Lords Sitting of 15 August 1919

Preamble
The House met at twelve of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Hubert Murray, Lord Bishop of OXFORD—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

WOMENS ROYAL AIR FORCE.
EARL STANHOPE: My Lords, I beg to make the Motion which stands in my name on the Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Farrer be added to the Select Committee of Inquiry on Miss Violet Douglas-Pennant.—(Earl Stanhope.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PROFITEERING BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

LONDONDERRY PORT AND HARBOUR BILL. [H.L.]
Message from the Commons, That they agree to this Bill with Amendments.
The said Amendments considered and agreed to.

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT BILL.
Message from the Commons, That they agree to the Amendment made by the Lords to the Commons Amendment to one of the Lords Amendments; that they insist on one of their Amendments to which the Lords have disagreed, but propose to amend the words so restored to the Bill.
Moved, That the Commons Amendment be now considered.—(The Earl of Lytton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
[The references are, to Bill (96) as first printed for the House of Lords.]

LORDS AMENDMENT.
After Clause 19, insert the following new clause:
Rates Advisory Committee.
—(l) For the purpose of giving advice and assistance to the Minister with respect to and for
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safeguarding any interests affected by any directions as to rates, fares, tolls, dues, and other charges or special services, a committee shall be appointed consisting of six persons, one being an impartial person (who shall be chairman) nominated by the Railway and Canal Commission, two being representatives of trading interests nominated by the chairman for the time being of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, one being a representative of agricultural interests nominated by the chairman for the time being of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, and two being representatives of labour interests nominated by the chairman for the time being of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress together with, if deemed advisable, one additional member who may at the discretion of the Minister be nominated from time to time by him.
(2) Before directing any revision of any rates, fares, tolls, dues, or other charges, or of any special services, the Minister shall refer the matter to the committee for their advice, and they shall report thereon to him, and where such revision is for the purpose of an increase in the net revenue of any undertakings which the Minister determines to be necessary, the committee shall also advise as to the best methods of obtaining such increase from the different classes of traffic, having due regard to existing contracts and the fairness and adequacy of the methods proposed to be adopted. Before prescribing the limits of rates, tolls, or charges in connection with a new transport service established under section nine of this Act, the Minister shall refer the matter to the committee for their advice.
(3) The committee before reporting or advising on any matters referred to them under this section, shall, unless in their discretion they consider it unnecessary or undesirable to do so, give such public notice as they think best adapted for informing persons affected of the date when and the place where they will inquire into the matter, and any persons affected may make representations to the committee, and, unless in their-discretion the committee consider it unnecessary, shall be heard at such inquiry, and, if the committee in their discretion think fit, the whole or any part of the proceedings at such inquiry may be open to the public:
Provided that, for the purpose of this provision, the council of any city, borough, burgh, county, or district shall be deemed to be persons affected in any case where such council or any persons represented by them may be affected by any such proposed revision as aforesaid.
(4) The committee shall hear such witnesses and call for such documents and accounts as they think fit, and shall have power to take evidence on oath, and for that purpose any member of the committee may administer oaths.
(5) There shall be paid out of moneys provided by Parliament to all or any of the members of the committee such salaries or other remuneration as the Minister, with the consent of the Treasury, may determine.
(6) For the purposes of this section, specia services means the services mentioned in section five of the schedule to the orders relating to railway rates and charges, and in the corresponding sections of the schedules to the orders relating to canal tolls, rates and charges confirmed by various Acts passed in the years eighteen hundred

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and ninety-one to eighteen hundred and ninety four.
The Commons agreed with this Amendment, but proposed the following Amendment:
In line 5 of the Amendment leave out from ("off") to ("together") in line 13, and insert ("five persons, one being a person of experience in the law (who shall be chairman) nominated by the Lord Chancellor, two being representatives of trading and agricultural interests nominated by the Board of Trade, one being a representative of transportation interests nominated by the Minister, one being a representative of labour interests nominated by the Minister of Labour").
The Lords disagreed with the Commons Amendment to their Amendment:
The Commons now propose to amend their Amendment with which the Lords have disagreed, as follows:
In line 7 of the Amendment, after ("Trade") insert ("after consultation with the interest concerned"), and in line 10 of the Amendment, at end insert ("after consultation with the interests concerned").
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, the Amendment of your Lordships which the Commons have refused to accept is that relating to the composition of the Rates Committee. The Commons have insisted on their Amendment, but have proposed a further Amendment thereto by inserting "trade" in line 7, and after "Labour" in line 9 the words "after consultation with the interests concerned." This Amendment was put in for the purpose of meeting the point raised by my noble friend Lord Emmott. I understand, however, that the words proposed by the Commons are considered too vague in character, and I therefore propose that the Lords agree with the Commons Amendment but propose a further Amendment thereto as follows: After "with" in the first Commons Amendment insert "the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the Central Chamber of Agriculture, and other;" and after "Labour" insert" after consultation with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress and other." The clause will then be as follows—
… five persons, one being a person of experience in the law (who shall be chairman) nominated by the Lord Chancellor, two being representatives of trading and agricultural interests nominated by the Board of Trade 'after consultation with the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the Central Chamber of Agriculture, and other interests concerned, one being a representative of transportation interests nominated by the Minister of Labour after
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consultation with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and other interests concerned."
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the Said Amendment, but propose the following further Amendment thereto: After ("with") in the first. Commons Amendment, insert ("the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the Central Chamber of Agriculture, and other"); after ("with") in the second Commons Amendment, insert. ("the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and other").—(The Earl of Lytton.)
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, this Amendment is an attempt on the part of the Government to put into form something of the spirit of the Amendment suggested yesterday by my noble friend below the gangway. I do not know precisely what my noble friend who sits near me (Lord Midleton) will say in respect of it, but at any rate. I will merely say (as my noble friend is now in his place) that I ant extremely grateful to the noble Earl for having considered the point so carefully as he has done in having it put in the proposed form.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: I have had the advantage of seeing outside the words which the noble Earl proposes to insert. There is no question that we disagree in principle with the course the Government have taken. We want a democratic and not a bureaucratic nomination of this committee. We view with great suspicion in this Bill, as in a great many others, the tremendous extension of the bureaucratic power that has been made in the last fortnight or three weeks. Particularly have we suspicion of the manner in which the Government have appointed various committees, composed of men bearing distinguished names, whose recommendations have been entirely ignored. Those committees were there to advise the Ministers, but I can give instance after instance where their advice has been ignored completely; they have been told that their advice is confidential, and the public has lost the whole value of their work. That being so, we had hoped that the Government on this occasion, making so large a demand upon us with regard to this committee, would have consented to its being nominated outside. But, seeing the difference that has arisen between the two Houses on the question and the great importance that the Govern

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ment attach to the matter, we feel that by the introduction of the proposed words there will at least be some security for the independence of the committee; therefore, I am sure that my noble friends on this side will agree with me that our only course is to assent to what the noble Earl has proposed.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and Bill returned to the Commons.

PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment. Then (Standing Order XXXIX having been suspended) Bill read 3a and passed.

WELSH CHURCH (TEMPORALITIES) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Viscount Peel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF KINTORE in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
Clause 4:
Further provisions as to welsh ecclesiastical property.
4.—(1) The Welsh Commissioners may postpone the transfer under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, of any property vested in them to any person or body of persons, whether corporate or unincorporate, other than the representative body and such person or body of persons shall not be bound to accept the transfer of any such property until the Secretary of State so directs; and so long as any tithe rentcharge which was previously attached to a benefice remains vested in the Welsh Commissioners, the Welsh Commissioners shall be deemed to be the owners of a tithe rentcharge attached to a benefice for the purposes of the Tithe Rentcharge (Bates) Act, 1899.
(2) If the Welsh Commissioners so agree with the representative body it shall be lawful for the Welsh Commissioners to buy and for the representative body to sell to them any of the tithe rent charge transferred to the representative body under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, at a price to be ascertained by the same method as that prescribed by the Tithe Act, 1918, for the payment of compensation for the redemption of tithe rentcharge; and the Welsh Commissioners may determine out of what part of the funds vested in them the purchase money payable for any such tithe rentcharge is to be paid and the tithe rentcharge when purchased shall be dealt with by the Welsh Commissioners in like manner as if it had been derived from the same source as the purchase money:
Provided that if the tithe rentcharge at the time of sale is subject to any existing interest it shall be discharged from that interest, and the representative body shall be liable to pay to the person entitled to the existing interest., so long as that interest would have continued, an annuity equal to the annual value of his interest therein ascertained in manner provided by the Fifth Schedule to the Welsh Church Act, 1914, and this Act.
(3) There shall be included in the property which the Welsh Commissioners are required by subsection (1) of section eight of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, to transfer to the representative body any tithe rentcharge derived from sources other than endowments of any ecclesiastical office or cathedral corporation in the Church in Wales, and not being Welsh ecclesiastical property, which has been appropriated since the year sixteen hundred and sixty-two to benefices in Wales and Monmouthshire,
LORD DYNEVOR LORD DYNEVOR moved, in subsection (3), after "transfer to the representative body," to insert "(a)," and at the end of the subsection to insert "and (b) all burial grounds." The noble Lord said: In moving these Amendments I would point out that their object is to save to the Church in Wales the ancient churchyards. These Amendment which I propose to take together as being the more convenient course—would place the ancient churchyards under the care of the Representative Church Body, and not, as they are under the original Act, under the care of the local authorities. All the existing burial rights are preserved. The reason, I believe, why the original Act took the ancient churchyards away front the Church was because in just a very few cases the incumbent had behaved foolishly and had ridden a rather high horse in regard to his rights over the churchyard. The cases, however, were really very few, and it is a drastic thing to put the whole of the ancient churchyards under the care of the local authorities. I cannot think of anything that is more likely to cause friction in the future. It would always be a matter of soreness with the members of the Church, and it would always rankle. I am not at all certain that the local authorities would give the necessary care to the maintenance of the ancient churchyards, especially when it came to raising a rate for their maintenance, and assuredly the local authorities would have to raise rates for their maintenance. The way to avoid friction in the future is to let the Church Representative Body have the control of these ancient churchyards in the same way they have, under the Act, the control of all the modern churchyards—that is, those churchyards that have been given to the

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church since 1662. The people who have boon put on the Church Representative Body are men of very wide experience and wide minded, and if any difficulties arose in the future I am quite sure that those representatives would put the matter straight at once and that there would be no difficulties in the future. In the past there have only been very few, and therefore I think in the future there would be none at all.
Amendments moved—
Page 3, line 35, after ("body") insert ("a") line 10, at end insert ("and (b) all burial grounds").—(Lord Dynevor.)
LORD CLWYD: The noble Lord opposite has referred to the possibility, if his Amendment is not accepted, of friction ensuing. I ant not going back to the past in regard to the history of this question, but on both sides those acquainted with that history will know that in the past there have been many difficulties and painful episodes in connection with this matter. All I wish to impress upon the Government from my standpoint is that this matter has been gone into very carefully quite recently by representatives of both sides, and, as was announced in the other House by Mr. Bonar Law, every effort has been made in order to reach what might be deemed a satisfactory understanding on the point. These efforts have failed, and, in my judgment, so far from avoiding friction and difficulty in the future, the passing of this Amendment would be the cause of further difficulty and friction. Upon these grounds, and in view of the fact that every effort has been made to settle the matter, I think the wisest and best course would be to let the understanding remain.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The two speeches we have just heard illustrate, I think, the difficulty that the Government is placed in by a proposition of this kind, because my noble friend opposite says that if the churchyards are left as they are and not banded over to the Representative Body there will be friction and trouble in the future, and my noble friend behind me says exactly the opposite, and that if a change is made there will also be friction and trouble. The position of the Government on this matter is really a very simple one. My noble friend knows that the greater number of the provisions of this Bill were arrived at after long and careful
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negotiations between the Welsh Members, the representatives of the Welsh Church, and the Government's representatives. This Bill therefore represents general agreement.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: They do not appear to have had all the facts before them.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I was not present at these conferences, and I really do not know. I should think if you have a number of Welsh Members and Welsh Bishops and representatives of the Government, that would be sufficient to ensure that all the facts were brought before them. I do not know if the noble Lord knows of any facts that were hidden or suppressed or not brought before them. I know the view the noble Marquess takes of the intelligence of the Welsh Bishops, which I do not share. These matters were discussed at great length, and I believe an arrangement was very nearly being arrived at on this question of the burial grounds, but unfortunately the negotiations finally broke down. No agreement has, therefore, been arranged, and the Government's position is that they can hardly accept an Amendment of this kind, which is outside the agreement, because it may upset the whole agreement which has already been arrived at. They cannot accept Amendments from one side or the other which would vary or alter the agreement. They could only accept Amendments which were the result of general agreement. Therefore, with great reluctance I am compelled on behalf of the Government to refuse to accept the Amendment moved by my noble friend opposite.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: We met representatives of the Government on several occasions. An Amendment was put forward to place all the churchyards belonging to the Church, both ancient and modern, under the control of a joint committee of equal numbers, the chairman to be appointed by the Home Secretary. That arrangement, however, was not carried through. I think my noble friend will bear me out that the attempt to get it through has certainly had a very good effect upon the situation, and I look forward with hopefulness to these difficulties being solved.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: It is a difficult position in which your Lordships find yourselves. If I may refer to the speech of

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the noble Lord who spoke second, I understood him to say that there had been hopes of a satisfactory arrangement being arrived at by the different parties to this painful controversy when the Bill was going through its stages in another place.
LORD CLWYD: I did not intend to convey that. There was no question of hope or otherwise expressed. I only referred to the fact that this conference had taken place, and that every possible avenue of settlement had been explored and had failed. In the circumstances I thought it was wisest to let the matter remain as it is.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I think the noble Lord used the words "satisfactory settlement"; at all events I understood him to do so, and I am going to point out that that rather implies—though perhaps he did not intend it—that the settlement which we find in existence is a satisfactory settlement. This question has not been before the House of Commons in the form of an Amendment. I am open to correction, but there was, as the Right Rev. Prelate has just stated, an Amendment on this subject down on the Order Paper of the House of Commons. When it was reached the Home Secretary asked that the Amendment be not pressed because there was a hope of a settlement being reached, and the Amendment was not pressed in the hope of a settlement. That settlement broke down, as we have just heard. Therefore the House of Commons has never yet on this Bill debated this question. It is perfectly true that another House of Commons debated this question, but I submit to your Lordships that it is not easy for us to rest with the rather easy assurance which is given by the right rev. Prelate that he hopes that in due course this matter will be settled. Settled how? By the introduction of another Bill? The right rev. Prelate shakes his head. How can a matter like this, which depends entirely on Statute, be settled by some local agreement? I suggest that it is not possible.
What are the merits of the case as we see it? Ancient churchyards have been in the custody of the Church in Wales throughout fifteen centuries, and against that custody is placed the assertion that in a certain number of cases there has been friction. I would venture to think they were comparatively few cases. The noble Lord who spoke second might think they were more numerous, but I am sure he would not say
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that in all of those cases there has been friction owing to the unwisdom of the local incumbent—sometimes owing to the unwisdom of the incumbent, and sometimes also owing to the aggression of those who had severed their connection with the Church of England. It is an extraordinarily strong step to take these churchyards away from the Church and to put them in the hands of the local authority, a purely secular body, dependent on the ratepayers, without any religious obligation whatever, except the individual religious obligation of members composing the local authority, and to take them away just at the moment when, by its action in Wales, the Church in Wales has shown with what wisdom and moderation it has composed its Representative Bodies.
If you do not insert this Amendment you are closing for ever, so far as the Statute Law of the Realm goes, not only the possibility of the Church retaining control of these churchyards which she has controlled, I venture to say, wisely and reverently for fifteen hundred years; but also the chance of having any share in the management, because the right rev. Prelate has told us that he does not look to any other amending Bill in the future. Therefore, I do submit that the case for putting in this Amendment, which, for the reason I have given, was never discussed in the House of Commons, is a very strong one. If it is carried and it becomes law, I have the greatest confidence that in the years to come no complaints will arise from those of our fellow-countrymen in Wales, who, unfortunately, from my point of view, have left the ministrations of the Mother Church, but they will admit the true reverence and broad-minded wisdom with which the Church Representative Body has carried out the great trust imposed upon it.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: I feel that it may be a little, I will not say presumptuous, but out of place for me to deal with the details of the matter, because my knowledge of the real working of the question in Wales, either in the past or what may be expected in the future, is very small. But I do think that the whole precedents of the working of the system whereby the Church retains control of the churchyards, though full freedom is allowed to other bodies, are all in favour of such a course as the Amendment of the noble

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Lord suggests. We go back nearly forty years to the legislation of 1880. I was then in a minority. I was not in this House of course, but I happened to be concerned in a subordinate capacity a good deal with the arrangements that were taking place both in this House and outside it. I remember the apprehensions aroused when the Burials Act of 1880 was passed—that if you left anything which should give to the authorities of the Church control over churchyards to which Nonconformists also were to have access, there would be all kinds of difficulties. The matter was met by the noble and learned Lord then on the Woolsack, the father of the noble Earl opposite, with a conclusive argument, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury supported the proposals of the Bill in the teeth of a great deal of apprehension which was then expressed as to the un workableness of it.
So far as I am aware, there is absolutely no body of opinion in England or Wales which will now say that what was then done was wrong. We are now trying to do very largely what was then done. I believe that nothing but good will ensue if, as the noble Earl said, we were to leave this matter to those on whom the responsibility has rested for centuries past. There is much evidence that they would invite co-operation from others in the practical working of it. The principle underlying the Amendment proposed by Lord Dynevor is one that I should like to support in the strongest way. What may be the action of the Government in the matter we must consider when that action is taken. I feel that the principle which the noble Lord has enunciated is one of high importance, and I believe that all precedents tend to show that it will work extremely well in practice.
LORD ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I want to say a word about the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne. It has always struck me, in the case of Wales, that you have got to consider the population from the point of view of things that have happened there in the past. The noble Earl, in the course of his speech, very frankly used the term "Church of England and those who had left it." As far as I have been able to understand, that has been the trouble in Wales. The question is, what is the Church of Wales? Many changes have taken place in the course of the history of the country and the result is the varied population which we have before us now.
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I really cannot see on what ground of logic or of justice it is possible to support this Amendment. It is all very well to speak of secularising graveyards. From the point of view of the Church to which I belong, such a thing as the secularisation of graveyards is one to which we object very strongly. Knowing Wales well, as I do, and I think the right rev. Prelate will bear me out, I say tat public life in Wales cannot be said to be a secular thing at all. Wales is, in a very peculiar sense, a religious country, and under whatever body the graveyards are placed in Wales, secularisation is not a term that can be applied to them. From the point of view of one who knows the country and who has studied the history of the country, I must oppose this Amendment.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just sat down has spoken, in terms with which I would not quarrel for a moment, of the strong religious character of the people in Wales. That I believe to be absolutely true, and it is a matter for which we ought to be profoundly thankful. But here is no suggestion of allowing these churchyards to be managed by other religious bodies in Wales. I would not, of course, be prepared to accept such a solution, though there would be something to be said for the noble Lord's argument if that had been the proposal. As the Act of 1914 stands, if no modification is introduced into it, these churchyards will be managed by a secular body—the parish council.
Let the noble Lord try and place himself if he will, and he is a liberal-minded man, in the position of Churchmen, whether in England or in Wales. Here are these churchyards, hallowed by every memory and every sacred feeling aroused when we walk across them. For centuries they have been the loving care of the religious body to which we belong. Henceforward they are to be handed over to the parish councils. We do not know how they will treat them. We can fancy the churchyards of the future right up to the door of the church, probably neglected, overgrown, ignored; and here we are ready ourselves to look after them as we have always done, not only in the interests of the Church but in the interests of all people, to whatever denomination they belong.
No doubt there have been scandals in the past, and Lord Clwyd will believe me when

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I say that no one more profoundly disapproves of the scandals than I do. All we ask is that the churchyards should be left. I am certain nobody on the Government Bench would wish it otherwise, and I am sure the noble Viscount in charge of the Bill in his heart would intensely desire that the churchyards should be left to the Church. Why then are they not? In the past every one of the noble Lords opposite have pleaded for it; and when we are giving up so much something might be given to us in return; especially as it was shown absolutely conclusively last night that the Church would have enjoyed all the money she is to get under this Bill even if the Bill had not been passed at all.
We ask that the churchyards should be left, and that the House of Commons should have an opportunity of reconsidering the point. We do not put it higher than that. I ask the Government, confidently, to allow this Amendment to go into the Bill so that the House of Commons may have an opportunity of considering it again. My noble friend Lord Selborne reminds me that, owing to the circumstances of the case, no blame is attached to any one; the House of Commons have never considered this point. There were certain negotiations I know. I profoundly loathe the word "negotiations" now—all sorts of things are given away in negotiations, and, generally speaking, it is the things that I care about which are given away. It so happens that our opponents are more persistent, or more courageous, than ourselves. I hope the Government will allow this Amendment to go into the Bill and thus give the House of Commons an opportunity of considering it.
VISCOUNT PEEL: May I be allowed to say one word more? The noble Marquess has raised a personal question, and if I had been at this conference myself I should have most vigorously fought for handing the churchyards over to the Representative Body. But this is not a personal question. It is a matter of general agreement. I only want to say 'two things. The first is, that I made clear the position of the Government, that they could not assent to the change proposed unless an agreement had been arrived at between the Welsh Members and the Welsh Bishops sitting in conference with the Government. I have listened carefully to the debate and I have not heard,
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even from the right rev. Prelate, The Bishop of Asaph, any statement indicating that if further negotiations went on there was much likelihood of some arrangement being arrived at.
The second point is with regard to the statement that the House of Commons never really did have an opportunity of deciding this question. I think they had an opportunity on the Report stage, because they could have pressed the matter then. They were told by the Government that no agreement had been arrived at between the parties to the issue, and that the Government, unless an agreement was arrived at, would be unable to accept such an agreement. The House of Commons, had they chosen, could have forced the issue. If the Amendment goes down to them they will hear again that no agreement has been arrived at, and will receive the same advice from the Government. I understand the noble Lord intends to press the Amendment but I can only repeat that, if your Lordships are successful, the Government will have to adopt the same position again in another place. They could not stand neutral; they could not let the House of Commons take its own view, and would be obliged to reaffirm the decision, that, an agreement not having been arrived at, they would be compelled to refuse the Amendment. That is the exact position and, therefore, your Lordships must take what course you think best.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 5 to 7 agreed to.
Clause 8:
Saving for divided parishes.
8. No parish situated in Wales or Monmouthshire and which is in an English diocese shall be deprived of the right of self-determination granted to border parishes by section nine, subsection (1), of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, by reason of its having been separated or divided off from a larger parish, situated partly in England and partly in Wales and Monmouthshire, if such separation has taken place subsequently to the year eighteen hundred and fifty.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The first Amendment on this clause is purely drafting. The words as they appear in the Bill, I am advised, mean nothing at all, and the Amendment carries out the intention of the clause.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 7, leave out from the beginning to the first ("of") in line 10, and insert ("Where an ecclesiastical parish which before the year eighteen hundred and fifty was situate partly in Wales or Monmouthshire and partly in England has since that year been divided into two ecclesiastical parishes, one of winch is situate wholly in Wales or Monmouthshire, and one wholly in England, and both those parishes are situated in an English diocese, then subsections (1) and (3) of section nine"),—(Viscount Peel.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The next Amendment is also a drafting one.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 10, leave out from ("1914") to the end of the clause, and insert ("(which relates to border parishes) shall apply to the ecclesiastical perish so situate wholly in Wales or Monmouthshire in like manner as if part thereof were situate in England").—(Viscount Peel.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.
LORD PHILLIMORE LORD PHILLIMORE had on the Paper an Amendment, after Clause 8, to insert the following new clause:
Subsection (5) of clause 3 of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, is hereby repealed, and in lieu thereof it is enacted as follows:—
It shall be lawful for the representative Church body acting on behalf of the Bishops and Clergy of the Church in Wales to request the Archbishop of Canterbury to be relieved from attendance in the Convocation of the Province and thereupon the Archbishop may relieve them from attendance, and so long as such request is not withdrawn it shall not be necessary for the Archbishop when summoning Convocation in obedience to the royal writ to include in his citation the several Bishops and Clergy of the Church in Wales.
The noble and learned Lord said: The primary object of my Amendment is to get rid of a subsection in the original Act, which is as follows—
"As from the date of Disestablishment the bishops and clergy of the Church in Wales shall cease to be members of or be represented in the Houses of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, but nothing in this Act shall affect the powers of those Houses so far as they relate to matters outside Wales and Monmouthshire."
From the time this subsection was enacted it has given great offence and been the occasion of much soreness of feeling. There have been times when I shared that soreness and when I thought that this subsection was put in the Act by the then majority of the House of Commons—your Lordships are guiltless of any responsibility in respect of it—out of pure arrogance and outre cuidance, as it were, a deter
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mination to stamp upon Church feeling; but reflection, and perhaps increasing age, has led me to suppose that a more charitable construction might be put upon the clause, and that it really represents a kind of meticulousness on the part of the Law Officers of the Crown, and, if I may say so, a certain clumsiness of thought and expression.
Convocation has, of course, two aspects. It is a body with a secular position and secular authority, and therefore liable to secular control. It can pass, with a license from the Crown and subsequent assent under the Great Seal, canons which will have within their limited sphere the force of law. It has still, though it is suspended since the time of Charles II, a power of taxation, and it has a specially authorised power of representation to the Crown in certain ecclesiastical matters. It is a body assembled by the King's Writ, addressed to the Archbishop, and it has therefore a side or form in which it is desirable and possible that Parliament, on such catastrophes happening as this Welsh Church Act, should deal with it. On the other hand Convocation is, as one of those canons which have the force of law says, the sacred synod of the province, and to say of the sacred synod of the province that it should be composed in this way or that, by the introduction or omission of certain bishops and clergy of certain dioceses, is nothing but an outrage upon the feelings of many Church people.
Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is a plant of tender growth, and if you touch it from outside you immediately create cases of conscience and impose a burden upon many honest and religious people. The clause is quite unnecessary in the form which it takes, and I invite your Lordships to take this opportunity of modifying it. It has been suggested to me, from more than one quarter, that it would be enough simply to repeal this subsection, and there is a good deal to be said for that, but I think it would leave the Crown lawyers and possibly the Archbishop in a certain amount of difficulty. We know that it is under consideration to establish a separate province for the Church in Wales, and as far as my humble opinion goes that might be a very desirable thing. I apprehend that without the consent of the Metropolitan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, such a thing could not legally be done according to Church law, but that with that consent, which I dare say would be fully and freely

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given, for the Welsh Church to establish itself as a separate province might be a very desirable thing.
As I am upon this matter, may I make a suggestion which is perhaps not quite germane to my Amendment, but which, as one who has given much study to this question during now a very long life, I should like to have an opportunity of ventilating. It is quite possible to have an ecclesiastical unit higher than a province. The Metropolitan, sometimes called the Archbishop, I take it presides over the province, but you may have an ecclesiastical unit higher than that presided over by a Primate. The Archbishop of Canterbury is Primate of all England, and the Archbishop of York Primate of England. They are Primates with only one province under them, but there are instances in Church history, and living instances, where provinces are grouped into larger units under a superior Archbishop, who may be very properly called a Primate. In the south of France, under the old Constitution before the Concordat arranged by Napoleon, such things were not unknown. The Archbishop of Bordeaux was Metropolitan of his province, but was subject to the Archbishop of Bourges, who was Primate of his province and also of Bordeaux, and there was an appeal from the Court of the Bishop to the Court of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and from the Court of the Archbishop of Bordeaux to the Court of the Archbishop of Bourges. In the same way I think the Archbishop of Aix was a Primate over several provinces. At this moment in Canada and Australia the Colonial Church has adopted an equally convenient arrangement. There are several provinces in Canada, but they all meet in one general Synod over which one of the Metropolitans, chosen for this purpose, presides, and in Australia, where it is desirable to combine recognition of State rights and to let each of the Colonies have their own province and Metropolitan, it is still felt desirable to unite the whole Church of Australia under one Archbishop who presides over the whole body.
I hope if the Church in Wales takes this step of forming itself into a province it will still recognise the primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or that if he is asked to part with any rights it will only be such as are necessary for their being a separate province. At the moment there is nothing in the Welsh Church Act
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separating the Welsh Bishops or Church from the Province of Canterbury, for which one may be thankful, but there is this provision separating them from the Convocation. It has been pointed out to me by a high authority that under the terms of the King's Writ, which I had not before me at the moment when drawing this Amendment, if they cease to be part of the province the Archbishop will not be bound to summon them, because the King's Writ does not dictate to the Archbishop who is in his province or what dioceses, but only desires him to summon the Bishops and clergy of his province. If, therefore, the Welsh Church should become a separate province this clause would be absolutely unnecessary, and might be simply repealed, but as they have not yet become a separate province, and as it is not certain, but most probable, that they will, I suggest that my Amendment had better stand and that it should proceed, after repealing the subsection, something in the language which I have proposed.
I venture to make two corrections in my proposed new clause which perhaps the noble Viscount will pardon me for making, considering the hurry in which this has necessarily been drawn up. The Lord Bishop of St. David's has informed me that the right word should not be "representative" Church body for this purpose, but the "governing" Church body. If that be so I propose to insert the word "governing" instead of "representative." I had also made this a kind of temporary provision. I had left it that as long as the Bishops requested not to be summoned, they should not be summoned, but I did that rather against my own feeling, and it has been pointed out to me that it would be very unwise to leave the matter in a state of suspense, and that the Bishops and Clergy of the Church in Wales had better go out of the Convocation of Canterbury once and for all, particularly as they might almost be embraced in the larger unit which I have suggested under a Primacy. Therefore I would cancel the words "so long as such request is not withdrawn." My Amendment would then read as follows—
"It shall be lawful for the governing Church body acting on behalf of the Bishops and Clergy of the Church in Wales to request the Archbishop of Canterbury to be relieved from attendance in the Convocation of the Province and thereupon the Archbishop may relieve them from attendance, and it shall not be necessary for the Archbishop when summoning Convocation in obedience to

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the royal writ to include in his citation the several Bishops and Clergy of the Church in Wales."
If that Amendment is carried all that, as I venture to suggest, is arrogantly and clumsily expressed in the original Act of Parliament will be attained, and at the same time the position of the Church as a spiritual body will be preserved.
It is possible, and indeed even likely, that this Amendment might be very greatly improved. I had to prepare it at very short notice. I can conceive another form in which it might be put. "If the Bishops and Clergy of the Church in Wales shall, with the consent of the Archbishop of Canterbury, form themselves into a new province, then it shall not be necessary for the Archbishop to summon them." I can conceive an Amendment somewhat of that kind, and if anyone proposes it now or hereafter, I shall be only too glad to submit to it. I will not weary your Lordships with details. I think that my clause is a workable one, and I do not think it will injure any feeling that ought to be considered, or any interest that ought to be considered. I cannot conceive it mattering two straws to any Nonconformist, and I cannot conceive it mattering to the Government, how this is expressed so long as it is effectually expressed; while on the other hand it will certainly recognise, as I feel sure your lordships would wish to recognise, the spiritual life of the Church. Therefore I commend it to your Lordships' notice.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 8, insert the said new clause—(Lord Phillimore.)
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: This is a really important matter, rather perhaps constitutional than practical, but it is, I think, very fortunate that an occasion has arisen for raising the points which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillimore, has so clearly and cogently put before your Lordships. The matter is not obviously part of what was within the original purview of this particular Bill, but it does give an opportunity for doing what I regard as most desirable, and I very cordially support the Amendment which the noble and learned Lord has moved. I wish to say a few words about it both on its constitutional and on its practical side.
As regards the constitutional question,
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there is no doubt at all that there is a very widespread and strong feeling among Churchmen both in England and in Wales as to the proceedings—the high-handed proceedings—which Parliament took in putting in this particular clause in the teeth of the objection which we expressed to it in the Act of 1914, and it was with a view to the reconsideration of that that the Select Committee of this House was appointed in June, 1914. They put in the forefront of their reference this very point. The reference was this—
"That a Select Committee be appointed to enquire and report whether the constitution of the Convocation of the Church of England has ever been altered by Act of Parliament without the assent and against, the protest of Convocation."
That reference led to the calling of a considerable amount of expert evidence before the Select Committee as to the constitutional bearing of this matter, and if any of your Lordships will be at the trouble to look at the evidence there given, there will be, I think, no doubt whatever in your minds that had that Committee been able to make a Report it must have stated quite specifically that there was no precedent whatever for the action which Parliament had at that moment provisionally taken. I dealt with it myself at some length, and with very considerable care, investigating the references and the authorities, and I may read a single sentence, namely—
"My point is that if you say the wishes of Convocation have been often protected or overridden by the action of Parliament, that does not cover the ground. Of course that has constantly happened. Parliament can do as it likes, but that is totally different from altering the constitution of Convocation. I do not say that there is anything that Parliament cannot do, but to alter the constitution of the body is absolutely without precedent and those facts as to overriding its wishes in other matters will be no precedent for the alteration of its constitution, least of all for the alteration of its constitution in the teeth of its own protest."
That was what I myself said. But what was much weightier than that was the evidence, of the high constitutional authorities who were unanimous in saying that there was no precedent for the action Parliament was taking in acting contrary to Convocation's own wish, and in reconstituting Convocation according to act of Parliament. I do not want to assume any undue or almost ludicrous authority for Convocation, but it is older than Parliament, and goes back before the con

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stitution either of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords. That Parliament should say in a light and easy way—I am not pressing the point to a fantastic degree—" We propose to alter the constitution "is a thing which is absolutely without precedent.
As has been already said by the noble and learned Lord, I cannot conceive who are the people who would be likely to take any exception to this change. It cannot be supposed for a moment that there is a desire on the part of Nonconformists in Wales or England that something should be done unnecessarily to hamper the freedom of action of the Church in England or Wales as regards its own religious gatherings and its own relations to fellow Churchmen on the other side of the Border. If a Constitutional question is raised as to the exact position of a non-established body which desires to have membership in the Convocation then it will be for the two bodies themselves in England and Wales to settle what they themselves desire to do. I venture to think that the initiative ought on every possible precedent and for every reason to come from them in the matter. Therefore, without fear or doubt, I claim that we have a right to ask that the constitutional wrong which was, I think, perpetrated when that clause was passed should be set right by the matter being placed in the position in which the noble and learned Lord's amendment would place it.
Having said that, I want to say that the question is really a constitutional rather than a practical one, because as a matter of practical fact the thing which the Act of Parliament would desire to bring about, though in an erroneous way, is as far as we can at present judge practically certain to be brought about without any interference of Parliament. At this moment I have been for some time in communication with the bishops and others in the Welsh portion of what is now the Province of Canterbury as to what is to happen after Disestablishment, and, as the matter is causing very wide interest, I venture to ask your Lordships to allow me to read to the House a formal letter which I wrote, which has received some little publicity, but very little, but which is really of very wide general interest in the Church, and is entirely germane to what we are now discussing. It is a letter to the Bishop of St. Asaph, written on May 24. The letter is as follows—
My dear Bishop of St. ASAPH,
I have received your very important letter in which, as Chairman of the Governing Body of the Church of England in Wales, you ask for my counsel respecting the future relation of the four Welsh Dioceses to the rest of our present Province of Canterbury. You are aware that I have continuously on behalf of our English Bishops pressed upon you and your Welsh Brethren in the Episcopate the assurance of our simple wish to be guided by your wishes and the wishes of the Church in Wales as regards the relation of the Church in Wales after Disestablishment to the Province of Canterbury and its Convocation. We have learnt to value the presence of our four Welsh brethren so highly that the loss to us would be very great if or when they leave our Convocation House, and I am certain that the same feeling is entertained in the Lower House. I have protested publicly and privately against the proposed statutory enactment interfering, without any consultation with us, with the existing Constitution of Convocation. I have pointed out in my evidence before the Select Committee of 1914 and elsewhere the wrongness of such Parliamentary action and its unconstitutional character.
On the other hand, if, as seems now to be the case, the disestablishment of the four Dioceses must unhappily be regarded as a fait accompli to take effect after the war, we have to consider what ought in future to be the position of your four Dioceses. I have, as I think you know, taken counsel on the subject with most of our English Bishops, as well as with all the Welsh Bishops, and I am prepared to say that I have the support of, at the very least, the great majority of them in expressing my deliberate opinion that it will conduce to the happy and orderly working of the whole Church in England and Wales if by our own joint action a separate Province be formed for Wales: indeed, I cannot help fearing that sinless this be done there is some danger of confusion, and even chaos, in the arrangements for the future. We shall hope in every possible way to retain the close followship in thought and action which has subsisted between the Bishops in the English and the Welsh Dioceses: but constitutionally the formation of a new Province will, as I believe, be essential to due orderliness and smoothness of working.
If I had reason to believe that this advice ran counter to the deliberate opinion of the bishops, clergy, and laymen who have been devising a new Constitution for the Church in Wales I should feel more hesitation than I do in giving you the advice which I here tender. Most gladly will I confer with you and with your colleagues in the Welsh Sees if you so desire. But the power and the resource which have been shown by the Welsh Church in the construction of its new arrangements seem to make it improbable that if once your decision be adopted you will be in need of any help at our hands. Whatever we can do with you and for you at this juncture in our history is wholly at your service, and I repeat that we are not going to allow the legal severance of some of the formal bonds which at present unite us to impair in the smallest degree the fellowship of the deeper kind which will continue to unite us in things spiritual.
I am, yours very truly,
(Signed) RANDALL CANTAUR.
I apologise for troubling your Lordships with that letter. It really is important in the Church's view that the matter should be understood as it stands to-day. Therefore it makes it the more natural that such an Amendment as the noble and learned Lord proposes should not be objected to or thrown out. It is not effecting any change which is not otherwise likely to be brought about, but it is making the whole procedure move in a constitutional way instead of an unconstitutional way, and it is, from the Churchman's point of view, safeguarding the privileges and the rights of the most ancient deliberative body in this country. I have reason to believe that all is likely to go forward in the direction of producing the result which is here aimed at, and I venture to hope that this Amendment will be carried, because I think it will smooth away certain constitutional difficulties which have arisen. It would smooth certain ruffled, and not unnaturally ruffled, feelings on the part of Churchmen who are deeply interested in this constitutional question, and I can conceive no one to whom the passing of that Amendment could do the slightest harm, or who could legitimately take exception to its operation.
LORD ASHBOURNE: The noble Marquess was quite right when he kindly assumed that I am of a liberal mind, and I always try to put myself in the position of other people. The difficulty in this case has been all along the number of people with whom you have to put, yourself in sympathy when you come to deal with Wales. But on this particular question I had intended to speak strongly against the Amendment, and I want your Lordships to bear in mind the reason, though I do not press it now as an argument exactly. All through the history of the Church in Wales, not merely since the Reformation (and there is a good deal of conflict about the time of the Reformation—a great many Welshmen did not accept it) all through history since the Normano-Saxon invasion the Church in Wales has not always been the Church of the People but it has always been governed from abroad.
The noble Viscount in charge of the Bill used the expression "extreme provincial feeling." What he calls provincialism we call nationalism, and there is a great deal of difference between them. The thought I had in my mind when I first read this Amendment was this. I have had a good deal of experience in dealing with ecclesias-
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tics in my own church, among other places, and I have come to the conclusion that when you are up against a principle of such a kind that the ecclesiastical body cannot in decency yield you have to treat it as you would treat traditionally a small boy when you want to teach him to swim—throw him into the water and see how he will get on, because he will probably find a way out. I was going to act upon that principle, but as the question is put now, and after the discussion we had the other day over the Enabling Bill, when I was glad to do what I could to help it, I certainly think there is reasonable ground for allowing this thing to work out or: ecclesiastical lines.
It is not really a matter which will interest the Nonconformists in Wales. You will not get them to protest one way or the other. I am saying this because I feel that at the bottom of their hearts my Welsh friends will agree with me that the strength of the Church in Wales in the future may lie in its having a chance for the first time in its history of being a thoroughly Welsh Church. I have a sort of feeling that, realising this, they will make use to the full of the powers which are given to them in the Amendment which is now proposed. For that reason I support the Amendment.
VISCOUNT PEEL: Possibly my noble and learned friend who moved this Amendment will discharge me from the duty of dealing with the charges of outre cuidance and arrogance which he brought against the draftsman of the Bill. I have never heard the crime of outre cuidance very carefully defined, and I need not say very much upon this Amendment, because the most rev Primate has dealt with it far more fully than I am capable of doing. I wish to lay stress on only one point. He did state that really the question was not one of very great practical importance, because I understand that the Church in Wales has intended to form itself into a separate province. If it does that there is really no need to give it the power not to attend Convocation any longer, because apparently it cannot be called upon to do so, as, in the terms of summons to Convocation, the words are—
"At all convenient speed in lawful manner to call together all and singular the Bishops of your Province."
I suppose it is clear that, if the Bishops are not "of your Province," you cannot under this Writ call them together.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Hear, hear.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I was not sure what meaning my noble friend attributed to it. He said that the Archbishops would not be bound to call them together, suggesting rather that he might call them together. I was advised that he could only do what he was entitled to do under the Writ of Summons, and that therefore he could not call them together.
LORD PHILLIMORE: May I say that we are dealing with two different things. If the Welsh Church ceases to be part of the Province the matter is simple. All that is then necessary is to repeal the offensive subsection which compels people to do that which they may do but which they ought not to be compelled to do. But if they are still part of the Province, then the Archbishop would have to summon them all. If they are not part of the Province he cannot summon them.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I really think that the noble and learned Lord agrees with the statement I was putting forward
LORD PHILLIMORE: Hear, hear.
VISCOUNT PEEL: On the assumption that they are going to form themselves into a separate Province and cannot be summoned to Convocation, the question then really has no practical importance—I lay stress on the word "practical." I am not sure how the Amendment as altered—
LORD PHILLIMORE: I have altered the word "representative" into "governing," because I understand that is correct.
VISCOUNT PEEL: But the words "the Archbishop may relieve them from attendance" remain in?
LORD PHILLIMORE: Then I cancelled a word making it temporary only.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The words "the Archbishop may relieve them from attendance" remain in?
LORD PHILLIMORE: Yes, and "it shall not be necessary."
VISCOUNT PEEL: I am obliged to the noble and learned Lord. I was only going to suggest to my noble and learned friend
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that if you are going to give complete freedom to the Welsh Church, ought you not to say "the Archibishop shall relieve them?"
LORD PHILLIMORE: Would the noble Viscount like me to say at once what the objection to that is? That is, again, Parliament dictating to the Archbishop what he is to do in a spiritual matter.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I thought that would probably be the answer of my noble and learned friend. I put it forward merely because it was suggested to me, although I felt the force of the objection that would be made. As to accepting the Amendment the position, therefore, is this. The provision in the Act of 1914 could not have effect for very long; but the difference, I understand, is that the Welsh Church says (if I may use the vernacular) "We do not want to be pushed out; we want to have the right to go out if we want to do so. We do not think that the State has the right to say to us on a point of this kind that we shall go out." That is the short point.
I am not exactly clear as to the relation of this particular Amendment to the agreement of which I have spoken. It appears to stand rather outside it. But, as has been pointed out, there does not seem any real reason to think that this would excite any particular susceptibilities in any quarter; and although I cannot accept the Amendment I am ready, with your Lordships concurrence, not to oppose its going in. I will go further and discuss the matter with the authorities and ask them whether I can allow it to stand.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9:
LORD DYNEVOR: My Amendment on this clause is purely consequential.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, after line 18, insert the following new subsection:
(2) The provisions of the Welsh Church Act, 1914, specified in the first column of the Schedule to this Act are hereby repealed to the extent mentioned in the second column of that Schedule."—(Lord Dynevor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD DYNEVOR: The next Amendment is also consequential.
Amendment moved—
Insert the following Schedule:

SCHEDULE.

4 & 5 Geo. 5, c. 91.

Extent of Repeal.

Section 8

In paragraph (a) (vii) of subsection (1) the words ("and not being a burial ground")

Paragraph (a) (viii) of subsection (1)

Paragraph (b) of subsection (1).

Section 19

In subsection (1) the words ("and burial grounds")

Section 24

Subsections (3) and (4).

—(Lord Dynevor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Title:
An Act to continue in Office the Welsh Commissioners appointed under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, to postpone the date of disestablishment, and to make further provision with respect to the temporalities of, and marriages in, the Church in Wales.
THE LORD CHAIRMAN: I think there must now be some alteration in the Title.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved, in the last line but one of the Title, after "the" to insert "constitution and." The noble Marquess said: In order to bring the Title into conformity with the Amendment of the noble and learned Lord that has just been passed, the words proposed in my Amendment will have to be inserted.
Amendment moved—
Title, line 4, after ("the") insert ("constitution and").—(The Marquess of Salisbury)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Title, as amended, agreed to.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I think it will be convenient to take the remaining stages of this Bill now, as we do not propose to sit to-morrow.
Then (Standing Order No. XXXIX having been suspended) Amendments reported; Bill read 3a and passed, and returned to the Commons.
[The sitting was suspended at half-past one o'clock and resumed at a quarter past two.]

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT BILL
Returned from the Commons with the Lords Amendment to the Commons Amendment agreed to.

ROYAL COMMISSION.
The following seventy-two Bills received the Royal Assent—

Consolidated Fund (No. 2).

War Loan.

National Health Insurance.

Merchant Shipping (Wireless Telegraphy).

Expiring Laws Continuance.

Retired Officers (Civil Employment).

Restoration of Pre-War Practices (No. 3).

Education (Compliance with Conditions of Grants).

Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland).

Government of Soudan Loan.

Government War Obligations.

Police.

Ministry of Transport.

West Indian Court of Appeal.

Checkweighing in Various Industries.

Coal Mines.

Commons Regulation (Coity Wallia) Provisional Order.

Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders.

Electric Lighting Provisional Order.

City of London Police.

Gas and Water Provisional Order.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 1).

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2).

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3).

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 4).

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 5).

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 6).

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 7).

Wells Particular Baptist and Congregational Chapels Charities

National Trust Charity.

Brooke Robinson Museum Charity.

Congregational Chapels Charities.

Eatington Wesleyan Methodist Chapel Property.

Plumptre Hospital Charity.

Headcorn Baptist Chapel Charity.

Tramways Provisional Orders.

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Dundee Harbour and Tay Ferries Order Confirmation.

Greenock Port and Harbour Order Confirmation.

Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders.

Newark Gas.

Stockton-on-Tees Corporation.

Stocksbridge Gas.

Waterford Harbour.

Nuneaton Corporation.

Poole Corporation.

London County Council (Money).

Manchester Ship Canal.

Rotherham Corporation.

Bournemouth Gas and Water.

Sheffield Corporation.

Birmingham Corporation Tramways.

Blackpool Improvement.

East Ham Corporation.

Leeds Corporation.

London Electric Railway.

Shoreham-by-Sea Urban District Council.

Tynemouth Corporation.

West Hartlepool Corporation.

Middlesbrough Corporation.

Workington Corporation.

Tyne Improvement.

Huddersfield Corporation Gas.

Dover Gas.

Pembroke Gas.

Bedwellty Urban District Council.

Birmingham Corporation.

Milford Docks.

Stretford Urban District Council.

Londonderry Port and Harbour.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corporation (Rates).

Clowes Settled Estates.

Boland's Divorce.

PROFITEERING BILL.
Standing Order No. XXXIX having been suspended,
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (VISCOUNT MILNER): My Lords, I will not pretend that the Bill of which I have the honour to move the Second Reading is one of a class of measures for which, personally, I have any very great affection. I do not suppose that it is one for which the majority of your Lordships have any great affection, and you will not be particularly reconciled to it by my saying that it is an emergency measure, a temporary measure; a measure to meet
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very exceptional circumstances. Arguments of that kind have been used so very often during the last four or five years in defence of a great number of unpopular though necessary laws and regulations, that people generally are getting a bit tired of them. But, my Lords, an argument may be threadbare, it may be tiresome, but it may still be right, and that is the case in this instance. It is an exceptional measure, an emergency measure, a rough and ready remedy, but it is for a very great evil which it is impossible for any Government to ignore and with which, I believe, it would be impossible for any Parliament not to attempt to deal.
I feel, my Lords, that our controversies at the present time would be less acrimonious, and that public discontent would be much less general, if only the people would realise how extraordinarily abnormal the conditions all over the world in respect of industry and commerce are at the present time, how dislocated trade still is throughout the world, how little we can rely upon the operation of those economic forces which in ordinary circumstances would come into play, to check anything like excessive profits. People put up with everything during the war. At the present time they are, quite naturally, much less patient of restrictive laws and regulations; but it was not so much the war as the economic disturbances consequent upon the war which rendered interference with individual liberty and with private enterprise, and innumerable restrictions upon trade and business, inevitable. That great economic disturbance throughout the world still remains. In places anarchy reigns supreme, and production is practically stopped. There are other countries where production is crippled to an unprecedented degree owing to various causes which are the result of the war. Transportation is crippled on land, and even transportation by sea, although somewhat recovering at the present time, is very far from being equal to meeting all requirements. There is a scramble for shipping, to-day, almost as great as ever there was, and above all, last but by no means least, there is the absolute chaos of the exchanges. What that means it would take me too long to attempt to explain to your Lordships, but there is no business man who does not realise how the dislocation of the exchanges in all the principal countries of the world, and the constant changes which are occurring, disturb and impede business to an extent

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which is absolutely unprecedented in the history of the world.
These are only some of the causes of the disturbance which lead to the crippling of production and impede the free flow of goods, and which afford exceptional opportunities for the speculator and the unscrupulous trader to enrich himself at the expense of the community. My Lords, do not let me be supposed to hold out the hope that anything we can do by this measure, or otherwise, will lead rapidly to a general fall of prices. Prices are high and will continue high from causes beyond all human control. There is a general scarcity of almost all articles of common and necessary use, and no wonder—it would be a miracle if it were otherwise. For four or five years the productive energies of the world, enormously increased no doubt by the stimulus of the war, have been devoted very largely to the creation of engines of destruction. Wealth, by millions and millions, has been destroyed or blown into the air. Labour has been diverted from the production of useful and necessary articles of all kinds.
Prices are, of course, high. The supply of all the articles which the world most wants is for the reasons which I have given, short of the demand, and there is no way out of this position, at least there is no sound and enduring way, except one, and that is the multiplication of goods, strenuous labour directed into the right channels—directed to the production of food, houses, ships, machinery, and all articles of use and necessity to the great body of the people, not of luxuries or things which we can largely do without. That is the only real and ultimate remedy, but that will take time. I need not say that the general slackness in respect of work—very natural, we must admit, after the strain of past years, but which I think it is about time to put a stop to—the general slackness and constant unfortunate interruptions of work owing to industrial disturbances are checking, delaying, and may fatally prejudice the recovery for which we are all longing and looking, and which in any case, as I have said, can only be a slow and gradual recovery. Unless these things can be by some means stopped there may be no recovery at all.
I say, then, with regard to the general high prices, that there are reasons for them which it is beyond human power to deal with. But here we must distinguish from this high tableland of prices, if I may
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use that expression. Above this level, so much above the level to which we were accustomed in former years, there stand out certain peaks of excessive dearness. There are quite a number of articles of common use and consumption—for instance, many articles of clothing—which, judged not by the pre-war standard but by the very much higher standard of prices to which we are unfortunately now accustomed, still appear startlingly dear. Again, in almost all articles among goods of the same kind there are between place and place and between trader and trader extraordinary divergences of price. These facts are notorious, and they have engendered a widespread suspicion that there are nefarious influences at work. They have caused something like fury- among large sections of the people who are convinced that they are being robbed. They may be quite wrong—in many cases no doubt they are wrong—and their suspicions may be unfounded. Investigation will show that in many cases there are really exceptional reasons—difficulties of transportation, exceptional price of labour, a hundred causes—which may justify these prices that appear so startingly high.
I say that in many cases these suspicions may be wrong, but in many they may be right; anyway there is a case for inquiry. It is that inqury which the Government feel it their duty to undertake, and to undertake instantly. No matter what people may say to us about hurried legislation, the need for prompt legislation is great, for there is going to be a regular rebellion against these high prices, as there have been rebellions in other countries all over the world, unless people can be shown that there is good reason for them, or that where there is no good reason an attempt at any rate is being made to curb them. It is with this work of inquiry that the Bill starts. If your Lordships will look at Clause 1, subsection (1), you will see that the Bill empowers the Board of Trade to investigate prices, costs, and profits at all stages, and for that purpose by order to require any person to appear before them, and to furnish such information and produce such documents as they may require. That is enforced in a subsequent clause by the Board of Trade having power to require any person appearing before them to give evidence on oath. No doubt the most important exercise of this power may be to insist on the production of trade books.

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This power of a general inquiry into the costs determining the range of prices in certain industries is the keynote of the whole Bill. We want to get at the truth about these extraordinary prices, and surely, my Lords, this will be all to the good, whatever the result. In some cases no doubt it will be shown that a trade or a section of a trade is exposed to exceptional disabilities, and has, owing to the circumstances of the time, to which I have referred, to contend with exceptional difficulties which justify these apparently outrageous prices. In that case it is only fair to the people engaged in the trade that the fact should be established, and should be established by an impartial authority. The public will be more satisfied, and the honest trader will no longer be exposed to injurious suspicion. That alone will surely be a valuable—though as far as the effect on our pockets is concerned it may be a negative—result, but it will be a valuable result as affecting not only fairness to individuals but the general state of public feeling.
Some relief will be afforded to the general tension when it is shown that there are cases—no doubt there will be many cases—where people have been under the impression that they have been robbed and where it will be shown to have been a wrong impression. But in the opposite case if it turns out—as I have no doubt whatever that it will turn out in some cases—that the public really is being grossly exploited, then no one surely will contend that we ought to sit down under such a state of things. Action will be called for, and action in that case will be justified, because it will be based on thorough knowledge. Here let me just say, lest anybody should think that we were going in for a wide and indiscriminate inquisition into the price of every sort of article, that this Act is limited in its application, by subsection (7) of Clause 1, "to any article or class of articles to which it is applied by order of the Board of Trade, being an article or class of articles declared by the order to be one or one of a kind in common use by the public, or being material, machinery, or accessories used in the production thereof."
We cannot hope, we do not attempt, to deal with all the innumerable articles of commerce. The purchasers of luxuries, of goods other than the common necessaries of life, must look after themselves. One
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would like to stop all exploitation, but there is a limit to what is practicable. The great object is to prevent people of all classes from being plundered in their attempts to supply themselves with the common necessaries of life.
But the power given by the Bill to the Board of Trade is not limited to investigation, nor, as I have said, would any one wish that it should be a case of exploitation had been clearly made out. The Bill accordingly goes on to provide in Clause 1 (1) that the Board of Trade shall have power to receive and investigate complaints that a profit is being made which in view of all the circumstances is unreasonable, and on any such complaint they may by order either dismiss the complaint or declare the price which would yield a reasonable profit, and require the seller to repay to the complainant any amount paid by the complainant in excess of such price. This is what I may call the disgorging clause, and it is no doubt, from the point of view of the general public, the most interesting provision of the Bill (I do not think myself that it is really the most important) and the one which is most likely to be of immediate application. It is clear that the investigations on a large scale into the operation of big branches of industry and trade which are contemplated by the first power of the Board of Trade to which I have referred will take much more time.
This clause, as I say, is likely to be of immediate application. I believe myself that its most powerful effect will be its deterrent effect, and that for one case in which a man is actually brought up under it there will be a hundred cases in which men will restrain themselves and put a limit to their greed of (rain rather than submit to the inquiry and the exposure which might ruin their business, even it it did not lead to their being subjected to severer penalties. For severer penalties than the mere having to disgorge unreasonable gains are provided in the Bill. In Clause 1 (2), which gives the Board of Trade power when it appears to them "that the circumstances so require"—which I interpret to mean in cases of very gross extortion to "take proceedings against the seller before a Court of summary jurisdiction," which Court of summary jurisdiction may impose a fine not exceeding £200, or imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months. These are the principle weapons with which the Bill arms the public authority for preventing the exploitation of the public.

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There are, of course, a great many points in this Bill on which I cannot touch, but which will all, no doubt, come under review in Committee. But I should like to say a few words about the manner in which these powers for the protection of the public are to be brought into play. I think it is idle to speculate—no man can tell—whether the complaints of excessive prices which may be brought under this Bill will or will not be very numerous. All speculation on that subject is mere guesswork. My own personal view is that there may be a considerable rush of applications in the first instance, but that, as the working of the measure gradually comes to be better understood, the number will fall off. I may be right or I may be wrong about that. Anyway, it is quite evident that the number of applications will be immensely greater than anything with which a public Department like the Board of Trade could itself deal. I do not suppose indeed that it will itself deal with any cases except those of a wide range of importance, such as may arise out of the operations of big wholesale dealers and manufacturers, perhaps of big trade combines. The vast majority of cases of complaints which are brought forward will have to be dealt with by those local committees which the Board of Trade is empowered by the Bill to invest with all its own powers under the Bill, with the exception of the power of fixing prices. As I conceive the situation, the main business of the Board of Trade will be that investigation into prices, costs, and profits in particular big branches of trade which may seem to call for such investigation to which I have already referred, and the general supervision of the local body to which, under Clause 2, it is enabled to delegate all or any of its powers, except the power of fixing prices.
No doubt the success or failure of the measure will depend very largely upon the composition and the working of the local committees which are to be appointed by the local authorities at the instance of the Board of Trade. On this point, all I can say is that our experience of the numerous local bodies which during the period of the war have been instrumental in carrying out—under the control of the central authority but with a great measure of independence—the exceptional powers created by Statute for the purposes of the war, in the case, for instance, of the Military Service Acts and more especially in the case of the
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local committees under the Food Controller which have been extraordinarily successful in their work—our experience of them gives us good ground for hope that this unbeaureaucratic form of machinery will be both popular and effective.
Whatever may be said of this Bill, it cannot be said that it is a measure for empowering officials at Whitehall to go and interfere with everyone's business throughout the country. It is a measure very largely for the protection of the public by putting them in a position to protect themselves. At the same time, the recourse which, again on the analogy of the Military Service Acts, is given from these local committees to central appeal committees ought to prevent any possibility of injustice to an individual from local or personal animosities or from trade jealousies. There is, besides that, an important provision which was inserted in the House of Commons—I think it is certainly a good Amendment—to the effect that a member of a committee established by a local authority shall be disqualified from acting in any case where he is a trade competitor of the person against, whom the complaint under investigation has been lodged. So much about the reasons for the Bill, the main powers conferred by the Bill, and the machinery by which those powers are to be exercised.
I do not wish to detain your Lordships much longer about specific points, but there are three matters of sufficient magnitude to call for some notice even in this merely introductory speech. I refer In the first instance to the provision giving the Board of Trade power to fix prices, which provision was inserted in the House of Commons as an addition to Clause 1 (1) (a). I have already read those most important and vital words about the power of the Board of Trade to investigate prices, costs, and profits at all stages. The words here added by the House of Commons are—
"And on any such investigation they" [that is, the Board of Trade] "may by order fix maximum prices."
I know that there are many people, whose opinion is certainly entitled to respect, who think it would have been a better way of dealing with this difficulty (which we all recognise) by attempting to fix maximum prices all round and relying upon that alone to check profiteering. It is a proposal which has been most carefully considered

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but which on investigation appeared to the members of the Government to be an impracticable method of carrying out the object which we all have at heart.
It is a very difficult subject with which to deal, but I think I should be justified in laying down the principle that the fixation of prices, in any case where you are not able to control the article from start to finish, is a most dangerous power which may very likely result in checking supply and production, thereby actually increasing the root of all our difficulties. That is not always the case; and, as I have said, in those comparatively rare cases where the authority which fixes the prices is able to control the article throughout, I think there is a case very often—as with regard to some of the particular articles of food—for the fixation of prices; but I do not object at all to this having been put into the Bill as I think it is a useful reserve power. There are cases in which is may be effective, but I am sure that it would be wise—as I am certain is the intention of the Board of Trade—to be very cautious in the exercise of it. Let me give one instance of the sort of difficulty that may arise. Take the case of an imported article, perhaps of considerable importance to the consumer. After careful investigation you fix a price which allows—considering what the importer has to pay for the article in the country of its origin and what he has to pay on transportation—a reasonable profit here. The moment you have fixed the price, up goes the cost in the country of origin. No doubt you may say, "You can alter the price here." Yes; but you cannot be constantly altering prices. These negotiations take time; meanwhile, until the alteration has been effected, there is a loss on that article with your fixed price. What happens is that the importer ceases to import, you at once get an increase of scarcity, and your last condition is worse than your first.
I am not arguing against the power; I wish merely to point out two things. One is that now we have the power we must be careful in our exercise of it; and the other is why we found it was impossible to rely only on this very doubtful and dangerous power in order to try to check the evil of high prices. It would have been an easier and pleasanter thing for the Government simply to have taken powers to regulate prices all round, but it would have been, in my opinion, wholly ineffective
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as a general measure of control. The power of fixation of prices is one which it may be useful to have, and to which in certain cases resort may be had.
The next point of large importance to which I should like briefly to refer is the power contained in Clause 4, by which the Board of Trade may, if they think fit, authorise local authorities, subject to such conditions as the Board may impose, to purchase and sell any article or articles of any class to which this Bill applies. I know that this provision is highly controversial. I also know that in the opinion of many really competent judges it is regarded as perhaps the most valuable clause in the whole Bill. I am told that something of the kind has already been done successfully in various parts of the country although the power did not absolutely exist. That may or may not be the case. What is certain is that in some foreign countries where this method of trying to check high prices has been adopted—that is, where the authorities themselves have become dealers simply in order to keep a check by competition upon the traders—it has met with a very large measure of success. I think that the anxiety which it excites in some breasts is due to the idea that it is the commencement—the argument used against it is our old friend "the thin end of the wedge"—of a general system of muncipal trading. It is nothing of the kind. This is a six months' Bill. Can it be supposed that any local authority is going to plunge, especially when it is directed to proceed on a commercial basis and not by way of subsidy or expense to the ratepayers, into any large operation in the way of muncipal trading under a power which it will only have for six months? What is much more likely is that local markets of a temporary kind may be set up, or even the humble barrow may be called into requisition to compete with the excessive prices, where they exist, which may be charged by local shopkeepers. I hope that whatever the objection is on principle which your Lordships may take to any introduction of a system of municipal trading you will bear in mind the special circumstances of the case and not try to deprive us of the power of making an experiment which may fail, and if it fails may very well be abandoned, but which may also prove one of the most important and valuable means of checking the evils against which this Bill is directed.

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You will be relieved to hear, my Lords, that I have come to the last point with which I propose on this occasion to trouble you. I should like to say one word with regard to a very remarkable clause which was inserted into the Bill in the House of Commons. It is what is now called Clause 3—"Operations of trusts, etc." It runs—
"Without prejudice to the generality of the powers under this Act, the Board of Trade shall obtain from all available sources information as to the nature, extent, and development of trusts, companies, firms, combinations, agreements, and arrangements connected with mining, manufactures, trade, commerce, finance, or transport, having for their purpose or effect the regulation of the prices or output of commodities or services produced or rendered in the United Kingdom or imported into the United Kingdom, or the delimitation of markets in respect thereof, or the regulation of transport rates and services, in so far as they tend to the creation of monopolies or to the restraint of trade, and the Board of Trade shall for the purposes of this section utilise the powers of investigation and of appointing committees conferred upon them by this Act."
The investigation into trust and combines existing for the restriction of trade and for the artificial augmentation of prices is no doubt one of the most difficult operations in which a Government Department could engage. I doubt whether within the six months during which the Bill will be in force it would be possible for the Board of Trade to carry out the provisions of this clause with regard to any considerable number of such trusts and combines. It may do so successfully in one or two cases. If the result is satisfactory, that part of the Bill, at any rate, may, by the good pleasure of Parliament, be prolonged.
What I would, however, specially like to say to your Lordships about this is that it may be argued, "Well, the introduction of this clause into the Bill in the House of Commons is a perfectly new departure and an immense enlargement of its original object and scope." It is a crossing of t's and a dotting of i's, and it is imposing upon the Board of Trade perhaps more definitely than was originally intended certain duties; but the duties themselves do not lie outside the scope and principle of what I have described as being the keynote and the basis of the whole measure—namely, that contained in Clause 1 (1) (a) which gives the power to investigate the prices, costs, and profits at all stages. Undoubtedly in the regulation of prices the power to look into the operation of these great trading trusts which determine whole
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sale prices, and in some cases retail prices as well, is fundamentally more important than any action yon may take against the retailer, and if it had not been for the existence of that power in the Bill as it was originally drafted I think the measure would have been open to the criticism—to which it has been exposed, but in the circumstances unjustly exposed—that it attacked the small profiteer but let the large profiteer go scot free. That first Clause of the Bill is one which is directed against profiteering on the great scale, and it directs against it the only weapon by which I think it can be defeated; that is, the weapon of thorough investigation and publicity. This new clause, to which I do not in any way o-ojeet—it may be an advantage to put it in—is only writing large, as I say crossing the t's and dotting the i's of what was one of the most important provisions of the original measure, and one which was always within the contemplation of the Government.
I feel that I have been a very inadequate exponent of a very difficult and complicated subject. If there are points on which your Lordships require more elucidation—and I have no doubt there are ninny such points—it can be given, and I shall be very glad to give it so far as lies in my power in the further discussions of the Bill. I have only two or three remarks to make in conclusion. We have been reproached in the matter of this Bill with hasty legislation. It is true that the legislation is very hasty. I regret it as much as anybody, but the consideration given to this matter has not been hasty. The Bill, good or bad, is the result, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack knows as well as myself, of prolonged and most anxious consideration on the part of the Government.
You may criticise its provisions. There is no conceivable measure dealing with this subject which would not be open to any amount of criticism. It is very easy to criticise its provisions. It is very much more difficult to make out a case for alternative provisions, and it is a remarkable fact—and the Lord Chancellor will bear me out in this—that a great number of the suggestions which were made in the House of Commons for alternative methods of dealing with the trouble were suggestions which had been considered, and most carefully considered, over and over again by us, and which we only gave up because the weight of argument and expert advice con

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vinced us that they were not practicable. The matter is one, I need not say, of extraordinary complexity and difficulty, and I hope your Lordships will take it from me that, whatever the defects of the measure may be and however regrettable it may be that we are obliged to discuss it in such a hurry—that I fully admit, and I feel it myself—whatever the defects of the measure may be, the proposals put forward by the Government are not the result of hasty deliberation and have not, in any case, been lightly adopted. They are the result of a very careful process of the winnowing of all possible suggestions for dealing with a matter of the greatest difficulty.
You may say, "If the thing is so difficult, so uncertain and so complex, why do you not leave it alone?" You cannot leave it alone. This is a universal evil all over the world. Profiteering is the cause of more disturbance, and it is a more powerful weapon in the hands of those who wish to destroy all social order than any other which they have got. You have it all over the world. In those countries where the authorities would not deal with it, the people have dealt with it themselves by rioting and rebellion. We do not want to leave matters to get to that point in this country. We believe—we are certain—that though these provisions may not be the absolute best, they are, nevertheless, provisions that will make a great and material difference and will bring about considerable relief to vast numbers of people. More than that, we are convinced—and I believe your Lordships will agree with me—that the mere fact that the Government and Parliament are not sitting with folded arms in the face of this great and admitted evil, but are making, at any rate, a serious, earnest and strenuous attempt to come to the relief of the suffering population, will do something, and will do a great deal, in itself, to allay that general indignation and resentment which might very soon take really dangerous forms, if nothing were done.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Milner.)
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: My Lords, the noble Viscount, when uttering his final sentences, must have been well aware that the full sympathy of this House would go with him in regard to any general measure
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having for its object the bringing of the whole question of supply and demand within reasonable limits; but I think the very full exposition of the Bill which he gave must have convinced your Lordships that he viewed with some apprehension the manner in which the points taken up by the Government in this great hurry would be accepted, and, still more, whether the methods adopted are entirely calculated to achieve the results he desires. Before I say a word on that subject, might I remind the noble Viscount that if the goodwill of this House could have been shown with regard to this subject, it has been shown by the appeals which for months have been made to the Government, to take action on their own account to prevent the state of affairs which they are now endeavouring, in great haste, to remedy.
If I merely mention the appeals which have been made, almost without response, I think I may convey to the Government that this House has not fallen short, for any want of goodwill, in this great work. First of all take the question of prices generally. The price of an article depends, as we all know, upon the sufficiency of the article. It requires an extraordinary organisation to enable any man or body of men to corner a large section of articles, if the supply is sufficient. We have, over and over again, almost implored the Government to open the ports, to take off the restrictions on a large number of imported goods. I believe that on the last occasion inquiry was made whether there were not some 700 articles on the tabooed list. I ask the noble Viscount now, Has that list been brought down? Are the Government doing their share to give to the country the fullest amount that we possibly can obtain by imports from abroad, or are they continuing, as they did for months after the Armistice, a restriction of imports most necessary to our manufactures, which is calculated to raise the price of every article? The second point on which we have pressed has been the delay of the Government in realising their own war stocks. They put those war stocks at £1,000,000,000. At intervals in the last few weeks there have been large sales of linen and other material, but has an substantial progress been made with those sales? In this way it is possible to do more to prevent profiteering than you can benefit the purchaser by punishment.

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In the third place, Does the noble Viscount really think that the whole of this mischief is caused by unfair trading? Look at the question of the currency. Every time the Government has given one of its fresh benefactions, involving an enormous amount of money, you have had an inflation of the currency which has raised prices to the disadvantage of the whole community. With all these points before us I appeal to the Government not to think they are going to deal with profiteering only by the method of this Bill. It is quite impossible that a subject like this should be adequately dealt with in this House between Friday and Monday next. The urgency of it is, no doubt, great, and although these provisions were hastily considered in the House of Commons we perfectly realise that some measure must be hammered out in the course of the next few hours. May we not ask then that, side by side with this attempt, which I fear is a very crude one, the Government will take the larger steps which are necessary, and not delay too long.
I desire to make three or four criticisms on the Bill itself, and I do so not from a desire to make difficulties but with absolute sympathy with the object of the measure. The noble Viscount justified the insertion in Clause 1 of the provision for fixing maximum prices. That was done with strangely little consideration. It is probably a necessary power the Government should have in certain cases, but is it necessary or desirable in all cases. Take the desirability. Is it really possible to go over the whole field of British industry and insist on the Board of Trade taking action if they find it necessary? What does it mean? It means that everybody who feels himself aggrieved will go to the Board of Trade and ask them to interfere and fix the maximum price of the article hey are supplied with. Will it be possible for the Government to fix the price of pig-iron, steel-rails, all of which were only rendered possible by the subsidy from the Government, which I believe everyone would object to see revived. If you are not going to do it you may interfere in the most serious way with trade; and if the President of the Board of Trade has to do this his energies may be wasted on the much larger questions.
Take shipping. All sorts of deals are going on in shipping. There is undoubtedly great dislocation in shipping all over the
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world. Are the Government going to say that, if the Board of Trade are sufficiently pressed, the unfortunate Minister will have to reconsider the price at which A may have bought from B, who may have bought from C, who nay have bought from D. I do not want to multiply instances but I suggest that we should consider, before the Committee stage, whether an Amendment which was moved by Colonel Walter Guinness in the House of Commons does not really meet the object in view. A provision specifying that maximum prices should apply to food, clothing, boots, and household necessities, would I believe cover nearly the whole of the province which particularly affects the classes to whom the noble Viscount alluded. The great amount of traffic from hand to hand and across the counter would be touched by such a provision, while the immense mass of the staple trade of the country would remain unfettered as at present. I commend that consideration to the noble Viscount with the desire that it should prove of some service.
I differ from the noble Viscount on one point. He thought that one of the chief results of the Bill would be its deterrent effect. I do not believe it. A great deal more would be done by leaving prices open than if the Board of Trade fixed the prices of raw material. In some cases it may be excessive. In all Bills which have interfered with prices, and with traffic, it has never been found that the deterrent effect has been such as the noble Viscount believes, while it has always been found that those who consider themselves aggrieved rush in and invoke assistance because they have nothing to lose and may gain a great deal. You will flood the Board of Trade. I believe, with an amount of business and complaints which will hang up the chief and immediate action we all wish to see taken.
I hope the noble Viscount will consider sub-section 5 of Clause 1—where a person is connected with a company and cannot prove he was ignorant, he is alleged to be guilty of what has transpired. I do not want in the least to absolve any person connected with companies any more than private firms or individuals. It is a question, however, to which the high legal authorities in this House should address their minds. It is a most serious change in the English law that you should assume a man guilty until he can prove himself innocent.

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Surely before you proceed to give a man six months' imprisonment, or fine him £200, it is the business of the prosecutor to discover that he was a party to the offence and that he did not exercise proper care and safeguard the actions of those with whom he was connected. I suggest that because I think it is a point which was dealt with at a very late hour in the morning in the House of Commons.
The third point is with regard to trusts. Trust law is a very serious question. I believe it has baffled the United States of America in their operations for many years past. Is the noble Viscount quite sure that it is wise in this Bill to attempt to lay on the shoulders of the President of the Board of Trade such a prodigious inquiry as that involved in Clause 3? It covers the whole field of British industry. He wants, and we want him, to be able to put his finger on the plague spots and bring to book those who are making a profit out of the country's misfortunes. I think this huge inquiry must be either a dead letter or will snow under the distinguished official to whom it is proposed to entrust this duty.
The last question which I would raise is with regard to municipal trading. There is a very strong prejudice against municipal trading, and it surely ought to be the last resort. Is it wise, until you find there are no other means of reaching your goal, that these great powers for fixing prices and enforcing supplies should be hampered by attempts on the part of the municipalities, at a time when they should be busy with the Housing Question, to enter into competition with private concerns the members of whom are members or citizens of the municipalities? I should have thought it would be far better that we should have kept to what is I believe still existent, the power of Government purchase and Government control, which has been carried as far as it should be and which covered a large number of our special commodities. I am not urging that you should set them on foot, but that you should set in action in the same direction the machinery of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of municipalities, to buy supplies and enter into contracts, seems to me to be a remedy worse than the disease which we want to cure.
I will only say one word more before I sit down. I believe the country is thoroughly sick of control, and that if we begin again we should do it by the smallest amount of
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control consistent with our object. I heartily wish the Bill well, and I urge the noble Viscount to realise that any criticisms which I have ventured to make have been entirely with the desire that the object which we have in view should be carried out, and above all that in the wish there has been to spread the net sufficiently wide we may not have spread it so wide as to cause it by its own weight to fail in its object.
LORD EMMOTT: My Lords, even when most violently opposed to the noble Viscount, Lord Milner, I feel almost disarmed by his frankness and obvious sincerity. With the objects of this Bill I have great sympathy, but I do not think I ever heard during twenty years Parliamentary experience an important Bill damned with such faint praise as this Bill had bestowed upon it by the noble Viscount. He said that people had lost patience owing to the strain of long years of war. So also is a convalescent impatient, but a wise doctor does not try to improve his condition by quack remedies. What we need now is to get back to normal conditions in this country, but my doubt about this Bill—of course, I am not going to oppose the Second Reading—is whether it does not prolong the period of uncertainty in this country. I am not sure that it does not form part of a vicious circle in which we are, and that the remedy is not going to make the disease worse rather than better—whether the Bill is not a useless plaster, giving some local relief but doing nothing to remove the real cause from which we are suffering.
If I may enter upon the larger question touched upon by the noble Viscount and say what I believe we want to do and what must be done before any real improvement occurs, I would suggest that the Prime Minister, with such unique powers of appealing to the public and such imagination as are possessed by Mr. Lloyd George, ought in the present condition of affairs to tell the country frankly that we are in for a bad and difficult time, however well we behave, and that tinkering, partial measures will be of extraordinarily little me, that if only the country will be brave and patient and will work, things will come right in time, but that a new heaven and a new earth cannot be made, after the enormous waste of this war, by extravagant expectations which, when once formed, can only do damage if they are not realised.

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The Government, however, have brought forward this measure. They appointed a committee one week to look into this question, and two or three weeks later they told the committee that it was of no further use and they were going to introduce a Bill. The best which I can say for the Bill is that it is a Bill of good intentions, but good intentions are proverbially the paving stones to a very doubtful destination. I have no animus against the Government, but I must say that the Government have not a good record on this question of profiteering. They have set a bad example hi some respects. During the years of war they made enormous profit out of oils and fats. It is true that a great deal more than that profit has gone in the subsidy on wheat, but look at the effect of the two transactions. The profit on fats and oils was made by keeping down the price paid to the natives of Africa, vet those natives had to pay more meanwhile for their cotton goods. It is no consolation to them that some of the profit thus made went for the payment for wheat from foreign countries. That is one instance of Government profiteering, and I could give others.
I was glad to hear the noble Viscount (Viscount Midleton) deal with the question of restrictions and embargoes on our trade. A few months ago it was the deliberate policy of the Government to keep up the prices of a great many commodities by the restriction of imports. That policy was avowedly based on the advice of Committees which I believe were largely manned by interested manufacturers. We have never had the composition of those Committees made public, but I believe they were largely manned by interested manufacturers. May I invite any of your Lordships who have the Bill in your hands to look at Clause 3. The Board of Trade is now to obtain from all available sources information as to the development—I am picking my words but I think quite fairly—of firms and combinations connected with manufactures having for their purpose or effect the regulation of the prices of commodities produced in the United Kingdom or imported into the United Kingdom, in so far as they tend to the creation of monopolies, or to the restraint of trade When I saw those words I really felt inclined to say to the Government: "Physician, heal thyself," because they are responsible for exactly the very condition of things which they are now instructing the Board of Trade to inquire
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into. Their policy has been vacillating and uncertain to the last degree in regard to these trade questions.
I expect your Lordships all know your Pickwick, and you will remember the story of the Eatanswill Election. I think it was the hero, Mr. Pickwick himself, who said that he shouted with the crowd, and when asked what he did in the case of two crowds both of which were shouting he said that he shouted with the loudest. I do not want to be disrespectful to His Majesty's Government, but that is the course that they have pursued with regard to these trade matters. When the manufacturers shouted loudest about import restrictions the Government immediately went for a policy of restriction, now that the consumer is shouting they go for a policy of investigating the very policy of import restrictions that they have themselves set up.
Truly and wittily this Bill has been called a Manifesto rather than a Bill. It gives the impression to me of a Minister in a hurry, and a Minister who is not fully seized of British methods. Just when trade was recovering in many ways, a comparative stranger to our methods is to have all the powers that are given to him in Section 7 to which the noble Viscount alluded. I must say that I take an altogether different view of the effect of subsection (7) of Clause 1 from that taken by the noble Viscount. I should like to ask for a list of articles that could not be included under subsection (7), and if we got a list of those articles I am perfectly certain that it would not include any of the great articles of trade which are the foundation of the prosperity of this country. Everything of real importance under subsection (7), as I read it, is to be made the subject of the powers given to the Board of Trade under that subsection. I suppose that this Bib is inevitable, but I think that it will frighten honest traders. That is my real objection to it. I am afraid that it will have a deterrent effect upon honest traders, and that the dishonest man will run his chance. That is always the effect of legislation of this kind. I should have preferred to have certain commodities—as few as possible—regulated through the whole course of trade, as suggested inferentially by the noble Viscount opposite, rather than this Bill. Even such a course as that has disadvantages, as we all know, because Government regulation of price takes no cognisance of quality. Such a

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course could not take proper cognisance of quality or grading. Those differences can only regulate themselves in a free market; they cannot regulate themselves under Government control.
The real trouble about profiteering will not be materially affected by this Bill. The real trouble is, I think, twofold. In the first place all that annual income returned as profits has been during the course of the war materially lessened by excess profits. The Government has never attempted to deal with the large question—I am afraid that it may now be too late—of the enormous increase of capital that many traders have achieved during this war—increase of capital which has not been subject to excess profits duty in any shape or form. That is one thing, and, after all, the working people of this country know it. I believe that is one of the great causes of dissatisfaction and unrest. My other remedy is the one I have already stated, that I think it is time the Government made known to the people as far as they can—and I am sure the Prime Minister could do it extraordinarily well if he gave his mind to it—the really dangerous and difficult position in which this country stands, and until that is done we cannot by little measures of this kind do much to get rid of the feeling of unrest in the country.
VISCOUNT BURNHAM: My Lords, there is no one less willing than I am to prolong debate on any subject in the sun of this hot day, but I think it would add to the scandal of the manner in which this Bill is being enacted if it did not have adequate consideration here. I hardly thought that it was a compliment to the intelligence of your Lordships' House when the noble Viscount in charge of the Bill said that the Government were fully seized of all the information that they required, just after they had appointed a Select Committee of the other House to inquire into the problem in all its bearings. There is no one who would wish to treat lightly a Bill the policy and purpose of which is to set out to reduce the scale of prices on all articles of use by the public. At the same time your Lordships must recognise that this is an industrial revolution. It may be that the Board of Trade—for which the noble Viscount can only speak indirectly, and can hardly pledge them in doing so—does not mean widely to apply its power of fixing prices; still
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you have given power to a Department of State to fix prices, if it so wish, for the whole range of commodities in common use throughout the country. It is quite true that the principle is not new. The principle was contained in the old Acts of the Edwards, of forestalling and regrating which Dr. Adam Smith denounced with so much force a long time ago. It was contained in a conspicuous degree in the famous decree of the Convention of 1793 fixing the maximum price of corn in France. We all know what was the end of all those experiments. I think that the noble Viscount must rather have been laughing within himself when he trotted out here those hoary fallacies of the Middle Ages as if he really believed in them.
I should like first to point out how unfairly this Bill is presented to the country. First of all, it is given the short title of "Profiteering." That is a kind of term which is applied very widely, and which it is impossible to define, but I beg your Lordships to recollect that in another place it was said—and said without contradiction—that the greatest profiteers of this country were the landlords. Of course, everybody here knows that to be transparently untrue, but it shows the difficulty of defining what profiteering is, and you can only imagine that the title was given to the Bill to make it practically impossible for anybody in either House of Parliament to oppose or amend it. I should like to see any candidate—and I speak with some experience—standing up before a popular audience in a great constituency and avowing that he had voted in favour of profiteering. Hardly anybody dared to vote against the Second Reading of the Bill or to vote against it at any subsequent stage, and I venture to say that it was very largely because of the skilful title which was given to it by the distinguished professor who carried it through the other House, and who seems to be less ingenuous than most professors are supposed to be in these matters of tactics.
But the question, of course, is whether this Bill is going to achieve any purpose at all, and we are unwilling to do anything here or elsewhere to throw away a chance of bringing down the range of prices. The arguments have been mainly that this Bill would have a terrorising effect. That was the argument used for the old Acts of centuries past—that the profiteers (they

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were not called so) would be terrorised by the mere fact of heavy penalties being held over them. That was constantly used by those in the House of Commons who did not care to vote against the Bill. Therefore the Bill is defended on two lines of argument, first, that it is merely brought forward for parade purposes, that it is what in America they call Buncombe legislation; and, secondly, that it is brought forward without any intention of its being widely put into operation, and that it will be used simply for the purpose of making those who are deriving unconscionable profits from trade amenable to public opinion.
I use the argument because later on I wish to ask the noble Viscount to consider how far publicity is guaranteed to the tribunals set up under the Bill. The noble Viscount said that, he attached most importance to the method and system of inquiry which could be set up by the Board of Trade into articles of prime necessity, rather than to any work of local tribunals. I venture to point out that the Board of Trade is thus undertaking a task of such a vast complexity that it would require not one, but a hundred Royal Commissions to do the work adequately. It cannot be suggested that the local committees can do this work. The noble Viscount said that the real cause of the rise in prices is mainly to be attributed to the convulsions of exchange and to the enforced scarcity of means of production and means of transport. Does he imagine that the committee of Little Peddlington will be able to appreciate how far the convulsions of exchange and the difficulties of transport have had to do with prices of articles manufactured mainly from raw materials of foreign origin?
Perhaps in these matters the best thing is to give the House one experience derived from a particular trade of which one may have some knowledge. I will take the paper trade, for example. Nobody can say that paper is not a necessity of life, and that it is not an article of consumption by the public. I am not thinking only of newspapers because, as the noble Viscount, who is skilled in these matters knows, newspapers only take one-sixth of the whole of the paper production, of the country, and printing only one-third. As a matter of fact, I am told that every person dealing in a shop now insists more than ever upon the articles bought being carefully wrapped, not once but twice and three times in paper.
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The community, that is to say, has reverted to its pre-war habits. As the noble Viscount knows from many cases which have been tried before the Courts, the weight of paper enters very materially into the cost of articles of consumption of the, very poor There are many famous cases which have proved that, and which have turned upon that and that alone. May I tell him that during the war the Paper Commission set up by the Government, which had power of restricting the importation of raw material never ventured to do more than fix a rough and ready price for paper consumed under contracts made before the war? They always professed the view that it would be beyond their ken and power to fix the price of paper outside the range of such contracts. I dare say there are a hundred grades and kinds of paper used. Paper mills range from the sweet and simple methods of Messrs. Portal's mills for the manufacture of bank paper to the huge concerns such as you find in Kent and in the North. When the Government fixed a schedule for the Paper Commission for the prices of waste paper to be used in manufacture there were thirty or forty different categories to be dealt with.
It is impossible to consider an article of that sort without seeing an endless series of special inquiries arising from them before the price could be fixed with any fairness, either to the producer or to the consumer. I point this out, because it is material as showing the want of reality in a good deal of the powers that are now sought under the Bill. But I also would ask the Government to say how far they are going to look into their own misfeasances at the present time. The high price of bricks is entirely caused by the fact that the Government is holding up the whole supply. They commandeered for the purpose of their great housing schemes the great quantity of bricks in the country, and at the present moment (I speak as Chairman of the Building Trades Committee of this part of England, and on the information given me by both employers and employed) the price of bricks for purposes outside these operations is artificially raised because the builders cannot get any quantity of the bricks released from Government control. That has been stated by the industrial Council of the building trade; it is the opinion of the trade. Therefore everything points really to the

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wisdom of the advice which was given by my noble friend, that the only effective method of reducing the price of the necessities of life and of commodities in general use is to open the ports and remove the restrictions. As paper makers I admit it might not be pleasant for my colleagues, or confederates, to have the ports opened for the importation of paper. You are only allowed at present to import 25 per cent. of the supply manufactured at home. But if that were done it is quite certain that the price would fall. I am not dealing with the effect on the labour market—that is another matter—but the price would fall, and if you mean to reduce prices, and want to reduce prices, I think I can prove to the House that paper does enter into the price of nearly every commodity which the poor buy.
The old remedy resorted to throughout history whenever there has been a special scarcity of raw material, whenever there has been an abnormal rise in price, must be followed and adopted, and as soon as possible you must open the ports freely and you must increase, so far as you can, the facilities of shipping for that purpose. That is dealing with the main question of the supply of material on a great scale. I should say I do not think that the great trades have as a rule any reason to be afraid of the inquiry which is incorporated in Clause 1 of the Bill. Personally it seems to me a very good thing that in the Bill should be included also the proposal to hold inquiries into trusts, rings and kartels which was put forward by the Royal Commission which reported not long ago. I wish it had been done before. It seems to me that this would be an effective means of checking that which in some cases may be a great evil, and which any rate is an object of great suspicion by the public.
You cannot imagine that the power of inquiry into price—although I am aware that the smaller tribunals have no power of fixing prices—would be exercised except lay the Board of Trade. That must result in an expenditure far in excess of the £50,000 which the Government say will be absorbed in the process. The smaller committees which will be appointed I take it in every borough and in every urban district throughout the country—though that is not laid down in the Bill—will have to deal not with the big questions of articles of necessity in large dealings but with the petty dealings between small
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shopkeepers and their customers. I am honestly afraid—I believe the experience of every noble Lord in this House must be the same—that we are likely to reap a harvest of what I think the great poet calls "home-bred hate."
In this process every small tradesman will be called upon before the local committee and asked to make good his claim to the price he charges for various articles. A general inquiry by a committee of the Board of Trade is only setting up a series of Royal Commissions, and, as I have said. I do not think there is much reason for being afraid that injustice will be done by the Board of Trade or by those who act under its immediate future. Far be it from me to suggest that the committees in the various districts will act as a rule with prejudice or with unfairness. At the same time, it is a very hard and difficult thing to put the small shopkeeper before his fellow citizens and to ask him to account (as he will have to do) for every penny that goes to make up the price of the small dealings in which he is engaged. There is great temptation for the committee to take a prejudiced view. These committees cannot be considered as being quite on all fours with the Military Tribunals, and they necessarily start without any special knowledge of the trade. They can judge only from their general notions of what a fair profit ought to be.
In the other House, in the course of the Committee stage on this Bill, Mr. McLean who is one of the Labour leaders, stated that the price of an article ought to be fixed by the charge made for the highest efficiency in production and that nothing else should be allowed to count. I doubt whether there is a small shopkeeper in the country who could justify his charges if they were judged on that principle. The small shopkeeper has not many friends here I dare say, or even in the House of Commons; but you have to consider that he has "over-head charges"—as they would say in discussing industrial matters—for rent, and very often for assistance, which have to be spread over a very small number of commodities on sale. Naturally they increase proportionately to an inordinate degree. What is a profit to the small shopkeeper would be a gigantic gain to the great trader or to the co-operative society. If it is the intention of this House, or of Parliament, to crush out the small dealer everywhere, or if they contemplate

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it as a result of the machinery they are setting up under this Bill, that ought to be known. There is no doubt that perhaps the most economic means of distribution is through the great agencies and co-operative stores particularly in the north of England, and here in the South by those great firms whose names are household words in our midst. But no shopkeeper can justify his scale of profits as tested in that way. I hope injustice will not be done, but I think it is very likely to be done in some cases.
In the same way the noble Viscount spoke very hopefully of the power which is generally to be given under this Bill to municipal authorities to set up street markets. It is very easy, of course, for a local authority which has not to pay—which will not be surcharged with any loss it may make—to set up a department for dealing with one special line of goods or in one particular part of a general trade. There, again, the local authority could not pay rates to itself, and it would not be called upon to pay rates at all; it would have nothing but the day by day expense of carrying on a market in that particular line which it thought most favourable to its operations. I can only say that if this power is used I hope it will not be used except for a short period, and then that there will follow what there ought to have been long ago—namely, a general inquiry into the increase of market accommodation throughout the country. There is, as a matter of fact, a great paucity of markets in London and elsewhere, and no doubt the price of goods is artificially increased by the want of proper means for distribution and sale. But that is another matter.
I do not want to misrepresent the noble Viscount in any way, but he looks, I think, to public opinion, as brought into being and interpreted by these committees, as the principal means for effecting the object of the Bill. That cannot be done without publicity; therefore the newspaper Press is once more called upon to convey to the public faithful and accurate reports of the proceedings so that public opinion may not only be fully informed but may also be able to express itself in the various cases which will arise. I conceive that there will be an intense interest taken in the towns of the country in local proceedings, far more than in any general inquiry by the Board of Trade. The newspaper Press is in a considerable difficulty in this matter,
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and I have been asked by their representatives throughout the country to bring before the Government the expediency of extending to the Press for this purpose the qualified privilege which it enjoys under the Law of Libel (Amendment) Act of 1881, and the Amending Act of 1888. The Press has no general privilege for reporting what is not fair comment. Reports must be bona fide and without prejudice. At the same time, unless they are protected in this way in the report of proceedings taken before local Tribunals—though they are called by that name I think the title is an unhappy one; "local committees" would be better—they will not be able to do so with ally reasonable security.
Under the old Acts, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack knows, absolute Privilege is given to the reports of Parliament, of Parliamentary Committees, and in certain other cases; also, privilege is given to the reports of meetings of municipal bodies and of public authorities of a like character. But I do not think—I speak with great deference—that such a privilege would extend to the meetings of sub-committees appointed by a Department of State although the Department of State itself might, of course, be able to issue any report, or, more than that, to have its proceedings accurately given in the newspaper Press. Under this Bill these bodies may issue reports even when they sit in secret, and the power is retained by the Board of Trade of excluding the public from these Inquiries. Those communications might and would no doubt be privileged. I am dealing with the reports of these crises which, although these bodies are in no sense judicial (I am sorry to say), will take place with evidence not given on oath and with allegations freely made by old men and women as to hardships they may or may not have undergone. It is desirable in the interests of justice that there should be a fair and accurate reporting of these proceedings; otherwise that part of the Press which is most circumspect in its doings naturally will not want to put itself continually in a difficult and dangerous position; therefore it will either not report the proceedings or will give only an abbreviated, and, necessarily sometimes, an ineffective report.
I do not think there is very much difficulty about the matter; but it is of far more importance than appears at first sight. Public opinion can only have its

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expression, or mainly have its expression, through the newspaper Press of the country. Altogether I cannot say that I do not feel grave misgivings as to what the result of this legislation will be. It is said to be only temporary. There is hardly an important social measure in our time that has not been temporary in the first instance and its operations have not been continued either under the Expiring Laws Continuance Acts or by re-enactment afterwards. I do not know whether the best result of the steps we are now taking may not be to gain the information upon which a wide policy of trade regulation may be founded. I understand that to be an argument largely used by the promoters of the Bill. It was said by Mr. Bright that a country which could comprehend and act upon the lessons God had given it, would never be found wanting in times of crisis. Perhaps the lesson we shall learn from the operation of this Bill may teach us wisdom upon the great subject of our industrial commercial welfare in the future; and I hope, at all events, whatever legislation is undertaken will not be in the frantic, one would almost say the panic-stricken, haste in which we are asked to legislate now. I venture to make these suggestions to your Lordships' House, but I will not press the noble Viscount to give me an answer now. I dare say he will consider in Committee, if he is favourable to giving the privilege of publicity to the proceedings of these bodies, what words are apt for the purpose. I should be only too glad to accept them, because I think the Government and the newspaper Press have a common interest and a common purpose.
VISCOUNT MILNER: I quite agree with the noble Viscount. The public and the newspaper Press are both interested in this matter, and certainly the report of the proceedings of these Committees, if they are fair and accurate reports, should have the benefit of the privilege to which he refers. I am not quite sure whether they would have it without our putting express words to that effect into the Bill. If, however, on investigation I find that special words are necessary, I shall be happy to move an Amendment to that effect.
VISCOUNT BURNHAM: I am much obliged.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: My Lords, I ventured a few nights ago to make an
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emphatic protest against the manner in which Bills have, in this session in particular, been sent up to our House from the House of Commons. In the case of this Bill, which my noble friend has very properly criticised as a panic-stricken Bill, and in the circumstances under which it comes to us and under which it was carried, so we are informed, in an exhausted House of Commons, practically disabled by absolute fatigue from giving to the subject the care that it deserves, I cannot refrain, with the permission of your Lordships, from making a few observations in that direction against it to-night.
The noble Viscount who introduced the Bill said that it was a measure for which he had no affection. I can well under stand it, and I think the day will come, and at no distant time, when he will have even less reason than he has now for any affection for the measure of which he is the spokesman. The noble Viscount told us I in his opening observations that he thought our controversies here, and the general discontent existing at this moment with the Government, would be less than they are if we were to remember the war and the general consequences which have fallen from it. He went on to say, "I want to know the truth." What are the causes which have produced this state of feeling, which he described in some cases as one of absolute fury among some classes of the people? I am not in the least surprised at it, because this was the answer which he himself gave to his own question. What were the causes? The shortness of supplies of all things wanted by the people and the high prices which they had to give for them. These conditions, he said, had caused a positive fury, and the question I am going to ask the noble Viscount is how the Government have tried to remedy these consequences. In my opinion there are two causes which perhaps more than anything have contributed to these high prices and to the shortness of supplies. One of them the noble Viscount himself said was "exchange." I agree with him there. That, however, is not the only thing; for one of the most remarkable things in the career of this Government has been that they have never lost a possible opportunity of increasing to an enormous extent the amount of wages paid to the workers in this country.
There is nobody more anxious than myself that every man who does a good

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day's work should have a good and a fair rate of pay for it; but there are limits to everything, and the first result of these enormous increases in wages has been immensely diminished production. Everybody knows that. At one time it has been in agriculture. Great measures were taken two years ago—the noble Viscount took part in those debates and he will remember perfectly well, when proposals were made for increasing arable cultivation to an enormous extent, that I took part in the debate and suggested as an Amendment that the first thing to do was to see that the requisite labour would be there. We asked the Government to give a guarantee on that subject. They ended by agreeing to that demand, but there has never been sufficient labour since then. Wages have since gone up to the enormous height that they are now, and all the work that was done then for increasing arable cultivation, or nearly all of it, has been completely thrown away. Everyone knows—you can go through the country where you like—that at the present rate of wages, and the difficulties with regard to labour, the land which was ploughed up is now going back again of its own accord to grass, and vast quantities of it have been growing nothing but thistles and weeds.
The noble Viscount spoke about exchange. What have the Government done to deal with that question? It is a most unfortunate and extraordinary position into which this country has fallen. The exchange is so much against us that there has been nothing like it for years; it never has been so within my recollection, and I think you will have to go a long way back into history before you find anything of the sort. The Government, however, were warned of this two years ago by Lord D'Abernon. What has been done since then? Have you taken any steps to try and improve the exchange? You have done exactly the reverse. You have inflated the currency in this country by the issue of millions upon millions of £1 notes. That, in itself, is alone sufficient to have raised prices enormously, and you see the result in the exchange between ourselves and America to-day.
I do not want to delay the House. I do not know that we could do any good whatever by anything we can say here to-night, unless, indeed, there was a majority in this House prepared to throw out the Bill, and
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there is not one. Nor do I think, in all the circumstances, that it would be advisable to do so after holding out this prospect to the people, although I fancy the people will be greatly disappointed when the time comes. The noble Lord was confidant that what he was pressing to-night—the adoption of this Bill—would be both popular and effective. It is for that reason that I have reminded him of what occurred on a former occasion when he and I had to take prominent parts in the debate to which I have referred. I claim that I was more of a true prophet on that occasion than he was, and I have no doubt that I shall prove so again in this particular case.
I should like to remind him of another debate which we lied here when I brought forward what was practically a vote of censure on Lord Rhondda who had fixed prices upon article after article in, as I thought, a most unwarranted manner. What was the immediate result of that fixing of prices—a result which the noble Lord could not deny in debate? It was the immediate disappearance of almost every article upon which these arbitrary prices had been fixed. And now, it is to the fixing of prices in the same way, that you look in order to appease the discontent of the people, caused by the high prices which they have to pay. What will be their feeling, if the result of your endeavours on this occasion is the same as the result of the efforts of the noble Lord of whom I have just spoken; if the articles disappear, or become fewer instead of increasing, as the result of your action in putting maximum prices upon them? I think we ought in these respects to be guided by the experience which we have had even through the War as to the result of fixing arbitrary prices.
Remember that you are now going to give to the Board of Trade the most outrageous powers that ever were known. I can recall the time when a distinguished statesman in this House—I think it was in this House—said that the Board of Trade had always been the worst Department in the whole of the Government, and the most unpopular, because of the man who at that time was the chief official in charge of its business. I do not know who is at the present moment its chief official and I should be very sorry to make any reflection of that kind upon a man of whose proceed-

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ings I know nothing. I have made it quite clear, so far as I am concerned, that I am entirely opposed to the passing of this Bill, but I imagine that we have no alternative. We have not the power to throw it out. Even if we had, after what you have held out to the people, I would not be responsible for doing anything to cause them even greater discontent that they feel at the present moment.
After all, what is this Bill? What is the guise in which it comes to us? As the noble Lord said, the Bill is introduced apparently almost in a panic and it comes from a House which was not even in a physical condition to give it anything like the full attention it deserved; and then we are asked to deal with these enormous questions—all these new powers that are being conferred on a Government Department—at a moment's notice. I heard of the proceedings in the House of Commons, but I had no opportunity of seeing the Bill until I came to this House this morning. That is all the time that is thought by the Government to be requisite for the consideration by one of the Houses of Parliament of a Bill giving to a Government Department powers which have never been heard of before and which, unless they are used with the greatest possible caution, instead of getting you out of your difficulty, will land you, I am persuaded, into a far worse position before very long than you are in at the present moment.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, it is indeed a melancholy result of Coalition government that one should see a distinguished statesman with a distinguished record which, without impertinence, one may attribute to him, supporting a Bill which, I feel convinced, must be contrary to all his traditions and all his training. A distinguished member of a college nearly as distinguished as my own in the great University of Oxford, he must have learned to laugh at the laws against forestalling and regrating; he must have been impressed with Bentham's argument against the usury laws and must have had rubbed into him, and almost taken in with every day at Oxford, the impossibility of artificial control of prices and the desirability of giving free handling to trade, and looking for the higgling of the market to bring about the right result.
We have been in great trouble. We are in great trouble. But the only way to get
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out of that trouble is to be courageous and to return to first principles. The longer we go on as we are, the worse we shall be. I can imagine the commission assigned to the noble Lord in the Cabinet. I should put it in the language addressed once to a converted heathen—
"Gentle Sicambrian, burn what you used to adore, and adore what you used to burn."
That seems to me to be the commission given to the noble Lord when he was asked to support this Bill. I will do him the respectful justice to say that he insisted largely on the powers of enquiry and research—a kind of research studentship for the Board of Trade. The President and his officers may research as much as ever they please, so far as I am concerned, if they will not have a fresh army of clerks at the expense of the taxpayers to conduct those researches, and if they will find time—poor things!—to attend to their legitimate business and not prolong correspondence over a great many months.
But apart from research, the Bill has all the evils of interference, with none of the advantages. Maximum prices! I should have thought we knew enough about them. Do your Lordships remember the time of food scarcity when a number of poor people—I call them poor; I mean small householders with limited means, fairly large families, and one or two servants—discovered (happy thought!) that they could buy a rabbit, which was not then subject to controlled price; whereupon rabbits went up, naturally enough, to a great price. What did the wiseacres of the Food Control Committee do? They put on a maximum price, with the result that rabbits disappeared from the market. That is the lesson I wish members of the Government would take.
At this hour, and in this thin House, and with the intimation from both sides that this Bill is not really going to be defeated (though I would be glad if it were defeated) it is no use my troubling your Lordships with a long speech. I have made my protest as an impenitent Cobdenite, Gladstonite, and Free Trader, and I venture to prophesy that you will do no good until you return to sane principles of commerce. Having done that, I will take up a more modest and humble position. I will take my position as a lawyer, and I will ask the attention of the noble Viscount to the passage to which Lord Midleton referred—subection (5) of Clause 1. To begin with, the grammar is wrong.
VISCOUNT MILNER: There is a misprint.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Can you tell me what it should be?
VISCOUNT MILNER: It should read "Where a person convicted under this section is a company the chairman"—the words "the chairman" have been dropped out.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Thank you; that explains it. But has the noble Viscount thought how this is to work? "Shall be guilty"—Does it mean that he is convicted? Does the conviction of the company thereby make the chairman guilty, or does it mean that thereupon there may be separate proceedings against the chairman, or managing director, or the officer concerned, in which he may be proved to be guilty. I confess as a lawyer I am quite unable to say what the meaning of the clause is. Without perhaps going so far as Lord Midleton in his assertion that nothing of the kind is known, because there is something like it in one of the Unseaworthy Ships Acts, I venture to say that it is going far indeed to enact that the chairman and every officer concerned in the management of the company (the chief clerk may stand for that) shall be guilty of a like offence unless he proves that the act took place without his knowledge. I feel certain that on consideration His Majesty's Government could put that clause into a form less likely to do injustice.
Then again in subsection 7 there are these words, "or class of articles declared by the order to be one or one of a kind in common use by the public." I would suggest four articles which the Board of Trade would be perfectly justified in saying should come under these words, and I ask your Lordships whether you are prepared to think there should be either profiteering alleged, or maximum prices, given in respect to them—namely, bicycles, photographs, gramophones, and newspapers. Those are four articles in common use by the public, and you may have the Board of Trade saying—I do not know why they should not—that to charge 2d. for a newspaper is a very illegitimate form of profit-erring.
There is one commodity in which there is more profiteering than in any other—and that commodity is labour. It is
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profiteering which ought (I will not say to be prevented, because to be consistent with my views persons should be able to sell their labour in the dearest market) but which ought not to be encouraged by the Government; and it is a profiteering which, almost alone, is at the bottom of our misfortunes. Let moral suasion be applied to those who are profiteering in this matter, let it be pointed out that they are the people who are really raising prices, and much more good will be done than by this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

COURTS (EMERGENCY POWERS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons, read la, and to be printed.
BRITISH MERCANTILE MARINE UNIFORM BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with an Amendment.

CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
ANIMALS (ANÆSTHETICS) BILL.
HOUSING, TOWN PLANNING, ETC. (SCOTLAND) BILL.
LAND SETTLEMENT (FACILITIES) BILL.
WAR PENSIONS (ADMINISTRATIVE PROVISIONS) BILL.
LEICESTER CORPORATION BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.

LABOURERS (IRELAND) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendment agreed to.

ACQUISITION OF LAND (ASSESSMENT OF COMPENSATION) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to, and with a consequential Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

FORESTRY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: The House of Commons has accepted the Amendments which your Lordships inserted in this Bill, but owing to an oversight—a word having dropped out—a drafting Amendment was still required, and this the Commons have made.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(The Earl of Crawford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

AGRICULTURAL LAND SALES (RESTRICTION OF NOTICES TO QUIT) BILL.
Message from the Commons, That they agree to certain of the Amendments made by the Lords; that they disagree to one other of the Amendments, for which disagreement they assign a Reason.
PRIVATE BILLS, ETC.
(From Minutes of August 14]
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE CORPORATION (RATES) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (NO. 4) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (NO. 7) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments, agreed to.

CLYDE NAVIGATION 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 Lord Hylton), and reported from the Committee.
CLYDE VALLEY ELECTRICAL POWER ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
To be read 3a on Monday next (The Lord Hylton.)
INTESTATE MOVEABLE SUCCESSION (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Commons Amendments to be considered on Monday next.
TRADE MARKS BILL.
Second Reading (which stands appointed for this day) put off until after the recess.

WOMEN'S ROYAL AIR FORCE.
The Select Committee to meet to-morrow, at half-past Twelve o'clock, and to appoint their own Chairman.
Ordered, That the Select Committee have leave to hear Counsel and to examine witnesses on oath: The evidence taken before the said Committee, from time to time, to be printed, but no copies to be delivered out, except to members of the Committee, and to such other persons as the Committee shall think fit, until further order.
House adjourned at five o'clock, until Monday, three o'clock.