Sitting of 3 July 1884

MINUTES.
NEW MEMBER SWORN—Philip Albert Muntz, esquire, for Warwick County (Northern Division).
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Cruelty to Animals Acts Amendment (No. 2) * [270]; Criminal Law Amendment* [271]; Benefices (Tiverton Portions) Consolidation Amendment * [272]; Public Libraries Acts Amendment* [273].
Second Reading — London Government [171 [First Night], debate adjourned.
Considered as amended—Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 5) * [239]; Elections (Hours of Poll) [261]; Tramways and Public Companies (Ireland) Act (1883) Amendment [231].
Third Reading—Elementary Education Provisional Order Confirmation (London) * [227]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (Dundalk Waterworks)* [223]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (Naas, &c.) * [220]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (the Labourers' Act) (Carrick-on-Suir) * [219], and passed.

PARLIAMENT—STANDING COMMITTEE ON LAW, AND COURTS OF JUSTICE, AND LEGAL PROCEDURE.
Ordered, That the Standing Committee on Law, and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, do sit and proceed with the Criminal Lunatics Bill on Thursday next, at Twelve of the Clock.
NOTICE.
  PARLIAMENT—HOUSE OF LORDS—CREATION OF PEERS.
  MR ASHMEAD-BARTLETT: I beg to give Notice that, on Monday, when the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) asks his Question of the Prime Minister with respect to the creation of Radical Peers for the purpose of making it more difficult for the Upper House to throw out Liberal measures, I will inquire of the right hon. Member, Whether, in view of the fact that the feeling of the country is strongly Conservative, and that the important and populous constituencies of Mid Surrey, South Hants, and North Warwickshire have lately returned Conservative Members to Parliament by majorities of 20 per cent, he will advise Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament and take the verdict of the nation upon the differences between the House of Lords and the subservient majority of the Lower House?
QUESTIONS.

  MUNICIPAL GOVERNING BODIES (IRELAND)—PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ACTS.
  MR. HEALYasked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, Could he state or give as a Return the names of the cities,
  1862
  boroughs, and towns in Ireland having municipal governing bodies, and the public or private Acts under which they are incorporated?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALKER)said, the information sought for would be found at page of the Report of the Local Government Taxation Inquiry of 1878, with the exception of the names of some towns since constituted under the Towns Improvement Act.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE—THE PAPER MANUFACTURES—POST CARDS.
  MR. H. S. NORTHCOTEasked the Postmaster General, If it is the case that the manufacture of paper used in the composition of post cards, which has till recently formed an important branch of industry in Devonshire, has now been transferred to Germany; and, if so, what are the reasons for this transfer?
  MR. FAWCETT: The matter referred to is one that belongs to the Inland Revenue Department, and not to the Post Office; but I have ascertained that the Commissioners of Inland Revenue obtain the post-cards in a complete shape by contract at a certain price, and that it is open to the contractors to get their material where they please. It appears that complaints were made to the contractors as to the quality of the cards, and that in consequence of the inferiority of the article they discontinued getting paper for the thin cards from Devonshire, finding they could obtain more suitable paper from Germany, whence they have always drawn their supplies of thick paper.

  THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC—WELSH COLONY AT CHUPAT.
  MR. JONES-PARRYasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Her Majesty's Government are in possession of intelligence as to the political disabilities imposed by the Argentine Government on the Welsh Colonists of Chupat, in Patagonia (a community of 1,200 British subjects), by evading conferring on the Settlement he legal municipal local administration to which it is entitled by the Agreement entered into in the year 1864; and, whether this is a case in which the good officers of Her Majesty's accredited representative at Buenos Ayres might be advantageously employed?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Her Majesty's Government are in daily expectation of receiving the Report called for in March last, which Her Majesty's Minister at Buenos Ayres has telegraphed that he has already forwarded. Mr. Monson has already called the attention of the Argentine Government to the matter; but until the He-port is received it is not possible to say what steps Her Majesty's Government may be able to take.

  THE MAGISTRACY (IRELAND)—ROAD SESSIONS, BALLYCONNELL, CO. CAVAN.
  MR. BIGGARasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that at the road sessions held in Ballyconnell, county Cavan, on 19th June, the presiding magistrates being Captain Roe and Mr. David Finlay, a contract was agreed to at one shilling per perch for repairing a road in the neighbourhood of Blacklion, while another person tendered at nine-pence per perch; and, have the ratepayers any remedy if dissatisfied with the contract entered into?
  MR. TREVELYAN: I am informed that the facts are as stated. The magistrates, on the recommendation of the County Surveyor, gave the contract to the former contractor, who had always kept the road well. They considered the lower tender, offered by a less experienced man, to be too low. The Presentment Sessions are not bound to accept the lowest tender; and I am advised that they could not be interfered with.
  MR. HEALY: Is it not a fact that the principle of the Grand Jury is to accept the lowest tender?
  MR. TREVELYAN: I am told there are cases in which they accept a higher tender.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)—ELY DISPENSARY, CO. FERMANAGH—USE OF BUILDING FOR PARTY PURPOSES.
  MR. HEALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the answer to the Question respecting the meeting of the Orange Lodge in the Ely Dispensary, county Fermanagh, was made on information supplied by three Orangemen, viz. Dr. Parke, Mr. John Trotter, District Master, and Mr. Nixon; is it the fact that the ratepayers rent the entire premises,
  1864
  and not merely a portion, as suggested, have the Orange flags, uniform regalia or band instruments been stored in the same room that the Dispensary Committee meet in, how many rooms or stories does the building contain, by whom was the "agreement" with the landlord made, why does the Local Government Board doubt their right to interfere if it be the fact that the Caretaker, elected three times by the Dispensary Committee, was objected to by the Local Government Board, and would the Board sanction the employment of the dispensaries throughout the three southern provinces as storerooms and meeting-places for the National party?
  MR. TREVELYAN: The answer was made on information supplied, through the Local Government Board, by Dr. Parke, the Medical Officer, and by the Clerk of the Union. I am not aware whether Dr. Parke is an Orangeman. I also had information from the Police. As I stated before, the Guardians have been asked to report more in detail as to the terms of the agreement under which the building occupied as the Dispensary is held by them. They will have the matter before them at their meeting on the 8th of this month, and until they report after that meeting I can give no more particulars on the subject.

  TRUST INVESTMENTS—COLONIAL GOVERNMENT STOCKS.
  SIR WILLIAM M'ARTHURasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, considering the security now offered and the position held in the Money Market by Colonial Government Stocks, opportunity may be afforded to trustees by means of such legislative enactments, and under such restrictions, as may be necessary to make investments therein?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. OHILDERS): In reply to my hon. Friend, I have to say that this Question concerns the Lord Chancellor far more than myself, and that I propose to consult him on the subject during the Recess. Of course, in extending the powers of Trustees to invest in Stocks not named in the settlements under which they act, regard could only be had to the intentions of the settlor; and if the settlements are modern—that is to say, of later date than the Stocks themselves—it would not be proper to allow investments in them. Great care would

  1865
  also have to be taken not to extend these powers of investment in Colonial Stocks in the interest of the Colonial Governments.

  QUEENSLAND—ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS.
  MR. SAMUEL SMITHasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether his attention has been called to the fact that, whereas great exertions are being made by emigration agents and others to stimulate the immigration into Queensland, there is a great want of employment there, and great distress among the newly imported immigrants; whether the position of young women who have been induced to emigrate there is one of hardship and danger; whether his attention has been called to the following statement, in a letter to Mr. T. Pierce, recently returned from Queensland:—
  "It is very painful to see so many of the immigrants weeping like children, not knowing where to turn, thinking of the home in England, which they once had; they saw their mistake."
  and, whether he has any information showing that the statements of Mr. T. Pierce are well founded or not?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: The only official information we have of the matters to which my hon. Friend's Question relates is contained in the Immigration Correspondence laid before the Parliament of Queensland. I find in those Papers that at the beginning of 1882 the Queensland Government decided to increase the moneys voted for promoting immigration, and in November of last year the Governor informs the Executive Council that there is a large demand for single women as domestic servants, and a considerable demand for single men, especially of the class of farm labourers. In January of this year I find the Agent General writing from London to the Colonial Secretary, and saying that on questioning the immigrants he ascertained that a great many were going to join friends already in the Colony, who, in all cases, had sent home encouraging accounts. Our official information does not, therefore, bear out the statements of the letter referred to, and which my hon. Friend has been good enough to let me read in full. I can, however, throw out a suggestion
  1866
  which may, perhaps, reconcile those conflicting views. There has been recently, both in Queensland and New South Wales, a most severe drought, with the result of driving into the towns many labourers who were thrown out of work. But the drought, I am glad to say, is over, and the inconvenience and suffering only of a temporary character.

  POST OFFICE —APPOINTMENT OF SURVEYORS' CLERKS.
  MR. HEALYasked the Postmaster General, How many officers from English offices were, during the past ten years, appointed to the position of surveyor's clerk or acting surveyor's clerk in Ireland; how many officers from such offices are still in such capacities in Ireland; and, whether these promotions in the Post Office Service are reciprocal between England and Ireland; and, if so, how many Irish officers have been transferred to England as surveyor's clerks, or acting surveyor's clerks, during the same period, and how many Irish officers are at present in such positions in England?
  MR. FAWCETT: If the hon. Member means to describe by the terms "English" and "Irish" the nationality of the officers referred to in his Question, I am unable to afford him any information, as it is not the practice of the Department, nor do I think that it should be, to make any appointments on the ground of nationality. The appointments to surveyors' clerkships are made by selection by the Postmaster General of the fittest person from among those who apply for the post in answer to notification of the vacancy addressed to the whole of the Service. If, however, the hon. Member regards as English and Irish the officers who received their first appointment to the Service in England and Ireland respectively, I may say that, in the past 10 years, six officers, originally appointed to English offices, have been transferred to Ireland, three of whom still remain there; and that one officer has been transferred from Ireland to England, where he continues to be employed.
  MR. HEALY: Can the right hon. Gentleman account for the fact that, while six gentlemen were promoted in England, only one was promoted in Ireland? Are there no suitable persons in Ireland to fill the offices there?
  MR. FAWCETT: I cannot account for it. Some of the appointments were made by my Predecessors. I have no doubt they, like myself, always endeavoured to select the best men.
  MR. HEALY: On the Estimates, Mr. Speaker, I will call attention to the fact that all the best men are Englishmen.

  THE MAURITIUS — MR. NAPIER BROOME, ACTING GOVERNOR.
  MR. WHITLEYasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he has any objection to lay upon the Table of the House the Correspondence relative to the illegal payment to Mr. Napier Broome while Acting Governor at Mauritius?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY, in reply, said, it would be inconvenient to lay the Correspondence on the Table at the present time, because, as he told the hon. Member on the 16th of last month, the matter had been referred to the Government of the Mauritius for further consideration, and when the result of that reference was known the Secretary of State would consider whether he could give the Papers. Meanwhile, he would be happy to show the hon. Member the Correspondence at the Colonial Office.

  NATIONAL EDUCATION—YETMINSTER AND LLANSILIN SCHOOL BOARDS.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTONasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council, Whether the School Board of the parish of Yetminster have passed a resolution to the effect that there is no necessity for building a new school because the present school, conducted under voluntary management, is sufficient for the requirements of the parish, and have asked for a public inquiry; whether the Department has declined to grant an inquiry on the ground that the school, being a voluntary school, was proof of its insufficiency for the purposes of elementary education in a parish where there was a School Board; and, whether, under the circumstances, he will now grant an inquiry, and if the present accommodation is found to be "sufficient, efficient, and suitable," he will refrain from insisting that an additional school shall be built at the cost and against the wishes of the ratepayers and the local authority?
  MR. MUNDELLA: A School Board was set up for the parish of Yetminster on the application of the Vicar and Managers of the Church of England School, who [declared their inability to carry it on owing to the lack of local support. They desired to transfer the school to the School Board, and steps were taken with this object. Before these were completed the Vicar died, and the new Vicar did not proceed with the transfer of the school, and wished to carry it on as a Voluntary School, and the School Board passed the resolution referred to. These are the facts of the case, and there is no question for public inquiry. The question is whether the duty of supplying the necessary School accommodation devolves upon the school Board which has been set up for the purpose, and this question has been referred to the Law Officers of the Crown.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTONasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council, Whether it is a fact that the School Board of the parish of Llansilin, in the county of Denbigh, demanded a a public inquiry in a case where the parish was aggrieved by a decision of the Educational Department, and that the Department offered to institute an inquiry only on the condition that each member of the Llansilin School Board should sign a bond for £300 to cover the expenses of the inquiry; and, whether there is any section of any Statute which gives the Department authority to insist on such a condition from members of a School Board?
  MR. MUNDELLA: The Department has followed the course described in the hon. Member's Question. They are advised that this course is in accordance with section 73 (4) of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, and is in conformity with the practice of the Department. I have already explained, in answer to a previous Question, that £300 is a mere nominal sum.
  SIR MASSEY LOPESasked whether, in a similar case, the Department had not recently officially intimated that a bond for £50 would be sufficient?
  MR. MUNDELLAsaid, the amount of the required indemnity would depend on the size of the parish and the nature of the inquiry. The cost in a town would differ from that in rural districts.
  SIR MASSEY LOPESasked whether the right hon. Gentleman, would make

  1869
  £50 the sum for the future in rural parishes?
  MR. MUNDELLAsaid, he would consider the matter.

  LAW AND POLICE-STEAMBOAT ROBBERIES.
  MR. MOOREasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether his attention has been called to the case of Frederick Dale, convicted at the Liverpool Police Court, on the 6th of June, of robbing a respectable servant girl on the Channel Steamer between Dublin and Liverpool; and, whether it is a fact that no separate accommodation is provided for women in the steerage of these steamers?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: The case referred to by the hon. Member was dealt with by the Liverpool Police Court, and in the ordinary course would not come under the notice of the Board of Trade. I cannot state positively whether any separate accommodation is provided for worn en in the steerage of the steamers; but I think it unlikely, having regard to the size of the steamers and the length of the voyage. The Board of Trade have power to require separate accommodation for women only in emigrant ships.

  LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART—SOUTH KENSINGTON EXHIBITIONS (EXPENSES).
  MR. BIGGARasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council, What is the total amount of money advanced by Parliament towards the expense of holding International Exhibitions at South Kensington; how much, if any part thereof, has been repaid; and, with regard to the balance, what are the trusts or conditions on which it is at present held by the Exhibition Commissioners, and what measures are adopted to insure the faithful carrying out of such trusts or conditions?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I have made inquiries, and I cannot find that Parliament ever advanced any money towards the expense of holding International Exhibitions at South Kensington.

  EGYPT—DR. CROOKSHANK'S REPORT.
  MR. BOURKEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Report of Dr. Crookshank, mentioned in Mr. Clifford Lloyd's letter
  1870
  to The Times of the 30th of June, has been received by Her Majesty' Government, and will be produced?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Further Papers on Egyptian affairs will be presented to Parliament, and will include Dr. Crookshank's Report. I am not prepared to lay it as a separate Paper, as this course is inconvenient, and was objected to by right hon. Gentlemen opposite in the debate on the last Vote of Censure.

  MOROCCO—PRISONS.
  MR. W. J. CORBETasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If his attention has been called to a letter, in The Globe of the 20th June, describing the manner in which money is wrung from the debtors of British subjects in Morocco, in which it is stated—
  "The prisoners are chained together at night like wild beasts, each unhappy prisoner being provided with an iron collar round his neck, through which the chain passes, and at sunset they are crowded into dark dungeons, where they are devoured by vermin," &c.;
  and, whether he will cause an independent inquiry to be made into the charges?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: The attention of Her Majesty's Government was called to the state of the prison at Tangier in the course of last year. Her Majesty's Minister in Morocco reported on the subject, and explained the steps which he had from time to time taken to improve its condition. The Report will be laid, and Sir John Hay will be instructed to report on the statement contained in the letter in The Globe of the 20th of June referred to by the hon. Member.

  LAW AND JUSTICE — ASSIZES — PLYMOUTH AND EXETER.
  MR. STEWART MACLIVERasked Mr. Attorney General, If the scheme for the assize circuits, recently laid upon the Table of the House, is to be deemed conclusive, or is still open to revision; and, whether he has considered if Plymouth, with law courts provided, and double the population of Exeter, might share with that city in the assize business of the county?
  MR. H. S. NORTHCOTEsaid, before the Question was answered, he wished to ask why Exeter, which was far more

  1871
  central than Plymouth, should be abandoned?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES),in reply, said, that, in the arrangement of Circuits, the Judges had given the most careful consideration to the claims of Plymouth; but, considering that the Assizes had been previously held at Exeter, and that that city was in the centre of the county, whereas Plymouth was at one extreme end, they had not been able to recommend a change of Assize towns which would deprive Exeter of its vested interests, and would necessitate witnesses and suitors being brought much longer distances to the Assizes.

  EGYPT—ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS—MR. CLIFFORD LLOYD.
  MR. COLERIDGE KENNARDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether, with reference to the Letter addressed to The Times by Mr. Clifford Lloyd, in regard to the present critical condition of internal affairs in Egypt, he can state to the House the grounds upon which Mr. Clifford Lloyd was suddenly withdraw from his post, and from the further development of such administrative reforms as are requisite to the existence of social order and governmental stability in Egypt? In putting the Question, the hon. Member said, he had done so entirely on his own responsibility, and without consultation with anyone; he should like to know whether anyone else had been appointed to carry on the merciful work which Mr. Clifford Lloyd had commenced.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: May I interpret this Question by asking whether a combination of brutal ill-temper and small mental power rendered Mr. Clifford Lloyd utterly unfit for his position in Egypt; whether his action did not tend to retard rather than advance reforms in Egypt; and whether his leave of absence was not in reality a dismissal, rendered necessary by his utter incapacity?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Mr. Clifford Lloyd left Egypt owing to certain painful differences of opinion between him and various high officials, both English and Egyptian. I must demur, however, to the accuracy of the term employed in the later part of the Question of the hon. Member for Salis-
  1872
  bury (Mr. C. Kennard). Her Majesty's Government have not assumed, and do not intend to assume, the entire internal administration of Egypt. They have claimed, and will continue to claim, the right to advise on all important subjects, and that that advice shall be attended to both as regards things and persons.
  MR. JUSTIN HUNTLY M'CARTHY: May I ask the noble Lord why Mr. Clifford Lloyd was quickly removed from his position in Egypt in deference to Egyptian opinion, and why he was retained so long in his position in Ireland in defiance to the public opinion of Ireland?
  [No reply.]

  ARMY—MILITARY EXAMINATIONS.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (for Sir JOHN LUBBOCK)asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it was intended to make any, and, if so, what, changes in the proposed regulations for Military examinations, as recommended by the Royal Society and the British Association?
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTER: My hon. Friend will, perhaps, permit me to give the Secretary of State's answer to this inquiry. The regulations for military examinations have been amended in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Society and the British Association. The regulations are now ready, and will be published shortly. The Secretary of State desires me to add that the new scheme will not be brought into operation before the winter examination of next year.

  EGYPT—THE CONFERENCE.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, At what date the Plenipotentiaries intend to resume the labours of the Conference?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): In reply to the hon. Gentleman, I have to say that an inquiry into the details of Egyptian finance is now being actively proceeded with by the financial delegates attached to the Plenipotentiaries. The latter will not, I believe, meet until further progress has been made with this inquiry.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked whether the Plenipotentiaries were not

  1873
  able to discuss questions other than financial in the same way as the House of Commons was in the habit of doing?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): The Conference was appointed in respect of the finance of Egypt only.

  STRAITS SETTLEMENTS—THE RAJAH OF TENOM—THE CREW OF THE "NISERO."
  MR. STOREYasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he can explain how it is that no certain news of the crew of the Nisero was received between the 26th of April and the 27th of June, a period of two months; the news received in each of these instances being, moreover, nearly a mouth old; whether he will state in detail what means have been taken during the past two months, and are now being taken, to keep up communication with the crew; what are the actual steps which have been taken by the British Government during the past two months to secure the release of the captives, and what steps are now being taken; what steps have been taken by the Dutch Government since their expedition in January, and what steps are now being taken by it; and, whether a claim will be made against the Dutch Government on behalf of the impoverished families of the dead and living members of the crew; and, if so, why the British Government does not now make a contribution to these poor people at the time when they absolutely need it?
  MR. BROGDENasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the demands of the Rajah of Tenom relating to the crew of the Nisero consists in part of matters of an International character which Her Majesty's Government could not entertain; whether, having regard to the active interchange of views now proceeding between Her Majesty's Government and the Netherlands Government, and the decisions to be taken thereon, Her Majesty's Government have obtained a distinct assurance that the Netherlands Government is already prepared to act at once and decisively; and, whether, if necessary, such action will be supported by Her Majesty's Government?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: At page 8 of the Parliamentary Paper,
  1874
  Netherlands, No. 2, of 1884, the hon. Member will find a telegram from Commander Bickford, of the Pegasus, dated May 20, which seems to have escaped his attention. It states that communications had been opened with the crew in the middle of May. The Report of Commander Bickford on the whole subject, including his attempts to secure the release of the captives and the unsuccessful transmission of provisions to them, for three months, has been received and will be laid on the Table. It also contains an account of the action of the Dutch authorities. At page 79 the hon. Member will find an account of the general arrangements made by Mr. Maxwell at the close of his mission in March for keeping up communications with the crew. The Pegasus left for Tenom on May 1, and returned on May 20 after the communications above referred to. She again left for Tenom on June 26 with the same object. In regard to the present position of this question, as it is the subject of urgent and almost daily communications between Her Majesty's Government and the Netherlands Minister, it is not in my power to reply at present to the hon. Member, while, at the same time, I hope he will believe that I fully understand his anxiety for early information. The Rajah of Tonom has been informed that he will be held responsible for the lives of the crew. In regard to the fifth portion of the hon. Member's Question, the hon. Member can, I hardly think, expect Her Majesty's Government to give a reply to the first part of it during the discussions which are being carried on between the two Governments, while, in regard to the concluding portion of it, I think the hon. Member has forgotten the reply I gave to his Colleague on Friday last, and which his hon. Colleague has already acted on.
  MR. BOURKEasked whether the Rajah of Tenom had been told that he would be held responsible to the Dutch Government or to the English Government?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: The instructions were sent to the Governor of the Straits Settlements, and the communnications were from Her Majesty's Government.
  MR. STOREYASKED whether it might be hoped that the Dutch and English Governments would come to a conclusion on this matter about the same time as

  1875
  they received news of the death of the whole of these men?
  [No reply.]
  MR. BROGDENsaid, that the noble Lord had not answered the first part of his Question.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: There is no doubt that questions of a serious international character are involved in the Correspondence which is now going on.

  EGYPT (EVENTS IN THE SOUDAN)—GENERAL GORDON.
  MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether any news has been heard of General Gordon?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Nothing direct has been heard from General Gordon since the 10th of April. On June 28, Lord John Hay reported from Suakin that Mason Bey reported from Massowah that the last news of Gordon was on the 27th of April, in a letter to the Mudir of Kassala.

  CONTAGIOUS DISEASES (ANIMALS) ACT—FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.
  MR. J. W. BARCLAYasked Mr. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Whether it is the case that a serious outbreak of foot and month disease has taken place in Yorkshire; if so, if he will state the circumstances; and, if ascertained, the origin of the outbreak; and, what measures the Privy Council and local authority have taken to pro-vent the spread of the disease?
  MR. DODSON, in reply, said, that he regretted to say that information had been received by the Department that foot-and-mouth disease had broken out on a farm in Yorkshire—five cattle out of a herd of 126 were reported infected; there were also 451 sheep on the farm. An Inspector of the Department had been sent down to the spot to give advice to the local bodies. A large area had been declared infected. The local authority had power to slaughter in case they should find it expedient. The origin of the outbreak could not at present be ascertained.

  CORRUPT PRACTICES AT ELECTIONS — SUSPENSION OF CORRUPT BOROUGHS.
  BARON HENRY DE WORMSasked Mr. Attorney General, Whether he in-
  1876
  tends to introduce in the present Session a Bill, similar to those passed in previous Sessions, providing for the suspension of the writs for boroughs in which corrupt practices have been declared by a Royal Commission to have prevailed extensively at the last Parliamentary election?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): Yes, Sir.

  PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) ACT, 1882—SEIZURE OF SEDITIOUS DOCUMENTS—MR. J. F. O'REGAN.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMONDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether, in view of his statement that the documents recently seized from Mr. J. F. O'Regan, of Durrus Banty, were believed to be of a seditious character, he will cause Mr. O'Regan to be arrested; whilst, if the said documents have been found not to be seditious or illegal, if he will cause them to be immediately returned to Mr. O'Regan; and, whether it is a fact that, on the evening of the 15th June, Mr. Starkie, of the Criminal Investigation Department, called upon Mr. O'Regan, and warned him to leave Ireland; and, if this be so, to state by what right Mr. Starkie undertook such a course?
  MR. TREVELYAN: I am advised that the documents seized were of a treasonable and rebellious character, and that they were properly seized. The question whether any proceedings should be taken against Mr. O'Regan is one for the Attorney General to settle, and he advises me that he is not at present in a position to decide. The visit of Mr. Starkie, who was accompanied by another Constabulary officer, to Mr. O'Regan's house, was in connection with the documents found there. He did not warn Mr. O'Regan to leave Ireland; but in the course of a conversation Mr. O'Regan told him that he intended soon to return to America.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the documents seized were documents connected with the Irish National League of the United States; whether it is the practice of the Irish Executive to leave at liberty a man on whom seditious documents were found; and whether the reason for these proceedings was simply because Mr. O'Regan is an Irish-American, a class of person

  1877
  for whom the Irish Government has no affection?
  MR. TREVELYANasked for Notice of the Question.

  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (IRELAND) —PARTY EMBLEMS AT ARMAGH—CATHOLIC EMBLEMS.
  MR. BERESFORDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether he is aware that at the intermediate examinations in Armagh, the boys were this year examined in a room in the Roman Catholic College, which was conspicuously ornamented by a large crucifix; and, whether the Commissioners had considered whether such a room in an entirely denominational building was unobjectionable in itself, and complied with the Schedule of the Act, which specifies the town hall or other public building suitable for the purpose, and was the figure given in freehand drawing to the junior class the emblem of Irish disaffection, a shield bearing a harp without a crown?
  MR. T. D. SULLIVAN: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers that Question, I would like to know whether the emblem here described as the emblem of Irish disaffection—a shield bearing a harp without the crown—is not largely used in the decoration of the House of Parliament; whether a shield bearing a harp without a crown is not opposite the Speaker's Chair, close to the Clock; whether a shield bearing a harp without a crown is not opposite the hon. Member himself on the Gallery over the middle Gangway on the Liberal side of the House; whether it is not to be found oil the Gallery over the Gangway on the Conservative side of the House; whether 30 or 40 such emblems are not to be found on the ceiling of the House; and whether, under these circumstances, the Question of the hon. Member for Armagh is not a combination of bigotry and folly?
  MR. TREVELYAN: The Assistant Commissioners inform me that the room in question has been used as a centre for examination for the last five years. Up to the present year there was also a centre at the Armagh Royal School; but as only a few students from the Royal School came forward this year, the hall at St. Patrick's College was sufficiently commodious for the examination of all the boys. It was, moreover, placed at
  1878
  the disposal of the Board free of charge, and was the only available room which could be had without payment. No complaint has been made to the Commissioners with regard to the existence of religious emblems. Had such a representation been made, they would have taken steps to have them removed or covered in accordance with the usual practice. The figure given in one grade in freehand drawing was a harp and a shield; and it was selected by the Art Master of Hammersmith Training College. I have no doubt he meant the design as a compliment to Ireland. As far as I am able to use my eyes, the Question of the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) must be answered in the affirmative.
  MR. HEALY: With regard to the crucifix, may I ask whether there were any Jews examined to whom the emblem might be objectionable?
  [No reply.]

  INTESTATE, &c. ESTATES (IRELAND) —ESTATE OF THE LATE MRS. HELEN BLAKE.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORasked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether it is true, as stated in The Freeman's Journal of 26th May last, the Treasury had acceded, or intended to accede, to the intentions expressed by will or otherwise by the late Helen Blake; whether the Treasury is in possession of a card or memorandum upon which the late Helen Blake wrote instructions as to the inscription to be placed upon her tombstone, either in the above form or otherwise; and, whether the Treasury is in possession of any, and what, proof of the marriage of the parents of Helen Blake and of her birth; and, if so, whether they will allow same to be inspected?
  MR. COURTNEY: Under the authority of the Chancery Division, and upon the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, the Treasury have carried out the pecuniary intentions of the deceased in this case so far as they could with any probability be ascertained. It is the fact that a note as to an inscription on her husband's tombstone was found among her papers, with an incomplete addition relating to herself. It is precisely because, after much inquiry, no one has been able to produce any proof

  1879
  of the marriage of the parents of Mrs. Blake, or of her birth, that the duty of dealing with her property has devolved upon the Treasury.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORasked if a gentleman named Sheridan had a primá facie case of his relation to this lady, would the Treasury allow him to inspect the documents in this case for the purpose of negativing or affirming his statement?
  MR. COURTNEYsaid, they had an enormous number of applications from Sheridans and Blakes who persuaded themselves that they were intimately connected with this lady. If this gentleman, whom he did not know, could identify himself as being connected with this lady, he would be entitled to all the assistance that they could give him.
  COLONEL NOLAN: Would the hon. Gentleman say that some of the property in question will be spent for the purpose of discovering the relatives of this lady?
  MR. COURTNEYsaid, that could not be done.

  LABOURERS' (IRELAND) ACT—THE SELECT COMMITTEE.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Why, at a period so advanced in the Session, so much time has been allowed to lapse between the promise and the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the working of the Labourers' Act of last year?
  MR. TREVELYAN: The Government have been very anxious to complete the arrangements for this Committee setting to work as soon as possible. The difficulties in the way of completion do not arise on this side of this House, and I hope they will be got over in a few days.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, he interpreted the right hon. Gentleman's answer to mean that the difficulty arose on the Opposition side of the House; and, if that were correct, he wished to ask the senior Whip of the Conservative Party whether he objected to the nomination upon the Committee of Members belonging to the Irish Party?
  MR. TREVELYANreplied, that his noble Friend (Lord Richard Grosvenor) and himself would use their best endeavours, and he hoped they should be able to arrange the matter within a very short time.

  EVICTIONS (IRELAND)—EVICTIONS AT GWEEDORE, CO. DONEGAL.
  MR. SEXTONasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If his attention has been called to the fact that a number of families of tenant farmers, including a large proportion of old and infirm persons and infants, were, on the 1st instant, evicted from their homes at Gweedore, county Donegal, at the suit of Mr. Wybrant Olpherto, chairman of the Dunfanaghy Board of Guardians; whether it is the fact that notice of the intention to evict was not given, to the local relieving officer, and that he was not present at the evictions to afford relief and shelter to the destitute; whether an application to the Board of Guardians by the Rev. James M'Fadden, P.P. Gweedore, as a warden of the Union, on behalf of the evicted families, was disregarded; and, what steps will be taken to assure due relief of the evicted, and to exact the appropriate penalty for a breach of the Law?
  MR. TREVELYAN: It is a fact that a number of persons, most of them owing two years' rent, have been evicted in the district mentioned. It is not the case that notice was not given to the relieving officer. The requisite notice was given to him. The law does not require the relieving officer to be present at evictions. His duty in the circumstances is regulated by Section 4 of the Act 11 & 12 Vict. c. 47, which provides that applications may be made to him by persons who become destitute through being dispossessed. I am aware that the Rev. Mr. M'Fadden did make some application to the Guardians, but I have not had time to ascertain from that remote district any particulars with regard to it. I do not know whether it reached the relieving officer, or whether, if it did reach him, it was one he could comply with. If applied to, it would be his duty to afford relief until he should obtain the directions of the Guardians, and the Guardians have power, if they think fit, to give outdoor relief for one month. Until I receive a fuller report, I cannot say whether there was any neglect of duty on the part of the relieving officer. The Local Government Board have drawn the special attention of the Guardians and of the relieving officer to the case, and have also called upon their Inspectors to report.
  MR. SEXTONasked the right hon. Gentleman, whether he was aware that these evicted families were now lying in the ditches, that the helplessness of their condition was intensified by the fact that not one of them could speak or understand a word of English, and accordingly could not make application to the relieving officer; whether the Government would themselves take immediate steps to ascertain the condition of these people, and afford them relief, or induce the Board of Guardians to give the relief allowed by law?
  MR. TREVELYAN: The Government will take all such steps as they are allowed by law to take to induce the Guardians to give these people four weeks' relief. I do not wish to pronounce any opinion on the conduct of those concerned on either side; but, however painful the circumstances, it is obvious the Government cannot depart from their legal duties and powers in the matter.

  SHERIFF COURT HOUSES (SCOTLAND) AMENDMENT BILL.
  MR. PRESTON BRUCEasked the Lord Advocate, Whether he will postpone for a week the Consideration of the Sheriff Court Houses (Scotland) Amendment Bill, and in the meantime cause the Bill to be reprinted, so as to show the Amendments introduced in Committee; and, if he will promise to take the Report stage at such an hour as will admit of a full discussion?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR): Yes, Sir; I shall postpone consideration of this Bill for a week, and in the meantime see that the Amendments are put down so that they may be seen. I hope that before that time I shall be able to suggest some further Amendments which may go very far to meet certain objections which are taken to the Bill. I also hope to be able to take the Report stage at such an hour as to admit of discussion.

  CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES — NON-EFFECTIVE AND CHARITABLE SERVICES—MR. CORRY CONNELLAN'S PENSION.
  MR. HEALYasked the Secretary to the Treasury, In what portion of the Estimates for 1884–5 does the pension of £436 11 s. 4d. to Corry Connellan, given on page 545 of last year's Votes,
  1882
  appear; will he lay upon the Table a Copy of the Treasury Minute of 1st October, 1868, authorising the allowance; and, as the pension is said to have been granted on the ground of "age," can he give Connellan's present age, and state where he now is, or where he draws his pension?
  MR. COURTNEYin reply, said, this pension was included in the Irish section of the Superannuation Vote, and the hon. Member would find it at page 472 of the Estimates. The Treasury Minute in question was purely formal, and there would be no use in laying it on the Table. The pensioner was now 77 and a-half years old, and his pension was drawn in Ireland.
  MR. HEALYasked the Prime Minister if he was aware that the Corry Connellan mentioned was the person who was obliged to quit Dublin some 15 years ago, because a warrant was out against him for an unnatural offence; that he had been in receipt of a pension from the Treasury of £436; that his name appeared in the Estimates until last year; that this year it suddenly disappeared; that its disappearance synchronized with the exposures in Dublin last October, as, of course, those who had the preparation of the Estimates must have known the pension would be attacked in Parliament; and whether the Treasury meant to continue the payment of £436 per annum to a man who was beyond Her Majesty's Dominions, and who fled from justice because of an unnatural offence?
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, the Question had not in the first instance been addressed to him; but if the hon. Gentleman would give Notice, he would answer it.

  EGYPT—THE CONFERENCE.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, In the event of the Conference not arriving at a conclusion with regard to the financial proposals laid before it, will there be anything to submit to the judgment of Parliament?
  MR. GLADSTONE: If I look at the literal sense of the terms of this Question, I shall have some difficulty in replying to it, because I think it would be hardly decorous for me at the time when the Powers of Europe have met together, deliberately and advisedly, for

  1883
  the purpose of performing certain work, and arriving at certain conclusions, to presume, even hypothetically, that they will leave that work undone; but I think I can perhaps meet the substance of the Question by saying that when the financial matters in regard to Egypt have been disposed of, and when, therefore, the whole subject will become ripe for discussion, Her Majesty's Government will think it their duty to forward by any means in their power any desire which the right hon. Gentleman may then think fit to entertain for discussion and a vote on the subject.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Then, in that case, there will be nothing proposed by the Government?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I cannot look so far into the future. I do not think it would be quite consistent with the respect I owe to the Powers assembled in Conference.
  MR. PULESTONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he can conveniently state that the special attention of the Conference will be directed to Article 3 of the Decree of November 1876, confirmed by the Law of Liquidation, which sets forth that the annuity necessary for the service (interest and sinking fund) of the Preference Debt will form the first charge on the Revenues of the Railways and of the Port of Alexandria, and "will remain, in every eventuality, the first liability of the Commission of the Public Debt;" whether his attention has been called to the following remarks of the Right honourable gentleman the Member for Ripon, in the Preface to the English edition of the said Decree, viz.:—
  "I am perfectly aware that all these regulations may be broken through by an arbitrary act, but that arbitrary act will have to be performed as an overt act, in defiance of public opinion and of the Powers whom the Viceroy has summoned to assist him in carrying out these reforms;"
  and, whether he had considered them in the proposals he has made?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, the two passages quoted by the hon. Member have certainly been under the consideration of Her Majesty's Government. They are important passages, and they have, with many other important pieces of evidence, received the fullest consideration of the Government before the Government determined what financial
  1884
  plans they would propose to the Conference.
  MR. PULESTON: What will be the position of these questions if the Conference does not conclude its labours before the Prorogation of Parliament?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am afraid I cannot add anything to what I have said; but it must be clearly understood that if, when the matter is completed, which must be by the adjournment of the Conference, it be desired to have a discussion or vote on this subject, it will be the duty of the Government to forward that desire.
  MR. PULESTON: The right hon. Gentleman misunderstood me. I meant, in the event of the Conference being still in session when the House adjourns.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am not prepared to say that the Session will not outlive the Conference. My impression is that it will.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORasked whether all these arrangements with reference to the Preference and other debts made in 1876, chiefly under the guidance of the right hon. Member for Ripon, were not founded on an estimate of the Revenue of Egypt, which afterwards proved to be largely in excess of the probabilities of the case?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I do not think there would be any advantage in entering retrospectively on a discussion of that kind at the present moment. The whole of these matters are before a higher tribunal, and I would rather avoid any discussion of them now.

  PARLIAMENT—ORDER OF PUBLIC BUSINESS.
  MR. J. A. CAMPBELLasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he will undertake that the Universities (Scotland) Bill shall not be brought on for Second Reading except at such a reasonable hour as will secure for it the opportunity of a full discussion?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I can answer the Question of the hon. Member, I think, in the affirmative, by saying that proper Notice will be given, and I may, therefore, say at the same time what we propose at present in regard to the procedure. The operation of the vote by which the House of Commons gave Morning Sittings during May and June for the promotion of Government Busi-

  1885
  ness, has, as the House knows, terminated, and we do not propose to renew the application to the House for Morning Sittings, at any rate, at present. But we propose, viewing the period of the year, to ask the House—and I will give Notice for to-morrow—to give precedence to Government Orders on Tuesdays. In case the House accedes to that request, and in case the debate upon the London Government Bill terminates, as I hope it may, to-morrow — [Laughter and cheers]—well, I hope I may be allowed to give my imagination so much licence as to suppose that possibility—in that case, we shall take the Scotch Universities Bill as the first Order on Tuesday, and the Coinage Bill as the second Order.
  MR. T. A. DICKSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Upon what day the Second Reading of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Bill will be taken?
  MR. H. H. FOWLERasked whether, having regard to the limited time devoted this Session to the Civil Service Estimates and to the fact that two Votes of Credit had already been taken, the Prime Minister would name an early day for resuming the consideration of those Estimates?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I will do so. We propose to devote Monday to the Army Estimates, and Thursday to the Civil Service Estimates, and we shall do the best we can to get forward with them. With respect to the Irish Bill, I am not able to make any arrangement during the coming week, and the present situation of public affairs generally makes me rather unwilling to enter upon any description of arrangements beyond the present week. But at the same time I may, I hope, in the course of next week, be able to give a more positive answer to the hon. Gentleman.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES)—VOLUNTEER SURGEONS.
  DR. FARQUHARSONasked the Secretary of State for War, If Volunteer surgeons can go through a course of training in ambulance drill at the Army Hospital Corps Depôt at Aldershot; and, if they will receive an allowance while attending?
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTER: In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire, I have to say that the Secretary of State for War has already
  1886
  under his consideration various schemes which have been proposed for the improvement of the Volunteer Medical Service, and for the better instruction of Volunteer medical officers in field work. The Secretary of State hopes to deal with these schemes in the autumn, and, among them, he will consider whether effect could be given to the suggestions contained in my hon. Friend's Question.

  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT—REPORT OF THE PURLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether his attention has been called to the Report of the Committee on Public Accounts, pages 7, 8, and 9, in which the methods of transacting business by the Education Department is condemned, especially in the following particulars, viz.:—That the Department maintains that the Education Code is superior to Statute Law (p. 7, s. 45); that money once paid to a school, either illegally or in excess of proper payment, ought not to be recovered (p. 8, s. 48); that the action of the Department has given occasion for a transaction which is, to say the least of it, most unusual (p. 8, s. 50); that a Memorandum prepared by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1881 is neglected (pp. 8 and 9, ss. 54–7); and, whether, in consequence of such Report, he will take steps to prevent the continuance of a system which, according to the opinion of the Committee, is incompatible with the theory and the practice of modern finance?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): My right hon. Friend has asked me to answer this Question. It will be seen, by reference to the proceedings from year to year of the Public Accounts Committee, that the practice of the Treasury is, after receiving the Report of the Committee, to frame a Minute directing the communications which the Treasury thinks necessary to be made to the various spending Departments, and expressing generally the views of the Department on such of the points raised by the Report of the Committee as call for notice. Thus, in the Report of the Public-Accounts Committee in 1882 appears the Treasury Minute on the Committee's Report of the previous year. In accordance with this practice, it will be the

  1887
  duty of the Treasury to take into their serious consideration the extracts from the Report of this Session to which the hon. Gentleman calls attention, and to make such communications as they think necessary thereon to the Education Department. The preparation of this Minute is one of the most serious duties of the Treasury as the Department of Control, and it is not often possible to complete it until towards the end of the year. The Treasury Minute of the Report of the Public Accounts Committee, which has just been presented to Parliament, will be in the hands of the Comptroller and Auditor General before the end of the year, and will be before the Public Accounts Committee on their assembling in the Session of 1885. In the meantime, it would be premature to express an opinion upon portions only of the Committee's last Report, especially as the evidence is not yet printed, and no sufficient opinion can be formed until it has been carefully perused.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTONasked whether these irregularities had been going on during nearly the whole time the present Government had been in Office?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): I cannot express an opinion upon the subject until I have read the evidence.

  SCOTLAND — CROFTERS AND COTTARS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS—REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION.
  MR. BARCLAYasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Government intend taking any step towards carrying out the recommendation of the Crofter's Commission in favour of increased telegraphic facilities; and, in particular, whether the Treasury will reduce, and, in the more pressing cases, dispense with the guarantee now required before providing telegraphic communications in the western islands, Orkney and Shetland?
  MR. COURTNEY: My right hon. Friend has asked me to answer this Question. I am glad to be able to inform my hon. Friend that the substantial recommendations of Lord Napier's Commission upon this point were anticipated. Under arrangements with the Fishery Board, a large proportion of the extensions recommended by that Commission
  1888
  are being carried out, and, in particular, that to Barra, upon which they laid most stress. Looking to the unremunerative character of the Telegraph Service, as a whole, it is scarcely possible to dispense with the guarantee protecting the public from loss; but the amount is reduced to the smallest sum; and if the experience of the present extensions justifies the hopes held out, the traffic over them should go far to relieve the guarantors from liability.

  EGYPT (REORGANIZATION) — CRUELTIES AND ABUSES IN GAOLS.
  MR. GORSTasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether Her Majesty's Government will use their influence with the Egyptian Government to procure an inquiry into the conduct of the Mudir of Tantah, in reference to the alleged cruelties in the gaol at Tantah; and, whether they will, if the justice of the case requires it, take steps to insure his being dismissed from the service of the Egyptian Government and adequately punished?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for calling my attention to this case, because I am glad to say that this Question has been anticipated. There were cruelties and abuses in the gaol at Tantah; but it was not quite certain whether the Mudir was personally implicated. He was certainly responsible, and he was accordingly dismissed some time ago. He was not absolutely dismissed at the moment from the Egyptian service, but was removed to Suakin, where, for a short time, he was Governor. Very shortly after, however, he was removed also from Suakin, and he is not now in the employment of the Egyptian Government.

  LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART—THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
  MR. J. R, YORKE (for Sir ROBERT PEEL)asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether, in pursuance of the assurance that—
  "The Royal Academy will frame documents, to be laid before the House, giving all the information, on every head, that has been given, whether in the form of a Parliamentary Return or in the forms given by the Royal Commission,"
  the Motions for Returns relating to the Royal Academy can now be moved for

  1889
  unopposed, which, at the request of the First Lord of the Treasury, had been so frequently postponed?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, Sir; I am afraid I did not convey clearly enough to the right hon. Baronet that the authorities of the Royal Academy were perfectly willing that all the information which has, on more than one former occasion, been given to the House, should again be given, and they accordingly propose to do that by a spontaneous communication of their own to the Government. That being so, and it being remembered that the Royal Academy has a good deal of independence in its position, I do not think it would be desirable that it should be brought as a subordinate Department of the State under the direct control of this House. Still, the Royal Academy is prepared to show every consideration and courtesy to the House, and I hope the House will not think it necessary to pass orders to the Royal Academy for information which will be submitted to it in a manner more conformable to usage.
  MR. J. R. YORKEgave Notice that the right hon. Baronet would call attention to the subject on an early occasion.

  MERCHANT SHIPPING BILL.
  MR. E. STANHOPEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, If he will now fix a day for the resumption of the Debate on the Merchant Shipping Bill?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: I may remind the hon. Gentleman opposite that in moving the second reading of the Bill, I stated that in view of the circumstances, and especially having regard to the pressure oil the time of the House and on the Government, it would be impossible for me to make any progress with this measure unless I have the hearty and general assent, not only of all Parties in the House, but also of persons interested in the matters dealt with in the Bill. Since then I have been in communication with a good many representative people, both in the House and out of it, and I am informed that some of the representative organizations which were most strongly hostile to the Bill when it was introduced are now desirous that it should be proceeded with in order that the Amendments which have been suggested should be introduced; and in that form, with such further slight
  1890
  modifications as might be carried in Committee, they would be glad to see it passed. Notably I have had communications from Liverpool, and from some of the largest shipowners engaged in trade in London and other ports. Unfortunately, on the other hand, I have received intimation that shipowners, especially in the North-Eastern ports, and on the Clyde, maintain their opposition to the Bill, even in its amended form. I am afraid, therefore, that I could not hope to proceed with the matter unless I were able to give a considerable time to its further discussion. There are two stages which the Bill would have to undergo. First, there is the second reading, and then the Motion for reference to a Grand Committee. I cannot, therefore, anticipate in the circumstances, that it would be possible for the Government to give the time which would be necessary to promote these two stages. Even if we did get so far, the Bill would go to the Grand Committee so late that I am afraid, considering the complexity of the measure, and the time that must be given to the consideration of its details, it would be impossible to return it to the House by the 1st of August, when the Reports from Grand Committees must be before the House. In these circumstances I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Bill must be withdrawn, and when on Monday it comes on I shall move that the Order be discharged.
  MR. GORSTasked whether the right hon. Gentleman and the Government were still of opinion that the present state of the law occasioned an amount of preventible loss of human life at sea?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: Certainly; that is my opinion.
  LORD CLAUD HAMILTONasked whether the right hon. Gentleman would have any proposals to make to the House in regard to the appointment of a Royal Commission on the subject?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: That is a matter which will have the immediate attention of the Government, and at a later stage I hope to be able to state the intentions of the Government.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURasked the Home Secretary, whether he was of opinion, that any Bill which had considerable opposition out-of-doors, and also in that House, and which was, moreover, of a

  1891
  very complex character, was one which it was possible to pass this Session?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to reserve my answer for a few moments.

  STRAITS SETTLEMENTS—THE RAJAH OF TENOM—THE CREW OF THE "NISERO."
  MR. STOREY: On several occasions, in fact on many of the early days of the Session, I painfully attempted to obtain from the Foreign Office some information regarding the captive crew of the Nisero; and I have not been able to satisfy myself, on behalf of those for whom I now speak, that the Foreign Office has exhibited that energy and determination which it ought to have done. On Monday I gave Notice of a series of Questions, expecting that the noble Lord (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) would be able this afternoon to give such an answer as would relieve the intense anxiety which prevails; but I find that the answer which he gave was misleading.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is not in Order in making a statement. [Cries of "Move, move!"]
  MR. STOREY: I will put myself in Order, Sir, by moving the Adjournment of this House in order to discuss a subject of urgent public importance.
  MR. SPEAKER: An hon. Member proposes to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance—namely, that the condition of a British crew now captive and in imminent danger of death in Sumatra, and the dilatoriness of the Foreign Office in taking effectual steps for their release.
  But the pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. SPEAKER called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than Forty Members having accordingly risen in their places,
  MR. STOREYsaid: I should not have taken this course this evening were it not for the extreme anxiety with which the friends of the imprisoned men are filled. Let anyone who think I act improperly listen to the following extract from a letter received from the father of a young boy now in prison in
  1892
  Sumatra, and when he has heard that, I venture to think he will not blame me for the step I have deemed it my duty to take. That gentleman says—
  "The authorities of the Foreign Office seem to delight in mystification and delay. One feels almost heart-broken to think of the waste of precious time, and that while the officials are complimenting each other the captives are perishing."
  If I thought that any action of mine would operate against the captives I would be very glad to preserve silence, as I have done on many occasions. But what are the facts? It is now 232 days since those men were first brought into captivity. For two months they were on the coast, and since then they have never been for more than a night or two above 12 miles distant from the shore. That shore is within three days' sail of a British establishment with a naval and military force, and notwithstanding that we have been without information respecting those men for months together. Once during that long period they have been in absolute want of food. The only news we have been able to obtain is that first one and then three of them are dead. Then, curiously enough, the moment news of this serious importance comes to the House and the country, we have increased action on the part of the Foreign Office; but whilst no news came there was no action. I freely admit that this is a difficult and delicate question, and I would not simply stand here to find fault with the Government if I thought that our officials had committed no more than an error of judgment. But I find, after a laborious examination of the Papers, that our officials in England have ignored the opinions and well-considered views of the officials on the spot, and neglected to take any action as advised by them. In making these observations I hope it will be understood that I make no accusations against our officials in the East. On the contrary, I am bound to admit that whether they be civil, military, or naval authorities, every one of them has exhibited enterprize and energy which I should wish to see imitated in this country. At the very earliest stage of all, the naval officer there, with a courage which one cannot sufficiently admire, proposed to cut the Gordian knot by landing his sailors and marines to rescue the men. One of our civil officers admits that if that had been done at the

  1893
  time it was proposed, the result would probably have been much, more satisfactory than have been the attempts since made by the Government of England on behalf of the crew. But methods familiar to Blake and Nelson are out of fashion in these mild and philanthropic days. We can apparently afford expeditions to deliver ruffians and convicts on the Coast of the Red Sea; but when men of our own kin are kept in captivity until they die off one by one like flies, then we realize the impropriety of using force to rescue those of our own blood. The Foreign Office made a mistake in the latter days of last year. I am not going to press the error of judgment strongly against them, because everyone may err. But what they do is this—instead of believing this was an English matter to be dealt with by the English Government, they leave the matter to be dealt with by the Dutch Government. Now, if they had done that under the advice of the officials on the spot I would not consider them to. blame; as a matter of fact they were warned, not by one, but by every official on the spot, that that precise method would result in failure. On November 24, Consul Kennedy wrote that there would be a chance of the surrender of the crew to the British, but not to the Dutch Government. On December 26, Lloyd's agent said, "Dutch powerless." On December 13, Governor Weld said, "The Dutch cannot get the men," and therefore he recommended that the Government should try direct negotiations. The Government, instead of accepting that advice of the officials, withdrew the Pegasus from the station, and left to the Dutch the release of those English captives. This was a great mistake. Now, what did the Dutch do? Count Bylandt, the Dutch Ambassador in this country, wrote on December 29th to the Foreign Office that the officials at Acheen only intended to employ force in case the shipwrecked prisoners were maltreated or assassinated. An admirable method, truly, of delivering them! But what happened? Within nine days of that declaration of the Dutch Government, whilst our men were not being ill-treated, the Dutch suddenly landed troops and burnt down the Rajah's town. They made no attempt to deliver the captives. They did not land any troops to surround the small town; they simply shelled it
  1894
  from the sea, and while it was burning, and when the Rajah had retired into the country, they landed, and there was a skirmish which was dignified in the despatch as a serious engagement. It is not my opinion alone that the Dutch did not care to deliver the captives. Here is the deliberate statement of Governor Weld written on February 2nd, and received at home on March 6th. He says that "the expedition as carried out was ill-advised in the interests of the crew." The conclusion is obvious. The Dutch simply cared to keep open the dispute with the Rajah, whom they had failed to conquer, and it was a matter of indifference to them what became of the crew. If it were a matter of indifference to them, how much the more reason why the British Government should keep in view mainly the safety of these men. I admit that the mistakes of the Foreign. Office, and the slowness of the action of the Government, might find excuse in the fact that so far the whole bearing of the case could not be known to Ministers at home. But without labouring the point of their conduct between November when the news came, and January when the Dutch expedition failed, I must ask the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whose reticence I confess I admire, to explain to me two or three later matters which have most painfully impressed, not only myself, but a very large number of persons throughout the country. Will the noble Lord explain how it was that in February, three months after the men had gone into captivity, the responsible Adviser of the Crown (the Earl of Derby), who was at the head of the Colonial Office, had not taken the trouble to read the Papers, or to understand, in the slightest degree, the circumstances of the case? I charge upon that noble Lord an indolence which I hope is not characteristic of all his dealings with public affairs. He did not, on February 11, three months after the wreck, understand the simple A B C of a question which, the Government assures us, is intricate and difficult. I will give chapter and verse in proof of my assertion, and if I do, I shall ask the House to agree with me that the Ministers of the Crown have not exhibited that anxiety in this important matter which they might have done. On the 11th of February, the Dutch expedition having

  1895
  failed a month before, the Earl of Derby sent the following despatch to Governor Weld—
  "Cannot undertake to name any sum now, or alter settled Acheen policy. Maxwell should first ascertain what ransom sufficient: hut if Tempoh repays pepper debt, why crew detained?"
  Now listen to two short telegrams which the Earl of Derby had received prior to that date. First of all Governor Weld telegraphs on February 2, as follows:—
  "Situation difficult since Dutch abortive attack. It is becoming evident money secondary; Rajah wants English protection; at least belligerent rights and free trade with English for Achineese. Crew, some ill, more delirious. No news since attack."
  That contains a distinct statement of what the Rajah really wanted, and the measure of the difficulty. At page 28, Governor Weld again telegraphs under date February 9—
  "All concur prisoners readily given up if ports opened free trade English guarantee Sultan Acheen. Arbiter can go to him only by means of refugee Acheenese hostile to Dutch. Tempoh willing go with Maxwell. Rajah Tenom pay pepper debt. Rajah bears high character. No news of crew."—[Netherlands, No. 1 (1884), No. 64, p. 28.]
  The Governor of our settlement there deliberately sets out the bearings and magnitude of the difficulty the Government had to encounter; and yet on the 11th of February the Earl of Derby replies—"If Tempoh pays the pepper debt, why are the crew detained?" Why indeed? Had not Governor Weld told him? I can only come to the conclusion that he had not taken the trouble to read the Papers. While the Earl of Derby was in this state of ignorance, attempts were being made to obtain the release of the crew by direct negotiations through Mr. Maxwell. On March 22nd, Maxwell failed in his negotiations, and reported the fact by telegram to the Foreign Office. What did Lord Granville do? Observe, the case was this. The Dutch expedition had failed, and the English negotiations direct had also failed; and Lord Granville, receiving that intimation on the 22nd of March, communicated the fact to the Representative of the Dutch Government, and asked if his Government had got "any further news." Then, until the 26th of April, not one single thing more did the Foreign Minister for England do that I can find in these Papers to secure the
  1896
  release of these poor men. By this time, he not merely knew the danger in which the men were placed, but also the only way of escape. On January 25th, as hon. Members will see by the Papers, page 40, Governor Weld communicated to the Foreign Office very distinctly his views, and this was received by the Foreign Office on the 6th of March, 16 days before they were aware of the failure of Mr. Maxwell's negotiations. Says Governor Weld—
  "I venture to recommend that diplomatic negotiations be set on foot with a view to some arrangement to secure freedom of trade and the avoidance of future difficulties like the Nisero case. In this case it should be distinctly understood that in my opinion no payment, even if it be considered right in policy to make a payment as a ransom, will avail without a promise, with our guarantee, to ameliorate the political condition of the Rajah and his people, and afford them some protection. If this is not done, the crew will probably die in captivity."—[Ibid. No. 78, p. 40.]
  Again, at page 57. the same Governor writes to the Earl of Derby, under date of February 9, and this was received by the Foreign Office on March 13—still before they learned the failure of Mr. Maxwell's negotiations — and in that despatch he says—
  "No one person from whom I have sought information, whatever be his sympathies, doubts but that an English guarantee of open ports and free traffic with Penang, such as was undoubtedly contemplated by our Treaty with the Netherlands of 1871, would immediately effect the release of the detained crew."—[Ibid. No. 82, p. 57.]
  Yet again, at page 60, on the 17th of March, Governor Weld telegraphs home—
  "Maxwell received well by Rajah. Conditions written. Free trade essential."—[Ibid. No. 86, p. 60.]
  Again, at page 76 of the Papers, Mr. Maxwell communicates to the Foreign Office his opinion, under date of March 22nd. He says—
  "The only means by which they can be released, and the question settled, is by requesting the Dutch to carry out the spirit of their Treaty with us regarding freedom of trade, and at the same time offering mediation with the Sultan of Acheen, a course which would relieve them as well as the Acheenese from many difficulties. At present the Sultan and the Rajah of Tenom are masters of the position, and we may expect repetitions of the Nisero case whenever occasions present themselves."—[Ibid. No. 97, p. 76.]
  Whilst at page 86 Captain Bickford says—

  1897
  "At the conclusion of this stage of the Nisero affair, I would venture to remark that, in my opinion, the chances of release of crew are very email indeed, unless this free trade is granted.…. The Dutch are now apparently going to make use of native (Acheenese) allies to act against the Rajah. This may possibly succeed, but of course the risk to the imprisoned crew would he great."—[Ibid. No. 97, p. 86.]
  And finally, at page 87, Mr. Maxwell reiterates—
  "I have now no hope that the crew of the Nisero will be peaceably surrendered to the Dutch, or to the English, unless free trade on the West Coast of Acheen is re-established as fully as it existed before the war." — [Ibid, No. 97, p. 87.]
  I think I have established conclusively that, from the 6th of March forward, the Government knew and understood the only conditions under which negotiations with the Dutch could be successful. Yet it was not till April 29th that Lord Granville spoke plainly to the Dutch Government. I should like, too, to direct the attention of the noble Lord to another point which has caused much feeling in the North Country, and some explanation of which, I think, he is bound to make to this House. It was on the 26th of April that the sad additional news came to England of the condition of these men. It was contained in a telegram found at page 94, and which reads as follows:—
  "Latest news of Nisero 31st March. One, Italian, dead; three ill; in great straits from want of food. After consulting with Senior Naval Officer, suggest that ship of war use utmost endeavours to convey stores; but at the same time will be difficult to communicate."—[Ibid. No. 98, p. 94.]
  That telegram was supplemented by a letter from the Governor, saying that it would be easy to communicate by boats. The point I want to put to the noble Lord is this, and it is one which, I think, is very discreditable to the officials of the Foreign Office. That telegram is of a very simple nature. It is in effect—"Here are British subjects dying of starvation; give me instructions to send out ship with provisions to them." That telegram was sent to the Colonial Office, and thence to the Foreign Office on the same day. Therefore, on the 26th of April, Lord Granville and his subordinates were in possession of the fact that these men were dying from want of food. Saturday passed, Sunday passed, Monday passed, and nothing was done. No order was sent from the Foreign Office till the 29th of April. [Lord EDMOMD
  1898
  FITZMAURICE dissented.] The noble Lord (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) shakes his head. I can only follow the Papers, and if the Papers are wrong I am not to blame. According to the Papers, it is clear that no order was sent from the Foreign Office with regard to the ship until the 29th of April. I do not know whether the noble Lord will contradict that fact. I understood when he shook his head that he would. If he does he will have to correct his Papers, not me. So far as the Papers are concerned, it is quite clear that it was the 29th of April. Then the Earl of Derby telegraphed to Governor Weld—
  "Make every effort to convey provisions to Nisero crew from either coast. Consult Maxwell and Senior Naval Officer. Supply requisite stores. Report fully by telegraph."—[Ibid. No. 105, p. 97.]
  That was certainly not received till the 30th of April. I ask whether the noble Lord does not think that very grave neglect was displayed by the officials of the Foreign Office in not sending that telegram before the 29th? I can assure him that in my own town, inhabited by sailors, the fact that for three whole days Lord Granville and his subordinates should have had in their possession knowledge of the fact that these men were without food, and that there were individuals itching with anxiety to send out a ship—that Saturday, Sunday, Monday, even till Tuesday—all that time should be allowed to pass before a single executive order was sent from the Foreign or Colonial Office, has caused very much dissatisfaction. I have left for a time the thread of my argument. I had arrived at the point when the Foreign Office learnt the only chance there was of obtaining the release of these men through the Dutch. When did Lord Granville act? I told the House that he had received information of the real facts on the 3rd, 6th, and 17th March. He never acted at all until the 26th April, when the sad news came of the death of this man, and the serious state of jeopardy of the others. In fact, as far as the Papers make it apparent, it would seem that all that time, from March 22 until April 26, when new circumstances had arisen to jog the memory of the Foreign Office, they sat quiescent, and allowed this state of things to go on. At last, on April 29, three days after the news came, and on the day the message I read went out, Lord Granville did write

  1899
  a despatch, which I must do the noble Lord the credit of saying was a firm despatch, to the Dutch Government, pointing out the circumstances, which he might just as well have pointed out at a time when there was some chance of doing good—namely, at the beginning of March. He wrote a despatch, I say, pointing out to the Dutch Government the serious consequences which might ensue if this case was allowed to create the feeling which it was calculated to create in England, and offering the mediation of the British Government between the Dutch and the Rajah of Tenom. Did the Dutch Government show such anxiety for the safety of these men as should induce the House to leave it in their hands? The despatch went out on the 29th April, and on the 8th May Lord Granville had again to write to the Dutch Minister begging him to Bend a reply. It came next day, and it was one which indicated very clearly that the Dutch Government did not consider so much the interests of our British subjects as its own interests in connection with the Rajah of Tenom. It absolutely declined the mediation of England. And why? Because the presence of the British as mediator might have a prejudicial effect upon the prestige of the Dutch authorities. On May 9th the reply came, and once again Lord Granville exhibits his "masterly inactivity." He has nothing more to say to the Dutch Government until the 31st May. Then he makes a further demand upon it. What had happened in the meantime? We left the men on the 31st March, one dead, the others ill, probably dying; and on May 27 Lord Granville received a despatch from our Acting Administrator there which seems once again to have stirred him up, for on 27th May the despatch dated the 20th April was received at the Foreign Office. Our Administrator says—
  "Seeing that the Dutch authorities are apparently perfectly hopeless in the matter, and are doing nothing likely to have a practical effect; and whilst, further, it is abundantly clear that the members of the crew will drop off one by one unless suitable provisions and medicines are supplied to them. I have to-day telegraphed to your Lordship as follows:—'Latest news of Nisero, 31st March. One, Italian, dead, three ill. In great straits from want of food. After consulting with Senior Naval Officer, suggest that ship of war use utmost endeavours to convey stores; but at the same time will be difficult to communicate,'"
  1900
  And yet, with a knowledge of that despatch, the noble Lord tells me curtly to-day, when I put a specific inquiry to him as to what the Dutch Government had done, and were going to do, that I must wait owing to the fact that active negotiations are going on. In my judgment there have never been any active negotiations yet. At one time after another the Foreign Office has been galvanized into activity by the serious news which has arrived, and as soon as they possibly could they have dropped a matter which was naturally unpleasant, and which might by-and-bye settle itself. I freely admit to the noble Lord and everyone that hears me that it cannot be a thing to contemplate with a light heart that there should be any difficulty between us and a friendly Power like the Dutch. I should be the last to say one unnecessary word in this House or in the country to cause unpleasantness between us and the Dutch Government; but, after all, if circumstances have caused unpleasantness, the actions of the Dutch Government have assisted in this; and I do not think we are quite called upon quietly to leave our men to die, or be content with the reiterated assertion of the noble Lord that negotiations are again being carried on. I have told the painful story, and I have risen for the specific purpose of trying to obtain from the noble Lord a statement of what is being done. For I tell him frankly that there is nothing in the past history of the case, nothing in the circumstances I have detailed to the House, that makes me trust for a moment to the Foreign Office in this matter. I remember the early delay; I remember the inability on the part of Lord Derby to ascertain the facts. I cannot explain, or justify, or excuse the delay in May in sending relief to the captives. I cannot tell why, time after time, we are to be put off, waiting whilst nothing effectual is being done. And when I remember that we know of the death of three of these men; that others are ill; that the climatic conditions are such, that we may naturally expect, unless something be done, all, or most of them, may perish, and that no amount of silence on my part will help the men, whilst, perhaps, utterances in this House may do something to expedite matters. I think I have established sufficient justification for the unusual course I

  1901
  took in this matter in bringing this question before it.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— (Mr. Storey.)
  MR. BROGDENsaid, he did not rise for the purpose of justifying any part of the action of the Foreign Office or of the Colonial Office in this matter. He left the noble Lord the task of defending or replying to the charges that had been made of delay and negligence. He was concerned rather with the freedom of the crew of the Nisero, with the unfortunate position in which they were placed, and with that view of the case which had regard to the Rajah of Tenom being so influenced that the captives might be released. The position which the Rajah of Tenom had taken up on this question was not unparalleled amongst the barbarous tribes of that region, though it certainly was not often witnessed. Usually, shipwrecked men received kindness at the hands of such people; but this case was certainly an exception. It was a well-known, fact that the Rajah had friends at Penang and Kassala, and had the means of communicating with the adjoining civilized districts, and he must have known what had taken place in this House and elsewhere. Instead of helping the shipwrecked crew forward to their destination he had taken them into the interior of the country, though not, perhaps, very far, and when he had them there he had refused to set them free. He pretended to be very friendly with and submissive to England; he said that he would kiss the feet of the English; and if spurned from one foot would cling to the other; but, in spite of all this, he had exercised a considerable amount of brutality upon these unfortunate men, and it was certainly impossible to call him a friend to the English people. But the House must take into consideration the fact that this was a subject of great delicacy. The Rajah had made use of these circumstances in order to make demands upon the Dutch Government, which no Government could concede. He wished, however, to impress upon the House the necessity of dealing with this question in regard to its internal and international relations, rather than as a mere question of deep sympathy with these unfortunate men. He asked the House
  1902
  to consider what the case would have been, and how it would have been regarded in England, if the subjects of a friendly Power, not, perhaps, equal to their own, but still a considerable Power, had been captured in a remote part of the British Dominions, and the Power in question had claimed the right itself to obtain the freedom of the captives? In his own opinion, the difficulty in this case had arisen, not from neglect, but from over anxiety. Instead of leaving the responsibility on the Dutch Government from the beginning, we had allowed our own people to treat with this Rajah as if he were an equal or a tributary of our own; and we had, in consequence, realized the old saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth;" whereas, if the responsibility had been left solely on the Dutch Government, they would have been obliged to take some steps that would have before now produced good results. Anyone who knew that country would know that an expedition would be utterly unavailing. There were means, however, by which these savage tribes could affect each other; and it was by such means that the Dutch Government would endeavour to establish relations with this Rajah. While everything should be done that could be done, either by money or other means, to secure the freedom of the captives, it should be remembered that there were circumstances affecting the relations between two friendly Powers which demanded a proper exchange of courtesies. While, then, he hoped the House would consider the desirability of enforcing on the Dutch Government that they should do all they could to procure the liberation of these men, he also hoped that we should impress upon them the responsibility they were under, and leave them to discharge their duties as they thought best.
  GENERAL SIR. GEORGE BALFOUR, as one who had had in former years considerable intercourse with Singapore, Malacca, and Penang, and had thereby acquired some knowledge of Sumatra, wished to deny the assumption of the hon. Member who spoke last, that the Malay people in that part of the world were barbarous and uncivilized. They were nothing of the kind, for they had the advantages of the Mahomedan civilization; and it was in evidence that the son of the Rajah of Tenom, who had

  1903
  the crew of Nisero, was being educated at Penang. With, regard to the trade in that locality, no sea was better adapted for navigation than the Straits of Malacca, and consequently the business done by the petty Chiefs was extensive. The hon. Member said we ought to look to the Dutch to free the prisoners; but he (General Sir George Balfour) considered that the handing over of Acheen and of the whole of the Island of Sumatra to the Dutch in 1871 was one of the most cruel and unjust acts ever committed by a British Government. In 1824 engagements were entered into with the Dutch which, taken in connection with previous engagements, limited their power and protected the Malay States from aggression; and we had allowed the Dutch, by our 1871 Treaty, far greater claims than they could ever carry out. In his opinion, the present difficulties were caused by that monopolizing spirit which pervaded the Dutch character. The Rajah, in a wrong way, was putting a pressure on us to keep that Free Trade with Penang which he had so long enjoyed. From 1871 till now it was notorious that the Dutch had never been able to go beyond the sea-shore of Acheen. He was persuaded that the Dutch were exercising rights over Malay States which our Treaty did not justify them in exercising.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEsaid, that there was one thing, and only one thing, in the speech of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey) with which he could agree, and that was when he had said that this question was one of great difficulty and delicacy. He thought that they must all agree in that. The hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Brogden) had brought forward the international side of the question in a manner which, he thought, must have convinced the House of the importance of that view. At the same time, while he was prepared to ask the House to consider how difficult and delicate a question this was, he, nevertheless, felt how abundantly justified was the anxiety of the House and of the country upon this subject. Although, as a Member of the Government, he regretted the course which the hon. Member for Sunderland had adopted, because, in his opinion, it was unnecessary, nevertheless he was aware that the hon. Member stood in a
  1904
  peculiar position with regard to this question, because it so happened that in his constituency there were a considerable number of relatives and friends of the unfortunate people who were now in captivity. At the same time, listening to the speech of the hon. Member, he could not help being reminded of how often the same set of facts struck different minds in a different way. What was the hon. Member's charge against the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office? It was the charge of delay and indifference; but when the Papers bearing on the case were laid before Parliament an article had appeared in The Times which said that, whatever difference of opinion there might be on this question, whatever charge might or might not be made, one thing at least was certain—that no charge of delay or indifference could be made against the Colonial Office or the Foreign Office, and that the conduct of the Foreign Office in this matter might be taken as a bright example to be followed upon all occasions. The writer of this article said he could only express his regret that all Departments did not found their conduct on these lines. But he was not going to shelter the action of the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office behind any article in any newspaper. He proposed to meet the only two specific charges contained in the long series of observations made by the hon. Member for Sunderland by examining the facts which he had alleged. The principal charge which the hon. Member had made was with reference to the telegram of the 29th of April. The hon. Member argued that because a telegram was received on the 26th of April, and no action was taken until April 29, that culpable indifference must be imputed to the Department. The hon. Member some time ago placed a Question on the Paper relating to this subject; but, for some reason best known to himself, the hon. Member refrained from asking that Question. He regretted that Question had never been put, as it would have afforded an opportunity of explaining the whole of the circumstances of the case. Technically speaking, no doubt the telegram was received by the Foreign Office from the Colonial Office on the 26th of April, which was a Saturday; but so late on that day was it that it was almost Sunday morn-

  1905
  ing. There were, as the hon. Member knew, certain difficulties in the way of transacting business on Sunday; but attention was paid to the telegram notwithstanding. Great efforts were made to reply to it at once; but it was absolutely necessary that whatever measures were taken should be taken in consultation with the Admiralty, because they must be done through one of Her Majesty's ships, and on Sunday it was found to be practically impossible to take the steps they desired. Communications were opened on Monday morning, the position of the Pegasus was ascertained, and also what communication it was desirable to send, because a great deal depended upon the local facilities the commander of the Pegasus could obtain in collecting provisions for the captives. The communications with the Admiralty took place on Monday; on Monday evening the Colonial Office was also communicated with, and on Tuesday morning the telegram was sent. The Pegasus left her station on the 1st of May, and, owing to the care with which the measures had been taken, the mission of Captain Bickford in the Pegasus was completely successful; and on May 3 three months' provisions and medicine was sent to the captives, sufficient, indeed, with care, to hold out for a much longer time. That was a plain, unvarnished tale, and he left it to the fairness and justice of the House to say whether, after what he had stated, there had been any delay, or whether the measures taken by the Foreign or Colonial Offices or the Admiralty were or were not well chosen. The second charge the hon. Member made was that between May 9 and May 31 Lord Granville appeared to have entirely neglected the matter, and his reason for that assertion seemed to be that he found two despatches bearing those dates in the Book, and assumed that nothing occurred between them. But the hon. Member did not appear even to have read the Blue Books, of which there were two, because, had he done so, he could hardly have failed to see that the long despatches of those dates could not have been written without personal communication between the Secretary of State, the Netherlands Minister, and the Representatives of both Governments at the Hague. Between those dates constant communications were taking place. He saw the Nether-
  1906
  lands Minister himself on this question. When the hon. Member declared that a painful feeling existed in the North of England, if it existed at all—which he did not believe—it was due to what he must term the inaccurate statements which the hon. Member himself had published in newspapers having a large circulation in the North. To show that this feeling did not exist to the extent that was represented, he might say that he had had constant communications from the unfortunate relatives and friends of the imprisoned crew, and he had received over and over again the thanks of those people for the attention given in the Foreign Office to their case. He had both private and semi-official letters acknowledging this fact. Then, what happened on the last occasion on which this matter was before the House? Why, the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Slagg), who had been more frequently at the Foreign Office in connection with this matter than the hon. Member for Sunderland himself, immediately rose in his place and at once contradicted the charges brought by the hon. Member against the Foreign Office and himself, stating them to be most unfair, and declaring he had always found the Department fully cognizant of the gravity of this question. The hon. Member was always claiming, practically, to be the only Member in the House who had taken up this subject; but the hon. Member was in Egypt until a recent date.
  MR. STOREY: The noble Lord has just repeated statements which he made on a former occasion, though I did not take the trouble then to contradict him. I never blamed the noble Lord. The moment the Session opened I put a Question in this House, and from Egypt I sent Questions to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. C. M. Palmer), who kindly put them for me. From the first I have followed the case with interest; but I never stated I was the only person who had done so.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEsaid, he believed the action of other Members was perfectly independent, and did not require to be prompted by the hon. Member. The assistance and advice given by those other Members had been most valuable, because they fully understood and appreciated the difficulty of this painful question; and while they naturally exercised all the influence in

  1907
  their power to show the Foreign Office the great interest that existed on the subject, they abstained from those constant attacks, which had in no way assisted the Foreign Office, but had, on the contrary, been a difficulty in their path in the course of the negotiations they had been carrying on. The hon. Member had made two main charges; but there were other vague charges which he could hardly have intended to be taken seriously. He said that, as far back as February, they should have acted in the spirit of Blake and Nelson. [Mr. WARTON: Hear, hear!] The hon. and learned Member for Bridport cheered that statement; but that they should at the very commencement of these proceedings have adopted a violent and high-handed course of action was a proposition that he did not think Her Majesty's Opposition, any more than hon. Members on his own side of the House, would advance. The sovereignty of the Dutch in Sumatra was not disputed; and the original arrangement, which was the father of all the successive arrangements relating to the Island of Sumatra, was made not by a Liberal Government at all, but by a Conservative Government, and by one whose name, he believed, was still honoured by his Party, for it was made as far back as the time of Lord Castlereagh. With regard to the charges made against Lord Derby, he must say a few words. The charge was this—that at an earlier period of these proceedings Lord Derby had sent a telegram showing he had not read the Papers relating to the question of how far the debt of the Chinese merchant was the original cause of these troubles. Lord Derby was perfectly acquainted with the Papers, but they were not at that particular moment as yet quite explicit on this point, and his telegram to the Governor of the Straits Settlements was for the purpose of having the matter fully elucidated. The statements of the hon. Member showed that he had read the Papers very carelessly; for example, by far the most part of these transactions were in connection with Mr. Maxwell's mission; but the hon. Member had not condescended to notice it. Mr. Maxwell's mission took place in March; but the full account only reached the Foreign Office in April. While they were waiting for Mr. Maxwell's Report, it was perfectly impos-
  1908
  sible for the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office to judge what further measures would be necessary. That was an answer to the charge of delay brought by the hon. Member against the Foreign Office upon this point. Moreover, they were awaiting the arrival of Governor Weld, from whom they expected to receive valuable advice and assistance. Governor Weld had since arrived, and the Foreign Office had received such advice and assistance from him. This would show that many of the charges against the Foreign Office were utterly without foundation. When the hon. Member came to the present aspect of the negotiations, and complained that his Question regarding them was not answered, the reply was plain and simple—these negotiations were not only going on actively, but were going on from day to day; and while they were pending the Foreign Office could not report from day to day what was said by the Netherlands Government to Her Majesty's Government, and by Her Majesty's Government to the Netherlands Government. They had such a sense of the gravity and importance of this question, that they could not make any partial or incomplete statement. He appealed to hon. Gentlemen opposite whether the Public Business could be carried on if the adjournment of the House was to be moved every time an Under Secretary, with the full approval and authority of his Chiefs, said it was not in his power to make a statement which naturally he would be the first to desire to make as soon as possible? He hoped before long to be able to lay further despatches on the Table, and also to state the views the Government took when they had received the final answer of the Netherlands Government. He regretted to have stood so long between the House and its Business, which it was anxious to enter upon; but he felt that the charges which were made against the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office were most unjust, and, under the circumstances, almost cruel. They had laboured to do everything they could in this matter, and if they had not done so, they would have been lacking not only in official duty, but in the commonest feelings of humanity. He hoped the time was far distant when, whatever differences there might be, one Party would make such a charge against another. He left the

  1909
  melancholy distinction of having done so to the hon. Member for Sunderland, and concluded by repeating, that whatever was the duty of the Government would be done, and he hoped with satisfactory results, though he was fully aware of the great difficulties and risks that had to be encountered.
  MR. GORSTsaid, that, notwithstanding the long speech of the noble Lord, he failed to see that he had made the case much better than it was before. The noble Lord had attempted to shelter himself behind The Times leading articles. It was not the first time the noble Lord had quoted articles in the public Press; and, knowing his literary tendencies, he thought that probably he contributed the article to The Times himself. When, however, the noble Lord came to specific answers to specific statements, he was singularly unfortunate. The tone of the noble Lord's speech alone was enough to induce them to think that there was a screw loose somewhere. With regard to the charge of delay from April 26th to the 29th, he (Mr. Gorst) found that instead of the telegram of the 26th being only technically received on that day, and practically on the Sunday morning, as represented by the noble Lord, it was received on the Saturday in sufficient time for the Colonial Office to receive a despatch about it; for, according to the Blue Book, the following letter was rewritten on the 29th by the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office:—
  "Tuesday. Sir,—I am directed by Earl Granville to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th instant, forwarding copy of a telegram from the acting Governor of the Straits Settlements, stating that, according to latest accounts received, one of the crew of the Nisero was dead."
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Sir, the hon. and learned Member, I am sure quite unintentionally, has misquoted. The telegram is not dated the 26th, it is dated 29th April.
  MR. GORST: Nothing of the kind. Unfortunately, the noble Lord did not appreciate his (Mr. Gorst's) position. It was that the Colonial Office received a telegram announcing the death of one of the Nisero's crew in time to write a despatch about it, and in the letter which he had read the Foreign Office acknowledged the receipt of that despatch and the telegram. The hon. Member asked what the Foreign Office really did on
  1910
  the Sunday; but upon Monday they opened communication, with the Admiralty. He was bound to say that the Admiralty was the only Department that exhibited anything like proper activity. On that day the Admiralty wrote to the Foreign Office stating that they had received a copy of the telegram of the 26th of April from the Colonial Office, and seeking to move Earl Granville whether a ship of war with provisions should be sent. Therefore, on the Monday the Admiralty were trying to move Earl Granville to express his opinion, and that opinion was not expressed until the Tuesday morning', when letters were written to the Colonial Office and the Admiralty. If the crow of the Nisero were left in starvation three days longer than necessary, the blame was on the Foreign Office, and not with the Colonial Office, or the Admiralty, or the people of Singapore. The noble Lord said that he had answered the two allegations which had been made against the Foreign Office; but he had omitted altogether the third and most important one—namely, that from March 13 to April 29 the Foreign Office did not make a single movement in a diplomatic direction to obtain the release of these men. The noble Lord said that Mr. Maxwell had been sent out, and that until the Foreign Office had received his Report they could not take any further steps in the matter; but the gravamen of the charge that had been made against the Government by the hon. Member for Sunderland was that they were aware, from the information which they had received from responsible officers on the spot, that Mr Maxwell's mission could not succeed, and that unless they took diplomatic steps those men could not be released; and yet, possessing that knowledge, they were content to lie by and to do nothing. The Government ought not to allow themselves to remain under a delusion on this question. The country laid the blame for the captivity of these men upon the British Government, who had allowed them to remain in durance for seven or eight months without making a move to secure their release. And yet, in. the face of these facts, the noble Lord had been good enough to insinuate that the hon. Member for Sunderland was guilty of obstruction, because, by bringing this question under the notice of the House, he was preventing the

  1911
  Government from proceeding with Business which must be abortive. In his opinion, the hon. Member deserved the thanks of the House for bringing this question forward; and he was sure he would receive the thanks of the country for calling attention to this shameful business. As the Business of that House was now conducted, it was exceedingly difficult to criticize the conduct of any public Department; and he was afraid that the result would be that in the future we should have more of these scandals than in the past. The facts of this case having now been fully stated in the hearing of the House, he was sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister would use his influence, so that the proceedings of the dilatory Foreign Office would be quickened in this matter.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEasked the leave of the House to make an explanation. He wished to explain this matter in regard to the telegram of the 26th, because the hon. and learned Member for Chatham, no doubt unintentionally, had misled the House. He had spoken of this telegram as a Foreign Office telegram. The Blue Book showed that the telegram was a Colonial Office telegram. It could not possibly have been anything else, owing to the position of those by whom, and to whom, it was sent. The information in this telegram was not known to the responsible officials at the Foreign Office till after Office hours on Saturday, the 26th, and he had explained the difficulties of taking action upon it during Sunday, because communications with other Offices were necessary. The House would see the difficulty he was in in replying to these minute and carefully-prepared charges as to dates and days, the hon. Member having brought forward this charge without having given him the smallest Notice of his intention to do so. He had consequently none of the necessary documents with him at the moment; but he had no doubt that the facts would be found to be as he had stated.
  MR. WARTONobserved that the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey) had brought forward this question, not only as an Englishman, but as the Representative of a sailor's constituency; and it had been altogether unworthy of the noble Lord to make the fact that he had called the attention of the House to the matter the ground of a personal
  1912
  attack upon him. It was clear that the hon. Member for Sunderland, in the course he had adopted, had been influenced by the most upright and conscientious motives. What had led to this unfortunate business was the knowledge that every small State possessed, of the invertebrate character of Her Majesty's Government. The action of this country was paralyzed all the world over, because Foreign Powers had lost their respect for England, on account of the timidity and vacillation of Her Majesty's present Government. He only wished they could have one hour of Lord Palmerston's or Lord Beaconsfield's Government, for then all these matters would be set straight.
  MR. GLADSTONEremarked that the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down had worked himself into a fine frenzy on this subject; but that fine frenzy would not advance the House one iota towards the end of this complicated matter, which it was quite clear that the hon. and learned Gentleman had never examined into. The hon. and learned Gentleman, led away by his general prejudices against the Government, and by his disposition to condemn them on every occasion for having degraded their country in the eyes of the world, had brought charges against them which common humanity should have prevented him from doing. He did not intend to enter into the controversial part of this subject, neither did he presume to censure the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey) for having brought forward this most difficult and complicated matter. It had been his duty to associate himself with Lord Granville in every matter of this kind; and, therefore, he admitted that he should have been prepared to have met, step by step, any attack that had been made upon the Government in respect of this question. The hon. Member for Sunderland, however, had never conveyed to him that he intended to deliver this carefully-prepared attack upon the Government in reference to these unhappy men, and that he intended to search the Blue Books, and to quote page after page of them in support of that attack, and to give his own version of the facts. In saying this, he was by no means questioning the excellence of the hon. Member's motives in bringing this matter forward; but if the hon. Member had in view the very proper

  1913
  and natural object of obtaining the liberation of these unhappy men, he did not think that he had adopted the course best calculated to attain that object. With regard to the charge which the hon. Member had brought against the Foreign Office, he must reserve his defence for the time; because he could not undertake, without due Notice, to enter into that defence. But he did say this—that he wished to express his own share in Lord Granville's responsibility, and that he was perfectly confident that when the proper time came for the examination of the Papers it would be found that the charge of neglect and indifference which had been so freely made against the two Secretaries of State, and particularly Lord Granville, had no foundation whatever. He wished it to be understood that Her Majesty's Government admitted no part of the charge which had been made by the hon. Member. He admitted that it was important that the conduct of the Department should be brought to notice; but it was still more important that these people should be released. He was not going to make it a matter of blame that the hon. Member had brought this subject forward; but he had hoped that when the hon. Gentleman adopted so high a tone he saw his way to some method by which the release of the men might be brought about, and would have offered to them some useful and valuable suggestions. It might be that the speech of the hon. Gentleman contained such suggestions, though he confessed he had been unable to perceive them. This was no reason for blaming the hon. Gentleman, because the difficulties of the case were such that they would have defied either official or private ingenuity. But it was rather material that the House should understand that in the face of the heavy accusations which the hon. Member had so freely and so abundantly launched, he did not lay down a policy by which he thought he could point out that the release of those men could be effected. The hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) kept himself within the lines of prudence; the hon. and learned Gentleman did not, he thought, profess to have in his hands a solution of the difficulty. His hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Brogden) gave them his view of the course which ought to have been pursued. His hon.
  1914
  Friend's opinion was that the British Government ought entirely to have avoided operating upon the subordinate authorities in this case, and to have confined themselves to holding the Dutch Government responsible, and requiring it to perform the duties of a Sovereign Power. He could not find any fault with his hon. Friend for making that suggestion; but he thought even his hon. Friend himself would admit that, in this peculiar case, the suggestion, if acted upon, would have been very uncertain in its issue. There were no means which Her Majesty's Government possessed of operating immediately upon the particular Chief under whose authority these unfortunate persons were held in detention. The Dutch Government itself did not appear to possess the means of operating at a given moment. It was, indeed, perfectly true, as his hon. Friend had said, that the Dutch Government was fully responsible; but the mode of enforcing that responsibility was a question of considerable difficulty. There were two things in view. One was the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government for the past, in regard to which he, at least, personally—although his noble Friend near him had made an able statement of the subject—must reserve what he had to say. The other was as to the means of procuring the release, and extreme difficulty attending a case of this kind, where there was, on the one hand, a Sovereign Power placed at an enormous distance, and, on the other hand, subordinate Powers combined and grouped together without a clear and highly-civilized organization. He thought his hon. and gallant Friend behind him (General Sir George Balfour) would admit that this was not an exaggerated statement with regard to the abuses arising in this particular case under one of the local authorities. It would be idle for him to attempt to state what the Foreign Office were at this moment about. It was their daily care to prosecute this subject, and he was not prepared to say how far they ought to express hope with regard to its issue. The Dutch Government was certainly not in an attitude of indifference. The Dutch Government had proposed a measure which it, no doubt, thought to be the best; but there were great difficulties attending the adoption of that measure. For

  1915
  the moment, he could only say he thought Her Majesty's Government were entitled, not to an acquittal, but to a suspense of verdict upon the main question; and he could give the House an assurance that, as regards the present proceedings not less than in the past, they were using every effort in their power. One word he would venture to say on what the hon. and learned Member for Chatham thought to be a salient point—namely, as to the delays which had occurred. He denied that the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman was a fair one. The telegram arrived at the foreign Office on Saturday after business hours. Was it right that there should be business hours in a Public Office? He was afraid it was a necessity. He ought to have stated that this telegram arrived after business hours on Saturday at the Foreign Office, and not at the Colonial Office; and the Foreign Office could not act on the telegram until it had communicated with the Admiralty. Now, not only had the Admiralty business hours, but on Sundays the establishment of the Admiralty was not on the spot; and accordingly, on Sunday morning last, when the authorities of the Foreign Office went to communicate with the Admiralty, they found that they could not get the Admiralty put into motion for the purpose of doing what was effectual on that day. He could not go into the details of the matter; but that was the fact as far as the Foreign Office was concerned. Even had the officials of the Admiralty been present, the matter was not one as to which they could lay their finger on the telegraph and say—"Do this." The Admiralty had to make considerable inquiries before it could give its orders. For example, it had to ascertain the precise spot where the vessel was to be found, which had been, he believed, in motion, and on the action of which it was to depend. The ascertainment of that spot was not a thing which could be done in a moment. Perhaps it might be said that all this was circumlocution; but still there were the necessities of a great and complex organization. Instructions to Foreign Agents could not be sent by the Colonial Office, nor could orders to the Queen's ships be sent by the Foreign Office. It appeared that this telegram went off on Tuesday morning, and he could conceive the possible
  1916
  allegation that it might have gone off on Monday night; but he did not think that in that margin there was to be found anything that would justify the grave charges which the hon. Member for Sunderland had thought proper to make. He trusted that when they again approached this subject they would do so in such a manner as to enable the House to put itself in possession of the facts, and, in addition, to pass a fair and equitable judgment on the entire case, which was one of the greatest difficulty, and which had the most direct and immediate claims both on the official duties and even on the common humanity of the Government of the country.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEremarked that when the right hon. Gentleman called for a full consideration of the course taken by the Government, and asked the House to suspend their judgment, one must feel that he was perfectly justified in making that appeal, especially under the circumstances in which they stood at the present moment. But, on the other hand, he thought the hon. Member for Sunderland had taken a most proper step in calling attention to the subject, because undoubtedly the case, while it was one of great delicacy and difficulty, was still one of great importance, and it was of very great importance that those who were interested in this matter, and also those who were interested in maintaining the honour of England, should be aware that a question like this was attracting the attention of the House of Commons; and he thought this conversation would have done good in this way. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken very truly of the great difficulties inseparable from a large and complex organization such as that of the British Government, in cases especially where several Departments had to act; but it was a great point that it should be pressed on the Executive Government from time to time that the greatness and complexity of its organization was no excuse whatever for any deficiency in its action. The late Government, he maintained, would have found no difficulty in acting on the shortest notice. It was essential that the main point should be kept in view, and that they should not lose themselves in the mere details of organization. The reflections which had been cast on the Admiralty were most

  1917
  unfair. It would also from time to time happen that one Department should be dependent on another, and it was unpardonable if the Department so called upon could not at once respond to the requirements of the other Department. He had not read the Papers in the case for a long time; but, if he remembered rightly, the Admiralty had acted with great promptitude. He thought the thanks of the House were due to the hon. Member for Sunderland for having brought this exceedingly difficult and delicate matter under the notice of the House; and he trusted, after what had transpired, that the Government would prosecute the matter with greater expedition.
  SIR JOHN HAYsaid, he did not think there could be any excuse for delay on the part of the Admiralty, since the House provided the First Lord with an official residence, and either he or one of the Lords of the Admiralty was always present to carry out necessary orders. He did not, however, believe that any delay rested with the Admiralty; indeed, the Papers showed that the whole responsibility rested with the Foreign Office. It was, therefore, quite unfair to charge the delay upon the Admiralty. He did not see that there needed to have been any delay. If a telegram had been sent to Singapore a ship could have been put in motion almost as soon as the telegram arrived. Acheen was as near Sumatra as the Isle of Wight was to England, so that effectual naval assistance might be sent there if the Government so wished it. He viewed these proceedings with the greatest distress and dismay, all the more that these 18 seamen were prisoners within five miles of the sea. He knew the coast perfectly well, and he knew the difficulty connected with the bar of the river; and he confessed that it was, in his opinion, a great weakness to request the Dutch Government, who were hated all over that district, to endeavour to obtain the release of those men. The result had been considerable bloodshed without any chance of doing good. He was quite sure, if the matter had been put into the hands of Sir William Hewett, or some other naval officer of that Station, that these men would have been released by this time. The difficulties which had arisen in connection with British shipping had been
  1918
  due to the handing over of those territories to the Dutch. He had always regarded that as an unfortunate arrangement, and had protested against it at the time. It had caused incessant bloodshed during the last 14 years between the Dutch and the Natives. If we were to take the matter into our own hands, he would undertake to say we would succeed in releasing these 18 men; but if they were not released in the course of the summer, we would have to thank the Rajah only for a grave. He wished he could hear from the right hon. Gentleman that they were going to put the matter into the hands of the Admiralty. The hon. Member had done well to bring this question before the House.
  MR. SLAGGsaid, he felt quite as keenly for those unfortunate men as the hon. Member for Sunderland himself; but he could not agree in the accusations of lukewarmness, which the hon. Member had brought against the Government. In all his communications with the Foreign Office he had found the utmost anxiety to obtain the release of those men, and the utmost energy in taking measures to that end. The hon. Member would have done more good if he had suggested some practical means of effecting the release of the prisoners. It would have been absurd to wage war either against the Dutch Government or the Rajah of Tenom. He had had very long interviews with the captain of the Nisero, who described to him the condition of the country. Anyone who heard that description must have been convinced that a warlike proceeding against the Rajah either by the Dutch Government or by the forces of this country must have ended in complete failure, and possibly in the death of the captives to effect the object desired. It often happened that subjects of this country were placed in positions of great danger and hardship under conditions with which we were unable easily to cope. This appeared to be one of those cases. The Rajah, when attacked by the Dutch Government, had only to remove the captives further into the interior; and even if our Government had sent an armed force to rescue them the Rajah would simply retire into the country, where our force could not possibly follow him. He agreed with the hon. Member that

  1919
  the Dutch Government were not free from blame. They had assumed the sovereignty over the country without discharging the responsibilities of that position. He hoped, however, the result of this debate would be to bring pressure upon the Dutch Government to do a good deal more than they had yet done for the release of these unfortunate captives. But beyond the diplomatic pressure which the Foreign Office had brought strongly to bear on the Dutch, he did not think the Government could have done anything, or that they had boon in any way negligent.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he hoped that the House would take note of the statement of the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Slagg) on behalf of the Government. It could only be inferred that the Government would do nothing for these men. The only crumb of comfort which seemed to be afforded by that discussion was that the Dutch Government would be impressed by the tone which it had taken. Speaking entirely from an unofficial point of view, he felt bound to express his own regret that the right hon. Gentleman the Premier had succeeded once more on that occasion in speaking eloquently and well and saying very little after all. He hoped the relatives of those men would find some encouragement in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. For himself, he must confess he was less acquainted with the policy of the Government in the matter after the right hon. Gentleman had spoken than before he had addressed any observations to the House. If those men had been bondholders they would not have been allowed to perish within five miles of gunshot of the British Navy. All the great Departments had been whitewashed, but it would probably turn out that the number of those prisoners would successively be reduced from 24 to 18, and then to a dozen or to six; and before the right hon. Gentleman, in a set debate, made another eloquent and unmeaning speech on the subject, it might be that there would not be a single British sailor to rescue. An unfortunate fatality appeared to hang over the expeditions of rescue of Her Majesty's Government.
  SIR ALEXANDER GORDONsuggested whether the Government might not take the same steps which were adopted some years ago for the release
  1920
  of an Englishman, who was captured by brigands in Greece. On that occasion Her Majesty's Navy had been employed in negotiating for his relief, and he believed they offered a sum of money. The negotiations were conducted with great ability and success; and he asked whether the same means might not be adopted to rescue the survivors of the crow of the Nisero?
  MR. STOREY: I think I should best consult the interests of those on whose behalf I speak by asking the permission of the House to withdraw my Motion. No good object will be served by continuing the discussion. But perhaps the House will allow me, for one moment, to refer to the speech of the noble Lord (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice), and to make a reference to a personal subject. A personal objection has been raised against my bringing this matter forward without Notice, and I think I am entitled to show that the censure of the Prime Minister—
  MR. GLADSTONE: I distinctly refused to pronounce any censure whatever, and expressly guarded myself against making any personal reflection. I protest against the hon. Member's assuming that there is any such implication on my part. Is the hon. Member in Order?
  MR. STOREY, who, on rising again, was met with cries of "Order!" said: I believe, Sir, I am not entitled to reply.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member for Sunderland has made a substantive Motion, and is, therefore, entitled to a reply.
  MR. STOREY: I am thankful to you, Sir, for instructing me in the presence of older Members of the House who would have deprived me of a right of which I was not conscious when I rose. But I will not take full advantage of my right. I wish, however, to point out to the House that the noble Lord did not do mo the honour to state my complaints correctly, much less to reply to them. What I stated, and now re-state, was that I could not understand why, from March 22nd, when the Government knew that their policy of negotiation had failed, until April 26th, they absolutely did nothing at all. What does the noble Lord tell me is the reason? He says that, although they had a telegraphic reply from Captain Maxwell, they could not do anything until they had detailed

  1921
  information by letter. Well, Sir, is not that admitting my contention—that while they were getting detailed information, they left these men to the merry of their captors; and when they admit my contentions — [Interruptions from the back Liberal Benches.]—I am really sorry to annoy those hon. Gentlemen behind me — after they admit this contention of mine, the Prime Minister thinks he settles the point by saying that I should tell the Government how I would settle this matter. Sir, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;" and there was a tide in the affairs of the Government when, if they had acted, they would have settled this question. But it was because they neglected the opportunity that they failed to rescue these men. At the risk of offending hon. Gentlemen, I will refer to another point. The Prime Minister seems to think that he answers my other contention by pointing out that, having received a telegram on April 26th, and that being a Saturday, nothing could be done until Tuesday, because it was necessary for the different Departments to communicate. I do not believe the common people of this country will accept that as an excuse. I will venture to tell the Prime Minister what I think should have been done. Bear in mind that when the Government received that telegram they knew that the men were perishing for want of food. All they had to do was to telegraph to the authorities on Saturday; but they did not do so until Tuesday. When the loss of the Nisero originally came to Singapore, the authorities there telegraphed for leave to send a ship; and the Departments, having laid their heads together, at last sent out orders. But while the Departments were deliberating the authorities at Singapore had already sent the ship. That contrasted curiously with the circumlocution and red-tape of the Foreign Office at a later time. In conclusion, I can assure the Prime Minister I have brought the case forward with a simple desire to let all parties in the House know what neglect there has been, and with the hope that there may be no neglect in the future, and that whatever it is possible to do may be done for the safety of these men.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

  PUBLIC MEETINGS (IRELAND) — THE NATIONALIST MEETING AT DROMORE.

    PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
    MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I beg to ask your permission, Sir, and the permission of the House, for five or six minutes, while I make a personal explanation on a matter which I am compelled to bring before the attention of the House. Last Monday the hon. Gentleman the Member for Devizes (Sir Thomas Bateson) put a Question to the Chief Secretary for Ireland in reference to the action of the Executive with regard to the extra police in Belfast on the occasion of the recent visit of the Lord Lieutenant to that City. When the Question was put, I ventured to interpolate a Question to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, and I quoted from the Chief Secretary some remarks he had made in the course of a debate in the present year with regard to counter-demonstrations in the North of Ireland, and especially with regard to a counter-demonstration at Dromore. The words of the Chief Secretary were to the effect that there were bodies of armed men who came to those meetings prepared to use their arms, and to make a murderous attack, if necessary, upon the Nationalists. The Chief Secretary, in reply to my Question, admitted the correctness of the Question, and reiterated his statement that there were bodies of armed men at the Dromore meeting, and at other meetings in the North. After that answer I put another Question, and the right hon. Gentleman re-asserted his statement that there were armed men at the Dromore and other meetings. Immediately afterwards there was a Question by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) in regard to a case in which Mr. Murray Ker was engaged. The hon. Member for Monaghan asked whether Mr. Murray Ker was the same gentleman who had used the expression—"Never to fire their revolvers unless they were aiming at somebody." The right hon. Gentleman replied, stating that Mr. Murray Ker had used those words, and that an explanation had been given, that he had accepted it, believing the words to have been used for an innocent and not a guilty purpose. I therefore asked again the right hon. Gentleman whether he had not employed these very words of

    1923
    Mr. Murray Ker as an example of the incitements to violence which were employed by the Orange leaders during the campaign in Ulster, and the right hon. Gentleman again re-asserted his statement that the explanation of Mr. Ker as to the innocence of these words had satisfied his mind. But the right hon. Gentleman made no other correction in his previous statement. He adhered to every other statement he had made as to the character of these counter-demonstrations — that they appeared at the meetings with arms ready to use them.
    MR. SPEAKER: Did I understand the hon. Gentleman to say he desired to make a personal explanation? He appears to me to be debating a matter which was the subject of a Question a few days ago. If the hon. Member desires to offer a personal explanation the House will, no doubt, hear him.
    MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I will wind up by asking the Chief Secretary a Question. I am showing I have a personal interest in the matter.
    MR. MACARTNEY: I rise to Order. The hon. Gentleman says he is going to conclude with a Question. Is that a personal explanation?
    MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member desires to ask a Question to clear up some matter which he thinks is necessary for some personal explanation affecting himself, he is at liberty to do so; but he is not at liberty to debate the matter in the manner he has been doing for some time past.
    MR. MACARTNEY: I think, Sir, that the hon. Member—[Cries of"Order!"]
    MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary whether he has seen the following words attributed to him as his answer to my Question:—
    "Mr. Trevelyan—I admit that at the time I had used strong language as to the Orangemen, but subsequent inquiry convinced me that the facts had quite a different interpretation."
    These words appear in The Daily Express of Dublin, and I desire to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether that report, by the omission of some words and the insertion of others, does not amount to a misrepresentation so gross as to be an invention; and whether the right hon. Gentleman will take means to inform the public in Ireland that this report of his answer to my Question is a gross
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    misrepresentation and invention of words which he never used?
    MR. GIBSON: Has the hon. Member for Galway given Notice to the hon. Member for Devizes that it was his intention to bring up this subject?
    MR. MACARTNEY: I also should like to ask whether the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken rightly described the Dromore meeting as an Orange meeting?
    MR. TREVELYAN: My answer will be very short. I noticed the report in The Daily Express to which the hon. Member refers. It was a report which by omission entirely and absolutely misstated what I had said. My attention was called to it by the very unusual honour paid me of having two laudatory articles in The Express. I thought the matter of sufficient importance to warrant my writing to The Express newspaper a letter correcting the report, which, I cannot doubt, will be inserted in to-morrow's issue.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  LONDON GOVERNMENT BILL.
  (Secretary Sir William Harcourt, Sir Charles W. Dilke, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Hibbert, Mr. George Russell.)
  LONDON GOVERNMENT BILL.

    [BILL 171.] SECOND READING. [FIRST NIGHT.]
    Order for Second Reading read.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said: It is owing to circumstances over which I have had no control that I have been unable to keep the pledge I gave earlier in the evening to the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. A. J. Balfour) that I would reply to his Question in two minutes. Instead of two minutes, a couple of hours have elapsed since then; but, Sir, the arrangements of this House for the transaction of Public Business are so admirable, so well contrived, and I think, before long, will be so well understood by the country, that it will appear, at first sight, a perfectly natural thing that the first Order of the Day upon the Order Book of the House of Commons should come on at such a time, say half-past 8 o'clock. That is the convenient manner in which public affairs are transacted, and those are the arrangements which

    1925
    compel me to make a few observations to the House at an hour when it cannot be expected that the Lord Mayor of London should be present. That, again, is a circumstance, no doubt, that I greatly regret; but Bills are introduced, and, whether passed or not passed, mortals, and above all even Lord Mayors, must dine. Now, Sir, I have had occasion to trespass so much on the indulgence of the House on a former occasion in introducing this Bill, that I shall desire to confine the observations that I have now to make within a very moderate compass; and, for my own part, I always prefer the calm repose of the dinner hour to say what one has to Bay, and one loses nothing by the tranquillity and peace and coolness of this hour. I do not propose to go over the ground I have already endeavoured to cover in describing the general feature and scope of this measure when I introduced it; that would be abusing the indulgence of the House; my remarks will be confined especially to certain circumstances which have occurred since the introduction of the Bill. Now the hon. Member for Hertford asked me, if I considered that the Bill ought to be withdrawn, because it was opposed. I do not hold that view; if I did, and acted upon it, or if anyone else did so, very few Bills would be introduced in this House. There is opposition and opposition; there are opponents and opponents. I have, since the introduction of this Bill, examined, with a good deal of interest, the manner in which this Bill has been received, and the character of the opposition to which it is now exposed. Well, a man who does not expect too much is not often disappointed, never expected the support of the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of London to this Bill. I have nothing to complain of, however, as to the manner in which the Lord Mayor and the Corporation have met me on this subject. They have met me with their direct opposition, which I always expected. Their opposition has not been in an uncourteous and unkindly spirit personal to myself; and I hope I Lave endeavoured to avoid anything of the kind towards them. I do not know that anything harsher has been said of me, even in the Court of Common Council, than to compare me with Claude Duval, a gentleman who followed his profession with very good manners and
    1926
    in a generous and amiable spirit. He generally honoured the subject of his attentions, whoever they might be, with a dance; and I do not feel called upon very much to object to, or to resent that comparison. Of course, the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London have done all they could in the Guildhall, and out of the Guildhall, to carry on the war very much as Mr. Pitt carried on war. Mr. Pitt carried on war, not only with his own forces, but with forces which received such other assistance from the British Treasury as might be necessary to support his warlike efforts. But when I come to another body, represented by the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir James M'Garel-Hogg), I really do not know whether the Metropolitan Board of Works are opponents of this Bill or not. I have watched their action with regard to it with a considerable amount of interest and a good deal of perplexity, and I find that the Metropolitan Board are not averse to a single Government of London, because they have always affirmed the proposition that there ought to be a single Government for London. They are, in a certain sense, themselves a single Government for London; and when I come to refer to the Amendments on the Paper, I shall have something to say on the subject of the Amendment put down with reference to the Metropolitan Board. I cannot help coming to the conclusion that, from what I have heard of the Metropolitan Board, their objection is not so much to a single Government for London, but that it is rather to the body from which that single Government is to be selected. That is a matter of detail, however, which I may yet further discuss with the hon. Baronet. Then I come to the Vestries. Now, it is not to be expected, in human nature, that any body should reform itself, or be very willing to be reformed, simply for the sole reason that it needs reforming; indeed, I know of no body which is disposed to reform itself for such a reason, except it be the House of Commons; and I am not at all surprised that any of those Vestries are not impressed with the modifications of the system which might reform their constitution. No doubt, this scheme is to establish a central control over the Vestries, or the bodies analogous to the Vestries, as to which nobody likes to be controlled—every-

    1927
    body would rather be entirely independent of control of every description; but whether or not the proposals of this Bill for the central control over the different local bodies are the best that could be conceived is a question which I am not prepared or disposed to argue on the second reading of this Bill. I am perfectly willing to discuss and consider any other method that may be stated to be better than that which is propounded in this Bill. But the real and principal question is—ought there, Drought there not, to be some control of some kind or other? It will surely never be contended that Vestries are to remain as they are. I will not go in any great detail into that matter, for other Gentlemen will speak upon it, and especially the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke). The central principle of the Bill is this—that there should be some common control over the Vestries which shall give them a uniform action for the benefit of the whole community, instead of leaving them, as they are now, independent of any such control. It is quite true that a good many gentlemen on these Vestries are opposed to the Bill, and that resolutions against it have been passed at Vestry meetings, naturally for the reasons I have stated; but I have received a letter from a gentleman which describes the manner in which such meetings have ill some cases been held, and I think the amount of Vestry opposition has been exaggerated, and that a great many of the members of the existing Vestries are not adverse to it. Then I come to another body who have opposed this Bill—I mean the Middlesex magistrates. They have pronounced against the Bill in a series of resolutions so eulogistic of themselves that I am not surprised that even Lord Salisbury has stated that he thought them a little too strong, and that, consequently, some of them were withdrawn. They appear to think it is a fatal objection to the Bill that it interferes with their administrative functions, and that, therefore, it would be hurtful to the interests of the community. But that is an opinion which is confined to the Middlesex magistrates, and I do not think that the circumstance that the Bill does interfere with the Middlesex magistrates is one which will determine its fate. The Surrey magistrates met to consider
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    the Bill in a somewhat more modest spirit. They merely adopted a resolution in favour of certain modifications which they said were required in the Bill. Passing from the bodies more or less affected by the Bill, and who are, therefore, not likely to regard it with very favourable eyes, I may say that a large number of public meetings have been held in favour of this measure; and, in answer to the hon. Member for Hertford, I can state that during the three months that this Bill has been under consideration out-of-doors it has received more support and far less opposition than I anticipated, for I never could have promised myself that it would have ever obtained, as it has done, the support of one of the Sheriffs of the City of London and one or two Aldermen. I come now to the downright opposition to the measure in this House. Looking at the Notice Paper, I find there is, first of all, the Notice of opposition by the usual "three months' hence" Motion which stands in the name of my right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor. And I also find that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross) has a similar Notice. After the Lord Mayor, who is naturally at the head of the opposition to the Bill, I do not know anyone more likely to come forward with such a Notice. He is against all Reform, on all occasions—against Parliamentary Reform and against the Reform of the City Livery Companies. But if this Bill is to be rejected point blank upon its principles by a Member sitting on the Front Opposition Bench, I should have rather expected that the lead in the matter would have been taken by another Member of the Opposition—by one who is also a distinguished Member for a Metropolitan constituency—namely, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith). Probably, however, the memories of days not long gone by prevented him; for he, some years ago, when this question was first debated, at that time came forward, and asserted that there was only one plan of reforming the Municipal Government of London, and that plan happens to be just the plan which is included in this Bill—namely, the plan of a single Government for London, by which the Corporation should be so extended as to take in the whole of the Metropolis.

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    That, no doubt, is a little obstacle to the right hon. Gentleman moving the rejection of the Bill. There is, on the Paper, a third direct Notice of opposition, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), so that the three heroes defending London are my right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire, and the hon. Member for Cavan. I observe with surprise the absence of a blocking Notice in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton). I have lost that advantage, at any rate; but I see that his faithful supporter the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Tomlinson) has, on the Paper, a Motion that is, to me, rather consolatory, because, three months after the introduction of the Bill, the hon. Gentleman wishes for more time to enable the ratepayers and inhabitants of the Metropolis to consider it, and asks that it should not be further proceeded with during the present Session. It cannot, therefore, be such a very bad Bill after all. There is another Notice of Amendment by the hon. and gallant Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir Alexander Gordon), as to which my difficulty is to understand it. In common parlance, "it seems a little mixed."
    SIR ALEXANDER GORDON: I will explain it afterwards to the right hon. Gentleman.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: As far as I can understand the first part of it, it asks for what the Bill exactly provides. I next come to a far more important person—the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works. What is his Amendment? It confirms me in the opinion I have formed, that he is not hostile to the Bill; and if I had ever thought of shrinking from going on with the Bill, I could not have done so after this Amendment, which assumes that the Bill will be read a second time. The Amendment is, that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee. Such an Amendment is tantamount to an admission that there is no opposition to the principle of the Bill on the part of the Metropolitan Board. It proves, in my opinion, that the Metropolitan Board of Works is not hostile to a single Government of London; and that if they had desired to resist the principle of the Bill, the hon. Baronet would not have proposed to refer it to a Select Com-
    1930
    mittee. But there are some Amendments which are as conspicuous by their absence, as those on the Paper are remarkable by their presence. We have heard a good deal of late about separate Municipalities for this Metropolis. That scheme has been propounded in this House; but it perished 10 years ago. It has been dragged as a red herring across the tail of the Bill; it has been spoken of by Lord Salisbury; it has been supported with great ability by my hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury (Mr. W. M. Torrens) and others; but what a remarkable thing it is that there is not a single Amendment on the Paper which recommends, as a solution of this question, the constitution of separate Municipalities. There is an Association for promoting this object. I have heard that it is supported by the Licensed Victuallers' Association, and a more influential body, or one more likely to promote a great idea, I cannot conceive; and this thing has been tried on in every possible way, and what has been the result? They got up a meeting at Greenwich, at which my right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor was present; and I think the hon. Member for that borough (Mr. Boord) will bear me out when I say that, during the last week, the inhabitants of Greenwich have declared unanimously against that proposal; and the Board of Works for that district unanimously determined to vote against a Petition to the Privy Council in favour of a separate charter for Greenwich.
    MR. BOORDsaid, he would quite admit the correctness of what the right hon. Gentleman had said; but, at the same time, he wished to point out that there was more than one District Board in Greenwich.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: That may be so; but what the other Boards in Greenwich are I am not able accurately to remember at this moment. I referred to Greenwich itself—to the hon. Member's capital—as he will acknowledge. There has been another attempt made in this direction, and that was in the City of Westminster; and I think the right hon. Gentleman opposite the Member for Westminster had some part in that; but it signally failed. I wonder who the persons are who desire a separate Municipality for Westminster? Is it a mistake to suppose that Westminster was ever a municipal borough?

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    It got the name of a city simply because, for a very few years, it had a Bishop; and such institutions as it possesses are the remains of the great ancient Manor of Westminster, of which the records still prevail, although it was greatly broken up in former times. Nobody believes that it would be an advantage to Greenwich, or take Westminster, and cut them out of London, bearing, as they do, an. equal share of all the burdens now borne by other parts of the Metropolis. As regards Greenwich and Deptford, I must confess the great blot on the map of London seems to me to be that Greenwich and Deptford are included in it. It is said they have a desire for a separate Municipality; but I would warn them to take care lest their desire be granted, for it reminds me of the lines of Juvenal as translated by Johnson—
    "When vestries fall by darling schemes oppressed,
    "Then vengeance listens to the fool confessed."
    At all events, it is quite plain that this shadowy red herring of separate Municipalities will not solve the question; and of the 35 districts now composing the Metropolis, not one has ever showed the slightest desire to have a separate Municipality, and no one has had the courage to place it upon the Notice Paper of this House. If you take from them the main drainage, the main roads, the fire brigade, the supervision of buildings, what have you got but a Vestry with a changed name? If this system were adopted, it would perpetuate the evils of which everybody complains. What is the great evil? It is that the Metropolis is broken up into fragments, each of these fragments acting on a different principle, some doing ill, and those who do well suffering in consequence of the ill-doings of their neighbours. If that be true of Vestries, it would be equally true of the separate Municipalities. Well, then, the opponents of this measure, after having tried the separate Municipality manoeuvre, have adopted an old resource of the Corporation of London, and have gone round, cap in hand, begging all the boroughs in England to petition against this Bill. I read in the papers this morning that the Canterbury Corporation had before them, yesterday, a letter from the Lord Mayor, asking them to present a Petition against
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    the London Government Bill; but the Council, by a very large majority, refused to take any steps in the matter, which must be very mortifying to my right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor; and I am afraid the Corporation of Leeds was so unkind as to present a Petition in favour of the Bill. In former years, no doubt, this old resource answered; but the world is moving; and I am afraid the Corporation of London has met with an almost universal rebuff from their ancient fellow-Corporations in the country. Manchester has not only refused to petition against the Bill, but has even been so kind as to petition in its favour. But there is balm in Gilead, and it is refreshing to hear that a Petition against the Bill has been presented by the solitary Corporation of Bury St. Edmunds. That is the result of this great canvassing operation. But they have got another great resource which they bring forward. It has been agreed that we might adopt a system of breaking up, rather than, that of a central authority. I believe that system has been tried in the Provinces, and they have always reverted to a system of one Government. [Mr. TOMLINSON: Salford.] The Government have considered the question of the separation, of Salford from Manchester, and we do not believe it is satisfactory to all parties. The opponents of the Bill have produced a real live Mayor from the other side of the Atlantic, who says that nothing could be more monstrous than the institution of one Government for all London. This gentleman says further that a single Government for a large city has been tried in America, but that it has been found a great mistake; and that they have had to have recourse to a totally different system, the result being that they had a dozen Municipalities in Boston and several Municipalities in New York, and he advises us to follow the example there set. But I am not inclined to lay any great stress upon this recommendation; because it has turned out that this gentleman's facts are not quite accurate. The information I have received is certainly not in favour of a number of separate Municipalities being established there. There are not a dozen such Municipalities in Boston, nor many Municipalities in New York. Then, again, I do not think that New York is exactly the place that I should

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    go to for a model and an example of separate Municipalities. When I am told that the Corporation of London have been obliged to get a Mayor from New York to tell us how London ought to be governed, I decline to accept the authority; for I think we are more capable ourselves of judging of the circumstances of our own case. What is the great outcry that has been raised against this Bill? It is said, first of all, that it will destroy the principle of local self-government. [Mr. W. M. TORRENS: That is one of the objections.] Well, I will deal with one at a time. What do you mean by local self-government? Do you mean that every street is to govern itself? [Mr. W. M. TORRENS: Every borough.] I will go step by step. The hon. Member for Fins-bury says, "Every borough." Well, the boroughs in London have not, at present, got local self-government; and, therefore, this Bill cannot destroy it as far as they are concerned. The bodies that have got local self-government are parishes and district boards. Does the hon. Member for Finsbury contend that every parish ought to have local self-government? Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and Leeds did not possess local self-government of that character, and every one of them is bigger than three or four of the existing parishes or district boards in London. I venture to say there is no parish in London numbering a population of 500,000.
    An hon. MEMBER: Lambeth.
    MR. W. M. TORRENS: The parish of Islington contains nearly 300,000 inhabitants, and a rateable property of £1,485,000, while its rates amount to £320,000 a-year. There are only four cities outside London with a greater population than that of Finsbury.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: That is exactly what I have said, and I cannot understand why I am interrupted. Is local self-government destroyed in the large towns which I have mentioned by their being governed by a Central Body? Manchester has tried the system of breaking up the town into fragments, supposing that the municipal affairs would be managed with greater convenience by being managed in two parts; but the system was soon found faulty, and the one-government scheme was reverted to. Glasgow, too, has something to say about minor Munici-
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    palities in the neighbourhood of large towns.
    MR. R. N. FOWLER (LORD MAYOR): There is Salford, which is separated from Manchester.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: My right hon. Friend must not suppose that the separation there is entirely satisfactory to the inhabitants. Then, again, is not the existence of the Metropolitan Board itself a violation of this principle of local self-government? What is that Board? It is a central Board which, in all the more important matters, exercises authority over the whole of London in every one of its separate parishes. Is not that a violation of local self-government, and do you preserve this sacred principle of local self-government by leaving to these districts the power of separate action only in the minor matters of paving, cleansing the streets, and lighting? For certain purposes, the Metropolitan Board governs all London. Its representation, however, is imperfect. [Sir JAMES M'GAREL-HOGG: No.] Well, the fact is that the Lord Mayor thinks the Corporation of London perfect, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board thinks his Board perfect, and the Middlesex magistrates think that they are unequalled. Just so, every Vestry thinks itself perfect; and, if that is so, what is to become of municipal reform? There would be none; for if they are right, why should we have reform at all? Then, why refer this Bill, as is proposed, to a Select Committee, after being read a second time, if there is to be no reform? Why have not hon. Gentlemen opposite put forward a Motion for the rejection of the measure? Because they know very well that the views of the Gentlemen to whom I have referred are not the views of the majority in this House, or of the majority outside this House, and that is why they have not met the proposal with a direct negative. The fact is, that, though it is known that there must be reform, nobody wants his own Body to be reformed. It is only in minor matters that the Vestries have any authority. For instance, the Metropolitan Board of Works controls all the house building from Camberwell to Hampstead, and elsewhere in the Metropolis. Is that not a violation of local self-government? Why should Wandsworth not control its own building operations?

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    It is because there should be uniformity. Only in minor matters, with one exception, do the Vestries have any authority at all. All the larger duties of local self-government are given to a central Body, the representation of which is very imperfect, because that representation is not in proportion to the wealth of the districts, or the population. Wands-worth sends the same representation to the Metropolitan Board of Works that is sent by Holborn or the Strand. That is not what I call a perfect representative system. The Vestries have authority as regards street paving, cleansing, and lighting. I will not say much about those matters; but we all know that everyone is inconvenienced by going into districts where streets are badly lighted or paved. Then there is the question of local sewerage, which is under the control of the Vestries. If that is done badly in one district, the whole of London will suffer; and it is to very little purpose that the Metropolitan Board should construct main sewers, if the local sewerage is imperfectly carried out by the Vestries. Then there is the great question of sanitary inspection, which is of cardinal importance in the government of London. What is the position of London in this respect? for nothing can be more important than that the local sewage should be properly dealt with, and that there should be a proper system of sanitary inspection. I do not wish to be an alarmist; but everybody knows that, at this moment, we are threatened with a very formidable disease, which has already attacked a neighbouring country, and that the safety of the population depends upon preventive measures. Those who understand the matter are aware that this country has entirely rejected the system of quarantine as being a preventive, and everybody agrees that the great danger of cholera arises from the imperfect sanitary condition of the place attacked. Therefore, when a danger of this kind threatens a great Metropolis like London all must desire and want a central authority, which should advise, which should assist, which should compel every part of the community to take those measures of precaution which are necessary for the safety of the whole. That is true at all times; but it is more particularly true now, and I warn this
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    House and the people of this Metropolis that no such authority exists at this time. How are you going to face this danger? Are you going to face it in the name of self-government, while it rests with each individual district entirely whether such a work shall be well or ill-done; and, in fact, whether it shall be done at all. My right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board can tell us something of his conflict with certain Boards, and of one district, which absolutely refused to do anything at all. If a Vestry refuses to make sanitary bye-laws, or to carry out a proper system of sanitary inspection, you are absolutely powerless to compel them to do so. A single parish may become a plague-spot in London, the focus and source from which disease may be spread all around, and the Metropolitan Board have no authority to make the parish do as it ought to do. If a parish has not a proper sanitary inspector, if it does not choose to have a proper system of sewerage, there is no authority to see that it is done. The Metropolitan Board and the Local Government Board have no power whatever to make a parish do what it ought to do in this respect. That is the condition of things. Is this the system which, in the name of local self-government, you would keep up; and are you going to say that London should not be armed with an authority which I tell you is absolutely necessary for the safety of the whole? That is the cardinal principle of the Bill. I venture to say that you cannot afford, with a population of nearly 4,000,000, to have 38 separate Bodies, any one of which neglecting its duty may imperil the whole of London. To put an end to such a state of things is what I propose. That is the cardinal principle which lies at the bottom of this Bill, and it is against that proposition that the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie) is directed. I say that is the vital principle of the Bill, and it is a question which affects the vital interests of London. There is another question in which great interest is taken, and that is the housing of the poor. That, again, rests with these Bodies under the name of local self-government. And what has happened? A short time ago there came to the Local Government Board a deputation, received by my right hon. Friend (Sir

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    Charles W. Dilke) and myself, with the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. W. M. Torrens) at its head; and what did he ask? He said—''For Heaven's sake give us some help, some power that will make these local bodies do their duty. Let the Government come in and compel the Vestries and parishes to do their duty, else we shall get nothing done." Well, I declined on the part of the Government, and in the name and on the principle of local self-government, to undertake any such duty. No; it is not the Executive Government which is to aid my hon. Friend to extricate his admirable waggon, which has now got stuck fast in the mud of local self-government. We have offered him a Body to control these subordinate Vestries, which Body is to be elected by the same constituencies from which the Vestries are drawn. That is a control which is consistent with the principle of local self-government, for to call on the Executive to work the principle of local self-government in the Metropolis is one of the most miserable resorts which can, be imagined. What is the plan that we propose in this Bill? We do not propose to take away the work of these local bodies. Under the Bill they will do very much the same work as before; but they will do it subject to a supervision and control which will see that it is done in a manner consistent in itself and necessary for the good of the whole. We leave, it is true, the attribution and distribution of those powers to a Central Body. You say that it is overbearing the local bodies to bring in a Central Body. Nothing of the kind; for what is the Central Body but a collection of members of those local bodies themselves? Every one of the members of the Central Body is a member of a local body, and is elected by the same constituency and at the same time. Further than that, the authority which is to distribute and attribute the powers of the local bodies is derived from, the same source as the local bodies themselves; and it is from it, not from the Executive Government, that the control is to come. A proposal more consonant with the principle of local self-government it is impossible to propound. There can be no tyranny about it; for it is a different thing even to being controlled by Parliament, or the Executive Government. It is also said—"Oh, the Central Body will take
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    away too much power from the district council." Why should it? It consists of members of the district councils. Whatever the district councils wish, the members of the Central Council are likely to wish, because they are members of the district councils themselves, and elected by the same constituents; and if you wish the district councils to have more power, the Central Body can give it to them. There must be a control over the local councils, and how are you to get it? Suggest to me a better plan, and I will adopt it. The hon. Member for Finsbury, when he came to ask the Government to work his Act, admitted that, in the carrying of it out, it had broken down. Then it is said that this proposal will detract from the dignity of the Vestries. I do not see why. Why should it detract from the dignity of a local body that its duties should be prescribed by a body constituted of its own members? I should have thought that the local body would rather have taken its power from such a source than from the Executive Government; that it would rather have had its duties prescribed to it by its own members than by an external body. How do you detract from that dignity by placing persons on these Vestries who are members of the great Corporation of London? It was said, under the First Napoleon, that every French soldier had before him the baton of a French Marshal, and so every vestryman will have before him the badge of a Lord Mayor. And now as to the outcry respecting expenditure, which it is said will be greatly increased. Will anyone explain to me why there should be a great increase of expenditure? There is one species of expenditure at present I should rather like to get the figures of from my right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor and the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and that is the cost of the battle they are waging about the sewage of London. I am told each of them has spent £20,000 in having got through only half of the inquiry. That shows that dual government is not always an economical affair. What are the items of expenditure? Take the Staff of the Corporation. There are the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, solicitor, engineer, architect, and so on. Why should you spend more than on the combined Staff of the Guildhall and Spring

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    Gardens? Without imputing extravagance to the Corporation of London, its Staff is very generously paid. The Staff of the Metropolitan Board is also well paid, and I venture to say that the expenditure on the two combined cannot be exceeded by that on the Staff of the Central Body. Then, as to the next head, why should the Central Body spend more money than the present Metropolitan Board of Works? Of course, if they undertake greater works, the expenditure may be greater; but there is nothing in this proposal of a Central Body which means greater expenditure. And as to the local expenditure of the parishes, why should that be greater? By the Bill each of these parishes forms its own budget. It is not the Central Body which says— "You will expend such and such a sum of money." There is no power to force on the Vestries an expenditure they do not desire to make, except in two cases, which, I venture to say, are necessary— namely, matters affecting the sanitary condition of the whole population and the housing of the poor. In all the rest the district authority is absolute master of its own expenditure. I see nothing in the Bill to justify the suggestion that it will lead to a larger expenditure, for that is the extent of the delegation of the powers; and the position of the Vestries, in respect of their administration and expenditure, will be exactly as it was before. Something has been said about the proposed number of the Corporation. Some people say the number is too great, and others say it is too small. My right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor will not say that the number is too great, for it is about the same number as the Common Council. I should have thought that 206 was too great a number for the Common Council, which administers the affairs of one square mile. However, I will say nothing against the existing system; but, on the other hand, it is an extraordinary thing that the whole of London is administered, in all its details, by a body numbering 46. I say it is marvellous. I should have said that the number was too small for such a great work. But the work we are going to throw upon this Central Body is not going to be very much different. That Central Body will have more authority than the Metropolitan Board, but its work will be
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    exactly of the same character. The object of our arrangements is not to take away from the work of the Vestries. What the Bill does is to give to the Central Body a controlling power which will bring these local bodies into harmony in the duties they have to discharge. That is the central idea of the measure. A Corporation of 240 men can never be congested by work. I want it to be clearly understood what is the vital principle of the Bill. The measure will not for the first time establish a single body for the government of London; that was done 30 years ago. There is a single body which, for all improvement purposes, does govern the whole of London, and for a great many purposes the area of the City. It exists now, and that is the Metropolitan Board of Works, and all the powder spent by the opponents of the Bill in the argument that this is the introduction of one body for the government of London is thrown away on the air. The principle of a Central Body has grown with the strength of London, and each succeeding want has been met by giving further power to the single body—the Metropolitan Board of Works—and not to the Local Authorities. The Bill, therefore, establishes nothing new; but it makes a representative body more representative than it was before by bringing within it members elected more directly by the ratepayers, and giving the ratepayers more representation in proportion to the wealth and population of each district than they possess on the Metropolitan Board. Now, as to the local bodies, the Bill does not destroy their power, nor does it dispense with their aid. On the contrary, it places them in a much more powerful position than they have ever been in before, because it affiliates them to the Central Body; and for the first time the Bill really does—what it is intended to do, and what I claim to be its vital principle—to establish a definite community of action among the different Governing Bodies of London. There are 38 of these bodies in London, each of which does exactly what it pleases. The principle of the Bill is to bring harmony of action in the central authority to bear upon the different districts of the Metropolis, and the question arises as to how that control is to be exercised? It is to be exercised by the persons most obviously competent—

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    the persons who are now members of the local bodies and who are elected by the ratepayers. That is a far better control than Parliament can contrive, or Government can exercise. I have pointed out that, with cholera in a neighbouring country, the existing practice is an immense danger. ["Oh, oh!"] I repeat that warning in the most solemn way. Yon may have one pestilential parish in London, which refuses to have sanitary inspection, and if the House refuses to establish some system which shall exercise control over the Governing Body of such a parish, then the consequences will rest with the House, and not with the Government. I will now refer to the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie). The hon. Gentleman does not propose the rejection of the Bill; but he raises the most extraordinary minute points, which are not in issue in the Bill at all. If you come to read the Amendment it is quite consistent with the Bill. It does not traverse any principle of the Bill. It is to the following effect:—
    "That while ready to consider the question of a reform in the Government of London, this House declines to assent to a proposal by which the control over the levying and expenditure of rates would be vested in one Central Body to the practical extinction of the local self-government of the various cities and boroughs of the Metropolis."
    But there is no local self-government at all, except in the City of London. It is an assertion of a fact which has no existence; and, therefore, the Amendment shows a want of acquaintance with the local self-government of London on the part of the hon. Member which I did not expect to find. The Amendment says that the levying and expenditure of rates will be vested in one Central Body. What rates does he mean? He cannot mean the poor rate, the education rate, the police rate, or the Metropolitan Board rate, which are vested already in a Central Body; and we leave other expenditure in the hands of different bodies. ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Members may cry "Oh!" but that shows they do not understand the Bill on the very point on which they attack it. The expenditure would be left there absolutely, when you once define the duty—["Oh, oh!"]—that shows still more that you do not understand the Bill. The ques-
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    tion only is—Who shall define the duty? When you have once defined the duty, either by Parliament or by the Central Body of each separate body, neither of them has control of the expenditure; it is a defining of the causes from which expenditure arises. But you then say that Local Government is destroyed. No; for you determine that the Vestry shall cleanse, light, and pave its streets, and have them, in its own control. If my right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire had had stomach for the fight upon the proposal of that day three months, no doubt the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets would have made way for them; but they have apparently thought it much more convenient that they should not pledge themselves to a proceeding of this kind. Therefore, the Bill is met by an Amendment which does not challenge any vital principle whatever of the Bill. It is put in simply as an Amendment to be voted upon, without committing anybody to anything. The Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for the County of Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) is framed in the same judicious spirit; it does not attack the principle of the Bill in any respect, and it is founded on a total misconception of the provisions of the Bill. I am afraid that I have detained the House much longer than I had intended; but I only wish to refer to the action of the Bill from a sanitary point of view. Now, the medical officers of the medical districts have a society of their own. That society met as soon as this Bill was introduced, and the council reported, without expressing any opinion upon the political aspect of the Bill—
    "That they noted with satisfaction that its provisions appeared well calculated to promote the much-needed unity of sanitary administration."
    That is the opinion of the men who are responsible for the health and sanitary condition of London. If there were nothing else in the Bill but the security to be given to the health of the Metropolis, that the neglect of a single fragment of this great framework should not imperil the safety of the whole, it would be enough, in my opinion, to command the support of the House. But there are many other objects which, I believe,

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    are necessary for the welfare of the community of the 4,000,000 of people; and I trust that, reserving to themselves every possible freedom in dealing with the details of this Bill in Committee, the House will affirm its principle by passing the second reading.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time," — (Secretary Sir William Harcourt.)
    MR. RITCHIE, in rising to move the following Amendment:—
    "That, while ready to consider the question of a reform in the Government of London, this House declines to assent to a proposal by which the control over the levying and expenditure of rates would he vested in one central body to the practical extinction of the local self-government of the various cities and boroughs of the Metropolis,"
    said, that the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) had begun his speech by congratulating himself upon the quietness which reigned in the House. He (Mr. Ritchie) thought it was an astounding thing that when the right hon. Gentleman was moving the second reading of a Reform Bill, and a Reform Bill which affected a population larger than that of Scotland, and an enormous amount of rateable property, the number of the right hon. Gentleman's listeners was 15, and at no time had it exceeded 50. He thought that that was an illustration of the quietness which reigned in the country with reference to this Bill. No doubt, there had been a great amount of effort on the part of the supporters of the Bill to create a public feeling in its favour; but, notwithstanding these efforts, he was satisfied that there was hardly an hon. Member in that House who really and honestly believed that there was any real demand for it in the Metropolis. He thought that, at the outset, he might fairly complain of the time at which this measure was brought forward. They were now in July, and this measure was one which the right hon. Gentleman himself acknowledged to be one of a most complex character. They were, therefore, asked seriously to consider a Bill of this great magnitude, abounding in detail, at a time when the Business of the House of Commons was considerably in arrear, and when it was notorious that the Government required
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    almost the whole of the time to get through the ordinary Business of the Session. As far as he had understood, the right hon. Gentleman had asked them to consider this Bill as a matter of urgency. For what reason? Because the right hon. Gentleman said that he would not be responsible for what would occur if they did not, seeing that cholera had invaded a neighbouring country. But had it not been for the painful misunderstanding between the Prime Minister and his followers, in all probability they would never have heard of this Bill at all this Session. It was rather strange, he thought, that the right hon. Gentleman should come down there and tell them, in stentorian tones, that he would not be responsible for the consequences if this Bill were not passed, when it was not to come into operation until next May. Would the cholera wait in a neighbouring country till then? He did not wish to be in any way disrespectful to the right hon. Gentleman; but it was really absurd to come before the House of Commons, and thus to make use of the dread arising from an outbreak of cholera as a means to urge a Bill on them, of which they would have heard nothing but for the misunderstanding to which he had alluded. He confessed that, in his opinion, to introduce a Bill of that nature and magnitude at such a time was very much like Obstruction. It was perfectly certain that the right hon. Gentleman could not hope to deal in Committee with this great and complex measure, and to pass it in the time which remained to them of the Session. That was the first objection which he had to the Bill; but there was another, the consideration of which he would leave to those who were more familiar with the matter than himself; and that objection was, that this was a Bill which ought to have complied with the Standing Orders of the House which were applicable to Private Bills, as it came under both categories of Bills to which they applied. As regarded the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, it was like the speech which he had made in introducing the measure, an exceedingly able one, as might have been expected from the right hon. Gentleman; but it was, in addition, what they could hardly have expected from him, of a moderate and conciliatory character. Both on that night and on

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    the previous occasion he had spoken of both the Corporation and the Metropolitan Board of Works in terms, at any rate, of qualified praise, and he had even admitted that the Vestries had done some good work. He (Mr. Ritchie) was afraid that, even with all this praise, there was the cloven hoof of the destruction of the ancient Corporation of London; and, notwithstanding all that the right hon. Gentleman had said that night, practically the destruction of local self-government in the Metropolis, and the inauguration of a vast system of centralization, which he would venture to say would not tend to the good government of the Metropolis in any way. They were told that the Corporation of London was not to be destroyed, but that it was to have a number of partners in its property. He doubted whether a desire to be partners in it was not one great cause for urging on the Bill, and probably was at the bottom of it. He did not propose to undertake the defence of the Corporation—there were many much more able champions than he; but he would not be doing justice to his own feelings and to those of his constituents in the East of London, if he did not bear his testimony to the vast amount of good the City of London had done in the administration of its funds. The population of the East End had many reasons to speak well of their public spirit; and when he remembered the way they had exerted themselves for the purpose of maintaining and securing Epping Forest from the grasp of the destroyer, and the many other charitable undertakings in which the Corporation had assisted, he was glad to bear his testimony to the fact that, on the part of the people of the Metropolis outside the City, there was no desire to see this ancient Corporation destroyed. It might be said that they would have a share in the funds. That he greatly doubted, for when they came to be filtered through so many hands the result would be that what there was to divide would be comparatively little and valueless. He wished to revert for a moment to what the right hon. Gentleman opposite said about the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Vestries—namely, that they deserved a tribute of public approbation for the work they had done, though that was not to save them from the ruthless
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    hand of the destroyer. It was true that the right hon. Gentleman declared that some were good, some were bad, and some were indifferent; but of what public bodies, or of what public men, could not the same be said? Even the Members of Her Majesty's Government were open to the same criticism—some of them were good, some indifferent, and some bad. [Laughter, miseries of "Names !"] No; when the right hon. Gentleman himself made the assertion, he had not condescended to give any name; and, therefore, he (Mr. Ritchie) must decline to undertake such an invidious task as that of distinguishing between the Members of Her Majesty's Government; they might settle that among themselves. It was very much the custom to speak ill of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Vestries and the government of London generally; but this fact could not be gainsaid, notwithstanding the complaint of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and those who supported him, that, under this administration, which the right hon. Gentleman was going to abolish, London had been converted from a badly-paved, badly-lighted, and badly-drained City to the healthiest City in the world. He would not weary the House with statistics; but the death-rate was an unerring proof of the sanitary condition of towns. In the years preceding 1860, the death-rate in London was 22·7; last year it was 20·4; showing a reduction of 2·3, or a decrease of 10 per cent. Comparing this rate with that of other large towns, what did they find? Between the years 1873 and 1882, the death-rate in Birmingham was 23·4; in Leeds, 24·8; in Liverpool, 27·6; and in Manchester, 28·8, yet all these towns enjoyed the blessings of centralized government, which the right hon. Gentleman wanted to bestow upon London. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Take Derby.] He understood the death-rate there was less. [Sir CHARLES W. DILKE: Sixteen per 1,000] That was lower, no doubt; probably due to the purity of the liquor, the size of the town, or the right hon. Gentleman's able representation of the constituency; but to cite a town like Derby as an instance was a reductio ad absurdum of the whole Bill. Taking the death-rate of towns outside England, they found, in Glasgow, it was 28·2; in Dublin. 29·2; in Paris, 25·2;

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    in Berlin, 29; and in New York, 27·4. He had been told it was hardly fair to strike a comparative rate without taking into account inherent differences, and doing that they obtained this result— In 1883, the death-rate was in Birmingham 22·75; in Leeds, 24·85; in Liverpool, 29·28; in Manchester, 30·8, or 50 per cent higher in Liverpool than in London. Whitechapel had been referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh University (Sir Lyon Playfair) as having a high death-rate—24·0; but, considering the class of people living there, it was wonderfully low. It should be remembered that the inhabitants of that district were people who suffered from privation and distress, and whom no amount of centralized government could keep alive. Then, as regarded the efficiency of the Local Boards, if the elections were not so satisfactory as could be wished— though he did not say so—he did not mean to convey the impression that he was entirely satisfied with things as they were, and with the little interest taken in the elections; but that they had not good representatives on those bodies was the fault of the electors, and not of the system, and it was not by taking away duties and responsibilities from the Vestries that they could hope to remedy that] defect. The question, after all, to be considered was, not whether reforms were necessary, but whether the proposals contained in the Bill were of so sound a principle that they would accomplish the objects in view, and whether the measure was likely to work? When the right hon. Gentleman said that the amount of centralization he proposed already existed in the Metropolitan Board of Works, he entirely forgot the difference between the constitution of that Body and the constitution of the central authority under this. Bill. Its proposals were distinct of a centralizing character, the Central Council having to consider and determine upon the proposals of the District Councils. He had heard that there were rumours in the air that the right hon. Gentleman was prepared to make considerable concessions; and he had waited, with some anxiety, to hear whether the right hon. Gentleman would cut the ground from under his feet by making those concessions. The right hon. Gentleman, however, had sat down without
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    suggesting the possibility of his conceding anything; and, therefore, he must treat the Bill as he found it. He maintained that the measure was one of a centralizing nature, and that it was directly aimed against local self-control. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the government of London was to be transferred from the various bodies that now governed it to one central body. This was not the first time that this proposal had been under consideration. The right hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Bill, had referred to the Commission of 1854. That Commission was composed of three eminent men—Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Justice Patterson, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis—and it was appointed to inquire into the state of the Corporation of the City of London. And what was the conclusion that those Gentlemen arrived at after full inquiry? It was that the very proposal which the right hon. Gentleman now made should not be adopted. They said, in their Report, that the advance of the boundaries of the City of London would create a Municipal Body of unmanageable dimensions, and that, therefore, the proposal should not be adopted. The fundamental error into which the Government had fallen in framing this Bill was that of supposing that London was one harmonious whole. The right hon. Gentleman had presumed that London was like other cities, in which all interests were in common; whereas, in truth, London was composed, not of one city and one borough, but of several cities and several boroughs which had nothing in common with each other. What, for instance, was there in common between Kensington and Poplar? Could interests be more widely different than those of those places? That fact had been fully recognized by the Commission, who had stated that London was not a City, but a Province, covered with houses, whose diameter was so great that those who lived at one end of it were altogether unacquainted with the wants and requirements of those who lived at the opposite end of it; and they had said that the duties of the administration of such a vast community were so great as to lead them to decide against recommending that the whole of the Metropolis should be placed under one Corporation. At the time when the Commission arrived at that conclusion, London

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    contained a population of 2,000,000— now it contained 4,000,000 of people; then its rateable value was £10,000,000 sterling—now it was nearly £30,000,000 sterling. If, therefore, the decision arrived at in this respect by the Commission was right in 1854, it would be 10 times more right in the present day. And yet Her Majesty's Government had thought fit to bring forward that proposal, which was expressly and in terms condemned by the Commission. In his opinion, the administrative machinery proposed to be set up by this Bill would be altogether unworkable. Look at the vast amount of work to be done. It might be that, at the first election, they might get a Council composed of the best men to be found in the Metropolis; but, as the real nature of the work to be done came to be fully appreciated, the administration would fall entirely into the hands of a few who would probably form a set of wirepullers, who would manipulate the affairs of the Corporation with motives and ideas very far removed from those now held by the Government. The right hon. Gentleman, in his speech that night, had said that this Bill would not interfere with local self-government; but he (Mr. Ritchie), on the contrary, maintained that it was one of the most centralizing measures that had ever been introduced into that House. At present, every part of the Metropolis was self-governed by its different local bodies; but what was to be the position of those different parts of the Metropolis under this Bill? Take the Tower Hamlets, for instance, with its population of 500,000. Under the Bill, it would be represented on the Central Council by 20 Members out of a total of 240. He was convinced that, in such circumstances, the Tower Hamlets would stand very little chance of having its wants considered, or of the recommendations of its District Councils being approved of by the Central Body. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to consider that the District Councils would perform the functions which were now performed by the local bodies; but, in his (Mr. Ritchie's) opinion, the position of a district councillor would be such as not to present any attraction to men of self-respect.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that they might look to attain the office of Lord Mayor.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, that, looking to the fact that the Central Council would be able to select for that office any person outside their body, he was afraid that no Tower Hamlets district councillor would find that he carried the Lord Mayor's baton in his knapsack. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the Central Councillors would also be District Councillors; and that, therefore, the different districts would be well represented on the Central Council. But each locality would be so sparsely represented that it would be unable to enforce attention to its wants. Then, moreover, what was the position which the District Councils were to occupy? They were not to appoint their own officers, and their expenditure was to be controlled and subject to the veto of the Central Council. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT dissented.] The right hon. Gentleman shook his head. Let that point be cleared up then. As he (Mr. Ritchie) understood the Bill, when any money was required for any local purposes, the District Council was to make a representation on the subject to the Central Council, with an estimate of the cost of the improvement, and the Central Council were to have a power to veto the proposal of the District Council. The right hon. Gentleman did not shake his head to that view of the operation of the Bill. Then, in future, he (Mr. Ritchie) hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would nod his head instead of shaking it when he stated his view of the operation of the Bill. The fact was that the Bill would furnish a gross parody on local self-governmont, and was one of mere centralization, which he had heard the Prime Minister himself say would be the greatest curse to the country. If this Bill were proceeded with on the lines indicated by the right hon. Gentleman, instead of inducing the best men, who had hitherto taken part in the administration of local self-government, to come forward and assist in the working of the measure now proposed, would, on the contrary, deter them from doing so when they found that the deliberate decisions of the District Councils were to be overruled by the veto of the Common Council; the Bill was, therefore, a measure to ignore local self-government, or to establish a system of centralization. Hence it was that, in spite of the solitary vestrymen, to whom reference had

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    been made, it could not be denied that the enormous majority of the members of the Local Bodies in the Metropolis were opposed to the present Bill. As a compensation for all those advantages, they were not even to have the benefit of one uniform rating, as had been expected would have been established by the Bill, dealing, as it did, with the whole Metropolis. On the contrary, he found that the people in the East End of London would still have to pay 5s. or 6s. in the pound; while their neighbours in the West End paid only 3s. or 4s. in the pound. The former were to give up their right of local self-government; but they were to be taxed all the same at the dictation of a Central Board. It was, in point of fact, impossible that they could treat London as a whole, and the Government themselves acknowledged the difficulties existing in the case by note conferring on the Board many of the powers which it was hoped by those who were mainly instrumental in raising the question would be vested in a new Municipality. As an instance, he might mention the case of the police, although he was not contending that the police of the whole of the Metropolis ought to be handed over to local authorities. The Government had more than once expressed a desire to exercise their power over the licensing; but the right hon. Gentleman had very prudently abstained from conferring such a power on the new Municipality.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he had stated a reason why that power and other powers had not been introduced into the present Bill. To introduce them would necessitate the insertion of numerous clauses; but it was the intention of the Government subsequently to give the powers.
    SIR R. ASSHETON CROSS: By separate Bills?
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Yes.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, he supposed, then, they were to understand that this was not a complete measure, and that it was, indeed, only the first of a series of proposals which would be laid before the House. Well, a few more clauses introduced into the Bill would not much matter. The Government would have cut out work for a good many Sessions if they were going to deal with all these matters in separate measures. Then there was the question of cholera and
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    small-pox. A writer in The Times in November, 1882, pointed out that if a really satisfactory Government existed for London there could be no reason for the separate existence of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. Was there to be another Bill introduced afterwards to transfer the powers of that Board to the new Municipality for London? Yet, in respect to sanitary matters, the Asylum Board took cognizance of them in a way to afford general satisfaction. It appeared to him that if this new Council were to be intrusted with anything at all, it might fairly be intrusted with the powers now possessed by the Metropolitan Asylums Board.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTexplained that the Bill did not deal with the Poor Law jurisdiction.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, he was aware there were many things which the right hon. Gentleman did not deal with. That was exactly the point, and that was the difficulty experienced in dealing with so large a place as London. If a Central Council were established, ought not London to have the control of the River Thames and the River Lea? He did not assert that the Government had done wrong in not conferring all these various powers on the Central Body; but he merely gave these as illustrations of the difficulties which the Government themselves saw in the way of parrying out their magnificent scheme. Large bodies in the Metropolis had proved to be very costly, as was seen in the case of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the London School Board. Possibly, under the new scheme, the cost of the Lord Mayor might not be so great as at present; but the Administration would feel the want of that hospitality which was now extremely beneficial, and which conferred a considerable amount of good, not only on the locality itself, but also on the nation at large. He found that London was governed at an expense of £1 10 s. per head, as compared with £4 11 s. 2d. in Paris, and £6 per head in New York. He also found that while the cost of the London rates was 4s. 5¾d per head, per pound, that of Bristol was 5s. 8d.; of Birmingham, 6s. 7d.; of Leeds, 6s. 8d.; and of Dublin, 9s. 3d.
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: That includes other things. It includes water and gas.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, he presumed that the right hon. Gentleman was speaking from actual knowledge when he stated that the rate in all those towns included water and gas.
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: At Birmingham.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, that Birmingham presented a flagrant instance of extravagance. He was told, however, that the rate there did not include the cost of gas. This Bill would not only be destructive to local self-government, but it would be cumbersome and unworkable, inefficient, and extravagant, while it was distasteful to those who were most deeply interested in the welfare of London. The right hon. Gentleman had asserted that "public opinion inside and. outside the House was in favour of the Bill. The fact was, that out of 38 Vestries and Boards of Works, 33 had passed votes against it, while only two had passed resolutions in its favour. Did the right hon. Gentleman consider that the public Press was evidence of public opinion? Out of 85 organs of public opinion in the Metropolis, 71 were against the Bill and only 14 in favour of it. Speaking of his own locality, the four or five Liberal organs were unanimous in condemning the Bill. [Mr. BRYCE: No !] The hon. Member would have an opportunity of telling the House what newspapers were in favour of the Bill. The paper which was loudest in praise of the hon. Member was also strongestin its opposition to the Bill. The evidence of public meetings was to the same effect. Means, no doubt, had been found to get up a bogus agitation in favour of the Bill; but it was through the instrumentality of packed meetings, where wilful and misleading statements were made, and freedom of discussion suppressed. In one meeting in the Tower Hamlets, a well-known Liberal —Colonel Munro—moved a resolution against the Bill. At that meeting, the supporters of the Bill were drawn from every quarter of London, and one gentleman came from Cookham. Then, the Kensington meeting was, to a great extent, a packed meeting. One-third of the Hall was filled before the meeting began; and hired bullies ejected with shameful violence all those who ventured to express dissent. Then, there were meetings at the East End and at Peckham Rye. The House might judge
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    of the character of the latter meeting by the fact that it was held on Whit Sunday. At these meetings the most false and misleading statements were made. At the Kensington Meeting, the junior Member for Chelsea (Mr. Firth) wished to make the audience believe that the Metropolitan Board was grossly extravagant and spent £4,000,000.
    MR. FIRTHsaid, he told the meeting that the budget of the Metropolitan Board was over £4,000,000.
    MR. RITCHIEasked whether the hon. and learned Member explained that that was not the expenditure of the Metropolitan Board?
    MR. FIRTHsaid, anyone who knew what the budget of the Metropolitan Board was, knew that it included loans to the School Board and other matters of that kind.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, the audience would not understand the distinction; and that the hon. and learned Member had not explained the difference between the budget of the Board and its own proper expenditure, until he "was challenged to do so. The hon. and learned Member intended to mislead the meeting. Then, at Peckham Rye, the inducement was held out, that the Bill would bring about an equalization of poor rates throughout the Metropolis. But the Bill contained no provision to that effect. Then, where were the Petitions in favour of the Bill? Comparatively speaking, there were none. There had been, in fact, eight Petitions, signed by nine people, in favour of the Bill; whereas there had been 173 presented against it, signed by 16,000; and even that did not represent the full extent of the feeling against the measure, as, in many cases, a Petition from a meeting was signed by the chairman only. He maintained, therefore, that the people of the Metropolis were not in favour of, but were opposed to, that expensive, delusive, and inefficient Bill. He was not opposed to reform; his Amendment did not say that he was; reform might be necessary, and he thought it was. It was a great misfortune, he thought, that so little interest was taken in the election of members of Vestries and District Boards; but it was quite a different question whether this was to be remedied in the way proposed by the Bill. The reform which he should like to see carried out was one which would increase the vigour and

    1955
    effect of local government, instead of extinguishing; it. If they wanted more interest taken in the matter, and better men to take it, they must increase the responsibilities rather than decrease them. How was that to be done? The right hon. Gentleman had denounced the principle of separate Municipalities as absurd, and said the reason he did not propose it was because the people did not want it. Was it absurd? He (Mr. Ritchie) was not prepared to say that it was absolutely the best way of doing what was desired; but this he did maintain—that, call the Body what they liked, whether a Municipality or not, it would probably be a great improvement if, instead of having half-a-dozen Vestries or Boards of Works in a district, like, for instance, the Tower Hamlets, having jurisdiction within the area of one Parliamentary borough, there should be within the borough only one Vestry or Local Sanitary Authority, whatever it were called. If a rearrangement of this kind were carried out, and some of the Vestries governed larger areas, it would be expedient to transfer to them many of the matters which were now attended to by the Metropolitan Board. By thus increasing the responsibility of the Local Bodies they would attract to them better men, and they would induce the ratepayers to take more interest in the elections and in the proceedings of the Local Bodies. However that might be, the Royal Commission of 1854 did not think this idea of separate Municipalities absurd. It was in this direction of consolidation, so as to get larger areas, governable with economy and efficiency by better men sensible of larger responsibilities and directly responsible to their local constituents, that they ought to look for improvements and greater public interest in local government, rather than in the creation of a great Central Municipality empowered to weaken the local feelings that now existed by supervising and controlling the action of the Local Authority. If the Government would come forward with some such scheme of consolidating the numerous Local Bodies now existing, he was satisfied that the proposal would not be so distasteful to the majority of the people of London as the present scheme was. The more people considered the great complexity of the measure, and the numerous details with which it dealt, the less they liked it.
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    The secretary of State for the Home Department had said that the Metropolitan Board of Works were in favour of the Bill, whilst the Amendment of his right hon. Friend the Chairman of that Board practically assented to the scheme; but he (Mr. Ritchie) had read a speech of Mr. Selway, at a meeting of the Board, in which he denounced the proposal in on unmeasured terms, as a great scheme of centralization, and his remarks were received with assent by that Body. How, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman could contend that the Metropolitan Board were in favour of the Bill, he could not conceive. As to the Amendment of the Chairman, it did not strike him in the same light as the right hon. Gentleman would have them believe it struck him; because, at that period of the Session, to refer such a Bill to a Select Committee was practically to shelve it altogether. The right hon. Gentleman had said that his (Mr. Ritchie's) Amendment was in accord, practically, with the principles of the Bill. What he (Mr. Ritchie) then would recommend him to do, if he believed what he said, was to gracefully withdraw the Bill, and accept the Amendment, and bring in a well-considered measure based on the principle laid down. If the right hon. Gentleman did that, he would assure him that it would receive the approval of the great majority of the House of Commons and the people of London. With regard to what had been said as to the position of his Amendment, he would remind the right hon. Gentleman that, since he placed it on the Paper of Business, it had undergone many changes in that particular, and the prominence it now occupied was due rather to accident than from any compunction on the part of his right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor to move his Amendment for rejecting the Bill altogether. The Bill, undoubtedly, so far from having the support of the people, was diametrically opposed to their wishes; and he desired to move the Amendment standing in his name.
    LORD ALGERNON PERCY, in seconding the Amendment, said, he hoped that, notwithstanding- the solemn warning of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) as to the cholera, the House would not assent to the second reading of the Bill. Under the plea of strengthening local self-

    1957
    government, it would practically extinguish such government by vesting a Central Authority with unlimited power. The right hon. Gentleman had said something about the exertions put forward by the Corporation of the City of London against the Bill; but he apparently forgot to mention that efforts had been made to obtain Petitions from the Corporations of Provincial towns in support of the Bill; and he (Lord Algernon Percy) believed that two such Petitions had been presented, which came respectively from Leeds and Congleton, two towns, no doubt, admirably capable, in their own estimation, of judging and deciding as to the wishes of the people of London. The right hon. Gentleman opposite argued as if the whole question was a question between separate Municipalities and one Central Authority; but it seemed to him (Lord Algernon Percy) that the real question was whether the Central Authority contemplated by that Bill was combined with a due provision for the preservation of local self-government. There were some rather curious circumstances connected with the introduction of the measure. On that occasion, the right hon. Gentleman had carefully praised the existing Bodies, and had alleged no maladministration, or that great evils existed in their administration; the only reason seemed to be that there was a want of symmetry in the present system, and a lack of power on the part of the Local Authorities to deal with certain matters intrusted to them. It might, therefore, have been thought that the right course would be to strengthen the powers of the Local Authorities; but that was not what the right hon. Gentleman proposed to do. On the contrary, he sought to sweep away the whole of the existing Local Authorities, and to substitute an entirely new creation for them. Again, although Returns had been asked from the Local Authorities, and cheerfully furnished, not one of those Authorities had ever been consulted in regard to that Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the supporters and the opponents of the Bill outside of the House, and had referred to the former as belonging to some thinly-attended Vestries; but he had not mentioned the fact that the meetings in its favour had been held in small school-rooms, where the majority of the
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    audiences were old women. The fact was, that the agitation in favour of the Bill did not arise amongst those remarkable either for their knowledge of local matters, or with individuals who had spent much time in the management of local affairs; whereas almost every Vestry or other Local Authority in London had passed resolutions in opposition to the measure. It was said that the Vestries were interested; but "the people" who figured so prominently in the placards connected with the small meetings to which he had referred were equally interested parties. Moreover, the right hon. Gentleman had admitted that the Local Authorities had performed their duties well, and with a considerable knowledge of the local affairs of London. It was rather curious, too, that since the first reading of that Bill the elections for the different Vestries had taken place; and in almost every instance the men who were opposed to the measure had been returned. It was alleged, from the fact that in one parish a Vestryman had been returned by only 19 votes, that comparatively very few of the ratepayers took part in the choice of those who managed the local affairs of London; but the Bill made no new departure in that respect. Under it the ratepayers within the limits of the Metropolis Management Act were to become burgesses, with the power of electing 240 members to the Central Council and also of electing District Councils. But, under the present system, all ratepayers were entitled to vote for their representatives; and, if they did not chose to do so, it was their own fault—not the fault of the system. They could elect men in their several districts who were acquainted with all its requirements, and those representatives again elected members of the Metropolitan Board of Works; and no difficulty was experienced in finding men of ability and intelligence, who devoted their time and energies to the service of the ratepayers, and who performed their duties very satisfactorily. The incident to which he had referred, therefore, exemplified a fault in the ratepayers and not a fault in the system. The right hon. Gentleman asserted that the Vestries did not want reform; but he (Lord Algernon Percy) was not aware that one of the resolutions passed in a Metropolitan Vestry expressed any op-

    1959
    position to reform. He believed they were prepared to accept reform; but, naturally, they did not wish the power taken out of the hands of the Local Authorities. At the present time, the London Vestries were composed of men. of all classes, who were thoroughly acquainted with the requirements of the neighbourhood. They did their work in the evening after their own business was over; but, under the Bill, those men would no longer be able to perform their duties, owing to the enormous area of the Metropolis, and the time which a consideration of its numerous details would involve; nor could they afford the expense which would be necessary in order to enable them to become candidates for such constituencies as they would have to represent. On the other hand, only rich men who could spare the time, or persons who would make municipal government pay, would find their way into the proposed Common Council, and, thereby, one very important element in good local self-government— the element of the participation of all classes of the community—would be destroyed, while the door would be opened to an enormous amount of jobbery. With regard to the proposed District Councils, their constitution appeared to him one of the most objectionable features of the Bill. The District Council was to be elected by the ratepayers, and, therefore, it might be supposed that the members of that Body would be directly responsible to the electors. But that was not really secured by the Bill. Any person, however, in reading through the Bill would find it difficult to discover what those powers were. They would, under its provisions, be incapable of performing the most ordinary duties without consulting the Central Body. They would not even be able to alter or improve a street.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: If the noble Lord looks at the Bill, he will see that if the District Council has assigned to it the care of a street, that Council can do anything in such street without consulting the Corporation at all.
    LORD ALGERNON PERCYsaid, that was so, if, in the first place, the Common Council delegated the authority to the District Councils. The question of the expense of repairs had to be brought before the Common Council before the repairs to a street could be carried out.
    1960
    Then, the District Councils had no power of rating—they could not spend a single 1d. on their own account, and to the expenses they wished to incur the Common Council might refuse to give consent. The carrying out of works would have to be decided by a Central Authority sitting a considerable distance away, connected with which there would only be a very small number of gentlemen representing the locality where the improvements were to be effected. Westminster, for instance, would only be represented by 23 members, and, therefore, would be in a small minority in the Common Council. The result might be the causing of a great deal of friction, loss of time, and damage to the interests of the public; and there would exist this extraordinary anomaly—that while the members of the District Council would be directly responsible to the electors, they would only be able to exercise derivative authority. He should hardly think that any independent and able man would be likely to put himself into such a position. By this Bill the public would lose three securities which they at present possessed—in the first place, security as to numbers, which they had in the existing government of London; secondly, they would lose the security of the local opinion brought to bear on the 3,000 representatives who were living in the localities they served; and, thirdly, the rating authority not being the same as the spending authority, they would lose the security resulting from the operation of public opinion locally generated and expressed in regard to expenditure. The argument, that the Metropolitan Board of Works had performed those duties, was no argument whatever, because that Board had never attempted to deal with all the minute matters which would come under the attention of the Common Council under this Bill; and it stood to reason that if they spread the principle contained in the measure over too great an area, individual authority would be swamped and lost. If the whole of London, with its varying interests and enormous population, was to be governed by one Body, and that Body was to be elected, they would to a certain extent get self-government in the same way as the people got self-government through Parliament; but it could not be said that they were developing the principle of local self-government.

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    To call it that was to give it a false name. He hoped the Bill would meet with a treatment which was somewhat unusual with Bills brought forward by the Government—that was to say, that it would be dealt with on its own merits; because there were many both inside and outside the House, of all shades of political opinion, who looked on it as inconsistent with the principle and incompatible with the practice of local self-government.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "while ready to consider the question of a reform in the Government of London, this House declines to assent to a proposal by which the control over the levying and expenditure of rates would he vested in one central body to the practical extinction of the local self-government of the various cities and boroughs of the Metropolis,"— (Mr. Ritchie,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    MR. FIRTHsaid, he was quite sure his hon. Friend the Member for the Tower Hamlets was sincere in the opinion he had expressed, that the people of London were to an appreciable extent against this measure, and that no important meetings had been held in support of it. He (Mr. Firth) would deal with the hon. Gentleman's observations, which, whilst sincere, had struck him, as one having as wide an experience as any living man of the opinions of the people of London on this subject, as perfectly astounding. He had just received a telegram—he would not at present read it—relating to a meeting held that night at Kensington. The Kensington Vestry had called a meeting, and had placed a rate collector at the door, so that no one could enter who was not a ratepayer. A resolution was moved against the Bill; but an amendment in its favour had been carried by 10 to 1; and he believed that in no single quarter of London, where the Bill was fairly explained, would there be a smaller majority in its favour. [Laughter.] He expected that statement to be received with astonishment by some hon. Members. [An hon. MEMBER: No; with laughter.] He had been down to every quarter of London, and knew the feeling of the ratepayers. Did hon. Gentle-
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    men pretend to suggest that he had ever misrepresented the case? If they did, they were wrong—he had never misrepresented the case of the opponents at any meeting held in support of the Bill. But he would have a word or two to say with regard to meetings later on. The way in which the hon. Member had commenced the debate that night had struck him as rather peculiar. He had commented upon a Bill of this magnitude being brought on for discussion on second reading at so late a period as July, and had declared the Government to be obstructing useful legislation; but how was it that the measure was only in its present stage in the month of July? Had the hon. Gentleman forgotten the constantly recurring Votes of Censure, for which the Government had been obliged to find time? It was only owing to an accident that the intention of bringing forward another Vote of Censure had been frustrated, and that the House had the privilege of going on with this Bill now. If it were Obstruction to bring forward a Bill of this kind, the system of Parliamentary Government would resolve itself into this —that a number of Gentlemen who were opposed to certain legislation would be able, by one proceeding after another, to bring about a process of exhaustion, and, at the end of the year, would go down to their constituencies and say of their opponents— "See, they have passed no legislation at all." Beyond doubt, the measure was one of magnitude as far as its physical side were concerned; but it contained only two important principles, and those, as some hon. Members might recollect, he had ventured to state some time ago. The Bill consolidated Central Authorities, and gave a proper control over the Local Authorities. Those two principles established, the rest of the Bill was almost entirely consequential—that was to say, every clause in the Bill could be shown to be a necessary consequence of those principles. The hon. Gentleman had complained that the Bill did not go far enough. Before criticizing details, he had complained that the Bill did not hand over the control of the Police to the new Authority. Well, he (Mr. Firth) would be glad to see such control in the hands of the Municipality; but they must move in this matter by steps. The hon. Gentleman also com-

    1963
    plained that the Bill would not give the Municipality control over licences. That, again, he should be glad to see conferred on the Local Authority; but hero, once more, he must remark on the necessity of their moving by steps. It was further complained that the Bill did not deal with the Metropolitan Asylums Board. That Board was a part of the Poor Law system; and he must say that he should like to see the Poor Law system of the House of Commons in the hands of the Municipality. But for that which was contained in the Bill they had waited long enough; and that of London was the only unreformed Corporation remaining. The management of the affairs of all large towns, save those of London, had been, by the Corporations Act of 1835, put under vigilant popular control. London alone remained unreformed, and, to his mind, had remained so long enough. Every local interest in this country, and every local interest in the Sister Island, had been considered again and again by one Administration after another. The present Administration had brought in a dozen Bills with respect to the agricultural interest of the United Kingdom and Ireland; but London remained without that simple elementary control over its own municipal affairs that the smallest town in the Provinces possessed. He admitted the problem was a difficult one to solve. If he might say so, it required a far deeper knowledge of the things dealt with than was ordinarily necessary to understand the measure properly. Many hon. Gentlemen were aware of the circumstances of the Corporation of London and of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and the circumstances attending the Vestries; but it was necessary to know the circumstances attending them all before they could form an opinion as to the best method of weaving them together, and in which Municipal unity could be produced. It was true that some of the Royal Commissions which had alluded to the question had come, in a certain sense, to a different conclusion; but the Royal Commission of 1835, which was appointed in 1833, was the only one which really sat on the question, and that had proposed a solution exactly on the same lines as the present Bill. Its solution of a similar question in other towns was exactly on the same
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    lines as the proposals of the Bill, so far as their central principle was concerned. The Royal Commission of 1854, to which reference had been made, had not been appointed for the purpose of inquiring into that question at all; and all that was contained in the Report was not within the scope of its inquiry. That part of the Report to which he had alluded was not to be regarded as in any sense binding. As an illustration of what he meant, he might say that Sir George Grey had proceeded in the matter on very different lines from those recommended in that particular part of the Report. This Bill was really very little more in its essence than a Bill making the Metropolitan Board of Works a Representative Authority. The Earl of Camperdown, as they knew, brought in a Bill for the purpose of doing that a few years ago, and the present measure did little more than carry out the provisions of that Bill. As he had said, it would bring about the union of Central Authorities and the control of Local Authorities. Was that union desirable? Would it not produce economy, and give them that control over their affairs that they now wanted? First, as to the constitution of London, the hon. Gentleman had been mistaken in supposing that the Bill sought to produce a revolution in the City of London. It touched the City, but only incidentally. It was said that the Bill had designs on the revenues; but the City had none worth appropriating. The accounts did not balance; for years they had been thousands of pounds on the wrong side; and when, in 1889, the Coal Dues came to an end, there would be a deficiency of at least £1,000,000 sterling still remaining on the Holborn Valley Improvement, and necessitating an increased payment out of City rates of at least £35,000 a-year. It was impossible to carry out any reform of this kind which did not involve dealing with the City of London. The Metropolis had grown around the City. Did they not remember reading how Queen Elizabeth had stopped the building of houses when there were 150,000 people in London, because, as she said, "a larger accumulation of people would be too many to serve God and honour the Queen?" Since then, however, London had enormously increased, and whilst the population of London had increased,

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    that of the City had diminished. In the time of Queen Elizabeth there were 150,000 within the walls of the City; but now there were only 50,000. The City was merely a shell, and in any London Government Reform Bill they were bound to deal with it. They were bound to deal with the whole locality; and it was just that they should do so, because the Corporation of the City of London not only assumed to speak in the name of the people of the Metropolis, and not only spent money levied from them, but it controlled their market arrangements, and in many other respects ruled them, without their having direct representation on it. As to its market jurisdiction, the House was aware how strenuously it adhered to the powers given to it originally by the Charter of King Edward III., confirmed by that of Charles I.—powers which enabled it to prevent the establishment of any market within seven miles of the City walls. The House had not forgotten the fight they had some years ago to get for the Metropolitan Board of Works power to inquire into the market question. Was it not right that powers of this kind exercised by an Authority, on which the inhabitants of the Metropolis had no representation, should be handed over to an Authority on which they had full representation? Undoubtedly, and such transfer of power would be effected by the Bill. With regard to the Metropolitan Board of Works the same arguments applied, and the same change would be effected by the Bill. At present, the people of the Metropolis had not the power of controlling the budget of the Metropolitan Board. That budget was rather over £4,000,000, and the people had no power of control over that part which the Board itself actually spent; and with respect to the rest— loans to the Asylums Board and other Public Bodies—they had no opportunity of deciding whether or not they should be advanced.
    SIR JAMES M'GAREL-HOGG: The hon. and learned Member, I am sure, would wish to be correct. Does he wish to put it to the House that the budget of the Metropolitan Board of Works is over £4,000,000 exclusive of the loans? He must know the loans are included in the £4,000,000.
    MR. FIRTHsaid, the hon. and gallant Gentleman had misunderstood him.
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    What he had said was, that the budget of the Metropolitan Board of Works was rather over £4,000,000, part of which was spent by the Board, and the rest advanced in loans.
    SIR JAMES M'GAREL-HOGG: I did not understand you to say that.
    MR. FIRTH: But I did say so. The argument he had put to the people of Mile End was, that when an immense sum of this kind was raised either by loan, or rate from the inhabitants of any place, those inhabitants ought, through their directly elected representatives, to have full control over the expenditure. That was exactly what they did not possess in London at the present time, and that was exactly what this Bill would give them. The main work, almost the only work, the new Corporation would have to undertake, would be the work now undertaken by the Metropolitan Board, and the only difference would be that the work would be performed by a Body directly responsible to the ratepayers, and not by a Body which was unknown in its form of action, and over which the ratepayers had no control. The problem was an extremely difficult one to solve; and he was sure hon. Gentlemen would believe him when he said that those of them who had carefully considered it, had been driven to the solution contained in the Bill by the circumstances of the case rather than by any preference for it over other possible solutions. The various powers of the Metropolitan Board could not well be divided among a series of Corporations. He would illustrate what he meant by that statement, and would do so by alluding to the lesson they had learnt in London since 1855. In that year there was given to the Metropolitan Board the control of the main drainage. That was the main object for which the Board was established; in fact, it was supposed at the time that the Board would only be of a temporary character. Well, did anyone suppose that it would be possible to divide the carrying out of a main drainage scheme amongst a series of Corporations in London—did anyone suppose it practicable to give each portion of London a separate cesspool? Parliament had decided that as to drainage there should be but one system; therefore, it was necessary that there should be union. In the same way as to buildings, in 1856 control over them was given to

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    the Board by a deliberate decision of Parliament. It was absolutely necessary that there should be but one Authority in this matter. His hon. Friend (Mr. Ritchie) had alluded to the question of the River. Surely he would admit that there must be but one Authority to control it. At the present time the Metropolitan Board dealt with the question of floods and embankments; and surely these were matters affecting the South as well as the North side of the River, and as to which there should not be a division of authority. The conservancy and purification of the River ought to be all in the same hands. There was another thing in respect of which there should be absolute control vested in one authority in the Metropolis— namely, the management of parks and recreation grounds. The Metropolitan Board of Works had had authority over parks and recreation grounds given to them, and they had obtained something like 1,700 acres of land. That authority should be continued in the same hands, otherwise there would be no uniformity in the Metropolis; one Local Authority would be prepared to tax its district for these necessities of modern civilization, whilst another would refuse. In other towns these things were managed by the ordinary Corporation. Not only did the lesson from 1855 down to the present day show that these affairs could be well managed by one Authority, but that they must be. Take, again, the Fire Brigade. Since 1869 the Metropolitan Board of Works had had the control of it in the Metropolis; and did anyone believe that it would be well to divide the control so as to have different Fire Brigades for the different Municipalities? He would give one or two further illustrations. Main street improvements had been put in the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Metropolitan Board of Works acted under more than 100 Acts of Parliament, and this Authority had not worked so badly as some people expected. They had not heard much about danger to the Constitution—perhaps, in regard to the present Bill, they might hear more about it in the future; but it might be remembered that, in 1855, Lord Fortescue declared that the Metropolitan Board would be a menace to the Throne. Did anyone so regard it now? The Authority which, he trusted, they were going to constitute
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    by this Bill, was one which had had all these powers deliberately given to it by Parliament, and which had used them and performed its duty certainly far better than had been expected. It had also had powers given to it in respect of artizans' dwellings; but they had been mainly powers to enable it to clear largo sites, at great cost to the ratepayers, and not powers to enable it to rebuild the houses pulled down. It was not only, however, in regard to the large main questions he had referred to that Parliament had exercised its judgment and given the Metropolitan Board of Works these powers. Powers had also been given to it in regard to matters requiring much detail work. In the construction of buildings they could exercise authority as to the thickness of the walls; they could also exercise authority as to the numbering of the houses, their cubic contents, and even as to the preparation of the sites, so that the old custom of speculative builders, under which the gravel was removed and sold, and houses built upon refuse, could be no longer carried out. All those powers over matters of detail had been given to the Central Authority, so that it could not be suggested that such Authority could not perform detailed work. In addition to the things he had mentioned, the Metropolitan Board of Works had power over offensive businesses, the storage of petroleum, and the regulation of slaughter-houses and cowsheds; but there were some matters in regard to which Parliament had not gone as far as it might. It had given the Metropolitan Board of Works power over tramways to a certain extent; but what was wanted in regard to the whole question of traffic was something more extended than anything they had now. The time of this Imperial Legislature should not be taken up with the discussion of such matters as London cab-fares, with the regulation of stage-carriages, and so forth. To his mind, a competent London Authority ought not only to be charged with the regulation of the things he had enumerated, and intrusted with the powers which other Corporationshad, but it ought also to have control over street traffic to a greater extent than it had now, and control over steamboat traffic; and it ought to be a deliberative Assembly which would examine into Railway Bills, and gas and other projects affecting Lon-

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    don, before they were presented to the Imperial Parliament. Every year they had proofs of the absurdity of the present system. Railway Companies came and suggested improvements within the Metropolitan area. Their proposals were submitted to Committees of Gentlemen having no knowledge of local affairs. If hon. Gentlemen wanted to see the result of this method of procedure, let them go to Clapham Junction, and other similar districts, and see the large amount of land wasted, a large portion of which land might have been saved if there had been an efficient Central Authority understanding the localities, with power to examine schemes and see that they were presented to Parliament in a uniform and definite shape. What these matters required was definite control. In the course of its existence the Metropolitan Board had had given to it one function after another, and why? Because Parliament recognized the fact that these were matters which should be dealt with in London by a single Authority. The Metropolitan Board had discharged its functions, having regard to the limited number of its members, he thought he might say fairly well, certainly better than they might have expected. Matters could be pointed out in regard to which they had not discharged their duties well; therefore, he was putting it as strongly as his hon. Friend could expect. Were they going to change all this? Did the House of Commons wish to go back from the decisionsithad deliberately arrived at during all these years? He thought not—he trusted not. What the Bill proposed was that such matters should, in future, be decided by a Central Authority, which should be representative. There were some other things as to which the Central Authority ought to have powers which it had not at the present time— and he must allude to them here, because it seemed to him that they would properly come in at this part of the observations he was making to the House on a question to which he had given the best study and attention of which he was capable. As to the question of the control of the water supply, they in London were probably in a worse position than any Municipality where the English language was spoken. He was not going now to enter into a contest with the hon.
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    Member for Middlesex (Mr. Coope) as to whether the statement of the Government analysts, to the effect that the water of London was unfit for human consumption, was or was not true. There was, at present, no Authority to deal with the Water Companies; and was it not the opinion of Gentlemen on both sides of the House that such an Authority should be constituted? In 1871 the Metropolitan Board of Works promoted a Bill to empower them to purchase the interests of the Water Companies; but the House had refused its consent to that measure, because it thought that the Board was not such a Representative Body as could be safely intrusted with such extensive powers. In 1878 the Board brought forward a Bill to enable them to provide an independent supply; but it met with the same fate, for the same reason. The fact was, London was helpless, supine, and voiceless on these matters seriously affecting her welfare. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Asshaton Cross) then brought in his Bill; and what was it that he proposed? He (Mr. Firth) would not go into the question of price; but the right hon. Gentleman proposed that there should be one Authority in London, who should be able to deal with the question. In 1880 a Select Committee sat to consider the question, and in its Report it proposed the same thing, as the Report said, "in the absence of any Municipal Authority." Well, it was exactly that Municipal Authority which the Bill asked them to constitute—that was to say, a Municipal Authority differing from the Metropolitan Board in that it would be representative. It would, therefore, be a Body to which the functions which he referred to might properly be given. The people of London were anxious that they should have someone to act in their name against powerful private organizations like the Water Companies. The Metropolitan Board, in 1871, was empowered to demand a constant supply; but that, he was afraid, was one of the matters the Board had almost entirely neglected. In 1869 was passed, as they knew, the Metropolitan Assessment Act, under which the Water Companies had been enabled to raise rates without increasing the supply—that was to say, to take a course unjust in itself, though

    1971
    perfectly legal. How was it that such a power was conferred by the Act of 1869? Why, simply because neither the Corporation of the City nor the Metropolitan Board of Works substantially attended to the interests of Londoners, and took care that they were safeguarded in the passing of such an important Act. He took it that it was necessary that the people of London should have someone to speak in their name on the question of the Water Supply. Was the present state of things to go on—were they to be left in this condition year after year, with their rates increasing upon them without additional advantage, when they saw in such places as Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow the Municipality obtaining the purest water and the largest supply, and putting the profits into the pockets of the ratepayers instead of into the pockets of the Water Companies? The new Authority should have power to deal with the question of Lighting. He would undertake to show that the Metropolitan Board had not attended to the interests of the inhabitants of London at all in the matter, though, in 1860, the Vestries endeavoured to deal with it, finding themselves, in the end, beaten out of the field by the Gas Companies. The condition of the lighting in the Metropolis was more satisfactory now than it was in 1860. The recommendations of a Select Committee of the House of Commons had put it in a somewhat better position; but, under this Bill, control over all these matters would be given to the Central Authority. If the management of these things were handed over to a Central Authority, what would there be left for the independent Local Authorities to do? And, in considering that question, he must, of course, deal with what the Vestries now did. Probably, he might be giving information to some Members of the House — and, doubtless, those to whom he was not giving it would" excuse him—when he said that in London there were 38 Local Authorities, 23 of which represented the old parishes, differing in size, and 15 of which were District Boards formed out of the union of parishes. These 38 Authorities were supposed to be directly elected. He said "supposed," because the election of a London Vestry was more often than not an utter farce. ["No, no!"] Some hon. Members objected to that; then he would
    1972
    give an illustration of his meaning. For instance, take the Islington Vestry election—Islington being the largest parish in the Metropolis. There were eight wards there, and in seven of them there was no contest last May. In Maryle-bone, the same was the case. In his own parish of Kensington, there was a contest. Hon. Gentlemen opposite did not seem to think that the fact of having no contest illustrated his point. He himself had thought it did. If they liked, they should have a contest. There was a contest in Kensington, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir Alexander Gordon) was returned after a severe fight.
    SIR ALEXANDER GORDON: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon—he is entirely mistaken.
    MR. FIRTHsaid, the hon. and gallant Member was returned after a severe contest, according to the local Press. The parish had 170,000 inhabitants, and its rateable value was £1,700,000. Was it, or was it not, an illustration of good local control, when even so excellent a Gentleman as his hon. and gallant Friend was elected in such a parish by 36 votes? He himself had had about the same number, he believed. The election happened in this way—those who were present at the meeting held up their hands, and no one demanded a poll. Was that a farce, or was it not? If anyone differed from him, he had nothing more to say on the subject. If they thought that was a satisfactory condition of local government, he was not disposed to quarrel with them about it. If they thought that in a great borough such as he represented (Chelsea), it was a satisfactory state of things to have only some 500 persons voting at the election of the whole of the Vestries in the borough, he confessed he disagreed with them; but everyone could form his own opinion about it. The Vestry was the street authority—and here he came to the second principle of the Bill, and would ask whether there should be control over the action of the Local Authorities? In the case of streets, frequently, after they had been made by the Vestry, in came the Metropolitan Board of Works and tore them up to lay down a main sewer; then the Gas Company would come in, later on, to put down gas pipes; and, at another time, the Water Com-

    1973
    pany to lay down or repair water mains. The result was that the roads were being constantly interfered with, that there was no unity of action, and no proper control over the authorities who disturbed them. They frequently saw streets and roads torn up a few days after they had been made at great expenditure of time and money. With regard to Vestry accounts, what was the system under which they lived? He could not suppose that the majority of Members in the House were aware of the hideous state of chaos into which the accounts had got—or the hideous method, or rather absence of method, in dealing with financial matters which characterized the London Vestries. They spent over £2,000,000 a-year, which was raised by rate. The Metropolitan Board of Works had fortunately assisted him with two Returns, to enable him to illustrate his point from unimpeachable authority. In 1874 the Metropolitan Board asked for Returns from the Vestries, showing the work they had done, under certain heads. These Returns were presented, and he had copies of them with him now. In 1882 similar Returns were obtained, and they were extremely instructive. He had compared the figures in both Returns, and had had the figures analyzed and certified by an experienced Vestry Clerk in London. Of course, the cost of paving in different districts varied; but these were the days before wood paving; and if the number of yards laid down in the 18 years was compared with the cost, it appeared from this Return that the average cost of all the paving throughout Chelsea was, approximately, 2s. per square yard; Paddington, about 4s.; Bethnal Green, 6s.; Camberwell, 8s.; St. Greorgo's (Southwark), 12 s.; Kensington, 15 s.; and St. Pancras, 17 s. Either the paving in some parts of London was in a remarkable condition, or something should be done to bring these matters into greater harmony in the different districts. One of the heads of Return was for expenses on "Sanitary works other than new sewers." Under this head, St. Pancras returned an expenditure of £211,662. Lambeth was in every respect larger than St. Pancras, but she only returned £10,200; whilst Islington, which was largest of all, returned £1,364; so that St. Pancras, according to this Return, spent 150 times
    1974
    more than Islington under this head. This was, surely, an illustration of the necessity of something in the shape of uniformity in the keeping of accounts and the carrying out of works in the Metropolis. Islington, as they had seen, returned her expenditure for the 18 years, 1856–1874, on sanitary works other than new sewers, at £1,364. She now returned her expenditure under the same head for the 25 years, 1856–1881, at £980,823—that was to say, that in seven years, 1874–1881, she expended on this item £979,000 more than in the 18 years, 1856–1874. Islington Vestry opposed the London Bill. Hackney expended in 1856–1874, under this head, £367. She expended in the years 1856–1881, no less than £130,150. Hackney District Board opposed the London Bill. St. Martin-in-the-Fields spent £1,000 in the first 18 years, and £ 11,000 in the next seven years; Wands-worth spent £528 in the years 1856–1874, and £86,776 in the years 1856–1881; but St. George's-in-the-East had executed a still more remarkable feat. Under this head she returned her expenses in the 18 years, 1856–1874, at £21,529, and in the 25 years, 1856–1881, at £19,867; so that she did the work of the seven years for £1,600 less than nothing ! Nor was this by any means the only case in which the Vestries could perform feats like that. Limehouse, having made between six and seven miles of sewer for £78,731 in 1856–1874, returned that in the years 1856–1881 she made 9½ miles of sewer for £9,964— that was to say, she made three miles of sewer in the last seven years for £69,000 less than nothing. St. Martin's-in-the-Fields made, in 1856–1874, 1,000 yards of sewer for £8,264. In the years 1856–1881 she constructed 1,200 yards of sewer for £2,350; so that, according to her own Return, she made 200 yards of sewer in the last seven years for nearly £6,000 less than nothing. Another example might suffice. Rotherhithe returned the cost of 10⅓ miles of sewer, made in 1856–1874, at £21,618. In 1881 she had made 14 miles of sewer, but returned the cost as reduced to £19,259; so that she also made four miles of sewer for £2,000 less than nothing, on her own Return. In another way the Returns were equally instructive. Thus, Marylebone returned that in 18 years, 1856–1874, she made 25½ miles of new sewer

    1975
    for £80,135. For the 25 years, 1856–1881, she returned 28 miles of sewer at a cost of £161,616; so that, if the Returns were correct, she made the first 25½ miles at a cost of nearly £3,200 por mile, and the remaining 2½ miles at a cost of about £32,000 a-mile. These accounts showed the necessity of a satisfactory audit; and the Bill said there should be a satisfactory atulit—that was to say, a valuable audit. One Vestry, to his knowledge, had appointed an auditor who could neither read nor write. ["Name !"] He should be glad to give more precise information privately, if hon. Members would ask him for it; but it did not seem desirable to give the name of one particular Vestry, when they all acted in very much the same manner. There could be no doubt that the audit of the Vestries was in an extremely lamentable condition. There were elected auditors, and, under the Metropolis Management Act of 1855, they had power to surcharge. But, curiously enough, the Act contained no power of enforcing the surcharge; and so it happened that, notwithstanding expenditure on all kinds of things not contemplated by the Act, there had never been any surcharge enforced in any London Vestry since their establishment in 1856. This was a very good illustration of the condition in which the accounts were. Was it too much to suggest that there ought to be something in the shape of control over this expenditure? If the Amendment of his hon. Friend went to anything, it went to the establishment of Bodies over whom there could be no control—to perpetuate the most lamentable chaos which had ever existed under the sun. With regard to Vestry functions other than those of street control, the Vestries frequently declined to exercise the authority Parliament had vested in them. Ought they, or ought they not, to carry out these Acts of Parliament? Parliament had decided that baths and wash-houses and mortuaries should be established under the authority of the Vestries, and yet very few of the Vestries had put up either of these. In one great Vestry, recently, a man's body had been dissected on his own dining-room table. Was there no mortuary in the whole area? In Clerken well a similar thing had happened in a small dwelling, because there was no place provided by the parish to which the body could be removed for
    1976
    examination. Very few Vestries had interested themselves in the matter of baths and wash-houses. Parliament had given them power to erect such buildings, but very few had availed themselves of it, although those which had— where the buildings had been established under satisfactory conditions, and something approximating to the value had been paid for the structures—generally found them to pay. He believed that in St. Martin-in-the-Fields the baths and wash-houses paid a profit. He had a right, then, to ask, should there not be a controlling power in the Metropolis to see that these things for the benefit of the people were carried out? Even where they were carried out, it was done in so irregular a manner, that it was essential that some central control should be exercised. Take, again, the Act with which the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. W. M. Torrens) was so honourably connected; no one knew better than the hon. Member how the Vestries had neglected to carry it out. Should there not be some controlling power to see that such a practical measure was carried out? As to the Sanitary Laws, his right hon. Colleague (Sir Charles W. Dilke) could, no doubt, testify as to the frightful irregularities which existed amongst the Local Authorities of the Metropolis with regard to them. The same thing might be said of the Adulteration Acts, and all the minor functions of the Vestries. The Bill provided that for these purposes there should be something like control over the Local Authorities. It had been suggested that it was a centralizing- measure. ["Hear, hear !"] He was glad he had arrived at a point on which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite distinctly contested the principle of the Bill. He would point out why he thought it a decentralizing measure. So far as the City was concerned, the Bill took from it, and gave to a Body representing the ratepayers, control over the Markets, the Coal Dues, and a good many other things —it took powers from a non-Representative Body, as far as London generally was concerned, and gave them to a Representative Body. The Bill would take some powers which at present Parliament alone had in its hands. It would take over the control and management of cabs and carriages, and give it to the new Municipal Authority. Surely, that

    1977
    was a decentralizing operation. It took from the Gas and Water Companies the powers they possessed, and gave them to the representatives of the ratepayers; and, surely, in regard to these matters, it was a decentralizing measure. How could it be said to be a centralizing measure? It was so-called, presumably, because it took over the expenditure of the money of the ratepayers from the Vestries, who so miserably discharged the function. "Well, in dealing with this question, if they were to have a central control, how were they to concede it? Should or should not the Central Council be directly elected? All would agree that it should. What, then, should be the qualification for the electorate? The qualification in this Bill was the same as that in other Municipalities. The City of London had recently brought into the field a champion who had quoted against the Bill the case of New York. There was no similarity between the case of London and that of New York. No reasonable comparison could be drawn between New York and London, or Paris and London. The qualification under the Bill for the electorate in London was to be the same as in other English Municipalities— that was to say, the rating and household franchise of 12 months' standing. In New York, everyone might vote who had lived a year in the State and six months in the City, even if he had lived in an hotel. Of course, there was a great difference between the two cases, and there was the greatest difference in the result. It had seemed to him a most extraordinary thing that the condition of New York should have been selected as an example of what was likely to result from this Bill. Anyone who was familiar with the condition of things in New York some years ago, anyone who had read The New York Tribune or Times during the autumn of 1871, would know what a fearful amount of corruption had existed. They would remember how some 'millions of dollars had been charged for the furniture of the City Hall, and how warrants to the extent of $6,000,000, stated to be fraudulent, were signed one afternoon. The whole of the expenditure was controlled by the "Tamanny Ring," and the Mayor of New York at that time was the new City champion, Mr. Oakey Hall. There was no comparison whatever to be
    1978
    drawn between what New York was and what London would be under this Bill. Then, what would be the result of the establishment of an Authority of this kind? Contrary to the assertions made against the Bill, he said it was a decentralizing and not a centralizing measure; and that so far from its tending to extravagance, its effect would be in the direction of economy. He did not think that under it the tendency would be towards increasing cost. Apart from other considerations, if it had the effect of producing harmony between the Authorities, that, in itself, must tend to economy. His hon. Friend (Mr. Ritchie) had given, as one illustration of this point, the fight which the Metropolis had had with respect to the discharge of the sewage into the Thames, which contest cost £40,000. They had not forgotten that contest, nor had they forgotten the contest about the Metropolitan Open Space, when the Metropolitan Board of Works prevented the Corporation of the City from expending the Grain Duties within the Metropolitan area. The Thames Sewage contest was not the only one which had been engaged in between those two great Bodies; and he believed, although, they were united now against the Bill, that if they were to defeat the efforts of London after local self-government, they would continue on the war-path hitherto followed by them, and that these costly contests would recur. The Metropolitan Board of Works fought the Vestries; they fought the Gas and Water Companies; and in this way the amount of money expended was very large. Surely, then, if Parliament established a controlling Authority for the Metropolis, there must be economy. Well, they had been told that the School Board afforded an illustration against the Bill. But it did not seem to him that the question of the School Board had any place whatever in this argument, because the School Board had been established to do altogether new work—to take 300,000 children from the streets, and to provide school buildings and education for them. But this Bill had been established in order to harmonize that which already existed; to take it over and to put it into a new form. He had been watching to see whether his hon. Friend, in his opposition to the Bill, would strike at it as a Centralizing Bill, or as a measure destruc-

    1979
    tive of local self-government; and he found that he contested it on the point that the functions of the Local Councils were not settled in the Bill. The functions of the Local Councils were to be settled by a Central Authority; and he (Mr. Firth) asked if it would not be better that those functions should be settled by a Body representing all the people amongst whom those functions were to be discharged, than by Act of Parliament, which would have to be amended whenever it was found desirable to change them? For his own part, he thought there was very little probability of the Central Authority taking more powers than the Bill conferred. It had been suggested that the budgets of the Local Authorities would be things which the Central Authority might control, and that their independence might, in that sense, be taken away. Now, it seemed to him that the budget of a District Council presented to a Central Council bore exact analogy to the budget supposed to be examined by the Treasury, and annually presented to that House by the Metropolitan Board of Works. He might have said that this budget itself was supposed to be presented, because it came forward at hours damaging to the health of the few hon. Members who thought it necessary to watch over it. However, the analogy was complete, and he contended that the argument with regard to the local budgets had no force as against this Bill. He said that the Bill would provide an absolute remedy for the evils which had arisen under the existing system. Every Local Body would discharge under it not only the duties now performed by the Vestries, but a great many more; the Central Body would delegate more duties to them than they had at present, because the Metropolitan Board of Works had no power to delegate to them any duties at all. Therefore, on that ground, also, he thought the danger apprehended was non-existent. Again, it was said that the Local Councils would be less attractive to ambitious men than the Vestries. He did not think that the Vestries were attractive at present, or that many persons knew much about them. But what was the alternative to the Bill? It was all very well to criticize the details of the Bill; but, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had pointed out, the
    1980
    only alternative was the establishment of separate Municipalities; and he (Mr. Firth) thought it worth while to draw attention to what the effect of that would be. There would, of course, be a dozen School Boards. ["No, no !"] Not of absolute necessity, certainly; but he would point out that directly hon. Gentleman contested that proposition, they took the first step on the line which he was following for the purpose of showing the great necessity which existed for the establishment of a unified Body for all London. No scheme for separate Municipalities had been proposed either by the Corporation of the City of London or by any other Body. The effect of the establishment of separate Municipalities, so far as the Tower Hamlets were concerned, would be that the School Board rate would be doubled. But it was not necessary to argue the question of the establishment of separate Municipalities, inasmuch as no one had proposed such a scheme. Before sitting down he wished, to say a few words with respect to a matter alluded to by his hon. Friend (Mr. Ritchie)—namely, the attitude assumed by the various Authorities towards the Bill. It would, no doubt, have been too much to expect the Corporation of the City of London to support the Bill; that would have been contrary to the whole course of its recent history, and therefore he need not indulge in any such speculation. They had not forgotten how the Corporation of the City of London acted with regard to the Commission appointed to consider the question of Municipal Government; how they had dealt with the Bills of Sir George Grey in 1856 and 1858, with the Bill of Sir George Cornewall Lewis in 1859, and with the Bills of Mr. John Stuart Mill. Nor was it forgotten how they dealt with one proposal, by what he understood to be about the meanest of all methods of stopping a Bill—namely, by objecting to it on the ground that the Standing Orders had not been complied with. There had been proposed a good many other measures in the interest of the reform of London Government, all of which had been opposed by the Corporation of the City of London in the same way as they had opposed the measures he had more particularly referred to; and he would remind the House that evidence had been given before the Commission of

    1981
    1854, that they expended large sums on secret service, which were dealt with in the accounts of the Chamberlain in such a manner that the money so expended could not very well be recognized. His hon. Friend had spoken of the amount of support given to this measure, and on that subject he wished to make one or two remarks. Although it had been suggested that Parliament had never been petitioned on this subject, there had been Petitions presented in favour of the Bill; and to-morrow he should present Petitions in its favour from a series of the largest free meetings ever held in London, according to his honest belief, on any question. But they had not canvassed London for the purpose of obtaining signatures to Petitions—first, because it would have been difficult to get a sufficient number of canvassers able to explain the Bill; and, secondly, because the operation would have cost a large sum of money. In that respect they had acted differently to the Corporation of the City of London, one of whose canvassers, he was informed by the lady who attended his (Mr. Firth's) chambers in the Temple, called upon her and ask her to sign a Petition against the Bill, on the ground that it was a Petition the object of which was to lessen the rates. He had no right to complain of the way in which the Corporation of the City of London had conducted their case against the supporters of the Bill, and that because he had read the past history of their opposition to other London Bills; he had no right to complain that Associations were started against it, and largely supported by City subsidies; he had no reason to complain that the City Authorities had expended thousands of pounds in placarding every hoarding, and in advertizing in every London newspaper, and in circulating in the houses of the people statements incorrect and grossly abusive of his humble efforts after reform; he had no reason to complain, nor did he complain, of all this, because he had read the history of their former proceedings before he went into the work, and knew what he should have to undergo. But there had recently been imported into the contest a feature which had, he believed, never appeared in such a contest before. It had remained for the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Mayor
    1982
    (Mr. R. N. Fowler)—not content with the operations of the agents of the Corporation of the City, not content with, prosy denunciations of what the supporters of the measure had done —absolutely to quote poetry against them. The right hon. Gentleman, not long since, at a public meeting put himself in the position of a Turkish Pasha, and spoke of those who would
    "—tamely view old Stamboul's wall Before the dogs of Moscow fall."
    The right hon. Gentleman did not give the context—
    "Nor strike one blow for life or death, Against the curs of Nazareth."
    He (Mr. Firth) was very much astonished to find the Lord Mayor of London quoting The Bride of Abydos. The poem was an old friend of his, and he confessed to finding some difficulty in understanding why the right hon. Gentleman should have selected that poem from which to make a quotation against the supporters of the Bill. But his surprise disappeared when he recalled the lines with which the poem began—
    "Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
    Are emhlems of deeds that are done in their clime,
    Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
    Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime."
    He sincerely trusted that the "love of the turtle," whilst it might "melt into sorrow," would not "madden to crime." Well, the attitude of the District Boards and the Vestries had been alluded to; but he did not think their position in this matter had been quite accurately stated by his hon. Friend (Mr. Ritchie). He had no doubt his hon. Friend was of opinion that 33 Vestries and District Boards had come to a conclusion against the Bill; but, as a matter of fact, that was not the case. The decisions at which the Vestries had arrived were very various. There was a considerable number of them in favour of the establishment of one Municipal Body, and who said that further powers should be given, to the Local Councils. Others, such as the Vestries of Greenwich, Deptford, and Lewisham, had all gone solid for the Bill. Therefore, he said, his hon. Friend was not quite correct as to the verdict which the Local Authorities had passed upon the main complaint amongst them,

    1983
    that the Bill did not give sufficient power to the Local Councils That was a matter which he thought might he fairly dealt with in Committee. As far as he was aware, the meetings which had been held in support of the Bill were free meetings. He himself had most of the responsibility for the Kensington meeting, and he would tell the House in what respect he differed from his hon. Friend on that subject. Their intention was that there should be no tickets whatever, and no tickets of any kind were issued; but, upon the morning of the Saturday on which the meeting was held, he received from many parts of London cards which had been sent to Conservatives and others, inviting them to attend—he believed that many were sentto him by Conservatives, because he had many Conservative friends, some of whom agreed with him upon this question. However, they had a number of tickets which came from Upton, Fins-bury, Stoke Newington, Bow, and other similar places, asking the people to whom they were sent to be "in their places" at Kensington Town Hall to support an amendment to be moved against the Bill at 7 o'clock. Now, he and his friends having called a perfectly free meeting at 8 o'clock, he asked hon. Members, on the supposition that they had been responsible for the meeting', what would they have done under the circumstances? Evidence came later on, and which they had by deposition in writing, that a considerable number of men were paid to come and interrupt. These men were booked from the Temple Station, mid they went straight to Kensington. The promoters of the meeting had hoard of their coming, and had them watched. He asked hon. Gentlemen interested in public meetings what they would have done under such circumstances? He would tell the House what he did, and what he thought he had a right to do. His hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Ritchie) had suggested that something was done which ought not to have been done. On the Saturday morning, he telegraphed to Chelsea what the facts were — namely, that opponents were coming to the meeting at 7 o'clock. Afterwards, they ascertained that the men had been paid to attend, and interrupt; and they asked all their friends to come as early as possible, and gave instructions that the doors of the
    1984
    Hall should not be opened until half-past 7, and that everyone who was known should be admitted by a side door. [Alaugh.] He might have been wrong in judgment, but as at present advised he should do the same again if he had a similar state of circumstances to deal with. What was the result? That they packed the whole front of the Hall. Because the men who came were instructed to storm the platform; and, indeed, they had a discussion at the back as to how the platform could be stormed. The men were paid from the same source as other men who had attended meetings to stifle free expression of opinion. He and those over whom he had any control had done their best to ascertain the opinion of the London people on this question. Having attended very large meetings held in every part of the Metropolis, his opinion was that London was very strongly in favour of the Bill. In the London Vestries there was a very strong feeling in favour of the Bill. A conference of Vestrymen favourable to the Bill had been held, and some of the most skilled Vestry Clerks in London strongly approved of the proposed measure. Mr. Gibb, the Vestry Clerk of St. Panoras, one of the largest of the Metropolitan parishes, had analyzed the Bill in a pamphlet of great length; he asserted that this was a measure which would work; and he used some of the arguments which he (Mr. Firth) had ventured to put forth that night as to the result of harmonizing the institutions which existed in the Metropolis. It was a very responsible thing for a man in the position of a Vestry Clerk to take up so strong a line with respect to a measure of this kind; but he thought he might fairly quote Mr. Gibb's opinion, because it snowed that there was a most intelligent opinion even in the Vestries in favour of the Bill. He (Mr. Firth) should have been glad if this question could have been regarded as in no sense a Party question. Although the Bill seemed to have amused some hon. Gentlemen opposite, there were many Conservatives in the part of the town he lived who were in favour of it—there were, of course, some Liberals who were opposed to it. An august Assembly, known as the "Kensington Parliament" —which turned out its Ministry upon Egypt—passed the London Government Bill neminc contradicente. It was the fact

    1985
    that there were many Conservatives who thought that London should have the same rights as other towns had, and he would—he did not know whether he ought to say appeal; but he would suggest that this should not "be treated as a Party question. Some time ago something was said about the political effect of the Bill. It was said that by the Bill a huge Caucus would be established. His hon. Friend (Mr. Ritchie) said there would be wire pullers in the Central Body it was proposed to set up. He (Mr. Firth) hoped that would not be so. His hon. Friend might take it from him that the most skilled Caucus drivers said that under the system of separate Municipalities a Caucus might be effectively worked; but they did not see how it was to be worked under this Bill. He only stated this as a fact for his hon. Friend's consolation. He thanked the House for the time and attention they had given to him while he had treated upon a somewhat dry subject, but one in which he had for many years taken a deep interest. It did seem to him that this Bill would, at least, give to London one voice. London at present was practically supine and voiceless; it had no one to speak in its name. Private Companies worked their own will upon it; but this Bill would give the people a deliberative body, who would be able to examine into the various projects affecting all London, and it would establish a body able to deal with the different bequests which had been left for the benefit of the poor; and, in addition, it would strengthen, and, he trusted, extend the public life and the public spirit of the Metropolis. He certainly hoped and expected that the best men of London—men who had rendered good service in various departments of public work all over the world —might be willing to join the body which would be established, and that in that body there should be representatives, not merely of one class, but of every class of the community; that the artizans themselves would send representatives to make their wishes known. He thought this was a Bill which would give the people of the Metropolis a citizenship which had long been wanting. There were many questions, as he had pointed out, upon which London had been practically united, upon which the brotherhood and citizenship of the whole
    1986
    town had been completely recognized, and he thought this measure would tend very much to strengthen that position. There were some gentlemen outside who had described it as a revolutionary measure, and who seemed to anticipate a reestablishment of the riotous folkmote of the Plantagenet period, or that there might be established a state of things analogous to that in which St. Paul's became a mart for newsvendor's, as it was in the time of Elizabeth, or a Cavalry barrack, as it was in the time of Cromwell. Such ideas were absurd. This was a Conservative measure in the best possible sense, in that it preserved all that was worth preserving, and extended it for the people of all London. The history in continuity of the Metropolis would be preserved unbroken. During the 1,900 years which had elapsed since Caesar's 10th Legion first landed on English shores, the history of London had been the epitome of the history of England. The people were anxious that the old Guildhall, around which clustered memories they could ill afford to lose, should be theirs. The Guildhall where Whittington and Walworth ruled; where Lady Jane Grey was tried; where King Charles the First appealed to the Common Council to give up Hampden; where the Lords and Parliament declared for the Prince of Orange; where the old Corporation struck many a yeoman, blow for English liberty. He thought it was the crowning glory of this great measure that in addition to endowing London with this grand heritage of the past, it would also confer upon the 4,000,000 of people who now lived within sight of the burnished cross of St. Paul's a living representative Municipal Government worthy of the capital of the world.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned." —(Mr. W. M. Torrens.)
    Motion agreed to.
    Debate adjourned till To-morrow, at Two of the clock.

  ELECTIONS (HOURS OF POLL) BILL.
  (Sir. charles W. Dilke, Secretary Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain.)
  ELECTIONS (HOURS OF POLL) BILL.

    [BILL 261.] CONSIDERATION.
    Bill, as amended considered.
    Clause 1 (Hours of polling in boroughs with more than five thousand electors, 31 & 32 Vict. c. 125).
    MR. H. SAMUELSONproposed, in page 1, line 10, after "any," to insert "county or." The hon. Gentleman said, that when he put down this Amendment there was no other Amendment standing on the Paper which had the effect he desired. He ventured in Committee to propose the extension of the operation of the Bill to counties; but he was ruled out of Order, consequently he put his Amendment down for the Report stage. He observed that the noble Viscount the Member for Barnstaple (Viscount Lymington) had an Amendment on the Paper which would have the same effect. It was, however, a little more explanatory, and he (Mr. H. Samuelson) need hardly say he would be quite willing to add the additional words in the Amendment of the noble Viscount to his own Amendment if the House saw fit. They were told that in proposing a measure of this sort it was intended to increase the time at the disposal of the electors during which they could record their votes. It was said they ought to go by steps and easy stages, in making the change, and that they had already taken a large step in the right direction by extending the hours of polling in the Metropolis. It, however, seemed to him that when a reform of this sort was under consideration it was just as easy to cut away at once all the objections which were raised to the present condition of affairs as to leave part of them to be dealt with in the future. Now, in his view, this Amendment was perfectly necessary, in order that the county voter might be able to give his vote without an amount of inconvenience leading to virtual disfranchisement. If some such Amendment were not accepted it would be necessary to put a clause in some Bill which should compel Returning Officers to fix Saturday as the day on which county elections should be held, otherwise many county voters would be practically disfranchised. He was present about a week ago at a conference of some 400 persons belonging to different Committees, and representing no less than five or six counties, or districts of counties, in the West of England. A number of interesting speeches were there made by gentlemen, who were
    1988
    conversant with the conduct of elections; and it was the general opinion that one of the greatest boons which could be conferred on the county voter was an extension of the hours of polling, similar to that proposed in the case of boroughs. He knew it might be said that, by the provisions of the Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act, magistrates had power, and, indeed, were enjoined, to create such a large number of polling places in counties that no voter would have any difficulty practically in getting to the poll. But, although magistrates had that power, they had not in every case exercised it in a proper spirit. He was sure the Attorney General (Sir Henry James) was well aware of one county at least in which the magistrates had not carried out the intentions of the provisions of the Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act with regard to the number and arrangement of polling places. But even if the magistrates did carry out that Act in this respect that would not be enough. Let them take one instance of the necessity of an extension of the hours of polling. Every hon. Member would understand that if an employer happened to know that the opinions of certain of his employés were different upon political matters to his own, it was very easy for him, without saying a word, so to manage that their work should take the men a long way from the polling places on the day of election. As by the Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act they were not allowed to provide paid conveyances, it was quite clear that a man who worked a long way from the place of polling could not manage, as the hours of polling at present stood, to get back in time, unless he sacrificed half-a-day's pay to record his vote. He did not think that any hon. Member of the House would stand up and say it was right that a poor voter should, in order to exercise what was not only a right, but a duty of an Englishman, lose a portion of his wages. It might be said that the question of conveying was easily got over, because there were always gentlemen ready to lend their carriage or conveyance without fee or reward. Unfortunately, however, there were many places in which one Party had almost a monopoly of convey-

    1989
    ances. It was quite clear that the political Party which possessed the most carriages, or waggons, or conveyances of different kinds was too favourably handicapped. The reform he suggested was particularly needed in the Metropolitan counties, because in those counties men went to work very early in the morning by train, possibly to a place far removed from the place in which they resided, and where they were entitled to vote. Many of such men could not return until long after the present hour of closing the poll; they, therefore, had no opportunity of voting. It seemed to him that the present hours of polling in "[the Metropolitan counties, at any rate, absolutely nullified the right of voting which was possessed by county voters; and as an illustration of that he might mention the fact, partly due, he knew, to other causes, but in great measure due to the difficulty voters had to get from their work in time to record their votes, that in the late election in Mid Surrey only 50 per cent of the electors went to the poll. They were now on the point, he hoped, of adding to the electorate 2,000,000 of capable citizens. At any rate, it was clear that if the Liberal Party did not add these people to the electorate, the opposite Party would do so whenever they came into power. It would be well to act handsomely to these people, and not give them the right to vote only, but give them the power and opportunity and time to vote, without any sacrifice on their part, or without having to go cap in hand to ask leave to vote from their employers. On these grounds he begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name, and he hoped the Government would look favourably upon it, because he could not see that the arguments which applied to the necessity of the change in large urban constituencies were wanting in the case of counties. Voters in counties had just as much difficulty in getting to the poll as men in large boroughs; indeed, the two cases seemed quite on all fours. He did not see what harm such a change could do. It was argued that it would lead to additional cost, and that the votes could not be counted the night they were given. It was seldom that the poll could be declared the same night in a county now, and it was very greatly in the interest of peace and
    1990
    quiet that the poll should not be declared until the day following the election. He begged to move his Amendment.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 10, after the word "any," to insert the words "county or." — (Mr. Henry Samuelson.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, that on the second reading he had pointed out that the question of an extension of hours in boroughs was a very old question. It had been before the House over and over again, and had been considered by two Select Committees of that House. A great deal of evidence had been taken before those Committees, and communications had been addressed on more than one occasion to borough Members and to Corporations, so that there was a great mass of evidence collected on the subject. The extension of hours in counties was a new question; but there was clear evidence that, as regarded suburban counties, such a change was needed, although he was far from believing that it was the feeling of county Members that such an extension should take place, and it had not been shown that there was any desire for this change outside the suburban counties. Instead of overloading this Bill, he would try to ascertain between now and next Session what the opinion generally of the county constituencies was; and if he found it was in favour of the change, he would himself propose that it should be made.
    VISCOUNT LYMINGTONregretted the reply which the right hon. Baronet had been obliged to give; and he must, in the first place, differ from the right hon. Baronet as to the distinction between boroughs and counties. Why should an agricultural labourer living within the radius of a Parliamentary borough, like Cricklade, Aylesbury, and Shoreham, have the advantage of this Bill, while the agricultural labourer living outside that radius should not have it? As the Bill stood, it would create an anomaly as great as the Franchise Bill intended to remove. It was of vital importance, if the labourer was to enjoy the vote which the Liberal Party wished to confer upon him, that the hours of polling should be extended. The arrangement of the polling districts

    1991
    depended on the magistrates; but it must be remembered that the vast majority of magistrates at Quarter Sessions did not belong to the Party in favour of the extension of the franchise. It was said that an extension of the hours would be likely to lead to riots and disorder; but if there was any such danger as that, he would venture to say there was far greater risk in large and crowded constituencies like the Metropolitan boroughs, where the hours had already been extended, than in quiet rural districts. He did not think that was an argument deserving of much attention. He felt that there was no other course than to divide.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)said, this was a practical question for both Tory and Liberal county Members; and his right hon. Friend had said he was anxious and willing to consider this subject with regard to legislation, and to entertain any arguments practically put before him. Everyone agreed that polling places should only be kept open so long as was necessary; and until the general feeling of the counties had been ascertained, this proposition should not be hastily adopted. In the absence of such information, he must give his vote against the Motion.
    MR. JESSE COLLINGSobserved that this was a question which did not so much affect county Members. The House had nothing to do with the convenience of county Members in this matter. What they had to consider was the best means of giving voters a chance of recording their votes. The question really did not need much argument. It was simply a question whether voters should be fully enfranchised or not; and there was no doubt that if the hours of polling were not extended until 8 o'clock a large number of present voters would be disfranchised.
    VISCOUNT EBRINGTONsaid, he thought it of great importance that the hours should be extended, and he should support the Amendment.
    MR. BROADHURSTsaid, it would be useless to appeal to county authorities for information in favour of an extension of hours, for they were certain to be opposed to it. There was no existing authority in counties except Toryism.
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, he should apply to Associations.
    MR. BROADHURSTreplied that the only authorities to be applied to were the Quarter Sessions Magistrates, and the case would be as hopeless as any that could be imagined.
    MR. LYULPH STANLEYsaid, he regarded this a perfectly right and proper Amendment, and he should vote for it; but, at the same time, there was a great difference between its being supported by the Government and being opposed by the Government; and he wished to suggest that some compromise should be aimed at.
    MR. CAINEsaid, he did not intend to divide the House. There was no need to discuss the Amendment any longer, as the strongest speech in favour of it had been made by the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill.
    MR. HEALYsaid, the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Lyulph Stanley) had asked if there was no possibility of a compromise on the Bill. He would suggest to the Government a compromise which was not unfamiliar to them— namely, that they should arrange for their supporters to go into one Lobby whilst they went into the other.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 54; Noes 107: Majority 53.—(Div. List, No. 150.)
    MR. WARTONsaid, he wished to propose an Amendment in page 1, line 11, to omit all the words after the word "which" to the end of the sub-section, in order to insert the words—
    "Has 'at the last registration on the register the names of more than three thousand electors."
    He did not wish to preclude the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) from bringing on his Amendment; therefore he would suggest that Mr. Speaker should put the Question so as to leave the hon. Member his opportunity. He (Mr. Warton) apologized to the House for not having put his Amendment on the Paper. He had not had time to do it. As to the words in the Bill, he ventured to think it was the wrong test to take the time of the passing of the Act, because they all knew that amongst a body of 3,000 electors the chances of life were such that some few were sure to die between the registration and the time the Act came into operation. It was quite within the

    1993
    bounds of possibility that an alteration might be brought about which would prevent the measure coming into operation in certain places unless some such Amendment as that he proposed were accepted. In considering this matter they ought not to contemplate the Reform Bill— they should take things as they were, and discard altogether the possibility of any future Reform Bill. It was quite time to deal with any such Bill when it was passed. The Government wished to adopt a hurried mode of legislation to save them the trouble of preparing a Schedule. They could not take the trouble to look through the number of electors in the boroughs at the last election and make out a list.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 11, to leave out all the words after the word "which" to the end of the subsection, in order to insert the words "has at the last registration on the register the names of more than three thousand electors."—(Mr. Warton.)
    Question proposed, "That the word 'has' stand part of the Bill."
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, he proposed to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Monaghau (Mr. Healy). It was rather long, but it seemed to make the matter clear. As to the suggestion of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bridport as to the registration, there was no official statement as to the number of names on the Register. Until the list was printed it was no one's business to count them; and no one, save, perhaps, the Revising Barrister and the Returning Officer, had any knowledge on the subject. There was always a good deal of doubt before the printing as to the number of electors on the Register, and the most careful estimates were generally found to be wrong in large registrations—perhaps by some 10 or 20 names. The Register was not printed until the 1st of January. He thought, therefore, they ought to take the Register in force rather than wait until the 1st of January for the "last registration."
    MR. E. STANHOPEsaid, he was sorry to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that the Government proposed to accept the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy). They might have this anomaly—that a constituency which had only a little less
    1994
    than 3,000 electors might acquire that number in a year or two, and then have a right to the extended hours for polling; but, supposing the constituency decreased, and from over 3,000 fell to below that number, they would have this absurd state of things existing—that whereas the hours of polling extended to 8 o'clock one year, the next year they would not go beyond 4 o'clock. Such a state of things would be intolerable, therefore he thought the words "at the passing of the Act" should remain in the Bill.
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, there must necessarily be a difficulty in regard to want of certainty as to what the number of electors was. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Monaghan would make the matter clear, because, under it, it would be the ascertained number of electors that would be fixed.
    MR. HARRINGTONsaid, that at a registration sometimes a large number of names were held over for appeal to the Revision Court, and the appeals were not heard until some time—perhaps months—after.
    MR. H. H. FOWLERsaid, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. E. Stanhope) had given a most conclusive reason against the 3,000 limit. As the Bill stood, it would exclude 141 boroughs in England and Ireland, which he considered a most serious matter, and one upon which it would be incumbent on him to take the sense of the House again a little later on. Let the House reflect upon these fluctuating numbers, and what the consequence of the course the Government proposed to take would be. A voter might, practically, have a vote given to him when the constituency to which he belonged numbered 3,000, but would have it withheld on the following year if the number fell to 2,999.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 12, to leave out the words "at the passing of this Act," and insert the words "for the time being, as appears from the number of names entered in the register of electors for the time being in operation in such borough."—(Mr. Healy.)
    Amendment agreed to.
    MR. H. H. FOWLERsaid, he had already stated the argument in favour

    1995
    of the Amendment he was about to move —namely, that if it was right that the working man should have the opportunity of recording his vote at all, he ought not to be deprived of the opportunity of doing so at a reasonable hour, because he lived in a small instead of a large constituency. Another argument in favour of the Amendment was that they ought, as the Attorney General said, to legislate in this matter on practical grounds. At the next General Election there would be 141 constituencies of less than 3,000 electors which would be excluded from the operation of the Bill, on what ground, rational, political, or logical, he was unable to conceive. He therefore asked the House to agree to the substitution of 1,000 for 3,000 as the limit of the electorate of boroughs below which the Bill was not to apply.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 13, to leave out the words "three thousand," in order to insert the words "one thousand,"—(Mr. H. H. Fowler,) — instead thereof.
    Question proposed, "That the words 'three thousand' stand part of the Bill."
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, he could not assent to the proposal of his hon. Friend. That proposal was to reverse the decision at which the House had arrived on a previous occasion, and could not, therefore, be entertained. With regard to the wishes of the constituencies, he might say that since his hon. Friend and others raised the question of 2,000 as against 3,000 a few nights ago, he had gone through the list of boroughs of between 2,000 and 3,000 electors, and had made as many inquiries as he possibly could in the time, with the result that he did not find that in more than four or five out of the whole number of them there seemed to be any strong desire for a change, and certainly there were many opinions against it. This was, therefore, not very conclusive of the matter. But he would point out that, in drawing the line even where they had drawn it, they had included some boroughs where there was no feeling in favour of the change. He thought, on the whole, that the Government had arrived at a fair decision.
    MR. BROADHURSTsaid, as was evident from the tone of hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House, this was
    1996
    really no Party question. It was simply a matter of convenience, and of giving to everyone entitled to vote, whether he resided in a largo or small borough, an opportunity of discharging his duties of citizenship without robbing his family of part of a day's wages. That being so, he sincerely hoped hon. Gentlemen would support the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) in the proposal he had made.
    MR. R. N. FOWLER (Loan MAYOR)pointed out that the argument used with regard to boroughs of 3,000 electors was equally applicable to boroughs of 2,000 electors or less; because if the electorate of a borough of 3,000 might be reduced to 2,999, that of a borough of 2,000 might be reduced to 1,999, and so on. He had found great inconvenience result from extended hours of polling in his own constituency.
    MR. H. SAMUELSONsaid, it did not matter in the least whether the borough in which a man who was entitled to vote lived contained 3,000 or 1,000 electors, or whether there were only 100. The question was, as to whether a man who worked three or four miles from the voting place could record his vote and get back to work without sacrificing his day's pay, or a portion of it. It was perfectly logical to place the question on that basis; and he should, therefore, vote for the Amendment.
    MR. E. STANHOPEsaid, he was glad that the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Mr. Broadhurst) had discovered that this was not a Party question, because, if he remembered rightly, the hon. Gentleman had taken an opposite view of it a short time ago. But, to come back to the Amendment before them, he ventured to hope that the House would not for one moment think of disturbing the settlement arrived at the other night on this question. That settlement was one not entirely agreeable to all on that side of the House. He, himself, had not assented to it; and the Government did not support it entirely with their vote; but, the settlement having been made, Gentlemen on that side would make no attempt to disturb it; and he hoped the Government would stand by it.
    MR. A. R. D. ELLIOTsaid, he had been unable to discover what reason the Government had for insisting upon 3,000, as against a smaller number. He agreed

    1997
    with the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Mr. Broadhurst) that this was no Party question; and he hoped the Government would see their way to substitute the number proposed by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton for that fixed by the Bill. He had listened attentively to the arguments on this subject; but had not been able to ascertain the reasons for insisting upon the latter number, and, therefore, in the hope of discovering what the reasons of the Government were, he should vote for the Amendment.
    MR. PULESTONsaid, he could conceive no reason for any limit being placed in a Bill of this kind. He supposed, however, that the Government had some reason for insisting upon the limit of 3,000.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 94; Noes 43: Majority 51.—(Div. List, No. 151.)
    Bill to be read the third time To-morrow, at Two of the clock.

  TRAMWAYS AND PUBLIC COMPANIES (IRELAND) ACT (1883) AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 231.]
  (Colonel Colthurst, Mr. Findlater, Mr. pamell, Mr. Deasy, Mr. Sheil, Mr. Shaw.)
  TRAMWAYS AND PUBLIC COMPANIES (IRELAND) ACT (1883) AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 231.]

    CONSIDERATION.
    Bill, as amended, considered.
    MR. BIGGARproposed the omission from Schedule 6 of the Athy and Kildare line. He said it would be within the knowledge of some hon. Members present that the other tramways mentioned in the Schedule were in the county of Cork, and that it was by the Members for the county of Cork that the Bill was brought in. To the part of the Bill which related to County Cork he raised no objection, for the simple reason that it was certified by the Members for County Cork that it was desirable that that part of the Schedule should remain unchanged. The case, however, was very different as to the Athy and Kildare line. The proposed line would touch three counties—namely Kildare, Kilkenny, and Queen's County. He was informed that the parts of the country which would be benefited by the proposed tramway would be the two ends of the line, which would be in Kilkenny and Kildare. His hon,. Friend the Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon)
    1998
    was anxious that he (Mr. Biggar) should raise no objection, to the part of the scheme which affected Kildare, and personally he had no objection to the scheme. At the same time, he was not disposed to be guided by his own opinion, and therefore he telegraphed to the senior Member for Queen's County (Mr. Lalor), because that county was concerned in three-fifths of the project. His hon. Friend (Mr. Lalor) was born in the county, he knew its requirements thoroughly, and therefore his opinion, upon the scheme was of great value. The hon. Member objected entirely to the guarantee proposed, and replied to his (Mr. Biggar's) telegram—" You are quite right about the tramway. Go against it." He therefore begged to move the omission from, the Schedule of "Tramway No. 6."
    Amendment proposed, in Schedule 6, to leave out the words "a Tramway and Light Railway from Athy (County Kildare) to Crettyard Bridge (Queen's County)."—(Mr. Biggar.)
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Schedule."
    MR. MELDONsaid, he would like to understand the question which the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) wished to raise on the present occasion. Under the Tramways Act of last Session a certain number of lines passed the Grand Juries, and obtained the Grand Juries' guarantee. When the presentments came before the Privy Council to be confirmed, it was held by the Privy Council that the amount of the capital of the Companies should have been specified, and that in the absence of such specification they had no power to confirm the presentment. A General Bill was then introduced into the House of Commons in order to correct the technical error which had been made, to give power, in fact, to Grand Juries at the next Assizes, if they thought fit to exercise it, to insert in the presentment the words which were accidentally omitted. The Bill would afford relief to all the Companies, who had expended their money and obtained the sanction of the Grand Juries; and he did not know that anyone in the country objected to it but the hon. Member for Cavan, who for some reason or other blocked the Bill, and made it a sine quâ non of taking off the block that the Companies to be relieved should

    1999
    have their names inserted in the Schedule. That was accordingly done, and when the Bill came on for Committee the hon. Member for Cavan assented to all the names.
    MR. BIGGAR: No, no. Mr. Speaker, I did nothing of the sort.
    MR. MELDONsaid, that at all events the Schedule appeared on the Notice Paper for several days, the Bill came on for Committee, and in his (Mr. Meldon's) presence the Schedule, which included the name of the Company in question, was passed without comment from the hon. Member for Cavan. Unfortunately for the Company, the hon. Member for Cavan discovered that he (Mr. Meldon) was in some way or other interested in it; and he therefore made up his made to do everything he possibly could to injure the interests of the shareholders, because of his (Mr. Meldon's) personal action.
    MR. HEALY, rising to Order, asked whether the hon. Member was entitled to charge another hon. Member with a determination to injure the interests of the shareholders of n Company because of his (Mr. Meldon's) personal action?
    MR. SPEAKER: It would be imputing motives which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would not wish to impute.
    MR. MELDONsaid, he would withdraw the words he had used; but the fact remained that the circumstances of the case of the Company the hon. Member wished to exclude from the Bill were identical with those in the case of the Companies which he was prepared to include in the Bill. Was it to be supposed that relief should be given to four or five Companies, and that a Company exactly similarly circumstanced should be excluded from relief? Certainly no reason had been adduced why the House should make an exception of one Company, The lines traversed some portion of Queen's County and Kildare, they were passed by the Grand Jury unanimously, and he believed they had the support of a great majority of the ratepayers of the two counties. It was perfectly open, to any ratepayer to object before the Grand Jury to the amendment in the presentment being made. The hon. Member for Cavan referred to the action of the senior Member for the Queen's County (Mr. Lalor), who was not very constant in his attendance at the House—he did not see the hon. Gentleman present that night. The
    2000
    hon. Member for Cavan read a telegram he had received from the hon. Member for Queen's County. When he (Mr. Meldon) heard that the hon. Member for Cavan intended to press his opposition to the Athy and Kildare line, he (Mr. Meldon) had the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Lalor), who was now in Ireland, communicated with. The gentleman who waited upon the hon. Gentleman telegraphed—
    "Saw Lalor. Won't consent. Showed me a telegram from Biggar to oppose, and he replied he would. Said O'Connor would be neutral, but would be guided by him."
    This telegram was sufficient to show the nature of the opposition raised to the line in question. He (Mr. Moldon) did not think the House would consent to inflict a penalty of several hundred pounds upon the shareholders of a Company simply because the hon. Member for Cavan wished it.
    MR. LEAHYregretted that the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had seen fit to oppose the inclusion of the Athy and Kildare line in the Bill. When the line was before the Grand Jury the ratepayers of Queen's County and Kildare petitioned in favour of it; in point of fact, there was not one opponent of the scheme to be found amongst the people of the district it affected. It would be a misfortune to the district if the tramway did not proceed, because the line would unquestionably be a means of developing the coal trade of Queen's County. He trusted his hon. Friend would withdraw his opposition.
    MR. HEALYpointed out to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon), who made reference to the fact that the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Lalor) was not a regular attendant of the House, that he (Mr. Meldon) himself was not a diligent attendant. Had he been so he would have known that the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) took off his block to all the previous stages of the Bill simply because there was an agreement between the hon. and gallant Member for Cork County (Colonel Colthurst) and himself (Mr. Biggar) that the Bill was to be confined to Cork County. Of course, a Bill of this kind had no chance of passing unless it was assented to by hon. Members generally. The hon. Member for Cavan was, totally opposed, as, indeed, he (Mr. Healy) was, to the Tramways Act, and as it had turned out

    2001
    he was perfectly right. It had been found that a more absurd Act was never passed. The Privy Council could not understand it, and it never could be worked. The hon. and gallant Member for Cork County (Colonel Colthurst) obtained the assent of the two hon. Members for the City of Cork (Messrs. Parnell and Deasy) to the Bill; in fact, their names appeared on the back of it. He (Mr. Healy) was asked by the Skibbereen Board of Guardians to oppose the Bill; but he did not oppose it, as he was inclined to do, because he felt that the promoters of the Bill were ratepayers in the district, and knew the requirements of the district. It was very easy to fling motives across the House. He might ask the hon. Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon) if he was a Director of 14 Tramway Companies; he might ask him what fees he got for the promotion of tramways? It must be remembered that if the hon. Member for Cavan had not withdrawn his block, the Bill would never have reached its present stage. When the block was removed, the hon. Member for Kildare saw his chance to spring on his Amendment, and he rushed over from Dublin, where he spent most of his time. He was sure that if his hon. Friend (Mr. Biggar) had ever supposed the Bill would have a general application, he would never have consented to withdraw his block. The hon. Member for Cavan and the hon. and gallant Member for Cork County met one another in the fairest possible way, the latter promising that he would never consent to the insertion of an Amendment which was contrary to the agreement the two had arrived at. He (Mr. Healy) held that the faith of the agreement had been broken by the inclusion of the Athy and Kildare line; and therefore he begged to move that the debate be now adjourned.
    MR. JUSTIN HUNTLY M'CARTHYseconded the Motion.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned." —(Mr. Healy.)
    COLONEL COLTHURSTasked the indulgence of the House while he made a few remarks in the way of personal explanation. When the Bill was intro-
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    duced by his hon. Friend and Colleague (Mr. Shaw) and himself, the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) objected to it as a General Bill. His hon. Friend and Colleague showed him the Schedule in which there were only mentioned five tramways in County Cork. At that time the promoters of the Bill were not aware of the existence of the Athy and Kildare line; but he was bound to say that his understanding—it might be an erroneous one—of the arrangement between his hon. Friend and Colleague and the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) was that they were at liberty to add such tramways as were similarly circumstanced to those already inserted, provided that the names of them were mentioned in the Schedule and submitted to the hon. Member for Cavan. When, therefore, his hon. Friend the Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon) wrote to him. (Colonel Colthurst) acquainting him with the circumstances of the Athy and Kildare line, he considered himself justified in putting it in the Schedule. It remained in the Schedule for four or five days without any Notice of opposition being given; but on the day the Bill was down for Committee, he found it was blocked. The hon. Member for Cavan told him he would not remove the block, unless the Athy and Kildare tramway were omitted. He (Colonel Colthurst) was obliged to say that if, on Report, the objection remained the same, he would not object, nor did he now object, to hold himself bound by the agreement, however unreasonable he might consider it. He did not object to the omission of the tramway in question.
    MR. BIGGAR, said, he did not wish to kill the Bill; but he should support the Motion for Adjournment.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 9; Noes 37: Majority 28. —(Div. List, No. 152.)
    Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present,
    House adjourned at half after Two o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Naval Enlistment* (175); Women's Suffrage* (176).
Second Reading—Summary Jurisdiction (Repeal, &c.) * (155); Supreme Court of Judicature Amendment (152); Fisheries (Oyster, Crab, and Lobster) Act (1877) Amendment* (135).
Committee—Improvement of Lands (Ecclesiastical Benefices) * (131).
Committee—Report—Tramways Provisional Orders (No. 3) * (151); Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings (Scotland) Provisional Order * (148); Public Health (Scotland) Provisional Order (No. 2)* (149).
Royal Assent—Customs and Inland Revenue [17 & 48 Vict. c. 25]; National Debt (Conversion of Stock) [47 & 48 Vict, c. 23]; Settled Land [47 & 48 Vict. c. 18]; Greek Marriages [47 & 48 Vict. c. 20]; Summary Jurisdiction over Children (Ireland) [47 & 48 Vict. c. 19]; Fisheries (Ireland) [47 & 48 Vict. c. 21]; School, &c. Buildings (Ireland) [47 & 48 Vict. c. 22]; Colonial Attornies Relief Act Amendment [47 & 48 Vict. c. 24]; Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law) (No. 4) [47 & 48 Vict. c, lxxiii]; Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law) (No. 9) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxiv]; Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law) (No. 10) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxv]; Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 3) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxvi]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (Labourers Act) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxvii]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (Waterworks) [47 & 48 Vict, c. lXxviii]; Water Provisional Orders (No. 2) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxix]; Tramways Provisional Orders (No. 2) [47 & 48 Vict, c. lXxx]; Local Government Provisional Order (Highways) [47 & 48 Vict, c. lXxxi]; Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law) (No. 12) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxxii];
1856
Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law) (No. 13) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxxiii]; Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 4) [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxxiv]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders [47 & 48 Vict. c. lXxxv].

EGYPT (TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT WITH FRANCE)—THE VOTE OF CENSURE.—EXPLANATION.
EARL GRANVILLE: My Lords, your Lordships will recollect that the noble Marquess opposite told to your great amusement on Monday a sparkling little anecdote about the answer which the Government Whips had given in "another place" to the Question put to them by the Liberal Members as to how they were to vote. The anecdote was excellent; it had nearly all the merits of a good anecdote. It was very racy in its conception, and very pat in its application. But it had one very little defect, from which even the best of anecdotes are not always exempt. I am authorized by the Gentlemen who are supposed to have given the answer to state that there is absolutely no truth in it.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: What Gentlemen?
EARL GRANVILLE: Lord Richard Grosvenor and Lord Kensington. The Italians say—"Se non è vero, è ben trovato;" and I agree that, although this anecdote is not true, it was well invented by those who communicated it to the noble Marquess, and I can quite understand that the temptation to repeat it for the amusement of your Lordships' House must have been irresistible.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, the contradiction of the noble Earl is very ingeniously framed; but I never accused Lord Kensington and Lord Richard Grosvenor of having said it, nor did I use the phrase "the two Government Whips;" the Gentlemen to whom I referred were Mr. Cotes and Mr. Duff. I quite accurately described their functions in saying that it was their duty to marshal the forces of the Government; at least, if that is not their duty, I do not know that they have any other. They are Junior Lords of the Treasury, and I am informed, on referring again to those from whom my information conies, that those Gentlemen did undoubtedly say to those who applied to them that it was not a Government question; that they had to go

1857
into the Government Lobby; but they indicated the other Lobby as the one into which the applicants for information should go. Of course, if there was a mistake, I am very sorry for it. But the noble Earl has not contradicted the statement as it came to me, and I can only repeat that it came on good authority. And although the noble Earl's contradiction is, of course, made in perfect good faith, yet he has left the matter exactly where he found it.
EARL GRANVILLE: If my memory does not fail me, the noble Marquess did not use the euphemious phrase, "Lords of the Treasury."
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I used the words "the two Gentlemen whose function it is to marshal the forces of the Government."
EARL GRANVILLE: I cannot now answer a new charge against two new persons, but I will inquire about it.

SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND BILL.

  NOTICE TO AMEND AMENDMENT.
  THE DUKE OF ARGYLL: I wish to give an amended Notice to that which I gave the other day with regard to the Secretary for Scotland Bill. I wish to state that I shall move that the Bill be replaced, in regard to the Judges, in the form in which it was introduced by the Government, because I find on consideration that, in my opinion at least, it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to separate any of the judicial offices in Scotland from the patronage of the Home Secretary.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYasked whether, considering that the debate on the Franchise Bill would probably last over Tuesday, it would not be more convenient to postpone the consideration of the Secretary for Scotland Bill, which was put down for that day?
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he was of opinion that, under the circumstances, it would not be convenient for their Lordships to take the Secretary for Scotland Bill on Tuesday.

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE AMENDMENT BILL.—(No. 152.)
(The Lord Chancellor.)
SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE AMENDMENT BILL.—(No. 152.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR, in moving that the Bill be now read a second
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  time, said, that it contained some matters which had passed their Lordships' House some time ago, and which he need not now specially refer to. The 4th, 5th, and 6th clauses needed no particular observations from him. The most important clauses in the Bill which were new were the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, which related to certain proposed limitations in the powers of appeal.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a." —(The Lord Chancellor.)
  LORD COLERIDGEsaid, he desired to call attention to the 7th, 8th, and 18th clauses of the Bill. He thought that one great defect, as he ventured to think, in the Judicature Act had been the immense multiplication of appeals in the Division over which he had the honour to preside—that part of the High Court which dealt with the Common Law of the country. In 1876 he took the trouble to obtain a Return of the total number of appeals from the Chancery Courts in five years, and also the number of appeals in the Common Law Courts during the same period. From 1871 to 1875 the total number of appeals from the Chancery Courts was 1,012; the total number of appeals from the Common Law Courts during the same period was 245. He thought that was a very striking difference. From 1877 to 1882 the appeals from the Chancery Division increased to 1,379; while those from the Common Law Courts rose to 1,296. Thus it appeared that, while the Chancery appeals had risen from 1,012 to 1,379, the Common Law appeals had risen from 245 to 1,296. Those were very striking figures. He, as Attorney General, was, it was true, in a great degree responsible for the Judicature Act; but the other two persons who were mainly responsible were his noble and learned Friend now on the Woolsack and the late Master of the Rolls, Sir George Jessel, who was at the time Solicitor General. The Lord Chancellor and the then Solicitor General were persons of enormous experience in the Chancery Courts; but they had not much experience of the practice at Common Law. He, on the other hand, knew very little of the Chancery Courts. He thought he was wrong in not foreseeing that what was good for the Chancery Division, would not work as well for the Common Law Division, and that the general power of appeal which was given under

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  the Judicature Act would have most mischievous effects in the latter Courts, In the Court of Chancery the states were usually much larger, the facts were more complicated, and the whole matter generally gave far more occasion for an appeal than did the cases with which the Common Law Courts had to deal. Appeals in Common Law cases now often took place in cases where the amount at stake was exceedingly small; and it, therefore, frequently happened that the costs formed by far the larger part of that which the losing part had to pay. He was informed by some leading solicitors whom he had questioned that since the Judicature Act the costs in Common Law cases had, at least, doubled. They had, therefore, to deal with the fact that appeals had in these cases multiplied fourfold, and that there had been an enormous increase in the costs. The principle of limiting the right of appeal was one that was already in existence. It applied to County Court cases and Quarter Sessions cases, criminal cases, and cases from the Revising Barristers. The fact had been recognized that a multiplication of appeals often amounted to a practical defeat of justice. Practically, the limitation of appeal proposed by the Bill would apply almost entirely to Common Law cases. If it was not carried into effect, the present arrears would become greater than they were now, and more Judges would have to be created; the distinction of classes of Judges would be aggravated; and it would become more and more difficult to get the first men of the country to take the position of Judges of First Instance. The only other matter he had to deal with was that of patronage; and with reference to that he only desired to say that, although he knew patronage was very safe in the hands of his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack, it was for their Lordships to consider whether it was a wise and desirable thing to take away the patronage from the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Bolls, and to place it in the hands of the Lord Chancellor. In referring to that subject, he wished it to be understood that he did not do so from any personal motive, as he himself would not be affected.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES) — THE IRISH MILITIA.—QUESTION.
THE EARL OF GRANARDsaid, he rose to call attention to the inadequacy of the lodging allowance paid to noncommissioned officers of the permanent staff of Irish Militia battalions not serving on Army engagements; and to ask the Under Secretary of State for War, Whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to increase the allowances, or to build, hire, or otherwise provide suitable quarters, as was done in England, for the permanent staff where no permanent accommodation could be given in barracks?
THE EARL OF MORLEYsaid, that the allowances to non-commissioned officers of the permanent staff of Militia battalions were precisely the same in all parts of the United Kingdom, and he feared that he could not hold out any hope that the allowances to the permanent staff sergeants would be increased. The noble Earl had some cause for complaint in connection with the head-quarters of his own regiment at Mullingar. It was sometimes difficult for the non-commissioned officers on the permanent staff to obtain good accommodation; but the Secretary of State for War had recently been in communication with the General Commanding in Ireland with the object of having further accommodation provided at Mullingar.

ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES) — THE IRISH MILITIA.—QUESTION.
  NAVAL ENLISTMENT BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend the Naval Enlistment Act, 1853, and for other purposes connected therewith—Was presented by the Earl of NORTHBROOK; read 1a. (No. 175.)

  WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for extending the right of voting at parliamentary elections to women—Was presented by The Lord DENMAN; read 1a. (No. 176.)
  House adjourned at half past Five o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.