Lords Sitting of 12 July 1910

THE LORD BRABOURNE.
Sat first in parliament after the death of his father.
The Earl of MOUNT-EDGCUMBE—Took the Oath.
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificate from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have been complied with:
Fylde Water Board.
Also the Certificate that no Standing Orders are applicable to the following Bill:
Paisley Gas Order Confirmation.
The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL [H.L.]—(UNOPPOSED ORDERS.)
Reported, with Amendments.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL [H.L.]—(Brownhills and District Gas Order.)
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL [H.L.]
Re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 3) BILL [H.L.]—(UNOPPOSED ORDERS.)
Reported, with Amendments.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 3) BILL. [H.L.]—(Ripley Gas Order and Swansea Gas Order.)
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 3) BILL [H.L.]
Re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
TRAMWAYS ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
  WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
    PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
    Reported, with Amendments, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL.
  Reported, without amendment, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
SHIREBROOK AND DISTRICT GAS BILL.
  LLANELLY HARBOUR BILL. [H.L.]
  Reported, with Amendments.
BELFAST CORPORATION BILL.
  CARDIFF RAILWAY BILL.
  Reported, without amendment.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL. [H.L.]
  Reported, without amendment, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
  SLOUCH WATER BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
Read 2ª, and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
SOUTHAMPTON CORPORATION BILL.
Read 2ª, and committed.
CONVEYANCING BILL.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.
    LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 9) BILL.
    Brought from the Commons.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1ª; and referred to the Examiners.
CITY OF LONDON (TITHES AND RATES) BILL. [H.L.]
  RAILWAY PASSENGERS ASSURANCE COMPANY (TRANSFER) BILL. [H.L.]
  Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
LONDON ELECTRIC RAILWAY AMALGAMATION BILL. [H.L.]
  SAINT MARY, STOCKPORT, RECTORY BILL. [H.L.]
    SOUTH LINCOLNSHIRE WATER BILL. [H.L.]
    Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
EXMOUTH GAS BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendment, agreed to.

BRIGHTON AND HOVE GAS BILL.
EAST GRINSTEAD GAS AND WATER BILL.
EGREMONT URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL (GAS) BILL.
EXMOUTH URBAN DISTRICT WATER BILL.
WORKSOP URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments, agreed to.

MANSFIELD RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
  METROPOLITAN RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
  Commons Amendments considered, and agreed to.
FINANCE (1909–1910) ACT, 1910.
Increment Value Duty—Rules made by the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue under Section 3, subsections (2) and (3) of the Act: Laid before the House (persuant to Act), and to be printed. (No. 97.)
NAVAL ESTABLISHMENTS IN BRITISH POSSESSIONS ACT, 1909.
Memorial to His Majesty in Council representing that it is expedient by Order in Council to vest in the Governor-General of the Dominion of Canada, the yards, buildings, and other property specified in the schedule hereto situate at Halifax in the Province of Nova Scotia: laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and to be printed. (No. 98.)
HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES.
Second Report from the Select Committee made, to be printed; and to be considered To-morrow. (No. 99.)
CONVEYANCING BILL.
Read 1ª, and to be printed. (No. 100.)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL. (No. 101.)
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 9) BILL. (No. 102.)
  Read 1ª; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.
WATER PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Read 2ª (according to order), and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 1) BILL.
Read 2ª (according to order), and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection in regard to the Gorseinon Electric Lighting Order.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.
Read 2ª (according to order), and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection in regard to the Ardrossan, Saltcoats and District Electric Lighting Order and the Cambuslang Electric Lighting (Extension) Order.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
Read 2ª, (according to order), and committed.
KIRKCALDY CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  WEMYSS TRAMWAYS (EXTENSIONS) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  Read 3a (according to order), and passed.

CENSUS (GREAT BRITAIN) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Earl Beauchamp.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Earl of ONSLOW in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
Clause 4:
Preparation and filling up of Schedules.
4.—(1) Schedules shall be prepared by or under the direction of the Local Government Board for the purpose of being filled up by or on behalf of the several occupiers of dwelling-houses, with the following particulars, and no others, namely, particulars as to—

(a) the name, sex, age, profession or occupation, condition as to marriage, relation to bead of family, birthplace, and (in the case of a person born abroad) nationality, of every living person who abode in every house on the night of the census day; and

(b) whether any person who so abode was blind, deaf, dumb, imbecile or lunatic; and

(c) in the case of any person who so abode being married, the duration of marriage, and the number of children born of the marriage the number of such children living; and

(d) the number of rooms inhabited; and

(e) in the case of Wales or the county of Monmouth, whether any person who so abode (being of three years of age or upwards) speaks English only or Welsh only, or both English and Welsh.

(2) Every enumerator shall in the course of the week ending on the Saturday next before the census day leave at every dwelling-house within Ins enumeration district one or inure of these schedules for the occupier thereof or of any part thereof, and on every such schedule shall be plainly expressed that it is to be filled up by the occupier for whom it is left, and that the enumerator will collect all such schedules within his district on the Monday then next following.
(3) Every occupier for whom any such schedule has been so left shall fill up or cause to be filled up the schedule, to the best of his knowledge and belief, so far as relates to all persons dwelling in the house, tenement, or apartment occupied by him, and shall sign his name thereto, and shall deliver the schedule so tilled up and signed to the enumerator when required so to do.
(4) In this section the expression "dwelling-house" shall include every building and tenement of which the whole or any part is used for the purpose of human habitation, and where a dwelling-house is let or sub-let in different tenements or apartments and occupied distinctly by different persons or families a separate schedule shall be left with or for and shall be filled up by the occupier of each such distinct tenement or apartment.
(5) For the purposes of this section, a person who is travelling or at work on the night of the census day, and who returns to a house on the morning of the following day, shall be treated as abiding in that house on the night of the census day.
LORD NEWTON*LORD NEWTON moved to amend paragraph (a) of Clause 4 so that it would read—

(a) the name, sex, age, profession, occupation, religious profession, condition as to marriage, relation to head of family, birthplace, and (in the case of a person born abroad) nationality, of every living person who abode in every house on the night of the census day; and

He had a further Amendment on the Paper to insert a provision that "no person shall be subject to any such penalty for refusing to state his religious profession."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving this Amendment I do not wish to recapitulate the arguments which I made use of 'a lien this Bill was read a second time, but I move the Amendment for a double reason. In the first place, I understand that there are a certain number of members of this House who are desirous of expressing their opinion upon the question to which it refers, and in the next place I wish to give the Government an opportunity of making some intelligible and coherent statement in explanation of their attitude upon this particular point. If the Government were to adopt a straightforward and candid attitude and were to come to this House and say, "We are very sorry we cannot accommodate you with regard to this matter, but the fact is that amongst our supporters are a large number of political Nonconformists of a persecuting type who desire to disestablish the Church in Wales, and who desire also to multiply their numbers in the estimation of the public very much in the same way that Mr. Haldane multiplies the numbers of the military forces of the Crown, and therefore, strongly object to any impartial enumeration of the different denominations in this country," we who understand the position could not admire the Government attitude, but at all events we should feel a certain amount of sympathy for them in their difficult position and it would have this result, that we should be able to believe what they said. But, under the present circumstances, with the best will in the world I find it impossible to accept seriously the statements which the noble Earl the Lord' President has made use of in this House. Instead of putting forward any really serious arguments, the noble Earl advanced reasons so futile and so incoherent and so unsatisfactory that really they do not take anybody in, not even myself.
What do the arguments of the Government amount to? Briefly they are covered by the inquisitorial argument and the argument that this country is different from the rest of the civilised world, including Ireland. It really does require the most extraordinary hardihood—I might almost say it requires a front of brass—to put forward arguments of this nature. The noble Earl, in his statement on the Second Reading of the Bill, said he ventured to impress upon the House that a very large number of people in this country really believe it to be improper for the State to ask such questions. I want to know who these,

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people are. Is anybody in this House acquainted with any person, male or female, who has any objection to stating what his or her religious belief is? Does the noble Earl know of anybody? I am convinced that there is not a single member of this House, or of the House of Commons as far as that gees, who would not infinitely sooner answer a question as to his religious belief than state what the amount of his income is, or answer other questions that are forced upon him by the Government.
But what I am asking the Government to do does not constitute anything of an inquisitorial nature, because it is purely optional. If there are the vast number of persons whose existence the noble Earl claims, all they have to do is to refuse to give the information. How can anything which is optional be inquisitorial? On the other hand, as I pointed out the other day, there are asked a certain number of not only inconvenient but possibly disagreeable questions which really enter into the arcana of the relations between the two sexes, and which a man or woman is obliged to answer under a penalty. The argument that this is a question of an inquisitorial nature is entirely destroyed by the fact that my Amendment is an optional one, and is in the same form as prevails in Ireland. Now with regard to the noble Earl's contention as to Ireland. Ireland, says the noble Earl, is different from England. As far as that goes, Scotland is different from England too, but no allowance is made for the difference of feeling which exists in Scotland. Why should Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Welshmen not be able to bear with a certain amount of equanimity the optional inquiry to which Irishmen take no objection at all?
I have always observed that for political purposes the Irish figure in speeches made by members of the Liberal Party as a romantic, emotional, impulsive, and quick-witted race, as contrasted with the heavier and more solid prosaic Englishman. Yet this sensitive and highly-strung being is called upon to face an ordeal for which the thicker-skinned Englishman or Scotsman is apparently considered to be unfitted, and the peculiar thing is that the Irishman makes no difficulty about it. He is not bound to furnish any particulars with regard to his religion—and I may say that the idea that there are only two denominations in Ireland is a complete fallacy, for in proportion to the population there are just
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as many denominations there as elsewhere—but he makes no objection whatever; and out of the whole of Ireland there are not 700 people who object to state what their religious profession is. The curious thing is that the most sensitive organisation in the world appears to be that of the British political Nonconformist.
I should not worry the Government or anybody else over this particular question were it not for a very obvious reason. Everybody knows perfectly well that the disestablishment of the Church in Wales is in the air. It is a long overdue item in, I believe, the Newcastle programme, and the Government are pledged to deal with this question as soon as they feel themselves equal to the task. The case for disestablishment in Wales rests largely upon statistics, more or less imaginary because they are drawn up by amateurs. I observed the other day that the Prime Minister, when making a statement with regard to a Bill now before the other House, said there were 12,000,000 Roman Catholics who owned allegiance to the British Crown. I do not know what authority he had for making that statement; but my attention was also called to a letter which appeared in The Times from a gentleman whom I believe to be a pillar of Nonconformity, Sir Robert Perks. Sir Robert Perks, writing in a some what pontifical strain, said—
"The established Church of England has long ceased to embrace within her fold a majority of the people."
I should like to know what authority there is for either of these statements. These are precisely the kind of statements upon which facts are required, and upon which facts will not be forthcoming unless you take an official and impartial census. I have no hesitation in saying that the refusal of the Government takes nobody in. Everybody knows perfectly well what it means. It is nothing but an attempt to conceal awkward facts, and, personally, I look upon it, in view of the political question involved, as taking an unfair political advantage of the situation. It is for that reason that I move the Amendment which stands in my name, and I need hardly say that if I obtain any support I am prepared to go to a Division.
Amendment moved—
Clause 4, page 2, line 3, leave out ("or"), and after ("occupation") insert ("or religious profession").—(Lord Newton.)
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: My Lords, I venture very briefly to support the Amendment. The noble Lord has already dealt so fully and effectually with the inquisitorial argument that I do not think I need refer to that in any detail. That argument certainly seems to me to lose its force entirely when you look at the inquiries about age and about mental and bodily infirmities which the census form contains, and which seem to me much more in the nature of trying inquiries than any question about religious profession. I noticed that in the debate in another place the question of a voluntary religious census was treated as if it was very unpopular. Speaking from my experience, I do not think the taking of a census is at all an unpopular thing in Wales. A great number of amateurs have tried from time to time to take censuses and have seemed to derive great pleasure from it, and their results have afforded satisfaction to the particular bodies on whose behalf they were taken
There is one very striking fact with regard to the supposed unpopularity of taking a religious census. I find that in regard to the last census, that of 1901, there were only 695 people in Ireland who either omitted or declined to fill in the column about religious profession. That seems to me to be a very striking fact indeed with regard to the popularity or otherwise of a religious census. Then there is, of course, the fact that in nearly all other civilised States a religious census is taken. I think I am correct in stating that it is taken in most, if not in all, our Colonies, and in the Census Report for India for 1901 perhaps the most interesting chapter of all is that upon the results of the religious census taken in that country. As to Ireland, it is often said that the religious census in Ireland was taken for the first time in 1861, but some attempt was made to take a census in 1831 in Ireland, but the enumerators were under the impression that they were to be paid in accordance with the number of people they enumerated, and the result of that census was not altogether satisfactory. But in 1861 the first official religious census was taken in Ireland, and it is impossible to study the Irish census without seeing that the taking of this type of census can be defended on utilitarian grounds. The results must be of extreme value to the religious bodies themselves—of value in
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the comparison of their work, in estimating the weak points in their work, and in distributing their forces for work.
Again, I cannot help thinking that the results of such a census are invaluable to our legislators. For instance, the bearing of the census upon education is given in great detail in the Irish Report, and I think it would be of very great assistance to our legislators in dealing With the education problem if we had these figures before us. Wales is very often quoted in connection with the taking of a religious census. I am not at all prepared myself to base the defence of any church merely upon the counting of heads, hut, if you are going to use that argument, surely it is desirable that you should make it as accurate as it is possible to make it. I do not think it will be possible for those who are opposed to the taking of an official religious census any longer to appeal to these amateur figures, the taking of which has been very lax and in many cases very inefficient.
I noticed that in the debate in another place one of the representatives from Wales, in referring to the statistical argument as far as Wales is concerned, said—
"No ecclesiastic ever dared to say that Churchmen in Wales were in a majority over Nonconformity."
I do not assert, but I am prepared to prove before any competent authority that the Church in Wales is in a great majority over any single Nonconformist body in that country. Of course, if you use Nonconformity in a lax way and include everybody who is not a churchman, I am not quite sure what might be the result with regard to a census of the whole Church of England. If Nonconformity merely refers to the leading Nonconformist bodies in Wales, there is this important fact, that even they themselves do not claim half of the whole population. What the other half may be I do not know, but I think a religious census would throw valuable light upon that. To return to the general question, it seems to me that the object of a census is to give us all possible information about subjects which concern in the broadest sense the well-being of the people, and I cannot myself think of any information which is of greater interest or of more vital importance than that for which the noble Lord now asks. I have great pleasure in supporting the Amendment.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL BEAUCHAMP): My Lords, we all enjoyed, as I am sure we always do, the speech made by the noble Lord opposite in moving this Amendment, but I hope he will forgive me if I say that I listened in vain for any useful purposes which in his mind would be served by passing this Amendment.
LORD NEWTON: I gave them last week.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I am sorry the noble Earl did not repeat them, for I do not remember that he stated any useful purpose which this information would serve. I venture to think that an Amendment of this kind, which would undoubtedly offend the feelings of a great many people, ought at any rate to be supported by proof of some really useful purpose which it is likely to serve. Let me take, in the first place, the comparison with Ireland, to which the noble Lord referred and upon which he threw so much scorn. I have very little hope of being able to satisfy him, because he told me to-day that the arguments which I put forward on a previous occasion front the parallel with Ireland were neither coherent nor intelligent. They were, he said, quite futile and thoroughly unsatisfactory, and if we were quite straightforward and believed what we said, His Majesty's Government would, said the noble Lord, put forward different arguments altogether. The noble Lord will forgive me, not having his admirable resources in the matter of adjectives, if I do not follow him in that. But may I point this out to him. I think it is a fact that points to some difference between the two countries. In England the occupier fills up the census return, but in Ireland enumerators are employed, and it is their business to fill up the returns. I have not much hope that the noble Lord will accept that as making any difference.
LORD NEWTON: Not in the least.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: Nevertheless, I think it marks a difference in taking the census. It is possible for the enumerator, who is generally a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, to get answers which will fulfil the requirements of the Government better than the occupier is likely to be able to do. Let me turn to another point in connection with Ireland which I
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think has escaped the notice of the noble Lord. It is quite true, as he said, that this inquiry as to religion is made in Ireland, but it is a curious fact, although the figures are not very large, that in the case of the last census more than double the number of people refused to give the information compared with 1890. There is a growing feeling on the part of the people of Ireland against disclosing their religion. There is another point. The whole matter of this census was before the Statistical Society. They appointed a Committee to go into the whole question, but they deliberately refrained from recommending that the religion of the various individuals in this country should be asked for. A few words with regard to Wales. Wales was chiefly in the mind of the right rev. Prelate behind me when he spoke. On a previous occasion an authority to whom the right rev. Prelate, I think, will pay some regard, Lord Hugh Cecil, said in another place that—
"A religious census was not asked for for the purpose of estimating the religious force of the various denominations in the country;"
and I venture to think that in such a matter as the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, we are, perhaps, on firmer ground if we take the opinion of the people's representatives in Parliament as being a more sure indication of opinion than the mere fact that the people state what their religious opinions may be in the census return. I would point out to the right rev. Prelate that there are a great many sincere and loyal members of the Church of England who wish to see the Church disestablished in Wales, and therefore in so far as he expects to find that everybody who returns himself as being a member of the Church of England is therefore anxious to maintain the establishment, the figures would certainly meet with a good deal of just criticism in this country. We do not see that any useful purpose would be served by including the religious profession in this census, and therefore we feel obliged to adhere to the Bill as it stands, and, if necessary, we shall ask your Lordships to divide upon the subject. Finally, I venture to think, in view of the fact that the matter was clearly before the Conservative Governments which were in office in 1890 and in 1900, when the question of the disestablishment of the Church in Wales was also in the minds of the people of this country, and the then Governments refused to include religion

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among the subjects upon which information was to be asked, your Lordships would be well advised in maintaining that prohibition on the present occasion.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S: My Lords, I am sorry to trespass on your Lordships' indulgence, but I cannot let what the noble Earl the Lord President has just said pass without some observations. He has attempted to justify the position of His Majesty's Government in taking a religious census in Ireland and refusing to take it in Great Britain on the ground of some difference in regard to enumerators. The noble Earl will correct me if I am wrong. Surely that is an inadequate argument for declining to apply in Great Britain the principle applied in Ireland. The other day, in the discussion on the Second Reading of the Bill, the noble Earl the Lord President said—
"The circumstances in the two countries are so far different that we trust they will be accepted as a sufficient reason for making a difference in regard to this matter."
A very eminent Statesman, a former Lord Chancellor—Lord Cairns—in 1870 went very thoroughly into the alleged difference between Ireland and Great Britain in this respect, and if the noble Earl will look at that noble and learned Lord's speech he will find that some argument must be sought for refusing a religious census in Great Britain other than merely to say, in a general sort of way. that there is some difference between the two countries.
May I be permitted to point out to the noble Earl that he was not altogether correct in quoting the authority of the late Lord Salisbury in favour of the position taken up by His Majesty's Government? I think that the noble Earl said that the late Lord Salisbury had suggested certain difficulties in this matter in a speech which he delivered in your Lordships' House in 1890. I have that speech here, but I do not find any difficulties suggested. On the contrary, the late Lord Salisbury in 1870 spoke very strongly indeed in favour of a religious census, and, among other things, he said on that occasion that; he would be desirous to show clearly who was of the Church of England and who was not, and he did not shift his ground in 1890. One argument used in 1890 was that, though people in other countries do not mind being asked to what religion they belong, in England people feel a great peril in doing so, and always call themselves
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members of the Church of England. The eminent Statesman quoted dwelt with scornful satire on the hollowness of that argument. He said—
"Englishmen always seem very free to express their opinions on any subject, religious or otherwise."
It is quite clear that if he reads Lord Salisbury's speech in this House in 1890 the noble Earl will find that he was led into an error by taking a particular sentence out of its context.
I hope the noble Earl will pardon me if I say that he also put rather too high his comments upon the Report of the Departmental Committee in 1890. The noble Earl said, on the Second Reading of this Bill, that the Departmental Committee refused to recommend a religious census. I have the Report of that Committee before me. What they say is this—
"In other countries and in our Colonies such information is obtained, and from a statistical point of view it is of value."
Therefore in the opinion of the Departmental Committee these statistics are of value in every country in the world in which they are taken. But the Committee continued—
"Arguments, mainly of a political character, have been urged against the requirement of returns under this head, and we are not in a position to make any recommendation with regard to the matter."
This Departmental Committee was a committee of statistical experts, and, very properly, they did not think that it would be right for them to report upon questions of politics, and so they said that while admitting the value of the returns they were not in a position to make any recommendation with regard to the matter. I think in these circumstances the noble Earl is hardly justified in making any deduction from the Committee's recommendation, except that they were desirous not to trespass upon what were really matters for the Government of the day.
I have looked up the debates on this subject on previous occasions. In 1860 Sir George Cornewall Lewis as Home Secretary proposed a religious census, and expressed the opinion that when a man was afforded full power of giving or refusing an answer to this question, it could not be contended that the inquiry came within the category of "authoritative demands." The noble Lord, in his Amendment to-day, provides that no penalty of any kind shall attach to a refusal on the part of any person to make

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this return. I therefore fail entirely to understand how any noble Lord who is concerned to use language with accuracy can apply the epithet "inquisitorial" to a schedule which simply gives a person an opportunity, if he so desires, of stating to which religious denomination he belongs. It was said in 1860, and has been said every decade since, that there are conscientious scruples on the part of many people to stating what their religion is. Sir George Cornewall Lewis pointed out that it was a very frequent thing for religious bodies to send petitions to Parliament and to say in those petitions that the petitioners belonged to certain denominations, that they represented a certain number of people; the fact that they represented that number of people of a particular religious persuasion was considered to carry great weight with Parliament, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis asked why they should object to insert in a census paper the description which they thus give of themselves. His question has never yet been answered.
I thought at first that the noble Earl the Lord President was going to give way on the Second. Reading, when he said that if it could be proved that this return would serve some useful purpose the case would be different. Surely, seeing that His Majesty's Government last year introduced a Bill for Welsh disestablishment, most people would have thought that it would be useful to know how many people there were in Wales who described themselves as attached to or belonging to the Church of England. According to the noble Earl, it matters not what the people themselves think about the religious persuasion to which they belong, but what their Members of Parliament think. I am the last person in the world to speak disrespectfully of the Members of Parliament for Wales. They have many virtues, but I do not think the noble Earl will claim that they are particularly qualified to be enumerators of the people's religious persuasions. I ask why should you object to having the facts of the case stated. Why should you object to know how many people in Wales are prepared to declare themselves adherents to the Church of England?
In introducing the Welsh Disestablishment Bill in the House of Commons the Prime Minister deliberately chose to base his case, one-third of it at least, upon religious statistics in Wales, and he was advised to select the number of Nonconformist sittings
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as a cogent form of using statistics. That is, just the same as if the First Lord of the Admiralty, in reply to a challenge as to the efficiency of the manning of the Navy, were to say that he had an over-abundance of hammocks in the Admiralty stores. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1906, and in the terms of reference was the requirement that they should inquire—
"as to the extent to which the people of Wales and Monmouthshire avail themselves of the provision made for their spiritual welfare by the churches of the various denominations."
As far as I can see, His Majesty's Government in that year were distinctly of opinion that the extent to which the people of Wales availed themselves of the spiritual provision made for them was a very important matter indeed. For the last four years that Commission has been at work, and I am bound to do the Government the justice of saying that they showed their desire to have the Commission carried out irrespective of political partisanship by appointing to the chair a most distinguished Judge. I hope the noble Earl the Leader of the House and the noble Earl the Lord President will be able to do something in this matter. It is a very unfortunate thing that four years have passed and we have not had a Report from this Commission. We have been told in the public Press that the draft Report of the Chairman has been ready for months, and that the majority of the Commission, indeed all the members of the Commission it is reported, are quite ready to sign it. It is an unfortunate fact, which may before very long become a public scandal, that in these circumstances we have to wait so long for the Report, especially as His Majesty's Government may in a lull in politics reintroduce the Bill for Welsh disestablishment. When they asked the question to what extent the people of Wales avail themselves of the religious provision made for them, what His Majesty's Government wanted to know was the number of adherents. There are no doubt figures of considerable interest and some value which we shall have in our hands, I hope, before long. But there is one figure you are not likely to get. You are not likely to get a satisfactory figure of the number of adherents in Wales. I say that from what appeared in the public Press. Committees were appointed in every county to collect information on this subject, over one of which, the committee in Anglesey, the noble Lord, Lord Sheffield, was the president—
LORD SHEFFIELD: The right rev. Prelate is entirely misinformed.
THE LORD BISHOP or ST. DAVID'S: The public Press is not always accurate. Perhaps it was because the noble Lord did not attend the meeting that the statistics turned out so had. At any rate a variety Of meanings was attached to this term "adherents," and therefore His Majesty's Government are not likely to get from the Welsh Commission any complete and reliable Report of the extent to which the people of Wales avail themselves of the Church provision. What do His Majesty's Government now say? It does not now matter a pin to the Government to what extent the people of Wales avail themselves of the accommodation provided by the Church. Why, they actually appointed a Commission to ascertain that very fact. Unless His Majesty's Government have changed their minds I think I have answered the noble Earl's challenge to give a proof of some useful purpose that these figures would serve.
The noble Earl used an argument last week which touched me very much. He said that the inclusion of the request for this information concerning the religious profession of the people would certainly not tend to peace between the various churches and denominations in the country. It is our duty to do all that in us lies to promote peace between the various religious bodies in the country, and it is a comfort to me to think that, except when political hurricanes sweep over the platform and the Press, the relations between Churchmen and Nonconformists in Wales are, to a much larger extent than is generally thought, those of peace. I should be very sorry to stand up to-day and support this Amendment if I thought the noble Earl the Lord President was right in saying that to take a religious census would not tend to peace. I think what does not tend to peace in this matter is the attitude of His Majesty's Government. Let them either adopt the only fair and impartial test, or refrain from using such statistics as they have as an argument, an irrelevant and feeble argument, for cutting up the historical unity of the Church of England.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I do not think that your Lordships can have been surprised when we found this evening that my noble friend behind me returned to the charge and insisted, in that direct and emphatic language of which he is
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a master, upon a more adequate reply to the very strong case which he laid before your Lordships' House the other evening, and, if I may be pardoned for saying so, it seems to me that up to the present he has had the best of the argument. I approach the subject with an entirely open mind. I came down to the House the other night without any strong feeling one way or the other, and I suppose that if I am prejudiced at all I ought, after hearing what fell from the noble Earl on the Front Bench opposite, to be prejudiced in his favour, because he apparently rested his case to a great extent on the fact that ten years ago and again twenty years ago his predecessors in office were inclined to the view which he holds this evening. I am not sure that that is an argument, although it is no doubt a telling one in debate, that always carries great conviction with it. Circumstances alter cases a good deal, and there are, at any rate, some facts to which my noble friend can point as being unchallenged and un-challengable.
In the first place, we have the example of other countries. With, I think, the exception of France, I believe all European countries have, when taking a census, insisted upon obtaining information of this kind. In our own Colonies the same thing is done. Our Colonies used to frame their institutions upon the British model. I am not sure that in these days we do not find ourselves rather frequently turning our eyes to the great Dominions beyond the seas in the hope of obtaining a useful hint from the systems and the procedure which they have adopted. Then there is the case of India. In India, of all countries in the world, the Government would hesitate to insist upon information as to the religious belief of its subjects unless there were strong reasons for obtaining such information, and unless it could be obtained without doing violence to those from whom the information was obtained. Finally, there is within the British Isles the case of Ireland. The noble Earl was at great pains to convince us that the circumstances of Ireland were so different from the circumstances of this country that we had no right to press the Irish analogy. We are all well aware, of course, that the circumstances of Ireland differ in many respects from those of this country, but when the noble Earl got to closer quarters what was the main difference upon which he relied? He said, "In Ireland the information is asked for by an enumerator

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who is a police constable, whereas in this country it will be collected by the occupier who his to fill up these forms." I should have thought that an average Britisher would be rather less inclined to divulge confidential matter to a policeman who came and required him to afford the information than to a member of his own family or the head of the house which he happened to inhabit at the moment.
Then the noble Earl delivered himself of what scented to me an amazing sentiment. He said "This information, when you have got it, serve no useful purpose." For what purpose then is it collected in European countries, in Ireland, and in India? And does the noble Earl exclude from his consideration the fact that in this country we are engaged with a number of great problems in which the political aspect of the case is inseparable from the religious aspect of it, so that you cannot deal with the one without adequate knowledge of the other? There is all our legislation that deals with the great question of education. There is all our legislation that deals with the great questions of the relations of Church and State. I believe I am right in saying that the Prime Minister not long ago, when he was discussing this subject of disestablishment in so far as it affected the principality of Wales, rested his case entirely, or to a great extent, on statistics having reference to the religion of the people of that country. Do not let us forget that in cases of this kind, if trustworthy and carefully compiled statistics are not forthcoming, people will be obliged to rely upon statistics which are untrustworthy and carelessly compiled.
The noble Earl's other great argument was that the collection of information as to the religion of our people would offend the feelings of a great many of them, that it was an inquisitorial inquiry. I am bound to say that I think the noble Lord who introduced this Amendment was well within the mark when he suggested to the House that the time had passed for complaining of legislation upon the ground that it is inquisitorial. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that five-sixths of our legislation in these days is inquisitorial. Every Act of Parliament, or almost every Act of Parliament, dealing with social matters, produces a fresh horde of inspectors whose business it is to be inquisitorial and to pry into the people's homes and find out everything concerning the most intimate affairs of
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their daily life. We make no complaint of it. We have to submit to it. But what we have, I think, a right to complain of is that these inquisitorial proceedings should be, as they are, encouraged by His Majesty's Government, but that on this particular occasion they should block us with the argument that it would be an inquisitorial and iniquitous proceeding to demand of the people of the United Kingdom that they should state what their religion is.
There is another, and it seems to me a complete, answer to the plea that this would be an inquisitorial proceeding. My noble friend provides by a second Amendment that no one need supply this information if he objects to supply it. Is it suggested, then, that the result of giving that option would be that a great many people would avail themselves of it and that your returns would be incomplete? I do not believe it. The Irish case which was cited to-night is, it seems to me, most instructive upon that point. I think we were told that on the occasion of the last census there were less than 700 abstentions in the whole of Ireland. The noble Earl says the number has increased. It may have doubled, but whether it is 300 or 700 the figure seems to me to be an entirely insignificant one, and to show that there is no genuine or deep-seated objection to supplying information of this kind. There was another argument which I noticed the other evening fell front the noble Lord who sits on the Back Bench opposite (Lord Sheffield). He was, unless I mistook his meaning, arguing that these returns were generally untrustworthy. He said that what would happen would be something of this kind. You would have a sturdy Nonconformist in the habit of attending chapel on Sundays, but who would get married in Church, and for whom the hospitality of the village churchyard would be claimed after his death. I gather that the noble Lord said that such a man would be very apt to return himself as a member of the Church of England.
LORD SHEFFIELD: I did not use the expression "sturdy" Nonconformist.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Well, the ordinary Nonconformist. I live in a part of England where there is a great deal of Nonconformity, and for all I know it may be the case that some of the Non-

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conformist villagers get married in the village church, and possibly some of them are buried in the village churchyard. But of this I am perfectly certain, that not one of them would declare himself, when he had to fill up a paper, to be a member of the Church of England if he was a Wesleyan or a Methodist. I believe it would be absolutely foreign to his idea of what was right and honest. Let me say, finally, that it seems to me that if a man has so little belief in the religion which he professes, so little courage of his religious opinion, as to return himself as belonging to some denomination other than that of which he is really a member, you may very fairly treat him and his religions opinions as a negligible quantity for all public purposes. For these reasons I think my noble friend behind me has had the best of the argument. I do not know whether he intends to press his Amendment to a Division. I am afraid that we are powerless on this side of the House to impose an Amendment of this kind upon His Majesty's Government, because it is perfectly clear that we must have a census, and if His Majesty's Government regard this proposal as fatal to their Bill we should be very sorry to see them drop it on account of our interference. Therefore my noble friend may possibly regard discretion as the better part of valour, and be content with having had, as I believe he has, very much the best of this discussion.
LORD SHEFFIELD: My Lords, I am sorry to have to intrude upon your Lordships again after last Thursday, but I will try to avoid the example which others have set and not repeat anything I said in the discussion upon the Second Reading, except so far as is absolutely necessary to explain to the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition the position I took up. In the course of my life I have been brought a good deal in contact with what I may call the Nonconformist point of view, and though I am in no respect a member of any of their chinches I am familiar with their common attitude; and I would appeal to people who know the country whether there are not a large number who flow from Church to chapel and vice versâ according to the attractiveness of the services, and, may I say, the Protestantism of the established clergyman. I know that you have chapels emptied in some cases by a liberal and
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broad-minded clergyman of the Church of England, and if another man is appointed the people will flow back to chapel. I am not, of course, speaking of sturdy Nonconformists.
I pointed out last Thursday that there were also people whose religion consisted largely, like the Royal Declaration, in disclaiming the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, and I said that you would entirely falsify any statistics of genuine adherence to any form of religious profession if you included all that floating body who will call themselves members of the Church of England if they have to call themselves something, because they really do not know what they are. I am reminded of a story of the great Lord Thurlow. There came to him when he was Lord Chancellor a deputation of Dissenters to urge upon him some grievance, and Lord Thurlow replied—
"Gentlemen, I belong to the Church of England. I belong to the Church of England because it is established. If your—religion was established I would belong to your—religion."
That summarises a point of view that was rather prevalent in the eighteenth century. Theological activity has made that point of view not so prominent now as then, but it still exists in the minds of a great many people. What they subscribe to is to being members of the Established Church.
The noble Marquess has suggested that with reference to much legislation it would be important to know the religious point of view of proportions of the population. I agree with him. When important questions come up in Parliament—such questions as under the leadership of Mr. Disraeli led to the Public Worship Bill—this information is of value. It would be a very important thing, when dealing with ritual in the Established Church, to know whether the legislation is sympathised with by the bulk of the people who are nominally members of the Church of England. The Established Church is like that net in Scripture which enclosed a great variety of fishes, and also like that net which contained animals clean and otherwise. If, in taking the census, we could ask people to say whether they were Broad Church, High Church, or Low Church, we should get some idea of what their religious preferences were. The Church contains within

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itself people far more widely removed from one another in religious belief than is the average Nonconformist from the average member of the Church of England, and if we are to secure figures that are to be of any value in order to determine how we are to legislate we should have to go further and find out what they really believe. For these reasons and those I gave before, which I will not repeat, I think the figures as to religious profession would be deceitful; they would give an apparent weight to the Church of England to which it is not entitled. I understood the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of St. David's to say that I had taken the chair at a meeting for the purposes of collecting statistics connected with the Commission upon the Welsh Church. I never took the chair at any such meeting.
THE: LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S: I did not say the noble Lord took the chair, but he was president of the committee. I, of course, accept his disclaimer.
LORD SHEFFIELD: I have been to a good many meetings connected with Disestablishment, but I do not remember that I was ever at a meeting where this question of collecting statistics came up. But that is a. small matter. The right rev. Prelate, after asking why we should not collect these valuable statistics, answered himself by going on to say that. statistics are an irrelevant and feeble argument in this matter. I will not say they are entirely irrelevant or that they are always feeble, but when we are arguing these matters we should argue them on a better basis than that of statistics. The two right rev. Prelates, while clamouring for these figures, said that if the figures went against them they would not be bound by them. I put it to the right rev. Prelates: Will they say to the Government, "If these figures of the adherents to the Established Church and other bodies in Wales are forthcoming and they go against the Established Church and show that the Established Church is in a minority, we will join with you in disestablishing the Church"? Of course, they will not. Then what is the good of playing the game of "heads I win tails you lose." I think that is rather an injudicious attitude to take up. There are very few in this House whom I should be more unhappy to be misunderstood by than the noble Marquess opposite, and I have therefore made these few observations in order to make clear my position.
LORD BRAYE: My Lords, the noble Earl the Lord President, in speaking on the Amendment, asked what possible use there could be in any kind of religious census, at all events at the present day. That question has been so ably answered that I am not going to detain your Lordships one minute more than is necessary. But there is one thing which has been omitted with reference to this matter. There is an important piece of legislation now in the other House of Parliament and which will soon be presented to this House for the alteration of the Accession Oath. I think it would be extremely useful to ascertain how many Roman Catholics there are in Great Britain. It is a curious thing that the number has never been really ascertained. It has only been very approximately guessed at; and, speaking as a Catholic myself, I have always heard it stated there we number 2,000.000 in Great Britain alone. Personally, I think that number is slightly overdrawn. Others go further, and say there more than 2.000,000. However that may be, it is quite certain that the exact number has not been ascertained.
I agree with the noble Lord who has just sat down that it would be practically impossible to ascertain with exactitude the number of members or adherents of the Church of England in this country, for the simple reason that there are hundreds and thousands of men and women who go to the Anglican church in the morning and also for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, but who frequent a dissenting chapel in the village or large town in the evening. When such people were asked to which denomination they belonged, in nine cases out of ten they would write themselves down as members of the Church of England, but their practical religion is really Nonconformist. Therefore it would be exceedingly difficult to obtain the true figures for the Church of England. But when you come to the Catholic question it is totally different. Every Catholic all over the world knows whether he is a Catholic or not; there would be no difficulty in getting a. plain "Yes" or "No" in the case of adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore I venture to think the proposed statistics would be of considerable value in this country, especially in view of the proposed alteration in the Royal Declaration.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, as it was impossible for me to be in the House on Thursday last when this subject was preliminarily discussed, I should like to say a few words upon the point raised by this Amendment. I am sorry that His Majesty's Government have refused what I am bound to say seems to me a perfectly reasonable request—a request which goes no further than this, that any man who desires to do so when the census returns are made should have an opportunity of stating to what religious denomination he belongs. Such a Return, Lord Sheffield says, would tell in debate hereafter to the disadvantage of a. cause which he has long advocated, and we are there, I suppose, to learn the reason why a request which otherwise would seem so reasonable is to be refused.
Some of the arguments dwelt upon by the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council in his speech surprised me. I cannot see what it has to do with the matter that years ago the people of Ireland were so illiterate that it had been necessary to make the enumerators fill up the return. What that has to do with the fact that we want to get this return to-day I am totally unable to conjecture. Would the Government be prepared to accept the Amendment if it stated that the return must be filled up by the enumerator? Then we are told that people dislike giving this information. That is to say, they dislike being offered an opportunity that they need not accept unless they choose of filling up a particular form in a way which would indicate certain facts respecting them.
The question of Welsh Disestablishment has loomed rather needlessly large in this question. The difficulty and obscurity of that controversy is not the ground on which I mainly desire to see this Amendment carried through. I am by no means prepared to say that such statistics, after proper discount has been made on both sides, would be without value when that controversy comes up. But it is on other grounds that I personally would desire to see the additional column which is suggested by this Amendment. I do not know whether I beard the noble Earl correctly, but I gathered that he said we must not rely, in a matter of Parliamentary controversy, upon the religious opinions of the electors
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but rather examine what are the religious opinions of those whom they choose as representatives. Have we really conic to this, that a Liberal Government say that the main factor in selecting a Member of Parliament is his religious opinions? That is not the doctrine of Liberalism in which I was reared, and I fear that it would be a very misleading form of criterion.
We are told that these statistics would be of no value. I do not grant it, but, If I did, I should still value these statistics. It is true that a purely Parliamentary controversy, though Disestablishment is more than that, could not wholly be decided either in England or Wales on the mere statistical question, but I should still maintain that obtaining and tabulating these facts would be of very real value if they were used with common sense and with large discounts on each side. It is perfectly true that there would be a great many people who would return themselves as Churchmen who are not Churchmen worthy of the name. It is also true, I am quite certain, that there would be a great many of these Nonconformists whom we are warned not to call "sturdy," who as heads of the households would fill up the return by a statement that the family were all Nonconformists, while it might be perfectly true that a good many members of the family were, to ssy the least, very lukewarm in their Nonconformity. Therefore I should wish to discount these statistics; but I still maintain that, after discounts had been made, such a return would serve a very useful purpose.
There are a large number of people in the country who are indifferent, careless, non-religious if you will, as regards any outward exhibition of religious devotion by attending at a place of worship, or in any other similar way, but every one of us who has had to do with parish work in England knows that these people are daily asking for ministration or counsel or help on the part of the clergy quite apart from the mere question of religious teaching. But from those who claim that kind of ministration on the part of the Church there must be deducted those who definitely claim religious ministration in other quarters, and we should know in a particular town or district or county or great area what number

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of people there were who might be distinctly regarded as those who do not want and do not use the ministrations of the Church as such. But when that deduction has been made, there will remain a huge number of persons who, as a matter of fact, while not returning themselves necessarily as members of the Church of England, will not return themselves as members of other denominations, and who, when they do not return themselves as belonging to other denominations, are practically left to such help, such counsel, and such guidance as in great crowded places is given daily by the clergy of the Church of England.
It was my privilege to work for some years in the Bishopric of Rochester, which included the whole of South London, and. there the proportion was something like ten or twelve resident clergy for one resident Nonconformist minister. These resident clergy are men who are working day in and day out, and what we want to know is what number of people there are in a neighbourhood who because they are firmly attached to other denominations do not want the kind of help, secular as well as sacred, which is given by the clergy. Those sort of statistics would be of the greatest possible value, not perhaps to the nation, but to the religious bodies themselves, whether Church or Nonconformist. Therefore I urge the expediency of accepting the Amendment, not because of its value to the nation or its Blue-book statistics, but for its value to the religious work of the country both Church and Nonconformist. I think great help would be derived from the possession of such figures, and it does seem to me strange that so reasonable a request should be declined.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE): My Lords, the noble Marquess who leads the Opposition began by dealing with an argument used by my noble friend the Lord President as to the action of previous Governments in reference to this question, and he said that the argument was not a strong one because the mere fact that a thing was not done ten years ago was no reason for not doing it now. But, on the other hand, when you are asked to change a practice which has uniformly obtained, you may reasonably ask that strong reasons
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should be brought forward for doing so; and I think we must assume that on the last two occasions, in 1890 and 1900, a strong opinion was held on both sides of the House that this particular change was not desirable. The right rev. Prelate the Bishop of St. David's quoted the late Lord Salisbury, but it was evident that if Lord Salisbury had entertained the view that a change was one which ought to be made, having, as he had in the year 1900, a complete command over both Houses, he would have carried it into effect. I note that in another place on that occasion Mr. Chaplin, who is, I am sure, a good Churchman, used the following expression. This proposition was made by Lord Hugh Cecil, and, a rather warm debate following, Mr. Chaplin said—
"The fact that this proposal has called forth such heat is the best practical argument against inserting religious questions in the census."
Therefore, I think we are entitled to say that noble Lords opposite who desire this change ought to adduce some reasons for supposing that the circumstances have materially changed during the last ten years.
Now have the circumstances changed? The most rev. Primate who has just sat down used arguments of which certainly do not deny the force, but which would have carried exactly the same weight ten or twenty years ago that they carry now, and the fact that the considerations which he adduced with regard to the value of a census of this kind, if it could be obtained, to general church work must have been brought before the Government of the day but did not persuade them to insert this provision, is one which I think ought to be noted. The Government, in considering a matter of this kind, have to ask two questions. They have to ask, do people generally wish a change of this kind to be made? and secondly, if it is made, will it serve any useful purpose? Up to the time when the most rev. Primate rose the argument in favour of the change was practically entirely based upon the question of the Welsh Church. What the noble Lord who moved the Amendment and what the two right rev. Prelates ask for is a referendum in Wales on the question of Disestablishment. They hope to obtain it by this insertion of a question in the census, and I think it is only fair to assume that

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they hope thus to obtain it in a form which will be generally favourable to the views which they support. I confess that I do not believe myself that if a definite referendum were taken upon the Disestablishment question in Wales it would lead to a result which would be conclusive or convincing. But if the matter is to be subjected to a direct inquiry to the people, by all means let it be done in regular form, and not be done in a manner which, as my noble friends behind me have pointed out, can only lead to an inaccurate and misleading result.
The most rev. Primate complained of my noble friend the Lord President for a statement which he made that in such a matter you could only go by the views of the representatives returned to Parliament, and he asked whether Liberalism had come to this, that a man's religious opinions were to be the test of his being returned to Parliament. It seems to me that that is hardly, if the most rev. Primate will excuse me, a fair way of putting it. The question of the maintenance of the Church in Wales or of its disestablishment is not, in itself, a religious question. It is a political question, and I think it may be assumed that at any election in Wales, so long as the matter is before the country, the election to a very large extent will turn upon the question whether the candidate is or is not in favour of the disestablishment of the Church. I see no reason for taking this particular question out of the category of general political questions, the passing of which is generally assumed to be contingent on the securing of a majority of the representatives of the people in their favour who will proceed to legislate on the subject.
The case of Ireland, and the historical reason for the application of this particular system to Ireland has been mentioned. I am bound to say, so far as my own experience goes, although I do not wish to lay down the law on the subject, I cannot recall any case within my own knowledge in which the possession of the facts obtained by a religious census was of any assistance to the Government of Ireland in arriving at any conclusion. It so happened that when I was partly responsible for the Government of Ireland we had to deal with difficult and intricate questions in relation to schools carried on by religious communities, but I cannot recall that on
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that or on any other subject this particular ascertainment of results was of a special help to us. At the same time, if Ireland likes a religious census, and if it is, as it undoubtedly is, a country in which religions and those who profess them can be divided into water-tight compartments for the purposes of enumeration of this kind, by any means let Ireland have it; but I confess I am not convinced by anything that has been said that if we were to agree to the noble Lord's Amendment we should be doing anything which is at all popular in this country. I believe that the notion of a religious census of this kind would be thoroughly unpopular in England, and I have heard nothing from noble Lords opposite to lead me to alter that view.
I think it is quite possible to press the inquisitorial argument too far. That argument is no doubt met to some extent by leaving it a matter of choice whether the return be made or not. On the other hand, I confess I am not convinced that the value, if value there be, of the return would not be very greatly diminished by the insertion of such a provision. I think you would get an enormous number of blank papers. You would get some, perhaps, flippantly filled up, and you would get many others misleadingly made up in the circumstances explained by my noble friend behind me, Lord Sheffield. Because, after all, the Church of England cannot be quite described as the noble Marquess opposite described it, possibly by accident but he did so describe it, as a denomination. I do not think that the most rev. Primate would agree that the Church of England should be spoken of as a denomination; and the mere fact that it is the established Church and is presumably the Church to which everybody belongs who is not an active member of some other religious body must surely vitiate an inquiry of this kind for the purposes for which alone it could be used. On this point the most rev. Primate was as fair as we always expect to find him. He said that a most liberal discount would have to be taken off any statistics arrived at in this way. I am sure that is so, but I am afraid everybody would not be so fair as the most rev. Primate, and that the figures, whatever they might prove to be, would be used unfairly and for misleading purposes by one side or the other, not necessarily only by those who desire to adduce particular

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arguments on behalf of the Church of England.
I ask once more what are the useful purposes to which this census could be put. The noble Marquess opposite spoke of various great problems, educational and other, and seemed to think that some assistance might be gained by such a census. I confess I do not see in what respect a religious census of this kind would help us with regard to a solution of the education question. Where there is a question of the encouragement of schools carrying out one particular form of religious teaching, the point has always been assumed to be, not the number of individuals of a particular religious faith who live in the locality, but the number of parents who desire t heir children to obtain that particular kind of teaching. If, for instance, at some fashionable watering place there were a large number of elderly maiden ladies who belonged to the Church of England, the argument for a Church school in that particular town would be neither stronger nor weaker than it would be if those ladies lived somewhere else. Consequently from this point of view on this matter of education I do not see that we should be helped. The conclusion, therefore, which I have reached is the same which my noble friend behind me has reached, and is the conclusion of His Majesty's Government. I cannot regard this as in any sense a Party question, and I have no reason that it should be so regarded; but as we happen for the time being to be responsible for the form in which this census is taken, we cannot make ourselves responsible for an addition to the form which in our view would be fictitious and misleading; and, speaking generally, it seems to me undesirable to include in a census paper voluntary questions
of this kind, or indeed of any kind. I should equally deprecate an inquiry, although it might be an interesting one from some points of view, as to whether a man described himself as a Unionist or as a Liberal. I take it that a large number of the inhabitants of this country would refuse to describe themselves as either. It seems to me undesirable, when the State is making an inquiry of this kind, although, of course, I am aware of the precedents to the contrary in other countries and in our Colonies, to depart from those questions to which the State says it has an absolute right to demand an answer, and therefore I fear we cannot recede from our determination not to accept the noble Lord's Amendment.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: May I ask, merely in order that the House may be under no misapprehension, whether I understood the noble Earl to say that while, on the one hand, he did not regard this as a Party question on the other hand His Majesty's Government would distinctly refuse to make themselves responsible for the Bill if it contained a provision such as that which the Amendment desires to insert in it?
THE EARL OF CREWE: I have not had any direct communication with my right hon. friend in charge of the Bill on that subject; but I think it may safely be assumed that supposing your Lordships were to carry the Amendment His Majesty's Government would not accept it in another place.
On Question, whether the word proposed to be left out stand part of the clause?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 31; Not-contents, 38.

CONTENTS.

Loreburn, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Balfour, L.

Lucas, L.

Beauchamp, E.(L. President.)

Denman, L. [Teller.]

Pentland, L.

Crewe, E.(L. Privy Seal.)

Digby, L.

Pirrie, L.

Eversley, L.

Reay, L.

Craven, E.

Farrer, L.

Ribblesdale, L.

Liverpool, E.

Granard, L. (E. Granard)

Saye and Sele, L.

Portsmouth, E.

Haversham, L.

Stanley of Aldorley, L. (L. Sheffield.)

Hemphill, L.

Morley of Blackburn, V.

Herschell, L.[Teller.]

Swaythling, L.

Joicey, L.

Woardale, L.

Airedale, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Welby, L.

Armitstead, L.

Lochee, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Canterbury, L. Abp.

London, L. Bp.

Colchester, L.

Ripon, L. Bp.

Crawshaw, L.

Linlithgow, M.

St. Asaph, L. Bp.

Faber, L.

St. David's, L. Bp.

Heneage, L.[Teller]

Bathurst, E.

Wakefield, L. Bp.

Lamington, L.

Camperdown, E.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Cromer, E.

Addington, L.

Mostyn, L.

Mar, E.

Ampthill, L.

Newton, L.[Teller]

Morton, E.

Barrymore, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Onslow, E.

Braye, L.

Ramsay, L. (E. Dalhousie.)

Westmeath, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Ravensworth, L.

Chaworth, L. (E. Meath.)

St. Levan, L.

Falkland, V.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Sinclair, L.

Halifax, V.

Clonbrock, L.

Wenlock, L.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Amendment agreed to accordingly.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 5 to 11 agreed to.
Clause 12:
Penalties for offences.
12.—(1) If any superintendent registrar, registrar, enumerator, or other person employed under this Act, makes wilful default in the performance of any of his duties under this Act, or makes any wilfully false declaration, he shall for each offence be liable on conviction under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts to a fine not exceeding five pounds.
(2) If any occupier for whom a schedule is left under this Act—

(a) wilfully refuses, or without lawful excuse neglects, to fill up or cause to be filled up the schedule to the best of his knowledge and belief, or to sign and deliver it as by this Act required; or

(b) wilfully makes, signs, or delivers, or causes to be made, signed, or delivered, any false return of any matter specified in the schedule; or

(c) refuses to answer, or wilfully gives a false answer to, any question necessary for obtaining the information required to be obtained under this Act;

he shall for each offence be liable on conviction under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts to a fine not exceeding five pounds.
(3) If any person employed in taking the census communicates, without lawful authority, any information acquired in the course of his employment, he shall be guilty of a breach of official trust within the meaning of the Official Secrets Act, 1889, and that Act shall apply accordingly.
LORD NEWTON*LORD NEWTON moved to add, at the end of subsection (1) of Clause 12, the words "Provided that no person shall be subject to any such penalty for refusing to state his religious profession."
Amendment moved—
Clause 12, page 4, line 31, after ("pounds") insert ("Provided that no person shall be subject "to any such penalty for refusing to state his "religious profession").—(Lord Newton.)
Clause 12, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
The Report of Amendments to be received on Tuesday next, and Bill to be printed as amended. (No. 103.)

CENSUS (IRELAND) BILL.
Bill reported without amendment, and to be read 3ª on Tuesday next.

INDECENT ADVERTISEMENTS (AMENDMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD BRAYE: My Lords, this is a Bill which I submit in the hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading, and I think I shall not be disappointed in this hope. The object of the Bill is to strengthen the law against the publication of improper advertisements. The first and last Bill on this subject became law in 1889. It was introduced in this House in 1888, and was piloted through in the following year by an eminent philanthropist whose name we all revere, Lord Meath; and it met with no opposition, so far as my recollection goes, in either House of Parliament. The provisions of that Bill were designed to prevent the custom which had obtained for many years of posting objectionable placards and advertisements up and down the country.
Prior to the passing of the Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889 anybody who wished to do so was absolutely at liberty to post these objectionable papers, not only in places where they might be expected to be placed and where they would have been out of sight of the general

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public, but also along the highways and byways of this country. I say advisedly the byways, because not only on the turnpike roads were these advertisements displayed, but actually in country lanes. They became, therefore, doubly and trebly conspicuous because of the fact that they were the only printed matter in these county places, which one would have hoped would have been protected from intrusion. That was the state of affairs prior to 1889; but when the Act of that year became law these objectionable advertisements disappeared like magic from one end of the country to the other. That Act, therefore, did an immense amount of good. It went very far, but it did not go quite far enough, in the opinion of those who support the measure now before your Lords-ships, because it did not prevent the introduction of objectionable matter of the kind which is detailed in this Bill, and which I need not refer to further, into newspapers and leaflets. There has been an appalling increase of that kind of literature in this country. I am sure that that nebulous personage the historian of the future, to whose unwritten records appeal is so often made, will find it incredible to believe that such a state of things could have existed in a European country. I think that this Bill, the general scope of which I have sketched, will go a great way, together with the Act of 1889, to put a stop to this evil. The newspapers referred to are not, of course, the general public newspapers, but there are every kind and every degree of publication from the highest to the lowest possible class; and in addition to newspapers there are leaflets and circulars, or what might possibly be dignified by the name of magazines—half-penny magazines—in circulation. At committees and meetings to which these matters have been referred prior to the bringing forward in Parliament of this Bill some of these publications have been handed round, and have certainly made a very unfavourable impression.
The Act of 1889 has had considerable effect in preventing the distribution of certain classes of unsavoury advertisements; but the definition of indecent advertisements in that Act has been found not to be wide enough to cover a number of advertisements of a character similar to those struck at by the Act. And while powers exist under the Post Office Protection Act of 1884 for preventing the circulation
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of such matter by post, there are no adequate or summary means of suppressing the publication in newspapers of advertisements which it is illegal to distribute in the streets. I do not think there will be any objection in this House to the principle of the Bill. On the contrary, I feel certain that your Lordships will welcome it and wish it godspeed, not only here but in another place, and will desire it to become law as soon as possible.
There is only one difficulty, perhaps, and it is contained in Clause 3, subsection (5), in which, in the case of a medical man writing a bonâ fide medical or scientific treatise or book of any kind on these topics, the onus probandi as to the literary character of the work or the bonâ fide medical or scientific character of the treatise is placed on the writer. Your Lordships must bear in mind that no prosecution can be instituted without the previous consent in writing of the chief officer of police of the district in which the offence is alleged to have been committed, or of two Justices of the Peace, or of a stipendiary magistrate having jurisdiction in such district. That is in addition to the consent of the Public Prosecutor, and I do not think any difficulty is likely to arise under that enactment. Therefore I commend the Bill to your Lordships, and I hope that at the date mentioned in the last clause—namely, the first day of January next year—it may find a place on the Statute Book of this country.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Braye.)
EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, the noble Lord says truly that this House will sympathise with the principle and objects of the Bill the Second Reading of which he has just moved, but the Bill itself, I venture to suggest, should be approached with a great deal of caution. Neither the Memorandum to the Bill nor the speech of the noble Lord has really dealt with everything that the Bill contains. In addition to striking at these advertisements the Bill contains a rather important provision in Clause 2 which was not alluded to by the noble Lord. That these advertisements and any public exhibition of things of this kind should be put down I think we agree, and we have all been able to recognise the good done by the previous Act; but while the object of this Bill will command sympathy,

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the drafting of its provisions is open to some little criticism. I should be sorry to see it in its present form placed upon the Statute Book, and I should be glad to hear that the noble Lord did not propose to do more than obtain a pious assent to the general principle to-night, without carrying the Bill in its present shape much further.
LORD BRAYE: I hope the noble Earl will pardon me for pointing out that the provision depends on the words "shall exhibit to public view." It is exhibition which is aimed at in this clause.
EARL RUSSELL: If your Lordships will look at the marginal note to Clause 2 you will see that it provides a "penalty for exhibiting certain appliances of an improper character." The opening words are, "Whosoever shall exhibit to public view in any house or shop …" Unless the word "exhibit" is to be taken to have a technical meaning and to mean an exhibition to which the public are invited, it would render liable to a penalty any person who accidentally exposed any of these things in any portion of a dwelling-house or in a bedroom.
LORD BRAYE: I think it is to be taken to mean exhibit for sale.
EARL RUSSELL: I do not wish to discuss the details across the floor of the House if I can help it, but I think your Lordships will see that this as it stands really does not hit the very mischief intended to be aimed at. What is probably intended to be aimed at is the exposure of these things for sale in the street or in a shop window, so that they meet the eye of the passer-by when he does not wish to see them and are forced upon his attention. It is to be noted—I think it is an entirely new departure—that certain things are included connected with Malthusian practices which I think require some little consideration before they are dealt with exactly on the same level as the other mischief aimed at in the Bill.
It is to be noted, too, that by Clause 3, subsection (4), there is to be no prosecution without the previous consent in writing of the chief officer of police of the district in which the offence is alleged to have been committed, or of two Justices of the Peace. I do not know whether it is usual to
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put in a sanction of that character to a prosecution. With sanction by the Attorney-General, or perhaps the Public Prosecutor, one is fairly well acquainted, but there is no precedent for a provision of this kind, and it is doubtful whether it is desirable in that form.
As to the provision in subsection (5) to which the noble Lord called attention, I do not altogether object to the onus of proof being thrown upon the person who is defending a publication to show that it is a bonâ fide medical or scientific treatise; it must depend ultimately on the common-sense of the Court that tries the question. I recollect, and I read with some care, the Report of the Committee presided over by the noble Earl on the Front Bench which dealt with this matter. This Bill does not quite agree with the Report of that Committee, and I think the noble Lord must feel that if it is to go further the enacting words of the Bill will require careful scrutiny.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON: My Lords, I wish to say a few words in support of the Second Reading of this Bill, not so much in my individual capacity, but as Chairman of the Public Morality Council for London, which includes every Christian denomination and the Jewish community. It is really our Bill which the noble Lord has been good enough to introduce. I should like to make plain the great good that has been done by the Act which was piloted through by Lord Meath. It is twenty-one years since the Indecent Advertisements Act became law. It has worked well and has been extremely beneficial in London; but it became plain, as so often happens, that there were certain loopholes in the Act. I hold in my hand most disgusting advertisements, with the reading of which I will not defile your Lordships' ears, which it has been found impossible to deal with under the existing Act. A public agitation was carried on for some four or five years eventuating in the appointment of a Joint Committee. After very careful investigation that Committee reported, and in their Report they pointed out that the Act did not make it an offence to circulate such advertisements as these in the shape of handbills inserted in books and magazines sold to the public, and also that the Act did not refer to advertisements printed in newspaper periodicals.

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The Joint Committee pointed out the loophole in the Act which the Bill before your Lordships seeks to fill.
There was also another defect. Clause 3 of this Bill simply makes good an omission in the previous Act. At the present time while it is an offence to distribute or send through the post handbills advertising certain drugs or offering for sale certain mechanical appliances, the same handbill can be printed and circulated in a newspaper and the present Act cannot be brought to bear. To have such advertisements in newspapers which circulate among the masses of the people is an evil infinitely greater than the handbills, and the clause simply extends the prohibition to newspapers. I can only say, on behalf of the Council I represent, that we very seldom come here for help in our efforts in the cause of morality. We only come to your Lordships' House to seek for help by means of legislation when some serious obstacle stands in our way and retards our work. I sincerely hope that your Lordships will give a Second Reading to this Bill, because I believe these advertisements which are scattered broadcast, and these shops exhibiting to public view these appliances, are most demoralising to unmarried people in making vice easy, and still more demoralising to young married people into whose hands they fall, and are degrading to public morality generally.
THE EARL OF MEATH: My Lords, as the author of the Bill which twenty-one years ago became the Act which it is now proposed to amend, it is a pleasure to me to hear that that Act has been of some service, and to read in the Memorandum attached to the Bill under discussion that the Act of 1889 has had considerable effect in preventing the distribution of certain classes of unsavoury advertisements. But an amendment of that Act is undoubtedly needed. I may say that 1 introduced certain words in the original Bill which would have prevented the possibility of these advertisements being issued in newspapers, but in its passage through Parliament those words were deleted. The noble Lord, Lord Braye, proposes to go still further than I did, and in doing that he has my most sympathetic support. It is not so very many years ago since a right rev. Prelate who is noted for his eloquence made a splendid speech in this House—the right rev. Prelate is present—on this very subject which has been alluded to
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of Malthusianism, and he pointed out the terrible effects which were taking place in the population owing to these doctrines advocating the restriction of the birth-rate. The evils which the right rev. Prelate pointed out in 1903 are very much greater now than they were at that time. The right rev. Prelate quoted an enormous mass of statistics on that occasion—I believe without any notes at all, to my extreme admiration—but one of the few figures I remember was that the birth-rate in the year 1876 was 36·3 and that in the year 1898 it was 29·4 per thousand. In 1907 we had gone further in a retrograde direction; and now the birth-rate is 26·3. The right rev. Prelate told us at that time—I think he took it front some figures given by Mr. Edward Cannon—that in 1880 the size of families was 4·34; at the end of 1890, 4·08; and at the end of 1900, 3·63. There are no figures that I know of that will absolutely show what the size of families now is, but if you take those proportions you find that about three is the size of the average family nowadays. In other words, there are about 2,000,000 less children in the land than there would have been if we had maintained the standard of these former years. The Registrar-General, in his last Report, says there can be little doubt that much of this is due to wilful restriction in child-bearing. I think it is most important, if we are to preserve not only the purity of our families but the very Empire itself, that we should take this matter into consideration. We own one fifth of the earth's surface, a great mass of which is quite capable of being filled up by people of the Anglo-Saxon race, and unless we are prepared to accept that duty and to fill those lands the British Empire cannot last. It is late, and I do not intend to detain your Lordships further than to say that we have recently heard, and I am sure all of us with great pleasure, words coming from the very highest quarter. Those words made a great impression upon me when I read them. They were—
"The foundations of national glory are set in the homes of the people. They will only remain while the family life of our race and nation is strong, simple, and pure."
I hope, my Lords, we shall to-night do something to assist in making the family life of this nation strong, simple, and pure.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: My Lords, I am very glad indeed, on behalf of His Majesty's

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Government. to express general approval of the principle of the Bill which the noble Lord has introduced. I had the honour some years ago of being Chairman of the Committee to which reference has already been made by the noble and learned Earl behind me. The members of the Committee realised the need of further legislation on the subject, and we did indeed definitely recommend the passing of a Bill which would consolidate and amend the existing law as well as extend it in some directions. It was brought rather forcibly to our minds that the whole subject should be dealt with in a single Bill if possible, and that the laws already existing should be consolidated. We did not feel that the matter would otherwise be adequately dealt with. The Home Office are entirely sympathetic with the objects and principle of this Bill, and I believe Lord Gladstone, before he left office, had intended to introduce a Bill on the lines recommended by our Committee, but the state of public business at the time did not allow him to proceed with the matter. I am, however, able to say that the present Home Secretary takes the same view as his predecessor did as to the desirability of legislation on this subject, and he hopes to be able to take the whole matter into consideration. I think, therefore, with this intimation we may give the Bill of the noble Lord a Second Reading, but I hope he will not press it beyond that stage.
There is a caveat which I desire to enter in connection with the matter. The objection which is felt by the Home Office to the Bill is that it only deals with a portion and not with the whole of the question. The subject is much larger than might be inferred from merely looking at the Memorandum and the Bill as introduced by the noble Lord. In our opinion what is really wanted is a consolidating and amending Bill dealing with the whole subject, and it is with a Bill of that kind that. His Majesty's Government hope to proceed on a subsequent occasion. In those circumstances, and in view of the condition of business in another place and also here, I venture to submit to the noble Lord whether there is any prospect of proceeding successfully with the Bill during the present session. There is a good deal to be said, which I will not trouble your Lordships with at the present time, upon the wording of the Bill, which is, in the opinion of the Home Office, very faulty and needs considerable amendment.
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If the noble Lord was to proceed to Committee stage His Majesty's Government, if it was likely that the Bill would pass into law, would be obliged to make a very large number of alterations in it. I venture to hope, therefore, that having passed the Second Reading of the Bill this afternoon in order to show our general sympathy with the noble Lord, he will be satisfied with that step for the present; and if he will be so good as to place himself in communication with the Home Office—and I address the same invitation to the right rev. Prelate—I am sure that Department will be very glad indeed to consider anything placed before them, and to take both the noble Lord and the right rev. Prelate into consultation before bringing in that larger Bill to which I have referred.
THE LORD BISHOP OF RIPON: My Lords, I hope I may be allowed for a few moments to trouble your Lordships with one or two observations on this matter. The noble Earl who has just sat down expressed a hope that this Bill will be given a Second Reading. I do earnestly trust that that will be the case. Butt some sentences that fell from him seemed to foreshadow modifications, and one would be very glad to know what direction those modifications are likely to take. I sincerely trust that there will be no modification of those parts of the Bill which in any way touch on what we generally call the practice of restriction of population in this country. As the noble Earl who sits on the Cross Benches has reminded us, this subject is one of supreme and Imperial importance.
According to the Registrar-General's returns of the last census it is reckoned that the loss to this country in the birthrate represented two per cent. in thirty years. But, my Lords, that was followed by what seems to me a far more important fact which marked a far more dangerous condition of affairs, namely, that the loss of birth force—that is a technical phrase but it expresses a well-known meaning—was 19·5 per cent. Now if it is the fact that there is this great diminution of birth force going on in this country I think we ought to take care that in a Bill of this sort we do put on record our determined hostility to those practices which are calculated to bring about a further diminution of the birthrate. May I point out what is the real

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danger, which is combated, I think, by this Bill? I have made inquiries in various towns where the population is large. I will take time Midland towns for the purposes of illustration, and select Nottingham, Birmingham, Leicester, and Derby as representing the Midlands. From inquiries I made in those towns from those who were in an official position and able to speak authoritatively on the subject, I find that the use of diachylon or oleate of lead, generally given out in the form of pills, is very frequent in every one of those localities. When I go to the great seaports of Bristol and Hull I find the same sort of report. When I go to Salford the same thing is expressed as being true, and when I pass to Sunderland I am told that in the view of the chemists this practice is one which is alarming in its extent. As a result of advertisements in the newspapers many persons carry out the practice which leads to the restriction of population by means of what really is a. systematic course of lead poisoning.
Your Lordships may not be aware of all the significance of that word "diachylon." For my own part I wish it could be brought within the scope of legislation to put diachylon amongst those scheduled drugs which ought not to be sold by chemists without special permit. The use of diachylon means that a process of lead poisoning is resorted to by those mothers who desire to avoid the birth of the child. It means, therefore, not only what is commonly called race suicide, but much more than that, for it must be remembered that every time the birth of a child is stopped in this way the mother-strength of the country is being seriously impaired. The use of this drug, in whatever form it is given, in the long run tends to undermine the health and the strength of the woman who takes it, arid, according to the outspoken record of the medical officer of health for Nottingham, who knows how widespread the practice is, this is a form of poisoning which leads to blindness, paralysis, insanity, and even death. Case after case has occurred in many quarters, not only in the Midlands but in the East of London; and your Lordships will find in the British Medical Journal and elsewhere reports of such cases and of prosecutions which have sometimes followed.
The decline of the birth-rate and the undermining of women's health are a
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serious national evil, and as surely as the practice I have spoken of prevails so surely will the evil exist. The practice is one which is brought to the notice of the inexperienced girl, or the ignorant young married woman, by means of specious advertisements— advertisements which suggest to the ignorant that some kind-spirited, soft hearted, generous minded person is prepared to give motherly help to poor unfortunate women who are driven to seek help by the hard circumstances of necessity. In this way these poisonous pills are sold and consumed to the detriment of health and to the destruction of the population that might be. My Lords, these things are far too serious for us to treat by, shall I call them, hypothetical clauses in a Bill. I rise for the purpose of urging that, whatever other change is going to be made, those words which touch this question of the restriction of population should be emphasised in the Bill, because in this day of national history we cannot afford to stand by and see methods adopted which tend to the diminution of our population and to the impairment of the moral energy of the Empire.
LORD BRAYE: My Lords, after what has been stated by the noble Earl, Lord Beauchamp, I will not press for the Committee Stage to be taken at the present time. I quite concur in what has been said with reference to proceeding with this Bill, and for my part I shall be only too glad to see the ample Bill which he alluded to brought in by the Government.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

NORWICH CHARITIES (No. 2) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
Moved, That the House do resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Denman.)
LORD BARNARD: My Lords, I do not know whether this is the proper occasion, before the House resolves itself into Committee, to repeat the question I put to the noble Lord on the Second Reading. Perhaps I had better explain the posit ion very shortly. The part the Charity Commissioners have taken during the last fifty years in framing schemes for the trusts of charities does not extend beyond the power

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exercised by Courts of Equity. The Act of 1853 empowered the Commissioners in certain cases to go to Parliament to approve schemes which presumably went beyond the ordinary power, but the eases in which the Commissioners have gone to Parliament to approve schemes have been very rare indeed. In many years there have been none at all, and in other years very few. On the other hand, under their ordinary jurisdiction the Commissioners have been in the habit of approving schemes by scores and hundreds, and I feel that the very fact that the Legislature requires that in certain cases a scheme should not become law except with the assent of Parliament indicates that it was beyond the ordinary powers of the Commissioners and of the Courts, and that therefore something exceptional was proposed. I do not for one moment suggest that in the case of this particular Bill every provision of the Bill is not entirely justified, but what I do want to draw the attention of this House to is the fact that if it once began to allow these Bills to go through as a matter of course, the whole of the principles upon which the revision of the trusts of charities is carried out might in course of time imperceptibly be very seriously changed, and the result, in my humble judgment at any rate, would be to deter pious founders and benefactors, as they are called, from founding charities. I have no doubt whatever that the noble Lord can give a perfectly valid explanation of the reason why a Bill is necessary in this case, but I do hope that in all future cases of Charity Bills your Lordships will insist on being told why it is necessary to proceed by Bill instead of by means of the ordinary jurisdiction possessed by the Commissioners.
LORD DENMAN: My Lords, I hope I may be able to satisfy the noble Lord on the point he has raised, which is really one of a rather technical character. The Charity Commissioners are obliged to come to Parliament because of an alteration of the area affected by the charities in this Bill. As I said on Second Reading, the object is to consolidate certain charities in the City of Norwich. There are thirty-six parishes having charities, some specially for one parish only, and some for groups of two or three parishes, and it was really impossible to effect the consolidation of these charities for Norwich as a whole under the ordinary jurisdiction of the Commissioners. This is the chief reason.
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There are other minor reasons into which I hope at this late hour the noble Lord may not think it necessary for me to enter. I am well aware that he speaks with great authority on this subject generally, but I hope he will consider the reason I have given sufficient and that he will not deem it necessary to oppose the passage of this Bill.
LORD BARNARD: I am quite satisfied.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Earl of ONSLOW in the Chair.]
VISCOUNT GALWAY: My Lords, I wish to call the attention of your Lordships' House to paragraph 55 on page 26 of the schedule. Your Lordships will, I am sure, agree that when any Act of Parliament is being administered, whether by a bureau or a body of trustees, there should certainly be a right of appeal to a Court of law for an interpretation of the Act if it is considered that anything is being done contrary to the intention of the Act. The paragraph to which I refer, and the deletion of which I propose to move, contains an extraordinary contradiction. Clause 1 of the Bill says that the said scheme as amended is hereby confirmed, provided always that nothing in this Act or in the said scheme shall be held to interfere with the ordinary jurisdiction over endowed charities now exercisable, or hereafter to become exercisable, by the High Court of Justice and the Charity Commissioners. But the particular paragraph—paragraph 55 in the schedule—which deals with questions under the scheme runs—
"Any question as to the construction of this Scheme, or as to the regularity or the validity of any acts done or about to be done under this Scheme, shall be determined conclusively by the Charity Commissioners, upon such application made to them for the purpose as they think sufficient."
The point is whether this paragraph does or does not take away the intention of the Act, or whether there is still a right of appeal to the Courts of Justice for an interpretation of the Act. It seems to me that the first clause and this paragraph contradict each other, and I feel strongly that there is a great endeavour nowadays being made for bureaux themselves to be allowed to interpret an Act of Parliament instead of a Court of Justice. I therefore move to leave out this paragraph, and I

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shall press the Amendment unless the noble Lord opposite can assure me that the paragraph does not do away with the right of appeal to a Court of Justice.
Amendment moved—
To leave out paragraph 55.—(Viscount Galway.)
LORD BARNARD: I would venture to appeal to my noble friend not to proceed with this Amendment. My desire is not to oppose the Bill, but, on I he contrary, to support it. The paragraph in question—paragraph 55—was framed a great number of years ago. There are hundreds of schemes in existence, and this clause has been put into every one of them, and in the course of my ten years experience actually in the office of the Charity Commissioners, in addition to having since had a pretty close acquaintance with charities and charity administration, I have never heard the faintest suspicion of this provision having worked badly or improperly. I think that of itself shows that in actual practice it is a very reasonable clause. I may, perhaps, be permitted to point out to my noble friend that you cannot take away the right of individuals to have an authoritative decision upon a disputed question with regard to the construction of a trust. In ordinary circumstances the Court of Equity is the proper. Court to decide such a point as that, but in former days a terrible scandal was created by the way in which charity funds were frittered away in applications to the Court to decide questions of this kind. It was therefore determined, and it has worked well for about half a century, that a body paid by the public should decide these questions; and they are bound, by Clause 1 of the Bill, to decide them in accordance with the principles of the law. If the Charity Commissioners exceed their authority the Courts have power to put them right, and we all know from recent experience in the case of a Battersea or Streatham Hospital, where the Commissioners exceeded their powers, that the Courts insisted upon the charity being put back into the original position. So that I think my noble friend need have no fear whatever that the Commissioners will go beyond the powers they possess, and I hope he will take my assurance from my practical experience on the subject, and not ask the House to divide.
LORD DENMAN: My Lords, I hope t lie noble Viscount; will accept the powerful
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appeal which has just been made by the noble Lord on the Bench opposite. It is really not a case, as the noble Viscount suggests, of a bureaucracy endeavouring to get more power for itself. The Charity Commissioners are not quite in the same position as a Government Department. They are appointed by Royal Warrant in the same way as His Majesty's Judges, their functions are of a quasi-Judicial character, and the Commissioners themselves have had a legal training and experience which fit them to deal with cases of the kind that will come up to them as contemplated in the Bill. Furthermore, they have been allowed by Parliament to have this power, as the noble Lind opposite said. There have been similar clauses since the year 1856 inserted in Charity Commission Bills, and what is an even stronger point is that in the year 1883 the Court of Chancery adopted a method whereby their schemes were construed by the Charity Commissioners themselves. Surely if the Court of Chancery asked the Charity Commissioners to undertake to construe their own schemes it must be conceded that the Charity Commissioners are capable of so doing. The points that come before them are often points of a very minor character that really it would be almost absurd to take to a Court of law—which might mean the absorption altogether of the funds provided by the Charity. I will give your Lordships one instance of the kind of question that comes before them: There was a scheme that gave power to contribute for the maintenance of a nurse for a parish, and the trustees differed as to whether they could contribute to the maintenance of a nurse who served another parish as well. These arc the kind of very minor points which, as I say, it would be almost ridiculous to refer to a Court of law. I trust, therefore, that the noble Viscount will not divide the House. It is really not a matter which affects the interest of the Government at all, but if the Amendment of the noble Viscount were carried and the paragraph omitted, it might seriously affect the interests of people in very humble circumstances who might be prevented from availing themselves of these charitable trusts. I therefore hope that the noble Viscount will not press his Amendment.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I am not surprised at my noble friend having moved this Amendment,

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although I confess that the two speeches we have just listened to have made out a very strong case for the retention of these words. I desire to mark two points, however, before we part with this subject. In the first place, it is clear from what the noble Lord, Lord Barnard, with his great knowledge of the subject has told us, that these words do not, in point of fact, oust the jurisdiction of the ordinary Courts of Justice. He has instanced a recent case in which, notwithstanding words like these, an appeal to the Court was successfully sustained.
LORD BARNARD: I do not think the scheme had been framed. They were making a scheme. It was on the original trusts in that case.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am afraid that does, to some extent, diminish the force of my noble friend's argument. He gave your Lordships to understand that, in his opinion, there was always an appeal to a Court of Justice against excessive jurisdiction on the part of the Charity Commissioners notwithstanding these words. That is one consideration which I think of great importance. Another is that the noble Lord, speaking with his responsibility as representing the Government, emphasised the fact that in this respect the Charity Commissioners are to be trusted because they are an impartial semi-Judicial body. I agree that the Charity Commissioners are so at present. That was the case also at one time with regard to other charities, not merely charities such as this Bill deals with; but in an evil moment the Education Department were allowed to supersede the Charity Commissioners in respect of those charities, and we know what the Education Department's views of a semi-Judicial function really are. I do not think there ever was so serious a blow struck as when one of the present members of His Majesty's Government so grossly abused his powers as Education Minister.
THE EARL OF CREWE: I really rise for the purpose of asking for information, and not with a view to attempting to score a point off the noble Marquess. But will be, as a matter of fact, inform us when the powers were handed over to the Board of Education.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not see that that has anything to do with it. The point is that they were handed over to the Board of Education, and the
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Board of Education has misused them; and I am not surprised, therefore, that my noble friend and other noble Lords always view with suspicion words of this kind, and are inclined to think of the possibility that under these words lies a future such as we have experienced. However, after the speeches that have been made I would appeal to my noble friend, if I may, not to press his Amendment.
THE EARL OF CREWE: My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Marquess treated my interruption, for which I apologise, with somewhat less than his usual courtesy. He made an attack in somewhat violent terms upon one of my right hon. friends, and it did not seem to me entirely irrelevant to ask him the question as to when the change was made. What I understand he objects to is that a public Department should have the Charity Commissioners' powers, and I think I am entitled to assume, if the noble Marquess is right in thinking that it is impossible for a politician to exercise those powers impartially, that that must apply to politicians upon both sides and not only upon one.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I think an apology is due from me to the noble Earl for the rather abrupt manner in which I met his interruption, but I am sure he knows me well enough to know that I did not intend any discourtesy. I was quite well aware what was in his mind when he put the question, and that, perhaps, accounted for my haste. But it is not material whether it is a question of a Liberal Government or a Conservative Government. What is material is that the experiment was tried and failed, and what I deeply deplore is, not that the Conservative Government did it, but that the Liberal Government misused it.
VISCOUNT GALWAY: I withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Bill reported without amendment, and to be read 3ª To-morrow.

THE ROAD BOARD.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU rose to ask His Majesty's Government—

1. What funds are at present available for the use of the Road Board, and whit funds will be available for 1910–1911.

2. Whether any representation is to be given to local authorities or to bodies representative of their interests.

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3. Whether any official announcement will be made as to the policy of the Road Board during the coming autumn and winter.

4. What is the estimated charge for salaries and departmental expenses for 1910–1911.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is now so late that I propose to be very brief in putting these Questions to His Majesty's Government. It is particularly unfortunate, as there are several points connected with this subject with regard to which I am sure they would like to give information to the country. Before proceeding further may I say that I am sure noble Lords will sympathise deeply with the noble Lord (Lord Llangattock) whose son (the Hon. C. S. Rolls) has met with such a sad accident to-day. Science is constantly claiming its victims, and the pursuit of it will always be attended with the risk of human life. I trust the life that has been given to-day will not have been given in vain. In connection with the Questions that I have put on the Paper, I would first like to congratulate His Majesty's Government on the appointment at last of the members of the Road Board. Some of us criticise the composition of the Board on the ground that it contains gentlemen who have not so far been particularly notable on the question of roads, and if I were asked what was the predominant feature of the Road Board my reply would be that those concerned in it are mainly notable by reason of their connection with railways. Still, sometimes a converted poacher makes a good gamekeeper, and although the Chairman of the Board and the noble Lord opposite to me in past times have displayed great interest in railways, I trust they will use the knowledge they so gained for the benefit of the roads. This Road Board has huge responsibilities and will have a very considerable revenue.
At the present moment there are nearly 150,000 miles of roads in this country, 28,000 main roads, and 120,000 secondary reads. I trust the Board will shape their policy with a view to improving not only the main roads but the secondary roads as well. They will have to decide what claims the diminution of dust has over the question of dangerous corners and the straightening of roads, and if they have anything like the amount of money foreshadowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer they will
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have something like £600,000 a year. I trust that their policy will be one of conciliating local authorities to start with, because they must work with the local authorities, who are by law absolutely independent of them, and the success of the Board's policy will depend to a certain extent on bow they treat them. The county surveyor is also a most important person to be considered, and they should try and get him to work in with their schemes. I trust that they will make their grants in ratio to the efficiency of the work done by various counties, and not give undue grants to counties which have always been backward in making roads and resisting the trend of events by keeping their roads bad in order to avoid traffic coming over them. They are limited in the Act to one-third of their revenue being spent on new roads. I think that is wise, but I trust they will not leave out of consideration altogether the importance of exits from cities. London, in particular, the largest city in the world, has probably the meanest exits of any. That is a subject requiring the greatest attention. I have seen noble Lords struggling in the narrow neck of Brentford, apparently swearing to themselves, and not only noble Lords but a great many other people also. It would be a great improvement if they could make by-roads for avoiding roads in certain places.
Then the question of dust, the greatest plague that has attended this new kind of traction, will require careful consideration and if they can give grants even in the smallest degree to the local authorities who have already dealt with this question themselves they will be doing a very good work. Nearly the whole of the main roads of Kent are now tarred; that example ought to be followed by other counties, and is being followed to a large degree. Great credit must be given to the county surveyors who have dealt with this question already, and I trust the Road Board will keep the dust nuisance in the forefront of their programme. I am sure noble Lords on this side of the House wish the Road Board well, and speaking for the motoring community we wish it every success. We think that representation might be given in two ways—first, that the local authorities, either through the County Councils Association or some other authority, might be given representation; and, secondly, that the interest of heavy traction ought to have

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some representation. I do not mean heavy traction of sixteen tons, but heavy van traction, which is becoming very extensive on the roads and ought to have sonic representation. I think that would add to the usefulness of the Board. I trust that the Board will form the nucleus of a far bigger Department some day which will take up the question of national roads and work them in a national sense. I wish we had more time to discuss this matter, but as it is so late I simply ask the Questions which I have put upon the Paper, and I hope the noble Lord who will reply will be able to enlighten us with regard to the points I have put forward.
EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, I am ashamed at this late hour to interpose even for one moment, but if the noble Lord opposite will excuse me I want to say one word on Question 2, as to whether any representation will be given to local authorities. The Road Board, in my view also, has a great future before it. It is limited a little unfortunately, as I said at the time, by the Act which constitutes it, hut no doubt in time those limitations will disappear. For my part I differ from my noble friend opposite in one thing. I am anxious that the Road Board should represent nothing but the interests of the roads. I think it is unfortunate that the members should be regarded as representing this or that particular interest in the constitution of the Board. The Board has been formed to some extent on that basis, but with members so excellent I do not think we need have anything to fear. I should not like to see a Road Board formed with the idea that particular interests should be represented all pulling this way and that when the various schemes are discussed. The Road Board should consist of strong men having regard merely to the question of the roads themselves, of course working harmoniously with the various interests concerned. I do not know whether the Board is to he drawn as to any official announcement, and I hesitate to tender advice to members of the Board so astute as the noble Lord behind me; but if I were to tender any advice it would be that they should hesitate before announcing anything in the nature of a policy at all, and that they should spend a good deal of time in informing themselves as to the very considerable difficulties winch exist in dealing with this question before they commit themselves to any public statement.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: With regard to Question 2, I wish to say one word on behalf of the County Councils Association, who have always strongly urged that the local authorities who are to be partners in the work of the Road Board should be represented on that Board, and although I can say nothing. about the nature of the communications which led us to suppose that some attention was going to be given to this matter, I think the noble Lord who answers the Questions, if he inquires, will find that something in the way of an expectancy that this might be done was held out to us. I hope, therefore, that whenever an opportunity arrives in the future he may be able to assure us that something will be done to give the local authorities some means, by way of representation, of making their views known in the councils of the Board.
LORD DENMAN: MY Lords, I desire to associate myself with what has fallen from the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, with regard to the late Mr. Rolls, whose terribly sudden death was announced this afternoon. Re was one of the pioneers of motoring and aviation, and certainly one of the most skilful and pluckiest of them, a man whom this country can ill afford to lose, and I am sure your Lordships will deeply sympathise with Lord and lady Llangattock in the cruel bereavement which has fallen upon them.
The answers to the Questions which the noble Lord has put on the Paper are as follow. With regard to the funds, there is already available a sum of approximately £300,000 in respect of the proceeds of the Motor Spirit Duty, less the cost of collection, for 1909–10; and there will be available in respect of the current financial year the net proceeds of that duty for 1910–11 and the proceeds of motor-car licences for 1909–10 and 1910–11. The estimated receipts from the Spirit Duty for 1910–11 will be £400,000, and from motor-car licences for the two years £520,000, making a total of £920,000. From that total must be deducted the cost of collection, which cannot be precisely ascertained at present.
As to the constitution of the Road Board, I am glad to find that there is no criticism of the personnel of this body. There is no special representative of local authorities, as the House is aware, on the Board at present. It was overlooked when the appointments were being made, but since

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then the Chancellor of the Exchequer has promised to consider whether or not it will be possible to grant some such representation. I cannot give the noble Lord any more definite information on that point at present.
As to Question 3, the Road Board intend to issue shortly a circular to county councils and highway authorities which will contain such indications of policy as the Board are in a position to give. As to Question 4. The salaries of the staff already sanctioned by the Treasury amount to £5,028 per annum in all. It is not possible to estimate with any degree of accuracy the departmental expenses for the year, but probably the cost of any additional staff that may be required and the departmental expenses, including office rent and furnishing, will not exceed £2,000. With regard to the other points raised by the noble Lord, I fortunately induced a member of the Road Board to be present to-night, and I am quite sure he will give every attention to those points.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: I am much obliged to the noble Lord for his answer, which throws a good deal of light on the question. The fact that the Road Board have nearly a million to spend is very cheering, and I hope they will make a very good show for it. I am glad that His Majesty's Government have appointed a secretary with whom we are very satisfied and in whom we have great confidence, and an engineer who has had so many years experience and study of the subject.

ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY REGULATIONS.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH*LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH rose to move that an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying him to withhold his assent from the words "or diminishing" in. Section VIII. (4) (c) of Ordinance No. 5 (Regulations for Degrees in Medicine), made by the University Court of St. Andrews under the Universities (Scotland) Act, 1889, Section 21.
The Lord said: My Lords, the Motion that stands in my name on the Paper is rather in the nature of using a steam hammer to crack a nut, but it is necessary to make a formal address to the Crown in order to get a small amendment made in a matter of this kind. The particular section gives the right to the University Court of St. Andrews to make certain regulations with regard to the
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conditions under which medical degrees may be taken. It is obviously not right, I think, that any one University Court should have the right of diminishing the amount of education or the length of time to be given before a medical degree can be taken. How the words got into the ordinance I am unable to say, but, acting as Chancellor of the University concerned, I suggest that in the interest of the University it would be right to present this Address, and so get the amendment made. I am sure it will be right, and I am sorry there is no other way of doing it.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying him to withhold his assent from the words "or diminishing" in Section VIII. (4) (c) of Ordinance No. 5 (Regulations for Degrees in Medicine), made by the University Court of St. Andrews under the Universities (Scotland) Act, 1889, Section 21.—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
On Question Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly: The said Address to be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

WATER PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 1) BILL.
  (Gorseinon Electric Lighting Order.)
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.
(Ardrossan, Saltcoats and District Electric Lighting Order and Cambuslang Electric Lighting (Extension) Order.)

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the following Lords be proposed to the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bills; (viz.),

L. Clinton (chairman),

L. Langford,

L. Colchester,

L. Shute (V. Barrington),

L. Blyth;

agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly: The Committee to meet on Tuesday next, at Eleven o'clock; and all Petitions referred to the Committee, with leave to the Petitioners praying to be heard by Counsel against the Bills to be heard as desired, as also Counsel for the Bills.
House adjourned at half-past Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.