§ Colonel WEDGWOODI desire, by permission of the House, to make a personal explanation. Speaking on 25th February on the Coal Commission Bill, I said:
I will give an illustration of what I mean, which was told me by Sir Arthur Markham. He told me ten years ago now, but the illustration holds good now as much as it did then. He said, 'I wanted to open up the coalfields under the Welbeck Abbey Estate, and I went to the Duke of Portland and offered him royalties which would have amounted to £50,000 a year. It was a fixed rent of £25,000, and the output would have been such as to produce £50,000 in royalties in a year. But the Duke declined to allow the estates to be worked, with the result that the coal was not got and the people who might have been employed getting the coal and the people who might have been using it were either not employed or unable to get it.'…The Duke of Portland was able to refuse to allow Sir Arthur Markham to work the coal because so long as he kept it idle he was neither taxed nor rated upon its value."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th February, 1919, cols. 1641 and 1642, Vol. 112.]In to-day's papers the Duke of Portland writes as follows:I wish to repeat that the statement that Sir Arthur Markham ever made to me such an offer as Colonel Wedgwood suggests is absolutely untrue. He never made an offer at all for the Welbeck coal, either at £25,000 fixed rent or £20,000, or any other figure. In 1907 I was in negotiation with neighbouring owners for the laying out of a coalfield under Welbeck Park and adjacent lands, and I was desirous to let that coal as promptly as possible. In November of that year Sir Arthur Markham's agents stated that they were instructed by him (then Mr. Markham) to make application for a lease of this coal, and they stated that he was prepared to pay a higher royalty than was then being paid by my other lessees. The reply sent to that letter was that Mr. Markham's name would be put on the list of applicants, but, as I have already said, Sir Arthur Markham never named a figure or price at any time.I accept unreservedly the Duke's statement, and desire to offer my apologies; both to this House for giving an inaccurate illustration and to the Duke for giving currency to an erroneous offer concerning his property. Needless to say, my illustration was not directed against the Duke as a landlord acting perfectly within his rights, but against a rating system which predisposes landlords to an unsocial exercise of those rights. Sir Arthur Markham is dead. He was a friend of mine, universally loved and respected in this House, both for his courage and for his independence. No tittle of blame must be allowed to rest on him. Though he cheeked the story, I am not sure that he authorised me to use the illustration, and, in any case, the mistake was mine in 619 stupidly confounding a tentative offer or proposal never communicated to the Duke with a firm offer never made. I thank the House for allowing me the opportunity to make this statement.