Commons Sitting of 5 December 1919

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Glasgow Corporation Water Order Confirmation Bill,
Considered; to be read the third time upon Monday next.
Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Housing) Bill,
Read a second time, and committed.

SHOPS ACT, 1912.
Copy presented of Order made by the Council of the undermentioned local authority, and confirmed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department:—
Urban district of Aberdare
[by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

PENAL SERVITUDE ACTS (CONDI TIONAL LICENCE).
Copy presented of Licence granted to James Lynchehaun, to which are annexed conditions other than those contained in Schedule A of the Penal Servitude Act, 1864 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
BILL PRESENTED.
"To amend Section four of the County and Borough Police Act, 1859," presented by Mr. SHORTT; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 234.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  GOVERNMENT OF INDIA BILL.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
  Mr. ADAMSON: The political consciousness of India has been awakening within recent years, and her people have been pressing for reforms. All the evidence goes to confirm the idea that that pressure will continue until her people are able to obtain complete self-government. That is a very legitimate aspiration on the part of the Indian people, and it embodies one of the principles which have been brought into great prominence in the course of the world conflict from which we are just emerging. The aim of the best type of British statesmen who have interested themselves in tile government of our great Indian Dependency has been to lead her people up by gradual stages to a position in which they would be able to exercise the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship within the Empire, a position in which they would be able to exercise all the duties and responsibilites of self-government. How this can best be accomplished is the problem which faces the House and the people of this country today, and I hope we are going to discharge that great responsibility in such a way as will assist the people of India to build up a strong united nation, well able to exercise all the duties of self-government. In "August, 1917, the present Government, in declaring its policy regarding the future government of India, indicated that they were in complete sympathy with the progressive realisation of this aim, and this Bill has been brought forward with that object in view. The Labour party are prepared to admit that the Bill is a definite move in the right direction, our principal criticism being that it does not go far enough, and -alai we are failing to take the fullest advantage of the help of the people of India themselves to assist us in the successful accomplishment of the great task we have in hand. The Bill gives to the people of India a measure of control in the various Provinces, but no real control in the Central Government. This is a mistake and will rob us of the sympathetic co-operation of some of the best elements of the population of India.
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  We also regret the very limited franchise which this Bill provides. There may be practical difficulties in the way of the full enfranchisement of the people of India at this juncture, but on the face of it it is absurd that only 5,000,000 out of a total population of 250,000,000 have been enfranchised by this Bill. Especially do we regret that the industrial workers are entirely excluded. There might have been something to have been said for the exceptional treatment of the industrial workers of India if there had been no industrial problems facing her people and demanding solution at their hands, but the industrial development of our great Indian Dependency has provided a considerable crop of industrial problems. While we are glad to note that the industrial workers of India are beginning to build up a trade union movement, whereby they will be able to protect their conditions of employment in the coming days, we are disappointed that in this Bill we have failed to provide the Indian working-class movement with that political safety valve which has been provided in our own and other industrial countries. We are fully aware of the great value that political freedom has been to our own nation. It has given the working classes an alternative to direct action, and an opportunity of working out their own destinies along constitutional lines, along the lines of evolution as against revolution, and the working classes of this country have taken full advantage of that opportunity. They have used that alternative to the greatest possible degree. To such an extent is that the case that there is a strong probability that Labour will assume the responsibilities of government in this country in the not distant future. That is an opportunity which you are denying to the industrial worker of India, and you force him back upon the alternative to that, namely, direct action. In our opinion that is a profound mistake, which may prove very costly to the Empire and to the people of India themselves. We regret also the exclusion of the women of India from the opportunity of standing on a political equality with the men. Our experience in this country, especially within the last five years, has taught us the great value of men and women facing the problems of national life together. Notwithstanding the defects, from our point of view, of this Bill, however, as a party we welcome the measure as a step in the right direction. We hope it will prove

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  a success, and so justify a further instalment of political power at no distant date. I hope the people of India themselves will accept the measure in the right spirit as a step towards the realisation of their ideals of self-government, and will do their best to make it a success, and so inspire the people of this country with the -necessary confidence to trust them with a much larger measure of self-government in the very near future.
  Sir J. D. REES: My right hon. Friend (Mr. Adamson) may not be aware that in the Report of one of the Committees—Lord Southborough's Committees—a recommendation is made for the special representation of Labour as soon as it is so organised as to admit of such representation being arranged, and that has been adopted, so far as I am aware, by the Report of the Select Committee. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not press the analogy of trade unions and English labour too hard, because if he does the analogy will break to pieces in his hands. As a member of the Joint Select Committee, I listened all last night without taking any part, but I cannot to-day give a silent vote in favour of this Bill. The members of the Joint Committee were practically silent last night, except the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Spoor), who put in again the Amendments in respect of which he was in a minority of one before the Select Committee. It is a fortunate thing that we did not all do the same thing, or the Bill would never have got through. There is no use blinking the fact that my hon. Friend's Amendments were supplied by a syndicate, and they represent the maximum of extreme opposition to this measure.
  Though my hon. Friend is so little influenced, or has so small an opinion of the views held by his colleagues on the Commitee, I was surprised that he was not impressed with the ripe wisdom of my right hon. Friend (Sir H. Craik). We all seem to have made very little impression upon him. I am astonished that Lord Crewe, with his reforming mind, and that the sagacious Lord Midleton, both of whom have been Secretaries of State for India, have had no effect upon him. I would remind the House that the recommendations of the Select Committee were those of seven representative and eminent Members of the other House, while as regards the Members of this House on
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  the Committee, it becomes me to say as little as possible. We had as Chairman Lord Selborne, a man with an eminent record, who conducted the proceedings of the Committee with exceeding great skill. We had Lord Midleton, an ex-Secretary of State, and Lord Islington, a man who has had valuable experience in and out, of India. We had the Duke of Northumberland, who does not pass for a very ardent Liberal in Labour circles; and we had my Noble Friend Lord Sinha, a man of such eminence that he has come right from the ranks of the Bar in India to the benches of the Government and into the House of Lords. I am sorry that all this has had such little effect upon my hon. Friend, that he should have thought it necessary to have put forward again all the Amendments which he moved in vain before the Committee.
  This Bill is, of course, a great experiment, but there is danger in it. There is far greater danger, however, in not passing the Bill. This measure, or something like it, has been the declared policy of the Government for two years, and it has been generally accepted that something like it must be done. Delay is dangerous, and for my part I am glad that we have arrived at the last stage of the measure. I am at a loss to understand the levity that was displayed last night. Here you have an experiment dealing with no small fraction of the inhabitants of this world, people of a different race, colour, religion and complexion, and yet it was treated to some extent as a sort of poker game—"the Government will go so far, and we will raise the Government; we will double the Government. The Government will make 5,000,000 electors; we will double that. To make more complex the difficulty we will make half of the new 5,000,000 electors women." How any Member of Parliament could have the extraordinary confidence at a time like this to suggest that we can safely enfranchise as many women as men in India absolutely passes my comprehension. I should be satisfied with the recommendations of the Southborough Committee, but I fully accept the collective wisdom of my colleagues, being more impressed thereby than my hon. Friend opposite, and I would leave this matter to the decision of the Legislative Councils in India.
  This is not a case in which any experience in Egypt is any guide. The women of Egypt are nearly all Mahomedans, with negligible exceptions, while the women of

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  India are nearly all Hindus, in the proportion of five or six to one. The. Hindu women are not, with rare exceptions, purdah women. That is an important matter to remember in connection with this Bill, and it is a fact which seems to be entirely unknown to some hon. Members. The impression that most women in India are behind the veil shows how little knowledge there is, and dangerous it is to go beyond the very liberal recommendations of the Select Committee. Nor should the House be over impressed by the eloquence, charm, and general capacity of the ladies who have come over here to advise in these matters, nor can they safely take their line of action from the great progressive, cosmopolitan, but, except from a geographical point of view hardly Indian, city of Bombay. If they want experience in this matter they must go to the least industrial and most rural, therefore the most representative, Provinces of India, first, Madras, and then the United Provinces. I could dwell upon this subject at very great length. It was my good fortune to have known Indian women who were the most progressive women in the world, who enjoy the great privilege of choosing their own husbands and dismissing them at will. I may say in their favour, however, that so reasonably do they exercise this tremendous privilege, that if the husband behaves himself at all decently he has an extremely good chance of being kept on. That only applies to one class of women—the Nairs of the Malabar Coast.
  As one connected with business as well as with India, I should like to refer to the protest against the local Government being concerned with the development and management of Indian industries. It is not the Government of India that has been the greatest factor in the development of those industries in India which were so necessary in addition to that of agriculture. It is British enterprise fostered by the local Governments. The Government of India has never been conspicuously successful in forwarding industry, and if it did not do that when it was in touch with the virile British mercantile community of Calcutta, still less will it be able to do so when it is in hiding amongst the tombs and the memorials of dead Empires at Delhi. I do not fear that the local Government will neglect the interests of the British mercantile man in India. I read in the papers articles "Why Lose India," and
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  may I repeat how utterly unreasonable are such fears when the House is now occupied with a Bill drafted on the best and most moderate lines in the beginning, and altered all in favour of moderation to such air, extent, and holding the balance so carefully between both sides that last night we had hon. Members separated only by a narrow gangway moving to the same Clause Amendments of exactly opposite signification.
  The statement is often made that all Lieutenant Governors of India are opposed to the distribution of work which is called by the terrible name of diarchy by some scholars who might have been far better occupied than in inventing such a bad name. Only two or three days ago I was shooting between two ex-Lieutenant Governors, who, I am happy to say, as became them, shot very well. I consulted them about this matter. They said, "It is by no means the case that Lieutenant-Governors are all of one mind on this matter. While as old Civil servants it is possible that we should prefer the existing system, we do realise that the time has come when India cannot stand still. She must have some share of the democratic advance for which, rightly or wrongly, we protest we fought in the War. We do not join in the strong opposition to the arrangements made for the distribution of the work, and we do not join in the whole-hearted way, in which we are often as a class represented, in condemning this proposal." For the life of me I cannot understand, now when Persia—the laws of which proverbially never change—the laws of the Modes and the Persians—has obtained Parliamentary Government, and China which was the symbol of unchanging conservatism has become a Republic, and every autocratic throne in the world is in the dust—not that I am rejoicing about it at all—but when these things have happened what absolute folly it is to talk about personal predilections and to pretend that there is any way of avoiding, even if we do not want it, a reasonably moderate and thoroughly safeguarded advance such as is provided by this Bill.
  Among all the denunciations of this Bill I observe the Noble Lord, for whom I have the utmost respect, Lord Sydenham, is strongly opposed to it. We have to accept that fact, but when he is described as the greatest Indian expert I must enter a protest. He has lived five

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  years in the cosmopolitan city of Bombay. My hon. Friend the Member for Kent (Mr. Bennett) has lived twenty-five years in that city, and therefore, on the record, my hon. Friend is five times the expert Lord Sydenham is, and he has given the Bill a support as strong as is the opposition of the Noble Lord, who is not displaying in this respect the great quality of adapting himself to the new world. The House would naturally suppose that a man like myself would—and I should like extremely on this occasion to—spread myself, but I am going to keep my eye on the clock for the few minutes during which the House will indulge me with its attention. In this Bill there are everywhere the most complete safeguards for the maintenance of British supremacy. The power of the Central Legislature is maintained intact. The Committee has recommended more seats for the rural population and greater representation for the depressed classes, whichever they are, and reserved seats for non-Brahmins.
  Here I must express extreme regret that a man of the eminence of Sir West Ridgeway should have described the Brahmins —those natural leaders of the Hindu community—as "bitter enemies" of the rest of the community. Without dwelling on the subject of which I have had a particularly intimate knowledge throughout my life, I must say that that is a gross and scandalous injustice to the class who are an aristocracy of industry and intellect quite as much as of birth and breeding, and whose position is due far more to their own habits than to any hereditary connection which they have with the priestly caste, for they are no more priests now than other people. Then there is representation for the great mercantile community of Bengal. Is it possible to overrate the advantages that that community has conferred upon India in introducing amongst other things the great tea industry? It is provided in this measure that the powers of re-entry, beyond the veto and restorations and reservations which are given to Governors, are not to be regarded as special and unusual, but as part of the normal machinery of government. Special provision is made for the protection of the Civil Service. I think that everything that can be done on their behalf should be done, and that the wholesale resignations of which we hear are not likely to
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  occur, and I believe that the great service to which it is the pride of my life to belong will continue in the future as it has in the past, to carry out the policy of its superiors without regard to its own personal feelings.
  Nor can I retrain from mentioning one representation of the Committee which may possibly escape notice. That is that increases of the land revenue, that all-important subject to the Indian cultivator, who is really the Indian working man—the petty landowner—should be as far as possible the act of the Legislature in future and not the executive act of the Government. That is a far-reaching proposal which will commend itself to the more Radical section of the House. We are all Radicals now—the whole of us. Much has been said about the Secretary of State who carried through the measure last night with such conspicuous ability. He has been condemned in various directions, and last night it actually happened that he was accused by the Radicals of being too conservative, and by the Conservatives, of being too radical, which is one of the greatest compliments that could possibly be paid to a man in his position. When I came into this House in 1906, my right hon. Friend, like myself, was a member of a small body, of which I was the Whip, of Liberal Imperialists. Not finding any Imperialism in their Liberalism I left the Liberals. I have followed my right hon. Friend's career with the utmost interest, and, though no doubt he would to-day deny it indignantly, I have always found a strain of Imperialsm in his Radicalism. I have never found that the protection of British interests was far from his heart, however interested he may be—and I know he is —in all the wants of the people of India. His sagacity in dealing with the native races has increased my admiration of his conduct right through, and I think the Indian people are fortunate that at a time like this he is in charge of a Bill like this, which cannot but form the beginning of a new era in Indian Government.
  Sir D. MACLEAN: The House will have been not only interested in the speech which has been made by my hon. Friend (Sir J. D. Rees), but also grateful for those bits of political autobiography with which he has favoured us. He says that he left the Liberal party because he failed to find enough Imperialism to satisfy his political soul. I regard this as a great

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  Liberal measure. I do not know that we may not find my hon. Friend once again on this side of the House.
  Sir J. D. REES: May I take that as an invitation?
  Sir D. MACLEAN: I think much criticism of this Bill is not required. This is a matter which has passed through very remarkable phases. I suppose that no measure affecting the great Dominion of India has ever received snore careful consideration. We had, first, the visit of the Secretary of State for India, who conducted a careful investigation, at a time of great internal trouble in India, into this very vexed problem. Following that we had one of the most remarkable State documents ever issued—what is commonly known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. Then came the Second Reading and committal to a Joint Committee of both Houses. I was a member of that Committee in its early stages, but I speedily found that owing to the claims on my time it was quite impossible for me to give the necessary attention to the Bill. I saw quite enough, however, to justify me in complete confidence that that Committee, in its majority, at any rate, would come to sound, fair, and statesmanlike conclusions, and I think, on the whole, the country will agree that that has been so. Then the Bill came here for its Committee, stage and Third Reading. The progress of the measure in the Committee stage was remarkable. There was much difference of opinion, honestly, and, I think my right hon. Friends will agree, competently expressed, but there were only two Divisions, and it has gone through without any of the accustomed Parliamentary pressure, without any Amendment at all. There has been no Report stage. I think that is a very remarkable event. It is symptomatic of a substantial measure of agreement with a proposal which in itself is one of the most difficult ever presented to this House, and I think the Parliament of this country is entitled to congratulate itself. There has been no attempt to stifle discussion, and no obstruction. There has been a measure of agreement in all parties, in the Joint Committee and here, and, I believe, in another place, which must satisfy those who are still very distrustful of the future of India, and give them seine consolation that this measure has been fairly, fully, and competently discussed.
  I should like to say at once, for my part and for those for whom I speak, how much
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  we appreciate the work which has fallen on the shoulders of the Secretary of State. He has shown a measure of devotion and of knowledge and of industry which we desire to thank him for and to congratulate him upon. Much has been said about the risks of this new experiment. As far as I can see, the strongest criticisms have come from those who think it does not go far enough. That may be so, but in dealing with so vast a problem as India I am convinced that the right way is to proceed with sufficient boldness to justify the confidence of those sincere reformers in India, accompanied by the necessary measure of precaution which has been dictated to us by experiences in the past, What is the problem, after all? It is all very well for hon. Members in this House, and persons who speak at large, outside, occasionally to treat India as if it were like Yorkshire, or Scotland, or Wales—a place where everybody spoke the same language, had substantially the same religion, and was a homogeneous whole. We know that India is not only of vast extent, but, as an hon. Member has said, contains a very large proportion of the total population of the globe. People there belong to different races and different creeds, and they speak totally different tongues. Vast portions of India are under the direct control of the British Crown, but vast portions are in all their internal matters totally independent of any outside interference. A question like that cannot be dealt with in any light-hearted way which may excite the cheers of unthinking meetings. If we are to be true to our trust it must be dealt with on broad, statesmanlike, and steady lines.
  We must be thankful that the true leaders of opinion in India are developing so rapidly amongst themselves men of the governing class, who will, I hope and believe, at no distant date as history goes, or their descendants, be qualified to table on their own shoulders the broad principles of direct self-government for that great country within the ambit of the British Crown. The step which has been taken by Parliament here, and which will shortly, no doubt, be confirmed in another place, is a long step forward. I only wish for my own part that my right hon. Friend had seen his way in some respects to go further, and those points have been brought out in Debate. I think he might safely have gone further, but, after all, events move swiftly, and I think we shall find in the course of the next few years that this

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  experiment has so fully justified itself that we shall have probably another Secretary of State issuing, with the representatives of the Birtish Crown in India, another Report. I can only hope that when that comes to this country it will be received and considered by as authoritative and as fair-minded a Committee as the one which has sat on this Bill, and by a House of Commons as receptive of true ideals and as eager to give practical expression to them, and that that will result in another great forward step in the self-government of India.
  I close with one other point. I would say to those hon. Friends of mine who are afraid of the future of India within the circle of the British Dominions across the seas this one thing: If we wish to retain India within the British Empire we must not be afraid of development and of change. We shall never keep her unless we thoroughly grasp that fact. What has been, after all, the great fundamental differentiation between the British Empire and other empires? It is this, that we have not, with all our faults—and they are many, as the pages of history very clearly disclose—really sought to govern great tracts of the earth's surface for the selfish purposes of this country. The other policy was the policy which brought down to dust all the empires in the past. I believe what I have stated is the sole reason why we find the British Empire still strong and, as I believe, going from strength to strength. Of all the parties in the State, I think the party to which I belong has seized more clearly and pressed that idea more progressively and forcibly than others, but still it has been at the foundation of both parties that we have a trusteeship for those great parts of the earth's surface and those huge masses of the earth's population over which for the time being we hold more or less benevolent sway. In dealing with India we realise that that principle has to be swiftly developed. The annihilation of space and almost of time and communication makes a vast difference in the development and in the making of history. What would have taken months and years in the early days in India is now compassed within the space of weeks. Education has gone on in India slowly I agree, but still the pace is constantly increasing, and we must recognise those facts. I believe there is no fear of India leaving
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  the ambit of the British Empire so long as we fully and adequately and in time recognise that we must give to India, growing as she is in knowledge and intelligence and self-consciousness, that self-government by which alone we can keep her along with us marching on the road of the world's progress. The Indian Empire has often been described as the finest jewel in the British Crown. It will flash more brightly and be increasingly resplendent in exact accordance with our application of that great principle to which. I referred a little while ago. If we do that then I am certain that India with all those internal troubles and differences which I mentioned, will join with us in the reconstruction of the world, as she so splendidly joined with us in these recent years in fighting against autocracy, militarism, and tyranny.
  Mr. OMAN: I rise to protest on behalf of those who moved Amendments from this part of the House that we never opposed the Bill; we only endeavoured to add to it Clauses which we thought would protect enlightened and wise government in India. Every Amendment that we brought forward was rejected. We cannot help it. We have merely done our duty. The constituency which I have the honour to represent is sometimes called the supporter of lost causes. To that list no more honourable cause can be added than that of the old Indian Civil Service, to which Oxford has given scores and hundreds of the best of her men, and whose activities are impaired for ever by this Bill. This measure seems to me to indicate a desire to disturb the placid content of the masses of India spoken of in that famous paragraph 144 of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. That idea appears to have prevailed over everything, and the desire to disturb disguised as idealism and high policy has brought as into a condition which I can only view with much doubt and fear for the future. My voice has been heard in this House far too often for the last few days, and for the first time the day before yesterday, and I would now ask pardon for having taken up ten minutes more of your time.
  1.0 P.M.
  Sir H. CRAIK: I regret that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir D. Maclean) confined his confidence to a majority of the Joint Committee. I think may right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will agree that on the whole we did what we could to meet his conciliatory views We are indebted

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  to him most entirely for the satisfactory way in which the proceedings were conducted. Beginning with doubts, I have learned to place great and added confidence in the statesmanship of the right hon. Gentleman. I am not going to follow the right hon. Baronet who spoke before me in self-congratulations on the work of the Committee, nor will I follow him in his personal remarks. I think that our duty now is not to discuss the details of the Bill, but to look forward. We all recognise that this is probably the most hazardous and the most daring step that has ever been taken by the British Parliament. The vast mass that are affected, the duties that lie upon us towards that mass, makes this a very hazardous experiment. Some of us, perhaps, feel it more strongly than the right hon. Gentleman and his friends, but I am glad to join my right hon. Friend in saying that not for a moment do we feel it merely on the ground of the selfish interests of this country. We feel that the government of India is a mandate and a divine duty, the responsibility for which we cannot throw aside, and we will not throw aside, but we never have been deterred in the pastfrom making bold steps of this kind, and we are not now deterred, although it may be that some of us were rather pessimistic in our views. We recognise, now, however, that the Bill is almost through, that there must be that unity of purpose and of spirit which has been the spirit of our Constitution, and the right hon. Gentleman may be certain that it will not be one party only, but the whole of this House, which will do all it can, however hazardous it may think it, to make this advance successful and prosperous for the country concerned. We must remember, and it must be known to our fellow citizens in India, what is the attitude of this House towards India. It is expressed in grave and solemn words in the Preamble of the Bill, every word of which was weighed, and which repeated the words of the famous Declaration of the 20th August, 1917, to the effect that the
  "manner of each advance can be determined only by Parliament, upon whom responsibility lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples."
  It is our bounden duty to judge, and we alone can judge, and we will judge, I am certain, in a bold and liberal spirit. India will understand that this departure, once decided upon, is not confined to one party, but is shared by all
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  parties, The spirit of our Constitution will be obeyed and loyally obeyed in doing what we can in making it successful. In only one word, in conclusion, let me refer to that great Indian Civil Service, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford University (Mr. Oman) has used words not one whit too strong. I have for many years been in the closest connection with that Service, and I am convinced that in their doubts and in their difficulties they were, whether you can call it mistaken or not, deeply and sincerely convinced both morally and intellectually of the dangers. The right hon. Gentleman admits that the central machinery of this Bill is at best a very difficult and unprecedented contrivance, and no one denies that. The Civil Service felt it more deeply perhaps than others, but I am convinced, from all I have heard—and I am hearing weekly in large numbers from that service—that they are not looking solely to their own interests, but are anxious for what will operate best for India, and that we have not used too strong words in our Report when we say that we
  "are convinced that the Services will accept the changing conditions and the inevitable alteration in their own position, and devote themselves in all loyalty to making a success, so far as in them lies, of the new Constitution."
  Mr. SPOOR: I agree with one previous speaker in the Debate, that the time for criticism is now past. We have had full opportunity for that criticism, and I believe that opportunity has been fully exercised, at all events, by all the members who had the privilege of sitting on the Joint Committee. My hon. Friend opposite the Member for Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees) in that characteristically witty speech that he gave us, expressed a certain measure of surprise that I should have had the temerity to introduce in the Committee of the House Amendments that had been defeated before the Select Committee. It is quite true, as he pointed out, that again and again I found myself in a minority of one. I want to say, however, that my action in supporting Amendments in the Committee of the House that had been defeated in the Joint Committee was certainly not due to any lack of recognition on my part of the collective wisdom of my colleagues. The simple fact was that whilst I recognised that collective wisdom, I did not entirely agree with it. The very first day we met under the presidency of Lord Selborne and I wish to associate, myself with the remarks of my hon.

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  Friends regarding the strict impartiality and the absolute fairness that characterised our Chairman's attitude throughout the whole of our sittings—when we met on that first occasion I remember Lord Selborne used words like this. He said, "This is probably the most important Committee of this character that has ever been set up in the political history of our country." He went on to indicate that, upon the findings of that Committee, and upon the subsequent decision of both Houses of Parliament, depended not merely the peace and tranquillity of India, but in very great measure the stability of the Empire and the peace of the world. I am sure that every Member who sat upon that Committee agreed with Lord Selborne, and whilst we may not have agreed regarding the merits or the demerits of this Bill, I am quite sure that every Member of the Committee did act always with the utmost sincerity, and with a very, very real desire to achieve a satisfactory result.
  The time, I say, for criticism has now gone by, but I would like just to say a word with reference to a phrase that was used by my right hon. Friend the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir H. Craik) when he said that we wanted now to look forward. I believe that that is the attitude which every Member of this House wants to take at this point. What is going to be the result of this measure? It has been criticised from both sides. It is suggested here by some Members that, because it has been criticised from both sides, the probability is that the measure strikes a happy medium. Time only will show how far that hope will be realised. Personally, I do most sincerely hope that all sections of political opinion in that country will use this measure to the fullest possible advantage, and if I might be permitted to say something I said last night, but which I am afraid was rather misunderstood, I hope the people of India will continue to agitate along strictly constitutional lines, in order to secure that wider and larger measures of self-government towards which this present proposal is only a step. In the course of the last few days' debate reference was made—I think it was by the hon. and gallant Member for Melton (Colonel Yate)—to the fact that I, as a member of the Committee, have not been to India, and he, in the kindest way possible I am sure, suggested
  808
  that I had perhaps been misinformed, because I had associated with certain Indian gentlemen who had come over to this country, who had apparently cut themselves adrift from the main current of national life in their own country, who, in some curious manner, had become Europeanised, and, therefore, did not represent the body of Indian opinion. I can only say that when I was seeking for knowledge of matters Indian, I was quite prepared to accept it from any quarter from which it might be likely to come. If I prefer to take it from men born in India, from men of Indian blood, in preference to taking it from Britishers, however distinguished they might be, who have simply visited India owing to the mere accident of being in a military career—they may have spent months there; they may have spent years there—I submit that, in trying to ascertain all that I possibly could regarding the real inwardness of the situation by getting that information from Indians themselves, I was acting upon perfectly wise, same, and reasonable lines.
  Seeing that in the opinion of the Secretary of State, I believe, I have been unreasonable on some points, I would like to take this opportunity of saying that I do most fully appreciate the extraordinary skill, the extraordinary persistence with which he has carried this Bill through the stages to which it has advanced. I believe the Secretary of State for India, when he openly consults his own personal judgment and personal feelings, will in all probability go a great deal further than the Bill. But, be that as it may, I do feel he is making history. I have criticised this Bill because I have said it is inadequate; it does not go far enough. At the same time, I do recognise in it a distinct break with the past. I do actually believe it is the opening of a door, and it depends in great measure upon the attitude, upon the solidarity, upon the unity of the Indian people, how much further that door shall be opened in the years that lie ahead. I therefore, wish to join, as I have already said, in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for India upon having taken this very historical step, for I believe that when this Bill goes from this House—and I sincerely hope when it reaches another place it will not be in any way weakened or interfered with—when it has passed through both Houses of Parliament, and

  809
  actually becomes law, we shall be beginning a state of affairs within the British Empire and in our relations with India that are full of promise for the future. There have been some rather black pages in the past. There have been misunderstandings, there has been coercion, there has been resentment, natural and quite understandable. I would like to use the expression that was used, I believe, by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for India last night. I would like to see the hatchet buried and the past forgotten; but, in order to do this, do let it be clearly understood in this House, and in this country, that the day has gone for ever when the people of India can be regarded as a subject people. Let us say now—and I submit that the principle of the Bill does say it—we regard the people of India as in every essential respect our equals, and if we can induce that sense of equality, that sense of real comradeship between the Indian people and the British people, I believe that the future relations of the two countries will be much happier than the past has been.
  One or two speeches this morning have suggested that in passing this measure we are conferring a boon upon the people of India. Personally I do not look upon it in that light at all. We are merely discharging, as I have already said, not quite adequately, obligations that have been pressed upon this country for a long time. We are seeking to fulfil some of the obligations of a trusteeship that was assumed many, many years ago. But if from now we can convince the people of India that this period when we have unfortunately regarded them as a subject race is past and gone, that they are really our equals, I believe that the people of India, working side by side with the people of Britain, will be able to make a much bigger contribution to the real peace and progress of the world than would have been possible under any other conditions.
  Captain ORMSBY-GORE: I do not propose to detain the House for more than a few minutes in offering a few remarks on this all-important Bill. I think I am right in saying that this is the eleventh Government of India Bill. They have hitherto really been, one after the other, improvements upon the existing edifice. Here, for the first time, we are passing a Bill which starts a new foundation and on a new foundation, namely, upon an Indian electorate. That is really the great thing which this Bill is doing. It is
  810
  going to establish what some hon. Members think is a too small electorate, but which is, in fact, the first really great electorate which India as one great nation ever had. You may say that 8½ per cent. of the adult males is a small number to enfranchise, but remember that that 8½ per cent. is something far more numerous than anything that has ever existed in the history of India. We are building our new edifice, the Indian constitution, as it were, upon a foundation of 5,000,000 Indian electors, with the prospect that those electors will increase in number as the machinery and practical exercise of the franchise grows from election to election. That is a direction where development must take place before the final coping stone can be placed.
  Till you have got the great mass of the Indian people using political power through the vote, knowing what the power of the vote means, and what its political use means, I am perfectly certain we cannot complete the edifice of responsible self government in India. The really important thing we are doing to-day is that we are establishing, for the first time, the broad foundations of an Indian electorate. Just as we are building in stone at Delhi the new buildings of the new capital, so we are giving a new constitution, on a new foundation, in the Provinces, and to a less extent in the Government of India. In the Provinces we are, for the first time, giving a mea. sure of responsible self-government—real Parliamentary institutions. Admittedly it is in a limited field, but it is an important field. All well-wishers of India will look with the greatest possible interest during the next few years to the use which is made by Indians of these powers they are going to possess, in regard to education, local self-government, agriculture, and other transferred subjects—and we look to that with hope.
  In regard to the top of the edifice—the Government of lndia—little has been done, and I think rightly, but a beginning has been made to make the All-India Legislative Assembly an assembly of which India may be proud. Hitherto the Legislative Assembly of India has been correctly described as a small debating society. For the first time we are giving her an Assembly which has some really representative character. Although the powers are few, the influence of that Assembly will grow. I do not wish to go into ally controversial matters on this occasion, but I

  811
  do wish to say something as a result of the remark made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University. He talked of the Indian. Civil Service as a lost cause. I do not think that statement ought to pass without challenge. The Indian Civil Service will be every bit of as great a value to India in the future as it has been in the past. More and more Indians will go into it. But I am perfectly certain that the same quality of Englishmen will continue to enter, realising that under this Bill, and the working of this Bill, there is this new and added interest in assisting Indians to prepare for their part in responsible self-government in an ever-widening sense. We have sent in the past of our very best to India. I believe that the vast mass of people in India realise that. I hope we shall go on sending of our best, because on the qualities of understanding, sympathy and service, which England can continue to give India, very largely depends the successful issue of this experiment. I say that not in any way wishing to suggest, that there are not thousands of capable Indians in India.
  India has got a great page in history, owing to being part of the British Commonwealth. India is taking this step to-day very largely because of the English ideas and English traditions which have been taken to India by Englishmen. I refer to English education and the like. This Bill is being passed because we have taught India to love our institutions, our political ideas, to admire them, and to endeavour to copy them. India is doing so. In the future, I believe, on the basis of this Bill and of progressive development, there will be an increase of mutual sympathy and understanding between Indians and Englishmen. That is what we want. Unless we get good will and mutual sympathy and understanding India will not realise the hopes that some of us have. It is that sympathy we want. In saying this, I do hope that the rather too-ready criticism which some Indians have adopted, especially in recent years, of the Indian Civil Service and of Englishmen themselves will cease, just as in the same way I am confident that all this talk of subject-races and people being unfitted to do this and do that will also cease on the other side. It is perfectly certain that only by mutual sympathy and understanding on the part of all the races which acknowledge the same allegiance to
  812
  the one King-Emperor—that is the important thing—will the real stability of the British Empire remain.
  The British Empire, it has always been said, is held together by gossamer threads. It is the indefinable loyalty to the same Sovereign and the same ideals that keeps the British Empire, not merely together, but in co-operation along the same lines towards the same great goal. I am confident that in this new edifice which to-day we are building—and there is no truer analogy in the world than the analogy between the architect and the statesman—on this new foundation we are doing something which is going to redound throughout history, no matter who writes that history in future generations, to the honour and glory both of the Indian and the British Empire.
  Captain ELLIOT: It is with the greatest timidity that I intervene in this Debate as one with no experience whatever of Indian affairs, having taken only the interest of the humble back benches in these reports, and the enormous mass of literature and correspondence with which we have been bombarded. On the Third Reading of a Bill of this importance there are one or two remarks which I think might usefully be made, and I believe there is an aspect of this Bill which I have not heard discussed with any sincerity on the floor of this House. It seems to me to be a most extraordinary thing that on an occasion like this, when we have a Bill brought in by Whiggism triumphant, that no mention of the other great party in the State should be made. After all, the extraordinary thing is, when one reads in the Report that an electorate is about to be increased from 05 to 5, that this should be treated in this way, everybody knows it is another move in the great parties. It is a change from bureaucracy to the oligarchy, and the oligarchs have caught the Labour party, and they are lining up behind them and cheering and saying, "Here we have a great democratic advance." It seems to me an extraordinary thing that "time cannot stale or custom wither" the interminable gullability of the Labour party, and when anybody cries eat liberty and waves a flag they will get their applause. [An HON. MEMBER: "Where is the Labour party?"]
  Nobody can deny that the change from a British bureaucracy to an Indian oligarchy is not necessarily the order of a tremendous uplift in the life of the

  813
  Indian people. The Labour party has had experience of this sort of thing before. Whenever the Whigs have won and put the oligarchs into power, the people have been ground down and trampled upon. They have done this time and again. This is another step in the struggle over the ages, and it is the effect of the powerful local people on the strong central authorities. They have won all over the world, and the end is not yet. It is coming. We see in Russia what happens eventually and where you get to when the big nobles and the Duma and the so-called representative Assembly succeed in smashing up central government, for it all comes back, and instead of the whips of the old central Government you only have the scorpions of the new Bolshevik Government. It seems to me that the fact that there is no security, and that here we have a great constitutional advance in India has not sufficiently been brought out. The hon. Member for Stafford (Captain Ormsby-Gore) made a speech which did not seem to me to square with the speech he made on the Committee stage, when he pointed out that we had to keep in the hands of the Central Government the power to protect labour in India against the inevitable assault of the Indian oligarchs. The upper classes in India may be all the good things that have been said about them. The Brahmins may be the natural leaders of the people by intellect and not by inheritance, but I have not seen in this country such a tremendous respect paid by the Labour party to these natural leaders. On the contrary they show the greatest distrust of them, and in many ways a very right distrust of them. I think it was William Morris who said, "No man is good enough to be another man's master."
  The Labour party greets with delight this handing over of 300,000,000 people to the sway of 5,000,000 of the upper classes. If India had been entrusted to us by the League of Nations, and if Britain had been handed over a mandate, would we consider that we were fulfilling this mandate by transferring them to 5,000,000 of the Indian upper classes. After all the record of the upper classes in India is not such an instained record that you can cheerfully entrust to them the ordinary millions of "hewers of wood and drawers of water." No Englishman has ever enslaved Indians as Indians have. We know there has been cruelty and tyranny, and we never said to the subject races that
  814
  they were not to drink water from the running streams, but only from the stagnant pools. I agree with other speakers who have said that we must look forward, and undoubtedly we have to remember that our responsibilities towards India will be very greatly increased by the passing of this measure. The supervision of Parliament over Indian affairs in the future will need to be much keener than it has been in the past, and I despair of our ever being able to accomplish that task in the congested state in which the British. Parliament finds itself at the present time. Such a supervision as will inevitably need to be carried out seems to me to be utterly beyond the power of any Standing Committee or the members of an overworked and congested assembly such as the British Parliament finds itself to-day. That is a point by the way.
  There is no doubt that this is a tremendous experiment, for it is handing over the Indian toiling masses to the rule of the Indian wealthy classes, and that is an experiment which this democratic Parliament of Great Britain will need to supervise with very great closeness. One of the dangers that has been shown so, clearly in the recent agitations over this Bill is the great danger to a country like Britain, with its 40,000,000 people, of governing an Empire of 300,000,000. When you have to deal with 300,000,000 people, I think it is time to begin to see that the dog is not wagged by the tail. When we see the pressure that has been brought to bear upon every individual Member of this House we must realise that there is a driving power behind this agitation which does not come solely from the political aspirations of the people of India. They are all very well, but I have never heard a word from the Labour party or the triumphant Whigs in this House about the economic driving power behind all this. What about the great factories of India, and the great men who fear the expense to be put upon them by sanitary and health legislation, which will inevitably be demanded in the near future by a democratic Parliament? We have erected a barrier against that, and it will need the most careful supervision. Indian sanitation is bad. The Indian may be a great philosopher or architect, and he may excel in ninny arts, but his achievements in the science of health are not such as would gain any approbation from any congress of scientific men.

  815
  I only want to point out that the strength of this agitation comes not entirely from the political aspirations of the Indian toiling masses, but also from the economic force of the Indian employing classes. The supervision that we shall have to exercise over the Indian electorate will need to be very close and very persistent. We have given over the poor men of India to the rich men of India. It may be a great step in advance, but it is a step on which the Whigs of this House have every reason to congratulate themselves. It has been the age-long aspiration of Whiggism to destroy the Central Government and run the poor in the interests of the rich, but it has not been the aspiration of the Conservative party, and, as far as I understand, it is very different from the aspirations of the Labour party.
  It seems to me like old times and the old constitutional struggle in this country when I see one Whig getting up on the Treasury Bench to move this Bill and another Whig on the Opposition Bench getting up to congratulate him. The only opposition we hear comes from a young aristocrat like the hon. Member for Stafford (Captain Ormsby-Gore), who raises a minor point in Committee, following the traditions of tie great Conservative, as his great political ancestor, Lord Shaftesbury, might have done. I apologise to the House for having broken in and wasted their time. Nothing that I have said will make any difference to the passing of this Bill. It is simply a danger signal, simply a warning that the great constitutional experiment, on supporting which the Labour party so much prides itself, is a very dangerous thing and is against the traditional policy of toe proletariat in all ages, which has been to strengthen the Central Executive as against the local people, to support the colonel as against the sergeant. What happens in a regiment? The colonel is the natural protector as against the sergeant, and in politics the analogy holds true. The man at the bottom does not look to the man in the middle, but to the man at the top for his remedy. Here we have the Whigs, the natural sergeant-majors of society, smashing up the control of the Central Executive and shaking hands with each other on the floor of the House on having accomplished it. The colonel's influence however, is a salutary and necessary and the private will be the first man to feel the
  816
  draught when the colonel's protecting influence is removed from the orderly room. The Labour party will yet live to regret the day when they weakened the authority of the Central Executive in favour of the wealthy people who will hold for many years to come the local power in India.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: The representative of lost causes who has just sat down—
  Captain ELLIOT: Winning causes!
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: —Is typical of those who were opposed to the great Reform Bill of 1832 on the ground that it did not give votes to the workers in the town, who opposed the Reform Bill of 1868 because it did not give votes to the agricultural labourers, who opposed the Reform Bill of 1883 on the ground that it did not give votes to women, and who opposed women's suffrage on the ground that their interests were much better looked after by their lords and masters. It is a type that we know well. It is against all sorts of reforms because they do not go far enough. When he appeals to the Labour Benches not to support this Whig measure, I can only regret that he did not see his way to support us in having the franchise extended to precisely those workers about whose interests he is so much perturbed. Many years ago, when the right hon. Gentleman and I were budding geniuses in that overflowing Parliament of 1906, he and I used to walk down to this House together every morning across Kensington Gardens, discussing everything in the universe. I remember on one occasion that he summed up the argument in this way, "You see, Wedgwood, you can divide all mankind into those who are politicians and those who are agitators. I am a politician; you are an agitator. "It is perfectly true, and in those rôles that have been cast for us we have each gone on ever since. I have watched, without regretting the rôles to which I was consigned, the progress of the right hon. Gentleman from office to office, doing good work in every office. I have watched him during this War helping to beat Germany by organnising one of the most important offices of the State, and I have never regretted that my line has been in other directions. When I see this Act upon the Statute Book, however, I begin to have doubts as to whether my rôles is the best. After all, I have been fourteen years in

  817
  this House and I have done nothing—nothing for which I came into Parliament; but he has put this Act upon the Statute Book. There is something to show to the account of a politician. I may have put heart into a few rebels here and there, but this is something upon which history is based and the happiness and the freedom of nations depends. It is true that all of us on these benches have sought to get Amendments into this Bill, making it a Bill of which we might be more proud and a Bill which India might he more ready to accept as the goal of their ambitions; but I know, and we all know, that this Bill is the utmost that can ever be got through Lord Curzon, and that it is really a triumph for the right hon. Gentleman that he has gone as far as he has gone.
  This Bill does not go very far, but it lays that foundation which we all like to treasure in our hearts as representing a true and glorious Britain. Other rulers of India in the past have left their monuments in India—Ali Musjid and the Taj Mahal and the great Portuguese cathedrals —but, so far as our architecture goes, all that represents Britain is a few tin cantonments. We are going to leave something more lasting in India than any architectural feature. We are going to show that though we conquered India we alone of the great nations of the world sought through the people whom we conquered to give them back their inheritance—give it back freely. It seems to be the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race that they can do things like this. America has done the same in the Philippines; we are starting to do it here, as we did in South Africa, and the result will be the same. We shall build up one fresh Anglo-Indian Dominion which will be one of the new governing countries of the world. I hope that this may be an example to the other Allied nations who have taken over mandates to administer other countries, and that the success of this experiment will be carried further in our own British Commonwealth—that what has been done in South Africa, and what will be done and is beginning to be done under this Bill in India, will also be extended to Egypt, to Turkey, to Mesopotamia, and even, possibly, for aught we know, to Persia. [An HON. MEMBER: "Ireland!"] Ireland can look after herself.
  We are laying the foundation, but this Bill is not enough. It would not have been enough if we had carried all those Amendments giving complete responsibility in
  818
  the Provincial Legislatures and giving the beginning of diarchy in the Central Government—giving that wider franchise for which in particular I should have asked. This Bill is not enough. India is not vitally interested in this Bill. India is infinitely more vitally interested in the repeal of the Press Act, of the Seditious Meetings Act, the Rowlatt Acts, and all the un-English Acts with which we have had to hold down India. India is much more interested in an amnesty for political offenders, for those hundreds of men who still lie in gaol in India or who are banished all over the world. If this Bill is to be a success, if it is to be worked, remember that it must have the right atmosphere in which to work. Unless it has that right atmosphere, no amount of Amendments, even if we carried them from the Labour benches, would put the matter right. No amount of Amendments would reunite the English and Indian peoples as they ought to be reunited. They have been severed—I will not go into the reason of it now—by people who did not know what England stood for. We have to bind them together. This Bill is not enough. Start on that, but for goodness' sake, when this Act comes into force, when the new constitution is granted to India, see that it is accompanied by a full amnesty for political offenders, and see, above all, that it is accompanied by a declaration of rights which will put the humblest Indian subject of the British Crown on the same footing as any of us here, and establish all those principles for which the English fought in the past when they conquered their rulers. Give us throughout the whole British Commonwealth a people divided neither by colour bars nor by any differentiation in the rights of man.
  Major Earl WINTERTON: No one can have failed to be affected by the obvious sincerity of the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend who has just sat down. I should like to say that I hope that, however much the majority of this House usually differs from the views that he takes, he will not suppose that he exercises no influence upon our political life. I consider that one who represents, as he always endeavours to represent, entirely sincerely and with the utmost eloquence, the views of those who, we believe, are not in the majority in the part of the world from which they come—I think it would be a very bad thing if one who did that regarded himself, or

  819
  was regarded, as not doing most useful work in this House. I think he is too modest when he says that he does not exercise an influence on our deliberations, and I, personally, hope the day will be far distant when those who hold the views that he holds—much as I disagree with them—are not able to get a hearing for them in this House.
  I only heard the latter part of the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Lanark (Captain Elliot) but I was rather surprised at the line he took. He showed an attitude of mind quite different from that which I should have attributed to him, but as I only heard the latter part of his speech I make but a passing reference to that. As regards the relationship between those at the top and those at the bottom, my experience is broadly that those at the bottom are much more inclined to go to those at the top than to those in the middle. I think that is a fact which is certainly true of the Army. But I do not think that the colonel and sergeant-major argument would entirely apply to this Bill and I do not think it is a reason for not passing the Third Reading. The great knowledge of constitutional law possessed by the hon. Member for Oxford University (Mr. Oman) appears to have somewhat biased him, and to have impressed him with the view that anything you may do is necessarily dangerous. In regard to that, I cannot help quoting sonic words spoken in this House in 1858 by one who was a great statesman in his day—Lord Lytton—on a Bill handing over the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown:
  "With regard. and to the Bill itself, which I am not disposed to discuss at this moment at any length, I must say that I think it is at once audacious, incomplete, and unconsidered."
  Those are the sort of words which might have fallen front the hon. Member for Oxford University or the hon. and gallant Member for Melton:
  "It is audacious, inasmuch as it effects the conversion of an administrative body, through which, whatever may have been its faults, every hasty or unwise proposal on the part of Her Majesty's Government was sure to be carefully sifted, into a. set of irresponsible nominees of the Ministers of the day. It is incomplete, because it does not afford us a single guarantee for that wholesome restraint on a. precipitate or a despotic policy that is effected by the system which it is proposed to remove."
  That is exactly the argument which has been used in relation to this present Bill.
  820
  Lord Lytton could not conceive that anything better could be put in the place of the officials of the East India Company. He went on to say:
  "And it is unconsidered because, even on so simple a point as the niece number of the Council which it would establish, every hon. Gentleman who has any practical acquaintance with the affairs of India tells you that it is preposterously inadequate for the discharge of the amount of business which the Council undertakes to perform."
  I do not often find myself in agreement with my hon. and gallant Friend who has just spoken (Colonel Wedgwood), but it is perfectly true that such words have been used in regard to every reform that has been brought forward of that kind. It is equally true that the fears thus expressed will prove in the long run to be unfounded. I thought that those words, which I happened accidentally to find, of Lord Lytton's speech, were a good answer to the fears which have been expressed in the course of this Debate about this Bill. No one will deny that the views of the hon. Members for Melton and for Oxford University are entitled to consideration, but I am bound, at the risk of putting a personal argument, to observe that I think that, in these present days, neither the views of people who have spent most of their life in India and end it as a Member of this House, nor views of the hon. Member for Oxford University, will necessarily influence opinion in that country. The War has made a difference. The whole world has changed, and the attitude of people's minds has changed; the psychology of everything has changed. We ought, while paying every deference to the views of experts like my hon. and gallant Friend opposite, to remember that the views of the younger men who have been in the Indian Service—either in the military service or in the Indian Civil Service—are very often in direct conflict with the views of the older members of those services. I have seen that myself in the Indian Army. Those at the top of the Indian Army and those who have joined only recently, just prior to the War, are often entirely different in their views. I think we ought to approach this problem to some extent with a fresh mind. We must always remember, of course, that the problems are largely unchanged; but, while the problems are unchanged, the attitude of men's mind's does change vastly in twenty or even in ten years.
  I should like to make reference to the way in which the Bill has been passed

  821
  through this House. In the circumstances, the haste with which the Bill has had to be passed has been abundantly justified, but I am bound to enter once again a protest, if I may do so without impertinence, because the view I hold is one held by many other hon. Members in all parts of the House. We are passing through a period of great danger in regard to the position of this House. On almost every measure brought forward we are told by the Government that there is great urgency to pass it, and there is a subtle hint of revolution at home or abroad if we do not. We were told on the Profiteering Bill that something was going to happen if we did not pass it. We are told that if we do not pass this Bill there will be serious unrest in India. It is not to our advantage to have these Bills rushed through. The necessity for adequate discussion in this House is a matter which is as important for every group in the House as it is for any one group. The Secretary of State has shown himself in connection with this Bill to be a Parliamentarian in the best sense of the word. That is a position in which it is extremely rare for a Cabinet Minister in these days to find himself. My right hon. Friend's conduct of this Bill has been in refreshing contrast with the conduct of some of his colleagues, who have seemed to think that Parliamentary experience can be learned in a day, and who consider that the greatness of the cause enables them to treat the House of Commons in quite a different way from that in which it is accustomed to be treated. I hope that my. right hon. Friend, in view of the support the House has given him, largely because of his own admirable attitude, will represent to the Government that, while we are willing to pass this Bill in the haste in which it has been passed through, there is a vast body of opinion in all parts of the House which believes that we are injuring the whole position of Parliament by the way in which measures are forced through under the suggestion that, if we do not pass them, there will be revolution or something else.
  Tribute has been paid, which I do not think was at all excessive, to the conduct of this Bill by the Joint Committee. All of us who are interested in India who were not members of that Committee must be grateful to them for the help they have given to the House and also for the self-denying attitude many of them have taken up during the Committee stage by not
  822
  taking part in deliberations in which they were much more competent to take part than some of us who did. It will be admitted by everybody that in India we cannot stand still and have to advance. The issue is, whether we shall advance along what is the broad and safe road proposed by the Secretary of State and the Government, that is along the path of progress, or whether we shall follow the long old-fashioned road of the hon. and gallant Member for Melton (Colonel Yate) and his associates—a road which reminds me of some old-fashioned tortuous street in a, sixteenth-century town—or whether we shall advance with the hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme and the hon. Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) along a path which reminds me of a man proceeding along a mountain path, jumping from crag to crag, with a chance of breaking his neck at the bottom. This House has never shown better sense than when it decided, as it has done all through by an overwhelming majority of opinion, to follow the right hon. Gentleman along what I believe to be an absolutely safe and sure path.
  2.0 P.M.
  Mr. STEWART: I should like to associate myself with what the Noble Lord (Earl Winterton) has said with regard to the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. I remember hearing the hon. and gallant Gentleman some years ago, in his unregenerate days, speak about India, and I said to, myself that if he had charge of India he would lose it in two months. I have rather changed my opinion since then. My hon. and gallant Friend has shown by his gallant actions that he does value the British Empire, and I hope he will not be so downhearted as from his speech he appeared to be, because I believe that his views are listened to with interest and received with respect by those who are entirely opposed to them. As one of those whom the Noble Lord (Earl Winterton) described as pursing the tortuous paths of the hon. and gallant Member for Melton I should like to say a few words as to the conditions under which the Bill is being passed. It has beers rushed at every turn. I do not think that is a sound way to treat a Bill of this sort. I almost hesitate to add to the many testimonies paid to the Secretary of State, because it might appear fulsome. I gladly admit his extreme courtesy and

  823
  his most extraordinary parliamentary ability, but I do not think he was quite fair to the House when he rejected every single Amendment last night. I do not suppose that he did that with a view to cutting out the Report stage, but I fear he rather treated those who put down Amendments as being hostile to the measure, whereas, as a matter of fact, they were in no sense hostile to the Bill. They simply put into the pool whatever ideas occurred to them as being prudent. I am not sure that it is a very wise process for a reformer to turn his back on those who do not agree entirely with him but who in the main do so. The right hon. Gentleman evidently thinks he has a perfect Bill. From the bottom of my heart I earnestly hope he has. He might have given us yesterday a little more enlightenment on certain points. when he was asked how far the financial policy of India was ruled by India or London, we received no answer. When he was asked for an explanation as to whether, by Clause 33, he was going under certain conditions to divest himself of his entire authority, we were left still in doubt as to the reasons why such a peculiar proceeding is enacted in this Bill. I do not claim to have any particular knowledge about India. Although I have been there a good many times, I do not speak with the same confidence as many Gentlemen who have never been there at all. I am one of those who have read the Chelmsford and Montagu Report from beginning to end. The first thing that struck me was that they spelled the word "Koran" with a "Q." I thought that might be literary superiority. However, I read the book right through—it was a somewhat dry treatise—until I came to the very last sentence, which runs:
  "We cannot close this document more fittingly than with the prayer which we know all India offers, that the principles of justice and freedom may be saved to the world by the splendid endurance and self-sacrifice of His Majesty's and the Allied Armies."
  There is not a single word there of thanks or appreciation of the sea power of this great Empire, without which we should have been perfectly helpless in the War. I wondered who wrote that? Was it come Indian barrister who had never been to sea? The concluding paragraph makes one really feel that it is written from an entirely local point of view. The dryness of the book is relieved by a dispatch from
  824
  Lord Dufferin, which is like an oasis in the wilderness. On page 147, Sir Thomas Monro said:
  "We should look on India not as a temporary possession, but as one which is to be maintained permanently until the natives shall in some future age have abandoned most of their superstitions and prejudices and become sufficiently enlightened to form a regular Government for themselves.
  That was written 120 years ago. It is rather hard on our predecessors in India that the whole claim for progress should be dated by the present Government from 20th August, 1917. Sir Thomas Monro's anticipations were further put forward by Lord Dufferin and further improved upon by Lord Minto and Lord Morley. It must have occurred to many people that the Minto-Morley reforms have had very short shrift indeed. If you admit that, how long will the present reforms carry on? No one can say that these are the best proposals possible. I should like to illustrate from this Report the kind of responsibility we, accept in passing this Bill. On page 29 is the following remark:
  "There are few more unobtrusive provisions on the Statute-Book than the once famous "Kimberley Clause," due really to Lord Northbrook, which is Section 74 of the Government of India Act of 1918. That Clause, while purporting merely to empower the Governor-General in Council to make regulations as to the conditions of nomination of the additional members, in reality effected a revolution in the Constitution."
  Can any man in this House say how many revolutions will be effected in the constitution of India by this Bill? I thoroughly agree that we must go forward, but I am somewhat in accord with the hon. Member for Lanark in what he said about sanitation. Under our rule, doing the best we could, we lost about 6,000,000 people by the plague about twelve months ago, and if sanitation falls under the management of the native population sack losses might very possibly occur again, and in a much greater degree. I think we might have asked more advice from our missionaries, who know the conditions in India probably better than most men. I should be interested to know whether the Indian Government ever censored any of the reports of the German missionaries, and are aware of the reports which they provided for their Government as to our administration.
  The Bill is inconsiderate to the Indian Civil Service. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Montagu) said last night that most of the objections came; from ex-Civil servants, and not from those now in the

  825
  service. That is quite possible because the ex-Civil servant is an independent man, and the man working in India is a younger man with a wife and children to support, and naturally is not able to exercise the same independence. The letter which was read by the hon. Member for Oxford University from the Indian Government yesterday really gives the Indian Civil Service cause for apprehension. The right hon. Gentleman says it has been withdrawn, but the men who wrote that letter are still in power, and that spirit of repression may very easily arise again under certain circumstances. I know it is the fashion to pooh-pooh any objections to this Bill. But here you are disintegrating India and handing it over to the unwarlike races at the very moment when you have lost control over the Amir of Afghanistan's foreign policy. What does that lay you open to? You must probably increase your Indian Army, and your expenses in regard to the Army of India will be greater. Your quarrels with the provinces over the central fund may become acute, and yet we go gaily into this thing without making new provision for a thing of that sort. You have violated one of the leading principles which has carried this great Empire to success. You have neglected the man on the spot. The whole British Empire has been successfully founded and carried on by trusting the man on the spot. Ninety-eight per cent. of Englishmen in India do not like this Bill. I speak of men I know—men engaged in business, young men, with their future before them. I do not think their opinion has been perhaps properly considered. At the same time we have to pass the Bill. I do not speak as a non-reformer, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman does not mind a little criticism. Even a perfect Minister may possibly find usefulness in it. We earnestly hope the Bill will turn out as well as he expects. Hon. Members with whom I have been associated earnestly hope and trust that his optimism will be borne out by the working of the measure, and that India will become as cheerful, happy, and prosperous as we should all wish her to be.
  Mr. B. DENNISS: It is necessary that one almost supremely important matter, which has scarcely been mentioned or thought of in the course of the Debate in Committee and here, should be brought to the right hon. Gentleman's attention so that he may tell us how far the fiscal policy of
  826
  India will be controlled by the new Legislature. That is a matter of profound importance to all in this country who trade with India, many of our principal industries, many of our great commercial men and traders. As far as I can see, the Bill is intended to remove every check upon the fiscal policy or fiscal control of the new Legislature. As far as possible we entrust it entirely to a body of men, who in the Legislative Chamber will consist, to a great extent, of the rich men, the manufacturers and merchants of India. I believe this Bill is intended, as far as possible to tie the hands of the Secretary of State and prevent him from placing any check upon any of the fiscal measures which may be passed, which may impose fetters upon our trade with India. The importance of that to our industries cannot be overestimated, and it would not become me, as one of the representatives of the centre of the great cotton industry, to let it pass without a warning of` what may, and is more than likely, to happen in the immediate future. Our cotton industry is our greatest exporter, and India is our best market. Under the present law the Secretary of State for India has absolute control over the fiscal policy of India. So far as the Executive is concerned, he has the powers of superintendence, direction, and control of all acts, matters, and concerns relating to the revenues of India. That power will be swept. away by Clause 33 when Rules are made under that Clause. There is a certain protection in that these Rules have to be laid on the Table of this House and Resolutions of both Houses have to be passed before the Rules become part of the Statute; but the intention is that immediately on the passing of this Act these Rules shall be made, and the Secretary of State will then be deprived of his powers of superintendence, direction, and control of all acts, matters, and concerns relating to the revenues of India.
  A further power which the Secretary of State has at the present time is that of disallowing the Acts of the Indian Legislature. He can intervene and advise His Majesty to disallow them, although passed by the Legislature and assented to by the Governor-General. Up to the present time he has had control of the import duties into India on English goods. Some time ago we had a Debate in this House on the Indian Cotton Duties. When India gave us her great contribution of £100,000,090 towards the cost of the War we agreed to the duties being raised, in consideration of a promise

  827
  that there would be some day at the end of the War a system of Imperial Preference throughout the Empire, in which the discrimination against English goods in regard to any of our Dominions and India would be done away with. It is the intention of the Bill that the Secretary of State shall no longer exercise his power of disallowing any Act imposing prohibitive restrictions upon the trade of this country with India. On this point the Report of the Select Committee, referring to Section 33, says:
  "Nothing is more likely to endanger the good relations between India and Great Britain than a belief that India's fiscal policy is dictated from Whitehall in the interests of the trade of Great Britain… India's position in the Imperial Conference opened the door to negotiation between India and the rest of the Empire, but negotiation without power to legislate is likely to remain ineffective. A satisfactory solution of the question can only be guaranteed by the grant of liberty to the Government of India to devise those tariff arrangements which seem best fitted to India's needs as an integral portion of the British Empire…. Whatever be the right fiscal policy for India, for the needs of her consumers as well as for her manufactures, it is quite clear that she should have the same liberty to consider her interests as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa."
  That means that the policy, apparently, is that the fiscal policy of the Indian Legislature is to be based on the same lines as that of Canada and South Africa. That means complete fiscal autonomy. Our manufacturres and traders should know that that is the intention of the Bill.
  "In the opinion of the Committee, therefore, the Secretary of State should as far as possible avoid interference on this subject—"
  That is to say, he is not to exercise his power of disallowing any such tariffs—
  "when the Government of India and its legislature are in agreement."
  If the new Legislature is to have a free hand in fiscal policy let us remember that India is a Protectionist country, and that all the ruling classes and her manufacturers and merchants are absolute Protectionists, and we must anticipate that the first Budget of the new Indian Legislature will be one which will not only continue to impose duties upon English imports, but may increase them to such an extent as to seriously cripple this country. It may be, with a powerful neighbour like Japan so close at hand, that in time she may even discriminate against us in favour of Japan, compelled by diplomatic circumstances. Trade between Japan and India is increasing by leaps and bounds. Before
  828
  the War Japan carried to India in her own ships only 30,000 tons, and now it is over 500,000 tons. Her imports have increased many times over during the War, and that state of things is likely to continue, and, astute diplomatists as they are, I very much fear that if the Indian Legislature is left to have control of fiscal policy we may not only suffer in regard to restrictions being imposed on the importation of our goods, but we may even have our great rival in the cotton industry receiving a preference. We have done a great deal for India. War, pestilence, and famine have, to a great extent, been banished by us, and peace and order reigns. The last sentence of the Report of the Committee referred to that subject. There can be no reproach that "in form" in the past the Government of India has been autocratic and has acted apparently in the interests of this country. "Whatever the form, the spirit of its being everywhere and always has been effort for the welfare of the masses of the people of India." You have brought that happy state of things to pass—peace, prosperity, law and order, and protection from war, pestilence and famine. Is the Indian Legislature going to repay us now by crippling our industries, when they have the power to do it, some of which are vital to this country, by a system of unrestricted duties? If the Secretary of State for India is to abandon, as this Report says he is, his check upon legislation of this kind and to leave it absolutely in the hands of the new Legislature of native representatives, then I rather tremble for the future of many of our industries in this country. I know the views of the right hon. Gentleman to a great extent and perhaps this will give him an opportunity of making some statement on the matter.
  Colonel YATE: I listened with interest to the speeches this afternoon. I would like to thank the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) for the way in which he was kind enough to refer to me. I have no doubt that in the eyes of the Noble Lord I am a most antiquated fossil, but still, with all humility, I would like to point out that the views which I have been expressing on this Bill are not entirely my own, but those of the Governors and a great many members of the Civil Service of India, men of the greatest experience in India whose views I have been trying to voice, though it is some years now since I left India. I would like also to refer to what was

  829
  described by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Spoor) as the characteristically witty speech of the hon. Member for East Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees) which was also subscribed to by the leader of the Wee Frees (Sir D. MacLean). I heard with astonishment the eulogy by the hon. Member for East Nottingham of the Brahmins in India. I could not help thinking of the difference between the opinions expressed to-day and those to which he referred in a book written only a few years ago entitled "Real India," from which I would like to quote a few sentences. In this book, written before the War, he says:
  "at the present moment agitation is proceeding in India, Inch is entirely caused by and restricted to Brahmins and other high castes in sympathy with them who even now have an immensely preponderating influence on the government of the country, but would fain be rid of the impartial supervision of British officers who refuse to let them plant their heels upon the necks of the lower castes and classes."
  That was his opinion only a few years ago and is in striking contrast with the eulogy contained in his speech this afternoon. The hon. Member, in this book, also went on to talk of the relations of the Brahmins and the Labour Members in this House. He says,
  "The interests of India on the part of labour Members or labourites, as they are called in the Indian Press, is a new development, and it is not a little extraordinary to see an hon. Member of Parliament with the utmost sincerity and purity of purpose dancing to the tune set by the Congrees as representative of the Indian upper and aristocratic classes… against whom the British Government has had by repeated enactments to protect their tenants."
  We have seen the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland dancing to the tune of, these Brahmins and politically minded men. We have seen him attending with these Indians the Red Flag meetings got up by the Labour party in the Albert Hall and all over the country, but this dancing to the tune of Indians has been described in a way that is hardly complimentary in letters written to India on the subject. Mr. Srinivassa Sastri, a witness before the Committee, who has often been quoted by the Secretary of State, writing to his paper, the "Servant of India," published in Poona, describes the proceedings of the Joint Committee, and says, "The Labour Member (Mr. Ben Spoor) may show more sustained interest than he does.' I think that that is very hard on him. That is all the thanks he gets for dancing to their tune. Then Mr. Sastri goes on to describe the hon. Member for East Nottingham.
  830
  Sir John Rees, he says, is very active on the side of the promoters of the Bill. He tries to bring out our side of the case." That is the Brahmin side—
  "He is strong on the Brahmin versus the non-Brahmin question, and takes the view that the Brahmin in Madras is intellectually the leader of the community, and his superiority is legitimate and beneficial."
  That is also absolutely opposed to what the hon. Member said only a few years ago.
  Sir J. D. REES: I do not admit that to be so.
  Colonel YATE: I may quote another few words from this very interesting letter, Mr. Sastri's:
  "Major Ormsby-Gore and Mr. Bennett take an important part in the proceedings, and though they may not favour drastic views, are very firm on the side of reform."
  Then he goes on to say,
  "Mr. Montagu and Lord Sinha are without doubt the leading members of the Committee, and it is only when they examine the witnesses that one sees the real scope of the Bill."
  That is a testimony to the Secretary of State. The right hon. Gentleman, as counsel for the plaintiff, who is himself, in this case as between himself and the Governors of the Provinces, examines the witnesses and then resolves himself into judge and jury to decide the case.
  I think all will acknowledge that there has never been a Bill of this importance passed through the House of Commons in so hurried a manner. We saw it pass the Second Reading in a few hours on a Thursday, on the day before the Adjournment for Whitsuntide. We saw it committed to a Joint Select Committee, of which, as we know, five out of the six members were already pledged to support the Secretary of State. Then we came here to the Committee of the Whole House, and we found the Bill hurried through in two nights, and on one night our discussions were continued after twelve o'clock. Almost all our Amendments were ruled out by the Chairman of Committees. We had no time, at that late hour, to emphasise any of the points we wished to bring forward. Here we are to-day at the Third Reading stage, in a House in which there are hardly forty Members present. I do not believe the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House have the faintest knowledge as to how far this Bill is going to take us. They cannot possibly have had time to study the Bill—neither of them. The more we

  831
  look into the Bill the more we realise how far it goes. I do not wish to touch on any of the points, such as the Rules, the diarchy, and things of that sort. We have made our protest, and that is all we can do. We have stated our opinions, and we have to leave it at that. I want to recall what the Secretary of State told us yesterday in reference to the Indian Civil servants. The Indian Civil servants, as we know, are highly disturbed over this Bill. They are all anxious as to the, result of its operations. I was very glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say yesterday that all the Indian Civil servants who desire to retire will be allowed to do so, on a proportionate pension, before this Bill comes into force. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has yet told us, but I take it that the covenant under which the Indian Civil servants are now serving is certainly broken, in depriving them of the Governorships of Provinces and in other ways. At all events, if it is not legally broken, it is certainly broken in the spirit.
  There is one very serious point in this Bill to which I wish to draw special attenton. The Secretary of State appears to me by this Bill, and by the Amendments he has introduced into the principal Act, to attach to himself all the powers of his Council and to leave himself in perfect autocratic power without any restraining influence whatsoever from his Council. First of all he has abolished the quorum of five on his Council. What is the reason for. that I cannot say. If the quorum is abolished and three members happen to be present, the Secretary of State can do what he likes by the use of a casting vote, for if one man votes with him the other two are helpless. I think that is very dangerous. If there is to be a Council at all, there ought to be a quorum of five. Then, again, he has abolished the weekly meetings of the Council. Why? They have carried on for all these years without any inconvenience to anyone. The Secretary of State in future need never hold meetings of the Council at all, except when it pleases him to do so. He can go for months without meetings. These two Rules taken together absolutely stultify the use and influence of the Council, and I think that that ought to be thoroughly understood. Then, again, every member of the Viceroy's Council may be a native of India. We all think
  832
  that that Council ought to be a strong Council, but under this arrangement how can British and Imperial interests be properly represented?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Montagu): It is the law now.
  Colonel YATE: There is nothing to prevent them from being all natives of India.
  Mr. MONTAGUE: There is no change in that.
  Colonel YATE: It may be. The only thing is that a man must have been ten years in India. Every native, of course, has been ten years in India.
  Captain ORMSBY-GORE: In the service of the Crown.
  Colonel YATE: The Maharajah of Patiala said that British rule is essential to the welfare of India. We ought to have in the Viceroy's Council at least half the members British-born subjects. All these things are dangerous to our future rule in India. We are weakening the government of India, not only in the Provinces but also at the centre. There is another very important question, and that relates to the various races and nationalities in India. The Secretary of State, as we know, went on a four months' tour to India, and he came back with a new franchise and Constitution for a country which is the saute size as the whole of Europe minus Russia. Look at the anomalies before us now. We have in existence a Committee sitting under the Chairmanship of Mr. Speaker considering the question of devolution. We are thinking of making four different nations in the country—English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh. As against that, we have the Secretary of State for India on a Committee which is trying to form into one nation the whole of the 315,000,000 people of different colours and creeds in India. If we cannot form one nation of the 45,000,000 Christian people in this country, how on earth are we to make the 315,000.000 of India into one nation? It is impossible and it is perfectly anomalous. In the reports of the Joint Committee it is proposed to send out a Commisson of Inquiry. Just consider that there are sixty-nine absolutely different languages, without mentioning dialects, spoken in the Plains of India with which we are dealing, and people of many different races, and the House will, I think, agree that the Commission that we send out should consist of the most

  833
  experienced men we can find, such as is the case in the Milner Commission, which is going to Egypt. I think we ought to have a Commission of the most thoroughly experienced men, and men of the most recent knowledge of India, to go out before this Bill comes into force and inquire into the different nationalities with their separate castes and distinctions. In the Province of Bombay, for instance, you have 20,000,000 of people, consisting of many different races. In Bengal you have 47,000,000 of people. All these things require the most careful investigation, and I do urge the sending out of a special Commission to inquire into all the various nationalities and distinctions, linguistic and racial. We are trying to overthrow the Indians' own ideals of living and general content, and to bring to them a wholly Western idea. I do say that that is a matter which requires the most careful consideration.
  Throughout this Bill there has been no proper recognition of the King as Emperor of India. In India the people reverence their King-Emperor, and would, I feel certain, like to see him again. Instead of having all these Orders issued in the name of His Majesty, we propose to deal with everything Indian by means of a Standing Committee of Parliament. In the case of the Dominions there is no such thing as a Standing Committee of Parliament, and we must recollect that the position of India has been entirely changed of late years and since the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. Since that time India has been admitted as an equal partner with the Dominions in the War Cabinet and the War Conference, and signed the Peace Treaty as a separate entity at the Conference in Paris. All that makes a great difference. What the position now is requires, I think, a statement from the Law Officers of the Crown. Whatever the case may be, all the Orders issued under this measure should be issued in the name of His Majesty the King-Emperor in Council. I had given notice of some Amendments making that point, but they were passed over at a late hour. India reveres her Emperor, and everything that has to be done for India under this Act should be done in the name of the King-Emperor and not in the name of the Secretary of State. Everything should be done to increase the reverence of the people of India for their Emperor, and if this Commission were to go out and inquire into the
  834
  boundaries, racial and linguistic, of the different peoples, there is nothing I should like better to see than that, Commission placed under the presidency of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. I believe if that were done it would be one of the most welcome things that could possibly happen to India. There is nothing the people of India would welcome noose than to see the Royal Family taking an interest in that way in their welfare. I was always very sorry that the announcement of August, 1917, was not made in the name of the King-Emperor, instead of being given out simply as an answer to a private question by the Secretary of State. That cannot be helped now. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but he arrogated to himself the position of King-Emperor.
  Mr. MONTAGU: No, no.
  Colonel YATE: The right hon. Gentleman made that announcement, which, I think, ought to have been made in the, name of the King-Emperor. I do hope that we are going to send out a Commission under the presidency of the Prince of Wales, and if we do I think we will be doing something which will be of great benefit to India.
  Mr. MONTAGU: I do not propose to detain the House very long as I have made so many speeches on this Bill, but I should like to close with one or two observations. I do not think there is any use in following my hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Yate) into the history of the matter, but he raised one or two new points. I venture to think he would have been the first to criticise if the announcement of the 20th of August had been made on the advice of the Government by the King-Emperor, and he would have told us that we had jockeyed the House into accepting a statement that they would not have been able to criticise because it came from His Majesty. For another reason I wanted to make it in the way that it was made because His Majesty the King-Emperor, who as my hon. and gallant Friend truly said, is personally venerated throughout India, could not be associated with the announcement until I was sure that Parliament was going to carry it out. It is no use making announcements. What you have got to make is effective application.
  But all those things are past. Whatever may be said against the methods by which this Bill has been presented, a Bill

  835
  which has taken from its inception something over three and a half years, and whatever may be said as to the time for discussion in this House, I gladly acknowledge that this seems to me to be the most responsible and, at the same time, the proudest moment of my life. I have been associated with the Government of India not as my hon and gallant Friend said, four four months, but for six years, for four years as an Under-Secretary and for two years as Secretary of State. I have kept before me one ambition, and that was to have the privilege of commending to Parliament what I believe to be the only justification of Empire, a step of self-government for India. It is quite true that my hon. Friend behind me said, by way of a taunt, that I once belonged to a party or the section of a party called the Liberal Imperialists, but I never had more than one conception of Imperialism in my mind, and that was that there could be no pride or pleasure in a Crown Colony, no pride or pleasure in domination or subordination, no pride or pleasure in flying the British flag for the benefit of British trade, but that the only Imperialism that was worth having was a trusteeship which was intended to develop the country under the British flag into a partnership in the Commonwealth, and it is for that reason that I commend with confidence this Bill to the House and feel proud to think that in a few minutes it will no longer be the Bill of the Government but the Bill of the House of Commons, for which all Members of it will be responsible.
  3.0 P.M.
  I think it is a great thing for the history of India that the House of Commons has given this Bill up to this stage in a spirit of almost complete, if not complete, unanimity, neither snatching a little more here nor saving a little more there, but giving it generously and with a set purpose that this shall be a transitional Constitution on a road which the House of Commons will to-day determine to follow. Therefore, if the Bill is to be accepted both in its provisions and in what it intends to be, a transitional stage in the development of self-government, a great responsibility rests on the Parliaments of the future. No Constitution of the kind seems to me to be of any use unless it is carried out by those who will be responsible for the government of India on behalf of Parliament—the Secretary of State in Council and the Government there—in the letter and in the spirit. The powers that are reserved to the
  836
  Government and are not to be controlled by the representatives of the Indian electors must be exercised as though they were applicable to a country of growing national consciousness on the road to self-government, and not as if we were administering a great estate. Secondly, Parliament, I think, must see that you do not at one and the same moment withhold things for a particular reason and then refuse the opportunity of procuring them. Do not at one and the same time say it is only a minority that wants these things and then complain when that minority tries hard to convert the majority. You must expect to see political life develop throughout India. Do not deny to India self-government because she cannot take her proper share in her own defence, and then deny to her people the opportunity of learning to defend themselves. These are problems of which Parliament takes upon itself the responsibility by the passage of this Bill. Then I would say alto that I think the passage of this Bill entails the end of the old era. Let us forget the sores of the past, let us cease to abuse whole sections, whole castes, whole races of the Indian people, and on the other hand, is it too much to ask that the Indian representatives of India will cease to abuse the Indian Civil Service, who, whatever differences of view there may be, are after all largely responsible for bringing India to this stage in her history? Let us forget the past and start afresh. I object to the hon. Member for Oxford University (Mr. Oman) saying that he is the representative of the Indian Civil Service in this Horse. I am; it is my business, and my privilege, and my pride to be that. I have never been asked by a Civil servant yet to ask Parliament to warp the history of India for the benefit of the Civil Service, and I think it is upon me to ask every section of Parliament to see that these Indian Civil servants, who work so unselfishly in India, and who will be our help and mainstay in carrying out this policy, do their work unhampered by often cruel criticism, particularly in circumstances when they have not the opportunity of any Parliament in which they can defend themselves. Let us wipe all that out, and let us start afresh. Let us begin on both sides with a desire to carry out the policy of Parliament, because it will be the policy of Parliament when this Bill finally goes through.
  One word more. I welcome the appearance of the Labour party in an organised capacity in the great part which it has

  837
  taken in the discussion of this Bill. I can only hope that some of my hon. and right hon. Friends opposite will take an early opportunity of visiting that country. I cannot help thinking, as I listened to my right hon. Friend who sits on the Front Opposition Bench, in talking about the representation now, at this moment, of industrial labour in India, that he had not yet got—how could he?—a real conception of what industrial labour is in India to-day, and how small is its development. I share with him the welcome which he gave to trade unionism in India, and I hope that it will be, as it has been here, a great power for achieving a better standard of life and conditions of labour in India. But it is no use trying to get a franchise to-day and now for which you have not got the material. I would beg those who have made themselves particularly the spokesmen of Labour on this question—my hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Wedgwood), one of the most popular men in the House, who has shown himself so close a student and so well informed of all the intricacies of this Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Spoor)—to lend their help in shaping the new era which I have ventured to predict.
  [At the point a male occupant of the Members' Gallery shouted, "Give Complete Home Rule to India and remove oppression." He then withdrew.]
  Mr. MONTAGU (continuing): Do not merely support a particular view because it is held by people who are in a hurry, without feeling quite sure that they understand the situation. I have read a letter this morning written on behalf of the Congress Committee. It is one thing to ask for more than this Bill does; it is another thing to fail completely to understand what it does. It is not necessary to belittle what it does do in order to ask what it has done, and it seems to me there are people speaking on behalf of organisations in India who understand some of the provisions, some of our Parliamentary safeguards and constitutional usage, and—I say it without offence—understand some others as little as my hon. and gallant Friend who spoke last understands them. If Labour will act not only as the spokesman of what I may call the extremist party in India, but also as the restrainers of some of the misapprehensions among them, I think that they will find that they will help in the develop-
  838
  ment of political life in India among those who are now looking to them for leadership and guidance, and although I try to realise there are great dangers and anxieties about this Bill, although I would not minimise for one moment the responsibility which I feel, and which I ought to feel, and which I think the House ought to feel, yet I am perfectly certain that there is no better way of consolidating the British Empire than by a measure of this kind, and steps in this direction. I need only conclude with one word of thanks to those who have not been mentioned. I do not refer now to members of the Committee who have sat on this Bill, but I refer to the witnesses whose evidence helped them to arrive at their conclusions.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the third time, and. passed.

  NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND (POWERS) BILL [Lords].
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND (POWERS) BILL [Lords].

    CLAUSE 1.—(Definitions.)
    In this Act—
    (1) "The National Assembly of the Church of England" (hereinafter called "the Church Assembly") means the Assembly constituted in accordance with the constitution set forth in the Appendix to, the Addresses presented to His Majesty by the Convocations of Canterbury and York on the tenth day of May, nineteen hundred and nineteen, and laid before both Houses of Parliament by His Majesty's command;
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, in. paragraph (1), to leave out the words, "by His Majesty's Command."
    This is a purely drafting Amendment. The constitution of the National Assembly of the Church of England, which is laid before Parliament, not being technically known as a Command Paper, it is advisable that these words be left out.
    Lord HUGH CECIL: I beg to second the Amendment.
    Amendment agreed to.

    CLAUSE 2.—(Establishment of an Ecclesiastical Committee.)
    (1) There shall be a Committee of members of both Houses of Parliament styled "The Ecclesiastical Committee."
    (2) The Ecclesiastical Committee shall consist of fifteen members of the House of Lords, nominated by the Lord Chief Justice, and fifteen members of the House of Commons, nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons, to be appointed at the commencement of each Parliament and to serve for the duration of that Parliament.
    (3) The powers and duties of the Ecclesiastical Committee may be exercised and discharged by any twelve members thereof, and the Committee shall be entitled to sit and to transact business whether Parliament be sitting or not.
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, in Sub-section (2), to leave out the words "Lord Chief Justice" and to insert instead thereof the words "Lord Chancellor."
    There is some substance in this Amendment. The HOUSE; will have seen that, since the Bill went to Committee, Clause 2—one of the most important Clauses in the Bill—has been quite revolutionised. The Bill originally proposed that a Committee of the Privy Council should examine all measures submitted to Parliament by the Church Assembly, and report to His Majesty upon those measures, and that the Report should then be laid before Parliament. On the Motion of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Middleton (Sir R. Adkins), the Committee upstairs agreed to change that, and to substitute what now appears in the Bill, that is to say, a Joint Parliamentary Committee. But the promoters of the Bill were extremely anxious that this Joint Parliamentary Committee should not be exactly upon the model of the ordinary Joint Parliamentary Committee with which we are so familiar. The functions of this Committee will not be the same as an ordinary Joint Parliamentary Committee, and it is extremely desirable that its appointment should be made in the most impartial and most judicial manner. My hon. Friend the Member for Middleton originally proposed that this Committee should be appointed, as regards Members of the House of Commons, by you, Sir, and in respect to Members of the House of Lords, by the Lord Chancellor. I must take upon myself full responsibility for having made the suggestion that the Lord Chief Justice would be a more suitable person to appoint the Members of the other House.
    I would like to say that conducting a private Bill through the House of Commons is not an easy matter. The ordinary Member has none of those resources which are open to members of the Govern-
    840
    ment, and I now see, on further reflection, that the suggestion which I made in Committee, and which my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton was good enough to accept, was not a good suggestion. I was led, I think, by the fact that the office of Lord Chancellor is the office of a Cabinet Minister, and I did not properly reflect that the Lord. Chancellor, besides being Lord Chancellor, is also Speaker of the House of Lords, and, therefore, if the Members of the House of Commons on the Ecclesiastical Committee were to be appointed by you, Sir—and I am sure we all hope they will be—it is only fitting and right that the Members of the House of Lords should be appointed by the Lord Chancellor. Therefore, I would like to take this, the earliest opportunity of retrieving what I now believe has been a mistake. I would like to say one word more. It has been pointed out to me that the attitude which I took up in Grand Committee might be held in some quarters to cast some aspersion on the present holder of the office of Lord Chancellor. I think it is hardly necessary for me to say that, in a matter of this sort, neither was I thinking of personalities nor ought any one of us to be thinking of personalities. It was purely a question of what was the proper office, and I should like to take this opportunity of saying how confident I am that the present Lord Chancellor, if these powers were entrusted to him, would fulfil them in the most admirable manner possible. Not only as a personal friend of his, but as one who has watched his wonderful career with great admiration, I should be exceedingly sorry if anybody thought I ever considered he was not a proper person to fulfil the functions that are proposed in this Clause.
    Sir R. ADKINS: I beg to second the Amendment, and I should like to take the opportunity of expressing here to the House itself appreciation of the way in which the view taken by a number of us on this very important part of the Bill on Second Reacting has been substantially met by my Noble Friend and those responsible with him for the conduct of this measure. There are one or two matters outstanding on which we do not agree. It is, therefore, all the more important to recognise quite frankly the important agreement come to. I believe a good deal of the future of this Bill, both in what it does and what it abstains

    841
    from doing, will turn upon the composition and work of this Joint Committee into whose membership both Houses of Parliament will come.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, in Sub-section (2), after the word "appointed" ["to be appointed at the commencement"] to insert the words
    "on the passing of this Act, to serve for the duration of the present Parliament, and thereafter to be appointed."
    If these words be not inserted, as the Clause now reads, the Ecclesiastical Committee, perhaps, would not be appointed until the next Parliament. Therefore this is a purely drafted Amendment.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (2), to insert the words
    "Any casual vacancy occurring by the reason of the death, resignation, or incapacity of a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee shall he filled by the nomination of a member by the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the case may he."
    This Amendment provides for an obvious necessity.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (3), to insert the words
    and notwithstanding a vacancy in the membership of the Committee. Subject to the provisions of this Act the Ecclesiastical Committee may regulate its own procedure."
    This is merely an Amendment to give the Committee power to arrange their own procedure.
    Amendment agreed to.

    CLAUSE 3.—(Measures Passed by Church Assembly to be Submitted to Ecclesiastical Committee.)
    (3) After considering the measure, the Ecclesiastical Committee shall draft a Report thereon to Parliament stating the nature and legal effect of the measure and their views as to its expediency, especially with relation to the constitutional rights of all His Majesty's subjects.
    (6) A measure passed in accordance with this Act may relate to any matter concerning the Church of England, and may extend to the Amendment or repeal in whole or in part of any Act of Parliament, including this Act.
    Provided that, a measure shall not make any alteration in the composition or powers or duties of the Ecclesiastical Committee, or in the procedure in Parliament prescribed by Section four of this Act.
    Amendments made: In Sub-section (3), leave out the words "their views as to its expediency," and insert instead thereof the words "its views as to the expediency thereof."
    In Sub-section (6), leave out the words "passed in accordance with this Act."—[Viscount Wolmer.]
    Sir R. ADKINS: I beg to move, in Subsection (6), after the word "Act" ["of any Act of Parliament"] to insert the words "so far as any such Act relates to the procedure or government of the Church of England."
    If this Amendment be not accepted I will move the next one. It is obviously a matter of common knowledge that there are some things which concern solely and only the Church of England, and the Church of England considered as a religious society devoted to spiritual work. There are other things within the gamut of our laws which concern the Church of England in its position as an established church with special duties and special legal rights, yet which are predominantly matters which concern the Church of England. There are, again, other matters in which it may be argued that the Church of England has some slight and ancillary concern which are really in themselves matters which affect the civil population as citizens primarily and predominantly, and in the ordinary common-sense interpretation of the facts of life. It has been felt by some of us, and it has been expressed in quarters outside, that it is desirable that there should be some form of limiting words to make it clear to the people of this country that the aim of this shortened Parliamentary procedure is to facilitate, and only to facilitate, the religious work of the Church of England, and not to make more difficult the full rights of discussion and debate which His Majesty's subjects ought to retain on matters which concern them all as His Majesty's subjects, and which are only in a secondary sense concerned with the Church of England. Therefore, I beg to move my Amendment.
    I am advised by high legal authority that the form of words proposed will cover what may be necessary to improve the procedure of the Church of England, and what may be desired by the Church of England itself in alteration of its governance—that they, or any words analogous if such, are preferred by the Committee, will make it clear to the public—it is not clear in the

    843
    Bill as it stands—that there is no intention, and that there cannot be any object, in using this Clause against reform when you come to alter any of the laws of England which may in any detail touch the interests or duties of the Church of England. I am fully aware that the Joint Committee will have matters of this kind to consider, whoever come to be the Joint Committee. It is rather serious that they should have so much put upon them, and I think that the public have a right to know, in connection with a Bill like this, which advocates a unique and shortened procedure, that it is only to be used for the specific purpose which has been so often clearly and persuasively declared by the promoters of the measure.
    Sir HOWELL DAVIES: I beg to second the Amendment. It is in no spirit of hostility to this Bill, but with the desire that it should be clearly stated that, in our opinion, the Bill should be confined to the purpose for which it has been introduced.
    Mr. INSKIP: I was a member of the Archbishop's Committee, and I have followed this measure from its inception with deep interest. At the same time I have never hid from myself that it contained defects and blemishes which appeared to me to make it necessary to insert some such words as have been suggested. I should have been prepared to support the Bill and to make it effective and useful as an Act, if it passes into law, notwithstanding these blemishes and notwithstanding the absence of the words proposed. But I do earnestly hope that some such words will be inserted. The Bill prescribes, in the scheme which is part of it, that those persons who are entitled to vote for representatives shall have to make a declaration that they are members of the Church of England and of no other body which is not in communion with the Church of England.
    I regard those, last words as unfortunate and even deplorable. I claim to be a devoted member of the Church of England, but I think those words are typical of a reactionary spirit in those who do not realise the essential unity of the Christian Church; and the desire of many of us that all the Churches shall be drawn together in a still closer union than they have been before. We cannot alter those words under the ruling of the Chair, and it appears to me an essential corollary that if those persons are to be allowed no voice
    844
    in the election of the Assembly, their rights ought not to be subject to the decision of persons in whose election they have no share. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in the speech which he made in the Representative Church Assembly, narrated one after another abuses and scandals in the Church which he said it was desirable should be removed at the earliest possible moment. In so far as this measure is designed to remove scandals and abuses, it has the support of every Christian and other Church, but if it is intended and is to be used for that purpose, I ask, Ought it not to be said at the same time, in deference and justice to my hon. Friend who has moved this Amendment, that it shall he used for no other purpose?
    I look forward to the time when the Church of England and its representatives in this new, Assembly will take the view that we can lie.t1 our unhappy divisions by recognising the unity of all the Churches and can invite the co-operation of our Nonconformist Churchmen in the building up of a greater and more powerful and more spiritual church than exists to-day. When that time comes we shall all be content to see this Bill used for the purpose of making the Church as effective as possible, but as long its those limiting words are in the declaration, I ask the House to insert, some, such words as those which have been proposed in order that they may remove any possibility of bitterness which may accrue I hope there will be no bitterness, and the Nonconformists, I hope, will give a full assent to the measure and allow the Church to use it as it desires. But whether or not the words are inserted in the Bill—and if they are not I shall regard it as deplorable and a blemish upon it—I want to see it made the best Bill that can be made, and hope that one of these Amendments will he inserted with the consent of the Noble Lord in charge of the Bill.
    Viscount WOLMER: Had I been able to say a word or two before the hon. Member who has just spoken I think I should have allayed the fears that seem to exist in his mind. In the first place, let me say that the question of the franchise has got very little to do with the matter. I do not intend to discuss the question of the franchise this afternoon, because I understand, Mr. Speaker, that you have ruled that out of order. May I point out, however, that the franchise is not my choosing, and when it came to a question of a vote

    845
    for the baptismal franchise as opposed to that originally proposed by the Archbishop's Committee in the Church Assembly, I voted against it, and my hon. Friend voted in favour of it, The question of the franchise has got little to do with the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Middleton (Sir R. Adkins). I have made a very great effort whenever my hon. Friends have proposed points on which they do not feel satisfied to try and meet them, and to look at the Bill through their spectacles, and I should like to say that I appreciate the way in which they have directed all their criticisms and lent their assistance during the passage of this Bill. I would, however, ask my hon. Friend not to press this Amendment, or the next Amendment that stands in his name, because they really touch the same point, and that point, in my humble opinion, as I hope to show the House, is already amply covered in the Bill itself. My hon. Friend says we must be perfectly certain that no measures passed under this Bill are going beyond the sphere of ecclesiastical legislation. I think that is common ground between us, but I claim that that is already provided for in the Bill, and I wish to direct the attention of hon. Members to the words of the Bill itself. In the first place, in Sub-section (6) of Clause 3 it is provided that "A measure passed in accordance with this Act may relate to any matter concerning the Church of England." Therefore in this very Clause we are discussing the scope of these measures are limited to matters concerning the Church of England. Then a question arises who is to be the judge as to whether a matter does concern the Church or England or whether it does not. Parliament and Parliament alone can be the judge, and to assist Parliament in arriving at that decision the Ecclesiastical Committee is brought in under Clause 2. We have during the Committee stage strengthened the Parliamentary scrutiny to which measures under the procedure of this Bill will be subjected, and we have done that designedly to meet the sort of point that the hon. Member for Middleton has in mind. We say to him that the only way in which you can guarantee both the efficient and just working of this proposal is that the opportunities for Parliamentary scrutiny, examination and decision should be real and effective. Having provided that, you cannot tie the hands of Parliament as to what its decision shall be, and, therefore, we are taking away the Privy
    846
    Council Committee and putting in this Joint Parliamentary Committee instead. That Committee will contain sections representative of all important opinions in both Houses of Parliament, and they will examine the Bill as it Would be examined by Parliament itself. In Sub-section (3) of Clause 3, they are especially instructed to
    "draft a report thereon to Parliament stating the nature and legal effect of the measure, and their views as to its expediency, especially with relation to the constitutional rights of all His Majesty's subjects."
    Therefore, we have an instrument to conduct this examination, one selected by the hon. Member for Middleton himself. We have them installed and specially instructed to examine every measure submitted by the Church Assembly, especially with relation to the constitutional rights of His Majesty's subjects, and we have the further instruction in the Bill that measures may relate to any matter concerning the Church of England. I submit that that really does secure what my hon. Friend is after, and if additional words were put in they would not produce any greater security but might prove a great difficulty on occasions on which there would be no real division of opinion.
    Sir COURTENAY WARNER: These words are really of importance. I do not think that they can possibly injure the Church of England in any legitimate work which it is going to do, but they would certainly keep out of general discussion any questions which, though they might concern the Church of England, might also concern the general public. One of the things that I for one want to avoid is controversial matters being carried in this way and then coming here, possibly through' the Committee, and leading to serious religious wrangling in this House. It is quite true that there are safeguards to protect the subject generally, but the safeguard that the Noble Lord has mentioned is that they shall be "matters concerning the Church of England." There may be matters which very slightly concern the Church of England and very much concern the general public, and those are the matters which we want to avoid being brought up in this way. Let those matters, which must be very few, be dealt with in the ordinary way by Parliament, and let purely Church matters be dealt with by this Bill. Surely there can be no real injury to the Church of England or to the working of this Bill if matters

    847
    outside the Church are brought up in Parliament in the ordinary way, instead of in this roundabout way through this Committee! It is said that the Committee will be the judge. I do not think that is enough. This House ought to have it strictly laid down that any matters outside absolutely Church matters ought to come before it. It ought to be laid down that matters concerning the privileges of the ordinary citizen should come up in this House unfettered by any decisions or any previous discussions of any Committee or of any Church Assembly, and I hope that the Noble Lord will make this concession. I do not think that it can really affect the working of this Act, and I am quite sure, if there were any things that came up, that it would avoid troubles and quarrels and difficulties with the Church.
    Mr. FRANCE: I did not hear the speech of the Mover of the Amendment, but I heard the speech of the Noble Lord, and, like all the speeches that he has made on this subject, it was one which must command respect and sympathy, because he treats the claims and the feelings of others with such consideration himself. He said that it was a matter of common agreement among all those in favour of the Bill that we wished to protect in every conceivable way the very point which this Amendment is really directed to secure. That being so I searched his speech to find the real reason of his objection to an additional safeguard to secure a thing which he himself admits it is very desirable to secure. The only words upon which I found he relied were the words in the Bill, "any matter concerning the Church of England." It has been pointed out by a previous speaker that there are many matters which concern the Church of England. We want to be a little more definite. There are matters that very properly concern the Church of England with regard to the life of the country generally. No doubt the question of premium bonds concerns the Church of England. No doubt the marriage laws concern the Church of England. No doubt the question of divorce concerns the Church of England. If there is any possibility of doubt a to the meaning of this Bill and as to how far there can be any touching of the life of the nation outside what is intended, it seems to me desirable that there should be every safeguard introduced in the Bill, especially as the Noble Lord generously admits that we are all agreed in desiring to secure
    848
    that end. I therefore ask him to consider whether there is not a good deal of force in the Amendment.
    Lord H. CECIL: I think I can convince my hon. Friend that the words proposed would be entirely unacceptable. The words limit the operation of the Bill to "Procedure and government of the Church of England." I am not quite sure what is the "procedure of the Church of England," but it is quite obvious that those words would not include two important branches of Church reform—the whole of the advowsons and the whole of the material fabrics of the Churches. Those are neither procedure nor government. May I say, as I said upstairs in Committee, that these words or any other words would not exclude gross abuses on the other side. If you are not going to trust to your safeguards, the statute de haeretico comburendo that might be revived. That is one way of governing the heretical members of a Church. Therefore, you cannot rely upon words drawing exceptions. This problem, I need not say, was most carefully considered at the very outset, and has been repeatedly reconsidered by those framing this scheme, which has taken, I think, more than ten years to frame.
    There are two ways of dealing with the difficulty, which is perfectly simply stated. You have what is called the Established Church, an establishment which has grown up not by positive enactments but in the passage of time. It has been the subject of endless Bills and Acts of Parliament, by which one way or the other the fabric of the Church Life and the fabric of the National Life have been intertwined. You want to pass a Bill which enables the Church to deal with its own proper affairs without interfering with properly national affairs. If you try and do it by words divining the spheres. saying, "These are ecclesiastical and these are national," you at once get into a peck of trouble. It is not susceptible of verbal definition at all. It is far too intricate for that, and, if you put in words, you find that you cut out, something from the ecclesiastical sphere which ought to be brought in, and you bring in something from the national sphere which ought to be kept out. Therefore, the method adopted by the framers was to use quite general words capable of being well understood by anyone exercising an honest, genuine discretion, and to give to competent bodies power to exercise that

    849
    discretion. The competent bodies are the Ecclesiastical Committee, which is to scrutinise at leisure the details of the Bill, and, secondly, the two Houses of Parliament themselves, who, after all, are the supreme judges in all such matters. Surely after a measure has been first discussed by the Church Assembly and then scrutinised by the Ecclesiastical Committee, which is to be a Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parliament, the two Houses, acting after all that debate and scrutiny, can be trusted to safeguard the National sphere and to keep the Church Assembly within its proper ecclesiastical sphere.
    Amendment negatived.
    Sir R. ADKINS: I beg to move, at the end, to insert the words
    "Provided also that no existing right of any person who is not a member of the Church of England, or who is a member of some religious body other than the Church of England, shall be prejudicially affected by any such measure."
    Although this Amendment deals with the Bill in a somewhat similar aspect to the last, it is quite distinct, and, in submitting it to the House, I hope it may-commend itself to Members who found hesitation in supporting the previous one. It is a very good thing we all have the tame object, and I welcome and shall recollect what the Noble Lord said in connection with the last Amendment as to the wishes of the promoters of the Bill. But this Amendment raises a different point, as I said, from the last, and I hope the House will consider it one of real importance. In this country you have a number of persons who are not members of the Church of England in any sense, and you also have people who are mom-hers of other communions and are thereby excluded from all share in the conferences and legislation with which this Bill deals, until it comes before the House for a decision "aye" or "no." I hope the House will agree it is not right in a, Bill which does many good things, and which, for the purposes of those who it includes, may be of the greatest public benefit—it is not right that such a Bill should have the power to injure or take away the rights of any persons outside its purview by means of this unusual form of legislation, and this abbreviated form of Parliamentary procedure which are being recommended as a means of getting through necessary reforms which involve great detail, without undue calls on the time of the House. But where it is a matter of taking away the rights of any-
    850
    one, no time of the House is undue; the poorest and most defenceless of His Majesty's subjects is entitled to fair consideration by Parliament before his rights are prejudicially affected. Therefore I move this Amendment, which seeks to exclude from the purview of the Bill the injurious affecting of the rights of persons who are not within the benefits of the Bill and who have no share in the ecclesiastical arrangements for the purposes of which the Bill is promoted. The promoters of the Bill, whom one is so glad to know in many respects are within the area of agreement, will minimise criticism outside this House, will promote good feeling, and will secure wider sympathy in the great and sometimes difficult experiment which they are to try, which will be all to the good if they will let the Committee put it into the Bill quite clearly that they are not going by this Act to prejudicially affect the rights of His Majestys' subjects in this country who are not members of the Church of England, but are members of other communions, and are, therefore, entirely outside the benefits which it is hoped this Bill will succeed in achieving.
    Sir H. DAVIES: I beg to second the Amendment. It is with some reluctance that we, press this point on the House, because during the Committee stage of this Bill the spirit of compromise was so strong that we all seemed to combine our efforts in the desire to improve the measure, but it is absolutely impossible, even in the best spirit of compromise always to secure a. perfect arrangement. These are times when there is a great desire for greater unity among the Churches, and there is a spirit abroad for promoting that unity, but I am afraid that unless some such words as those suggested here are put into this Bill it may prevent members of other Churches from taking that public part in regard to the work of the Church of England which otherwise they would take. I am quite sure that if these words were inserted we should be securing rights that at present exist. Upstairs we were told again and again by the promoters that there was no desire, and, indeed I do not think there is a desire, but I am afraid there is a danger, that the rights that now exist may not exist after the passing of the Act. We all desire it should be a national Church, and not simply a religious denomination. If the Church of England is to be a national Church I am afraid that by excluding citizens from participating in its work it will

    851
    cease to have a claim to be a national Church. These points were brought before the Committee upstairs. Our views were not accepted, and we think it is our bounden duty to bring the matter before the House and to leave the House itself to determine whether or not tire words should be inserted.
    Viscount WOLMER: I do not think my hon. Friends have thought out the consequences that would ensue if this Amendment were carried. They have shown us abundantly already that they do not want to wreck the Bill or injure its usefulness. I will not repeat what I said on the last Amendment about the Parliamentary safeguards being adequate, but I would ask the House to consider what the actual effect of these words would be on the sort of legislation which everybody agrees would be proper legislation for the Church Assembly to submit to Parliament. Let me take the case of the appalling scandal of the sale of livings—one of the scandals which men of all Christian denominations disapprove of and repudiate in the strongest possible way. It is a matter of common knowledge that livings can be bought and owned by people whether or not they are members of The Church of England, in fact, whether or not they are Christians, so long as they are not Roman Catholics. Therefore, it is possible, let us say, that a member of the Jewish faith should own an advowson and that that advowson could be sold to somebody else who was not a member of the Church of England. If these words were inserted in the Bill, no measure could be submitted by the Church Assembly to put an end to the sale of livings so long as that sale was conducted by somebody who is not a. member of the Church of England. It is the same in other matters. Matters of ecclesiactical administration are so much intertwined with our national life that you cannot draw hard and fast lines in a sentence in an Act of Parliament. The only course to pursue is to see that your Parliamentary guarantees and safeguards are adequate and trust to the discretion and judgment of Parliament. I am glad to see the Solicitor-General present. I should like to appeal to him to tell us whether what I have said is not in fact in law, and whether words of this sort would not cut right across the whole schemes of Church reform which I think would be common ground to us all in this House and in the other House too.
    4.0 P.M.
    Mr. SPENCER: I should like to say a few words, first as a Nonconformist, and, secondly, as a Labour Member. I sincerely hope that my Nonconformist Friends will not press this Amendment to a Division. There never was a time when we should approach these questions with a greater degree of sympathy and with a greater desire for the manifestation of a spirit of unity than at the present time. While I recognise that those who are moving these Amendments are prompted by the best possible motives in regard to the Church, yet they might be said by some persons, who are not well-disposed to any of the divisions of the Church, to spring from suspicion one towards the other. I am quite sure that the House will not for one moment ascribe that suspicion to those who are moving this Amendment; but in order to allay any such feeling, and to show a spirit of trust between each denomination, I sincerely hope that the Amendment will not be pressed to a Division. The Noble Lord opposite (Viscount Wolmer), who has been conducting this Bill both in this House and upstairs, has displayed from time to time a very generous desire to meet the wishes of those concerned, and more than once he has told my Nonconformist Friends that if any kind of words could be found which would safeguard both sides, the promoters of the Bill would be prepared to give them consideration. The Noble Lord has shown how detrimental this Amendment world be to the future work of the Church in a very important direction. That was known by many people interested in Church work and who were on the Committee. Having had that pointed out to as, we should not be doing the best service to the Church if we pressed this Amendment. We have sufficient and ample safeguards in this Bill. But assume for the moment that we had not those safeguards. I could not conceive of anything which would be more disastrous to the future well-bring of the Church than an attempt to do anything which would be derogatory or detrimental to the general interests of the country. I am quite certain that the sound common sense and the sense of fairness of those who are conducting this Bill, and of those who are behind them, will always lead them to be very discreet in any step they take lest they should damage the interests of the community. I believe we should have a generous spirit displayed one

    853
    towards another, so that the Church should have a real opportunity of expressing her spiritual and moral mission. All of us must be impressed by the fact that there was never a time in the history of this country when it was so essential that the Christian bodies should be alive to their mission and work as it is at the present time. For these reasons, I sincerely hope that my Friends of the Nonconformist Churches will not press their Amendment.
    Dr. WORSFOLD: I desire to endorse most heartily the sentiments expressed by the last speaker in regard to the unity of the Church. This Amendment has very far-reaching possibilities. It is intended to protect all those who, although not in communion with the Church of England, reverence, tradition, and many other things have almost brought within its fold. The point has been raised as to an advowson being held by a Jew. I hope that in the future such a thing will be dealt with, but if a man has acquired a vested interest in the past, I understand that is not to be confiscated. I view with some alarm the possibility that if this Amendment be not passed those who are not of the Church of England may have that which they have paid for prejudiced by the passing of this Bill. I feel sure that is not the intention. I would put it on a higher plane altogether. Even in the Church of England itself, of which I am a devout though a humble member, there are those who, while they sing of unity, are with their hands raising barriers against other Churches and communions. Therefore, on the highest plane, not as a mere matter of barter and purchase, but in order to bring together those to whom the Church of England, if it is not theirs is a very high and reverend association and institution of this Kingdom, I support the Amendment most strenuously.
    Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING: If I understand the hon. Member opposite rightly that he is pressing this Amendment so as to protect the Church against the bartering by all and sundry of the livings in the Church, I sincerely trust the Amendment will be agreed to.
    Colonel YATE: I wish to say a word in support of what was said by the hon. Member for Central Bristol (Mr. Inskip) as to his objection to the wording of the qualifications for electors of the parish who have to make a declaration that they do not belong to any other religious body which is not in communion with the
    854
    Church of England. I cannot help thinking the addition of these words will unchurch millions of people who can now legally claim to be members of the Church. I also think the Church will no longer be the Church of the nation as it has been ever since the days of the Saxons. I am a Churchman, and I hope to see union in every possible way with the other Churches, but I do not like these stipulations in the conditions of the franchise. The two main objects I have, which I should like to see carried out and which I have serious doubts about, are the preservation of the rights of the Crown with regard to its ecclesiastical patronage, and the parishioners given more control in the services of their own Church. Feeling as I do, I think I ought to support the Amendment.
    Mr. FRANCE: I appreciate the attitude of the hon. Member opposite who hopes in the future for a spirit of friendliness, but if we are to trust entirely to that we should not bother about the Clauses of the Bill at all. If we rely entirely on the benevolence and goodness of the Noble Lord, do not let us bother at all about any safeguarding words in the Bill. But very unfortunately the Noble Lord will not last for ever, and there may to others in future looking at it purely from the commonsense point of view, with the best intentions in the world, and with the most charitable spirit, who will nut look at these things as the Noble Lord does, and in framing a Bill of such an important character it is important to see that we give adequate protection at all future times. The illustration he gave was a little unfortunate. It is said that hard cases make bad law. He spoke of one or two particular kinds of cases which must be very rare, and suggested that it would be possible for people who were not members of the Church of England to acquire livings. I do not know how these things are done, but it is suggested that it could be done in order to sell them. He cannot have read the wording of the Amendment. It is only that the existing rights of any person shall not be prejudicially affected.
    Viscount WOLMER: A Jew at present has a right to acquire a living.
    Mr. FRANCE: I beg the Noble Lord's pardon. I am referring to the existing right of any person, not of an institution. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if any particular Jew held a living to-day that case would not be touched, but cases

    855
    could not be multiplied, and the scandal could not be continued. There may be a few cases of that kind in regard to which it might be necessary to come to the House to have the law altered, but there are many other cases which might be adversely affected, and I should be glad if the Noble Lord and those who are supporting him could see their way to provide every conceivable safeguard in the spirit in which they have so very generously met criticism during the proceedings on the I was not very much impressed by that part of his argument. Much as I desired to see the most perfect friendship and the spirit of charity between the different Churches, we must have some protection, and this Amendment seems to me a perfectly reasonable one.
    Lord H. CECIL: I hope this Amendment will not be pressed. The truth is that any words of this kind are unworkable. I do not think hon. Members have reflected how the Amendment would work. You are going to say that no measure shall be passed which shall be prejudicial to anyone who is not a member of the Church of England. Who is going to decide whether a particular measure is or is not prejudicial to the interests of a person who is not a member of the Church of England? Obviously all measures which directly or indirectly affect the general rights of property of the community might come within the scope of this Amendment. Supposing we deal, as I hope we are going to deal, with the City churches. We shall have to deal with ancient lights when we destroy a church and sell the site. That affects the rights of property of everybody all round, and some of those affected may not be members of the Church of England.
    Sir R. ADKINS: How on earth does the question of ancient lights come in?
    Lord H. CECIL: Quite simply. If you are going to destroy a church and sell the site you will have to make provision for the lighting rights of all those around in the measure providing for the destruction of the church.
    Sir R. ADKINS: If you pull down a church and sell the site the purchaser of the site will not be able to interfere with the ancient lights of the surrounding owners any more than the Church does at the present time. They will be in just the same position, no better and no worse, than the ecclesiastical authorities.
    Lord H. CECIL: They might very easily say, "A settlement which seemed reasonable for the Houses of Parliament and those who framed this measure does not seem reasonable to us." Who is to decide? If you once introduce the word "prejudicial" you propound a conundrum which only a Court of law would be able to decide. This would invert the whole procedure of the Bill. We want this to be a short way to obtaining an Act of Parliament. We do not want to have a scrutiny of each measure before the Courts of law so that you may be troubled with this technical point or that technical point. If that happens, so far as I can see, the whole measure will be in danger. In regard to its operation in particular cases a person might satisfy the Courts that his interests were prejudicially affected. The Courts of law having so decided, the whole measure would go by the board, and you might have to wait perhaps years, may be ten or twenty years, to get another Bill through. The only sound way is to have safeguards openly debated and scrutinised here, and having that ample safeguard, the most complete safeguard in the world, let hon. Members trust it.
    Hon. Members seem to be apprehensive that something affecting the rights of Nonconformists might be passed in this Assembly. Can anyone with any imagination suppose that such a thing is possible? First, you would have to have a measure invading the rights of Nonconformists debated in the Church Assembly. There would be a great deal of opposition. You would to satisfy the three houses that the proposal was a proper one. Meantime public attention would be concentrated. Every Nonconformist would be up in arms long before it was brought to the Committee. The newspapers would be full of letters drawing attention to the provision to which objection was taken, and by the time it came to the Parliamentary Committee the opposition would be overwhelming. I gave an illustration just now about burning heretics. It is quite as likely that Parliament would allow the Church Assembly to pass a Bill for the burning of heretics as to pass a law invading the rights of Nonconformists. Do not spoil the efficiency of the Bill for its own proper purposes because of these quite visionary fears. These dangers are not in the least likely to take place, but

    857
    it is easy to spoil the working of the machinery by the insertion of injudiciously chosen words.
    Mr. HUGH EDWARDS: I would appeal to the Noble Lord in charge of the Bill whether, with a little more of that conciliation which he has shown in the Committee, he cannot meet the position put by hon. Friend who moved the Amendment Speaking as a Nonconformist, I sympathise fully with the Noble Lord as to the scandal of the sale of livings. I feel that that scandal is detrimental not only to the Church, but to the best interests of religion altogether, and I am quite sure he can count upon our sympathy there. But it seems to me that there is another issue of which the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University has lost sight. Would not it be possible to insert words which would make it impossible for the sale or livings to take place by a person who was not a Churchman but at the same time would do something to safeguard the interests and rights of Nonconformists? I do not know whether the Noble Lord sees the full implication of the Clause in the Bill. The Church of England cannot have its cake and eat it. It cannot claim to be a National Church, representing the whole nation, giving equal rights to every section in the nation, and at the same time limit the rights and powers to one particular section. In the Debates on the Welsh Church Bill we were informed again and again by the Noble Lord and his friends that in every parish every parishioner, whether he went to church or chapel, had equal rights in the sight of the law and of the Church. If this Bill becomes law, and this Amendment is rejected, you cannot make that claim. I do not think that anybody but a Churchman ought to have a say in the management and government of the Church; I should resent a Churchman coming into my church and interfering with it, but we do not claim to go into the National Church. The words of this Amendment are, "No
    existing rights of any person." The Nonconformists have existing rights, and this Bill will deal with those existing rights. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] There is a division of opinion, some members of the Church saying "Yes," and others saying "No." The rights of Nonconformists in the parishes will be affected by the pasage of this Bill.
    Viscount WOLMER: No existing right of any Nonconformist is affected by the passage of the Bill.
    Sir R. ADKINS: Under this Bill there is a short method of taking away every right.
    Viscount WOLMER: Only with the consent of both Houses of Parliament after elaborate scrutiny. It is in the power of Parliament to take away all the rights of Nonconformists now.
    Mr. H. EDWARDS: Yes, but the State does not give Nonconformists now any special privileges. I hope the Amendment will be pressed to a Division.
    Mr. D. HERBERT: Those who have been supporting this Amendment have been so genuine in their friendly attitude towards the Bill as a whole that I cannot help thinking they have mistaken the position with regard to this particular point. The last speaker spoke of the Church of England as the National Church. It is because the Church is the National Church, and wishes to remain so, that we are obliged to resort to some procedure of this kind in order to get the necessary measures through. The mere fact that the National, Church is in that position makes it a practical impossibility to carry through any of those great schemes which the hon. Member and others are so anxious to see carried. It would be impossible to carry them through if we had this hindrance put upon us.
    Question put, "That those words be there inserted in the Bill."
    The House divided: Ayes, 27; Noes, 154.

    Division No. 146.]

    AYES.

    [4.25 p.m.

    Barrand, A. R.

    Griffiths, T. (Pontypool)

    Ward, Col. J. (Stoke, Trent)

    Blake, Sir Francis Douglas

    Hambro, Angus Valdemar

    Waring, Major Walter

    Broad, Thomas Tucker

    Hinds, John

    Warner, Sir T. Courtenay T.

    Davies, Sir D. S. (Denbigh)

    Holmes, J. Stanley

    Williams, A. (Consett, Durham)

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

    Johnstone, J.

    Worsfold, T. Cato

    Edwards, Major J. (Aberavon)

    Lewis, T. A. (Pontypridd, Glam.)

    Yale, Colonel Charles Edward

    Edwards. J. H. (Giam., Neath)

    Murray, Dr. D. (Western Isles)

    Young, William (Perth and Kinross)

    Gardiner, J. (Perth)

    Rees, Captain J. Tudor (Barnstaple)

    Grant, James Augustus

    Rowlands, James

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Sir

    Greig, Colonel James William

    Shaw, Hon. A. (Kilmarnock)

    R. Adkins and Mr. France.

    NOES

    Adair, Rear-Admiral

    Forrest, W.

    Mount, William Arthur

    Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher

    Galbraith, Samuel

    Nall, Major Joseph

    Bagley, Captain E. A.

    Ganzoni, Captain F. C.

    Neal, Arthur

    Baird, John Lawrence

    Gardner, E. (Berks, Windsor)

    Nicholson, W. (Petersfield)

    Baldwin, Stanley

    Geddes, Rt. Hon. Sir A. C. (Bas'gst'ke)

    Nield, Sir Herbert

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, London)

    Geddes, Rt. Hon. Sir E. (Cambridge)

    Norris, Colonel Sir Henry G.

    Balfour, George (Hampstead)

    Gilmour, Lieut.-Colonel John

    O'Neill, Captain Hon. Robert W. H.

    Barnett, Major Richard

    Glyn, Major R.

    Ormsby-Gore. HON. William

    Beckett, Hon. Gervase

    Goff, Sir Park

    Pease, Rt. Hon, Herbert Pike

    Benn, Com. Ian Hamilton (G'nwich)

    Goulding, Rt. Hon. Sir E. A.

    Peel, Col. Hon. S. (Uxbridge, Mddx.)

    Bennett, T. J.

    Greame, Major P. Lloyd

    Perkins, Wailer Frank

    Billing, Noel Pemberton

    Green, J. F. (Leicester)

    Philipps, Sir O. C. (Cnester)

    Birchall, Major J. D.

    Griggs, Sir Peter

    Pinkham, Lieut.-Colonel Charles

    Blair, Major Reginald

    Grundy, T. W.

    Pollock, Sir Ernest Murray

    Borwick, Major G. O.

    Guinness, Lt.-Col. Hn. W. E. (B. St. E)

    Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton

    Boscawen, Sir Arthur Griffith-

    Hailwood, A.

    Preston W. R.

    Bowles, Colonel H. F.

    Hall, Lt.-Col. Sir Fred (Dulwich)

    Pulley, Charles Thornton

    Bowyer, Captain G. W. E.

    Hanson, Sir Charles

    Raeburn, Sir William

    Brassey, H. L. C.

    Harris, Sir H. P. (Paddington, S.)

    Raffan, Peter Wilson

    Breese, Major C. E.

    Henderson, Maj. V. L. (Tradeston, Glas)

    Rees, Sir J. D.

    Bromfield, W.

    Henry, Denis S. (Londonderry, S.)

    Richardson, Alex. (Gravesend)

    Bruton, Sir J.

    Herbert, Denniss (Hertford)

    Richardson, R. (Houghton)

    Buckley, Lt.-Colonel A.

    Hewart, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon

    Roberts, Sir S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

    Burden, Colonel Rowland

    Hilder, Lt.-Colonel F.

    Rogers, Sir Hallewell

    Burn, Col. C. R. (Torquay)

    Hills, Major J. W. (Durham)

    Roundell, Lt.-Colonel R. F.

    Campion, Colonel W. R.

    Hoare, Lt.-Colonel Sir Samuel J. G.

    Samuel, A. M. (Farnham, Surrey)

    Carr, W. T.

    Hood, Joseph

    Sanders, Colonel Robert Arthur

    Cecil, Rt. Hon. Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Hopkins, J. W. W.

    Sitch, C. H.

    Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord H. (Oxford Univ.)

    Horne, Sir Robert (Hillhead)

    Spencer, George A.

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J.A. (Birm., W.)

    Hughes, Spencer Leigh

    Stanley, Col. Hon. G. (Preston)

    Clyde, James Avon

    Hunter, Gen. Sir A. (Lancaster)

    Sutherland, Sir William

    Coats, Sir Stuart

    Hurd. P. A.

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. Lord E. (Chichester)

    Cobb, Sir Cyril

    Jesson, C.

    Talbot, G. A. (Hemel Hempstead)

    Cooper, Sir Richard Ashmole

    Johnson, L. S.

    Terrell, G. (Chippenham, Wilts.)

    Courthope, Major George Loyd

    Jones, G. W. H. (Stoke Newington)

    Tickler, Thomas George

    Croft, Brig.-General Henry Page

    Jones, J. (Silvertown)

    Tillett, Benjamin

    Curzon, Commander Viscount

    Kelly, Major Fred (Rotherham)

    Turton, Edmund Russborough

    Davies, Sir Joseph (Crewe)

    Kenworthy, Lieut.-Commander

    Vickers, D.

    Davison, Sir W. H. (Kensington)

    Law, Rt. Hon. A. Boner (Glasgow)

    White, Colonel G. D. (Southport)

    Dean, Com. P. T.

    Lindsay, William Arthur

    Whitla, Sir William

    Denison-Pender, John C.

    Lonsdale, James R.

    Wignall, James

    Denniss, E. R. Bartley (Oldham)

    Lorden, John William

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Dockrell, Sir M.

    Loseby, Captain C. E.

    Willoughby, Lt.-Col. Hon. Claud

    Doyle, N. Grattan

    Lyon, L.

    Wilson, Capt. A. Stanley (Hold'ness)

    Duncannon, Viscount

    M'Donald, Dr. B. F. P. (Wallasey)

    Wilson, Colonel Leslie (Reading)

    Elveden, Viscount

    Macmaster, Donald

    Wilson-Fox, Henry

    Eyres-Monsell, Commander

    Mitchell, William Lane-

    Winterton, Major Earl

    Falle, Major Sir Bertram Godfrey

    Moles, Thomas

    Young, Sir F. W. (Swindon)

    Farquharson, Major A. C.

    Molson, Major John Elsdale

    Fell, Sir Arthur

    Moore-Brabazon, Lt.-Col. J. T. C.

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Viscount

    Fisher, Rt. Hon. Herbert A. L.

    Morrison, H. (Salisbury)

    Wormer and Sir Edward Beauchamp.

    Forestier-Walker, L.

    Morrison-Bell, Major A. C.

    Bill read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.

    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, after Sub-section (6), to insert:
    "(7) No proceedings of the Church Assembly in relation to a measure shall be invalidated by any vacancy in the membership of the Church Assembly or by any defect m the qualification or election of any member thereof."
    This, I am legally advised, is a common formula which is nearly always inserted in Acts of Parliament when any powers are given to any body, so that its proceedings shall not be upset on some technicality subsequently.
    Amendment agreed to.

    CLAUSE 4.—(Procedure on Measures Reported on by the Ecclesiastical Committee.)
    When the Ecclesiastical Committee shall have reported to Parliament on any measure submitted by the Legislative Committee, the report, together with the text of such measure, shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament forthwith, if Parliament be then sitting, or, if not, then immediately after the next meeting of
    860
    Parliament, and thereupon, on an Address from each House of Parliament asking that such measure should be presented. to His Majesty, such measure shall he presented to His Majesty, and shall have the force and effect of an Act of Parliament on the Royal Assent being signified thereto in the same manner as to Acts of Parliament:
    Provided that if, in respect to a measure laid before the House of Commons, the Speaker of that House shall be of opinion that the measure deals with two or more different subjects which might be more properly divided, the Speaker may divide the measure accordingly; and, if any measure be so divided, such part or parts of that measure only as may be specified by Addresses from both Houses of Parliament (whether the Addresses be identical in both Houses or not) shall be presented to His Majesty for Royal Assent.
    Amendments made: Leave out the words "an Address from" ["thereupon, on an Address from each House of Parliament"], and insert instead thereof the words "a Resolution being passed by."
    Leave out the word "asking" ["asking that such measure should be presented to His Majesty"], and insert instead thereof the word "directing." — [Viscount Wolmer.]
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, after the word "measure," to insert the words "in the form laid before Parliament."
    Sir R. ADKINS: The effect of this Amendment, in the vast majority of cases, would be that a Resolution passed would be a Resolution affecting the measure in the form in which it was laid before Parliament. This cuts away a possibility, which was present to the minds of many of us who served on the Committee, and which we thought ought to remain. If these words were not put in, there would be just the opportunity for Parliament, not to amend the measure by altering or modifying it, but to say that they would pass, or direct the passing, of a Resolution, or direct an Address to the Crown, so far as concerned a part of the measure only, so that that part could then go forward and become law, if Parliament so decided, while the rest could await further consideration. That is a very small loophole indeed left for independent Parliamentary action, and, considering that some of these measures will be of vast importance, and are now known to include other aspects than those which are exclusively ecclesiastical, it is surely important that that very limited power should remain to Parliament, in the interest, I should have thought, of the Church itself and in the interest of the welfare of the country. I, therefore, very much regret that my Noble Friend should have put this Amendment down, and, frankly, I was surprised that he had done so. I fully admit that my friends have said all along that they wanted to have as little Parliamentary control as possible consistent with the preliminary arrangements, and, with the power of this and the other House, to say Yes or No; but I respectfully protest against this deprivation at the last moment of certain very limited powers which were in the Bill as originally drafted.
    Viscount WOLMER: That is so. This Amendment has been put in simply to make it perfectly clear that when a measure has passed the Church Assembly, and has then received the blessing of the Joint Parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee, the question proposed by both
    862
    Houses of Parliament will be whether they accept or reject the measure as a whole, because if either House is asked to amend a measure, then that involves a greater tax upon Parliamentary time than experience has shown us Parliament is willing to grant for ecclesiastical legislation. Therefore, this Amendment simply makes perfectly clear what has always been said by the promoters of the Bill from the very beginning, and I think we may regard my hon. Friend's speech as an argument in favour of the Amendment, because he certainly seems to be of opinion that without these words the Bill would not be doing what we all hope it will do.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Viscount WOLMER: I beg to move, to leave out the words
    "Provided that if, in respect to a measure laid before the House of Commons, the Speaker of that House shall he of opinion that the measure deals with two or more different subjects which might be more properly divided, the Speaker may divide the measure accordingly; and, if any measure be so divided, such part or parts of that measure only as may be specified by Addresses from both Houses of Parliament (whether the Addresses be identical in both Houses or not) shall be presented to His Majesty for Royal Assent.
    and to insert instead thereof the words
    "Provided that, if upon a measure being laid before Parliament, the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords and the Chairman of Ways and Means in time House of Commons acting in consultation shall he of opinion that the measure deals with two or mote different subjects which might be more properly divided they may, by joint agreement, divide the measure into two or more separate measures accordingly, and thereupon this Section shall have effect as if each of the measures resulting from such division had been laid before Parliament as a separate measure."
    Perhaps I ought to say a word about this Amendment, because I do not think I am betraying any confidence when I say I submitted this Amendment to my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton, and I was sorry to find that it did not commend itself to him. I want, therefore. to say this: During the course of the Bill through the Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and some of his colleagues pointed out that the very point which arose on the last Amendment—namely, that the House of Commons or the House of Lords were only to be asked to say "Yes" or "No" in regard to any particular measure, caused anxiety in their minds in case the Church Assembly might lump together several different subjects in one omnibus measure, and that,

    863
    while both Houses of Parliament might be willing to agree to four out of five possible subjects in a measure, they might very much dislike the manner in which the fifth subject was treated, and yet be unwilling to reject the whole Bill for fear of jeopardising the other subjects. That was the case put forward by my hon. Friends in Committee upstairs, and to meet those arguments, my Noble Friend the Member for Oxford University put down an Amendment which was carried, and which now forms the proviso at the end of Clause 4, giving to you, Mr. Speaker, the right to divide any measure sent up by the Church Assembly into as many different measures as you thought light, and that was accepted by my hon. Friends as an adequate safeguard against the Church Assembly lumping together two or more different subjects which ought to be presented separately for an independent decision by Parliament. That was carried in Committee upstairs with general consent, but my Noble Friend made it clear at the time that if such powers were conferred upon an officer of the House of Commons similar powers would naturally be desired by members of the other House. I have alluded already to the difficulty that private Members have in piloting a Bill through Committee in this House, and therefore we have not the same opportunities of getting in touch with Noble Lords in another place as members of the Government have, certainly not at a moment's notice. Therefore we tried to do our best on the spur of the moment. That short consideration resulted in the addition of the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University, which was designedly confined to this House. We did not at that stage attempt to deal with the exercise of similar powers in another place. We took the view that Members of the other House would very much dislike this matter being dealt with in this House of Commons. Since then I have conferred with several Members of the other House, and I find amongst them a unanimous desire that the powers that were originally proposed to be conferred upon you. Mr. Speaker, in regard to the House of Commons should be exercised, as regards the House of Lords, by the Lord Chairman of Committees.
    Then comes the question of co-ordination between the two Houses. Let us suppose that the Church Assembly sends up a measure which ought to be divided into
    864
    two parts, and the measure deals with two different subjects. Obviously, it is the interest of everybody that these measures should be divided in the same way in both Houses. Therefore, we are anxious that whoever divides the measure in the House of Commons should have some opportunity of conference with the officer who divides it in the House of Lords. As I understand, there is no precedent for you conferring with the House of Lords, the Amendment appears in the form it does.
    Sir R. ADKINS: This modification is, I think, a rather ill-starred modification. In the Joint Committee the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University brought out this paragraph in the form in which it appears in the Bill. Those of us concerned for securing as much real Parliamentary control as is consistent with the general objects of the Bill did, in consideration of that Amendment, withdraw other Amendments which we had put down by which, at any rate, we could prolong discussion, if we wanted to, and which would have put much more pointedly the fact that this House should have the same power to deal with these Bills. I certainly was under the impression that no alteration would be made by either of my hon. Friends in a thing which was accepted after discussion, and on the fact of which acceptance other Amendments were withdrawn. I was surprised and sorry that my Noble Friend should have altered this. As the original paragraph stands in the Bill it is in your power, Mr. Speaker, to decide whether a measure so laid should be divided, and, if so, into how many, and that gives this House the right by itself to decide so important a matter. Now this House alone will have no right, and it can only be divided by the joint opinion of the Chairman of Committees in this House and the other House. Therefore it is open to the Chairman of Committees in the other House to veto any proposal that might commend itself to this House. The exercise of the real judgment as to whether more than one subject is included is taken away from the chief officer in this House and is dependent upon the agreement of two persons, one of whom does not owe any allegiance to this House. This is really a cutting down of the power of this House of deciding. I understand from your ruling, Mr. Speaker, that it would not be in accordance with Parliamentary traditions for you to confer with anyone representing

    865
    the other House, and that is why the Noble Lord has inserted in this Amendment the Chairman of Committees. Of course I bow to that decision with the greatest respect. The point is not only who should have the power to decide, which I should prefer should be Mr. Speaker, but instead of this House having an independent decision, there is to be a joint decision between the two Houses. There must be and no doubt will be informal conferences between the representatives of the two Houses; it is not right that the decision of this House should be dependent upon the judgment and opinion of anyone in the other House. Therefore I protest against this alteration being introduced at the last moment.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."—[Viscount Wolmer.]
    Lord HUGH CECIL: I wish to ask you, Mr. Speaker, a question upon the practice of the House. I understand that Resolutions under Clause 4 fall within the character of exempted business, and may, therefore, be moved after eleven o'clock at night, and may be taken, so that they could not be actually crowded out for want of time. It is desirable to know, if the worst comes to the worst, if they could be treated as exempted business, and your ruling, Mr. Speaker, on that point would be of great interest.
    Mr. SPEAKER: In reply to the Noble Lord, I am of opinion that the Resolutions to which he refers would be "proceedings made in pursuance of an Act of Parliament," and, they are "proceedings made in pursuance of an Act of Parliament," then they are exempted business under Standing Order No. 1, and can come on after eleven o'clock.
    Sir H. DAVIES: Considerable reference has been made to Free Churchmen and Nonconformists. I have endeavoured, in the way that I have approached this Bill, to view it only as a public citizen, arid, owing to the generous way in which the Bill has been managed upstairs, our views have received very great consideration, and very often have been met. I must say now, as a Free Churchman, that I sincerely hope that this power which we have conferred upon the Church of England by this Bill will help them to remove many of the abuses which we all deplore, and give the Church of England greater oppor-
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    tunities for usefulness. These are not the times when we ought to magnify small points of differences. It is our desire to come together in a spirit of unity as far as we possibly can, so as to bring all the forces of order and of morality to help in the building up of this England, which is so dear to us all. I am sure that the supporters of this Bill and my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton (Sir R. Adkins) will agree with me that so far as we Nonconformists are concerned we wish the very best to the Church of England.
    Sir R. ADKINS: I desire to associate myself with the words that have fallen from my hon. Friend. The discussions on this Bill have taken, on the whole, a most desirable and fortunate turn, because there has been a universal desire to keep in mind the high endeavours and objects which are behind the Bill, and to adjust those, as far as may be, to the constitutional rights of His Majesty's Government. Those of us who would gladly have seen the Bill modified in important particulars — I have only within the last five minutes been handed a resolution, very gravely worded, from the Free Church Council, full of anxiety on salient points—do not yield one iota to those who support the Bill as it stands in our desire that it may be an instrument of great good, and that all the dangers that we fear may none of them come about. I hope that I shall not be thought impertinent in adding this: In the Bill as it now stands, and as substantially it will become law in a few days, there are great experiments in the relation of religious enterprise to constitutional rights which must and will be undertaken. It must rest, with the wisdom of those who work this Act of Parliament, and with their sense of fairness particularly to those who share neither their position nor their privileges, whether this Bill is to be the success that we all desire. If it does become such a success, it will in its turn react upon Parliamentary reform, and we shall gain greater flexibility while maintaining a proper hold over the rights of all citizens.
    Viscount WOLMER: I am very much moved by what my hon. Friends have said, and I have only risen to thank them and to say I hope we have now inaugurated a new era of Christian co-operation in this country.
    Bill accordingly read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.

  MENTAL DEFICIENCY AND LUNACY (AMENDMENT) BILL,
  Read the third time, and passed.

  WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION WAR ADDITION (AMENDMENT) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Major Baird): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  This is a very important Bill. It is necessary in order to enable the scale of compensation to be increased to meet the increase in the cost of living. It is a temporary measure. It provides for an increase of the percentage of compensation payable based on the compensation in the Act of 1906 from 25 per cent. to 75 per cent. It represents what we hope will be a fair solution of the difficulty. It is merely for the war period and six months after. It is to bring the temporary Act of 1917 up to the requirements of the present day and to continue that temporary measure. The whole question of compensation is now under the consideration of a Departmental Committee, and we hope that that Committee will report in time to enable permanent legislation to be brought in in the course of next year. I would apologise for inviting the House to give a Second Reading to a measure of this importance at this late hour if it were not for the fact that it is extremely important to get it. The only questions which will arise are really all Committee points.
  Bill accordingly read a second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

  FERRIES (ACQUISITION BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES) BILL [Lords].
  As amended (in the Standing Committee and on recommittal), considered.
  FERRIES (ACQUISITION BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES) BILL [Lords].

    CLAUSE 1.—(Power of Local Authorities to Acquire, etc., Existing Ferries.)
    (3) A local authority may join with any other local authority for the purchase or acceptance,
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    working, maintenance, or improvement of a ferry under this Act, or may contribute towards the expenses of the purchase or acceptance, working, maintenance, or improvement of a ferry by another local authority, and any difference which may arise between any local authorities who have agreed to take joint action under this Sub-section shall be determined by the Minister of Transport, or by an arbitrator appointed by him, and such determination shall be final aid binding.
    Amendment made: Leave nut the words "have agreed to take joint action," and insert instead thereof the words "are acting jointly or jointly bearing any expenses."—[Mr. Neal.]

    CLAUSE 2.—(Protection of General Public.)
    In the case of every ferry acquired under this Act, Regulations with regard to the working shall be made by the county council for the protection from injury of passengers and the general public: Provided that no such Regulations shall have any force or validity until the same have been confirmed by the Board of Trade with or without amendment. Offenders against such Regulations shall he liable to such penalties, not exceeding forty shillings, as may be thereby prescribed.
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (Mr. Neal): I beg to move, after the word "liable," to insert the words "on summary conviction."
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Can we have some explanation of the meaning of this?
    Mr. NEAL: As the Clause stands, it does not provide a method in which the offence is to be tried which leads up to the penalty provided.
    The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
    Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.
    Adjourned at one minute after Five o'clock.