Lords Sitting of 4 July 1923

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The EARL OF DONOUGHMORE on the Woolsack.

JUDICATURE CONSOLIDATION (PROBATE, ETC., DIVISION) BILL. [H.L.]
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate enactments relating to the jurisdiction of the High Court in Probate, Matrimonial and Admiralty causes and matters; and to move that it be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

WEST HARTLEPOOL CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
The King's consent signified: Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (CALNE WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.

SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE.
LORD ERSKINE LORD ERSKINE rose to call attention to the desirability of assisting the establishment of the national theatre at Stratford-on-Avon for the production of Shakespeare's plays, and to ask His Majesty's Government if they can see their way to afford some financial assistance to this national object.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Notice that stands in my name is perhaps of a somewhat novel character, but I hope that what I have to say may be of interest to your Lordships and may also awaken a chord of sympathy in the heart of the Board of Education, to whom I am addressing myself this afternoon. I have not been asked by any of the governors of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon to champion their cause. I am simply speaking out of the fullness of my heart from the experience I have gained of what the governors and the founders have done for the past forty years in aid of this great scheme, the endowment of the theatre. I should like also to try to show how the country will benefit educationally under this endowment scheme.
May I read a few extracts from a statement which explains the endowment fund scheme in a far better and clearer way than I could hope to explain it?
"The Shakespeare Memorial Association was founded on the initiative of one family in Stratford-upon-Avon on June 29, 1875. This family had a vision of something greater and more lasting than the mere raising of a memorial in bricks and mortar to the master dramatist. Recognising that the drama of Shakespeare was one of the greatest possessions of the English-speaking race they determined to make that possession a living and real force in the world. For that to be possible they knew that there must be a theatre where the Shakespearian drama could be performed for the sake of art alone and without thought of profit. For the fitting presentation of the plays they saw that there must be opportunity for intensive study of Shakespearian lore. Thus they designed to have a library and a gallery of pictures and sculpture of Shakespearian interest. … The generosity of a few Stratford-upon-Avon people together with some outside assistance—valuable in its spirit, though not great in capital amount—made possible the laying of the foundation stone of the Memorial Theatre buildings on April 23, 1877. These were completed in 1879 and a large part of the dream of the founders became reality. The governors were now in possession of a block of buildings suitable for many of their immediate needs. To-day, besides the theatre dedicated to the memory of the poet, the foundation includes a library containing nearly 15,000 volumes of Shakespearian literature, with a spacious reading-room, a gallery of pictures and sculpture of Shakespearian interest, and a lecture hall. …
Great an accomplishment as was the provision of the edifice itself, yet still greater, considering all the difficulties which lack of endownment has entailed, is the work that has since been accomplished there.

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Beginning its work at a time when only a few of the poet's masterpieces were at all frequently performed upon the English stage, the governors have during the last 46 years kept alive the love and study of Shakespearian drama and have restored to the modern theatre the plays which, neglected in the poet's own country, could only be seen performed in the subsidised theatres of Germany. The production of the whole cycle of the poet's historical plays in their chronological order in one week, with their noble and patriotic ardour, has stimulated interest in our English history and national development … To the Memorial Theatre have come some of the greatest British and other actors and actresses of the last fifty years. … Around the festivals have grown up various activities connected with the drama, and not a year passes without lectures, conferences, schools of elocution and dancing, and exhibitions connected with the art of the theatre being held either in the town or in the buildings of the Memorial."
That, I think, is a very strong point in favour of the educational side of this scheme. I have had the pleasure, as I expect a great many of your Lordships have had, of attending these festivals; indeed, I do not think I have missed one for the last twenty-five years. And it is, I maintain, a great pleasure and a great education to be present at these memorial festivals. Not only that, but one meets there many interesting and learned people from all quarters of the globe. One cannot come in contact with these, people without learning something from them, and no doubt they learn something from us as well. This meeting together twice a year of all these people from the distant parts of the Empire and from outside the Empire to compare notes and to learn things from each other is a great educational asset. And it is a cheap form of education too, because if this endowment fund can be once established the festival can be carried on year after year, and carried on even on a finer basis than it is at present. That would be an enormous help to education in this country. The statement from which I have quoted says—
"Almost the whole of the financial burden of this great achievement has been borne by the people of Stratford-upon-Avon and its neighbourhood. "When it is remembered that the entire population of the town is only somewhat over 9,000 and that its public-spirited inhabitants have given money, land, and buildings to the value of £100,000 the result appears amazing. From outside sources only some £20,000 has been contributed. At the present moment a guarantee fund raised by the townspeople is making it possible to continue the festivals. It has
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been suggested that the corporation should subsidise the Theatre. Even if this were just, and they obtained the necessary powers they could give no adequate assistance for the town is so small that a penny rate would not produce £200 a year. An adequate subsidy would be an impossible burden on the town and, after all, the Memorial belongs not to Stratford-upon-Avon, but to the entire world."
That is the story to-day. Appeals for funds have been addressed to the people of this country and to those of the United States of America, and although certain sums have been received, money is not coming in as fast as could be desired.
I may be told that in due course an endowment fund will be raised and that some wealthy man or men will be found to complete the work that the governors of the Theatre have in view. But in my humble opinion such a scheme as this should not be left entirely to the generosity of private individuals, either here or in America, as has been the case up to the present time. Shakespeare and his works are the proud possession of these Islands, and it is, I venture to think, to the Government of this country that our people should look for that financial assistance that will both advance the honour and glory of our great national dramatist and the cause of education which every man, woman and child should be only too ready to foster and encourage. Again, I may be told that were the Government to help this endowment scheme other theatres might make similar appeals. In my humble opinion there is only one Shakespeare and only one Stratford-upon-Avon, and there is no like festival in any other part of the world. This is, I think, a sufficient answer to that objection.
A letter appeared in The Times on April 23 of this year, in which it was said—
"It is the people of England above all others whose pride it should be to prove to the world that they prize at its full value the greatness of the common heritage. Quietly and patiently this handful of Stratford's citizens have borne the burden and heat of the day. It is time that the load of financial anxiety should be lifted from their shoulders, and their work developed on a stable basis as a National Trust."
In conclusion, I humbly suggest that the Board of Education should be asked to contribute £5,000 towards this endowment fund. If my appeal receives a favourable reply the Government will know that they

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have helped to create a centre of education that will confer far-reaching and inestimable benefits upon the present and rising generations, and give to Shakespeare and his works that commanding position which the genius of the man entitles him to hold for all time.
LORD STUART OF WORTLEY: My Lords, I desire to advocate on all occasions, especially at the present time, all reasonable and necessary economies. I also admit the complete novelty in our politics of a proposal such as that which has been made to your Lordships by my noble friend who has just sat down. I hope to show your Lordships before I sit down that it is by no means a novelty elsewhere and in other societies which claim to know quite as much about art, whether dramatic, or musical, or other art, as we do here. But I hope that nothing will be said by the Minister who replies to this Question to-day which takes too great advantage of the fact that this is a novel proposal or, on the other hand, negatives entirely the idea that it is a permissible principle to give a subsidy of this kind. This is not merely a matter of economy of material wealth or an inroad upon material savings. The mere fact that this Question is about to be answered by a noble Lord who discharges with great ability the functions of responding not only for the Board of Education but for the Ministry of Health, shows that though there are material assets which are valuable, other which are not less valuable are moral and spiritual assets in the life of a nation.
This subject touches the question of education and, not merely artistic, or literary, or technical education alone. It would help, as some of us think, to impart that civic education which is the root of all our national spirit, our national refinement, our national courage and all those great elements which go to make up the character of which Shakespeare wrote so splendidly nearly 400 years ago. The admissibility of such a subsidy as this flows from a deeper principle still, and that is the principle that in matters of art the commercial and economic principle fails as a test of excellence or a guide to popular taste. You may search the records of Parliament in vain for any but the scantiest allusion in past years to subjects such as this.
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That leads me to say that I believe I am connected with about the only piece of Parliamentary literature which bears upon the subject. Some twenty years ago when I was, comparatively speaking, young and more ardent, in my House of Commons days, there was a discussion going on outside the House on subjects such as this and it occurred to me to move what is called an Address for a return from His Majesty's representatives abroad of all subsidies and grants given either by the State or by municipalities to any form of dramatic, or operatic or musical representation. I persuaded the House of Commons to make an Order for that Return, which eventually materialised in the form of a White Paper which is known as Command Paper No. 1838 of the year 1903. I am glad to see my noble friend Lord Lansdowne in his place, because it brings to my mind the recollection that whereas at that time, in 1903, I was hoping that in my humble person I was going to receive some of the credit of this Return, the fact was that my noble friend's great reputation, enjoying, as he did then, the great office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, attracted to him all the notice of that favourable Press which I hoped was going to be mine. He, no doubt fully conscious of all that was done in his name, sent out circulars to His Majesty's representatives abroad asking for this information. They responded and sent in a whole lot of information, which was issued in the White Paper. As a result he was complimented upon his never-ceasing vigilance in the search for knowledge of that kind. If I did not get all the share of the credit that was due to me on that occasion, no doubt my noble friend Lord Lansdowne gave me no more and no less than he thought was good for art and for this country.
That leads me to remind your Lordships of some of the things that are going on in the way of creating new precedents, continuing existing precedents, and consolidating and confirming old precedents in the matter of grants of this kind elsewhere than in this country. My own connection with this Return is only to be found in obscure entries in the Votes and Proceedings of the House of Commons on March 2, 1903. Assistance of this kind is bound to take one or two of various forms. There are cases of mere exemptions from taxation of theatres. I mention them

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especially because it is not only to the ancient monarchies of the old Courts of Europe that you go for instances of that kind, but you find that sort of thing also in Buenos Aires, in a quite new Republic in Latin America. There are also the gift of State sites, the erection of State buildings at State cost, and the providing of repairs at State cost. There are existing instances of State management with State-chosen directors, which we must assume is on account of the confidence in their skill and taste in the management of dramatic or operatic representations. There is another common form of assistance, and that is the grant of a State indemnification against the deficits which are only too likely to happen in the case of some dramatic representations, and not by any means the least because they are the best representations that can be given.
I am very far from suggesting that I should take your Lordships through the long catalogue of reports which form this White Book, but I will take some of the principal cases. If we go to Central Europe we find that at Vienna an opera house was erected at the cost of the equivalent of £500,000 some time before 1903; at any rate, it was in existence in 1903. Besides that, at Vienna there was the Burg Theatre which seems to have cost the equivalent of £13,700, and was erected like the opera house upon State land. Both these institutions, the Report says, were the property of the Emperor's Treasury, and were maintained and administered by the Lord Chamberlain's Department. In Hungary, on the other hand, at Budapest, large sums were spent on like objects. The opera house and the National Theatre at Budapest alone seem to have cost very close upon £50,000 in the year 1903 in the shape of recurring charges for the representations there.
Now we come to the three most conspicuous cases in Germany. Let us take Munich, Berlin and Dresden. Munich has its National Theatre which is sometimes called the Court and National Theatre. That was built by the State, repaired by the State, and occupied without rent being paid to the State. There is also the Residenz Theatre. That was kept and administered by what was called the Civil List. I
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shall recur to this point directly. In Munich the Civil List gave aggregate subventions equivalent to £12,500 a year, besides making good any deficit which might result from the performances. In Berlin there are two houses, one the Royal Opera, the other the Royal Playhouse. Together they seem to get, or were getting in 1903, no less than the equivalent of £54,000 sterling from what was called the private revenue of the Crown. They were also built on land which was the property of the Prussian State, and the cost of repairs to them was met by the Prussian State.
Besides a long list of municipal aids to provincial theatres, which list of municipal aids covers even large villages, and in the special case of Leipzig shows a financial connection between the municipality and three great theatres, there were in Dresden an opera house, a theatre, and an orchestra, all managed by the King's own director, and costing in subsidies in 1902 an equivalent of £41,000. In addition to the State grants which I have mentioned, help took the form of so-called Royal grants in many of the cities both of Germany and of Austria. There were, in 1902 and 1903, municipal grants from many cities in Austria, Hungary and Germany. I could cite other instances in Germany. There were the Wurtemberg, the Darmstadt, Baden and Weimar theatres and many others, in which the Courts or the taxes or both provided subsidies of the same kind.
I am aware that it may occur to your Lordships to say that these are nothing but survivals from the old Court system in which all art was regarded as little more than a decoration of the Court life, and the only patronage that art got was from the monarchies and the adherents of the monarchies, and that their life rested upon them. You may say that all these subsidised institutions are nothing but a continuation of the old epoch and that the burden still falls in the same place. I dispute that proposition. I say that we do not know what is meant by a Civil List, and it is quite clear that in many cases it is not entirely made of grants from the private revenues of the Crown nor is it clear what you can call private revenues of the Crown in any particular case. But there is an element of contribution from the taxes in many of the instances so that in reality you find

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these great theatres continued by sacrifices at the cost of the taxpayers in part; or at all events, there were in 1903, subsidies of the kind for which my noble friend behind me has asked.
I can quote two other and more conclusive and significant cases. We find that a new State like Belgium, which has not yet existed for a century, has its State and municipal aids to drama and music. There was a good municipal subsidy to a theatre in Sofia in Bulgaria. It had existed for some time. There is a Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, and there is a municipal aid in Denmark, though I admit that it is only given to concerts. Under British tutelage in Egypt I find that, somehow or other, nearly £10,000 a year was being given to drama and music. There was a good municipal Return was made. In Norway a site was given by the State for a theatre, and there were municipal aids in the provinces. I find instances in Rumania, while in Russia there were no less than six theatres, three in St. Petersburg and It had existed for some time. There is three in Moscow, to which some very large sums are mentioned as having been given. In connection with this I may read a passage from the Return which says, dealing with the year 1903—
"In Russia the theatre is looked upon as being on educational institution, and the Government aims at making it within the reach of all. It is possible to visit the opera for 5d., and to see Russian pieces for 3d., and French or German pieces for 9d. or 10 d."
Those are the European cases. There are other cases in Latin America, though I cannot quote a case from the United States of North America.
There is also the still more interesting case of France. In France, however, it falls in the class for Parliamentary grants, in the class of what you may call a modern State organisation, but I must admit that there is in it something of Napoleonic inspiration. I believe that tradition says that even amongst the frightful preoccupations of his stay in Moscow the great Napoleon was actually engaged in looking to the details of the constitution of the Comédie Française. Anyhow, I have here the regulations which affect the constitution of the theatres in Paris and elsewhere in France, in which the State regulates the number of artistes engaged, which means a higher standard of excellence in the representation, and
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also looks to the quality and attainments of those artistes by stipulating that some at least should have received their education at the National Conservatoire. It shows that it is not content with providing these financial links between the State and these artistic representations. So much for foreign precedents. I admit that times then were different, and possibly the constitution of these States was different. It may be some time before we get any information at all as to what is going on now in regard to subsidies of this kind in States which have suffered such frightful trials.
I think the Government will do well not to close the door for ever, or to give any negative answer—I hope they will not do so—except upon purely temporary and opportunist grounds. I said that this is partly educational and partly due to the fact that the commercial principle fails you as a principle in matters of art. When I moved for my Return twenty years ago I remember being told by a leading member of the then Labour Party in the House of Commons, who subsequently received Office under the Crown, that he should certainly not object to a subsidy such as those which I had hinted at in my Motion because he regarded it as a form of technical education of the highest and most valuable kind.
I ask your Lordships to receive the introduction of this subject with favour and to use your influence with the Government in the direction which is indicated by the terms of the Question. If you leave an unrestricted operation to what may be called the commercial and advertising spirit in relation to dramatic art, the prizes and the profits will probably go to the loudest shouters, to the thickest skinned seekers of the thing which is denoted by that base word "publicity," and in the end the highest inspirations and the best productions will probably disappear through starvation and the cause of the best art will surely suffer.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: My Lords, as a Warwickshire man whose home is not very many miles from Shakespeare's birthplace, although, like a great many other Warwickshire men, I have never been inside Shakespeare's birthplace—most of our visitors from elsewhere do themselves and us the honour of going there—I should like to support the appeal which the noble Lord

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has made to the Government. I am not responding for the Government this afternoon, but I can anticipate very fairly what the Government reply will be. My noble friend will receive an exceedingly polite and consoling answer. He will get every consolation except the consolation of a cheque. But in spite of that I associate myself with what Lord Stuart of Wortley has just said, and I feel sure that the Government will not turn down unsympathetically the idea which has been placed before your Lordships.
The noble Lord who introduced the subject has a particular title to speak to your Lordships on such a matter. He is connected with a family who have done perhaps more for Shakespeare- than anybody else in the United Kingdom. There have been at least four generations of the Flower family at Stratford-upon-Avon who have endowed and sustained the theatre there in which Shakespeare's plays have been consistently played. To the single-minded and generous efforts of the Flower family this country really owes a deep debt of gratitude; they have created a cult and a home for Shakespearian performances. My noble friend, I am sure, will agree with me that in his appeal one cannot get away from a consideration of the general arguments for and against a national theatre, and it seems to me that the House of Lords is a very convenient place in which to offer one or two remarks about it. We can do so without any financial responsibility whatever. We shall get the best opinions as to whether we ought to have a national theatre in this country or not; and not the slightest notice will be taken of the debate outside. In that respect it will be highly characteristic of some of the discussions we have had; for instance, the discussion with regard to Socialism.
The question of a national theatre is really a very serious one for the life of this country, and the arguments for and against it can be very briefly stated. If your Lordships will allow me I will try to place before you one or two considerations. To my mind the arguments in favour of a national theatre and a national school of dramatic art are these. If you have a national school of acting and a national theatre, to which the pupils from that school have the right of access after having obtained certain diplomas,
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you give to young actors and actresses the chance of displaying their talents and interpreting the drama of this country; an opportunity which they think, perhaps rightly and perhaps wrongly, they do not possess at the present. You take them away from the caprice or passing humour of the moment, from the choice of the actor manager of the day, and place them in a secure position and enable them to have some sort of opportunity of displaying their art before the British public. At the same time, if you have a national theatre you give yourselves the opportunity of cultivating the national taste and sustaining great national authors of this country, such as Shakespeare. Many of your Lordships are well aware that when the Colonial troops came here at the beginning of the war they were much astonished and aggrieved that in the very capital of England there was no representation at that time of any single one of Shakespeare's plays. At that time Shakespeare's plays were being played to crowded houses in the very country with which we were at war.
Not only would a national theatre give a chance to actors and actresses, but it would also give a chance to the author. I know it is very easy to say: "Why should you subsidise a national institution in order that an author may have a chance of being displayed? Surely he can write a play without any great expense." That is true. You can write a book and produce it, you can paint a picture or create a piece of sculpture, without incurring any very great expense, but you have to do more than merely write a play—I am not speaking as an author myself, because I have never written one, but I know some of their troubles—you have also to go to the expense of getting the play produced. Consequently, the dramatic author does not stand on quite the same level as regards getting his work presented as the author of a book which does not take the dramatic form.
In considering the advantages and disadvantages of a national theatre, we have to ask ourselves (1) whether it is a desirable thing; and (2) whether we can afford it. There are a great many arguments against a national theatre. The subsidised theatres in foreign countries, to which my noble friend Lord Stuart of Wortley referred just now, have from

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time to time been rather severely criticised. It is said that if you start a national school of acting you tend to stereotype a certain class of acting, to preserve gestures and styles of acting which in time become old-fashioned, hidebound, and archaic, with the result that you do not make any real progress. To judge from certain things that one hears, I am not at all sure that human nature behind the scenes in a State-subsidised theatre is not pretty much the same as human nature behind the scenes in any other theatre, and we hear of what, by a euphemism, is called the artistic temperament, which is English for a first-class row, making itself heard behind the scenes of the Comédie Française just as much as that class of temperament tends to make itself felt in a privately-owned theatre in this country.
The other objection which is constantly urged against a national theatre is that we are not a theatrical race. I believe that is not an ill-founded criticism, and perhaps its best justification would be found in the House of Lords this afternoon, where a comparatively small attendance is discussing such a very important matter as the establishment of a national theatre at the very birthplace of our national poet. But surely we cannot be said to be a wholly untheatrical race. We have produced Shakespeare and Sheridan, Garrick and Irving, to take only four names, and in the poet Gay we have produced the author of a play which has the immortal honour of lasting almost as long as, or, I believe, a little longer than, a masterpiece like "Chu Chin Chow"—and, after all, that is not so bad. When it is said of us that we are not a theatrical race, do not your Lordships think that what people really mean is that the English people as a whole do not care about what is known on the Continent as an academy? I think Mr. William Archer, who, as your Lordships are well aware, is one of the leading critics of the theatre, once said that we shrink from idealism. In this country, instead of having an activity subsidised by the State, we prefer to rely upon individual effort and individual achievement.
It was only this morning that I met in the street an actor-manager whose name, which I do not mention, is well known to your Lordships. He has received a distinction from his Sovereign as being one
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of the best actors that we have ever produced and a great authority on the drama. I asked him whether he was aware that this debate was coming on this afternoon. He said that he was. I then asked him what side I was to take on the question of whether one should declare in favour of a national theatre in the abstract, or not. He said: "I was once in favour of a national theatre, and I worked very hard for it indeed, but since I have seen the terrible hash in which all Government-run concerns ended during the war I am beginning to be very doubtful about entrusting the theatre to those same tender mercies."
It has also been said that any good play will stand upon its own merits and is bound to succeed, that all these "mute, inglorious Miltons" who are complaining about never being produced have not really written anything that its worthy of being produced. I am not at all sure whether that is absolutely true, because, to descend from Shakespeare to the author of "Charley's Aunt,' I have no doubt that some of your Lordships are aware that Brandon Thomas, the author of that play—I am speaking without the book, but I know that this is relatively true—had to take that play round London—a play which has run longer, I believe, than any other play except the "Beggar's Opera" and "Chu Chin Chow"—for weeks and even for months before he could find a manager to accept it. It is not at all certain, therefore, that there are not authors of unproduced plays nowadays whose talent we might evoke and exploit by placing it at the disposal of the nation by means of a national theatre.
Looking at the question in the abstract, as one who has taken some interest in the drama and who is himself the owner of a London theatre—though I am not responsible for the productions at that theatre—
A NOBLE LORD: Which theatre is it?
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: I will tell you afterwards, my Lords. I will place my box at your disposal whenever your Lordships desire it. In the abstract, I am certainly in favour of what is called a national theatre, and I hope that my noble friend will not appeal in vain for public support. But at the back of it all there is that spectre of the cost. Now that we are discussing

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the subject, it may be interesting to your Lordships to recall that two separate attempts have been made to estimate the cost of a successful national theatre. In the year 1904 the whole question of expense was thoroughly examined by such supreme authorities as Sir Henry Irving, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. Pinero—as he then was—and, I think, the late Sir George Alexander, together with all the heads of the dramatic profession, acting in concert with leading critics, such as Mr. William Archer, and an exceedingly interesting book was published. They arrived at the conclusion that you could not sustain a national theatre in this country unless you were prepared to spend at least £70,000 or £80,000 a year That means a capital sum of something like £2,000,000.
Later on, if your Lordships will remember, a very able appeal was made to the nation some few years before the war, when England was really rich, and people could afford, and some of them did afford, to give large subscriptions towards a thing of this kind. I believe that all the trustees for that fund then sought to be raised are now dead, with the exception of the present Lord Lytton, who is now Governor of Bengal. I do not know what has happened to the money which they collected, and they collected a considerable sum, but I expect that the subscribers have already asked for and obtained their money lack at the door. We will let that pass. They asked for at least a sum of half a million, and therefore I am only uttering a platitude when I say that at this time of day, with the general dislike there is of any State-managed concern, with the Income Tax and national taxation generally at the present figures, it is not likely that we shall appeal to the Government with any prospect of success for a State-aided theatre—for a subsidy to the theatre. At the same time, as a Warwickshire man, and as one who has taken great interest in the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, I thank Lord Erskine for the way in which he has brought the matter forward, and I trust that this debate will well ventilate the subject and will not have taken place entirely in vain.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (THE EARL OF ONSLOW): My Lords, I think we
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owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord for having raised this Question, because it has produced a very interesting debate on a subject of interest to everybody in this House, and has also elicited two or three very illuminating speeches, from various points of view, from those who are best qualified to speak upon the subject. The noble Lord who asked this Question gave us a very interesting account, for which we are all grateful, of the activities of the society at Stratford-upon-Avon, and I am sure that anything that can be done to assist the objects which he has in view at Stratford-upon-Avon will be welcome to us all. But what he really suggests in this Question is that the Government should undertake a subsidy to the theatre. I think, although perhaps he may differ from me on this point, that that was really recognised by the two noble Lords who succeeded him in the debate.
Now a subsidised theatre, as Lord Willoughby de Broke said, is in this country a new departure altogether. I do not say it is a new departure to subsidise art. We do subsidise art in other ways, such as, for instance, the National Gallery and certain museums, but we never have yet, either nationally or municipally, given a subsidy either to the theatre or the opera, and to do it now would be a new departure. I am well aware that in most other countries this form of subsidy is commonplace. It is regularly done either from the State or from the municipality, but it has not been done in this country, at any rate up to the present moment. I venture to think, although perhaps my noble friend will not quite agree with me, that if the Government were to accede to his request and accord a subsidy to the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, it would be quite impossible not to open the whole wide subject of a national subsidy of the theatre.
I think if the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon were selected for subsidy my noble friend the Lord Chamberlain would receive a great many requests from theatres in London and elsewhere that similar treatment should be accorded to the theatres in London, and also requests from the London playgoing public, because, of course, although I admit all the historical and sentimental value of the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, theatres in larger centres are perhaps more convenient.

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I am not going to follow Lord Willoughby de Broke into the argument for or against a national theatre, or a national subsidy, but I would remind your Lordships that this is a new departure, and that the present moment, as Lord Willoughby de Broke foreshadowed in a reference to my probable reply, is not a time in which we really could embark upon new forms of expenditure. Although I am very sorry to give so discouraging an answer to my noble friend, I think your Lordships will agree that it would be impossible really to consider a new avenue of expenditure which this would open up, and therefore I am afraid it will not be possible to entertain the request which he has put forward.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, I have no wish to prolong the discussion, and what I wish to say I will say in a few words. Probably it will be felt difficult to meet the point made by the noble Earl, but I think there are other ways in which public expenditure may assist the objects which the noble Lord who asked this Question has in view. Ultimately, the drama of the country must reflect the public taste, and public taste in dramatic art, as in other forms of art, depends upon the education of the people. There is, at the present moment, as your Lordships know, a most interesting kind of experiment being gone through in our elementary schools, and in many other schools throughout the country, with a view to making the drama an essential and integral part of the public education of the boys and girls of the country. The results that have already been obtained by the use of the drama as an instrument of education are most interesting and promising. Ultimately, if such education is extended, it will, I hope, mean that there will be an increasing number of people, not only in London or in Stratford-upon-Avon, but throughout the country, who have been trained to value good dramatic art for its own sake. If public expenditure is to be used for the purpose of improving the quality of the drama in this country, in my judgment it can be aptly expended both by the State and by the local authorities in encouraging, wherever possible, the development of these experiments of making drama part of the normal curriculum in our secondary and elementary schools.

LEGITIMACY BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, your Lordships, yesterday, received with such ready welcome the case of the bastards that I feel encouraged to think you will also give a kindly hearing to the case that I have to present to your Lordships on behalf of the illegitimates. It is at the request of those who successfully piloted this Bill through the House of Commons that. I have undertaken to place it before your Lordships. I dare say that they might have chosen a better exponent, but I know your Lordships will not attribute as defects in the Bill itself any shortcomings of my own. I think that if it had been proposed to me to bring forward a Bill of this kind for the first time in this House, I should have said that I thought such a change in the law ought to be in the hands of the Government, not of a private member. But the case is different now, because this is a Bill which has come up from the other House, where it was very fully considered, and where it passed both the Second and the Third Readings without a Division. I am bound to say that I think there is some disadvantage, not only to myself but to the House, that this question should be debated in the absence of the Lord Chancellor, but I cannot think that your Lordships will consider that the Second Reading ought to be delayed any longer. Your Lordships may have observed that I was in no hurry to put down the Bill for Second Reading, and I think you will agree that it ought not to be postponed too long.
The Bill, so far as I am concerned, is founded upon sympathy for the illegitimates, for those who have come into the world by no fault of their own, and find themselves exposed to neglect and contempt, and, indeed, to all sorts of degradation. There has been, I think, a great change in feeling upon this subject in recent years—over a good many years, in fact, and, as it seems to me, it is a growing feeling. I do not know whether or not high-minded ladies approve of this Bill. I know that some do, and I should hope that there was not general objection in that quarter. I will not trouble your Lordships with figures and statistics bearing upon the Bill. I will only say that those, at any rate, who work

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among the poor are aware of a very strong feeling on this matter. They are led to feel compassion for the sorrows, not only of the illegitimates themselves, but of the parents, who are able to retrieve their mistaken courses, but are not able to do anything for the unfortunate children. The proposition to which I ask your Lordships to adhere by moving the Second Reading is the simple one which is contained in the Title of the Bill: "An Act to amend the law relating to children born out of wedlock."
It seems to me to be impossible to bring about a complete remedy, because there are facts in the case which even an Act of Parliament cannot get over. But certainly a great deal might be done to mitigate the severity of the fate of those who are the subject of this Bill. All that your Lordships are asked to do to-day on the Second Beading of the Bill is explained in these words from Clause 1 (1)—
"Where the parents of an illegitimate person marry or have married one another, … the marriage shall, …"
if the father is domiciled in England, legitimate an illegitimate person
"and such person is in this Act referred to as a 'legitimated person.'"
The greater part of the Bill is occupied with minor points, some of which no doubt are difficult, or at any rate require very careful consideration before being confirmed by this House, but they are not, I venture to say, natters that are involved in the Second Reading. I think that I could not do better than very shortly run through the clauses of the Bill, and your Lordships will see what I mean by drawing that distinction between the Second Reading and the further progress of the Bill.
Clause (1) deals with the legitimation by subsequent marriage of parents. That is, as I have already said, the one question involved on this stage of the Bill. Clause 1 (2) requires particular attention. It was the subject of much marching and counter-marching in another place. I hope it will be well thrashed out here. I will accept whatever is the decision of the House. If the matter were res integra I should have preferred that this subsection were not included. In fact, I cannot help thinking that, if you are to distinguish between illegitimate children, those are in a sadder case who come
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within the class excluded by this subsection than the others. Therefore, it is not an exclusion which I should have favoured, if the Bill had been one of my own. My impression is, however (though I am not quite sure) that it represents the law of Scotland. I do not know whether one of the noble and learned Lords from Scotland is here who would inform me, but I think that that is so. It is, of course, a strong argument in this House that you should conform to a law of which there has been long experience in Scotland, and with which, I think, my countrymen are quite content. A very eminent Scotsman has just left the House, the most rev. Prelate, the Archbishop of York. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not here, but I believe that both those most rev. Primates, like myself, were born and bred in the country where that law prevails, and that their ancestors, like my ancestors, were quite content to live under that law, and nobody has ever wished to depart from it. Therefore that is an argument that may be used in favour of keeping these words.
It must also be said that the matter was very fully debated in the House of Commons, and that the promoters have committed this Bill to me with these words inserted therein on the last occasion. I must, of course, expect that your Lordships will debate that subject, and it certainly does deserve careful consideration. Your Lordships will observe that subsection (3) provides that what is to happen in regard to the succession of property does not follow, as far as this Bill is concerned, upon the provisions of subsection (1). As at present advised, the clause seems to me to be quite right, but I do not know whether I shall remain of that opinion after having heard the debates in your Lordships' House.
Clause 2 deals with the effect of the Bill upon intestacies. If your Lordships will look at the clause you will sec that there are two dates mentioned in it, and I can imagine that there are those amongst your Lordships who will wonder what is the meaning of those dates. The noble and learned Earl on the Front Bench below me [the Earl of Birkenhead] knows very well to what they refer. They refer to the date on which the Law of Property Act, which he passed through this House and which obtained the assent of Parliament, will come into operation,

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and it will be very awkward to deal with many of the subjects of this Bill before that Act becomes the law of the land. That is the meaning of the clause and of the provisions contained therein. I dare say that there are noble Lords who would not follow all the intricacies of Clause 2, and I greatly hope that I shall not be cross-examined too closely upon it by those who do understand it. So far as I am capable of judging, I believe that the clause as it stands is right.
Clause 3 is one with which I need not trouble your Lordships because it deals only with technicalities concerning powers of appointment. Clause 4 is so technical, I think, that I ought not to go into it on this stage of the Bill. Clause 5 is a matter of Inland Revenue. Whether it is right or wrong I do not know, but I dare say some light will be thrown upon it in the course of discussion. Clause 6 is one which will naturally excite some interest in this House because it contains the following subsection:—
"(1) Nothing in this Act shall affect the succession to any dignity or title of honour or render any person capable of succeeding to or transmitting a right to succeed to any such dignity or title."
Somewhere else in the Bill there will be found, I think, a provision which deals with the very difficult question of how far property and titles may become divorced under these provisions. That is a, matter which I shall have to try to deal with if any difficulty is raised in Committee, but at the moment I confess that I should not be prepared to give an opinion to your Lordships that was worth giving.
Clause 7 is an Inland Revenue clause. I trust that it is all right, but I am not at the moment prepared to say anything about it. Clause 8, as your Lordships will see, is a long clause in which provision is made in regard to persons legitimated by extraneous law. I should be very sorry to say much to your Lordships upon that just now. It is a difficult subject, and I shall not say anything about it at all unless at some future stage I understand more about it than I do at the moment. Now I come to the last clause. In subsection (2) of that clause a date is mentioned for which I am not responsible and which, I think, is absolutely hopeless. I have come to the end of that part of what I have to submit to your Lordships. I only wish now to say that the Bill was
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very carefully considered in another place, that it was warmly supported by members of the Government, and, as I have said before, that it passed both Second Reading and Third Reading without a Division.
Perhaps, without being out of order, I may refer to the future course of the Bill in your Lordships' House. There is a temptation when Bills come up from the other House, to try to take them through this House without amendment. If one has the advantage of being able to do that the Bill will, of course, become law without any difficulty; but I would not undertake to ask your Lordships to pass this measure without amendment. As I have said before, there are clauses in it which require very careful consideration. I shall be glad to see them established, with one exception. I shall be glad to see the clauses dealing with the devolution of property accepted, but only accepted because, as the result of your Lordships' careful consideration and the assistance of the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, one can say that they are right. If I may be forgiven for saying so, your Lordships exist to examine Bills that come up from another place, and if you think they really require amendment your Lordships should amend them and stick to your Amendments, and do the other House the honour they deserve of supposing that they will deal with matters that come down to them in a reasonable way and in a manner which is courteous to your Lordships' House.
Then, of course, there comes the question of Committee. If it is a disadvantage not to have the presence of the Lord Chancellor on Second Reading, it is a still greater disadvantage that he should not be here when the Bill is considered in Committee. I hope that I shall receive the approval of your Lordships in not immediately naming a day for Committee, but in waiting not so long as to imperil the Bill by lapse of time but for at least what I might almost call a decent interval to know something of what prospect there is of the noble and learned Viscount being back in the place in which we wish so much to see him. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: My Lords, I share somewhat the regret of the noble Lord that it has not been found possible for the Government to make this a Government Bill and to undertake the responsibility which would have followed upon such adoption. As the noble Lord quite truly said, this Bill received a great deal of support from various members of the Government in another place and, indeed, the members of the Government greatly, and, as I think in one important particular unfortunately, influenced the effect of the proposals. The noble Lord was somewhat unenthusiastic, I thought, as to some of the clauses of the Bill and he was, if I might say so, parcus laudator of the measure which he was to recommend to your Lordships for Second Reading.
I very much hope that he will not postpone unduly the setting down of the Committee stage of the Bill, though he is evidently right in not precipitating that stage of a Bill which, unquestionably, requires both discussion and consideration. In particular, the conveyancing clauses, or the clauses which involve conveyancing questions, have caused me some little anxiety and will, I think, require further examination. But the noble Lord and those with whom he is acting will, I think, be well advised to keep their eyes very closely upon the development of the Session and the time that is available, because if your Lordships are agreed upon the principle of this measure nothing could be more unfortunate than that, by unduly postponing the Committee Stage, the discussions which may become necessary with another place should occupy so much time that there might be a risk of losing the Bill altogether. I should most greatly regret it if this Bill were lost. It seems to introduce far too late in our social history a measure of elementary social justice.
The principle which underlies this Bill is that no child shall suffer because of the transgressions of the moral law by its parents. Let us never lose sight of this principle, because we shall find it, I think, a guide in various difficulties which have arisen elsewhere, and which will certainly re-present themselves for consideration in this House. There can be no other principle, I think, involved in this case. No one, for instance, will say that we are to legitimise children out of consideration
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for the father or the mother I am not concerned here to debate any question of sexual morality, and I gladly evade such an obligation in this connection. If therefore we exclude any consideration at all for the father or mother—I am dealing with the ethical side of it—there remains no other sure guide for legislation of this kind except the paramount interest of the child.
How elementary are the considerations of justice which make it right that that interest should be safeguarded? The child is innocent of all wrong. It comes into the world, in existing circumstances, with everything that can contribute a pathetic, a melancholy disability of shame to its youth and its maturity. The very system under which birth certificates must be produced on recurrent occasions in life, results in each of those occasions being stamped with some fresh stigma of humiliation for one who is completely innocent of any offence either against the law of this country, or the morals of this country. When he is at school in the surroundings of a village (if his lot has been cast among the lowly part of the population in these Islands) or (if he belongs to a section in society which is more happily provided for in means of the world) when he comes to a public school it is known to those before whom his age must be vouched by his birth certificate that the stigma of shame was branded upon him in infancy.
We have passed far in legislative matters, I hope, beyond the precept that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. This may, unhappily, still he true in some melancholy physiological matters which exceed the scientific skill of man to alleviate or to cure. It has long since ceased to be the guide or the principle upon which our Legislature depends. I cannot believe that any considerable number of your Lordships—who for so many years, I might, indeed, say for so many generations, have set a high example of progressive thought in these matters to another place—will dissent from the general principle which, so long after it should have been corrected by legislation, is effectively secured by the proposals of the present Bill.
There is, however, one section that was very generally referred to by the noble Lord who moved this Bill, which requires

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a more particular consideration. The point is really, as the noble Lord himself seemed to be aware, one for Committee, but it so dominates in importance any other topic that is raised in the Bill that I think it right, as a preparatory step, to put down an Amendment for the committee stage to alter the proposals of the Bill in their present form and to offer now some explanation of the, point which, in my judgment, will require this correction in Committee and which I shall attempt to amend in Committee. Section 1, subsection (2), in the Bill as originally introduced, was in this form—
"Nothing in this Act shall operate to legitimate a person whose father or mother was married to a third party when the illegitimate person was born."
The effect of that is manifest. Supposing A and B, being unmarried, had an illegitimate child, the benefit of the measure was to be given to that child, on their subsequent marriage, but as the Bill stands there is this limitation upon the benevolence which is shown to the illegitimate child, that if either the father or the mother of the child was married to a third party at the time of the birth of the child the benefits were withheld from the illegitimate.
I do not think that any person who had accepted what was the obvious principle of the Bill could possibly have, made himself responsible for an exception which seems to me at once so barbarous and so entirely out of harmony with the general principle of the proposal, because what does it mean? It means that although we are agreed that the object and the sole justification of this legislative proposal is in the interest of the child, to remove from that child a stigma for which that child has no individual responsibility, nevertheless in certain excepted cases, dependent upon what might almost have been an accident as to whether either the father or the mother was married to a third party at the time of the birth of the child, this protection was to be withdrawn. What conceivable connection has that got with the case of the child we are to benefit? We are not here to distribute either praise or censure to the fathers. We are not here by nice gradations of morality to distinguish between the degrees of blame which we must give respectively to fornication and adultery. Such inquiries are wholly alien to any purpose which we have in
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our minds in dealing with this question. How are you to distinguish between the case of a child in the one instance and in the other?
Suppose that you have before the Legislature two children, each of them, we will suppose, about the age of twenty, each of them illegitimate. One of them says: "I claim the benefit of the Act," and to him the Legislature says: "You are entitled to the benefit of the Act because your father and your mother were neither of them married to another party when you were begotten and when you were born." To the other who comes before the Legislature with individual claims which are indisputably just as strong, because they are identical, you say: "We will give you no relief in comparison with him with whose case we have just dealt. We say you shall still continue to be illegitimate." When he says: "Why in the name of social fairness do you say that?" you answer: "It has nothing whatever to do with you. The decision could not have been influenced, and it is not influenced, by anything that you have suggested or anything that you have done. The distinction is because in our judgment the moral fault was greater which gave you birth." To adopt such a view is, in the first place, to repudiate and to negative the, whole principle upon which these proposals depend, and, if that principle is right, it is to perpetuate an act of utterly indefensible injustice to the child placed in the unhappy circumstances which I have described.
These somewhat obvious considerations did not fail to attract attention in another place. I must trouble your Lordships in a few sentences with the Parliamentary history of this business. The matter was discussed very fully in Standing Committee. These considerations were explained and the result could not for one moment be in doubt, I venture to think, in any rational assembly uninfluenced by official pressure. Accordingly, in Standing Committee this provision, after a full and intelligent discussion, was taken out. The Attorney-General made some observations on that occasion. He pointed out that it is not the case that it is consistent with the law of Scotland. The noble Lord rather founded himself upon a supposed advantage, which I do not fully appreciate, that would attend a complete uniformity between the

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Divorce Law of Scotland and the Divorce Law of this country. That argument leaves me quite cold. We have gone on for several centuries differing profoundly from the Scottish nation in our Divorce Law without exciting any considerable degree of dissatisfaction or protest cither in this country or in Scotland, and I know no reason why those who have attempted from time to time to reform the Divorce Law of this country should be debarred from making a reasonable provision in our own legislation by any reference or appeal to Scottish precedent.
For the Attorney-General that argument does not apply. He says:
"If that be the only reason for the clause I doubt very much whether it effects its object, because I am told by Scottish lawyers that by the law of Scotland it is necessary, in order that the child may become legitimate, that the parents should be free to marry, both at the date of conception and at the date of birth. This clause does not carry that out. A child conceived in adultery and born after divorce would be illegitimised by the law of England, but not by the law of Scotland. If the only argument for that clause is that we want to bring the law of England and Scotland into harmony the clause must be left out."
We have the advantage of the guidance of the Attorney-General. Now we come to the discussion on the Report Stage, on June 15, in the House of Commons, and a very surprising development took place then. The clause was replaced.
No one who has read the Report of the debate in the OFFICIAL REPORT can be under the slightest delusion as to the circumstances in which a clause so illogical and indefensible was restored. It was not restored in obedience to a conviction entertained by any of the speakers who addressed themselves to the arguments which were raised. It was restored in consequence, and solely in consequence, of a most surprising intervention in the debate by the Solicitor-General. I ought to make it plain that we might have been excused for supposing that we had the advantage of the Solicitor-General's support in this matter. The Solicitor-General in an earlier stage of the Bill made an observation in which he said:
"I despair of explaining what complications may ensue if the Bill goes through in its present form in regard to succession to property. … If this Bill goes through a child will be legitimated in England who would not be legitimated in Scotland."
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And the Solicitor-General, on June 15, when the clause was restored, also said:
"If this Amendment be accepted and the words, which were removed in Committee, are put back into the Bill, substantially it will make the law as enacted by this Bill in regard to England what the law is in Scotland."
The Attorney-General finds himself in complete disagreement with the Solicitor-General on this point. The Attorney-General, who is an old friend of mine, has recently stated in the country, a little impolitely I think, to fourteen of his present colleagues, that in the course of the last few months he has been very busy in clearing up Coalition mess. When this admirable task has been completed and the Augean stable cleansed, for the present condition of which fourteen of his colleagues were responsible equally with other malefactors like myself, I hope the learned Attorney-General will find time also to clear up some little discrepancy which appears to exist between himself and the Solicitor-General on a not unimportant matter.
When the clause was restored on the Report Stage the Solicitor-General, entirely forgetting or disregarding what the Attorney-General had said on a previous stage, and also what he himself had previously said, made a very strong and vehement intervention in the debate and said what calamitous consequences would follow unless the clause was restored. I believe I am right in saying that the Solicitor-General on a previous occasion had voted with the majority for removing it. Between the two stages his mind had so completely altered that he who had been in favour of removing the clause when the matter was discussed in Committee, came to the conclusion, on the Report Stage that it would be calamitous to remove it. The reason he gave was that it would establish a difference between the law of Scotland and the law of England, whereas the Attorney-General on an earlier stage said that it was impossible to suppose that the retention of this clause would retain uniformity between the law of England and the law of Scotland.
I shall certainly propose, when the Committee stage is reached, that the decision which should be taken by this House is the decision taken during the Committee stage in another place, and if your Lordships are good enough to accept

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that proposal I cannot doubt that it will be received, and most gratefully received, by the promoters of the Bill. It will be realised how faulty and unsatisfactory was the advice, differing from his earlier view, given by the Minister who intervened. If you take that view you will make the Bill at once more harmonious to its own purpose, more consistent and infinitely more fair and generous to that most unhappy class which it is primarily intended to benefit.
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord who introduced the Bill will forgive me for saying that when I heard his speech I was irresistibly reminded of the old tale which must have cheered many of us in our infancy; I refer to the story of "The Babes in the Wood." It appears that this legislative infant has been entrusted to his care by its parents in another place, and he appears to have abandoned it to your Lordships with an earnest request that you should reverently cover its body with leaves by means of as many Amendments as you think right to introduce. I say nothing of what the promoters may think of the prospects of this Bill if it be amended, as I have no doubt it will be in response to the invitation of the noble Lord. But as he has suggested that in its present form it is either incomprehensible or unpleasant, I shall certainly do my best to bring; my little tribute of leaves and scatter them upon its body. I have the gravest doubt whether in those circumstances the Bill will ever see the light of day, and I would abstain were it not that it is quite certain that it is impossible to expect the same reticence from other members of your Lordships' House.
I regret this, and for this reason. I regard this Bill as one of these measures at which when it becomes law people will look with surprise because of the long and weary time during which it has been brought to birth. It is to me incomprehensible that a civilised community could do the unspeakable wrong of branding with illegitimacy a child born out of wedlock when its parents have married and have desired to do everything that remains in their power to remedy the initial wrong of which they were guilty. The injustice to the child is something that no man can possibly defend, because no one can suggest that the sins of the
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parents are born in the child so that the child should carry like a scapegoat into the wilderness of its life all the errors of which its parents were guilty. From the point of view of the child, therefore, I do not suppose that anyone will doubt that this measure ought to be passed.
But it not only for the sake of the child that I desire to see this Bill become law. It has often seemed to me one of the most unfortunate things in life that you should deny to men and women the opportunity of remedying wrongs of which they have been guilty, and when a man and a woman have been responsible for the birth of an illegitimate child and have, subsequently married, it does seem to me that it is an act of extraordinary cruelty to deny to them the right to receive as a legitimate child into their household the infant that was born before they were married in holy wedlock. I know it will be said that this is one of the things that will encourage immorality. I have heard that argument so many times in connection with so many matters, and my answer to it has been given so frequently in your Lordships' House that I hesitate to repeat it again. I will only say that the people who imagine that acts of immorality are the result of mathematical calculation are utterly ignorant of human nature. That is not the way they arise. A man and a woman do not associate together, with the unfortunate consequence of a child being born, after they have prepared an elaborate balance sheet like that issued by a company, looking at the profit and loss on one side and the other and deciding on which side the balance of advantage lies. I utterly disbelieve that people will abstain from these acts from the fear that the child when born may be illegitimate. They may abstain from the fear that the child will be born, but not from the fear that the child, when born, will suffer as these children must suffer.
I sincerely hope, therefore, that this Bill will receive its Second Reading and that the Amendment which the noble and learned Earl beside me has given evidence of his intention to move will be accepted. I will say no more about that Amendment at present because I intended to put down exactly the same Amendment myself. I trust that when that Amendment comes up it will receive your Lordships' favourable consideration. For the

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moment I will conclude by saying that I hope that this Bill will receive a Second Reading and that when it has passed that stage the noble Lord in charge of it will take some form of tonic which will enable him to fight for the life of this Bill in Committee and to see if it be not possible to secure its passage with something better than an apology for its existence.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, I rise because I think it is only respectful to your Lordships that some indication should be given from the Government Bench as to the attitude which His Majesty's Government adopt in respect of this Bill. I have to say at the outset that we as a Government do not take any part in it. As members of your Lordships' House we have, of course, the full privilege of any other noble Lord of expressing our opinion both by word and by vote as to the Second Reading of this Bill and as to any Amendment which may be moved in any subsequent stage. But although I do not speak as a member of the Government in respect of this Bill, I hope the noble and learned Earl opposite will forgive me if I say that I think an elaborate attack upon the Solicitor-General for his conduct in respect of this Bill in another place is not a very convenient course. Strictly speaking, it is out of order, but, of course, we do not enforce those orders, and I have no desire to enforce them. As regards the conduct of the Government as a whole, it is no doubt convenient to refer to their attitude in one House of Parliament or the other as the case may be, but for the purpose of a personal attack as between the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General I should have thought that the proper place in which to deliver such observations would be the House to which they both belong.
As regards the Bill, speaking only for myself I shall not be desirous of opposing the Second Reading. I think there is a case for a Second Reading, and I think that, in the words used by one of the noble and learned Lords opposite, when two people desire to make good a great wrong which they have committed they ought, so far as is possible, to have the opportunity of doing so. At the same time, I think the burden of proof, as it were, rests upon them as to how far that
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is a reasonable course, having regard to its consequences. People speak as if this were a very simple matter. No one who heard the speech of my noble and learned friend who introduced the Bill into your Lordships' House, no one who follows the tenor of the Bill itself, can fail to be convinced that, far from being simple, it is a very complicated matter. People say we-must get rid of the old idea that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children. You cannot do it. The thing is impossible. No legislation will achieve it, for the broad, hard, stern facts remain, and you have to make up your mind to that. You may mitigate them, as the noble and learned Lord opposite wishes to do and as I think your Lordships will probably wish to do, but you cannot get away from them. You have only to look at the tenor of the clauses of this Bill to realise that you cannot get rid of what is called the slur of illegitimacy merely by passing an Act of Parliament. It will be clear that certain children were born out of wedlock and that certain others were born in wedlock, and as they grow up it will be found, where they both belong to the same family, that the elder children rank below the younger children because of that fact. That appears on the face of the Bill. I merely mention it as an example. You cannot get rid of the facts, and you must make up your mind to them.
If I may venture to say so, I think that the noble and learned Lord who introduced this Bill exercised a very wise discretion when he said that he thought this was pre-eminently a Bill which ought to be scrutinised very carefully in your Lordships' House. We have amongst us men of great wisdom and prudence in matters of this kind, many learned noble Lords whose advice upon such a matter is all-important. I hope that the two noble and learned Lords who spoke will not think me disrespectful if I suggest that when they address themselves to the difficult law surrounding this Bill they will free themselves a little from the strong sentiments which they entertain on subjects of this kind. Naturally, they feel very sorry for people who have done wrong and for the consequences of that wrong. So do we all. But these are very difficult matters which must be approached in the coolest spirit. They must not for a moment allow the sentiment or the pity which they feel to interfere with the cold calmness of their

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legal judgment. I earnestly hope that when we get into Committee they will help us to solve this very difficult question without an appeal to our compassion at every second sentence.
It is a very difficult matter, and we on this side art; specially at a loss, because there is sitting behind us at the present time no noble and learned Lord. We are deprived of the experience and advice of the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor. I have said that as a Government we do not take any side in respect of this Bill, but I do think that in turning out good legislation from this House it is of the very highest importance that we should have the guidance of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. He is occupying the greatest position in the law in England at this moment, and his absence from our deliberations on this occasion seems to me a very great loss. I am glad to say that I have in my pocket a letter which indicates that we may hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to resume his services to this House, and to the country, after the Recess that is about to take place, and that when we reassemble in the autumn he will be found in his accustomed position on the Woolsack. I very much hope that your Lordships will not ask us to proceed to discuss this Bill in Committee until we have the advantage of his presence.
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: But that will be in the autumn.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Yes, and I think that is right.
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: Will the noble Marquess explain what are the legal difficulties? Except as to one or two small matters of conveyance, there are no legal difficulties at all.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am not a lawyer, and am incapable of explaining legal difficulties. But I find the Bill extremely complicated, and I heard the impassioned speech by the noble Earl with reference to subsection (2) of the first clause.
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: That is not law, but fact.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I stand corrected. The noble and learned
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Earl is a very adequate censor in these matters, but I stand by my judgment that these are matters which ought to be very carefully considered by lawyers, and I venture to think that it would be wise not to press the Bill forward. I have no control over the House, and I am only giving my humble suggestion as a Peer among other Peers, when I suggest that we should agree to the Second Reading of the. Bill, and that afterwards those interested in the matter should confer together, when I hope they will be satisfied that the course which I suggest is the one that they should pursue.
LORD GORELL: My Lords, I agree with one sentence in the speech of the noble Marquess, when he said that this Bill is not a simple Bill, but I do not go so far as to say that because of the difficulties which he sees in it the Committee stage of the Bill must necessarily wait until the Lord Chancellor is present. The noble Marquess distinctly stated that the Government took no part in it, and so far as legal difficulties are concerned there are many noble Lords who, with equal though past judicial experience, are capable of pronouncing upon those difficulties. At the same time it does seem to me that although the principle of the Bill is perfectly simple, there are certain difficulties, at any rate to those who are not trained lawyers, in the application of the Bill, and I confess that I was much relieved by the statement of the noble and learned Lord in charge of the Bill, in which he made it certain that there would be Amendments by referring to the question of the date as being hopeless. That would certainly be one Amendment, and I had anticipated that he would take much the same course as was taken by the noble and learned Lord in charge of the Matrimonial Causes Bill, and tell your Lordships that the measure would be lost if Amendments were moved.
As, however, it is thrown open to amendment by the noble and learned Lord in charge of the Bill, it might be well to point out one or two difficulties which occur to me, not as a trained lawyer. It seemed to me that the noble and learned Earl drew a very touching picture as to discrimination between certain classes, but a large portion of his speech was of wider reference than the reference in this Bill, and the eloquent phrases which he used as to the commiseration

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to be extended to certain children under this Bill could equally be applied to any child born illegitimate, whether the parents subsequently married or not. I imagine that there could be no argument really in favour of Clause 1, subsection (2), other than that it was a deterrent, and to that extent I associate myself with the words of Lord Buckmaster. There must be discrimination, but I hope we shall not keep this subsection in the Bill, and shall have as little discrimination as possible.
I may be wrong in this, but it seems to me that there are two cases of discrimination in the Bill apart from that subsection—namely, in Clause 6, subsection (1), which says:—
"Nothing in this Act shall affect the succession to any dignity or title of honour, or render any person capable of succeeding to or transmitting a right to succeed to any such dignity or title";
and under Clause 4, subsection (4) you cannot separate the devolution of property from a dignity or title of honour, although under Clause 4, subsection (3) a legitimated person would succeed to certain property. There you discriminate between two children in exactly similar circumstances. You might perfectly well have two men in contiguous places in the country, one of whom suffered under the provision of this subsection. He would have succeeded to the property along with the title of honour, but for this discrimination, whereas the other is in exactly the same position as if he had been a legitimate person from the first.
Then there is another in the first subsection of Clause 1. As at present drafted it seems to me that it will have this effect. The Bill is to come into operation on September 1, 1923, and under it any child of parents who subsequently marry becomes legitimated if alive at that date. If he happens to be dead before that date he is not legitimated. It is quite obvious that in all Bills of this kind there must be a date on which it comes into operation, and to make the Bill retrospective would introduce endless complications, but this Bill, if it passes as it is at present drawn, will have this effect, that where you had three children born before the marriage of the parents and one of whom has died before the date for the coming into operation of this Bill
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and the other two are still living, and all of those three children have had children themselves, the children of the child who is dead will be descended from an illegitimate child, but the children of the children who are alive will be descended from a legitimate child.
This, in the times in which we live, will have this definite discrimination, and there are cases which could be quoted. If those three sons, in the period of war through which we have passed, have had this record, that one volunteered for war and was killed, and the other two did not go to the war at all, and now live, the children of the soldier are definitely penalised under this Bill because of the patriotism of their father. I was hoping that there would be an opportunity of putting in an Amendment to meet that particular case. I was afraid that the noble and learned Lord would say that that would destroy his Bill, but, in the circumstances, I hope to have a further opportunity of moving an Amendment to that effect.
LORD PARMOOR: My Lords, I am entirely in accord with the views expressed to your Lordships by the noble and learned Lord who moved the Second Reading. I understand that those views are very much in agreement with the views of the noble Marquess which have just been stated. I imagine that everyone is in favour of the general principle of the Bill. It was discussed as long ago as at the Assize of Northampton, over seven centuries ago, when the Spiritual Peers desired legitimation in these circumstances, and the non-Spiritual Peers objected on the ground that the title to estate would be imperilled by a system of legitimation such as we have in the present Bill. There are many clauses in this Bill which are so complicated that I find great difficulty in understanding them. Lord Muir Mackenzie asked me if I would look through the Bill in order to see whether, in my view, these difficulties did arise. I told him I thought they certainly did, and they are particularly matters with which the Lord Chancellor could deal. They are not matters within my cognisance, but matters of intestacy, devolution of estates, and so on.
I do not think you can deal with this Bill in the haphazard way which has been suggested. We want illegitimate children

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to be rid, as far as can be, of their stain, but I think the Bill is much too wide. I have not had an opportunity of considering Clause 1 (2), and as I have great respect for the opinion of the Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Inskip, I should very much like to read more carefully than I have been able to do what his views were. But let us consider this. Suppose the mother is married, and after her marriage a child is born. The prima facie assumption is that it is the child of the two people who are married, to which no taint need be attached at all. Is the idea of subsection (2) in the case of this child, which prima facie is a legitimate child, because its parents were married before it was born, to relegate it to the illegitimate ranks, and then try to make it legitimate by Act of Parliament? That appears to me to be the effect of subsection (2). I do not want to speak too positively, because I have not had time to study the matter, and I do not know what Sir Thomas Inskip said; but I entirely agree with the noble and learned Lord who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, and I hope he will carry out his excellent intention of giving adequate time, so that such a complicated Bill may be fully considered.
LORD BUCKMASTER: Assuming that this Bill is postponed until after the Lord Chancellor can resume his place, will the Government adopt the Bill, after it has passed through the House, and secure its passage in another place?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I could not answer that question without notice.
LORD BUCKMASTER: Because otherwise the Bill is lost.
THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH: My Lords, the last speeches to which we have been listening have made the Bill appear so complicated that there seems to be some doubt as to whether it will be able to remedy the wrong with which it deals without introducing worse wrongs. No one can at this stage, I fancy, prophesy what the upshot may be. At the same time, I was very grateful to Lord Buckmaster when he dealt with the moral side of the question. I know that in earlier speeches it was said that it was
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desirable to leave out that special aspect of the question, but if it is left out in your Lordships' House I feel no doubt that it would be largely canvassed outside, and many of those who would read this debate in its full or in an abbreviated form will be those who will pay great attention to the moral issues involved.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster, explained—and I was very grateful to him for emphasising that point—that those who drive themselves into sin of this kind do not do so with a full and careful calculation of its consequences. I could not myself suppose that we were encouraging sexual sin by removing, so far as is possible, the stain that at present attaches to an illegitimate child. On the contrary, my own view—and it is only my own view, for I do not speak with any authority from the Episcopal Bench—is that, after the intricacies of the Bill have been solved and it is passed, the general effect of the Bill would be rather to encourage marriage on the part of the erring man and woman than to encourage sexual irregularity in the first instance. If that is the case then I think one is entitled to associate oneself with one's whole heart with the words that fell from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Muir Mackenzie, and from the noble Earl, Lord Birkenhead, when he appealed to our compassion.
It is perfectly clear that this Bill, however amended, will never touch the bulk of the illegitimate children in the country. No one would pretend that it would, but if we can, by a compassionate act, help those whom we may attempt to assist, I cannot see that, because the scope of the Bill is as limited as it is, that is any reason for saying that it should be rejected. I myself have been brought in contact with just the sort of things of which the noble and learned Earl, Lord Birkenhead, spoke. As the headmaster of a great school I had to deal with a certain number of those who, in what are popularly called the upper classes, were the sons of irregular unions, and I was immensely struck by the number of the occasions when this disability came up, and the difficulty that one had in passing on such boys to the Universities and elsewhere. It was not as if the stain was once accepted and then let alone, but

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again and again the mud had to be stirred up, and in every case one's pity went out to the innocent victim of the parents' guilt.
I think that the Bill, when amended, will still have a very limited scope, but I believe, on the other hand, that there are many, among the poor and among the rich, who will stand to benefit by this Bill, and if we cannot, as the noble Marquess rightly said, remove all the stigma, and if the facts themselves really constitute the stigma, yet I do believe that a Bill wisely conceived may do very much to reduce the number of occasions on which stones would be thrown at some of the illegitimately born. Therefore, in a spirit of compassion and, as I believe, right compassion, I can see no moral objection to passing this Bill, and I sincerely hope that when it does lie within our power to act with pity and sympathy we may use the opportunity even though its range may not be very widely extended.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, I rise not to continue the discussion, but to ask the noble Marquess opposite whether he can get the House out of a difficulty. I have read the Bill and I agree that it is a difficult Bill, and it is made much more difficult because of the very odd way in which the draftsman has put it together. It is, therefore, desirable that we should have the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack when we have the opportunity of considering it. But if we are to wait until the autumn we shall be placed in this difficulty. Governments have a way of taking up the whole of the time in Autumn Sessions. It is too much, I think, to ask the noble Marquess to tell us that the Government will be responsible for the Bill in the autumn, because he may not wish to do that; but we may ask him to say this. If we assent to the putting off of the Committee Stage until the Lord Chancellor has had an opportunity of looking at the Bill, will he give an undertaking that when the Bill goes back- to the Commons there shall be at least an opportunity of considering the Amendments we have made. I do not ask the noble Marquess to say that at this moment, because he may wish to consult with those who are responsible in another place. But if my noble and learned friend Lord Muir Mackenzie, before putting down a date
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for the Committee Stage, would put a question to the noble Marquess and get from him an answer that is satisfactory, it would very much facilitate matters.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I can only speak by the leave of your Lordships. I think the request and the observations of the noble and learned Viscount are very reasonable, and I shall be quite prepared to give an answer to this question if the noble and learned Lord will give me an opportunity of consulting my colleagues in another place before I reply. I cannot promise that the answer will be "Yes," but I will give him an answer, and I think it is a very fair course to pursue.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

BRITISH OFFICERS IN INDIA.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will consider the possibility of giving officers of the British Army who have reason to be dissatisfied with the conditions of service in India the option of serving elsewhere? There is only one fact to which I wish to direct the attention of your Lordships, and it is this. The British Government, rightly or wrongly, have decided to give certain allowances to married officers. The Indian Government, rightly or wrongly, have decided not to give those allowances. What that means is that the British Government says, in effect, to these officers: "We think you ought to have 35 s. a day and that is what we shall pay you; but whenever it suits us we shall compel you to serve the Indian Government for 32 s. a day."
The noble Viscount the Secretary of State for India has informed your Lordships that the whole question of pay of the Army in India will be considered next year, and it is possible that these allowances may be increased. But, judging from the state of the Indian finances at the moment and the Report of Lord Inchcape's Committee, it is more likely that they will not be increased. The question which I venture to ask His Majesty's Government is whether the British Government is justified in placing upon the shoulders of the Indian Government

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the entire responsibility in this matter and in compelling its employees to serve that Government for less than they would receive if they were serving their own Government.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (THE EARL OF DERBY): My Lords, the answer that I have to make to the Question on the Paper is that I am unable to accede to the request.

MATRIMONIAL CAUSES BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to Order); Privilege Amendments made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

SITTINGS OF PARLIAMENT.
Order of the Day read for the Commons Message to be taken into consideration.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I beg to make the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend the Leader of the House.
Moved, That this House do concur in the following Resolution communicated by the Commons namely:—"That it is expedient that a Select Committee of the Commons be appointed to join with a Committee of the Lords to consider the desirability of altering the customary period of the Parliamentary Session and the incidental charges necessary thereto."—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.
House adjourned at a quarter past six o'clock.