Lords Sitting of 13 October 1909

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I beg to ask the noble Earl the Leader of the House a Question of which I have given him private notice—namely, if he can tell us anything with regard to the course of business next week, and perhaps during the following week. Noble Lords from Ireland are naturally anxious to know what opportunities they will have of discussing the Irish Land Bill on Report.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE): My Lords, I understand that the business for to-day and to-morrow is set out on the Paper, and that it will not be for the convenience of noble Lords from Ireland to take the Report stage of the Irish Land Bill before Tuesday, the 19th. In that case I would suggest, with your Lordships' concurrence, that the House need not sit on Monday next as there will be no business to take on that day. I am not certain how long the Report stage of the Irish Land Bill will take, but in the event of its being finished on Tuesday we propose to take the Committee stage of the Development Bill on Wednesday, the 20th. That is supposing the Land Bill Report does not take more than one day, but if it should occupy two days then we should propose to take the Development Bill on Thursday, the 21st. Then there is the remaining stage of the Scottish House Letting Bill which we propose to take on Wednesday, the 20th, or Thursday, the 21st. As to the following week, there remains the Third Reading of the Irish Land Bill and the remaining stages—Report and Third Reading—of the Development Bill, and we propose to devote Monday and Tuesday to those two Bills; it is not, I think, necessary or desirable to say at the moment which Bill will be taken on each day, because we should prefer to meet the convenience of noble Lords. That is so far as I know the business before the House, and unless further business should appear on the Paper, I should think it would be possible for your Lordships to adjourn for a few days on Tuesday, the 26th.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I understand the noble Earl proposes to
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leave it open whether we should take the Development Bill on Wednesday, the 20th or Thursday, the 21st next week. I gather from my noble friends from Ireland that there is at any rate a possibility that more than one night will be required for the Report of the Irish Land Bill, and I also understand Thursday would be more convenient than Wednesday for the Development Bill. It might be wiser, I think, to settle now that the Development Bill should be taken on Thursday, leaving Wednesday to be made use of for the Irish Land Bill and the Scottish Bill, if necessary.
THE EARL OF CREWE: I have no objection whatever to that course.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.
Read 3a (according to order), with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

ASYLUM OFFICERS SUPERANNUATION BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
LORD MONK BRETTON: My Lords, this is a Bill to insure the provision of pensions to asylum workers in England, Scotland, and Ireland. As the present law stands in England and Ireland there is permissive power given to local authorities to grant these pensions, but in Scotland there is no permissive power at all. The object of this Bill is to provide for uniformity of pensions all over the country, and to provide security of pensions to all asylum workers. I do not think in your Lordships' House, where so many of your Lordships have experience of local government and through your visiting committees know much of asylums, that it is necessary I should say much as to what a deserving class this is for which this Bill is intended. It is a dangerous profession and one very trying to the nerves, and there are a great many breakdowns among asylum workers. This Bill is intended to provide similiar conditions for these asylum workers as is already enjoyed by the prison service and the police. Your Lordships have already given your assent to the principles of this Bill when you passed the Second Reading of a

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Bill which was moved by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, in the year 1898, and which provided that—
"It shall be the duty of the visiting committee of every asylum to grant superannuation allowance to their officers and servants, and the allowance shall be not less than one-sixtieth of the value of the salary and emoluments for each year of service."
This Bill, the Second Reading of which I am now moving, has passed the House of Commons. It was referred there to a Select Committee, and that Committee reported unanimously in its favour, and their evidence, which is a very strong argument for this Bill, shows that the asylum service suffers from the lack of a uniform pension system. It was shown that in Scotland the workers leave very largely for the prison service, and that in England they leave for the police and the Poor Law.
This Bill divides asylum workers into two classes. For the first class, which is the more favoured class, it provides that if they are fifty years old and have worked for fifteen years in an asylum they shall be entitled to one-fiftieth of their salary and emoluments for each year of service. The second class is to be twenty years in an asylum, sixty years old, and is to receive one-sixtieth of the salary and emoluments for each year of service. The intention is that those who have the care and charge of the insane and who have the danger and responsibility of the profession, should be in the first class and should get the more favoured treatment, and that the second class should consist of those who are workers in the asylum but have not the same danger, though they are exposed to that nerve strain which is inevitable to those who have contact with lunatics. The Bill does not provide as to how those classes are to be settled. The decision is left to the local authority. It would be impossible to put it into an Act of Parliament, and the local authority who administer the asylum are obviously the best people to decide this matter. Clauses 7 and 8 of this Bill provide for contributions in the form of a sort of deferred pay from the asylum workers for their pensions. That is, two per cent. of salary and emoluments. In saying that let me call your Lordships' attention again to the clause which I read from Lord Halsbury's Bill, which provided one-sixtieth as the scale of superannuation. This Bill provides one-fiftieth, but the difference
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between the two Bills is that there are contributions in this case and there were none in the other, and consequently the difference between one-fiftieth and one-sixtieth is discounted in that respect.
Then, my Lords, there is a provision in the Bill with regard to existing servants. As they have paid no contributions in the past they are to be charged a higher contribution, but if they object, under Clause 13, they are permitted to contract out and to remain as they were. Then there is another provision for those who are injured in their work after ten years service. They are to have pensions. I propose, if this Bill gets to the Committee stage, as I hope it will, to move an Amendment to provide that a local authority may grant gratuities or pensions in special cases of injury, even when workers have been less than ten years in the service, but it is to be a permissive and not a compulsory Amendment as regards a local authority. Clause 4 contains the principles of aggregation in reckoning service; that is to say, when a man has worked under one local authority and he moves to the asylum of another local authority he will not lose pension service by doing so. The object of that is to better the profession, to provide for more interchange, and to extend the horizon of asylum workers. There is, I think, another lack in the Bill. I did not draft it, and it is not my fault. There is no machinery in the Bill to provide that one local authority may recover from another local authority money in respect of pensions. That is a want which I hope to remedy in Committee if His Majesty's Government do not suggest a clause.
The whole Bill is to provide uniformity of treatment. At the present time a great many local authorities say that they will judge the cases of these people on their merits. A local authority may be in an economical mood or it may be in a generous mood, and the pension which a man gets depends very largely on the frame of mind of the local authority at the moment. Consequently there is injustice. Then there is another point which is remedied by the Bill. There are cases of one asylum serving a number of counties. I believe in the case of the county of Denbighshire that is one of a group of five counties which have one asylum. When an officer in that asylum wants a pension his pension has to run the gauntlet of five local authorities, and, consequently,

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if two of these authorities are at loggerheads with one another about something quite different, this man's pension may be prejudiced. That is an evil which is got rid of by this Bill.
Now I would come to some of the objections, and I do not think there are many, which can be raised to this Bill. I do not think your Lordships will say that this is an interfering Bill. There have been many interfering Bills which have put officials in Whitehall over the elected representatives of the people in the county councils, but this is not one of them. This Bill only enforces what is the common practice of local authorities in England and Ireland with regard to pensions. It is very difficult to discover what is the attitude, or what is likely to be the attitude, of local authorities towards a Bill of this kind. I believe if you circularise local authorities with regard to a Bill which is pending before Parliament it comes into the hands either of the clerk of or one man in the local authority. He states his views with regard to it, and the whole local authority votes without having seen the Bill or knowing what it contains, and therefore I do discount opinions which are given by local authorities with regard to Bills pending in Parliament. But I understand that the County Councils Association have circularised their counties throughout England with regard to the Bill, and the only objections, so far as I know, are given in the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons. I do not know of any others.
I should like to call your Lordships' attention to the objectors. In the first place, there is the Asylums Board of Lancashire. I am very much surprised to see that board quoted as an objector. I can only say that I have spoken with the chairman of that board, that he is in favour of the Bill and has authorised me to say so, and that he was not aware that his board objected. Then there is the West Riding of Yorkshire. Well, the West Riding of Yorkshire had a representative before the Committee. I do not know whether he came to curse the Bill, but he ended by blessing it, and by telling the Committee that though they objected to some of the details of the Bill they did not object to its principles. Then there is the County Council of East Sussex, of which I have the honour to be a member. I know the story of the resolution passed
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by the East Sussex County Council, and although I will not inflict it upon your Lordships I do not think their opposition is serious. Then there is the Visiting Committee of Leicestershire, which is merely a visiting committee, and there is the County Council of Nottinghamshire. Really I think the opposition comes down to the County Council of Nottinghamshire. There is a resolution, which is also quoted, by the Municipal Corporations Association. Now the Municipal Corporations Association are not the municipal corporations, and I must say I discount a resolution of theirs as well. They say they would prefer to have a wide scheme for pensioning all the servants of all local authorities. I ask your Lordships, Is that a question of practical politics at the present moment? I do not think it is, and, in any case, the claim of this Bill for preferential treatment for asylum workers is that they are in a dangerous profession. That has been the practice of Parliament throughout. Since 1845 they have been selected as people who are in a dangerous profession. In the same way, in 1890, under the Police Act, the police were given preferential treatment because they were in a dangerous profession, and I believe that in the London County Council you find that the members of the fire brigade are given special treatment because they are in a dangerous profession. That is the ground on which I urge this Bill.
The other objection to this Bill, I suppose, is the question of expense. No doubt the Police Act raised the rates. I would make any objector to this Bill a present of that; but I would point out that there are a number of local authorities at the present time, notably Lancashire and the London County Council—who, by the way, are in favour of this Bill—who are more generous to their asylum workers at the present time than the provisions of this Bill. Consequently, one may say that they would be gainers in that respect, and that that would be an economy. But I must go into an argument which has been urged on the other side with great force in a Memorandum which was issued by Mr. Jarman of the National Debt Office. In that Memorandum it is pointed out that the object of this Bill is to give stability to the asylum service. If you succeed in giving stability to the asylum service you will increase necessarily the number of pensions, and consequently, it was said,

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the asylum service would be as expensive as the police service had proved. There are several answers to that, and I feel it my duty, even at the risk of wearying your Lordships, to give them to you. The asylum service is different from the police service for this reason. There always must be a great number of early withdrawals from the asylum service. A great number of attendants are young girls who invariably leave on marriage; and many asylum attendants will always leave, early because of the unattractive nature of the service; people will never stay in it in the same way as they do in the police. A point on which I would like to lay stress is that in the police a man is pensioned according to the salary he is receiving when he goes out of the service. Under this Bill an asylum worker has to be paid on the average he has been receiving for the last ten years, and for that reason, my Lords, I would point out that there is very good ground for saying that this Bill will not have any appreciable effect on the rates either one way or the other.
I must say a word with regard to the scale, because Scotland is in an entirely different position. This Bill provides for the same conditions of pension in district and parochial asylums in Scotland. It does not affect Royal asylums, which are a different class of institution in Scotland, and are very like our hospitals, although they take pauper lunatics. At the present time there is not even a permissive law to allow local authorities to give these pensions in Scotland, and with that object a Bill was introduced this session in another place. In the vicissitudes of its course it met this other Bill from England and Ireland, and it got amalgamated with it, and there now comes before your Lordships one Bill for England, Ireland, and Scotland. Dr. Johnson, who gave evidence on behalf of the District Asylums of Scotland, speaking of the anxiety of local authorities to grant these pensions, said that sometimes an asylum authority, when an officer wished to retire, made him a consultative officer, although they never consulted him, but merely to give him a pension; and in another case they made him a gate-keeper merely to get round the law. Then Mr. Spence, the Secretary of the General Lunacy Board, gave very important evidence that every year in Scotland one-third of all the employés in asylums go out, seventy-five per cent. of their own accord.
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This shows what a very transitory service this is in Scotland. It is very much more transitory than the prison service, and the reason given is that there is no security with regard to pensions. If there is this transitory service in Scotland it must follow it is very bad for the patients. I am not going to say that this Bill can become law without affecting rates in Scotland, but I do say that I cannot understand why an asylum worker in Scotland should be in a wholly different category from one in England or Ireland. They are entitled to the same consideration, and I think they should be included in this Bill. I understand that there have been no objections from lunacy boards in Scotland to this Bill, and although the time has been short I have been given a list of seven lunacy boards in Scotland who are anxious for it.
I would say a word with regard to Ireland. I was handed a telegram this morning which stated that all the county councils in Ireland except two have approved of this Bill. It was given in evidence before the Committee in another place that seventy per cent. of the officials of the asylums in Ireland were favourable to it, and of the remaining thirty per cent. I believe half have not answered and the other half belong to one particular asylum which give such exceptionally good pension treatment that they do not think they will be so well off under this Bill. There was also very good evidence given that there was an unequal treatment in different asylums in the granting of pensions. I am not altogether surprised at it, although I do not know much about Ireland. The authorities that give these pensions in Ireland are the same authorities that have achieved some prominence in their management of the Old Age Pensions Act. I venture to think there should be some discipline introduced in these local authorities with regard to their distribution of pensions for asylum workers. I should like to tell your Lordships two stories from Ireland with regard to it, and which, I think, are better than any argument. There was an attendant in an asylum in Ireland who got a crack on the head. In consequence of that he became an epileptic. Being obliged to retire he applied for a pension but was only given a gratuity of £25. The poor man eventually lost his reason and became a patient in the asylum in which he had formerly been an attendant. In the same asylum there was another man

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of about the same age and service, and he took to drink. The visiting committee wanted to get rid of him so they gave him a pension for the rest of his life. This is the other story. There was a doctor of an asylum who thought it his duty to condemn the meat brought to the asylum as being putrid. A member of the visiting committee was the contractor who supplied the meat. The contractor told the doctor that he would take care that he suffered for what he had done, and if this Bill does not pass I have no doubt he will. There are in your Lordships' House many noble Lords from Ireland who can speak with more confidence than I can with regard to this matter, but I think, first, that there is a great want of uniformity in the distribution of pensions in Ireland, and I believe that noble Lords from Ireland will agree that there is no objection on the part of the Irish local authorities. The whole Bill is to provide for a uniform and comprehensive scheme to give security to these workers, so that under whatever local authority they serve they shall be in the same position as regards pension. That will raise the profession and will be in the interests of the insane. These officials are not known to the public. Everybody knows the local policeman and his desserts, but nobody knows the desserts of workers in asylums, and I think they have a peculiar claim on your Lordships' consideration. They are most highly-tried officials, and I would ask your Lordships, after this Bill has got thus far, not to refuse it a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Monk Bretton.)
LORD BELPER: My Lords, I think it would be convenient at this early stage of the discussion to put before your Lordships a few considerations which I think ought to carry some weight before this Bill is read a second time. I regret I am not able to speak on behalf of the County Councils Association. Since the Bill passed its Second Reading in the other House the County Councils Association issued a circular to all the county councils of England asking for their opinion about this Bill, and up to this time there has been only a very limited number of replies. I noticed what was evidently a communicated statement in The Times a few days ago, in which it was said that nineteen county councils had passed resolutions in favour of the Bill. All I can say is that if that referred to
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county councils in England and Wales it is absolutely incorrect. The statistics which we have got are that seven county councils and six asylum committees have declared in favour of the Bill and three county councils and two asylum committees have sent in replies in the other sense.
I am bound to say that when my noble friend tried to explain away all the resolutions that have been come to by county councils against the Bill he was skating, I thought, on rather thin ice. Of course, I will leave it to him to explain why his own county council came to a resolution against the Bill when their real opinion was in its favour; but I cannot accept the statement he made with regard to the West Riding County Council, because not only did they oppose this Bill through one of their officers, but since the Bill has passed through the other House they have sent a memorial to the Home Office laying down their objections to the Bill in quite clear terms. Therefore no possible suggestion can be made that the West Riding of Yorkshire are in favour of the Bill as it stands. In their memorial the West Riding County Council and the West Riding Asylums Committee, which latter body represents the county boroughs of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield and Rotherham as well as the county council, expressed their desire to secure certain Amendments which appear to be essential to the Bill if the Bill is to go through, and suggested that the Bill should be made adoptive, but that if it is to be made obligatory on all authorities its provisions deserve better consideration if they are to be acceptable to the Asylums Committee. As I understand, the promoters of the Bill would construe it as opposition to the principle of the Bill if it were made adoptive instead of compulsorily. I believe they stand to what they call the principle of the Bill, that every authority should be obliged to adopt it whether they like it or not. What I wish to submit to your Lordships is that the Bill having passed through the other House, as I think I can show, without any discussion, at all events the principle Of the Bill should be discussed in this House, and that consideration should be given to the question whether it is absolutely necessary that the Bill should be made compulsory. I am quite willing to recognise all the arguments of my noble friend with regard to the principle of this Bill. I quite recognise that the officers in favour of whom this Bill is

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brought forward are officers who require protection and who, if anybody, should have a satisfactory system of pension; but it seems to me if that is to be done some consideration should be given to those who have to find the money, to decide whether the terms of the Bill are reasonable or not, and, at all events, that some discussion more than has been given in the other House should be devoted to the question whether it is absolutely necessary that this Bill should be made compulsory.
Now, my Lords, let me call attention to what has really taken place with regard to this Bill, because I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding. Your Lordships would suppose that if a Bill had been in the other House for six or seven months its principle would have had full discussion, and that after full discussion in that House it had been referred to a Select Committee to consider its details. Nothing of the sort. I have searched through Hansard for every stage of the Bill, and so far as Hansard shows not a single word has been said either in favour or against this Bill on any stage. It passed its Second Reading without any discussion and was referred to a Select Committee without any discussion. It came back with important Amendments inserted in the Bill, and so far as the Hansard reports show there was no discussion on the Report of the Select Committee. It passed the Third Reading in the same way, and therefore I feel it my duty, having some responsibility to the county councils of this country, at all events to do my best to see that the views of the minority should not be overlooked in this House.
It may be said, of course, that all the discussion took place in the Select Committee, and that the provisions of the Bill were thoroughly sifted before that Committee. I have no wish to take exception to, or to attempt to criticise, the manner in which the members of the Committee in the other House carried out the duties entrusted to them by that House, but I would venture to say that I think the question as to whether it is desirable in a matter of this sort that the local authority should be compelled to adopt a scheme whether they like it or not hardly received any consideration in the Committee more than it did in the House. I notice that, although there were ten independent witnesses called—in addition to the promoter of the Bill, or at all events, the gentleman who explained the
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Bill (Dr. Shuttleworth) and Mr. Byrne, the witness for the Home Office—six of those ten witnesses were doctors. Five of the ten came from Scotland, two from Ireland, and there were only three from England who expressed any views with regard to this Bill. One represented the West Riding, and another represented West Ham. Those two gentlemen took very opposite views, and got into a little contest with each other as to whether the West Riding scheme was a liberal one or not. I am only alluding to that because I do think it shows that at all events the points which I wish to bring before the House have not been discussed in the other House in any way.
If you read the Report of the Committee it would appear as if everybody was in favour of the main principles of this Bill, and I notice in the Report the Lunacy Commissioners are quoted as being strongly in favour of a scheme of this sort. I think that goes without saying. No doubt it is the duty of the Lunacy Commissioners to do what they can to promote the interests of the officers of whose duties they know so much; but I am bound to say that nobody would think of going to the Lunacy Commissioners if they wished the question of the interests of the ratepayers to be considered in any way; in fact, in past days I had some experience of the Lunacy Commissioners, and I found that in matters which caused expense they certainly were not reluctant to impose regulations which the county councils often thought unnecessary with regard to the building of asylums. I think that is very much changed at the present day, but I only mention it to show that you do not look to the Lunacy Commissioners to protect the ratepayers.
The Bill of my noble friend Lord Halsbury has been alluded to, and I think my noble friend Lord Monk Bretton went so far as to say that the principle having been approved in 1898 it showed approval of the principle of this Bill. But what really happened with regard to the Bills introduced by the noble and learned Earl? Every one of those Bills split on the rock of whether a compulsory system of pensions should be embodied in the Bill or not. I find that in 1898, on the Second Reading of the Bill which has been referred to, two most interesting speeches were made by very prominent members of this House on this very point. Let me say, first, however, that I quite understood that the noble and

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learned Earl, Lord Halsbury, in introducing those Bills, always laid it down as an axiom that it was for Parliament to consider whether it wished to adopt a compulsory system of this kind or not, and, therefore, it seems to me it is all the more reason for calling the attention of this House to the matter as it has not been considered in the other House of Parliament. Now the two noble Lords from whose speeches I wish to give some very short extracts perhaps had a larger knowledge of local government than any members of this House. They were both leaders of the other side of the House, and I would commend to the noble Earl the present Leader of the House some of the remarks which were made by those who filled the position he now occupies. The first words I should like to quote are from the speech of the late Lord Kimberley, who said—
"When we consider the authority which the county councils possess throughout the country and their representative character, I think it is extremely undesirable, unless a very strong necessity arises, to do otherwise than leave them a free discretion with reference to the expenditure on the maintenance of lunatics. It is very desirable that county councils should feel that they have entrusted to them the real business which comes under their control. If you go too far in laying down what they should do you will weaken the authority of the county councils very seriously, and the result will be that you will not get men of the same position to take posts in the management of the various matters which come under the administration of the county councils."
He went on to say what I would commend to the consideration of the House—
"We could not do worse than increase the functions of the Government with regard to local affairs. I feel very indisposed to limit in any way the discretion which those bodies now enjoy."
That was not only the opinion of Lord Kimberley. Lord Ripon, who also had a wide knowledge of local affairs, spoke on the same occasion. He said—
"It should not be made compulsory on county councils to spend money in this manner if they do not think fit. Speaking generally, I have always thought it a mistake to enforce expenditure on county councils by Act of Parliament. I venture to submit that it is only reasonable that county councils should ask that this matter should be left to their discretion,"
Now, my Lords, those two opinions are very forcible in language and would have much more effect than any words of mine. But I do venture to say this. If those words were spoken some time ago, at all events the principles of local government
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are the same now, although they are not recognised so widely as they were by those two noble Lords. I would suggest that in these matters which cause a considerable expense to county councils it is not quite fitting that they should be entirely ignored with regard to any consultation as to the effects of a Bill of this kind, especially as they have some part in administering the Acts.
I should like to make one or two remarks on the question of finance, because it is somewhat important although the noble Lord who introduced this Bill tried to minimise the effect. I cannot help thinking that the Committee did not come to any very decided conclusion as to what the effects of this Bill were likely to be. There were two members of the Committee who gave it as their opinion that as there had been a very small amount spent on pensions that would be likely to be the case in the future; but Mr. Jarman, to whom Lord Monk Bretton has already referred, entirely upset any of those calculations, although he only put it in a Memorandum and was not examined as a witness. He said that if the Superannuation Bill would have the effect of inducing officials to remain in the service as anticipated, the proportion of seven per cent. might in the course of time increase to twenty per cent. or more, as in the case of the police service, where the pension is somewhat similar to that proposed in the present Bill. I cannot help thinking that if the Committee had taken a little more trouble to go further into this matter they would have come to the conclusion not only that that was proved but that if you are going to compare the pensions to be given under this Bill with the pensions given under the Police Act there are certain circumstances which show that the charge would be very much higher than it was in the case of police pensions. The county councils of England at the present time pay enormous sums out of the rates in aid of the police funds, which are insufficient. I have got nine or ten counties, not picked out as being specially large, but some of them large counties—and the largest of these goes as high as £4,200, which is to be found out of the rates towards the police pensions. The average of the nine or ten is over £2,000 a year. The Government allow £300,000 a year for this purpose, but not a penny will be obtained from it for the superannuation of asylum officers if this Bill is passed, besides which in the early days, when the police pension

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system was adopted, there were a great many young officers in the force who could not call on the fund for many years, with the result that a substantial sum was accumulated, and that helped very considerably to meet the pensions.
My Lords, this is not the occasion on which to go more into details with regard to a matter of that sort, but I do think at all events it shows that the question of the expense to those who have to administer the Bill and pay for it ought to have had more consideration before it came to this House. With regard to the scales in the Bill, let me only say that a very strong case has been made out for those officers who are in direct contact with lunatics, especially dangerous lunatics, and who are exposed to all the disagreeable circumstances as well as the danger of their profession. I think a very strong case can be made out for a pension for those officers, and, if it is proved to be necessary, a compulsory pension. But when you come to include, as von include in this Bill, every labourer, every clerk, every man who works in the garden, every woman who works in the asylum, you are setting a precedent for compelling county councils to give pensions to all their officers in every branch of the work. Why should a clerk who attends the meetings of the asylums committee have more right to a pension than the clerk who attends the highways committee or any other committee? If you adopt this scale in the Bill, I venture to think you will be making not only a most dangerous precedent with regard to the county councils, but a precedent for giving many other people who are in a somewhat similar position a very much larger pension than they are receiving at the present time.
I am quite aware that if we move Amendments—and I hope Amendments may be moved to this Bill—we are in a very dangerous position. I am told that if we touch the scale of the pensions it may raise the question of privilege. I am not one of those who are very much inclined to set up for ourselves the bogey of privilege in this House, and I am quite sure that the House of Commons can take care of themselves with regard to that matter. But if we put in Amendments which are privileged, as has been the case in many other Bills, they might not be considered on their merits. Though it is possible for the other House to waive its privilege in cases where they think it desirable, I do not see what assurance we would
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have that our Amendments would not be struck out without consideration, and when the Bill came up ill its final stage we should have lost the opportunity of amending it. I can only say that if noble and learned Lords who have had better experience in this matter than I have can make any suggestion which will help us to put Amendments into this Bill I shall be only too happy, but I am bound to say that if the Bill is to be passed without amendment I shall retain full discretion to take action on the Third Reading.
There is one other point to which I wish to refer, and it is a very important one. There was a clause put into this Bill in the Select Committee without any allusion being made to it in the Report, and no allusion has been made to it by my noble friend Lord Monk Bretton, and, so far as I know, not many members of this House are aware of it at all. It is Clause 14, which lays down the manner in which the payment of allowances and gratuities should be made. Hitherto the county council has paid over all pensions which are imposed by the asylum committee, and those pensions have to come up for confirmation by the county council. If the clause stands as it is that charge will be taken off the county council and put upon the guardians. It will be part of the fund out of which the salaries or wages of officers and servants in the asylum are payable and to which the necessary sum for pensions will be added. That makes very little difference, of course, so far as the ratepayers are concerned, because whether the rates are raised by the county council or by the board of guardians it comes to the same thing in the end; but this clause is accompanied by a provision which repeals a section of an Act of Parliament under which it is said that any pension must come for confirmation to the county council. If you are going to do away with this power of confirmation you will be putting nothing in its place. You are making the asylums committee even more absolute than they are at the present moment, and there is no authority who will be able to have any say as to whether the particular pensions are desirable or not. Anybody who knows the administration of lunatic asylums knows that the law with regard to the visiting committee is very anomalous at the present moment. In most of the matters under their administration the county council have no control over them whatever. They have to fix the salaries of the officers, and the

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only power the county council have, if dissatisfied, is to decline to re-elect these members to the visiting committee. That is a power which is very difficult to carry out because it is not so easy always to get responsible men to take that position, especially as the work is not a very pleasant one and it takes many gentlemen a great distance from their homes. I am bound to say that if there is any alteration to be made in the law in this respect it would be far more desirable to give greater control to the county council than to do away with this one matter of control over pensions. That is all I have to say with regard to this Bill.
I can assure your Lordships that I feel very considerable responsibility in laying before the House the objections which I have to some of the provisions of the Bill. I am perfectly aware that if I wished to move the rejection of this Bill it would be said that I was opposed to the principle of giving pensions to these deserving people. I have no such feeling, but I do wish to insure that the views coming from the side of the ratepayers and from the side of those who may have to administer this part of the Bill should be fully considered. If we can get Amendments which may make this Bill more in accordance with what I think is desirable it should be, I should be only too glad. Let me say at once that my own view is that the best solution of this matter would have been to put off this Bill for this session and to have had a full discussion between all those interested in the matter, when I think a much better Bill than this would have been arrived at. I am not making this merely as an excuse. I have considered the matter and have talked with others about it. Considerable objections have been raised to the details of the Bill, and I believe that if the County Councils Association, after having got complete information from all the county councils, had had the opportunity of discussing with the promoters the details of this Bill, and especially those with regard to the finances and the scale of pensions, we might have arrived at a solution acceptable to all, and which would have caused little difference of opinion. Of course, in this matter I am entirely in the hand of the House. So far as I am concerned I have ventured to lay these considerations before you. I hope, at all events, whether the Bill is proceeded with this session to the end or whether it is not, that in Committee we may get some improvement made in the Bill,
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but I shall retain full liberty with regard to any action I may choose to take on Third Reading.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I only wish to say a few words on the general principle of the Bill, and I am particularly anxious to do so after the interesting and weighty criticisms which have fallen from the noble Lord whose views are always entitled to well-deserved consideration in your Lordships' House, especially when what he says is in connection with county council matters, of which this is one. But, my Lords, I should like for a moment to go away from his detailed criticisms and remind your Lordships of the largeness of this question having regard to its ultimate importance. When one looks into it it really turns out to have much bigger results than lie upon the surface. In the first place it is of the highest possible importance to the, I am sorry to say, increasing number of unfortunate patients of whom we are thinking, that those who are attending upon them should be the best possible people that can be got for that particular kind of work. We are at this moment losing the assurance that we are getting the best available material for the purpose, and we are therefore desirous of taking every step that will result in such material being obtained for the carrying out of a work which is one of quite extraordinary difficulty, responsibility, and anxiety. I do not 'know how many of your Lordships have read the Report of the Select Committee which inquired into this matter and the evidence which is appended to it, but those of your Lordships who have done so—and I think I have gone through every word of it—will realise, I am certain, not merely the need of something of this kind, but the extraordinary unanimity with which the principles embodied in this Bill have been accepted. That the principle is indisputably a right one can hardly be doubted by anybody who reads the Report and the evidence appended to it. I confess to a little surprise when listening to some of the criticisms of my noble friend who has just sat down. He says that the Bill passed through the House of Commons on Second Reading, went to a Select Committee, came back from the Select Committee, and on Third Reading was not opposed. That argument hardly goes to show that there was a great deal of opposition to it. If closure had been

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applied it might have been a different thing.
LORD BELPER: I am unwilling to interrupt, but my argument was that as there was no discussion with regard to the principle on Second Reading it ought at all events to be discussed in your Lordships' House.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: If there were any objections to the principle on Second Reading there was every opportunity in the House of Commons for objections to be raised. The Home Office consented to the Bill being read a second time on condition that it went to a Select Committee, and when it was sent to the Select Committee the county councils were communicated with in order that they might bring forward any objections they had in the matter, and we have the result in the Blue-book. All the objections the county councils put forward are presumably in this Blue-book; at all events they had the opportunity of making objection if they desired to do so. I ask your Lordships, will any one read this evidence and say that the principle on which this Bill centres has been objected to by anybody? Not only the members of the Committee but all the witnesses were practically unanimous in asserting the principle embodied in the Bill. The noble Lord told us that there had been a mistake in the statistics quoted as to the formulated opinions of county councils sent in in the form of resolutions, but, after all, his argument reduced itself down to seven in favour as against three not in favour. All the county councils, however, had an opportunity of objecting if they so desired, and whether the statistics quoted were correct or not, the fact at all events remains that up to the present time there has not been, except in the smallest possible proportion, any objection taken to the principle of the Bill either by county councils as a whole or by the asylums committees of the county councils. However, my Lords, those are questions of detail as to the kind of opportunity that has been given for opposition to be brought forward. Until the noble Lord's speech to-night there has hardly been any criticism of the main principle of the Bill, although there have been criticisms as to the details, which are, I should have thought, capable of amendment in this House. For instance, whether it is true
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that a labourer employed by an asylum becomes under the Bill an established officer entitled to a pension I should have considerable doubt, but, if any mistake has been made, I imagine the thing is capable of amendment.
But the main point of the noble Lord's opposition, as I understood it, was that the thing was more or less being hurried. That does seem to me of all phrases or epithets which could be used with regard to this subject the most inappropriate. Since 1891 this question has been familiar to all those who have had to do with asylum matters. We have the advantage at this moment of having present in the House two noble and learned Lords who have had under their control the Lunacy Commissioners and who can tell us the opinion which has been expressed by them for a very long time; and this House, on the motion of the noble and learned Lord who sits opposite, passed a Bill which virtually gave effect to the main principle which this Bill endeavours to reassert. Now, on the very eve of our attaining this long-desired object, are we to be told that we are to hang the matter up again and send it back for further consideration when every opportunity has been given for raising objections and those objections have not appeared? There has been, and we are all very thankful for it, a great improvement in recent years in the management of asylums in this country. That improvement has been due in part to the painstaking efforts of the leaders of medical and mental science who have dealt with this particular problem, but not less to the officers and the subordinate officers of the asylum who have to perform one of the most trying and unpleasant tasks that it is possible to imagine—a task requiring that those who undertake it should be relieved from all the anxiety which we can relieve them of when their health has broken down and they have worn themselves out in the service. Through those officers we are dealing with a class of the community which beyond all question is the most helpless and the most unable to speak or act for itself—namely, the patients in these great asylums; and we want, if we possibly can, to ensure that the very best material that is obtainable shall be at our service for this purpose.
The noble Lord referred to the evidence that came from the witness who appeared on behalf of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Mr. Crowther. May I read a few sentences

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from that evidence? He says that in the West Riding there has been a rule for many years that any officer entering their service has to sign a paper that he or she waives any right to a pension on retirement. Then the witness tells us what has been the result of that rule. He says—
"We believe that if there was a prospect of pension we should get a better class of applicant. Since 1891, when we abolished the system of giving pensions, we have not had the same quality of applicant. Our reason for saying so is that we have not really the same number now who take up the nursing and ambulance work for which we give certificates. We think that pensions would remedy that."
That shows, my Lords, that the people who now take up service in these institutions where there are no pensions given have not got their hearts in their work in the same way, and are not prepared to give their time to the technical work and instruction necessary to make them thoroughly capable, and the lack of which makes all the difference in the world to the unfortunate patients in the institutions. There is in regard to these public servants a difference, which is sometimes forgotten, between their position with respect to pensions and some of the other public servants we are more accustomed to deal with, and who are perhaps, engaged in what might be called kindred work. We have been reminded that the police, those who serve under the Poor Law, and those who serve in prisons are all entitled to pensions in the way that is here proposed; but we have not been reminded of one fact, which is this, that, unlike all those other officers, there is open to attendants in asylums a branch of service kindred to that in which they have been engaged—that is to say, as attendants in private asylums or attendants upon private patients who are afflicted in their minds; and nothing is more dangerous than that we should lose from our public institutions experts in these matters who are prepared, because the positions are more lucrative, to transfer themselves to private institutions or to private control of patients, because we are not prepared to offer them those pensions which under similar service elsewhere they would be entitled to look forward to. I do feel that it would be a disaster of the first magnitude were we at this stage, after all that has been said in favour of this principle, to go back upon it on the ground that there are objections. I do not wish to criticise the degree of their gravity, but those objections at all events are not fundamental to the principle of this
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measure, and I trust your Lordships intend to read the Bill a second time to-night and let it pass into law during the present session.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD LOREBURN): My Lords, surely there will be no question that your Lordships' House will read this Bill a second time. Here is a Bill sent up by the House of Commons without discussion because there was no opposition to it, and are we to insist upon an elaborate and protracted discussion of it by those who are apparently unanimous in holding one view with regard to it? I should be very sorry to suggest any such thing. Months ago the county councils apparently were invited to express an opinion by their own association with regard to the Bill, and three county councils alone objected to this burden being imposed upon them.
LORD BELPER: If the noble and learned Lord will excuse me, what I said was that the only answers received had been from seven county councils in favour and three against. I based no argument upon it with regard to the numerical strength of each party; it was only a piece of information which I felt bound to lay before the House.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I was not putting my proposition adversely to the noble Lord, because I do not think that he really has expressed himself with hostility towards the Bill. I was not intending to use it as an argumentum ad hominem, but out of all the county councils the fact remains that only three of them objected to the passing of the measure. I have intervened to address your Lordships because, as you are aware, connected with the office I hold I have a great deal of responsibility in regard to this most unhappy class of His Majesty's subjects. The noble and learned Lord who preceded me on the Woolsack will, I am sure, tell your Lordships the same thing, that in respect of the work of the Lunacy Commissioners similar representations have been received over and over again. Lord Waldegrave, who is the Chairman of the Lunacy Commissioners, has shown me a letter of the 29th September last written by them in which they state that they had written a Memorandum to this effect, that the Commissioners were in entire agreement with the objects of the Bill and that there should be an obligation

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upon asylum authorities to grant superannuation allowances on a fixed scale. The reason that these attendants are deserving of consideration is that the service upon which they are engaged is not only a dangerous one but is extraordinarily arduous and difficult; they have to incur the risk of personal injury and to submit to things which, if done by an occupant of a prison, would be punishable, and if by a patient in a hospital the necessary force to restrain could be used; but the attendants upon these unhappy people have to submit to these, things. One of the Commissioners himself, I know, has been injured, and it is not an uncommon thing for serious injury to be inflicted upon these attendants by their patients. Is it not right that these Unfortunate people should get their attendants from the best material that can be found, and that the attendants who run these risks should have some provision made for them in the way of pensions in the future, thus preventing them when they are still capable from leaving the public institutions for more lucrative employment in private institutions, or from being retained out of compassion after they have ceased to be able to discharge their duties? As regards the principle of the Bill, I do not understand that the noble Lord himself objected to the Second Reading, so that we need not leap before we come to the stile; and when we reach the next stage the criticisms of the noble Lord, which are valuable as regards detail will be deserving of serious consideration. As the noble Lord did not object to the Second Reading, I trust your Lordships will accord it, because I feel that the general principles of the Bill are sound and necessary.
VISCOUNT CROSS: My Lords, having been chairman of the visiting committee of one of these asylums and knowing perfectly well the dangers to which the officers as well as other people are exposed, I would ask your Lordships to read this Bill a second time without further comment.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY: My Lords, I feel I ought not to be silent in this discussion because my silence might be misconstrued. I heartily support the Second Reading of this Bill and I think it would be a great misfortune if the opportunity, which is not very easily obtained, of passing such a Bill as this is neglected because of the sort of vague general idea that my noble friend
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behind me has suggested that a better Bill will be brought forward at some time or another. I have heard that aspiration expressed before on many occasions, but I am afraid I do not remember it ever being fulfilled. I have not read the Report of the Select Committee to which the most rev. Primate referred, and I do a little protest in this House against the course pursued by my noble friend behind me. I do not know that it is part of our duty to acquaint ourselves with the discussions in the other House—in fact, it seems to have been forgotten that a discussion of what hon. members have said there is not quite in order in your Lordships' House. But whether that is in order or not it is extremely inconvenient to discuss, and with some degree of criticism, those who gave evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons. This is the opportunity to discuss the matter if it is to be discussed, and we are not to be precluded from the exercise of our functions by what has been said on the subject on either side in the House of Commons. The question here is that this Bill is now proposed for Second Reading, and if there is any objection to the principle of it this is the opportunity for making it. I confess I was a little surprised to hear so old and respected a Member of this House mentioning more than once that the thing ought to be brought forward again, and that this and that objection made by county councils ought to be considered. Be it so, but this is the opportunity of doing it, and I have not heard any objection raised. What may be said or considered when it is a question of whether this or that section shall stand part of the Bill is another thing, and will have to be considered when the Bill is put forward in Committee.
Now, my Lords, let me say a word about the principle of the Bill. I had to consider the principle on another occasion in connection with the Bill to which the most rev. Primate referred, and I must say if there ever was a class of person who in the interests of the public ought to have pensions I think these attendants in lunatic asylums form such a class. It is their duty very often to submit to violence and cruelty, and as long as human nature remains what it is it requires an extraordinary degree of temper and coolness to receive the injuries that they sometimes do and not to be able, as is the natural impulse of every man who receives a blow, to retaliate. Attendants in lunatic asylums,

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however, are obliged to submit to them in silence, and to behave with kindness and tenderness to those at whose hands they suffer. I do not believe that there is any other class of the community who undergo so much provocation as these attendants do, and who undergo it as a rule so admirably and with such good temper and good feeling. The principle of the Bill is to provide them compulsorily with pensions, and I should be very sorry indeed if the matter were to be left to the determination of those who, as my noble friend behind me says, have to provide the money, because sometimes there is a tendency to get the best men you can for as little as possible, and I think it is not desirable to leave it to them to say whether or not these persons are of a class entitled to a pension. For those reasons I hope your Lordships will read the Bill a second time.
LORD ASHBOURNE: My Lords, as this Bill extends to Ireland and as I have taken great interest in this subject and paid many visits to lunatic asylums and seen the unfortunate people confined there and those who administer to them, I would like to say a word with regard to it. No one respects the noble Lord, Lord Belper, more than I do, but I do not think that one word of his criticism touched the principle of the Bill. He discussed some details which will receive attention in Committee. But the principle of the measure is, Are those concerned with the administration and care of kinetics entitled to be regarded as this Bill seeks to regard them? I know of no class of public servants who have to administer a more difficult or more arduous task or under more trying conditions than this particular class. Their work entails upon them not only a mental but an enormous physical strain, and it is no wonder that many a man and many a woman break down under it; and I conceive that they are a class who are entitled to special consideration at the hands of those who attend to the legislation of the country. The way in which it is sought to be carried out may be open to question, but that the class of public servant with which the Bill deals is entitled to every conceivable consideration I do not think is open to question. I do not understand the points that were made about the passing of the Bill through the House of Commons. It passed through the House of Commons unopposed because it met with general approval, and I have no doubt that your Lordships will support the Second Reading. I have not
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heard a single syllable to prevent any one from giving a Second Reading to the Bill, and the suggestion that we should post pone the debate to another session is, if I may say so, in my opinion a very idle one. We have lots of time now to discuss it; if there are any objections we can meet them and answer them; but as we have the Bill before us now I hope we will give it a Second Reading, and at a later stage pass it through Committee.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: I My Lords, I should like to say one or two words with regard to what I believe to be the attitude of those county councils who have expressed their appreciation of the Bill. I think they are at one with your Lordships in considering that those who spend a very large portion of their ives in contact with lunatics are entitled to be rewarded with a pension when the period of their service has expired, and the county councils are in favour of the granting of pensions being made compulsory. I think that is the attitude of most of the county councils, and that their approval of the certainly goes that far. But that approval should not, I think, be carried too far, because I am not certain that it goes beyond Clause 12 of the Bill, which says that an established officer or servant means such officer or servant as the local authority may determine to be engaged in the work or administration of the asylum. I do not think that the approval of the county council goes so far as to say that every person who is employed permanently in the work of conducting an asylum is necessarily a person who ought to receive a pension, and if there is any doubt about that in regard to Clause 12 it certainly ought to be set right. There is another point which I do not think ought to be taken on behalf of the county councils as being included in their assent to the principle of the Bill, and that is the question of the scale. There is, I fancy, in the minds of many no reason why there should be a difference between the period of age when the servant may demand to retire with the pension and the period when the asylum authority may retire them compulsorily on that pension. The amount of the scale, too, is a point which I do not think was included in the expression of approval which the asylum authorities have given and which the county councils have generally endorsed, and their approval should not be taken to go further than that they do think that those who are engaged in

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active service in the lunatic asylums and are brought into constant contact with lunatics should have an assured and certain pension on a fixed and, if possible, uniform scale. To that extent, my Lords, I think that the majority of the county councils may be said to approve the principle of the Bill.
LORD CLONBROCK: My Lords, as this Bill refers to Ireland, and as I have some slight experience of the management of lunatic asylums and other local bodies I should like to say a few words. I think that the uniform rate of pension provided for in this Bill is a most valuable one, and is in itself quite a sufficient reason for supporting the Bill on Second Reading. Any points of detail can be settled in Committee. The reason I advocate a uniform rate of pension is this. The noble Lord who introduced the Bill mentioned two cases where pensions had been allotted in a remarkably unjust and unequal manner. Of course those were exceptional cases, and would not be likely to occur in the ordinary course of things; but it does seem to me that, as the noble Lord also said, the way in which pensions may be granted depends very much on whether the managing body of the asylum happens to be in a generous or a niggardly frame of mind at the moment. I would also point out that the management of one asylum may be habitually in a more generous frame of mind than another, and there is further the point that unfortunately differences of opinion on matters wholly unconnected with the management of asylums, such as religion and politics, do prevail in Ireland a good deal, and there is a danger that these differences of opinion might be introduced into the discussion of the respective merits of retiring officers. I think it is most expedient, therefore, that there should be a uniform rate. I have heard the argument used—not at a meeting of an asylum committee it is fair to say, but at a board of guardians—that unless a man is absolutely destitute there is no occasion to give him a pension. It has been said, "If this man was a very poor man we might give him a pension, but he is fairly well off and there is no occasion to burden the ratepayer by granting him a pension," utterly forgetting the valuable services the man had rendered and the hard work he had done very often for an inadequate remuneration, and as there would be in this case the addition of the absolute dangers and difficulties with which officers of asylums have to
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contend I hope the Bill will be accepted for Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

MERCHANDISE MARKS (IRELAND) BILL.
  FISHERIES (IRELAND) BILL.
  House in Committee (according to order) Bills reported without amendment Standing Committee negatived, and Bills to be read 3a on Wednesday next.

WEEDS AND AGRICULTURAL SEEDS (IRELAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Denman.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF ONSLOW in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
1.—(1) The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland (in this Act referred to as "the Department") may, with the consent of the council of any county, make an. order declaring that throughout the county alt plants of any species to which this section applies-are noxious weeds for the purposes of this Part of this Act.
(2) The species of plants to which this section applies are ragwort, charlock, coltsfoot, thistle, and dock, and the order may include all or any of those species.
(3) The consent of the county council shall be signified by a resolution passed at a meeting of the council, and a copy of the resolution under the seal of the council shall be accepted as sufficient evidence of such consent.
(4) The Department, with the consent of the county council, or the county council, may revoke or alter any order made under this section.
LORD DENMAN LORD DENMAN moved to omit from subsection (4) the words "with the consent of the county council, or the county council, may," and to insert the words "may, and at the request of the county council, shall." He explained that his Amendment would slightly limit the power of the county council with regard to the Bill. Subsection (4) of the clause as it stood authorised the county council themselves to revoke or alter any order made under the section, but on consideration it was thought better that they should not possess that particular power, and his Amendment carried out that intention.
Amendment moved—
"In page 1, line 19, to leave out from 'Department' to 'revoke' in line 20, and to insert' may, and at the request of the county council, shall.'"—(Lord Denman.)
On question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2:
2.—(1) Where the Department are satisfied that there are noxious weeds growing upon any land, they may serve upon the occupier of the land a notice in writing requiring him to cut down or destroy those weeds in the manner and within the time specified in the notice.
2. If any occupier upon whom a notice is served under this section fails to carry out the requirements of the notice within the time therein specified, he shall be guilty of an offence under this Act, and shall be liable on summary conviction to a penalty not exceeding, for the first offence, five pounds, and for the second or any subsequent offence, ten pounds.,
LORD CLONCURRY*LORD CLONCURRY moved the insertion of the following new subsection:—"Any occupier who causes the weeds upon his land to be cut down or destroyed not less than once every year shall not be liable to a penalty under this section." He said that the Amendment was not put down an any spirit of hostility to the Bill. Part II, which dealt with agricultural seeds, met with their universal support, and Part I could be made both useful and necessary if guarded by the insertion of some reasonable safeguards. Their Lordships were well aware that thistles, for example, would make a second growth in August or September although they had been cut down at the proper season of the year, but that second growth was neither dangerous nor noxious with regard to adjoining land, and he was of opinion that men who had shown their bona fides and their desire to carry out the spirit of the Bill should not be liable to prosecution because of a second growth in cases where they had already cut down their weeds in the same year. Their Lordships were also aware that in certain parts of Ireland itinerant inspectors and reporters could gain cheap notoriety by instigating and recommending prosecutions against men engaged in great grazing industries on a large scale, and he thought where men had shown their bona fides and had once cut down their weeds they should not be laid open to being brought before petty sessions perhaps
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once a month to gratify some private spite of their neighbours.
Amendment moved—
"In page 2, line 9, after 'pounds' to insert the following new subsection—
'( ) Any occupier who causes the weeds upon his land to be cut down or destroyed not less than once in every year shall not be liable to a penalty under this section.'"—(Lord Cloncurry.)
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Whether the Amendment moved by my noble friend is the most appropriate one that can be devised I will not undertake to say, but it does seem to me that he is right in calling attention to this clause and in suggesting that there should be some safeguards as to the manner in which it might be applied. The clause is a very remarkable and extraordinary one, and I do not know whether the House has given attention to it. May I point out what will happen under this clause? The first step is for the Department of Agriculture, with the consent of the county council, to declare that a certain plant or plants is or are noxious weeds. Suppose the Department declares the first weed mentioned in the list, which is ragwort, to be a noxious weed. The next thing that happens is for the inspectors of the Department to start on an official tour in search of ragwort. From my slight knowledge of the country I will undertake to say that their quest will be a very successful one, and that they will find that particular botanical specimen almost universally luxuriant. The inspector, being armed with compulsory powers, may enter upon the land everywhere. There are possibly some places where he might not be received with open arms, but I pass that by. Then the inspector having reported that he has discovered an abundance of ragwort, the Department serves notices upon all the farmers who have been growing it, and I can imagine a shower of notices of the most portentous dimensions resulting all over the country. The recipients of these notices will thereupon have to commence the task of extermination and will have to neglect all other branches of industry, agricultural and political, and concentrate themselves for the time upon the extinction of ragwort. Supposing, which is far from unlikely, that these poor people find a good deal of difficulty in effectually getting rid of this particular herb, they thereupon, all of them, become liable to be hauled before

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the magistrates and to be fined, on a summary conviction, not more than £5 for the first offence and not more than £10 for a subsequent one. My Lords, it is to my mind absolutely inconceivable that this machinery should be applied indiscriminately and generally all over the country, and I think there will be a very great risk, as my noble friend has pointed out, of its being applied against individuals, and as often as not for a particular purpose. In my opinion, therefore, it is most necessary that somewhere in the Bill there should be words protecting those who have at any rate made a reasonable effort to get rid of these excrescences upon their fields against vexatious proceedings under the Bill. As the clause at present stands, it seems to me to lend itself to vexatious proceedings instigated from personal motives, and I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord in charge of the Bill will consider the suggestion of my noble friend.
LORD DENMAN LORD DENMAN said he was glad to hear that the noble Lord had moved his Amend meat in no spirit of hostility to the Bill; but he did not know whether the noble Lord quite realised what effect it would have on Part I of the Bill. The noble Lord seemed to fear that certain persons would be liable to prosecution by inspectors and other people for more or less political or other motives. He would like to point out to the noble Lord that the inspectors under the Department of Agriculture in Ireland would have to deal with the administration of that part of the Bill, and so far as he was aware the Department of Agriculture in Ireland had not hitherto been accused of sending inspectors down to take vexatious proceedings against individuals for really unworthy purposes. He did not think the noble Marquess would himself support that contention for a moment. He thought that disposed of any danger of vexatious proceedings under the Bill. But further he would point out that any fines which might be imposed would go to the Department of Agriculture, so that local authorities would be under no temptation on that account to undertake proceedings against individuals. In order to secure a conviction under the Bill it would first of all be necessary to prove that noxious weeds were growing upon the land occupied by the person against whom the proceedings were taken, and, secondly, that although the Department had served a notice upon him calling upon him to cut
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down the weeds he had failed to do so. If the Amendment of the noble Lord was accepted it would have this effect, that it would be a good defence for a person against whom proceedings were instituted to say he had been in the habit of having his weeds cut down each year, and then he would not be liable to a penalty at all. But the trouble would be there just the same. The cutting down of weeds once a year would not prevent weeds being disseminated and causing injury to other lands in the vicinity. Of course, the fact that there had been attempts made to meet the provisions of the Bill would no doubt tend to mitigate the penalty imposed, but the Amendment as it stood would enable any unscrupulous person to make out a very plausible case and so evade the Bill altogether. So far as he understood, the small holders had raised no objection whatever to the Bill. He did, therefore, hope that noble Lords from Ireland, who might be taken perhaps to represent the larger owners or occupiers of land, would not insist upon such a very damaging Amendment as the particular Amendment moved by Lord Cloncurry. If the noble Lord's Amendment was accepted it would almost altogether destroy Part I of the Bill, and it would then become a question for the Department of Agriculture in Ireland to consider whether it was worth while proceeding further with the measure. A Bill of the kind necessarily must contain some rather drastic provisions, and it could only be by general agreement that such a measure could pass into law, but he would like to remind the noble Lord that it had a most flattering reception from the House on Second Reading, and that noble Lords connected with Scotland and England found fault with the Government because it only applied to Ireland. He did not think he would be contradicted when he said that that was a most unusual thing to happen in the case of a Bill emanating from the Department which he had the honour of representing in their Lordships' House. Of course, they would be very glad to consider any limitations which the noble Marquess desired to place on the operations of the Bill, but he hoped the noble Lord would not press his Amendment, because it was one which they could not possibly accept.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I would like to explain that in anything I said I was very far indeed from casting

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any imputation upon the Department of Agriculture, or in suggesting that there would be the slightest tendency on their part to exhibit a partisan spirit in these matters. I have the greatest respect for the Department, but it is not the Department with which we shall have to deal. We have to deal in this case with local travelling inspectors, many of them, I believe, of a comparatively humble class, who might very easily be set in motion by interested persons against particular individuals.
VISCOUNT ST. ALDWYN VISCOUNT ST. ALDWYN said that what appeared to him to be a good point in the Bill was the enactment that a penalty should be imposed upon any person, who, greatly to the injury of his neighbour, insisted on growing weeds rather than the crops which his land ought to bear, and so far he would be very glad to see such an enactment applicable in this country. He confessed he could not vote for the Amendment which his noble friend had just moved because it would be quite impossible, if weeds were to be thoroughly eradicated, to allow a person to escape a penalty by the mere fact that he had cut his weeds down early in the season, for the reason that some of those weeds might have seeded and there might be a fine second crop of weeds before the season was over. He quite agreed, therefore, with the noble Lord opposite that the Amendment would knock the bottom out of the Bill. But was it necessary to enforce the Act by inspectors from the Department of Agriculture? It would be quite impossible for those inspectors to make themselves acquainted with all the weeds in Ireland, and would it not be sufficient to enact a penalty and let offenders be prosecuted in the ordinary way by any one who was aggrieved?
THE EARL OF CREWE: If the risks which the noble Marquess fears have any foundation, I should have thought that to place an unfortunate farmer at the mercy of a common informer might be worse than to place him at the mercy of an inspector of the Board of Agriculture. Although I see what was in the mind of the noble Viscount who has just sat down, that it does seem difficult for inspectors to keep an eye on the growth of weeds all over Ireland, I certainly should have thought that the inspectors of the Board of
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Agriculture were not liable to be subjected to the particular kind of pressure of which, the noble Marquess seems to be afraid. They are not, I should have supposed, the sort of men who would be subject to local prejudices and local influences, even although they may be of a comparatively humble class, and on the whole I think it, will be safest to adhere to the plan proposed in the Bill.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL CARRINGTON)THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL CARRINGTON) said that he had been asked how it was that England and Scotland had not been included in the Bill. He would tell their Lordships. He had obtained as much information as possible in the interim, and he did not find that much enthusiasm existed in favour of the Bill in its present form. Most of those to whom he had spoken on the subject thought that the measure was a little drastic, so perhaps the best thing would be to wait and see how it worked in Ireland before making any attempt to extend the area of its application.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clauses 3 to 8 agreed to.
Clause 9:
9. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires—
The expression "noxious weed" means any plant declared by an order of the Department under this Act to be a noxious weed in any county to which the order applies;
The expression "agricultural seeds", means the seeds of grass, clover, flax, cereals, turnips; rape, mangel, carrots, cabbage, or parsnips;
The expression "occupier" shall be deemed to include—

(a) in the case of any public road, the county or district council by whom the road is main tamped;

(b) in the case of any land the occupier of which (being an individual) is absent from Ireland, any agent or other person entrusted with the management of the land on his behalf.

LORD CLONCURRY LORD CLONCURRY said that Clause 9 appeared to him to completely override Clause 1, which contained the definition of noxious weeds. Clause 9 now threw it open to the Department to publish any additional list of weeds that they chose without any restraint and in defiance of subsection (2) of Clause 1.
LORD DENMAN LORD DENMAN did not think, speaking off-hand, that that was so, but he would inquire into the point and have an answer for the noble Lord when the next stage of the Bill was reached.
THE EARL OF MAYO THE EARL OF MAYO said there was no doubt that the weeds in Ireland were perfectly outrageous, and that there were a number of noxious weeds in addition to those mentioned in the Bill. As he believed their Lordships' House trusted the Department of Agriculture, which had great experience in the matter, he thought they ought to have power to declare other plants to be noxious weeds in certain localities.
LORD DUNBOYNE*LORD DUNBOYNE agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cloncurry, that the two sections were inconsistent. If they were not he really did not know what inconsistency meant. He could only say it was an example of the manner in which Irish Bills were usually drawn.
THE EARL OF CREWE: I do not think that there is really any difficulty on the point. It is quite true that a certain list of weeds is set out in Clause 1, and that power is given to the Department in Clause 9 to declare that other plants are noxious. But that is according to precedent. In the Poisons Act, for instance, you will find a schedule of poisons at the end of the Act, and you will also find a clause empowering, by an Order in Council, other substances to be added to that schedule. That, I think, supplies an analogy, although the procedure is not the same. As the noble Earl, Lord Mayo, said very truly, the question really is whether you are prepared to say that the Agricultural Department in Ireland will exercise a wise discretion in this matter and will not insert in the schedule of weeds plants which are not weeds but something else. I confess I do not quite understand what it is that the noble Lord, Lord Cloncurry, is afraid of. Is he afraid that plants which are of a serviceable character should be inserted in the weed schedule by the Department? I should have thought that very unlikely to happen. We have heard tobacco described as a noxious weed, but great things are hoped for tobacco-growing in Ireland, and it certainly is not likely to be so described by the Board of Agriculture. I really do not see any objection to the form of the Bill as it stands.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
Standing Committee negatived: The Report of Amendment to be received on Wednesday next, and Bill to be printed as amended. (No. 198.)

THE COMPULSORY ACQUISITION OF LAND.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW*THE EARL OF ONSLOW rose to call attention to the proceedings taken in different parts of the country for the compulsory acquisition of land under the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts, and to move to resolve, "That in the opinion of this House, it is not desirable to apply the provisions of these Acts to the acquisition of land for other purposes, without alteration and amendment."
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I think perhaps I owe some slight apology for taking up the time of the House upon this subject at a period of the session when your Lordships are exceptionally busy in dealing with Bills of great importance and of some magnitude brought from the other House of Parliament. But my apology must be that the subject of my Motion is closely connected with more than one measure now before your Lordships' House and with some that were passed in the last session of Parliament. In the Housing and Town Planning Bill your Lordships will find clauses very similar to those in the Small Holdings Acts providing for the taking of land otherwise than by agreement. Those clauses were also originally in a Bill which is now before your Lordships—the Development Bill. They have since undergone considerable modification, but, at the same time, it is quite clear that His Majesty's Government are very much enamoured of this particular procedure for the acquisition of land otherwise than by agreement. I therefore think that the moment is not inopportune to ask your Lordships to consider how those clauses have worked in the Acts to which I have referred.
Up to the passing of those Acts what was the recognised procedure? It was, first of all, that in one shape or another Parliament should authorise the taking of the land. It might have been by a private Bill, it might have been by a public general Act, or it might have been by a Provisional Order

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promoted by a Government Department; but in every case in the first instance the sanction of Parliament was required for the acquisition of the particular piece of land Then the Act, which is well known to your Lordships, the Lands Clauses Act, was incorporated in each of those Acts of Parliament, and it was only under the provisions of the Lands Clauses Act that land could be acquired otherwise than by agreement. Then came the proposal in the Small Holdings Bill put forward by the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture. Your Lordships agreed to that Bill, and you did so, I think, for two reasons. In the first place, on both sides of the House it was agreed that the extension of small holdings was extremely desirable in this country, and that no undue obstacles ought to be put in the way. In the second place, it was, I think, held in some quarters that the expense and the delay of the proceedings which I have just enumerated were considerable, and that where the subject-matter was not one of great extent or of great value the procedure ought, if possible, to be simplified, and therefore both sides agreed to the provisions embodied in the Small Holdings Act, I think rather with the idea that it would be desirable that we should see how they worked before we proceeded to apply those principles to other statutory measures.
One word, my Lords, on the subject of the acquisition of land by compulsion. I think the noble Marquess behind me who leads the Opposition exactly summed up the opinion on this side of the House with regard to the acquisition of land by compulsion. He said that compulsion by itself was not a wrong thing if you could carefully limit the objects to which it was to be applied and the manner in which it was to be exercised. With that, my Lords, I absolutely and entirely agree. Noble Lords opposite have, I think, sometimes been inclined to glory in the application of an epithet to the word compulsion. They have spoken of that blessed word 'compulsion,'" and although I quite agree that compulsion may be necessary sometimes, I think there is another blessed word, and a word which ought to be as closely married to compulsion as husband is to wife, and that is the word compensation." I do not think that under any circumstances a man's property should be taken from him by compulsion
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unless he is given full compensation for the loss of his property.
Now what is the nature of the compensation which is given under the Small Holdings Act? In the first place when another Act, of which the noble Earl opposite was also the author, was under consideration by Parliament—the Agricultural Holdings Act, described by the noble Earl opposite, with that hyperbolic flow of language which we know in this House, as the Tenants' Charter —words were put into that Bill by His Majesty's Government that no compensation should be paid to an out-going tenant if he were displaced for reasons of "good estate management," and we were particularly told that the object of putting in those words was that it might be desirable to take the land for small holdings, and that that was good estate management and no compensation therefore ought to be payable. I do not pursue that further because that is a matter which has been generally accepted on both sides of the House, but where I do say hardship comes in is where part of a man's land is taken from him and no compensation is given him for severance. I think your Lordships will remember that when this matter was under consideration by the House a good deal was said upon this subject by my noble friends Viscount St. Aldwyn and Lord Clinton, who were very anxious that the compensation to be paid to the tenant should be assessed by an arbitrator rather than by a valuer. My noble friend Viscount St. Aldwyn, I am sorry to see, has left the House, but it will be, I think, within the recollection of the Elouse that he said at that time it was of great importance in the interests of the occupying tenant that compensation should be decided by an arbitrator rather than by a valuer; he said the whole work of a man's life might, so to speak, be put an end to by the operations of the schedule, and was it not right, he asked, that such a person should have, with regard to the damage by severance, the same protection in compensation that he would have if his landlord gave him notice to quit. A day or two ago I read in the newspaper what purported to be a quotation from a letter written by my noble friend opposite, the President of the Board of Agriculture. If he tells me that what I am going to quote was not said by him at any time I shall, of course, not trouble your Lordships with any further remarks about it, but this is what he is reported to have said—

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"When the Small Holdings Bill was before the House of Lords the Tory landlords informed him that if he insisted on compensation being given to tenant farmers on account of small holdings, they would wreck the Bill."
I have no recollection whatever of anything of the kind happening in your Lordships' House.
EARL CARRINGTON: Would the noble Earl tell me when and where I am supposed to have said this?
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: The noble Earl is supposed to have written it in a letter to Mr. Seddon, M.P. If the noble Lord tells me he did not write or say this at any time I shall have nothing more to say. There are two measures before Parliament now to provide that some compensation should be given where a portion of a man's land is taken away for the purpose of small holdings, both introduced by political friends of the noble Earl. I know quite well that if any provision were made for giving compensation out of the amount of money payable by a county council the result would be that the small holder would have to be charged more rent for his holding. But what I want to ask the noble Earl is, What has become of the Small Holdings Fund which was set apart for the purpose of paying the expenses of obtaining the land? It was to have been £100 000 a year. As far as I can see from the Return presented to Parliament something like £99 up to the end of 1908 is all that had been spent for these purposes out of the Small Holdings Fund; and I would venture to ask, in view of the really serious feeling which there is in the country, where tenants are being compulsorily evicted, whether the noble Earl could not see his way to add to the costs of acquiring land by county councils a sum of money for compensation to the evicted tenant—I think "evicted" is not too strong a word to use—out of the Small Holdings Fund, a very considerable one, and as far as we know, not drawn upon to any very great extent. That is the first objection which I have to the procedure under the Small Holdings Act—that there is no compensation for severance in a case where land is taken away from a tenant compulsorily.
The next objection I have is to the provision in the Act which makes it impossible to employ counsel, or to call expert witnesses, except with the consent of the
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Board of Agriculture, and I venture to think that a real hardship has arisen there also. There was a case in Carmarthenshire, with which the noble Earl probably is familiar, where a lady was not allowed, at her own expense mind you, to employ counsel. This is not a question of putting any expense upon the county council or any additional rent upon the small holder. It is simply this, that without the consent of the Board of Agriculture no person can employ counsel to show cause why his land should not be taken or why it should be taken at a particular value. I know the Board of Agriculture have refused to allow counsel to appear for county councils. That may be all very well, because as a rule, as your Lordships know, county councils have very efficient officers who are able to conduct the case for the county council; but I do submit that it is a great hardship where, as in this case, the unfortunate lady could only be represented by a young solicitor in the town who knew practically nothing of the intricacies of land valuation and of the acquisition of land compulsorily, and that she should not be allowed at her own expense to employ counsel to combat the arguments which were brought forward by the very expert persons who represented the County Council of Carmarthenshire. That case was put forward as a test case, and the county council announced that it would be taken as a precedent whichever way the case went. The result was that it went against the lady, and she had very unfair treatment. I am told the Board of Agriculture have never in any case allowed counsel to be employed, and I venture to think that that is a somewhat serious blot on the procedure under the Small Holdings Act.
Now, my Lords, I come to the third and last objection which I entertain to these provisions, and that is to the provision which makes it impossible to appeal from an order of the Board of Agriculture to a Court of Law. Your Lordships will, of course, recollect that under Section 39 of the Act an order when confirmed by the Board shall become final and have effect as if enacted in the Act, and the confirmation by the Board shall be conclusive evidence that the requirements of the Act have been complied with and that the order has been duly made and is within the powers of the Act. There were a number of safeguards and limitations put

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into this Act. It was provided that no land which is part of a home farm, or which was woodland, or part of a park, or of an ancient monument of archeological interest, is to be taken for the purpose of small holdings compulsorily, and that due regard is to be given to the amount of land taken from any one owner or occupier. Supposing the Board of Agriculture disregards that—of course, I do not say intentionally, because I do not suppose that the Department of which the noble Earl is the head, or any other Department of the Government, would intentionally contravene an Act of Parliament, but it may be, for example, that there would be great difference of opinion as to whether a particular piece of land was or was not part of a home farm. Your Lordships know how difficult it may be to define exactly what is a home farm. But if an order is made and confirmed by the Board of Agriculture, it is then impossible to appeal to a Court of Law to have it set aside. There was a case the other day of a person named Ringer, whose land was taken from him for the purpose of small holdings. I know nothing of the merits of the case, but the noble Earl sitting behind the President of the Board of Agriculture very likely knows all about it, and it may be that the letter and the spirit of the Act were observed. But, at any rate, he did not think so, so he did what most British subjects think is the inalienable right of a subject of the Crown—he went to a Court of Law; and they told him that the jurisdiction of the Court was ousted because Section 39 said that the order of the Board of Agriculture was to have effect as if enacted in the Act. It is, therefore, impossible to obtain any redress in the ordinary Courts of Law, and I Venture to say to your Lordships that that is another great objection to the procedure under the Small Holdings Act.
The noble Earl the other day, I thought with some rather unnecessary warmth, when the noble and learned Lord behind me, the Lord Chief Justice, said he had heard that there had been some cases of injustice under the Act, stated that he was quite prepared to show that there never had been any case of injustice, and he challenged inquiry. I hope he will be able to convince your Lordships that there never has been any case of injustice, but the information which reaches me
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does not confirm that statement of the noble Earl. I believe that there have been and that there will be more cases of injustice if this procedure is embodied in future Acts of Parliament; and it is because your Lordships are being asked just now to consider proposals very similar to these in other measures that I have ventured to bring the subject before you and to move your Lordships to agree that it is not desirable that this particular procedure should be embodied in future. Acts of Parliament unless it be altered and amended so as to remove what I think is the legitimate grievance that has been shown to exist under the Act as it stands.
Moved to resolve, That in the opinion of this House, it is not desirable to apply the provisions of the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts to the acquisition of land for other purposes than small holdings and allotments without alteration and amendment.—(The Earl of Onslow.)
LORD CLINTON: My Lords, before the noble Earl replies I should like to say one word by way of addition to what the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has said on the question of valuation and arbitration with regard to dispossessed holders under the Act. As the Small Holdings Act was brought in it provided that in the case of a tenant who was compulsorily turned out the tenant should receive compensation for unexhausted improvements on a valuation by a valuer appointed by the Board. We accordingly inserted in the Bill an Amendment to the effect that he should be compensated by arbitrators, the arbitrators to be appointed by the parties, and, failing agreement, by the Board. That is the system which has always been adopted under the Agricultural Holdings Acts and is a fair and proper system. It is certain that under such a system a tenant farmer will get his rights, but under the Small Holdings Act when a tenant farmer was turned out of his land it originally took away from him the right of arbitration and made him submit to a valuation not by a valuer or arbitrator mutually appointed, but by a valuer appointed by the Board. When the Bill left your Lordships' House our Amendment giving him the full right of arbitration was cut out in another place, and when it came back to your Lordships, after a considerable amount of argument, there were put in three or four lines providing that the tenant should obtain the arbitration to

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which he was entitled. That was granted to us but it was granted somewhat in the form of a concession to make up for the full right of arbitration which we had asked for and which we could not get. Yet, my Lords, it was not a concession in any way at all; if was merely conferring upon a tenant the right which was his and which always has been his, and it was in fact nothing more than a tardy recognition of what all along had been granted to a tenant under previous Acts of Parliament.
EARL CARRINGTON: My Lords, I certainly have no reason to complain of the speech of the noble Earl opposite, and I take it, after the speech of the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition last night, and after the decision at which the House arrived last night, that we are all of us, or at any rate most of us I think I may fairly say, in favour of the compulsory acquisition of land under fair and proper conditions. I do not understand from the speech of my noble friend that he in any way objects to that principle. What I understand him to say is that he objects to seeing the methods and the machinery of the Small Holdings Act extended. I might ask just for one moment what are the alternatives as regards authority to acquire land compulsorily? As far as I know there are two—there is the Provisional Order confirmed by Parliament, and there is the limited procedure under the Port of London Bill. I shall, of course, be glad to be corrected if I am wrong, but I am aware of no other machinery of any sort description, or kind, and as the noble Earl opposite moves that in the opinion of this House it is not desirable to apply the provisions of the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts to the acquisition of land for other purposes, without alteration and amendment, I therefore think I may fairly assume that he is in his heart of hearts in favour of the adoption of one or other of these two courses.
I am bound to say at once that if the noble Earl had had his way as regards the Small Holdings Act, that Bill for all practical purposes would have been killed at once, because if the Act was to work in any way satisfactorily there was an absolute necessity to have a machinery which was simple and speedy and as little expensive as possible. The result, I think, has shown that your Lordships were quite right in agreeing to the provisions of the Small Holdings Bill,
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because in England and Wales during the last fifteen or sixteen months only 8,000 acres have been taken by compulsion out of a total of 57,772 acres taken altogether. On the Motion of the noble Earl I should like to be allowed to ask two questions, and two questions only. The first question is, Has the machinery of the Small Holdings Act been carried out fairly and impartially on the whole by the Board over which I have the honour to preside? Secondly, has it saved unnecessary expense? Has it saved an expense which, had that expense been insisted on, would most inevitably have knocked the Bill on the head for good and all? Lord Onslow seems to doubt whether the Bill has worked as well as I hope and really believe it has, but I am rather reassured by the speech which the noble Earl has made to-night because he really has brought no charges, as far as I understand, of injustice or of hardship against me this evening.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: I have not suggested that the noble Earl was guilty of any act of injustice. I only said that the procedure provided in the Act might produce injustice. I must beg the noble Earl's pardon for interrupting him, but that was very far from suggesting that he personally had been guilty of any injustice.
EARL CARRINGTON: I am much obliged for the interruption, and I quite agree with the noble Earl that it might have arisen, but it has not. Many things might be, but they are not; and I think it is a little bit hard to be brought up at the bar of justice and to be told that a great many things might happen which apparently have not. Still I am bound to say that the noble Earl has had a backing of a very important description. I should like to call the attention of your Lordships' House for one moment to a remark that was made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice on a recent occas on, I think on the 4th of October when he told us that the injustice which had been caused under the Small Holdings Act in cases before the Courts would not have occurred had the man had proper representation. By proper representation I believe he means learned counsel. I would very respectfully ask to what cases does the Lord Chief Justice refer. The only case, so far as I am aware, that has been brought before the Court was the case alluded to by the noble Earl—the case of Ringer v. the Norfolk County Council. I need not go into that case because the noble

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Earl did not definitely say that there was any case of injustice, but if your Lordships want to know anything about that case my noble friend behind me, who is on the Norfolk County Council, will be able to give chapter and verse about the case of Ringer v. the Norfolk County Council, which was brought before Mr. Justice Darling and Mr. Justice Jelf in July of this year. It was an ex parte application, the Norfolk County Council not being represented, so that the two Judges, having heard only one side, naturally could express no opinion as to whether justice had or had not been done. They simply stated, what everybody knew, that under the Act they had no jurisdiction whatever. In addition, Mr. Ringer, who in the public Press has been held up as a martyr under this monstrous Act and as most grievously and shamefully ill-treated, never even applied to have what the Lord Chief Justice called proper representation. Like a wise man, he employed no counsel but kept his money in his pocket.
I have here a sheaf of supposed cases of injustice, about which I have been soundly abused in the provincial Press. But I am happy to be able to say that I need not trouble your Lordships or detain you for a single minute on these supposed cases, as they have not been referred to in this House. There is one thing that I should like to be allowed to say. I object most strenuously to the word "injustice." It is a word that is often used with regard to proceedings under the Small Holdings Act. There is hardship perhaps—I acknowledge that—but it is not a hardship that is on one side only. No doubt the action sometimes taken is a hardship, or considered a hardship, by a farmer who has land all round a village, who has, one might say, the village by the throat. I know the case of a man who has 700 acres all round a village, up to the back-gardens. The landlord, as landlords are, is very anxious to give small holdings. He was asked, and lie said "I am afraid I cannot meet your wishes, because dear old John Barleycorn would object to it so seriously." No doubt it was a hardship for John Barleycorn, but what about the hardship for these labourers in those cottages, who, day after day and week after week, in their small wretched gardens at the back of their cottages, look hopelessly and hungrily over the hedge at these bits of land of which they are unable to get even so much as would fill a flower pot. There was one case which I brought before your
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Lordships—the case of a village on the Crown Lands, where the farmers absolutely refused to give up any land to the men. They had great farms, and as they would not give up land I took it and gave it to the men. Mr. Armstrong, of Selby, complained bitterly that several farmers had had to give up twenty to thirty acres on farms of 800 to 1,000 acres in Yorkshire, and called it a great injustice and a most abominable act.
I come to my second point. Has our procedure saved unnecessary expense? I do most respectfully claim that it has. For any procedure which allows expert witnesses and counsel and all the protection of the majesty of the law must inevitably be more costly than that which does not, and I honestly believe that the disallowance of these learned persons is one of the great merits of the Act. It leads to a considerable saving of expense, and, as I think we have seen to-night, no great injustice, I may say no injustice or hardship whatever, results, to the parties concerned. May I give one single instance of what I have done? I daresay many of your Lordships who live in the Eastern counties will remember the case of the St. Faith allotments. In 1891 the Norfolk County Council made a Provisional Order for the compulsory purchase of two fields or fourteen and a-half acres Their costs for the Provisional Order and. the consequent Parliamentary proceedings amounted to £499. The owner incurred. costs which were calculated at over £1,000, and the arbitrator awarded her £966 for the land. The two tenants dispossessed from these fourteen and a-half acres got, one £124 and the other £41. The expense of obtaining the land thus come to £24 per acre if you add to that ten per cent, for compulsory purchase, which was allowed in those days, you bring up the cost of the land for those poor men to £104 per acre. That naturally killed the Allotments Act of 1882 stone dead, and it quieted the ardour of landless men and also the ardour of the Norfolk County Council as well.
I have only one more instance. You may say that it is ancient history; that it is the Old Testament and that it cannot happen now. But this happened in October, 1903—six years ago. My trustees sold six acres to a girls' school, to a company of beneficent individuals who look after the education of girls. The price was to be fixed by an arbitrator, and the inquiry lasted two days. Expert wit-

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nesses, men of the highest possible standing, for the school put the highest price of this land of mine at £1,000. The arbitrator, after hearing counsel and expert witnesses for two days, and after three months interval, awarded me £3,425. The costs to my trustees amounted to £579, and I presume that the costs of the purchasers were not less, so that between us we paid in costs £1,159, or £159 more than the school expert witnesses swore, and I am perfectly certain honestly believed, to be the outside selling value of these six acres. Now that is not an extreme case. It is not a single case. These things are going on day by day and week by week. Of course I should be the last person to wish to push the question of expense too far. We all agree that justice is the first consideration. But I do say that though we may be enthusiastic in my office, we are all upright and honourable men, and our great and only object is to promote agricultural interests and to do justice between man and man. That is our ambition and that is our aim. I hope that in what I have said I have been able satisfactorily to answer the strictures of my noble friend the Chairman of Committees.
THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I have been alluded to a great deal about a certain Ringer case, and I really think, if you will give me a few minutes indulgence, I can satisfactorily prove to your Lordships that in this case there was absolutely no injustice. There may have been slight hardship, but there must be hardship in some form. I will give you the bare facts of the case. In 1907 when the Small Holdings Act came into force there were a great many applications all over the county. On April 3 a farm was purchased by Mr. Ringer near the farm to which he and his brothers and sisters had succeeded and which they still hold jointly. His father had farmed the land for thirty-six years. He bought that farm at an absolute knock-out price of £16 10 s. per acre, working out for 180 acres, with enfranchisements and copyhold, at £3,000. He knew there was a great demand in the parish where he lived for small holdings. On May 13, 1908, we proceeded, after a local inquiry, to get land under the Act, and on June 2, we made application to Mr. Ringer. He absolutely refused. His is the only land in the parish—I challenge any-
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body to deny it—that is really suitable for small holdings. The other land is not suitable. But he refused and the matter dropped for the time being, because we were so much engaged in hiring land voluntarily.
On September 12, the Board of Agriculture sent down a complaint to us that small holdings had been required in the district and had not been got. We answered the letter, and on November 5 an inspector was sent down from the Board to visit the parish. The Board on November 16 suggested to us to consider the advisability of acquiring the farm. On January 2, 1909, the sub-committee again, after a long correspondence, and having tried in every way to induce Mr. Ringer to give up some of his land, reported that he refused absolutely to negotiate. On January 20 the sub-committee were still trying to do everything they could. On January 23 we got tired, and at last we said we would move for compulsory purchase. We gave notice for compulsory purchase, and on May 4 a commissioner was sent down to hold an inquiry. I may say that at that inquiry Mr. Ringer was represented by his own solicitor. On May 22 an order for compulsory purchase was confirmed. Mr. Ringer then sent in a claim for £6,327 for the purchase he had made only six months before at a cost of £3,000. He made the amount up in this way: 181 acres, £4,511; damage by severance, £1,099; alterations to farm, £25; money spent on the farm, £75; losses on implements, £150; disturbance as a tenant. £217; losses on covenants, £250. Naturally we were rather aghast. I would point out that the first item of £4,511 works out at £25 per acre for the land which he purchased at £16 10 s. If we had purchased it at that it would have been all right, but he added all the other things.
As we could not come to any terms we resolved, on September 1, to arbitrate. When that came on there was a local Chamber of Agriculture meeting at which a tremendous resolution was passed on account of the decision or rather of what was said in the Law Courts when the county council did not take the trouble to appear, because we thought we had no locus standi. The Act we thought covered us. The resolution stated that the Chamber, having considered the decision of the High Court of Justice and having the best wishes for

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the success of small holdings and allotments was of opinion that the ouster of the jurisdiction of a Court of Law was undesirable and likely to have a prejudicial effect on the working of the Act. That resolution was passed by the Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture. They might have represented that when the Act was being passed, but they never thought about it then. They woke up, like Rip van Winkle, after a year and a-half and found this out.
I moved, and very nearly carried at the next meeting, a resolution that we should proceed to arbitration at once, but it was suggested that if it were possible we should again meet Mr. Ringer. Two extra men of the sub-committee were then sent down, one of them one of the most able valuers and land agents in the county. They asked him if he had anything to say. He said he thought he would perhaps offer fifty-five acres, but he declined to do anything further. He said he must consult other people. The fact of it is he is a very much misguided young man, entirely in the hands of people who are trying to make him pull chestnuts out of the fire. He had two friends on the committee. The next time the committee met after that and I moved that we proceed, his two friends got up and said that he had not a leg to stand on and they could not therefore do otherwise than vote for my motion, which was carried unanimously. Our committee is a very mixed one. There are on it landlords, valuers, and the secretary of the labour union. We meet nearly every Saturday, and, for myself, I can say I have only missed two Saturdays for eighteen months There is a lot to do, but we have never had a word of disagreement. We may have argued, but we have always been unanimous, and we should not have done this if there had been the slightest injustice of any sort or kind. At the present moment Mr. Ringer is in the position that if the arbitrator says that the price is so heavy that we cannot let the land at a proper price to the applicants he will remain in undisturbed possession. I may say that land is going up in Norfolk. People are buying it in the hopes of getting the county council to pay for it. A man came to me recently and told me he had bought certain land and asked what the county council was going to give for it. I replied, "You can keep it." If you once give compensation like this you will have land
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snapped up all over the place in the hope of its being bought and compensation paid. There is not one atom of injustice, I repeat, in the case of Mr. Ringer. He bought the land knowing we were applying for it, and he might have come to us. If he had been a sensible young man, instead of being badly advised, he would have sold this land long ago and saved himself enormous delay and expense and put a very handsome sum into his pocket.
THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: If the speech to which we have just listened is the outcome of this form of annexing property, it furnishes in itself a very considerable argument against it. I see much that is unfair in what the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture thinks perfectly fair. Surely it is unfair that when a man thinks he has had an injustice done him by a public body, it should be possible for a member of that body to come and deliver his own view of the case without giving the other side the smallest opportunity of being heard. That is what we have witnessed to-night. We have been told that there is an individual who thinks that he was badly treated by the county council. He went to a court of law and was told that the court was not open to him. The case is mentioned here incidentally, quite incidentally, by the noble Earl who brings the Motion forward, and it has been made a peg upon which a long statement has been hung, reflecting very seriously upon this gentleman—a statement, as I said before, to which he has no opportunity of replying. Now that could not have happened had this case been taken before a court of law. You do not hear in this House the pros and cons of the matter, and it furnishes to my mind one of the strongest arguments against the provisions of this Act, that it leads to things of this sort. I am sorry, my Lords, to say that the President of the Board of Agriculture does not altogether approach the matter in a judicial spirit. He has tried to put a complexion and a colour upon the case by taking the instance of a man who occupied a farm all round a village. Is that the only case in which compulsory purchase powers have been put in force under this Act? The noble Lord knows that such instances are comparatively rare.
EARL CARRINGTON: Oh, no.
THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: The instances I have known of compulsory purchase have not been in cases where farms have been all round villages. Of course I am not saying there are not such cases, but to suppose that the grievance of compulsory purchase only occurs in a case of that sort is an entire misapprehension of what is going on. I do not wish to detain the House longer, but I could not help making a protest against what I think is most unfair to any person who considers an injustice has been done him, that his case should be argued here without the slightest opportunity being given to him to answer the charges. I know absolutely nothing about the case myself, and therefore I am most impartial on the subject.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, perhaps it would not be right that the debate should close without a few observations being delivered from this Bench. Let me say, to begin with, what has often been repeated from this side of your Lordships' House, that there is none of us who is opposed to the establishment of small holdings. On the contrary, we believe in small holdings, and most of us, in our private capacity, have done our best to promote them. But I confess that when I hear the noble Earl opposite, the President of the Board of Agriculture, speaking in rather scornful tones of the hardships inflicted upon sitting tenants by the operation of the Act, I regret such a tendency in his mind. The hardship is very great where a tenant of many years standing is turned out of his holding under the operation of the Act.
EARL CARRINGTON: Hear, hear!
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Just compare the attitude of mind in which each of us approaches the subject when we are dealing with tenants in our private capacity and when we are asked to deal with them by the noble Earl opposite as members of a county council. Everybody knows that on well-managed English estates the tenant who occupies land from year to year is as safe, as undisturbed, as if the land belonged to him, so long as he performs the covenants of his tenancy. From year to year the tenant remains on as his father had remained before him. Nobody dreams of disturbing him. That is the practice, I am glad to say, as between good landlords and good tenants
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over the length and breadth of England. Therefore to say there is no hardship in turning out a tenant is idle. There undoubtedly is. There may be in certain cases sufficient reason to overcome the consideration of that hardship, but that the hardship exists is undoubtedly the case; and I regret very much to hear from the noble Earl that as much as 8,000 acres has been taken compulsorily under the operation of the Act.
I am quite sure the less compulsion there is in the working of the Act the better Every effort should be made, and I am quite certain that by the county council upon which I sit every effort has been made, to avoid compulsion and proceeding to last extremities. The Act has worked in many cases sufficiently well, and that has been due to the action of the county councils themselves, because the county councils in England—at any rate I can speak for my part of the country—are moderate in character and anxious to apply temperately any powers they possess. They do their utmost to prevent any hardship taking place. But what the Lord Chairman urged before your Lordships was that there were provisions in this Act which were capable of very unjust application, and I think in what he said he was abundantly justified. The two particular matters which he brought forward were these. First, that where persons come before the Court to recover the price which is due to them under the operation of the Act they should be allowed to be represented by counsel. The noble Earl opposite said he thought we were very well quit of these learned gentry.
EARL CARRINGTON: I did not use that term.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I think the noble Earl called them learned. He is quite justified in that. He seemed. to think the whole paraphernalia of our Courts of Justice—counsel, Judges and other forms—unnecessary excrescences on our social system which we should be better without. My Lords, why do we take so much trouble to have these Courts of Justice? Why, after so many years of traditional experience, have we erected an elaborate code of rules under which they are administered? Why are counsel trained to plead before those Courts

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under very careful rules? Why is all this done if justice could be achieved without it? Why are we put to the pains and expenses of having all this intricate system of justice? It is because it has been found by experience that you cannot rely upon getting justice unless you have these forms. These institutions are essential to the administration of justice and the securing of justice for the subjects of His Majesty. Therefore we on this side of the House have always protested against legislation, of which many examples have been produced by noble Lords opposite, which seeks to dispense with this protection.
I do not want to trouble your Lordships by referring to the Bill which has recently occupied a great deal of your attention, but it will be within the recollection of your Lordships that it required the action of the Opposition in order to force upon the Government the provision of Courts of Justice under the Housing and Town Planning Bill which we have just passed. In Bill after Bill the Government have tried to dispense with this protection, and in Bill after Bill it has been our duty to insert it. I am sorry to say that in the Small Holdings Act we did not do so, and I think it will be found that the absence of this protection of the right of the subject to conic before a Court of Justice and be represented by trained counsel will tell against the equitable administration of the Small Holdings Act. I repeat what I ventured to say at the beginning of my remarks, that we are in favour of small holdings and that we hope the Act will succeed. But we regret the blemishes which; not by our action, but by the action of the Government, were left on that Act when it passed through Parliament.
THE EARL OF CREWE: I need only say one or two words in reply to what has fallen from the noble Duke and the noble Marquess who has just sat down. Alluding to compulsion and the possible hardship inflicted on the holder of a farm, the noble Marquess spoke very truly of the tradition of well-managed estates on which a yearly tenant is in a secure position. That is perfectly true. But there are exceptions which are liable to work far greater hardship to the tenant than anything which, as far as I know, has ever been done under the provisions of the Small Holdings Act. In the first place, a man may sell part
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of his property. Nobody can say that every landowner is bound to keep in every part of England every acre of land which he possesses. He may wish to add to one estate and reduce another. In that case his yearly tenant gets notice to quit, and whether he remains on his farm or not depends on the will of the purchaser. That is one case. There is another case which certainly happens on the best managed estates. The noble Marquess may go so far as to say no one ought to sell land, but nobody can say that a man ought not to develop his land, and there are oil the estates of a great many of your Lordships' cases in which parts of farms become available for building. Nobody thinks of the tenant then. He is compensated, as he ought to be, but I never heard of anybody who had such a sentiment for his tenant in the capacity of a farmer that he refrained from building on land that had become ripe for that purpose. In this case the affliction of the tenant appears to me exactly of the same character as if part of his land were taken for small holdings, with this undoubted difference, that the tenant is very often a man who quite recognises that the landlord is doing a sensible thing in turning part of his farm into building land. He is, however, not likely to be much of a believer in the system of small holdings, and he would think it a hardship that any land should be taken away in support of a scheme in which he did not believe. That is practically the difference which makes the farmer complain more in the one case than in the other. The noble Marquess said it was a hardship for a man to have all his farm taken away.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: It is very often a much greater hardship to have half his farm taken away.
THE EARL OF CREWE: I agree that is so. But among these eight thousand acres, of the taking of which I have no personal knowledge at all, I wonder if it will be found that there are cases in which the whole of a man's farm has been taken and he has been thrown on the world without any other farm to go to, or whether there are case of the kind mentioned by the noble Marquess in which the tenant of a farm up to 300 acres has had a half taken away. I very much doubt if such a case exists. My impression is that in cases of

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compulsory purchase as a rule moderate slices have been taken off large holdings. My noble friend behind me knows more about it than I do, but I shall be surprised if the particular cases of hardship mentioned as possible are likely to have occurred.
With regard to the criticism raised by the noble Duke upon the speech made by my noble friend behind me, Lord Kimberley, I quite appreciated the reticence with which the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, mentioned the case of Mr. Ringer. But if he will forgive my saying so, it might have been better if in the circumstances, when he was not prepared to describe the case, he had not mentioned the name at all. It would have been less likely to lead to some further mention of the case by my noble friend behind me. I cannot, however, think that any possible harm could be done to the gentleman in question by the speech which my noble friend made, because, as I understood it, the case was now in this situation, that it was merely a question of how much an arbitrator would say the land was worth, and in that respect I cannot see that the gentleman's interests would in any way be damaged by what my noble friend behind me said.
On the general question I only have to say this. The noble Marquess talked about the experience and the tradition of ages; those hoary traditions which have, no doubt, come down to us from our forefathers. But if you look at this in a practical and commonsense way you will see that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot surround every one of those transactions with all that tremendous apparatus of legal inquiry which the noble Marquess thinks is necessary. It is all very well to say you are in favour of small holdings. It is an abstract opinion which anybody can hold, but if, as we believe to be the case, you have to choose between the provision of small holdings on the one hand and on the complete maintenance of all this expensive apparatus of legal inquiry on the other, you must make your choice. I do not see how it can be denied that if you permit the employment of highly paid expert witnesses and expensive counsel you either prevent the transactions taking place in many cases at all or you give an advantage to the long purse over the short one; and when the noble Marquess talked of those venerable traditions, which we all respect,
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we must recollect that is not only a matter of veneration but it is also to the interest of a large number of people to maintain them. We have seen that in relation to a subject of which we have often heard from the noble and learned Earl, Lord Halsbury—namely, the question of the transfer of land. The noble and learned Earl has often spoken in this House within my recollection of the dead weight of interests which prevent the cheapening of the transfer of land in this country, and it is something of the same kind, in addition to the reverence which we all feel for the high traditions of British law—it is something also of the kind which tends to make a large number of people regard it as necessary to employ in all cases expert witnesses and counsel.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The noble Earl is putting—perhaps through my own fault—much more upon me than I think I intended to say. The argument the noble Earl is addressing to the House is in favour of cheapening procedure but not of abolishing legal protection altogether. That is the charge which the Government have to meet.
THE EARL OF CREWE: You cannot, I. think, enjoy the one without running the risk of the other. I certainly did understand the noble Marquess was speaking of expert witnesses.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Counsel is what I said.
THE EARL OF CREWE: It is also true, if you are to carry all these cases to the High Court, that it involves the employment of counsel and possibly a large expenditure of money. I have nothing to add, but I do feel very strongly that if you are to have this cheaper procedure you may, in fact you must, have to give up something. I suppose everybody would like to have his case tried before the pick of the Judges of the High Court and also to be able to employ the most able counsel; but hundreds and thousands of cases of all kinds are tried before Courts all over the country under far less imposing circumstances and yet very substantial justice is done. I hope, therefore, that so far as regards the procedure under this Act, it being apparently

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impossible to lay down any rule by which you can keep applications to a Court on a thoroughly cheap footing, you will be content, in the absence of proved cases of hardship, to rely on the procedure under the Act.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: May I venture to say that I think the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture has not perhaps done me the complete justice of reading the Notice of Motion which I put upon the Paper of your Lordships' House. I think the noble Earl came down with a sort of idea that I was going to make a general attack upon the way in which the Small Holdings Act had been administered by the Department over which he presides. I had the honour of being President of the Board of Agriculture, and I know something of the officials of the noble Earl's Department, though, of course, the Commissioners under this Act are men who have been appointed under the noble Earl and with whom I am not acquainted. But the noble Earl asked the question, "Did they or did they not on the whole carry out the Act impartially?" I hope there was nothing I said in the remarks I addressed to your Lordships to suggest that there was any desire on the part of the noble Earl or his officials to carry out this Act in any way except with impartiality. What I did say was that the procedure which had been put into the hands of the noble Earl by Parliament was such that it might occasionally work injustice in particular cases; and I ventured to put before your Lordships instances where, whether it was so or not, it was thought by the persons who considered themselves aggrieved that injustice had been worked. I did not go into the case of the Norfolk County Council which has been referred to because I am not at all familiar with the circumstances, and I was quite certain that your Lordships' House was not the place in which the question could be argued upon one side or upon the other. If I did wrong in mentioning that case I offer my apology to the noble Earl the Leader of the House. All I can is that as this is the only case in which application has been made to the Courts it would be quite obvious to what case I alluded.
THE EARL OF CREWE: The noble Earl will understand I made no complaint of what he did.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: The gist of all my observations was not whether in this particular case the man got the compensation he ought to have got but whether the order of the Board of Agriculture did or did not contravene the Act of Parliament. That, I understand, was the question which this gentleman desired to put to the Court. That was my point. I did not go into the question whether the man got the proper amount or not, but whether the Act had been infringed, for when he went to the Court to ask he was told that they had no power to exercise any jurisdiction. Then the noble Earl said, Have we or have we not carried out these compulsory purchases without unnecessary expense? What I said was that if the alterations which I suggest ought to be made in this procedure were carried into effect it would not add to the expense in any material degree. The Leader of the House talked a great deal about the panoply of justice and the cost of having cases tried before the most eminent Judge or by the most distinguished counsel. That is not what I put forward at all, if I may venture to say so. What I put forward was that where there is a doubt whether the Act has been properly carried out by the Department there should be some opportunity of appealing from the public Department. There is none such in the Small Holdings Act. It is exactly the procedure which was proposed to your Lordships the other day in the Housing Bill, and it is for that reason I thought it my duty to call your Lordships' attention to it.
The noble Earl said very little with regard to the question of compensation. On former occasions the noble Earl has said he was very anxious to do all he could to give compensation where he thought there was any hardship. There was a case—I am almost afraid to mention names, but it is a well known case—the Clarke case, the case of a tenant of the Crown. The last time that case was referred to in this House the noble Earl said that he would take into his most earliest consideration whether or not some compensation could be paid to that tenant. The noble Earl has a tender heart, as we all know, but he has a hard taskmaster over him in the person of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when he went to the Treasury and asked them whether they would find any money to compensate this gentleman who had been

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dispossessed of his farm the answer was they would not give him a single sixpence; and that answer has had to be given—not by any fault of the noble Earl—to the person who was turned out of his farm.
There is one other matter the noble Earl did not refer to. I should have been glad if he could have told us the exact views he holds upon the subject. I refer to his having said that noble Lords upon this side of the House had threatened to wreck the Small Holdings Bill if there were any clauses for compensation put into it. I should be glad to know whether the noble Earl admits that soft impeachment, and if so in what manner he proposes to justify it. At this hour and with this thin attendance I do not propose to press your Lordships to a Division. It is quite sufficient to have elicited the debate we have had, and I shall rely, as each successive measure comes before your Lordships' House, upon the opportunity that will be afforded of offering some observations with a view to the amendment of the provisions for the compulsory purchase of land.
EARL CARRINGTON: I apologise to my noble friend for having forgotten to answer that last question. I need hardly say that I never said to anybody at any time that if compensation were insisted on in the Small Holdings Bill the Tory Lords told me they would wreck the Bill. There is not the smallest justification for that, and it really shows the danger of gentlemen, with the best possible intentions, repeating conversations second-hand. When the Land Tenure Bill was before the House
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I wanted to introduce into that measure, in the compensation for disturbance clause, compensation for tenants who had portions of their land taken for small holdings. I saw there was a good deal of difficulty about that and I consulted a third man, not a member of your Lordships' House, and asked him what I had better do. He said that the House of Lords would probably object very strongly to compensation for disturbance, that it was a very moot point whether they would allow that to go through, and that if I wanted to secure the Bill it would be the stupidest thing in the world to overload the Bill. He said, "If you put that clause in, it is absolutely certain to wreck it," so I left it out, and compensation was never put into the Bill. I admit there is a great deal to be said for it, and a great deal more to be said in the case where the State takes land for the Small Holdings Act. In Grand Committee that Amendment was moved, but then it was pointed out that compensation could not be paid out of the public purse for what landlords did not—I do not say would not—pay out of their private purse. So the matter ended, and that was why it was never debated in the House of Commons. I am much obliged to the noble Earl for giving me the opportunity of saying that the statement made was an entirely erroneous description of the conversation, and that I never said anything of the sort ascribed to me.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at Eight o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.