§ [THIRD READING.]
§ Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read for the Third Time."—(The Lord James of Hereford.)
§ THE EARL OF WEMYSSMy Lords, before this Bill leaves your Lordships' 6 House, I wish to say one word with regard to it. I was not here when my noble friend introduced it, so that I do not know whether he did or did not act upon a suggestion which I made to him last session.* This is what I call thoroughly retrograde legislation. It fixes the price of money. I suggested last year that whenever any member of this Government brought in a retrograde measure, he should appear in the costume of the period to which legislatively he asked us to revert. My noble and learned friend is now asking Parliament to retrograde to the Dark Ages—to, I think, the customs of the 14th or the 13th centuries, when all these usury questions were in the hands of the clergy; and, as I ventured last year to say, my noble friend would, if he had followed my suggestion, have appeared in the dress of the Bishop of Hereford of that period. I do not know whether he followed that very excellent and valuable suggestion. If he had done so it would, I think, have been a warning as to what this kind of legislation really means. If you fix the price of one article—and money is the article probably most current in the world—why should you stop at that? Why should you not fix the price of other things? We all know what exceptional legislation means. The landlords have had a pretty good turn of it with regard to exceptional legislation in the matter of land. I remember hearing Mr. Gladstone, when he brought in his Bill in 1870 which interfered with contracts in Ireland, say, in eloquent language, that it was purely exceptional legislation, and that his hearers should not for a moment imagine that it was going to extend to other parts of the United Kingdom. But it had not been passed more than a year or two before it moved across the Irish Sea and settled in Scotland, and our socialistic Government has, I believe, got another Bill for further amending the law with reference to agricultural holdings. The point of my argument is this. When once you begin this sort of thing you never know where it will end. I recollect at that time holding strongly the other view, that it is not the duty of the State to make men's contracts or to interfere with them, and I also remember pointing out to those who thought they were not interested because
* May 1st, 1899. See The Parliamentary Debates [Fourth Series], Vol. lxx., page 928.7 they were not landlords, that they could depend upon it, if this principle was once broken through, that the so-called exceptional legislation would extend to almost everything. I have in my hand a copy of a Bill entitled the Wages Boards Bill, the object of which is to provide for the establishment of wages boards with power to fix the minimum rate of wages to be paid to | workers in particular trades, the socialistic Home Secretary of the day having the power to say what those trades are to be. Such a Bill as this is the direct consequence of the legislation proposed by my noble and learned friend. The great peculiarity of this Bill is the third clause, which says—A wages board shall consist of a Chairman and such number of other members, not more than four nor less than ten.Who drafted that Bill I do not know, but these are the persons who have such great powers of calculation and who will fix the wages in every trade which the Home Secretary desires. The names at the back of the Bill are Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Burns, Mr. McKenna, Mr. Tennant, and Mr. Trevelyan. Mr. Burns admitted to me, at a discussion at the Society of Arts last year, that the object he and those who worked with him had in view was that all the instruments of production should be in the hands of the State, and that private enterprise should be done away with. I wish to call attention to the rapid way in which this is being brought about. The Bill which my noble and learned friend is now asking the House to read a third time met with a timely end in the House of Commons last year, and I hope it will meet with a like fate during the present session.On Question, agreed to; Bill read 3a (according to order); an Amendment made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.