAKER: Are we to understand that this new weapon with which the right hon. Gentleman was so satisfied last July has not been definitely abandoned, and that still there is some hope of making it into a sound, serviceable weapon?
    Colonel SEELY: The matter is one of importance that could not possibly be dealt with by means of question and answer. If the hon. Gentleman will refer to my speech of 30th July, and will then put down any other question, I shall be glad to answer as far as possible.

    DRILLING IN ULSTER.
    Sir JOHN JARDINEasked the Secretary of State for War whether he has received applications from officers of His Majesty's Military Forces, or officers retired from service with pension or military rank, for permission to help in drilling or in organising civilians in Ulster; whether such permission is necessary under Army Regulations; and whether the rules and practices in such matter are the same for officers of the British Army in India as in the United Kingdom?
    Colonel SEELY: No such application has been received.

    ARMY PAY DEPARTMENT.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Secretary of State for War whether any and, if so, how many higher grade writers

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    have been appointed in the Army Pay Department under the provisions of the Army Orders of July, 1910, which provide for the appointment of forty higher grade writers to be filled by selection from the grade of writers?
    Colonel SEELY: Eleven hired higher grade writers have been appointed under the Army Order referred to. These include eight civilian clerks of the old establishment, who are now classified as higher grade writers. Further promotions will be considered as the establishment of noncommissioned officers, Army Pay Corps, decreases.

    Government Railway Employés, Shoeburyness.
    Mr. THOMASasked the Secretary of State for War whether a petition from the Government railway employés at Shoeburyness has been submitted to his Department for some months, and no satisfactory reply given to the same; and will he take steps to investigate the matter, and so meet the legitimate claims of the workers?
    Mr. H. BAKER: The petitions referred to have been received, and are being considered. It is not yet possible to announce any decision in the matter.

    Somali Mullah.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether he has any information to the effect that the Somali Mullah is raiding the tribes which were friendly to Great Britain before the retreat to the Coast?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): I have no information that the Mullah is raiding the tribes referred to.

    Jamaica (Hospital Accommodation).
    Sir JOHN JARDINEasked whether anything has lately been done by the Government of Jamaica to increase the hospital accommodation in that island, especially in districts remote from existing hospitals; and whether anything has been done to utilise the services of ordinary independent medical practitioners, especially in districts reported upon as containing an extraordinary number of cases of syphilis?
    Mr. HARCOURT: In reply to the first part of my hon. Friend's question, hospital accommodation in Jamaica has been
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    steadily augmented for a number of years past, both by extension of buildings and by provision of additional beds. Comparison of the Blue Book for 1912–13 with that of three years before shows an addition of nearly 250 beds to the provincial hospitals. A new cottage hospital was provided last year at Ulster Spring, a district remote from existing hospitals. During 1911–12 and the ensuing year out-patients' departments have been established at all the hospitals, and in the latter year the number of out-patients attended to in the districts, in addition to those treated at the out-patients' departments of the hospitals, amounted to over 45,000. The medical expenditure since 1907–8 has increased by nearly 90 per cent., and in the current financial year nearly £11,000 has been provided for new works, as against £522 at the beginning of the period. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative; but special provision has been made to utilise the Government medical service for dealing with disease in such districts.

    Malay States (Railway Officers).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received a humble memorial from the subordinate officers of the Federated Malay States railways, petitioning for a revision of their salaries scheme and conditions of service, and pointing out that the senior officers who also presented a memorial had had their position improved in 1903, in 1906, and in 1907; that since 1904 prices of food have increased by about 50 per cent., while rents have increased by 75 per cent.; and that the revenue and expenditure accounts of the States show a surplus of nearly $12,000,000 in 1912; and whether he is able to hold out to the memorialists any hope of a favourable consideration for their request for an improvement in their conditions?
    Mr. HARCOURT: A copy of the memorial has been sent to me direct by the petitioners. In accordance with established regulations it has been returned in order that it may be forwarded through the High Commissioner for the Malay States with his Report.

    Agricultural Wages (Ireland).
    Mr. HUNTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the fact that the highest wages paid to agricultural labourers in any districts in Ireland are

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    lower than the lowest wages paid in any districts in England, he will in any measure for the improvement of English labourers' wages include similar provisions for the increase also of agricultural labourers' wages in Ireland?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Runciman): I am not prepared to make any statement at present in regard to legislation for the improvement of agricultural labourers' wages in England. In so far as the question relates to wages in Ireland, it should be addressed to the representatives of the Irish Government.
    Mr. HUNT: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Government, under Home Rule, will apply the principle of the minimum wage to Ireland, and how are—
    Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: That is a Chinese puzzle!
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: Questions on Home Rule must be addressed either to the Prime Minister or to the representative of the Irish Government.

    Tuberculosis Order.
    Mr. MOUNTasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he proposes to make any modifications in the Tuberculosis Order; and, if so, whether he can state in what directions he intends to modify it?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am not at present in a position to add anything to the answer which I gave to a question on this subject addressed to me by the hon. Member for the Wilton Division last Thursday.

    Potato Disease.
    Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked the President of the Board of Agriculture what areas under the Departmental Order of the 2nd February have been declared, or are about to be declared, by the Board infected with wart disease in potatoes; and whether, in view of the alarm felt on the American continent owing to the supposed extensive prevalence of this disease in Great Britain and the recent restrictions imposed by the United States Government upon potatoes exported from this country, he will take steps to reassure American importers and obtain a modification of such restrictions in favour of districts in England and Wales which are not infected with the disease?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: Copies of all the Orders issued by the Board declaring areas to be infected with wart disease will be presented to Parliament. If the hon. Gentleman so desires, I shall be pleased to send him a list of them. The Board have already made formal representations through the usual channels to the United States Government, with the object referred to in the second part of the question.
    Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked if, in view of the prevailing ignorance as to the nature and external appearances of wart disease in potatoes and of the provision in the Board's Order of the 2nd instant that growers shall forthwith notify the existence of disease to the Board, he will take steps to give to growers, through the provincial Press, a full description of the disease, so that they may recognise it if existing on their premises?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: A new edition of the Board's leaflet on wart disease is in preparation, and an illustrated poster will shortly be issued, to be exhibited in all districts in which the disease occurs. I have no doubt that in this, as in all matters of agricultural interest, the Board will be able to rely upon the ready cooperation of the provincial Press.
    Mr. BATHURST: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of publishing some picture of this disease in the agricultural papers?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: I shall be quite glad to let the agricultural papers have a copy of the agricultural poster, of which they can make any use they like; we do not claim any copyright.

    Captain Spitta.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Undersecretary of State for India whether the case of Captain Spitta is under the consideration of the Secretary of State in view to a reconsideration of his trial and sentence?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY Of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Charles Roberts): The Secretary of State has considered a memorial received from Mr. (late Captain) J. C. Spitta and other representations made on his behalf, but has found no ground for intervention or for a recommendation for the Royal clemency.
    Colonel YATE: Have any new facts come to light since this trial?
    Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS: I should like notice of that question; but, I believe, none.
    Sir J. D. REES: Is the hon. Gentleman aware there is a very strong feeling that there has been, to some extent at any rate, a miscarriage of justice?
    Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS: I will convey that opinion to the Secretary of State.

    Indian Mails.
    Sir J. D. REESasked whether the Government of India and the Secretary of State propose to take any and, if so, what action in order to the acceleration, or other improvement, of the mails between India and the United Kingdom?
    Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS: Drafts of tender forms are being drawn up by the Postmaster-General in communication with the Secretary of State and the Government of India, with the object of inviting tenders for alternative forms of an accelerated or otherwise improved mail service between this country and India. The ultimate decision will of course largely turn on considerations of cost.

    Local and Imperial Taxation.
    Mr. HUNTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the fact that the local and Imperial taxation for the upkeep of the United Kingdom comes to £300,000,000 a, year or more, he can say if this comes chiefly, if not entirely, out of the production of goods produced in the United Kingdom; and can he state, approximately, what is the local and Imperial taxation paid on the production of £100 worth of barley and of £100 worth of steel, including all local and Imperial taxes paid by landlords, farmers, labourers, employers, and workmen?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Montagu): My right hon. Friend has no material upon which to make the calculations which the hon. Member requires.
    Mr. HUNT: Does not £300,000,000 a year come out of the pockets and wages of the people of this country, and is not that 15 per cent. on the £2,000,000,000 of our income?
    Mr. MONTAGU: If I may suggest it to the hon. Gentleman, that would be a suitable subject for discussion on a Tariff Itefore debate; but on this particular point the advisers of my right hon. Friend inform him that it would be difficult or impossible to satisfy the hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: Is the hon. Gentleman not capable of a very simple problem in mental arithmetic?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I shall be glad of the hon. Member's assistance in trying to give an answer.
    Mr. F. HALL: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this £300,000,000 to which reference has been made should, according to some of the supporters of the Government, been raised by the Single Tax?
    Mr. HUNT: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Prime Minister stated that the national and local taxation of the country constitutes a serious element in the cost of production?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I was not aware of the statement until the hon. Gentleman told me.
    Mr. HUNTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the increase of taxation in the next Budget, he can see his way to providing some of the money by imposing Import Duties on the at present duty-free competing luxuries of the rich?
    Mr. MONTAGU: Should the necessity foreshadowed by the hon. Member arise all relevant suggestions will be taken into consideration.
    Mr. HUNT: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the Government are still prepared by the so-called system of Free Trade, to continue no Import Duties on the luxuries of the rich, while putting heavy taxes on the necessities of the poor?

    Members of Parliament (Salaries).
    Mr. KELLAWAYasked how many Members of Parliament are at present refusing to receive their salaries?
    Mr. MONTAGU: My right hon. Friend is informed that the number is eight.
    Mr. KELLAWAY: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the largest group of paid Members now sits on the Unionist Benches?
    Mr. LEE: Is the total amount of money paid to the Members of the House entitled to be on the Votes each year; if so, what becomes of the surplus—that of the eight Members that is not down?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I am afraid I cannot answer that without notice.
    Major ARCHER-SHEE: Is there not a far greater amount paid to supporters of

    937
    the Government than to supporters of the Unionist party in this House?
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: Will the Prime Minister give us an early opportunity of discovering how many Members of this House are willing to vote for a discontinuance of their salaries?

  NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.

    RESERVE VALUES AND AMALGAMATION.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANSasked how many societies, owing to claims for benefits in excess of the contributions received, have been called upon by the Commissioners to make provisional claims for reserve values, or have been advised by the Commissioners to amalgamate with other societies?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN (Lord of the Treasury): I am having a statement prepared from the information in the hands of the Commissioners, and will communicate with the hon. Member.

    EXPENDITURE (FIRST YEAR).
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANSasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether any societies or branches have informed the Insurance Commission of the amounts actually spent by them on sickness benefit, maternity benefit, and cost of administration for the first year since the commencement of the National Insurance Act, or any part of it; and, if so, whether he can state the amounts and the number of insured persons included and how such expenditure compares with the estimates of the actuaries published when the Bill was introduced?
    Mr. BENN: The audit of the expenditure of approved societies upon benefits for the first year is now in progress. The Commissioners are, therefore, not in possession of such information as is described in the question, and the information in their possession is not such as to justify a comparison between actual expenditure and the actuaries' estimates.

    MEDICAL TREATMENT.
    Mr. RUPERT GWYNNEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if his attention has been called to cases in which insured persons, on moving their residence, have been refused medical treatment by panel doctors on the grounds that they had recently had a touch of influenza and were therefore in need of a bottle of medicine; whether doctors, in so acting, complied with the regulations which
    938
    govern the administration of the sickness benefit under the National Insurance Act; and, if so, what steps insured persons are to take to obtain advice and medicine if all the local doctors on the panel act similarly?
    Mr. BENN: No cases of the kind referred to have come to the notice of my right hon. Friend. Doctors on the panel have, of course, a right under the National Insurance Act, 1911, to refuse in the first instance to accept an individual insured person, but arrangements have been made whereby a doctor may be obtained by any insured person so refused.
    Mr. RUPERT GWYNNE: Will the hon. Gentleman make inquiry from the Commissioners?
    Mr. BENN: As I have explained to the hon. Gentleman, arrangements have been made for dealing with these cases. If he knows of a case where the arrangement has been broken, I shall be very glad to know about it.
    Mr. RUPERT GWYNNE: Will not the hon. Gentleman inquire? My difficulty is that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Masterman), who has been in correspondence with me on the subject, is not here, and therefore I think I have a perfect right to press the matter.
    Mr. SPEAKER: The matter can be arranged by putting a question down.

    LONDON INSURANCE COMMITEE (FUNDS).
    Mr. F. HALLasked the hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East, as representing the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, if the Treasury Estimates of the cost of treating insured persons have been exceeded, and if there are enough funds in the case of the London Insurance Committee to give proper medical treatment to insured patients; if it has been suggested to the London County Council that half of the deficiency should be met out of the rates; if there are any other cases in which insurance committees have to face a similar deficiency; and if, in view of the fact that the question of further relief to local authorities from the Imperial Exchequer in regard to burdens placed upon them by Parliament before the passing of the National Insurance Act is now the subject of inquiry, the Government will defer any proposals for the charge of insurance deficiencies against local authorities until it has been decided what adjustment of existing burdens is called for?
    Mr. BENN: The hon. Member is under a misapprehension. Under the arrangements entered into between insurance committees—including the London Insurance Committee—and the doctors on their respective panels no deficit can occur upon the funds available for defraying their liabilities to those doctors, and the rest of the question does not therefore arise.
    Mr. F. HALL: Am I to understand that the London County Council has not been asked to make up any deficiency?
    Mr. BENN: Oh, no; the hon. Member put down a question in reference to medical benefits, and the answer I have given refers ta medical benefits.

    PAYMENT OF FULL BENEFITS.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Prime Minister whether the Government will guarantee the payment of full benefits under the National Insurance Act to those who fall sick and who have paid up their full contributions?
    Mr. BENNrose to reply—
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: On a point of Order. As the Prime Minister is present, am I not entitled to an answer from the Prime Minister to my question?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): It is not any want of courtesy to the hon. Gentleman, but I have nothing whatever to do with the administration of the Insurance Act.
    Mr. BENN: The Act of 1911 provides that societies administering benefits shall be subject to periodical valuation, the contributions or benefits being adjusted according as the valuation discloses a surplus or a deficiency. The hon. Member's suggestion, if I rightly understand it, would be inconsistent with the system of administering the Act through independent approved societies.
    Mr. J. H. THOMAS: Does that mean that the full benefit can be stopped before the valuation is taken?
    Mr. BENN: I do not quite apprehend the meaning of my hon. Friend's question.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Will the Government bring in an amending Bill guaranteeing full benefits to those persons who paid up their full contributions if, through no fault of their own, their society is found in deficiency in the first year?
    Mr. BENN: Of course, it is not for me to answer a question about future legislation; but, in reply to the hon. Member, I may say the Act provides for payment of contribution and Parliamentary Grant more than sufficient to provide the benefits mentioned in the Act.
    Mr. WILLIAM THORNE: Is it not a fact that all members are guaranteed full benefits until further valuation comes round?
    Mr. BENN: I do not quite understand the sense in which the hon. Member uses the word "guarantee."
    Mr. F. HALL: Government guarantee.

    SANATORIUM BENEFIT.
    Mr. THOMASasked the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Insurance Commissioners have taken any steps to safeguard patients whom they are sending to sanatoria in Derbyshire against the infringement of the provisions of Subsection (2) (e) of Section 14 of the National Insurance Act by the managers of those institutions; and whether he will prohibit the payment of any money by the insurance committees to any sanatoria in Derbyshire, the managers of which may refuse to respect conscience in the manner provided in the above mentioned Sub-section?
    Mr. BENN: The duty of making arrangements to provide treatment for tuberculous insured persons in institutions or otherwise, and of considering cases with a view to recommendation for such treatment, is by the Act laid upon insurance committees, not upon the Insurance Commissioners. The arrangements made by insurance committees require the Commissioners' approval, and in no case do they impose any obligation upon insured persons to submit to vaccination as a condition of their being recommended for treatment.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEasked how many persons have applied for sanatorium benefit in the county of Fife since the 15th October, 1913; and how many of these have received it under the provisions of the National Insurance Act, including any applicants whose applications were standing over at the date mentioned?
    Mr. BENN: The answer to the first part of the Noble Lord's question is forty-eight; five applications were outstanding at the date which he mentions, and forty-nine persons have received treatment since that date.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: Is it not a fact that the Insurance Fund was overdrawn at the date I have mentioned, and that all the tuberculous patients since then have been paid for part out of the rates and part out of the Government advance, and have been kept in hospitals for scarlet fever patients?
    Mr. BENN: I am afraid I cannot answer all those questions. Perhaps the Noble Lord will be good enough to put his question on the Paper.

    DORSET CONSTABULARY.
    Sir RANDOLF BAKERasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that though the members of the Dorset, constabulary have been granted an exemption from the provisions of the National Insurance Act on 29th March, 1913, yet a refund of the contributions paid by them till that date has been refused by the Insurance Commissioners; and whether, under the circumstances, the Commissioners will direct that such refund should be made?
    Mr. BENN: The certificate of exception granted in respect of the Dorset police operates from 3rd March, 1913, and prior to that date contributions were properly payable, and the Commissioners have no power to refund them. In the event, however, of any of the men concerned again becoming insurable, the fact that contributions had already been paid in respect of him, would be taken into account in determining the benefits to which he would then be entitled.
    Sir R. BAKER: Does the hon. Member mean to say that under the Act the contributions taken from these men when exemption is granted are annexed by the Insurance Commissioners and no benefit is given to them?
    Mr. BENN: These men pay certain contributions in respect of which they are entitled to benefit, and as long as they pay those contributions they are entitled to benefit.

    SCOTTISH INSURANCE COMMITTEES.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that insurance committees in thinly-populated districts in Scotland are finding difficulty in doing their work on the funds they have available for administration; and, if so, what the Government propose to do in the matter?
    Mr. BENN: The matter is under consideration. I may point out that as respects the period to 14th January, 1914, a sum of £22,650 has been provided by Parliament for the purpose of making Grants to insurance committees generally whose statutory income for that period was insufficient.

    TUBERCULOUS PERSONS (WEST HAM).
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked how many of the tuberculous persons receiving domiciliary treatment in the area of the West Ham Insurance Committee at the end of 1913 were sleeping in the same rooms as other persons?
    Mr. BENN: No, Sir, my right hon. Friend has no such information.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Has the hon. Member seen the report of the subcommittee of the West Ham Insurance Committee, in which it definitely states that no less than thirty-seven tuberculous persons out of ninety-five were sleeping under those conditions?
    Mr. BENN: I have not seen that report.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: I will give the hon. Member the report.

    PANEL CHEMISTS.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that panel chemists in several districts, particularly in Manchester, Salford, and Scotland, are dissatisfied with their position and prospects of full payment of their accounts under the National Insurance Act; and, if so, what the Government proposes to do to avoid the danger of insufficiency or inferiority of medicines supplied to the public?
    Mr. BENN: My right hon. Friend is not aware of any such general dissatisfaction in Scotland. The chemists on the panel in Manchester and Salford expressed dissatisfaction at the arrangements in force in those areas during 1913, but it is understood that they have renewed their agreements for the current year under special arrangements for their protection against extravagant prescribing. In reply to the second part of the question, the regulations and the agreements which doctors and chemists have entered into provide ample safeguards both as regards the quality and the sufficiency of the supply of medicines.
    Sir W. BYLES: Is the hon. Member aware that in Salford the chemists were underpaid last year?
    Mr. BENN: I understand the chemists of Salford have entered into an arrangement with the doctors which is satisfactory to both parties.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON:Is the hon. Member aware that there is a deficiency of £16,000 in the Manchester grant fund?
    Mr. BENN: No, Sir; I am not aware of that.
    Sir JOHN JARDINE: Has the hon. Member had any complaints from the chemists in the borough of Roxburgh?
    Mr. BENN: No, Sir; I have got no complaints from there.

    WORCESTERSHIRE INSURANCE SUB-COMMITTEE.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked whether the hon. Member's attention has been called to a report of a Worcestershire insurance sub-committee on the sickness in Cradley, in which statements of Mr. Appleton, secretary to the General Federation of Trade Unions Approved Society, are admitted to the effect that the sickness rate amongst female workers in the district is enormous, and is between 6 per cent. and 7 per cent., or three times the normal; and whether, if this rate is continued until the first valuation, it will entail a very heavy levy on, or a reduction of benefits to, the compulsorily insured members?
    Mr. BENN: My right hon. Friend has seen the report, but it does not appear that the figures have been tested. In any case since approved societies or branches of societies, and not geographical districts, are the units for valuation purposes, the benefits of insured persons resident in the Cradley district will be governed after the first valuation (subject to the provisions of the Act for pooling surpluses and deficiencies) by the general experience of the different approved societies or branches of which they have respectively become members.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Is the hon. Member aware that one of the chief causes of so much sickness in Cradley is in consequence of the beastly low wages paid by the employers?

    APPROVED SOCIETIES (CHOICE OF PLACE OF MEETINGS).
    Sir J. D. REESasked whether the Insurance Commissioners propose to interfere with the discretion now exercised by approved societies as regards the choice of places in which their meetings may be
    944
    held; whether the Government has sanctioned any such proposal; and, if so, why this has been done, in view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's pledge that the self-government possessed by friendly societies should not be impaired or destroyed by the passing of the National Insurance Act?
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked why the Insurance Commissioners are interfering with the choice of the members of approved societies as to meetings on licensed premises; and why the question cannot be left to a vote of the members?
    Mr. BENN: I propose to take Questions 60 and 63 together. Under Section 27 (2) Regulations have already been made in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. As regards England, no Regulation has yet been laid before the House. A draft has been submitted to the Advisory Committee. My right hon. Friend has also arranged to receive deputations from two large approved societies on the subject, and he will be happy to consider representations from any other approved societies which are interested.

    Building Trade Dispute (Government Buildings).
    Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, whether the Office of Works has insisted on the continuance of the ordinary repair and maintenance work on Government buildings, in spite of the present dispute in the building trade; and, if so, why this policy has not been extended to contract construction work?
    Mr. BENN: When the dispute began the Office of Works informed the maintenance contractors that they could not allow it to interfere with the public service. If by contract construction work "lump sum" contracts are intended, the First Commissioner can only reply that he is bound, as are the contractors, by the conditions of the contract.
    Mr. TYSON WILSONasked whether a clerk of works of the name of Coward, in the employ of the Office of Works, is in forming workmen who apply for work that he cannot give anyone a job, but if they care to sign the circular recently issued by the master builders they can have a job with Messrs. Leslie and Company; and whether the Office of Works will put a stop to this recruiting by its officials of work-

    945
    men for contractors who have locked out their own employés?
    Mr. BENN: There is no ground whatever for the statements contained in this question.
    Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked whether, in addition to the three young men taken on at the new Home Office building from the Borstal Association, a number of others have since been taken on at the same place and were informed that if they did not sign the circular recently issued by the building employers of London they would be sent back to prison; and whether he will have inquiries made into the matter and ensure that the Office of Works is not lending its support in any way to the employers in connection with the present lock-out?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN: The Borstal Association report that, since October or November last, when the three lads mentioned were first employed on the Government buildings, no youths have been taken from the association by the contractors. There is no truth in the statement that any Borstal lads have been told that they would be sent back to prison if they did not sign the circular of the building employers. With regard to the last part of the question, the First Commissioner is in no way giving any support to the employers, and does not intend to depart from the attitude he has taken up.
    Mr. DUNCAN: Have the boys been asked to sign the paper?
    Mr. BENN: Yes, Sir; I think they have.
    Mr. DUNCAN: Have the boys refused?
    Mr. BENN: I would rather have notice of that question.

    Westminster Hall.
    Mr. WHITEHOUSEasked the hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East if he can make any statement as to the condition of the roof of Westminster Hail and the repairs necessary?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN: A very complete survey of eight trusses and six bays and a very able, exhaustive report and drawings have been prepared by Mr. Baines, one of the principal architects in the Office of Works. The First Commissioner hopes to be able to publish this report and place the drawings in original in the Library for Members to see. It, is proposed that two trusses and three bays most affected by decay shall be dealt with
    946
    during the next financial year. The present scaffolding, being purely for survey and examination purposes, will be removed and the repair work carried out from a moveable steel supporting centre and scaffold.
    Mr. LYELL: Can the hon. Gentlemant give any information as to when the repairs will be completed?
    Mr. BENN: No, Sir; I am afraid it would be impossible to say when the repairs will be completed.
    Mr. WHITEHOUSE: Can the hon. Gentleman say when the public are likely to be admitted?
    Mr. BENN: I think I may say as soon as the danger of fire is removed, but I cannot give an answer without consideration and consultation with my Noble Friend.

    Advowsons.
    Mr. ALDENasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been directed to the fact that trusts of a partisan character have been formed by certain sections in the Church of England for the purpose of acquiring advowsons; and whether he will take steps to amend the law so as to prevent such traffic in the cure of souls?
    Mr. MacNEILL: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers that question may I ask him before he undertakes to introduce any legislation on this subject if he will get the whole matter referred to the body of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is an ex-officio member? I refer to the Board of Trade, which is perfectly competent to deal with these things.
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have seen what has appeared on this subject in the public Press. I will consider the matter, but I fear I do not see my way to introduce legislation at the present.

    Cahirciveen Post Office.
    Mr. BOLANDasked the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to the resolution passed by the Cahirciveen Rural District Council, on 28th January, with reference to the new post office in the town; and whether effect will be given to that resolution?
    The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Hobhouse): My attention has been called to the resolution. The case is tinder inquiry, and I am not yet able to say what will be done.

    Telephone System, King's Lynn.
    Mr. INGLEBYasked whether complaints have been made in some of the villages adjacent to King's Lynn as to the method adopted in extending to them the telephone system and as to the charges made for its use; whether he is aware that the charge at Marham is 2d. for a message to Swaffham, with which place there is no business connection, and 5d. for a message to King's Lynn, which is the centre of all the business of the district; whether similar complaints have been received from the two Massinghams; and whether, before the system is completed, he will consider if he can better adapt it to the needs of the locality?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am aware of the complaints referred to, and I regret that at the moment I am unable to offer communication with King's Lynn at a lower rate than that mentioned. I hope, however, that under the proposed revision of rates and charges, which will be made public shortly, it may be possible to put forward a scheme which will meet the objections raised. The cost of providing a direct telephone circuit from Great Massingham or Marham to King's Lynn would not be justified by the business.
    Sir PHILIP MAGNUS: Why is it that these arrangements are made; and is it beyond the competence of the Post Office to remedy the anomaly referred to in the question: Where a charge, in one case, of 2d. is made for a message to a place with which there is no business connection, and 5d. for a message to a town which is the centre of the business of the district?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: That is merely a repetition of the question on the Paper which I have endeavoured to answer.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will really put his back into these things and have them remedied?

    Registered Letters (Delivery).
    Mr. FALLEasked if the Post Office claims the right of delivering any kind of registered letter by merely placing it in the house letter-box without the registered letter being signed for?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: The hon. Member's question is understood to refer to a Parliamentary Notice of Objection. Such
    948
    notices are dealt with under special regulations. It is the rule to obtain a receipt on delivery, if possible, but where a notice cannot be delivered either to the addressee or to some person on his behalf, it is placed in the letter-box at the address, if there is one.

    Postal and Telegraph Service (Promotion)
    Mr. POINTERasked whether, in view of the stagnation of promotion throughout the postal and telegraph services, he will favourably consider the desirability of restricting the retention of the postmaster and the assistant post master of Leeds beyond the age of sixty years?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: It is not the practice to enforce retirement at sixty years of age if an officer is thoroughly efficient, and his retention is in the interests of the service. In no case is retirement insisted on merely for the purpose of accelerating promotion. I may add that the postmaster and assistant postmaster at Leeds are both thoroughly efficient.

    Post Office Mails (Ballymaconnelly).
    Mr. KERR-SMILEYasked if the right hon. Gentleman is aware that a mail car daily runs from Kilrea to Cullybackey and back; that it calls on the way at two post offices, Ballymaconnelly, a mile and a half from Kilrea, and Rasharken, three miles from Kilrea, where there are two postmasters; that a change has recently been made under which persons in the immediate locality or in Kilrea writing to an address under one or other of these post offices have their letters carried past them to Belfast and back, a distance of nearly 100 miles, and involving a delay of a day in delivery; and if he will revert to the former practice?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am having inquiry made, and I will communicate with the hon. Member.

    Marconi Shares (Mr. J. E. Taylor's Reinstatement).
    Major ARCHER - SHEEasked whether Mr. J. E. Taylor, who has now been reinstated in the Post Office, will also have the difference in pay between that of the lower rank to which he was reduced and his present rank since the time of the reduction restored to him?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: The answer is in the negative. The reduction in rank was the punishment for a definite offence, and

    949
    there is no intention of making good any loss which may have resulted from that punishment.
    Major ARCHER-SHEE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he will reconsider this case; is it not a fact that Mr. Taylor never pretended that he had not made the investment, and did not receive a tip from ihe contractor, as was the case with the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
    Mr. HOBHOUSE: What happened was this: On 15th December Mr. Taylor attended a committee in connection with wireless, the first committee he had ever attended of that sort. On 21st December he went into the market and had share dealings and bought shares in the English Marconi Company at about 58s. On some date early in March he sold those shares for 92s. 6d., clearly a most improper transaction. For that alone he was punished, and, in any judgment, ought to be punished.

    Civil Service (Transferred Officers).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether otticers transferred from one department of the Civil Service to another carry with them their privileges as regard annual leave if the period allowed in the new department is loss than that received in the old department?
    Mr. MONTAGU: No, Sir, the general rule is that officers so transferred are not allowed leave in excess of that received by other members of their new class.

    Small Holdings (Scotland).
    MARQUESS Of TULLIBARDINEasked what is the amount of travelling allowance and maintenance paid to the officials and employés of the Board of Agriculture and Land Court in connection with small holdings up to date; and what is the total amount of rental fixed upon which was in dispute or required adjustment?
    The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. McKinnon Wood): The amount of such expenditure by the Scottish Land Court is £3,945 18s. 4d., and by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland is £5,071. Full particulars of the rental of the holdings dealt with up to 31st December, 1912, are given in the First Report of the Land Court. Particulars of holdings dealt with during the year 1913 are not yet fully tabulated, but this work is being pushed on as rapidly as possible, and the figures will appear in the Report to be issued shortly.
    MARQUESS Of TULLIBARDINE: Will the right hon. gentleman say if the expenses he has given are up-to-date?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Yes. That was my answer.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: Why is it the hon. Member can give the information on one side and not on the other?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: It is a much simpler matter to state the amount of expenditure.

    Deer Forests.
    Sir J. D. REESasked what proportion of the local revenues in counties possessing deer forests is raised from rates levied upon such forests; and how the latter amount compares with the local revenue derived from rates levied on agricultural land?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: There is no information available on this subject.
    Sir J. D. REES: Will the right hon. Gentleman endeavour to obtain the information? It is of some importance.
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No, I cannot promise to do that, because it would be a very difficult matter.
    MARQUESS Of TULLIBARDINE: Could he not obtain it from the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Member for Ross, who pretend to know all about it?
    Viscount CASTLEREAGH: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that there is no information available upon the subject of rates paid on deer forests, or does he mean that he is unwilling to give that information?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No, I am not unwilling to give it; but if I can be convinced that it is worth the expense of compilation I am quite willing to give it, but I am not satisfied at present that it is worth the price.
    Mr. F. HALL: If there were a memorial signed by 100 Members, would the right hon. Gentleman grant it?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I would consider it in that case.

    Midlothian Tenants.
    Major HOPEasked whether the right hon. Gentleman has yet made any inquiry into the conditions under which

    951
    the small tenants at Murieston, Midlothian, hold their land from the Scottish Local Government Board; and whether he will consider the advisability of referring their rent to the Scottish Land Court for revision?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The matter is now under discussion between the Local Government Board for Scotland and the Edinburgh Distress Committee, from whom the tenants hold their land.

    Railway Accidents.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the President of the Board of Trade what are the comparative figures of fatal and non-fatal railway accidents according to the latest available figures in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Burns): The figures relating to non-fatal accidents cannot be compared, as the definition of a non-fatal accident differs in almost every case. [See Written Answers this date.]

    Railway Companies (Milk Charges).
    Mr. ORDE - POWLETTasked whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention has been called to the increased charge for the conveyance of milk, amounting to 4 per cent. and over, by certain railway companies in the North of England; and whether he proposes to take any steps to protect the interests of the milk producers in that part of the country?
    Mr. BURNS: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave on Monday last to a similar question which was asked by the hon. Member for the Wilton Division.

    Steamship "Bridgeport."
    Mr. O'DONNELLasked whether the steamship "Bridgeport," owned and registered in London by Brown, Jenkinson, and Company. 4, Lloyd's Avenue, London, which left Sydney for Montreal on the 1st November last, has not since been heard of; whether it is proposed to hold an inquiry in this country into the matter; whether statements made by officers of the vessel and now in the possession of their parents or friends will be taken into account at the inquiry; whether, when this vessel arrived at Sydney, Cape Breton, on the 23rd May, 1913, her
    952
    thwartship beams were put ashore to facilitate the working of the cranes and were left there after her; whether, on the voyage of the 8th September at Montreal,, this ship's cargo of coal was 11,660 tons, draft 26 feet 11 inches, whereas her builders, William Doxford and Sons, Sunderland, give her dead weight 11,000 tons, on a draft 25 feet 1⅜ inch; whether the compass, owing to the change of derricks, had shifted a point, and was the cause of putting the ship on the wrong course; and whether, seeing that this vessel was owned and registered in this country and that the officers, all of whom were lost, are British subjects, the inquiry into her loss and its cause should be held in London?
    Mr. BURNS: The steamship "Bridgeport," of London, has not been heard of since she left Sydney, Cape Breton, for Montreal, on 1st November. At the time of her loss, and for some months previously, the "Bridgeport" had been trading on the Canadian coasts, and the Canadian Court, which is to hold an investigation into the loss of the vessel, is in a much better position to secure material information regarding the casualty than a Court of investigation in this country. I am unable to say whether the statements in my hon. Friend's question as regards the conditions obtaining on the vessel at different times are correct, but they and any other statements bearing on the loss of the ship, which can be supplied to the Board of Trade, shall be forwarded to the Canadian authorities, to whom certain information has already been sent.

    Inebriates Bill.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Home Secretary whether he proposes to reintroduce this Session the Inebriates Bill, which last year was received with almost unanimous approval by the House?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): Yes, Sir, the Bill will be introduced without delay.

    Glamorgan Police.
    Mr. THOMASasked whether the Glamorgan police are visiting the homesof responsible trade-union leaders, ascertaining the membership of their organisation, the address of their secretary, and place of meeting, and further seeking information to report on the discipline, temperament, and disposition of the leaders, and other similar information;

    953
    whether this information is being sought at the request of the Home Office; and for what purpose such information is necessary?
    Mr. McKENNA: I have heard nothing of any such inquiries. If they are being made, it is not at the request of the Home Office.
    Mr. THOMAS: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries with a view to ascertaining whether it is the intention of the Glamorgan police to copy the methods adopted in South Africa?
    Mr. McKENNA: I think I may say from my own knowledge that they have no such intention; but, if my hon. Friend wishes it, I will certainly inquire into the point.

    Hawkers' Licences.
    Mr. FALLEasked the Home Secretary if he proposes to make any alteration in the law as regards the necessity of credit drapers having to obtain hawkers' licences?
    Mr. McKENNA: I cannot undertake to introduce legislation for this purpose.

    Anthrax Poisoning.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been directed to a recent inquest upon a water side labourer, who died in Guy's Hospital on 21st December last from anthrax poisoning, at which the jury, in returning a verdict of accidental death from such poisoning, expressed the opinion that the Home Office should extend the regulations of the Factories and Workshops Act, which apply only to anthrax in factories and workshops, to wharves and other places where horsehair, hides, skins, and pigs' bristles were dealt with; whether the Departmental Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease recently called attention to the danger of such substances, unless effectively disinfected, becoming carrier of anthrax and other animal diseases; and whether he proposes, as the result of the above fatality, to take any action in the direction suggested by the coroner's jury?
    Mr. McKENNA: The answer to the hon. Member's first two questions is in the affirmative. The rules referred to cannot be extended in their present form to wharves or to any places other than factories and workshops, because they were made under the old Factory Act of 1891, which applied only to factories and work-
    954
    shops; but I hope to be able shortly, when certain inquiries now in hand have been completed, to replace these rules by fuller Regulations under the Factory and Workshop Act of 1901, and the question of applying these Regulations to wharves and warehouses where the danger may arise, will receive very careful consideration.
    Mr. C. BATHURST: I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he realises the importance of greater cooperation between his Department and the Board of Agriculture in respect of these fatal diseases which are common both to animals and men?
    Mr. McKENNA: Yes, Sir, certainly.

    Safety in Mines.
    Mr. WHITEHOUSEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the total number of different firms affected by the Draft Regulation of November last respecting the provision of rescue apparatus in Lanarkshire; and how many of these have appealed against the Draft Regulation?
    Mr. McKENNA: The draft amending Regulation is not limited to Lanarkshire, but will apply to all mines throughout the country to which the principal Regulations apply, including 156 mines in Lanarkshire. No individual owners in Lanarkshire have submitted objections to the Draft Regulation, but an objection has been lodged by the Mining Association of Great Britain on behalf of their members generally.
    Mr. WHITEHOUSEasked the, name of the referee to whom the appeal of the Lanarkshire coalowners against the Draft Regulation of the Home Office relating to the provision of rescue apparatus has been referred?
    Mr. McKENNA: The Reference Committee have appointed Lord Mersey as referee to consider the objections to the Draft Regulation which have been referred under the Act.

    Deportations (South Africa).
    Major ARCHER - SHEEasked whether Mr. Poutsma, who has been deported from South Africa by the South African Union Government, is a British subject; and whether, if he is not a British subject, he will be refused admission to this country as an undesirable alien?
    Mr. McKENNA: As I informed the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow on Monday last, Mr. Poutsma has stated that he is a naturalised British subject. In any case he would not, so far as I am aware, be, within the meaning of Section 1 (3) of the Aliens Act, 1905, an undesirable immigrant to whom leave to land in the United Kingdom may be refused.
    Major ARCHER-SHEE: May I ask first, whether Mr. Poutsma is a naturalised British subject in the United Kingdom; and, secondly, whether the right hon. Gentleman will introduce legislation to amend the Aliens Act so that desperadoes of this character—[Interruption.]
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better put the question upon the Paper.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Is Mr. Thornton, the new manager of the Great Eastern, an alien?

    Education Bill.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked whether the Bill providing for a national scheme of education will be introduced before Easter; and whether such Bill will be a purely educational measure or whether it will deal also with matters of religious controversy?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. J. A. Pease): I am unable to make any statement as to the date at which the Bill will be introduced, or as to its scope. But I may refer the hon. Member to the statement which I made on 22nd July last in this House, and remind him that the King's Speech contained an announcement that the proposals there outlined would be the subject of a Bill this Session.
    Mr. BATHURST: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the local education authorities throughout the kingdom are intensely desirous of having a real Educational Bill and not a religious-squabbles Bill?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That is not a question designed to elicit information; it is an argument.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: On that answer, which was rather imperfectly heard owing to a dispute taking place on the Labour Benches—[Interruption.]
    Mr. SPEAKER: If the Noble Lord puts an introduction of that sort to his question, it naturally leads to disturbance. He had perhaps better put his question down.

    Land Purchase (Ireland).
    Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners are aware of the promise given by Lady Chapman, of Killua Castle, to her congested tenants, to sell her entire estate to the Commissioners under Section 6 of the Land Act of 1903, in order that all the non-residential grass farms might be applied to the relief of the congestion; why the Commissioners entertain the sale in a different manner, making relief impossible; the number of holdings on the estate now derelict in consequence of the congestion; the number which do not comprise any land; the number consisting of less than half an acre each; the total number congested within the meaning of the Land Act of 1909; the number of non-residential grass farms, with their gross acreage; whether some are held by agreements preventing building and tillage; the dates of those alleged agreements; under what Section are such holdings on a congested estate to be sold to graziers; why the Commissioners do not, as a condition of dealing with the estate, require the vendor to exercise her power of having them surrendered and the estate dealt with as congested; and whether the Government propose to take action in this case to prevent the congestion becoming permanent?
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The Estates Commissioners inform me that the owner has instituted proceedings for the sale of this estate to them, and at this stage of the negotiations they do not consider it desirable to discuss the terms on which they may acquire the property or the other matters referred to in the question.
    Mr. GINNELL: May I ask whether the sale of this extensive and congested estate is a matter of such little importance to the right hon. Gentleman that he can give no information about it?
    Mr. BIRRELL: On the contrary, it is of so much importance to me that inasmuch as the owner has instituted proceedings for the sale of the estate to the Estates Commissioners, I am very anxious that the negotiations should not be complicated by any utterances of mine.
    Mr. GINNELL: Is any one of the allegations in the question in doubt?
    Mr. BIRRELL: That would not in any way affect the question of the sale of the estate, which the owner has herself instituted, to the Estates Commissioners.

  FAIR ISLE (CABLE AND MAIL COMMUNICATION).
  Mr. CATHCART WASON: May I ask the Postmaster-General a question of which I have given him private notice: If, in view of the fact that there has been no mail communication with the Fair Isle for several weeks, and that the supplies in the shops are said to be exhausted and the perishable produce of the island lost, he can state what steps he has taken to restore communication; and also if he can state when cable communications will be resumed between the Orkneys and the mainland, and the reason for the delay which has taken place?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: It is unfortunately the fact that the mail to Fair Isle, which runs once a fortnight, has not on the last three occasions been able to get there on account of the heavy weather. When my hon. Friend brought this fact to my notice last night I communicated at once to the postmaster at Lerwick, and instructed him to find out what was the earliest possible moment at which a mail could be got there. I was informed that a special trawler would be sent there. It started last night at ten o'clock, and I hope, therefore, by this time communication has been restored with the island and any necessities of the islanders have been relieved. With regard to the second part of the question, perhaps I may inform my hon. Friend that the repairs to this cable have to be undertaken by the cable ship, which is at present at work on the Fish-guard and Blacksod cable. The work there has been delayed by heavy weather, and as soon as they complete that—and I hope it will be completed to-day—the cable ship will proceed to the Orkneys, and I hope that the work of repairing the cable which has been broken down will be commenced within the course of the next two or three days.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  MR. J. E. TAYLOR'S REINSTATE MENT (POINT OF ORDER).
  Major ARCHER-SHEE: I desire to raise a point of Order. During questions I was asking Question No. 54 when the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) made an observation to me of a most offensive character. He said: "You ought to be the last person to bring charges against anybody." He was heard by several hon. Members behind me. I desire to ask you whether it is in order for hon. Members to make offensive remarks of that character to Members while they are asking questions, remarks which are mendacious and absolutely without any foundation whatever?
  Mr. DEVLIN: The hon. and gallant Gentleman has said that I made an observation of an offensive character towards him when he was asking a question. That is a misstatement; I did not make the observation then, but when he put a supplementary question which in my judgment, and in the judgment of all who listened to it, was of a personal and most offensive character. It was not a series of questions, but a series of observations which hon. Members on these benches resented. I did say to him that he should be the last to make these charges. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because I was one of those who strongly supported the attitude which he took up when he occupied a large portion of a Session of Parliament in resenting charges made against relatives of his own. Those charges were proved to be untrue, and no one was more delighted than I was. The charges which he continuously levels across the floor of this House at Ministers, who have been also proved to be falsely charged—proved by a Select Committee of this House—are charges which hon. Members will not listen to without resentment.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member will have seen that trouble has arisen in consequence of the supplementary question, and not in consequence of that which was on the Paper. I pointed out to the hon. and gallant Gentleman at the time that the supplementary question was an improper one. I regret that the incident has occurred between him and the hon. Member for West Belfast, but he must not put the whole of the blame on the hon. Member for West Belfast.

  AMENDMENTS TO THE ADDRESS.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: There is upon the Paper an Amendment standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield and myself, raising a question which, rightly or wrongly, we think important. It is to the following effect:—
  "But humbly regrets that His Majesty's Government do not propose to take any steps for preventing the growing debasement of the accustomed standard of purity in public life."
  Rumours have reached me that it is not unlikely that to-morrow evening the Government will move the Closure on the Address. I do not know whether you will feel it right to grant it or not, but, supposing you do, I should like to know whether, in your judgment, it is likely that that Amendment will be reached? I should also like to ask this further question: Whether the order in which Amendments are taken to the Address is not a matter solely and entirely within the discretion of the Chair, with which Members of the House have no power to deal at all? I only ask for this reason—I need not say not with the least desire of challenging or criticising or in any way questioning any decision which you may have given, but because, having put down an Amendment of so controversial a character, I should not like it to be thought—and my hon. Friend agrees with me in this—that we have put a Motion on the Paper and are reluctant in any way that the House should have an opportunity of discussing it.
  Mr. SPEAKER: I think there is no question that the Noble Lord put the Motion down bonâ fide, and is anxious to have an opportunity of debating it. But it seems to me of a rather indefinite and vague character. I may be wrong, but I think it refers to a matter very fully discussed last Session, and would probably only revive old controversies, and there are many other matters in these Amendments which are deserving of more immediate attention than that in the Motion of the Noble Lord. It is perfectly true that the invidious duty is cast upon me of making the selection, and I have to use the best judgment I can as to which are pressing and more urgent matters, and those in which the House is most interested.
  Mr. JAMES HOPE: Will you indicate whether there will be an opportunity of raising this question, in which so deep and

  973
  painful an interest is taken outside this House?
  Mr. SPEAKER: There is an opportunity by means of the Tuesday and Wednesday ballots, and there is also an opportunity open in Committee of Supply.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: Will the Prime Minister give us an opportunity of discussing it?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I think, as Mr. Speaker has indicated, hon. Members should take advantage of the opportunity which they have in the ballot.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: Does not the hon. Gentleman think the opportunity afforded by the ballot at the fag end of the Sitting is wholly inadequate for so important a matter?
  Mr. AMERY: Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that the question is of no interest to the Government?
  The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir; I do nothing of the kind.

  NOTICES OF MOTION.
  Mr. EDGAR JONES: I beg to give notice, that on this day two weeks, I shall call attention to the need for a redistribution of seats, and move a Resolution.
  Sir MARK SYKES: I beg to give notice, that this day two weeks, I shall call attention to the condition of Ireland, and move a Resolution.
  Mr. JAMES ROWLANDS: I beg to give notice, that this day two weeks I shall call attention to elections of Members of Parliament where there are more than two candidates for the vacancy, and the need of an amendment of the law, and move a Resolution.

  BILLS PRESENTED.
    CHILDREN ACT (1908) AMENDMENT BILL.
    "To amend The Children Act, 1908." Presented by Mr. ALDEN; supported by Mr. Arthur Allen, Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and Mr. William Crooks; to be read a second time upon Wednesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 46.]

    MOTOR CARS BILL.
    "To amend The Motor Car Act, 1903, in relation to endorsements of driving
    974
    licences." Presented by Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS; supported by Mr. Arthur Stanley, Mr. Cathcart Wason, Captain Arthur Murray, and Mr. Douglas Hall; to be read a second time upon Friday, 24th April, and to be printed. [Bill 47.]

    HIGHER ANIMALS PROTECTION BILL.
    "To prohibit the vivisection of the higher animals." Presented by Mr. CATHCART WASON; supported by Mr. Cowan and Mr. Webb; to be read a second time upon Friday, 6th March, and to be printed. [Bill 48.]
    INEBRIATES BILL.
    "To consolidate and amend the Law relating to Inebriates." Presented by Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH; to be read a second time upon Thursday, 26th February, and to be printed. [Bill 49.]
    VETERINARY SURGEONS ACT (1881) AMEND MENT BILL.
    "To amend the Acts relating to the practice of veterinary surgery and medicine." Presented by Mr. SANDERSON; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 50.]
  HIS MAJESTY'S GRACIOUS SPEECH.

    DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS (Seventh Day).
    Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [10 th February], "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
    Most Gracious Sovereign,
    We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—[Mr. Walter Roch.]
    Question again proposed. Debate resumed.

    STRIKE RIOTS, DUBLIN.
    Another Amendment proposed, at the end of the Question, to add the words,
    "But humbly regrets that no mention is made of the recent deplorable events in Dublin and no promise made of an impartial and representative commission of inquiry into the conduct of the police."—[Mr. Barnes.]
    Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
    4.0 P.M.
    Mr. BARNES: I rise to move this Amendment standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Lancashire (Mr. Clynes) who, I am sorry to say, is detained elsewhere. It is desired, if possible, to get a full, impartial, and representative inquiry into the conduct of the police of Dublin, or, alternatively, that there should be some proceedings instituted, either by way of prosecution of the police, or some other method, in order that the whole facts may be brought to light; and, in the second place, we demand that some adequate compensation shall be given to those people whose furniture was broken up and whose houses were forcibly entered by the police on the 31st August last. There has been a lurid light thrown upon Dublin during the last few months. Possibly Dublin may be little different from other industrial centres. Low wages and bad conditions of life obtain on this side as well as the other side of St. George's Channel. I was reading the other day some articles by Mr. Harold Begbie relating to Glasgow, dealing with tenement houses and the low life there generally. There is this difference between Glasgow and Dublin: that, whereas the Glasgow authorities are well aware of the trouble and are anxious to deal with it in a sympathetic manner, and that there the police are well under control, so far as I can gather the police in Dublin are masters of the situation and regard themselves as mere janissaries to keep the people in order; they are mere toadies of Dublin Castle and representatives of the minority in Ireland, who are well-to-do people, who seem to keep themselves dominant there. Although there may be a good deal of bad conditions on this side of St. George's Channel as well as in Ireland, we have far different and better methods of dealing with them. It will be noticed that our Amendment is pretty wide in its terms. It would include consideration of the industrial position in Dublin, and of the proceedings there before and after the events of last August and September. I may say, however, that we have no desire to discuss the industrial situation in Dublin for many reasons, the chief of which is that we want to focus attention upon the proceedings of the police; but perhaps I might be allowed to say personally that I think any efforts made on the part of the poor people
    976
    of Dublin themselves in the way of social and industrial betterment ought to have been met by sympathetic consideration on the part of the people who are in authority in Dublin.
    Dublin is a city of low wages and very low conditions of life. It happened to be my lot to be there in the early days of last September, and I saw a good deal of the conditions of life there. I came to the conclusion that Dublin was a place where the forces of evil and, I am afraid, I must include in them strong drink, made havoc with the people's lives. It was my lot to go through some of the slums there, and I never saw worse in my life. I followed the body of the poor man who had been, killed in the disturbances. We went through a long stream of people, and I never saw such bruised and battered humanity in my life. It was my lot to go into some of the houses, some of them with little or no furniture at all. I even climbed the rickety stairs of the houses immediately adjacent to the gap made by the fall of two houses the week before, and I went into some of the rooms vacated by the poor tenants who had lived there, but who fled in terror when the houses had fallen, and I never saw such poverty anywhere else in my life. Whatever else might be said of what is called the Larkinite movement, it had in Ireland, at all events, brought some new life and new hope to these people, and from all I can gather it was a sober movement. Not only was sobriety and abstinence held up by precept by those who were leading the movement, but they held it up by example as well; therefore I say that movement deserved sympathetic consideration by those on the spot, instead of which it was met with nothing but savage repression on the part, I was going to say of the authorities, but at all events on the part of those in uniform.
    Before referring, as I want to do later, to some evidence in favour of reopening the inquiry, I should like to give one or two reasons why in our judgment that evidence which I have here should not have been, as it was not, submitted to the Commission which reported a day or two ago. It may seem to some of our Irish Friends that it is presumptuous on our part to interfere in a matter of this sort, but I think even they will admit that we have some claim to speak on behalf of organised labour in Dublin. Moreover, I have to point out that this Commission, so far as I can gather, has not given any sort of

    977
    satisfaction to the people on the spot. I am not in a position to speak for the Corporation of Dublin. I know that the Dublin Corporation itself demanded a full and impartial inquiry in the early days of last September. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may be better qualified than I am to say whether or not the Dublin Corporation is satisfied with the inquiry that has been held. I know that six Members of Parliament, representing Dublin and the vicinity, did issue a letter on the 6th September last themselves, demanding a full inquiry into the events in Dublin. I am not going to say—I have no knowledge—whether or not those six hon. Members are satisfied with what has taken place. They, of course, must speak for themselves. I am here to say that this recent inquiry was held to be a sort of fraud upon the people of Dublin, and has been so held from the very moment it was first announced. That Commission was set up on the 5th of last month, and on the 8th the "Freeman's Journal" said:—
    "No importance is attached by anybody in Dublin to the inquiry. Its Report will affect no opinion and change no judgment. The Commissioners are two highly esteemed Unionist lawyers, who will be certain to take a highly conservative view of the rights of the public as affected by police action."
    Referring to a statement made on the other side that their photographs of the events of 31st August had been faked, they said:—
    "This statement is a sufficient test of the reliability of the whole inquiry. It gives us a measure of the methods by which the Report of the Commissioners is to be obtained, and it convinces ns that the citizens have exhibited a sound instinct in treating the whole inquiry as worthless."
    Even the "Irish Times," which I take it represents more or less the Conservative view in Ireland, on the 9th stated that
    "the Report, whatever it was, would not satisfy the workers of Dublin."
    So far as Nationalist opinion, as viewed through the spectacles of the "Freeman's Journal," is concerned, the inquiry was not accepted as in any way satisfactory from the very beginning, and we shall, of course, hear later on whether it is accepted now after the Report. In the next place, the Commission has not been accepted as satisfactory by a body which has come into being—I do not know how long it has been in being—during the last few months. I refer to the Civic League. On the 14th of last month the Civic League had a letter in the "Irish Times," from which I quote two or three sentences. First of all, they say:—
    "They do not intend in anyway to reflect on the character of the two Commissioners, but they were convinced that the body of evidence against the police
    978
    was of so serious and authentic nature that the fullest and most representative inquiry is absolutely necessary for the sake not only of public confidence in the Government's good faith, but also in the interests of the police themselves and their relations to the public."
    They suggest
    "There should be a Commission empowered to compel the attendance of witnesses, and empowered to report on the whole system of police administration in Dublin with a view to its fundamental reform."
    And they go on to say that
    "these conditions have not been complied with in the setting up of the Commission,"
    which had then been sitting for a few days. Further, they said that
    "such was the reign of terror in Dublin at that time that no workman or small shopkeeper could with safety go before that Commission."
    That is signed by Captain White, R. J. Collingwood, and the Rev. R. M. Gwynn. That is further testimony as to the state of feeling in Dublin at the time. There are other and special reasons why we of the Labour party should not accept the Commission that has recently reported as in any way satisfactory. In the first place, it is not the Commission that was promised by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. I may say that I put a question to the Chief Secretary the other day, but unfortunately it was placed so low down on the list—I do not suggest that he is responsible for that any more than I am—but it was No. 106, and therefore was not reached. I put down that question to the right hon. Gentleman with a view to getting from his own lips what he had himself said some time ago in promising the Commission as to what the character of that Commission should be. I believe it is usual, when a question is not reached, that the information should be sent later on to the Member, but although I have asked for that information several times since I have not yet got it. I do not charge the Chief Secretary with any want of respect.
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): It was printed in the ordinary way. The question not being reached, I handed the answer in at the Table, and it appeared the next day in print.
    Mr. BARNES: I have not seen it in print. I understood it was usual for a Member to get the information, when the question is not reached, in type. I make no charge against the right hon. Gentleman, and I merely mentioned the matter to show that I was anxious to quote his exact words. Not having his exact words, I have had to go to the newspapers, and I find them

    979
    reported as follows: In answer to a deputation of trade unionists, who waited upon him at Bristol, he said:—
    "With regard to the conduct of the police an inquiry has been promised. It has not yet been instituted, but I hope it will be before long. It will be a judicial inquiry and so composed as to include a representative of the views of the working classes in Dublin or the neighbourhood. If the police behaved badly, they will receive the punishment which is their due."
    I do not know whether or not those are the exact words used by the Chief Secretary. He will be able to tell us that later on, but I believe that in essence he did promise that when this Commission was set up there should be a representative of the working classes of Dublin upon it. I should like to know who is the representative of the working classes on this Commission. Is it Mr. Dennis Henry or Mr. S. L. Brown? With deference to both these eminent lawyers, I should say probably not one of them knows anything at all about the working-class views of the organised workers of Dublin or elsewhere, and probably not one of them has any information at all of working-class life or working-class views upon anything. They are probably typical representatives of what might be called the garrison in Ireland, and therefore we, as a Labour party, do not accept for one moment either of these gentlemen or the two of them as in any sense representing the working classes, and we hope there will be some reasons given why that promise of the Chief, Secretary has not been carried out. Then, in the next place, we are dissatisfied with the Commission of Inquiry, because it is limited in scope by its reference to the events of the last few days in August, I believe, and a few weeks in September, and we have ample evidence not only of police brutality during those few weeks, but of police brutality long before that, as we believe, which led up to any disorder that took place during last August and September; and we further have proof of irregularity and misconduct on the part of the police since, and, therefore, in any inquiry that is going to be satisfactory all round, we submit that it should include not only the doings of the police during those few weeks, but the doings of the police before and after.
    There is another reason why the Commission which has recently reported cannot be accepted as satisfactory, and that is that they did not get the full facts. Of course, we are open to the retort that they might have had those facts placed before
    980
    them if our friends had been willing to go there. But our friends were not willing to go there for good reasons, and, as a matter of fact, according to the Report itself, which is now in print, no fewer than 202 out of the 281 witnesses who went before that Commission were policemen or police officers. It seems to have been a sort of beanfeast of policemen, a self-glorification, and an opportunity for the police to use whitewash liberally on themselves. There is another thing: so far as we can see they had no power of examining witnesses on oath or even of compelling witnesses, when they were there, to answer questions. There is an item in the Report where the hon. Member (Mr. Booth) asked a question, a germane question, as to the proceedings on Sunday, 31st August last, and the Superintendent of whom the question was asked blankly refused to answer it, and he was supported in that attitude by the two Commissioners. Then, lastly, so far as we are concerned—this will be sufficient in itself—the organised trade unionists of Dublin have repudiated the whole business, and have boycotted it, and said they would not go near it because of their lack of confidence in it, and have treated the whole thing with contempt, and, therefore, the workers' position in Dublin has not yet been put before that Commission. Therefore, for all these reasons, for the reason that the facts have not been fully brought out, and for the reason that the recent Commission does not in any way comply with what we had been led to believe by the Chief Secretary would be the character of the Commission when set up, we say that the Commission has not been in any way satisfactory.
    I want to quote some evidence. I have here a number of depositions, as I suppose they should be called. I am not sure whether they have been sworn to or not, but at all events they are ready to be sworn to by those whose names are appended to them at any time when a satisfactory Commission has been set up. The first one of these documents is drawn up for, or by, F. Skeffington, who is a resident in Dublin, and who has been an eye-witness of many disturbances during the last few months, before August and September, and since the termination of these trials. First of all we must go back behind the proceedings of last August—the last two days of August—in order to get some explanation of these matters. He says:—
    "On the Thursday and Friday evenings, 28th and 29th August, I was in the streets at the hour when the

    981
    meetings were dispersing, and I saw the attitude of the police. They appeared to me to be in a state of high excitement. Every group of half a dozen that stood on the streets was immediately approached by them and broken up. I saw them rushing at and breaking up such groups on both evenings, in O'Connell Street and on O'Connell Bridge, without the smallest provocation. Batons were not used as far as I saw, but the members of these standing groups, if they showed the smallest inclination to resent the action of the police in hustling them, were struck and cuffed. Those who were fairly well dressed, as a rule, escaped these attentions."
    That is a matter which comes over and over again in these statements. The poor working man, the man ill-dressed, the man who appeared to be perhaps slightly under the influence of liquor, was mercilessly batoned by these policemen; but where a man had a good coat or was known to be a man of some influence, he escaped scot free. Then, he goes on to the Saturday night:—
    "The events of the Saturday night, which are admitted to have been the worst examples of police brutality, I did not personally see; but from what took place on Sunday, 31st August, in broad daylight in the city's chief thoroughfare, before numbers of impartial and unimpeachable witnesses, it is possible to form some idea of how the police, in their then frame of mind, were likely to behave at night time, in the slums and bye-ways, and without any other witnesses than their working-class victims."
    Then he goes on with a long explanation of the sparseness of the crowd in Sackville Street on that particular Sunday afternoon. It has been said by the police afterwards, as a sort of plea for justification of what they have done, that the calling of a meeting elsewhere than in Sackville Street was a sort of ruse to get the police off the track. That is disposed of absolutely by this document, because it shows that he and those who were in the inner counsels of the labour people were perfectly bonâ fide in their endeavours to take the crowd off Sackville Street on that Sunday afternoon; that he himself did not know anything different, and that, as a matter of fact, in Sackville Street on that Sunday afternoon, there was not, at the very outside, more than fifty or sixty people who knew anything at all about the 3abour movement, and that the number was made up of decent people going home from church, who knew nothing about police riots or anything of the kind. There is a sort of lurid patch. This is in reference to Sunday:—
    "A group of young girls in a semi-hysterical condition were lamenting the loss of a small child who had disappeared in the course of the charge. While my wife and I were speaking to them, a burly constable came running across the street at our group, in which I was the only man, with his baton drawn and uplifted. The girls, some of them mere children, screamed and fled down a bye-street. I called out the policeman's number and told him I was watching him. He then stopped, apparently recognising me, and said, apologetically, 'I did not do anything.' I replied, No, because I called out your number in time.'"
    982
    That is typical of this statement right through dealing with the incidents not only of last August and September, but later on. I may call another sentence here of an incident in November last. He says:—
    "On November 8th, or rather on the morning of November 9th, about 1 a.m., I was walking home along the Rathmines Road with my wife and three friends, two ladies and a gentleman. A constable on duty on Rathmines Road, near Portobello Bridge, crossed the road towards us, planted himself in front of us, and peered into our faces. He lurched heavily from side to side and smelt strongly of drink. We asked what, he wanted and told him to stand aside. He continued to obstruct us and uttered insulting remarks. We asked if he intended to arrest us. He said for very little he would, but he knew us all and could get us any time. Ultimately we got past, leaving him lurching and muttering on the footway. Imagine any solitary passenger, especially a woman, being at the mercy of n charge brought against her by a man in this condition. He was a very big man and palpably drunk. I have his number."
    So much for that! I now get back to that Saturday night and to the killing of this poor man, Nolan, in respect of whom we hope something will be done to compensate those who have been dependent upon him, and also to bring, if possible, to justice those who had killed him. I have two statements here. First of all, one from Stephen Gilligan:—
    "I was going down to the post office with a telegram. As soon as I landed outside I saw the charge of the police. The people were talking in threes and fours, and got no chance of moving. The first thing they knew was the batons coining down on them. I heard a voice saying, Now give it to them, boys!' I pretended I was a reporter and got safe. I saw the police charge the doorway and smash the sidelights. They charged round Eden Quay. The majority went on the footpath charging the people there. The people for the most part kept to the quayside. I stood in the shadow of the Corporation weigh-house and saw poor Nolan trying to get away. He was dodging along, but he was under the influence of liquor, appearing to be that way. I saw a police constable, 224 C, Constable Bell, strike him with a baton. I saw him fall on his knees. The constable ran on, and then 149 C struck him across the neck. I went back towards the Butt Bridge. I saw another small man hit by a baton—this was between seven and eight o'clock. I saw another man try to pull the injured man out of the way. The rescuer was struck also by a baton and fell across the first injured man. The police charged as far as the Tivoli Theatre. I went off to the post office and sent the telegram, and know nothing more. I saw windows smashed another day in Waterford Street by the police—the R.I.C. men."
    There is another statement of a man who also was an eye-witness of the killing of that Nolan—Patrick Carton, 54, Marlborough Street, Dublin. He says:—
    "As far as I can remember on the night of the occurrence, when the first baton charge took place, I was at Liberty Hall and I noticed about twenty police on duty outside Tuck's entrance. There were about 300 people round Liberty Hall. I noticed a number of children singing national songs. The police advanced and drew their batons and commenced batoning the people owing to the children singing national songs. I was on the steps and I heard a voice stating, 'Clear the steps of Liberty Hall!' I then made my way out to Eden Quay, but got a blow on the way which my cap saved me from.

    983
    I saw a man lying on the ground after being batoned, whose name subsequently turned out to be James Nolan, who died owing to the effects of this baton charge. I saw a policeman going in front of Nolan and looking at him after, as I thought, striking him. I took the constable's number, which was 224C. After the constables had retreated I rendered all the assistance possible to the man, and, as a matter of fact, went with him to the hospital. I called the attention of Inspector Campbell to the state of the man on the ground, and lie ordered the constable to disperse the men about, Inspector Campbell sent 52C in a cab to the hospital with the man. I insisted on going also, and after a lot of argument I managed to step into the cab and accompanied the constable to the hospital. The man never spoke after he went into the hospital, and on looking at him his eyes and head were all swollen and battered. What took me to Liberty Hall was to pay my weekly subscription, which I did before the charge."
    That is all I will read with regard to this man Nolan. I think it is sufficient to show that he, an inoffensive man, was done to death unnecessarily by the police. I have here also a statement by Mr. Lennox Robinson, 73, Lower Baggot Street, manager of the Abbey Theatre. He says:—
    "On Saturday night, 30th August last, I was going down to the theatre via Brunswick Street and Tara Street, towards Butt Bridge. Everything was quite ordinary in Tara Street. Just as I approached the bridge I saw two men leaning against the Quay wall. They were standing apparently doing nothing. Two policemen crossed the bridge, and, without any parley or words, they caught hold of one and threw him into the street, and the other policeman struck the other man with his baton. There was no disturbance, and I crossed the street to the bridge. I met eight or ten policemen coming over the bridge: they charged down Burgh Quay towards the Tivoli Theatre. It was apparently in this charge that one of the men was killed."
    I want to read a statement from Henry Nicholls, Esq., B.A., B.A.I., T.C.D., 1, Church Avenue, Rathmines. This gentleman is one of those who came under the batons of the police—I suppose accidentally—and after the police had batoned him and he had asserted himself, they found out that he was a man of some influence Then they apologised to him. If he had been a poor workman there would not have been any apology. In his statement he says:—
    "On the evening of 29th August (Friday) I went to Beresford Place, about 8.30, to listen to the speeches. The crowd was very peaceable, and remained quiet under the provocation given by the police forcing a way through them to let a motor car pass. When the speaking was over I was making my way home along Eden Quay, when suddenly, without any provocation, about twenty police charged the crowd, of which I was one. The majority fled. I walked on and was knocked staggering by a blow between the eyes by a constable. When turning to notice his number I was struck by another constable in the mouth, my pipe being smashed. I got the numbers of both constables (33B and 188B) and immediately went to College Street station to lay a charge against the constables. Two people who witnessed the assault (Mr. and Miss Byrne) came with me. At College Street I was referred to Store Street, when I handed in a
    984
    written statement, as did Mr. and Miss Byrne. Next day I saw a solicitor, and on Monday Mr. Smith (29, Lower Gardiner Street) advised me to ask for a summons at the Police Court office. This was refused me, and Mr. Smith said he would apply to the magistrate the next day. However, the next morning, Inspector McCaig called on me and asked me not to summon the constables and offering me an apology. I asked him to put his apology in writing, and on receiving it agreed not to proceed with the summons."
    The apology was in the following terms:—
    "On behalf of the constables who assaulted Mr. Nioholls I apologise to him on their behalf for having done so, and regret very much that such should have occurred."
    That is what happens in the case of a man who, having money, is able to go and fee a solicitor—a man who has such a position in society in Dublin that he can have justice done to him. The next statement I want to read is a short note from an Englishman who happened to be there—Mr. H. J. Macauley. He wrote to the Lord Mayor of Dublin:—
    "My Lord,—On being informed that it is your intention of holding a public inquiry into the conduct of the police during the last few days. I wished to state that on Friday night last, after having a business appointment in the city, I was unmercifully beaten by the police and knocked down and trampled on at the corner of Eden Quay without, the slightest warning. I reported the case to College Street Police Station, and stated there that I thought the police deserved censuring, but of course this would not be likely to do much good. I brought three witnesses with me, and they agreed that there was no cause for a charge on innocent people of which a good proportion were women and children. I may state that I have been confined to bed since as I am unable to walk and this is a serious matter, as I am the manager of a wool warehouse in the city. I have only been resident a short time in Dublin, and coming from England I might be pardoned if I state that the police of this city, are in my humble opinion, unworthy guardians of law and order. Trusting that this may be of some little assistance to Your Lordship."
    Then I have a statement from an engineer who was walking out with his wife on 31st August. His wife had a child in her arms. The statement is to the effect that they were walking peaceably along Townsend Street in the afternoon, and that at the corner of Shaw Street there were about twenty people. He saw them do nothing, but somebody shouted, "Look out!" and when he turned round he saw the police charging. He pushed his wife up some steps into a door where others were rushing. When he turned round to see what was going on he was immediately struck by a baton on the hand, and the bones of the hand were broken. He attended a hospital and was in receipt of 10s. weekly from the National Health Insurance ever since. I want to call attention to a statement from a person in a very high position in society, again showing the discrimination made by the police in favour of such people as compared with the poorer citizens. The Hon. Mary Lawless, Hazel-

    985
    hatch, county Kildare, in her statement says:—
    "On Saturday, 25th October, I was responsible for bringing the children from Liberty Hall to Hazelhatch. The parents of each child were there and a consenting party. As a matter of fact, they were coming with the children. At King's Bridge Station the crowd, headed by John E. Nugent, attacked the parents and took one child away. I complained to police Nos. 93 A and 47 A, and they declined to do anything. They said they could not do anything. They did not try to. I said I would complain of them to Mr. Harell, who was a friend of mine, and send him their numbers. They immediately started to keep order, and succeeded to a great extent. This was after we were considerably jostled. Afterward we went up to Kilmainham Police Station to charge some of these people, and we met Inspector Murphy and a constable on duty at the door. It was then about 7 o'clock. Mr. Skeffington was with me. He said we were come to make charges against Nugent and a certain woman named Farell for kidnapping the child. Superintendent Murphy said it was too late, and that everyone was gone home, and told Mr. Skeffington to 'be off until Monday.' Mr. Skeffington then mentioned my name, and immediately the police were servile, and took long statements and depositions from four of us. The father and uncle of the boy were with us and also gave depositions. The uncle's head was bleeding where he had been beaten."
    I wish also to refer to a statement which Mr. William Lowry, LL.B., barrister-at-law, addressed to the Lord Mayor as to the conduct of the police. It has reference to an assault on a number of people at one of the Dublin railway stations. He says that the people were quite inoffensive and peaceable, and that the police made an attack upon them and brutally assaulted many of them. The charges against the police are stated in this way:—
    "(1) No attack has been made on the police from the station premises; (2) the police invaded the station in considerable force; (3) the police attacked people in the station indiscriminately; (4) several persons were injured; and (5) a superior policeman came into the station after his underlings had withdrawn, walked round, refused to listen to complaints, and then took himself off."
    Mr. BIRRELL: What date was that?
    Mr. BARNES: It was the 31st. That would be after the so-called riot in Sackville Street. I have statements from two or three dozen people—from women whose houses had been broken into and from men who had been brutally assaulted, some of them old men, one seventy-three years of age. I do not propose to read these statements, because it so happens that we have now the printed Report of the Commission which was set up on the 5th of last month. The two lawyers forming the Commission admit, on the whole, the charges made against the police as to people living in the Corporation Buildings. I want to put on record what the Report of the Commission says at page 11:—
    "We make every allowance for the excitement under which the constables were labouring owing to the attacks made upon them from the buildings, but in our
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    opinion in the case of eight or ten dwellings wilful damage was done without justification.
    The rooms in which the principal damage was caused were seen on Tuesday, 2nd September, by Mr. Eyre, the City Treasurer, and his evidence fully corrobrated the statements of the tenants of the dwellings, and was fully accepted by us, as was the evidence of Miss Harrison, who saw some of the dwellings. We are also satisfied that in some instances assaults were committed without just cause.
    In the case of a man called Michael Whelan, who seemed to us a respectable working man, living in No. 28 D, it was proved that he, his wife, a man named Bernard Morrissy Morrissy's daughter, and two other persons were sitting in the room. The door was broken in a number of constables entered, and Whelan was violently assaulted. As a result of this assault one of the bones of his arm was broken. Bernard Morrissy was also beaten with batons, and sustained two scalp wounds, and also injuries on other parts of his body. In the course of the struggle injuries were also inflicted on other inmates of the room."
    I skip a bit and read further on:
    "Complaint was made also as to injuries inflicted on a Mrs. Byrne in the south block of buildings. In this case it was proved that both her husband and her son had thrown stones at the police, who followed them to their dwelling and arrested them. They were subsequently convicted and sentenced. We are satisfied that the injuries which Mrs. Byrne received, and which were described by Miss Harrison, a member of the corporation, were sustained by her during the scuffle which took place during the arrest of the two prisoners."
    I come now to the last case, which was, perhaps, the worst of all. The Report says:—
    "At the close of the evidence given as to Corporation Buildings a Mrs. Thompson gave evidence as to an occurrence at the house No. 2, Foley Street, where she resided The lady was a widow, whose husband had recently died, and she alleged that on the night of Saturday, the 30th, hearing a loud noise at the hall door, she left her room on the first floor, taking her child with her, and went to the landing on the floor overhead. While there a, number of constables rushed into the house and, finding light in her room, entered it, and proceeded to wreck the furniture in the room—the pictures on the walls and the delph. It was impossible to trace the constables who were alleged to have entered this house, but we believe the evidence of this witness, and are satisfied that in this case also damage was done without any just cause."
    Might I call attention to the word "just." I think it throws some illuminating evidence as to the mind of the Commissioners who reported on the proceedings, because it implies that in their opinion, there might be just cause for a body of policemen entering the house of a poor widow and smashing all her furniture. I think it throws a peculiar light as to the mind of the people who have been conducting this inquiry, and, as we believe, this unsatisfactory inquiry. I hope I have put the matter without unnecessary offence to anybody. I hope I have said enough to show that there have been events in Dublin which ought to be the subject of a searching and representative investigation. I think I have said sufficient to show that the conditions of life and labour in Dublin are not such as to satisfy any sympathetic justice-loving man or woman. I think that the working people of Dublin in their

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    efforts struggling to be free ought to have the support of all the people in Dublin, instead of what they have just got, and I want to press for a full and impartial investigation. Further, I want to ask the Chief Secretary, in all seriousness, even now after the Report has been given, and when no mention is made of compensation to these poor people living in the Corporation Buildings who did not take any part in these disturbances, many of whom knew absolutely nothing at all about them, some of whom were lying on their sick beds, one of them being a woman who had been confined only two days previously, is not there an unanswerable case for these people to be compensated and given full value for all their furniture and belongings that have been destroyed? Of course we want a special inquiry into the whole circumstances.
    One last word as to the plea put forward sometimes by the police in justification for this harshness and brutality on their part that there was lawlessness and harshness on the other side. I was in Dublin on the 7th of last September—that was the Sunday following the unprovoked assault by the police on about 100 civilians of Dublin. It might be thought if the people of Dublin were lawless, that when 50,000 of them were gathered together in a confined space, there would have been a row. Instead of that, 50,000 people were gathered in that broad street of Dublin which was packed from one end to the other, and there was not the least disturbance. I was one of those who were somewhat timid, having heard all that I had heard about Dublin, and when I arrived at the bottom of that street and saw the immense crowd, I had some misgivings as to whether the whole thing would go off peaceably. It did. The procession marched up through the street and through the dense mass of people. Each contingent fell into its place without confusion. The trade unionists themselves had appointed some hundred stewards to maintain order. They were armed with ample staffs with a flag at the top. Everything passed off without the least indication of disorder, and the meeting dispersed without the slightest disturbance. In view of the fact that the police have made statements as to the lawless character of the people of Dublin. I may say that, probably, if the police had been in Sackville Street that afternoon there would have been a row. There was no row, and so far as rows in
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    Dublin in times gone by are concerned, they have been caused very largely, so far as I can judge, because of the police. We say that the police ought to be the servants and the guardians of the people of Dublin, and not their masters, or their gaolers, or their janitors. It is because we want this enforced in this House by the Chief Secretary that we put forward the Amendment which I now beg to move.
    Mr. GOLDSTONE: I desire formally to second the Amendment.
    Mr. BRADY: I desire to make a few observations on the Amendment from the standpoint of a Nationalist representative of one of the Dublin City divisions. I feel confident that the House, although it may involve the exercise of a little patience on its part, will extend some little indulgence to one who has not many opportunities of addressing it. There will be general agreement with the hon. Gentleman the Mover of the Amendment in all parts of the House, with the description, in the Amendment of recent events in Dublin as deplorable. Whether one sits on these benches, or above the Gangway, or on the other side of the House, we must all agree that the state of things which obtained for five long weary months in the city of Dublin, is a matter for profound regret and not a little disquiet. If a stranger happened to visit Dublin during these days he would almost think that he had found himself in a beleaguered city. He would see tramears guarded front and rear by armed policemen and lorries conveying goods to their destination, carrying at the same time policemen to protect both the goods and the driver, and he would be told that sometimes it was positively dangerous even for the ordinary peaceable citizens to walk in broad daylight in the main thoroughfares of the city. It is because these things obtained for five months, from August until the end of last month, that I can say with confidence that there is no division of opinion in any part of the House with the hon. Member for Blackfriars when he describes these things as deplorable. But it is, of course, when one tries to examine the causes which reduced Dublin to this state of siege, that one enters at once into the regions of controversy. The trade of the city was unquestionably, if not entirely, paralysed—at any rate carried on under the conditions which I have indicated.

    989
    No useful purpose can be served by entering here and now into personal issues or an analysis of motives. I have no desire, and I am sure that my colleagues have no desire, to say anything harsh or intemperate of men whose objects may have been good and whose ideals may have been conceived, and I am willing to assume that they were conceived, in the best interests of the working men of Dublin. But, speaking for myself, I do feel most strongly that these methods, however well-intentioned, were wrong methods, were bad methods, and have resulted, unfortunately for the workers of Dublin, in disaster to those in whose cause they were adopted. The methods employed in Dublin during these recent occurrences were those of pure syndicalism, and Dublin has afforded the latest and, as I think, the most conclusive proof that the syndicalists are, as the hon. Member the Leader of the party opposite so well described them in a recent Debate, the worst enemies of organised labour. A writer of authority, hardly less eminent than the hon. Member himself, has said that if the sympathetic strike principle
    "were adopted by the whole labouring class, all social intercourse would be destroyed, all mercantile concerns would have to close, the cultivation of the soil, the production of wealth, on which rich and poor alike depend, would come to an end. There would be universal starvation and red-handed anarchy."
    Trade unionism on sound lines is an urgent necessity in Dublin, as in any part of this great Empire. There are many good employers in Dublin; unhappily there are not a few bad ones, and even one of the most prominent employers, one who played a very large part in the recent disputes in Dublin, was the first to recognise and state positively, with all the authority which such a statement coming from him carries with it, that he attributed the strikes in Dublin largely to the bad employers who existed in the city. But syndicalism is not the remedy for all this. The writer whom I have already quoted says:—
    "Give the labourers strong unions, which will enable them to make fair terms, and they will enjoy true liberty of contract; they will be too strong to be driven to accept famine wages or iniquitous conditions of work; they will not have the perpetual goad of wretched homes and starving wives to drive them into revolution."
    I have quoted that expression of opinion because it describes so accurately the mind of the Irish party on this question. That party has always been a Labour party in the best sense of the word, and,
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    what is more, the workmen of Dublin recognise this. During the recent troubles, with which we are dealing in this Amendment, our enemies seized the opportunity of criticising the Nationalist Members for the City of Dublin, and taunting us with our persistent silence, as it was sometimes called. We bore these taunts and sneers, it is true, in silence. We knew that they were unfounded. Throughout the long and bitter struggles the attitude of the Members for Dublin, for whom it is my privilege to speak, was this: They conceived it to be no part of their duty to enter into this industrial dispute unless and until their aid was invoked by the parties to the dispute, and that there was a reasonable prospect of any decision which would be arrived at being accepted by the parties to the dispute. We were never invited to intervene, and by no word or act did we seek to make difficult a situation which was already difficult and acute enough. My colleagues and I are confident that our attitude has not been misunderstood by our friends, and we care not how much it is misrepresented by our enemies.
    5.0 P.M.
    I do not wish to labour that point further as to these deplorable five months in Dublin. From the bottom of my heart I can say that I am very sorry that any such occasion has arisen at all. Following the example which the old Parliamentary hand, the Member for Blackfriars, has set me, I might profitably employ the remainder of the short time which I propose to occupy in discussing the proposal made by the Amendment as to the necessity for a further inquiry into the conduct of the police. The Amendment expresses regret that the Gracious Speech from the Throne indicates no intention of holding any further inquiry into the conduct of the police during the recent strike in Dublin. Speaking for myself, and again I am hopeful that I am interpreting the views of my colleagues, I do not regret that there is no prospect of any further inquiry. If my hon. Friend opposite will bear with me for a brief moment or two I will satisfy him, I think, that it involves no root disagreement between us. The hon. Member for Blackfriars throughout his whole argument assumed that if a further inquiry took place it would be a much better inquiry than that which has already been held. I am not prepared to assume that at all.
    Mr. BARNES: I will assume that it would enable a representative of the working classes, as was promised by the Chief Secretary, to be present, and sworn evidence to be taken. [An HON. Member: "This evidence was sworn."]
    Mr. BRADY: I quite follow that. But the point I was endeavouring to make is this: It is that the Irish people and those who represent them in this House have no confidence in these inquiries and Commissions, and the only inquiry in which the Irish people would have proper confidence is one which would be set up by themselves in a Parliament and by an Executive responsible to them. I am certain that hon. Members opposite will be the very last to deny the reasonableness of that view which I am submitting to the House. I would also like to say that I wish to speak, as I do speak, with the greatest respect of the two gentlemen who constituted the recent Commission. Both of them are in the very forefront of their profession, and, of course, they brought to the discharge of their duties, their delicate and difficult duties, not only legal ability of the highest order, but also. I have no doubt, speaking for myself, a desire to get at the truth of all the happenings in Dublin. I do not blame the police so much for what occurred at all. I am not traversing for a single moment the accuracy of the statement of the hon. Member for Blackfriars; but I say that one has to go much deeper to get at the root of the troubles which take place in Dublin. I say that, whilst the police, as the hon. Member for Blackfriars has shown to the House, have been to blame, and seriously to blame in many cases, yet the culprits are the authorities at Dublin Castle. Even hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway, I understand, are now coming round to the view that that "absurd and irritating anachronism," as it was once so fitly described by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, must go. I may be shown later by hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway to be wrong, but I submit that the whole root of the trouble during these deplorable transactions is to be found in the manner in which the authorities in Dublin Castle dealt with a situation which was unquestionably a difficult one, but which could have been dealt with much more advantageously on other lines.
    Though the police were very greatly to blame no doubt for many of the occur-
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    rences which took place, at the same time their masters are still more to blame. I say with confidence, and here I think I shall be expressing the feelings of my colleagues, that had a Government responsible to the Irish people been in power in Dublin, the blundering with the situation which took place would never have occurred. In the early days of surgery the universal remedy for all ills was bleeding; whether it was a pain in the head or the big toe, the patient was always bled. In the same way the universal panacea of Dublin Castle for every ill has always been, and I suppose always will be to the end, proclamation and prosecution. Prosecutions have brought fortunes and judgeships to many an Irishman; they have brought nothing but misfortune to their fellow countrymen. True to this inglorious tradition, at the very outset, even before the Member for Blackfriars, I believe, arrived in Dublin, we had the inevitable proclamation and the inevitable prosecution. I say that there was no necessity either for the one or the other, and if anybody questions that, I refer him, as the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division has already done, to the experience of that day fortnight, the fortnight following Sunday, 31st August. The hon. Gentleman bore eloquent testimony to the conduct of my fellow citizens when 50,000 people assembled in O'Connell Street—by leave, this time, forsooth, of the authorities—and when a mother with babe in arms could have passed through that crowd without any danger to her or the child. As regards the conduct of the police, I desire to adopt as my own view that put forward at the recent inquiry by the solicitor to the corporation, who presented his clients' case with a moderation and skill which in no way surprised the members of his profession, in whose ranks he stands so high. I want to quote the words of Mr. Rice, in which he so moderately described the situation so far as the attitude of the police is concerned. Mr. Rice said:—
    "In his opinion, in normal limes, under normal conditions, the police force of Dublin was very satisfactory, and did its duty efficiently and for the benefit of the citizens. But on the days in question the police were subjected to extraordinary strain, to bitter attacks, and, in fact, to attempts to murder them, by large numbers of evilly disposed people. Assuming that to be correct, the natural result would be that the temper of the police and their self-restraint would have been very much tried, that they broke down under the strain, and that in their consequent fierce excitement and anger they lost command of themselves, and forgot the respect due to property and persons, life and limb, and simply 'ran amok' in Corporation Buildings. It was natural to think

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    that men suffering from the attacks which the police had described us having taken place in the buildings, which, it was the case of the police, was the rallying ground and ambush, and specially selected place of attack on the police, who, as they stated, were lured to the place where the people had laid up 'ammunition' and prepared fortifications to receive them—it was only natural under these circumstances that they should wish to get some satisfaction from the people they thought were responsible for this."
    Mr. Rice, of course, was not alone in adopting that opinion, which he put so moderately and temperately to the Court. His opinion is fully borne out by the findings of the Commissioners themselves. As the hon. Member for Blackfriars has already told the House, the Commissioners found in reference to this particular transaction that damage was done by some of the police after the entry was made into those houses belonging to the corporation, and when no rioters were found inside. The Commissioners say:—
    "We make every allowance for the excitement under which the constables were acting, but, in our opinion, in the case of eight or ten dwellings, wilful damage was done without justification."
    I will not read other passages which have already been quoted by the hon. Member for Blackfriars, but again the Commissioners find that there was unjustifiable violence in the baton charge which took place in O'Connell Street on the same day, Sunday, the 31st August. As frequently happens, there seem to have been several peaceful citizens swept into and along with the mob and received some injury in the street. In one regrettable instance Mr. O'Donnell received some severe injuries at the hands of the police. I wonder what the citizens of London would think if a Commission, carrying with it all the respect and weight which, at any rate, some people will attach to a Commission such as this, found that members of the Metropolitan Police had inflicted injuries such as these on life and limb and property here in London. I will not say that this is an ordinary occurrence in Dublin, but it all comes back to the original cause of the evil, namely, the manner in which the same laws as obtain in this country are administered in Ireland. In this country, the police, like every other department, whether local or Imperial, are governed by the people through their representatives. The police are only one of sixty-seven boards which govern Ireland, and on which the people have no power. I do not think I could profitably labour the case any further for or against the police. I am quite with the hon. Member for
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    Blackfriars in everything he has said regarding the attitude of the police, but where he and I part, unfortunately for me is the conclusion which he draws that another inquiry is necessary. I deny that altogether. I think it would be both unnecessary, unprofitable, and possibly mischievous.
    My colleagues and I want to forget these five sad months in Dublin; we want to forget them, at any rate, so far as their recollection would be likely to engender bitterness of feeling; we want to remember them for other purposes which may be described briefly in a sentence or two. I subscribe to Mr. Rice's view that the police were to blame, but to blame under circumstances which, at any rate, can be accurately described as abnormal. I do not think that any good purpose would be served by having another inquiry into their conduct, but I can see that a great deal of evil might result from such an inquiry, however impartial it might be, and however well constituted the tribunal might be. The Irish party want, and the Members for Dublin want, to continue to do in future as they have done in the past, namely, to plead and support the cause of legitimate trade unionism in its endeavour to obtain fair wages and fair conditions of employment in Dublin, and there is plenty of field for us to do a great deal of work in that direction. I regret to have to admit that in Dublin, as I have said, there are many employers who do not give a fair wage to their workers, and whose general conditions of employment are made very onerous indeed. I say we can much more profitably employ our energy in putting an end to that kind of thing than in pressing the right hon. Gentleman and his Government for another inquiry into the conduct of the police. There is another thing we can do, and which, of course, those with whom I am associated have been doing for years, and that is to press the question of housing. That might at first sight not appear relevant, but with great respect I submit to the House that the ill-housing conditions which unfortunately obtain in Dublin are largely responsible for the unrest which obtains in the labour world, and that it behoves all of us, whether we sit on these benches or above the Gangway, as Irish Members, to do everything in our power to promote this question of the proper housing of the working classes. The Corporation of Dublin have done everything which they could do within

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    their resources. I happened this morning to see the only copy available in the Library, as it has not yet been generally circulated and printed, of the Report of the Housing Commission, which the Chief Secretary set up to inquire into the housing condition in Dublin, and I am very glad to find in it confirmation of the statement I have just made. The Commissioners say:—
    "We now turn to the action of the corporation in regard to the provision of houses."
    The finance of their operations is dealt with later—
    "and it is with pleasure that we state that they appear from the beginning to have taken advantage of the powers given to them in this regard, and it must not be forgotten that the Acts before 1890 placed a limitation on their borrowing powers for those purposes."
    I think I shall have the best opinion of all sides with me when I say that this question of housing is not a purely local one, but that it is an Imperial question, and that it exists for Dublin to perhaps a greater degree than in any other portion of the Kingdom. We shall continue to press with all the force at our command the necessity for dealing with this question on Imperial lines, and dealing with it at the very earliest opportunity. I believe that it is only by the removal of such sources of industrial unrest, as unfair wages, and unfair conditions of employment generally, and by the removal of ill-housing, that disturbances, of which Dublin has had so terrible an experience, will not recur, and that permanent industrial peace will be secured.
    Mr. BOOTH: I certainly shall not join issue with the hon. Member who has just spoken in any remarks he has made as regards the importance of this controversy. I think it is of special importance, also, for the business Members of this House and those responsible for the conduct of industry, because if the employers and men of wealth and station allow the idea to be fostered that the power of the public authority is always to be exerted against the poor or against men clamouring for improvement in their conditions, then the lot of those of us who manage industries in the United Kingdom will be hard indeed. One of my greatest regrets in reviewing the unfortunate incidents that took place before my eyes in the metropolis of Ireland is, that the inevitable result must be to throw the great city of Dublin back in commerce. Mart and exchange cannot thrive where there
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    is fear, distrust, and hate deliberately manufactured against the captains of industry. Hon Members may attribute that work largely to some imaginary body of syndicalists. That is a term at present which is used most by those who understand the least, but I may say that as far as I am able to judge, the police force of Dublin was deliberately used to increase ill-feeling and to provoke riot and disorder in order that they might make a demonstration on behalf of wealth. I had hoped that the inquiry into the proceedings in Dublin would have included the examination of the heads of the police as to their attitude towards the Trades Dispute Act and towards the trades union movement, and I ventured in the letter I wrote to the Chief Secretary to indicate my wish that the inquiry should be more extended in its scope than ultimately he saw fit to adopt.
    One of the most serious charges that has been brought against the police officials was that they took sides early, and that they acted most bitterly in what they supposed to be, no doubt, the general interests of law and order which, according to their minds interpreted, meant siding with the employers against the men on strike. There was no inquiry into that issue. I should have thought the police themselves would have been anxious to show that, apart from disorder and riot, they were perfectly impartial in this dispute about wages or hours. The hon. Member who has just spoken has a concern that he quite justified, and I would not attempt to minimise it. To translate it into insurance language, let me point out that the insurance rate at Lloyd's amongst underwriters against riots and disorder in Dublin was 12 per cent. per annum, whereas in the case of Ulster it is only 7s. 6d. per hundred pounds against any risk resulting from civil war. I do think the House will expect me, as one of their colleagues, to devote my remarks principally to as impartial an account as I can of what I actually saw. I must ask to be excused if any Member is expecting me to discuss the trades dispute, or even to discuss too closely any estimate of the capacity of this inquiry from a legal standpoint. I can only say here, that before I give my evidence to the House, that in attending that inquiry, which has proved so unsatisfactory, and which I do not regard as in the least worthy of any attention from this House in its conclusions and Report, I was not able, as I had intended,

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    to give any evidence there. That was through no fault of mine. I volunteered immediately I arrived before the Court to make a statement of exactly what I had seen, and of what charges I brought against the police. I was directed rather to cross-examine police witnesses, and I very reluctantly undertook that course.
    Directly I arrived in Dublin and left my hotel, the first visit I paid was to a firm of solicitors to ask them to engage a distinguished Unionist King's Counsel, in order that he might attend the inquiry on behalf of my wife and self, and I was only deterred from doing so by the suggestion from those in charge of the inquiry that it was unnecessary. That inquiry has issued its Report. I shall not trouble with its testimony, I consider it waste of paper and ink. I do think that even the employers should not desire that two lawyers should solemnly give their opinion upon matters on which they did not hear the evidence. That is so contrary to my ideas that I wonder why they troubled to write a large part of their Report when we remember that no statement of the case against the police with regard to general incidents from beginning to end was given, and that the whole of the police evidence was unanswered and not upon oath, and that, apart from the cross-examination of three or four of the leading officials, there was none offered. When we remember those things, I ask the House to take upon itself to disregard in an emphatic way findings on evidence of that description. However, that is a point more for the barristers of the House than for myself.
    I give four considerations which influence me, in my intention not to waste the time of the House by dealing with this unreliable Report. First of all, they made no effort to secure evidence with regard to the death of Nolan. The police had been charged with murder. An hon. Member of this House, who is not now in his place, at a meeting I attended, and in the presence of police taking it down openly in the streets of Dublin, charged the police with murdering Nolan. One would have thought, that the witnesses who appeared in the previous police cases, would have been brought before the inquiry that had taken place, because the coroner's jury in their verdict found:—
    "That James Nolan died on the 30th September, 1913, from fracture of the skull and compression of the brain and this was caused by the blow of a baton."
    I do not press that point too far, but I say I am bitterly disappointed that any inquiry worthy of having regard given to its con-
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    clusion should have given so little attention to the decease of a quiet trade unionist done to death in the streets of Dublin. My second point is, that the inquiry did not deal with the photographs and with the newspaper reports of the occurrences. I shall have to refer to that later in connection with Sackville Street. My point now is, that these men did not even read the newspaper report, and did not have before them the newspaper reports in capitalist organs, in Mr. Murphy's own organ, the "Irish Independent," and it did not trouble to look at what his paper said about the proceedings in O'Connell Street, nor did they examine photographs taken from the spot. Thirdly, when they started they promised that we should have, as part of this Report, a copy of the evidence taken. Mr. Henry, in opening the Court, said:—
    "The evidence will be taken by the Official Shorthand writer, and will be transmitted by us as part of our Report to the proper quarter."
    Where is that evidence? The Report has been issued to hon. Members, but the evidence is not available. Fourthly, I say that the House cannot give that respect to this Commission which it seeks because of the threat of violence made by the official spokesman of the police. On Thursday, 8th January, at the opening of the Commission, counsel raised the point that I had attempted on the previous day to hand in a copy of the "Evening Telegraph," which is the evening edition of the "Freeman's Journal," with a reproduced photograph of the scene. It annoyed him so much that on the following morning he drew attention to it, and complained in strong terms against my producing it, because under the picture they had printed the words, "It will be observed that there was no sign of disorder." Again, as a layman, I offer no opinion as to whether that was contempt of court, breach of privilege, or whatever it might be. Counsel went on to say:—
    "They had to submit yesterday to the most cruel and vindictive aspersions, and now it is sought, while this inquiry is still open to prejudice and poison the minds of the public against them by suggesting that there was no disorder in Sackville Street on that day. I do not know what steps you will take to protect them from these statements, but I will say this, that there is a limit to the human endurance even for a policeman, and if this fresh persecution is continued any longer the citizens of Dublin, including the writers in the 'Evening Telegraph,' may have to bike steps to protect themselves and their property from hooliganism."
    I ask any Member of this House, when counsel spoke in those terms of the questions I have put in cross-examination the previous day, and used that language with

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    regard to journalists connected with the official organ of the Irish Nationalist party, what did he mean by saying that they might have to take steps to protect themselves from hooliganism because the policemen's patience would have been exhausted? I submit that an inquiry conducted under these conditions cannot be expected to have the public confidence. I would now like to describe briefly exactly what I saw. Probably, with the exception of a visitor in the Ladies' Gallery, I am the only person at present in the building who actually witnessed these terrible scenes. The hon. Member for Dublin City said quite rightly that he would like to forget them. I never can. When I arrived in Dublin it was not for the purpose of exploring any labour trouble. I did not know there was any. The first time I heard the name of Jim Larkin was at a football match, when I asked why a brass band advertised on the bills had not appeared. After a very arduous Session here—I think hon. Members will admit that I spend as much time on these premises as any other of the 670 Members of this House, except our worthy Speaker—on going to Ireland for the first time in my life for a holiday, the last thing I wanted to do was to investigate a labour trouble. A deputation from Liberty Hall waited upon me when Jim Larkin was in prison, urging me to go and help them with my counsel or to guide them in some way, but I felt bound to decline. I said that I was a visitor, that I knew nothing of the labour or commercial conditions except what I was learning from day to day, and that I could not see my way to comply with their request. They appealed to me for over an hour, but I refused to concern myself in any way whatever in the labour dispute. A deputation from the employers' leaders also interviewed me, putting their side of the case, and suggesting that I might mediate. Again I declined, saying it was none of my business, and that I did not think I should be at all useful. I have never passed an opinion, and I shall not do so to-day, about the matters in dispute between the Transport Union and the masters.
    The frame of mind that I was in was that of one keenly interested in a land of which I had heard a great deal, and which is one of the leading topics of discussion in this House. I arrived in Dublin, a supporter of the Government and a great admirer of the Chief Secretary and of the
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    Lord Lieutenant. So far from wishing to say anything disagreeable or to be found here complaining of the acts of the Dublin. Executive, anything further from my mind I cannot imagine. The hotel was chosen by accident. I wished to stay at the Shelbourne Hotel, but, it being Horse Show Week, they were full, so I got rooms at the Imperial. Some friends have suggested that, knowing something interesting was going to happen, I determined to be on the spot. Nothing of the kind. I claim no credit whatever for being on the scene of action. It was pure accident. I did not know that the Imperial Hotel belonged to Mr. Murphy, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, but it was none the less acceptable on that ground. I submit that no one could have had less bias or less wish to find complaints against anybody. What did I do? Apart from visits to the Show, polo matches, and the approved societies of Dublin, and Hibernians and Orangemen combining together to stand me a lunch, apart from incidents of that kind, which were very enjoyable, nothing unusual took place until Saturday evening. I had made arrangements to go into the country to stay with some friends near Blackwater. But on Saturday evening I had to begin to look at things in a very different light from that of the happy experiences of the few days I had passed there. I saw one or two attacks upon the police in the course of Saturday. I saw people throw stones and bottles at the police. I have not the slightest intention of giving the House an account of what occurred without stating both sides. This piece of granite (the hon. Member produced a piece of granite), which just missed my head, was thrown at a policeman; it missed the policeman and broke a shop window. I saw a good deal of the rioting—at some little personal risk. I felt that being there I would risk getting a knock in order to find out what was going on in the street. I would not have complained at all if I had met with some trouble myself; I had to take that risk.
    It is not at all a correct view to take that the rioting, as far as I observed it, was on the part of trade unionists or strikers. I never saw a striker or trade unionist or working man who seemed to me to be of the type of Larkin's union in this disorder at all. The person who threw this piece of granite was a woman. I asked her what her husband did; was he a striker? Nothing of the kind. He

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    was a fish hawker, and had nothing at all to do with Larkin's union. I asked, "What is the meaning of it? Why did you throw the piece of granite?" She replied, "Some years ago a younger brother of mine was brutally ill used by the Dublin police, and I am getting a bit of my own back, and when it grows a bit darker I have another piece here for them," and from beneath her shawl she produced another piece of granite. I mention that to show that the position in Dublin is a legacy from a terrible past. There has been such an experience, which I am not here to describe or to judge, but of which this is the result. There is no doubt that in the poorer parts of Dublin there are numbers of people who regard the police as their natural enemies, and are animated by a spirit of revenge for what they consider to be intolerable wrongs in the past. I saw a man called Burn in the custody of the police. What he had done, I do not know. He seemed to me to be simply suffering from drink. I accompanied the arresting party to the police station. He was a strong man; on the way he struggled, and he was cuffed and beaten by the policeman in charge. Further on, another policeman came up, and in broad daylight, in the presence of scores of women and children, the man was knocked about. I was following with the rest of the party on a jaunting car, within a few feet of them, and I saw four policemen stretch him out, one holding each ankle, and one holding each wrist, while a fifth struck him over the private parts in order to quiet him. I simply mention that, and leave it for the House to draw their own conclusion.
    Later on I went about the district of the hotel; half an hour later I went out again; half an hour later again; and so on during the whole of the Saturday evening. I was on the spot where Nolan was butchered just before and just after the occurrence. I did not see it; I simply heard that a man had been knocked down and carried off, and that they thought he was dying. I made personal inquiries, and found that Nolan was one of the most quiet men in Dublin. He never liked to argue, and would not dispute. If ever there was a wrangle, he was invariably the first to get up and go. He was killed because of that trait in his character. When he had paid his subscription at Liberty Hall, he did not, want to hear the speeches, and so withdrew himself to the outskirts of the crowd. Consequently when the police
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    charge came along he was the first man to be struck down, and he was struck down from behind. The widow is an estimable woman, as also is the widow of the other victim. Miss Harrison, who is well known in Dublin, wrote to me only this week giving independent testimony. She finds that the wives and families of both these men are very respectable, and she wishes to help them in their necessity. What the Government are going to do, I do not know; but if they do not reply to the appeal of the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow by making some announcement in regard to these people as well as the other unfortunate victims, I think Members will go home with very sad hearts. On the Saturday night I was talking to Councillor Briscoe, who I believe is secretary of the Town Tenants' League of Ireland, and from whom I was trying to get some information in regard to the working of the League with a view to possible legislation here. Whilst we were discussing the matter there was noise in the street. We stepped on to the balcony, and I saw a police charge come round the corner by the hotel with a number of people fleeing before it, whilst there were one or two on the ground. It was a disagreeable sight. We stepped right forward on the balcony and looked down. We saw a man lying in the gutter being kicked by policemen. I called down and said: "If the man has done anything wrong arrest him, but you have no right to kick him while he is on the ground," and I added, "If you do not stop I will come down." Councillor Briscoe said: "Remember, you are not in England; you are in Dublin." I must ask the Chief Secretary to get what consolation he can from that remark. I do not know whether it was really my shouting or not, but the police did leave the man alone, and slunk away. The man raised himself on one arm, and I noted that blood was streaming down his head and neck. He crawled towards the hotel and steadied himself, and subsequently he was taken away by someone. What the man had done I do not know. If he had broken the law he ought to have been taken and charged by the police. There was no crowd, no riot, no larking, no demonstration that took place in front of that hotel.
    On the Sunday I determined to change the subject. I determined to go out into the streets, and speak to every man I could find, as I desired to know the working of the Insurance Act in Ireland. Some

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    hon. Members may think that I have got Insurance on the brain. However, I went from man to man, and from group to group simply discussing the Insurance Act, and asking them what they thought of it. I probably spoke to about 100 groups in the course of the morning—that is from about nine o'clock to 1.30. I occasionally walked along Beresford Place for the purpose of seeing the procession start to Croydon Park. The whole of the Larkinite or Transport Union forces were marshalled together. They had issued a manifesto stating the meeting, as arranged, had been abandoned, and that they were going to hold it at Croydon Park, about two miles away. I strolled back again, continuing my peregrinations, up and down Sackville Street, or O'Connell Street, I do not know which is the right name. I mention this because I think I know, as well as any man could possibly do, what population there was in the street.
    The few men that I did meet, when the dispute was mentioned to them, made some criticisms of Larkin; not one of them spoke of Larkin with whole-hearted approval. They were critics and opponents of Larkin. About 1.30 my wife came back to the hotel with some friends with whom she had been a motor ride, and we subsequently went into lunch. This is a melancholy part to me. The matter had an effect upon my wife's mind, for had she come into lunch ten minutes later, she would have been in the dreadful mélée and have been knocked down, and possibly maimed for life. It is all very well to say that on such occasions one must keep calm and collected. Personally, I can stand a very great deal. I bear no ill-will to opponents however violent may have been the conflict between us. Whether I get the best or the worst of it I bear no malice. But it is a very different thing to contemplate one's wife being in an affair of this description. Police-counsel Powell said at the inquiry that no one in their senses would have been in Sackville Street on that day. But is an English visitor to the Horse Show who is staying at one of the leading hotels to be fastened up the whole day? I have never heard such a monstrous doctrine as that laid down as this inquiry. It seemed to be considered that no people should have been in the street at all. In that street, however, there is the Gresham Hotel, the Metropole Hotel, and also the offices of the news-
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    papers close by, and some of these papers issue Sunday editions. The post office is also there. Yet it is stated that people would have been well advised not to have been in the street. I would like to know whether the Chief Secretary takes that view. It is a monstrous thing to suggest that people staying at the hotels there should be unable to step into that beautiful thoroughfare on a Sunday.
    Just before we sat down to lunch we looked out from the balcony again, and noted to each other that there was nothing going to happen; that everything was perfectly quiet. There was no riot, no meeting, no anything. My wife had seen the demonstrators go away, and I had seen them start off for Croydon Park. Looking up and clown the street, we said there could have been nothing more peaceful when we sat down to lunch. Larkin appeared. I did not know him. He wore a false beard. He appeared immediately in front of our table, and addressed a few words to the street below. What he said I do not know because of the hum of the passing traffic. We were within a yard of him. We understood him to say that he was going to speak until the police arrested him. Immediately he said that he turned on his heel, passed our table, and went, I understood, to the kitchen of our hotel, where he was arrested by Superintendent Murphy. That officer was certainly quite calm and collected. He was one of the officers of the police who impressed me of being a substantial person, but one or two who came to his help were very excited. We stepped back into the balcony to see what was happening in the street. One of the police witnesses at the inquiry said that a few people had stepped from the near footpath into the middle of the road, and some others had stepped from the footpath on the opposite side of the road to the middle of the road. While on the balcony somebody shouted that it was Larkin, or that it might be Larkin. What else was shouted did not reach our ears; but we were interested in seeing Larkin brought out of the hotel. He was brought out peaceably enough. We were just thinking of turning to go, back to lunch when the mad scene broke out. We looked down and saw the shouting and excitement in the street. The police had drawn their batons. Some of the police had gone one way, some another, and were being met by others and by the people, many of whom, girls and others, wore straw and sailor hats. It was an ordinary Sunday crowd.

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    They were certainly bewildered, and did not know which way to turn. I cannot do better than to read a description of the scene which I contributed to the London Press. I said:—
    "I was back on the balcony when he (Mr. Larkin) was removed by the police, who had been rushing excitedly into the hotel. The puzzled crowd could not tell what was happening. Policemen came in view from all sides, girls hastened away with their companions, and excited women shouted for cheers for Larkin. A few responded as the prisoner was marched away; then silence ensued save for pattering feet and sickening thuds. The noble street was in the hands of the most brutal constabulary ever let loose on a peaceful assembly. Up and down the road, backwards and forwards, the police rushed like men possessed. Some drove the crowd into side streets, to meet other batches of the Government's minions wildly striking with truncheons at every one within reach. In escaping many ran the gauntlet until the third or fourth blow knocked them senseless. The few roughs got away first; most respectable persons left their hats, and crawled away with bleeding heads. Kicking the victims when prostrate was a settled part of the police programme. Three such cases occurred in a direct line with our window."
    Mr. NEWMAN: May I ask who wrote that?
    Mr. BOOTH: I wrote it, and I saw it. It is true.
    Mr. NEWMAN: You ought to be ashamed of yourself!
    Mr. BOOTH: I do not know what the hon. Member means. Is he suggesting that I ought not to have described a scene like that?
    Mr. RONALD M'NEILL: Perhaps my hon. Friend was referring to the style.
    6.0 P.M.
    Mr. BOOTH: Maybe he was not, but let it go. I have got in my possession here a copy of the "Sphere." It is not, I understand, a political organ at all. The "Sphere" reproduced the balcony scene after my description was in print. Anyone can compare the dates. Any impartial persons who will examine it can see what the photographs say, and these photographs were taken on the spot. [HON. MEMBERS: "Pass it round" and "Circulate it with the Votes."] The "Daily Sketch" reproduced the photographs; so did the "Freeman's Journal" and the "Manchester Guardian." At the inquiry a remarkable statement was made by Mr. Powell. He said that he had been instructed that the photographs that appeared in the "Freeman's Journal" were faked. I want to know from the Chief Secretary, who instructed him. It was not the surmise of an advocate. It was a distinct statement that he was instructed. I want to make an appeal to the Press of this country. We hear a great deal now
    1006
    about the honour and conduct of Members of Parliament at by-elections, and so on. Is there not to be a standard of honour amongst the Press? If these great newspapers are capable of taking photographs and faking them by inserting batons in policemen's hands which they did not hold in order to bring discredit upon the force, I say these papers should be denounced throughout the length and breadth of the land. There is a great London newspaper, the "Times," and the "Spectator." Either in this matter they should support the honour of the Press and defend these other newspapers against the vile attack, or they should themselves criticise their colleagues; for if the charge is true, they have been guilty of one of the worst offences that a journal can commit. And I will be very anxious to see what line the London "Times," and the other great London organ who pays such respect to journalism, will take upon that statement, that counsel was instructed to say that these photographs were faked.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: May I ask the hon. Gentleman did counsel say that these were all faked, or only the one that appeared in the "Freeman's Journal"?
    Mr. BOOTH: Yes, the photograph that appeared in the "Freeman's Journal" and in the "Evening Telegraph."
    Mr. J. H. CAMPBELL: It is the same paper, or rather the evening edition of the same paper.
    Mr. BOOTH: I think the Noble Lord is entitled to know that the photograph which appeared in the "Sphere" and in the "Manchester Guardian" is identical with the one which I handed in at the inquiry. I was asking one of the superintendents, who described, in the course of the inquiry, what had taken place in O'Connell Street, whether he had seen this photograph. I handed him this picture, and asked was not that a picture of the scene in which he took part. Objection was at once taken by the police, and I had to withdraw the picture; and the following morning the statement appeared that this was a faked picture.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: Did not the President of the Commission say that if evidence was given that that was an actual photograph of the scene, he would be very glad to receive it?
    Mr. BOOTH: Yes.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: No such evidence was produced?
    Mr. BOOTH: I said I would produce the photographer, whose name is Matthew Blakemore, and I said he appeared at the trial of Larkin at the Police Court and went into the box in my presence, and was prepared to swear to it. It was objected to then on behalf of the police, and the police magistrate said he would not take it. I put this in in cross-examination so that I might produce the photographer and put the picture in evidence.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: Did you produce him? I do not think the lion. Gentleman quite understood my point. I asked him "Did not the Chairman of the Commission tell him that the photograph would become evidence the moment the photographer was produced to prove that it was an actual, original photograph?"
    Mr. BOOTH: Certainly he did, and the photographer is ready to go into the box.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: After it is all over.
    Mr. BOOTH: This was not an inquiry on oath; the photographer was in Court to swear to it.
    Mr. JOHN GORDON: At the inquiry?
    Mr. BOOTH: No, at the Police Court. I put it in in cross-examination so that I could call the newspaper people later on to support me and to get it in evidence. It never got in because I withdrew from the inquiry, and the "Freeman's Journal" itself denounced the whole inquiry as a, farce, and said they would have nothing to do with it. The point is, that if the Dublin police want to answer this they can hardly be satisfied to leave the inquiry where it is. Would any man of honour and respect, seeing that those responsible newspapers produced this picture, be satisfied with an inquiry which, in any circumstances, had terminated without this being gone into? The statement that it was faked was one of the most miserable subterfuges. I saw that scene exactly as depicted in the photograph. I am ready to take my oath anywhere and to submit to cross-examination by anyone on that question. I declare to the House that it is a true and exact picture of what I saw from the balcony of the hotel, and what scores of other people saw as well. It surely throws a lurid light
    1008
    upon the action of the police and their friends that this is to be their reply to a picture taken by the camera. I am not an authority on photography, but I am informed that it is physically impossible to do with a picture what the police allege. The "Freeman's Journal" are ready to produce their photographer, and the "Manchester Guardian" stand by the photograph and say that they have examined it with scrupulous care. I do not think a single person in Dublin, or the police or their officers, have the slightest doubt about what took place.
    Where was the Chief Commissioner and his assistant all this time? Skulking in a shop. The police charge had come down the street as they were coming over O'Connell Bridge, and they went into a shop. The Chief Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner were in a telephone box behind the barrier at this time. I say the heads of the police should have immediately asserted themselves and found out what was the right or the wrong of this matter. When the prisoner went by with his escort, and the charges were over, the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner came on the street. What took place after they passed the balcony? There was a boy collecting women's hats and boys' caps as those two proud heads of the Dublin police scanned the scene of what had taken place. These are the two men whom I blame for what took place at the inquiry. I bear no malice towards Mr. Powell. When anything offensive was said to me by him it was always after consultation with his neighbours. When I withdrew, I did not withdraw because of what was said, but because it was not rebuked by the chiefs of the police, and because no withdrawal was demanded by the Commission.
    In their Report the Commissioners regret that they had not my assistance during the latter part of the proceedings. If they had requested me to stay and said I was helpful to them, as they consider now, and if they had called upon that offensive word to be withdrawn, of course I should have continued, although my task was a very difficult one. At any rate, as far as I am concerned, the evidence of the heads of the Dublin police is another lesson as to why the inquiry was conducted in the way it was. How was it conducted? The whole Court was crowded with policemen in uniform who occupied the seats in order to keep the public out. I am told that that was done frequently all over Ireland

    1009
    in the old days. The great trouble in Dublin is the old spirit of oppressive coercion which still survives in Dublin Castle and amongst the police. The Court was crowded with policemen. After an appeal by one of the town councillors one day, the Commissioners said that in future they would reserve a few seats in the jury box for the public. I submit to the House with confidence, that this was a travesty of an inquiry. I identify myself to some extent with the hon. Gentleman opposite who says he does not want another inquiry. I am entirely with him there, because there has not been one, and therefore you cannot ask for another, and I should be very sorry if the result of the discussion should be that another inquiry of that kind would be set up.
    I wish to refer to only one other matter, and that is the trouble that took place at the corporation building. There again you will find that the police in reply to the charges go to terrible extremes in order to evade the facts. They try to evade the the charge of destroying sacred pictures pictures were faked. They try to evade the charge of destroying sacred pictures and relics and ornaments by saying that the people did it themselves. Now, I am a Protestant, but one attribute I think every Protestant will believe of the Roman Catholic faith is, that, the poorer the home or the tenement, the more attached the people living there are to the faith, in which they are brought up. I am perfectly sure my friends, both Churchmen and Nonconformists, will pay that tribute to the Roman Catholic faith, and it is additionally cruel that after the police had gone into these houses and wrecked these houses, proceeding from door to door, from room to room, scattering the dinners of the people upon the floors, beating women in bed, giving a black eye to a baby, and running riot, they should then charge these people With tramping upon the emblems of the faith which they adore. I regard that as one of the ugliest features in the conduct of the police.
    All I saw and witnessed—which struck me with so much horror—makes me, if possible, a more convinced Home Ruler than I was before. But if this is to be a sample of English Government at the end of 1913, with an enlightened Liberal Cabinet in power as the professed sympathisers with the democracy, I say it is time that we gave the Irish nation an opportunity of
    1010
    ending its own miseries and proceeding on other lines. Therefore, I am bound to say that I think it would be a very ill result of a complaint of an incident like this if we by so doing delayed the arrival of that time when the responsibility for the treatment and good conduct of the Irish nation will be placed upon their own executive. I therefore await with some anxiety the attitude of the Government upon this Amendment. What I say generally to the House is this: Whether we are Unionists or Home Rulers, we cannot leave this inquiry in the miserable condition in which it is left. Hon. Members who are Unionists will not denounce a Chief Secretary and Lord Lieutenant in Dublin Castle. Surely they must feel as I do the need for enlightened and sympathetic rule in Ireland. I believe the Unionist party lost more headway with regard to their Irish policy in that country through Dublin Castle than any other, and it was that which made the people of this country conceive that a change from Dublin Castle to self-government was necessary, and it was for that reason that the democracy of the United Kingdom made up their mind to end their responsibility and to place responsibility on the shoulders of the Irish people. Those of us who are Home Rulers looking forward to visiting Dublin under happier auspices, we feel the deepest shame; we who boast of our success in government throughout the wide world, and spend vast sums of money in teaching the heathens the Gospel of Christ, that our last contribution to the Government of Ireland should be a scene like this, carried out in this dreadful manner, which must fill the heart of every loyal citizen of the King with deep regret and remorse.
    Mr. R. M'NEILL: I propose to offer only a few observations upon the Amendment before the House, and upon the speech to which we have just listened. I hope the hon. Member for Pontefract will not consider it offensive if I feel that I am unable to take quite so seriously as he himself does the interesting chapter of his autobiography which he has given. But even if the hon. Member takes himself a little more seriously than we can, at all events we can congratulate him most heartily upon his first visit to Ireland. In the latter part of his speech the hon. Member seemed to shake his head over his experiences, but I gather that he had the time of his life. To begin with, the hon. Member was given a lunch by the approved

    1011
    societies, and for no less than an hour understand that the persuasive powers of the Labour party in Dublin were directed to overcoming the reluctance of the hon. Member to give them his counsel and advice. There is one thing in which we may condole with the hon. Member, and that is that he does not seem, to have succeeded in preserving his incognito as well as he no doubt desired to do. From all we have heard, he seems to have got himself mixed up in a number of proceedings in Dublin, and we can all sympathise with the painful publicity which the hon. Member received in consequence. I was at pains to gather what the hon. Member for Pontefract was doing in Dublin at all. I understand that he went to Dublin, accompanied by his wife, to enjoy a holiday at the time of the Horse Show, and I think that is a very sensible way of spending a holiday. He was unable to find accommodation at one hotel, and we afterwards find him relegated to the balcony of another hotel. Afterwards he finds himself in a Court of Law. The hon. Member has told us that he is a layman in these matters, and we hear that he was ready to produce this and that witness, and subject this and that person to cross-examination. He never told us, however, for whom he was acting, or the fee for which he was retained.
    Mr. BOOTH: I thought I stated, that when I arrived the first thing I did was to see a firm of solicitors, and ask them to engage counsel. I only took up the task of cross-examination at the request of the Commission.
    Mr. R. M'NEILL: I have no doubt that the people of Dublin and all the parties concerned have gained great advantage from the services of the hon. Member who was rescued from the Horse Show to conduct this examination before learned Gentlemen. The hon. Member seems to have been rather upset by his experiences in that Court. I do not pretend to know the rights and wrongs about these photographs and I do not think the hon. Member made this point very clearly. As far as I can gather, the hon. Member's complaint is, having no idea what is evidence and what is not, he was prevented from presenting this evidence in a way the Court of Law would not accept. If the hon. Member had gone through the ordinary steps necessary for making these photographs evidence there would have been no
    1012
    objection to their acceptance. The hon. Member made one very great mistake during his visit to Ireland. I am sorry to say that he appears, after spending that holiday, to have come back without having his sense of humour sharpened by his experiences there. He came into contact with one of the leaders of the Irish Bar, and the result of that was, as the Report has told us, that the Commissioners were deprived of the great advantage they would have undoubtedly have derived from further examination and cross-examination by the hon. Member, and possibly of evidence which he might have given himself.
    The hon. Member's exit from the Court appears to have been somewhat inglorious—I think he rose to a considerable height of repartee with the leader of the Irish Bar. I have not refreshed my memory, but if I recollect rightly, he reached the height of informing this legal gentleman that he had lunched, and that he was a liar. It is quite clear that the hon. Member left the Court a little crestfallen, and although a fine performer on the trumpet, the tune he was playing on that occasion was certainly not Handel's "Conquering Hero." Perhaps I may pass away from the autobiography of the hon. Member with the feeling that after all his experiences in Dublin, although intensely interesting, have really not a very great bearing upon this particular case. I have not the slightest doubt that the hon. Member has sincerely and honestly told the House what he saw. It is a great pity he did not give all this in evidence where it could have been sifted by cross-examination, and then the impression of the Commissioners would have appeared in the Report. After listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Blackfriars I am bound to say that I do think he has made out a pretty strong case against the Dublin police. I decline altogether to accept the statement which the hon. Member for Pontefract made that the police had deliberately got up this row in Dublin in order to make out a case on behalf of the employers. What I think is true, and what has been brought out by the hon. Member for Blackfriars, is that under circumstances when the police had suffered a good deal of provocation, and when they had had onerous duties to perform and a good deal of overwork, on this, particular occasion they did seem to lose their heads and exceed their duty. That appears to have been borne out both

    1013
    by the Report of the Commissioners and certainly by the evidence, which, unfortunately, was not laid before the Commissioners, and which has been brought forward by the hon. Member for Blackfriars.
    Whether or not the best method of dealing with that unfortunate occurrence is to have a new inquiry or not I do not know, but I do think that in this particular the people of Dublin have cause for complaint against the Chief Secretary for Ireland. I understood, when the hon. Member for Blackfriars was speaking, that there was some question as to the exact words used by the Chief Secretary for Ireland when he gave a promise that an inquiry should be held. I do not think it very much matters what the exact words of the right hon. Gentleman were, because he was undoubtedly reported and generally understood to have promised that there should be upon this Committee of Inquiry a representative of the working classes in Dublin, and if that promise was so reported and understood, and if there is any accuracy in the report, I think it was the bounden duty of the right hon. Gentleman at once to put an end to that misunderstanding, and not allow the expectation to go forward unquestioned for so many weeks that there would be a different sort of inquiry to that which he eventually set up. We listened with amazement to the speech of the hon. Member for Dublin. We watched him in his anxiety to avoid, on the one hand, causing any dissatisfaction as to his attitude in his constituency, and, on the other hand, any dissatisfaction with his attitude among the Labour party opposite; and he seemed still more anxious to avoid any dissatisfaction with his speech on the Treasury Bench. We find the hon. Member pointed out that although the case against the police was overwhelmingly strong, the very last way of dealing with this particular evil was by an Amendment to the Address. The hon. Member for Pontefract took the occasion to point out to the House that, after all, this was only one more illustration of the crying necessity for Home Rule. I suppose he means that if we had had Home Rule and an Irish Executive this state of things would not have occurred. The hon. Member seems to forget that this is one of the reserved services under the Bill of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite.
    Mr. DILLON: The hon. and learned Member is quite wrong.
    Mr. R. M'NEILL: I know what the hon. Member is going to say. He is going too tell us that this is only a reserved service for six years. [HON. MEMBERS "No."]. Well, it is only the difference between the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Let us see where this lands us. After the policy of the Government has been carried out it is supposed that we shall immediately, under the Home Rule regime, have a perfect police in the City of Dublin and an execrable police in the rest of Ireland. That is the case which has been made by the hon. Member for Dublin, and which has the enthusiastic support of the hon. Member for East Mayo. I think a case has been made out against the police. I think the thief Secretary has not given the inquiry he led us to expect, and if I were to give a vote on this Amendment I should feel obliged to vote with the hon. Member who moved it. There is, however, one consideration which deters me from doing so, and I shall not vote for the Amendment for this reason: I do not want by any action of mine, or my hon. Friends on these benches, to compel the hon. Gentleman opposite to tell against his own Amendment, and I do not want, by the vote I shall give, to compel the hon. Gentleman opposite to stultify his vote.
    Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS: I do not think I shall be able to follow the hon. and learned Gentleman in what he has just said. His intervention is always very acceptable. I admit him to be a good lawyer, and I have known him to be a good shot, but this afternoon he has proved himself to be a most entertaining humorist. His speech led me to conclude that he had decided to vote for the Amendment, but instead of that he recognises that it is unwise for his party to take sides against the police and the constituted authorities; and, on the other hand, when it is a question of labour and human life, then we do not find we get the support which we might reasonably contemplate.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: Are you going to divide?
    Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS: The Noble Lord can always find that out when the Question is put. I desire to avoid obscuring the real issue which we are submitting to the House this afternoon, and I will try as far as possible to avoid unduly controversial points. The inquiry we have had has been of a

    1015
    very indecisive and unsatisfactory character. The hon. Member representing the city of Dublin had an extremely delicate and painful duty to perform. He had my profound sympathy, for I am sure that his heart was not in his task, and that he would have preferred to have been in cooperation with us this afternoon. He, in my opinion, rather sought to avoid the real issue by introducing what appears to me to be the extraneous question of syndicalism. I do not see how that question is involved in the question of the conduct of the police in the city of Dublin. It is hardly necessary for us on these benches to declare that we have no sympathy what ever with what is called the syndicalist movement, and I only apprehend that the word is so frequently used in order to conjure up an amount of prejudice against us and our actions. After all, the hon. Gentleman himself seemed to realise towards the conclusion of his speech that it is not sufficient merely to mention a phrase which is causing alarm in society, for he acknowledged that there was some reason even for the growth of this movement in the city of Dublin. The neglect of the authorities in the past, the absolute indifference of the employers of that city, the wretched housing conditions that prevail there are in themselves the causes of the unrest and the unfortunate manifestations which have taken place in the city.
    Our purpose is to make out a case for a genuine inquiry into the police excesses, and to prove the justice of the demand for compensation of those who have been injured and for the property that has been destroyed. My hon. Friend the Member for the Blackfriars Division produced a great deal of evidence to prove that, if a properly constituted inquiry had been conducted, then an extraordinary strong case might have been made out against the police. Our first point is, that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, at any rate, misled us into believing that an inquiry would be set up that would deserve and secure the confidence of the trade unionists and labour people in Ireland. He told my hon. Friend yesterday that when he inquired he found it difficult and impossible to carry it out. I would like to know on what point he found it impossible to set up an appropriate inquiry, an inquiry of the character he led us to believe would be set up as the result of questions put to him at Bristol. Is it that the right hon. Gentleman himself has been
    1016
    overborne by other authorities? Is it that other influences have been brought to bear against him to prevent him from fulfilling the pledge he then made. If so, we are entitled to know the reason that promise was unfulfilled and why we are compelled to make this demand to-day for a more satisfactory inquiry. It is undoubted that the police committed a number of excesses.
    It appears to me, after listening to the hon. Member the Member for Pontefract, and going through the Report that has been presented to us, that it is extremely unsatisfactory to have to recognise that those who murdered the men Nolan and Byrne have not yet been traced. I am certain that had they been two men of the well-to-do class every means would have been resorted to in order to trace their murderers and, in my opinion, there is no doubt whatever that they would have been brought to law. Here we have citizens who are prepared to testify in a Court of Law to the identification of at least the man Nolan, and, when the hon. Gentleman the Member for one of the Divisions of Dublin tells us that they are anxious to forget, I say that if we defend this present inquiry and its findings we are going the wrong way to work to induce the people of Dublin to forget what has happened in recent times. They will labour under a sense of grievance; they will feel that there is one law for the rich and another for the other classes even in Dublin; and I am sure, if the Government desire to restore confidence there, they will accede to the request we are submitting in the Amendment. It is a remarkable feature of this Report that the only body represented by counsel at this inquiry was able to make its case and compel some acknowledgment to be incorporated in this Report. The Corporation of Dublin was represented at the inquiry by counsel, and they were able to prove police excesses and unprovoked attacks and the destruction of property of harmless, private citizens. After we have had that admission here, I think that we are entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman what it is proposed to do in respect of those citizens who, by full admission, took no part in any riotous conduct, but were the victims of police excesses, and suffered both in person and property as the result of those excesses. I am sure if we were to have a further inquiry that we should be able to prove that many similar cases might be upheld.

    1017
    Like my hon. Friend the Member for the Blackfriars Division, I had an opportunity of visiting Dublin just about the period of this disturbance. We prosecuted, as well as we could, the fullest inquiries, and there is no doubt whatever in my mind that the police did lose their heads and commit many assaults upon harmless, inoffensive citizens. I do not deny that there may have been provocation; but, after all, that is no justification for police excesses. After all, the police are supposed to be a disciplined body, acting only under instructions, and never to be allowed to run amok amongst citizens. I say quite candidily that I am bound to confess, on the evidence that is placed before us, and in respect to inquiries we made in Dublin, that the police were provoked in a great many measures, but that, in my opinion, affords no justification whatever for the conduct of which it has been proved they were guilty. I am sure, unless you are able to satisfy the trade unionists and labour people generally of Dublin that you are going to deal with the police as they ought to be dealt with, having regard to the reports that have been submitted to this House, that they are not going to forget this matter at all. A sense of grievance still exists, unrest will not be allayed, and you will have further trouble in the times to come. I trust that we shall be able to induce the Government to grant us our plea. We want a better inquiry, one in which all sections of the community can have perfect confidence. We desire that compensation shall be granted; and, furthermore, we hope, having regard to the conditions of the working classes in Dublin, that the hope expressed by the hon. Member who speaks for the City will be fulfilled, and that all classes will co-operate for the purpose of removing the fundamental causes of this unrest—the wretched poverty and terrible housing condition which so widely prevail in the city. In conclusion, I may say, in response to queries which have been addressed to me from the other side, that it is the intention of my colleagues to press this Resolution to a Division.
    Mr. BIRRELL: I am very sorry that I have to begin the observations which I have to make upon the Debate, certainly introduced to the House in a speech of great moderation by the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow (Mr. Barnes), by one of those unfortunate personal explanations. It has been asserted
    1018
    boldly in this Debate that I gave a pledge to the four gentlemen who waited upon me at Bristol representing the trade unions in the capital, not only that there would be a judicial inquiry into the conduct of the police, but that in any event on, that Commission there would be placed a representative of the working classes. I do, not complain at all that the idea should have got abroad. My attention having been drawn to certain newspaper reports, I can see that it is not an unnatural conclusion to have been drawn. I did not myself search for reports of the proceedings. They were at the time very disagreeable to me. Four representatives of the Trade Council met me before one of my meetings at Bristol, and I am sorry to say that, as the result of what I always considered to be the outrageous behaviour of one of the members of that deputation, we had a most stormy and tempestuous interview. I received, unsolicited, a few days afterwards, an apology from the actual union to which this person belongs for the nature of the language he employed. I had constantly to protest against it, and, indeed, I really think that I would have left the room had it been possible for me very well to have done so; but it was so completely filled up by the four gentlemen that I really thought it better, and I am glad now that I did so, that I should remain where I was. We had a most stormy and tempestuous interview, in which all sorts of language passed between us.
    I said most emphatically, and it was true, that the kind of Commission I had in my mind and wanted to appoint would be a Judicial Commission, and that there would be a judge of the High Court as its chairman. I should endeavour to obtain someone well acquainted by actual experience with the life and best traditions of a police force, and then I should hope to obtain some gentleman who might be taken fairly as representing the working classes. I said that was what I was going to do. That is what I intended, and that is what I did most strenuously endeavour to do. I may point out in passing that this inquiry which I had in view would have been exactly the same kind of inquiry, so far as the legal powers of putting witnesses to the oath or compelling their presence are concerned, as the Commission which was actually set up. I cannot set up a Commission of any other character. An Act of Parliament would be required to set up the kind of Commission that hon. Gentle-

    1019
    men opposite now say they would have liked. That would have postponed the inquiry. They were all pressing that it should be obtained without a moment's delay. Therefore, any Commission that I appointed would have been of necessity just the same kind of Commission, having regard to its powers, as that established. I came back and at once set to work to obtain, if I could, the services of a judge. I badgered two Lord Chancellors, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, to see whether I could be spared a judge of the character and of the experience that I most certainly desiderated. I could not get him. I then set about to obtain someone who would have the confidence of the police in this matter. I was not going to leave them out of consideration. They, too, were parties to this inquiry. Their characters were at stake, and they were just as much entitled to someone, not, of course, representing them, but acquainted with the circumstances of their lives, and with the traditions of the police force. I am sorry I could not get a person of that character. Therefore the whole framework of my scheme fell through. I could have succeeded in obtaining a gentleman of the working class, who, no doubt, would have acted in as grave and judicial a spirit as anybody else, but I could not put him on alone, and, without anyone else to balance, the composition of my ideal would have been impossible. I regret I could not do it. You cannot advertise for gentlemen of this sort. Anybody engaged in setting up Commissions knows, as hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, when in the fulness of time they come to form an Administration, will find, that nothing is more difficult than to get persons to undertake work of this character when once you seek to represent different kinds of interest and different persons. I was sorry to abandon the scheme, but I ask the House to believe that what I said to the Bristol Trades Council I intended to do, and I did endeavour to do. Still I failed.
    I then found myself thrown back on precedents hitherto employed in the case of police inquiries in other parts of Ireland and, no doubt, in other parts of the United Kingdom, namely, to obtain as members of the Commission legal persons of high authority and position. I do not ask the Gentlemen below the Gangway to
    1020
    have confidence in Mr. Denis Henry and Mr. Samuel Brown. They are not Dublin citizens themselves, and they do not know the position that these two gentlemen occupy as distinguished lawyers and as Dublin men. I really think, this being a Dublin inquiry, relating to the Dublin police, it was a most desirable thing to have men on the Commission, so long as they were independent and impartial, entertaining the feeling of Dublin citizens. These two gentlemen are no friends of mine in a political sense; they are perfectly impartial, but, I do not know two men who would enjoy a tilt at me more than those two gentlemen. I cannot imagine two men, however, better fitted to do this work and to bring out the facts. I have received many letters saying this, that, and the other. I addressed a letter to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who was dissatisfied. I wrote telling him what I said at Bristol, and there was a good deal of feeling about it, but I think that feeling has died down so far as Dublin is concerned. I notice that the Corporation itself, which was very much opposed to the constitution of the Court when it was first announced, nevertheless sent a representative to look after their case. They took part through him in the whole of this inquiry. Further, in the Corporation only the other day a motion was submitted very much of the character of the Motion submitted to this House, and, on being put to a division, was defeated by twenty-three votes to fourteen. I think the citizens of Dublin, rich and poor, men and women alike, are fully satisfied of the character and independence of these gentlemen, and with the nature of their report.
    It is a misfortune that sonic of the evidence that was read out by the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division was not submitted to them. I could not help that. They could not help it. They would have listened to anyone who came forward. As a matter of fact, they had seventy-nine civilian witnesses and 202 police witnesses before them. The police necessarily ought to be witnesses. They were the persons who alone could give their account of the transaction, and it was for the civilians who had a case against the police, or information to put before these gentlemen, to come before them. They did not do so; they sulked. I could not help it if they had no confidence in the tribunal. They were not represented on it in the way they thought they were going to be, and there-

    1021
    fore they stood aloof from it. People who stand aloof from an inquiry of this sort are not entitled to come here and read out statements which they would have made had they been there. I am not questioning the truth of what the hon. Member for Blackfriars has said, or of the depositions he has produced; but everybody with a knowledge of the proceedings of a body which has to discover the truth, knows how difficult it is to rely on written statements by persons not even before you, and to accept them as evidence of what really and actually took place. I admit it was a pity that these people did not come forward; but I cannot help saying that neither the Government nor these two excellent painstaking lawyers are to blame for that. I repeat, and I want to emphasise the fact, that unless the inquiry was postponed until such time as an Act of Parliament could be passed, sworn testimony and the compulsory attendance of witnesses could not be secured by any action of the Executive at Dublin Castle.
    I do assure the House that I feel very much the gravity of the case made against the police. I confess I do not understand the attitude if even so moderate a man as the hon. Member who introduced this Amendment: he seemed to speak of the police as if they were the enemies of the people. He spoke of them as toadies of Dublin Castle, braggarts, and as masters of the situation. He spoke of them in a way which to anybody who knows the good nature and good humour of the Dublin police under ordinary circumstances is ludicrous. They are poor men, not endowed with great salaries. They work extraordinarily hard for comparatively small pay. Many of them are married men living in Dublin with their families. They have sympathy with the working classes, and to imagine some malign influence in Dublin Castle operates on these men and turns them into janissaries or Bashi Bazouks—whose one desire is to break someone's head—I cannot understand. The police discharge vicariously on our behalf the duty imposed on every one of us of keeping order, and protecting life and property. They discharge their duty to the best of their ability, and every Government—I do not care whether it is a Home Rule or a working-class Government—every Government that ever comes into existence will have to rely in its great towns and cities and in the small municipal boroughs on these men. Therefore I
    1022
    admit, until you can show a case against them which compels me to withdraw my sympathies from them, they have that sympathy. Having regard to the duties that they have to perform, until you can show that they have forfeited, and to what extent and how many are involved in that forfeiture, I say I stand here, Division or no Division, be the consequence what it may, to defend the police if I honestly can do so.
    People talk about this as if there were nothing in it. Yes, but there were more than 240 police badly injured, and some were injured two or three times over, because, with great courage they stuck to their work, although they could easily have obtained medical certificates which would have entitled them to go back to their families. They stuck to their work and were brutally injured, kicked, knocked down, cut with bottles, assailed with stones. One stone was presented here to-day; I have seen much bigger ones. For months before there had been strikes in Dublin. The police had been doing extra duty for a considerable period, working far harder than usual and exposed to a great deal of danger. I agree that the proceedings mostly centred upon two very black days, Saturday and Sunday, 30th and 31st August. During those two days there were fifteen riots in different parts of Dublin. The whole force practically of the Dublin Metropolitan Police was employed. There were fifteen fierce engagements, some lasting only a few minutes, others prolonged over many hours. These men were kept engaged in this fierce occupation in different parts of the city; they were struck with stones and glass bottles. They were injured in the manner I have described; they were taken to hospital, and their lives were, over and over again, endangered.
    Perhaps some Members of the House have read the Report of the two Commissioners. The hon. Member behind me lays it on one side, and seems to regard it as a chapter out of a novel, and as if it were describing things which did not take place. I do submit to the House that anyone who reads the Report cannot possibly take that view. How did these 240 policemen come to be wounded? Did they wound themselves? Did they go about encouraging riots, knocking peaceable people about, in order that they might be carried to hospital? Nothing of the kind. Nobody who knows anything about it will say that. The hon. Member for Pontefract said he saw

    1023
    bottles and stones thrown at the police. Were they thrown because the police went up to perfectly quiet people and struck them with their batons? No. There were, during these two days, and before and after, as well, violent and tremendous riots in the streets. The tramway men had to be protected. The police had to protect them; they were constantly wounded and assailed, and dragged from the trams. Who did it? Someone must have done it; the police did not do it themselves. If you take this Report you will see it analyses and historically sets out these fifteen riots which took place during Saturday and Sunday, 30th and 31st August. This, according to the Report, is how it began:—
    "On the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th August, the first of the riots which we have investigated broke out in the district of Ringsend, near the city.
    The power station of the Dublin Tramway Company is situated here, and it was in the neighbourhood of this building that disorder first showed itself.
    Inspector Bannon, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, was in charge, and he was assisted by Inspector Chase, who was accompanied by a namber of mounted troopers.
    During the riot Inspector Chase was struck by a stone, and his horse was knocked down by members of the crowd. The tram cars were attacked, and when the police sought to protect them, they were received with a volley of stones, bottles and other missiles, thrown not only from the street, but also from houses. Four members of the force were injured in the course of this riot, which lasted for an hour.
    The efforts made by those responsible for the preservation of the peace did not involve the use of any unnecessary violence."
    7.0 P.M.
    Then we come to an occurrence which, I think, was one of the riots witnessed by the hon. Member for Pontefract. He gave a rather sad account of it. I am not disputing it at all, but there is another account given by somebody else who also saw it, a clergyman of the Church to whom the hon. Gentleman paid so sincere a tribute. This is the account of the Rev. J. Curran, who writes from Archbishop's House, Dublin. He is a citizen of Dublin, and was not visiting it for the first time. He says:—
    "I passed through Great Brunswick Street on a tram between 4.30 and 4.45 p.m. on Saturday, the 30th August, and witnessed the threatening conduct of the crowd towards the tramway men and their subsequent violent conduct towards the police. At every street corner along Brunswick Street there were large groups of people, chiefly women and children, of a degraded class, obviously labouring under great excitement. As the tram passed each group they lost all control of themselves and behaved like frenzied lunatics. They shouted coarse language and threats at the tramway men, and, with violent gestures, indicated the fate that awaited the 'scabs' if the 'scabs' fell among them. The violence was renewed and increased from time to time as policemen arrested men and escorted their prisoners along the street. Not only men, but women, with hair all dishevelled, and even
    1024
    young girls, of fifteen or sixteen, rushed and surged round the police. The women, indeed, almost eclipsed the men with their wild cries, shaking their fists in the very faces of the constables, hitting them on the back and pulling them and their prisoners about. One obsessed creature seized are empty coal-bag from a cart and belaboured the constables to the utmost of her power. I saw five or six arrests, and within ten minutes matters went from bad to worse. Cries gave way to more or less violent assault, and assault to attempted rescue. … In the last case I witnessed, as I turned towards Westland Row Station, two policemen, who made a double arrest, were subjected to a very severe mauling, and were violently hindered in making the arrest. They were surrounded by a dangerous-looking body of mess, who violently impeded the constables, who, as far as I could see in the crowd, were subjected to very severe treatment. … The mob did not seem to contain more than one striker, and he was more demonstrative than violent. It was composed of the roughest element of the city—people who, in my opinion, had no concern with the labour trouble as then existing. I consider it my duty to accede to the request of the police authorities to state my opinion of what I saw."
    I want this to be borne in mind. I am not saying that these rioters belong to the Transport Union, or were honest working men simply trying, as everybody is entitled to try, to make the best of what they can for themselves. They were mobs of violent hooligans, and a danger. They exist in all large towns. They are the enemies of all citizens, be their political opinions what they may. These were the people whom this clergyman saw. He goes on to say:—
    "It is my distinct opinion that the five or six policemen of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary whom I saw subjected to these insult and violent conduct, behaved with singular self-restraint, and in some cases with actual good humour. There was an absence of violence oil their part, except in the last instance, when they only employed such force as was necessary to secure and retain their prisoners. Their behaviour was the only redeeming feature of what was for a Dublin citizen a really humiliating and disgusting spectacle."
    I do not ask hon. Gentlemen opposite—I do not know this reverend gentleman—to believe that that account is all that can be said in this matter, but I ask them to believe it as against my hon. Friend. He saw things, and the clergyman saw things. The scenes were scenes of violence. You may see a policeman hustling, knocking down and attacking a man, and it may be in the course of his duty, but you will also see the police themselves being attacked. It is their business to maintain order. They are there by the order of their superiors, and it is their business to keep order. During that time there will be scenes of violence, and I dare say regrettable incidents on both sides. All through this Report you find the same testimony. There was the lamentable occurrence at Eden Quay, when James Nolan met his death. I protest against it being said

    1025
    that James Nolan was murdered. I must be allowed to say that. I deeply regret James Nolan's death. I dare say it is perfectly true that he may have been an innocent and inoffensive member of the community in himself, but the fact only too often happens that if you will have violent rioters challenging the authority of the police, dragging tram-men down from tramcars and proceeding to throw missiles which you have previously collected in large numbers—stones, bottles, and the like—at the constituted authorities of the State, and if people are to be found inside these crowds, it may very well be, as the hon. Member anticipated, that some damage will be done. It is most regrettable that injury resulting in death was inflicted upon poor James Nolan; but to say that he was murdered is, I think, striking a blow at the very foundations of our social order. There was a coroner's inquest, which found, undoubtedly, that this poor man had met his death by a fractured skull from a baton blow. There was nothing to show the precise circumstances in which it was delivered. It was delivered in a fierce riot, and it sometimes does happen in these cases that it is not the most violent man in the crowd to whom the most severe punishment is meted out. Five policemen were severely injured in that riot.
    Then we conic to the Sackville Street meeting which the hon. Gentleman witnessed front the balcony of his hotel. The meeting was proclaimed. It was an advertised meeting and people were begged to come there in overwhelming numbers. They are not entitled to hold any meeting at all in Sackville Street. Sackville Street, or O'Connell Street, whichever it may be called, is no doubt a wide and noble thoroughfare. Tramways run right through the middle of it. This was a tramway dispute. Tramways are entitled to make their way at all hours of the day unmolested and unimpeded by huge crowds. I do not say that it is always a wise thing to proclaim a meeting. I know no question about which it is more difficult for an executive official to come to a decision. If you have proclaimed a meeting and there is a row, people say that if you had not proclaimed it there would not have been a row, and the row only comes because you inform people they are not entitled to hold a meeting in that particular place. Anybody who knows Dublin knows that it would be a foolish thing to permit a great crowd to collect in Sackville Street.
    1026
    To allow it to collect without any demur, to allow any body of discontented persons, rightly or wrongly discontented, to have the right to hold meetings in that place, is to upset all constituted authority. They have not even a customary right. It is not a place like Hyde Park or a common, where the people have permission to be, without injury to their fellow-subjects. It is not a place where they are entitled to hold a meeting at all. The meeting was proclaimed. The hon. Gentleman severely criticised the conduct of the two heads of the police. He said he saw them skulking in a shop. Even if they were in a shop, I cannot see why they should have been described as skulking. As a matter of fact, Sir John Ross was not in any shop, and Mr. Harrel went to the shop to do what the hon. Gentleman seemed to think was the chief duty of the police in trying times, namely, to telephone. As a matter of fact, it is all in the Report if you care to read it. The whole incident lasted a very few minutes. This was not a case of prolonged riot, but there was an unfortunate circumstance connected with it. Princes Street, as everybody who knows Dublin is aware, comes into Sackville Street just by the Post Office, and there two converging crowds met, and there it was that the batoning—if there was any batoning—took place, for otherwise the police did not come into physical contact with the crowds.
    Here is another case. There was an attack on the Inchicore trams by a mobof three or four hundred people. Every policeman out was struck and cut, and some were badly injured. Inspector White was badly cut. Two policemen were saved by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who brought them to his Presbytery. That was a scene of the most extraordinary violence. The Report states:—
    "In the meantime the windows of the tramcar had been smashed by rioters who had got behind the police, and two of the police who were nearest to the tramcar were badly injured, one of them being knocked down with a stave and the other getting his chin split open with a bottle."
    Those are aggravating circumstances.
    "Some of the rioters were arrested and taken with great difficulty to Chancery Lane. Inspector White, who went in front to keep back the crowd, being struck on the head, and badly cut, in Back Lane."
    He did not inflict those injuries upon himself.
    "On their way back from Chancery Lane to Corn-market the police were again assailed from the tenement houses in Nicholas Street with stones and bottles, thrown from the windows of the houses. A little later in the evening another tram car coming from Inchicore to College Green, and protected by two constables, was

    1027
    attacked and held up by another riotous mob in High Street, throwing stones, bricks and bottles. The mob numbered about 200, and there were only the two policemen, who were rescued from a position of imminent danger by Father Reilly, who brought them into the Presbytery, followed by about fifty of the crowd, who proceeded to smash the windows of the Presbytery"—
    It only shows what people will do when they get angry, even in spite of religion.
    "and tried to force the door. They were relieved by a party of six police from Chancery Lane, who managed to disperse the crowd. From about 5.15 p.m. until 7 p.m., owing to the presence of riotous and disorderly crowds, it was necessary to patrol the streets in the neighbourhood with six members of the Royal Irish Constabulary troop, who were stoned by the crowd in High Street, and pelted with bricks and bottles from the windows of the houses in High Street and Francis Street."
    And so on for several hours with regard to that riot. The next riot was in Aungier Street, Redmond's Hill, and Cuffe Street. The report says:—
    "This riot commenced with an attack, a little before 5 p.m., on one of the outgoing cars of the tramway company. The attack came from a crowd which had collected opposite the Transport Workers' Union Hall in Aungier Street. Two members of this crowd attacked and struck the motorman with sticks. The motorman was obliged to leave his car, and defend himself with his driving handle. In the meantime the crowd, which had increased to 300 persons, smashed the windows of the car. There were no police in the immediate neighbourhood at the moment, but two men of the 'B' Division were quickly on the scene, and one of them (145B) went to the rescue of the motorman. He was at once knocked down, and brutally assaulted while on the ground, and the motorman in attempting to get back to his car was struck with a bottle on the back of the head, and so severely injured that he had to be removed to Mercer's Hospital. One of the policemen went for reinforcements, which soon afterwards arrived, and the crowd was dispersed. Constable 145B was so severely injured that he had to go off duty for three weeks.
    About the same time an incoming tramcar was held up at the same place by the same crowd, who wrecked the car, knocked the conductor down, and took his leather bag, containing about £3 in money. The conductor was so badly injured that he had to be taken to hospital, and remained there for ten days."
    The whole report goes through and analyses each of these cases. This is the last one. The report says:—
    "On Sunday, 21st September, about 5.50 p.m., a procession, estimated to contain several thousand people, formed in Beresford Place and the neighbourhood, and proceeded to march through the city. Chief Superintendent Dunne, with Superintendent Kiernan and Inspector Bannon, and sixty sergeants and constables, accompanied the procession, which was led by a crowd of roughs, many of whom were under the influence of drink. The chief superintendent, who has forty years' experience in the Dublin Metropolitan Police Force, stated that he had never seen such an assemblage of the disorderly class. In the course of their march tramcars were attacked and wrecked, to the number of nine in all, and the members of the crowd behaved in a very disorderly fashion. Stones were thrown at different times during their progress, but it was not until Townsend Street was reached that the riot assumed a really serious
    1028
    aspect. When the procession reached the street an organised attempt was made by its members to overwhelm the force which had accompanied them. Showers of stones and bottles were thrown, in many instances from the houses, and a hand-to-hand struggle went on here for twenty minutes between the police and rioters. Some of the horses belonging to the troopers were knocked down; the men themselves received severe injuries, and in many instances their lives were only saved by their helmets, which were broken by stones and missiles. Pieces of concrete, iron nuts, and bricks were freely thrown. Batons were drawn and used at several points in the street, but for some time even this measure had not the effect of dispersing the crowd or restoring order. Some of the constables were knocked down and rendered unconscious, and in one instance a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police was wounded by a knife. The total number of constables injured in this riot was thirty-six."
    There was the state of things going on in fifteen different places during these two unfortunate days of Saturday and Sunday, and during the whole of this time a body of men, whom I do not hesitate to call a gallant body of men, were engaged in violent conflict, and certainly although, no doubt, they inflicted injuries, they themselves received very heavy, and some of them very cruel, sufferings. Therefore, looking at the matter as a whole, if you have a police force, and everybody will always have to have a police force, it will have to be composed of human beings, and human beings are so constituted that if they are kept for hours and hours engaged in difficult work of this kind, not getting their food, or only getting it at intervals, and not in comfort, and if missiles such as I have described are thrown at them from houses and from roofs as well as from the street, if they sustain and see their fellow constables sustain such injuries, they will at times lose their tempers. You cannot help it. There has never yet been a police inquiry on any police force anywhere, without discovering that although the police, as a whole, may have been vindicated, as they have most successfully been vindicated here, there are instances—individual cases—in which some of them have escaped from discipline and have lost their tempers. You have only to consider the circumstances, and even that does not become such a very serious offence. One Christian doctrine which I have never had any difficulty in believing is original sin. Humanity seems to bind us into a common bond. We understand how men behave in certain circumstances. The policemen of Dublin are the friends and guardians of all well-disposed persons, whether citizens or visitors, and will give them the information they sometimes sorely need. Anyone who says anything to the contrary, I am sure, can only speak from ignorance or

    1029
    prejudice against all police forces. It has been shown that a certain number did misbehave themselves in Corporation Buildings. I analyse that with the care and particularity that it is my duty to do, and I find that the greatest number of men that could by any possibility have o done any of these improper acts is twenty' two, and of these twenty-two it seems perfectly clear that not more than seven or eight were engaged in the acts of violence and impropriety which has been found against them by this inquiry.
    They went up into Corporation Buildings—they were being stoned, and they went up and forced their way into some twenty or thirty of these small tenements, and they were found by these two perfectly impartial persons guilty of impropriety and cruelty. To me it is painful. Hon. Members may think it is a nice thing to find them guilty. I am very sorry. It shows that their discipline is not complete. It shows that they cannot be trusted, under the most terrible and trying circumstances, to behave with perfect, propriety. A certain number of them have been found guilty in this matter, and what has been found against them is that they hit one man and broke a bone in his arm, and inflicted two scalp wounds on another person, and broke pictures, and made hay, so to speak, in these very scantily-furnished rooms. That is a very serious thing. I deeply regret it. It has been put to me what the Government will do in that matter, I certainly think it is most desirable, first that all disciplinary efforts should be made—the area, of course, is not large; the total is confined to twenty-two—to find out who these men were and punish them, and I certainly think every effort ought to be made so to do. Every part of the House will agree that the best thing we can do to vindicate the general character of the force is to deal out suitable punishment when it can be done to the persons who, under any provocation were guilty of the improper acts referred to. The provocation was great, and was found and admitted to be great by the advocate who represented the Corporation, and who certainly deserved, in my judgment, the praise bestowed upon him by the hon. Member for one of the divisions of Dublin, who read out some words which otherwise I would have read. I am sorry the evidence was not printed in time for this Debate, but the Minutes of Evidence will be in the hands of Members as soon as possible. If they will look at
    1030
    Sir John Ross's concluding observations on this very transaction in Corporation Buildings they will read what is, at all events, my opinion upon their conduct. So far as compensation is concerned for the furniture and the things which have been destroyed, I certainly think it ought to be given.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: Will there be any compensation for the wounds?
    Mr. BIRRELL: With regard to the two persons, Mr. Whelan and Mr. Morrissy, their cases also, I think, ought to be considered in exactly the same way.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: About the other cases, Nolan and Byrne?
    Mr. BIRRELL: No, certainly not. There was nothing brought against the police with regard to Nolan and Bryne. I do not admit it for a single moment. My case stands upon this Report and upon the coroner's inquest, and I find nothing in them to justify any such language, which I have already reprobated with regard to these two. With reference to the people in Corporation Buildings, the poor people whose furniture has been destroyed, and who have been injured in their own homes, and who were, it appears from the Report, behaving in a perfectly quiet manner—though you must not forget that stones were being thrown at the police from these very buildings—the police, whoever they were, have been found guilty of misfeasances. I certainly quite agree that they should be subjected to discipline if they can be found, and I am quite willing to take the stern view of a disciplined force that ought to be taken by anyone. I do not say these Dublin policemen are Aristotles or Solons—they are big, stout, healthy men, and I dare say their tempers may be occasionally hot. At all events, looking at all these transactions and studying this Report, considering what they were exposed to, not only during these days but for months before, I think you will say these are a police of whom any city or any executive officer may be proud.
    Mr. JOWETT: There is one point that we on these benches wish to keep distinct and clear, and that is that the tribunal which was appointed was of a kind which we think to be unsuitable for its purpose, and whatever the Chief Secretary may say with regard to his promise to the Bristol Trades Council, this one thing is certain;

    1031
    that he had conveyed the impression that there should have been a tribunal which contained a representative of the working-classes and others. If he could not get exactly the type of tribunal that he had then in his mind, I maintain that he should have got the nearest approximate to it, and he could have got one much nearer than the one which he actually obtained. I cannot understand how, after reading the reports which appeared in the ordinary Press, a fair-minded man, as I take the Chief Secretary to be, should ever allege or believe that the Commission which sat on that case was an impartial Commission. There was no Press report which did not bear, on the face of it, examples of partiality, so far as that Commission is concerned. But now so far as the Chief Secretary's statement goes, he has made one or two admissions. He admits, for instance, that those who have suffered damage in regard to property ought to be compensated.
    Mr. BIRRELL: Those in the Corporation Buildings.
    Mr. JOWETT: But what about Nolan? The question was put to the Chief Secretary and I understood him to say that the death of Nolan could not be traced to the police. I beg to call his attention to the Report of the Commissioners themselves.
    Mr. BIRRELL: I did not say he could not be traced. But he was an unfortunate person in the crowd. I quite agree that poor Nolan met his death as any person might have done who came into contact with the police in that particular crowd.
    Mr. JOWETT: Here is the passage:—
    "They also found that the injuries were caused by a blow of a baton, but the evidence was too conflicting to say by whom the blow was administered."
    If it was a blow on the head by a police baton, surely the Chief Secretary cannot deny liability for any compensation which may be necessary. The most liberal compensation must be quite inadequate for the purpose. I should like to ask whether he can find who these policemen were who invaded these homes in Corporation Buildings, and whether they will be retained in the service, because it seems to me to go without saying that they ought to be dismissed. We have had in times past many agitations in Ireland, and I remember well one very great agitation about Mitchelstown. A great statesman
    1032
    made this country ring years ago with the words, "Remember Mitchelstown." From my knowledge of what occurred then, I think I can say that the occurrences in Dublin were equal to, if not worse, than those at Mitchelstown. They show, if they show anything, class bias. They show that force is always available in order to repress the aspirations of working men when they are trying to better themselves, by means of strikes. They show also the beginnings of a class war. When that class war is properly understood then you may be sure that the authorities will not at the finish have the laugh on their side. So far as I am concerned, whatever others may do, I will go into the Lobby against the Government, feeling that I am only doing what is right and performing what I regard to be my duty to the working people of this country.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: I feel that I owe some apology to the House for intervening in this Debate. I do so with some satisfaction to myself, for it seems to me that the occurrences in Dublin may form a dangerous precedent with respect to, strikes in this country. The prime cause of the occurrences is known to be the proclaiming of a meeting and the prevention of freedom of speech. That is an old crime in Ireland; but it is a new crime to prevent freedom of speech in relation to a labour dispute. I think the Amendment ought to be supported for that reason, if on no other ground. The meeting, according to all the evidence brought before us, was to be held in a place where meetings have been held before for that purpose. What happened was the same kind of action as was taken on the Rand. It was the same in Ireland, and we shall have it in England, I can tell you, as soon as the authorities consider that the condition of things here is as dangerous as in Ireland or South Africa. I wish to refer to, the composition of the Commission of Inquiry. Every unprejudiced person who reads the Report of the rioting in Dublin will realise at once that the Commission was a white-washing Commission. Two Castle lawyers were appointed to white-wash the police in order that they should not be thrown over by the authorities whom they supported so nobly on the 31st August last. I think anyone who wishes to keep a check on the bureaucracy of this country ought to register a protest against the appointment of two lawyers who are more or less in with the police, who support the police before the Magistrates' Courts, and who

    1033
    cannot be trusted to treat the police from the same point of view as the democracy of the country. The weakest point of the Chief Secretary's case was his defence of the police. I think it was about as lame a one as I have ever heard from him. The right hon. Gentleman must have realised that this inquiry has been a farce, largely because of his own action at Bristol. I shall quote to the House the words he used at Bristol, as reported in the daily Press. He said:—
    "It will be a judicial inquiry, and so composed as to include it representative of the views of the working classes in Dublin or neighbourhood."
    These words reported in the Press may not be the words he used. They were reported broadcast throughout the country. The members of his official staff must have known of that promise being made, and if these words were not those which he used, then it was his duty to let the world know through the usual channels that they were mot the words he used, and that he had given no pledge to appoint on that Commission a representative of the working-class. It may be that the interview was a stormy one. It may be that, having four men face to face, he used a form of words which he did not mean to use. Everyone who took an interest in what happened in Dublin knew that the right hon. Gentleman had given that pledge, and if a wrong impression had been given, it should have been put right at the first possible moment. I am bound to say that, in my opinion, if it had not been for the arrest of Larkin and his release, there would not have been any wish to disavow this pledge to appoint working man on the Commission. The pledge was given, but it was not acted upon. Two Castle lawyers were appointed to act as impartial arbitrators. The people of Dublin—Civic League and all independent people—on hearing of the appointments, and knowing the pledge that had been given, realised at once that the Chief Secretary was not living up to the pledge. They boycotted, naturally enough, the whitewashing Committee. They refused to give evidence before the Committee. The hon. Member for Pontefract, (Mr. Booth) did give evidence, but he found that the partiality of the Commissioners was such that they would not support him against the browbeating of the counsel who appeared for the police. What chance would an ordinary citizen lave standing up to Mr. Powell, when a Member of Parliament was treated as was the hon. Member?
    1034
    The Commission was naturally boycotted by all the people who had cause of complaint against the action of the police on 30th and 31st August. There was one exception. Dublin Corporation brought evidence before the Commission in regard to certain incidents in the rioting. The Corporation brought evidence to show that their own property had been destroyed in a moment of frenzy. In the one case in which evidence was brought forward, even this partial Committee, and these two Dublin Castle lawyers, had to find that the complaints were justified, and that the police were not justified in what they did. Hon. Members have read from friends in Dublin evidence which the Civic League had available for any really impartial Committee. There were 500 sworn testimonies as to what took place on these two awful days in Dublin. The Chief Secretary has quoted large extracts from the evidence of the police of what took place during these days. He has taken the evidence of the police. It was not sworn evidence. It was ex-parte evidence, and apparently the Chief Secretary knew so little of what was being done, that he thought the evidence was given on oath.
    Mr. BIRRELL: No, no. I knew perfectly well that it would require an Act of Parliament if the evidence was to be taken on oath.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: Of what value is the evidence which the right hon. Gentleman quoted to the House, in view of the fact that the police who appeared as witnesses spoke in the presence of their superior officers at the inquiry, in which the police had everything to gain by exculpating themselves. We are told that their evidence justifies the outrageous behaviour of the police. The Chief Secretary moved the House by describing the atrocities committed on the police on the previous day. The hon. Member for Pontefract showed us a piece of granite that was thrown. No one knows better than the Chief Secretary that the fact that the police were assailed one day by certain crowds is no justification for their next day batoning innocent people who were not rioting, who were perfectly peaceable, and who were carrying on their work as ordinary citizens. The people in leaving Sackville Street were batoned by the police; and every man had a blow or two. The police rushed up in to the Corporation Buildings and wrecked rooms where there was no person. The rooms were entirely

    1035
    empty in certain cases. I say that no man who reads the evidence can imagine for a moment that any amount of rioting would justify such outrageous behaviour on the part of the police. It is an insult to the police force of this country to compare the men of the Irish police with them. No British police force has ever behaved in such a manner, and no amount of provocation could justify such action. I ant prepared to say that a British police force would not do so. The House has before it the extraordinary evidence of the Civic League. In a statement as to what occurred, the Countess Merkieviecz says:—
    "We had driven down with a few friends to see if the proclaimed meeting would be held. There were no unusual crowds; our ear trotted clown O'Connell Street and pulled up at Prince's Street, opposite the Imperial Hotel. We noticed a great number of police everywhere. Larkin was just, finishing his speech, and went into the hotel a few seconds after our arrival. A few people gathered. They were all laughing and very much amused at Larkin's appearance. A friend recognised me, and called on me for a speech. I did not want to create a disturbance, so I jumped down off the car and walked across the street. As I reached the other side Larkin came out of the hotel, between two policemen, and surrounded by an escort of about thirty police. I ran across in front of him and shook his hand, saying 'Good-bye, good luck.' As I turned to pass down O'Connell Street, the inspector on Larkin's right hit me on the nose and mouth with his clenched fist. I reeled against another policeman, who pulled me about, tearing all the buttons off my blouse, and tearing it out all round my waist. He then threw me back into the middle of the street, where all the police had begun to run, several of them kicking and hitting at me as they passed. I saw a woman trying to get out of the way. She was struck from behind on the head by a policeman with his baton. As she fell her hat slipped over her face, and I saw her hair was grey. She had a little book, which fell out of her left hand as she fell. I saw a barefooted boy with papers hunted and hit about the shoulders as he ran away. I shall never forget the look on his face as he turned when he was struck. I could not get out of the crowd of police, and at last one hit me a back-hand blow across the left side of my face with his baton. I fell back against the corner of Hoyte's shop, when another policeman started to seize toe by the throat, but I was pulled out of the crowd by some men, who took me down Sackville Place and into a house to stop the blood flowing from my nose and mouth, and to try and tidy my blouse. I noticed that the policeman who struck me smelt very strongly of stout, and that they all seemed very excited. They appeared to be arranged in a hollow square, and to be gradually driving the people into the street, and then closing in on them and batoning them. I tried to go up, down, and across O'Connell Street, but each time I was put back by them into the crowd of charging police. The people were all good-tempered, and there would have been no row. They were also outnumbered by the police round about where I was."
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Is that evidence given?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: No. This is a sworn statement made before the Civic League.
    1036
    It is better than evidence not given on oath before this sham Commission.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: And cross-examined on?
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: There was no cross-examination.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: This evidence was not taken alone. I find in the depositions of the Civic League several other witnesses referring to the fact that they saw the blood flowing down the Countess Marckievicz's face, and that they picked her up. I find among the evidence at least half a dozen other cases of women hit by the police, and the case of a little child in the Corporation Buildings who said, "Don't hurt my daddy," whereupon he was promptly knocked down by a baton. It seems to me to be the habit of the Dublin police not only to attack men, but also to make a speciality of onslaughts on women. [HON. MEMBERS "Oh, oh!"] Unless hon. Members have read these statements made by the Civic League, they have no right to protest. This is what the Commission ought to have inquired into. It is not what they did inquire into. I do not want to labour the case against the police. I know perfectly well the difficulties which they had to face in these clays of riot. There is no doubt that they lost their heads and batoned innocent people. Seven hundred cases were admitted to hospital in Dublin, and there were any number of cases who did not go to hospital. This was done not only on the day of the riots, but on the day succeeding the riots. There are photographs here showing the whole thing—photographs which cannot lie. And then hon. Members opposite ask the hon. Member for Pontefract why he did not prove these photographs before this Commission, and prove that they were not faked! What business was it of his to prove that? It should have been the business of the Commissioners to see that they got that proof. He does not represent the public interest. The gentlemen on the bench were supposed to represent the public interest in a case like that, and they naturally did not choose to call a single, piece of evidence to be used against their protégés, the police.
    The hon. Member for Pontefract put the question: "Does the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or the police, or the hon. Member opposite, maintain that these photographs

    1037
    were faked?" If those pictures are accepted, they are proof positive of what went on—something that could not possibly have been justified. It is a great pity that the Chief Secretary did justify it, for it is a bad precedent as regards the action of the police in time to come. The Amendment asks for a genuine inquiry into these disturbances. What we have had was undoubtedly a whitewashing inquiry. It has successfully spread the whitewash, which has been added to by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The grounds on which the House ought to insist on having a genuine inquiry are, first of all, the pledge given to the representatives of the working classes at the time when the whole of the country was; outraged by the imprisonment of Jim Larkin, and given under very special circumstances, and the House would be very ill-advised not to insist upon it. We have not seen in this country for over 100 years any such action on the part of the police as we have witnessed in Ireland during the last few months. They are looking forward in the near future to the possibility of equally serious disturbances in the North of Ireland. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance, for all those who believe that law and order must triumph, that the action of the police, and of Dublin Castle in particular, in this matter should be carefully scrutinised. The triumph of law and order should be carried out in as lawful a manner as possible. For all those reasons we are perfectly justified in asking for a new inquiry. Even if that inquiry has to be postponed until the Chief Secretary for Ireland can get an Act passed to allow the inquiry to be held on; oath. The inquiry is still wanted, and ought to be held.
    I remember many inquiries into the actions of the police, and am bound to admit that anybody who studies these inquiries must come very rapidly to the conclusion that the police have a great pull over the public in all these inquiries. They have enormous advantages. There is a certain solidarity about them. There is a certain unwillingness to credit the citizens as against the police. The police are accustomed to give evidence, standing together in the Magistrates' Courts. Why on earth is it necessary to give them even a stronger pull than they have already? Why is it necessary to allow them to make statements un-crossexamined and not on oath before Commissioners who are already interested in their favour? And let us have an inquiry that will re-establish confidence in the police. If we do not get it, these people in Ireland will be justified in believing that it is useless to ask for justice. So long as this class war, to which the hon. Member for Pontefract has referred, is in operation, those who are rising against class in justice can expect no justice from the upper classes. These people when they come into conflict with the civilisation which presses them down and robs them, cannot expect justice any more than the Italian groaning under the yoke of Austria could expect justice sixty years ago in Italy, or any more than the aristocracts in the days of the Terror could expect justice from Saint Just and Couthon. That is not only the impression, which the workers of Dublin and of this country will get, but it is the impression of the truth.
    Question put, "That those words be there added."
    The House divided: Ayes, 45; Noes, 233.

    Division No. 7.]

    AYES.

    [7.54 p.m.

    Adamson, William

    Gill, A. H.

    Snowden, Philip

    Arnold, Sydney

    Glanville, H. J.

    Sutton, John E.

    Barnes, George N.

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Thomas, James Henry

    Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)

    Hogge, James Myles

    Thorne, William (West Ham)

    Bethell, Sir J. H.

    Hudson, Walter

    Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)

    Booth, Frederick Handel

    John, Edward Thomas

    Wardle, George J.

    Bowerman, Charles W.

    Johnson, W.

    Watt, Henry Anderson

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Byles, Sir William Pollard

    Jowett, Frederick William

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Crooks, William

    Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)

    Williams, John (Glamorgan)

    Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

    De Forest, Baron

    Outhwaite, R. L.

    Wilson, W T. (Westhoughton)

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Richards, Thomas

    Wing, Thomas Edward

    Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)

    Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)

    Elverston, Sir Harold

    Rowlands, James

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

    Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles

    Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

    Mr. Goldstone and Mr. George Roberts.

    NOES.

    Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)

    Agnew, Sir George William

    Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry

    Addison, Dr. Christopher

    Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)

    Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)

    Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)

    Hazleton, Richard

    O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

    Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)

    Helme, Sir Norval Watson

    O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

    Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick Burghs)

    Hemmerde, Edward George

    O'Doherty, Philip

    Barton, William

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

    O'Donnell, Thomas

    Beauchamp, Sir Edward

    Henry, Sir Charles

    O'Dowd, John

    Beck, Arthur Cecil

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

    O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)

    Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St, George)

    Higham, John Sharp

    O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)

    Bentham, George Jackson

    Hinds, John

    O'Malley, William

    Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)

    Black, Arthur W.

    Holmes, Daniel Turner

    O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

    Boland, John Pius

    Holt, Richard Durning

    O'Shee, James John

    Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)

    Hope, John Deans (Haddington)

    O'Sullivan, Timothy

    Brady, Patrick Joseph

    Home, Charles Silvester (Ipswich)

    Palmer, Godfrey Mark

    Brocklehurst, W. B.

    Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

    Parry, Thomas H.

    Brunner, John F. L.

    Hughes, Spencer Leigh

    Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

    Buckmaster, Sir Stanley O.

    Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Burke, E. Haviland-

    Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

    Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

    Philipps, Colonel Ivor (Southampton)

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Jones, H. Hayden (Merioneth)

    Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

    Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)

    Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

    Pollard, Sir George H.

    Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Pryce, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

    Chancellor, Henry George

    Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

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

    Chapple, Dr. William Allen

    Joyce, Michael

    Radford, G. H.

    Clancy, John Joseph

    Keating, Matthew

    Raffan, Peter Wilson

    Clough, William

    Kellaway, Frederick George

    Raphael, Sir Herbert H.

    Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock)

    Kelly, Edward

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)

    Collins, Sir Stephen (Lambeth)

    Kennedy, Vincent Paul

    Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

    Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

    Kilbride, Denis

    Reddy, Michael

    Condon, Thomas Joseph

    Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton)

    Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

    Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)

    Cotton, William Francis

    Lardner, James C. R.

    Rendall, Athelstan

    Cowan, W. H.

    Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)

    Richardson, Albion (Peckham)

    Crumley, Patrick

    Leach, Charles

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Cullinan, John

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

    Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

    Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert

    Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Robertson, John M. (Tyneside)

    Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

    Lundon, Thomas

    Robinson, Sidney

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Delany, William

    Lynch, Arthur Alfred

    Roche, Augustine (Louth)

    Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Roe, Sir Thomas

    Devlin, Joseph

    McGhee, Richard

    Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.

    Dillon, John

    Maclean, Donald

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

    Donelan. Captain A.

    Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.

    Samuel, Sir Stuart M. (Whitechapel)

    Doris, William

    MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)

    Scanlan, Thomas

    Duffy, William J.

    Macpherson, James Ian

    Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

    Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Seely, Rt. Hon. Colonel J. E. B.

    Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)

    M'Callum, Sir John M.

    Sheehy, David

    Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)

    M'Curdy, C. A.

    Shortt, Edward

    Essex, Sir Richard Walter

    McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

    Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook

    Falconer, James

    M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.)

    Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)

    Farrell, James Patrick

    M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)

    Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

    Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson

    Markham, Sir Arthur Basil

    Tennant, Harold John

    Ffrench, Peter

    Marks, Sir George Croydon

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Field, William

    Marshall, Arthur Harold

    Toulmin, Sir George

    Fitzgibbon, John

    Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

    Trevelyan, Charles Philips

    Flavin, Michael Joseph

    Meehan, Patrick J. (Queen's Co., Leix)

    Verney, Sir Harry

    France, Gerald Ashburner

    Middlebrook, William

    Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.

    Furness. Sir Stephen Wilson

    Millar, James Duncan

    Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)

    Gladstone, W. G. C.

    Molloy, Michael

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Molteno, Percy Alport

    Webb, H.

    Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)

    Greig, Colonel J. W.

    Mooney, John J.

    White, Patrick (Meath, North)

    Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward

    Morison, Hector

    Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

    Griffith, Ellis Jones

    Muldoon, John

    Whyte, Alexander F. (Perth)

    Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke)

    Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert

    Wiles, Thomas

    Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)

    Murphy, Martin J.

    Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N.W.)

    Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)

    Murray, Captain Hen. Arthur C.

    Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)

    Hackett, John

    Nannetti, Joseph P.

    Williamson, Sir Archibald

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)

    Needham, Christopher T.

    Winfrey, Sir Richard

    Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton. Beds)

    Neilson, Francis

    Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)

    Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)

    Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)

    Young, William (Perthshire, East)

    Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

    Nolan, Joseph

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)

    Norton, Captain Cecil W.

    Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry

    Nugent, Sir Walter Richard

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.

    Hayden, John Patrick

    Nuttall, Harry

    Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.

    Hayward, Evan

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Main Question again proposed. Debate resumed.

    ROAD BOARD ADMINISTRATION.
    Another Amendment proposed, at the end of the Question, to add the words,
    "But humbly regrets that His Majesty's Speech contains no reference to the unfair administration by the Road Board of the funds under its control."—[Sir John Bethell.]
    Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
    Sir J. BETHELL: I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name upon the Paper. I observe, from the last Report of the Road Board, that the receipts from the 10th May, 1910, to the 31st March, 1913, amounted to £3,437,285, and the estimated income for the current year ending 31st March next is £1,340,000, making a total of £4,777,285. A sum of £700,000 has, I understand, been set aside for works to be carried out in periods of trade depression, and, after allowing £45,000 for administrative expenses, the amount available on the 31st March next will be upwards of £4,000,000. This large sum of money is under the control of an authority which is practically independent of this House, and it is only by raising the question in this form that we are able to obtain any information as to the policy of the Board in connection with the distribution of funds. I should like some information from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury as to the method of allocation of the funds between the various local authorities, and I should also be glad if he could inform me whether the money is distributed according to population, rateable value, or the needs of the districts. I observe from page 7 of the Third Annual Report of the Road Board that they have agreed to contribute a sum of £400,000, subject to Treasury sanction, towards the cost of a new road from Kew Bridge to Hounslow. This work no doubt is necessary and desirable, and I congratulate the Middlesex County Council on the excellent terms they have made with the Road Board. There is, however, a feeling that the Board is favouring the West of London at the expense of the East of London.
    My main objection to the policy of the Board is their attitude with regard to two urgent public improvements required in the county borough of West Ham—the first being a proposed new thoroughfare from London to the Victoria and Albert Docks, at an estimated cost of upward of £300,000. The traffic to and from the docks is not local in its character, and it is felt that the burden of this great improvement should not fall upon the local authority, the West Ham Corporation, and unless we can obtain substantial financial assistance from the Road Board the improvement will certainly not be carried out. Two deputations have attended before the Road Board and fully discussed the matter, and the Board, while benevolently blessing the
    1042
    scheme, stated that its funds were earmarked for other schemes, especially the West London approach scheme. The Board appear to favour substantial Grants being made for widening and improving roads on the west side of London to facilitate the rapid transit of the light motor car; but they declined to make Grants towards the cost of improving the means of communication between London and the Albert and Victoria Docks. From a census recently prepared by the West Ham Corporation it appears that upwards of 11,000 vehicles passed daily over the iron bridge, Barking Road, to and from the docks, and I think, if the Road Board would take the trouble to make further inquiries into this scheme, they would reconsider their decision and make a Grant towards the cost of this very desirable and pressing improvement.
    The second scheme is the widening of High Street, Stratford, from the Metropolitan boundary to the Stratford Market Station. This road is the principal artery for traffic between London and the eastern counties, and it is the most congested length of roadway around London. The present width of the roadway is about 50 feet, and it is proposed to widen the thoroughfare for a length of about three-quarters of a mile to 85 feet, providing a wide avenue between London and the eastern counties. The estimated cost of the improvement is about £200,000. The West Ham Corporation has been in communication with the Road Board for upwards of three years, but up to the present they have not been able to induce the Board to make a proper and adequate contribution towards this important widening. The daily average of traffic passing through High Street, Stratford, is upwards of 11,000 vehicles, a large number of which are heavily laden with market-garden produce for the London markets. The corporation of West Ham have not received one penny from the Road Board, and they feel that unless attention is called in the House to their claims, the borough will not receive justice at the hands of the Road Board. The population of West Ham is about 300,000, and if the money in the hands of the Road Board was distributed on a basis of population, West Ham would be entitled to an immediate Grant of £30,000, instead of a paltry £9,000, the figure suggested by the Road Board. I strongly protest against the attitude of the Road Board with reference to applications for Grants for the East of London, and

    1043
    appeal to the House to pass the Amendment.
    Mr. WILLIAM THORNE: I beg to second the Amendment. During this week and the latter part of last week we have been engaged upon questions of a national character, but this Amendment is for the purpose of obtaining some little sympathetic consideration from the Secretary to the Treasury and also from the Road Board. Deputations from the Borough of West Ham waited upon the Road Board for the purpose of placing two schemes before that body, but on each occasion they got no sympathetic consideration at all. I think I am justified in saying that the Chairman of the Road Board stated, that their money was not for the purpose of carrying out widening of roads, and that it was the duty of the local authorities to carry out improvements of that kind. I may point out that as a matter of fact the Borough of West Ham, which I represent, has spent many thousands of pounds in the widening of roads in different parts of the borough. But the road which is in question in this instance is a main traffic road which passes through High Street, Stratford, and right to Aldgate. It is one of the most urgent improvements that we can consider. Anyone who passes along that roadway between six and ten o'clock in the morning, more especially on market days, is aware of the crowded state of the thoroughfare, and it is a difficult matter for motor omnibuses to get through the congested traffic in the manner in which they ought to be able to get along.
    The Borough of West Ham are quite prepared to do even more, than their share to carry out this very important improvement, an improvement, the cost of which would amount to something like £200,000. All that has been offered to us, however, in relief of the burden imposed by such an improvement is something like £9,000. The reason why we press forward this Amendment and why we ask for more sympathetic consideration from the Road Board, is that the rates in the Borough of West Ham are now 11s. 3d. in the £, the education rate being 3s. 3d.; and when we are asked to carry out an improvement of the kind now under consideration, an improvement which is on one side of the borough, and which will cost £200,000, I think we are being asked to do a great deal more in a way of effecting an improvement for the accom-
    1044
    modation of general traffic than we ought to be called upon to perform. If we pass, on to the south side of the borough, where the improvement to be effected is just as urgent, we find that the traffic from the docks over the iron bridge, right up the main road, is just as congested as it is on the other side. It appears to me that unless an improvement scheme is carried out the congestion of traffic will be a great deal worse than it is at the present time. There is a scheme proposed to form a new road right over the level crossings of the Great Eastern Railway and right across the docks to the swing bridge road. The result of the presence of these level crossings is that on some days traffic is congested for about half a mile along the road, and many hundreds of very heavy vehicles are delayed.
    In regard to the swing bridge, although the dock company provide a bridge for the purpose of passengers crossing the docks, yet when traffic is passing up the river and big steamers are coming in through the dock, it is found sometimes that the gates are open for twenty minutes, and even for an hour at a time. The result is that neither vehicles nor passengers can get across and often hundreds of men are compelled to lose an hour or two hours, because, according to the regulations of the factory owners who employ them, if the men are a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes late they are compelled to remain out until breakfast time. Therefore, it is a great injury, not only to the workmen, but also to the factory owners in consequence of the local traffic being delayed. That scheme will cost something like £300,000. That means, if the borough of West Ham is called upon to carry out the scheme on the north side to the extent of £200,000 and on the south side to the extent of £300,000, that an 11s. 3d. rate will jump to about 15s. in the £. We contend that we have not been fairly dealt with. I dare say we shall be told that as far as Essex is concerned, substantial sums have been granted to the Essex County Council for the purpose of widening and carrying out improvements on roads in the county. So far as the borough of West Ham is concerned, we have not received one single farthing, although I have heard that the Road Board has promised something like about £9,000. It appears that the Road Board has agreed, or, at any rate, partially agreed, to assist the Middlesex County Council to the extent of £400,000. The

    1045
    scheme which was first put forward by the Middlesex County Council, to carry out a new road from, I think, West Cromwell Road, viâ Hammersmith and Brentford, to Hounslow, would have cost over £1,000,000, but because the Road Board put a check on that, and said they were not prepared to grant the amount of money that the county council wanted, the county council altered the scheme and adopted a new one, which, I understand, has got the sanction of the Road Board, and will cost about £500,000. All that the Middlesex County Council are going to subscribe towards that is 25 per cent., while the Road Board has promised the remaining 75 per cent., which amounts to £400,000. I admit, of course, that the road from Kew Bridge through Brentford is a very narrow road, and no doubt at times very congested, but there is absolutely no comparison at all between that congested road and the road either on the north side or on the south side of the borough of West Ham.
    If the Road Board can find money to the extent of £400,000 to carry out improvements in a direction not so necessary as the improvement which I have indicated, then it does appear to the local authority of West Ham that we ought to receive more sympathetic consideration. The Port of London Authority have promised that they will come to our financial assistance to some extent; but we have not been able, up to the; present, to find out to what extent they would help us The borough, of course, is quite willing to pay its share. I believe that the factory owners at Silvertown and on the other side, and that many factory owners even along Commercial Road and on the south side will be quite willing to subscribe towards the cost. A delay in their vehicles of twenty minutes or half an hour means a great loss to the factory owners, not only in the Borough of West Ham, but right, up Commercial Road, and even on the south side of London. Therefore, I do hope, in face of the heavy burdens we have got to carry in one direction or another, that the Treasury to-night will certainly indicate to the Road Board that they ought to deal with West Ham in a more generous spirit than they have hitherto done. We have done all we possibly could to try and persuade them by the force of our argument, but have absolutely failed. Therefore, now the only remedy, of course, is to come to the House of Commons to get the sympathetic consideration of the Treasury. It may, no
    1046
    doubt, be a difficult matter to attempt to-bring pressure on the Road Board; but in face of the position of a struggling body like West Ham, they ought surely to assist us to carry out these two very important schemes.
    Mr. WILLIAM PEARCE (Tower Hamlets): I have risen to point out that this is not entirely a West Ham question. The provision of this road really means some extension of the dock facilities to the whole of London. The Port of London Authority are engaged in a very large and very expensive work, and if there are not proper means of ingress and egress to the docks, the whole benefit is not possible to the different parts of manufacturing. London. This matter, to my mind, is of extreme consequence to the whole of the London district. Everybody knows that the Thames and river facilities are really the breath of London, and that industry entirely depends on their proper management and development. We have taken large and expensive steps in the development of the Thames, and those are likely to be checked unless there are proper approaches. There is no good in having a fine thing in the way of docks if you are denied proper ingress and egress. At the present time the road approaches to this new dock system in West Ham and East Ham are a perfect disgrace to the largest city in the world. Although I am supporting the lion. Member in one way, I have to quarrel with him in another. He suggested and recommended to His Majesty's Government and the House that the extra expense might be placed on the trade of London in this regard.
    Mr. W. THORNE: No.
    Mr. W. PEARCE: You suggested that the factory owners and traders might be willing to contribute.
    Mr. W. THORNE: As a matter of fact, the factory owners at Silvertown have agreed to subscribe some part of it, not to any great extent.
    Mr. W. PEARCE: The House has already gone to a great extent in charging the development of the Port of London on the trade of London. I opposed many of the provisions of the Bill in that respect. London, after all, is the only city with, large docks which charges an enterprise of o that description on to the trade of the Port. The Port of London Authority have had to exert their power of raising dues

    1047
    to the full, and at the present time they are taking from the traders nearly £350,000 per year in port dues for the support of their undertaking. That is all very well in good times, and times have been good lately, but I think the Government and the House must see that £350,000 is a permanent charge on the industrial possibilities of London. Therefore, though perhaps I may be wrong in interpreting to the full the remarks made by the hon. Member who has just spoken—and he is as much interested in industrial development as I am—yet I do think they bore that interpretation, and the Government might be inclined to consider that the trade and business of London was still able to carry an extra burden. I think the burden that has been placed on them already is serious, and I do hope that nothing that has fallen from my hon. Friend will be interpreted by the? Government so as to put extra charges on London business. This is, as I have stated, by no means a West Ham or East Ham question, but it is one which affects the whole of the trade of London. Any money that could be spared from the Road Board, a large portion of whose income is derived from the duty on petrol consumed on the streets of industrial London, and any way they could see to help the scheme put forward by the Port of London Authority and the Borough of West Ham and East Ham, would be to the great satisfaction and to the good of the whole of industrial London.
    Sir ARCHIBALD WILLIAMSON: I wish to deal with another aspect of the policy of the Road Board which has subjected that body to very serious complaints and criticism in Scotland. There is very little doubt, I think, that when the House passed the Act constituting the Road Board that it was with a view to relieving and to meeting to some extent the complaints that had been made as to increasing rates for the upkeep of roads caused by the cutting up of roads by motor cars. The rates in the country districts in Scotland have been raised, even since the Road Board came into existence, to a very considerable extent. In many parts of Scotland the rates have been raised by 50 per cent. as compared with a few years ago, and the grievance which my Constituents and others similarly situated feel is that, while they are paying these greatly increased crates for the maintenance of their roads, they are paying for a condition of road
    1048
    which is required, not for their local traffic, but for motor cars, which are largely alien to the district. The policy of the Road Board has unfortunately not resulted, at any rate in my Constituency, in any diminution of the rates, or even in arresting the increase of the rates. The policy seems rather to have been directed to a course of action which actually raises rather than diminishes the rate—at any rate, for the time it raises them. The policy has been for the Road Board not to pay for the upkeep of the road, but only to contribute a certain proportion of the cost of the improvement of the road—an improvement in some cases beyond what, in the opinion of the locality, is required for their own needs.
    In the county of Elgin the roads have been exceptionally well maintained. During the time that the motor traffic was rapidly increasing the roads in Morayshire were kept up at local expense, and were, I believe, considered to be in first-class condition, and superior to those of many others of the Highland or North of Scotland counties. That was very creditable to the local authorities in Morayshire; but, unfortunately, owing to the policy of the Road Board, the local authorities in Morayshire, so far from benefiting, have actually been losers by this "generous policy. Counties which had not kept up their roads, but had allowed the motor cars to cut them up, and had not properly repaired them, are now in a position to go to the Road Board and say that they are willing to go in for large improvements, and so obtain from the Road Board a considerable proportion of the cost; whereas a county, such as that which I have the honour to represent, which had maintained its roads and put them in first-class condition at its own expense, now finds itself in the position that when it goes to the Road Board and asks for assistance the Road Board puts forward such a proposition as, for example, that if the county will tar and macadam the roads, which admittedly they do not require, the Road Board will pay a certain proportion of the expense, leaving the additional amount to fall upon the locality. That is not exactly what Parliament intended when it passed the Act constituting the Road Board.
    It is true that the Act, according to the legal interpretation, did not enable the Road Board to contribute towards maintenance, but I think the general impression of Members was that in such a

    1049
    case as that which I have quoted we should not find ourselves in the position of having no recognition for the good work and expenditure undertaken by the county and of being able to get assistance from the Road Board only if we are willing to put down something which, in the opinion of the locality, and I believe in the opinion of the Road Board itself, is unnecessary. The county has not received from the Board one single penny. We are on the main road running from Aberdeen to Inverness. Thousands of motor cars pass through during the summer, not only on the way to Inverness, but also to Grantown and Rothes. The roads are being cut up by all these cars, but from this fund we are receiving nothing at all, and we are obliged to pay 50 per cent. more for the maintenance of our roads owing to traffic which is foreign to the locality. I bring this? matter forward in the hope that the Secretary for the Treasury will see whether it is not possible for the Road Board to meet a grievance such as this, which I can assure the House is not confined to Morayshire, but is shared by other counties in the North of Scotland, where the population is somewhat sparse, and any addition to the cost of the maintenance of the roads falls very heavily, owing to the low valuation on which the rating is based.
    Mr. ALDEN: I have the greatest possible sympathy with the hon. Member who has just spoken, and I am certain that the Road Board will sympathise with him, because it is perfectly clear that the time is rapidly drawing near when this or some other Government will have to take over the whole of the trunk roads of the kingdom. It is absolutely impossible for the local authorities to maintain these trunk roads in a fit and proper condition. Although, as it seems to me, the Road Board has done all that lies in its power with regard to these front roads, there is still much to be done, and I am sure the time is rapidly drawing near when we shall say that it is the business and a proper responsibility of the State to take over the high-ways. I wish to emphasise the point which has already been emphasised by two or three hon. Members, with regard to the roads in West Ham. I have lived there for twelve years, and only a few hundred yards away from the highway which has been described—the Victoria Dock Road. I can, therefore, speak with some authority on the subject. I have no hesitation in saying that it is one of the
    1050
    most important roads in Greater London, that it has to bear very heavy traffic indeed, and that it serves not only the local authorities in the immediate neighbourhood, but the whole of London. If we are to make the Port of London what we want it to be, something ought to be done to improve that entrance to the port. I do not see how you can expect West Ham to do very much in that direction. I represent a Middlesex division; therefore, it is perhaps not my proper function to stand here and plead for West Ham, which is in Essex. At the same time, I sympathise very much with West Ham, and I rather fancy that the Road Board, in its heart of, hearts, if it has a heart, also sympathises with them. It is perfectly obvious that you cannot expect a heavily-rated district, such as that is, with a very poor population, to undertake the work of providing a proper entrance to the Port of London. The road has been described as a perfect disgrace. So it is. It is a very narrow road; it was badly made in the first instance—it has been re-made, since; the houses on one side are in a tumble-down condition, owing to the heavy traffic which, goes along the road; and there is a railway on the other side, which also makes the houses insecure. What is really required is that the road should be widened, if possible, to double its present width, in order to make a first-class entrance to the port which is now becoming so important. I hope the Road Board: will consider this to be their duty.
    As I read the figures — though, of course, I may be mistaken — the estimated income for the year ending 31st. March, 1914, is £1,340,000. There was available on the 30th June, £1,669,000. Since then £113,000 has been offered or allocated to the highway authorities in Greater London, and £269,000 to county and borough councils in England and Wales. There is still a fair margin left, and I most sincerely hope that the Road Board will see its way to make a more adequate grant to West Ham in order to assist them in the widening and remaking of these two roads, the Victoria Dock Road, and the High Street, Stratford, near Bow Bridge. I do not think the Road Board would expect, I do not think anybody expects, West Ham to spend half a million to do this work. I am perfectly certain that it will not be done unless some assistance is given. I know no other authority capable of giving this assistance except the Road Board. We do not expect the Government to make a Grant.

    1051
    The Government would hardly make a Grant to the Road Board except for such a purpose. I trust the suggestion will be reconsidered. It is a very small Grant, £9,000, which I believe has been made for the High Street portion. It ought to be very much increased, and a larger Grant made for widening and improving the entrance to the Port of London, namely, the Victoria Dock Road.
    Mr. KELLAWAY: The discussion, and the fact that the question has to be raised in this way, only illustrates one of the difficulties which I think from the first was seen to be incidental to the character of the Road Board. It is not a satisfactory state of things that this question can only be discussed on an Amendment to the Address, that in this matter the ratepayers who are intimately interested, and the taxpayers have, in effect, no practical control of any kind over the Road Board or even in the way in which it may choose to dispense the funds at its disposal. This is not surely a question for London, nor for Scotland. I could bring before the House grievances that have been brought to me by my own Constituents and ratepayers of the county of Bedford, who feel that they have been very badly used by the Road Board. I will venture to say that every Member of the House can do exactly the same thing. I think this is an illustration of the vicious principle—of the vicious control—which is bound to have an effect upon the work of the Road Board. As a matter of fact, I do not think anybody will be able to discover any principle on which the Road Board is now making its Grants. I do not believe that the Road Board itself has ever yet formulated a policy on which its Grants shall be made to the different authorities of this country. I hope the Government, if they have any influence with the Board, will use that influence in the direction that the Road Board should speedily formulate a policy, so that the local authorities of the country should know on what principle the funds at the disposal of the Board are being granted.
    The Road Board appears to be, so far as one can make out, under the headship of a very distinguished ex-railway man, who has to carry on his back a number of decaying colonels whose views upon traffic would, I think, make a very interesting exhibit in some antiquarian museum. That is not the way in which this body ought to lay down a policy on which it is
    1052
    going to distribute its funds. In the first place, it was said that the funds at the disposal of the Board were not to be used for anything but permanent improvements. To-day the Road Board is making Grants for the maintenance of the road crust. That cannot be called a work of permanent improvement. It was the intention of Parliament that the money at the disposal of the Board should be used for road widenings, rounding of dangerous corners, and similar work. A substantial Grant is now being made to local authorities—I am not complaining about it except to point out the change in the policy of the Board—on road maintenance purely. The point was put to the representative of the Treasury that practically a very large proportion of the funds of the Road Board came from the Petrol Tax levied or raised in London, and that therefore London was entitled to some more consideration that it is now getting. I hope my hon. Friend will be very, very chary before he accepts any such statement. It may be the fact that a large amount of the Petrol Tax is raised in London, but I venture to say that the damage done to the roads in London is not nearly met by the amount of the Petrol Tax which is raised in London. The damage done, too, is largely distributed over the whole country.
    Here I would point out that the authorities of the Road Board seems to have a most extraordinary idea—or had it at one time—as to the amount of the Petrol Tax which was raised by one important branch of the London traffic, the motor bus traffic. Most sensational figures were given by the Chairman of the Road Board to a representative conference. Those figures were at once laughed out of court by everybody who knew anything about the facts. So far as the Petrol Tax in London is concerned, even if the whole of the motor cars pay that tax, it is not nearly beginning to pay the damage that is now being done in London by these forms of heavy motor traffic. I hope Parliament will be given an opportunity of considering right through the present way in which the Road Board is using its funds, and see if some better system cannot be found. It appears to me that Parliament has created a Frankenstein which it cannot now control. I sympathise with my hon. Friend in having to reply to a discussion of this kind; and to make apologies for a body which is practically independent of him and of Parliament, and which can afterwards

    1053
    go on its own sweet way. I think it would be difficult to find a champion of the Road Board from any municipal authority in this country. It is not the fault of the Road Board. I believe they have done their best, according to their lights, but the way in which that body has been set up, and the system on which it works, makes it impossible for it ever to be regarded, I believe, as a permanent part of the municipal system of the country.
    Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: I had not any intention of speaking upon this subject, because I thought that the matter might come up later upon the Estimates, rather than upon an Amendment to the Address; but I think that my Friends are justified in creating discussion upon this important subject. I can assure the House that there is a very great deal of dissatisfaction existing in the municipalities, especially as to the manner in which the Road Board is utilising its funds. I am given to understand that there were accumulations amounting to two and a-half millions in March of last year; added to that will be accumulations of this year. These are very large sums. I understood when the matter was debated last year that the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that they were accumulating the money for the purpose of meeting depression in trade that might occur at some future time. I think it is a very difficult matter to accumulate and spend all the money in that way, because it is collected from all parts of the country. Therefore, all the municipalities are very keen and very anxious to obtain their share of this Grant towards the improvement of their roads. I am given to understand that a very large amount of this money—I have gone through the allocations, for during the Recess I read the Report of the Road Board, but I have not got them in my mind—and I am bound to say it appears to me that a very large amount of this money is misapplied. For instance, if you take the improvements in the roads they are really made in the counties. There are no Grants awarded to the towns. That is what I complain of. In the first discussion that took place here, I made a very strong complaint on behalf of the non-county boroughs. I represent two non-county boroughs, and neither of them have any Grant whatever.
    I complain that the non-county boroughs must apply through the county councils, and that they cannot obtain direct access
    1054
    to the Road Board. I dare say in the London boroughs it is the same. Many of these boroughs have very heavy rates. In the town I represent the highway rate—lighting, scavenging, maintenance of roads, etc.—comes to 3s. 4d. in the pound. That is a very heavy highway rate. In the county there is very little highway rate, because there are very large Grants from the Exchequer to the county councils, and there again the county boroughs get very little of the money. Taking everything into consideration, the non-county boroughs are suffering very great injustice, and there, again, they have to go to the county councils for grants for the maintenance of the roads and also for the Grants made by the Road Board. I hope that the Road Board will take every application into consideration fairly, and treat the counties better. In some localities, as I pointed out, they receive very little, and have little expectation of getting anything. I remember last year, I think it was, there was an application made to the Road Board from the district in which I live, where a new road was going to be made, and where they proposed to have this road, which was going to be made by the public authority in the first instance, and a very open through thoroughfare costing between £50,000 and £60,000. I think there is to be but a very small Grant towards that very costly road. There, again, I think there is a very grave injustice, because the Road Board ought to give assistance when new roads are made in this way, and I think the Road Board, which has this money, ought to give a Grant towards these main roads. I have raised some of those points which I think the Road Board, and especially the Secretary to the Treasury, ought to take into consideration.
    I see the new President of the Local Government Board is present. In fact, we are in this unfortunate position that both the Secretary to the Treasury and the President of the Local Government Board are new to their offices, and although we were not dissatisfied with the past President, still, I think the new President ought to take the views I am expressing into consideration and try to bring pressure to bear upon the Road Board to distribute this fund in a fairer way. I hope the new Secretary to the Treasury will assert his authority. They do say, I do not know with what truth, that Secretaries to the Treasury are too much subject to the permanent officials. I should like to see a

    1055
    different state of things existing with the new Secretary to the Treasury I should like to see him assert his authority and look into this matter. There are cases, I can assure him, where the local authorities are dissatisfied with the accumulation of this money, and I honestly believe that you cannot, even when depression comes, spend this money in the way in which the Road Board anticipate. Let me put one case with regard to this depression. This is what I find in my experience in municipal life, and I have got a long apprenticeship of over thirty years in municipal work—if you have depression in towns, I do not care what town, you have a certain amount of work to do, whether by way of private improvement or public work, by making new roads or improving old roads. Now there are men engaged upon this work already. We have road men, drainers, paviors, and men engaged specially upon that kind of work.
    What I have always contended and argued in my own Constituency is that when you have depression, say, in the shipbuilding or in other trades, and when you bring these men into that kind of work, you simply have a, displacement of labour. In other words, you take from the men engaged in this sort of work so much of the work which they ought to do, and therefore you have displacement of labour, and you do not create work for the unemployed, because if you employ men out of work in that sense you are simply putting other men out of work ultimately, and in that way you are not doing any good. I think the proper plan is this—that the Road Board ought to distribute this money so that roads can be improved. There is another thing I should like to bring before the House in which I think the Road Board should help, and it is this. In many of our towns, and especially our old towns, we have narrow streets and awkward corners, and it is impossible to get a grant from the local authorities to widen these roads and cut off these corners. I am very glad to say that the chairman of the Road Board comes from our district in the North of England. He is none the worse for that, because I believe he is a very progressive man, and we are very glad that the chairman of the Road Board for the time being is a North of England man. It is very important that the chairman should be a man of right disposition. I do think that when these improvements become a very onerous cost
    1056
    to the local authorities that this money which the Road Board have in their possession ought to go to the local authorities to assist them in carrying out these improvements. That was what I understand the Road Board was going to do, but instead of that nothing has been done.
    If applications are made by the non-county boroughs, they have to go through the county council who knows nothing; about the road or the requirements of non-county boroughs. I know very few of them are main roads, and, therefore, the county authorities have not that control, over them which they have over their own county roads. Anyone who has had experience of county councils or local government, knows that you must have the men in the district who represent the ratepayers to sympathise with these proposals, and you cannot expect those living fifty or sixty miles away to know the requirements of any particular district in the county. So far as non-county boroughs, are concerned, the county councils are not the bodies to whom these applications should be made. On a former occasion I pleaded that the non-county boroughs, should have this right of direct application 10 the Road Board. To-night I hope that we shall hear something from the Secretary to the Treasury on this question, and I trust that he will undertake to make these representations to the Road Board. I had not the pleasure of listening: to the speech of the Mover of this Amendment, but I understand that he has been urging that more money should be given to the London authorities. I sympathise with that, and while I do not think this is the proper time to raise the question, and that it would be better to raise it on the Vote, still I think the discussion will do a great amount of good, and it will anticipate what the Secretary to the Treasury will have to meet when the Vote comes up for discussion.
    9.0 P.M.
    Sir RICHARD WINFREY: I wish to place before the Secretary to the Treasury the considerable difficulty in which we have been placed in our county owing to the manner in which the Road Board has allocated to us a Grant. I am a member of the Peterborough County Council. We have, just on the very borders of Peterborough, the great North Road, and there is a stretch of about seven miles of this road in the Soke of Peterborough. That is a road which is not really used by the inhabitants of the Soke of Peterborough. I do not suppose it is used by any

    1057
    of the ratepayers with the exception of a few farmers who have fields adjoining that road on one side. The Road Board was anxious that this great North Road, which is the great motor high road to the North, should be improved. Probably they were right in that respect; I do not dispute that, although so far as I have observed, it was quite good enough for me and for most people. Still, the Road Board desired that that great road should have its efficiency increased and should be improved, and so they came down to the Soke of Peterborough County Council and to the Borough of Peterborough and said: "If you are prepared to do this road, we will make you a Grant of £7,000." That seemed a very handsome Grant, and the chairman of our Council, Lord Exeter, who, no doubt with the best intentions in the world, supported this proposal. We had a new surveyor, and I think he was anxious to get some increased work, and the result was that the council accepted this offer from the Road Board, the condition being that the ratepayers of the Soke of Peterborough should spend a like amount on the roads. That proposal was passed, and I had to take some responsibility for it because our highways committee agreed to it. It was a very small area, and the work being pushed on more rapidly than was wise, we have now discovered that we have landed ourselves in an extra twopenny rate for the administrative county, and the citizens of Peterborough are up in arms at the increased rate they have been called upon to pay. Two-thirds of our rate is derived from the Borough of Peterborough, and one-third from the rural districts. This means that the citizens of Peterborough have to find two-thirds of this £7,000 for improving the great North Road mainly for the benefit of the motorists of this country. I maintain that the allocation of a sum like that is unfair and unjust to those of us who reside in Peterborough. I think the Road Board ought to have given us a Grant sufficiently large to have done the work, and I do not think they are treating our rural areas in a generous spirit by making such an onerous condition that when a Grant is made the locality concerned must find an equal sum. I have another grievance. The Read Board seem to me to devote too great a proportion of their money to the improvement of the road surface. We have in the City of Peterborough a level crossing over which the Great Eastern Railway crosses
    1058
    our main road just as you enter Peterborough from the south. Before you get to the town bridge there is a level crossing, at which I dare say the Secretary to the Treasury, in motoring through our district, had to wait for some minutes at the gates. The city has grown considerably in the south, and here we have a large number of workpeople who pass to and fro at meal-times. We have a great deal of traffic, and it is not only extremely inconvenient, but it is very dangerous at the present time.
    After getting a promise from the Great Eastern Railway Company that they would contribute towards the cost of the bridge, we approached the Road Board, because we thought, and I think rightly, that it was an appropriate subject for a Grant. Not only should the Road Board improve the surface, but they should help us to facilitate traffic, especially in such an important town as Peterborough, of which I have the honour to be mayor at the present time. I naturally desired in that capacity to get the assistance of the Road Board, and we approached them. After some time they told the committee, a special committee appointed for that purpose, that they would be prepared under certain conditions to make a Grant. What were those conditions? They were these: If they made us a Grant, say, of £10,000 to assist us in erecting this bridge, which is so necessary for our traffic, they would give so much less to the Huntingdonshire County Council, to the Isle of Ely County. Council, and to the Peterborough County Council. In other words, if they gave us that Grant, it was to be ear-marked and considered as part payment of the Grants that would be made to those three county councils. It was really giving us nothing. The Huntingdonshire County Council, which would have assisted us by making us a grant, said "No. If the Road Board are going to give you £10,000, but are going to stop it out of any Grant that they are going to give us in future, that is our contribution, and you cannot expect anything further from us." The Isle of Ely County Council said the same.
    I venture to criticise the action of the Road Board in those two particulars. Where main roads pass through rural districts, and are used largely by the public other than the particular ratepayers of the district, I think that the Road Board when it wants that road improving beyond the ordinary upkeep, ought to contribute the whole amount. In the second place, I

    1059
    think that instead of allocating three-fourths or four-fifths of their money, as they do now, to the roads surface they ought to consider very carefully this question of the bridges. I remember when we had the disastrous flood in Norfolk two years ago several of our bridges were washed away. They were not perhaps as good as they might have been, but still they had lasted a good many years and had withstood a good many storms. They gave way, however, under that great pressure, and the Norfolk County Council naturally asked the Road Board to assist them in erecting new bridges. The Norfolk people feel that they have a grievance against the Road Board, that they did not get such generous assistance as they felt that they might reasonably claim on that occasion. It was a very exceptional circumstance, it is true, but it was one in which the local ratepayers deserved more consideration than they got from the Road Board.
    My hon. Friend who has just sat down referred to the case of street widening in non-county boroughs. Up to now I have not heard of any non-county borough that has got any assistance from the Road Board at all. We are often very highly rated in these non-county boroughs, and why the whole of this money, which is raised, at any rate, from different sources and from all sorts and conditions of people, should go entirely to the assistance of the county ratepayer as distinct from the borough ratepayer I cannot see. I cannot see any force in it. It so happens that Peterborough has a street called Narrow Street. A street which is not only narrow in name but narrow in fact. The corporation have spent hundreds of pounds already in getting the owners of property, when it is being rebuilt, to set it back a few feet in order to widen the street. It has been a ruinous business for us. I should not like to say off hand how many thousands we have spent during the fifteen years that I have been on the corporation. No motorist can get into our market place from the south without he goes along that street. It is a street used not only by the citizens, but by all people who pass through Peterborough, whether from the North to the South or from the South to the North. I venture to back up the suggestion of my hon. Friend that we do deserve in these non-county boroughs more consideration than we have had up to the present from the Road Board, and
    1060
    that the question of street widening might be one of the subjects with which it should deal.
    Mr. CROOKS: I have only one or two observations to make about the desirability of improving the new southern road, in West Ham. It will be in the recollection of Londoners that London has extended away down East. It has the Victoria Docks, one hundred years old, and it has the Royal Albert Docks, about twenty years old, but there has never been any serious attempt to make a road. Nearly all the food supply goes along this road, and the men from the North and from the South would not live if it were not for this particular road. It has been noted for two crops a year for the last forty years. When I asked what the crops were they said, "One was a crop of mud and the other was a crop of dust." It retains its reputation to this very day. Traffic is sometimes held up for the want of a pull, or perhaps a taxi gets stuck. There is no necessity to have the police here. All you want is a little more power. You can always get a champion from the North or from the West of London to talk about the needs of a proper road surface for motorists, but the facilities you get for the merchandise of London to these so-called new docks still remain the same. You have only to say it is in the East End and they turn their noses up and walk away. Ninety-eight per cent. of the traffic of those roads is alien traffic, distributed over the whole of the Metropolis and various country districts. It would perhaps be a good thing if the Chairman of the Road Board would get a motor and come down and see us. We would take him over the road. If he were not able to see it, I will undertake that he would be able to feel it.
    It passes the wit of man to regulate the traffic when it is hung up like that. If we get this road we shall have no repetition of the old story of the Parliament Street policeman who was stopping traffic to-allow Members of Parliament to cross the road. A lady looked out of her carriage window, and said, "You really must let me go by, officer, I am the wife of a Cabinet Minister." The policeman replied, "It does not matter to me if you are the wife of a Presbyterian minister, you won't get by here!" If what I have suggested is done you will be able to walk across the road quite freely. I want you to give some help to our end of the town. It would be really a boon. Let the Port of London

    1061
    Authority agree to make a grant. The local authorities are expected to make another grant. This is one of the main arteries for the food supply of London, and, I think, therefore, the Board should bear the whole expense. It is often remarked in the House of Commons, "The poor are very good, they help one another; they show their local patriotism, why interfere with them? May I put in a plea for the East End?
    Mr. WALTER REA: I want to say a word in favour of the Road Board. Although I have considerable sympathy with my lion. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk and with his demand on the funds of the Road Board, I would point out we are all anxious on behalf of the localities in which we live and the constituencies which we represent to get our share of this money. But there is an obvious danger in carrying out the suggestion of my hon. Friend that if the Road Board is to pay the whole cost of constructing all these roads, we shall have one wild scramble to create unnecessary roads in every area in the country, the pressure on the Road Board will be such that they will be unable to give proper consideration to what is really required, and the money will be frittered away in areas represented by the most persistent Members of Parliament. My hon. Friend took exception to the fact that the Road Board does not contribute as much as it might to non-county boroughs. I have the honour of representing a non-county borough, and I do my share in seeing it is not unduly robbed by the county area; but I cannot be unmindful of the fact that, after all, the ratepayers in this class of county borough and in rural areas both have to contribute to the same rate, and any amount granted by the Road Board to the rural area is an actual relief to the pockets of the ratepayers in the non-county borough. That is an argument, therefore, which my hon. Friend must not press too far.
    Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: Many non-county boroughs have no main roads and therefore get no Grant.
    Mr. REA: I do not suggest that what I said was of universal application, but it does prevail to a large extent, and, so far, it is a relief to the ratepayer in the non-county borough. But I did not rise to find fault with the speeches of my two hon. Friends. I rose rather to protest against the attacks being made from all quarters on the Road Board, and in particular
    1062
    against the attacks being made in London. It seems to me a most unfair thing to say that a large amount of the money which the Road Board controls is raised in London, and that it ought, therefore to be spent in London. I am one of those wicked persons who runs a motor car, and, although I use it considerably in London, a large amount of the wear and tear of the roads of which my car is guilty occurs outside London, and, therefore, I think it is perfectly justifiable for the Road Board to say that much more than the share proportionate to the amount raised in the country should be spent in the country, because there is no doubt that a very large number of motor cars, mostly used in the country, are registered in London, which gets the benefit of the registration fees and similar payments. I feel that a great many of the local authorities, within a radius of 100 miles from London have a great grievance, inasmuch as these motor cars tear up their roads while the receipts are allocated to London, and it is only by means of the policy which, I understand, the Road Board are carrying out, that this thing can be made a little bit fairer.
    I want to say a word in favour of the policy of the Road Board. We are told that they are hoarding money, and not spending it as quickly as it comes in. This, road problem has to be considered as a whole. It is no use building roads in a great hurry simply because there is money in the bank. There can be no more spendthrift way of getting rid of money than spending it merely because it is there. We want well-thought-out schemes for the benefit of the whole country, and if that involves a certain amount of delay, I am not going to say that that is an undesirable thing. Members in various quarters of the House have stated, both publicly and privately, that it is desirable public authorities should spend their money with discretion, and with an eye to the mitigation of unemployment in bad times. If the Road Board had spent all their money during the past year, they would have been doing the work at a most expensive time, when labour is scarce and employment plentiful. I am strongly of opinion it is greatly to the advantage of this House that the Road Board and the local authorities generally should reserve such work as they have to do, which is not of an urgent nature, until bad times, and then they may be able to spend the money and give out the work when it is required, and they will

    1063
    not be competing against one another, and paying uneconomic rates for roads which are needed, but which, after all, are not urgent.
    I have in my mind a scheme for a road which is desired by many in the Lake District. There is a problem there which has to be faced, and one of the gravest dangers is that, if the Road Board is forced to consider the matter and receive local objections before the proper time, it may lead to irretrievable disaster to the amenities of this county. The Road Board has been pressed very hard to make a road from the centre of the Lake District to the West Coast, and, knowing something of the district, I am prepared to say that it would be an outrage to construct a road such as is attempted to force on the Road Board. There happens to be an alternative road much more free from objection, and I trust the Board will consider long before they decide. The alternative road is in the jurisdiction of three counties, and therefore there is considerable difficulty in getting everybody into line; but I strongly hope it may be possible for all the bodies to come together and to contribute what may be a fair share of the cost of the road, and thus prevent the desecration of some of the most beautiful valleys in the Lake District by roads which motorists and motor papers are trying to ram down the throat of the Road Board. I have no doubt the same thing applies to other districts throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. All these things require to be considered most carefully. Plans have to be made, and objections heard, before we can commit ourselves to the enormous expenditure involved in building brand new roads. Therefore, although I have the greatest sympathy with every Member who desires a larger amount to be spent in his own constituency, I feel it is most unfair to press the Road Board unduly to spend money before it is required, simply because they have that money in their pockets.
    Mr. M'CURDY: No one, I am sure, can fail to realise that the national service which Parliament entrusted to the Road Board some four years ago is not only at the present time one of the most important of our national services, but it is a service which is growing in importance year by year. The revolution which the last ten years has seen in the conditions of our road traffic have been wholly unac-
    1064
    companied up to the present time by any corresponding revolution in the condition of the main roads of the country. We have, on the one hand, automobile traffic increasing in most extraordinary proportions year by year, and, on the other hand, we have all over the country roads which are mere relics of cattle tracks laid down by ancient Britons, wholly unsuitable to the modern forms of traffic they have to bear. It is an important service having regard to the amount of money involved in that expenditure year by year. At the present time I believe there are something like 2,000 different local authorities spending between them £15,000,000 a year upon the surface of the roads, an expenditure wholly unco-ordinated, an expenditure carried out not in pursuance of any general scheme laid down by any central authority, but in the hands of all those far too numerous authorities. We created the Road Board some four years ago, and I very much regret that we did. I think it would have been far better, if on an occasion like this, when the administration of the great public roads of this country comes up for consideration, we could be talking to the head of a Government Department, responsible to us and the country for the administration of the money concerned. But Parliament in its wisdom has decided otherwise, and we are under the painful necessity—always painful to Englishmen with their essential justice—of having to criticise the administration of people who unfortunately cannot be here to put forward their defence or views on the matter.
    What is the real indictment on the part of the people of this country against the administration of the Road Board? I do not think it turns upon the minor matters referred to by some preceding speakers—it is rather a matter of broad principle. It is that, considering the fact that the coordination of the main roads and the connecting roads of this country is every year becoming more and more important, having regard to the great growth of traffic, and considering also the fact that we have entrusted to the Road Board vast responsibilities and very considerable funds for the purpose of carrying out those responsibilities, that up to the present we do not think that in their administration of those funds the Road Board is showing either the wisdom or the courage to grapple with those great problems of national traffic upon the scale that the time and occasion demands. The revenue in the hands of

    1065
    the Road Board amounts to more than £1,000,000 per year. Up to the present time the principal use which they appear to have made of that great revenue is to lock it up in investments. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] I am ready to be corrected if I am wrong, but I think I am right in saying that of the first £3,300,000 received by the Road Board for the purpose of carrying out the duties entrusted to them, at the end of the three years of their existence a sum of £2,500,000 was safely invested. That may be a prudent financial policy.
    I am not at all overlooking the fact that it is desirable that when expenditure upon great constructive works is handed over to any Department of the Government or any fresh departmental body, such as the Road Board, which was created by the Government for the purpose, they should have regard in their expenditure to those cycles of unemployment to which we must always be subject, and that they should, so far as possible, arrange that their expenditure of public money on great constructive works should be applied in those seasons when it will afford a real relief to unemployment, unaccompanied by any of the evils of indiscriminate charity or the pauperising of the recipients of the relief. When all those considerations are taken into account, I think we have a very substantial grievance against the Road Board in that a great central authority of this kind has not done all that they might and ought to do if they fully realised the great opportunities that lie before them. Consider for one moment the case of London alone Of the £1,200,000 which rolled into the coffers of the Road Board a very large proportion comes from the area of London—a much larger proportion than might be expected from the relative population of London and other parts of the country. The tax is provided mainly from o two sources, the product of the tax on petrol and the Carriage Duties, taxes to which London undoubtedly contributes a larger proportion than other parts of the country. What is the position with regard to London? I forget the exact date, but it must be two or three years ago since I received, as I have no doubt a good many other Members present received, a very large, bulky and interesting volume published by the Traffic Committee of the Board of Trade. I am speaking from memory, and may be misquoting the title of the body which published that very interesting volume. It was a volume con-
    1066
    taining a very large number of plans of London, and most elaborate and minute statistics with regard to the growth of traffic along every main road leading out of London at the present time. North, east, west, and south, the observers of the Board of Trade had waited day by day and hour by hour during the busiest hours of the day, during a certain period of time, and the Report showed at what an extraordinary rate the growth of traffic of all kinds has been increasing for some ten or twelve years and is still increasing in every direction out of London.
    Not only was there in that Report the most abundant material for thought, but it was followed by what I venture to say were very valuable recommendations on the part of that Committee as to the policy which should be adopted with regard to providing this great Metropolis and centre of the Empire with means of exit and access somewhat adequate to the needs of the great population which it contains. First and foremost, they found the absolute necessity of finding a new means of exit and access for Londoners towards the east. At present we go in our motor cars along the ancient Roman road along which Queen Elizabeth used to travel by easy stages to take the pleasant air of Essex. It remains pretty much as it was in Queen Elizabeth's time. Traffic and population have altered considerably since the days of "Good Queen Bess," and the Committee of the Board of Trade reported, as the first necessity for Londoners, that we should construct a new eastern approach to London which would give access from London to the Eastern Counties. What did the Road Board do, or, for that matter, what has anybody done, in respect to that very important suggestion since the day when that very valuable and voluminous Report was issued? So far as I know, nothing whatever. And yet if we were to go and ask the advice of the Valuation Department of the Inland Revenue, we should be told, and rightly told, that every year, nay every month, which elapses without the Road Board or some other proper authority turning its attention to the necessity for constructing these new main roads, so much required in and out of London, is costing, and will cost the taxpayers of this country, who will ultimately have to pay for them, very large sums of money. We ask, and I think reasonably ask, that the Road Board, constituted as it is as the one central authority to con-

    1067
    sider this traffic problem, should not only take into their consideration an important report of that character, but should formulate some policy, should press that policy, and if necessary, seek the assistance of the Government to carry it out. What is true of London is equally true in a minor degree of the urban districts of this country. The urban districts contribute much the largest proportion of the funds which the Road Board have at their disposal; but do the urban districts get anything like their reasonable proportion of the Grants which are doled out from time to time. The exact opposite is the fact. The Road Board are mainly confining their energies to the petty and parochial task of rounding off road corners in rural districts, instead of turning their attention to great schemes or improving the main roads where the great centres of population are. I regret that this is not a matter which is placed by Parliament in the control of a Government Department, which might answer these criticisms with responsibility, and I regret that it is necessary to have to make these criticisms on a public body in their absence. But that is a fault for which I am not responsible.
    Colonel YATE: I should like to join with the hon. Member in expresing my entire commendation of that voluminous Report which was submitted by the Board of Trade on the question of arterial roads in and out of London, and I should like to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to give us some particulars to-night as to what is to be done to carry out the recommendations of that Committee. The Committee certainly drew up a most magnificent scheme for the great arterial roads in London, and it is not only the eastern roads which require to be done, but I would especially bring to mind the great urgency of the western roads. That question is hung up for the present, I understand, by various committees and councils which have not been able to come to a common understanding, and I would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to collate all these different authorities and try and get them to come to some determination to carry out these roads at the earliest possible date. The want is increasing, and every day's delay means many thousands extra expense, and the sooner we can bring these various schemes to a settlement, and get something definitely decided on, the less cost
    1068
    there will be to the State. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell us exactly what is being done to bring these schemes to a conclusion, and get a really good exit out of London, provided for in the East and the West, which is so urgently required. I trust that, in addition, he will tell us what is being done by the Road Board throughout the country to remove the tremendous dangers there are now, owing to high hedges and other things, at the cross roads, junctions and dangerous corners throughout the country. Those high hedges at cross roads have been the cause of many accidents throughout the country, and I trust that measures will be taken to keep them properly trimmed and cut low. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give us a full explanation on these two points. What is being done to carry out the scheme of the London Arterial Roads, and what is being done throughout the country generally, in view of the great danger of accidents to motor traffic, at dangerous cross roads, junctions, and corners.
    Mr. FARRELL: I should like to say a word on this Amendment from the Irish point of view. We find there is a very considerable increase of motor traffic in our country for the last couple of years, and in order to meet that new form of traffic the county councils have been endeavouring to have the main roads of the country improved. Towards that end they have been praying for Grants from the Road Board to enable them to make the roads wider and better, and more suitable for this kind of traffic. So far as I understand, there is no representative of any kind of Irish interests on this Board at all. [An HON. MEMBER: "There is one."] He is, so far as our experience of his interest in the work which the Board is supposed to do goes, very inefficient for our purpose. We in the county of Longford applied to the county council, of which I am a member, for the usual Grant, and before we received any consideration for our application at all we had to submit a regular scheme to this Board, which involved the ratepayers, between all the costs incurred in the purchase of machinery and plant, and everything of that kind, in an expenditure of close on £30,000. When all this was done, we found that in order to secure a paltry Grant of some £1,250 we had to prepare a scheme which meant double that sum. After that, through influence which was brought to bear by a Noble Lord in another place, a small additional Grant was given for the

    1069
    purpose of doing some short distance of public roads in the immediate vicinity of the town of Longford. But beyond these comparatively trifling sums, though the ratepayers of the county were involved in an expenditure of close on £30,000, we received no Grant whatever from the Board, except what I mentioned. I believe the same applies to other counties. I have seen it stated in the Irish Metropolitan Press that other counties, with a larger valuation than ours, have been even worse treated.
    I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell as what steps the Board of Trade, or the Treasury, will take in this matter, and that they will consider the advisability of giving some direct representation to Irish public bodies on this Board—the county council for the county, or the general county council for Ireland, which is a very representative body, comprising men of standing in the country who take a great interest in the work of local government and the development of road traffic in that country. I hope we shall have a sympathetic reply which will assure public bodies that before they plunge into a large expenditure of public money, such as I have mentioned, they shall have their claims sympathetically considered by this Board. Up to the present it has been a struggle to get even small Grants from this Board, and such small Grants as they have been able to get have only been given to us on the condition of imposing a very large expenditure on the public bodies of the country. I do not think that that is fair. I think when a Board of this kind is placed in charge of the disposition of large sums of public money it should certainly not impose on the ratepayers more than their due share of loss in connection with the working of those schemes. The roads of Ireland, owing to the poverty of the country, have not been as well made in old times as your roads in England, and they have not been so well kept. That is the inevitable result of the administration of the country for many years past, but now that you have come to have a different system of road making, and that you are applying money secured through great public revenue towards that purpose, I hope the hon. Gentleman will give some attention to the claims of roads in Ireland. We are endeavouring to meet the new circumstances in that country as well as we can out of small means, and I submit that it is too bad that conditions should be
    1070
    imposed on public bodies which are beyond our means and which mean to our people burdens almost intolerable to bear.
    Mr. BENTHAM: I wish to draw attention to an additional iniquity of the Road Board. I sincerely hoped that when the Government, four years ago, gave to this responsible Board the distribution of large sums of money local authorities would get more liberal treatment. I hope that the precedent will not be followed again. I do not know what is going to happen to the large sums of money in the hands of the Board. They may mount up to £5,000,000 or £10,000,000, and it may be that in future a Chancellor of the Exchequer in need of money might observe these fat sums doing nothing, and, with a subservient majority at its back, might use them for objects for which they were not intended. We in Lincolnshire have a distinct grievance. There is from the sea to Gainsborough a distance of fifty to fifty-five miles and no bridge at all over the Humber or the Trent. We made application to the Road Board for a very modest amount of money—only a few thousand pounds—to enable us to free the toll on the bridge at Gainsborough. If they had given the smallest encouragement—only a paltry £5,000, which is a large amount to us, but a small amount to the Road Board—it would have induced the county councils and the town to contribute the balance, and thus we would have been very materially helped indeed. The answer of the Road Board was that they could not give a penny for such a purpose as this, as the money was only given to them to improve roads, and they went so far as to say that if the toll was removed there would be more traffic, and the roads, instead of being improved, would be deteriorated. I should like to say that, in my opinion, the Road Board would find no better use for their moneys than in enabling local authorities to get rid of this incubus on traffic and locomotion, and in encouraging them to free such bridges as I have mentioned.
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Montagu): In the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend regret is expressed that "His Majesty's Speech contains no reference to the unfair administration by the Road Board of the funds under its control." Most of the speeches have been addressed to asking the Treasury to use its influence. I think

    1071
    my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton (Mr. J. Samuel) said that I should assert my position and try to persuade the Road Board to make Grants for Middlesbrough, East Ham, and for places all over Scotland, and England. The Treasury has absolutely no voice at all in this matter. It has no voice by the express desire of Parliament, because, when setting up the Development Fund, this House was afraid of what was then termed "political corruption," and in the Act of Parliament, from which the Road Board gets its power, the independence of the Road Board of Treasury control was very carefully provided for. I should like to read to the House a quotation from a speech made during the passage of the Bill by Sir Samuel Evans, who was then a Law Officer of the Crown. Speaking on behalf of the Government as to the members of the Road Board, he said:—
    "Their position, therefore, is one of complete independence. The right hon. Baronet said that they will be the creatures of the Treasury; but they will in no sense be the creatures of that department, except in the sense that the appointments rest with it. In no other sense will they at all be the creatures of the Treasury. The Treasury will have no control whatsoever over the Commissioners. The Treasury cannot take away from the Commissioners any application or scheme which any authority or responsible body may send."
    The case for Ireland has been forcibly raised by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Farrell). The hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) said, in a speech when the Bill was before the House, that on the whole, he was rather disposed to think that there should be independent Commissioners to distribute this money. I think anyone who has listened to this Debate will realise that the difficulties would be increased a hundredfold if, instead of having the Road Board dispassionately and independently considering the merits of schemes referred to them, a Minister in this House had been made responsible for every action, and had to listen to the heartrending appeals of various Members in various quarters of the House on behalf of particular constituencies. All that it is necessary for me to do is to protest in the strongest possible manner against the wording of the Amendment, though not against the speeches delivered in support of it. There is no evidence whatever, and none has been produced to-night, that there has been anything at all unfair in the allocation of money by this independent body of Commissioners who administer the Road Board Grants. I can supply hon. Members with the most recent figures up to
    1072
    the 31st January, 1914. The net income available for Grants and loans to the Road Board on that date was very nearly £1,250,000, and if you add together the Grants that have been made and the Grants which will be made in accordance with schemes that have already been approved, there has been an excess of expenditure over actual revenue of nearly half a million sterling.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Can you give separately the amount of Grants paid and the Grants indicated?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The amounts paid under Grants are just over £1,000,000 sterling, and the Grants indicated in excess of payments come to over £2,000,000 sterling.
    Mr. FIELD: How much of that is for Ireland?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I am coming to that point in a minute. I do suggest to the House that it is a great mistake to insist upon the actual expenditure. These are large sums, and it takes some time to provide schemes and some time to allot contracts, and to suggest that the Road Board has not been paying money out fast would be a great mistake. The hon. Member who moved this Amendment asked me to explain in what way the Road Board proposed to allocate this money. Hon. Members say that they can detect no principle in the way in which the money is allocated. I will tell the House the principle. It is allocated upon the principle, roughly speaking, of population. In accordance with this rough allocation according to population, England and Wales get 82 per cent., Scotland 11 per cent., and Ireland 7 per cent. Scotland, as I would point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Elgin, who told the pathetic tale of the conditions in Morayshire, gets slightly more than her share, according to population, because the Road Board take into account the exceptionally large amount of what can be described in Scotland as foreign motor traffic.
    Sir A. WILLIAMSON: To what proportion is Morayshire entitled?
    10.0 P.M.
    Mr. MONTAGU: When the Road Board is entrusted with this responsible task of allocating money to particular counties, or districts in counties, or parishes in districts, it is a matter which requires the sifting of all pressing needs and the weighing of one claim against another

    1073
    and a strong determination to prevent the judgment being fogged by the attractiveness of the method in which the appeal has come to us from the hon. Member. Then, there is a second principle upon which the Road Board allocates Grants. They believe it to be the right thing to do to allocate the money first for the process which is technically known as the reconstruction of the crust of the road rather than for widening. When the hon. Member thought that he was attacking the policy of the Road Board, the was supporting it. He dislikes tar macadam. So also do the Road Board. The policy of the Road Board is that they consider that their first claim is to prevent the necessity for continuing repairs to the road by improving the crust at a time when the matter is so urgent that if the work was not done the road crust would be destroyed because it was not sufficiently solid, so that it would be entirely spoilt and have to be rebuilt. Bo the first distribution of money has been for a reconstruction of the crust.
    The second distribution of money has been for making new roads rather than for widening roads. It has been the policy of the Road Board to put off, as being the least urgent, eases in which the vast bulk of the money which they would grant would be spent, not on constructing the roads, but on the purchase of property, for the simple reason that these matters, being spread over a large number of years, are really better subjects for loans than for grants of money, and are of necessity less national in their purpose than roads that can be attended to without the expense of purchasing. The hon. Member who seconded this Amendment compared the road which he wants built at Victoria Docks, in the matter of expense, with the new road which is suggested to be built, the Brentford loop road, as an approach from the west. That road would be five miles long. The road which he suggests would be a little more than a mile long. These are all conflicting claims. The Road Board have to exercise their independent judgment and to decide on the principles, which I have tried to explain to the House, what are the most urgent and what ought to come first, having regard to the amount at their disposal. Everybody would like to see his own pet scheme carried out, but this income is just over £1,000,000 a year and it is impossible to carry out everything, or nearly everything. I do not think, if the hon. Member
    1074
    will forgive me, that any cases have been so unsympathetically dealt with as he suggests they have been dealt with by the Road Board. A deputation waited upon the' Road Board, as he described, in support of the proposed new roads. I think the hon. Member himself was present, and the Chairman answered it, and refused the application. He said:—
    "The conclusion the Board came to on consideration of all the schemes affecting Greater London was that the Western Approach Road was the one that should be taken first, not to the exclusion of others, but merely in priority. The Board had to deal with the whole of the United Kingdom."
    That is the whole of my case. I am quite certain that hon. Members will achieve the object they desire in expressing their views in regard to the Road Board, because this Debate will be reported, and the Road Board, of course, will read the comments which have been made.
    Mr. J. SAMUEL: Will the hon. Gentleman mention the case of the non-county boroughs?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The non-county boroughs is the case to which the hon. Member referred. I would point out that, although they have a highway rate of their own, the money granted to the county councils has some effect on the non-county boroughs, even if it has no direct effect in rounding off corners of narrow streets in Stockton and Peterborough. It is, after all, a conflict of two methods. The Houses of Parliament might have decided in their wisdom that they would not allocate the funds to one of the Departments in order that they might bully the Minister in charge of that Department, with a view to getting something. I am bound to say, after listening to this Debate, that I should not envy the Minister in charge of that Department if Parliament so decided. But Parliament decided differently. It decided that the Road Board should be an independent body appointed by the Treasury, and should have complete control over this money. I beg to suggest that anybody who has listened to this Debate to-night will say, that although, as is his duty, he made out a strong case on behalf of those of whom he speaks, there is absolutely no ground to suggest that the Road Board, to use the words of the Amendment, has been unfair in its administration of the funds under its control.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I have listened to the speech of the hon. Gentleman, who

    1075
    I will not say was defending the Road Board, but was answering for that body, And I am not surprised that he took refuge in the Act of Parliament, and that he expressed his pleasure that he has not been subjected to the pressure which undoubtedly would have been put upon him by Members of his own side—[AN HON. MEMBER: "And your side"]—if he had been responsible for the allocations of the moneys of the Road Board. I am not quite sure who has spoken on this side, but the complaints made have come from all over the country—Stockton, Peterborough, West Ham, and the eastern counties—and I think that every complaint came from that side of the House, and every attempt to get money out of the Road Board has come from that side. I do not want to be offensive in my suggestion, but it will be quite a pleasant feeling among Radicals that there is a chance of getting pickings for their own constituencies.
    Mr. W. THORNE: You have got £400,000; you are all right.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: If we are all right, I have not got any of those pickings. I will let the hon. Member into a secret in regard to that. Two days ago I presented a Petition to this House from the inhabitants of High Street, Brentford, against it. I have taken no part whatever in that matter, and it so happens that in my Division there is very divided opinion with regard to that road. I hope very much I shall not be a member of the Private Bill Committee which has to decide that question.
    Mr. W. THORNE: I hope you will succeed in giving the money to West Ham.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I thoroughly agree with the answer of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, that it is very undesirable that any Minister should have official charge of giving out these Grants. When the Bill came before Parliament, an undertaking was given that it should be an independent body, and that it should not be in the power of any Minister to submit to the pressure put by hon. Members in order to get funds for roads in different parts of the country. But I am afraid I cannot altogether acquit the Road Board in regard to the way in which they have managed those funds. I am not saying one word as to the particular locality, but I dc want to say a word as to the whole
    1076
    method in which they have allocated or dealt with those funds. The hon. Gentleman gave us the figures. He gave us an income up to the present time, January, 1914, of four and a quarter millions, which the Road Board had received almost entirely from the extra taxes placed by the Act both upon pleasure and upon commercial motors, owing to the Petrol Duty. These taxes were imposed upon motorists by reason of the motor traffic. The motoring community, in some respects, were entitled to bear, for pleasure as well as commercial motors, a part of the expense, and I fully and frankly accepted their obligation to contribute to the expense of widening and improving the crust, which must be necessary, because of the new form of traffic brought upon the road. The income was four and a quarter millions, and the Grants paid amount to one million. The Grants indicated amount to two millions, and I assume the balance is accumulating.
    Mr. MONTAGU: I only gave the rough figures. I have here the accurate figures. You will have to add together the Grants paid and the amounts paid in loans, and that comes to £1,377,000 actually paid. The Grants indicated in excess of payments amount to £2,380,000, loans £906,000, which together makes £3,280,000, or an excess over the income up to the 1st January of £453,000.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I will not trouble about the odd figures, but that is that the sum of £3,000,000 is to be paid in Grants and Loans, but the sums indicated are not yet paid. The point I desire to make is that the Road Board might have spent some of that money which is covered by Grants and Loans indicated. I tried last Session in this House to get out of the representative of the Road Board when they thought those Grants would be really required. I ventured to make the prophecy that certainly one million of them would be wanted during the current year. I should be very much surprised indeed if, when I put the question to the hon. Gentleman, he is able to come and show me that £1,000,000 out of the three and a half millions is at all likely to be paid out during the current year. If that is the case—and I think he will find it is—we are entitled in this House to say to him that though the Road Board is independent of him, and is an independent body, he is either by Statute or by some decision of the House appointed here to answer for the Road Board, and he at least can convey to that Board the opinion of the

    1077
    House that they must not go on hoarding this money, but that if the Grants for loans are not taken up within a reasonable time by the local authority to whom they have been indicated, they must put them on one side and deal with the more pressing roads and the more pressing Grants required. There is a very strong feeling throughout the country amongst the motorists who pay this tax against the Road Board hoarding this money. They do not object to paying that money, but they want it spent on the improvement of the roads. Roads are waiting for improvement in the crusts, and corners have to be rounded off, and widenings have to be effected.
    I may say also I see no reason why the Road Board should not take a share in the widening of roads. We want the hon. Member to convey to the Road Board that we do feel in this House that they might spend their money more freely. I think some of the complaints made by hon. Members opposite with regard to the poorer districts were perfectly justified. The Road Board likes to make a contribution or Grant where there is a certainty that a rich county council will make a correspondingly large Grant. There is a very great difficulty in poorer districts in getting the county council or the local authority to make a corresponding Grant. I do not think the Road Board ought to be very strict in that way, and if there is a poor locality where the roads are used by motorists and cut up by them, and where there is difficulty from the poverty of the neighbourhood in getting a contribution, they should not be so insistent in regard to those localities, but help them in doing the work of improving the crust, rounding the corners and widening. They should make Grants, and see that they are spent quickly, and not continue to hoard up the money in the way they are doing now.
    Mr. WILLIAM FIELD: I desire to point out that the right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said very little about Ireland. I am a member of the General Council of the County Councils of Ireland, and I am also a member of the County Council of Dublin. We had several deputations, on this subject, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken that it seems to be exceedingly difficult to get any money from the Board. So far as I am able to understand the finances of the Road Board, the
    1078
    money appears to be hoarded up and not given, sometimes, in cases in which Grants might be very well made in aid of a particular district. The hon. Gentleman stated that one of the main ideas in regard to the Road Board was population, and that according to the population Grants would be given. I would like him to convey to the Road Board that a sparse population means a poor country. If you have two big cities lying at each end of a road through a poor district, surely that is exactly the kind of road that ought to be helped by the Road Board. It seems to me that the poorer districts and the sparsely populated districts are precisely the places where Grants ought to be given. The Financial Secretary spoke about a Minister being bullied in this House. I have been twenty-two years a Member of this House, and my experience is that the Minister generally bullies the House instead of the House bullying the Minister. I think it is quite obvious under our system of Government. The Government takes all the time of the House, practically, and the private Member is almost reduced to a cypher. Except to ask a question or to vote according as he is told, they appear to have very few rights, and the idea that private Members are going to bully a Minister is a kind of fairy tale I do not believe. I think the majority of Members would agree with that. I know that this Board is founded on what appears to me to be quite a peculiar principle.
    I do not know how we are to get at this Board, except through this House. I am a practical man, and I want results. I have been on deputations to this Road Board; we have got plenty of compliments, sympathy, soft talk, and all that sort of thing, but very little money. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but money is no laughing matter. So far as Ireland is concerned, lack of sufficient railway accommodation is a reason why the Road Board should be more generous in Ireland than in England. In England you have the whole country covered by railways supplying the necessary means of communication, which is not the case in Ireland. Now that motors have come to stay, I think it will be the duty of the Road Board to provide not alone for the pleasure seekers, but for the commercial traffic. I am more interested in the commercial side. We in Ireland are not satisfied with the hon. Gentleman's explanation in this respect, and if

    1079
    it is in order for him to give a further idea of what he is going to do, we shall be very glad to hear him. Apparently the Road Board is in an almost impregnable position. We can only approach them by deputation or by writing or reasoning with them, and it is all lost time. I think that a more sensible policy ought to be adopted. The Road Board ought to endeavour to provide, wherever possible, proper transit facilities on the main roads of the three countries. I agree that the policy of hoarding up money is indispensable. That money has been collected mainly through the Petrol and the Motor Taxes, and it ought to be expended. Whether it is in the bank, or wherever it is, it has been collected, and it ought to be spent. The hon. Member who spoke last was quite right in saying that the Secretary for the Treasury has given us an indication of how the money is being dealt with. But we want more than an indication; we want facts, and we want money, in order that the improvement to the roads may be carried out. I hope the hon. Gentleman will give a further explanation with regard to the policy to be pursued in Ireland.
    Mr. J. M. HENDERSON: With regard to hoarding up this money, I think, if the hon. Members refer to speeches made from the Front Bench when the Act was under discussion, they will find that it was distinctly understood that the money should be kept as far as possible for times when unemployment was rife. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Very great complaints have been made against the Road Board. They have a very difficult task, and so far as my experience goes, they have carried it out very well. They have very, very great difficulties, and the only remedy for all this complaint is one which cannot be far away, namely, that all this road expenditure should come upon the Imperial Exchequer. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not all."] Very nearly the whole of it.
    Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON: The main roads.
    Mr. J. M. HENDERSON: The main roads; that is what I mean. What struck me as being a most extraordinary thing was the attitude of my hon. Friend on the Front Bench who answered on behalf of the Road Board, although he took no responsibility for the Road Board. His speech seemed to me to be very
    1080
    reactionary. The Road Board has been created, no doubt, partly owing to the appeals made from the other side, but it is certainly a most extraordinary thing that we in this country should have a body dispensing millions of money, and yet that nobody in this House is responsible. My hon. Friend says that he does not envy the position of the Minister who would have to answer for this money. On the Front Bench there are Ministers who answer for the expenditure of twenty, thirty, and forty millions. Of course, when the Government take over the main roads, there will not be so many local applications, because then there will be, or may be, a challenge in the House over any particular main road. It will be the same then as with the telegraphs and the telephones. I cannot understand the present position. It is a very bad principle which has been followed. As I have said, I have no fault to find with the administration of the Road Board, but there is the Development Commission which has got large Grants, and who controls them: who says to them, "What are you doing?" I can point to one or two Grants which they have made which I should strongly challenge, and will do so when I get the opportunity. But there you are again! Parliament has given them the powers, but the time must come when any body who has the spending of taxes, or the expenditure of income derived from taxation, must be represented by a Minister who shall be held responsible to the House, and who can meet the challenging of the House from time to time when his vote comes on. It is no use our moving to reduce the salary of my hon. Friend by £100 on account of the Road Board. He is not responsible for it. Yet he defends the Board. Very properly no doubt. I have no complaint to make. I find fault—and I am sure the House will when they come to consider it—with the principle which enables a Board outside this House and outside Parliament, to expend millions of money.
    Mr. FIELD: Or keep the money.
    Mr. J. M. HENDERSON: While no Member of the Front Bench is responsible for that expenditure, this cannot go on. These main roads will, I suppose, be put upon the Exchequer, and then some Minister will be held responsible for the whole of the roads of the Kingdom, and the money that comes from these various taxes. Until that is done you will always have these complaints, and sectional

    1081
    complaints, without any satisfaction, with the same defence, from the Front Bench from a Gentleman who is not responsible for anything.
    Colonel WESTON: On behalf of a north country constituency, I just wish to say that having had considerable experience of the Road Board, I think the impartial manner in which they have administered their funds has been extremely satisfactory. But I do think there is a very strong feeling in my constituency that where counties have a very large extent of roads, that we should get something for the maintenance of these roads, apart from mere improvements. We are put to enormous additional expense. We have a very large through traffic, and that wears our roads in a manner well known to those who have to use them. We feel very strongly that some of this money—I do not say the whole of it—ought to go to repairs of the roads. I think that ought to be pressed upon the Road Board with great urgency. There is another point; that the counties are vieing with each other as to who can get most out of the Road Board by the amounts they themselves contribute. I think that is a wrong principle. I think we ought to have these Grants made apart from local resources. I think that counties having to subscribe one half and the Road Board another half is a wrong principle. We are going on with a deal of work which is really unnecessary, just because the Road Board will help with one half, though the county does not consider the work necessary. That is my criticism of the Road Board, the administration of which, I think, is otherwise fair and impartial.
    Mr. O'SHEE: The Secretary to the Treasury in his speech stated that the principle upon which the Road Board is distributing this money between England Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, is, roughly, the principle of population. I have just refreshed my memory on the figures of population and I find if this money was distributed on that principle, the population of Ireland being 4,390,000, and the population of England and Wales being 36,070,000, if 7 per cent. is the right proportion, roughly, for Ireland, then the right proportion, roughly, for England and Wales would be 57¾ per cent., not 82 per cent., which England and Wales are getting. And Scotland, the population of which is 4,760,000, would only be entitled to 8 per cent., whereas, according to
    1082
    the figures, she is getting 11 per cent., so that the basis of population has not been, roughly, accepted. It is clear from the figures that if the basis of population, roughly, were accepted, England and Wales are receiving 24 per cent. more than they ought to receive, and Scotland is receiving 3 per cent. more than she ought to receive. When the Road Board Bill was in Committee in this House, the suggestion was made that the proportions between the three countries should not be 80, 11, 9, which is the proportion adopted for England, Scotland, and Ireland in other matters. It was suggested to the Irish members on that Committee that it was likely Ireland would receive, out of this fund, a larger proportion than 9 per cent. The roads in Ireland are not, as everybody knows who travels on them, at all as efficient as the roads of England, Scotland, and Wales. The poverty of Ireland, taken as a whole, does not enable it, out of its own resources, to keep the roads of the country in as good a state as the roads of this country, and it was suggested that the proportion of 80, 11, 9 should not be inserted, because Ireland would be likely to receive a larger proportion than 9 per cent., which is the proportion allowed Ireland out of the Probate and Whisky Duties.
    The result has been that Ireland has suffered a very large loss indeed in the adminstration of this fund by the Road Board. It is, therefore, very disappointing to hon. Members from Ireland to hear the figures which have been given by the Financial Secretary. I should like to know what staff the Road Board has got in Ireland. I am told it consists of only one county surveyor who has, I understand, his own work to do in his own county, and to him is dedicated the entire work of supervision and report for the Road Board as far as Ireland is concerned. It is obvious that this gentleman, having his own duties as county surveyor to attend to, cannot be in a position to report satisfactorily or sufficiently to the Road Board as regards the requirements of all the counties in Ireland. I will give one instance of what has been done. The Road Board has undoubtedly recognised that the great circular coast road through the most picturesque scenery of Ireland, running from Dublin through Wicklow, Wexford, Cork and Kerry, deserves from them recognition. What I complain of is that although they give it recognition it is very inadequate. In the county

    1083
    of Waterford, which I represent, through which that circular road runs, the only money the Waterford County Council has got from the Road Board in respect of that great circular route from the coast of Ireland is £2,200. I know they have been promised a further sum of £2,000 to improve twelve miles of this road, but it is obvious that £4,200 is not sufficient. On the basis of population Waterford County, with a population of 90,000, by getting only £4,200, is not receiving one-half of what it is entitled to on the basis of population. I trust the result of this Debate will be that the Road Board will reconsider this allocation, and if they do adopt the basis of population, I hope they will adopt it more accurately than they have in the past. Let it be a fair allocation, and not a rough one on the basis of population, which hits Ireland so much, as it has been hit by the allocations of the past.
    Mr. LYELL: My hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury waited long and patiently to the criticisms of the Road Board, but if he thought he had waited until those criticisms had been exhausted, the speeches he has listened to since must have disabused his mind of that notion. Unlike hon. Members who have spoken, I do not desire to make any claim for the Constituency I represent. A great many complaints have been made and, of course, we all complain when we do not get the money we want. A short time ago there was a distribution of public money for Scotland, and hon. Members for all parts of Scotland were extremely anxious that the allocation should meet the views of each of their particular constituencies. In the picturesque language of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, they vied with one another in the attractiveness of the arguments they put forward. It seems to me that a great deal of the difficulty which has exhibited itself in the Debate to-night arises from the obvious fact that at the present time we are in a state of transition, and that in more senses than one. In the first place, we are in a state of transition from horse traffic to mechanically propelled traffic. It is only necessary in order to realise that to study the difficulties of road authorities in such places as London, where a surface has got to be kept which is suitable, as far can be for both, and which, as a result, is not as suitable as it might be for either. We have got to get a road surface which
    1084
    will stand the heavy weight of mechanically propelled traffic, and at the same time we have got to get a road surface that will give a holding ground for the few horses that remain. It is a state of transition, but it is not a very wild prophecy to indulge in to say that before many years have passed horse traffic will be extinct, then the problem of making a road suitable for mechanically propelled traffic will not be so difficult.
    We are in a state of transition in another sense. I want to associate myself very warmly with the remarks of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire (Mr. J. M. Henderson). If it were not clear before, this Debate would certainly have made it clear that the present position is one which cannot last. There is no Minister directly answerable for the Department which has the administration of these large funds. Parliament in its wisdom decided that no political or Parliamentary pressure should be exercised upon it; but it is perfectly obvious that this question is getting larger and larger, and must get larger and larger as time goes on. I venture to associate myself with my hon. Friend in what he said about the nationalisation of the main roads. That seems to be an urgent question, and a way out of the difficulty, but, as he pointed out, if the main roads are to be nationalised, it is quite clear that there will have to be a Minister responsible for them. What we call him does not much matter. In other countries where they take a more serious view of these matters, they have a Minister responsible for communications only. There have been cavillings over the multiplication of officials. I think, if and when the time comes when hon. Members opposite occupy seats upon this side of the House, that they will discover that the growing complication of governing any country renders some such multiplication a matter of urgent necessity, no matter which party happens to be responsible. By means of the nationalisation of our roads we shall avoid a great many of the injustices of which hon. Members have complained to-night. The hon. and gallant Member the Member for Westmoreland informed us that there was an enormous amount of through traffic. It is obviously unfair that a county without any high rateable value should be compelled to keep up roads for the benefit of this through traffic, which is getting a larger and larger feature of that which goes past upon our roads. The best

    1085
    instance I know of is in the constituency of West Perthshire, represented by the Noble Lord opposite (Marquess of Tullibardine). He knows very well—indeed he will not contradict me—when I say that the county of Perth has a comparatively low rateable value, and yet, when one takes up a position in the months of August and September along the road from Perth to Inverness, he will see a regular procession of motor cars going past—cars which return later, and which do not contribute a single penny towards the upkeep of the road. He will bear me out also when I say that since the multiplication of these motors the roads has very considerably deteriorated. I think a great many of the arguments which have been put forward to-night would be met by the policy of nationalisation of the main roads. My hon. Friend who has answered for the Road Board has exhausted his right to speak, but I have no doubt he has taken note of the criticisms offered since he spoke, and we may hope that those notes will bear good fruit in the future.
    Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I agree with a good deal of what fell from the last speaker. This is one of those comparatively rare occasions in this House when it is possible to adopt a non-party frame of mind, and it is with some satisfaction I find myself in a partial measure of agreement and a considerable measure of disagreement with what has been said by hon. Members in all quarters of the House. There has been three criticisms put forward on the present position. It is said that the Road Board is inaccessible from the point of view of the House, that it has made a mistake in hoarding its funds, and that when it distributes those funds it does so on wrong principles. In the first place, I will deal with the question of the accessibility of the Road Board from the point of view of this House. Hon. Members should remember that when the Road Board was created it was deliberately and of set purpose and after full examination made inaccessible to Members of this House, and the reason for that was plain. It was the warning which we had had in different countries—notably in New Zealand—of the evil effects of making a Department like this directly amenable to Parliamentary pressure. I admit if you are to nationalise the main roads the case assumes a different aspect, but I sincerely want to press upon hon. Members who have spoken about the present position of the Road Board that Parliament ought
    1086
    to think long and carefully before it reverses a position deliberately arrived at so long as the existing state of things continues and makes this Board vested with the duty of dividing sums of money entrusted to it among different localities in the country, directly amenable to Parliamentary pressure in the House.
    Then it is said that the Road Board in the course of a comparatively brief existence has contrived to accumulate a great, deal of money. While a certain amount of that is ear-marked for future Grants and loans, a considerable sum, it is said, ought to have been spent. I do not agree. We have had to learn, as far as road-making in this country is concerned, by experience. The time was when our roads, were great highways, and were the means, of communication by mail coaches, and in those days road-making for the purposes, of that kind of locomotion reached its very highest point. Now we have a new form of traffic altogether to deal with. We learn by experience and by the experience of other countries. An hon. Member mentioned the case of France. I say, without hesitation, that even at the present moment our roads on the whole compare very favourably indeed with the French roads. I have recently had opportunities of making personal inspection, and I say that except in a few cases where, owing to the heavy motor omnibus traffic just outside London, it is possible the roads are in a bad condition, our roads do compare very favourably with those of France. I repeat we have to learn by experience. If the Road Board immediately on being entrusted with this large sum of money had proceeded to expend it on the improvement of the existing roads, I think the House would now find that a very considerable proportion of the amount so spent would have been wasted. It is only comparatively recently that road engineers have come to realise that when dealing with a road it is no use tinkering at the top of it; that a road is to be regarded as a species of bridge, and that the whole of the road has to be strong enough to carry the traffic put upon it. Now we have arrived at the point when road engineers in this country are becoming equal to dealing with the strain put upon the roads by mechanical traction. I join with my hon. Friends who expressed the view that the policy of hoarding should not be continued. It has been a wise policy in the past, but I hope it will not continue as a permanent policy.

    1087
    With regard to expenditure on roads, I hope the House will remember that the money was originally given not so much for the construction of new roads as partially for the improvement of corners, and other things, on existing roads, so as to enable a higher rate of speed to be maintained. It was money given for the improvement of the surfaces or crusts of existing roads. I certainly think that ought to be the first charge. As to the third criticism, namely, the problem of distribution, the hon. Gentleman who spoke from below the Gangway (Mr. O'Shee) mentioned the basis of population as being, in his opinion, a satisfactory basis for distribution. He talked about the Goschen basis of 80 per cent., 11 per cent. and 9 per cent. I entirely disagree with the view that population is a fair basis for the purposes of distribution. The criterion ought not to be population, but necessity. Money ought to be given to improve roads, not where 100,000 or 200,000 or even 10,000 people live in the locality. It ought to be given, if it is wanted, for the upkeep of the road. That, and that alone, ought to be the test. I hope the House will not let it go forth as its considered opinion that population ought to be considered as the sole factor. If it is, many parts of the country which have to bear a very heavy cost at the present moment through the depredations upon their roads of motor cars registered in great commercial centres or great cities would come off very poorly. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about Ireland?"] What would happen in many country districts in Ireland if you took population as the basis, with motor cars registered in Dublin or Belfast going about those districts?
    Mr. O'SHEE: I meant Ireland as a whole.
    Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I have no objection to seeing that Ireland gets its fair share of any Grants that are going. All I am anxious about is that when one is made it ought not to be appropriated by the great centres of population to the exclusion of the rural districts, because it is in the country districts that the greatest necessity is felt. It is there that much the greatest damage is done, and certainly when the contribution is being made I hope regard will be had not merely to population, but to the basis of real necessity, which ought to be the basis of all your Grants.
    Mr. NORMAN CRAIG: As regards the question of nationalisation of roads from the point of view of property that is a question altogether outside the area of this Debate, but in the limited sense of nationalisation, I think that the expenditure of the money available for the Road Board should be upon national lines, not from the point of view of nationalisation, but from the point of view of national means. I agree entirely with what has fallen from my hon. Friend, that as regards expenditure of money upon roads it is not by the counting of heads that the expenditure of money should be determined. It is by user, by need, and not by population that this question should be dealt with. I hope that in the hoarding of their money the Board may bear this in mind, that that money may be available for the maintaining of roads which are national in this sense, that they are used by the people as a whole. It is not for the sake of building local roads where there are no local needs, that money voted for this purpose should be spent. It is for the purpose of maintaining roads which are maintained at present by local rates, which are in fact used by the people all over the country, that the monies should be devoted. Where you have local expenditure to a large extent, you should have Imperial assistance if that local expenditure is upon rates which really go to meet national needs, and it is, I imagine, for that purpose that this fund was originally created. I agree that there is some ground for criticism of the Board for the hoarding of its funds. I do not altogether disagree with the fact that they have hoarded to the extent of waiting to see where the need was, but I hope they will see their way to spend in the proper direction. I hope too they will see, not only that they spend their money properly, but will see, too, that to the extent of their ability, contribution is made to their funds which go to the maintenance of the roads by that class of vehicle which does more to destroy the roads than all the ordinary vehicles which use them. I shall be glad to see, either on the part of the Road Board, or on the part of any other body some determined attempt to see that the heavy vehicles which destroy the roads, make large profits, and pay no special contribution, should be made to contribute to the funds of the Road Board, and make available to that Board much larger funds, to make good the

    1089
    damage which unquestionably is done by the user of that class of vehicle.
    Sir J. BETHELL: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Question put, "That those words be there added."
    The House divided: Ayes, 55; Noes, 263.

    Division No. 8.]

    AYES.

    [11.0 p.m.

    Anson, Rt. Hon. Sir William R.

    Gilmour, Captain John

    Sanders, Robert Arthur

    Baird, John Lawrence

    Gretton, John

    Spear, Sir John Ward

    Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)

    Hamilton, C. G. C. (Ches., Altrincham)

    Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)

    Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)

    Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

    Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)

    Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

    Hibbert, Sir Henry F.

    Talbot, Lord Edmund

    Bethell, Sir J. H.

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)

    Blair, Reginald

    Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)

    Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)

    Bridgeman, William Clive

    Hunt, Rowland

    Thorne, William (West Ham)

    Burn, Colonel C. R.

    Jessel, Captain H. M.

    Touche, George Alexander

    Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred

    Joynson-Hicks, William

    Weston, Colonel J. W.

    Castlereagh, Viscount

    Larmor, Sir J.

    Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)

    Cave, George

    Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)

    Williamson, Sir Archibald

    Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University)

    Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Craik, Sir Henry

    Malcolm, Ian

    Winterton, Earl

    Dalrymple, Viscount

    Newton, Harry Kottingham

    Yate, Colonel C. E.

    De Forest, Baron

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Duke, Henry Edward

    Pollock, Ernest Murray

    Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.

    Pryce-Jones, colonel E.

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

    Fell, Arthur

    Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)

    Mr. Norman Craig and Mr. Sanderson.

    Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    NOES.

    Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)

    Crooks, William

    Hayden, John Patrick

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Crumley, Patrick

    Hayward, Evan

    Adamson, William

    Cullinan, John

    Hazleton, Richard

    Addison, Dr. Christopher

    Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)

    Helme, Sir Norval Watson

    Agnew, Sir George William

    Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

    Hemmerde, Edward George

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Alden, Percy

    Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

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

    Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton)

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    Henry, Sir Charles

    Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)

    Dawes, James Arthur

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

    Armitage, Robert

    Delany, William

    Higham, John Sharp

    Arnold, Sydney

    Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas

    Hinds, John

    Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry

    Devlin, Joseph

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E.

    Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)

    Dillon, John

    Hogge, James Myles

    Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)

    Donelan, Captain A.

    Holmes, Daniel Turner

    Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)

    Doris, William

    Holt, Richard Durning

    Barnes, George N.

    Duffy, William J.

    Hope, John Deans (Haddington)

    Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick Burghs)

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

    Barton, William

    Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)

    Hudson, Walter

    Beauchamp, Sir Edward

    Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)

    Hughes, Spencer Leigh

    Beck, Arthur Cecil

    Elverston, Sir Harold

    Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)

    Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St. George)

    Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)

    John, Edward Thomas

    Bentham, George Jackson

    Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)

    Johnson, W.

    Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

    Essex, Sir Richard Walter

    Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

    Black, Arthur W.

    Falconer, James

    Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)

    Boland, John Pius

    Farrell, James Patrick

    Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

    Booth, Frederick Handel

    Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles

    Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

    Bowerman, Charles w.

    Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)

    Ffrench, Peter

    Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

    Brace, William

    Field, William

    Jowett, Frederick William

    Brady, Patrick Joseph

    Fitzgibbon, John

    Joyce, Michael

    Brocklehurst, William B.

    Flavin, Michael Joseph

    Keating, Matthew

    Brunner, John F. L.

    France, Gerald Ashburner

    Kellaway, Frederick George

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Furness, Sir Stephen Wilson

    Kelly, Edward

    Buckmaster, Sir Stanley O.

    Gelder, Sir W. A.

    Kennedy, Vincent Paul

    Burke, E. Haviland-

    Gill, A. H.

    Kenyon, Barnet

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Gladstone, W. G. C.

    Kilbride, Denis

    Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)

    Glanville, Harold James

    Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

    Byles, Sir William Pollard

    Goddard. Sir Daniel Ford

    Lardner, James C. R.

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Goldstone, Frank

    Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)

    Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)

    Greig, Colonel J. W.

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)

    Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward

    Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert

    Chancellor, Henry George

    Griffith, Ellis Jones

    Lundon, Thomas

    Chapple, Dr. William Allen

    Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.

    Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)

    Lynch, Arthur Alfred

    Clancy, John Joseph

    Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)

    Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)

    Clough, William

    Hackett, John

    Macdonald. J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock)

    Hancock, John George

    McGhee, Richard

    Collins, Sir Stephen (Lambeth)

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)

    Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.

    Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

    Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

    Macpherson, James Ian

    Condon, Thomas Joseph

    Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

    M'Callum, Sir John M.

    Cotton, William Francis

    Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)

    M'Curdy, Charles A.

    Cowan, W. H.

    Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry

    McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

    1091

    M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.)

    Outhwaite, R. L.

    Sheehy, David

    M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S (Lincs, Spalding)

    Palmer, Godfrey Mark

    Shortt, Edward

    M'Micking, Major Gilbert

    Parry, Thomas

    Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook

    Markham, Sir Arthur Basil

    Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

    Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

    Marks, Sir George Croydon

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)

    Marshall, Arthur Harold

    Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)

    Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

    Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

    Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

    Strauss, Edward A. (Southward West)

    Meehan, Patrick J. (Queen's Co., Leix)

    Pollard, Sir George H.

    Sutton, John E.

    Middlebrook, William

    Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

    Tennant, Harold John

    Millar, James Duncan

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

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Molloy, Michael

    Pringle, William M. R.

    Toulmin, Sir George

    Molteno, Percy Alport

    Radford, G. H.

    Trevelyan, Charles Philips

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Rattan. Peter Wilson

    Tullibardine, Marquess of

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)

    Verney, Sir Harry

    Mooney, John J.

    Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

    Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)

    Morison, Hector

    Reddy, Michael

    Wardle, George J.

    Muldoon, John

    Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

    Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.

    Munro, Ft. Hon. Robert

    Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)

    Watt, Henry Anderson

    Murphy, Martin J.

    Rendall, Athelstan

    Webb, H.

    Nannetti, Joseph P.

    Richards, Thomas

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Needham, Christopher T.

    Richardson, Albion (Peckham)

    White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)

    Neilson, Francis

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    White, Patrick (Meath, North)

    Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)

    Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

    Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

    Nolan, Joseph

    Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

    Whyte, Alexander F. (Perth)

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Robertson, John M. (Tyneside)

    Wiles, Thomas

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Robinson, Sidney

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Nuttall, Harry

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N.W.)

    O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

    Roche, Augustine (Louth)

    Williams, John (Glamorgan)

    O'Doherty, Philip

    Roe, Sir Thomas

    Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)

    O'Donnell, Thomas

    Rowlands, James

    Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

    O'Dowd, John

    Rowntree, Arnold

    Winfrey, Sir Richard

    O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)

    Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.

    Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)

    O'Kelly James (Roscommon, N.)

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

    Young, William (Perthshire, East)

    O'Malley, William

    Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)

    Scanlan, Thomas

    O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

    Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—?

    O'Shee, James John

    Seely, Rt. Hon. Colonel J. E. B.

    Mr. Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.

    O'Sullivan, Timothy

    Question put, and agreed to.

    Main Question again proposed. Debate resumed.
    It being after Eleven o'clock, and objection being taken to further proceedings, the Debate stood adjourned.
    Debate to be resumed to-morrow (Thursday).

    PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE.
    Ordered, that the Committee on Public Accounts do consist of fifteen Members:—
    Committee accordingly nominated of Sir Robert Balfour, Mr. Brady, Sir Hildred Carlile, Mr. Courthorpe, Sir Henry Craik. Mr. Hazleton, Sir Charles Henry, Mr. Higham, Captain Jessel, Mr. Leif Jones, Mr. Jowett, Earl of Kerry, Mr. Montagu, Mr. Lees Smith, and Colonel Williams.
    Ordered, that the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records.
    Ordered, that five be the quorum.—[Mr. Illingworth.]

  HOUSE OF COMMONS (SEATING ACCOMMODATION).
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Gulland.]
  Viscount CASTLEREAGH: I should like to ask the question which was put to Mr. Speaker by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Down, with reference to the inconvenience of the seating accommodation in this House; and I am prompted to do so owing to what occurred at question time. I know that it will be within the recollection of a great many hon. Gentlemen who are present that there was an unusual remark which came, from the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) with reference to a question put by my hon. and gallant Friend. Mr. Speaker was asked whether it would be possible to make the seating accommodation more convenient than it is at the present moment. The Nationalist party have occupied seats below the Gangway for some time past, but I do feel now, when their convictions and principles and Parliamentary tactics are so closely intertwined with the party opposite—
  Mr. EDGAR JONES: On a point of Order. May I ask whether it is in order that the Noble Lord should raise this matter for discussion when it was decided by Mr. Speaker—
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley): If the Noble Lord had been out of order, I should have called his attention to it. So far as he has gone he is not out of order.
  Viscount CASTLEREAGH: As the Members of the Nationalist party are so closely associated with the party opposite, I think it would be to the convenience of this House, and also tend to the better conduct of the Debates in this House, that they should join their Friends on the other side, instead of sitting among the Unionist party, which I may say is the largest individual party in this House at the present moment. Mr. Speaker did express an opinion on the point at Question Time this afternoon, but I thought that it would be in the interests of Members in this House, and in the interests of the conduct of Debate, if you, Sir, could make some arrangement by which those hon. Gentlemen who sit on this side of the House at the present moment might cross to the other side.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The Noble Lord will recollect what was said at the beginning of the Session by Mr. Speaker. What occurred at Question Time I think very much strengthens what the Speaker then said in reply to an hon. Member who raised a similar question. He said he believed, if the usual courtesies of debate were observed by hon. Members in all parts of the House, no difficulty would arise in the seating accommodation of hon. Members. The Noble Lord has rightly pointed out that the present arrangement has lasted now for a good many years, and I do not think that what occurred at Question Time to-day is sufficient cause for altering that arrangement. The incident at Question Time to-day arose from what is the comparatively modern practice of using epithets in supplementary questions. If hon. Members will be good enough to remember that they ought not to ask supplementary questions on any question which does not come within the purview of the Chair, then no such question could arise again.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: It is perfectly understood in all parts of the House that this matter finally depends upon Members themselves, as no power can compel Members to sit rather in one place than another. The incident at Question Time today shows how exceedingly inconvenient it is to have hon. Members who differ fundamentally from us in political convictions sitting immediately behind us and so close to my hon. Friends. The practice of dividing parties according to their opinions is a very convenient one. Hon. Members have sat there because they desired to indicate their general oppo-
  1094
  sition to the Government in this House which would not give them Home Rule. Now that they have got a Government to give them Home Rule, why do they not go over and support them? The reason hitherto alleged for their sitting here has become obsolete, and why do they not go over opposite and sit there? Whatever time intervenes—which they think will be a short and which I think will be a long time—before they obtain Home Rule. Hon. Members who sit here suffer a great degree of inconvenience and annoyance by the presence of the Nationalist party. They are an incessant fount of danger to the order of Debate, and it is very desirable that they should go among their own friends, who may enjoy their society better than we do.
  Mr. PRINGLErose—
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: This is a matter for the Chair, and I think it is for the Chair to deal with it rather than by Debate in the House.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Has not the Noble Lord made a speech in the nature of a debating speech on this subject?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I understood the Noble Lord to be reinforcing the point put by the Noble Lord the Member for Maidstone (Viscount Castlereagh), who quite correctly put his point to the Chair, not as a matter of Debate, In reply to the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil), I would remind him that the Chair always deprecates interruptions and interjections. It is quite true that there is a recent growth of interruptions and interjections between the two Front Benches between the Gangway. If the Noble Lord and his friends will give the House the benefit of their example I am quite sure it would go far.
  Earl WINTERTON: On a point of Order. I am not in the least deterred or handicapped in the slightest degree by the silly interruptions of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, as my knowledge of Africa has made me familiar with Simian sounds. I desire to call attention to the fact that it is only a matter of custom where hon. Gentlemen sit, and that if the largest party in the House should desire to sit on those benches no ruling of yours can by the constitution of the House prevent their doing so. I desire respectfully to ask whether circumstances might not arise when, if the official Opposition becomes much larger than it is—as it is expected

  1095
  it will do after this week—the more physical necessity of finding seats might cause them to take up a position on those benches from which it might be very difficult to evict them without circumstances arising which would not add to the dignity or decorum of the House.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: That is a hypothetical question which perhaps I am not expected to answer.
  Viscount CASTLEREAGH: Is it not the fact that really Mr. Speaker has no control
  1096
  of where hon. Members choose to sit? I think it is the case that they can sit where they please.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: It is true that the seating arrangements are largely the result of custom, but Mr. Speaker is the guardian of the dignity and order of the House, and if any dispute arose in a matter of that kind he would deal with it himself.
  Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-two minutes after Eleven o'clock.