§ Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL, in moving that the House be put into Committee, said: My Lords, it is hard on me, and hard upon the House, that I should be compelled to add a few words on the Motion with a view to shorten our proceedings, and to avert a general debate upon the Bill before us. The noble Earl (the Earl of Wemyss), by his Amendment, would raise a general debate, since he proposes to throw out the Bill at a time and in a manner perfectly unprecedented. When was there ever an example of the House refusing to go on to the next stage and to discuss the clauses of a Bill, after a Select Committee of the House had just examined and revised them? It is a form and species of obstruction which even in "another place" has not been yet arrived at. The noble Earl is well entitled to a patent, not for averting smoke, but for retarding legislation. But the Resolution in itself is as unten- 677 able as the time for making it is inappropriate and startling. It maintains that the Bill ought not to go on until the Acts of Lord Palmerston have been amended. But the Bill proposes to amend them. The last two clauses have no other object. They enlarge the area in which those Acts are valid; they add to the constructions over which they will be operative. "But," says the noble Earl, "until you have amended the Acts of Lord Palmerston, you must reject provisions for amending thorn." The Resolution maintains also that the Bill ought not to go on until the Acts of Lord Palmerston are better administered. But it has been repeatedly explained, while now the evidence confirms it, that they can never be enforced until the smoke of private houses is in some degree abated. If the noble Earl has not acquired that lesson, he is wholly unfit to guide the House upon the subject. But for another reason he is unfit to guide the House upon the subject, he asserted here that the Bill gave the police a right to visit the interior of domiciles, and to the Vestry of St. James that no class of houses could be possibly exempted. Both statements are unfounded, and it can only be supposed that he has never read the Bill he so traduces and calumniates. The noble Earl is also quite alone in the position which he occupies. His own League has not condemned the Bill which he, at last, proposes to annihilate. His own Party, consisting of another noble Lord and of himself, are not united in resisting it. His near Relative (Lord De Vesci) has laboured to correct and to enlarge it. If the noble Duke (the Duke of Westminster) was able to be hero to-night, which he is not, he would oppose the noble Earl to the utmost of his power. Last of all, Her Majesty's Government having given Notice of Amendments to be moved in Committee, cannot, at least, without a flagrant inconsistency, support the noble Karl in refusing to go into it. My Lords, I do not deprecate, however, the hostility of the noble Earl to the Bill if he sincerely disapproves it—although, in that case, he ought to have opposed it long ago on many previous stages. All Bills afford a scope for opposite opinions. I venture only to point out the proper mode of acting on his judgment with regard to it. It is to move against it in the ordinary way on the third reading. 678 Before now, Bills have been rejected on that stage, after going through every other one. At no period, unless I am entirely deceived, have Bills been quashed in transit from a Select Committee to the general Committee. I engage the noble Earl to give up that which ought to be hopeless, for that which may be possibly attained; and at the same time—as regards this measure—to exchange the character of a persecuting friend for that of a legitimate and straightforward opponent. It is not at all too late for him to withdraw the Notice he has given, and to offer that which I suggest to him. The noble Lord concluded by moving that the House go into Committee.
§ Moved, "That the House do now resolve itself into Committee upon the said Bill."—[The Lord Stratheden and Campbell.)
§ THE EARL OF WEMYSS, in rising to move—
That before the law for the prohibition of smoke is extended to private dwellings, it is desirable that the purpose and intention of the existing Acts be more carefully carried into effect, either by their amendment or by their better administration,said that, notwithstanding the outrages of which the noble Lord complained, he had not the slightest intention of withdrawing his Amendment. If his action was unexampled, the Bill of the noble Lord was no less unexampled. He was in sympathy with the general object of the Bill, though not with its provisions. He remembered some years ago a gentleman, supposed to be a speculative builder from Croydon, announced a great discovery and made an alarming prophecy about the doomed city, London, which was to be suffocated in a dense fog, and that those who lived in the pure atmosphere of Croydon were to come in and bury the ill-fated inhabitants of the Metropolis; but London had got on in spite of the fogs. And on the other hand, as regards the question of health, a gentleman of recognized authority in sanitary matters had expressed the opinion that what Tendered the air of London, with its 4,000 miles of sewage, less deleterious than it might be expected to be was the great quantity of carbon with which it was impregnated. His objection to the Bill was that it was to be applied to private houses. His 679 contention was that the present law, with some extension of its application and of the area over which it extended, was sufficient for ail purposes. The Acts at present in force were those of 1853, 1856, and 1866. The Act of 1853 applied to every furnace employed in working engines, to dye-houses, distilleries, sugar refineries, and other similar places. The Act of 1856 extended the Act of 1853 to steamers west of the Nore and to public baths and wash-houses. Then there was the Sanitary Act of 1866, which was repealed as regards the rest of the country by the Public Health Act, 1875, but was still in force in the Metropolis. The objection might reasonably be made that the present law did not apply to steamers with, donkey engines or to clubs or hotels, and that the area over which it extended was too restricted. Before a Bill enforcible against private houses was passed it would be much better to extend the existing law to semi-public buildings, like hotels and clubs. To put private houses under like provisions would be to establish a hateful system of espionage. The present system was for policemen to go about with smoke shades, by which they tested the density of the smoke issuing from any manufactory. If the smoke was denser than the permitted standard the owner was warned, and three warnings were given in consequence of what was observed by the policeman outside before an Inspector was sent to examine what was going on inside. He supposed his noble Friend's Bill would be worked in much the same way. Now, about 50 policemen were at present employed on this special duty. It might then be imagined what an army of policemen and what an enormous expenditure would be required to administer such a Bill with respect to the 700,000 houses in the Metropolis. Further, the cost of the measure to owners and occupiers of the necessary changes in their grates was calculated at between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000 sterling. Public opinion was not ripe for so stringent a measure.
§ THE EARL OF WEMYSSDid his noble Friend mean to assort that public opinion in the country generally or in the Metropolis was ripe for such a measure?
§ THE EARL OF WEMYSSWell, he had read the evidence of Mr. Ernest Hart, and other witnesses, on this point, and he said distinctly that public opinion was not ripe for it. His noble Friend's utmost hope was not that his Bill would be universally applied, but that some of the Local Bodies would be inclined to adopt the proposed system. If such a measure as this were passed it would, in his judgment, remain a dead letter. He heartily sympathized with his noble Friend in his object; but he thought it would be better to proceed slowly on the old lines, and to ascertain whether the present Acts were efficiently administered, and whether their operation might not be reasonably extended. By bringing forward this Bill his noble Friend had shown what good intentions he had; and by passing the second reading their Lordships' House had affirmed the principle that this smoke nuisance ought to be further abated. Having said this much, he ventured now to move the Resolution which stood in his name.
§
Amendment moved,
To leave out from ("That") to the end of the motion for the purpose of inserting the following words: ("before the law for the prohibition of smoke is extended to private dwellings, it is desirable that the purpose and intention of the existing Acts be more fully carried into effect, either by their amendment or by their better administration").—(The Earl of Wemyss.)
§ THE EARL OF HARROWBYsaid, that all the objections adduced by the noble Earl were raised many years ago when Lord Palmerston initiated his great smoke reform movement. The wonderful success of Lord Palmerston's legislation must be admitted by everybody who remembered the state of things that previously existed. One hardly knew the City again after the Act had been in operation a few years. What was the real evil which we had to deal with now? Lord Palmerston intended to deal with all the factories of his time, and consequently he fixed a certain limit But since that time the spread of manufactures had gone on steadily. Clearly, therefore, if we wished to carry out Lord Palmerston's intentions we must attack the factories which were outside his limit was the evil a great one or was it a small one that they 681 had to contend with? He thought the London fogs need only be thought of a; few minutes to convince their Lordships that the evil was a very great one and that it was growing every year. The addition of the 40,000 houses per annum was of itself a source of great alarm. They had beard in medical evidence, that a dense fog in London had raised the mortality to that of the great cholera year. Every year the bulk and the frequency of the fogs increased, and it was becoming a perfect scandal and discredit to us that we were taking no steps whatever to deal with this tremendous evil, which was causing an increased rate of mortality. The trees and plants were telling the same story. The last conifer in Kensington Gardens had given up the struggle, and the roses were stunted and dwarfed. His noble Friend had talked of this Bill as if it were a measure of the most tyrannous and sweeping character. Its first object was to extend the area of Lord Palmerston's Act. It was next proposed to bring clubs, hotels, and refreshment houses under the operation of the Bill. Let any noble Lord walk down Northumberland Avenue and watch the chimneys of the great hotels pouring forth great volumes of smoke which floated across to the National Gallery and evidently produced most serious evils. Again, their Lordships had only to watch their clubs in order to see the damage done by the smoke which issued from them. Their Lordships would observe that it was not a question of prohibiting smoke—for that, of course, would be absurd—but of abating smoke. The best witnesses agreed that if we could cope with the smoke of the kitchen chimneys we should enormously diminish the magnitude of the smoke nuisance in London. A grate in a kitchen could be dealt with at a very small cost—from 10s. to 30s. for a very large kitchen range. Was there the slightest danger of this Bill being put in force tyrannically? The power of enforcing the Bill was placed in the hands of the Local Authorities, who were elected by the inhabitants, and the measure was much more likely to be inoperative than too operative or too drastic. Moreover, any regulation relating to the abatement of smoke must be sanctioned by the Home Secretary. there was no real danger in making the experiment. The 682 smoke from steamers could easily he dealt with. One large Company was already, with great advantage, consuming its own smoke. The smoke from locomotives was another question which would have to be considered. He ventured to suggest that they should try the experiment of this simple Bill. It was a step, at any rate, in the direction of amendment, which could not lead to any grave or tyrannical results, because the powers under the Bill were placed in the hands of people who lived in the houses affected by it. He implored their Lordships to take a step forward in this great question, and he hoped that if the experiment could not be made this your Her Majesty's Government would hold out some distinct hope of dealing with the question completely and thoroughly in the next Session of Parliament.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)said, he was willing to admit the necessity of some measure for the abatement of this nuisance; but he could not resist saying that he thought the Bill before the House was rather an obstruction than an aid to doing good. If the object, which he thought all would agree was a good one, were attained by this Bill, he could quite understand the argument of his noble Friend who had just sat down; but he found that every tiling was to be left to the Local Authorities, who were to make any regulations they thought fit for the abatement of smoke in any private dwelling. The Local Authority might impose on offenders such reasonable penalty as they thought fit; in fact, the Bill provided no limit at all. This was the first time that legislation proceeded on such lines. He could not help thinking that although its object was a very good one this Bill was ill-devised, clumsy, and inconvenient, and would be totally inoperative for the purposes for which it was intended. He hoped their, Lordships would not proceed further with it.
LORD MONKSWELLmaintained that public opinion in many parts of the Metropolis was in favour of the Bill. The expense of putting the Act in force would be reimbursed over and over again in the course of a few years. He hoped, therefore, seeing that the Government had not adopted the course taken by the noble Earl on the Cross Benches, but had put forward such Amendments 683 as would make the measure workable, then Lordships would proceed with the Bill.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORDsaid, he would remind their Lordships of the system of police supervision in domestic matters which this Bill would inaugurate. It seemed to him that the Bill was drawn in the interests of the producers of gas and coke, and for the benefit of the Welsh coalfields. In his opinion, the small amount of damage from the ordinary domestic fireplace did not call for the interference which would be absolutely necessary under such a measure as this. Reference had been made to the dense fogs of a few years ago as having caused a large death rate. It was the custom to attribute the severe fogs and dark days that occurred in London to the smoke, and he was of that opinion until a short time ago. During the last Whitsun Recess an excessively black fog hang over London for 21 hours; that fog he traced back to Holland, whence it got to Dover, and the next day, eight hours later, it reached London. That fog could not. therefore, be duo to London smoke. He believed that if the existing law was more frequently enforced the smoke nuisance would be much lessened. The prime cost of the apparatus prevented many persons from burning the smoke of their furnaces, and unless they were fined they would continue to evade the law. He heartily supported the Amendment of the noble Earl (the Earl of Wemyss).
§ LORD HOBHOUSEobserved that he thought it probable different methods of dealing with smoke would be found suitable in the various parts of London; but, whether that was so or not, he was sure that no one knew the best method, and that by the Local Authorities trying different plans the best method would gradually be discovered. It had been said that the control of the Home Secretary in this matter would be illusory. It was not his experience that in local matters the control of the Central Authority was illusory. On the contrary, there wag a disposition on the part of the Central Authority to make all the Local Authorities act in a single groove, and to adopt methods which were sometimes unworkable. He thought that the Local Authorities, under the supervision of the Home Secretary, might be trusted to carry out the provisions of this Bill, which he should support.
§ EARL BROWNLOWsaid, that on behalf of the Government he should support the Amendment of the noble Earl (the Earl of Wemyss), having always held the view that private dwellings should he excluded from the operation of the Acts. There was extreme difficulty in legislating on a subject such as this Bill attempted to deal with. Inquiries had been instituted by Parliament on the subject. There had been a long correspondence on the subject, and all that he could say was that Her Majesty's Government were carefully considering it with a view of ascertaining whether any amendment could be made in the present law, or whether the difficulty could be met by a better administration of the present law.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERYsaid, he should support the Motion to go into Committee on the Bill. He had not much confidence in the argument that it would be better to await the time when London should have a local government, and to leave this question to be dealt with by that Body. Nor had he much confidence in waiting till the Home Office had made up its mind on the subject. He had no great affection for the Bill; but on one broad ground he did entirely sympathize with his noble Friend behind him (Lord Stratheden and Campbell). His noble Friend had two or three times been permitted by the House to read the Bill a second time, and on the third occasion the House deliberately referred the Bill to a Select Committee. The Committee having sat upon the Bill, and the measure having returned from that body, it was now proposed to reject it without allowing it to go through the ordinary stage of Committee. To burke the Bill in this way seemed to him to imply a disregard for the Select Committee that had sat upon it. Out of respect for their own proceedings, and their own Committee, it appeared to him absolutely necessary that their Lordships should go into Committee on the Bill, in spite of the Amendment of the noble Earl (the Earl of Wemyss). If the noble Earl had any wish to put an end to the measure at a later stage, the proper course would be to do it on the third reading.
LORD DENMANsaid, that it being the usual custom of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches to propose Resolutions and then to withdraw them, he 685 scarcely knew how to act in this matter‥ If the noble Earl pressed his Amendment to a Division he should support it, as he thought that the present law should be enforced before fresh legislation was entered upon, especially as a Member of the Government had opposed the second reading. It seemed to be forgotten that in 1820 Mr. Parkes, a worsted manufacturer at Warwick, got a patent for consuming the smoke at his works; and the first Lord Penman saw the air as pure as Mont Blanc, and linen bleaching below the tall chimney. Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor brought in a Bill to indict defendants for a nuisance if they did not consume their own smoke; and a power was given to the Court to order the building of furnaces, at the expense of defendants, suited to consume the smoke; but it seemed to have not been workable. When the Prince of Wales was in Sheffield all the fires were put out. He (Lord Denman) thought the House ought to be obliged to the noble Lord for causing the Bill to be studied; but he believed that more inquiry should be made before a compulsory measure was passed.
LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELLsaid, he had no desire to add anything to the speeches of his noble Friends in favour of the measure. He would point out, however, that whether their Lordships desired to carry it or not, they were bound to consider the Amendments offered by himself and by the Government. They could not judge the Bill until its final shape was given to it. Even if the smoke of London was to be prolonged the decorum and the dignity of that House ought not to be impaired, which they would clearly be if the Amendment triumphed.
§ On Question, Whether the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Motion?
§ Their Lordships divided:—Contents 12; Not-Contents 30: Majority 18.
§ Resolved in the negative.
§ Then Motion, as amended, agreed to.