Lords Sitting of 25 June 1912

BARONIES OF BURGH, STRABOLGI AND COBHAM.
A witness ordered to attend the Committee for Privileges and produce documents.
BARONY OF LATYMER.
Several witnesses ordered to attend the Committee for Privileges and certain of them to produce documents.

ROYAL COMMISSION.
The following Bills received the Royal Assent—

Government of India.

Aberdeen Market Company Order Confirmation.

Glasgow and South Western Railway Order Confirmation.

Prestonpans Combination Water Supply (Finance) Order Confirmation.

Kilmarnock Gas Order Confirmation.

Clyde Lighthouses Order Confirmation.

Dundee Harbour and Tay Ferries Order Confirmation.

Falkirk and District Tramways Order Confirmation.

Allan Glen's School Order Confirmation.

Metropolitan Police Provisional Order. Collooney, Ballina and Belmullet Railways and Piers.

Weston-super-Mare Grand Pier.

Wirral Railway (Extension of Time).

Crédit Foncier of Mauritius.

Leatherhead Gas.

Newry, Keady and Tynan Railway.

Sidmouth Urban District Council.

Belfast Corporation.

Everton, & c., Drainage.

Penwortham Bridge.

Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.

Liverpool Corporation.

Dunstable Gas and Water.

Church Stretton Urban District Water.

Egremont Urban District Water.

Ramsbottom Urban District Railless Traction.

Birkbeck Share and Debenture Trust.

Manchester Ship Canal.

Price's Patent Candle Company.

The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House. That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the Standing Order applicable to the following Bills has been complied with:

Land Drainage Provisional Order.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3).

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 4).

Also the Certificate that the Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have been complied with:

Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4). [H.L.]

The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
(East Surrey Water Order and Chiddingfold and District Water Order.)
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL. [H.L.]
(Knottingley Gas Order.)

EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (LONDON No. 2) BILL. [H.L.]
LOCH ERICHT WATER AND ELECTRIC POWER BILL. [H.L.]
FYLDE WATER BOARD BILL.
METROPOLITAN RAILWAY BILL.
GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY BILL.
MIDLAND RAILWAY BILL.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 2) BILL. [H.L.]
(Tipperary Gas Order.)
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. Ellenborough,

L. Elphinstone,

L. Basing,

L. Swaythling;

agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly: The Committee to meet on

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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.

TAVISTOCK URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
  METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY BILL.

    SCUNTHORPE URBAN DISTRICT WATER BILL.
    LONDON TRUST COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
    Reported, with Amendments.

    PORT OF LONDON AUTHORITY BILL.
    The King's consent signified, and Bill reported,with Amendments.
    EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (ESSEX, & c.) BILL. [H.L.]
    Reported without amendment, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
    EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (LONDON No. 1) BILL. [H.L.]
    Reported without amendment, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.
    BEDWELLTY URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
    Reported, with Amendments.
    GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY (GRIMSBY FISH DOCK) BILL. [H.L.]
    The King's consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
  GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
    NOTTINGHAM MECHANICS INSTITUTION BILL. [H.L.]
    Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
WINDERMERE DISTRICT GAS AND WATER BILL.
  GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY BILL.

    ANNFIELD PLAIN AND DISTRICT GAS BILL.
    DUBLIN AND SOUTH EASTERN RAILWAY BILL.
    Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

    LAND DRAINAGE PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 2) BILL. (No. 86.)
    SEA FISHERIES (LYNN) PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL. (No. 87.)
    Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed, and referred to the Examiners.

KEIGHLEY CORPORATION BILL.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; read la; and referred to the Examiners.
  BRIGHTON AND HOVE GENERAL GAS COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
  Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
  YSTRADFELLTE WATER BILL. [H.L.]
  Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.

  PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1899.
  Report by the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords and the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons under Section 2 of the Act—

  1. That, having regard to Section 16 (2) of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, the provisions of Clause 72 of the Falkirk Burgh Extension and Drainage Order ought not to he dealt with by Provisional Order under that Act;

  2. That, save as aforesaid, the Draft Provisional Orders be allowed to proceed, subject to such recommendations as may hereafter be made with respect to the several Orders:

  Laid before the House and ordered to lie on the Table.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT, 1911.
  1. Special Order providing that Section 46 (8) shall apply in certain circumstances to men of the Naval Reserves, the Army Reserve, and the Territorial Force who are being trained at the date of the commencement of the Act or at any time within one month of that date;
  2. Provisional Regulations made by the Irish Insurance Commissioners as to claims for exemption of Irish migratory labourers;
  3. Regulations of the Insurance Commissioners (England) as to behaviour during disease or disablement, dated 25th June, 1912;
  4. (Unemployment Insurance)—Regulations made by the Board of Trade under Section 99 of the National Insurance Act:
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and to be printed. (No. 88.)

  BISHOPRICS BILL. [H.L.]
  A Bill to facilitate the foundation of new Bishoprics and the alteration of Dioceses, and to amend the Bishops' Resignation Act, 1869, and for other matters incidental thereto—Was presented by the Viscount St. Aldwyn; read la; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Wednesday the 3rd of July next. (No. 89.)
  CRIMINAL LAW (AMENDMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
  Bill (on Motion) by leave of the House withdrawn.
  LAND DRAINAGE (LINCOLN WEST) (SOUTH DISTRICT) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL. [H.L.]
  Amendments reported (according to Order), and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
  EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (KENT, & c.) BILL. [H.L.]
  Read 3a (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

  AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS BILL. [H.L.]
  Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
  Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Lucas.)
  LORD CLINTON: My Lords, before the House goes into Committee upon this Bill I should like, in the words of the Notice standing in my name on the Paper, to call the attention of His Majesty's Government to the objections which have been raised by agricultural bodies to this Bill, and to inquire whether in the circumstances the Government are still of opinion that it is desirable to proceed with the measure. Your Lordships are aware that during the Second Reacting debate a few weeks ago we on this side of the House criticised the most important parts of the Bill. We showed, I think, that while some system of counter-notice might in certain circumstances meet one particular grievance under which agriculturists suffer—which is that in certain cases a tenant whose farm is sold very shortly before the expiry of his tenancy is placed in a very difficult position because he has not time in which to make full arrangements with the new owner or to find another farm—the particular system which the Government have adopted cannot help those tenants. We also showed, I think very clearly, that no system of counter-notice can in reality touch even the fringe of the difficulties which have recently born pointed out as confronting agricultural, tenants.
  In the interval since the Second Reading of this Bill the view which we took on this side of the House has been abundantly proved by the protests which have been received from agricultural bodies. The Government, I have no doubt, have seen from those protests that these bodies are entirely dissatisfied with the scheme that has been brought before them. The Bill has met with a chorus of disapproval, I think almost of ridicule. It cannot be satisfactory to agriculturists in any way. I do not wish to labour the reports which I myself have received from these bodies. I have no doubt they are all in the possession of the Government, and that they have considered them, but I think for the information of the House I ought to read extracts from two or three of these reports

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  from the chief bodies. First, there is the report of the Central Chamber of Agriculture. At the last meeting of the Council of that body the following resolution was passed—
  "The Council regrets to have to express its extreme disappointment that the only remedy proposed by the Government to meet the serious position of tenant farmers created by the breaking-up of agricultural estates is the totally inadequate Agricultural Holdings Bill now before the House of Lords. It urges, first, that the Bill should be withdrawn; secondly, that the Agricultural Holdings Act, 1908, should be so amended as to secure full compensation for those compelled to leave their holdings; and, thirdly, that legislation to provide State aid for those tenants who have an opportunity of purchasing their holdings should be introduced forthwith."
  Then we have the Farmers' Club. They have issued a report upon the measure, in the course of which they say—
  "The Committee of the Farmers' Club consider that the real remedy at the present time is State-aided purchase, and that any other suggestions are mere palliatives which do not meet the main object, which is to keep the tenant in his farm so that he can feel such security as will lead to better cultivation. The Committee believe, therefore, that the tenant farmers will not be satisfied with the Bill now brought in, and will feel that their cause is being neglected by the Government by reason of the omission of legislation on the most important recommendation made by the Departmental Committee."
  The National Farmers' Union has not met, but the chairman of that body, in a letter, says that he is bitterly disappointed that the Government have done nothing in the matter of State-aided purchase, and also that though the Bill might be amended lie cannot believe that any amendment would be of advantage to the tenant farmer.
  In addition to those three main bodies, there are a large number of reports from the chambers and clubs affiliated to the Central Chamber. I think one at least has been issued to your Lordships. The Chester Farmers' Club say this—
  "The members of this club are strongly of opinion that the proposed amendment of the Agricultural Holdings Act, 1908, as contained in Lord Lucas's Bill, is most undesirable, and hope the Bill will not become law."
  There are many others which I do not propose to read to your Lordships. I think this is a very fair indication of agricultural feeling. In fact, it is difficult to find a single case, although there are two
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  or three, where chambers have in any sense supported this measure, and I think in every case where they have supported it they have suggested considerable amendments. I ask the Government whether in the circumstances it is worth while to continue pressing a measure intended for the benefit of agriculturists, but which agriculturists themselves seem to have almost entirely and unanimously repudiated, and, further, whether it would not he better to withdraw this measure which aims only at a minor item, important certainly but comparatively small, in the grievances of farmers, and yet distinctly fails to carry out the objects with which it is brought in.
  I do not wish to go over any of the points or arguments which we brought before the House at the Second Reading stage, but there is one point which I desire to lay before your Lordships. I understand that when the Government have received protests from farmers and farmers' clubs against their measure they have replied that the measure is brought in to carry out the express wishes of the Departmental Committee. I endeavoured to contradict that on the Second Reading, but I wish to say one word more about it. I think that the Government's answer must have been given under some misapprehension, because although it is certainly true that the Departmental Committee did recommend in their Report that some further extension of time should be given to tenants when their holdings were put up for sale, yet the Government imply in their answer that the views and intentions of the Committee in making that recommendation have been carried out in this Bill. That is, I think, inaccurate. I am quite certain that any of your Lordships who take the trouble to read the Committee's Report will see that the reason this particular recommendation, which, as I have said, is a minor recommendation—it is only one out of eight others—was put forward was as supplementary to their main recommendation of State-aided purchase, and particularly to carry out the idea that a tenant should have sufficient time after his farm is sold to make his arrangements. It is obvious that under this Bill he has not got that time, because it is just as probable that the owner will sell three months before the expiry of the counter-notice as it is natural that he should now sell three months before the

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  expiry of his own notice. The tenant is therefore in no better position. The Bill does not carry out the recommendation of the Departmental Committee. The objection which farmers have to this Bill is, first of all, that it does not even carry out that minor recommendation; and, secondly, that the scheme of the Bill is quite insufficient. It does not even touch the main grievances of which tenant farmers now complain.
  The anxiety and insecurity brought to tenant farmers by the breaking-up of estates is a new grievance and must be met in some way or another. It has been brought about to a large extent by the operations of the Small Holdings Act, and it has also been brought about to a large extent by recent legislation and recent taxation, which have made it necessary for owners to dispose of their estates; and the reason which has made it necessary for owners to dispose of their estates is the same reason which is preventing the large owner from buying. Formerly when the large owner bought it was necessary that he should have his farms well occupied by substantial tenants, but now the position is changed. The large owner is no longer in the market. When an estate is sold it has to be split up and sold farm by farm in order to attract the occupying owner, who is now the only person out to buy. Consequently when the existing tenant is unable himself to become the purchaser it is almost certain that he will be turned out of his farm to make room for the new owner, and that is the anxiety of tenant farmers at the present moment. I am quite certain that that anxiety and that insecurity cannot be remedied by tinkering at the law which deals with notice to quit. The farmers in their protests recognise this thoroughly, and say that this Bill is of no consequence or no use to them. The only remedy they can see is some scheme of State-aided land purchase, and they have expressed their extreme disappointment that the Government have refused to take up their grievances and settle them in the only way they think proper. I repeat my request that the Government should consider whether in the circumstances it would not be better for them to withdraw this measure and endeavour to bring in a f ally considered scheme to deal with the matter.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD LUCAS): My Lords, it is very sad to hear the noble Lord opposite disown his own child in such an unequivocal fashion, all the more so as the reasons which he gives for it seem to be unconvincing lie states, which is no doubt the case, that the main recommendation of the Committee was that which dealt with State-aided purchase, and it was somewhat as an appendage to that that the majority of the Committee signed the particular recommendation which forms the main part of the Bill now before your Lordships. The reason which Lord Clinton gave for not being able to support this proposal as to the counter-notice is that we have not included in our Bill any proposals with regard to purchase.
  LORD CLINTON: The reason I object to this Bill is that it does not carry out the purpose for which it is intended, which is to give the tenant time to make his arrangements after the farm is sold.
  LORD LUCAS: I think the noble Lord has failed to make good that contention. What we have contended all through is that although you may occasionally have cases where it is possible that under the Bill the tenant may be in no better position than he is at the present time, undoubtedly you will have a large number of cases where the serving of the counter-notice will give the tenant a great deal more time than he now has. It will also tend to do another thing—namely, to stop this practice which has grown up quite recently of serving notice to quit upon the tenants before an estate is put up for sale. I think a number of cases could be quoted where the counter-notice will undoubtedly be of assistance to the tenant farmer.
  To pass to the main point in Lord Clinton's speech, I am not going to try and maintain that this Bill has received the unanimous approval of the various organisations of farmers who have discussed it, but I would like to point out that the Bill has been criticised not so much for what it does contain as for what it does not contain, and the principal thing which it does not contain and which

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  has led to criticism is any proposal with regard to State-aided purchase. Naturally the particular form of State-aided purchase which the farmers regret they do not see in this Bill is that which is recommended in Mr. Jesse Collings's Bill. On that Bill I have two remarks to make. The first is this. After all, one has to remember that the whole of this question from the point of view of the farmer is a financial question, and the test of whether or not a proposal is satisfactory- to him is whether under such a scheme he will be able to pay what he considers to be a fair economic rent for his farm. In the form in which Mr. Jesse Collings's Bill has been considered by the farmers' organisations, the finance of it is, to say the least, misleading, and for this reason. Until, I think, the edition which has been brought out this year it has been proposed to float Consols for the purpose—that is to say, £1,000,000,000 and £2,000,000,000 at a rate of interest of 2¾ per cent. and a sinking fund of ½ per cent., so that I think one is justified in saying that the finance of that proposal, which has been the one chiefly considered by farmers, is somewhat misleading. My second remark is this, that I do not think that. Bill has the faintest chance of becoming law.
  The position of the Government is perfectly clear on the question of land purchase. Under present conditions we are definitely opposed to land purchase. I am extremely sceptical, in spite of all that has been said, whether we shall ever see coming from the Party opposite, if and when they ever come into power, any proposals for land purchase at all on anything like the scale contemplated by the people who are discussing this Bill. It will be interesting to see whether the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition is prepared to commit his Party to a policy of land purchase. I am profoundly sceptical of it. As a matter of fact, land purchase in this country is not within the realm of practical politics, and when people recognise that, and when a good deal of this rather windy talk on the subject of land purchase subsides, I think the farmers will realise that this Bill is going to be a better friend to them than the various proposals with regard to land purchase with which they are being bombarded at present. That is the reason, my Lords, why we have no intention of withdrawing the Bill.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I cannot help thinking that the House finds itself in rather an embarrassing position with regard to this Bill, and that of that embarrassment perhaps rather the larger share must be felt by the noble Lords who are responsible for the origin of the measure which we are discussing. Let me remind your Lordships of one or two rather obvious propositions. In the first place, this difficulty with which we have to deal is one for the creation of which His Majesty's Government are very largely responsible. I am quite aware that it has been contended—it was contended with great ability by the noble Marquess who leads the House the other day—that there are a number of causes which have contributed to the general desire, now so widely prevalent, on the part of owners of land to part with a large portion of their holding. On the other hand, it does seem to me, particularly when you consider the terms of the Report of Lord Haversham's Committee, preposterous to contend that the particular cause which more than all the others has contributed to force land into the market within the last year or two has not been the general apprehension caused in the minds of all land-owners by the language used by certain members of His Majesty's Government. Landowners may have been well content to receive only a very moderate return for their capital locked up in land. They may have been very well content to submit to the many cares and responsibilities which are inseparable from the possession of landed property. But when they are asked to do these things and also to be held up, as they have been held up, to execration—that is not too strong a word—and when they have been singled out, not once but many times over, for denunciation as the class of the community which beyond all others is greedy and rapacious in its dealings, then, human nature being what it is, you cannot be surprised that many owners of land should ask themselves whether it is worth their while to submit to all these sacrifices any longer. That is one proposition which I venture to affirm.
  Then there is the grievance of the sitting tenant whose farm is sold over his head. That is admitted on both sides of the House. It is certainly not disputed by His Majesty's Government, and they could not dispute it in the face of the Report of their own Committee. His Majesty's

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  Government appoint a Committee; they include amongst its members a number of gentlemen who are universally regarded as experts in regard to agricultural questions; and that Committee makes its Report. Well, the first thing His Majesty's Government do is to brush absolutely on one side the main recommendation of that Committee—the recommendation, I mean, which suggested that an attempt should be made, not universal but in the particular ease of sitting tenants disturbed in consequence of sales, to facilitate the acquisition of their holdings by those tenants. His Majesty's Government put that altogether on one side. Indeed, the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, in his speech the other evening banged and bolted the door against all proposals founded upon land purchase. There was also a remarkable article, which I read with much interest, over the signature of the noble Marquess on the Back Bench opposite, Lord Lincolnshire, in one of the periodical reviews—a kind of swan song of the retiring Minister and evidently expressing the views of his Department. He, too, was emphatic against purchase.
  The noble Lord in charge of this Bill, Lord Lucas, asks me whether I am in favour of purchase. I do not know whether he was in the House the other day when the noble Marquess on the Back Bench opposite also challenged me upon that point. I told him that in regard to this particular class of tenant I was in favour of facilitating purchase, and I added that I believed it would be possible to do this without in any way committing oneself to a general and indiscriminate scheme for converting the whole of the tenant farmers of England into owners of their farms. Any proposal of the latter kind I should deprecate every whit as strongly as the noble Lord himself, for all the evidence, and notably the evidence taken by Lord Haversham's Committee, goes to show that the best thing that can happen for the agriculturists of this country is that the old relation of landlord and tenant should go on under conditions which give the tenant a sufficient amount of security.
  Then His Majesty's Government, having dismissed the main recommendation of the Committee, concentrate upon the minor and ancillary suggestions. They do not take them all, but they take some of
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  them and found their Bill upon those. What has the result been? The result has been a Bill for which no one has a good word to say. I do not believe any Bill, certainly no Bill that I can recollect, has been more sweepingly and unanimously condemned by the very persons whom it is intended to benefit than this Bill has been. My noble friend Lord Clinton cited the different agricultural associations and clubs which had pronounced against it. The noble Lord in charge of the Bill seemed to be under the impression that the condemnation of these societies was entirely due to the fact that they desire to obtain facilities for purchase and consequently repudiate this Bill, but that is not at all the case. The noble Lord will find, if he will take the trouble to read the resolutions passed by the Central Chamber of Agriculture, by the Farmers' Club, by the National Union, and by the Central Land. Association and a number of other bodies, that quite apart from the inclusion or non-inclusion of land purchase they have condemned the proposals of this Bill on their merits as being unsatisfactory and likely to do very little good to the tenants and a great deal of harm to the interests of farming. That really was the plea which my noble friend Lord Clinton put forward.
  I do not wish to argue the question to-night upon the point of land purchase. Let us put that entirely on one side. It is quite clear that His Majesty's Government are not going to facilitate it. But I want the House to consider whether this Bill as we find it on the Table is a good and useful Bill or not. You are told by the farmers of this country almost unanimously that it is not a good and useful Bill, and the question that my noble friend asks, and I think asks properly, is whether in those circumstances it is worth while for your Lordships to go on with the Bill, or at any rate worth while for His Majesty's Government to continue to press it on the House. I cannot help thinking that if His Majesty's Government were well advised they would of their own accord ask at any rate for a few days in which to consider this great mass of evidence which has unexpectedly been sprung upon them. They cannot possibly have considered it yet. The noble Lord in charge of the Bill was evidently under a misapprehension as to the contents of a great number of these reports and resolutions. What I venture

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  to suggest is this. Let us put land purchase aside. Let us consider whether this Bill really does what I think most of us want to do—that is, to give to the sitting tenant who finds himself disturbed owing to the sale of his farm a sufficient opportunity to turn round and to come to terms if he can with the purchaser of the estate, or, if he cannot con-Le to terms with the purchaser, to look about him for another farm. Those who have examined this Bill believe that owing to the way in which it is drafted it will fail in its object.
  My noble friend pointed out one respect in which it might certainly so fail. What is there in the first clause of this Bill to prevent a vendor of an estate, if he is served with a counter-notice, from postponing his sale for a year? At the end of that time the sitting tenant comes face to face with the same difficulty. He may have only three months or so in which to turn round. We all admit that is not enough. I hope noble Lords opposite will not suspect for a moment that I want to get rid of this Bill by a side wind. On the contrary, if you can make it into a good Bill I should like to see it made into a good Bill, but if we are driven to go into Committee to-night before we have had time to consider the overwhelming body of objection which has been taken to the Bill, before we have had time to consider what Amendments might be put forward in order to meet those objections, we shall surely approach the subject at a very great disadvantage. Therefore, my Lords, although I do not press the noble Lord, if His Majesty's Government seriously believe that this Bill is a good and useful one, to withdraw it, I do ask him to consider whether it would not be desirable and fair to the House that we should be given at any rate an interval of a few days in which to consider the situation created by this great body of objection to which I have referred.
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (EARL BEAUCHAMP): My Lords, the question which has been put to the Government by the noble Marquess opposite deserves, and indeed demands, an immediate answer. I am sure that we on this side of the House are much obliged to the noble Marquess for the sympathy he expressed for the embarrassment which we feel with regard to this Bill. I am not quite sure whether in the course of his
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  remarks he followed up the sympathy which he expressed for His Majesty's Government by trying to diminish our embarrassment or to increase it. At any rate I am sure that we do not feel any great embarrassment with regard to the matter, and for our own part we should be quite willing to proceed with the Committee stage this afternoon. As the noble Marquess has just told us, this Bill is concerned with the position of the sitting tenant, and noble Lords opposite and His Majesty's Government are all anxious to do what is possible to help the sitting tenant in the difficult position in which we admit he sometimes finds himself. The noble Marquess and Lord Clinton have both referred to the possibility of a landlord, having once announced his sale and having given notice to his tenant and received a counter-notice, then postponing the sale for twelve months, so that eventually the position of the tenant would be no better than it is at the present moment. Let me say that, to quote an expression already used in this debate, human nature being what it is we do not think that it is likely that any landlord would take such a very curious procedure. Obviously from his own point of view the management of the estate would present considerable difficulties if he did so. For ourselves we do not see the necessity for postponing the discussion, but if noble Lords opposite move that the Committee stage be postponed for a fortnight His Majesty's Government would not offer any opposition.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl for having received the suggestion of my noble friend in the manner in which he has done. I noticed that the noble Lord in charge of the Bill did not attempt to defend his Bill, but proceeded to attack another proposal in a measure which I believe is in the other House but is not before your Lordships' House. But although Lord Lucas showed a discreet silence with regard to the Bill itself, the noble Earl who has just sat down did deal with one point that was raised, and seemed to think it incredible that a landlord on receiving a counter-notice would postpone his sale. I think it is natural enough that on receiving the counter-notice he should postpone the sale. I observed that in the Second Reading discussion the argument was used that the landlord would not do that

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  because some tenants might give a counter-notice and other tenants might not, and he would, if he postponed the sale, have a sort of particoloured property left. That was a plausible argument, but it was not repeated by the noble Earl to-night, and I think that when it is looked at it is seen not to have much value. Modern sales are not sales of a property as a whole. The property is sold in bits. In the case where particular pieced are purchased for occupation there would be no difficulty in selling a certain number of the farms on your estate one year and the remainder, which had been subject to the counter-notice, in the succeeding year. The difficulty disappears altogether when the estate is disposed of piecemeal, which is the modern practice. Therefore there appears to be nothing whatever to be said for this Bill. The Bill does not make the sitting tenant any more secure. He will not know what his fate is to be until perhaps three months before the expiration of the second year. He will be in the same position of uncertainty as to his fate under the Government proposal as he is under present circumstances, but he will be in this position worse off—the period of uncertainty will be much longer. That is not a good but a bad thing. So that this wonderful proposal which is to help tenants will positively put things in a worse position than they are in at present. There will be uncertainty for twenty-one months, and, so far from that being an advantage to the farmer and to agriculture, it will be a disadvantage. How can the Government defend such a proposal as this—a proposal which on its merits breaks down and which has been manifestly condemned by all whom it is supposed to benefit? The noble Earl is quite wise in agreeing to a postponement. I think we shall do well to accept the suggestion that the Committee stage should be postponed for a fortnight, and we must see in the meantime whether there are any means of making this useless Bill into a Bill which will be a benefit to the tenant farmers of this country. I move the adjournment of the debate.
  Moved, That the Debate be adjourned.—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
  On Question, Motion agreed to, and the further Debate adjourned to Thursday, the 11th of July next.

  BANKRUPTCY BILL. [H.L.]
  Amendments reported (according to Order).
  THE EARL OF HALSBURY: My Lords, I propose to move several Amendments to this Bill, but I think it would be more convenient in the circumstances if I adjourned the discussion of them until the Third Reading. I will put the Amendments down to-night and move them at the next stage.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: The course proposed by the noble and learned Earl will meet the convenience of the Government, and, subject to his agreeing to it, I propose to put the Third Reading down for next Thursday.
  Clause 1:
  Prosecution of Offences Summarily, 32 & 33 Viet. c. 62.
  1.—(1) Any offence under, or which may be dealt with as if it were an offence under, the Debtors Act, 1860, alleged to have been committed by a person who has been adjudged bankrupt., or in respect of whose estate a receiving order has been made, may be prosecuted summarily, and if so prosecuted references in the enactments creating those offences to the jury shall be construed as references to a Court of summary jurisdiction:—
  Provided that—

  (a) the maximum term of imprisonment, with or without hard labour, which may be awarded by a Court of summary jurisdiction for any such offence shall be six months; and

  (b) summary proceedings in respect of any such offence shall not be instituted after the expiration of three years from the commission of the offence, or of one year from the first discovery thereof either by the Official Receiver or by the trustee in the bankruptcy.

  (2) Where the prosecution of a person for any such offence is ordered by the Court, and the order of the Court is made on the application of the Official Receiver and based on his report, the Board of Trade, if they think that the offender should be prosecuted summarily, may, notwithstanding anything in section one hundred and sixty-six of the Bankruptcy Act, 1883 (hereinafter referred to as "the principal Act"), themselves or through the Official Receiver institute the prosecution and carry on the proceedings, unless in the course thereof circumstances arise which, in the opinion of the Board, render it desirable that the remainder of the proceedings should be carried on by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD THE EARL OF GRANARD moved to delete from subsection (2) the words "if they think that the offender should be prosecuted summarily," and to insert, after the word "proceedings" where it first appeared in the subsection, the words

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  "if or so long as those proceedings are conducted before a Court of summary jurisdiction." The noble Earl said: This Amendment is an endeavour to meet the suggestion made by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Halsbury, who objected to so much discretion being left with a Government Department.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 1, page 2, lines 1 and 2, leave out ("if they think that the offender should be prosecuted summarily")
  Clause 1, page 2,line 6, after ("proceedings") insert ("if or so long as those proceedings are conducted before a Court of summary jurisdiction").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Clause 2:
  Provisions with Respect to Offences under the Debtors Act, 1869.
  2.—(1) Where under the Debtors Act, 1869, an act or default committed by a person who has been adjudged bankrupt, or in respect of whose estate a receiving order has been made, is an offence unless the jury are satisfied that he had no intent to defraud, or (as the case may be) to conceal the state of his affairs or to defeat the law, it is hereby declared that the onus of proving the absence of such intent lies upon the person accused, and that it is not necessary to allege in the indictment or information charging the offence or to prove any such intent.
  (2) Any acts or defaults of any person who has been adjudged bankrupt, or in respect of whose estate a receiving order has been made, which under any of the provisions of the Debtors Act, 1869, are made offences if committed within four months next before the presentation of a bankruptcy petition by or against such person, shall, as from the commencement of this Act, be offences if committed within six months next before the presentation of such a petition.
  (3) Any act or default which under paragraphs thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen of section eleven of the Debtors Act, 1869, as amended by this section, is an offence if committed within six months next before the presentation of a bankruptcy petition, shall be an offence if committed after the presentation of a bankruptcy petition and before the making of a receiving order.
  (4) Paragraphs fourteen and fifteen of section eleven of the Debtors Act, 1869 (which make certain acts offences if committed by traders), shall extend to the like acts committed by persons who are not traders, and accordingly those paragraphs in relation to persons who are not traders shall have effect as if the words "being a trader," where-ever they occur in those paragraphs, and the words "otherwise than in the ordinary way of his trade," which occur in paragraph fifteen, were omitted therefrom.
  (5) Section eleven of the Debtors Act, 1869, shall be construed and have effect as if the term "the trustee in bankruptcy" included the Official Receiver.
  (6) Section fourteen of the Debtors Act, 1869 (which relates to false claims by creditors in a bankruptcy), shall extend to persons claiming to be
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  creditors in a bankruptcy, and accordingly in that section after the word "creditor" there shall be inserted the words "or any person claiming to be a creditor."
  (7) Notwithstanding anything in section sixteen of the Debtors Act, 1869, it shall not be obligatory on any Court, in the absence of any application by the Official Receiver for such an order, to make an order under that section for the prosecution of an offence, unless it appears to the Court not only that there is a reasonable probability that the bankrupt will he convicted, but also that the circumstances are such as to render a prosecution desirable.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD THE EARL OF GRANARD moved three drafting Amendments, the first to amend subsection (5) so that it would read—
  (5) Section eleven of the Debtors Act, 1869, shall be construed and have effect as if references to the trustee administering an estate for the benefit of creditors included references to the Official Receiver";
  and the second and third Amendments to omit the words "in a bankruptcy" in both places where they appeared in subsection (6).
  Amendments moved—
  Clause 2,page 3,lines 2 and 3,leave out("the term 'the trustee in bankruptcy' included") and insert ("references to the trustee administering an estate for the benefit of creditors included references to")
  Clause 2,page 3 line 5, leave out ("in a bankruptcy")
  Clause 2,page 3 line 6, leave out ("in a bankruptcy").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendments agreed to.
  Clause 4:
  Punishment of Bankrupt for Gambling, & c.
  4.—(1) Any person who has been adjudged bankrupt, or in respect of whose estate a receiving order has been made, shall be guilty of an offence under section eleven of the Debtors Act, 1869, if, having been engaged in any trade or business—

  (a) he has, within two years prior to the presentation of the bankruptcy petition, by gambling or by any rash and hazardous speculations unconnected with his trade or business, materially contributed to or increased the extent of his insolvency; or

  (b) he has, between the date of the presentation of the petition and the date of the receiving order, lost any part of his estate by gambling or by such rash and hazardous speculations as aforesaid; or

  (c) on being required by the Official Receiver at any time, or in the course of his public examination, by the Court, to account for the loss of any substantial part of his estate incurred within a period of a year next preceding the date of the presentation of the bankruptcy petition, or between that date and the date of the receiving order, he fails to give a satisfactory explanation of the manner in which such loss was incurred:

  Provided that in determining for the purposes of this section whether any speculations were rash and hazardous the Court shall take into consideration the financial position of the accused person at fie time when he entered into the speculations.
  (2) A prosecution shall not be instituted against person under this section except by order of the Court, nor where the receiving order in the bankruptcy is made within two years from the commencement of this Act.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD THE EARL OF GRANARD moved to amend paragraph (a) so that it would read—
  "(a) ho Ins, within two years prior to the presentation of the bankruptcy petition, materially contributed to or increased the extent of his insolvency by gambling or by rash and hazardous speculations, and such gambling or speculations are unconnected with his trade or business; or"
  The noble Earl said: This Amendment deals with the point raised by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, in the previous debate. The noble Marquess desired that it should be made perfectly clear that gambling was only a criminal offence when it was wholly unconnected with the person's trade or business. The object of this Amendment is to give effect to the views of the noble Marquess, and I sincerely trust that it will meet any objection he had to the clause.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 4, page 4, line 20, leave out from ("petition") to ("materially") in line 22
  Clause 4, page 4 line 23, after ("insolvency") insert ("by gambling or by rash and hazardous speculations, and such gambling or speculations are unconnected with his trade or business").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: So far as I am concerned this Amendment meets my point, and I am much obliged to the noble Earl.
  LORD FABER: On the last occasion that this matter was before your Lordships' House I pointed out that it ought to be very carefully laid down that a man who was engaged, for instance, in the corn trade or in the cotton trade was not necessarily gambling when he dealt in "futures" in corn or cotton. The Amendment which is now proposed by the noble Earl quite meets my view.
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD THE EARL OF GRANARD moved to amend paragraph (b) by inserting the word "such" before the word "gambling," and by omitting the words "by such" before the words "rash and hazardous speculations."
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 4, line 26, after the first ("by") insert ("such") and leave out ("by such").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Clause 13:
  Amendment of Section 47 of Principal Act as to the Avoidance of Settlements.
  13.—(1) The following subsections shall be substituted for subsection (2) of section forty-seven of the Bankruptcy Act, 1883, which relates to the avoidance of settlements:—
  "(2) Any covenant or contract made by a person (hereinafter called the settler) in consideration of marriage, either for the future payment of money, or for the future settlement on or for the senior's wife or husband or children of property, wherein the settlor had not at the date of the marriage any estate or interest, whether vested or contingent, in possession or remainder, and not being money or property in right of the settlor's wife or husband, shall, if the settlor is adjudged bankrupt and the covenant or contract has not been executed at the date of the commencement of his bankruptcy, be void against the trustee in bankruptcy, except so far as it enables the persons entitled under the covenant or contract to claim for dividend in the settler's bankruptcy under or in respect of the covenant or contract, but any such claim to dividend shall be postponed until all claims of the other creditors for valuable consideration in money or money's worth have been satisfied.
  "(2A) Any payment of money (not being payment of premiums on a policy of life assurance) or any transfer of property made by the settler in pursuance of such a covenant or contract as aforesaid shall be void against the trustee in the settler's bankruptcy, unless the persons to whom the payment or transfer was made prove, either—

  "(a) that the payment or transfer was made more than two years before the date of the commencement of the bankruptcy; or

  "(b) that at the date of the payment or transfer the settlor was able to pay all his debts without the aid of the money so paid or the property so transferred:

  but, in the event of any such payment or transfer being declared void, the persons to whom it was made shall be entitled to claim for dividend under or in respect of the covenant or contract in like manner as if it had not been executed at the commencement of the bankruptcy."
  (2) The following subsection shall be added at the end of the said section forty-seven:—
  "(4) Nothing in this section shall affect or prejudice the title or interest of any person who before the date of the receiving order and without notice of the presentation of a bankruptcy petition has bona fide and for value purchased or acquired from the person or persons entitled to the benefit of any such settlement, covenant, or contract as aforesaid the money or property the subject thereof or any interest in such money or property."
  THE EARL OF GRANARD THE EARL OF GRANARD moved to insert a new paragraph to follow paragraphs (a) and (b). The noble Earl said: This Amendment is also to meet a point which was raised by the noble Marquess opposite. When this Bill was in Committee Lord Salisbury said there might be a covenant or contract of settlement made ten or twelve years before the bankruptcy which might contemplate as one of its provisions that money to come subsequently to the husband from some particular person should be protected for the wife under the settlement. The object of this Amendment is more or less to meet the situation then outlined by the noble Marquess. The question is purely a legal one and a very difficult one. We had an interesting discussion upon it when the Bill was in Committee, and I trust that these words, which have been carefully drafted, will meet the view of the noble Marquess.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 13, page 8, line 41, at end insert ("or
  "(c) that the payment or transfer was made in pursuance of a covenant or contract to pay or transfer money or property expected to come to the settlor from or on the death of a particular person named in the covenant or contract").—(The Earl of Granary.)
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I feel all the more as time goes on my extreme rashness in having embarked upon this discussion. I am very much obliged to the noble Earl, however, for his attempt to meet me. I believe this Amendment does not quite meet all the points I raised, but it meets the substantial part, and so far as I am concerned I accept the additional paragraph.
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  LORD ROTHERHAM LORD ROTHERHAM moved to add, at the end of paragraph (c) which the House had just added to the clause, the words "and was made within one month after the money or property came into the possession or under the control of the settlor." The noble Lord said: I do not think this Amendment can be regarded as in any sense hostile to Lord Granard's Amendment which has just been added to the Bill; it is merely supplementary to it. Its object is to protect such payments or transfers only when made within a limited time after receipt by the settlor.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 13, at the end of the new paragraph (c) to add ("and was made within one month after the money or property came into the possession or under the control of the senior").—(Lord Rotherham.)
  LORD FABER: I desire to support the Amendment moved by the noble Lord opposite. This is a very difficult question, and, as the noble Earl in charge of the Bill said, it is one upon which we had considerable discussion on the last occasion. I look at the matter from a business point of view, and it is not always easy for a layman to understand what is said on the other side from the legal poi at of view. In supporting this Amendment my one desire is to prevent commercial fraud. There are two sides to this question. We have, first of all, the trader. The trader gets into difficulties; he has command at that time of a great deal of creditors' money, which he takes. He settles the creditors' money on the lady whom he afterwards marries, and that is held to be a good consideration. The creditors can do nothing at all except look on while the trader lives on the interest of the money happily ever afterwards. That is the creditors' side of the case. I listened with great attention to the remarks which were made by Lord Salisbury in Committee. The noble Marquess put it very fairly from the lady's side, and it certainly seemed hard on the lady that she should be deprived of the money. I confess, looking at it as carefully as I can, that I think the lady's interests are more easily protected than the interests of the creditors. If the father takes the necessary precaution the lady's interests can be fully protected. In my opinion this is an extremely good Bill. I supported the noble Earl's Amendment which the House inserted a few moments ago, and I support Lord Rotherham's Amendment because the new paragraph (c) with these words added goes further in the direction of affording precaution to creditors.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not see any objection to the Amendment in principle. I only want to protect a bona fide settlement which the father has had made at the time of the marriage and without which he would not have consented to the marriage in the interests of his daughter. To have that upset years afterwards, which might have happened under

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  the clause as it originally stood, seemed a great hardship. Upon that point I carried the general sense and feeling of the House with me. Now what the noble Lord opposite proposes is to add to the Amendment which the Government have inserted a provision that the money should be paid over immediately. There is evidently a great advantage in having the money paid over at once. The noble Lord proposes that it should be paid over within one month. I think that is almost too short a period, and what I suggest to His Majesty's Government and to the noble Lord is that they should allow, say, three months.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT HALDANE): I am glad that a settlement has been come to on this point. One wishes, of course, to protect marriage settlements, and, on the other hand, to avoid the scandal which occurs in such cases as that to which attention was called during the discussion of this point in Committee. There is, I think, a great deal to be said for the Amendment now under discussion, which proposes that whenever a property comes into possession there should be a speedy dealing with it. I feel also the force of what the noble Marquess has just said, that a month is a very short time. One knows how difficult it is to get these transactions through speedily, and I suggest to the noble Lord who has moved this Amendment that he would be well advised in giving a little more time. I think the period of three months is a fair one in the circumstances.
  LORD ROTHERHAM: I am quite agreeable to that alteration.
  On Question, Amendment, as amended, agreed to.
  Clause 16:
  Amendment of Section 4 (1) (g) of principal Act as to Acts of Bankruptcy.
  16. Section four of the principal Act (which relates to acts of bankruptcy) shall have effect as though in paragraph (g) of subsection (1) (which makes it an act of bankruptcy to fail to pay a judgment debt after bankruptcy notice where bankruptcy notice has been served) references to final orders and to sums ordered to be paid were included in the references to final judgments and judgment debts respectively wherever the same occur.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: I move after "subsection (1)" to insert the word "thereof"; after the word "served" to insert "and in section one of the Bankruptcy Act, 1890"; and at the end of the clause to add "and a reference to the proceedings in which the order was obtained was included in the reference to the action in which the judgment was obtained." These are purely drafting Amendments, and were suggested by the Parliamentary counsel.
  Amendments moved—
  Clause 16, page 10, line 9, after ("subsection (1)") insert ("thereof")
  Clause 16, page 10, line 11, after ("served") insert ("and in section one of the Bankruptcy Act, 1890")
  Clause 16, page 10, line 13, after ("occur") insert ("and a reference to the proceedings in which the order was obtained was included in the reference to the action in which the judgment was obtained").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendments agreed to.
  Clause 25:
  Avoidance of Deeds of Arrangement unless assented to by a Majority of the Creditors.
  25.—(1) A deed of arrangement shall be void unless before or within twenty-one days after the registration thereof, or within such extended time as the High Court or the Court having jurisdiction in bankruptcy in the district in which the debtor resided or carried on business at the date of the execution of the deed may allow, it has received the assent of a majority in number and value of the creditors of the debtor.
  (2) The list of creditors annexed to the affidavit of the debtor tiled on the registration of the deed of arrangement shall be prima facie evidence of the names of the creditors and the amounts of their claims.
  (3) The assent of a creditor shall be established by his executing the deed of arrangement or sending to the trustee his assent in writing attested by a witness, but not otherwise.
  (4) The trustee shall file with the Registrar of Bills of Sale at the time of the registration of a deed of arrangement, or, in the case of a deed of arrangement assented to after registration, within twenty-eight days after registration or within such extended time as the High Court or the Court having jurisdiction in bankruptcy in the district in which the debtor resided or carried on business at the date of the execution of the deed may allow, a statutory declaration by the trustee that the requisite majority of the creditors of the debtor have assented to the deed of arrangement, which declaration shall be prima facie evidence of the fact declared.
  (5) In calculating a majority of creditors for the purposes of this and the next following section, secured creditors shall be disregarded, and creditors whose debts amount to sums not exceeding ten pounds shall be reckoned in the majority in value but not in the majority in number.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: The Amendment standing in my name to this clause is purely drafting and refers to subsection (5).
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 25, page 14, line 6, leave out ("secured creditors shall be disregarded") and insert ("a creditor holding security upon the property of the debtor shall be reckoned as a creditor only in respect of the balance (if any) due to him after deducting the value of such security").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Clause 27:
  Penalty on Trustee Acting when Deed of Arrangement Void, 50 & 51 Viet. c. 57.
  27. If a trustee acts under a deed of arrangement—

  (a) which is void by reason of non-compliance with any of the requirements of the Deeds of Arrangement Act, 1887, or this Act; or

  (b) after he has failed to give security within the time and in the manner provided for by this Act,

  he shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding three months or to a fine not exceeding five pounds for every day between the date on which the deed became void or the expiration of the time within which security should have been given, as the case may be, and the last day on which he is proved to have acted as trustee, unless he satisfies the Court before which he is accused that his contravention of the law was due to inadvertence.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: I move to leave out "which is" at the beginning of paragraph (a) and to insert "after it has become." This is a purely drafting Amendment.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 27, page 15, line 2, leave out ("which is") and insert ("after it has become".)—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: I move to add, at the end of Clause 27, the words or that his action has been confined to taking such steps as were necessary for the protection of the estate." There has
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  been a great deal of controversy with regard to this clause. It is considered by some chambers of commerce and other bodies too strict. The words which I propose are added to make the clause somewhat clearer, as it is considered open to doubt as drafted.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 27, page 15, line 14, after ("inadvertence") insert ("or that his action has been confined to taking such steps as were necessary for the protection of the estate").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Clause 29:
  Audit and Accounts.
  29.—(1) Where an application in writing is made to the Board of Trade by creditors of a debtor who has executed a deed of arrangement representing at least one-half in number and value of the creditors who have assented to the deed for an official audit of the trustee's accounts, the Board may order the trustee's accounts to be audited, and, if such an order is made, all the provisions of the Bankruptcy Act, 1883, relating to the institution and enforcement of an audit of the accounts of a trustee in bankruptcy (including the provisions as to fees) shall, with necessary modifications, apply to the audit of the trustee's accounts, and the auditor shall have power on the audit to require production of an allocatur for the taxed costs of any solicitor whose costs have been paid or charged by the trustee, and to disallow any costs in respect of which no allocatur is produced.
  (2) Every trustee under a deed of arrangement shall, at the expiration of six months from the date of the registration of the deed, and thereafter at the expiration of every subsequent period of six months until the estate has been finally wound up, send to each creditor who has assented to the deed a statement in the prescribed form of the trustee's accounts and of the proceedings under the deed down to the date of the statement, and shall, in his affidavit verifying his accounts transmitted to the Board of Trade, state whether Or not he has duly sent such statements, and the dates on which the statements were sent; and, if a trustee fails to comply with any of the provisions of this subsection, the High Court may, for the purpose of enforcing those provisions, exercise on the application of the Board of Trade all the powers conferred on the Court by subsection (5) of section one hundred and two of the Bankruptcy Act, 1883, in cases of bankruptcy.
  (3) At any time after the expiration of two years from the date of the registration of a deed of arrangement, the Court having jurisdiction in bankruptcy in the district in which the debtor resided or carried on business at the date of the execution of the deed, or, if he then resided or carried on business in the London bankruptcy district, the High Court may, on the application of the trustee or a creditor, or on the application of the debtor, order that all moneys representing unclaimed dividends and undistributed funds then in the hands of the trustee or under his control be paid into Court.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: I move, after the word "Where," at the beginning of the clause, to insert "in the course of the administration of the estate of a debtor who has executed a deed of arrangement, or within twelve months from the date when the final accounts of the estate were rendered." This is to meet some representations made to the Board of Trade as to liability of audit. The consideration was pressed upon us that there ought to be some limit to the liability of audit, and for that reason we propose to insert this Amendment.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 29, page 15, line 33, after ("Where") insert ("in the course of the administration of the estate of a debtor who has executed a deed of arrangement, or within twelve months from the date when the final accounts of the estate were rendered").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: The next Amendment is consequential.
  Amendment moved—
  Clause 29, page 15, lines 34 and 35, leave out ("creditors of a debtor who has executed a deed of arrangement representing at least one half") and insert ("a majority").—(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Schedule:
  THE EARL OF GRANARD: The final Amendment is in the Schedule, and its object is simply to correct a slip in the Bankruptcy Act, 1890.
  Amendment moved—
  Schedule, page 18, line 18, at end insert:—

  Section 164

  The word ("debtor's") shall be substituted for the word ("bankrupt's")

  —(The Earl of Granard.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Bill to be read 3a on Thursday next, and to be printed as amended. (No. 90.)

  SEAL FISHERIES (NORTH PACIFIC) BILL. [H.L.]
  House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment, and to be read 3a To-morrow.

  SHOOTING ESCAPING CONVICTS.
  EARL RUSSELL EARL RUSSELL rose to call attention to the practice of shooting escaping convicts, and to move to resolve—
  "That in the opinion of this House the infliction of the penalty of death or wounding upon convicts who are seeking to escape should no longer be authorised by law."
  The noble Earl said: My Lords, from time to time in the ordinary course of perusing the daily newspaper I read with a certain amount of shock that convicts who may have been attempting to escape, generally at Dartmoor, have been fired upon by the warders and have been more or less seriously wounded and taken to hospital, and in some, but fortunately rare, cases they have actually been killed. I wish to communicate to the House this afternoon, if possible, that sense of shock with which one reads in the year 1912 such announcements as that, and I wish to suggest to your Lordships that that particular method of restraining convicts and of keeping them in confinement is somewhat out of date and might be superseded by better methods. I recognise that in order to justify putting an end to a practice which is undoubtedly one of some antiquity one ought to show that the practice is no longer of any use. I hope also to persuade your Lordships that it comes from a rather barbarous time and should no longer exist, and that it is possible to exercise the necessary discipline and to recapture an escaped convict without taking these extreme measures.
  I have not informed, myself as to the origin of this practice, and I do not know whether it rests upon any statutory enactment. I am rather inclined to think that it does not. I am inclined to think that it survives from the time when it was not unusual for force to be used by the Executive in cases of this kind. It is obvious that in the case of an escaping convict shooting is not necessary for the protection of the warders, because the' escaping convict is not an attacking convict. He is running away, endeavouring to escape observation and not offering fight; and we know that nowadays in the case of riots resulting from strikes or other reasons there is a great and natural reluctance to use lethal weapons against people even when they are actually threatening violence to those in authority and causing commotion. Now comes the question whether this practice is any

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  longer necessary. I think if your Lordships follow the accounts of these occasional escapes in the newspapers you will observe that when a convict escapes he is invariably recaptured within a very short period, generally within twenty-four hours or at the extreme within from three to five days. It may, of course, be argued in support of the practice that while he is at large he is a danger to the ordinary peaceful population in the neighbourhood of the convict establishment from which he has escaped; but I think modern records rather tend to show that all he does as a rule is to break into some farmhouse for the purpose of stealing food or clothes. He is not any danger to life or more than a moderate danger to property, and if it was necessary to restrain him by firing at him because he was a danger to property I think that a somewhat similar argument might apply to burglars at large.
  The convict is tried before a Judge and jury with every formality and every protection of law, and no matter how serious his offence may have been, except in a few rare cases where it is possible to order flogging, the Judge himself is not in a position to inflict corporal punishment, far less is the Judge in a position to order the man to be shot at. It seems rather strange that a person in the position of life and with the education of a warder should be placed in a position so much superior to that of the Judge at the trial who sentences the prisoner, and that once the prisoner has been sentenced he should so entirely lose his ordinary human rights as to become a fit object to be shot at by a warder if he tries to escape. The offence of escaping in itself is an offence which involves no moral turpitude. It is as natural for a convict to wish to escape as for a bird to try and escape from its cage. Therefore you cannot say that he is guilty at the moment of escaping of any conduct which deserves moral censure. When once a convict ceases to have the instinct to regain his liberty he has become what I suppose would be called a model prisoner, but a prisoner quite hopeless and useless to the community outside the prison because he has lost all sense of discipline, of self-control, and of self-respect.
  Apart from the great power which you entrust to the warder, what justification is there nowadays for this practice? I should also like to call attention to the crimes for which prisoners may find them-
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  selves in this position. I have heard of a man sentenced to three years penal servitude for breaking a plate-glass window. It is true that he had committed the offence before and had been warned that if it was repeated he would get penal servitude, and he did. But once having received this sentence he becomes liable to be seriously wounded or killed if, obeying some sudden hope for freedom, some sudden chance in a fog, he tries to run away; in that case he is liable to be shot at, and, it not killed, seriously wounded. I suggest to your Lordships that the time has gone past for dealing with our convicts on that principle. We are a civilised community, we have an excellent and efficient police force and communication by telephone and telegraph which make it almost impossible for any man to escape when sought for, and we need no longer adopt methods of a rude and uncivilised kind.
  Nor is there any moral justification for adding so severe a punishment to the sentence already imposed on the man by the Court Your only right, I suggest, is to catch him again and to keep him for the term of his sentence, and in catching him you ought to use the most humane methods. You ought not to be inhuman any more than is absolutely necessary, and you have no more right to catch an escaping convict by shooting him than you would have to throw at him an anchor with a hook at the end and catch him in, that way. I do not know whether this question has been considered at the Home Office and whether the Home Office have asked themselves whether it is necessary to retain this power, or on what it rests; but I think the time has come when it might be considered, and if I could receive any hope that the matter would be considered and that other regulations might be made, retaining if you like the existence of this power but not exercising it, I should be glad to withdraw my Motion. But I do think that this practice no longer consorts with the state of this country. It is no longer fitting for us in these times to employ these somewhat barbarous methods for restraining convicts. Therefore I move the Motion standing in my name.
  Moved to resolve, That in the opinion of this House the infliction of the penalty of death or wounding upon convicts who are seeking to escape should no longer be authorised by law.—(Earl Russell.)
  THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD STRACHIE): My Lords, in addressing this House for the first time. I know I may ask for that indulgence which your Lordships are always ready to extend to new Members. I also have another claim upon your indulgence, because not only do I speak in your. Lordships' House for the first time, but I am also on this occasion speaking on behalf of His Majesty's Government and representing the Home Office. I have had some experience in another place of representing a Department under like conditions, and I know the difficulties. It is therefore with the more sincerity that I ask for the kindly consideration of your Lordships in replying to the Motion of the noble Earl. As far as I gather, the noble Earl makes no charge against the warders or officials of convict prisons of doing anything which is outside their duty, or acting in any extreme way. The view of the noble Earl appears to be that this right of shooting at escaping convicts, many of them very desperate characters indeed, ought to be abolished, and, indeed, that there should be no arming of warders.
  EARL RUSSELL: I did not say that.
  LORD STRACIHE: As far as I gathered, the noble Earl deprecated shooting to prevent the escape of convicts. It does not matter whether it is inside or out. It might be equally necessary to use firearms in either case. The noble Earl certainly could not have sustained the suggestion that great care has not been taken by the authorities in the regulations regarding the use of fire-arms. Convicts are only fired on under careful regulations with minimum risk to life and limb. To show that that is the case, may I quote the regulation which has been laid clown by the Home Office on this point? It runs—
  "The object of firing being mainly to induce a convict to stop whilst in the act of effecting his escape, it would be advisable that the first shot at least should be wide of the mark, and, if it should be necessary again to lire, that the aim should be low, which would avoid the danger of wounding a vital part and would at the same time be most effective in causing him to desist from his purpose."
  I think it will be clear to your Lordships that that principle has been acted upon when I inform you that during the period from 1880 to 1896 three convicts only were killed, and that since that period no
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  convicts have been killed but only wounded when attempting to escape.
  An inquiry was instituted in 1896, no doubt arising out of the deaths of these convicts, and the regulations to which I have referred were made in consequence. The noble Earl seemed to lose sight of the fact that a very large percentage of the men in these convict prisons are of a desperate character. They are inert who have been convicted, perhaps, of very serious offences against the subject, and of causing grievous bodily harm. Therefore it is very necessary that the warders, who are only in the proportion of ten per cent to the convicts, should be properly armed in order to prevent a mutiny, for these convicts are often employed in field work outside and in gangs in the quarries at Portland and other places. What would be the alternative if the suggestion of the noble Earl were adopted? It seems to me that the only alternative would be to chain these gangs together. It seems to me very undesirable, if not revolting, that you should have human beings at work in quarries chained together, as was the case in the Middle Ages.
  The right of the restricted power to shoot at escaping convicts is necessary as a deterrent as well as a preventive against escape. It is also a deterrent from attacks upon warders. Warders are often attacked as it is, and I think your Lordships will agree that the Home Office is perfectly right in refusing to accept the noble Earl's Motion. As I have explained, this power is used with great care and under strict regulations, and since 1896 has not resulted in any serious injury, and certainly in no loss of life. In these circumstances, I submit that it would be very undesirable in the interests of good order and good management and preventing attempts at escape that this power should be abolished. Therefore on behalf of the Home Office I must resist the -Motion of the noble Earl.
  On Question, Motion negatived.

  GLASGOW CORPORATION (WATER) BILL.
  Report from the Committee of Selection, That the following Lords be proposed to

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  the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bills; (viz.),

  L. Braye,

  L. Kintore (E. Kintore) (Chairman),

  L. Seaton,

  L. Holden,

  L. Rotherham;

  agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly: The Committee to meet on Monday next, at Twelve 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.

  RELIGIOUS WORK IN CARDIFF.
  THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH rose "to call attention to the misleading statements recently made by the Home Secretary in reference to the comparative work of the Church and the Calvinistic Methodists in Cardiff."
  The right rev. Prelate said: My Lords, in calling attention to statements about the Church in Wales recently made by the Home Secretary I at the outset disclaim any desire to discuss the merits or demerits of the particular measure which gave rise to these statements. My purpose is to deal with simple matters of fact, for proof of which there is official authority open to all which no one can dispute. On May 16, in concluding the debate on the Second Reading of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, the Home Secretary made the following statements—
  "Who does the slum work in the cities of wales? I will take the City of Cardiff and I will ask you to compare the work of the Calvinistic Methodist Forward Movement with the work of the Church of England. And when you are dealing with Wales and ask Who is to minister to the poor?' you have to conjure up to your mind not the work of the Church of England but the work of the Free Churches. The Calvinistic Methodist Forward Movement in Cardiff alone has no less than twenty-two halls. What are the corresponding figures for the whole of the Church of England throughout Cardiff? There are but thirteen churches of the Church of England in Cardiff, and to anybody who knows Cardiff the whole of the work of the Church of England in Cardiff is not comparable to the work done by one Free Church alone, the Calvinistic Methodist."
  Upon this passage let me observe that slum work and work for the poor represent a test of work which the Church welcomes. Cardiff is the greatest city in Wales, and
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  nowhere could this searching test be applied on so large and conclusive a scale.
  I now come to the facts. In the one great slum district of Cardiff the Church has the Parish Church of St. Mary's, the Mission Church of St. Michael's, large day and Sunday schools, three clergy residing in the very centre of the slum district, and five Sisters of Mercy living and working there. The Calvinistic Movement, with which Mr. McKenna compared the Church, does not touch this district and has not got one single hall or mission place in the district. Moreover, the number of Church communicants and of Sunday school scholars in this district is at least three times as large as that of all the Nonconformist bodies put together. There is no comparison between the Church and the Calvinistic Methodist work in this district because the Methodists have nothing to offer in comparison. Again, Mr. McKenna stated that the Calvinistic Methodists have twenty-two halls in Cardiff. I called his attention to the fact that all the Methodist chapels and halls added together do not number twenty-two. In justification of his statement he frankly admitted that he obtained the figure twenty-two by counting the various adjoining rooms in these buildings as separate halls, and thus the nine halls which the official record of the Methodists themselves claims were increased to twenty-two. According to this computation a church with a choir vestry and a clergy vestry would be counted as three churches, or a Church mission building with three rooms would be counted as three mission chapels.
  I now come to the last statement of Mr. McKenna, that there are but thirteen churches of the Church of England in Cardiff, and that the whole of the work of the Church of England in Cardiff is not comparable to the work done by one Free Church alone, the Calvinistic Methodist. I take the last assertion as to the comparison of the Church and the Methodists in Cardiff. The total number of the Church communicants in Cardiff returned to the Royal Commission was 9,354, and the total number of the communicants of the Calvinistic Methodists in Cardiff was 3,484. Mr. McKenna seems to think not only that a half, but a third, is more than the whole.
  Finally, I come to Mr. McKenna's most amazing statement, that there are but thirteen churches of the Church of England

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  in Cardiff. Mr. McKenna has omitted all the churches in Cardiff and given only the thirteen mission rooms. There are twenty-five churches in Cardiff as returned to the Royal Commission. And here let me make one point clear. I have not raised questions of controversy but questions of fact. The present Government issued a Royal Commission to report upon the work of the Church and the Nonconformists in Wales. Every fact and figure which I have given to-day can be substantiated from the Reports of that Royal Commission. Mr. McKenna cannot urge in his defence the extenuating circumstance that a busy Minister cannot be expected to make minute local inquiries. He had the evidence at hand before him in the Official Reports of the Royal Commission, and therefore there is no reasonable excuse which can be urged for these disastrous blunders.
  But the matter does not stop there. Mr. McKenna's attention has been called to these grievous mistakes. The evidence which he does not attempt to deny has been put before him again and again. How has he met this serious position? Instead of answering straightforwardly in another place, he first attempted to shield himself by putting up somebody else to speak, and then, after receiving a rebuke probably as severe as any ever given to a Minister of the Crown, he made no apology for his misstatements hut endeavoured, in the fete words which lie, was compelled to say, to avoid the real points at issue. It is an unpleasant task to call attention to these things, but beyond and above the controversy of the moment we have a right to claim from His Majesty's Ministers a high standard of honour, and it is because I believe that this House is jealous and vigilant in maintaining that standard of honour in our public men that I felt it to be my duty to bring this matter before your Lordships' House.
  LORD STRACHIE: My Lords, I have to ask for some indulgence in this matter, because it was only when the House was rising last night that I was made aware that the right rev. Prelate intended calling attention to this subject in your Lordships' House to-day. I at once put myself in communication with him and asked him to be so kind as to give me the date of the Home Secretary's statement which he describes as misleading. The right rev. Prelate gave me the date—namely, May 16. I further asked him whether in the circum-
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  stances he could see his way to postpone this discussion. I pointed out that this was in the nature of a personal controversy between the Home Secretary and the right rev. Prelate and not a question connected with the administration of the Home Office, and that therefore it was desirable that I should have an opportunity of conferring with the Home Secretary on the matter. I informed the right rev. Prelate that owing to public business which the Home Secretary has to undertake to-day, which is even more important than attending to the Motion before the House, it was impossible for me to confer with my right hon. friend on the matter. The right rev. Prelate, however, was unable to agree to a postponement. Having made that explanation I will do my best to answer the statement made to-day, but in the circumstances I hope the House will excuse me if I cannot give a complete reply.
  The right rev. Prelate said, first of all, that the Home Secretary made a misleading statement in his speech in the. House of Commons on May 16 as to the comparative work of the Church of England and the Calvinistic Methodists in Cardiff. As I understand, the Home Secretary was not dealing with the whole comparative work of the Church of England and the Methodists in Cardiff. He was rather making a statement upon the question of the comparative work of these two religious bodies in the slum areas of Cardiff, the comparison being purely one as regards slum work. The Home Secretary introduced the question with the following words—
  "The question has been asked in die course of this debate, `If the Church is disestablished who will minister to the poor?' Words convey meanings to us according to our antecedent impressions and associations, and in this House immediately that question is put to an audience consisting almost entirely of English and Scottish Members, the picture is conjured up of some Church of England missionary going down to the slums of our great cities teaching and winning the poor over to the Christian faith. Is that a picture of what happens in Wales? Who does the slum work in the cities of Wales?"
  That paragraph surely makes quite clear what was in the mind of the Home Secretary at the time. He was not dealing with the ordinary work of the two Churches, but with their purely missionary work.
  Further on the Home Secretary gave statistics of the Calvinistic Methodist Forward Movement, whose first object,

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  he said, was "to reach non-church and non-chapel goers," showing that he was referring to a particular class of the population and not to the population of Cardiff as a whole. He gave the number of halls belonging to the Movement and their accommodation. Then he asked, What are the corresponding figures for the Church of England? and lie gave the number of their mission rooms, which, by inadvertence, he described as "churches." The fact cannot be doubted that he was dealing with purely mission work in the slums and among the poor. The point has been taken that there are not twenty-two mission balls belonging to the Forward Movement in Cardiff. There may or may not be twenty-two separate buildings, but there are twenty-two halls which can he used and are used simultaneously for this work; and I must say it does not seem to me a matter of very great importance whether these twenty-two halls are each under a separate roof or not as long as they serve the same purpose of getting the people in in order that they may hear the gospel.
  In stating that the Forward Movement had twenty-two halls Mr. McKenna took the figure from the Appendices to the Report of the Welsh Church. Commission, Vol. I, Part II, page 167. He took into account the schoolrooms adjoining the halls, because it was explained in evidence before the Commission that these schoolrooms were used for religious services simultaneously with the halls themselves. It is not the case that the Home Secretary took into account all the classrooms attached. The following footnote is appended to the Table in the Report of the Royal Commission which he made use of: "Classrooms are attached to these halls which we have not taken into consideration." The result, then, briefly is as follows. The Home Secretary gave the figures for the purely missionary halls and schools of the Calvinistic Methodists, but never referred to any of their chapels. He then gave the "corresponding" figures for the mission rooms of the Church of England, which he took from Vol. V of the Evidence of the Welsh Church Commission, page 39. That number is thirteen. He did not give, and he never intended to give, the figures for the ordinary churches of the Church of England in Cardiff, as that figure would be utterly irrelevant for the purposes of his argument.
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  Then the right rev. Prelate referred to the number of communicants of the Church of England and the Calvinistic Methodists. That, again, is not a question that applies to mission work in slum areas, and it was not the question which the Home Secretary went into. Therefore we can dismiss that from our minds. Then the right rev. Prelate seemed to think that as regards the slum area in Cardiff, which is known as Tiger Bay, the Nonconformists were doing very little if anything at all. I am informed that in the parish of St. Mary's there are four Nonconformist chapels, and that there are also in that area two sailors' rests which are run by Nonconformists, each of these rests having a salaried Nonconformist missioner. Again, the superintendent of one of these homes is a Presbyterian.
  I hope the House will understand that in replying to the right rev. Prelate I have been placed in some difficulty owing to the Question having been sprung upon me and the right rev. Prelate not seeing his way to postpone it, though I must say he very graciously gave me all the details he could on the matter. I have now given to the House all the information I have at my disposal. It was impossible for the Home Secretary to deal with this matter himself owing to the short notice and to the fact that he had to leave London on public business at an early hour this morning.
  THE EARL OF SELBORNE: My Lords, I think the House has listened with much sympathy to the noble Lord in the difficult task which he has had to perform, because when a colleague commits himself to a statement of the kind to which the Home Secretary committed himself the task of defending him cannot be described as simple or easy. But do not in your sympathy with the noble Lord who has just spoken forget that the whole object of the Home Secretary in his observations was to point out that the Church of England in Cardiff was doing less work than one single Nonconformist body. That was the whole point of his observations, and therefore I do not think that your Lordships can agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken, that the right rev. Prelate had no need to introduce the comparative figures, as given before the Royal Commission, of the communicants of the Church of England in Cardiff and the communicants of the Calvinistic Methodists.

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  I think those figures require more explanation than has yet been given to them if we are to be led to suppose that the work of the Church of England in Cardiff is of less volume and less effect than the work of that great religious body the Calvinistic Methodists alone.
  What is the explanation which the noble Lord has asked this House to accept? He tells us that the Home Secretary had in his mind the slum or mission work alone, and it was due to the fact that that alone was in his mind that he omitted to mention all the churches of the Church of England which exist in Cardiff. I will ask your Lordships to listen to the words actually used by the Home Secretary presently, and then you will be able to judge whether that explanation is really adequate and whether Mr. McKenna's words are really capable of that interpretation. First of all, I would ask you to recollect the figures which the noble Lord has just given about the halls at the disposal of the Calvinistic Methodists in Cardiff for mission work. He has read from the records of the Royal Commission that there are twenty-two such halls. He has been careful to explain that all of those halls are not buildings exclusively devoted to this object, but that some of them are halls available for other purposes but available also for these purposes when the Calvinistic Methodists wish so to use them. We are very glad that the number of halls at the disposal of the Calvinistic Methodists should be so large; but there is a distinction, when you are comparing the work of two great religious bodies, between halls which have been purchased or erected for this exclusive religious purpose and halls which can only be occasionally retained for assisting that object. It is clear that the occasional use of a hall for this purpose is not as strong an evidence of the permanent character and strength of the work of a religious body as the existence of a building which has been erected for this purpose exclusively and devoted to no other. Therefore, while giving the Calvinistic Methodists every credit for the existence of these buildings and for the use they put other buildings occasionally to, it is of interest to remember that all these buildings are not exclusively devoted to this purpose. Yet, when it came to the comparison all these buildings were put to the credit of the Calvinistic Methodists. The Church of England was credited with
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  only the thirteen mission halls, all of them, I understand, exclusively devoted to this purpose, and the Home Secretary entirely forgot to mention the twenty-five churches. But why are churches not centres of mission work? Every permanent church or chapel, whether it belongs to the Church of England or to another religious body, is a centre of religious work and not less entitled to be considered in making this comparison than a smaller or humbler building erected in a particularly poor quarter.
  Now let us consider how far Mr. McKenna's words can possibly bear the interpretation which the noble Lord has put upon them. Mr. McKenna said—
  "What are the corresponding figures for the whole of the Church of England throughout Cardiff?"
  Not one word about mission work. Not one word about slums, but the "corresponding figures for the whole of the Church of England throughout Cardiff." Now, my Lords, I say with confidence that if the English language means anything at all those words mean that there was not a building connected with the Church of England unaccounted for in the Home Secretary's statement. I maintain also that it cannot possibly be said that he was thinking only of the slum districts. Otherwise how could he use the words "corresponding figures for the whole of the Church of England throughout Cardiff" And then he went on to say—
  "There are but thirteen churches of the Church of England in Cardiff."
  We know that a hard-worked Minister does sometimes deviate into inaccuracy when dealing with statistics. I do not think that any inaccuracy really would be pardonable when it is the inaccuracy of a Minister in charge of one of the principal Government measures on a subject which he knows that on one side or the other the whole of his fellow-countrymen feel very strongly. Has there ever been another case where a Minister, having made such a gross misstatement, having been so utterly unfair to his opponents, so utterly unfair to a religious body which is on its trial and which is the subject of a measure which it believes conscientiously proposes to perpetrate upon it a great wrong—has there ever been a case in which a Minister of the Crown, having made such a misstatement, has not had the courage or the good faith to confess it?
  EARL BEAUCHAMP: My Lords, I do not think the statement of my right hon. friend the Home Secretary really deserves the hard language which the noble Earl opposite has applied to it. In a question of this kind there are, of course, always facts and inferences, and we all admit that the inferences which may be drawn from certain facts may be different on both sides of the House. It ought to be easy to arrive at the actual facts, and I do not see why we should not do so this evening. What was it that my right hon. friend said? He was dealing with the very poor in Cardiff, and not, as the noble Earl suggests, with the whole of the work of the Church of England. He was dealing with the work of the Church of England and of the Calvinistic Methodists among the very poor in Cardiff, and he proceeded to compare like with like. He did not take the churches of both bodies, or, as the noble Earl would wish me to say, the churches of the Church of England and the Nonconformist chapels. He did not compare those with one another. What he did was to compare the number of mission halls of the one with the number of mission halls of the other. There is no suggestion that in the comparison which he made he added the churches or chapels to either side. He was merely comparing the mission halls which deal with a certain class of the poor, and these mission halls on both sides deal with the same class. Those were the facts with which my right hon. friend was dealing.
  We have already had quoted to us the figures from the Blue-book, about which I do not think there is any dispute. My information about the use of these halls is different from that of the noble Earl opposite. The Calvinistic Methodist mission halls and schoolrooms are exclusively and permanently used, for religious purposes, if two services can go on at the same time in different rooms in the same building I think it is a fair method of calculation to speak of them as two meeting places. My right hon. friend put the Calvinistic Methodist halls in Cardiff alone at twenty-two, without adding the chapels, and then compared with that the figures of the Church of England. It is perfectly impossible for the noble Earl to deduce from the words used an extended meaning which was not attached to them at the time in the House of Commons,
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  and certainly not at any time by the speaker himself. My right hon. friend was dealing specially with the work of the mission halls among the very poor, and having excluded in one case the chapels he proceeded to exclude in the other case the churches, and he gave the figure of thirteen mission halls. I do not think there is any doubt as to the actual figures, although there has been some criticism as to the enumeration of two rooms in one building as two separate halls. Except from that point of view I do not think that on the actual figures there is any serious controversy between us, and I venture to say that if any one of your Lordships reads the whole passage and does not take a single sentence, as the noble Earl did, away from its context, it will be impossible for him to say that in the statement made my right hon. friend was not substantially correct.
  THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I do not intervene in this debate with a view of dwelling upon the detailed statistics put forward by Mr. McKenna, not, I think, as was inadvertently stated by the noble Lord who speaks for the Government, on the Motion for the adjournment of the House but in the great debate on the Bill itself. The point of the matter seems to me to rest, not upon some mistake in statistics, but upon the much broader fact that while we expect accuracy from every member of either House of Parliament when he is speaking on an important subject, we have especially a right to expect it when the Minister in charge of a great Bill is deliberately setting before the House and the country a general summary of the situation and of the Government's case, making for example in this instance a careful comparison between the work of the Church and the work of Nonconformity. We say that in such a case he is peculiarly bound to be, in the large sense of the word, accurate in the figures which he puts forward. I am a bad statistician and a bad hand at remembering detailed figures in the course of a debate, and I should make the greatest possible excuse even for a Minister of the Crown if inadvertently some statements were made which proved on investigation to be unsupported by fact. But I venture to say without hesitation that if any one will read quietly and without bias of any kind the statement made by the Home Secretary

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  in support of the great proposition which he was giving to the country and will follow the comparison he drew between the Church and Nonconformity in the great city of Cardiff, and will then give attention to what was afterwards said about the mistake the right hon. gentleman had made in the figures, he will see that the Home Secretary had only one possible course left open to him. When a Minister of the Crown had made such a serious mistake as Mr. McKenna had inadvertently made, he would naturally be expected to acknowledge it, and in that case every one would have understood and condoned what had happened. Instead of following that course, when the real figures had been presented to him three or four times by successive writers and speakers, the right hon. gentleman uttered a single sentence or so in the House of Commons and then wrote to the newspapers to say that he had already refuted the figures put forward by those who criticised him. My Lords, there is no such refutation on record. The Home Secretary's memory may have deceived him, but we have not had any refutation to our challenge. I deeply deplore the fact that in a matter of this kind when a Minister in charge of a great measure has inadvertently been led into making a misstatement which was at once made much of by his supporters as an important statement of fact he could not, when it was shown that he had been mistaken, have stood up and acknowledged that he had been misled. That, and that alone, is what I personally take exception to. If the Home Secretary had acknowledged his mistake I would have been ready to make the greatest possible allowance for an over-worked man labouring under the difficulty of a very hard case to prove; but in the circumstances I find it impossible to make any such excuse for the continuous silence with which the demonstration that his figures were altogether erroneous has been met.
  *THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, we are about to have a discussion in this House as to the manner in which the business of His Majesty's Government is distributed among the occupants of the Front Bench opposite. I think we shall have to suggest to them that one Minister should be told off specially for the purpose of explaining away the utterances of his colleagues. Last night we listened to the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, with much
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  ingenuity putting various glosses upon an extremely inconsistent statement made by his Under-Secretary elsewhere; and tonight we have had two Ministers bestowing equal ingenuity upon explaining away the statement recently made by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons. I hope the two noble Lords will excuse me if I tell them that I never listened to more unconvincing explanations. We all felt a sympathy with the noble Lord who spoke first, and we took note of his plea that he had not had very long notice of his discussion and had been consequently a little pressed for time. But may I venture ay that if lie had had six months to prepare his case he could not have made a better defence than he made this evening, because there was no defence to make. The noble Earl opposite renewed the attempt to convince us that the Home Secretary when he made his speech in the House of Commons was instituting a comparison between mission halls and mission halls. That theory is absolutely inconsistent with the plain language of the Home Secretary himself. The Home Secretary was drawing a picture of the state of things in Cardiff. He did not confine himself to the slum area. He was dealing with what he described as "the whole work of the. Church of England throughout Cardiff" without any limitation whatever, and in the picture that he drew he light-heartedly included the chapels on one side and left out the churches on the other. It is very easy to argue if you are permitted to halve your opponents' figures and to double your own, and that is really the mathematical basis on which the contention of His Majesty's Government is founded.
  But, my Lords, I do not know that I should have intervened had it not been for my desire to point out to your Lordships that what we are discussing this evening is not merely a personal question. So far as the personal question is concerned, the Minister undoubtedly fell into a very serious error; but, as the most rev. Primate said a moment ago, every one would have been ready to condone the error if it had been frankly admitted and apologised for. But what I think is to be borne in mind is that the whole of these arguments, based, as we have shown, on such a slight foundation, are part of a deliberate policy to belittle the work of the Church of England in Wales and to exalt in comparison with it the work done by the Nonconformist

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  denominations. In endeavouring to establish that disadvantage noble Lords opposite and their friends spare no pains to show that the Church of England neglects her opportunities in Wales, that she is outstripped by other denominations, that she is out of touch with the people of the country, and that her teachings are imposed upon reluctant people. It is in order to establish those propositions that all these statistics, so inaccurate, so recklessly collected, are put before the public; and I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to the right rev. Prelate for the courage with which he has taken this sample of the arguments used by the other side and exhibited in the full light of day the absolute untrustworthiness of the statements which have been made use of. To my mind, the result of the examination which the Home Secretary's statements have undergone has been to throw very grave doubt indeed upon the statistical basis of the whole of the case upon which it is proposed to deprive the Church of England in Wales of her present position there, and to rob her of her slender resources.
  LORD SHEFFIELD: My Lords, I do not know that it is very advantageous to debate a matter that will come before us in a more serious way in the autumn, or to discuss the construction which noble Lords opposite and the right rev. Prelate choose to put upon the substantial meaning of the speech of the Home Secretary. The question that was raised by Mr. McKenna was not that of the whole work of the Church of England. Lord Selborne said that Mr. McKenna's object was to show that the Church of England was doing less work in Cardiff than one Nonconformist church. Mr. McKenna's observations, it is quite clear, dealt with one particular section of the work of the various Christian bodies—namely, that section of their work which is addressed to the specially poor and to those who stand out of all religious organisations. The noble Marquess who leads the Opposition complained of Mr. McKenna's figures being grossly inaccurate. I contend that though Mr. McKenna made the slip in his speech, which he corrected long before this debate, of using the word "churches" when he was speaking of "mission halls," the whole of the previous part of his speech showed that he was speaking of those places which appeal to persons outside the regular frequenters of the church.
  THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: The noble Lord is arguing as if these halls were treated as halls in the Blue-book. They are classified in the official return of the Nonconformists themselves as "chapels." That is our point, that while including all the chapels of the Nonconformists Mr. McKenna excluded all the churches of the Church of England.
  LORD SHEFFIELD: The Church of England statistics, after enumerating their churches, enumerate their thirteen mission halls. These Mr. McKenna inadvertently called "churches," but he corrected himself afterwards and said he meant mission halls. The noble Marquess who leads the Opposition complained that Mr. McKenna had added together the chapels and the mission halls in order to get his number. I turn to Vol. VI of the Royal Commission's Report containing the figures handed in by the Calvinistic Methodists of Cardiff. There you have set out the chapels and the schoolrooms, and very often the schoolroom adjoins the chapel, but sometimes the schoolroom is separate. The seating is totalled up separately in the tables; the schoolroom is different from the chapel, and the statistics are put separately. If you add together the chapels and the schoolrooms of the Calvinistic Methodists you get a considerably larger figure than the twenty-two which Mr. McKenna quoted. There is no mistake about it that the mission rooms or schoolrooms of the Calvinistic Methodists are distinct from the chapels, which are enumerated in a separate column and quite apart. Whether in Tiger Bay the Church of England with its two mission rooms is getting hold of the low class of people better than the Nonconformists I do not know, and I do not very much care. When we come ultimately to seriously discuss this question of the Established Church in Wales we are not going to be side-tracked into the question of any single parish in a particular city. Whatever noble Lords who have no sympathy with Mr. McKenna or with the policy- which the Government advocate may say on the matter, I submit that, barring the little slip to which I have referred, the substance of what Mr. McKenna said is confirmed by the facts in the Blue-book. Because he inadvertently spoke for a moment of churches when he meant to speak of mission halls, you must not put upon him an allegation which he never made.
  VISCOUNT HALIFAX: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just sat down has exhibited remarkable courage in the few words which he has addressed to the House. He says it is unfair to judge Mr. McKenna except upon the broad contents and meaning of his speech. It is precisely on account of the broad effect of his speech that we blame Mr. McKenna. Any one who is conversant with the facts knows that the statements of Mr. McKenna are not true. No one who has read the debate in the other House can doubt that the object of Mr. McKenna was, by the statement he made, to make it appear, at all events in this particular instance, that the work of the Church of England was less than that of one of the Nonconformist bodies. I have no sort of desire to belittle the Nonconformist bodies, but on an important question of this sort, which involves the gravest issues, we have a right to expect that a Cabinet Minister when he makes a statement of that sort should make a true statement; and when we have proved to him that he has done nothing of the sort, and that he has made a mistake, and a mistake in regard to an important matter touching very grave issues, his primary and first duty is to acknowledge it. That is what Mr. McKenna has not done, and that is what everyone who knows anything about this matter blames him for and blames him severely.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I rise to point out the somewhat unsatisfactory position in which the House is placed in dealing with this subject. Very short notice was given of this debate. The right rev. Prelate only put down the Motion yesterday, and as Mr. McKenna, whose conduct is in question, is away on public business it has been impossible to communicate with him. The right rev. Prelate may be quite right in wishing to bring this matter as quickly as possible before public attention, but he must also accept the disadvantage of the position that he is condemning a man who is not here to answer for himself and who has had no opportunity of saying what defence he would desire to make against the imputations that are brought against him. I think it would have been much more satisfactory to hear what the person accused had to say for himself than to bring this Motion forward to-day on the supposed ground of urgency. I have had considerable experience in these matters,
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  and I have learned enough not to come to a conclusion until I have heard the other side. For all I know there may be a great deal to be said for the other side. We have not had an opportunity of hearing what Mr. McKenna has to say for himself. In the peculiar circumstances t think it would have been better if the discussion could have been adjourned for a few days until we were in possession of the views of the chief person whose character is impugned.
  THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: I shall be delighted to move the adjourn-meat of the debate if the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack wishes it. May I say that every statement I made to-day in your Lordships' House I made in The Times as far back as May 23. It is the 25th of June to-day, and I should have thought that Mr. McKenna would have had plenty of Opportunity in the meantime to prepare an answer.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I hope the Government will take note of what the right rev. Prelate has said. The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack has great duties to perform which occupy the whole of his time, and he has not had an opportunity of watching what has really passed in this matter. These allegations have not been made now for the first time. These figures have been quoted against the right hon. gentleman over and over again. The Lord Chancellor urged that his right hon. friend might have a great deal to say in reply to these charges. If so, he has shown a wonderful amount of coyness, to put it no stronger than that, in coining to the point. He has been given an opportunity, not merely in The Times but in the House of Commons. He seemed to be very reluctant to get up in the House of Commons to reply. A private Member was allowed to intervene between the right hon. gentleman in defence of his own credit before the country, and then there were only a few minutes left under the operation of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons in which the Home Secretary could defend his credit and reputation; and so reluctant was he to answer the question that he, a Minister of the Crown defending his own words, was actually reproved by the Speaker for having been reluctant to rise. I am sure the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack did not know all this. He did

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  not know that his colleague had been exposed to a mortification such as hardly any living Minister has had to undergo. All that the right rev. Prelate and his friends, having failed to get any reply from the Home Secretary, could do was to raise the matter in your Lordships' House in the most formal manner. The Home Secretary has ample opportunity of replying to his critics. He can do it upon any day he likes. Why should he not do it? I should like to say to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack that when a Minister makes a statement which he cannot substantiate and will not withdraw it, the discredit does not fall only upon him; it falls, of course in a minor degree but to a certain extent, also upon his colleagues in the Government. I cannot think, after what has been said in
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  your Lordships' House and the line which the noble and learned Viscount has most properly taken, that the Home Secretary will fail to take an opportunity of giving a full answer to the statements which have been made. If he has been led into inaccuracies he will have abundant opportunity of saying so, and that will be the end of this matter. But if not, I think hardly any Minister within my recollection has been placed in such an invidious position as he will be placed in, and I think some of the discredit does fall upon the noble and learned Viscount and his other colleagues.
  House adjourned at ten minutes before Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.