Lords Sitting of 31 July 1913

PILOTAGE PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 148.)
AIRDRIE CORPORATION GAS ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899), deemed to have been read 2a (The Earl of Craven), and reported from the Committee. (No. 149.)
EAST HAM CORPORATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and referred to the Examiners.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY (ST. EDMUND HALL AND GATCOMBE RECTORY) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 14) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendment, agreed to.
CROWN LANDS BILL.
HERRING FISHERY (BRANDING) BILL.
DUNFERMLINE DISTRICT WATER ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments, agreed to.

BARRY URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAM WAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
BELFAST CORPORATION BILL.
The KING'S consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
Read 3a, and passed.
DERBY CORPORATION BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

POST OFFICE (LONDON) RAILWAY BILL.
THE EARL OF CRAVEN: I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That the Order made on the 22nd of April last, "That no Provisional Order Confirmation Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Thursday the 19th day of June next" be dispensed with.—(The Earl of Craven.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
THE EARL OF CRAVEN: My Lords, I now move that this Bill be read a second time. The purpose of the Bill, which is an uncontroversial measure, is to enable the Postmaster-General to construct an underground electric railway from the east to the west of London for the purposes of his Department for carrying mails and parcels.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Craven.)
On Question, Bill read 2a.

TRADE BOARDS ACT PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL.
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD STRACHIE): My Lords, 011 behalf of my noble friend the Master of the Horse, I beg to move the suspension of the Order made on April 22 with a view later to moving that this Bill be react a second time.
Moved, That the Order made on the 22nd of April last, "That no Provisional Order Confirmation Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Thursday the 19th day of July next" be dispensed with.—(Lord Strachie.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORD STRACHIE: My Lords, I now move that the Bill be read a second time, and in doing so I should like to explain why the Bill has come up to your Lordships' House so late. As the House knows, the

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present session of Parliament did not begin until March 10. Representations were made to the Board of Trade that it would be desirable to further extend the provisions of the Trade Boards Act, 1909. The Board of Trade therefore had to make very full inquiry into the matter upon these representations in order that they might see whether there was a strong case for the extension of the Act and whether the employers would be damnified at all by having the Act extended in the manner proposed. As your Lordships are aware, the Board of Trade are very anxious to extend this Act to other trades where a clear case is made out for it. This Bill went before the House of Commons for First Reading; on May 1, but owing to the long Whitsuntide holiday it was not read a second time until June 16, and the Select Committee did not report until July 17. The Bill now comes before your Lordships' House as an unopposed measure, though in the House of Commons it was opposed in regard to the question of steam laundries, but this provision has since been dropped out of the Bill.
The Trade Boards Act, 1909, applies to the trades specified in the Schedule to that Act, and to any other trades to which it has been applied by Provisional Order of the Board of Trade made under section one of that Act, and time Board of Trade have power under that section to make a Provisional Order applying that Act to any specified trade to which it does not at the time apply if they are satisfied that the rate of wages prevailing in any branch of the trade is exceptionally low as compared with that in other employments, and that the other circumstances of the trade are such as to render the application of that Act to the trade expedient. The trades to which the Act of 1909 is extended by this Bill are sugar confectionery and food preserving, shirt-making, hollow-ware making, and linen and cotton embroidery. These trades are defined in the Schedules of the Bill. The trades have been consulted in the matter, and there is no organised opposition whatever to these four additional trades coming under this Act. Therefore we may take it that employers generally are satisfied that it will be an advantage.
It is very satisfactory from the point of view of the Board of Trade that up to the present, moment the working of the Trade Boards Act has given general satisfaction,
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and we are glad that in consequence of the Act wages have been considerably raised in those trades where employers were cutting prices and sweating their work-people. Some 200,000 persons come under the present Act, 70 per cent. of whom are women and girls; and it is considered that by the new Provisional Orders included in this Bill between 150,000 and 200,000, a vast proportion of whom are women and girls, will be added to the number of employees who will have their rates of wages settled under the Trade Boards Act. As the object of this Bill is to do something for the benefit of those who are unable to help themselves, I hope that your Lordships will consent to give it a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Strachic.)
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, I dare say that what the noble Lord has said is all perfectly true, but at the same time this Bill has never been circulated to your Lordships and I cannot see a copy of it upon the Table.
LORD STRACHIE: I hold the Bill in my hand. It bears the endorsement that it was brought from the House of Commons on July 24.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: But I do not hold it in my hand, and that is why I have called attention to the matter. The Bill has not been circulated and is not on the Table, and I have never seen any print of it.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (EARL BEAUCHAMP): I think there is one answer which I might offer to the noble Earl by way of explanation, and that is that it is not usual to circulate Provisional Order Bills. A copy of the Bill is, of course, at the disposal of the noble Earl in the Printed Paper Office if he wishes to see it. I can assure him that there is no sinister intention in the Bill not having been circulated. That fact is due, as I have said, to its not being usual to circulate these Provisional Order Bills. But if the noble Earl wishes it, I am sure my noble friend in charge of the Bill would have no objection to postponing it so that the noble Earl might have an opportunity of looking at the Bill.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: It seems to me to be a Bill of considerable importance. I understood the noble Lord to say that it affected 100,000 people.
LORD STRACHIE: It would apply to between 150,000 and 200,000.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: Then surely a Bill which has that application is a very important one, and one of which the House ought to be informed. As your Lordships know,' in the closing days of the session every sort of measure is brought up; it is not circulated, and then some Minister rises and proposes that it be read a second time and that all the Standing Orders be suspended. I am not accusing the noble Lord the Paymaster-General in the least personally, but I say that this thing has happened in my recollection constantly in the last fortnight of the session. Unless there is some very special reason why this Bill should be taken to-day, I certainly think it should be postponed until we have had an opportunity of seeing the Bill and studying its points.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: This is a matter of considerable importance. We are all watching with sympathetic interest the working of the Trade Boards Act, which as your Lordships know, was not the subject of any Party controversy when the measure was passing through your Lordships' House. I gather from the noble Lord's statement that this particular Bill will almost double the number of persons who are subject to the Trade Boards Act. Therefore it is a Bill of very great importance, and although we were very much interested and gratified to hear the account, the brief account necessarily, which the noble Lord gave of the working of the Trade Boards Act, yet I think your Lordships would have liked rather longer notice and an opportunity of studying the whole of the provisions proposed in this Bill before being asked to give it a Second Reading. I understood the noble Lord to say that the trades concerned had been very carefully notified of what was proposed to be done, and that all the necessary steps had been taken to put them in possession of what it was proposed to do. That is very satisfactory. We should have, perhaps, liked a little more detailed information as to how far these trades had been consulted, what steps had been taken to consult them, who had been seen,
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and what the Board of Trade thought it right to do, for this is almost the first Occasion on which the Trade Boards Act has been extended under the section permitting its extension. Perhaps the noble Lord would not mind postponing the Second Reading until another day in order that we might have an opportunity of looking at the Bill. I see that one or two copies of the Bill are now upon the Table, but they were not there just now, and as far as I know the Bill was not circulated to your Lordships with the Minutes. That being so, I think there is a strong case for the postponement of the Second Reading, though I hope His Majesty's Government will understand that we do not in any sense wish to stop the operation of this Bill, but merely desire that a Bill of this importance should be properly considered before it is given a Second Reading.
LORD STRACHIE: If the noble Marquess and the noble Earl opposite are anxious that the Second Reading should be adjourned, of course the Government will readily consent to that course. But may I appeal to noble Lords opposite upon the urgency of this Bill? It would be very unfortunate if it were to fail for want of time. The reason it did not come up earlier, as I have explained, has something to do with the late period of the year at which the present session commenced and the long Whitsuntide holiday. The noble Marquess asked whether the employers concerned had been given full time for the consideration of the proposals in the Bill. That, my Lords, was one of the reasons why the Bill took so long to go through the House of Commons. It was put down on May 1, and the Second Reading was deferred until June for the very object of giving the employers concerned ample time to consider it. Provisional Order Bills are circulated to Members of the House of Commons, and I should think it would be well for the future for instructions to be given that all Provisional Order Bills should be circulated also to your Lordships.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I hope His Majesty's Government will agree to the short postponement asked for by my noble friend. I do not think that it need involve any interference with the ultimate fate of the Bill. There will be plenty of time next week to consider it.
LORD STRACHIE: What day does the noble Marquess suggest?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Tuesday.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: And that the Bill be circulated in the meantime.
Further debate on the Motion for Second Reading adjourned till Tuesday next.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 18) BILL.
Moved, That the Order made on the 22nd of April last, "That no Provisional Order Confirmation Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Thursday the 19th day of June next," be dispensed with, and that the Bill be now read 2a agreed to: Bill read 2a accordingly.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order), and Bill to be read 3a on Wednesday next.
WEMYSS TRAMWAYS ORDER CON FIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.
DUNFERMLINE CORPORATION WATER ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN LOAN BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD STRACHIE: My Lords, the object of the Bill to which I now ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading is to authorise the Treasury to guarantee the payment of interest on a Loan to be raised by the Government of the Sudan for irrigation and other purposes. Not only may we say that it is an obligation on our part to assist in the social and commercial development of the Sudan and the maintenance of good government there, but while we are helping the people of the Sudan we are also able to say that we are helping our own people in this matter. The Loan which the Government of the Sudan
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propose to raise is mainly for irrigation, and in that matter the people of this country have a direct and very great commercial interest, especially the people of Lancashire, because the object of this irrigation is to enable a very large tract of country in the Sudan to be made available for cotton growing. Your Lordships are no doubt aware that there has been a very large increase in the export of cotton goods from this country. In the last ten years the increase has been something like £50,000,000, and we may fairly say that this country is the greatest exporter of cotton goods in the world; while on the other hand, as far as Europe is concerned, this country is the greatest consumer of raw cotton. From that your Lordships will see that it is very important to the commercial interests of the great cotton spinning districts of this country that there should be a large supply of cotton coming from different parts of the world. The more we can increase the supply of raw material the cheaper we can buy it, and the cheaper it can be bought in the raw state the cheaper is the cost of manufacture and the more easy it is for us to export the finished article abroad.
The British Cotton Growing Association, feeling the necessity of increasing our cotton supply in different parts of the world, sent out a Commission of Inquiry to the Sudan. The chairman of that Commission was Mr. Arthur Hutton, who reported on the possibilities of cotton growing in the Sudan and described a very large part as being an area which it would be very desirable to irrigate. At the present moment this area, the Gezira Plain, was described as being barren, sterile, and hardly growing anything—in fact, an absolute desert, useless for man and beast, except some 2,000 or 3,000 acres, which had been irrigated and was consequently a perfect oasis in that great desert. And where cotton was being grown at the present time in the Sudan he found that there was produced 550 lbs. of cotton per acre, as against an average in Egypt of 450 lbs. per acre, and in America of 200 lbs. Mr. Hutton, dealing with the Gezira Plain, this large tract of country of over 5,000,000 acres, described it in this way. He said—
"Practically every acre of it is capable of producing high-class cotton and of a quality which Lancashire requires in larger and larger quantities every day. It is also a country which can be irrigated at a comparatively small expense."

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No doubt your Lordships are aware that one of the difficulties of irrigation is not only that of getting the water upon the land but of getting the water off the land. The configuration of this particular tract of country called the Gezira Plain, the slope of it, is such that it is not only easy to get water on to the land but also off. It is proposed out of this Loan also to irrigate the Toka and Kassala areas as well, but they are comparatively small areas of 200,000 acres.
Lord Kitchener estimates that the irrigation of the Gezira Plain would cost from £1,250,000 to £1,500,000, and I might incidentally remark that this great scheme is only following out the policy of the noble Earl, Lord Cromer, who we all are aware did so much in Egypt as regards the vast works of irrigation that were carried out in that country, which have added so enormously to the value of the land there and to the revenues of Egypt. I should also state that in taking this water from the Nile for irrigating this Plain, great care will be taken that nothing shall be done to prejudice the irrigation works which have already been such an enormous success in Egypt. This will be safeguarded by not taking the water at the same time, or by taking it under conditions which will do no harm at all to the irrigation works in Egypt, because I am sure your Lordships will agree that it would not be right to do anything to benefit the Sudan at the prejudice or the harm of the Egyptian irrigation works. Lord Kitchener is sanguine that this undertaking will have the indirect effect of once more making the Sudan a largely-populated district. Before the Dervish disturbances the population was some 9,000,000 in this area. It was reduced after the Dervish raids to a population of something like 2,000,000, and at the present moment the inhabitants do not number more than 3,000,000. Lord Kitchener thinks that when these great irrigation works are carried out it is safe to reckon that in the next five or six years the present population of 3,000,000 will have doubled, because when good government and work are established there it will be certain that a large population from outside will flock into that district.
As your Lordships will see, this Bill only proposes to guarantee the payment of the interest on this Loan. But it is proper
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that your Lordships and the country should consider the financial position of the Sudan at the present moment. A few years ago there was no trade and no revenue to speak of, but now the trade has grown enormously. In 1906 the exports were £265,000; in 1911 the exports had risen to £1,400,000. And as regards revenue, in the year of the battle of Omdurman, 1898, the revenue was only £35,000. It went up in 1899 to £127,000; in 1905 to £665,000; and in 1912 to £1,424,000. The subsidy which Egypt used to make to the Sudan to assist them in their finances has this year come to an end, with the exception of a small sum that is paid for a small body of Egyptian troops who are kept in that country. Again I may mention, as this Loan is being also asked for by the Sudan Government for railways, that the railway receipts since 1909 have gone up from £330,000 to £505,000. As I have explained, this Bill does not ask this country to raise a Loan as a present for the Sudan; it only asks that the interest on the Government of Sudan Loan shall be guaranteed by the Imperial Treasury. As regards the payment of interest, power is given to the Treasury to guarantee the Loan at an interest not exceeding 3½ per cent., but the guarantee is not to be given until the Treasury and the Secretary of State are satisfied as to the provisions for raising and applying the Loan, and also that an arrangement for the establishment and regulation of a sinking fund for the repayment of the principal in thirty years or less has been made by the Sudanese Government. The Treasury are not responsible for the sinking fund; but no guarantee will be given until they are satisfied that due provision has been made for paying off the Loan in thirty years or less. The Treasury will also have to lay before both Houses of Parliament a statement of such guarantee and an account of the sums issued.
I may add that Lord Kitchener does not at all expect that it will be necessary to call upon the Treasury to make good this guarantee. The object of the Sudan Government and of Lord Kitchener in supporting this application is that they may be able to borrow the money at a cheaper rate, because it is clear that a Sudan Loan with an Imperial guarantee is a very different thing in the Money Market from a Sudan Loan without an Imperial guarantee. Lord Kitchener is

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of opinion that the irrigation work in the Gezira Plain, which is to be undertaken first, will be self-supporting. He is satisfied that the finances of the Sudan at the present moment are well able to bear the interest on this Loan until construction, and therefore there will be no call even during construction on the guarantors of the Loan. The Loan is for £3,000,000—for irrigation works, £1,900,000; for contingencies, £100,000; and for railways, £1,000,000. It is not proposed to raise the whole of this money at once but as it is required, and the guarantee in respect of the payment of interest will move pari passu as the money is raised. But, as I say, the contingency that any charge is likely to fall on the revenues of this country is very remote. The Loan will be paid entirely by the Sudan without the smallest chance of any charge falling on this country. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Strachie.)
THE EARL OF CROMER: I trust that your Lordships will give a Second Reading to this Bill. I can confidently state that nowhere has the exercise of British influence produced better results than in the Sudan, and one of the main reasons why these results have been so good is that the system of government has been singularly well adapted to the requirements of the country. More especially decentralisation has been carried very far in the Sudan. Sir Reginald Wingate and the admirable staff of officers, civil and military, who have been working with him have been left practically alone to work out the salvation of the country. There has been practically no interference from London, and but very little interference and guidance from Cairo. The results have been in every respect admirable. When you consider the vast extent of this country, the savagery of a great portion of the population, the enormous distances of waste and desert which separate one place from another, and the general economic conditions of the country, the rapidity with which the Sudan has been regenerated is really marvellous. I often wish that those politicians and others who at times are apt to depreciate and to decry the work which their countrymen are doing in the distant parts of the Empire, could see a
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little more of these young men, for most of them are young, could hear them talk, and could realise a little more than they appear to do at times what is the work they are doing. If they did, they must be very curiously constituted if it did not evoke in their minds some feeling of pride for the work which their countrymen are doing abroad. I am particularly glad of an opportunity of stating this, because these Sudan officials, besides being very efficient, possess another good quality which is not common in these self-advertising days and to which I attach great importance—that is, they are very modest; they do not blow their own trumpets, and they are very rarely heard of in the Press. That, my Lords, is the more reason why those who, like myself, have had some opportunity of judging their work should bear testimony to what they have done.
A great deal has been done in the Sudan, but there remains a great deal to do. No doubt one of the first requirements of the country is that there should be considerable capital expenditure by Government on public works. A good deal of money has already been spent, and I should like to explain to your Lordships why more money has not been spent. It is because, as the noble Lord remarked in the course of his speech, capital is not the only requirement in the Sudan. It has also required population; and when I was to a certain extent responsible for the general government of that country it always appeared to me that it was both useless and unnecessary to spend vast sums of money 41 bringing fields under cultivation when there were no hands to cultivate them. Therefore I went slow. The waste of life in the Sudan during the Dervish rule, to which the noble Lord alluded, was something appalling. Be quoted figures based on the estimate of Sir Reginald Wingate. They were that the population before the Dervish rule was about 8,500,000, and in a period of twelve years that number had wasted to 2,000,000. That was by reason of inter-tribal warfare and the ravages of disease. I confess that when these figures were first revealed to me they were so startling that I hesitated to believe them, but I have no reason to discredit them, and I should like to state a thing which I saw myself which rather confirms them. I remember perfectly

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well the year after the Battle of Omdurman going to the town of Metemmeh, which lies 50 or 60 miles this side of Khartoum, and which had been a big town containing many thousands of inhabitants. I went into the square, where all the people assembled to meet me. There appeared to be very few of them and especially very few men, so I asked the local official in charge of the town what the population was. He told me that there were 1,300 all told, of whom only 150 were men. The fact was that most of the men had been killed. The most hopeful sign that I saw in my frequent visits to the Sudan was the large number of children about. No doubt good government has already attracted many people there from other parts of Africa, and I do not doubt that Lord Kitchener's estimate is correct that as time goes on further people will come in. The result is that we have now got to a stage when money may safely be spent upon irrigation purposes without any danger of outstripping the wants of the population.
To turn to the question of this Loan, I noticed that in the discussions which took place in the other House some objections were raised to the Loan because it was said that the money might better be applied to helping the agricultural population of this country. I do not propose to go into that question. It appears to me that a discussion on that point would lead us perilously near the dreary and tangled jungle of the fiscal question, which certainly I wish to avoid. Therefore I am going to leave that branch of the question entirely alone, and to consider the point on its own merits. There was another objection which was not raised to this Loan, but which might very well have been raised, and to which I think I had better allude. It might have been urged that inasmuch as the British Government does not guarantee the interest on Indian and Colonial Stocks, why, therefore, should it guarantee the interest on the Sudan Loan? I see my noble friend Lord Welby in his place, and I think he will bear me out in saying that that was a point to which in bygone days the Treasury attached some importance, and no doubt the objection is a rather forcible one. But I should like to point out to your Lordships why I consider that the Sudan in this instance may be differentiated both from India and the Colonies. The
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circumstances are very peculiar. In the first place, there is to some extent a precedent for this Loan, because in 1885, I think it was, the English Government in concert with the other Powers of Europe guaranteed the Egyptian Loan of £8,000,000. But that is not the only reason, and in order to explain the further reason I must allude very briefly to the political status of the Sudan.
You will remember that after the Battle of Omdurman the question of the political status of the Sudan had to be considered, and a very difficult question it was. On the one hand, the British Government did not in the least want to annex the Sudan. Far from it. They very much wished not to annex it, and had it not been for the capitulations and the ex-territorial rights acquired by Europeans in Egypt the best course would have been to have incorporated the provinces of the Sudan into Egypt and to have treated them as part of Egypt. But that was impossible. If we had done that, the whole of the cumbersome paraphernalia of mixed Courts and all the rest of it, which have done some good but which have certainly retarded progress in Egypt, would have been brought into the Sudan and would have rendered the government of the Sudan quite impossible. That being the case, we had to find a way out of the dilemma. In these circumstances, I undertook to propose to Lord Salisbury, who was then at the Foreign Office, that a hybrid form of Government, wholly unknown to international jurists up to that time, should be created, and that the Sudan should be neither British nor Egyptian but Anglo-Egyptian, with both the British and the Egyptian flags flying. That was a proposal which was novel and was certainly rather of a nature to shock conventional diplomatists. But I think its unconventionality and its novelty was rather an attraction in the eyes of Lord Salisbury, under whom it was my privilege to serve then, and he readily acceded to the proposal. The result was that the Sudan Convention was passed, and there is no doubt that the arrangement has worked very well. But it has had a certain disadvantage, and that is that being a complicated arrangement it has been very difficult to make the Egyptian people and the Egyptian Legislative Council understand it, and I must confess they are to be excused for not under-

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standing it altogether, for I doubt whether there are many people in this country who would understand it. A certain feeling of soreness was created in Egypt. They were constantly saying, "You say we are partners. The British and Egyptian flags are flying. There are considerable charges in respect of the financial burden, but the principal partner in the undertaking is paying nothing at all." I do not think these complaints were justified, because it must be borne in mind that this particular form of Government was created because of Egyptian complications. Moreover, it was Egypt much more than England which profited by the reconquest of the Sudan. At the same time, as I say, it was very difficult to explain; and for my own part I very much welcome this opportunity on political grounds of doing away, I hope, to a certain extent with that soreness which existed among Egyptian people when they said that the whole financial burden of governing the Sudan was left to them. Therefore I am glad this opportunity has been taken to show that British financial assistance will come to a certain extent to the aid of the Egyptian Treasury.
But in saying that I wish to utter one note of warning. There is nothing said in this Bill about the Egyptian liability. I do not complain of that. I do not profess to have gone into all the most recent facts of Sudanese finance, but I presume that His Majesty's Government and also Lord Kitchener have satisfied themselves that the Sudan Treasury can bear this charge and that in all probability no call will be made upon the British guarantee. But I think that the Egyptian Ministers and all in authority in Egypt should understand that the mere fact of this Bill having been passed does not involve their washing their hands entirely of all interest and all responsibility in Sudanese financial matters. Indeed I may go further and say that if, unfortunately, it should prove to be the case, as I trust it may not, that the Sudan Treasury cannot pay the interest and sinking fund under this Bill, I think it is conceivable that in the future questions of the extent to which some call may be made upon the Egyptian taxpayers may have to be revived.
On Question, Bill read 2a.
Committee negatived, and Bill to be read 3a on Tuesday next.

TEMPERANCE (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a. (Earl Beauchamp.)
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I rise, in pursuance to a Notice I have given, to move that this Bill be read a third time this day three months. I do so more for the sake of putting myself in order than for any other reason; but I desire to express my regret that this House is making itself responsible for this Bill in its present form. There can be no doubt that the House does make itself responsible by passing it in the circumstances in which we stand to-day. I think that the whole procedure under this Bill is an advertisement of how useless discussion is on any Bill, at any rate in this House, and I think in the other House also to a large extent, when once the powers given to the Government under the Parliament Act have been invoked. I venture to add that I do not believe the Parliament Act was ever intended for a Bill of this kind, brought forward in the circumstances under which this Bill has been brought forward, or a Bill which has been discussed, or its general principles so cordially accepted, as has been the case in regard to this Bill. I go further, and I say that I do not believe when the Government passed the Parliament Act that they themselves had any intention of applying it to a measure of this kind. The fact that the Parliament Act has been invoked for this Bill is really owing to what I may say, I think, almost the intolerance of a large section of the supporters of the Government in Scotland.
The point I want to make is this, that once the Parliament Act is appealed to, it has the effect of taking away all real freedom and responsibility from discussion. I am the last to say that this House under any circumstances can be, or even ought to be, on absolutely equal terms in matters of this kind with those who are, so to speak, the representatives of the people. But it seems to me entirely unreasonable in a matter of this kind that all independent action should be taken away from this House under the threat that if this House does not agree to anything which is proposed by the Front Bench opposite the Bill shall be passed over the heads of this House. I venture to say respectfully to those who are

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responsible for it that I think, in all the circumstances that have passed—which I shall go over as briefly as I can—it would have been much more in conformity with the dignity of this House if this House had thrown upon the Government the responsibility of the passing of the Bill under the Parliament Act, to be passed, if it was to be so passed, with all its crudities and all its absurdities in the form in which it came up to this House in the first instance. In other words, if the appeal is made to the Cæsar of the Parliament Act it should be by that tribunal judged, and that it would be more in conformity with the dignity of this House not to have taken part in making any amendments in the Bill after the discussion which took place last year unless really substantial concession on points of detail had been given to us.
At any rate, there can be no doubt of this. This Bill does not in any way stand in a parallel position to either the Government of Ireland Bill or the Bill with regard to the Established Church in Wales. So far as the Irish Bill is concerned it would have been an absolute farce to give that Bill a Second Reading or to go into Committee upon it, as we were invited to do, in the hope of making it a Bill which could in any way be in conformity with the opinions and judgment of the majority of this House. But there never has been disclosed any really fundamental differences in regard to the contents of this Bill. We all want to promote temperance. All of us who know the condition of affairs in Scotland—and I think I may say the whole House—agree that there is a strong case in the present state of things there for reform and for change. I can say for myself, at any rate, that all along I have cordially welcomed the extension of local control over licences. I have a real belief in its wisdom. I am perfectly prepared to trust my fellow-countrymen to do justice when the case is fully put before them and they are given a full measure of discretion in regard to the policy which they would choose. I agree that there is a strong case for reduction in the number of licences in many parts of Scotland, and that if you can, as it is possible you may under this Bill although I have some doubts about it, get a really judicial consideration and decision with regard to the licences which ought to be taken away, you may make some change for the better in regard to the position of affairs.
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I frankly admit that in those points, at any rate, this Bill is really desired by enlightened Scottish opinion; but I go further and say that I think Scottish opinion is favourable to a much freer power than is given under this Bill to make experiments, and I believe it would be wiser to give the people of Scotland a really broad choice over the policy which they, on full information, would have desired to adopt. It is not unfair to say that the Government, or at any rate a large proportion of those who are behind the Government in this matter, are not prepared, like those of us on this side of the House, to trust the people altogether. They are only desirous of trusting the people with those options which they in their wisdom think the people ought to want to choose. As an illustration of this I instance the whole question of what we have been accustomed to describe as disinterested management. Even the Secretary for Scotland has never challenged the wisdom of the principle underlying disinterested management, and it is an open secret that a large number of his colleagues in the Cabinet are actual supporters of it. Their public declarations show that that is the case. Yet we have the anomaly of a Government in that position, and holding the opinions some of its members hold, making no effort whatever to adjust terms whereby the people of Scotland, or such portions of them as may desire it, can have the opportunity of exercising that option.
So far as that is concerned, in the last session of Parliament when minor Amendments favourable to bringing in disinterested management, which is seriously handicapped under the existing law, were proposed, those of us who were in favour of the principle of disinterested management could get no support at all or even toleration from those who are in charge of this Bill. At present the principle of disinterested management is seriously handicapped in the respect that under the present licensing law we are obliged to take out the licence in the name of an official or an individual employed by the company for disinterested management. We cannot get the licence in the name of the company. That is a serious difficulty, because it puts the individual under the general licensing law in whose name the licence is taken in far too prominent and far too powerful a position. This is a part of the licensing

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law of Scotland wherein it differs from that of England, where, speaking generally you license premises rather than an individual. In Scotland you license the individual to sell in premises, and the licence is much more regarded in Scotland as the appanage of the individual than of the premises or of those who are behind him. We asked the Secretary for Scotland whether, even in a small matter of that kind, a reform might be made whereby the company charged with disinterested management should be in receipt of the licence. There is no real difficulty in it. Yet the answer given to us was that there were certain penalties to be enforced in the case of breach of licence, and that these were money penalties with the option of imprisonment, and you could not imprison the company if they did not pay. How hollow that is I will show your Lordships in a moment. I believe there is no case on record—at any rate not for a very long number of years—where it has been found necessary to put in prison for any of these classes of offences any holder of a licence for not paying the fine. But even so under the Factory Laws there are many cases in which, if there is a breach of those laws, the penalty is a tine with the option of imprisonment if the fine is not paid. There are many limited companies employing hands in factories, and they cannot be put into prison because it is obviously impossible that you can do it. That is an exactly parallel case, and it shows the sort of rubbish which is thought good enough for argument by the Secretary for Scotland.
When we knew that we were not going to get the option of disinterested management, we confined ourselves to asking that this simple change in the law might be made which would give us greater facility for trying these experiments; and although this Bill is a Local Option Bill it does contain half a dozen or more provisions for the amendment of the general licensing law, even this simple request, was denied us. The Divisions which have been taken on this question of disinterested management are about the most striking and remarkable that I have ever seen. I go so far as to say that this Bill as it stands, without the option of disinterested management, represents neither the wishes of the people of Scotland nor the untrammelled desires of the House of Commons, and it cannot in any way be said to be representative of the opinion of this House. On the
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Amendment early in the year on which the question of disinterested management was first discussed, the Government could only get 22 Peers to go into the Lobby with them, and I think I am right in saying that 17 of those were actually members of the Government holding office, and four of the other five had been created Peers within a very short time. The overwhelming sense of the House was in favour of giving the option of disinterested management, and even so consistent a supporter of noble Lords opposite and one who knows Scotland so thoroughly as Lord Loreburn actually left the House rather than support the Government in the Division which they took upon that particular matter. That, even if it stood alone, is a somewhat striking proof of what the opinion of this House in regard to the principle at stake is. When the point went down to the other House of Parliament, there were challenges over and over again that the Government Whips should not be pot on, that the free vote of the other House should be given in this matter, but that was rejected. If that is a true instance of the working of our representative system under the domination of Party and under the working of the Parliament Act, then I am even more surprised now than I have been in the past that this system as it is should be so much the ideal of the noble Viscount the President of the Council, who is the most consistent and determined opponent of anything in the nature of a referendum upon any of these matters.
I should be the last person to say anything harsh or bitter about those who have worked hard for this Bill. At the same time, I believe that they are in an infinitesimal minority among the people of Scotland. I pay them the tribute of saying that they are earnest and hard-working and self-denying, and that they are much in evidence in local organisations and very skilful in bringing their influence to bear. In the passing of this Bill in the form in which it passes they have their reward. In my opinion they will find that they have won, from their point of view, a useless victory. It is my belief that the voting on this Bill will prove that they have over-estimated their power and their influence, and that, although in some cases there may be a reduction, in very few instances indeed will they gain their real desire of total prohibition. I go further and say that where the change is

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most needed I believe it will not come under this Bill either with the rapidity or with the good effect with which it might have come if a more sensible course had been pursued. It is my humble belief that, except in some sparsely-peopled areas where it is not required, prohibition as a policy will not be adopted by the people of Scotland. It is never wise to prophesy until you know, and perhaps I am risking something in making that confident prophecy, but it is my belief that in those congested populations where the reduction of licences is most required a great danger will be run that success will not follow the efforts which will be made.
I believe that the real hope of reform and of improvement lies in improving the management of public-houses, coupled with the increasing growth, and it is increasing and growing, of working-class opinion and sentiment that it is a disgrace to be seen the worse for drink; and also, I think, we have much more chance if we rely on the slow but sure operation of religious and educational influences in strengthening character and in giving self-control. But for these things to take effect, you must, in my humble opinion, have improvement in management. Through all the time I have been on the Bench as a licensing magistrate in my own district my experience has been that far more can be done by the personal responsibility of a high minded man in managing a public-house than can be done by coercion or by unduly limiting the times and driving those who are determined to get drink at times when the law says they are not to have it either into what are known as shebeens or into not altogether creditable clubs. This Bill is passing under the œgis of the Parliament Act. I cannot deny that the Government can pass it by that means. In my humble opinion it would have been wiser for this House to have let it go with all its defects and absurdities in the matter of areas and other things in the form in which it came, rather than make itself responsible for it even in the to the some extent improved form in which it now stands.
I admit that the areas are likely to be better now than they were when the Bill was brought to us. But look at it how you like, local government areas are not suitable for this class of legislation. You have the difference between county and burgh and the divisions between wards in your
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larger cities. Unless the authorities of those different areas work together, you will have all over the country a series of areas with different laws in which men who desire to procure drink will only have to walk a few hundred yards, in some cases only across the street, for the purpose of satisfying their desires. My experience from what I learnt in Wales nearly 20 years ago is this, that anything like a division by streets or by a river, as is sometimes the case, between county and borough is absolutely destructive of the possibility of carrying out a law of this kind If you are going to have areas in some of which there is prohibition and in others there is not, you ought carefully so to delimit the areas for the purpose by an arrangement in which local knowledge plays its part, sanctioned by the central authority, in which, as between one area and another, there will be wide spaces rather than the mere crossing of a street. In very many cases in Scotland there will be different authorities on opposite sides of a river, and although I admit that the areas as they now stand are an improvement upon what they were before, I venture to predict that this Bill will not go any distance, as it now stands, to satisfy the wishes even of its promoters, and so far as I am concerned I desire to dissociate myself from any responsibility with regard to it.
Amendment moved—
To leave out ("now") and add at the end of the Notion ("this day three months").—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
EARL BEAUCHAMP: The noble Lord who has just sat down will, I hope, acquit me of discourtesy towards himself if I do not respond at any great length to the speech which he has just made, in view of the important discussion which we are awaiting with regard to the affairs of India. Indeed, if I were to answer, point by point, the various questions which he has raised, I am afraid the debate would be prolonged for a considerable period. He spoke, as we on this side are now becoming accustomed to hear, hard words of the Parliament Act. This is not the first time during the past few weeks that we have heard denunciations of that measure, and I daresay that in the course of the next year we shall hear even a great deal more against it. But I venture to think that

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in so far as it has promoted the passage of this Bill during the present session, those who were responsible for that Act may at any rate take some credit to themselves. I believe that on the whole all moderate-minded men would have preferred the passage of this Bill even with the Amendments that have been put in, small though the noble Lord thinks them to be, during the present session, rather than its ultimate passage next session without any of those Amendments having been made. The noble Lord laid emphasis on the fact that discussion was useless in the present circumstances. I remember that some years ago, in 1904, we had long discussions upon a licensing measure which had been introduced by noble Lords opposite. A great many Amendments were moved, among others by the noble Earl on the Cross Benches The noble Earl will, I am sure, bear me out when I say that he was disappointed at not receiving all those concessions from the Government in power which he hoped to get. Amendments were moved, not only by the noble Earl himself, but by a large number of noble Lords who felt on that occasion, as the noble Lord feels to-day, that discussion is, after all, useless when the Government has made up its mind with regard to a particular measure.
We are forced back on this occasion to consider which of the two views most nearly represents the wishes of the people of Scotland—the opinion of your Lordships' House as it was expressed last session, or the opinion of the direct representatives in another place of the people of Scotland. On the whole we prefer to take the expressions which reach us from the direct representatives of Scotland as being the most representative of opinion in that country. There was, indeed, one feature which gave us some satisfaction in the speech of the noble Lord. That was the fact that he seemed rather to blame this Bill for its sins of omission rather than its sins of commission. It is not so much what the Bill does as what it leaves undone that the noble Lord blames.
That brings us to the question of disinterested management, as to which Lord Balfour said a good deal in the course of his speech. We have discussed this at considerable length, and I am still
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not without hope that, within the course of next session, a Bill may be introduced by those who are keen advocates of the proposal for disinterested management which will make that principle apply to England as well as to Scotland. I am afraid I am obliged to repeat myself upon this question. We do look forward to the possibility of such a Bill being introduced in order that it may apply, not only to Scotland, but also to the whole of the country; and I venture to think that if such a Bill could be produced and laid upon the Table of your Lordships' House we should then be able to judge more easily what are the difficulties in the way of the passage of such a measure and how far it will be easy to apply tins principle. But if such a suggestion is refused and no such Bill is introduced, I venture to think that those noble Lords who are anxious for the promotion of the principle of disinterested management will lay themselves open to the suspicion that perhaps after all it is more difficult to draw up a Bill for the promotion of that principle than we had suspected before.
To a great deal which was said by the noble Lord it is, of course, difficult to make any reply. Much of it consisted of prophecy as to the uselessness of our victory and as to the uselessness of the Bill even when it is put into operation. We must wait and see what the actual result will be. But, at any rate, if in the course of the next few years no progress is made with the principle of disinterested management we on this side of the House who believe in the principle will be able, when we change sides, to claim the support of the noble Lord if we then press upon the Government of the day to support or produce a Bill on these lines. I am glad to think that the noble Lord does not intend to ask your Lordships to divide upon this occasion. Indeed, if a Division had taken place I venture even to think that we might have managed to secure the passage of this Bill. But although it is being passed without the support of the noble Lord I cannot conclude without expressing my regret that that should be so. We all of us know the interest which the noble Lord has taken in social affairs in Scotland and the influence which he very justly and rightly exercises in that country and therefore we regret the more that in this matter we should not have his support.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, my noble friend who has made this Motion will, I understand, not ask the House to divide upon it, and I am glad that that should be his intention, for it would obviously have been impossible for me to go into the Lobby with him. At the same time I rise for the purpose of expressing my entire concurrence with a great deal of what was said by my noble friend. I say frankly that I have never liked this Bill, and I do not like it now. I dislike it because I believe it will be fitful and perplexing in its operation. Under this Bill the law in any given area in Scotland will depend, not upon principles laid down by Parliament, but upon the will or, I might perhaps say the whim, of the majority of the electors inside the area. I dislike the Bill because I feel convinced—and I ant glad in this respect to be fortified by the high authority of my noble friend—that it is not likely to do much for the cause of temperance. There will be startling discrepancies under this Bill between the treatment of one area and another. You will have one area in which prohibition will prevail, and alongside of it, divided perhaps by the width of the street, you will have another area in which there will be free trade in intoxicating liquors, stimulated and aggravated by the disappearance of all facilities in the adjoining area.
I dislike this Bill, again, because I believe it to be unduly severe and harsh in its operation upon the holders of licences, and because it cannot fail to inflict a great deal of uncalled-for inconvenience upon persons who may desire to gratify a perfectly harmless propensity which no law has yet stamped with the brand of illegality. And perhaps most of all I dislike this Bill because, although it professes to be a Bill for conferring local option, it denies to the electors a particular form of option which many of them probably prefer to any other, and which upon the merits appears to me to be a more reasonable form of option than any of those included in the scope of the Bill. We tried hard to deal with those defects during the different stages of the Bill, and if we failed I do not think it can be said that we failed ignominiously. We failed really because we attempted an impossible task—that of amending an extremely complicated measure without any
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assistance from the Government who are responsible for it. Our feelings remain unchanged. But we had to take into account that persistence in our views meant the loss of the Bill this session, followed by its passage into law next year in a completely unaltered shape under the operation of the Parliament Act. My noble friend told us just now that in his view it might have been better for this House and more consonant with its dignity if we had chosen that course. I do not entirely agree with him. There was, perhaps, something to be said for it if we had merely desired to bring discredit upon the Bill and upon those who are responsible for it, but we had to consider the Bill on broader grounds, and to my mind the most important point we had to consider was that it is a Bill which is distinctly local in its operation. Its operation is confined to Scotland, and we are told—and I think my noble friend confirmed it—that it is desired by a great number of people in that country. And again it is local in its operation as regards the different areas concerned. The principle of the Bill is that each area is to be free to choose for itself.
That being the character of the Bill it has never seemed to us to be one in regard to which we ought altogether to exclude the idea of compromise; and therefore when an overture was made to us, as it was the other evening, by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack and by the noble Earl in charge of the Bill, we did not think it our duty to disregard that overture. We accordingly endeavoured to come to terms. I say frankly that to my mind the terms are by no means completely satisfactory, but we have to remember that in negotiation we did not meet on equal terms. Noble Lords opposite had a weapon which they were able to hold in terrorem over us, and we had to be content with the best terms that we could get. We have been able in some respects to make it a less unfair Bill than it was. We have in particular been able to mitigate the hardship of the Bill by a substantial extension of the time limit. That I regard as distinctly an improvement. We have also been able to render it less easy to inflict either prohibition or limitation, with all their attendant hardships, upon the areas con-

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cerned by an alteration in the numbers of those voting under the second clause. We arrived at an agreement upon these bases, and such as it is I am glad that it has been arrived at. We, at any rate, have been parties to that agreement, and that being so we cannot recede from it now; and it is therefore certainly not our intention to offer any further opposition to the progress of the measure.
On Question, whether the word ("now") shall stand part of the Motion, resolved in the affirmative: Bill read 3a accordingly, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order), and Bill to be read 3a on Tuesday next.

THE INDIA OFFICE.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON VISCOUNT MIDLETON rose to ask the Secretary of State for India whether it is in contemplation, by legislation or otherwise, to introduce any changes into the conduct of business in the India Office.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I have ventured to put this Question on the Paper because for some little time past statements have been current, especially in one or two of the leading Indian newspapers, to the effect that some change is imminent in the conduct of business at the India Office, and, I think it has also been suggested, in the relations between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy. It would be, I think, undesirable for me to enter into any of these questions while we are still in ignorance as to whether the Government have decided to take any action in either of the directions suggested. With regard to the conduct of the India Office itself, although the circumstances of the Secretary of State are peculiar as compared to other Offices in that he is assisted by a Council and acts in most of his official acts in concert with a Council, at the same time with regard to the actual arrangements of business in the India Office the Secretary of State has, without legislation, very great powers, and if there is anything which calls for amendment in the present conduct of business there I apprehend
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that the Secretary of State has it in his own power to make very considerable changes without in any way infringing the Act under which the business of the India Office is carried out. As to the relations between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy I should be still unwilling to enter into that subject, except to say that we all realise that great changes have been carried out recently in regard to the conduct of business in India, but nothing certainly has transpired to make us believe that these changes have in any way altered the extremely harmonious working between the Secretary of State and the India Office on the one hand and the Viceroy and the India Council on the other. Therefore without in any way prejudging any of the questions at issue, I think perhaps the noble Marquess will allow me to take this opportunity of putting the Question standing in my name on the Paper in order that he may inform the House before we separate whether these rumours have any foundation, and, if he so desires it, to set them at rest.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE): My Lords, I am afraid that I must occupy rather more of the time of the House than would be needed for a simple answer to the Question put to me by the noble Viscount. I have to thank him for giving me full notice of his intention to raise this matter, because the subject of the government of India and of the methods by which it is conducted are intrinsically of vast importance, although the actual details of that government cannot be expected to be of close interest to a large number of people in this country. But so far as this House is concerned there are many noble Lords who, in one way or another, have been engaged with the conduct of Indian affairs, and I have no doubt they will be glad to know what the present position is, and how far it is contemplated to propose any changes in that position.
I propose to allude to various points in connection with our Office affairs in the merest outline, and I venture to assume that until I am able to put some distinct proposals before the House noble Lords will desire to postpone anything in the nature of a general discussion. It is true, as the noble Viscount has pointed out, that there are many changes in the conduct of the business of the India Office

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which can be carried out by the Secretary of State under the powers already given him by Parliament without asking for the amendment of any Act. But those possibilities are so closely interwoven with the possible necessities of asking for statutory sanction for changes that it is almost necessary to describe the subject as a whole, and to mention certain matters upon which the discretion of any Secretary of State might be exercised without application to Parliament.
When I went to the India Office quite late in the year 1910 I found that the conduct of business there had for some little time been the subject of discussion, and it was obviously necessary for me to wait for a little time to get some experience of the particular methods of the India Office before I could attempt to form any conclusion as to whether or not changes were necessary. It so happens that during the last thirty years I have been an inmate in various different capacities of several Public Offices, and I was able, therefore, to institute certain comparisons of the various methods which obtain, and to compare them with those of the India Office. Since my appointment, as it happened, I have been absent from my Office twice for two periods of several months in duration—once from illness, and once when I was attending His Majesty in India; but so far as these particular periods were concerned the time was in no way wasted, because the interval has enabled me to obtain opinions on the working of the Office and upon possible changes from many of those who are most competent to speak on the subject. Those who have, either in India or this country, had personal experience of the methods under which the India Office works have in a considerable number been good enough to supply me confidentially with their personal impression. I ought particularly to express my obligations to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Mr. Montagu, who has brought to bear much industry and acute observation in studying this subject of business; and all those of your Lordships who have had to do with Public Offices will, I am sure, agree that in many respects as regards the daily details of an Office an Under-Secretary is in a stronger position than his Chief to observe and also to form critical opinions upon the every-day proceedings of the Office.
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I found, in collecting the various opinions of experienced men, that the general opinion appeared to be, in the words of one of my eminent predecessors, that the procedure of the Office in relation to India was "intolerably cumbrous and dilatory." In discussing the general question I must remind your Lordships, as the noble Viscount did, that the India Office is different in constitution from other Offices, from the fact that there is a Council which works with the Secretary of State. It is a unique form of Council, because such other bodies as the Board of Admiralty and the Army Council are really administrative boards, which the Council of India is not. It differs in important respects. The most important point to remember is that the Secretary of State in Council controls by a majority of votes the grants or appropriations of revenue; that is to say, the whole control of the expenditure of India finally rests with that body. It is familiar, I think, almost to everybody that the inception of this Council dates from the year 1858, when after the great Mutiny of the previous year a Secretary of State with this Council was substituted for the Honourable East India Company and the Board of Control. But it is worth noticing that the idea of the Council goes back further than that. It had been seriously mooted in 1853, when the Mutiny was never dreamt of; and for twenty years before that the East India Company had to some extent altered in character and ceased to be the great commercial body which it had been in the past. In February, 1858, Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister, and he brought in a Bill for the dissolution of the Company and the formation of the Council. He proposed that there should be a Council of eight members whose tenure of office would be for five years, and that for the sanctioning of expenditure at least four of those eight must concur with the Secretary of State; and the Council was to distribute its business among the various members according to the different departments in the Office. The members of the Council were to receive a salary of £1,000 a year.
Almost immediately afterwards came the great Parliamentary débûcle which noble Lords will remember occurred after the attempt by Orsini on the life of the Emperor Napoleon. The attitude of Lord Palmerston and his Government with respect to such crimes caused him to be

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defeated in the House of Commons, and they were turned out and succeeded by the Government of Lord Derby. Accordingly in March, only a month later, Mr. Disraeli tried his hand at a similar task. He introduced a Bill involving the creation of a Council of a different kind, a Council of eighteen members with a six years' tenure; nine of them were to be nominated, and nine were to be elected by some singular constituencies composed of Civil servants, of holders of India Stock, and of some of the great urban communities in this country. This Bill did not find very great favour, and it was finally withdrawn in the course of the summer; and Lord John Russell proposed that, as there were two rival measures similar in object but completely different in method, the House should content itself with passing certain Resolutions involving the disappearance of the Company, and this was accordingly done. The result was that, later still in the session of the same year, Lord Stanley, whom we remember in this House as the fifteenth Lord Derby (the uncle of the noble Earl who sits on the Front Bench opposite), the last President of the Board of Control and afterwards the first Secretary of State for India, brought in what was known as No. 3 Bill, which became an Act and is the Act under which the India Office is now worked, although various modifications have been introduced into the system since. That created a Council of fifteen members receiving a salary of £1,200 a year. The conditions of tenure I will deal with later.
The debates in both Houses of Parliamen on that measure were of singular power and interest. Mr. Disraeli took a prominent part; Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Bright all made speeches in the course of the debate, as did also a number of those particularly qualified to speak from Indian experience; and when the Bill came here the debates were also powerful and interesting, conducted by Lord Derby, by Lord Ellenborough, whose eloquence has remained a historical tradition in this House, and by Lord Granville on behalf of the Opposition. The measure received the Royal Assent in August of the year 1858. From the discussions and from the form which the measure ultimately assumed certain practical conclusions emerged. It was agreed by everybody that the Secretary of State should be assisted by a Council founded, no doubt,
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largely on the analogy of what had been the government of India under the East India Company. It is evident to anybody who reads the debates that there was a marked dread of the Government and in particular of a single Minister having uncontrolled power of spending the revenues of India, and there was also deep mistrust of the patronage of India being handed over to a single individual. But it was also generally agreed that the functions of the Council should be in the main advisory, and that the individual responsibility of the Secretary of State should be safeguarded and maintained. It was also frequently emphasised that the Council of India should not have to give its time to routine work but that it should mainly devote itself to important questions of policy and other matters of first-class interest.
The Act of 1858 is one of the most elaborate pieces of machinery which could be seen anywhere. I may again remind the House that its central point may be taken to be this—namely, that every order or communication proposed to be sent to India, and every order proposed to be made in respect of Indian affairs in the United Kingdom, must either be approved by the Council or must lie on the Council table for a period of seven days. I think the House will at once see that this rigid rule, added to the size of the Council, almost inevitably brought about a state of things in which the work of the Council would be mainly done by Committees, power being given in the Statute to divide the Council into such Committees. It became the natural trend of affairs that all business should in time fall within the scope of the work of such Committees, and for this reason—that, in the first case, where a conclusion had to be approved by the Council it was found to be an obvious saving of time in the long run for it to be examined by three or four people, when, if they were able to come to some agreement, it was likely to go through more surely than if it had to be considered for the first time by a body of fifteen. In the second case. where a Paper had to lie on the table, the fact that it went to a Committee would tend to prevent the possibility of some member of the Council rising and objecting while it was on the table, and thereby perhaps causing more delay than the examination in Committee itself would cause. These two things being so, the

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process naturally grew up of relegating to the examination of Committees practically all subjects of business, large as well as small. I have stated that the Act was a careful and elaborate one. One of its provisions is that the Council is obliged to meet every week in the year whatever business there may be to be done. The result is, therefore, that the longest actual holiday which can be obtained by all of its members is that somewhat maimed period of enjoyment known as "the clergyman's fortnight," one meeting being held on a Monday and the next on the ensuing Saturday week. No business whatever can be done without a quorum of five, however trivial the business may be, and there are certain cases in which a series of signatures by members of the Council are required to documents the importance of which scarcely seems to warrant such extreme closeness of attention.
I need not trouble the House with certain modifications which were made in the Council arrangements in 1876, and again in 1889. But in 1907 my noble friend the Lord President, who was then Secretary of State, was responsible for a Bill which your Lordships may remember, in which it was laid down that the Council should consist of not less than ten or more than fourteen members, and their salary was reduced from £1,200 to £1,000 a year. This, generally speaking, being the system under which we work, I must ask the House to consider what are the shortcomings which seem specially to attach to it, and what methods of reform it might appear wise to adopt. It was asked in 1858, and it has been asked on various occasions since, Why have a Council at all? The Foreign Office and the Colonial Office—the latter, of course, presenting the closer analogy—dispense with any such system of advice to the Secretary of State, and why, it is asked, should not the India Office do the same thing? In 1858 Mr. Roebuck, who belonged to that perennial class of politicians, of whom there are always a few in Parliament, whose life is spent in raising objections to almost everything that is proposed, took a strong view on this question. He spoke of the attempt that was being made to "patch up the rickety progeny of Lord Stanley"—that being the third Bill—and he prophesied confidently that in a very few years time the Secretary of State would be the sole governing power.
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My own shorter experience is confirmed by the opinion of those who have enjoyed longer experience, and I say confidently that if I could I would not part with the Council of India. The India Office in its official departments is manned by a singularly able body of Civil servants, and so far as the conduct of the Office is concerned we should no doubt be as competent as other Offices to do our daily work. But it is by no means only a question of the assistance which the Council of India render to the Secretary of State by causing matters to come before him for decision in a more compact and concentrated form than they do in other Public Offices. It is also a marked advantage to the Secretary of State, supposing there to be some differences of opinion and a discussion on a particular subject in Council, to be obliged to present his case in a more accurate form than he probably might, do if he had only to argue the pros and cons of it with himself. And furthermore—and this is by no means the least important point—the existence of the Council greatly strengthens the position of a Secretary of State in his dealings with the Government of India, more especially, of course, when he is a new comer to the India Office. My own experience is a special one, because I happen to be on terms of almost life-long intimacy with the present Viceroy, I am well acquainted with his ways of business, as he is with mine, and so far as our relations are concerned I should not mind conducting business with the Government of India without any intermediary. But if the existence can be conceived of a Viceroy of a singularly independent or even arbitrary turn of mind, a Viceroy backed by a body of local experts of long practical experience, then I think the Secretary of State would need to be a Bismarck to hold his own in any controversy against so powerful a combination as that, and the only result, a disastrous result as I think, would be that India might be brought more often than it is within the cock-pit of Parliamentary politics. Therefore, as I have said, I for one, and I believe all those with similar experience would say the same, would not dispense with the Council of India. What is more, my own experience, and, so far as I know, that of others, would not lead me to ask relief from that financial control which the Act of Parliament empowers the Council to exercise.

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In theory, of course, the Council might make the government of India under our Parliamentary system almost impossible by opposing the Government of the day and declining to carry out propositions to which the Cabinet attach supreme importance. But those are purely theoretical possibilities which need not alarm practical men, because it is, I think, the universal experience of people that when you collect a number of men practised in affairs round a table anxious to agree if they can, a method will always be found by which some reasonable result can be obtained. The proof of this appears to me to be that in other matters not financial, in all of which it is within the competence of the Secretary of State of the day to override his Council, it is only on the very rarest occasions that such a step has to be taken; and if any of the ex-Viceroys of India who have been in the same position with regard to their Councils happened to be in the House now, I think they would give similar testimony of their relations with their own Council. Therefore I shall certainly not ask your Lordships' House either to abolish the Council of India or to strip it of its former powers; but there are certain propositions, some domestic and some necessitating the amendment of the Act of Parliament, upon which I ought to say a word.
In the first place as regards the number of the Council. The existence of the present number seems to me to depend upon the necessity, if proved, for that universal activity of the Council which in its turn involves the perpetual action of Committees. Now, I venture to think that the Committee procedure is, in fact, only required on matters of moment. There are now seven Committees, and to man such a number as that it is obvious that a large Council is required. I shall propose, therefore, to make the procedure by Committee exceptional instead of, as it is now, invariable, and that I believe can best be done by attaching the various Members of Council to a particular Department in the office; not, of course, making them the controllers of the particular Department or in any way depreciating the position of the Secretary of the Department; but initiating a system by which they may co-operate for the particular work. And I should hope that thereby a great deal of business which now goes to Committees, and afterwards in a perfunctory
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way to the Council, might be done directly by the Department, sometimes, of course requiring the particular sanction of the Secretary of State, approached for the purpose, as he always is, through an Under-Secretary, but often in small matters on the responsibility of the Department itself.
I need not trouble the House with a description of the long and intricate method by which a file of papers travels backwards and forwards within the walls of the India Office, a rolling stone which on its way gathers sometimes a vast amount of moss. The process in subjects of the first magnitude is not too elaborate and may, indeed, be absolutely necessary, but in minor matters time is obviously thus spent which might quite well be spared; but I will not attempt now to elaborate any details of how Committees which would have to sit on many subjects should be specially framed for that purpose. It is said, I know, that if a Member of Council is thus specially attached to the Department the position of the permanent head of the Department, the Secretary, would thereby be lowered; but it is worth while noting that in our Military Department a system practically similar to that which I have mentioned obtains. The Military Secretary and the Military Member of Council are both soldiers of great eminence, both full Generals, and it is certainly not the case that co-operation between them is difficult, or that the position of either is compromised by the presence of the other.
One advantage which I should hope would follow is the initiation of far more direct communication between the different. India Office departments and the Government of India itself without the necessity of passing through the various processes which at present are followed, and I should hope thus to dispose of the complaints which we have many times received from India of delay which occurs in small matters. Well, this all points to a reduction of the number of the Council. For the actual work of the office, except for a consideration to which I will allude, a Council of eight would, I think, be adequate, answering so far as possible both in number and in the character of the work done to the different members of the Viceroy's Council in India. But it has to be noted that my noble friend behind me (Lord Morley) introduced, if he will allow me to say so, with great perspicacity the custom of getting two

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Indian gentlemen to sit on the Council here. That is a custom which I trust will be perpetually maintained; and it would sometimes, no doubt, be possible to attach an Indian gentleman of official experience to some particular department. However, it may not always be possible so to attach him; and the conclusion, therefore, is to my mind that the statutory limit which we shall probably desire to submit to your Lordships in a Bill will be the number of ten, which would leave a certain margin in case any particular Member of Council is not to be attached to a department.
There is a further reason why all that I say now must be regarded as somewhat provisional. Your Lordships are aware that an important Commission is sitting—a Royal Commission—under the presidency of Mr. Austen Chamberlain to inquire into matters relating to Indian finance, and at the close of the terms of reference to that Royal Commission you will find the words "The Commission is to report as to the suitability of the financial organisation and procedure of the India Office." Now, my Lords, I cannot in any way foretell what recommendations that Royal Commission may make. They have been good enough to inform me that they have not so far touched upon this question of India Office organisation. I, of course, should be anxious not to propose anything beforehand which would be incompatible with their recommendations and I have no doubt that they would be equally unwilling to propose any form of office reorganisation which would be incompatible in a general sense with the outline which I am now setting before the House. But it cannot be disputed that the Finance Department and the finance membership of Council, which has been the subject recently of a number of attacks—many of which I am confident are founded on absolute ignorance of the subject—it cannot be disputed that the position of the Finance Member or Members of the Council and the salary which should be paid to such Members may need differential treatment from that which we should propose to apply to those who sit on the Council in an ordinary capacity. I make that caution because it is desirable it should be understood that I am leaving out the question of India Office finance, at any rate in its detail, from these general propositions which I am laying down.
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Then there arises the question as to what Members of Council ought to be paid. If I succeed in carrying out my project of reducing the numbers of the Council and effecting some method of attachment of each Member to a particular department, it will be obvious that such a Member will have to become, more than he is at present, a full-time public servant, and that he will not be able to combine the holding of his post, as Members are able to do now to a certain extent, with outside work. In those circumstances it would probably be right, I think, to revert to the salary of £1,200 a year instead of the £1,000 to which my noble friend altered the payment in circumstances, of curse, altogether different from those which will exist when our measure is put forward. And I hope it will be found that the membership of the Council here should be regarded in the future, not as the beginning of an Indian official's retirement, but as the final stage in his actual Indian work; and there is no reason that I can see why it should not accordingly count for pension as part of his Indian service. That, I think, would be a change which might sometimes help us to obtain a man whose services we should not otherwise get; and it seems to me to be reasonable and fair, as well as advantageous, to link more closely this particular service with the service which a man carries out in India.
Much has been said about interchange between the Indian service and service in the India Office. The word sometimes almost becomes a shibboleth with those who have seen, or at any rate heard of, the useful effects brought about by interchange, as for instance in the Foreign Office. Interchange can be applied sometimes, and is sometimes applied, to the great public advantage; but the suggestion which has sometimes been made that officials in India might come on to the Secretary of State's Council and then return to Indian activities, although there may be cases in which such a thing is possible, contains one objection which I am sure your Lordships will realise. It has been pointed out that in such a case a Member of Council waiting for further promotion in India at the hands of the Secretary of State would, or at any rate might, lose some portion of the complete independence which ought to characterise a Member of Council, because he might be, or consider himself to be, dependent for promotion on

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agreement with the Secretary of State of the day. That is an objection which, no doubt, carries some weight. In my view the system of interchange should be an elastic one, but it should not be general, either as regards Members of Council or even as regards secretaries and clerks within the office itself, although in the latter case it can no doubt be usefully applied on occasion.
But one consideration I do regard as very important—namely, that so far as possible when a man comes on to the Council his experience of India should be recent experience. That was obvious to the acute mind of Lord Palmerston so long ago as 1858, because in one of his speeches on the subject he said that "obsolete experience is worse than useless." Men talk of the "unchanging East," but, as a matter of fact, social and sometimes political changes in India pass with the rapidity of a kaleidoscope, and a man's knowledge of a number of local considerations of importance soon wears rather thin. Experience, of course, of a different kind—experience of character and probable motive—always remains valuable and does not wear out, but the actual experience of affairs must be tolerably recent if it is to be of great value. As it is now, of the Members of Council nine must have served for ten years in India, and they must not have left India for more than five years. Formerly the limit of possible absence from India was ten years but that was one of the points which was altered by my noble friend behind me to the public advantage, as I venture to think, for an interval of ten years must be in most cases too long. It might not be prudent to debar by Statute the Secretary of State from appointing a Member who had been absent for five years, but so far as the practice is concerned—and I do not hesitate to say that so far as I am concerned myself it is a practice I should desire to follow—the interval of absence should not, if possible, be more than two or three years.
My Lords, I have made it, I hope, clear that certain statutory changes would be required to carry out these reforms to which I have alluded. There is a great deal in the Act of 1858 which might be left to be done by rules in the Office instead of being imposed upon us by an Act of Parliament; but it is quite possible that it may be thought not worth while, as the
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Act is there with all its detail, to repeal small or unimportant details of such a kind except where their existence can be shown to be actually obstructive to business or likely to interfere with any general improvement in the way business is conducted. But I hope that public attention, so far as interest can be generally taken in such matters, will be directed to the subject, and I can only say that I myself shall welcome any criticism or any fresh ideas which those who are so interested may feel able to bring forward. The sole object which any of us can have in view is to improve, and so far as may be perfect, the machinery by which the daily and sometimes almost the hourly intercourse between those who represent the Imperial Parliament and those who control the actual government of our great Eastern Empire is carried on. Nobody on any side, I am glad to think, has any axe to grind in such matters as these, and no Party considerations of any kind enter into it. I hope, therefore, that general assistance will be forthcoming when I am able to produce a measure, as I hope to do next session, which as noble Lords will see will not be by any means of a long or elaborate character, to carry out the reforms which I have indicated.
On the single point that the noble Viscount opposite mentioned, that of any alteration in the relations between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy, except so far as those relations may be affected by possible changes in the procedure or methods under which the Council works I can assure the noble Viscount that none such are in contemplation. I have already stated that the relations between the Government of India and myself are of the most happy and harmonious character; and although, of course, suggestions may be made for improvement of methods at that end as well as this, we have no formal propositions of any kind to make which would alter the relations between the two Departments, the one in India and the other in Whitehall.
LORD MACDONNELL OF SWINFORD: Might I ask the noble Marquess for an explanation upon one point, whether the attachment of a Member of his Council to a department of his Office will be of the same character as the attachment of a Member of the Viceroy's Council to a department of the Government of India?

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In other words, is a Member of the Council of India to be in charge of the department with power to pass orders on matters of ordinary importance, reserving matters of serious importance for the decision of the Secretary of State in Council?
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I am sure the noble Lord will forgive me if I do not attempt to go into anything like detail. My general impression is that the relations between the particular department and the Member of Council would not be quite so close or so formal as those which exist in the case of the Viceroy's Council. The Secretary to the department would, of course, have precisely the same direct access to the Secretary of State that he enjoys at present. I should look rather to a system of general co-operation than to anything which could be described as the passing of orders, which the noble Lord has mentioned.
THE EARL OF CROMER: My Lords, it would manifestly be impossible to discuss now the very important statement which the noble Marquess has made, but there was one point to which he alluded to which I think your Lordships listened with great pleasure—that is, that the proposals of reorganisation solely concern the India Office, and that there is no intention of altering the statutory relations between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy. Although there has been no statutory alteration since 1858, in practice the relations between the Viceroy and the Secretary of State have unquestionably a great deal altered in recent years; and one point is frequently forgotten in connection with these matters—namely, that directly the telegraph was established it was inevitable there should be certain changes in practice. I heard with great
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satisfaction the noble Marquess say that there was no intention of making any statutory alteration in those relations.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: I am sure the noble Marquess will not expect us to make any comment to-day on the interesting statement he has made. I quite share the feeling expressed by Lord Cromer. I gather that the changes which the noble Marquess has adumbrated cannot be introduced at this moment, and I will therefore not add anything except that we shall most carefully consider his statement.
House adjourned at Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.