Lords Sitting of 17 December 1919

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, THE LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
LORD FORSTER.
The Right Hon. Henry William Forster, having been created Baron FORSTER of Lepe, in the county of Southampton—Was (in the usual manner), introduced.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 1) BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

NATIVE RIGHTS IN BRITISH WEST AFRICA.
EARL BEAUCHAMP EARL BEAUCHAMP rose to call attention to the recent interference by the Colonial Office with the rights of natives in British West Africa to dispose of their agricultural produce in the open markets of the world; to ask what other Powers if, any, have imposed similar restrictions, and what effect such action will have upon obligations of this country under the General Act of Berlin or under any more favoured nation clauses, or under any treaty or engagement; and to move for Papers.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, already since this Notice appeared on the Order Paper His Majesty's Government have in one material point altered their policy in regard to native rights in British West Africa, but the export duty of £2 per ton remains, and it is for this reason that I raise the question. The first stage in this policy was taken when in 1916, as a war measure, Mr. Bonar Law appointed a committee on oil seeds and kernels under the chairmanship of Sir Arthur Steel Maitland. The Committee was composed of Departmental officials, margarine manufacturers, palm oil merchants, a representative of the shipping interest, and Mr. Thomas Wiles, M.P., for Islington, who issued a Minority Report. It is noticeable and regrettable that there was no direct representative of the natives upon this Committee, which reported in the sense no
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doubt desired by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. I quote the following paragraph which contains the gist of their recommendations, but which I hope your Lordships will notice was not signed by Sir Frederick Lugard or Sir Hugh Clifford—
"The imposition at an early date in the several West African Colonies of an export duty of not less than £2 per ton on all the palm kernels exported from British West Africa, the duty to continue during the war and for five years afterwards, and to be remitted on all kernels shipped to and crushed in any part of the British Empire. If a duty of £2 per ton be found insufficient to divert the trade to this country, the amount should be raised until the duty is adequate to effect its purpose, and this determination should be made clear from the outset."
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Which paragraph is that?
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I have not the reference with me. I think it is one of the summaries. Your Lordships will note that there is no guarantee that the £2 per ton is a maximum, or that it might not be raised at any time it appears good to the Secretary of State. After June 1, 1916, and before the White Book was in the possession of Parliament, without any discussion in the House of Commons Mr. Bonar Law issued instructions to the Governors of British West Africa to prepare legislation giving effect to the majority recommendation. The Legislative Ordinances appear to have passed through the local Legislative Councils of Sierra Leone and Nigeria without any difficulty because they were recommended on the plea that it was a necessary war measure against Britain's enemies. In the Gold Coast, however, the proposal met with vigorous opposition, and when it was before the Legislative Council in November, 1918, it was opposed unanimously by all the white and coloured unofficial members. Only the official members of the Council voted in favour. It was open to Sir Hugh Clifford to use his official majority to force the measure through, but this he refused to do and referred the matter to Downing-street for instructions. The whole subject was then postponed until the departure of Colonel Guggisberg in October, 1919. The Ordinances postponed through opposition and various other difficulties, coupled with the fact that the blockade had rendered the measures superfluous, were brought into effect on October 20, 1919, by Proclamation. I should be much obliged if the Government can give me any information

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in regard to the Gold Coast Legislature in this connection, having regard to the fact that the unofficial members in November, 1918, refused to pass the Ordinance. Has it been passed in spite of their protest?
About October 20 certain unknown difficulties occurred, and there is some reason to believe that the Colonial Office had discovered at the last moment that the proposals as set forth in the Ordinances were impracticable, and steps were hastily taken, with the help of the British Food Controller, to reinforce the Ordinances. Instructions were sent to West Africa to prohibit the export of vegetable oil seeds except upon this basis—10 tons of kernels to competitors for every 90 tons of kernels sent to British manufacturers of margarine and cake; 20 tons of ground nuts to competitors for every 100 tons to British manufacturers of salad oil and margarine, and 100 tons of copra to competitors for every 100 tons to British manufacturers of margarine and cake. The kernels therefore appeared to be doubly protected.
The Indian Government was invited to adopt the same method with reference to ground nuts, but refused to do so. Will the Government produce any Papers on this point? The provision which had been imposed in the latter half of October was revoked, I understand, on December 2. We are all accustomed, my Lords in these days to bad administration by Government Departments. In this case I think we are entitled to some explanation from the Government why these instructions were given and why they were suspended? Surely nothing can be worse in administration than to change your policy so often.
Your Lordships will not be surprised if those of us who are interested in the question view action of this kind with particular suspicion. We do not believe that the object is the retention of foodstuffs specially needed in the British Isles; but we do believe that the result will be to consolidate the financial position of a privileged, but small group, of British manufacturers. The plea that additional and exceptional security against competition is necessary for the manufacture of margarine and cattle cake has some light thrown upon it by the issue of the prospectus of the "Jurgens Group," and Levers, and also various other crushers and oil cake mills. They show such a handsome profit that I do not think it is very necessary to do anything more to assist them.
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But apart from questions of this kind, international questions are involved affecting treaties with several Powers. Questions arise whether or not France has (she has now a system of licences) already contravened the General Act of Berlin, also what will be the attitude of America in regard to cotton seed under the Treaty of 1815, whether if other British Colonial territories are involved France will retaliate still more effectively and in some more permanent form. There is also the question as to whether if Belgium retaliates we have the right to object, and, if not, what happens to British capital sunk in the Belgium Congo for the expansion of the palm, kernel, and oil industry. I venture to read a letter received by the antislavery society from a firm in Lagos. They say this—
"In view of the interest which your society is taking in the question of the special £2 per ton Export Duty now levied on palm kernels shipped to foreign countries from British West Africa, the following extract from a recent letter received from a native of Warri, who is an agent of ours, will interest you: 'The Government has abolished the general bond in connection with the export of kernels, and has ordered that a separate bond must be executed for each shipment of 50 tons or above. On any shipment below 50 tons no bond is allowed, but a deposit of on every ton so shipped has to be paid to the Custom Department, this duty to be refunded, of course, after a landing certificate shall have been produced by the exporter here. It is unfair of the Government to saddle shippers at this end with such responsibility.' The glaring injustice of such regulations is apparent. The larger exporters are allowed by the Nigerian Customs to give a bond to cover this duty, but the small shipper, be he native or European—"
And, of course, generally speaking he is a native—
"is debarred from giving a bond, and obliged to pay the duty, for which it is in the highest degree improbable that he will become liable, and which duty will only be returned to him, then without interest, on his producing the landing certificate from the port of discharge for the consignment."
That is to say, the money which he deposits is locked up without bearing any interest to him until he gets back his landing certificate, say from the port of Bristol, or whatever may be the place to which the goods are consigned. The letter goes on to say—
"This certificate it will probably take him six months to obtain. For this landing certificate the charge is 5s. Customs fee and 5s. for clerical work entailed, so that a shipper who makes say fifty small shipments of 5 tons each incurs charges as follows, as compared with his more favoured competitors:—

50 Landing Certificates 10 s.

£25

10 per cent. Interest for say—six months on £500, being a deposit of £2 per ton Export duty on 250 tons

£25

Allowing six months for obtaining the Landing Certificate.

Beyond this he is deprived of the use of £500 of his small capital locked up on deposit with the Customs. The duty in itself is serious enough, but if such regulations as these are to be inforced to aggravate it, the effect on the small shipper will be that he will be quickly squeezed out of the trade. Considering that apart from a few chartered ships practically nearly every ship loading, at any rate at Nigerian ports, belong to Messrs. Elder, Dempster & Co. and that the itinerary and port of discharge of every ship is perfectly well known to the Customs Department, it is surely extraordinary that either bond or deposit of the duty should be required in respect of palm kernels exported by these steamers when they are cleared for the United Kingdom."
I hope very much that, in view of the well-founded complaint which is voiced in this letter, His Majesty's Government, if they are determined to retain this duty, may at any rate be able to offer seine relief to the small merchants and traders in our West African Colonies.
There is another, but. I agree smaller, point on which I should be very glad to have the opinion of the Government. Your Lordships will see that this ordinance, even in the West African Colonies affects partly these goods when in this country. How far is it possible for an ordinance in the West African Colonies to affect goods while in this country? The refund is not made until after the goods have been in this country for some time, and I should have thought it would have been' necessary there should have been legislation in this country in order to cover goods while within the limits of the United Kingdom.
But the most important issue at stake appears to be the departure front British Colonial policy, because this dictated policy implies a proprietary right of the Mother Country in the internal vegetable resources of the Dependencies. It has hitherto been a cardinal principle of British administration that the right to collect or dispose of virgin vegetable produce belonged exclusively to the native possessors of the soil. Indeed, this was the basis of the British protest against the Congo scandal. The Congo system reposed upon a claim that the virgin produce of the Congo forests, which the native alone could gather, was primarily the property of the Belgian Government, which could dispose of it at will to financial syndicates. The Congo
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system was in its inception beneficent, but it developed into pernicious exploitation.
The new British policy cannot be compared in degree with that of the Congo, but a similar principle is at stake, namely, the right of the natives of the Dependencies to gather produce which only the natives are capable of gathering, and then to sell the products with out, disabilities in the open market. It is believed that this is the first time that the British Colonial Office has attempted to issue directions for the sale of the native produce almost exclusively in our markets. In this connection it is important to know that the Belgian Government has lately reasserted its determination never again to expose the peoples under its care to the dangers which arise from the combination of commercial interests and executive powers in the same hand.
I should like to point this out to His Majesty's Government. As I understand the Treaty of Berlin imposes upon Belgium certain conditions with regard to duties on palm kernels exported from anywhere inside the Congo Basin. If we allow financial duties of this kind to be imposed in our Colonies, how would it be possible for His Majesty's Government to protest against Belgium if she follows our example. We shall not be in a position, having once abandoned the high principles which have actuated the British Empire until the present time, to refuse to Belgium permission to do the things which we are doing ourselves. It seems to me it would be very curious treatment of the gallant Ally to whom we owe so much. It seems to me that in this matter the action of the Government has weakened our position before the world in regard to the matter of native rights. I can imagine that something might be made of the position of tin. Tin also is a product of these West African Colonies, but I think I may point out one very essential difference which exists between tin and these palm oil kernels. Palm oil kernels are a product of native labour. Tin is almost entirely the result of development by white men; the mines are financed from this country, they are largely worked by white labour, and therefore are in a very different position from the natural native resources of the West African Colonies.
This seems to me to be a curious result of an attempt at Imperial Preference, the object of which was to bind the British

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Empire together. One of the first attempts to put it into operation has produced the unanimous opposition of the unofficial members of the Gold Coast Legislature. The finer policy seems to me to have been indicated by the speech which was made by the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in November, 1896, which I shall venture to quote to your Lordships—
"We, in our Colonial policy, as fast as we acquire new territory and develop it, develop it as trustees of civilisation for the commerce of the world. We offer in all these markets over which our Flag floats the same opportunities, the same open field to foreigners that we offer to our own subjects, and upon the same terms. In that policy we stand alone, because all other nations, as fast as they acquire new territory—acting, as I believe, most mistakenly in their own interests, and above all, in the interests of the countries they administer—all other nations seek at, once to secure the monopoly for their own products by preferential and artificial methods."
I wish that His Majesty's Government would revert to the principles indicated by Mr. Chamberlain in this connection. The Committee, it will be observed, admit (you may observe it in the White Book, page 23, paragraph 2) that there would a "risk" but they say that the "risk" of injustice to the native is "worth taking" in view of the "object" of the duty. I venture to say, on the other hand, that no risk is worth taking if it means danger to the natives' rights for the benefit of the traders of this country.
May I refer your Lordships to an admirable article which appeared in The Spectator of December 6, and which puts this point forcibly. It said—
"If by our Ordinance we are depriving the natives of the right to get the best price they can for their product then we are failing in our duty as trustees to the natives of West Africa."
This is surely a most serious departure from the traditional policy of the British Empire which has been entered into by His Majesty's Government without any public discussion. I am glad to have had this opportunity of bringing it before your Lordships this afternoon, when I hope a full and free discussion may take place. Although I suppose that it is too much to hope that His Majesty's Government may indicate a reversal of their policy, I do trust that they may be able to indicate that they will take such steps as will ensure that the rights of the natives are properly safeguarded and looked after. I beg to move.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I feel somewhat presumptuous in standing up to speak even for a few moments on this subject. It is a very technical subject, and a very difficult one, and I do not desire to plunge either into the problems of palm kernels or into questions of conceivable preference and the like that are involved in the policy which has been described. The reason that I venture to ask for a few moments' attention is this. Ten years ago I was to the fore essentially in the question of the Congo and its administration, and all the troubles which we then went through. I was practically compelled, not against my will but with my will, to bear a prominent part, and I know that a superficial reading of the literature on this subject—and it can be for me only superficial unless I were able technically to go into the small details—leaves with me an immense whiff of something like the very thing that we were then denouncing in the Congo. I say an "immense whiff," for I think it is very possible that the noble Earl who replies on behalf of the Government may be able to show me and others that we are under a misapprehension.
As it looks to me on the surface of the matter it is something like this. We are now almost for the first time—I hope it is for the first time—departing from the principle which we have throughout endeavoured to lay down that although a European country and above all our own country may take over the trusteeship, control and guidance of a country belonging really to a native people in Africa, we do it with the view of benefiting that people and of making that country when developed a better place not for shareholders at a distance primarily but for the people of the country itself. That we feel was violated entirely in what took place in the Congo ten years ago, and that is what I hope we shall not find is being violated in what is now being done in regard to these West African products. The danger is that what is developed is developed simply for the interests of the concessionaire or the shareholders and not for the benefit of the country and its people, and that seems to me to be bad. At its best such a policy is practically incapable of being worked satisfactorily in the end. Unless we can see that our trusteeship for the child races of the world in the development of the products which they must produce, and which are derived from land belonging to

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them and can only be produced by their handiwork and their toil, and unless we can see that that production, if it be successful, is going to result finally in gain to the country from which these products are derived and only indirectly to those who are developing it for the purpose of profit we shall fail I think in the way in which we transact our business.
I venture to interpose now because I want to be assured by His Majesty's Government. It is upon that point only that I desire to say this word, but it does seem to me a vital one. If our principles are to be maintained the world over, we must administer a country for the benefit of the simpler races or the child peoples as we like to call them, and not do it merely for the gain of those who administer it because the investment is a sound one. We must act primarily for the advantage and ultimately for the improvement in every sense of the peoples on whose behalf alone it is that we have a right to be there. That seems to me to be a fundamental principle stretching far back into the very roots of the administration of Colonial and other Dependencies which are inhabited by races other than our own. It is because I cannot help feeling some alarm as to the tendency of what is here described that I ask an assurance from His Majesty's Government on the subject.
LORD EMMOTT: My Lords, any one who feels as strongly as I do that this recent new departure of His Majesty's Government is a very dangerous one must be grateful to the most rev. Primate for laying down the broad line of the chief objections which those of us who are critics feel about it. Indeed. I think that we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Beauchamp for bringing this matter forward this afternoon. Very often the request for Papers is a mere formality in this House to give the chance of a reply at the end of a debate, but in this case I think that the demand for Papers is justified in itself.
Why is it that after three and a-half years of vacillation this duty has suddenly been put on in October of 1919? What is the real story of what happened in the Gold Coast? I think that some of the circumstances are tolerably well known. General Grey, a man who rendered such extraordinarily valuable assistance to General Maude in his advance on Baghdad
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that he was specially mentioned in The Times in their account of the affair and praised for what he had done, took his first leave by going back to the Gold Coast Colony. When there he found that this question was before the Legislative Council and he felt so strongly about it that he led the opposition to it, and the opposition was so strong that Sir Hugh Clifford, a most experienced governor, absolutely refused to override the unofficial minority and referred home for instructions. That occurred, I think it is public knowledge, in November, 1918. Why is it that the unofficial minority is overriden after what happened then? Again, what is the reason of the recent restrictions as to quantity, which my noble friend described? What is the reason these restrictions were put on a day or two before the new duty was imposed, and why were they suddenly removed? So far as I know anything of the circumstances, there was no shortage of oils and fats in this country at the time—October, 1919—these restrictions were put on, and I am confirmed in that by seeing in a paper that was handed to me this morning quite unexpectedly called The Margarine and Allied Trades Journal. In an issue of November that journal, in regard to the importation during September of oils, seeds and other goods, said that the increase in that importation was simply astonishing. There cannot, therefore, have been any shortage in October, and I want to know what were the real reasons for these restrictions which have now been removed.
I desire now, however, to speak on the question of principle. It cannot be denied that the object aimed at by this £2 duty on palm kernels to other than an Empire destination is for the purpose of giving an advantage to the trade of Great Britain. May I read a paragraph from the Report of the Joint Committee on the India Bill which seems to me to have a direct bearing on the principle which we are discussing this afternoon. It is said in the paragraph—
"Nothing is more likely to endanger the good relations between India and Great Britain than a belief that India's fiscal policy is dictated from Whitehall in the interests of the trade of Great Britain. That such a belief exists at the moment there can be no doubt. That there ought to be no room for it in the future is equally clear."
What does that mean? It means, I think, undoubtedly that it is contrary to sound policy to dictate the fiscal policy of the countries we govern in the interests of our

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own trade. And it is so contrary to sound policy that in the case of India the mere suspicion that it exists is to be removed and India is in future to have the right to arrange her own taxation and to tax the import of goods from this country if she chooses to do so in defence of her own industries. This palm kernel duty is a flagrant violation of the principle of which I speak. I thought that was a self-evident proposition. There is no pretence anywhere in this Report that the duty is for the benefit of the natives. It was imposed on the fiat of the Secretary of State against the wishes of the Colonies. It was carried in the Gold Coast by the action of the official majority at a time when the new Governor had been appointed—I forget whether he had arrived or not—and when an old, experienced Governor had left.
This country is so absorbed in other important matters that I am very much afraid that the importance of this particular question is not fully realised. I make no apology for appealing to fundamentals in regard to it. History tells us the story of great Empires that have risen and passed away. The great Empire of Rome was destroyed largely owing to slavery and the exploitation of subject races. More than a thousand years later the great overseas Empire of Spain fell through similar causes. But one had hopes that the British Empire had learnt by experience and found a better way of dealing with native races which would have given it a longer term of life. We began with our Colonial Empire as these other Empires began, but we were taught a sharp lesson by the American colonies and we learned a good deal from it. Later we purged ourselves of the curse of slavery by a somewhat heroic action, the paying of an enormous sum of money at a time when we were almost as overburdened with debt as we are to-day. We learnt how to deal with the Dominions by giving them autonomy on the basis of the famous Durham Report of 1840. We followed with the other Dominions, and the notable case of South Africa, whose statesmen—not of our blood and men who were fighting against us only a few years ago—have stood by us so splendidly in this war, is a justification of that policy.
On the whole, even in the last years of the Company and since the days of the Company we have ruled India in the interests of her people as we conceived
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them. And in Queen Victoria's reign what the Spectator described in the article to which my noble friend has alluded as "the principle of trusteeship" had, I thought, been finally accepted in this country as regards our Colonial Empire. Trusteeship involves the principle that native races are to be governed for their own interests and not exploited for the benefit of our trade. When I went round the Dominions with a Parliamentary party in the autumn of 1913 I very often took the opportunity of explaining in the Dominions what our colonial policy was as regards those parts of the Empire that were not self-governing. I did it for obvious reasons, and I found that it was often listened to with the greatest interest. I should be ashamed to go round now, with this £2 kernel duty, and try to tell the same story. Indeed, the confidence placed in what the British people have done in the past is almost pathetic at the present time when there are derelict portions of the world left by this great war, many of which are clamouring to come under the ægis of the British Empire. That is a great tribute to the justice and unselfishness of our rule in the past.
Is all this to be changed? Is the war to start a new era of selfish exploitation of native races for the benefit of the people here at home? If so, I am sadly afraid that the Empire, already dangerously large, will soon fall to pieces, owing to the trouble and difficulties that will be created. You may think I am exaggerating and tearing a passion to tatters. All I can say is that I am saying what I honestly believe, and I am not at all exaggerating consciously. To me the new principle involves the exploitation of native races for our own interests, to which I object. It is an absolute reversal of the policy of the last sixty or seventy years. I believe that, if it is continued, it will prove to be a policy of ill-omen to all of us. It is no use saying this is such a little thing it really does not matter. The recommendation of the Committee—and it is endorsed by the then Secretary of State in his Dispatch of June 1, 1916—is that if the £2 duty proves inadequate it is to be increased. It is quite futile to say, as Colonel Amery said in another place, that he did not understand that the native producers will lose in any way. Of course they will lose.
I admit that trade is at present abnormal, and one needs to be very careful how one

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uses market quotations unless one knows all the details and everything connected with them. But I had some prices sent to me without any solicitation. I have had them checked and I quote them because I believe they are correct. On September 2, weeks before the new duty or the restrictions were put on, palm kernels to Antwerp were quoted at £44 10 s. a ton, and to Liverpool at the same time £43 15 s. On the 18th, a month before the duty, they were actually quoting for Antwerp £41 10 s. and for Liverpool—a rather high price—£42. Quotations of course vary. On October 29, nine days after the duty was imposed, the price was £41 to Antwerp, £39 to Liverpool—just the £2 difference. On November 24 to Antwerp £44 10 s. on November 25, to Liverpool £39—there is the difference of the duty, plus the other restrictions on the destination. Also, on December 11 I am informed the price of Congo kernels in this market was £12, of West African kernels £37 10 s., and I am told that the difference was because of the restriction in the one case and the absence of restriction in the case of the other.
I do not want to attach too much importance to isolated figures, but I beg you to look at the matter from the other point of view. Supposing a duty for export to other than Empire destinations were proposed for the cotton and woollen manufactures of this country. What would the manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire say as to the effect on prices? Again, take our self-governing Dominions. Is it conceivable that Australia should put on a similar duty as regards wool; or—to take a case more exactly analogous—the case of India, is it conceivable that India would put a similar duty on copra? on ground nuts, on linseed, or on cotton? Incidentally, she was asked to put on restrictions—not a duty—as regards ground nuts and copra and contemptuously refused to have anything to do with it. It needs no argument that when you restrict a market prices will tend to fall. And a more unconvincing a argument I never read than on pages 22 and 23 in this Report. I am surprised that Sir Frederick Lugard should have agreed as it is stated he did agree, to what is there stated.
I have made inquiries about this Report. One member who sat on the Committee told rue that the Report was drawn under the impression that the war was soon coming to a close. I can hardly conceive that this
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was the case; but at any rate anyone who reads the Report will see that it is based entirely on the belief that Germany was going to be in a position at the end of the war to carry on the competition that she carried on before the war. The only reason given for this proposal is the fear of German competition. I must now read one or two passages from the Report to prove my point. Here is one—
"But while this is so, the Committee are still convinced, from the evidence before them, that the bulk of the trade will revert to Germany in the absence of specific measures to the contrary. On this point the Committee are quite clear. The trade will not have become sufficiently rooted in this country by the end of the war to overcome successfully the competition which it will then have to meet."
Another passage says—
"The question is one between this country and Germany. For many years before the war, German traders in British Colonies in West Africa, as throughout the rest of the world, have enjoyed—and abused—British hospitality. Just as German trade has been fostered by the German Government, so German traders have in their turn been the political instruments of that Government. When the war is over, they may be expected to return and carry on trade, as before, if they are allowed to do so. Already discussion is taking place in Germany as to the reorganisation, when peace returns, of her commerce and industry 'in anticipation of a fresh war.'"
One other short passage—
"It must be remembered that there is an appreciable danger of State aid on a lavish scale being used in Germany to, retain such an industry as palm kernel crushing, and the British Colonies concerned must be prepared to adopt a resolute policy if they are to avert the danger of the trade returning to its pre-war channel. The Committee, therefore, have suggested a tax of £2 per ton as a tentative measure. If it proves inadequate it should be raised."
Those passages prove that the only reason for the suggestion made in the Report was the fear of German competition.
The Committee sat from the autumn of 1915 and reported in May, 1916; and obviously they thought that Germany was going to be left in the position in which she was before the war when the war was over. They could not have anticipated that Germany would suffer the greatest defeat known in history. They imagined that Germany was going to be in a position to offer financial aid to this one industry on a lavish scale. They worked on the hypothesis that the trade had not obtained a sufficient root in this country to run by itself. But since that time we have been crushing in this country. We have been

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bringing to this country from 250,000 to 300,000 tons a year, and crushing almost the whole of it here. The trade has become organised, and new works and machinery have been put down for the purpose. We are told that palm kernel oil is the best oil for edible purposes—for the manufacture of margarine. We know that the manufacture of margarine has enormously increased in this country and that the demand for it is very much greater than it was. But if the case for the temporary protection of an industry here had been sufficiently strong to justify such a grave departure from sound procedure as is here indicated—a thing which I personally deny—the whole case is shattered by the out-turn of the war. The Germans have been turned out of West Africa, their property sold, and the whole trade is in non-German hands. So far from Germany being in a position to resume, her traders have gone, her shipping has vanished, and her financial resources are such that she cannot pay any in-indemnity for some time to come. It is impossible to dream that Germany can give subsidies on a lavish scale to an industry like this. Indeed, if we are to have any indemnity from Germany at all we must allow her to re-start her industries. Whatever case could have been made early in 1916 for this action has now entirely disappeared. As I have said, I do not think that our case was good enough to justify it; but, whatever case there was has now entirely gone.
I agree with my noble friend opposite that the case of tin is not a real precedent. Tin is an article which is irreplaceable. The whole mining of tin is arranged by white prospectors, run by white capital under white supervision, and with the assistance of white engineers. The tin is brought here for the white man's needs. Palm kernel collection is absolutely and purely a native industry. Personally I do not defend the case of tin; I dislike the principle as regards tin; but it does differ almost toto cœlo from the case of palm kernels. The effect of the palm kernel duty is felt by the natives, but the effect of the tin duty is not.
Let me say one or two words about the positive reasons against this proposal. Palm kernels are not a monopoly. France in her Colonial Empire raises 40,000 to 50,000 tons a year; the amount that can be produced in the Belgian Congo is, of course, enormous. It is not a monopoly of
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this country; but even if palm kernels, as such, were a monopoly, the uses to which they are put can be attained by half-a-dozen or a dozen other oleaginous commodities. Copra has a much larger oil value than palm kernels, and it is practically as good for all edible purposes; and nowadays by the advance of science the process of hydrogenation makes it possible to use whale oil and linseed oil, and so on, and they are being used on the Continent for making a quite good margarine. If all the palm kernels produced in the world had come to Great Britain before the war broke out they would not have provided more than about one-quarter of the oil we ourselves used at that time, to say nothing about France, Germany, America, and the other great countries of the world. As far as I can see, the total quantity of oil produced from palm kernels to-day supplies only one twenty-fifth or one-thirtieth of the whole oil requirements of the world.
Therefore in these circumstances, as palm kernels can be practically replaced by other commodities, the only effect of the lower prices for palm kernels in this market is to tend to raise the prices of other things which compete with it. The British Empire has nothing like a monopoly of vegetable oils, and as to animal fats it is very deficient. America has the great supply. America produces cotton-seed oil and animal fats; the Argentine gives us vast supplies of linseed; the Dutch Colonies give great quantities of copra; the French Colonies give palm oil and other oleaginous commodities, and Belgium has a vast supply of palm kernels and other oleaginous material. What does this mean? It means that other countries have means of retaliation on us even with regard to the matter of oil. France has most closely watched our manœuvres in this matter—I have documentary proof of that if I had time to give it to the House. They have translated the whole of our White Paper; they have translated and put into its proper logical form the evidence given. That they have taken the trouble to do this, shows how interested they are in the matter. Therefore we may be sure that the highly protectionist and scientific people interested in this industry are taking note of the matter. It may be said by the Government that the General Act of Berlin prohibits a preferential duty in the basin of the Congo. That is correct. It may also be said that the Anglo-American Com

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mercial Treaty dating as far back as from 1815, and still, I believe, in force, prohibits a differential export duty being put on the products of America which are sent from America to British territory in Europe. That also is perfectly correct. But these treaties are not laws of the Medes and Persians; they may be denounced; they probably will be denounced if we are foolish enough to go on with a policy of exasperation such as this seems to me to be.
Another aspect of the question has been alluded to by my noble friend—namely, the unfairness between different classes of natives, and between small traders and large traders. In the mandated territory—the new territory that comes to us of former German Colonies—no such differential duty can be imposed by the terms of the mandate. Therefore the naives of those former German Colonies are now able to sell at the best price they can obtain in the open markets of the world, while the natives of our own Colonies, who stood by us so loyally during the war, are unable to do so. How can we expect contentment in our old Colonies when an unfairness so gross and palpable as that is, being perpetrated? Sir Frederick Lugard and the Committee knew nothing about that matter when they brought up their Report.
Then as to the large traders and the small, I think I ought to tell your Lordships that I am a director of the Niger Company, but I am not in any way speaking on their behalf; I am simply expressing my own views. I say that it is unfair that a great company like that should be able to give a bond instead of money for the quantity of palm kernels that the export, where a small trader, whether native or European, sending less quantities than 50 tons has to provide cash for the purpose. I say it is grossly unfair.
To whom does this advantage enure? I believe it comes to the manufacturers and the crushers. I do not think it goes to the consumer, because the oil market of the world is a great international market, and you will not, by protecting a certain quantity of oil producing raw material in one particular country, lower the general price of oil in the world. But you do lower the price of the raw material which you bring here, and therefore I think the profit enures to the manufacturers and crushers.
Mr. Bonar Law, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1916, in speaking
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of the Report of the Committee in the House of Commons, suggested that the objectors to the idea of the new duty—for it was not then in existence—were influenced by manufacturers. I presume that the Margarine and Allied Trades Journal, which is a new production to me—it happened to be placed in my hands today—speaks for some of the manufacturers. It is a highly protectionist journal, and this appears in the issue for November—
"Palm kernels, ground nuts, copra, to be protected for our use. If the £2 per ton is not yet imposed, the policy of prohibition has been accepted."
The information on which they rest their pæan of joy is obviously out of date. But it shows the spirit in which this matter is regarded by some of those who are supposed to represent the manufacturers.
I apologise for having detained your Lordships so long. I trust that I have done something to show, in the first place, that this new duty exploits the native of West Africa in our old loyal Colonies—not in the new mandated Colonies—for the benefit of the manufacturer here; in the second place, that it is not needed against Germany, and it also Would be ineffective if it were needed because they would equally well buy other things; in the third place, that it is foolish for this country to set an example of an expert duty, because it is provocative of retaliation; and in the fourth place, that the trade is quite profitable here at the present time and there is no need for protection at all. In conclusion, I say that if protection is necessary, in Heaven's name let there be protection by subsidy or some other rational measure, and not by the mean and un-English policy of exploiting the native races for the benefit of our traders at home.
VISCOUNT BRYCE: My Lords, there is only one point to which I desire to call your Lordships' attention, in addition to what has been said by my two noble friends and the most rev. Primate. It was alluded to in passing by my noble friend Lord Emmott, but I think it deserves separate attention. It is to be found in the Covenant of the League of Nations. In the provision for Mandates in Article 22 of the Covenant there is a paragraph which prescribes the treatment which is to be given to natives. It begins—
"Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee—"

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Then a number of points to be guaranteed are specified: freedom of conscience and religion, and so forth—
"and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League."
The point of that, of course, is that in the Covenant of the League of Nations, to which we and the other signatory Powers have recently assented, there is a principle that in the territories of native races which are to be administered under a Mandate equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of every member of the League are to be given. That is a principle to which we have just set our hands, and which very likely may have been introduced in deference to what has been, on the whole, our traditional policy. Nigeria is not subject to a mandate. These territories were already ours, and they will not come under the Mandate. But there is the principle. Is it right for us, having recently affirmed that principle, to deviate from it in this particular case and to refrain from giving equal opportunities simply because we happened to have Nigeria already? I think that is inconsistent with the line of policy we have taken; it would not be fair, and would be very likely to give rise to attempts at evasion on the part of other countries.
My noble friend Lord Emmett referred to the possibility that there might be retaliations. So also where there are other countries enjoying Mandates, if they see that in one of our Colonies we are not observing the principle which is laid down in the Covenant of the League of Nations, they might be inclined to evade and find excuses for a departure from that policy of equal opportunities. It has been the policy which we have followed out for many years. It was enunciated in that quotation from the speech of Mr. Chamberlain which my noble friend Lord Beauchamp read to the House. It is a sound principle in the interest of the natives themselves. It is one which has been vindicated by our practice during many years, and it would be a very great pity if, in a case like this, where any possible benefit to British trade is, of course, infinitesimal, we attempted to set an example of deviating from it.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (The EARL of CRAWFORD): My Lords, I must thank my noble friend Lord Beauchamp for having given me very
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specific notice of the points he wished to raise, and I think I shall be able to answer them with one exception, upon which I have not a complete note. But I confess that I was not prepared, upon the comparatively narrow issue formulated in my noble friend's Question, with an answer to what in effect is a general debate on Free Trade and Imperial Preference, dealt with by Lord Emmott. But I will deal, though I fear in rather a perfunctory manner, with some of the matters which have been raised, notably by the contribution made by the most rev. Primate.
In the first place, let me say that this is not a new matter. It has not just been settled, as Lord Emmott tells us, after years of vacillation. This question first came up soon after the war began, in the time of Mr. Asquith's Government. The policy was settled under Mr. Asquith and by Mr. Asquith's Government, and it was not settled or agreed to by that Government until it had been submitted to the closest scrutiny by a large and carefully-constructed Committee. Eleven out of twelve members of that Committee who were in England at the time the Report was signed, gave their adhesion to this policy. I emphatically deny that it was with the object of consolidating the position of a privileged and small group of British manufacturers. I forget which of the noble Lords said that, but those are the words I took down from the lips of one of your Lordships. That was not the object of the Inquiry. Far from that being the case, it could not have been the object of the Inquiry, because when the Inquiry took place there were no manufacturers of these kernels to speak of in this country. The industry practically did not exist here, so that there could have been no question, at that time at any rate, of consolidating any advantages for British manufacturers.
No; I must ask your Lordships to go back to the position as it was in 1915, and to think perhaps a little less of the British manufacturers and of British trade, about whom we have heard so much this afternoon, and to think a little more about the actual, concrete hardship of the producers of these goods in Africa. Before the war, from a variety of reasons, including a skilful manipulation of tariffs, Germany had virtually acquired a monopoly of this crushing industry. The war came and shipments to Germany had to stop. The export of these goods, so far as the pro

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ducers was concerned, practically came to an end. Prices which had been remunerative to the producer in Africa disappeared altogether. There was a collapse. Prices, which are to-day £20 a ton, fell to the disastrous figure of £9 a ton in 1915, when the export to Germany stopped.
It was with a desire to help the Colonies, and not for the mean and gross motives which Lord Emmott ascribes to these three successive Governments—primarily with a desire to help the Colonies to find an alternative market for the produce—that the Colonial Office was led to enquire into the subject. They were driven into this Inquiry, and where an industry, a producing or exporting industry, has fallen into the hands of one monopolist importer, the greatest service you can render to that production is to find an alternative destination for the goods. And, as I say, an Inquiry, a most careful and meticulous Inquiry, was accordingly held by the Colonial Office, and action was taken.
What has been the result of that? Lord Emmott said that in 1916 the Committee reported in the belief that the war was going to come to an end shortly, and he quoted two or three sentences which showed that the Committee thought that the attitude of Germany in this commercial matter was of paramount moment. I agree that there were people in 1916 who thought the war was going to come to an end quickly, but whether the war came to an end quickly then or not, or whether, shortly or remotely, Germany is going to re-enter the market for palm kernels, the effect of that series of Ordinances has been that a new market has been created for these goods which did not exist before the war.
LORD EMMOTT: May I ask the noble Earl which Ordinances?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I use the word "Ordinances." It may be the wrong word to use—the action under which this duty is imposed.
LORD EMMOTT: But it was only imposed on October 20 of this year.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: The absence of shipment to Germany, as the noble Lord is aware, ceased with the war.
LORD EMMOTT: Of course.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Then, when the Inquiry was held, a recommendation was made that this differential duty should be imposed. On the strength of that guarantee, we were able to build up an industry in this country; and, therefore, as I say, we have got in this country—and I think it also applies to British Dominions as well—plant and equipment, which did not exist before the war, which represent a potential consumer of these African products, and which (in other words) gives the producer of palm kernels an alternative, and a second; market. That, I say, is an invaluable asset to the producer of these palm kernels. Supposing this had not been done and in the course of time Germany had been able to revive the virtual monopoly she held over these goods, the producer would have had only one market. The most rigid and the most immaculate Free Trader cannot object to an alternative market being given to the producers of goods. It carries with it competition, cheapness, a variety of assets which I know are highly valued by Free Traders.
What was the practical result? When this Report was issued and when it was accepted by the Government, the assurance was there by given to manufacturers here that for the remaining period of the war, and for I think a period of five years after peace was declared, or ratified—I forget which—this differential duty should be allowed to continue. On the strength of that assurance plant has been set up in this country, and in large quantities. There has been a considerable development here at home of the crushing industry. I do not know whether it is wrong to point out, or wrong that it should have occurred, that this has resulted in increased employment of people in this country; or that a second result is that the output of margarine in this country has been considerably increased. Lord Emmott might argue that owing to the manner in which these two results have been obtained, these things are to be deplored.
I will therefore turn to the third result—namely, that the grower and collector and the man who does the preliminary cleansing of this fruit in Africa have gained enormously by the fact that during the war we have set up this industry, and have been able to take scores of thousands of tons for

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crushing, and thereby have been able to pay a remunerative figure which, without that, they could not possibly have received. This is said to be a great departure from British policy. Natives, we are told, have complete freedom in handling the national products of their soil. Lord Emmott insisted upon this in a most gloomy fashion, predicting in effect the end of the British Empire in consequence of this action on our part. I hope to-morrow morning, if I may say so with perfect good humour, that he will read through his speech and make a schedule of the epithets and terms of obloquy with which he has assailed all those who support Imperial Preference.
LORD EMMOTT: I must beg the noble Earl's pardon. I did not deal with the question of Imperial Preference at all; I never mentioned the term. I was dealing with this matter and pointed out why it was against public policy. The noble Earl accuses me of hurling epithets and terms of obloquy against those who believe in Imperial Preference. I said nothing to justify that remark.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I am delighted to hear it. I should have said "Preference within the Empire." I am glad to think that those epithets were not directed against those who advocate preferential duties within the Empire. But there are ample precedents for this. Lord Beauchamp was, I think, rather painfully conscious of the tin precedent. He said that tin is very different from palm kernels. Of course it is. He said that palm kernels were produced by native labour and that tin in Asia was not. That, in effect, is what he said. It is not the case, of course. There are many of your Lordships who know the Straits Settlements and who know how tin is produced and smelted there. I undertake to say that no white labour is employed except in its superior direction and control.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I never said a word about Asia. It never entered my mind.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I am speaking of the Straits Settlements. It is a distinction between the Straits Settlements in Asia and Nigeria which is in Africa. The principle is exactly the same. Native labour is used for producing tin just as much as it is used for clearing palm kernels.
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I say that there is ample precedence for this. Export duties have existed for years and years. It is a perfectly recognised form of public income in these Dependencies. It exists in Nigeria, in the Gold Coast, and in Sierra Leone. Let me here answer the question which Lord Beauchamp asks about the Gold Coast. He is quite correct in what he said, and I merely state this in order to confirm his statement. The Ordinances imposing a differential export duty on palm kernels was passed by the Gold Coast Legislature by nine votes to eight by the use of the official vote, all the officials voting for the Ordinance and all the non-officials against it. I do not think it applies to a very great degree to palm kernels, but I am not sure about it. I think the Gold Coast places an export duty on other products of its own country, such as cocoa.
LORD EMMOTT: Differential duties?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Export duties. The articles in particular in West Africa are palm oil, cocoa, and one or two other items. In the Malay Straits it is tin and rubber. Lord Emmott referred to the preferential duties on tin from Nigeria. These were actually proposed (not merely export duties, but preferential export duties) under the régime of Lord Harcourt, and I believe they are in actual force to-day.
There is one other precedent which, I think, should be quoted. Lord Emmott said that the India Government contemptuously refused to do something of the kind in relation to copra. I should like to inform him that in July last the Government of India itself proposed that an export duty should be imposed in India of 15 per cent. ad valorem on hides and skins, but that a rebate of two-thirds of the duty should be made in the case of bides and skins tanned within the British Empire. The legislation imposing this duty has actually been introduced. There again is not exactly a precedent but an ample example that these things can be done by Governments which are concerned with the interests of great native populations.
Lord Beauchamp also put two further questions. He asked what effect such action will have upon obligations of this country under the General Act of Berlin or under any most favoured nation clauses? I think there must be a little misappre-

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hension about that. He rather illustrated it by referring to the General Act of Berlin and its relation to the Congo Basin. I am informed that the British West African Colonies are not bound by the free trade provisions of the General Act of Berlin since they are outside the Basin of the Congo. Therefore they are completely free to do this, and such action can apparently have no effect under the General Act of Berlin because it does not apply to them. I desire also to inform the noble Earl that no most favoured nation clause of the Treaty, nor any other Treaty engagement, gives any foreign power a right to object to the preferential export duty on palm kernels in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, or Gambia. That particular point therefore should not cause any diplomatic difficulty.
I am afraid I cannot answer the question which Lord Bryce put to me. I do not carry the text of the group of clauses of the League of Nations in my mind, but if I understand him aright he said that every country had agreed that there should be complete free trade in all Colonies or Dependencies where there were large native populations.
VISCOUNT BRYCE: No I did not say that. I intended distinctly to say that we were not bound, as regards Nigeria, by the passage in the Covenant of the League of Nations. What I said was that we have declared it as a principle which ought to apply to any African colony which comes under a mandate. It does not apply to Nigeria because it is a British Colony already and does not come under a mandate. We have asserted this principle in the case of all African Colonies that do come under a mandate, and it seems a pity that we should depart from the principle in the case of this Colony of our own.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Perhaps I had better not embark on a discussion of this kind, as I have not examined the subject; but I should be much surprised to learn that the American Government, for instance, has thus tied its hands about the Philippine Islands, France about Madagascar, Spain about her interests in Morocco, or Holland with regard to her interests in Java; or, indeed, how far it is compatible with adherence to that clause to impose preferential railway duties, or preferential dock, harbour, and freight duties, or systems of through rates, which seem to me just as good as preferential duties. Still
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Lord Bryce must understand that I never forecasted a technical question of that kind, but I will make sure that my right hon. friend Colonel Amery, who is in charge at the Colonial Office during the absence of Lord Milner in Egypt, shall have his attention drawn to this particular clause.
I have detained your Lordships longer than I had intended, but I desire to refer to what fell from the right rev. Primate. May I say that I heard his speech with some surprise. He used the phrase that the name of the Congo is associated with atrocities and systematic misgovernment. He spoke furthermore about our trusteeship for the child peoples of the world, and the danger that the development of these colonies should be in the interests of concessionaires. I discussed this general question on two occasions with officers of the Colonial Office, and I asked them what further points, other than those raised by Lord Beauchamp's Question, were likely to be raised by subsequent speakers, and these public Officers told me this that and the other on which they desired me to be prepared to answer, but I confess it was never suggested to me that this action on the part of the Government was susceptible to so grave a construction as was put upon it just now.
I do, however, recall now one thing which was told me at the Colonial Office a day or two ago, namely, that—whether it was one colony in particular or the four colonies in general I have forgotten, but at any rate in our West African Dependencies—there has recently been a very severe loss of revenue owing to drastic action being taken by the authorities, with the cordial assent of the Colonial Office, to reduce the trade in strong liquor. I was told that the income which will be derived from these duties will materially contribute to make good these losses, and I was also told that it will probably be used also for the erection of schools.
I demur to the statement by Lord Emmott that this is selfish exploitation. I, at any rate, should not be ashamed to talk to any fellow subjects of mine in His Majesty's Dominions as to the action of the Government in this matter. I do not admit that there has been any dishonesty of purpose on our side, and I refuse to accept the indictment of Lord Emmott of our motives, or to admit aspersions which I regret are so widespread, so uncompromising, and as

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I think so unfounded. This policy has been considered throughout not merely as an aspect of the German imbroglio of 1915, not merely in order to establish a new and a useful trade in this country, but in the interests of these African Colonies which have always been to the front in the Colonial Office here. I believe that their motives in pressing this forward—three or four Secretaries of State for the Colonies in succession—have been purely honourable, and I believe it will be really beneficial to the Colonies concerned.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, this question would naturally have been dealt with by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and I have no doubt that the noble Earl opposite regrets that Lord Milner is not here to make a reply to my three noble friends who started the debate; but your Lordships will, I am sure, agree that the noble Earl, who is labouring under considerable physical difficulties which we all deeply regret, has made a careful study of the subject, and, so far as the facts of the case admitted, has dealt fully with the indictment which was made by my noble friends, and on particular points by the most rev. Primate. The subject, of course, can be approached from two different points of view, and has two different aspects. There is the question upon which the noble Earl became indignant in his closing sentences, as to whether the natives are being fairly and properly treated according to the old traditions of the British Empire, under these Regulations. Further, there is the question of the fiscal side of the matter, and as to how far this particular action on the part of His Majesty's Government involves au approach to a protective system.
So far as the interests of the natives are concerned, this is in one respect no new subject to me, because when I was at the Colonial Office, a number of years ago, on more than one occasion British firms endeavoured to secure monopolies for palm nuts in different West African colonies. The attempts at that time dealt less with the question of palm kernels, which are used for the extraction of the finer oils, than with the outer shell of the palm, which is used for the production of the coarser kinds of oils, which are not edible oils. The reason which actuated us at that time, and I think my successor at the Colonial Office also, in refusing those lucrative monopolies, which no doubt would in a sense have encouraged trade, was that it was im-
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possible to feel that under them the interests of the natives could be sufficiently safeguarded. I do not think the noble Earl alluded to, or at any rate he did not attempt to explain, the fact that in the particular Colony of the Gold Coast the unofficial members of the Legislative Council were unanimous in opposing the imposition of these duties, which were forced on the Colony by the action of the official members, who, being official members, have to vote as they are instructed by the Government.
I confess that I cannot feel satisfied, after hearing the reply of the noble Earl, that there has not been on this side of the question some departure from the ancient custom which was so well defined by Lord Beauchamp and by Lord Emmott and also by the most rev. Primate—that of regarding ourselves as primarily in such matters the guardians and trustees of the interests of the native races inhabiting our Colonies and Dependencies. The two conceptions of Empire have been fully explained by former speakers, the opposite conception to that which I have mentioned being the utilisation for commercial purposes of Colonies inhabited by what have been considered in the past inferior races. The history of our Indian Empire in the past is by no means entirely free from the taint of such a conception, and it was, as everybody knows, the danger of that sort of thing which early in the nineteenth century caused the political control of India to be taken from the East India Company, and which finally placed India under a special Department of its own in this country. One cannot help feeling that in Colonies which are Crown Colonies but are more strongly represented on the native side and are consequently more vocal, this particular step could not have been taken. In such a Colony as Ceylon or Trinidad it would have been impossible to take the steps against the wishes of the unofficial members which I understand Sir Hugh Clifford was compelled in the long run to take at the Gold Coast.
I pass from that side of the question to the commercial side, to which the noble Earl devoted the greater part of his speech. I understand that he maintained that it was part of the work of the Government to which I belonged—
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: To which I belonged, too.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I was speaking of the Government before the Coalition. I was under the impression that the noble Earl was speaking of Mr. Asquith's Government before the Coalition. The Government in which I had the pleasure of being a colleague of the noble Earl is then considered to have been responsible for the adoption of the principle upon which this action is founded. I do not know whether the noble Earl desires to imply that this action is in conformity with the decisions of the Paris Conference. I think that perhaps he may, because, as we know, at that Conference different political action in relation to trade was laid down to be taken during the war and was foreshadowed for an intermediate period after the war, and finally for the future, generally speaking. It is important to remember what was alluded to by Lord Emmott—that in 1916, although all the Great Powers and the small Powers represented at the Paris Conference were fairly confident of victory, yet we could not at that time venture to foresee so complete a victory, ending in an entire political and economical break-up of Germany, such as that which rather more than two years later took place. It was quite possible then that even though we obtained the victory which would close the war it would be by no means in its economic aspect a victory such as crowned the year 1918, and the Resolutions of the Paris Conference for which I was partly responsible—I was one of the three representatives of the Empire there—were founded on the possibility that Germany at the close of the war aught still be, although beaten in the field, economically very powerful and able to carry on in various fields a rivalry with us in which in some respects she might enjoy even greater advantages than she had possessed before the war.
That possibility has entirely disappeared by common consent—I think even by the consent of those who shake their heads most dolefully about the possibilities of renewed German aggression. This being so, it is not safe to found upon what happened then—before the Battle of the Somme as it was—or upon what happened at the Colonial Office at that time, arguments for the taking of new action at this time, or even for the maintenance of action which may then have been necessary as a safeguard. The noble Earl adduced a number of cases in which export duties are imposed in Colonies and Protectorates, and he might have added that they are some-
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times imposed here. A former Government proposed for a time an export duty on coal from this country, and we all know that export duties in themselves are thoroughly recognised means of raising revenue, although they ought to be imposed with extreme caution because their effects are uncertain; and it is also the fact that unless the country in which the duty is imposed possesses a monopoly, or at any rate a qualified monopoly, of the article the subject of the duty, the duty will not be paid by the foreigner but, like so many other duties, will be paid by the consumers of the article in the country itself.
But the point is surely in this case, not whether it is expedient or reasonable to raise revenue in the West African Colonies by means of an export duty, either upon tin or upon any other product., but whether the imposition of this particular duty inflicts a hardship upon the inhabitants of the country. The noble Earl has tried to show that it does not. He has taken the bold line of saying that the duty is imposed from a desire to assist the Colonies. How you can assist these West African Colonies by limiting the market to which their products can be sent, I confess, passes my comprehension.
The noble Earl's argument (as I understand it) is that, unless the duty had been imposed, margarine factories would not have been set up in this country or in other parts of the Empire, and that now there would be a smaller market for palm kernels than there is, if the duty had not been imposed. I greatly question whether that contention can be sustained. In the first place, there was a growing tendency in this country to manufacture margarine before there was any question of imposing the duty; and, again, the country which has been the principal and most successful manufacturer of margarine, namely Holland, is also subjected to this disability, with, I conceive, the probability of reducing the consumption of palm kernels there. In fact, it is not easy to separate this contention of the noble Earl's from—I going to say almost the mechanical use of the old Protectionist arguments with which we have been so familiar ever since the subject had a new birth in the year 1903. And when the noble Earl said that, according to the best of his recollection, when Lord Harcourt was at the Colonial Office a preferential duty on some Imperial product was imposed, I

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confess I should be very glad to know what that product could have been. I certainly never heard of such a duty.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I appear to have said that under the régime of Lord Harcourt, whom I believe to be a Free Trader of irreproachable virtue, an export duty on Nigerian tin of a preferential character was seriously proposed. I do not know whether he put it into force, but it was seriously discussed under his œgis.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: With a preference within the Empire?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Yes.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I can only say that, as a colleague of my noble friend, it was never discussed within my hearing, and I cannot help thinking that, if it was discussed in his, he must have refused to assent to it.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I hope I am not wrong.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: However, I pass from that. I am quite certain that the noble Earl is convinced from the information which is before him that something of the kind took place.
The only other point on which I desire to say a word is regarding the possible infraction of the Berlin Act, as to which the noble Earl pointed out with perfect accuracy, I believe, that these Colonies—Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast—not being in the Congo basin, did not fall within the ambit of that Act, and that therefore there can be no infraction of its provisions as regards them. That is precisely on all fours with the point that was raised by my noble friend Lord Bryce with regard to the League of Nations, in which he pointed out that these, not being mandatory territories, did not fall under the stipulation laid down in the Covenant of the League of Nations. But in both cases the point is that if you take this action, so different from that imposed by the Berlin Act, or recommended by the League of Nations Covenant, we are stultifying ourselves as an Empire and removing, or doing away with, the old traditions which have so fortified our Imperial position.
The point surely is this. We have now for 150 years held a worldwide Empire. It
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was considerable before that, but for that period we have held a worldwide Empire, through the control of which we might have earned the hatred of the whole world and have come to be regarded as a public enemy to civilised Europe. There has been, no doubt, some jealousy of us, and we have been habitually regarded as a rather hypocritical nation. But we have never earned that sort of dislike which, if we had used our imperial position worse, we might so easily have incurred. And, above all reasons, that is due to the fact that our ports have been open and all countries have been able freely to trade in them, and have had the freest use of the products of our great Colonies and Dependencies. If there is to be a departure from that rule, particularly at the time when we are endeavouring to take the lead in setting up the League of Nations, we place ourselves, as I venture to think, in a most unhappy position in the face of Europe and of North and South America, and we cannot be surprised if, in spite of all our sacrifices and the part we have played in the war, we are regarded with suspicion, if not with actual dislike, by all the Powers with whom we have to deal commercially or otherwise.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: My Lords, I am inclined to apologise for taking part in a debate in which I did not hear the mover of the Resolution. On the other hand, I should be very sorry if my noble friend opposite who is in charge of this debate should not be told by some one, at all events, that he has in the speech that he has just made, the hearty support of, I believe, a good many noble Lords on this side of the House and of a great many other people outside. Quite apart from the Paris Conference, it is not so very long ago that the principle of Imperial Preference was announced as accepted by His Majesty's Government by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the other House. This announcement led to a dinner being given by prominent Tariff Reformers and advocates of Imperial Preference in this country, and among those who were present was one of the most distinguished members of your Lordships' House—namely, my noble and learned friend, the Lord Chancellor. Indeed, the Lord Chancellor made what was called "the speech of the evening" upon that particular occasion. Therefore, that the noble Earl should be flouted and attacked from two different parts of the

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House for the acceptance of that principle, and for stoutly maintaining it, is something to which I could not submit without saying a word or two in his defence, and in confirming my complete support of everything he has said.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: The noble Earl who responded for His Majesty's Government was good enough to satisfy me in nearly every particular. There is, however, one Paper to which I shall refer in one moment, but before I do that may I make a comment upon the noble Earl's reference to the speech made by the most rev. Primate? He told us, as I understood, that in preparation for the debate to-night he was good enough on two occasions to consult the officials of the Colonial Office with regard to everything that might possibly be said upon this question, but that they never suggested to him that the rights of the natives or the interests of the natives would enter into this discussion.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: No, not at all. Really that is not fair. My noble friend must not say that. I asked, "On what case shall I be attacked apart from that of which Lord Beauchamp has given me notice?" and they told me a variety of things—Lord Crewe has referred to one and Lord Emmott to others—but it did not occur to them that this action laid them open to the imputation made by members of this House that the rights of the natives had been disregarded and still less that the natives had been badly treated.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I accept that. May I ask the noble Earl whether he will transmit to the Colonial Office this aspect of affairs which has been discussed in more than one newspaper and is an impression which is commonly held by a number of people outside your Lordships' House? Will be insist that the Colonial Office shall consider the matter from the point of view of the interests of the natives themselves, and how far this differential duty bears hardly on them? May I beg that the noble Earl at the same time will point out to them that in this country, where the differential duty exists, the natives get a lower price for their produce than they get for the produce which they send to other countries? It seems to me that if they consider those figures it will be difficult for them to come to any other conclusion
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except that the differential duty causes a loss to the native producer, and in so far it very harmfully affects his existence in the British Protectorates? I hope that this point of view will be put before the Colonial Office, and, perhaps, on some future occasion, we may be favoured with their views on that aspect of the matter.
The other point to which I wish to allude is this. As I understood the noble Earl, this question is no new one; it has been considered for a long time; from the moment when the war broke out it was obviously a question which had to be dealt with. The result of it has been that this Ordinance was promulgated in the month of October, 1919. In the meantime, without the help of this Ordinance a large and thriving industry has been set up. If this large and thriving industry has been set up in the course of those, years, I do not quite understand how it is that this differential duty was necessary on October 20, 1919.
NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: It may be due to the assurance. The noble Earl said something about an assurance. Might we have that assurance laid upon the Table of the House, because that seems to me to be a matter of very serious importance? If the noble Earl would agree to lay that assurance on the Table of the House I will with draw my Motion for the production of Papers.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I understand that an assurance was given by Mr. Bonar Law in the House of Commons, in public; probably in the first Official Statement on this subject by a Secretary of State, which, I think, must have been in August, 1916. That is my impression. If I am correct in this, the assurance, of course, is public property. Lord Beauchamp also asked that I should get some Indian Papers. I will inquire about those Indian Papers, but I do not really know what they are. I think that I gave him information about which he obviously did not know—namely, the preferential treatment accorded by India in the question of hides. I imagine that the noble Earl will be less interested in the discussion of India on the question of oil seeds, and palm oil, and so on, because in the case of hides the Government of India has conceded the propriety of this preferential duty. I will make inquiries

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and see if there are any relevant documents which can be laid. When I say "laid," I mean that I will submit them to Lord Beauchamp first, and ask him whether he thinks it necessary to go to the expense of having them printed.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I am obliged to the noble Earl. I shall be glad to see the documents with regard to hides as well as those with regard to seeds. The point about which there is some difficulty is the assurance. If it is a public assurance it certainly will not be necessary to lay it upon the Table of the House. May I take it that if there is an assurance of any other kind the noble Earl will lay it upon the Table of the House?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I will undertake that a complete statement shall be made as to the justification of my remark that an assurance has been given. What form that assurance took I will endeavour to find out.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I am much obliged to the noble Earl, and I am willing to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC TRUSTEE.
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE LORD MUIR MACKENZIE rose to ask the Lord Chancellor whether he proposes to take any action with regard to the recommendations of the Committee which recently reported upon the Office of the Public Trustee.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think your Lordships will have seen the Report that has been recently laid upon the Table of the House with reference to the office of the Public Trustee, and also no doubt your Lordships may have seen letters in several of the newspapers dealing with the subject of that Report. The matter is certainly one of some importance, and I think it is probable that several of your Lordships may be personally interested. It is now twelve years ago, I think, since the office of Public Trustee was established. It was set up on the ground of being needed to satisfy a public want. There were people who desired to find trustees for their
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settlements and other matters, and who found a difficulty in doing so. On the other hand there were people who were asked by their friends and relations to be trustees and wished to be relieved of that burden. What was wanted was an available, reliable, competent, continuous trustee.
Beginning at zero, in the short number of years that I have mentioned the want has been met to the tune of something like £130,000,000. I think, therefore, the metaphor that was used by the noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State for India, might be repeated in this case: the grain of mustard seed has become a great tree and innumerable birds are lodging in the branches thereof. There can be no doubt that the want has been met. When the Trustee Act was passed the whole thing depended upon the appointment made of Public Trustee. There never was a happier appointment made. Sir Charles Stewart, by his abilities and his enthusiasm, organised and popularised that institution; his appointment, in fact, was the making of it. On no man, my Lords, and on no Department did the war fall so heavily as upon Sir Charles Stewart and upon his Office Sir Charles Stewart lost his two sons and the husband of his daughter. The office, which consisted entirely of young men, was denuded for the purposes of the war to a greater extent, I believe, than any other Public Department. How Sir Charles Stewart managed to carry on that work with his devastated heart and his devastated Office it is difficult to say. But he did run it until nature gave way and a catastrophe fell upon him, which made it impossible for that strain to be continued.
That things began to go awry was naturally to be expected, and a Committee were appointed very opportunely at the time when the Office was vacant to inquire into the state of the Office. It is impossible not to feel some anxiety when you read their Report. It speaks with certainty of the need of such an Office and of the excellence of its work, but it is the fact that at the present time the Office is being run at a loss and the fees must be raised. What effect may be produced by that is a matter of uncertainty. I am confident myself that the public will continue to regard the advantages of utilising the Public Trustee as outweighing the increase of cost which may seem to be necessary. This seemed to be

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the opinion of the Committee that was appointed, with one exception. Respect is due to the dissentient voice, and the noble and learned Lord has a difficult task in deciding what course be is to take. The main contention of the dissenter is that the Public Trustee, like a son of Zeruiah, takes too much upon himself. It is not an easy point to determine where the Trustee should draw the line as to the transactions which belong to his Office. He would certainly not give satisfaction if he were to act as a mere conduit pipe for bringing business to solicitors, surveyors, accountants, and the like. It is equally certain that the expenses connected with trusteeships would not be diminished if he were to adopt that course. I did not rise in order to trouble your Lordships with my own views upon the Office or upon the effect of this Report but the Lord chancellor is aware of, and I know forgives, the great interest that I take in this subject, and I venture to ask him the Question which stands on the Paper.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BIRKENHEAD): My Lords, I am glad that my noble and learned friend, by putting down this Question, has given me an opportunity of making a statement upon the Report of Sir George Murray's Committee. No one has shown more interest than the noble and learned Lord in the office of Public Trustee, and no one contributed so much to its formation; few, at any rate, contributed more. My noble and learned friend naturally watches over the activities of this Office almost with a paternal eye. I am sorry that the reply which it is right that I should make to this Question must necessarily be somewhat lengthy and, I fear, tedious to those who have not had occasion to take an interest in the work of the Public Trustee's Office. I would only, in condonation, remind your Lordships that, directly or indirectly, the activities of that Office affect the fortunes of many many thousands of our fellow subjects; that millions and millions of pounds are committed to the care of the Public Trustee; and that every indication available to us for our guidance suggests that the activities of the Office are likely to be very greatly exceeded in the future. I ought, I think, to add that there has been much legitimate public curiosity as to the workings of the Department. In the last, two years certain questions have been asked in another place, and it has not been
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possible to reply to them with authority or with completeness there because, as your Lordships know, I am responsible for the office of the Public Trustee and it is I alone Who, in the circumstances, can make any pronouncement with authority upon this subject.
While the proposals of the Majority of Sir George Murray's Committee have received on the whole a very favourable reception in those circles which are best fitted to judge, there have been in the public Press certain criticisms which merit attention. Many of those criticisms are, I believe, based on a misapprehension, both as to the reasons which impelled me to set up the Committee and as to the effect of the Committee's recommendations, and I am very glad to have this opportunity of dispelling any misunderstanding on those points which may have arisen, and perhaps not unnaturally arisen, in the minds of those who are most deeply interested in the subject.
There were two main causes which led me, in consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to think the time had come for a general inquiry into the administration of the office of the Public Trustee. I was not in any way actuated by any notion that the affairs of the Office were conducted inefficiently. I shall have a word to say presently about the manner in which the business was conducted. Nor was I actuated by any desire to initiate some far-reaching change the general nature of the conduct of the business, and particularly I had no intention—nor did it pass through the mind of any of those whose opinions were taken upon the matter—of increasing the scope of the duties performed by the Public Trustee. The reasons were, as I have said, two:
First, the enormous and rapid growth of the business entrusted to the Office, and second, the financial situation produced mainly by the war, with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and myself were faced. The idea of such an investigation had, I believe, been present to the minds of my immediate predecessors. From a period which roughly coincided with the commencement of the war, it had become obvious that the Office of the Public Trustee had passed through what I may call the experimental stage, had justified its existence, and had reached that period of its growth at which it was desirable that

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a general review should be made of its activities, and there should be a kind of stocktaking with respect to its operations. While the war was proceeding, it was, for obvious reasons, impossible to set on foot such an investigation. But the cessation of active hostilities, with its promise of a return to more normal business conditions, happened to coincide with the retirement of the late Public Trustee, Sir Charles Stewart, and this conjuncture seemed a very favourable opportunity for initiating the work which had been contemplated for so long.
Taking those two motives in order, I should first like to give the House some idea of the enormous growth of the work of the Department. It commenced operations on January 1, 1908. I am unwilling to inflict upon the House more figures than are absolutely necessary, but to give some idea of the position I must say that in the first fifteen months of the existence of the Office the number of cases accepted by the Public Trustee represented an approximate value of 3½ millions. In the last completed year before the war the value of the cases accepted was nearly 13½ millions. In the year which is now last completed the value was somewhat over 17 millions; and the total number of cases accepted up to the time when the Committee commenced its operations was 14,522, representing an approximate value in excess of 129 millions. It is perfectly obvious that a system which was capable of dealing, and dealing adequately, with some 3½ million pounds worth of investments, whether in real or personal property, required complete overhauling and minute examination, when the values with which it had to cope amounted to some forty times that figure and when the gross total value of all the estates to be dealt with was increasing at a rate five or six times that which prevailed during the early months of its existence. It seemed to us that the public at large, and more particularly those of the public whose financial interests had been committed to the care of the Public Trustee, were entitled to know upon inquiry by skilled and impartial observers that sound, careful and honest administration had been exercised in the management of their business.
Now on that I am happy to say that the Report of the Committee is quite clear. They say, "We have been much impressed by the pride which the staff take in the
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work and the energy and devotion to duty which have enabled them to cope with the rapid increase of business under exceptionally adverse conditions. The figures which we have given (some of which I have already read to your Lordships) show that the Department has now established itself successfully; that it has broken down most of the opposition with which it was at first confronted; and that it has met a growing demand for its services. "I lay stress on the rapid increase of business which I have already mentioned as showing, despite such observations as to mistakes as I shall have to make later on, that there is a widespread desire on the part of the public to take advantage of the Office and that, whatever slips or mistakes have been produced by the emergency conditions of the last few years that confidence in the Office continues and is still growing so that the rate of increase in the number and value of the estates entrusted to the Office grows continually. When we hear, as we do from time to time, general criticism, which seldom condescends to particulars, of the methods or the practice of the Department, I think that I and those more closely concerned in the administration are entitled to point to those figures as a proof that there is general confidence, and that that general confidence is deserved and justified. It can be but seldom in the conduct of a great business that an investigation into its methods is necessitated, not because the business is diminishing or the public are resorting to it less than its promoters had hoped, but because the confidence is so overflowing and the resort to it so thronged as to be almost embarrassing to those who have to conduct it.
My second motive in a setting up the Committee was less cheerful. We were faced with an accumulated deficit which, if present arrangements continue, must also continue, and, I fear, continue in an ever increasing degree. When I speak of deficiency I think that I ought to make it quite clear in what sense that word is used. There is no question as to any deficiency in the trust funds committed to the charge of the Trustee. The only question which arises is with regard to the expenditure of the Office in managing those trusts and the income available to meet that expenditure. Section 9 of the Public Trustee Act 1906 (6 Ed. VII. c. 55) directes that there shall be charged in respect of the duties of the Public Trustee such fees as the Treasury with the sanction of the Lord

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Chancellor may fix, and it requires that those fees shall be arranged from time to time so as to produce an annual amount sufficient to discharge the salaries and other expenses.
Now I should like to make clear also, once and for all, what my own view is with regard to this matter. The provisions of the Statute are explicit and must be obeyed. But even were it otherwise, in my opinion there is no justification (subject to one observation on one small point) for imposing upon the public any charge in respect of services rendered by the Public Trustee to the private persons who seek his assistance. It is open to them to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the Office for the care of their affairs and for the guarantee from the Consolidated Fund which is thereby obtained. It is equally open to them to abstain from so doing. I see no justification whatever for the provision to those who make use of the Office of a subsidised service or a service below cost. The Office has justified its existence in the past by providing a service for which the public or certain members of the public were willing to pay. If they should cease to be willing to pay, the facilities must come to an end. I will be no party now or hereafter to providing those facilities at the cost of the general taxpayer, or to setting up at the public expense, machinery which with the aid of that subsidy could compete at an advantage with professional accountants, surveyors and solicitors who live without a subsidy by the exercise of their profession.
Unfortunately, the facts with which we are faced in this matter are very serious. The first few months of the Office not unnaturally resulted in a small deficit. This is inevitable in the start of any business of this nature. But that state of things soon passed away and for some six or seven years the Office showed a small apparent surplus upon each year's working—a yearly surplus which began to diminish when the war began, and which by the third year of the war had become a small, and by now has become a large, and indeed a formidable, deficiency.
One of the tasks which we laid upon the Committee was to consider this circumstance together with others bearing on the same subject matter. The Committee have considered this matter and they have reported not only that the deficiency to which I have already alluded exists, but
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that it is necessary that further expenditure should be incurred which, if no increased income can be obtained, will increase the deficiency still further.
There is only one source from which an increased income can be obtained, whether to meet the deficiency upon yearly working as the Office is now constituted, or to meet the still heavier expenditure which is proposed by the Committee, and that source is an increase of the fees paid by those who take advantage of the Office. These were the two main motives which induced me and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to set up Sir George Murray's Committee. But I have already alluded to complaints of inefficiency and mistake in the Office, complaints which together with all other relevant matters formed a subject for the consideration of the Committee. I do not shrink from saying that there were mistakes and that there was inefficiency, though these mistakes have been vastly exaggerated in popular belief, and the total loss consequent upon them in eleven years working has been almost negligible. It would, indeed, be strange if in the conduct of so vast a business no weaknesses were disclosed in the course of ten years' rapid growth. It would be still stranger if such weaknesses had not arisen in the course of the last five years of strenuous and difficult administration.
During those years, as I have already pointed out, the business of the office has grown in ever-increasing ratio. Meanwhile, the Office, like all other great offices, whether in the public service or outside it, has suffered most seriously from war conditions. At the commencement of the war there were employed in the Department 155 permanent male persons. It will be remembered that the Department was new, and, as might be expected, a large proportion of that staff were below the average age. No less than 140 of the 155 were eligible for war service and no less than ninety-nine actually joined His Majesty's Forces. Two-thirds, therefore, of all the skilled male staff were removed from the Office and the work had to fall to less skilled and, I am afraid I must say, less efficient hands. Long before, under demobilisation, these men began to return to their duties it had become almost impossible to obtain anywhere efficient male clerks with any skill in the technical matters with which the Office is principally concerned.

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Nor was this all. It will be remembered that during the whole of that time the growth of business has increased so far as related to what I may call the ordinary work of the Public Trustee. Owing to the fate of the war not only were more estates committed to the charge of the Public Trustee, but death removed an unusual proportion of those whose affairs were so committed, and thus the Department of the Office concerned with distribution and with executorship was doubly overburdened. In addition, the numerous Acts which dealt with enemy property in this country imposed wholly strange and new duties upon the shoulders of the Public Trustee and his officers. He became the custodian of enemy property under the Trading with the Enemy Acts, and I might observe that in that capacity he has conducted his business to such advantage as to give general satisfaction and establish a balance between the fees and the cost of administration. But for this, in the midst of the anxieties and the burdens of increasing work and decreasing staff, a new Department had to be organised and some of the time of his most experienced officers devoted to learning this new work and teaching and managing this untrained and unskilled staff.
My Lords, if in these circumstances some mistakes have been made and some well-justified causes for complaint have arisen, is it to be wondered at? Is there any noble Lord conversant with the conduct of a great business during the war who has not been conscious that his own business has not been conducted with the same despatch and the same accuracy which in more peaceful times made its pride and reputation? I am glad to think, as I am entitled to think upon the Report of the Committee, that those of the staff who were enabled to remain at their duties, assisted by the less skilled members of the old staff, and by such assistance as could be obtained from time to time with great difficulty from the open labour market, devoted themselves day and night to their duties, and in spite of these minor slips and mishaps have earned the commendation of the Committee and have enabled the work to be carried on with the minimum percentage of error.
Now I think that before I proceed to deal in any detail with the recommendations of the Committee, I owe it to the House that I should explain how it is that we come
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to be faced with this present deficiency. I think it possible, and indeed probable, that when the fees were originally fixed they were fixed too low, having regard to the expenditure which even then had to be anticipated. Almost the whole of the money expended upon the office goes in salaries. The staff at the commencement were young and they were willing to work on small salaries, looking forward no doubt to promotion and advancement if the business proved a success. I think it possible that even then the youth of the staff and the certainty that if they remained in the Service they would require larger salaries might have been taken more closely into consideration and a higher expenditure therefore anticipated, and therefore some part of the deficiency with which we are faced is due to some initial miscalculation. But having said this, I wish to say at once that that is the smallest element in the present situation. It is extremely difficult to analyse figures of this nature, but I am pretty confident that the great bulk of the deficiency is due to other causes—causes which could not possibly have been foreseen at the initiation of the work and which have sprung primarily from the effects of the war.
In the first place, as I have already stated, two-thirds of the skilled male staff were withdrawn for military services. To each of these men, as in the case of all other clerks employed in Government service, and I am glad to think the vast majority of clerks employed in private adventure, sums of money had to be paid to make up the difference between their military pay and that which they would have received had they remained at work. This was just and equitable, but of course the result was to cast upon the Public Trustee a mass of expenditure which was wholly unprofitable looked at from the strict point of view of profit and loss. Nor was this all. In place of each of the men who so went to serve their country in the field there had to be employed, if he could be got, some persons from the outside world. As the war proceeded, it was not possible to obtain those substitutes even at the salary which had previously been paid to the man whose place was being taken. The market continually rose against us. It is common knowledge that all banks, insurance companies, and solicitors' offices were in a like case. We had actually to pay for less experience and less skill a greater sum than before the war had been

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given to our permanent employees. And unhappily, and this is in itself a high attribute to the existing staff, it was not even found possible to substitute one untrained man for one trained one. We frequently had to get two men where one had previously sufficed. Hence again a heavy burden of expenditure wholly attributable to the war. These factors no doubt will cease gradually to have their effect as the trained men return and resume their duties. But there are other and more permanent factors on the expenditure side, directly attributable to the war, which went to build up our deficiency. Rightly or wrongly, and this is not the time to discuss the policy of the measure, the claims of all clerks employed in Government offices have been submitted from time to time to the Conciliation and Arbitration Board and there have been paid to those clerks war bonuses which now amount to over 30 per cent. upon their pre-war salaries. Similar measures have been necessary in private enterprise. We have here, therefore, apart from the other matters to which I have alluded, a direct increase of over 30 per cent. net to by far the heaviest figure on the expenditure side of the Public Trustee.
On the income side, the effect of the war has been no less serious. It had been the custom, though I am not sure how far the terms of the Fee Order justify it, to charge the income fee, that is to say, the fee reckoned on the income paid to the beneficiary which the Public Trustee receives in respect of his yearly administration of the trust, to charge that fee not on the gross income of the trust but upon that income less income tax. When the difference in the amount of income tax at the commencement of the war from the figure at which it stands at present is remembered, it will be seen at once that we have here a loss amounting to some 25 per cent, upon so much of the Public Trustee's income as is derived from the income fee.
Again, the acceptance and distribution fees, that is, the fees paid when the estate is handed over to the Public Trustee for administration, and when it is distributed to the beneficiaries and which is reckoned upon the capital value of the estate, have shrunk proportionately to the shrinkage in general capital values with which we are all so painfully acquainted. The figures which I have given in an earlier part of these
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observations of the value of the estates committed to the Public Trustee's charge are to this extent misleading, that the figure of thirteen millions which I gave for the last year before the war is reckoned upon stock exchange values as they then stood, and the figure of seventeen millions which I gave for 1918–19 is also reckoned upon stock exchange values as they stood during the, latter year. Naturally, having regard to the general shrinkage, seventeen millions in 1918–19 represents a far greater excess of labour and administration over the 1913–14 figure than would be supposed at first sight from the mere mathematical difference between the two figures, and if the estates handed over in 1918–19 had been valued at the figure at which they stood in the former year, a far greater fee would have been taken by the Public Trustee.
These then are the causes of the deficiency in the presence of which we now find ourselves. To sum them up they are some small miscalculation at the commencement. The vast dead weight of the sums spent to replace those who had gone to the war. The general increase in expenditure caused by the war bonus and the rise in the labour market. And on the income side, the increased income tax and the shrinkage in capital due to the general depreciation in the value of securities.
Unhappily that is not the full tale of all that we have to face. The Committee have, as they say, found it necessary to make proposals for strengthening the staff of the Department and those proposals necessarily "involve a considerable increase of expenditure." "This must" they say, "be regarded as inevitable under the circumstances. In its earlier years the Office was an experiment depending for its success on its ability to attract business, and there was a natural tendency on the part of those who controlled it to keep down expenditure and charges. The scales of salary offered were low and the staff was insufficient in number."
I do not wish to minimise in any way the gravity of the total effect of the Committee's recommendations upon the expenditure of the Department. In their view, the net expenditure of the Office as at present conducted must be taken at £204,000, and the figure which they have found it necessary to adopt for the purpose of determining the amount of expenditure to be fixed in the future is £275,000. The estimated annual receipt from fees at

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present rates may be taken at £120,000 and, as the Committee say, it is therefore necessary to construct a scale which will produce the necessary income. Now I am not myself committed without further inquiry to these precise figures. The Committee point out that further consideration of the number and salaries of the staff may enable some reduction to be made in the amount of revenue which must be earned, and they desire their figure to be taken merely as a provisional estimate framed for the particular purpose in view, bearing in mind that it represents the estimated cost at the time when all salaries are exceptionally high and under conditions which can hardly be regarded as permanent. The officers of the Public Trustee and the officials of the Treasury are at present engaged in conference in going through again these estimates and proposals with a view to seeing how far it is possible to avoid unnecessary expenditure. But with these estimates before me, I am bound to tell the House that I see no alternative but a largely increased expenditure, and as a result the making of provision for a largely increased income. With such evidence as lies before me of the amount of over-work and over-strain at present imposed upon the staff, with the actual figures of the salaries paid to the people employed in the Office, it would be idle for me not to face the fact that a very large additional expenditure is imperatively and immediately necessary, and for that purpose a very large increase in the revenue of the Office. I am sure that no one wishes that the staff should be called upon to work unreasonable hours or at unreasonable rates of pay. To adopt either of these courses must mean the perpetuation of the system under which the mistakes and inefficiencies of which complaint is made have occurred. It must do much more than this. It must mean the definite acceptance of a low standard of work and a low standard of duty towards the beneficiaries and the Public Trustee, which must ultimately result in the destruction of the business and the ruin of the Office, and, therefore, however reluctantly, I have felt bound to assent in principle—as I have said I am not committed on any detail until after long consultation between myself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer—to the Committee's main recommendations.
This being so, I have next to turn to the question of the source from which the additional revenue is to be obtained. There is,
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in fact, only one source, and that is the fees paid by the persons who have the advantage of the services of the Public Trustee. The Act, as I have already pointed out, calls upon us to require such fees as will enable the income to balance the expenditure. It will at once be said, indeed it has been said, that to increase the fees will be to inflict a previous hardship upon those persons whose estates have been entrusted to the Public Trustee without any notice that these increases would be made. I do not stay to do more than notice the technical answer that. any person who so committed his affairs did so with his eyes open to the fact that from his fees, combined with those of others, the expenditure of the Office had to be met having regard to the terms of the Act of Parliament. I would, however, remind you, my Lords, that after all these people are in this position. They are at present receiving a service at much under its cost price. Some of them have had the advantage of receiving that service for some years. We are all, in these unfortunate times, faced with the necessity of paying more for services and articles whose cost we had regarded as never likely to rise, or never likely to rise to any serious extent, and I am afraid that the beneficiaries and settlors who are concerned in this matter must face this disc agreeable necessity like the rest of us.
At the same time, I will point out that there is a considerable misapprehension in connection with the matter. The fees taken by the Public Trustee fall into three main categories, two of which are taken on capital and one on income. As far as the income fee is concerned, it has hitherto been the custom to levy that fee ad valorem on the net income of the estate excluding from the calculation the amount paid by the estate in income tax. There is at least room for doubt whether this practice of excluding the amount paid in income tax is in accordance with the Fee Order. It is held by competent authorities that it would be open to the Public Trustee (and that it was always intended that he should) to levy the fee upon the gross income. However that may be, the recommendation of the Committee now is that the gross and not the net income should be taken into the calculation for the purpose of determining the income fee to be levied. I believe that the fairness of this proposal will commend itself at once to any one who considers it. Some extra charge must be imposed upon the beneficiaries, and regrettable as that

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necessity may be, this seems, having regard to the considerations which I have already laid before the House, the most equitable manner of obtaining it. But this is the sole measure in any way affecting income which is now proposed.
The two capital fees are taken respectively on acceptance of a trust and on its distribution, and it is by a large increase of these two fees that in the main it is hoped to make the income balance the expenditure. It is at once obvious by raising the fee taken on acceptance, that no injury is inflicted on anyone. No one is obliged to have recourse to the Office of the Public Trustee. If he has that recourse, it is only reasonable that he should pay such a fee as will enable that business to be conducted otherwise than at a loss.
The Committee further propose a large increase upon the distribution fee. Here again I regret the necessity for an increase, but I see no alternative and those who suffer—as some must suffer from the increase of this fee—must bear in mind that they have for some years enjoyed the services of the Public Trustee at a cost to themselves which was less than the market price of the services.
Now, having said this much as to the condition of the Office, as to the recommendations of the Committee, as to the expenditure necessary in the Committee's opinion, and as to the means whereby that expenditure can be met, I should be in-dined but for one circumstance to sit down with this final observation, that I hope that everyone who is interested in the question, either because he has business relations with the Office, or because he takes a general interest in the matter, will read the Report of the Committee. It is short and clear. I do not think that it is possible for me to summarise its contents in such a way as to present its proposals to the House more clearly than the Committee themselves have done. It is in my view a State paper worthy of the closest scrutiny.
The reason why I cannot take that course of bringing my observations to an end which would be alike agreeable to the House and to myself, is that it would appear from communications which I have received from certain professional bodies and from letters which have appeared in the public Press, that the Report has not received that impartial and careful scrutiny which, in my opinion, it deserves. I say that because the criticisms which have appeared upon it,
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and indeed the impression which seems to have been formed in the minds of those who have emitted these criticisms, proceeded upon a complete misapprehension of the situation and of the proposals of the Report.
Before I come to deal more closely with the matter, I want to draw the attention of the House to the constitution of the personnel of the Committee, bearing in mind that those criticisms proceeded mainly upon the ground that an attempt is now being made, apparently for the first time, to build up some great institution under Government control which is to frustrate private enterprise and place everyone's affairs, so far as I can make out, in the hands of a body of interested officials.
The Chairman of the Committee was Sir George Murray, himself certainly an official of long standing, sometime Secretary of the Post Office and subsequently Secretary of His Majesty's Treasury, and therefore biased, I suppose, with a liking for official interference and official ways. If that is the suggestion, it is curiously wide of the mark so far as Sir George Murray is concerned. After years of eminent public service he is now, I believe, engaged in private business and those who knew him during his official career, whatever other observations they might have to make as to his views on administration, know well that he was not one of those who had sympathy with large Departments or the indefinite extension of departmental activities, or with bloated expenditure. With him were associated Mr. Henry Bell, General Manager of Lloyd's Bank, who may be presumed to have brought from his long and intimate experience in the City a singularly wide knowledge to the consideration of problems kindred to those with which he has dealt during his whole life; Sir Willoughby Dickinson, a very well known former Member of Parliament, a member of the Bar, and of ripe experience in many business and philanthropic enterprises; and Sir William Plender, head of the great firm of Deloitte, Griffiths and Co., chartered accountants in the City of London, who is probably as well known to most members of this House as he is to myself, and who has brought to the inquiry the singular advantage of having had for many years an inside knowledge of its methods and business. It is the Report, signed by these four gentlemen, which has provoked the criticisms to which I

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have referred. They were impartial, they had wide business experience, no one attempted to dictate to them what they should find or what they should say, and have not the least doubt that any men equally experienced and equally impartial who came to the consideration of the question would have arrived at the same decision.
With them was associated Mr. Samuel Garrett, one of the most eminent solicitors in the City of London, a gentleman very well known to me professionally, universally respected and eminently successful in his profession. Mr. Garrett has concurred in the great majority of the proposals made by the Committee, but he has unfortunately, as it appears to be, coupled with his concurrence certain extremely drastic proposals which not only diverge wholly from the conclusions of his colleagues, but, as it seems to me, cut at the root of the existence of the office itself.
Mr. Garrett's report is published with the Report of the Majority, and here again for those who wish to understand the subject, I can only recommend them to read Mr. Garrett's own words, to which I could hardly do justice if I endeavoured to give a detailed summary of them. Perhaps, however, the main point of the Report is summed up in paragraph 28, which is in the following words:—
"The remedy is surely obvious. The Department has attempted to do a quantity of work which it was not intended by Parliament to do, which it is unable to do efficiently and which it is not paid for doing. This must cease if disaster is o he avoided. The branches created to do extraneous work must be practically abolished, and the work of the Department must be confined to that which can be done by a competent and careful trustee."
I do not think I am doing Mr. Garrett an injustice if I say that the implication in this and in the remaining paragraphs of his report is that if what he calls extraneous work were rejected and the work confined to that which could be done by a private trustee, the necessity for the large increase of fees would disappear, and all would be well. Certainly this is the implication contained in the letters which I have received and the letters which I have read in the Press. No conclusion could be more fallacious, as I shall show in a few moments.
On that, interpreting Mr. Garrett by those who base their criticisms upon the foundation of his Report, I cannot help noticing representations which have been
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addressed to me on behalf of the Law Society, the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors, and the Surveyors' Institution. They, like Mr. Garrett, seem to read into the recommendations of the Majority some adumbration of a gigantic scheme in which, as they say, "the Public Trustee should himself act as the accountant, valuer, land agent, or any other professional capacity"; or again—
"If instead of merely instructing and checking the outside agents and their work, the Public Trustee is to have a professional staff to do the work themselves of accountants, surveyors. valuers, land agents, house agents, financial advisers, and so on in connection with these 14,000 trusts, the business of the Department would become unmanageable from its bulk and comp exity."
Some of these categories of professional people have definite meanings, others have not. It is quite clear that the Public Trustee must have accountants to keep the accounts of the 128 millions of money which is entrusted to him, and I should have thought it was obvious that he required some small sub-division of his office in which could be located some one who could act as the financial adviser or investment manager. Indeed, Mr. Garrett himself was a party to the unanimous Interim Report of July 8, 1919, in which he definitely recommended the continuation and development of the small investment branch which then existed, changing, it is true, the title of its head from Financial Adviser to Chief Investment Manager, but retaining all and more than all the functions hitherto committed to that branch of the Office. Dealing with this particular branch the Report to which he is a party says: "We think that it is of the first importance to provide a staff which will enable the business to be conducted efficiently." As far as all these other persons—surveyors, valuers, land agents and house agents—are concerned, I quite agree that if it were proposed that the Public Trustee should himself act in those capacities not only would the professional interests of gentlemen in the outside world be injured, but also probably there would be a loss of efficiency. No one has ever made such an absurd proposal, and no one makes it now. It is true that there has been in the Office a small staff of surveyors and valuers. Its duties, so far as these matters are concerned, comprise the general administration of real property including the supervision of the collection of rent, the collection of mortgage interest insurance and records. If by Mr. Garrett's

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observations, and those of his friends, it is intended to convey that there is to be some new departure of policy whereby the Office will be developed shortly into a place where law, land surveying, and the business of letting and managing house property is to be provided for all those who come without recourse to outside assistance, I can only say that such an idea bears no relation whatever to the recommendations made by the majority. What the majority have recommended is that—
"trust estates should, while retaining the services of outside agencies, secure the further advantages afforded by a Public Department having at its disposal, within its own walls, independent experts capable of criticising, and possibly correcting or supplementing the advice received through the ordinary channels available to the private Trustee."
It is the more curious that this misapprehension should have arisen because the Majority Report deals specifically with the three branches of the Office, which might be thought to provide unduly specialised services. The first of these is the Investments or Financial Section of which I have already spoken. Here the Committee, with Mr. Garrett's concurrence, recommended the employment of one Investment Manager, three Assistant Investment Managers, and a small clerical staff. I may say in passing that nothing has been pressed for more insistently during the last few years by the small Advisory Committee on Investments, than the establishment and development of this Branch. The Advisory Committee consists of four independent gentlemen, whose names are well known in the City, Mr. Frederick Huth Jackson, Mr. Robert Holland-Martin, Mr. Mullens, junr. (of the firm of Mullens & Marshall), and Sir Robert Kindersley—none of them gentlemen, as one would have thought, likely to favour the undue growth of the Departmental system. Can it be contended that a small staff like this can dispense, for executive purposes, with outside professional assistance in handling investments which approximate to £100,000,000 in value?
Next comes the Surveyors Branch. The Majority Report recommended the retention of this Section as "an Advisory Branch on all questions arising out of the management of real property held by the Public Trustee." The real and leasehold property in the hands of the Public Trustee is valued at about £11,000,000 and the mortgage investments at about £3,250,000.
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The staff recommended consists of one Chief Surveyor with six Assistant Surveyors, and the necessary clerical help. How could a staff of this size deal executively with even a small fraction of this mass of property, or how is it possible for any one with a sense of proportion to base upon the existence of a staff of this size, the suggestion that the Public Trustee is to have a staff of Surveyors, Valuers, House Agents, and so on instead of employing outside agencies for the purpose? The third Specialist Branch is the Legal Advisor-ship, together with its sub-Branch dealing with the legality of investments, and this Branch is recommended for abolition both by the Majority Report and by Mr. Garrett.
There remain the two big Central Branches of the Office—namely, the Administration Branch which actually manages the Trusts, and the Accountants Branch where the Accounts of the Trusts are kept. Now here, when we come to detail, it is very difficult to see what changes in substance are suggested. Mr. Garrett does suggest a diversion of some of the work from the Accountants Branch to the Administration Branch and a more frequent recourse to outside accountants. It is very difficult to follow what economy would result from the transfer which he suggests. It is quite certain that it would not result in meeting the wishes of the professional critics of the Office. It merely shifts work from one portion of the Office to another. What really seems to be running in the minds of the critics of the Office is the idea that the Public Trustee should have no more competence or skill in the administration of his Trust than the ordinary man in the street. Considered as a maxim of general application, it may be that no higher degree of care and duty and skill is called for from him than from the first comer, but in practice it must be remembered, first that those who entrust their affairs to an institution established and conducted under the œgis of the State, look, and rightly look for a higher degree of these qualities, than when they commit them to the Trustee taken at haphazard, and often unwillingly from among their acquaintances and friends, and secondly, that when the Public Trustee selects those persons who are to be employed to look after the Trusts, he of necessity selects them from a class who have a slightly greater knowledge of the Law and of business than can be found in the average private Trustee. The question may be

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presented ad absurdum. Clearly whoever is employed to act as clerk in charge or in some analogous position, will in course of time, through handling many Trusts, become more skilled in Trust matters and particularly in the simpler legal problems than the ordinary individual who is a private Trustee, and whose life is spent in selling candles or in speculating on the Stock Exchange. Is it argued that as soon as he becomes more skilful, he is to be dismissed and someone less skilful substituted in his place? Clearly such an argument could not be advanced. It seems only reasonable that the persons entrusted with the every day conduct of the Trust should be chosen from among those who have a certain degree of skill derived from education and experience in the handling of Trust matters. It follows of necessity that the simpler legal problems and the conduct of the simpler business operations which arise in the every day work of the office can be dealt with by these gentlemen without recourse to outside assistance, though I can understand that the feelings of the professional gentlemen who suppose, though without any warrant, that they will lose professional business, may be ruffled, and that their apprehensions may be aroused, however unnecessarily.
It would be impossible to carry on the business of the Public Trustee with satisfaction to the public and with due regard to the interests of the Consolidated Fund without the employment within the office of some persons who are specially skilled in the conduct of trust business. It stands to reason that the executive staff must be composed in the main of expert trust administrators. I should like the House to consider how much skill and how much discretion must necessarily be expected of these gentlemen. It was to find that skill and discretion combined with a complete disinterestedness and security that the office was established. Let me give instances of what actually happens in practice. Within the last few months twelve cases have come to my notice in which a solicitor has given to the office demonstrably wrong advice and has been corrected by the office; and within the last few weeks two cases at least have come to my knowledge in which a solicitor acting as solicitor to a trust under administration in the office has maintained a position in which his duty to other clients plainly conflicted with his duty to the trust and has compelled the Public Trustee to refer
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to an independent firm. In all these cases I think that a private trustee would have acquiesced in the advice of the solicitor, and the trust, and possibly also the trustee himself, would have been damnified.
One further point is taken by way of criticism of the system of the office and of the recommendations of the Majority Report. It is said that simple estates are by the system of a flat rate of fee taxed for the benefit of more complicated and difficult estates. There is no doubt that any flat rate fee must involve the result that some trusts obtain more than the strict value of the amount paid entails them to, and some trusts obtain less. The real practical question is, however, in what degree this results in hardship, and whether any means can be found to modify it. On the former question some light may be obtained by comparing the different proposals of the Majority and Minority Reports. I have already spoken of the three specialist departments. As to the retention of the first for dealing with investments, the Majority and Minority are agreed, and it must therefore be taken that the charge for that Department can reasonably be spread over all the estates met by a flat rate. As to the Surveyors and Valuers, the total cost of that branch would not exceed £6,000 a year. It is an advisory branch and its cost reduced to a percentage is very little over 2 per cent. of the total cost of the office salary. It is purely advisory. The third technical branch, the Legal Advisorship is, as I have already said, proposed for abolition. On the other hand, the Majority Report recommends that certain specialist services should be paid for by special imposed management fees so advised as to cover approximately the cost in view of the special operations which attract them.
It remains for me to say a word with reference to the cost of small estates. No doubt the management of some estates by the Office involves the Office in loss on the cost of administration, and here it is possible that some special arrangements may have to be made to meet the difficulty. The Majority Report makes detailed proposals on the subject. Some of them are concerned merely with administration; some with serious and difficult problems of finance. All these matters will receive my most careful consideration after consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and at present I have not arrived at any conclusion upon them.

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I have dealt in the main with the various criticisms which have been made against this Department. I am not unconscious that it may be said of me that at this period of the session I have taken an undue advantage of your Lordships in dealing at such extraordinary length with a subject which can interest only those who have had occasion to pay attention to it. Believe me when I say that I have a justification for so doing. In the history of this Office in the work it has already done, in its contingent importance in the years that lie in front of us, and in the very serious nature of the problem which faces us to-night as to whether it can be maintained on lines which are financially sound, I am sanguine enough to believe that we should be wrong not to draw from the history of the past the confident conclusion that not only is the Office of the Public Trustee desired by the population, but that it can render the greatest possible service to many people who find it difficult to surround themselves with legal advice, and whom, as the past as shown, would have been exposed to risk and hardship if they had not had this Department at their service. I will only acid this. If we can keep this Office going upon an economic basis, if we adhere to the terms of the Act of Parliament and insist that the Office shall pay its way, having spent a great deal of labour on this question since I attained to my present position I venture to predict, first, that this Office will grow more and more in weight and influence, and, secondly, that the increase in its fees which is necessary, and which I propose with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to authorise, will not sterilise or indeed very much alter its activities and its beneficial service to the public.

MINERAL RIGHTS DUTY.
LORD DENMAN: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Strachie, who is unavoidably absent, I desire to ask His Majesty's Government the Question standing in his name—Whether it is the case that Mineral Rights Duty is payable on Excess Profits on mineral royalties; and, if so, whether they consider it fair that such tax should be imposed on that part of royalties on minerals which has to be paid over to the Government.
LORD HYLTON: In answer to the Question, my noble friend will probably
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know that the Mineral Rights Duty imposed by the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910, is charged at the rate of 1s. in the £ upon the net amount, after the deduction of Income Tax, of mineral royalties paid by the lessee working the minerals in respect of the right to work the minerals. Then as regards the Excess Mineral Rights Duty, that was imposed by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1915, as an addition to the Mineral Rights Duty. It corresponds in some respects, as your Lordships know, to the Excess Profits Duty, being a charge upon the "excess" royalties accruing in certain circumstances to the owners of mineral rights just as the Excess Profit Duty is a charge upon the "excess" profits of trades and businesses. The subject of the charge to Excess Mineral Rights Duty is the mineral royalties payable by the working lessees in respect of the right to work the minerals; but whereas the Mineral Rights Duty is charged upon the full amount of the mineral royalties so paid, the Excess Mineral Rights Duty is levied only in cases where the royalty varies according to the selling price of the minerals, and is charged upon the "excess" of the royalty payable in any working year ending after August 4, 1914, after the pre-war standard. The rate of duty which is payable on the "excess" has always followed the rate of the Excess Profits Duty. That was originally 50 per cent., subsequently it was increased to 60 per cent., then to 80 per cent., and it has now been reduced to 40 per cent., in respect of the excess accruing as from January 1, 1919.
I do not know whether my noble friend wants me to explain to him exactly how that pre-war standard of which I have spoken is arrived at. As a matter of fact, it is the average of any two of the pre-war rent values of the last three pre-war years. That pre-war rent value is a purely hypothetical figure bearing no relation to the amounts of royalty actually payable in the pre-war year, and is taken to be the figure to which the royalties payable in the working year would have amounted if the selling price of the minerals in the pre-war year were substituted for the selling price in the working year. There is one point about the Mineral Rights Duty and the Excess Mineral Rights Duty—namely, that they are both of them in effect annual levies on capital; because, as your Lordships know, minerals are a wasting asset, and, to arrive at the difference between the gross and the actual net receipts in the case of an income

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derived from mineral royalties, you must deduct from the gross royalties in the first place the Income Tax at 6s. in the £ in the second place, the Mineral Rights Duty, to which I have referred, at 1s. in the £ in the third place, the Excess Mineral Rights Duty, if any; in the fourth place, the super-tax if any; and fifthly—owners cannot disregard the fact that this must be the fifth deduction to arrive at the difference between the gross and net mineral receipts—the salary of minerals agents whose services are, as many of your Lordships know who are practically acquainted with these matters, indispensable in the case of every royalty owner. From the figures I have given it will be obvious to your Lordships that the State has been receiving, and is now receiving, a larger proportion of the receipts on royalties than the nominal owner of the royalties; and it will, perhaps, be a matter of regret to some future Chancellor of the Exchequer to lose this considerable branch of the revenue if mineral royalties are nationalised.
The second Question of my noble friend asks whether in the opinion of His Majesty's Government it is fair that the Excess Minerals Rights Duty should be imposed on that part of royalties on minerals which have been paid over to the Government. I am not authorised by His Majesty's Government to answer this question, but most noble Lords know that, under the present system of assessing Income Tax on lands or houses, we most of us have to pay Income Tax on much that we do not and cannot receive. My noble friend might equally ask whether the Government thought that was fair. I am afraid that the only answer I can give is that at present it is legal.

TURKISH RULE IN ARMENIA.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY rose to call attention to the sufferings of the Christian refugees, Armenian, Nestorian, and Chaldæan, who are still prevented from returning to their homes by the Turkish troops who are occupying the districts from which they were driven, and to the repeated declarations made by the Government that all Turkish rule should cease in Armenia and the other districts referred to; and to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can give any information as to the steps taken or proposed in relation thereto.
The most rev. Primate said: My Lords, I do not think that any of your Lordships who have taken an interest in the question relating to which I have placed a notice on the Paper will take exception to public attention being called to the matter at this time. We have reached a stage in what may be called the resettlement of the world after war, when this matter, whether it be possible or not to handle it thoroughly, at present, is one of urgent and massive importance; and it it is to be handled it is well that it should be in the public recollection what has passed hitherto respecting it, and with what it is we really have to deal.
Just three years have passed since a remarkable Blue-book was published in October, 1916—a Blue Book which I venture to say, if the war had not at that time absorbed everyone's attention and retained their attention for some time afterwards, would have had a position and a reputation unlike most of the books which appear under covers of that colour and in that form. It was the Blue-book giving the story of the treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and containing a collection of documents relating to it. The treatment of Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and to some extent Greeks, is handled in some measure at least in that book, and the book is one which to any one who desires to understand the whole question is not only essential for proper information but is interesting from cover to cover.
The appalling stories of wholesale massacre, of expulsion of great populations from their homes under conditions which could only be described as in most cases slowly dragged-out massacre, are set before us in incident after incident, showing what has happened on a scale so vast as is scarcely credible in our own time or, indeed, in any time. Every one who studies the subject at once begins to ask himself: Are the outrages which are here described the misdeeds of lawless ruffians who are out of hand and incapable of knowing what mercy or humanity means, or can they be the deliberate acts of a Government itself? On that question very large issues would necessarily turn. Unhappily the Blue-book leaves the impartial reader in no doubt whatever as to the answer which must be given. The book is no mere string of incidents. It gives the coherent story of these years, introduced and supplemented by narratives of the past and

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summaries of what has happened in the present which enable us by the lucidity, the range, and the clear arrangement of the whole, to deal with that question without hesitation and to arrive at the conclusion which is, I think, inevitable. No one reading it carefully but must be convinced, not, I will say, of the Turkish Government's complicity in these matters, but of its authorship, the actual authorship of these unspeakable outrages.
At the very outset of the war a deliberate plan was adopted, it is perfectly clear, by the Turkish Government for dealing with these long oppressed peoples, peoples in their various groups whose courage, whose loyalty to their Christian faith and, in some cases, whose industry aid grit had enabled them to hold their own for centuries and centuries in face of oppression, and poverty, anti misrule. The Government decided upon a cold-blooded plan of a double character. It was first to be a plan of quite deliberate massacre on a large scale, and it was next to be a plan of so-called deportation from the occupied regions which, in very many cases, merely meant massacre in a deferred degree.
Different regions were taken in order. The records which are here brought to light show that there were telegrams at the same time sent to the various parts of the Empire so that the massacre, if it was to be a massacre, should take place at the same time in different places. The deportations were carefully arranged by a plan which makes it utterly impossible to suppose that they were the acts of local governors, or local authorities, or that they emanated from any other source than headquarters, whether or no those headquarters had an identity different from that which belonged to the Turkish Government.
What took place is described in this book by eye-witnesses. Narrative after narrative gives it in detail. These are not for the most part the accounts of victims who had survived; they are narratives by calm, competent, highly-skilled observers, familiar with the country, familiar with the people, and incapable of misrepresenting what they saw. Americans, Germans—I will note Germans very markedly—and English observers as well. These all support, with practical unanimity, the stories given by those victims who had survived, whose records, had they not been thus supported, might very unfairly have
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been judged as not likely to be correctly or temperately given.
The last thing I want to do is to go over in detail horrors of this kind. I would quote just two instances in order to give examples of the kind of things to which I refer. There was, first, the policy of this deportation that we speak of. I have chosen out of an almost unlimited number of cases which one might choose, a statement by the principal of the American college who has gone into the whole matter with the most accurate observation and with statistical care, in regard to one particular deportation, and this is his summary of it—
"Front the village of E—"
The observer has not mentioned what village it was—
"212 individuals set out—"
"Set out" means, of course, that they were driven from their homes with the express intention of their being taken somewhere to be settled, were driven for the most part into wild regions over roads of such length and under such conditions of hardship that the survival only of the strongest of them was possible. All the young men before that time had in every single case been taken away, and the old men, the women, and the children were the people who survived to be the victims of the deportation—
"From the village of E 212 individuals set out, of whom 128 (60 per cent.) reached Aleppo alive; 56 men and 11 women were killed on the road, 3 girls and 9 boys were sold or kidnapped, and 5 people were missing. From the same place another party of 696 people were deported; 321 (46 per cent.) reached Aleppo: 206 men and 57 women were killed en route; 70 girls and young women and 19 boys were sold; 23 were missing. From the village of D a party of 128 were deported, of whom 32 (25 per cent.) reached Aleppo alive: 24 men and 12 women were killed en route; 29 girls and young women and 13 boys were sold; and 18 were missing."
I have purposely taken not one of the many accounts which give the facts in their detail, but a summary of that which the observer found to be the outcome. If we remember the phrase that "seventy girls and young women, and nineteen boys were sold," and we look over the page to see what that means we find how, as they passed each town, the girls or young women were in most cases paraded in front of the house of any Turkish buyer who chose to come and take them for purposes described in detail, so unutterably horrible—girls

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being constantly done to death by those who took them in this way—as make the records appalling to read. That, I take it, is by no means an extreme case. There are many cases where the numbers were greater and the survivors fewer, but I have taken the one which was testified to by so competent and cool an observer, who is able to give us figures and not to talk in any way general terms.
So much for the deportation part. Let me give you one form among many that there are with regard to the massacres. The massacres were often en route. For example, great numbers of women and young girls were placed on board dumb barges on the Tigris and half an hour after leaving the bank they were thrown overboard, while soldiers had been placed in proper positions along the banks to prevent any of them reaching the shore. That kind of thing happened not in twenty, thirty, or fifty cases, but—I do not say in thousands—but certainly in many hundreds of cases.
This kind of thing is also described by a careful observer whose name is there—
"Every one of the Armenians, leaders as well as men, was killed fighting"—
That is, the younger men—
"and when the silence of death reigned over the ruins of churches and the rest, the Moslem rabble made a descent upon the women and children and drove them out of the town into large camps which had already been prepared for the peasant women and children. The ghastly scenes which followed may indeed sound incredible, yet these reports have been confirmed from Russian sources beyond all doubt. The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them. Fire was set to large wooden sheds in Alidjan, Megrakom, Khaskegh, and other Armenian villages, and these absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death. Many went mad and threw their children away; some knelt down and prayed amid the flames in which their bodies were burning; others shrieked and cried for help which came from nowhere. And the executioners, who seem to have been unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, grasped infants by one leg and hurled them into the fire, calling out to the burning mothers, 'Here are your lions.' "
That is the kind of description which occurs, not once or twice in this book. It is not some over-wrought account by an excited observer, but it is the record of really competent people telling what they saw take place, not at one spot but at many, over a region of that fertile country which is capable of better things.
There are not a few men and women in this country who are able to speak as eyewitnesses of many of these things. Some of your Lordships know, and have had the privilege of making the acquaintance of, a lady in a high position among the Nestorians, Surma the sister of Mar Shimun, the late Patriarch, who is now in this country as a sort of delegate from her people. She is able to speak with the fullest personal knowledge of details of happenings which she herself has witnessed. Her brother, the Patriarch, was massacred. She herself survived and the account she gives, with great calmness and perfect self-control, of things she has seen and what she knows to have happened to her sisters, cousins and other relatives and friends, women and girls particularly, are such as support to the full, one is only too sorry to say, the very worst accounts which appear in the printed record.
What was the result, taking it in a large way numerically? I prefer here to take the statement of one of these careful statistical observers who has summarised for the Blue-book what were the results. I may be asked "Are you speaking of a few thousand, or how many thousand?" I will read the paragraph in which it is summarised—
"There is no dispute as to what happened in 1915. The Armenian inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire were everywhere uprooted from their homes and deported to the most remote and unhealthy districts that the Government could select for them. Some were murdered at the outset, some perished on the way, and some died after reaching their destination. The death-roll amounts to upwards of six hundred thousand; perhaps six hundred thousand more are still alive in their places of exile; and the remaining six hundred thousand or so have either been converted forcibly to Islam, gone into hiding in the mountains, or escaped beyond the Ottoman frontier. The Ottoman Government cannot deny these facts, and they cannot justify them."
If you refer to the Book itself you will see that the estimate is carefully reached as the result of balancing different evidence about the numerical details, which are obviously very difficult to obtain. If it errs at all I am quite clear it errs by under-stating, rather than over-stating, the facts.
I believe that the story of these years is really an outrage on civilisation without historical parallel in the world. I do not believe that in the wildest barbarities recorded in history, including those of the days of Tamerlane, you would be able to exceed, if you could parallel, the accounts

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that are here given. And these can be, as I have said, undoubtedly traced, not to the outrageous conduct of undisciplined hordes, but to the deliberate plan and scheme of a Government with which you are supposed to have been on friendly terms and in alliance for many purposes. After all the distractions which the war has brought into the mind of men all over the world in contemplating contemporary history, is it conceivable that we are going to allow these facts to be forgotten; or, if we do not allow them to be forgotten, that we are going to allow conditions to arise again during which their repetition can be possible? That seems to me to be a question which ought to be, and must be, asked at once.
Any person to whom one mentions the subject naturally asks, "How do they explain, how do they account for, this themselves? What answer do the Turks themselves give to a statement of that kind as to the wholesale character of these horrible doings? To my mind hardly anything is more damning in its condemnation than the nature of the defence which is offered. There are three different branches of excuses given, which are summarised for us in this book. The first is that these were rebellious people, that they were not really loyal to Turkey's rule—we know what the Turkish rule over them had been for a great many years—and that it was necessary to exercise disciplinary action in order to reduce things to order. This is the way they put it—
"It was the Ottoman Government's duty to uphold public law and order. In war time measures of this kind assume an especially weighty and pressing character."
It is not that the thing is not true. As to the next explanation the quotations I am going to give you would, if one could get away from the horribleness of the whole thing, really have an almost humorous character. The Turkish Governor said—
"The sad events that have occurred in Armenia have prevented my sleeping well at night. We have been reproached for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty; but that was utterly impossible, in view of the fact that those who were innocent to-day might be guilty to-morrow."
That is the second explanation. Is it possible to conceive, when officials in high places give that as an explanation of what has taken place, that we can regard the doings in any way except with horror?
The third explanation is a deliberate statement that it was revenge executed upon Armenians and other Christians resident in Turkey for the fact that Armenians and other Christians were fighting against them in Russia at that time. Here is another quotation—
"Was it not human nature that we should revenge ourselves on the Armenians at home for the injury we had received from their com-patriots fighting against us at the front in the Russian ranks—men who had actually volunteered to fight against us in the enemy's cause?"
Therefore, those who in their own country were subjects of the Turkish Empire and were allied to those who in another country were fighting against Turkey, were to be treated in the way here described. You will notice that every one of these excuses admits the facts. The facts, as far as I know, have never been challenged except in vague generalities asserting that they were gross exaggerations. The facts are patent; the authors of these misdeeds stand self-condemned as well as condemned by the opinion of every reasonable man.
It is, of course, difficult to know how to deal with the question and that is a matter which is not within my province or within my power to handle in any way at all. No one contends that it is a very easy matter to know what ought to happen next, and hardly any one contends that we should suppress the Turk in Asia Minor proper; that is in the peninsula west of a line running from Samsoon in the north to Alexandretta in the south. West of that line we admit that Asia Minor is a region under Turkish rule, and presumably it is to continue to prevail with whatever checks or supervision are practicable. No one suggests that they should be suppressed in this region. But east of that line the whole conditions are entirely different. That region has never historically belonged properly to Turkey; is not inhabited by the Turkish races, nor are the Turks as numerous there, as are other races.
When the Turkish arrangement of the Provinces there was made, I understand that the vilayets were so constructed and defined as purposely to make the elements contained in them as heterogeneous as possible so as to prevent a great Christian population growing up. The result is that the races are very mixed, and they really have no claim to be Turkish in character. They are of all kinds and sorts of races; a very large proportion of Christians, and many

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Mohammedans. Though strong things have been said as to the nature of the Kurds many observers say that the Kurds and Armenians would get on fairly well together provided there was some control of the whole country, some government properly controlling the country when the Kurds would no longer commit the outrages which he is only too ready to perpetuate when encouraged by the Turk. This region could get on without Turkish rule with less difficulty than some people suppose. But whatever is the process for mending matters the Government and the Allies have declared their resolve quite clearly to prevent a repetition of these outrages.
I do not think some of your Lordships, and doubtless many people in the country, realise what a great deal we are doing at this moment for these Christian people. There is a great camp outside Baghdad into which the remnant of these refugees, Armenians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, have been collected up to the number of 50,000, and we are paying for their upkeep and care at the rate of £1,000 a day. It is worth knowing that this country is doing the work on this gigantic scale. We believe that for the moment we are doing what is best for these unhappy people.
But what is to happen next?—that is the purport of my question. We have always believed firmly that as regards America, when the war was over and the active help which Americans gave us so strenuously during the war ceased to be necessary, we might rely on the same spirit to help us in these matters. It is no more our business in one sense than it is theirs, and we have a right to expect that we are going to get some practical, strong, and substantial aid from those who have shared our responsibilities in war and who we believe ought to share them now. My fear is that the story of these horrors have been almost obliterated from many minds by the incidents of the war, in which we had perhaps a more direct concern and that they will fade into the background and be forgotten. People will think that we ought to go on now in the way we are doing and make the best of it. I do not believe the Government will think that but I can imagine, and I know, that such an opinion is finding expression in many quarters now.
It has been definitely promised that whatever flag it is which flies over these regions in the future the actual control
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must never again be in Turkish hands. I will not trouble your Lordships with quotations but I will give two from the Prime Minister himself. Speaking in December 20, 1917, in the House of Commons the Prime Minister said this—
"What will happen to Mesopotamia must be left to the Peace Congress when it meets; but there is one thing that will never happen; it will never be restored to the blasting tyranny of the Turk. At best he was a trustee of this far famed land on behalf of Ah! what a trustee! He has been false to his trust, and his trusteeship must be given over to more competent and more equitable hands chosen by the Congress which will settle the affairs of the world. That same observation applies to Armenia, the land soaked with blood of innocents massacred by the people who were bound to protect them."
Speaking a little later the Prime Minister said—
"Outside Europe we believe the same principles should be applied. While we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the home lands of the Turkish race with its capital at Consantinople—the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being internationalised and neutralised—Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are, in our judgment, entitled to a recognition of their separate national conditions. What the exact form of that recognition in each particular case should be need not be here discussed, beyond stating that it would be impossible to restore to their former sovereignty the territories to which I have just referred."
I ask now, What are we to understand as to their fulfilment? I do not believe I appeal to an unsympathetic tribunal. I apologise for having detained your Lordships so long but the point raised in the question had to be made clear; it is one which deserves attention and must not pass from the memory of civilised people. It is a matter of vital import to the honour of humanity and the good faith and wellbeing of the world.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON): My Lords, I do not want to stand between the House and my noble friend Lord Bryce, but, I have an engagement which compels me to go away presently. No one will dispute the extreme gravity or the poignant tragedy of many of the incidents which the moat rev. Primate has placed before us. He has recapitulated from the Blue-book many of the most terrible incidents in the long career of bloodshed, atrocity, and crime which has disfigured what I hope will be the dying days of the Turkish Empire in those parts of Asia to which he had alluded. I need not dwell or even comment upon that

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narrative, which can leave but one impression on the minds of those who are brought in contact with it. What the House will be concerned to hear from me is what the Government are doing in the matter, and what is the prospect that lies before the unhappy peoples of whose sufferings we have heard so much from the most rev. Primate.
I observe that in his speech the Archbishop moved rather rapidly from Assyrians to Armenians and from Armenians to other Christian populations, treating them, as it is not unfair to do, as a great aggregate of suffering humanity placed under the cruel heel of the Ottoman Turk. In my reply I ask leave to distinguish rather sharply between them, because I think that your Lordships will wish to know what is being done for each community in the geographical area in which it is at the present moment. The most rev. Primate spoke a great deal about the Assyrians, variously known as Nestorians and Chaldæans. He spoke about the remarkable lady who has come from that race and from that country to England, and with whom I, among others, have had the privilege of conversing; and I may say, in passing, that a more remarkable specimen of womanhood, or a lady more competent to speak for the interesting community to which she belongs, it is impossible to imagine.
The most rev. Primate told us of the existence of this camp at Bakuba, in the vicinity of Baghdad, and spoke of the 50,000 or more refugees who have been there collected. Probably the number is in excess of what he says, and is nearer 53,000 than 50,000. They have been there from the month of September or October, 1918, and they consist partly of Assyrian Christians from the neighbourhood of Lake Urumia in Persia; partly—and this is the larger number—of Assyrians from the regions of Kurdistan; and partly also of Armenians, 12,000 in number, who are included in that total. There, as the Archbishop correctly pointed out, we have been maintaining them ourselves for over a year and a-quarter. The cost, I think, has been even greater than the most rev. Primate anticipated. It has amounted to £4 per head per month, or an aggregate of over £200,000 a month, which works out—I mentioned to your Lordships that the total period already exceeded a year and a quarter—at £2,500,000 in the year. These
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unhappy people in this country have been occupied in various forms of work—namely, military work, gendamerie, road-making, camp duties, cultivation, and so on, but of course the important thing is to get them back. The difficulty about that is manifest. In the first place those who are Persians in origin and come from the neighbourhood of the Persian lake cannot go back to a country access to which is at present closed, and where no sort of security exists, and for the time being the lady to whom the most rev. Primate and myself have referred herself fully realises that repatriation to the Persian homes of these Christians is not to be contemplated.
Then there is a further difficulty. We have no right under the terms of the Armistice to repatriate these people to any place outside the Armistice area; in other words, we have no right, even if we had the force (and we have not the force), to take them back into the mountainous region of Kurdistan, and obviously it would be suicidal folly to send them out to be waylaid and murdered on the way. These people themselves are, of course, reluctant to move unless tinder conditions which give them reasonable security, and as winter is now approaching I am afraid we cannot expect to do anything substantial until the spring. Meanwhile the administration of this camp has been taken over by the civilian from the military authorities, and it is hoped that the expense will thereby be reduced to £3,000 a day.
Willing as we have been to pay, we have never quite been able to see why this expenditure, as indeed most of the expenditure of the war in the East, has fallen upon Great Britain alone. Therefore we have invited France, who is greatly interested in that part of the East, to bear her share of the burden. Our policy there is quite clear. It is to get the Persian Assyrians back to their country as soon as conditions admit of it; and as regards the Assyrians who lived before and who are willing to live again in the areas which belong to the old Turkish Empire, either to place them in an enclave adjacent to the territories under our control, so that they may be under our wing and within easy reach of our protection, or, if we provide a home for them in their former home lands or further afield among the Kurdish peoples, to try to make such arrangements for them as may secure their safe and decent existence.

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Here let me say that what the most rev. Primate said about the relations between the Kurds and the Armenians appears also to be true about the relations between the Kurds and the Assyrian Christians, because the lady who has been referred to told me that she did not anticipate that difficulties would arise from that cause. The fact is that these people when not stirred up by the Turks, or by local feuds, are quite capable of getting on with each other; indeed, the Assyrians are in many ways necessary to the Kurds, for the purposes of cultivation and otherwise. If you can arm a sufficient number of them to act as a sort of gendarmerie to themselves, I believe there is no reason why in the future those two communities should not live side by side. That is the object that we are keeping before ourselves, and I hope that when winter is over and spring comes we may be able to take steps to move them back to their own homes. So much for the Assyrian Christians.
Now may I say a word about the Armenians, and I need not enlarge upon—indeed, I need not devote even a passing sentence to endorsing—what the most rev. Primate said about the historic sufferings and miseries of that people. Never in their long history have they been so scattered or dispersed or in a more forlorn and pitiable condition than at present. What are we doing for the Armenians, and where are the Armenians with whom it is possible to deal? I spoke just now about the 12,000 who were at Bakuba, refugees from different parts of what was formerly Turkish territory. The most rev. Primate himself alluded to the Armenians in the South, and there have been until quite recently for the best part of a year if not for longer something like 12,000 Armenian refugees at or in the immediate neighbourhood of Aleppo. The House is probably aware from what it has seen in the Press that arrangements have been recently concluded between the British and French Governments by which those parts of Syria and Cilicia have been evacuated by the British troops who have hitherto occupied them and handed over to the French, and accordingly when this step took place we proposed to transfer to the charge of the French the 12,000 Armenian refugees at Aleppo to whom I have referred. That charge was accepted by them, and those persons are being transferred to Cilicia. There are also a number of Armenian refugees at other towns in the north of
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Syria, Marash and Urfa, and other places which are now in the French sphere, and who will therefore be looked after by the French. Then if you come to Cilicia itself, there is the Armenian community in that old province of the Turkish Empire which throughout has been under the military and civil administration of the French where therefore the Armenians are again a French charge. So much for the southern fringes of the Old Armenia.
If we go up to the North we come to the areas where a larger number of these exiles are congregated. There has been for some time a cluster of 25,000 to 30,000 refugees from Turkish Armenia in the State of Azerbaijan. I am glad to say that the relief work of feeding them and saving them from destitution has for the most part been undertaken by the Americans. Next door to them we come to the old Province of Russian Armenia which, in the new condition of affairs, has claimed for itself a national existence, calls itself the Armenian Republic, maintains a form of Government, and indeed a definite national existence, with its centre at Erivan. Around Erivan and Kars are said to be a population of about 500,000 Armenians. I should say that one of the most difficult features of the Armenian case is that of reconciling the various figures that are given, sometimes from American, sometimes from British, and sometimes from native, sources. I assure your Lordships that they differ not only by 50 or 100 per cent., but sometimes by 200 and 300 per cent. I only give your Lordships the figures which are the best that I can produce. There are believed to be in this Armenian State something like 500,000 resident Armenians. Then there is the refugee population who have crowded in there from the west and south-west. Again the figures that I have been given from different sources vary from 150,000 to 300,000. I do not know where the truth lies between these extremes. Here, my Lords, I am afraid that there has been and there is great suffering, a very heavy mortality, and that the people have in many cases reached the absolute limit of their resistance. Here again the principal work has been done and is now being done by the American Relief Mission, and it is a splendid thing that we have found our own charitable efforts backed not only by the large heart but by the deep purse of the American nation in this emergency.
About one thing I think we may be reassured. A few months ago we were told

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on every side that there was very grave danger of a massacre of these unhappy people, and that a repetition of some of the worst horrors of the past was to be feared. As far as I can make out that is not at all likely to be true, partly because the Armenians themselves are now in many quarters well armed and are able to look alter them elves, and partly because I suspect that the old Armenian massacres of which we have heard so much were almost invariably ordered for political reasons from Constantinople; and now that Constantinople is voiceless and powerless in the matter there is really no one, as far as I can see, interested in setting in motion that particular weapon of cruelty.
The Americans and ourselves—for we have officers in the Caucasus—are doing the best possible to establish peaceful relations between those Armenian groups of whom I have last been speaking and their neighbours in the neighbouring states and partly owing to the influence of the American head of the Allied Mission deputed from the Paris Conference to do what he could in that neighbourhood, and partly by the efforts of Mr. Wardrop, who is our own Consul at Tiflis, much more harmonious and peaceful relations have been created between the Armenians in the centre, the Azerbaijanis on the East, and the Georgians on the West. I hope myself that the worst is over, and that there are here the germs of a State which will retain an independent existence in the future with clearly-defined boundaries, and able to live in peace and amity with its neighbours.
The most rev. Primate alluded to the different declarations that have been made at various times since we went into the country by responsible spokesmen of His Majesty's Government. He quoted in particular two declarations made in the course of last year or the year before by the Prime Minister. By those declarations we stand. They have never been departed from there. They do not express the sentiments, the aspirations, or the intentions of ourselves alone. They are shared by all our Allies. And, my Lords I hope that many months—I may even go further and say that I hope that many weeks—will not now elapse before the Allied Powers in Conference are able seriously to come to a solution of the Turkish problem, too long delayed already, and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
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I am not certain that as this is solved the larger aspirations which were once entertained of an Armenia stretching from sea to sea will be capable of realisation. The problem is not merely one of means and of money; it is also one of men. Many of us had hoped—I myself cherished the hope for long—that America would have been willing to take up this great responsibility. President Wilson was, I believe, earnestly disposed to do so at one moment, and for all I know may be so still, and had America taken it up she would with her large ideas and her great resources have been able to do it on a much larger and more satisfactory scale than anybody else. I am afraid that the omens in the United States are very unfavourable to any such solution being found, and I think that the best that we can do for the time being, without surrendering the hope of better things, is to try and solidify, consolidate, and build up the fortunes of an Armenian State in that part of the world to which I have referred. I think I have covered most of the ground that was touched upon by the most rev. Primate.
I hope, as I have to go in a moment, that my noble friend Lord Lamington, who has a Starred Question on the Paper, will allow me to answer it before I sit down. The Question he asks me is "whether I will lay on the Table the Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the disorders that took place at Smyana last May and June." The Report in question is addressed to the Peace Conference by an Allied Commission appointed by the Supreme Council in Paris, and is not the exclusive property of His Majesty's Government. It is therefore, I am afraid, not in our power to lay it.
VISCOUNT BRYCE: My Lords, as I recognise the very large amount of business which remains to be done this evening I shall confine myself to a very few remarks upon what has just fallen from the noble Earl. I am anxious that the House should appreciate the great urgency that this question has with regard to these refugees upon whom the most rev. Primate dwelt, and who have been referred to in some detail by the noble Earl who has just spoken. They are anxious to return to their homes. They are anxious, not only on account of the suffering which at present presses en them, and which some of them have endured for more than two years—now nearly for four years since they first fled

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from the great massacres of 1915. It is by that that the prosperity of the country, if it is ever to be restored, must be restored. Meanwhile they are dying—dying by hundreds a week in many places, not only from disease, but from starvation and from diseases which are due to starvation. They are dying in spite of all the relief which we are giving at Bakuba, in spite of the relief which has been given partly by Americans in the north, but from British sources also—and in the case of the Americans I should like to say that a sum of £6,000,000 has been sent out from America within the last ten months—and that in addition to millions of pounds which had been previously contributed by America. It is only fair that, although the American Government has not come forward, the private gifts of Americans to this immense extent should be appreciated in this country.
It is becoming a matter of great urgency that these unfortunate refugees, who in the north in particular are perishing in such numbers, should be able as soon as possible to return to their homes, rebuild their houses, cultivate the fields, and avoid the prospect of a famine which is always impending in these countries where it is so difficult to bring food and where there has been so little cultivation during the last four years. They cannot return until something is done to check the Turkish bands which are still ravishing the country. There are, I am informed, no regular Turkish forces now in Armenia proper, that is to say, in Armenia to the east of the Taurus Mountains, nor in Cilicia, but there are wandering bands—the remnants of the former Turkish forces—and all the bad characters who always come to front where a country is in complete disorder, and these are so numerous and so well armed that it would be unsafe for the refugees at present to return.
What I therefore desire to press upon His Majesty's Government is the duty of taking all possible steps to endeavour to free the country from these bands in order that the refugees may return and may again resume the cultivation of the country. Of course, it is said that you require a large force, but it must be remembered that although these bands are Irregulars they are all more or less amenable to the Turks who remain—to some extent to Constantinople, and to some extent to Mustafa Kemal, who is in command of a large Turkish force which is
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to the west of the region I have described, on the other side of the Taurus in Asia Minor. If it is provided in the Treaty to be made with Turkey that one condition of the Treaty shall be that the authorities at Constantinople and such Turks as remain in power in Asia Minor, such as Mustafa Kemal, shall at once be responsible for joining in the pacification of the country and securing the withdrawal of these bands, it will then be possible for these refugees to return.
I believe that by that means, by means of the exercise of diplomatic pressure, by sending a force into the country, which need not be a very large force, to see that these bands are suppressed, it will be possible to enable the refugees to return in safety. I believe that although there is a certain amount of ammunition and a certain number of rifles still in the hands of these bands, and also in the hands of Mustafa Kemal, they have no artillery to speak of, and, of course, they are dependent for supplies of ammunition and of many other things upon commerce with the West, and therefore the British Fleet would be able to prevent any military supply from coming in, and to put a pressure upon them which will be extremely efficient in reducing the Turks to reason, and in securing that, when the Treaty is made providing for their withdrawal and the pacification of this country, that Treaty will be carried out.
That brings me to say a word about the Treaty itself. The first condition of any Treaty to be made with the Turks is that they shall entirely evacuate what is known as Armenia. I share the view which was expressed by the most rev. Primate that there is no reason why a Turkish Sultan should not continue to reign in those parts of Asia Minor where there is a majority of the Muslim population. The Muslim population is in the large majority along the north coast of Asia Minor, and through most parts of the central plateau, and there a Sultan may remain, and if anybody likes—if he can obtain recognition from the Mahomedan world as Caliph—he may remain as Caliph also. But what I believe the public of this country will insist upon, and in fact, what public opinion must insist upon when it knows the facts and realises those facts upon which the most rev. Primate dwelt—the immense scale and the circumstances of horror which attended these massacres and which have shown once again how utterly unfit the Turk is to

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exercise powers over persons of a different faith and race—is that there shall be no more Turkish rule in Armenia nor in those other regions, Chaldæan and Assyrian, in which the massacres have been perpetrated.
Some other declarations—those made by the present Prime Minister—have been referred to by the most rev. Primate. I could if it were necessary give other declarations—declarations made by Mr. Balfour on behalf of the Government, declarations made by Lord Robert Cecil on behalf of the Government., declarations made by M. Clemenceau who also pledged France to secure liberation of the Armenians. And therefore I am very glad to know that the noble Earl, in the words which he spoke just now, declared that His Majesty's Government—and he said he spoke for the Allies also—stand by those declarations, and intend to fulfil them. I am sure the House will note with satisfaction that declaration, and will feel sure that His Majesty's Government will carry it out. But I want to press this point upon it, that that must be taken to mean the regions in which the Muslim population is not in a large majority, such as the centre of Asia Minor, and that the declaration must be taken to include all the countries to the east of the Taurus Mountains, Cilicia, and the six vilayets of Armenia, and that it is not only for the Republic at Erivan that independence is to be promised, but that that independence is to belong to all the regions which historically belong to the Armenian part of Western Asia.
I need only remind your Lordships that if you desire to have any other view of the conduct of the Turks and the character of those massacres in addition to that which the Blue-book presents, to which the most rev. Primate has referred, you will find it in the book of Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople during the period of the massacres. He tells us himself that he constantly went to Enver and Talaat, who are the two chiefs of the Committee of Union and Progress and the persons chiefly responsible for planning and carrying out the massacres. He represented to them that the world would be outraged if those things continued, and he tried for the same purpose to enlist the sympathy of the German Ambassador, Wangenheim. He describes there how Talaat and Enver did not attempt to conceal the massacres, did not deny what their policy of extermination was.
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They did it all with a deliberate purpose; they were supported by the other members of the Committee of Union and Progress, and not a word was said amongst the Turks against these massacres.
LORD LAMINGTON: And the Germans.
VISCOUNT BRYCE: Yes, the Germans also knew; but I am speaking now of Turkish opinion. Not a word was said in Turkey, or by the Committee of Union and Progress, to deprecate the massacres; and the Germans, through Wangenheim, absolutely refused to interfere. If anything were needed to show how impossible it is to allow the Turk to go into the regions of which I am speaking, the facts stated in the Blue-book and the facts stated by Mr. Morgenthal would be sufficient.
I had intended, had there been more time, to have dwelt also upon some very important British political interests which attach to this country. It is a matter of the highest political interest for the future of Persia that there should be no Turkish power co-terminous with Persia to threaten Persia or to bring into it, and through it into regions further east, those intrigues of which we have heard so much and in which the Turk is the tool of the German. It is very much to the interest of Persia and Afghanistan that there should be no contact with the Turk any more. It is very much to the interest of India, and for the security of India, that the country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, which is now held by the four small republics which have emerged from what was Trans-Caucasia, should not be used as a strategic base through which the Turk, as the tool of Germany, can form designs against Baluchistan and Afghanistan and the security of India itself. We know what the plans of the Germans were, and the most efficient way of preventing them from being carried out is to prevent any contact between the Turks beyond the Caspian and the Turks who ought to be confined hereafter to the regions of Asia Minor That is, however, a subject too large to dwell upon further at present.
I welcomed what was said by the noble Lord with regard to the solidifying of the Armenian Republic of Erivan. I believe it would be very greatly to the advantage of that Republic, and greatly contribute to the preservation of order in those districts, if His Majesty's Government would allow

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some British superior officers to superintend the levies that they say they could raise, and also give them some rifles and ammunition which would enable them to arm the forces they could collect. They assure me that they could arm and put into the field a considerable force if they could have a supply of ammunition from His Majesty's Government. The desire has been expressed that this force should be under the order of British officers in order to prevent anything happening in a country where passions have been aroused, and where we should have the security that the force would be used for policing and not for revenge by the Armenians. I hope that suggestion will be considered by His Majesty's Government. I am glad to note that an arrangement has now been made—a sort of treaty concluded—on the one hand between the Republic of Erivan and the Tartars to the east of them; and on the other hand between the representatives of the Armenians and the Kurds who live to the north, so that in those two quarters there is the prospect of an arrangement which will result in an ultimate peace.
With regard to the Americans, I think it is premature to conclude that there will not be some assistance from the United States. I continue to hope that, whether it takes the form which was no doubt desired by President Wilson—namely, of the acceptance of a mandate, or whether it takes the form proposed of a pecuniary subvention, there is still reason to hope that America will feel, after the part she has taken in the war, that it might be a duty on her to do something further to aid the Allies in the establishment of peace, and to give some assistance to these countries which have suffered so much, and for which her sympathy has been in many ways so strong. She has contributed enormous sums for the relief of distress and for the preservation of life; in times past she has rendered great service to this country through her missionaries, and I think it is still possible to hope that she may do something in the future, as soon as the Treaty to be concluded with Turkey removes Turkey's power altogether from these regions, to give an opportunity for their future pacific development.
LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, I desire to say a word with regard to the appointment of British officers for a force to be raised to prevent ebullitions of feeling between the Armenians and the Turks.
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The noble Viscount referred to vengeance being taken by the Armenians. As a matter of fact, in the spring of this year the Armenians did perpetrate cruelties on the Turks. It is to prevent this that I suggest some precautions should be taken. That is made more difficult by reason of the new settlement whereby France is really put into occupation of what might be termed Southern Armenia or Cilicia. I think it must be recognised that what the noble Viscount feared has already taken place in the early part of this year.
VISCOUNT BRYCE: There may have been something, but I do not think it was on a large scale. Further, I thought it was in a different part of the country from that to which my noble friend refers.
[The sitting was suspended at twenty minutes past eight o'clock and resumed at a quarter past nine.

LAND SETTLEMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL of DONOUGHMORE in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.
Clause 3:
Procedure for compulsory acquisition of land, and entry on land to be acquired.
3.—(1) For the purpose of the compulsory acquisition of land under the foregoing provisions of this Act, the provisions of the First Schedule to this Act shall have effect.
(2) Where an Order for the compulsory acquisition of land has been duly made under the provisions of this Act, then at any time after a notice to treat has been served the Board may, after giving not less than fourteen days' notice to each owner, lessee, and occupier of the land or such part thereof as is specified in the notice, enter on and take possession of the land without previous consent or compliance with sections eighty-three to eighty-eight of the Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act, 1845, but subject to the payment of the like compensation for the land of which

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possession is taken and interest on the compensation awarded as would have been payable if those provisions had been complied with.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL moved to insert the following new subsection—
"(2) No order for the compulsory acquisition of land made under the provisions of this Act shall authorise the acquisition of any land which at the date of the order forms part of any park, or of any home farm attached to and usually occupied with a mansion house if the land is required for the amenity or convenience of the mansion house, or of any land which at that date forms part of any garden or pleasure ground, or which is woodland, not wholly surrounded by or adjacent to land acquired by the Board under this Act."
The noble Duke said: This Amendment is perfectly simple and straightforward. There is a similar provision to be found in the Small Holders (Scotland) Act, and much the same idea is followed in the English Act. I cannot quite understand why it is not in Part I of this Bill. I presume the reason is that it was not thought that such ground would be required, that it possibly was of an expensive nature and unlikely to be dealt with within the period of two years which is covered by Part I of this Act. In other words, I imagine that the Secretary for Scotland, as he has not excised it from Part II of the Bill—that is to say, it is in there by inference—considers it is unnecessary in Part I, and therefore not objectionable in itself.
Perhaps the Secretary for Scotland is afraid that it might prevent him from purchasing a whole estate in which there may be a home farm or a mansion house. If such is the case, certainly it is not my intention to put that interpretation upon it. I must also point out to your Lordships that there is another Amendment later on that I may have to move on another part of the Bill, which deals with very much the same subject. It is to give the Board of Agriculture leave to buy other ground to substitute for a home farm if such is necessary and for the advantage of both parties.
I do not particularly wish to press this Amendment to a Division. At the same time it is only just and right that we should have it, because it might be very hard on a small estate especially if the whole of the surrounding ground were bought, and even the mansion house and the reasonable pleasure grounds were to be taken. I think it is necessary more for the protection of small landowners than large ones, and it is already admitted in the principal Act.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 18, at end insert the said new subsection.—(The Duke of Atholl.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The Amendment which has been moved by the noble Duke in studiously moderate terms was one which was considered in the House of Commons and it may perhaps be worth while, in however short a time, to consider its history. It was moved, not in identical but in very similar terms, by Sir George Younger on October 28, and after debate it was withdrawn. An Amendment in terms which I think have suggested those employed by the noble Duke, was moved on the Report State on December 2. On that occasion it was negatived without a Division.
The restriction which the Amendment of the noble Duke would impose would apply to land purchased by the Board under Part I of the Bill. As regards land which may be selected for the purpose of small holdings under Part II, restrictions much more comprehensive than those suggested were prescribed by Section 7 and Section 26 of the Act of 1911, which are not affected by this Bill. When the Amendments were moved in the House of Commons it was pointed out—and this I think at least cannot be denied, whatever the reasonable view upon this question may be—that the usual and more convenient procedure under Part I would be for the Board to purchase the whole of an estate; and that while, even if the Amendment were inserted, the Board could still do this by agreement, yet if the landlord should refuse to sell the whole by agreement, the Board could insist on buying only divided portions. That might be, as any one will readily see, very hampering and restrictive upon their freedom.
Here we approach a question which I anticipate I shall have to ask more than once in the course of these debates—How far are your Lordships prepared to trust the Board? I know that many will say, and perhaps some among the number who have a good deal of experience of the Board, that they are not satisfied with the decisions which they have taken in the past, or with the exercise of their discretion in the past. These are topics that can only be touched upon with great reticence and discretion. I am not unaware that many noble Lords who represent important interests in Scotland have formed the view

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that the discretion of the Board in the last few years has not always been exercised—I choose my language carefully—in the wisest possible direction. We have, after all, to look to the future, and in my humble judgment, for what it is worth, that any great interest in this House—and the Scottish landlords, historically and actually, represent a very great interest in this House and a very powerful contribution to the national life of these Islands—I cannot help thinking that they would act unwisely if they despaired of the fairness of the Scottish Board of Agriculture; if, in other words, they said they were not definitely prepared to accept legislation upon these lines, and to believe that at least those who administer it will administer it with responsibility, with fairness, and with a due sense of their public obligation.
I make these general observations not because they bear directly upon the present Amendment but because I think these considerations ought to be borne in mind by your Lordships in the differences of opinion which have manifested themselves between those who speak for these interests and those who have put forward these proposals on behalf of the Government. I assure you that there is not only no desire to inflict any injustice upon any legitimate interest but that the very contrary is the case. It certainly does happen here, as it happened in the case of the English proposals—if the contrary can be proved in argument I will gladly listen and see whether I can meet it in reply—that cases arise in which it is not possible to carry out the purposes of the Government and not possible to give effect to admittedly public interests without involving a certain degree of inconvenience and of hardship to certain classes in the community.
I beg your Lordships to apply your minds to the specific proposals, not very numerous though of great importance, which confront us in the Committee stage of this Bill with the knowledge that it is the desire of every one, as far as their purpose can be reconciled with the essential objects of the Bill, to see that fair play is done. It was, and is, the view of the Secretary for Scotland and of the Board that the wiser course in relation to this particular Amendment would have been to rely upon the decision of the authorities—the consent of the Treasury and the consent of the Secretary for Scotland are alike necessary before such proposals can be
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carried out. While that is true, at the same time everybody must realise that there is some sentiment which surrounds the proposal to acquire land which forms part of a park or home farm, and if it be the view of those who I know are acting with the noble Duke that on the whole, and having regard to their experience in the last five or six years, they would prefer the security which is given to them by this Amendment to such security as is alternatively secured to them by a decision of the Board of Agriculture, subject to correction by the Secretary for Scotland, the Government would not be prepared to contest it or challenge it.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I think the main point is this, that we are not quite satisfied that injustice might not be done under the Bill. There is no intention or wish to prevent the Secretary for Scotland, that is to say the Board, from purchasing the home estate, but we think it necessary to safeguard small estates for the next two years, and if the noble and learned Lord is prepared to say that this power under the Bill is not going to be used unjustly, I personally have no wish to force the Amendment, because I have a much more important one to move.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: I think one of the points is that it is possible for the whole of the land to be taken and only the mansion house left, which would be practically valueless. Under the clause that would be done, and it rather reads as if it was intended.
LORD LOVAT: May I raise one further point which I think goes to the whole root of the opposition to this Bill? I think the central point, which the Lord Chancellor rather seems to have missed in his argument, is that what is resented on this side is the fact that we in Scotland have been treated in an entirely different way from the way in which English Peers were treated when a Bill with exactly the same object, namely, the settlement of soldiers on the land in England, was introduced last session. That is the root of our opposition, because we say you are treating English owners of land in one way and—either because the Government declined to stand up to a certain section, or because they do not expect the same support from Scottish landlords—they have treated Scottish landowners in an entirely different way. It is not in the

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least a matter of administration by the Board. I am perfectly prepared to submit myself to the good mercy of the Board, and I hope we shall be properly treated, but here is a definite Amendment which was accepted in the English Bill but which is left out of this Bill.
If noble Lords on the Government bench can bring forward a single argument why in Scotland parks and home lands should be treated in a different way to parks and home lands in England, we shall be glad to listen to them, but no such argument is forthcoming. Personally I associate myself on the question of a division on this Amendment with the noble Duke who has recently spoken. We shall be very loth to divide the House on a matter of secondary importance. We have one and all declared that we wish to see this Bill passed and soldiers settled on the land, and if we have to make additional sacrifices we are prepared to do so; but we ask the Government to give us a concrete reason why landlords in Scotland should be treated differently from the stronger body of land-owners and people representing the land interest in England.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think the discussion would have been accelerated if the noble Lord had listened a little more carefully to what I said. He is quite wrong in saying that I did not appreciate the central argument which was advanced. He is still more wrong when he says that I have not appreciated the point made on the Second Reading debate, that one must attempt to see whether landlords in Scotland are treated in the same way as landlords in England. It is for that reason that I indicated to your Lordships after considerable discussion that this Amendment was one which, if pressed, the Government are prepared to accept. Why noble Lords should say that I have paid no attention at all to the point made over and over again on the Second Reading I confess myself unable to see. I told the noble Duke who moved this Amendment in a spirit of great moderation that if on the whole he preferred the security which was afforded to him by this Amendment to reliance upon the Board of Agriculture the Government would not resist it. I cannot say more than that.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to
Clause 4:
"Power to contract to pay feu duty, &c.
4. Where, under the Small Holding Colonies Acts, 1916 and 1918, the Board has power to purchase land in consideration of a feu duty, ground annual, or other annual payment, the Board shall have power and shall be deemed always to have had power to contract to pay the feu duty, ground annual, or other annual payment as and when it becomes due.
LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN moved to insert as a new subsection—
"(2) Where the Board exercise the said power to purchase land in consideration of a feu duty, ground, annual, or other annual payment, the amount of the annual payment shall be such as would, if sold in the market by a willing seller at the time the amount of the annual payment is fixed, realise a capital sum equal to the value of the laud."
The noble Lord (who was indistinctly heard) said: The point that I want to raise is that this is a novel way of giving an agricultural holding in Scotland. So far as I know, we have no feus for agricultural land. The fens that we have experience of are feus for building land, and in those cases, of course, there is the house on the land as security for the feu. But if the land is feud, as, is proposed under this scheme, I do not see where there will be any security whatever for the feu. The Bill says that the Board has power to purchase land in consideration of a feu duty, and that the Board shall have power and shall be deemed always to have had power to contract to pay the feu duty as and when it becomes due. It is important in connection with this matter that consideration should be given to the market value of such an annual payment. It is easy to see that the capital value by the sale of a fourteen years' purchase can never possibly be approached. No one here will dispute that. The value of the farm may be considerable and yet all that the landlord can get is the equivalent of a fourteen years' purchase.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, after line 36, insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Saltoun.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Lord was kind enough this afternoon to bring me his Amendment and ask me if I had any observations that I could usefully make upon it. I regretted very much that at the moment I had another subject, and a very complicated and difficult one, in my mind, and it was not possible for me to take

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advantage of the opportunity for discussion that he was good enough to afford me. But I think the Amendment has been put down under a little misapprehension. The Amendment deals with the power of the Board, and it is a question of the exercise of "the said power" of the Board. The power which is referred to is their power when purchasing land to contract to pay an annual sum instead of a lump sum. This is a power that can be exercised by agreement only—I am not sure that the noble Lord is aware of that—that is, only if the owner of the land consents to accept payment in that form; and, that being so, it is for him to see that the annual payment is sufficient. He can always insist on payment of the whole price at once. Further, there is another point, namely, that the Amendment, if inserted, might prove to be actually hampering to limited owners contracting with the Board, for which purpose they have these special powers under Section 5 of the Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, 1897, which is applied by Clause 5 (2) of this Bill. No one is more conscious than, I am that to fling a number of sections and subsections at the head of the noble Lord is likely to be a little bewildering, and if there is any doubt about this point, if he would be good enough to approach me privately, I am quite sure I could resolve it to his satisfaction.
LORD SALTOUN: I think the wording of this is bad. If the noble and learned Lord would leave out the words "has power to," or at all events would consider that point and allow me to bring it up on Report, I think such an Amendment would make it much clearer.
LORD SHAW: I think the Amendment of the noble Lord opposite is really founded upon a mistake. I think this Amendment clearly applies to an arrangement for acquisition of land between the owner on the one hand and the Board on the other. If that acquisition of land is in the form of a capital payment, then there may be a fixed or an agreed sum, or they may be required to proceed to ascertain that sum. But in the case of agreement I desire to impress upon the House the great advantage to the landlord interest in accepting feu duties or annual payments instead of a capital sum. I will illustrate this by only one figure. In former times I had much to do with the valuation of property realised on the subject of feu duties. In those days
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the feu duties were of a higher value than now, but there is no better security known in Scotland than a feu duty. It is the envy of other systems of jurisprudence. May I press my noble friend to reconsider this matter, because I think the advantage of the option given to the landowner to make this a feu duty payment is highly in the interest of landed proprietors.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clauses 5 and 6 agreed to.
Clause 7:
Powers of Board with respect to land acquired.
7. Without prejudice to any other power conferred on the Board by the Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, 1897, or the Small Holding Colonies Acts, 1916 and 1918, the Board shall have power in any case where in their opinion it is necessary or expedient so to do for the better carrying into effect the purposes of those Acts or of this Act—

(a) to erect, repair, or improve dwelling-houses and other buildings on any land acquired by the Board, or to execute any other improvement on or in connection with and for the benefit of any such land, or to arrange with the tenant or holder of any such land for the execution of any such improvement on such terms as may be agreed:

(b) to sell, excamb, or let any such land or any right or interest therein: and

(c) generally to manage any such land.

LORD LAMINGTON LORD LAMINGTON moved, in paragraph (b), after "therein," to insert the following proviso—
("Provided that (subject to the provisions of this Act as to the prior offer to the Forestry Commissioners of land suitable for afforestation) unless the land has been offered to and purchased by the tenant of the land, the Board shall offer such land to the owner from whom the land was purchased, or his successor in title, at a price at which in default of agreement shall be determined by the Land Court ").
The noble Lord said: Clause 7 gives powers to the Board, and amongst those powers is that to "sell excamb or let any such land or any right or interest therein." It is obviously a distinct hardship to a landowner to have his land taken for the national purpose of the creation of small holdings and then in the course of time find that this land might be diverted to some other object—a factory, or whatever it might be. I have put down this Amendment for the protection of the original landowner. In the first place some objection was taken to it on account of the

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forestry interest, but that has now been included in the scope of my Amendment, and I therefore trust that the noble and learned Lord will accept it.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 12, after ("therein") to insert the said proviso.—(Lord Lamington.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It would certainly not be possible to accept this Amendment in the language in which it is conveyed; and, as I do not desire to found myself upon a technical objection to it, I say that on the merits also it is in my judgment open to grave objection. As drafted the Amendment would require the Board to offer purchased land back again to the owner before letting it even to a small holder. I cannot think that this is the object of the noble Lord.
LORD LAMINGTON: No.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I can assure the noble Lord that it will have that effect. No doubt it is intended to apply only to "sell or excamb," and this defect to which I have called attention could be rectified by inserting the words before "sell or excamb," such land. I ask the noble Lord to accept that.
LORD LAMINGTON: I accept that amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Now as to the merits. This Amendment, securing in every case where the Board purchases land for small holdings a right of pre-emption to the seller or his successor, was not proposed in the House of Commons, where many Amendments which were well worth consideration were brought forward—as has been the case also in this House—and it is one which in my judgment ought to be resisted. If the Board purchase by agreement and the seller desires to reserve such a right—in the case of an agreement it ought to be left to a voluntary and declared reservation—the Board can always consent if they think it compatible with proper freedom in their subsequent dealings and if they could thereby reduce the price. But if the Board should purchase compulsorily a much more formidable consideration arises. The intention then is that they should buy out and out, and the whole frame and the scheme of the Bill are upon the basis that they should buy out and out. In those circumstances the superfluous land
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provisions of the Lands Clause Act are excluded from incorporation by paragraph 2 of the First Schedule. This exclusion is in accordance with recent practice wherever a local authority or a Government Department is the acquiring authority, and I think I am right in saying that the practice has also been shared in England. I think this particular Amendment is open to two further criticisms, both of which are worthy of attention. In the first place, it is inconsistent with the obligation of the Board under Clause 6, sub-clause (5) of the Bill to give the Forestry Commissioners an opportunity of buying any land suitable for afforestation which the Board may wish to take.
LORD LAMINGTON: That is saved; that is in the Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I have the words of the noble Lord's Amendment before me, and I do not think it is saved.
LORD LAMINGTON: It says: "Subject to the provisions of this Act as to the prior offer to the Forestry Commissioners of land suitable for afforestation." That is saved.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I agree that those words save that, but I should desire to consider them more carefully before agreeing that the protection is complete. I think that particular criticism has been anticipated by the noble Lord, and he has attempted to deal with it. The second objection I suggest is, I think, more formidable. "The price at which the land was purchased," I think, is the wording used by the noble Lord. That, surely, is an uncertain measure. It is highly improbable that the Board would re-sell a whole estate, an estate in its entirety. I have the words here. [THE LORD CHANCELLOR then read the Amendment.] I do not know how recently the noble Lord amended his Amendment, but I think there is something in the last line which does not appear in the form in which it was before me this morning.
LORD LAMINGTON: It was circulated this morning.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It should be "price at which," I suppose?
LORD LAMINGTON: Yes.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I cannot help thinking that if this Amendment were adopted it would prove really to be quite inconsistent with the basis upon which any system of compulsory purchase can be defended. All the great landlords of these islands—it is a circumstance, if I may say so, of which we may all feel proud—have desired to assist the main features of these proposals, and, of course, a principal feature of all of them is the compulsory element. I cannot help thinking that the objection to this Amendment is almost insuperable, and that if the Board must purchase compulsorily the intention of such compulsory purchase is that they should buy out and out. In that case I would point out that the superfluous land provision of the Lands Clauses Act excludes the particular incorporation by paragraph (2) of the first schedule, and that practice has applied in the case of England in Scotland. Unless, therefore, this is one of those points—I know there are one or two to which noble Lords attach very great importance—which they regard as being of the highest importance, I should hope they would not think it worth while making this a subject of difference.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I venture to suggest that the noble and learned Lord should not give a final decision on this Amendment at present, because it is quite clear that since he first had the opportunity of seeing the Amendment it has been re-drafted. Anybody who followed his speech could see that the form in which he had seen the Amendment was not the precise form in which it appears on the Paper. Perhaps the drafting is not perfect now, because the noble and learned Lord has pointed out that certain words would require to be changed. But on the real substance of the matter, I think my noble friend behind me is absolutely right. The broad object of the Amendment is that if the land which has been taken from the landlord turns out in fact not to be required for the purpose of the Act, then the landlord shall have the opportunity to recover it. I cannot see anything objectionable in that principle. It seems to me to be straightforward. It does not follow as a matter of certainty that the landlord will wish to recover the land, but it is proposed that he should have the opportunity to do so, supposing it is not required for the purpose for which it was acquired by the authority.
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The only point which remains is as to the price at which this opportunity should be afforded. On this point it is clear that there must be a re-drafting of the Amendment as it stands on the Paper, but otherwise it is very difficult for a layman to see what objection can be made to it. It is proposed that the land should be re-sold at a price to be fixed by the Land Court in case of a difference of opinion, and I cannot see how anything more fair can be proposed. I do not say that this is one of the Amendments of vital importance and I do not suppose my noble friend would desire to die in the last ditch for it. I only suggest to the Government that it is an obviously fair Amendment, and if the noble and learned Lord, not having seen the Amendment in this form until he stood at the Table, wished for an opportunity to reconsider it, I suggest that it should be postponed to the next stage.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Marquess has made a proposal which is perfectly fair and I gladly accept it, because our object is to arrive at an accommodation. If the noble Lord will withdraw it for the moment I must not be understood as promising more, but I will most carefully consider it and the arguments in its support.
LORD LAMINGTON: I will withdraw on that understanding.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9:
Amendment of section 7 of Act of 1911.
9. For subsections (8), (9), (10) and (11) of section seven of the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act, 1911 (in this Act referred to as the Act of 1911), there shall be substituted the following subsections:—
"(8)— (a) Where the Board are satisfied that there is a demand for small holdings and that suitable land is available for that purpose, it shall be the duty of the Board to prepare a scheme for the constitution of one or more new holdings on such land, to be occupied by new holders upon such terms and conditions not inconsistent with the Landholders Acts as the Board think reasonable.
"(b) Every such scheme shall show—

(i) the situation and total area of the land on which one or more new holdings are to be constituted;

(ii) the number and respective situations and areas of the new holdings;

(iii) which, if any, of the existing buildings on the land are to be utilised for the new holdings;

(iv) the water supply for each new holding, including the source from which the supply is to be taken, and any necessary pipes or other works;

(v) the situation and area of any common pasture or grazing to be occupied in connection with the new holdings; and

(vi) the rent of each new holding.

"(c) Where the Board are satisfied that there is not available on the land on which the new holdings are to be constituted a supply of water sufficient for the holdings, they may include in the scheme provision for taking and conveying from or through any part of the estate whereof such land forms part such supply of water as may be necessary for the new holding and is not required for the remainder of the estate; and for the purposes of this section any land from or through which supply of water is to be taken or conveyed shall be deemed to be comprised in the scheme.
"(9) Where the Board intend to prepare such a scheme, they shall give notice of their intention to the landlord of any land which is to be comprised therein, and when a landlord has received such notice it shall not be lawful for him, save with the consent of the Board, to let or to enter into any agreement for letting such land or any part thereof until the Board have made an order confirming the scheme, or have abandoned the same:
"Provided that—

(a) Such disability shall not in any case continue for a longer period than six months from the date of notice, and

(b) for any loss sustained by a landlord, tenant, or occupier from the operation of this subsection, the Board shall pay to him such compensation as may be agreed or as may be determined, failing agreement, by the Land Court on the application of either party.

"(10) When the Board have prepared a scheme under this section they shall intimate the prepared scheme to the landlord, tenant, and occupier of any land comprised therein, and shall give to such landlord, tenant and occupier, an opportunity of considering the scheme and of making representations concerning the same to the Board, and after giving to all persons interested an opportunity of being heard may, with the consent of the Secretary for Scotland, make an Order confirming the scheme, in whole or in part, and with or without modification, or may abandon the scheme.
"(11)— (a) Where the Board make any such order, they shall notify the same to the landlord, tenant and occupier of any land comprised therein, and shall pay to such landlord, tenant and occupier such compensation for any damage or injury done to him in consequence of and directly attributable to the constitution of new holdings under the scheme (including any damage or injury done to a landlord in respect of an obligation to take over sheep stock at a valuation) as may be agreed or as may be determined, failing agreement, by the Land Court, upon the application of either party, and after giving to all persons interested an opportunity of being heard, and, if they so desire, of leading evidence in the matter.
"(b) The compensation payable under this subsection shall not include—

(i) any allowance on account of the constitution of new holdings being compulsory;

(ii) any compensation for injury done to or depreciation in the selling value of the land comprised in the scheme, or of any estate whereof such land forms part, except in so far as the same arises from injury done to or depreciation in the letting value of the land or estate; Or

(iii) any compensation for injury done to the value of the sporting rights over such land or estate in so far as it exceeds the estimated value of such rights if the land or-estate were put to the full possible use-for which it could be let to agricultural or pastoral tenants.

(c)" For the purpose of this subsection any benefit or relief enhancing the letting value of the land comprised in the scheme or of any estate of which such land forms part resulting to a landlord or to any other person in consequence of and directly attributable to the constitution of new holdings under the scheme upon the one hand shall be set against any damage or injury done to him as aforesaid upon the other hand.
"(d) In determining the amount of compensation payable to the tenant of any farm, regard shall be had to the duration of his lease, and in no case shall any allowance for loss of tenant's profits be made in respect of a period exceeding three years.
"(e)— (i) Where any compensation has been awarded and the amount thereof determined by the Land Court under this subsection, the Board may at any time within two months after such determination, resolve to abandon the scheme and withdraw the order, paying to any person any expenses reasonably incurred by him in connection with the making of the order or the claim for compensation, as such expenses may, failing agreement, be determined by the Land Court on the application of either party.
"(ii) Subject to the foregoing provision, every order made by the Board for the constitution of new holdings shall be recorded in the Landholders' Holdings Book as if it were an order of the Land Court, and shall there

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upon have effect and be enforceable in like manner as an order of the Land Court so recorded.
"(f) In any case where the Board have entered into an agreement with a landlord or a tenant or any other person for or in connection with the constitution of one or more new holdings upon land in which such landlord, tenant or other person is interested the Board may pay to any person so interested, whether a party to the agreement or not, such compensation (or other consideration in money), if any, as the Board consider equitable and consistent with the provisions of this subsection in respect of any damage or injury done to him in consequence of and directly attributable to the constitution of the new holdings, and it may be a term of any such agreement entered into by the Board with a landlord that section seventeen of this Act shall apply in respect of any such new holding as if the holding had been constituted otherwise than by agreement, and in that case the said section shall apply accordingly."
LORD ERSKINE LORD ERSKINE moved, at the end of the substituted subsection (8) (a), to insert the following proviso—
"Provided that, in considering the relative suitability of land, the Board shall have regard to the probable effect of a scheme upon the burden of rates in the locality concerned."
The noble Lord said: The Amendment which I have the honour to move is practically the same as one moved by the Secretary for Scotland in Committee of the House of Commons. It was, however, taken out on the Report Stage after an interesting debate, and I hope the noble and learned Lord will now see his way to agree to its re-introduction. Noble Lords who own land in Scotland are not one whit less anxious than other Scotsmen to see small holdings created in Scotland. They recognise that the strength of Scotland depends upon settling men in these crofts as in former days, but they feel strongly that the Board of Agriculture should take the rating question into consideration, and they consider it only wise and proper that the instruction should be included in the terms of the Bill.
This is a matter affecting in a vital degree the interests not only of landowners but also of ratepayers in many parts of the Highlands. Without entering into detail on a very controversial subject, it is sufficient to say that there are vast tracts of the Highlands which are suited for nothing but deer. These tracts of country, as pastoral subjects, are worth practically nothing, but they have a high value for sporting purposes, and the rents obtained for them pay a large portion of the local
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rates in the very districts where, owing to the barren nature of the country, the assessable rental is abnormally low and the local rates aye abnormally high. For example, in the year 1914–15 the total assessable rental of the parish of Bogart was £4,715, of which £2,281, or 48 per cent., was sporting rental, and for the parish of Kildonan the total rental was £11,940, of which £6,820, or 57½ per cent., was sporting rental.
To enable the deer in these barren tracts of country to live, it is essential that they should have some area of low lying grazing ground in the winter. The extent of this ground may only be a fraction of the total area of the forest, but if it is withdrawn the whole forest is ruined. For example, the rent of one forest before sheep stock was introduced used to be £1,200, the sporting tenant paying occupier's taxes. As the result of the introduction of sheep on to part of the forest the rent has fallen to £750, the proprietor paying the occupier's taxes. The tenant has indicated that he will not return as a large part of the forest is useless. The grazing rent paid by two tenants is £30. The fact remains, therefore, that if the Board of Agriculture for the sake of a few hundred acres of rough grazing were to cut out these parts of a forest they would ruin the whole, and under the present Bill as it stands the proprietor would get no compensation whatever for the loss of a very valuable sporting subject, for which he has been regularly taxed.
The indiscriminate taking of these wintering areas will, however, most seriously affect not only the proprietor of the forest, but all the other ratepayers of the district. I have figures here as to the local rates in some parishes which disclose the present serious state of matters even where sporting rentals are uninjured and bearing a very large share of the burden. In many parishes the education rate has gone up this year three and four times above last year's figures, and in one case (Moy) five times. The parish of Arisaig, with a gross assessable rental of £7,000, has to raise £2,144 in rates. In one parish the sum to be raised for education works out at nearly£17 per pupil. In view of these startling figures anything which would lower the existing assessable rental of these parishes would spell bankruptcy and reduce many of the parishes in the north of Scotland to the pauperised condition of the Outer Islands. In these districts sporting

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rentals have an economic value which far outweigh any small agricultural loss that may exist through the land being put to its present use.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 39, at end insert:
("Provided that, in considering the relative suitability of land, the Board shall have regard to the probable effect of a scheme upon the burden of rates in the locality concerned").—(Lord Erskine)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The Amendment moved by the noble Lord undoubtedly raises a point of considerable importance, and about which many noble Lords speak strongly. Its career in the House of Commons was somewhat chequered. The noble Lord has been an attentive student of the debate in the House of Commons on this point. In the Scottish Standing Committee Sir George Younger moved an Amendment which had the same object as that of the noble Lord. The Lord Advocate submitted a revised version, and this revised version of the Lord Advocate, who is a very accomplished lawyer and draftsman, was accepted. But the noble Lord has fastened for dialectic purposes on the very amendment which was drafted and recommended by the Lord Advocate. In the Report stage the omission of the proviso was accepted and agreed to by the Government and rather surprisingly, having regard to its history, it excited no dissent or comment. It is not for me to attempt to compose the differences of view that arose in the stages which I have briefly summarised, but the effect of the noble Lord's Amendment is, after all, a somewhat innocent one. He says that in considering the relative suitability of land the Board shall have regard to the probable effect of the scheme on the burden of rates in the locality concerned. I am on the whole—and perhaps I may be allowed to have an independent opinion having regard to the difference of view which has taken place in the House below—of opinion that there is no reason at all why, in considering the relative suitability of land, the Board should not have regard to the probable effect of a scheme upon the burden of rates in the locality concerned. Therefore I take upon myself to accept the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: There is a lot of other business, and therefore I will
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only say on my Amendment that I do not think there is any objection to it. It is really drafting.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes; I accept it.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 23, leave out ("is not required for") and insert ("which can be taken without detriment to the requirements of").—(The Duke of Buccleuch.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD LAMINGTON LORD LAMINGTON moved, at the end of subsection (11) (a), to insert—
"Provided that, where within twenty-one days after the receipt from the Board of a notification of the making of an order under this subsection, a landlord or tenant as the case may be, intimates to the Board that he claims compensation to an amount exceeding three hundred pounds and that he desires to have the question whether damage or injury entitling him to compensation as aforesaid will be done together with the amount of such compensation (if any) to be settled by arbitration instead of by the Land Court, the same shall be settled accordingly and at any time within fourteen days after the said intimation, failing agreement with the Board as to the appointment of an arbiter, it shall be lawful for the landlord or tenant, as the case may be, to require the Board to have the questions aforesaid decided by an official arbiter appointed under the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act, 1919."
The noble Lord said: The provision which I wish to insert simply has reference to the nature or character of the tribunal which is to determine the question of compensation when the amount claimed is over £300. I do not wish to press this Amendment, for one reason that the alternative tribunal which I name, namely an official arbiter appointed under the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act, has never yet been appointed. It is not in existence, I understand, and therefore the Land Court is the only tribunal which can determine the amount of compensation; but at the same time it might be desirable that this new tribunal which is to be formed should be the arbitrating authority instead of the Land Court.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 31, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Lamington.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I hope that the noble Lord will not think that this is an Amendment on which it is worth his while to insist, because it is one which I should feel difficulty in accepting. Its

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effect would be to preserve the existing law as regards the tribunal for assessing compensation, under Section 7 of the Act of 1911, as provided in subsection (11) of that section, as it stands, and as modified by Section 11, subsection (1), paragraph (a) of the recent Acquisition of Land Act. To put it in popular language, as matters stand the Land Court is the normal tribunal, but the landlord or tenant can demand arbitration where the amount of the claim exceeds £300. For this distinction I confess there does not seem to me to be any sound reason, and I do not think any of your Lordships who are familiar with recent developments in Scotland will dispute the claim which I now make, that recourse to arbitration has been frequent, delaying and very costly. It will be my unfortunate duty to say more on the subject on another Amendment.
If it is said that the Land Court is not a good assessing tribunal, I am informed by those who are in a better position to know that it is a tribunal which, judged by every standard one can employ, is enjoying increasing confidence. Noble Lords know better than I whether that is a well-founded claim, and they may reply that it is enjoying increasing confidence among those whose interests are divergent from theirs. The argument which I desire to establish is of a simple character, and it is this, that if the Land Court is admitted to be a reliable tribunal up to £300, it really would seem to be difficult to argue that for a larger sum one would dispute their competence. It is not the distinction which we might draw between a County Court Judge and a High Court Judge in this country where, admirable as the County Court Judges are, every one will admit that a greater degree of confidence may under all the circumstances be expected from the High Court Judges. But those who are members of the Court are, after all, people in regard to whom even this Amendment insists that up to the amount of £300 they are reliable, and having regard to the evident importance of unanimous and rapid procedure, so far as that is consistent with a proper consideration of the case, I very much hope that this Amendment will not be pressed. If I am to give its Parliamentary history in a sentence, it is this. It was moved in Committee in the other House by Sir George Younger on November 6, and in the Committee on which I think practically all the members were Scots it was very fully debated, and was not even divided upon
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by the representatives of Scotland who represented all parties on that Committee. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will not think it worth while pressing this particular issue.
LORD LAMINGTON: In view of what the noble and learned Lord has said, I will withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH moved, in subsection (11) (b),to leave out paragraph (ii). The noble Duke said: I think that this is one of the most important Amendments, but it is one which at this late hour I do not wish to detain your Lordships upon long, because I spoke upon it at some length on Second Reading. Perhaps your Lordships will not object to my reading out what is provided as to compensation. I propose to leave out the subsection which states that the compensation payable shall not include "any compensation for injury done to or depreciation in the selling value of the land comprised in the scheme, or of any estate whereof such land forms part, except in so far as the same arises from injury done to or depreciation in the letting value of the land or estate."
The objection that we have to this paragraph in the Bill is this. I think that it has been quite accepted by your Lordships and by Parliament that it is right and proper that the country should take any land which is required for national purposes, but it has been laid down that when the country does that it should be prepared to pay a full and fair value for the land that is taken. Without raising any argument it must be admitted that in this case the individual from whom the land is taken has to pay a part—possibly a small or possibly a considerable part—of the cost of these holdings, because it says that no compensation is to be paid for the objects which I have enumerated. It is said that there have been certain difficulties in the past. No doubt there have been, because the sums allotted for small holdings in Scotland have not been at all extravagant. The whole point, which I do not wish to labour, is that instead of the whole of the cost being paid for by the State a proportion of it is to fall upon the individual. I admit that it will not affect the very large estates so much as the small ones, but it is generally accepted

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that if small holdings are created on a farm the value of that farm is greatly depreciated.
I do not give that as my own opinion, because it has been expressed in a decision of the Land Court. And they also stated there that apparently it was not a favourite investment for lenders. The point really comes to this, that when the small holding is created on a small estate very likely the mortgagee forecloses and there is a forced sale at a ruinous price, and the individual is ruined. In many cases it will not only be the contribution that the individual would make to this thing, but far more, because, if there is a forced sale, he may lose all that he has to live on. What we contend for is the broad principle that if anything is taken for the good of the country a fair price should be paid for it, and I think on the face of the clause it cannot be denied that a certain portion of that price—whether small or large, does not I think matter very much—has to be paid by the individual from whom the land is taken.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, lines 36 to 40, leave out paragraph (ii).—(The Duke of Buccleuch.)
LORD SHAW: I am surprised at, and I very much regret, the action of my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch, because I happen to know the history of this question pretty much from the beginning, having been largely concerned with the drafting of the original Act which, I think, appeared in Parliament in 1908–9, but which culminated in the legislation of 1911. The passage of that Act through the Grand Committees of the House of Commons was extremely heavily contested from day to day and from week to week, and the time came when it was necessary, if possible, to make a supreme effort to compromise the position of parties, in this sense, that they would combine to make an experimental clause of the kind which is contained in the Act of 1911.
I think much of the lack of success of that Act has arisen from that compromise because the scheme of compensation—and, if I venture to mention the subject, it is with real anxiety—set up by the Act of 1911 was to all intents and purposes unprecedented in this country. Compensation was given in respect of the letting value of the land to be occupied by the new holder, or of any farm of which the land formed a part, or to any tenant in respect that the land formed part of the whole of
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his tenancy, or to any land in respect of an obligation to take over sheep stock at a valuation; and then come these fatal words—
"or in respect of any depreciation in the value of the estate of which the land forms part in consequence of, and attributable to, the now holdings."
Parliament is not unacquainted with this subject of injurious affection of land. Since the Railways Clauses Act, 1845, and The Lands Clauses Act of the same year Parliament has been well acquainted with the fact that there must be a payment, not only for the land taken, but for the injurious affection of land or buildings in the immediate proximity of which buildings a part is taken, and a part only, under the scheme.
With regard to the land, as apart from the buildings, all the ambit of the extensions beyond the part actually taken is where there has been half an acre of land (I think it is) extra which is cut off from communication with the outside part of the estate. But the scheme of compensation introduced by the Act of 1911 was so vast that not only was the compensation to be given in respect of the land taken, in respect of the farm or which it was a part, but in respect of the entire estate of which that part of that farm was a part. I say that in principle, if that had been the law of this country applicable to railways or applicable to great undertakings under which a settlement is made under the Lands Clauses Act, the industry of this country and its transport would have been sterilised, and we should have had no progress made until a scheme of that kind had been destroyed.
Not long after this Act came into effect there was the case to which my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch has referred. How serious the matter is your Lordships will understand from the observation I am now going to make. The land taken in that case was part of a little estate of 3,000 acres—800 acres were taken. There was compensation to be reckoned under the Act, and the compensation in the first place was by reference to the letting value of the land taken. It was found by the arbitrator (as we call him in the North) that there was no loss whatever in the letting value of the land because, upon a comparison of the existing rent of the 800 acres with the new rents to be obtained under the scheme, the landlord was to be the gainer

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by about £23 a year, I think. Then buildings were compensated for on a very large scale to the extent of £3,800; fencing was compensated for, and also manures; then there were certain holdings remaining unlet—the whole amounting to about £4,000. Then came this clause. What was the arbitrator to do as to valuing the injury to the remainder of the estate? Will your Lordships believe that what the arbitrator gave under this clause was no less a sum than £4,600.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: I think that included everything—the farm buildings, and so on.
LORD SHAW: No, not at all. That is the shocking thing about it. I myself could hardly believe it, but to-day I went to verify it, and the noble Duke may take my word for it as I have gone into the original papers in the action. Here are the figures: For buildings, £3,740; fencing, £19; manures, £118; for holdings remaining unlet,£109. That comes altogether to £3,986. Then on top of that came this item, and this is thus named by the arbitrator, who himself was apparently a little shocked by it because he catalogued it "secondly," and then he proceeded to divide it up and paved the way for Courts of Law to say whether that was reasonably competent under the Act. This is his language in respect of loss—this is over and above the £3,986—caused by depreciation in the value of the estate in consequence of that attributable to the constitution of the new holding; that is to say, this landlord got £4,600 in respect of the prospective and conjectural value of a difference between having an estate with small holdings on it and an estate without small holdings on it. That was actually given. It almost looks like a direct attack upon Parliament itself by the landlord saying: "Stand and deliver" in so much money because that land is to be devoted to the very purposes for which Parliament passed the Act.
I know what your Lordships will say in reply to me: Is it not right when the value of an estate is affected as, for instance, when the shootings are affected injuriously, that there should be a payment for that in addition to the payment for the land taken? Or, is it not right that severance may be taken into account? Many of your Lordships are much more expert in these matters than I am, but you know that
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in all these cases severance is an important consideration. Is it not right, you will say, that management—that is to say, the difference between splitting up the management of an estate, part of it under the Government and part of it in the man's own hands—and all these things should be taken into account?
It seems like a fairy tale. But the arbitrator saw the thing himself, and he differentiated his figures and said: Of the £4,600 which is to be given for damage to the value of the estate, and to the shootings, the compensation for severance and for division of management, I do value that. The sum of these three things put together, which is almost as much as imagination could conceive, is £750, and therefore the remaining sum, says he, is £3,850 in addition to shootings, severance, management, land taken, and all the rest.
In respect of this clause in the Act "Depreciation in the value of the estate," had the like been dreamed of under the Lands Clauses Act or the undertakings under it, or under the Railways Clauses Act and all the undertakings under it, it would have stopped industry in this country and prevented anything being done. That is the instance which has occurred, and what this Bill says in this proviso is that that instance shall be taken out. It says compensation shall not include any compensation for injury done or depreciation in the selling value of the estate. Then comes an exception as to which I have the greatest doubt myself "except in so far as the same arises by injury done or by depreciation in the letting value of the land or estate." That is an extremely generous and extremely large departure from anything that could have been done under the Lands Clauses Act, 1845. But, my Lords, assuming that is so, here is depreciation which is not to include depreciation in the letting value of the land or of the whole estate. What more can any man want than that? The landlord will be left exactly in the position that the commercial value of the subject which is being disposed of will not only be recouped to him, but there will be completely recouped to him every commercial factor which went to deplete the value of the remainder of the estate. I am only anxious upon this subject. It matters little to me what the House decides with regard to any trivial matter, but this is not a trivial matter. This case is a concrete illustra-

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tion of the thing which has marked the history of land legislation in Scotland, and marked it as a failure, because it is impossible for land to be acquired either by individual small holders or by any public Board on terms so extraordinary as those I have described. It is desired that that difficulty, which has made all this land legislation a failure, shall be removed and for ever.
I will now ask your Lordships to consider what was done in the House of Commons. We have now a Coalition Government. No more astute ally of my noble friends opposite exists in the House of Commons than Sir George Younger. He was present at all the debates in Committee on this Bill. Not one Amendment, so far as my recollection serves, was made in the extreme sense of that of the noble Duke, because every man on both sides of the House, and the Parties in the Coalition, realise fully that to reinstate in this Bill the selling value of the entire estate as a matter of compensation would ruin the measure once and for all. Then we come to Report. Not one Amendment was moved there. All parties accepted the clause in this form. There were various suggestions for amendment with regard to other particulars, but none in regard to this. I do ask your Lordships to pause before wrecking this measure. I think it means the wrecking of the measure; I do honestly and sincerely. I think it is impossible that this measure can ever have the success which a measure for giving access to land can have, if this Amendment is insisted upon.
Since the Act of 1911 was passed that illustration has occurred. But another thing has also happened, which ought seriously to weigh with your Lordships. Soldiers and sailors are returning, and in Scotland there are no nobler men who went to the war than those who are now returning. They wish to have access to the land. They do not desire to have access to the land on unfair terms, but they desire to have it under a Bill in which this wrecking element shall not occur. If this element is insisted upon then that access for soldiers and sailors is denied by this House—not by the Coalition Government I am glad to think, not by any Party in the House of Commons, but by a section of your Lordships' House. I hope your Lordships will not think I am over-rating the value of the Amendment, but I conclude with an appeal
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to your Lordships to reconsider your attitude towards the Amendment, which is fatal to the efficacy of the Bill.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I am sure we have been interested in what has fallen from the noble and learned Lord, and I shall be prepared to deal with the shocking case he has raised. I should like first to say that in my opinion this is the most objectionable part in the Bill. We are in favour of the Bill and most anxious to get men who have served in the trenches on to the land, if they wish to go there and we can train them to it; but we do not see why it should be necessary to tack on to a Land Bill for soldiers a principle which has never been in any Bill before. This is absolutely germane to other species of property. It may be our turn at the present moment, but if later on it is the turn of noble Lords opposite I shall not be sorry if they do not help us to-day. It is for that reason that I hope noble Lords will judge the question from the point of view of the principle involved rather than as part of a Scottish Land Bill, no matter how desirable the measure might otherwise be. It may jeopardise the Bill but only if certain people are obstinate enough to make it so. There is no reason why it should jeopardise the Bill; it has nothing to do with the objects of the measure.
We must admit that in a sense no subject has any rights at all; but he has many privileges as a citizen. There is the protection of his life and his property as long as he behaves himself and is engaged in a lawful pursuit. We accept that in a civilised community. We also realise that the Government may take anything from any individual for the purposes of the State, and unless it is directly stated that compensation is to be paid then we understand that there will be no compensation. In other words the Law is supreme. If the Law chooses to allow injustice to be done, or commits unconstitutional actions, such as is proposed in this Bill of depriving citizens of their legitimate pursuits and the results of their enterprise, then the whole fabric comes down. In this case we have an individual who has property of an undoubted value, and the State, which is supposed to maintain the rights of property, wishing to acquire the property which it admits is being used for the best possible benefit of the community. Surely that is not fair.

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The principle of the Bill is that property shall be acquired at a valuation, and that due compensation shall be paid. That is admitted by Lord Shaw. The purchaser, however, has no right to say that he will pay the cheaper part of the compensation and will not pay the expensive part. The attitude of the arbiter in this case is quite clear, and it was ably summed up by Lord Shaw in the shocking case to which he referred. Some of us remember "the shocking case," and also remember the splendid defence made by the noble and learned Lord himself in that case. Indeed it was due to him and Lord Haldane that exactly the opposite was carried to that which is proposed in the Bill. The noble and learned Lord may remember his words. They made a strong impression upon me at the time, and I have refreshed my memory since. He was talking about the arbiter. He was strongly in favour of many things, including the sentimental value. He said "In my humble judgment—
LORD SHAW: I was interpreting the Act of Parliament and showing that that Act would include all kinds of things like sentimental value and all the rest, and it is another question whether such a token of value should remain on the Statute Book.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I agree with the noble and learned Lord and therefore want to quote what he said—
"In my humble judgment an arbiter has nothing to do with the quality of the objections which either raise or depress market values. The one equally with the other he does not inspect the quality of. He assesses the pecuniary result."
That is really our point. The noble and learned Lord went on to say—
"These sentimental objections matter nothing one way or another except as they affect the price to be realised."
We thank the noble and learned Lord for the way in which he put the matter on that occasion. Here we find a particular Department of the Government, whose duty it is among other things to purchase land for small holdings, deliberately admitting the value and refusing to pay for it. In plain English, this is brigandage and nothing else. If the Government deliberately embark on this line of policy then nothing is safe in the way of property and it is difficult to blame individuals who, possibly from want, or possibly from baser motives, act in the same way. The noble
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and learned Lord is a Judge and knows how he would deal with an individual who acted as the Government propose to act and I cannot see any difference between a burglar and a Government if they both do the same thing. In ordinary life, if you cannot pay for a thing you have to do without it. In this particular instance the Government have not even the excuse we see in many cases, that they are improving the well-being of the community. They are stirring up endless opposition to a scheme which if it is to be successful should have the cooperation of all men. I assure the noble Lord that we all desire to promote in every way the success of this scheme.
It has been said tentatively, and I think even considered by the Secretary for Scotland, that an owner should exercise his claim within a limited number of years, by selling the estate, when he should be given the balance due for capital value. I absolutely disagree. I consider he should be given the full value of what he is deprived, when the deal is made in the first instance. Lord Haldane puts it in a nutshell. He also was one of the judges in the case. He stated in the same way—
"It is true that the arbiter has also said that the landlord has no intention of selling, but what of that? According to the principles which are so well settled in this House and other Courts, when you make a claim of this kind you must make your claim once for all. If hereafter damage emerges from the same cause, for which therefore you might have claimed, you cannot claim again."
That is good law and good sense, and I cannot understand why His Majesty's Government should wish to depart from it. No doubt the noble and learned Lord will explain. I also believe that the view advanced by the Scottish Office is that if you put property in the market you do not get a fair valuation. It is very difficult to know any fairer method of getting to know the true value of an article. After all the market price is a criterion at the moment. But it is very difficult for noble Lords on this side to know what to do when the Government itself does not know what to do. I am a supporter of the Government—except on this. You find one Department of the Government doing exactly the opposite to what another Department does. You find one great Department of the State when dealing with Lord Rosebery the other day offering for disposal that which was not their own property and advancing the argument in justification that it was really only a bogus

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sale in which they were trying to find out the true value by a sale in the open market, that being the only way of assessing the true value. Yet when we suggest that the market value should be taken the Scottish Office say that the market value is unfair and improper. On the other hand as I have just pointed out you have another Department saying that is the only way of arriving at the true value. We say exactly the same in the case of other Departments. At the present moment I believe there is a small war going on between two dusky Potentates in the East, one financed by one Department and the other financed by another Department of the Government. In very much the same way we see proprietors mulcted by the Inland Revenue. The noble and learned Lord will admit that in arriving at the death duties the capital value of land is taken into consideration. The noble Lord nods and I assume he agrees. If it is good for death duties why is it not good in the case which I am putting when an assessment has to be made of the value of land taken. When one has paid ones death duties there is no earthly reason why the Land Court and its minions should not step in and refuse to pay the capital sum which the other Government Department has a short time before assessed for the purpose of death duties. That is an impossible situation and it is dishonourable. We have all heard about honour rooted in dishonour, and I cannot myself see how you can possibly have justice based upon injustice. For that reason I support the noble Duke.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it would be idle to conceal that the Amendment which has been moved is likely to present a most serious cause of difference between the Government and noble Lords who are here to-night to give expression to their views. I do not underrate the importance of the discussion, though I a little regret the language in which in one, I think, uncompleted sentence the noble Duke said to his colleagues, speaking for a large number of Peers in Scotland "It is our turn to-day. I hope other noble Lords will help us now."
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I did not intend it quite in that way. What I hoped to say was that I trusted the lesson would not be lost on noble Lords whose own turn might come another day to be deprived of a commodity.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am much too old a friend of the noble Duke's for many years now in another House to develop any criticism at all on any language he uses the moment he says he did not mean it in the sense in which I took it. But I must, I confess, ask your Lordships to go with great care into this Amendment. It is an Amendment which in my judgment is really destructive of the practical success of the Bill, and yet it is one of those Amendments which, of all others, are the most difficult to criticise and to oppose, because it can undoubtedly be defended with a plausibility which is not altogether superficial. I would ask that the history of the question raised by this Amendment should be considered a little attentively, because in relation to Scotland this is a matter which requires some degree of historical treatment. And I am bound to make an observation in this connection upon the criticisms which the noble Duke made with reference to the contribution to this debate of my noble and learned friend Lord Shaw. I know that the noble Duke is not a lawyer—he will thank me for this testimonial. But when he says as against my noble and learned friend that, sitting as a Judge on the Act of 1911, which it is our expressed purpose in this Bill to amend, he gave certain decisions and reached certain conclusions, and then cites these as if they involved my noble and learned friend in any definite individual opinion, at a period when the one object of this Bill is to alter those very conclusions of law upon which my noble and learned friend was pronouncing, it is really an argument to which I think, with a little more reflection, my noble friend would not have committed himself.
But with regard to the history, I hope to build up a case which will satisfy your Lordships of this, and I do not desire to put it too high. I do not desire to put it so high as this, that the landlords of Scotland have no cause of complaint under these proposals. But while I make that admission, I say that they have no greater cause of complaint than many landlords in England have had now for nearly forty years under the Lands Clauses (Consolidation) Act. So in all these great public reforms cases arise in which individuals suffer. And believe me, it is a mistake, and it is certainly a mistake in this House to put it too much as if it was a matter of principle. Let us rather argue it out in

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this way. Where great national ends are common ends, where everybody admits that certain conclusions must be gained, are we or are we not pressing unduly upon a single class?—are we or are we not asking a single class to make a sacrifice which, under all the circumstances of the case, must be pronounced excessive?
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: Do the Lands Clauses Acts apply to this?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: No Certainly not. But I was trying to point out that under the Lands Clauses Acts if, for instance, a railway intervened in the estate of a noble Lord, comparable sacrifices were compensated for in a manner analogous to that which is recommended in this Bill.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: If a railway took land it would pay for it. In this case it would not.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: But if a railway took land, no doubt they would pay for it under the terms of compensation provided in this Bill, but they would not pay for it on the terms, or anything like the terms, or on the principle, to which my noble friend has called attention; and it was one of the most scandalous applications of the principles of the Act of 1911 of which I am aware, and indeed it was an application of those principles which made those principles bankrupt, and which has produced these proposals to amend them, which—I would remind the noble Duke—have been received with extraordinary public support from all classes in Scotland.
Let me now come back to the history of it. The tenure of the small landholder in Scotland, as it stands to-day, has grown directly out of the crofter's tenure under the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886. That is the first landmark in the history of this question. That Act gave to the crofter in the crofting counties security of tenure at a fair rent which was to be fixed, failing agreement, by the Crofters Commission. The Crofters Commission were the predecessors of the present Land Court, and many of your Lordships are familiar with their activities. The arrangement under that Act was subject to revision every seven years, and a statutory tenure was thus substituted for a tenure by agreement. I am speaking in
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the presence of many noble Lords who, by their circumstances and their history, have had great experience of the crofting conditions, and they will tell me whether I am right or wrong when I say that the rent roll under that legislation not only suffered but suffered very considerably. The Scottish landowners at that period received no compensation, and so far as I am aware they asked for no compensation.
It may be said in answer that this is not a true analogy; it may be said that Parliament imposed no new tenants upon him and put none of his land to a new use. I have heard the argument used that it revived, and in a sense stereotyped in the public interest, the existing contracts between the landlord and his existing crofter tenants. But that does not conclude the matter. While the Act of 1886 did not provide for the creation of new crofts, it did provide for the compulsory enlargement of existing crofts—a very analogous case to that which we are discussing to-night; and here, again, the landlord received no compensation whatever for loss in either selling or letting value. The only compensation payable in respect of enlargements was to the agricultural or sporting tenant of the land taken. Under the Act of 1886 more than 72,000 acres—including, I would ask your Lordships to remember, portions of deer forests—were assigned for enlargements by the Crofters Commission before the 1911 Act came into force, without one penny of compensation being paid to landowners. And this loss or injury—if indeed it is to be called a loss or injury—fell not on all landlords alike but only on those landlords whose lands were assigned.
Then came the 1911 Act. When noble Lords say, as they say with perfect truth, that this Bill gives them less than was given by the 1911 Act, let them clearly understand the attitude which we assume in relation to that Act. It is true that we propose less under this Bill. Under circumstances of imperious public necessity known to everyone, under the stimulus of objects which are admitted by noble Lords in every part of the House to be demanded at this moment by every consideration of public duty and obligation, it has been decided that arrangements must be made under which far greater facilities may be swiftly and immediately provided for the settlement of soldiers upon the land. Then we had to ask ourselves this question—

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Can we really claim that it is within our power to make those settlements if we adhere to the conditions of the 1911 Act? Not one expert who has advised us has told us that it is in our power to make the arrangements which everyone admits to be required, and to be required now, if we adhere to the principles which have been proved to be unworkable, to be unjust, to be unfair to the general taxpayer, and which were most disastrously adopted by the Act of 1911.
My Lords, let me for a moment remind you of the provisions of the Act of 1911. It began by converting a large number of existing tenants into small holders. For this it provided no compensation to the landlord, treating it in this respect just as the 1886 Act had done. Section 7 of the Act of 1911, which must be carefully borne in mind in this discussion, provided for the constitution of new small holdings, and therefore was the comparable section to the relevant section in this Bill and to the section equivalent to the Crofts Section of the Act of 1886. It contains a very general compensation provision which covers loss in selling value as well as in letting value. In order that your Lordships may be apprised of the whole of the circumstances under Section 16, this applied to enlargements also.
The whole question in debate to-night is whether the provision of Section 7 of the 1911 Act ought to have been stereotyped and applied in the proposals which are now before this House. I must point out, to begin with, that no Amendment was ever proposed in the House of Commons anything like approaching that which the noble Duke has proposed tonight. There are many Scottish Members representing all parties in the House of Commons fully acquainted with the history of this matter, able and willing to make any reasonable protest which the stability and protection of property might seem to render reasonable, but no Amendment like this was proposed. In the House of Commons an Amendment was moved to omit all the words of the paragraph after "part," in order to exclude land selling value altogether. That Amendment was opposed by the Secretary of State and on a Division it was defeated, not by a Committee of unintelligent and uninformed Englishmen, but by the Scottish Committee. It was put down again, but it was not even moved. But at no stage in the
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House of Commons was it proposed, as is now done, to omit the paragraph altogether.
Whatever other Amendments may require consideration, I cannot think that the noble Duke would desire that his name should go down in the history of this controversy as having for the first time—no such attempt having been made in the House of Commons—moved that this provision should be omitted altogether. The Amendment was pat down by Sir George Younger, and I agree entirely with what my noble and learned friend has said that no more astute adviser, no more kindly and assiduous friend of all the legitimate interests of the great land-owners of Scotland could be found No man has a more perfect and complete comprehension of what is practicable and obtainable in the House of Commons and of the means by which alone the essential objects of the Government, as shared by noble Lords, can be obtained. Sir George Younger moved an Amendment to which I desire your Lordships' careful attention. He moved both in Committee and on Report a proviso to the effect that on actual sale of the land within five years after the creation of small holdings, thereupon the landlord should have a claim for actual loss of selling value as shown by the price obtained. I conceive Sir George Younger's object to have been this. I imagine that he was pressed as any noble Lord who gives attention to this matter will be, by what I really must call the scandal of the arbitrations that have been held under the Act of 1911.
The case made, and plainly made, on the Second Reading of this Bill can be summarised almost in a single sentence. It was this—Under the terms of this Bill you only give us compensation for letting value. That is incomplete and unfair compensation, because it may be that we have not sustained at the moment any real loss under the head of letting value, but if we have to sell in the circumstances of small holdings super-imposed on our estates, we have sustained a real loss under the head of selling value. That was the case made here on Second Reading.
Let me tell those of your Lordships who are not so familiar as noble Lords from Scotland how the matter has in fact been dealt with between the year 1911

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and to-day, in order that it may be determined by the House as a whole whether the system which has prevailed during that period is one which can, on its merits, be defended, or whether it is one which any thoughtful friend of landlords, either in Scotland or England, would be deeply concerned to protect or to recommend. Arbitration after arbitration has been held under the Act of 1911. In these cases the claimants were Scottish landlords, upon whose estates small holdings were established. They came forward and they said, under the terms of the 1911 Act, "We affirm that the selling value of our estate has been diminished, and inasmuch as it has been diminished, here and now we claim to receive compensation." And they had not the slightest intention of selling their estates. They have not sold their estates to this day. There has not been in the majority of the cases at this moment in my mind any single indication that they ever intend to sell them. Yet they have recovered from arbitral tribunals thousands and thousands of pounds of compensation upon grounds founded upon the most flimsy hypotheses which in my experience have ever been offered to the consideration and judgment of an arbitrator.
If I may inform your Lordships, this is the kind of evidence. An expert witness comes—I have on previous occasions expressed some of my opinions and stated some of my experiences of expert witnesses—and says, "Here is this estate. I find that upon it there are twelve small holdings. I believe that the purchaser would have given £40,000 for that estate if these small holdings had not been placed upon it, and my opinion is that the purchaser would not give more than £30,000 for it now." And with no appreciable or provable inquiry to an estate, of which the landlord has not divested himself and of which there is no reason to believe he ever intended to divest himself, these enormous and swollen verdicts have been given by arbitrators. Not only did this happen in the case referred to by the noble and learned Lord, but, unfortunately, it has become a kind of precedent. The next arbitrator says that was the principle in the case of so-and-so, and £8,000 or £9,000 was given; and so one case succeeds another until the situation has been reached in which I say plainly—and plain, though I hope entirely inoffensive
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language is desirable in this matter—in which those who are best qualified to judge have advised those who are responsible for introducing the Bill that if the methods of compensation adopted under the 1911 Act are to be maintained and applied to all cases of compensation under this Bill, the Bill cannot be made an effective measure in Scotland. If we had reached the conclusion that what was provided by the Act of 1911 was defensible in itself then, if we could not justify the course we propose in this Bill, it might be necessary to reach the conclusion, melancholy as the conclusion would be, that some other line of approach must be attempted. But when we have reached the conclusion that no sufficient justification can be made for the principle of compensation which was adopted in the Act of 1911, it can hardly be expected that we should acquiesce in the destruction, as we conceive it, of our present proposals by a perpetuation of the provisions of the Act of 1911 which have been riddled with abuse in Scotland and elsewhere.
I was dealing with Sir George Younger's alternative proposal. It will be readily conceded that that proposal at least dealt with the scandal of large sums of compensation being awarded to landlords who did not sell, and whose claim to be treated on the basis of selling value was not obvious. It was resisted in the House of Commons upon grounds which cannot be lightly dismissed. In the first place it was resisted on the ground that it would be extremely difficult to estimate how much, if any, of the loss was due to the existence of the small holding. I do not regard that as a fatal objection, for this reason, that all arbitrators have to face difficulties which are really almost as great as that which I have indicated. The Tribunal is a finite one and the methods which they must employ are finite too. While some weight must be given to it is not a serious argument. The most serious objection to the proposal of Sir G. Younger is this—that it is absolutely essential that the compensation should be ascertained once for all when the scheme is made, in order that the Board may know the cost and decide whether to proceed with the scheme or abandon it. If there are contingent liabilities at a given moment it would certainly impede the activities of the Board.
These considerations were pointed out in connection with the moderate amend-

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ment of Sir G. Younger. They were pointed out in the House of Commons, and as a result Sir G. Younger withdrew his amendment I cannot help thinking that the experience in the House of Commons indicated a general, and in my judgment a justifiable feeling that unrestricted compensation for injury to selling value, though it was provided for in the Act of 1911, has proved to be a mistake, and is now indefensible. It results in compensation for every loss actually sustained, plus compensation for loss which might never be suffered at all. Certainly in some cases, noble Lords for Scotland will not deny it, the landlord may be richer than he was before. It would be unfortunate if any such claim should be made in relation to a Bill which is in redemption of war pledges, and which everyone supported, not only with the language of the tongue but with the language of the heart. In arguing this difficult case I hope I have said nothing to reflect upon the well known desire of noble Lords who directly represent Scottish interests to contribute even by great sacrifices to that which the national interests require. I earnestly impress upon them that the view is taken that if anything like the. Amendment of the noble Duke is accepted, the Bill becomes a Bill which it is impossible to press forward with any hope that it will attain the objects proposed to itself by the Government. I know how dear to the hearts of noble Lords are the objects of this Bill. And while any alternative proposal which the ingenuity of noble Lords or of their advisers may suggest will be considered with the respect that their origin would require, I can only tell the noble Duke that the omission of this subsection would in my view be regarded by the Government as a fatal objection to the progress of this Bill.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: My Lords, let us see how we stand in this very complicated and important matter. All of us, without exception, wish to help the Government to fulfil the national pledge of putting on the land the men who fought for us. If my noble friends from Scotland claim anything more than has been given under similar conditions in England I certainly am not going to support them, but they surely are entitled to an absolutely fair price for any property taken from them for any national purpose; and the Prime Minister himself has laid it down
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as one of the corner stones of his policy that although he will take for the nation what the nation requires, he is always going to pay a fair price for it. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that unless the Bill we have before us is passed very much in its present form the purpose of settling these men on the land in Scotland cannot be carried out. But is that so, my Lords? It is going to be carried out in England, and this difficulty does not arise in England. What is the whole cause of this difficulty in Scotland? In England the State can either buy land or hire land. In both those cases the Lands Clauses Acts come into operation, and if there is injurious affection it is taken into account either in the purchase price or in the rent paid for compulsorily hired land. I do not suppose that my noble friends from Scotland ask for anything more than that. The whole point is that the Lands Clauses Acts do not come into operation in the case of this particular plan adopted for Scotland. The State says "We want to put soldiers on the land." The State can buy the land. You say that in this case it is difficult to raise more money and the State will not buy the land, but the State can hire land. That will cost the State no capital sum. Instead of which, for some reason which is perfectly unintelligible to Englishmen, the late Government adopted this plan of neither buying nor hiring but placing compulsory tenants on an unwilling landlord and insisting upon his keeping the land and making those tenants his own. To us Englishmen it seems a perfectly preposterous plan, and Lord Shaw told us that the clause, which he drew, Clause 11, turned out to be a very bad one.
LORD SHAW: I beg the noble Earl's pardon. I did not draw it. I had the honour of being a member of your Lordships' House before the clause came into existence. I was referring to a previous Act.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: Then somebody, the then Liberal Law Officer for Scotland, drew a very bad clause—and then the Lord Chancellor tells us practically that every arbiter in Scotland is unfit for his post. I do not know whether my noble and learned friend really wished us to infer that.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I said nothing of the kind. I said that two decisions had been given under this Act which had undoubtedly occasioned the greatest possible anxiety and had shown that if this principle contained in Section 7 of the 1911 Act were persevered in it would prevent this Act being possible. I never made any general reflection on the arbitrators.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: If the noble Lord, Lord Shaw's account, which I thought was entirely endorsed by my noble and learned friend opposite, is accurate I cannot call the arbitrator a good arbitrator.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I had the arbitrations in my mind, both of which are well known to the noble Earl, before I spoke. The arbitrators in these were profoundly wrong and unfortunately they have been followed in other cases.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I am not at all sure then that I exaggerated if profoundly wrong decisions be given by two arbitrators and all the others have followed their example. These arbitrators are I understand appointed by the Court of Session, and I would have thought that the Court of Session would have appointed fit men for such responsible work. If the wording so unfortunately adopted by some Scottish law officer whose name I forget and which was not Lord Shaw has had these disastrous effects there might be an argument for amendment, but I can see no argument for entirely depriving the unfortunate landowner of what may be a very important part of his property. The Government are founding their position on a hard case and Lord Shaw has laid great stress on the Lindean case, in fact this sub-clause is founded on the Lindean case. I am only an Englishman and it is quite by accident that I happened to come across this information the other day. But I have been reading very assiduously the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Agriculture, and I came across this given in cross-examination by the representative of the Scottish Farmers' Union. I had never heard of the case before. It was the case of Lord Elibank's estate and Lord Elibank had a lot of these tenants
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imposed upon him by a Scottish Land Court or Board of Agriculture. Lord Elibank said that he did not want to be the landlord of these tenants and he would therefore sell his land. The land is in the Lothians, and what do your Lordships think that this part of the estate sold for? Ten years purchase of the land. No one could possibly have thought that ten years purchase was the value of this land before it had been taken for this purpose. Therefore there is a real case to be met here. I do not think that it is met in the best way by this Amendment. I am, however, not competent to form an opinion on that subject and I rather gathered by several of the sentences of my noble and leaned friend the Lord Chancellor that he was not quite comfortable about the wording of the Act as it stands. If, the only choice we have is between the Amendment of my noble friend and the non possumus of the government, I shall certainly vote for my noble friend.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: My noble friend, Lord Selborne alluded to the case of Ballencrieff. I think I am correct in saying that the tenant was offered £25,000 for the farm, and that when it was sold the total realised by him, including compensation, came to £20,500, so that he had a loss of £4,500. I would point out that this does not affect Part I of the Bill, which is the principal part for settling soldiers it only affects Part II.
But we have unofficially made certain suggestions to the Government with which I understand they will proceed. We were quite willing to do anything we could so as to give a reasonable security to those whose land is going to be taken, and if possible to prevent any abuse, assuming—which I do not quite admit—that there has been any abuse, as stated by my noble and learned friend opposite (Lord Shaw). The case I allude to is the Kinnenhall case, in which the Land Court stated that, owing to the property being turned into small holdings, they awarded three years purchase. There is no doubt there is a loss of value in this, and all that we want is that that value should be met, and if an Amend-merit could be suggested by the Government I am sure that those on this side of the House will be very pleased to consider it and do what we can to meet the Government.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I would ask your Lordships to remember that the history of the question, as I attempted shortly to describe it, shows quite plainly that a difference of system has been adopted as between the law applicable to English land and the law applicable to Scots land, and it is quite possible to point to cases in which you can show divergencies of practice, and even occasionally the appearances of hardship in relation to the one system which cannot be discovered in the other. For instance, there are Many cases in England in which you have compulsory leasing, and no compensation is payable on the selling value, although the property is considerably depreciated. And you must consider each system separately. I have no claim to be a great authority on Scots law or the history of Scots law, but I am advised by those who are very competent to give advice in such matters, and I am not at all sure—to take the only specific case which my noble friend Lord Selborne put to me, the case of Lord Elibank—I am not at all sure that the noble Earl has sufficiently considered his facts in regard to that matter.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I read the facts in the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Agriculture.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am informed on the subject by those who took a very prominent part in the proceedings. I am sure that what the noble Earl read was accurately stated, according to his memory, but I am informed by one who had very intimate sources of knowledge that nobody ever did better than Lord Elibank as the result of those proceedings. I am informed that Lord Elibank received compensation for his buildings, received damages to compensate him for depreciation by reason of that which had happened, and and in addition received ten years purchase If I am well informed upon that, the whole edifice of the argument raised by the noble Lord upon that case is dissipated and destroyed. I should not have thought it right to state this view of the facts if it had not been given to me by one who is entitled to consider himself an authority upon the matter.
The Amendment of the noble Duke is one which we cannot and will not accept. It is, in my judgment, one which would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of
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the noble Duke's countrymen in the House of Commons. I should profoundly regret if your Lordships persevered with it, but that does not in the least mean that the Government would not be prepared to consider less extreme proposals if they can only be framed and formulated, and if they will not destroy—as we are convinced that this will destroy—the whole hope and prospect of this Bill.
LORD LOVAT: Although I do not accept one or two of the facts mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, what he has said evidently shows a wish to reconsider the situation, and I have advised the noble Duke, rather than divide upon this question at this time, to formulate certain proposals for the next stage of the Bill. It is a question who should be the ones to bring forward these proposals. I think we have heard enough to show that it is admitted on the other side of the House that in certain cases a definite hardship occurs. I think there is not the least question that, when a sale actually takes place, something between three and live years purchase of the land has to be stood by the proprietor. I myself would urge that the proposal should come from the other side, but if it does not I would suggest that the noble Duke withdraws his Amendment and makes a proposal before we get to the next stage on the general lines of what has been brought forward.
LORD LAMINGTON: It is a question of principle. It. is almost impossible now to devise some Amendment, except that which the noble and learned Lord has seen on the Table, which would be a compromise that the selling value should be only in respect of the land actually taken and not in regard to the estate lying outside the scheme. It would be a compromise with regard to amount but not as regards principle. I hope that the noble Duke will adhere to his Amendment unless the Government compromise on those terms. The lairds will be hit under these proposals, and it is not fair that we should make our decision solely on the question of the large landowners being affected.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I want to say what I think would be a convenient course to adopt. The argument on this Amendment has now proceeded for a considerable time, and I am convinced that upon the case submitted my noble

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friends who represent Scotland have established their case, therefore in my judgment your Lordships would do well to insert the Amendment in the Bill. But there is no doubt that the noble and learned Lord has intimated that he has certain doubts. Supposing that between now and the Report stage an arrangement can possibly be come to upon other lines—though I myself do not see what other lines are possible—then a modification may be hereafter introduced; but as it appears, on the arguments submitted to your Lordships, that the noble Lords from Scotland have established their case, if they go to a Division I shall certainly support them.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I will only say this. If it be the fact, as the noble Marquess has inferred from the debate, that on the discussion which has taken place noble Lords are right and the Government are wrong, and if it also be the proper inference from the debate that it is for the Government, realising that noble Lords have been right and we are wrong, to make an alternative proposal, I for one should think it wrong to persuade the noble Duke to withdraw his Amendment under any such delusion.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not suggest that there should be any
obligation on the noble and learned Lord, but it may appear that some other arrangement is possible. I do not put the Government under any obligation.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I could not possibly undertake such a responsibility because, like the noble Marquess, I am at present not able to suggest an alternative to the proposal of the noble Duke. The noble Lord sitting behind the noble Marquess has handed in a manuscript Amendment to which I have given such consideration as I can I would not dismiss it as not deserving of consideration, but, while I have been either making or listening to speeches, I have not been able to give it full consideration. So far as the Amendment of the noble Duke is concerned, nothing is to be gained by postponing difficulties and the solution of difficulties. It is one to which the Government will never willingly assent. If the House thinks it worth while to postpone the difficulty by the withdrawal of the Amendment—well, if not, I think the House had better take its course.
On Question, whether paragraph (ii), proposed to be left out, shall stand part of the Clause?
Their Lordships divided:—Contents, 23; Not Contents, 42.

CONTENTS.

Birkenhead, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Farquhar, V. (L. Steward.)

Meston, L.

Sandhurst, V. (L. Chamberlain.)

Ranksborough, L.

Bradford, E.

Peel, V.

Rathcreedan, L.

Chesterfield, E.

Shaw, L.

Curzon of Kedleston, E.

Annesley, L. (V. Valentia.)

Sinha, L.

Lytton, E.

Clwyd, L.

Somerleyton, L. [Teller.]

Onslow, E.

Colebrooke, L.

Stanmore, L. [Teller.]

Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

Hylton, L.

Wigan, L. (E. Crawford.)

Lee of Fareham, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Argyll, D.

Churchill, V.

Fairlie, L. (E. Glasgow.)

Portland, D.

Falkland, V.

Gisborough, L.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Cholmondeley, M.

Ampthill, L.

Harris, L.

Linlithgow, M.

Brodrick, L. (V. Midleton.)

Hindlip, L.

Salisbury, M.

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Lamington, L. [Teller.]

Doncaster, E. (D. Buccleuch and Queensberry.) [Teller.]

Clinton, L.

Lovat, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Monckton, L. (V. Galway.)

Malmesbury, E.

Dunmore, L. (E. Dunmore.)

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Mar and Kellie, E.

Ebury, L.

Ruthven of Gowrie, L.

Selborne, E.

Elgin, L. (E. Elgin and Kincardine.)

Saltoun, L.

Strafford, E.

Sandys, L.

Strange, E. (D. Atholl.)

Elphinstone, L.

Tweedmouth, L.

Erskine, L.

Willoughby de Broke, L.

Chaplin, V.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Wolverton, L.

Wyfold, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL moved, in subsection (ii) (b), to leave out paragraph (iii). The noble Duke said: This is a difficult subsection to understand. To put it shortly it really means that you are not giving compensation if the land is full of stock. But supposing it is not fully stocked or a part of it is not fully stocked they will only give compensation as if it had been fully stocked, and this although the fact that you have not stocked your land fully is a distinct advantage to the district, and although it results in keeping a far greater population in the district, and is better for the rates. I would remind noble Lords that the rating question is a very serious question in the North, and an intolerable burden would also point out that I have had to move the rejection of the whole of this paragraph because I could not think of or invent a new paragraph which would meet the views of noble Lords opposite. I only wish they had put forward a proposal before to-day which we would have been able to consult and agree upon; but the Government will not put out a right hand in any shape or form. Therefore there was no other course except to move the excision of this objectionable paragraph.
I wish to make it clear, however, that I am absolutely in favour of doing away with deer forests which should never have existed and the existence of which is detrimental to the populace. They are only doing harm from every point of view. To justify a deer forest it must not displace people, there must be as many healthy families on it as could be employed if it were used for other purposes, and it must produce a reasonable amount of meat in comparison with the amount of meat which would be produced if the land were used for agricultural purposes. I am prepared to go a very long way with noble Lords but where a deer forest in comparison with a sheep farm offers an overwhelming advantage to the rates it is most unjust to the poor people who are groaning under the burden of the rates that they should have to make good the deficit due to an uneconomic fad—more especially when you recollect that the people who are to be planted on the land are not going to bear their share of the burden of the rates. I should have thought that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have realised that there were
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enough difficulties in the way of getting money in this country and would have restrained the Government from bringing in a measure which is going to pauperise most of the landowners in Scotland, with the result that he will get very much less in the matter of income tax, and the direct outcome of which will be that he will have to pay huge subsidies in the relief of rates. So I cannot see where there is any catch in it at all.
The Clause as it stands gives no security that it will not be unreasonably used, and I want to point out that if the Clause is passed no land will be secure. I think a far better clause could have been invented. I have no objection to the real reasons underlying the Clause, but as drafted it is going to depreciate practically the whole of the land in the North. I must ask the noble and learned Lord to consider what the effect of it will be upon mortgaged land in Scotland. At the present moment I should think that certainly more than half the rural land in Scotland is under mortgage, and if the value of the land is to be depreciated in this way in a great many cases the estates are so burdened that the bond-holders will actually lose their money. In that case there will be taken away a great deal of the security of the land, and it will be extremely difficult to get money at any price to carry out improvements. I cannot see the advantage of a measure which is so unjust, and to prevent compensation being payable for injury done to the value of sporting rights on the land is not fair. This paragraph will do a great deal of harm, and I must move its recission unless the Government are prepared to give us a Clause in which we can fairly agree.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, lines 1 to 6, leave out paragraph (iii).—(The Duke of Atholl.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: After the decision which your Lordships so recently reached by a large majority this is a matter of comparatively small importance, and I propose to discuss it quite briefly. The paragraph was attacked from both sides in the House of Commons, and was very fully discussed in the Scottish Standing Committee on November 5 and 10. Let me say at once that it is recognised that there may be what are sometimes called natural deer forests consisting of land suitable for deer and useless, or practically

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useless, for agriculture or the grazing of sheep. Under these circumstances separate treatment is, of course, to be justified, and it is adopted in this Bill. But there is also land devoted to deer which has been cleared of sheep and of men, or in other places withheld from pastoral uses in order that deer may abound. I do not think that any noble Lord will challenge that statement. It is considered as a matter of policy that sheep might be readmitted to much of this land without a serious reduction in the stock of deer or a serious diminution in sporting value. The rule set out in the Clause is that regard is to be had to such sporting value as arises from what are called legitimate sporting uses. This would mean the full sporting value in natural forests, and in other cases a value corresponding not to exclusive sporting use, but to such sporting use as should be consistent with concurrent agricultural or pastoral use so far as the land admits of that. The noble Duke apparently almost makes it a grievance that the Government has not suggested some Amendment to its own Clause, and have not met them half way. I am informed that the Secretary for Scotland has discussed this matter very closely with him, and with profound respect to the noble Duke, I must demur to the view that it is the duty of the Government, which is perfectly satisfied with its own Clause, to put forward an Amendment of it. It is for noble Lords who are dissatisfied to move such Amendment as would give effect to their grievances.
VISCOUNT GALWAY: I shall support this, for the State has no right to take away land or property on which death duties have been paid and not compensate the landlord for the loss. That was what led me to support the noble Duke in the last Division. It is the same motive which induces me to support him now, because I hold very strongly that wherever a case has been made on which the landowners have paid death duties to the State and the property on which those death duties are paid is deteriorated the State is bound to pay compensation for it.
LORD LOVAT: I shall certainly follow the noble Duke if he goes to a Division. It is a similar case to certain other cases under the Bill in which the Scottish landowners are not treated in the same way as the English landowners have been. At Election time we had certain definite
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promises made in Scotland by the leader of the Unionist Party, Mr. Bonar Law, as well as promises made by Mr. Lloyd George, that land would be taken as and when required for soldiers, but that suitable compensation would be paid. I would take issue with the Lord Chancellor and say that it is up to the Government to fulfil that pledge. The amount of money which is involved, however, is very apt to be exaggerated. I believe that you could produce the number of deer forests suitable for carrying a stock of sheep or for afforestation at a not very considerable cost. I believe that £200,000 would probably produce perhaps 50 per cent. of your deer forests, which is a very small sum to sacrifice for a promise definitely made. The Bill as it stands gives absolute power to take land wherever they wish, and makes it possible by merely placing 200 sheep there to absolutely ruin a subject which may be bringing in £3,000 or £4,000 a year, of which 50 per cent. of the net revenue goes to the local rates. I listened very closely to the debate in the House of Commons on the local rate question, in which the sporting interest plays a large part. The question of the rates was never fairly faced in another place, and it is essentially here that we realise what importance the rate question has. An accusation has been made that I am not in favour of reducing the area of land dealt with by sport. I am in favour of its reduction to the absolute limit possible, but I do believe that there are two distinct limitations. One is the rates, and the other is the amount of wintering for sheep on the high ground. I would add that I have spoken in exactly the same terms in my own country on this very point. I happened to stand the other day for a County Council election, and I told the electors that I was certainly going to oppose the Government in this House for not paying adequate compensation to landowners for what is taken away. I am absolutely satisfied that I did not lose a vote at my election by the fact that I stated what I thought was correct to be done. I do not believe that the average man in Scotland would not agree that fair compensation should be paid to the lan-owner for what is taken away from him. With regard to what the noble and learned Lord has said, I think it is only fair when a subject is taken away that full and fair compensation should be paid. I shall certainly follow the noble Duke into the Lobby if he divides.
On Question, whether paragraph (iii), proposed to be left out, shall stand part of the clause.
Resolved in the negative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL moved, after Clause 9, to insert the following clause—
"10. Where the Board make any order under the immediately preceding section they shall, if so requested by the landlord, be bound to erect and maintain, or cause to be erected and maintained, to the satisfaction of the landlord of the land comprised in the scheme and of any adjoining land such march fence, or fences, as may be necessary to prevent the stock of the landholder straying beyond the limits of the land comprised in the scheme, any dispute as to the adequacy of such fence or fences to be settled failing agreement by the Land Court."
The noble Duke said: The Amendment is simply this. In cases where there are pieces of ground cut off from deer forests, permission shall be given to put up fences and that putting up of fences shall be compulsory, if it is required. I do not think I need say anything further. The reason is to prevent stock from getting out and straying into the ground and spoiling its value. The landlords may not require fences to be put up, but where it is necessary to do so I think it should be compulsory.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 9 insert the said new clause.—(The Duke of Atholl.)
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 22 Not Contents, 36.

CONTENTS.

Birkenhead, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Sandhurst, V. (L. Chamberlain.)

Hylton, L.

Peel, V.

Lee of Fareham, L.

Bradford, E.

Meston, L.

Chesterfield, E.

Annesley, L. (V. Valentia.)

Shaw, L.

Lytton, E.

Clwyd, L.

Sinha, L.

Onslow, E.

Colebrooke, L.

Somerleyton, L. [Teller.]

Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

Elgin, L. (E. Elgin and Kincardine.)

Stanmore, L. [Teller.]

Wigan, L. (E. Crawford.)

Farquhar, V. (L. Steward.)

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Argyll, D.

Chaplin, V.

Erskine, L.

Portland, D.

Churchill, V.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Falkland, V.

Fairlie, L. (E. Glasgow.)

Cholmondeley, M.

Hampden, V.

Gisborough, L.

Linlithgow, M.

Harris, L.

Salisbury, M.

Ampthill, L.

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Brodrick, L. (V. Midleton.)

Lamington, L.

Doncaster, E. (D. Buccleuch and Queensberry.)

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.) [Teller.]

Lovat, L.

Monckton, L. (V. Galway.)

Malmesbury, E.

Clinton, L.

Saltoun, L.

Rosslyn, E.

Cottesloe, L.

Sandys, L.

Selborne, E.

Dunmore, L. (E. Dunmore.)

Wemyss, L. (E. Wemyss.)

Strafford, E.

Ebury, L.

Wyfold, L.

Strange, E. (D. Atholl.) [Teller.]

Elphinstone, L.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR: This proposal in its present form is unacceptable, but if the noble Duke will put it down in such a form as to make the Land Court, failing agreement, the arbitrator in respect of the necessity for fencing as well as the adequacy of any particular fence I should not quarrel with him. Perhaps he will do so on Report, or as there is not much time I had better say that I will consider some words by the Report stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 10 to 13 agreed to.
Clause 14:
As to land within burgh in crofting counties.
14. Notwithstanding anything contained in paragraph (c) of subsection (3) of section twenty-six of the Act of 1911, or in the reference to that paragraph in subsection (4) of the said section, a person may be held, as from and after the commencement of this Act, an existing yearly tenant or a qualified leaseholder, and shall be admissible to registration as a new holder under the Act of 1911 in respect of land within the parliamentary, police, or municipal boundary of any burgh or police burgh situate in the counties of Argyll, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, and Orkney and Shetland.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL moved to leave out Clause 14. The noble Duke said: On this Amendment I am entirely in the hands of the Government.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 14.—(The Duke of Atholl.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Duke says he is in the hands of the Government. I can assure him he has done nothing to entitle him to expect to receive any compassion from our hands. If he does not intend to press the Amendment I should be strongly tempted to tell him to leave it where it is. On the other hand, there is something to be said for the point raised, and while in all new small holdings, properly selected, the Board might safely be allowed any such powers as are spoken it may cause confusion now and stereotype all existing holdings without distinction. I think the result which the noble Duke desires could be obtained by omitting the words from "person" to "shall," but at this hour of the evening I think we should prefer to trust to the clearness of the Report stage, and I invite him to postpone the proposal until then.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 14 agreed to.
Clause 15:
Power to make advances to land banks, &c.
15. In addition to the purposes mentioned in section six of the Act of 1911, the Board may, on such terms and conditions as they think proper, with the approval of the Secretary for Scotland and the Treasury, apply the Agriculture (Scotland) Fund constituted under section five of that Act in making or guaranteeing advances, either directly or indirectly, to land banks or co-operative or credit societies having for their object or one of their objects the assistance of tenants under Part I of this Act, landholders or statutory small tenants in the stocking, equipment, and profitable working of their holdings.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH moved, at the end of the clause, to insert "and may, with the approval of the Secretary for Scotland, apply the said fund in the acquisition for such sum or annual payment as failing agreement may be determined by the Land Court, of land for the purposes of facilitating the constitution of new landholders' holdings and the enlargement of landholders' holdings."
The noble Lord said: The object of the Amendment is obvious. It is, that with the approval of the Secretary for Scotland there shall be an alternative to purchase as well as lease.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 10, at end insert the said words.—(The Duke of Buccleuch.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I hope the noble Duke will be satisfied with the
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wounds which his tomahawk has already inflicted on the Bill, and will not persevere with this Amendment.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: I do not wish to do so.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 15 agreed to.
Remaining Clauses agreed to.
First Schedule:
(5) If within that period no such objection has been so presented, or every such objection so presented has been withdrawn, the Board may subject to the approval of the Secretary for Scotland, forthwith make the Order; but if any such objection has been duly presented and has not been withdrawn, the Board shall take the same into consideration, and, after such inquiry (if any) as they think fit, may either withdraw the Order, without prejudice to the preparation and making of a new Order, or may make the Order with or without modification, subject to the approval aforesaid.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL moved, after (5) in the First Schedule, to insert, "Provided that, before giving such approval, the Secretary for Scotland shall consider any objections which may have been presented to the Board as aforesaid and not withdrawn, and shall, if so required in such objections, direct the sheriff of the county in which the land comprised in the Order is situated to hold a local inquiry and to report to him with respect to such objections."
The noble Duke said: My sole point in moving this Amendment is that some people feel that they are being tried by the same Court twice, and that the Court itself is interested. Nobody suggests that the Secretary for Scotland would not be a fair arbitrator, or that anybody in his position could not be trusted. At the same time he is a very busy man and has not the time to go into these matters. As there is a law officer in every district in the person' of the Sheriff he could make a local investigation and report upon the case, although some people are afraid that there might be a certain amount of political bias used with regard to these small holdings, and this would really be a very great safeguard, I think, for the Secretary for Scotland himself, who ought not to be particularly anxious to make himself arbiter in these matters. If the Sheriff found good reason for making

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these Orders the Secretary for Scotland would be in a very strong position.
Amendment moved—
First Schedule, page 15, line 33, at end insert the said proviso.—(The Duke of Atholl.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: This Schedule relates to the compulsory purchase of land for small holdings by the power in Part I of the Bill, or for allotments by local authorities under Part III. It has nothing whatever to do with Part II. Now, my Lords, under the scheme of the Bill the Order is to be made by the Board subject to the approval of the Secretary for Scotland. For the intervention of the Sheriff in such a case, so far as I know, there is no precedent in the whole of the history of Scottish Law, and it would undoubtedly cause a great deal of delay. If we are to seek for guidance in the English case, such orders are made by the County Councils, subject to the approval of the Board, and during the next three years, under Part of the recent English Act they do not even require the approval of the Board. I do not think noble Lords would put forward the contention that the Secretary for Scotland would be likely to discharge his duties in a perfunctory way, and I hope they will be satisfied with what is given them under this Act, namely, a larger degree of protection than is given in the English Act.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
First Schedule agreed to.
Remaining Schedules agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: May I ask when it is proposed to take the Report stage of this Bill?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Marquess makes a very reasonable application. I think, on the whole, it would be not inconvenient—at least I understand so—to noble Lords from Scotland that a very short interval should interpose between the discussion to-day and the Report stage. After all the points at issue are very clearly determined, and I am not hopeful, although for some time I was, that an adjustment in respect of them would be reached in this House. I do not know that anything is to be gained by postponing for any considerable time the Report stage. There are two points on
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which your Lordships have over-ruled the Government—one of first class importance—and two points of quite subordinate importance on which I have promised amendments, which I can readily introduce to-morrow, and which will not be the subject of controversy. As your Lordships have taken the course on these two points of challenging directly the policy of the Government in this Bill, I should have thought it would be acceptable to everybody if to-morrow we took the Report stage and sent the Bill to the House of Commons, in order that whatever controversy may develop may be developed at the earliest possible moment.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: It is not a matter for us to express a very strong feeling about, but I should certainly have thought that a delay of 48 hours to consider the Bill would be an advisable course, but if the noble and learned Lord does not agree with me I do not wish to press the matter further.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I take the responsibility, on a matter on which I feel very strongly indeed, of saying that if there was any disposition which I could appreciate to take a different or largely modified view on the very important decisions taken in this House to-night, I certainly am not one of those who would say whatever the results might be that I would not take the Report stage tomorrow, but I was bound to assume and did assume that the decision taken to-night was deliberately taken with full knowledge of all that it was likely to involve, and if that was a first view I confess that I should think that the more convenient course would have been to take the Report stage to-morrow, but if any noble Lord from Scotland desires to take a different view I shall carefully consider it.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: We will not press the matter further, but will take the Report stage to-morrow.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I said that if any noble Lord from Scotland cared to take the view—
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I think that for many reasons it should be taken tomorrow.
The Report of Amendments to be received to-morrow, and Bill to be printed as amended.

DOGS REGULATION (IRELAND) (No. 2) BILL.
Order of the Day for Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: My Lords, at the present moment there is a licence duty in Ireland upon all dogs, and this Bill proposes to increase that licence duty from 2s. to 4s. The proposal is supported by practically all types of local authority and Government departments in Ireland. I understand that it is valuable, not only as helping to control the dog population of that country but as giving to the officers responsible for looking after these licences a proper remuneration, which the present amount of the licence does not allow them to receive.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Crawford.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House tomorrow.

IRISH LAND (PROVISION FOR SAILORS AND SOLDIERS) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: My Lords, this is a Bill which I believe to be substantially an agreed measure not arousing points of controversy analagous to those we have heard this evening. It is to provide land for sailors and soldiers in Ireland. The Bill does not change the existing land acts in Ireland except in one small particular. It merely extends under the two groups of land acts the benefits to soldiers and sailors who as such are not at present qualified to become benficiaries under these Acts. The machinery therefore in Ireland already exists. Large powers are vested in the Government and the two separate series of enactments—namely, the Land Purchase Acts and the Labourers (Ireland) Act—provide a system by which soldiers and sailors can be settled on land in Ireland without any substantial modification of the existing law. The Bill in fact does no more than to say that soldiers and sailors as such shall be qualified to benefit under these two groups of statutes where as now it is a specified body of men who can be included under these two groups of Acts. The first clause of the Bill makes the provision as regards the Land Purchase
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Act. It allows sale to be expedited and it provides for land which is vested in the congested Districts Board to be sold. The second section is technical. It restrains alienation, the object being to give these men a good start in life by preventing their being hampered by antecedent debts. Clause 4 is the second branch of the Bill, and here the benefits of the Labourers (Ireland) Acts are extended to soldiers and sailors as such. This is the existing statute but amended in one or two small particulars. Firstly, the control of the interests of soldiers and sailors under the Labourers Act will by this Bill be vested in the Local Government Board instead of in local authorities; and the second Amendment is that, instead of one acre, which is at present the statutory minimum, two acres shall be substituted. I beg to move the Second Reading of the Bill.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Crawford).
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House tomorrow.

THE COAL QUESTION.
THE EARL OF ROSSLYN: My Lords, I rise to ask His Majesty's Government what tonnage of coal has been raised during the preceding eleven months of this year; what proportion was shipped abroad and what proportion was used for house and industrial consumption; if the Government can state the average price received for each of the above. I may say that I am not asking this Question for any idle purpose.
LORD SOMERLEYTON: The tonnage of coal raised in Great Britain during the eleven months ended November 30, 1919, was approximately 207,873,676 tons. During that period the proportion shipped abroad as exports was 32,315,700 tons, or 15·5 per cent. of the output, and 10,838,130 tons (or 5·2 per cent. of the output) were shipped for use of steamers engaged in the foreign trade. The amount of coal delivered to merchants for retail sale for household purposes was 33,656,000 tons, or 16·2 per cent. of the output.
I am very sorry that we cannot give the full particulars for 1919 in further detail, but the figures for 1918 may be of use to my noble friend. Leaving out the exports in 1918, the amount for consumption as

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household coal was 18 per cent. of the whole, for gasworks 9 per cent., for electricity works 3 per cent., for railways 7 per cent., for general industrial work 10 per cent., making a total of 77 per cent; the remaining 23 per cent. was divided principally between Admiralty bunkers and collieries' own consumption. These figures, as I have said before, do not include exports, and we cannot say what the figures for 1919 are, but the noble Lord may take it that they are practically the same.
I understood that the noble Earl also desired to ask whether the Coal Controller considered that the amount raised by the extra price of coal exported was sufficient to pay the loss caused to those collieries which deal only with household coals. On that I would say that arrangements have already been made to finance, by means of advances, collieries which are in difficulties, as the result of the 10 s. reduction in the price of household coal. The Coal Industry (Emergency) Bill provides for the pooling of all profits derived from the raising of coal, including the very large profits which certain collieries are making as a consequence of their being permitted by the Coal Controller to sell their coal for export. The basis of distribution provided in the Bill has the effect of making good losses caused to collieries producing household coal by the reduction of 10 s. in the price. The Government is now considering what steps should be taken to arrange the finance of the year in view of the situation which has arisen with regard to the Coal Industry (Emergency) Bill.
THE EARL OF ROSSLYN: The noble Lord did not mention what the average prices for export were for this year.
LORD SOMERLEYTON: I am sorry I forgot that. The average value per ton f.o.b. of exported coal during the period under notice was 45 s. 8d., and the value of coal shipped for the use of steamers engaged in foreign trade may be taken at approximately the same figure. As regards the price of household coal, I am unable to furnish the figure as the information respecting the price of coal sold in England does not distinguish between household coal and coal sold for general inland purposes. That is why I gave the figures for 1918 instead of those for 1919.
THE EARL OF ROSSLYN: I am obliged to the noble Lord for his courteous reply; but I really must draw your Lordships attention to the extraordinary attitude of the President of the Board of Trade—
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: May I remind the noble Earl that there is no Motion before the House?
THE EARL OF ROSSLYN: May I not ask a supplementary question? Then I will leave the matter.

REGIMENTAL DEBTS (DEPOSIT OF WILLS) (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD STANMORE: My Lords, the object of this Bill is to overcome a difficulty which has arisen, in connection with the deposit of wills with the Commissary Clerk of the County of Edinburgh, in terms of Section 21 of the Regimental Debts Act, 1893. That. section requires that, where the original will of a person subject to military law is in the hands of the Secretary for War, and confirmation (the Scottish equivalent of probate) of the will is not taken out, the Secretary for War may cause the will to be deposited, if the testator is a domiciled Scotsman, in the office of the Commissary Clerk of the County of Edinburgh. The section makes provision with regard to the preservation of the will in the Commissary Office. It sometimes happens that, after a will has been so deposited, it is required for the purpose of completing a title to heritable estates in Scotland. For this purpose the original will is necessary. The present Bill therefore authorises, under due safeguards, the surrender of the will by the Commissary Clerk, for the purpose of completing a title to heritable estate, and also for the purpose of taking out confirmation, as it sometimes happens that the will is deposited before a decision to take out confirmation is reached, and difficulty is thereby occasioned.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Stanmore.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House tomorrow.

THE HIGH COST OF LIVING.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, on behalf of Lord D'ABERNON I rise to ask His Majesty's Government whether they will give the necessary directions for the publication quarterly in an amended form of Command Paper 434, in view of the important bearing of the facts contained in this paper upon the problem of the high cost of living and the prevailing rates of exchange.
LORD SOMERLEYTON: My Lords, the reply is a very brief one. It has been arranged to present in a quarterly Command Paper the statistics asked for by the noble Lord.

BRITISH TROOPS IN PALESTINE.
LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, I rise to ask His Majesty's Government whether it is a fact that no British troops now remain in Syria and Cilicia; whether all British civilian subjects have left Syria; if not, what British representative there is to look after their interests; and what number of British troops there are in Palestine and what is the most northerly post they occupy.
VISCOUNT PEEL: My Lords, in reply to the first Question, British troops have now been withdrawn from Cilicia and Syria, with the exception of some troops awaiting embarkation at certain ports. The replies to the second and third Questions have been supplied to me by the War Office. I have no information of any general exodus of British civilians from Syria. Mr. Wratislaw has been appointed H.M. Consul at Beirut, and is leaving shortly for his post. Until other arrangements can be made the United States Government has instructed then Consuls at Damascus and Beirut to take charge of British interests. As to the fourth Question, there will remain in Palestine, as post-war garrison, one Indian Infantry Division and one British Cavalry Brigade. The most northern line occupied there is approximately from Ras-en-Nakhura, about half-way between Tyre and Haifa, on the coast, to the marshes north of Lake Tiberias.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION (WAR ADDI TION) AMENDMENT BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment, and to be read 3a to-morrow.
COUNTY AND BOROUGH POLICE BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment, and to be read 3a to-morrow.

INCREASE OF RENT, &c. (AMENDMENT) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in asking your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill at this period of the session I am taking a cause which can only be justified by the extreme urgency of the situation to which the Bill relates. I have explained the circumstances and the scope of the Bill to several of your Lordships who take an interest in these matters, and I think they are unanimously convinced that the Bill is one which ought to be passed through its stages in this House with the utmost possible expedition.
I think I can explain in five minutes what is the emergency and what is the remedy proposed. Under the existing law a tenant who pays his rent and observes the conditions of his lease cannot be evicted from a house to which the Acts apply, except on the specific grounds which are set out in the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915, and the Acts amending it. Those grounds are—1, that the tenant has committed waste or been guilty of a nuisance; 2, the premises are reasonably required by the landlord for the occupation of himself or some other person in his employ or in the employ of some tenant; 3, some other ground which may be deemed satisfactory by the Court making such order.
The existing Acts are so framed that the Court has practically no discretion to refuse an order for possession if one or other of the special grounds set out is established. The continued shortage of housing accommodation in London has led to an immense multiplication of cases in which application is made to which there is no legal answer, and yet in respect of which every County Court Judge before whom the cases come says that cruel injustice is being done by the application of the existing law. This Bill was suggested by a most powerful representation of all the County Court Judges of London who have to administer the law, which they tell me—and I accept

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their statement—is leading to the gravest risk of widespread disturbance in the poorer parts of London.
I examined the representation made to me by the County Court judges and I assented to it. I have put it before several members of your Lordship's House as a grave matter of national urgency which I believe the House of Commons will accept even at this late period of the Session.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: My Lords, the House is very empty now, but I believe every one desires to meet the emergency alluded to by the Lord Chancellor. There is, however, a great deal to be said upon the policy of this Bill, and even now there is nothing to prevent a tenant who remains in a house against the wishes of the landlord, sub-letting the house at a great increase on the rent. That is a point which I hope the Lord Chancellor will consider before we reach the Committee stage.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: That point has been considered, and I shall be glad to discuss it with the noble Viscount at an early stage. I shall have to ask your Lordships to take the Committee stage quite soon. I ask the noble Viscount to approach the Committee stage with this knowledge, that it is the unanimous recommendation of the County Court Judges, who are closely in touch with the question, that some such proposal should be passed in order to deal with the subject.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House tomorrow.

MENTAL DEFICIENCY AND LUNACY (AMENDMENT) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment, and to be read 3a to-morrow.

MINERS AND COLLIERY BOARDS.
THE EARL OF ROSSLYN: My Lords, I rise to ask His Majesty's Government whether any scheme whereby the miners could be represented on Colliery Boards and share in the profits has ever been considered by His Majesty's Government; and in what respect.
LORD SOMERLEYTON: My Lords, the Government have considered the reports on the second stage of the Coal Industry Commission. Noble Lords will remember that Sir Arthur Duckham's report contains provisions for representation of miners on colliery boards. On August 18, in the Prime Minister's review of the trade and industrial position, he announced the Government's policy with regard to the future of the coal industry. Briefly, the policy then decided upon might be stated to be—first, nationalisation of mining royalties; second, certain improvements in housing conditions; and third, unification and amalgamation within districts, with the workers having directors on the Area Boards which control the policy in the district, and also having the opportunity of co-operation in shaping the general conditions of the industry.
As a result of the Prime Minister's meeting with the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee and the Executive of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain on October 9, the position underwent a considerable change, necessitating a further consideration of policy by the Cabinet. Subsequently the Prime Minister intimated that it would be necessary for him to refer the matter to his colleagues for further consideration in view of the fact that the Miners' Federation objected to unification even if accompanied by representation on the board of directors. Since then I learn that no move has been made and I regret I have no further information on the subject which I can communicate to the noble Earl.
THE EARL OF ROSSLYN: Will the noble Lord make representation to the Government that all these objections can be overruled?
LORD SOMERLEYTON: I will take care that what the noble Earl has said is passed along.

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
Clause 41:
Statutory commission.
41.—(1) At the expiration of ten years after the passing of this Act the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of both Houses of Parliament, shall submit for the approval of His

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Majesty the names of persons to act as a commission for the purposes of this section.
(2) The persons whose names are so submitted, subject to the approval of, and to any alterations made by Parliament, shall be a commission for the purpose of inquiring into the working of the system of government, the growth of education, and the development of representative institutions, in British India, and matters connected therewith, and the commission shall report as to whether and to what extent it is desirable to establish the principle of responsible government, or to extend, modify, or restrict the degree of responsible government then existing therein, including the question whether the establishment of second chambers of the local legislatures is or is not desirable.
(3) The commission shall also inquire into and report on any other matter affecting British India and the provinces, which may be referred to the commission by the Secretary of State.
VICOUNT MIDLETON VICOUNT MIDLETON formally moved, in subsection (2), to leave out "subject to the approval of and to any alterations made by Parliament," and insert if approved by His Majesty, "and at the end of subsection (3), to leave out" the Secretary of State "and insert" His Majesty."
Amendments moved—
Clause 41, page 29, line 16, leave out from ("submitted") to ("shall") in line 17, and insert ("if approved by His Majesty")
Clause 41, page 29, line 29, leave out ("the Secretary of State") and insert ("His Majesty").—(Viscount Midleton.)
LORD SINHA: I accept the Amendments.
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
Second Schedule:
LORD SINHA: I have a manuscript Amendment which is purely drafting.
On Question, drafting Amendment agreed to.
Bill to be read 3a to-morrow.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order).
[THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE in the Chair.]
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: My Lords; I have given notice of half-a-dozen Amendments, but I can assure you that they are purely drafting and technical and do not in any way change the principle of the Bill to which you gave unanimously a Second Reading. I suggest that they be agreed to en bloc, and I so move them.
Amendments moved—
Clause 1, page 1, line 18, after subsection (2 insert the following new subsection:
"(3) Where the Public Libraries Acts have been adopted by the council of a county the council may borrow for the purposes of those Acts as for the purposes of the Local Government Act, 1888:
"Provided that money borrowed for the purposes of those Acts shall not be reckoned as part of the total debt of the county for the purposes of subsection (2) of section sixty-nine of the Local Government Act, 1888, and that sixty years shall be substituted for thirty years in subsection (5) of the said section sixty-nine as the maximum period within which money borrowed for the purposes of those Acts is to be repaid."
Clause 3, page 2, lines 16 and 17, leave out ("for a library district the library authority of") and insert ("by an authority which is not the library authority of an existing library area and")
Clause 3, page 2, line 28, leave out from ("may") to ("delegate") in line 30, and insert ("refer any matters relating to the exercise by them of their powers under the Public Libraries Acts to the education committee established under the Education Acts, 1870 to 1918, and may")
Clause 3, page 2, lines 30 and 31, leave out ("any of their powers under the Public Libraries Acts") and insert ("to that committee any of those powers")
Clause 3, page 2, lines 32 and 33, leave out ("to the education committee established under the Education Acts, 1870 to 1918").
Clause 4, page 3, line 28, after ("borough" insert ("including a metropolitan borough").
Clause 10, page 5, line 25, after ("Acts") insert ("or in which a public library has been established and is being maintained under or by virtue of any local Act").—(The Earl of Crawford.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
The Report of Amendments to be received to-morrow.

NURSES REGISTRATION (No. 2) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: I have some Amendments, but can assure you they are all drafting and do not alter the principle of the Bill in any sense or degree. I therefore move them en bloc.
Amendments moved—
Clause 3, page 4, line 3, after ("void") insert ("and if modified it shall thenceforth have effect as so modified").
Clause 6, page 5, line 9, after ("registered") leave out ("as a nurse") and insert ("either generally as a nurse for the sick or as a nurse of some special class")
Clause 6, page 5, line 15, after ("registered") insert ("in a corresponding manner").
Clause, 8, page 6, line 16, leave out ("If any person") and insert ("Any person who "(a)")
Clause, 8, page 6, line 24, leave out (" If any person ") and insert:
("(b) being a person whose name is included in any part of the register, at any time after the expiration of the period aforesaid takes or uses any name, title, addition, description, uniform or badge, or otherwise does any act of any kind, implying that his name is included in swim other part of the register; or
"(c)")
Clause, 8, page 6, line 26, leave out ("he").
Clause 9, page 6, line 36, leave out ("(No. 2)").—(Viscount Sandhurst.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
Bill to be read 3a to-morrow.

NURSES REGISTRATION (IRELAND) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: The Amendments to this Bill are also drafting, and I move them en bloc.
Amendments moved—
Clause 3, page 3, line 38, after ("annulled") insert ("or modified"), and after ("annul") insert ("or modify")
Clause 3, page 3, line 39, after ("void") insert ("and if modified it shall thenceforth have effect as so modified").
Clause 6, page 5, line 5, leave out ("as a nurse") and insert ("either generally as a nurse for the sick or as a nurse of some special class")
Clause 6, page 5, line 11, after ("registered") insert ("in a corresponding manner").
Clause 8, page 6, line 11, leave out ("If any person") and insert ("any person who
"(a)")
Clause 8, page 6, line 25, leave out ("If any person") and insert:
("(b) Being a person whose name is included in any part of the register, at any time after the expiration of the period aforesaid, takes or uses any name, title, addition, description, uniform or badge, or otherwise does any act of any kind, implying that his name is included in some other part of the register or
"(c)")
Clause 8, page 6, line 26, leave out ("he").—(Viscount Sandhurst.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
Bill to be read 3a to-morrow.

NURSES REGISTRATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order).
[The EARL OF DONOUGHMORE in the Chair.]
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: The object of the Amendments standing in my name is to bring the Bill into conformity with the other measures. I only wish to call attention to the Amendment in Clause 3, page 2, line 30, which leaves out that part of the clause which had to do with a lady being one of the examining body. I have put this Amendment in at the request of Lord Kintore, who would have moved it if he had been present.
Amendments moved—
Clause 2, page 2, line 3, leave out ("mental")
Clause 2, page 2, line 4, after ("nurses") insert ("trained in the nursing and care of persons suffering from mental diseases")
Clause 2, page 2, lines 12 and 13, leave out ("duly authenticated in the prescribed manner").
Clause 3, page 2, line 30, leave out from ("examinations") to end of line 33.
Clause 3, page 3, line 3, leave out ("and") and insert:
(f) for enabling the council to constitute committees and for authorising the delegation to committees of any of the powers of the council, and for regulating the proceedings (including quorum) of committees; and
(g)
Clause 3, page 4, line 22, after ("void") insert ("and if modified if shall thenceforth have effect as so modified").
Clause 6, page 5, line 32, leave out ("as a nurse") and insert ("either generally as a nurse for the sick or as a nurse of some special class")
Clause 6, page 5, line 38, after ("registered") insert ("in a corresponding manner")
Clause 7, page 6, line 27, leave out ("Division") and insert ("Court").
Clause 8, page 6, line 37, leave out ("if any person") and insert ("Any person who (a)")
Clause 8, page 7, line 5, leave out ("If any person") and insert:
("(b) being a person whose name is included in any part of the register, at any time after the expiration of the period aforesaid takes or uses any name, title, addition, description, uniform, or badge, or otherwise does any act of any kind, implying that his name

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is included in some other part of the register; or (c)")
Clause 8, page 7, line 7, leave out ("he").—(Viscount Sandhurst.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
The Report of Amendments to be received to-morrow.

ANGLO-PERSIAN OIL COMPANY (ACQUI SITION OF CAPITAL) AMENDMENT BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a tomorrow.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: My Lords, I beg to move the adjournment of the House, and in doing so I desire to say that the first Order to-morrow will be the Motion in the name of the Leader of the House to consider the suspension of Standing Orders. Of the Bills to be taken, the Aliens Bill will come first, the Housing Bill second, and the Scottish Land Bill third.
House adjourned at ten minutes before one o'clock a.m.