§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
§ Sir D. MACLEANPerhaps we may have a few words of explanation as to the object of this Bill.
§ Mr. BALDWINFor some years this Bill has been pressed sub silentio, but I am only too pleased to respond to the request for an explanation. The Bill is introduced every year, and it is necessary to pass it within six months or, if the House is sitting, before the House rises at the end of that period, after the Tynwald in the Isle of Man has passed various customs duties for the ensuing year. We have no power to interfere, as the House is possibly aware, with the customs of the Isle of Man. Our function is to ratify what the Tynwald has done, and Statutory force is then given to these duties in the Isle of Man by the very fact of the Act that we pass. I have never dared to contemplate what might happen if we refused to pass this Act; there would undoubtedly be a constitutional crisis of the first water, and I very much trust that to-night I shall not be placed in that most undesirable predicament.