Sitting of 19 May 1886

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered — First Reading—Barristers at Law and Advocates (Fees)* [219]; Distress for Rent Amendment* [220].
Second Reading — Poor Law Guardians (Ireland) [5]; Parliamentary Voters Registration [100], further proceeding adjourned.
Second Reading—Referred to Select Committee—Railway Regulation [97].
Select Committee — Post Office Sites* [148], nominated.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  DUNDALK GAS BILL.

    CONSIDERATION.
    MR. DILLON: In consequence of the opposition to this Bill, I would suggest that the third reading be postponed for a few days, in order to give the Irish Members, who are very much interested in the measure, an opportunity of considering its provisions.
    MR. SPEAKER: The Bill, if opposed, will stand over until to-morrow.
    Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  POOR LAW GUARDIANS (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 5.]
  (Mr. Edward Harrington, Mr. Edmond Dwyer Gray, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Timothy Healy, Mr. Jordan.)
  POOR LAW GUARDIANS (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 5.]

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    MR. E. HARRINGTON, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, he would not go through the stereotyped formula of claiming the indulgence of the House in addressing it for the first time; but he felt, at the same time, that the House would be indulgent to any shortcomings which he might display. This Bill, the second reading of which he now proposed, extended merely to Ireland, for the simple and plain reason that it principally concerned Ireland, and also that its necessity existed in Ireland more than elsewhere. The salient features of the Bill were—first, that in future in elections in the Poor Law in Ireland to the position of Guardian there should be voting by Ballot; second, that in these elections there should be no voting by proxy; and, third, that there should be a better balancing of the representation of property by the reduction of the number of ex officios who were at present entitled to sit on these Poor Law Boards. At present the number of ex officio Guardians entitled to sit on the Boards equalled the number of Guardians elected by the ratepayers; and when it would be remembered that, in addition to this privilege, there was in Ireland a scheme of voting in Poor Law matters according to the amount of property held by those entitled to vote, it would be seen that property had an undue and overwhelming preponderance in the Boards of Guardians as at present constituted. In the proposal they were now making the Irish Party were not asking the House to affirm any new principle. They were not going in for any of those radical changes and wild notions which were now so readily ascribed to them. They were merely asking the Legislature to revert to the better wisdom which it exhibited in a former time. He had in his hand an Act passed in the first and second years of the Reign of Her present Majesty, and he found that in that Act the number of ex officio Guardians in Ireland was limited to one-third of the elected Guardians, and one-fourth of the whole Board. This Act was, unfortunately, repealed 10 years afterwards, and the number of ex officios raised from one-fourth to one-half of the whole Board in Ireland, while in England, he believed, the old custom of limiting the ex officios to one-fourth of the whole Board

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    was still maintained. To better balance the representation of property at the present time, they proposed, not that there should be one man one vote, but that each man should be entitled to vote according to the amount of property he represented, and that the ex officio representation of property should be reduced to the limit of one-third of the elected representation. If, as hon. Members above the Gangway from Ireland said, property and intelligence go together, and loyalty was a natural concomitant of both, then he thought that under this system these things received their due, and even more than their due, share of representation. The backbone and essence of the measure, however, was the principle of vote by Ballot. The tendency of the age, under every system of representation where it was possible to adopt it, was in that direction. The system at present in Ireland with regard to voting for Poor Law Guardians was a sort of "free-and-easy, go-as-you-please" arrangement. A policeman took around a bundle of voting papers to the houses of the different ratepayers, and sometimes he would leave them at one house and tell a youngster to deliver them to the neighbours. It was not this irregularity, however, that was the danger to the system of representation. The danger lay in the fact that the policeman was followed in his rounds by a number of harpies representing, it might be said, both sides, and the moment the voting paper was delivered it was pounced upon either by a smart bailiff on the part of the landlord, or an equally smart boy on the part of the National League, and filled up by either of them. He would ask the House whether it was decent—whether it was in the interest of the growth of a system of real Constitutionalism—that such a state of things should continue to exist? Another feature of the matter was that the majority of the Clerks of the Unions, who were the Returning Officers in these elections, were the creatures of a certain Party, and it was only a natural consequence of men's present imperfect human nature, even in the 19th century, that a person should favour those gentlemen who gave him his position. Now, in this Bill they did not seek to influence the Returning Officers to one side or another. They merely wished to make
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    it impossible that they could be so influenced. This Bill had an interesting history. It was in a small way, in miniature, a reflection of Irish history. The Bill had been before the House several times. It passed through the House in the Autumn Session of 1884, and where did it go? It went to that mystic region with the symbolic name called "the other place." There was an infernal suggestion about the words "the other place." Well, "the other place" sent it to "another place." It was referred by "the other place" to a Select Committee. This was the traditional policy of the House of Lords regarding Bills dealing with justice to the masses of Irish people, and he might add, indeed, with regard to the masses of English people as well. The House of Lords dealt with Irish Bills by what he might call a political system of baby-farming. They sent out Irish Bills to such baby-farmers as Select Committees, and kept them there until by dint of nursing they killed them. He had in his hand a big volume containing a Report of Evidence of the Select Committee of the Lords on this Bill. He honestly confessed he did not bewilder himself by reading it. It did not in the slightest affect the matter now before the House. The House had already affirmed the principle of the Bill, and he presumed it would do so again today. One would imagine that, instead of dealing with the question of the Poor Law in Ireland, the Lords' Committee was investigating something concerning Woolwich, something concerning an arsenal, or the Soudan Campaign, so great was the number of captains, majors, and colonels examined before it. In the Poor Law system in Ireland, from the Local Government Board down to the most minor grades, the whole system was saturated with the presence of those dilapidated, disused, and misplaced military men, whose military ardour only found vent in thwarting all the efforts of the people to get themselves properly represented on these Boards. They had gallant colonels, gallant majors, and, of course, equally gallant captains. In fact, they reminded him of a facetious poet who wrote—
    "Captains who never yet in battle
    Wielded pistol, sword, or wattel."
    One of those gallant colonels—the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Colonel

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    King-Harman)—had given Notice to read this Bill six months hence; he presumed he meant six centuries hence. [Colonel KING-HARMAN: Hear, hear!] "Hear, hear!" said the gallant Colonel. Well, all he could say was that there was not in the world a country more be-coloneled, be-majored, and be-militia-manned than Ireland, and yet Ireland was to have an Arms Act to prevent the people from carrying arms, and he supposed before long even rotten eggs would be proclaimed. These military men might be wonderful at military tactics, and have great military experience, and have distinguished themselves somewhere, though as a humble student of history he had not been able to discover where. The hon. and gallant Member was no doubt consistent in his Motion, and he was the consistent opponent to popular representation in the Union of which he was Chairman. Only the other day an honest Englishman who visited the Union told how a certain person deprived a certain people of a certain quantity of turf because they had the audacity to oppose a certain nominee of a certain hon. and gallant Colonel.
    COLONEL KING-HARMAN: And he was flatly contradicted.
    MR. E. HARRINGTONsaid, he would prefer to see a man contradicted intelligently instead of flatly, and he thought the hon. Gentleman referred to well established his case in his retort. But, to pass away from personalities, it was said that they wanted to place by this Bill the Boards of Guardians in the hands of the National League; but the answer to that was that nearly every Board of Guardians in Ireland had declared itself already in favour of national principles. That was not what they wanted. When political feeling ran neck-and-neck, it was impossible to keep political matters out of the administration of such Boards as Poor Law Boards, and what they wanted was to obviate the necessity of introducing political tests into the election of Poor Law Guardians, by giving the people the representation to which they were entitled. He would readily admit that at present unfit men were elected to these Boards on both sides. When he said unfit men, he meant that more capable men, but who might not have strong political feelings one way or the other, were not
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    chosen. It was their desire, not alone in this matter, but in every other effort at serious legislation which they made in that House, to so frame their measures as to obviate the necessity for the continual exercise of political feelings on both sides, and to give a chance to men of evenly-balanced minds to come in and administer such Boards as Poor Law Boards. It would, he thought, be hard for those who opposed this Bill to show that the Irish Party had any other object in view in introducing this measure. He had some experience of the present system. He knew that sheaves of voting papers were taken and filled up on both sides on behalf of certain men nominated to represent certain political principles, and who would not be nominated if they did not represent these political principles. Now, under this Bill there would be room for useful men, who might not lean to one set of political principles or the other. Under the old system the people had no representation. The Land League and the National League set itself to attack that system, and, of course, in attacking a bad system there could not be perfection in the attack itself. In former times it was the custom that the landlord, the lord of the soil, should be Chairman, that his agent should be Vice Chairman, and that the deputy agent should be Deputy Vice Chairman. He was stating facts, and the rest of the Board was made up of the bailiff, the rent-warner, the driver, and the few lick-plates who surrounded the "big" house. He would appeal to the Tory Members above the Gangway whether that was a system to which they desired the country to revert? He had known men, under that system, to go against their political principles and their consciences, and even their faith. He would not dwell further on that part of the subject beyond saying that he thought it would be found that all the principles which he said they desired to enforce were amply provided for. In the Bill they also provided for triennial elections, so that a man who, although he might be a good, sound, and useful man, might have momentarily incurred popular disfavour, could not be immediately swept off the Poor Law Board. Another satisfactory and sufficient reason for substituting triennial for annual elections was that the expenses of the elections came out of the

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    rates levied for the relief of the poor. There were also provisions regarding the trial of election petitions. The measure, in fact, was word for word, letter for letter, and comma for comma, with the provisions of the Bill which had already passed the House. By an error the qualification of candidates was fixed at £12, whereas it was intended to allow the matter in blank, so that the House might fill it in with a figure which they might think proper. For his part, he did not think there was any necessity for this double-barrelled reservation regarding property. When they had property represented on a sliding scale gradually increasing in ratio to the value of the property there was no need, in his opinion, for this property qualification of a candidate. If property was sufficiently represented—and he thought the House would agree that it was sufficiently, and more than sufficiently, represented, when one man could outvote 18 others if he had property enough—he did not see what need there was for a reservation on the class of candidates. Indeed, it was their experience that in certain electoral divisions it would be expedient that the occupier of a cottage and a few acres of ground, but who might not have sufficient to cover the necessary qualification, should be the Guardian of the district. At present the rate varied in Ireland from £30 and £25 in some districts, to £10 in other districts. But they would be prepared to allow the House, in its wisdom, to fix the figure if they considered that there should be any figure at all. With these observations, he would now conclude by asking the House to read this Bill a second time.
    MR. DWYER GRAY, in seconding the Motion, said, that whatever might be thought of the merits of the particular Bill under discussion, he did not think there could be any difference of opinion as to the ability displayed, or the manner in which it was proposed. He believed that this Bill was before the House for 15 years. To his knowledge, it was before the House for 10 years, and it was quite correct to say that, in this respect, it was a kind of epitome of Irish history. It passed the House of Commons several times, and when it was sent to the House of Lords it was treated in the manner which his hon. Friend had described.
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    On the last occasion it was referred to a Select Committee by the House of Lords; but those who supported the Bill declined to give evidence before a Committee appointed for the palpable purpose of obstructing the passage of the Bill. There were several hon. Members in that House sitting on the Benches opposite who were constantly advising the Irish Nationalist Party that they ought to trust to the goodwill of English Members, and that they had nothing to do but to bring Irish grievances forward in the House of Commons in order to have them remedied. Well, here was a Bill of a third or fourth-rate importance, and, although it was before the House for 15 years, it had not yet been dealt with. This was not a question of the goodwill of the House; it was a question of its power; and he doubted the power of the House to insist on having its decisions carried out when Irish matters were under consideration. For that reason Irish Members declined to even discuss this question of good will. He had no doubt some Tory Members would not object to the provision regarding the Ballot; but that reform without the others contemplated in this Bill would, in his opinion, make the present state of things even more mischievous than at this moment. These were the provisions regarding proxy voters and the number of ex officios. Ex officios rarely attended except when elections of officers were to take place, or when some job was to be done, and, he should add, when the religion of some deserted child had to be decided. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] It was quite true. He did not think that anything more lamentable could occur in civilized life than a meeting of the South Dublin Board of Guardians when the religion of some poor little waif found in the streets had to be decided. It was found that the ex officio Guardians had the power to outvote the Catholic Guardians. The chances were 50 to one that a waif found in the City of Dublin was born of Catholic parents, certainly of a Catholic mother, and yet the chances were 100 to one that the Guardians of the Union would vote so as to make that child a Protestant. When any official was to be elected then the ex officio Guardians were to be found on the spot—every one of them. He knew of one distinguished Gentleman, formerly a Member of this House, and

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    at present a Member of the Upper House, who was in the habit of coming over from England in order to vote at the election of officials, and back he went again. But as to attending to the business of the Board, of course, he was far too great a representative of wealth and of intelligence to do anything of that sort. An examination of the books and records of the North Dublin Union would show that that particular Gentleman never attended a meeting of the Board convened for merely business purposes. But when an officer, a clerk, or a medical doctor was to be elected—when the committees were forming and manipulated, then, and only on occasions of that kind, ex officios of that complexion were to be found present in their full force. That was the way the ex officio element worked. The hon. Member for South Londonderry (Mr. T. M. Healy) had moved for a Return of the attendances of ex officio Guardians and elected Guardians, and the Return showed some very remarkable results. But could it have been shown in that Return what the particular business on the paper was when the ex officio members attended, it would have demonstrated what he (Mr. Gray) asserted of his own knowledge—that they never attended except when there was an election of an official, the religion of a child to be decided, or some contract to be given away. Now, in England the representation of that class being restricted to one-third, it was in the power of the elected Guardians to protect the interest of the ratepayers and the public. But in Ireland, inasmuch as the representation of their ex officios was one-half, and as through these the proxy property vote and various other matters were introduced into the Irish system, some of which, no doubt, existed in the English system, they always, or nearly always, had a working majority of the Board—a majority which never did any work except of the class he had described. The result was that the elective force and power in the Boards of Guardians was ineffective for useful work, except to a certain extent. It was allowed to do the routine business of the Board, but had no voice when anything of importance was to be decided. It was for the House to say if that was a system it approved of. He did not think they would approve of it. The proxy system was one involving abuse
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    of the grossest character. He knew himself of cases which proved that fact. The proxies could be held by one man, for five years—practically for six years—and he knew of a case in which a man, who for a long time was the agent for a political Party in Dublin, held a large number of proxies for each electoral division of the particular Union in which he was concerned, and this resulted, practically, in his returning a large number of Guardians in his own interest, and they appointed him Clerk of the Union at a very large salary. Such cases could be multiplied by his hon. Friend; but the possibility of one was enough to condemn the system. It would not do merely to establish vote by Ballot without accompanying it by the abolition of proxy voting. He had much pleasure in seconding the proposition.
    Motion made, and Question proposed. "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Edward Harrington.)
    COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Gray) had made a rather startling statement—that the ex officio Guardians at present in Ireland possessed by their own votes a power able to influence and to produce a workable majority at almost all the Boards in Ireland. If that were so, and if it was also a fact that these ex officios only attended at the election of officers, &c, how came it that in five-sixths of the Unions the Chairmen elected were members of the National League, returned by the elected Guardians? He thought that fact disposed of the statement as to the overwhelming power of the ex officios. The hon. Member who moved the Bill (Mr. E. Harrington) made a speech of much force and ability, and one with which he had not much to quarrel. But in that speech he spoke of the Bill as though it contained one principle, and one only—vote by Ballot. I But the hon. Member who seconded the Motion informed the House that it would be no use unless other principles were affirmed. Now, as to the question of; vote by Ballot for Poor Law Guardians in Ireland, he, for one, did not in the slightest degree object to seeing the secrecy of the Ballot extended to Ireland. He agreed that there had been intimidation practised in the Poor Law elections in Ireland. He did not deny that

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    in some cases the influence of the land lords and agents had been extensively used; but, on the other hand, the hon. Gentleman who moved the Bill did not deny that intimidation of another character had been very largely practised. Large gangs of men went round the country, broke into houses, took the voting papers, and——
    MR. E. HARRINGTON: I beg the hon. and gallant Gentleman's pardon. He is giving a most elastic and fanciful interpretation of what I said.
    COLONEL KING-HARMAN: I had no idea just now of quoting the words of the hon. Member, but was merely stating what actually occurred. The hon. Gentleman simply stated that the landlords and agents and the "prime boys" of the Land League ran a neck-and-neck race. But there was no need to go further into the question. He and those who acted with him would be glad to accept the principle of Ballot; most likely it would cut one way as well as another. He believed that intimidation in general worked so as to make the voter vote for the National candidate. In their own interest, therefore, he and his Friends were prepared to accept the principle of the Ballot. But there were other principles in the Bill to which they objected, such as taxation without representation. They maintained that Poor Law Boards should not be the arenas of political strife. The duties of the Guardians were to raise taxes for local purposes, and to spend the money thus raised for the relief of the poor; those who had the largest stake in respect of property, and who paid the largest proportion of the rates, should have a larger voice in the election of Guardians than those paying only a few shillings. He contended that the system by which the proportion of ex officios was one-half in Ireland worked well. No sufficient cause had been shown why the proportion of ex officio members should be reduced from one-half to one-third. It was an absolute fallacy to say that the law in England was that the ex officio representatives should be only one-third, because the number of ex officio representatives in this country was practically unlimited, and there was no law fixing it at a third or any particular number. He was not opposed to the principle of triennial elections. It was said that the Bill was shelved in the Lords by re-
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    ferring it to a Select Committee, which bristled with colonels and captains.
    MR. E. HARRINGTON: No; I said that the evidence before the Committee was mainly supplied by colonels, captains, and so forth.
    COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, that of the 17 witnesses examined only two of them had any military title, and it was not true that no Nationalists were examined, for there were three. He did not see why this Bill should not refer to England and Scotland. He strongly objected to Clause 9, which did away entirely with proxy voting. It was hard upon invalids and women that they should be obliged to go out and face a crowd at the poll if they desired to have their vote recorded. At the same time, there was something in the objection which was raised to persons residing away from their property altogether having as much voice in the fixing of the rates as those who lived at home. But how could a man whose property was situated in two or three Unions, and, perhaps, in nine or ten electoral divisions of those Unions, record his vote at each polling place? Voting for Poor Law Guardians meant, purely and simply, voting for the fixing of taxation; and if an owner of property was prevented from delivering his vote on the question as to how his property was to be taxed, and how the taxation was to be administered, it amounted to nothing more or less than taxation without representation. Any man who had delivered a vote at any one polling place in any division should be allowed to record his vote in respect of property held by him in any other Union by means of a registered letter. With regard to the question of qualification, it was only fair that a man who was to have the management of taxation, and, what was more important, the care of the poor committed to his charge, should be a man who had some stake and some responsibility in the country, as he was much more likely to be careful of the rates than the man who had no responsibility and nothing at stake. He ventured to say that the best managed Unions in Ireland were those in which the qualification stood highest and the ex officio Guardians attended most. The taxation in those Unions was lower than in others, and the poor were looked after very much better. There was more jobbing in

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    Unions where the ex officio members did not properly attend. Boards of Guardians were now divided into political Parties; the election of Guardians was a political contest simply, and to further a political purpose was the object of the Bill.
    Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Colonel King-Harman.)
    Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
    CAPTAIN VERNEYsaid, that Irish Gentlemen were always getting to windward of the English Members. When they got hold of a good measure they introduced a clause that it should not apply to England or Scotland, and a former speaker had proceeded to denounce "captains and colonels." Now, he, as a captain, stood up to show that a good man might be found even among that obnoxious class. He rose to ask hon. Members on the Liberal side of the House, if they had any sympathy with the suffering lower classes of England, to join hands with the Irish Members, to show that in this case at least there was no opposition of race, and that there was a real and earnest desire to help those who could not help themselves. He was personally acquainted with men who were teetotallers, who led self-denying, righteous lives, who could point out how hopeless was their chance of rising in the world, with no prospect but the workhouse, and who saw nothing before them but ending their lives almost like the beasts of the fields. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] He was sorry to hear hon. Members say "Oh!" because that showed that they were not in touch with these people in the agricultural constituencies of the country. Let them try to do something to raise the man above the animal. Now that they had come back fresh from their constituencies, and before the feeling of sympathy wore off, they wanted to ask the House of Commons for some practical measure which would help to alleviate the condition of these poor people. They did not want to wait for a Local Government Bill. Here was a thoroughly practical measure which had passed the House before, which started no new theory, and which
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    did not wait for any new application of local self-government. The principles of the Bill were more trust in the people and the lowering of the property qualification. He should wish to see that qualification altogether abolished. If men were fit to sit in that House without a property qualification, surely they were fit to sit at Boards of Guardians, nor should ex officio Guardians be ashamed to sit among them. It would be more dignified for ex officio Guardians to abstain from voting when appointments were to be given away to a relative. Something had been said about the influence of the landlord. It was enormous, and was not to be weighed by the vote he gave at a Board of Guardians. A landowner might have great influence among his tenants if he understood their feelings and lived among them, and might lead them anywhere; but why he should want to have more than one vote he (Captain Verney) could not understand. The landlord ought to be content to vote for one Guardian; and voting by proxy should be done away with. He was in favour of vote by Ballot, application of the Corrupt Practices Act to these elections, the abolition of the property qualification, and having labouring men able to sit on the Boards of Guardians. When the Bill got into Committee he should move an Instruction that it should apply to England as well as to Ireland.
    COLONEL WARINGsaid, he thought that all the arguments of the hon. and gallant Member who had just spoken were in favour of the extension of the principle of the Bill to England and Scotland; but, in discussing the question as far as it concerned Ireland, it was well to consider by whom the contributions to the rates were made. He (Colonel Waring) hoped to see labouring men sitting at Boards of Guardians. When the labouring men contributed in a larger proportion to the rates which were expended he thought it would be fair and right that they should have a voice in their administration. He did not know how low the range of the poor rate in England was, but in Ireland, however, no person living in a house rated at less than £4 contributed anything to the rates expended under the authority of the Boards of Guardians; the landlords always paid as much as half the entire amount, and in

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    some cases they contributed five-eighths or three-quarters of the rating of the whole division. He had no objection to the suggested vote by Ballot, which would probably be found to act quite as much in favour of the landowners as against them; but as to proxy voting, he thought the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Colonol King-Harman) was a fair one. He could not see any reason why a person holding property and largely contributing to the rates in one Union should be disfranchised in another Union in which he held property. The vote did not in this matter represent a man's individuality, but his property; and he did not see why he should be called upon to select for which Union he should vote. They had heard something said about ex officio Guardians appearing on great occasions to vote for the election of officers, and for what was said to be a job; but, as a member of another body, in which jobs were sometimes said to be perpetrated — namely, the magistrates and associated cesspayers — his experience was that the jobs that were perpetrated were never assisted by the class of gentlemen to whom they had been attributed in the present discussion. He had himself frequently driven in Ireland many a weary mile in bad weather to prevent the perpetration of a job, and he had no recollection of a case in which he or his brother magistrates had gone in order to perpetrate one. He could not think that £12 was a sufficient qualification in many instances to secure economy of expenditure. In the Union for which he sat the argument had over and over again been made use of—especially in questions touching the medical relief, half of the contributions to which were paid out of the Consolidated Fund—that it did not much matter what was done, because only one-fourth of the charge fell upon the occupiers, and that was frequently the cause of the most reckless expenditure. Therefore, he held that the £12 qualification was not sufficient to obtain for a man the confidence of his brother ratepayers that he would narrowly look after the administration of the funds and see that they were not wasted. But the strongest objection he had to the Bill was the proposed reduction in the number of ex officio Guardians entitled to attend the Board. As a mat-
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    ter of fact, the number of ex officio Guardians who did attend never came up to the limit proposed; but the diminution of the number on the list would very much further reduce the attendance, because gentlemen who held that position were frequently called by their avocations to various parts of the country, and could not always be on the spot where the cultivators of the soil must necessarily be. He thought it would be found that the Unions where the ex officio Guardians attended most regularly where those in which the funds were most ably and economically managed. In his own Union his experience was that the attendance of ex officio Guardians was pretty steady, but not excessive, and that they enjoyed the confidence of the ratepayers in the district to a very large extent. To the vote by Ballot he had no objection; but he thought it necessary to enter his protest against the reduction of the qualification to £12, and against the abolition of proxy voting.
    MR. ARCHsaid, he supported the recommendation made by the hon. and gallant Member for Bucks (Captain Verney) that the Bill should be extended in its application to England. He had taken a considerable interest in this question of Poor Law, and had watched with interest its administration in rural districts; and he was able to testify that some such measure was sorely needed in the rural counties of England. He was glad to hear the Chief Secretary for Ireland state that the Government would soon be able to introduce a Local Government Bill which would benefit that class. On behalf of the poor agricultural constituencies in England, he desired to press upon them the importance of such a step. As to the property qualification, the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Waring) had said that a qualification of £12 was too low for candidates for seats on the Poor Law Boards, and he considered that it should be higher. The hon. and gallant Member had spoken as if only property holders had anything to do with the payment of rates; but it was a fact that there were thousands of labourers who were paying indirectly, their rates being incorporated in their rents. There were many men who engaged with farmers to work for a certain wage per week, and to live in the farm cottages, the rates for which

    1429
    were paid directly by the farmer, but were taken into consideration in the amount paid to the labourer. A man in the humbler walks of life was, in his opinion, better fitted for the consideration of questions affecting the requirements of the poor, labouring classes than a wealthy man. He was himself debarred from offering himself as a candidate for the Board of Guardians in the Union where he resided. He and his father had paid rates in the same parish for 40 years; but if he offered himself as a Guardian, he would at once be told that he had not the requisite property qualification of a £20 rating. When he sought a seat in that House at the last Election he was never asked what property qualification he possessed, but was simply asked by his constituents what his politics were; and it was a monstrous absurdity that a man who was qualified for a seat in Parliament should not be considered to possess the necessary qualification for a seat at a Board of Guardians. Then, as regarded ex officio Guardians, he failed to see the wisdom of the present state of things. The hon. Gentlemen who, having had a seat in that House, and who, on seeking re-election, were defeated, did not come back and say—"We ought to be admitted as ex officio Members." They would not admit them on that ground; and be wanted to know what the justice was of admitting to the Board of Guardians persons who had not been elected by the ratepayers to fill the office of Guardian? He believed that the poor suffered keenly, because they were not directly represented on the Boards of Guardians. He had had some painful experience of Boards of Guardians; and where Guardians of the higher qualification meted out justice to the poor, injustice was done. He asked the House to pardon him if he mentioned his own case. His father had paid rates in a Warwickshire Union for upwards of 32 years without asking a farthing from the parish. He himself, seeing now many of his class found themselves in old age with no other dependence than the Union, insured himself at the early age of 17. After he was married and had a family of six children depending upon him, his father's health gave way, and he had nothing to fall back upon. He wrote to the Guardians stating the case, and he received, in reply, an offer to take
    1430
    his father into the Union if he would pay 1s. 6d. a-week for his support. There were many cases harder than that. During the last 14 years, when men and women had applied for relief, the Board of Guardians had forced their children—the poor labourers who were scarcely able to make ends meet—to maintain them in the Union by paying 1s. or 1s. 6d. a-week out of their small earnings. Not from any want of love for their parents, but from their inability to find the money, they had been unable to meet the demand, and they had been sent to gaol. Was it not, then, time that working men had seats on the Boards of Guardians? He contended that the time had come when such a Bill as this should be brought in for England, and when the Poor Law should be placed upon a sounder basis—a basis more Christian and more humane.
    MR. JOHN O'CONNORsaid, he did not complain that hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House (Radicals) followed their example on this question. They had no desire to prevent them from "taking leaves out of the book" of the Irish Members in their endeavouring to obtain an amelioration of the Poor Law system. They hoped they would, however, obtain their support in trying to obtain further measures of popular self-government for Ireland. He had occasion recently to investigate another branch of local government in Ireland, and found that the hon. and gallant Member for the Island of Thanet (Colonel King-Harman) had opposed almost every measure of such a kind proposed for Ireland. He had made one charge which he believed should be met—that was with regard to the mismanagement of Poor Law Boards except where ex officios predominated. The fact was that out of the 163 Unions in Ireland it was only found necessary by the Local Government Board to suspend one since the year 1845, and that was one in which ex officios predominated. He also made another charge with regard to intimidation in regard to Poow Law elections. This Bill had, however, been introduced for the purpose of stopping that intimidation—not only the intimidation which the hon. and gallant Member said proceeded from what he termed the "prime boys of the National League," but also the much

    1431
    more serious intimidation by the bailiffs of the landlords. The first principle of the Bill was that Guardians should hold office for three years. He had a good deal to do with elections of Poor Law Guardians in the South of Ireland, and their great complaint was that they were compelled to proceed to election every year. He did not care whether the Guardians were Conservative, Liberal, or Nationalist—he did not believe that it was necessary to elect the members of the Poor Law Boards every year. Politics might change every week, or even every hour, but the cause of the poor was the same at all times. They had a high authority for this in the verse which stated that "The poor are always with us." Another principle of the Bill was that elections should be conducted by Ballot. If there was to be proxy voting, he held that open voting was necessary; but if they abolished proxy voting, the voting by Ballot, which had been so successful in all other matters, Imperial and National, should be adopted in regard to Local Boards. The principle of representation for taxation had been greatly abused in Irish Poor Law elections; and if they had to choose one of two evils it was best that they should choose the lesser, and abolish proxy voting. The hon. Member for St. Stephen's Green (Mr. Gray) stated that he knew of a case where a gentleman had a sufficient number of proxy votes to vote himself a salary of £800 a-year; and he also knew a case of a family in Cork who were able to sign 150 proxy votes, some for persons as wide apart as the West Indies and Ceylon. These, however, were placed in the hands of a local landlord, who used them for his own purposes. The principle might be amended in Committee; but the people desired that some limitation should be placed upon the exercise of this proxy system in regard to Poor Law government. He had also a word to say with regard to the ex officio Guardians. In 1882, when it was said "Irish discontent was driven beneath the surface," and many hon. Members on the Benches near him were under lock and key, they knew how the ex officios had acted. When his hon. Friend the Member for West Waterford (Mr. Pyne) sought the position of Chairman of the Lismore Board of Guardians, to his (Mr. John O'Connor's) knowledge, ex officios came from Switzerland and Italy who had never
    1432
    been known to attend the Board before to vote against him. Another such case occurred in the case of the election of a Chairman of the Clonmel Board of Guardians. One ex officio Guardian came from Italy to vote who had not been within the walls of the Union before for 20 years. They were told that the Nationalist Guardians mismanaged the Unions; but he could tell the House that the Local Government Board Inspector congratulated his hon. Friend the Member for North Tipperary (Mr. P. J. O'Brien) upon the good management of the Nenagh Union since it got into the hands of the popular Party. A similar state of things existed in Clonmel, for the Tipperary Unions which, under the management of the ex officio Boards, were in a state of bankruptcy, were now in the most flourishing condition under popular control. In conclusion, he thanked the House for the way in which the measures of the Irish Party had been received in the present Parliament.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. JOHN MORLEY)said: Mr. Speaker, I quite agree with the hon. Member who has just sat down that this Bill is not likely to receive less favourable consideration from this Parliament than from the Parliament of 1884 and 1885. We have heard the objections of the hon. and gallant Member for Thanet (Colonel King-Harman), who recapitulated most of those used in the last Parliament. But nothing which has occurred in the interval from the consideration of the Bill in the last Parliament to the present day makes any difference in the weakness of his objections or the strength of the arguments by which they were met. The Bill contains principles which have been found already to meet with substantial agreement in all quarters of the House. The proposal that elected Guardians shall hold office for three years instead of one year, is one that commends itself to all of us. That elections should be conducted under the Ballot Act is a point that was practically settled years ago, and nothing has been said from that—the Tory—quarter of I the House to-day to show that another opinion should be held upon that head. Not so many questions have been put to me since I became Chief Secretary as to my Predecessor in the last Parliament

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    with regard to the Poor Law elections, but enough have been put to show that there is a very considerable abuse under the existing system. The preparation of the Register is another important practical point upon which there has been a complete agreement. The Bill provides that the Lists and Registers of voters shall not be extempore lists made out, almost casually, immediately before the election. The Local Government Board of Ireland feel very strongly the necessity for another proposal—namely, that, in cases where the validity of an election is questioned, the petition ought to be heard, not, as at present, by an Inspector sent down by the Local Government Board, but before the County Court Judge. There is one point upon which opinion seems to be divided—that is as regards the property qualification for an elected Guardian. The Bill provides that the qualification should be a fixed one—namely, a rating of £12. I have listened to all that has been said as to the existing practice in regard to the matter; and the House should know, as a matter of fact, that the average qualification is at present about £20. Of course, the qualification varies, and is sometimes as high as £30, and sometimes as low as £6, as fixed at the discretion of the Local Government Board. They exercise that discretion in view of the average wealth of the district and other considerations, and the result is a qualification of £20. That does not materially differ from the average in England. The Government entirely approve of the reduction of the qualification to the figure named in the Bill. There are two points upon which there is a distinct division of opinion, and there always has been that division—first, regarding the retention of the proxy voting; and, secondly, regarding the number of ex officio Guardians. Well, the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel King-Harman) did not, under the circumstances, over-ingenously quote the opinion of my Predecessor, the right hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan). No doubt, in 1882, he did express to the House an opinion adverse to the change; but in 1884 the then Chief Secretary, the right hon. Member for the Border Burghs, stated in the course of a debate that he had been led to change his views; and after a speech, in which he laid down the
    1434
    principle that proxy voting might be altered, he was taunted with his change of views by a right hon. Gentleman who is now Lord Ashbourne, and of this the hon. and gallant Gentleman must have been aware.
    COLONEL KING-HARMAN: I was perfectly aware of it. He changed his mind; but he gave his reasons for one opinion, but not for the other. This was what I stated.
    MR. JOHN MORLEY: I think I have stated what was the impression left by the hon. Member on the House; but I do not press the matter. It has been said with regard to the extension of the provisions of this Bill to England that it would be well to alter the system of proxy voting. I may state that at the meeting of the assembly of Poor Law Conferences very considerable sympathy was expressed with the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles W. Dilke), who is entirely opposed to proxy voting in any shape or form. I should say that when the present Government bring in their Local Government Bill, I should not be surprised if it is found that proxy voting will disappear in England. It is obvious, therefore, that we cannot disagree with the proposal in the Bill to remove that feature in the election of elective Boards of Guardians in Ireland. The next point is the number of ex officio Guardians. The number of ex officio Guardians in Ireland is at present one-half, while in England the number is one-quarter or one-third of the elective representatives. Now, I have listened very carefully to the arguments from hon. Gentlemen opposite, and I must say that I have heard more arguments for this reduction from them than against it. In 1884–5 the hon. and gallant Member for Thanet (Colonel King-Harman) admitted that in three-fourths of the Unions in Ireland the elected Guardians had already practically the control, more or less, even with the ex officios; and, therefore, this reduction of the ex officios cannot make any substantial difference in regard to the protection of property. It was also admitted by the hon. and gallant Member for Down (Colonel Waring) that the attendance of ex offiico Guardians, except upon occasions when special matters were on foot, was not very constant nor useful when business was of an ordinary character.

    1435
    However all that may be, it is perfectly clear to me that we cannot, upon principle, contend that the proportion of ex officio Poor Law Guardians in Ireland should be greater than it is in England, although the amount payable in rates by the people in Ireland place them at a certain disadvantage in regard to property in respect of rating. I have read the evidence given before the Lords' Committee last year pretty carefully, and it has no more been proved by the witnesses before the Lords' Committee, than it has been proved by any previous speaker, that the power possessed by ex officio Guardians afforded any substantial or effective protection to property. For my own part, I agree with hon. Members representing English constituencies who express the hope that when we extend local government in England we shall also do away with ex officio representation, and with another artificial protection of property which exists in Ireland in a very elaborate form—namely, plurality of voting. I may remind the House of this, in conclusion, with regard to what has been urged against both proxy voting and the use of voting papers, that they have already been condemned by a Committee of the House of Commons which sat, I think, in 1878, under the Presidency of the Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. Hibbert). It is clear, therefore, that a Bill which moves so obviously in the direction in which we wish to go is one which we cannot now refuse to assent to; and I, for one, shall give it my cordial support.
    MR. HOLMESsaid, he had no desire to prolong the discussion on this Bill, but thought what he had to say might have a tendency to shorten it. He thought it was a matter for regret that there should be introduced into a subject of this kind either attacks upon classes, professions, or individuals. It seemed to him that in dealing with the Bill before the House the subject should be met in a different spirit. Boards of Guardians were not established for political purposes, their objects being solely the relief of the poor, and to impose rates for that purpose, and to expend those rates in as efficient a manner as possible. He was sure that the opposition to the Bill was only upon certain points contained in it which his hon. Friends thought would not render the measure efficient. It had
    1436
    always been their desire that property should be properly represented; and he understood that there was no objection from any part of the House to such a proposition. In Ireland the owners of property paid, taking the entire country together, five-eighths of the rates; but in certain of the poorer Unions, where the property was poorly valued, they probably paid three-fourths of the rates. For the purpose of giving property its due weight and due significance two provisions were made in the existing Poor Law—the one was the plural vote, and the other the system of ex officio Guardians. This Bill did not seek to interfere with the principle that property should have adequate representation, or with either of the modes in which property was represented. The hon. Member for Kerry (Mr. E. Harrington) did not propose by this Bill to destroy the constitution of the Board in so far as the Board was constituted of ex officio Guardians. The Bill did not intend to deprive property of the protection which the plural vote gave it; therefore, it seemed to him that many of the arguments addressed to the House to-day were wholly irrelevant to the subject under discussion, for many of the arguments had been directed against the system of ex officio Guardians, and also against the system of plural voting—matters with which they were not concerned. Those principles were not concerned or affected by the Bill. When they came to examine this measure in detail they found the objections to it were really objections to two or three clauses of it. One of the objections was to the abolition of the system of voting by proxy; and another referred to the change which was made in the number of ex officio Guardians. The objections were to matters of great importance, and were not unreasonable objections; and the observations made by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Colonel King-Harman) were observations which commended themselves very favourably to his (Mr. Holmes') mind. It seemed to him that if they had property representation at all proxy voting in some form—he did not say that the form in which it existed now was a necessary complement of that—must prevail, and that they would interfere in a very material degree with

    1437
    that representation which property now obtained if they destroyed voting by proxy altogether. The other objection was, perhaps, of greater importance still—the objection to the change made in the number of ex officio Guardians. He confessed that the only two arguments he had heard to-day in favour of that proposition were that the ex officio Guardians did not sufficiently attend to their duties, and that when they did attend it was only for the purpose of promoting their own ends. If they did not attend to their duties there might be some reasonable ground for excluding them from the Board, and supplying their place by some other persons who would represent property; but it would hardly be a reasonable argument for reducing their number from one-half to one-third of the Board. The attendance would certainly be less if they were only one-third instead of one-half of the Board. In regard to the attendance of ex officio Guardians at the meetings of the Board, he asked the House to bear in mind that ex officio Guardians were magistrates, and that as magistrates they had very important public duties to perform in addition to their private duties. Generally speaking they were members of other Boards, and it was but reasonable to suppose that gentlemen in such a position had less opportunity of attending Board meetings than elected Guardians, who probably were not so immersed in public duties. Now, if their number upon the Boards were reduced, it was quite plain they would not have the same degree of weight on the Board that their position rendered it necessary they should have. These considerations, so far from forming reasons for reducing the numbers from one-half to one-third, seemed to him to point in the other direction. Now, as to the argument that the ex officio members were very fond of jobs, and that they only attended for the purpose of perpetrating jobs, he was not a person who considered that virtue was a monopoly of any class of the community. He could well understand that an ex officio Guardian might be anxious to carry out some job that would benefit either a friend or relation, such as the appointment of a Chairman, a clerk, or some official receiving pay, and he could imagine a number of ex officio Guardians combining together for the benefit of
    1438
    some particular individual. But if he could imagine that he could just as readily imagine that an elected Guardian would be very anxious to carry out some job, and that a number of elected Guardians would combine together for the perpetration of some job. Just as he believed that elected Guardians were a check upon ex officio Guardians in the jobbery which was said to exist, did he consider that the ex officio Guardians, representing property, might act as a very valuable check upon the elected Guardians in respect to jobbery; and he maintained that if they wished to preserve Boards of Guardians from a disposition towards jobbery the best course to adopt would be to keep up the balance which now existed instead of reducing one portion of the Board to a position which would be very inferior to that of the other portion. It must be borne in mind that Boards of Guardians had two duties—not one only—to perform. It had been suggested in the course of the debate that the great duty of Boards of Guardians was the duty of guarding the interests of the ratepayers. But they had another duty, and that was a duty to the poor. An hon. Gentleman who spoke from below the Gangway said that the poorer classes of Guardians regarded 1s. as of as much importance as the wealthier classes regarded £1, and he claimed a greater amount of parsimony for the elected Guardians. If a Board of Guardians were to act parsimoniously, they would, no doubt, spare the ratepayers, but they would do so at the expense of the poor; so with regard to parsimony and the attention which the Board were bound to pay to the poor, one body of Guardians would be a check upon the other. He was clearly of opinion that the provisions of the Bill in regard to the representation of property were vicious provisions, and in the proper place and under proper circumstances he should offer them his opposition. Something had been said about the history of the measure. It seemed to him that the very circumstance that so much care was taken in investigating the matter before a Select Committee showed that there was a desire to approach the question fairly, and to consider it fully and deliberately. According to his recollection, certain Amendments were introduced in "another

    1439
    place." The Bill fell through last Session by reason of these Amendments not being accepted by the promoters of the Bill. They had now got the Bill in exactly the same terms as before. Probably, if there had been some give and take, his hon. and gallant Friend would not have moved the Motion for the rejection of the measure now standing in his name. He submitted to the hon. and gallant Member whether, as some of the provisions of the Bill were undoubtedly valuable, it would be desirable to divide the House on the second reading, but that they should all endeavour, when it reached Committee, to introduce Amendments which would make the measure a most efficient one for the purpose for which it was designed.
    MR. COOTEsaid, that that was an equally important question to the agricultural counties of England and Scotland. He held it to be monstrous to prevent the labourers from having the right of representation on Boards of Guardians merely because they did not pay the rates directly. When it was alleged that representatives of the labourers were not fit to sit on Boards of Guardians, he should like to know what hon. Gentlemen thought of those Representatives of the labouring class who now sat in that House. His own experience of ex officio members of Boards of Guardians was that they showed up when questions of the election of a Chairman, a clerk, or some other salried official had to be decided, but that they did not attend in anything like proper numbers from week to week, while the hard work of the Board, on the other hand, was done by the direct representatives of the people. He trusted, as a Member for an agricultural constituency, that the Government would take the opportunity of adopting the principle of enabling the labourers to have representatives on Boards of Guardians in England and Scotland, without waiting until it was convenient for them to introduce their expected Local Government Bill.
    MR. MARUM, said, he thought that no Justice of the Peace should be qualified to be an ex officio Guardian of the poor in a Union unless he was a ratepayer of that Union, and that no Lieutenant of a county, who might be a strong political partizan, should virtually have the power of
    1440
    giving a particular colour to a Board of Guardians.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 203; Noes 105: Majority 98.—(Div. List, No. 99.)
    Main Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed for To-morrow.

  RAILWAY REGULATION BILL.
  (Mr. Channing, Mr. Joseph Leicester, Mr. John Wilson (Durham), Mr. C. S. Parker, Mr. Jacoby, Mr. Lawson.)
  RAILWAY REGULATION BILL.

    [BILL 97.] SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    MR. CHANNING: Mr. Speaker, in rising to move the second reading of this Bill, I feel, Sir, that some apology is due to the House for the fact that a measure of such importance, dealing with so great and wide interests, and specially affecting the functions of a great Department of the State, should be brought before the House by a private Member. I can only assure the House that I took the step of introducing this Bill after consultation with those whose experience is much greater than my own. I may also remind hon. Members that when my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade introduced the Railway and Canal Traffic Bill, I did my utmost to urge upon him the advisability of dealing with the question of railway safety in that measure, as well as railway rates. Sir, I feel that the difficulties of a private Member carrying a measure of this kind through the House are so great that I strongly hope that the case which is to be laid before the House and the Government to-day may induce the Government to consent to the adoption of this Bill, or to hold forth some promise of dealing with this question on the lines we propose. Sir, this Bill rests on three propositions. The first is that the Railway Companies, in return for the concessions under which they have carried out their commercial enterprizes, have assumed certain duties—one of which is to provide the maximum of safety for the public and their servants. The second is that a large proportion of the accidents involving loss of life and personal injury are preventible. The third, that when it can be shown

    1441
    that accidents are preventible, the State ought to interfere to insist on the discharge of their duty by the Railway Companies. I know, Sir, that I shall at once be met by the answer that railway accidents have diminished. It would, indeed, be surprising, considering the wide adoption of safety appliances and arrangements within the last 10 or 12 years, if accidents had not diminished. But I cannot admit that there has been any substantial diminution; and, in the classes of accidents specially covered by the clauses of this Bill, hon. Members will find, in the Reports issued by the Board of Trade, that there is a remarkable persistence of the types of accidents to prevent which is the chief object of this Bill. Take, for instance, the figures for fatal and other injuries from falling between carriages and platforms, and at level crossings. And, when we turn to the worst of all, the loss of life and injuries among the railway servants in all the operations connected with shunting, it amounts to a national scandal. But, Sir, it is really immaterial whether accidents have diminished or not. The real point is, whether the accidents which do occur can be prevented? The recent Reports of the Inspectors of the Board of Trade show conclusively that a very large number of accidents are due to the absence of safety arrangements, while other accidents are due to the fact that safety appliances are improperly worked. Well, Sir, what have we been doing, what are we doing, or what are we called on to rely to remedy this state of things? We are told, in the first place, to rely on the principle of responsibility — that the compensation which Railway Companies are compelled to pay will be a sufficient inducement to them to adopt the necessary precautions to insure the safety of passengers and servants. As to compensation, I think hon. Members will agree with me that it is not a powerful weapon. I may point out that whereas the total working expenditure, the cost of running a train mile, varies from about 2s. 6d. to a little over 3s., the amount of compensation for personal injuries which has gone to make up this sum has only been from a halfpenny down to one-sixth of a penny — less, in fact, than 1 per cent of the working expenditure. Then, as to responsibility, how has that
    1442
    principle been applied? When have we heard of a Railway Director being put on his trial, where the neglect of precaution has led to a fatal accident? The principle of responsibility has been applied; but it has not been applied to the Railway Directors, nor to the Railway Managers. It has been applied, again and again, to the unfortunate railway servant. It has been, too often, some poor signalman, or pointsman, or engine-driver, who has, perhaps, been exhausted by too prolonged hours of work, who has been doing his best to discharge his duty under great difficulties, and who has not been guarded against error by safety appliances, whose judgment has failed at the critical moment. It is men like these who have been brought to justice, and made the scapegoats of the neglect of their superiors. At inquests, held on the railway premises, and under the eye of railway officials, verdicts of manslaughter have again and again been brought in against railway servants; but I am glad to notice, in many cases, when these men have gone before a jury at the Assizes, they have been acquitted. Then, Sir, the second method of checking accidents has been the method of publicity—the system of the Returns of accidents under the Act of 1871, of the extension of the block system, and of the interlocking of signals and points under the Act of 1873, and of the application of continuous brakes under the Act of 1878. These Returns, of course, have their value. But I affirm that, when they are closely examined and compared with the facts stated in the investigation of accidents by the Board of Trade, the Returns are found to be untrustworthy. Take the block system. Practically many lines of railway are returned as being worked on the absolute block system; whereas it is found on examination that in practice the absolute block system is evaded and set aside. Passenger and goods trains are allowed to enter block sections under a warning arrangement, or with caution tickets, on several important lines. Goods trains are even allowed to advance towards a fouling-point on converging lines of rails without a ticket. In the last Report of the Board of Trade an accident is dealt with which might easily have been a serious disaster. At what is called the Crewe Junction of Chester Station two excursion trains were allowed

    1443
    to advance on converging lines of rails on the warning arrangement plan, and a collision occurred. And, in the Report of the accidents in 1883, attention is drawn to the fact that one of the regulations of the Railway Clearing House itself permits goods trains in shunting to pass beyond the signal box into a section which is not clear, and to be worked by hand signals. That is, the Railway Clearing House itself authorizes an evasion of the block system, which destroys its value. Take a case like that of the Somerset and Dorset Railway. That is a single line, and it has been returned as being worked on the absolute block and train staff system. There have been repeated accidents; and a fatal accident, which occurred only in February last, has brought out the fact that instead of being worked on the absolute block and train staff system, as stated in the Return made to the Board of Trade, the trains have been worked, and the crossing arrangements of trains meeting each other have been made by telegraph by an official at Bath. I do not think, therefore, that very great reliance can be placed on the remedy of "publicity." Then we have the powers exercised at present by the Board of Trade. The Board has the power of instituting inquiries into the causes of the accidents reported by the Companies, and of making recommendations based on these investigations. But the only real power which the Board possesses is that of postponing the opening of new lines, and of new parts of old lines, until the requirements they have laid down as indispensable for safety, as regards permanent way and the general equipment of the line, are completely satisfied. This power has repeatedly been used with the very best effect. But, Sir, there appears to be this anomaly—that just where the power is most needed—in the case of single lines—this power has no legal force. It is one of the requirements for the completeness of a line that it should have double rails, and a single line is, by that very fact, imperfect and incomplete. The practice is for the Board of Trade to license the opening of a single line on receiving an undertaking from the Directors that the line shall be worked on one of three specified plans for securing safety. But this undertaking has no legal force. It cannot—I believe I
    1444
    am right in stating—be enforced in a Court of Law, and the only real power the Board of Trade has in this matter is to proceed against a Company for making a false Return as to the system of working. As to the investigation of the causes of accidents, and the recommendations of the Inspectors, these recommendations have no legal force whatever, and their only weight with the Railway Companies is their inherent reasonableness. The Reports show that the recommendations have again and again been neglected. Where the defects which have caused an accident have been pointed out they have not been removed, and repeated accidents have been the consequence. In the Report on an accident at Cowdenbeath, in 1882, the Inspector says that urgent remonstrances have again and again been made as to the neglect of the North British Railway Company in not adopting the block system on their Fife-shire branch lines, with the result of repeated fatal accidents. I do not know what is the present position of these lines. But even supposing the recommendations have now been complied with, is it right that we should have had to wait till the repetition of disasters had quickened the sense of duty? It is no secret, Sir, that the Board of Trade has exercised its powers in other ways to enforce railway safety. When Companies have introduced Bills into Parliament to obtain extended powers, the Board of Trade has, in several instances, used its power of postponement not only to enforce its requirements on the new parts of the railway, but to insist on the adoption of safety appliances and other improvements on the old parts of the line. This has, doubtless, been most useful; but, I ask, would it not be better for the Board of Trade to exercise such a power in a straightforward manner, and by statute, than by stratagem and obstruction? It seems monstrous, too, that if the recommendations of the Inspectors of the Board as to the removal of defects which have brought about disasters are of any value, they should not be enforced and carried into effect promptly. And surely, Sir, it is most inconsistent and illogical that, while the Board of Trade is empowered to assert and enforce a standard of public safety on new parts of a line, it should not have the same power in re-

    1445
    gard to the older parts of a line, where human beings run exactly the same risks. Now, Sir, these confused and imperfect powers are consolidated in this Bill, and made a reality. I have, I hope, given some reasons for the Bill in pointing out where existing means fail to prevent accidents. But there are other arguments on which this measure rests. The Bill embodies the principles laid down in the recommendations of the only important Royal Commission which has thoroughly thrashed out the question of railway accidents, and which sat from 1874 to 1877, and reported, I believe, in February, 1877. That Commission reported in favour of this extension of the powers of the Board of Trade which I now propose. None of the recommendations have, as yet, been acted upon, except the question of compensation to servants in the Employers' Liability Act of 1880, the operation of which is now before a Select Committee of this House. Further, the principle of the recommendations of this Royal Commission was practically adopted by the Board of Trade during the last Liberal Administration, and accepted by the then Liberal Ministry, and sanctioned in the Railway Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) in 1884. Now, Sir, I fear I have trespassed somewhat too long on the kind indulgence of the House; but I cannot but feel that this measure represents the wishes of a very large section of the public, and that I should not be doing justice to the case which has been intrusted to me if I did not say something as to the practical necessity for the proposals of this Bill. To deal first with the question of brakes, I would ask any impartial man who has looked into this question, who knows the history of "the battle," or, rather, "the muddle of the brakes," whether he does not really think that many hundreds of lives would have been saved, and that, leaving aside personal injuries, a vast amount of the money of railway shareholders might have been saved, if the Board of Trade had been enabled to intervene effectively some time ago? Hon. Members will have in their recollection that, after the important brake trials at Newark, the Board of Trade issued a Circular which defined clearly the necessary requirements of brakes if they are really to be
    1446
    effectual—and that the most important of these requirements were that they should be instantaneous in their action; that they should be self-acting; and that they should be continuously applied throughout the train and to the engine. That Circular also drew attention to the advantages of uniformity. It was pointed out that, on the through lines running to Scotland, it was of the greatest importance to be able to use the same type of brake throughout, and that accidents had frequently occurred, or been aggravated, by having the rolling stock fitted with different brakes. This difficulty, I believe, is now practically in process of being removed. But I cannot think it can have been very satisfactory to the shareholders of some of these railways that they should have been obliged, by want of uniformity, to pay for fitting their rolling stock with two, or even with three, different brakes on the same vehicle. I maintain it has been clearly proved that the requirements of the Board of Trade Circular are sound. Yet we actually find that, perhaps, the greatest and most important line in the whole country—the London and North-Western—still has nearly half its rolling stock fitted with an antediluvian brake, wholly unsuited to the requirements laid down by science and experience. We are all familiar with the saying attributed to the Chairman of the London and North-Western Company as to automatic brakes—that any man must be mad who would trust his safety to an automatic brake. I think the London and North-Western Railway have had some reason to learn the value of automatic brakes. Several times accidents have occurred on their line from trains breaking in part on inclines, notably at Wigan in 1884, when Colonel Rich commented very strongly on the defects of their brakes. And only the other day an accident took place at the New Street Station at Birmingham—in the presence of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham and the hon. Member for the Handsworth Division of Staffordshire (Mr. Wiggin)—from the fracture of a coupling, when a very serious collision might easily have come about had not the space the train had to run down the incline and on the level prevented it. This and other accidents would have been prevented by an automatic brake, which would at once have

    1447
    arrested the vehicles which had broken away. Now, Sir, the North-Western have recently decided to adopt a new system, and are fitting about half their rolling stock with a vacuum brake, which I believe I am correct in stating is substantially the same as the brake the failure of which brought about the terrible disaster on the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway at Penisstone in 1884, when 24 persons were killed and a very large number injured. To touch for one moment on another requirement in the Bill. Two recent accidents on the Metropolitan or District Railways, where a carriage in the middle of a train left the rails, and might easily have brought about a ghastly catastrophe, show the imperative necessity for electric communication between the guard and the engine-driver. I might deal with other points; but I turn at once to the questions which specially affect the safety of the railway servants, who suffer so terribly in life and limb. In one of the Reports laid before the country by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Sir Henry Tyler), the hon. Gentleman dwelt on the startling and melancholy record of the casualties among railway servants, combated the theory that they suffered from their own recklessness, and pointed out many ways in which the work of railway servants might be made less dangerous. The recommendations in his Report are all covered by the proposals of this Bill—as, for instance, the question of better spaces for the working of the trains in shunting and other operations, and the question of improved couplings. For a long time there had been many practical inventions which would remove the necessity of the men going between the buffers to couple or uncouple waggons. Hon. Members might be aware that this question has excited much attention in America. In the States the goods traffic was conducted in long covered cars on bogey trucks, nearly as large as a Pullman car. It was obvious that there was infinitely less coupling and uncoupling to do, as compared with our system of a large number of small trucks. Then, too, owing to the adoption of the centre-buffer arrangement in the States, the accidents which occurred were of a much less serious nature—the loss of fingers and similar injuries of a trifling character—compared with the injuries to the
    1448
    body of being crushed between the buffers, the usual type of accident here. Yet, in several of the American States laws had been passed in the last few years compelling the Companies to adopt some kind of safety coupling within a specified time. There had recently been held some practical trials of couplings—automatic and non-automatic—by the kindness of the South-Western Company, at Nine Elms. These trials had been carried out by the railway servants themselves, and the prizes provided by their own funds. It was clearly shown that there are many useful and practical inventions for dealing with this danger. And I may mention that it is stated that one of the satisfactory couplings can be applied to railway stock at a cost of £1 per truck. The railway servants ask, and ask with reason, that when Railway Companies are prepared to spend £3 10 s. on electric communication to give their first-class passengers a sense of security against a Lefroy or a Müller, who may be found on the railway once in 20 years, they should also be willing to spend 20 s. on a railway truck, in coupling or uncoupling which a shunter or a goods guard may have to risk his life once a week. Then, Sir, there is the question of overtime work. I might give the House many recent instances of excessive hours of work among signalmen and engine-drivers. But hon. Members are so familiar with this subject that I shall not attempt to occupy the House with details. The clause in the Bill as to overtime is virtually the same as was proposed by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) in 1884, and is of so moderate a nature that I do not think it can be quarrelled with. To sum up, I would say that this Bill is not the mere expression of the views of a group of individuals. It is the direct legislative outcome of the Report of the Royal Commission. It is the carrying out of the deliberate decision of the previous Administration of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone) and of the Board of Trade at that time. Further, Sir, this Bill comes before the House with the emphatic approbation of a large section of the public. It has been supported by nearly 200 Petitions from railway servants in every part of the country, and also by many public meetings. I appeal to this House to

    1449
    give it a favourable reception on behalf of the railway servants of this country. They have discharged, and are discharging, dangerous duties with loyalty and devotion, and they have the right to ask that those duties should be discharged under recognized conditions of safety to life and limb. Most of us here have travelled in the old times when safety arrangements had scarcely been introduced at all; when crowded express trains rushed through stations and junctions where our safety depended almost wholly on the unaided judgment of railway servants. We owe a debt, Sir, to the brave and loyal men whose cool heads and steady hands protected us from disaster under circumstances of the greatest difficulty. We owe it to them; we owe it to the widows and orphans of the thousands who have perished in serving us; we owe it to the men who are toiling now for us, and to their families, that we should insist that such appliances and such arrangements as have been proved to reduce human fallibility to a minimum, and to secure the maximum of safety for all, should be provided for the working of our railways. In conclusion, Sir, I sincerely trust that after the representations made to-day, the Government may either see their way to support the second reading of this Bill, or else that they may hold out such a decided intimation that they are prepared themselves to introduce such legislation based on its general principles as will give encouragement and satisfaction to the 350,000 railway men in whose name I have addressed the House to-day. I beg to move the second reading of the Bill.
    MR. JOHN WILSON, in seconding the Motion, said, he thanked the hon. Member who had moved the second reading (Mr. Channing) for having brought so important a matter under the attention of the House. This was not, however, a new matter, for it had been before the country and both Houses of Parliament in previous years. He was quite prepared to admit that there was sufficient selfishness in us to enable us to say that if the matter in hand only appertained to a certain class, and did not affect our purses, we might be led to look lightly upon it; but the measure that had been submitted to the House that afternoon
    1450
    provided very largely for the safety of the public, as well as for the safety of the railway servants themselves. The hon. Gentleman the Mover of the second reading of the Bill (Mr. Channing) mentioned two or three objections that, perhaps, might be taken to it. He observed that it might be taken as an objection that this measure was an interference with the profits of the Railway Companies. He (Mr. John Wilson) thought that the time had gone by when money should be placed against men; and, therefore, money should not be allowed to stand in the way of such a Bill as this. This was not a matter which should be left to be settled by the workmen and their employers. He would grant that there were certain things that ought to be, and should be, left in the hands of the workmen and their employers, and he would be the last one there to ask for State interference where workmen could make their own arrangements; but he thought that, for the safety of the public, a matter like this should not be left in the hands of the employers and the employed. There were many cases in which questions might be left to private opinion. A gentleman, say, employed a coachman who was careless; that coachman might take out a coach with a wheel that was likely to come off, and so long as the careless man only hurt himself, it did not much matter, but so soon as he injured the members of the community, he (Mr. John Wilson) thought the State ought to interfere. The measure before the House was one which the workmen had taken upon themselves to meet to the best of their ability. They had by speech and by action tried to show that they were desirous that the best means and the best inventions should be adopted in order that no unnecessary expense might be incurred by the Railway Companies in introducing safety appliances for their men. The principles of this measure had been before the Trades Union Congress for some three or four years, and resolutions had been passed affirming it, and asking the House of Commons to deal with the matter. He remembered being at the Congress when the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) was discussed, and when resolutions were

    1451
    passed to the effect that the Congress was desirous that the Bill should become law. In order to show the earnestness of the workmen with regard to this subject, he might state that the railway servants gathered together by their small contributions a sum of £500, to be offered as a prize for the best railway coupling that could be found for promoting safety. It was no selfishness which led men to this idea, but it was the desire that their lives should be safe, and that what they did should be done with efficiency and security. He did not desire to waste the time of the House, because he would like to see, if possible, the measure pass. He was not a very great reader himself, but he had read in one of Lord Bacon's books that ignorance was bliss. He might say that ignorance had been bliss in his case, for when he had been travelling along the railway he had believed until lately that the block system was in universal use on our lines; but he very much feared now that that was not so. He considered that men who had to work 12 hours a-day in a signal box were engaged too long in a labour which involved the safety of the lives of human beings, and he did not believe that it would cost the Railway Companies more than at present to allow their men in the signal stations shorter hours. The Bill asked for 12 hours of work and nine hours of rest. He ventured to say that the employé would not get nine hours of rest, for the time would be encroached upon by family affairs and family duties. He (Mr. John Wilson) had never been in favour of class representation in that House; but he felt it would be a great advantage if they had in the House a railway man who could speak accurately of the technicalities of his trade. Many accidents happened through the coupling, recoupling, and shunting of trains, which had to be carried out within a certain time, and it was often that a man when in a hurry through his impatience placed himself in a position of danger. In the absence of an experienced railway employé to argue the case of the servants of the great Railway Companies, he hoped that the House would compel the Companies to adopt the best means of procuring the safety of those in their employ, and that of the general public using their lines of railway.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Channing.)
    SIR JOSEPH PEASEsaid, that the Bill had been brought before the House, in a manner which left nothing to be desired, by the hon. Member who seconded the second reading (Mr. John Wilson). The object of the Bill was one with which the House would sympathize most heartily. The hon. Member who had just sat down remarked that they wanted in that House an hon. Member who was an experienced railway man to state the case of railway employés to the House; but he must say that after the speech of the hon. Member the cause of the railway employés had lost nothing by the manner in which he had presented their case. It was not his intention to oppose the Bill in any way; but speaking on behalf of Railway Directors generally, he (Sir Joseph Pease) could say that they were most anxious to adopt every contrivance calculated to save human life. For the last 20 years, to his knowledge, the Railway Directors of the country had examined and looked into the latest and best means of preventing accidents on rail ways and protecting human life. He could say, speaking for his own Company—the North-Eastern—that there was no accident involving damage or loss of life that the Directors had not inquired into and probed to the very bottom; and he had no doubt that the same vigilance was exercised by other Companies. He did not believe that the Railway Directors of the country deserved to be spoken of in the manner referred to by the hon. Gentleman who had first spoken (Mr. Channing). Railway Directors had done in the past, as they were now in the present doing—they endeavoured to adopt appliances which would facilitate the traffic and help the public, and which would add to the safety of human life. As to the block system, he believed that there was not a railway in the Kingdom on which it was not in use. All those appliances which the hon. Gentleman would force upon the Companies were being most rapidly adopted; but the work meant great change and research. There was now on all the principal lines a block system in active and daily operation. The cost

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    of the system was great. He was told of the fact that the block system on the Great Northern cost about £120,000 a-year to work it; and on the railway with which he was connected — the North-Eastern — it annually cost considerably more. The system had answered, for it facilitated the traffic, and gave greater safety. Some reference had been made to a poor line like the Somerset and Dorset line, which had never paid a dividend, and it was stated that it had not been worked on the block system; but this could not be taken as a sample of the railways throughout the country. The Railway Companies had, after long investigation, adopted and applied interlocking signals; and now on every line in the country some particular system of interlocking signals was being carried out. Then, in the course of the debate, something had been said about the continuous brakes, and one speaker said that such brakes ought to have been in use long ago. He denied that that was a fair way of putting the matter. The continuous brakes were many in principle and design. It had not been decided which was the best; and he did not suppose that the Board of Trade would undertake to settle the point as the hon. Gentleman had suggested. The Railway Companies, some time ago, sent a Commission over to France to inquire into the nature of the continuous brakes in use on the railways of that country, and they had brought over a railway van with the experimental brakes in general use, and experimented with it on the Brighton and South Coast and, he believed, the South-Eastern Railways. It was also the subject of experiments on the North-Eastern Railway. There were, as he had said, a great variety of those brakes before the public. There was the Westinghouse brake, the vacuum brake, and am automatic vacuum brake, and the brake which the hon. Gentleman had despised, known as Mr. Webb's brake. Of this latter brake he knew nothing; but Mr. Webb's shops at Crewe were the model railway shops of the day. The Companies were doing what they could in the matter to settle on the best brake. Then, as regarded the want of uniformity in the railway platforms throughout the country, every Company had its own standard for platforms; but it was impossible in
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    some cases to have all platforms, even on the same line, of the same height. Take, for instance, the Central Station at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the platform was much lower than the carriages; but that was an engineering necessity which could not now be easily altered. In some cases the platforms at stations had to be higher than they could be at others. As to the question of communication, the Bill provided for improved communication between guards and drivers; and he admitted that the cord system did not at present meet the requirements of the Board of Trade. No Railway Board objected to such communication, and experiments on the subject were going on from day to day by which it was hoped a better means of communication might be obtained. Then as to wide spaces near stations, it was not the fault of the Companies that this was not so, for it was only experience that had shown how needful wider spaces were. Railway stations that had at one time been in the country were now in the middle of towns, and in other places the towns extended close up to the stations, where land was difficult to procure. With regard to overtime, the question practically was between the employment of three men or two men in the 24 hours. It was only on lines where there was a great interval between the passing of the trains and where the men had one or two hours' rest at a time that only two men were employed in the 24 hours. Such a system as was proposed with regard to the Return of overtime to the Board of Trade would defeat its own object. Overtime frequently arose in matters over which there was no human control. For instance, an engine-man with his train in a fog had to put it into a siding because of the approach of a mail train, and had to remain there for a considerable period. That was a case in which a man had naturally to work overtime. He quite agreed that where a man had worked long overtime he ought to have a corresponding time to rest before going to work again. He would suggest that the Board of Trade might have power to ask, in case of complaint, for a Return of the overtime in question. His belief was that the Railway Companies had not neglected these things. But coming to the practical object of the Bill, while he admitted the loss of life on railways

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    was appalling and much to be deplored, he denied that Railway Companies had neglected any of the provisions necessary to insure the public or their servants' safety; and, therefore, the remarks of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Channing) on that head were somewhat uncalled for—remarks which would rather tend to injure his cause than to promote it. He did not, however, object to the Bill being read a second time, if after the second reading it was fairly considered by a Select Committee, before whom those interested in the railways of the country could be heard. If any regulations by Acts of Parliament, or any increased supervision by the Board of Trade, would diminish loss of life, no objection would be raised by those who represented the railway interest in that House or anywhere else.
    MR. H. ROBERTSONsaid, he had devoted a large part of his life to the making and promoting of railways in this country, and he must say that the great want they experienced in the working of railways was to find men who would take care to see that all signals were in good working order; and if this were done they should find that there would be fewer accidents and loss of life. When the hon. Member for Durham (Mr. John Wilson) spoke of those railway servants who exposed their lives in the discharge of their duty, he begged to say that there was one class of railway servants who devoted themselves more than any other to the public service and the preservation of human life, and that was the higher class of railway officials. He would not compare the man who had to do with the mere mechanical operation of running along the line with the man who had constructed the line safely, or who saw that the whole system of the railway was uniform, and that if any accident occurred or any change took place in the daily work of the system it had the means of adapting itself to the circumstances and providing for the safety of the public. He did not think there was a country in the world which possessed a body of men superior in ability to those of this country. He believed that from what he knew of Railway Directors they did everything that they could to make the railway system of the country free from accident and safe for the general public. All the regulations
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    suggested in the Bill before the House were now in force on most railways; what the Bill proposed was to make them compulsory, and to throw on the Board of Trade the duty of carrying on the regulation of the railways throughout the country. He (Mr. H. Robertson) was entirely opposed to this course, because it would have the effect of doing great mischief—namely, taking away from the railway management of the country the responsibility it now undertook and discharged. The Bill before the House would appoint officers under the Board of Trade to carry out the duties prescribed in the measure. There were matters which it was better that the Board of Trade should not have the decision of, otherwise the root of railway responsibility was struck at. He had great respect for the officials of the Board of Trade; but when a new officer was appointed he would like to ask how he had got his experience? An engineer employed for years at Malta, in charge of a dock, might have had no railway experience in his life. He, for one, should object to any such change in the law. The Board of Trade had officers in the Railway Department, many of whom were men with no experience of railway matters; they were, it was true, men of education, and after blundering for a short time they obtained that information which enabled them to serve the Board of Trade. It should be remembered that there were not born railway engineers. He knew men who, after a short time, had acquired a very great knowledge of railway matters, though at first their knowledge was so deficient that it could not be of any service in railway management or control. If the Bill was to be carried, as was proposed, in its present form, everything that it provided for would have to be carried out under the Railway Department of the Board of Trade. With reference to the new proposals of the Bill in the direction of improvements, it might be well to state that most, if not all of them, were already adopted by the Railway Companies. It struck him that persons interested in the Bill might also be interested in some patents. But the practical application of what might be useful was one of the most difficult points for a Railway Manager to decide upon. There was hardly anything more difficult than to put into general application rules and

    1457
    regulations of a particular character to I be carried out by the Board of Trade. One objectionable feature about the Bill was that it was to apply to all railways—to the great railways of the country as well as to the poor railways. There were railways and railways; and he had had something to do with getting the capital together for railways that he had been instrumental in having constructed in both North Wales and South Wales—not only as engineer and as promoter—and he could tell the House that there was great difficulty in a poor part of the country in getting the public to subscribe the capital. The landowners would be induced after a while to take shares, and then the tradesmen in the localities that would be benefited by a railway; but in the long run they always found it difficult to get the capital together. Did the House think that it would be any easier to get railways made in poor districts if this Bill were passed? The Board of Trade would, if the Bill were passed, enforce its provisions against all railways—whether they were rich or poor, extensive or limited in their mileage. The inconvenience of this would not be felt only in this country, but in nearly all the railways in Wales and Ireland, which, as the House and as Irish Members knew, were struggling concerns in many parts of those countries. The Railway Companies now coming into existence were greatly hampered by the regulations of the Board of Trade. New regulations were enforced against the new railways that were unknown on the old railways. [Mr. MUNDELLA: Hear, hear!] There were new conditions with regard to bridges, and the manner in which they were to be built, and the old railways under their respective Local Acts were not liable to the new conditions and regulations. Then when a railway was made, three or four years, say, after its commencement, it was put to heavy expense in order to meet the requirements of the Board of Trade. The requirements of the Board of Trade if carried out in regard to some railways, and especially in reference to Irish railways, would involve a very heavy rate of expense, where in reality it was not wanted in the interests of the public safety. It was by no means necessary to enforce vigorously all the Board of Trade requirements over railways on which the trains
    1458
    ran at moderate speed, for trains travelling at a slow rate did not require the same precautions for safety as fast travelling express trains. Besides, most of the new lines made in poor districts were worked by the large Railway Companies. That was so in the district where he was acquainted with small lines. He thought it was worthy of the consideration of the Board of Trade whether there should not be a second class of railway, so that, while sufficient could be done for the public safety, the requirements might not be too great for small Companies to meet, who had, perhaps, spent all their capital. The Bill before the House would compel all railways to adopt the changes comprised in it; therefore, on that ground alone, it was faulty. He would not, however, object to the second reading of the Bill. He thought that the Bill might be referred to a Select Committee; if so, it would require a great deal of alteration, and he hoped that these points would be considered; if they were not, he thought that the Bill was one that ought not to pass.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. MUNDELLA)said: I think that at this hour it is right that I should state what course the Government propose to take with regard to this Bill. I am sure that there is not a single Member of the House who does not feel sympathy with the object sought to be attained by this Bill. The Bill is not only designed to insure greater safety for the travelling public, but also for that numerous class of railway servants who, after all, are the greatest sufferers by railway accidents. The percentage of the loss of life among railway servants in past years has been appalling, though I am glad to be able to say that it is declining. It has been so large that I think the general public hardly realizes the extent of it. I agree with my hon. Friend who has just sat down (Mr. Robertson) as to the character of the railway servants of this country. They form a vast array of 350,000 or 400,000 men, and of every man, from the Railway Manager down to the humblest porter on the line, it may be said there is not a more exemplary class of officials in any country in the world. There is among them an esprit de corps and a readiness to respond to any demand of the public that stands

    1459
    in striking contrast with the feeling of railway servants in almost every other country of the world. I have travelled myself over all the railways of Europe, and over many in America, and all I can say is that I am always glad when I get in sight of an English railway station. There is no man so ready to help you, who is so free from officialism and so unselfish in his willingness to undertake a heavy load, as the English railway servant whenever you meet him. I feel, therefore, that the House will recognize that he has every claim upon us to relieve him if we can, and to diminish his sufferings. But what I want to caution the House about is, that if we undertake legislation, we should endeavour, in our desire to be serviceable to the travelling public and to the servants of the Railway Companies, not to relieve the Railway Directors or the Companies of their responsibilities and transfer them to the Board of Trade. There is a great deal already being done in the direction of this Bill. Many of the objects sought to be attained by it are in steady process of accomplishment. My hon. Friend who brought in the Bill (Mr. Channing), and the hon. Member who so ably seconded him (Mr. John Wilson), do not deny that there is steady progress in the direction of the Bill. Further, my hon. Friend does not demand that the provisions of the Bill, if they become an Act, should be put in force immediately in all cases, because that would be, as he knows, an absolute impossibility. I should like to point out to the House some of the justifications for the measure. There is no doubt we have done what we can in this House to diminish loss of life amongst the working classes by the Factory and Workshop Acts. The effect of all that legislation has been for the general good of the whole community. When I come to read to the House some of the statistics relating to railway servants the House will see that the calamities which befall them do not affect the individual merely, but his family and those dependent upon him. During the last 11 years the total number of railway servants killed in the service of the Railway Companies amounted to 6,584, the total number injured was 26,012. The total, it is clear, amounts to the losses sustained in many battles. There is no doubt that many of the deaths are not preventible. They come from the rail-
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    way servant taking risks to which he has been accustomed in the desire to perform his duty promptly. On the other hand, a great number come from causes which are preventible. I am glad to tell the House that these calamities during the last 11 years show a steady diminution year by year. The number of passengers killed while travelling on the railway in 1874 was 76; in 1875, 17; and in 1879, 75. To show how steady has been the diminution, I will read the list from 1880. In 1880 there were 29; in 1881, 23; in 1882, 18; in 1883, 11; in 1884, 31; and in 1885, 6. So that there was a steady diminution, although during the same period there was a large increase of passengers. The number of passengers killed while travelling was in 1874 one in 5,500,000, the number in 1880 fell to one in 20,000,000, and in 1885 to one in 116,000,000. The number injured in 1874 was 1,613; in 1875, 1,212; in 1878, 1,173; in 1880, 904; in 1881, 987; in 1882, 802; in 1883, 662; in 1884, 660; and in 1885, 435; the number in the last year being the least ever known. If I take the number of railway servants killed the same thing obtains. The number in 1874 was 46, and in 1884 it came down to 13. The number injured in 1874 was 271, and in 1885, 81. The percentage of injured was in 1874 as one in 70, and in 1885 it was one in 163. Undoubtedly the number is still too high, but it is satisfactory to feel there is a diminution. The Bill of my hon. Friend is not a Bill which compels the Board of Trade to take prompt action in all cases. It is a Bill conferring large discretionary powers, which, if the House does confer them, will require to be exercised with great discretion. I agree that the block system which substitutes an interval of space for an interval of time is one of the greatest possible preventives of accidents. It ought to be in operation throughout the whole railway system of the country. It is being introduced to a very large extent. I will tell my hon. Friend to what extent the block system now obtains. On the 31st of December, 1885, it prevailed on double line railways extending to 9,583 miles out of a total of 10,479 miles, or on over 92 per cent of the whole system. It may be said, Why should it not be imposed on the remaining 8 or 9 per cent? The

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    answer is that these railways are very poor, and that it would be very difficult for them to raise the money to accomplish all those changes. No doubt the Board of Trade finds itself sometimes in a difficult position for enforcing its decrees. I know of two Railway Companies running side by side, one of which was well equipped and had all the necessary arrangements for safe working, and the other was as badly equipped as it could possibly be. What was to be done? There were accidents again and again. The Directors were paying no dividends, and as a result there was no interlocking signal at work on their line. When my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) was President of the Board of Trade there were two or three accidents on that line. He had no power to enforce interlocking signals, and he had no power to interfere until an application for further powers was made. Then by his resoluteness he was enabled to insist on those necessary parts of the equipment of the line being carried out. This Bill proposes to give us powers to enforce the provision of interlocking signals, double lines, and continuous brakes. The House will recognize that the Board of Trade is eager rather to take too much responsibility than to shirk it; but I feel somewhat reluctant to take all the responsibility which this Bill would put on the Board. There are powers which I think the House might with safety confer and apply; but there are powers also which I think the Board ought not to be pressed to exercise. There is one to raise all the platforms to a standard height on the London and North-Western Railway. That would involve an enormous outlay, and, after all, it is doubtful if the outlay would give greater safety.
    MR. CHANNINGsaid, he admitted that the clause of the Bill was badly drawn, and he would be willing to excise that portion of it.
    MR. MUNDELLA: I am glad of it. Then as to coupling appliances, I do not think it would be well to make the Board of Trade the judges in this matter of deciding what improved coupling appliances should be used. I do not see any objection to furnishing a Return of the overworking of railway servants. Those long hours are a great source of
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    danger. There is no harm in making this Return to the Board of Trade. I do not think I should be justified in refusing to give the Bill a second reading. I hope the House will agree to the second reading, and to have the Bill then sent to a Committee upstairs, where the railway servants and the Directors can be heard. I have no doubt that by that means the object of my hon. Friend will be attained.
    MR. E. STANHOPEsaid, he objected to the way in which the responsibility would be divided by this Bill between the Board of Trade and the Railway Companies. There were some powers contained in this Bill which it would be unwise to give to the Board of Trade, and which would have the effect of stopping invention among railway engineers, and stereotyping present systems. In conferring increased powers on a Department of the State, two conditions ought carefully to be examined. The first was that they did not unduly diminish the responsibility of the Railway Companies, and the second that the powers that were proposed to be intrusted to the Department should be reasonable. He entirely agreed with the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Mundella) that the clauses of this Bill required very careful consideration, and he therefore cordially approved of the proposal to refer the measure, after it had been read a second time, to a Select Committee.
    MR. CHANNINGsaid, that he had much pleasure in agreeing with the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Mundella) that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee.
    MR. PLUNKETsaid, that he did not rise for the purpose of opposing the second reading of this Bill, understanding that it would be referred to a Select Committee. He entirely sympathized with its main object—namely, the protection of the lives of railway servants. He believed that by that method of procedure the objects which the promoters of the Bill had in view might possibly be attained. He rose only to protest against the extraordinary statement by the Mover of the Bill, that the London and Northwestern Railway Company were using an "antediluvian kind of brake" over a great portion of their line. As a Director of the Company he was able to

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    say that from the first they had spared no pains or expense in securing the best brake they could get, and in the opinion of the highest authorities the brake they were now applying was the very best which had yet been invented. He thought the London and North-Western was one of the very last Companies to be charged with indifference to the public safety. They laid down four lines of rails with special regard to that consideration, when, perhaps, they would not have done so if they had consulted only the interests of their shareholders. He repudiated with amazement the charge which the hon. Member, without any special knowledge or title to speak on the subject, had thought fit to bring against that Company, on whose behalf he was not at all afraid of the closest examination and inquiry. It was to the interest of Railway Companies, above all others, to prevent accidents occurring upon their lines.
    MR. C. S. PARKERsaid, as one of the backers of the Bill, he must express his satisfaction with the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Mundella), and that the Government were going to support the second reading of this Bill, seeing that during the last 10 years the number of persons killed on our railways was 6,000, while the number of persons maimed was 26,000. He had no doubt the Select Committee, with the assistance of the special knowledge of the Railway Directors and other experts, would be able to improve some clauses. The points objected to by the Government were not of principal importance. He hoped the Committee would be promptly appointed, and that it would get to work at once, so that the Bill might become law in the present Session.
    MR. J. C. BOLTONsaid, he had no doubt the Select Committee would deal with the Bill satisfactorily. He desired most distinctly and clearly to express his great sympathy with the object of the Bill, which was, in so many words, to effect the greater safety on railways both of passengers and railway servants; but he did not concur with the facts, so-called, stated by the hon. Member who moved the second reading (Mr. Channing), and he certainly did not concur in some of his deductions. The hon. Member said com-
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    pensation for accidents had had no effect on Railway Directors and shareholders; but he would remind him of a serious accident which happened recently on the line he was connected with—the Caledonian Company—which involved a cost to the Railway Company of £55,000, while the fares in the train which suffered were only about £10. That cost represented about 1 per cent of dividend, and he could assure the hon. Gentleman that 1 per cent was a matter of considerable importance to the shareholders. He hoped the suggestion would be taken into account that there might be two classes of railways. The Bill was a proposal practically to confer upon the officers of the Board of Trade the decision of what should be the arrangement for working railways, and he would impress upon the House that even officials of the Board of Trade were human, and were not always of one mind. At one period they recommended and insisted upon one thing, and later on they changed their views, or new men came in, and different arrangements were imposed. All he wished to do at present was to call attention to the fact that the Bill required very great alteration. He wished to say a word as to the care taken by some Railway Companies at least to reduce to a minimum the loss of life. The Company with which he was connected some 12 or 15 years ago resolved to establish a premium fund for the avoidance of accidents. The Caledonian Company had instituted a system of issuing cards to their servants. Every servant of the Company, whose duty permitted him to cause or enabled him to prevent an accident, on entering their service received a card; and if at the end of the year a card was presented to his superior without a complaint upon it—that was to say, that he had not contributed in any way to an accident—a certain sum was paid to the holder. In this way the Company had during the last 15 years paid an average sum of £10,000 per annum as a reward for strict attention to the regulations of the Company.
    MR. J. H. A. MACDONALDsaid, he wished to say one practical word as to accidents, having had considerable experience in dealing with them from an impartial point of view—namely, the professional point of view. His experi-

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    ence had led him to the conclusion that it was not so much a question of machinery or arrangement, as that two things were too often neglected. One was the ascertainment that the servants were properly educated to the use of the appliances which they had to work. The other was the servants not being sufficiently imbued with the notion that it was by blind mechanical obedience to the rules laid down that the safety of the public was secured. He had known many cases, both on sea and land, in which accidents had occurred because rules were neglected in the misplaced confidence that others would observe rules laid down for them. A broke his rule, trusting to B observing his, and B taking the same course, accident followed.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed to a Select Committee.

  PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS (REGISTRATION) BILL.— [BILL 100.]
  (Sir Julian Goldsmid, Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Robson, Mr. McIver.)
  PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS (REGISTRATION) BILL.— [BILL 100.]

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Sir Julian Goldsmid.)
    And it being a quarter of an hour before Six of the clock, the Further Proceeding on Second Reading stood adjourned till To-morrow.

  MARRIED WOMEN (MAINTENANCE IN CASE OF DESERTION) BILL.
  (Mr. Pulley, Mr. Thomas Blake, Mr. Winter-botham, Mr. Warmington.)
  MARRIED WOMEN (MAINTENANCE IN CASE OF DESERTION) BILL.

    [BILL 111.] COMMITTEE.
    Order for Committee read.
    Ordered, That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to extend the provisions of the Bill to the maintenance of children deserted by their father.—(Mr. Warmington.)
    Further Proceeding on going into Committee deferred till Wednesday 2nd June.

MOTIONS.

  BARRISTERS AT LAW AND ADVOCATES (FEES) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Boord, Bill to enable Barristers at Law and Advocates to recover
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  their Fees and to render them liable at law to persons employing them, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Boord, Mr. Ingram, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Lawson, and Mr. Hanbury.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 219.]

  DISTRESS FOR RENT AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Burt, Bill to amend the Law of Distress for Rent, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Burt, Mr. Arthur Williams, Mr. William Cook, and Mr. Robson.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 220.]

  POST OFFICE SITES BILL.
  Mr. SPENCER, Mr. GERALD BALFOUR, and Viscount LYMINGTON were nominated Members of the Select Committee on the Post Office Sites Bill.
  House adjourned at five minutes before Six o'clock.